should be aroused again.
Economic reform should proceed first on educational lines before it
could be hoped to establish new industries with any hope of success.
The pioneer in this work was the Hon. (now Sir) Horace Plunkett who
returned to Ireland after some ranching experiences in the United
States and set himself the task of effecting the economic regeneration
of rural Ireland by preaching the gospel of self-help and
co-operation. It is no part of my purpose to inquire into the secret
motives of Sir Horace Plunkett, if he ever had any, or to allege, as a
certain writer (M. Paul Dubois) has done, that Sir Horace promoted the
movement for economic reform in the hope of reconciling Ireland to the
Union and to Imperialism. I may lament it, as I do, that Sir Horace,
who now believes himself to be the discoverer of Dominion Home Rule,
did not raise his voice either for the Agrarian Settlement or for Home
Rule during all the years while he was a real power in the country. I
am not however going to allow my views on these questions to deflect
my judgment from the real merit of the work performed by Sir Horace
and his associates in the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society,
which in the teeth of considerable difficulties and obstacles
succeeded in propagating through Ireland the principles of self-help
and co-operation.

From the first, the Society had many and powerful enemies, most of the
opposition springing from interested and malevolent parties. But there
is, perhaps, no man in all the world so quick to see what is really
for his advantage as the Irish farmer, and so the movement gradually
found favour, and co-operative associations began to be formed in all
parts of Ireland. The agricultural labourer has all along regarded the
Creamery side of co-operation with absolute dislike. He declares that
it is fast denuding the land of labour, that it tends to decrease
tillage, and is one of the most active causes of emigration. They say,
and there is ocular evidence of the fact, that a donkey and a little
boy or girl to drive him to the Creamery now do the work of dairymaids
and farm hands. But, whilst this is a criticism justified by existing
conditions, it does not mean that co-operation is a thing bad in
itself, or that there is anything inherently vicious in it to cause or
create the employment of less labour. What it does mean is that the
education of the farmer is still far from complete, that he does not
yet know ho