happened. There are hundreds of parishes in Ireland where one or
two men want co-operative societies or village halls or rural libraries.
They discuss the matter with their neighbors, but find a complete
ignorance on the subject, and consequent lethargy. There is no social
organism with a central life to stir. Before enthusiasm can be kindled
there must be some knowledge. The countryman reads little, and it is a
long and tedious business before enough people are excited to bring them
to the point of appealing to some expert to come in and advise.

More changes often take place within a dozen years after a co-operative
society is first started than have taken place for a century previous. I
am familiar with a district--in the northwest of Ireland. It was a most
wretchedly poor district. The farmers were at the mercy of the gombeen
traders and the agricultural middlemen. Then a dozen years ago a
co-operative society was formed. I am sure that the oldest inhabitant
would agree with me that more changes for the better for farmers have
taken place since the co-operative society was started than he could
remember in all his previous life. The reign of the gombeen man is over.
The farmers control their own buying and selling. Their organization
markets for them the eggs and poultry. It procures seeds, fertilizers,
and domestic requirements. It turns the members' pigs into bacon. They
have a village hall and a woman's organization. They sell the products
of the women's industry. They have a co-operative band, social
gatherings, and concerts. They have spread out into half-a-dozen
parishes, going southward and westward with their propaganda, and
in half-a-dozen years, in all that district, previously without
organization, there will be well-organized farmers' guilds,
concentrating in themselves the trade of their district, having
meeting-places where the opinion of the members can be taken, having a
machinery, committees, and executive officers to carry out whatever may
be decided on: and having funds, or profits, the joint property of the
community, which can be drawn upon to finance their undertakings. It
ought to be evident what a tremendous advantage it is to farmers in
a district to have such organizations, what a lever they can pull
and control. I have tried to indicate the difference between a rural
population and a rural community, between a people loosely knit together
by the vague ties of a common latitude and longitude