thin the union facilities
have been found for selling the products of one district to members in
another.

Irish agriculture.

In Ireland stores have not hitherto flourished, though a few exist.
Irish co-operation is agricultural, and dates from the foundation of one
co-operative dairy in 1889. Thence has grown a movement already of great
importance, still advancing and comprising from eighty to ninety
thousand members, belonging to some hundreds of societies--dairies,
agricultural supply societies, banks and so forth, formed on the Danish
model. To form a dairy the small working farmers of a district register
a society and take up shares of L1 each, in proportion to the number of
their cows. Each brings his milk to be separated, is paid for the
butter-making material it contains, and receives back skim milk. If any
profit is divided, it belongs nine-tenths to the suppliers of milk in
proportion to the value of their supplies, and one-tenth to the dairy
employees as dividend on wages in pursuance of the co-partnership
principle. These dairies produce butter worth more than L1,000,000.
Their rapid spread is due to their great influence in improving the
quality of butter, and hence increasing the farmer's gains. The
co-operative banks are of the Raiffeisen type, though a few have limited
liability. They aim at providing the peasants with necessary capital
("the lucky money" they have christened it) and expelling the usurer.
They are increasing rapidly. Among other objects of Irish co-operation
are selling eggs, poultry, barley and pigs, joint-grazing,
potato-spraying, scutching flax, bacon curing, home industries, and of
course supplying farm requisites. The movement promises much further
growth in magnitude and variety. The dairy societies have federated into
an agency for reaching the English market, and the supply societies into
an Irish Wholesale for purchasing to the best advantage. Besides the
direct profits and economies of these societies, they have greatly
benefited Ireland by teaching men of all classes, parties and religions
to act together for peaceful progress; they have led to a wide diffusion
of better agricultural knowledge, and to the establishment by government
of the Agricultural Department. (See IRELAND.)

Co-operative agriculture in France and other countries.

In France, which Englishmen are apt to speak of as preeminently the
country of co-operative production, the agricultural is the mo