or the mass, goes back to strengthen the
system they protest against through purchases of domestic requirements.
The creation of co-operative stores ought to be the first constructive
policy adopted by Irish labor. It ought to be as much a matter of class
honor with them to be members of stores as to be in the trade union of
their craft. The store may be regarded as the commissariat department
of the army of labor. Many a strike has failed of its object, and
the workers have gone back defeated, because their neglect of the
commissariat made them unable to hold out for that last week when both
sides are desperate and at the end of their resources. But it is
not mainly as an aid to the strike that I advocate democratizing the
distributive trade, but because control over distribution gives a
large measure of control over production. The history of co-operative
workshops indicates that these have rarely been successful unless
worked in conjunction with distributive stores. The retail trader is
not sympathetic with co-operative production. As the cat is akin to the
tiger, so is the individual trader--no matter on how small a scale he
operates--a kinsman of the great autocrats of industry, and he will
sympathize with his economic kinsmen and will retail their goods in
preference to those produced in co-operative workshops.

The control of agencies of distribution by the workers at a certain
stage in their development enables them to start productive enterprises
with more safety and less expense in regard to advertisement than the
capitalist can. In fact the co-operative store, properly organized,
creates a tied trade for the output of co-operative workshops. It is
a source of financial aid to these, and will invest funds in them and
assist trades unions gradually to transform themselves into co-operative
guilds of producers which should be their ultimate ideal. As I shall
show later on, the store will enable the urban worker to enter into
intimate alliance with the rural producer. Their interests are
really identical. In every town in Ireland efforts should be made to
democratize the distributive agencies, and the workers will have many
allies in this, driven by the increased cost of living to search out the
most economical agencies of purchase. If the proletarians are not in a
majority in Ireland--a nation where the farmers are the most numerous
single class--they certainly form the majority in the cities; and the
co-operati