Irish work convinces me our people would have adopted long ago if they had had similar educational advantages.  And I would further point out that there is no better way of promoting the reform of education in the ordinary, the pedagogic, sense, than by bringing to bear upon the minds of parents those educational influences which are calculated to convince them of the advantage of improved practical education for their children.  So to the economist and to the educationist alike I would submit that the new work of economic and social reform should be judged as a whole, and not prejudged by that hypercriticism of details which ignores the fact that the conditions with which it is attempted to deal are wholly unprecedented.  I am quite content that the movement which I am about to describe should be ultimately known and judged by its fruits.  Meanwhile, I think that to the intelligent critic it will sufficiently justify its existence if it continues to exist.

* * * * *

The story of the new movement, which must now be told, begins in the year 1889, when a few Irishmen, the writer of these pages among them, set themselves the task of bringing home to the rural population of Ireland the fact that their prosperity was in their own hands much more than they were generally led to believe.  I have already pointed out that in order to direct the Irish mind towards practical affairs and in order effectively to arouse and apply the latent capacities of the Irish people to their chief industry, agriculture, we must rely upon associative, as distinct from individual effort; or, in other words, we must get the people to do their business together rather than separately as the English do.  Fortunately for us, it happened that this course, which was clearly indicated by the character and temperament of the people, was equally prescribed by economic considerations.  The population and wealth of Ireland are, I need hardly say, so predominantly agricultural that the welfare of the country must depend upon the welfare of the farming classes.  It is notorious that the industry by which these classes live has for the last quarter of a century become less and less profitable.  It is also recognised that the prime cause of agricultural depression, foreign competition, is not likely to be removed, while that from the colonies is likely to increase.  The extraordinary development of rapid and cheap transit, together with recently invented processes of preservation, have enabled the more favoured producers in the newly developed countries of both hemispheres successfully to enter into competition in the British markets with the farmers of these islands.  The agricultural producers in other European countries, although to some extent protected by tariffs, have had to face similar conditions; but in most of these countries, though not in the United Kingdom, the farmers have so changed their methods, to meet the altered circumstances, that they seem to have gained by improvement at home as much as they have lost by competition from abroad Thus our farmers find themselves harassed first by the cheaper production from vast tracts of virgin soil in the uttermost parts of the earth, and secondly by a nearer and keener competition from the better organised and better educated producers of the Continent.