o, having elicited the fact that our movement
recognised neither political nor religious differences--that the
Unionist-Protestant cow was as dear to us as her
Nationalist-Catholic sister--gravely informed me that our programme
would not suit Rathkeale. "Rathkeale," said he, pompously, "is a
Nationalist town--Nationalist to the backbone--and every pound of
butter made in this Creamery must be made on Nationalist
principles, or it shan't be made at all." This sentiment was
applauded loudly, and the proceedings terminated.

On another occasion a similar project was abandoned because the flow of
water to the disused mill which it was proposed to convert into a
creamery, passed through a conduit lined with cement originally
purchased from a man who now occupied a farm from which another had been
evicted. To some minds these little complications would have spelled
failure. To my associates they but accentuated the need for the movement
which they had so laboriously thought out, and the very nature of the
difficulties confirmed them in their belief that the economic doctrine
they were preaching was adapted to meet the requirements of the case.
And so the event proved.

In the year 1894 the movement had gathered volume to such an
extent--although the societies then numbered but one for every twenty
that are in existence to-day--that it became beyond the power of a few
individuals to direct its further progress. In April of that year a
meeting was held in Dublin to inaugurate the Irish Agricultural
Organisation Society, Ltd. (now commonly known as the I.A.O.S.), which
was to be the analogue of the Co-operative Union in England. In the
first instance it was to consist of philanthropic persons, but its
constitution provided for the inclusion in its membership of the
societies which had already been created and those which it would itself
create as time went on. It had, and has to-day, a thoroughly
representative Committee. I was elected the first President, a position
which I held until I entered official life, when Lord Monteagle, a
practical philanthropist if ever there was one, became my successor.
Father Finlay, who joined the movement in 1892, and who has devoted the
extraordinary influence which he possesses over the rural population of
Ireland to the dissemination of our economic principles, became
Vice-President. Both he and Lord Monteagle have been annually re-elected
ever since.