Mr. Anderson, who sometimes accompanied me and sometimes went his rounds alone, had similar experiences.  I may quote a passage from some of his reminiscences, recently published in the Irish Homestead, the organ of the co-operative movement in Ireland.

It was hard and thankless work.  There was the apathy of the people and the active opposition of the Press and the politicians.  It would be hard to say now whether the abuse of the Conservative Cork Constitution or that of the Nationalist Eagle, of Skibbereen, was the louder.  We were “killing the calves,” we were “forcing the young women to emigrate,” we were “destroying the industry.”  Mr. Plunkett was described as a “monster in human shape,” and was adjured to “cease his hellish work.”  I was described as his “Man Friday” and as “Rough-rider Anderson.”  Once, when I thought I had planted a Creamery within the precincts of the town of Rathkeale, my co-operative apple-cart was upset by a local solicitor who, having elicited the fact that our movement recognised neither political nor religious differences—­that the Unionist-Protestant cow was as dear to us as her Nationalist-Catholic sister—­gravely informed me that our programme would not suit Rathkeale.  “Rathkeale,” said he, pompously, “is a Nationalist town—­Nationalist to the backbone—­and every pound of butter made in this Creamery must be made on Nationalist principles, or it shan’t be made at all.”  This sentiment was applauded loudly, and the proceedings terminated.

On another occasion a similar project was abandoned because the flow of water to the disused mill which it was proposed to convert into a creamery, passed through a conduit lined with cement originally purchased from a man who now occupied a farm from which another had been evicted.  To some minds these little complications would have spelled failure.  To my associates they but accentuated the need for the movement which they had so laboriously thought out, and the very nature of the difficulties confirmed them in their belief that the economic doctrine they were preaching was adapted to meet the requirements of the case.  And so the event proved.

In the year 1894 the movement had gathered volume to such an extent—­although the societies then numbered but one for every twenty that are in existence to-day—­that it became beyond the power of a few individuals to direct its further progress.  In April of that year a meeting was held in Dublin to inaugurate the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, Ltd. (now commonly known as the I.A.O.S.), which was to be the analogue of the Co-operative Union in England.  In the first instance it was to consist of philanthropic persons, but its constitution provided for the inclusion in its membership of the societies which had already been created and those which it would itself create as time went on.  It had, and has to-day, a thoroughly representative Committee.  I was elected the first President, a position which I held until I entered official life, when Lord Monteagle, a practical philanthropist if ever there was one, became my successor.  Father Finlay, who joined the movement in 1892, and who has devoted the extraordinary influence which he possesses over the rural population of Ireland to the dissemination of our economic principles, became Vice-President.  Both he and Lord Monteagle have been annually re-elected ever since.