ried and responsible business undertakings.

With the growing work the staff has been repeatedly augmented to enable
the central society to keep pace with the demand made by groups of
farmers to be initiated into the principles of co-operative
organisation and the details of its application to the particular
branches of farming carried on in their several districts. At the same
time the societies which have been established need, during their
earlier years, and with each extension of their operations, constant
advice and supervision. Hence skilled organisers have to be kept to form
co-operative dairy societies, inspect creameries, and give technical
advice upon the manufacture and sale of butter, the care of machinery,
the adequacy of the water supply, the drainage system, and many similar
technical questions. Others are employed to start poultry societies,
which when organised have still to be instructed by a Danish expert in
the proper method of packing, selecting, and grading the eggs for
export. In tillage districts there is a constant demand for organisers
of purely agricultural societies, which aim at the joint purchase of
seeds and manures, of implements and other farm requisites, and at the
better disposal of produce; while the growing importance of an improved
system of agricultural credit keeps four organisers of agricultural
banks constantly at work Home industries, bee-keeping, and horticulture,
may be added to the objects for which societies have been formed and
which require separate expert organisers. And in addition to all this
work, the central association has found it necessary to keep a staff of
accountants, versed in the principles of co-operative organisation, to
instruct these miscellaneous societies in simple and efficient systems
of bookkeeping, and in the general principles of conducting business.
To complete the description of the propagandist activities of the
central body, there is a ceaseless flow of leaflets and circulars
containing advice and direction to bodies of farmers who, for the first
time in their lives, have combined for business purposes; while a little
weekly paper, the _Irish Homestead_, acts as the organ of the movement,
promotes the exchange of ideas between societies scattered throughout
the country, furnishes useful information upon all matters connected
with their business operations, and keeps constantly before the
associated farmers the economic principles which must be o