re
learning to purchase their agricultural requirements intelligently and
economically. They are also beginning to adopt the methods of the
organised foreign farmer in controlling the sale of their butter, eggs
and poultry in the British markets. And they not only combine in
agricultural production and distribution, but are also making a
promising beginning in grappling with the problem of agricultural
finance. It is in this last portion of the Irish programme that by far
the most interesting study of the cooperative system can be made, on
account of its success in the poorest parts of the Island. Furthermore,
the attempt to enable the most embarrassed section of the Irish
peasantry to procure working capital illustrates some features of
agricultural cooperation which will have suggestive value for American
farmers. I will therefore give a brief description of our agricultural
cooperative credit associations.

The organisation was introduced in the middle of the last century by a
German Burgomaster, the now famous Herr Raiffeisen. He set himself to
provide the means of escape from the degrading indebtedness to
storekeepers and usurers which is the almost invariable lot of poor
peasantries. His scheme performs an apparent miracle. A body of very
poor persons, individually--in the commercial sense of the
term--insolvent, manage to create a new basis of security which has been
somewhat grandiloquently and yet truthfully called the capitalisation of
their honesty and industry. The way in which this is done is remarkably
ingenious. The credit society is organised in the usual democratic way
explained above, but its constitution is peculiar in one respect. The
members have to become jointly and severally responsible for the debts
of the association, which borrows on this unlimited liability from the
ordinary commercial bank, or, in some cases, from Government sources.
After the initial stage, when the institution becomes firmly
established, it attracts local deposits, and thus the savings of the
community, which are too often hoarded, are set free to fructify in the
community. The procedure by which the money borrowed is lent to the
members of the association is the essential feature of the scheme. The
member requiring the loan must state what he is going to do with the
money. He must satisfy the committee of the association, who know the
man and his business, that the proposed investment is one which will
enable him to repa