nt or little farmer, who is a member of one or more of
these societies, who helps to build up their success and
enjoy their benefits, acquires a new outlook. The jealousies
and suspicions which are in most countries so common among
those who live by the land fall from him. Feeling that he
has a voice in great affairs he acquires an added value and
a healthy importance in his own eyes. He knows also that in
his degree and according to his output he is on an equal
footing with the largest producer and proportionately is
doing as well. There is no longer any fear that because he
is a little man he will be browbeaten or forced to accept a
worse price for what he has to sell than does his rich and
powerful neighbor. The skilled minds which direct his
business work as zealously for him as for that important
neighbor."[36]

It is interesting to note that the three highest authorities on the
cooperative movement in Ireland all lay great stress on its importance
as a means of community organization and value its social effects as
highly as its economic benefits. Thus Sir Horace Plunkett says:

"Gradually the (cooperative) Society becomes the most
important institution in the district, the most important in
a social as well as an economic sense. The members feel a
pride in its material expansion. They accumulate large
profits, which in time become a sort of communal fund. In
some cases this is used for the erection of village halls
where social entertainments, concerts and dances are held,
lectures delivered and libraries stored. Finally, the
association assumes the character of a rural commune, where,
instead of the old basis of the commune, the joint ownership
of land, a new basis for union is found in the voluntary
communism of effort."[37]

In the same vein Smith-Gordon and Staples in their account of the
cooperative movement in Ireland, see it as the most important force for
socialization because it makes the most immediate and practical appeal
to men of all parties and sects and establishes a business system which
develops the community attitude:

"The present individualist system which takes care of the
business interests of the farmer is a dividing and
disintegrating force. It tends to destroy the natural
associative character and to set e