IN

THE NEW IRISH

MOVEMENT

N the year 1888 some public-spirited Irish gentlemen, perceiving how terribly Ireland as an agricultural and pastoral country had fallen behind her competitors, determined to attempt the difficult task of teaching our peasantry the principle and practices of co-operation. Thev perceived that in the countries which were beating Ireland out of the British markets, peasant co-operation was the rule and individualism the exception, and believed that it was to this fact the success of those countries was due. Though it was predicted on all hands that the Irish farmers could never be brought to endure the discipline necessary for the successful working of the principle of co-operation, they persevered. Amongst these gentlemen the inspiring influence was that of the Hon. Horace Plunkett, M.P. In the year 1889 they succeeded in founding one co-operative society, with 50 members. Though in that year and the next they held many meetings of farmers, in different parts of the country, at which they explained to them the advantages which would certainly accrue from combination, and offered much voluntary assistance for the overcoming of the initial difficulties, no further progress was made till the year 1891. But, on the other hand, the pioneer society founded at the start held its ground, and its members were prepared to testify to all inquirers that the working of the system had been of great material benefit to themselves. The business for which they had combined was the establishment of a creamery and butter factory. When it was proved by experience that better butter could be so produced and better prices realised in its sale, and that the common management of such an institution was no such mighty feat after all, curiosity and interest began to awake in the rural mind. The results were apparent in the establishment, in the year 1891, of seventeen societies, with 850 members. In 1892 there were in full working order twenty-five societies, with 1,050 members, and in 1893 thirty societies, with 1,250 members.

This, indeed, was no great result for five years'

indefatigable work on the part of the promoters.

decidedly slow, but at least there was progress.

Progress was

Mr. Plunkett and his friends now felt that they were in a position to invite a more general support for their movement, which had hitherto been conducted at their own expense, and in the year 1893 founded the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, to carry forward the work on a larger scale and with more adequate funds. The object of this Society was to promote and encourage co-operation only up to that point at which it might be expected to go forward with its own momentum, until the co-operative societies, being drawn into mutual co-operation, should, through their own governing body, be able to take charge of the movement. The Agricultural Organisation Society would then have accomplished its purpose and be dissolved. In the year 1894, the first year of the existence of the Agricultural Organisation Society, the number of peasant co-operative societies increased to thirty-three, with 1,650 members; in 1895 to sixty-seven, with 3,800 members; and by the 31st March in the present year to the gratifying total of one hundred and ten societies, with 10,120 members. There

is no manner of doubt now as to the success of the movement. In a few years all the Irish farmers will be combined in co-operative societies, and a great work, with far larger issues than are apparent on the surface, will have been accomplished. The majority of these societies exist for the purpose of working co-operative butter factories, but there are some which work bacon factories, and thirty whose primary object is the joint purchase by their members of agricultural requirements, such as tools, seeds, manures, &c. The Agricultural Organisation Society the moment they perceived that the movement had taken a deep and firm root, and that its success was assured, went on to the next step and founded the Irish Co-operative Agency Society. This is the common trading agency of the various local societies, and represents the natural development of the movement. The Organisation Society is in no sense a commercial institution, it is purely philanthropic. The members subscribe to its funds, but draw no dividend. Those funds are expended in the despatch of trained organisers to localities in which the farmers indicate a desire to form a co-operative society, and request the Society to undertake the task of teaching and advising them. The Society also prints and disseminates a propagandist literature, and exercises a general friendly superintendence over the whole movement. Their organ in the Press is a weekly newspaper

called The Homestead, edited by Mr. T. P. Gill, Secretary of the Recess Committee, and the actual writer of the Report which has recently attracted so much attention. As already explained, the Organisation Society will be dissolved as soon as its work is done: that is to say, as soon as the movement is sufficiently strong to take charge of itself.

The Co-operative Agency Society, on the other hand, is a trading and commercial body, the commercial representative of the combined co-operative societies. Each of those one hundred and ten societies, formed down to the 31st of March last, takes, on joining the Agency Society, twenty one-pound shares, of which one-fourth only is payable on the allotment, the remaining three-fourths are deducted from the profits as they become due on the trade carried on between the co-operative society and the Co-operative Agency Society.

The establishment of co-operative peasant banks is one of the most important and far-reaching aspects of the movement. The promoters, however, while well aware that that was so, have felt themselves constrained to exert their chief energies in a different direction. The funds at their disposal being limited, they deemed it more prudent to employ their organisers, at the beginning, in the far simpler work of establishing co-operative creameries and agricultural societies for the common purchase of farmers' necessaries. Under the direction and advice of the trained organisers the farmers combined, readily enough, for the formation of such, because the principle was quickly apprehended, and the financial advantages of co-operation were almost self-evident. The co-operative banking system, on the other hand, is far more complex, and demands, on the part of the co-operators, a far greater degree of mutual confidence. Of such banks the vital and essential principle is that of unlimited liability, and, very naturally, farmers are apt to look askance at any proposal involving a liability of such a formidable character. Nevertheless, the Organisation Society has had for some years in working order a bank of the kind, viz., that of Doneraile, in the county of Cork. This bank has been such a success financially, and has conferred such substantial advantages upon its members, that in this vitally important direction, as well as in the others, the progress of the movement seems to be assured. The Doneraile bank has been an object-lesson to the farmers of Munster in particular, and of Ireland in general, more convincing than all theoretical demonstrations, and even than the experience fetched from foreign countries, such as Italy and France, where such banks flourish in great numbers,

and have never, I understand, exhibited a single instance of break-up or insolvency. Besides that at Doneraile, another has been established in the West of Ireland, and there are several more in process of formation. The normal Irish banking system lends itself fairly well to the exigencies of large farmers, but not to those of the small, or of cottiers, or of agricultural labourers. Through the agency of the proposed co-operative banks, men will procure credit for productive expenditure who never enjoyed such credit before, or did so only at

a

ruinous interest. As these banks multiply they will abolish the notorious gombeen man, the peasant usurer who has been such a curse to our poor country-people. Moreover, apart from the sinister industry and enterprise of the gombeen man, a veiled system of usury, under the form of long credit, with high interest upon the debt, has been practised very generally by the rural shopkeepers.

Through the Co-operative Agency Society the members of the local societies save some thirty-five or forty per cent. on their purchases. They receive a better description of article for their money, and enjoy a reasonable degree of credit, without interest. The peasant banks will complete their emancipation from the tyranny of the usurer and the long prices, plus high interest, of the retailers. It is not surprising, then, that the shopkeepers of the country towns and villages should be intensely hostile to the whole movement. They have been so, and are, and their hostility has been reflected in the Press. It is, however, strongly maintained by the promoters of the movement that the displacement of custom of which the shopkeepers complain will be succeeded by a greater general volume of trade according as the farmers become more prosperous, and have more money to spend. They assert that the co-operative movement in Denmark has actually resulted in the largelyincreased prosperity of the rural villages and towns, and prophesy a good time coming in Ireland for the shopkeepers as well as for the farmers. Whether that be so or not, the hostility of the shopkeeping class is actually supplying no serious bar to the progress of the movement. Hitherto the Irish farmer has been beaten, because, in the isolation of individualism, he has been endeavouring to compete with foreign producers, who understand and practise the principle of co-operation. Now, in combination, he has begun to feel his strength. Irish butter produced in his co-operative creameries, with the aid of first-rate machinery, and under the direction of trained and skilful managers, again tops the market, and is likely to remain at the top, for no Vol. XV.-No. 91.

2 X

improvement in the art of butter-making can take place anywhere without information on the subject being at once conveyed to him through a channel, which is at present supplied by the Organisation Society, but ere long will be supplied by the delegated body which is to replace the Organisation Society, viz., the elected representatives of the co-operative societies.

The Irish farmer is still handicapped by a very expensive and inefficient and wasteful system of internal and trans-Channel communication, which grew up unchecked under the régime of individualism. The Co-operative Agency Society, acting in the name and with the authority of some thousands of organised Irish farmers, has begun to address itself to the abolition of the more obnoxious features of that system. When the farmers are fully combined their representatives will probably be strong enough to mould that system to the agricultural and pastoral exigencies of the country without the intervention of Parliament. If it is found necessary to invoke the action of Parliament, the demand will be made and will be attended to.

From the start, the promoters of this great movement have felt that the salvation of the Irish farmer, who is the root of every existing mode of material prosperity in the country, could arise from himself only, from his own intelligence and energy, and that no legislation or administration from without, however wise or well-intentioned, could really save a class of men competing as individuals with perfectly -organised peasant communities such as those of Denmark and other Continental countries. They felt that unless the Irish farmer could be induced to put his own shoulder to the wheel and lift his cart out of the slough in which it was seen sticking so ruefully, no agrarian legislation, even though it should effect the utter ruin of the landlord class, no State-constructed Chamber of Agriculture, no eleemosynary and enervating State assistance would finally save him. Without co-operation and active and intelligent self-help he would probably, in the long run, yield up the ghost possibly before the advent of immigrants and colonists thrown on these shores from the better-educated and betterorganised peasant communities of the Continent: communities which, as a fact, had already converted poor Paddy's unintelligent industry into a sorry farce, growing more dismal as time ran on. But they perceived also that the Irish peasantry were, individually, as intelligent as the peasantry of any other European country, possibly more so. They suspected, too, that the known gregariousness and sociability of