country will hold its own tug for tug with
the towns.

Now it may be said I have talked a long while round and round the rural
community, but I have not suggested how it is to be created. I am coming
to that. It really cannot be created. It is a natural growth when
the right seed is planted. Co-operation is the seed. Let us consider
Ireland. Twenty-five years ago there was not a single co-operative
society in the country. Individualism was the mode of life. Every farmer
manufactured and sold as seemed best in his eyes. It was generally the
worst possible way he could have chosen. Then came Sir Horace Plunkett
and his colleagues, preaching co-operation. A creamery was established
here, an agricultural society there, and having planted the ideas it
was some time before the economic expert could decide whether they were
planted in fertile soil. But that question was decided many years ago.
The co-operative society, started for whatever purpose originally, is
an omnivorous feeder, and it exercises a magnetic influence on all
agricultural activities; so that we now have societies which buy milk,
manufacture and sell butter, deal in poultry and eggs, cure bacon,
provide fertilizers, feeding-stuffs, seeds, and machinery for their
members, and even cater for every requirement of the farmer's household.
This magnetic power of attracting and absorbing to themselves the
various rural activities which the properly constituted co-operative
societies have, makes them develop rapidly, until in the course of a
decade or a generation there is created a real social organism, where
the members buy together, manufacture together, market together, where
finally their entire interests are bound up with the interests of the
community. I believe in half a century the whole business of rural
Ireland will be done co-operatively. This is not a wild surmise, for we
see exactly the same process going on in Denmark, Germany, Italy, and
every country where the co-operative seed was planted. Let us suppose
that in a generation all the rural industries are organized on
co-operative lines, what kind of a community should we expect to find as
the result? How would its members live? What would be their relations
to one another and their community? The agricultural scientist is making
great discoveries. The mechanical engineer goes from one triumph to
another. The chemist already could work wonders in our fields if
there was a machinery for him to work thr