e, as the
farmers in proportion to their trade.

A second policy open to agricultural labor when it becomes organized
is the policy of collective farming. This I believe will and ought to
receive attention in the future. Co-operative societies of agricultural
laborers in Italy, Roumania, and elsewhere have rented land from
landowners. They then reallotted the land among themselves for
individual cultivation, or else worked it as a true co-operative
enterprise with labor, purchase and sale all communal enterprises, with
considerable benefit to the members. We can well understand a landowner
not liking to divide his land into small holdings, with all the
attendant troubles which in Ireland beset a landlord with small farmers
on his estate. But I think landowners in Ireland could be found who
would rent land to a co-operative society of skilled laborers who
approached the owner with a well-thought-out scheme. The success of one
colony would lead to others being started, as happened in Italy.

This solution of the problem of agricultural labor will be forced on us
for many reasons. The economic effects of the great European War, the
burden of debt piled on the participating nations, will make Ministers
shun schemes of reform involving a large use of national credit, or
which would increase the sum of national obligations. Land purchase
on the old term I believe cannot be continued. Yet we will demand the
intensive cultivation of the national estate, and increased production
of wealth, especially of food-stuffs. The large area of agricultural
land laid down for pasture is not so productive as tilled land, does
not sustain so large a population, and there will be more reasons in the
future than in the past for changing the character of farming in these
areas. The policy of collective farming offers a solution, and whatever
Government is in power should facilitate the settlement of men in
cooperative colonies and provide expert instructors as managers for the
first year or two if necessary. Such a policy would not be so expensive
as land purchase, and with fair rent fixed, hundreds of thousands of
people could be planted comfortably on the land in Ireland and produce
more wealth from it than could ever be produced from grazing lands,
and agricultural workers and the sons of farmers who now emigrate could
become economically independent.

I hope, also, that farmers, becoming more brotherly as their own
enterprises flourish,