14 
LAND & WATER October 19, 1916 
Co-operation and Country Life 
By T. W. Rolleston 
IF Ireland has in recent times added some dubious 
and sinister elements to the life of the Empire, it 
is all the more to be desired that any good and 
wholesome thing coming from that quarter should 
receive due acknowledgment and attention. And one 
thing it has produced which is worthy of the closest 
'attention that can be given to it — a thing unique in the 
United Kingdom but destined, one may hope, to prove a 
]30werful force in the regeneration of social and economic 
hfe in Great Britain as well as in Ireland. I speak of the 
co-operative movement in Irish agriculture. 
The history of this movement is a most interesting and 
encouraging chapter in the chequered story of our own 
times. It has been written in two books— Sir Horace 
Phmkett's Irdaud in the New Century, and Co-operation 
and Nationality by Mr. George W. Russell. These books 
contain respectively the Law and the Prophets of the 
new movement, while Sir Horace Plunkett's has also 
some of the annals of the Exodus of the Irish farmer 
from the old condition of helplessness and isolation into 
that promised land, much of which has still to be con- 
quered and occupied. They are written for an agri- 
cultural people, and it is natural that the work which they 
describe and to wliich they summon the energies of the 
countrv should begin in a land where agriculture is the 
dominant interest. But it should not end there. That 
agriculture and rural life generally are so relatively 
weak and backward in the general economic life of Great 
Britain is a dangerous and unhealthy condition. A nation 
whose material prosperity is not broad-based on the 
land is like a sailing ship without ballast, dependent for 
its safety on fair weather. Were Germany and Austria 
in the same economic position as England before the war, 
they would have been prostrate in three months. 
A Complex Problem 
The agricultural problem is a very complex /sne. It 
is a strange and at first sight an inexplicable phenomenon 
that while in every other branch of industry nothing is 
more marked than the tendency to run businesses 
together up to the widest limits within which a united 
management is practicable, agriculture remains wholly 
unaffected by this movement towards consolidation. 
Why is this ? On the surface, agriculture would seem 
likely to profit by consolidation just as much as any other 
kind of productive industry. The vast " bonanza " 
farms of the American North-West seemed to have 
pointed the way towards a revolution in the economics 
of agriculture \'ery similar to that which has transfomied 
the old agencies, both of production and of distribution, 
in every other industry. Yet these great farms are now 
seen to be merely a temporary expedient for breaking in 
the wilderness. Far from showing the way to the 
amalgamation of smaller farms, they themselves tend to 
lapse into farmsteads of two or thr^e hundred acres, 
each with its sturdy family working away in their fortress 
of individual ownership. 
Farming is thus placed in a category to itself in modern 
industry ; and the reason appears to be this, that the 
farm is at once a factory, a counting-house and a home. 
Unless it fulfils adequately all three functions it is not a 
prosperous concern. Sir Horace Plunkett has summed 
the matter up by inscribing on the banner of agricultural 
reform the watchword : " Better farming, better busi- 
ness, better living." To be of real value, an advance 
must be made all along the line, and in modern times 
it is the co-operative system which alone makes such an 
advance possible. Farming is in need of the extensive 
application of new machinery — the individual farmer 
usually cannot afford the outlay required ; a group of 
associated farmers can. In marketing his produce the 
individual farmer is at the mercy of a ring of middlemen. 
Associated farmers form a wholesale department, and 
sell their produce through their own paid agents. The 
problem of making the country a better place to live in 
is only beginning to be studied, but the things that 
association can perform are great and manifold. At 
present the town has far outrun the country in the organi- 
sation of social life. In the city, as Mr. Russell writes : 
" There are pleasures to be enjo^'cd. There are libraries 
where all the knowledge of the world is to be learned, 
and theatres where all the gaiety in the heart of man or 
woman can be satiated. There the great, the wise, and 
the famous congregate. There national destinies are 
decided. The day in the cities is busy and crowded with 
activity. The night in the cities seems like a fairyland 
with the glitter of lights, and with the friendly people in 
the streets bent on pleasure ; and the houses, too. seem 
built up to high heaven to those who know only the cabins 
and cottages ; and when the misty brilliance of lamps is 
diffused over the streets, the great huikiings rise up 
above them like Babylon or niany-templed Nineveh." 
Freedom of the Town 
And besides the vague attraction of all these things, 
the countryman knows that in the town he has more 
freedom to live his own life, more opportunities for 
growing rich, far better facilities for educating his children. 
Many of these attractive things the country, of coiirse, 
can never supply. But it has powerful counter-attractions 
of its own, and wise thought with united effort can, as 
the example of the Scandinavian States has abundantly 
shown, make the country a far more pleasant and far 
more profitable place to those who live in and by it than 
it is anywhcie in the British Islands to-day. 
The Irish attempt to grapple with the task of rural 
reform on the above lines began in the year 1889 ^'ith the 
comparatively modest effort to form associations of Irish 
farmers to work their butter in properly-equipped 
creameries instead of letting their labour on the land be 
exploited by strangers. It met with difficulties of all 
kinds — apathy among the farmers, hostility from the 
trading interests involved, angry suspicion from the 
politicians. Sir Horace Plunkett held fifty meetings 
throughout all Ireland before he could get a single society 
into being. At last they began to spring up by ones and 
twos ; they faced a tornado of abuse and mockery ; 
they confuted the cynical disbelief of the many who 
thought Ireland radically incapable of economic progress. 
At the present day the co-operative societies of all 
varieties, for dairying, for agriculture, for rural credit, 
for poultry, and what not, number nearly a thousand ; 
all Ireland is dotted \\ith them, and their united trade 
is three millions a year. 
Most Encouraging 
And it is an interesting and most encouraging fact that 
just at the present timfe when almost every Institution in 
Ireland is tottering, the Irish Agricultural Organisation 
Society has stood without a quiver the strain of the Sinn 
Fein rising and of the furious internecine animosities 
since unloosed. Within this magic circle Irishmen of the 
most extreme types in religion and politics still meet and 
work together harmoniously. 
The remarkable story of this development has attracted 
attention and stimulated similar efforts all over the 
English-speaking world. But its work is only just begun. 
It is only now, aiter nearly thirty years of effort and experi- 
ment, that the real scope of the problem as well as the 
real forces underl3dng the movement are beginning to be 
visible. The crown will be set on the work by other 
hands and in days yet distant. That work is nothing 
less than the creation of a rural civilisation by wedding 
the thought, the science, and the energy of the towTi 
to the beauty and wholesomcness of country life. No 
man in our day can set his hand to a nobler or more needed 
work. But it is a work which cannot be left to the 
country alone. The town, which has drawn so much 
vitality from the land, and which indeed can get renewed 
^■itality from no other source, must give back some of its 
gain if a proper balance is to be preserved. It must give 
it back by its organising power, by its facilities for study 
and debate, and in its overflowing wealth. The goal 
