While the opening up of what the economists call the ‘world market,’ has necessitated, as a condition of successful competition, improved methods of production for, and carriage to, the market, a third and less obvious force has effected an important change in the method of distribution in the market.  The swarming populations, which the factory system has brought together in industrial centres, have to be supplied with food by a system of distribution which must above all things be expeditious.  This requirement can only be met by the regular consignment of food in large quantities, of such uniform quality that the sample can be relied upon to be truly indicative of the quality of the bulk.  Thus the rapid distribution of produce in the markets becomes as important a factor in agricultural economy as improved methods of production or cheap and expeditious carriage.

Now this new market condition is being met in two ways.  In the United States, and, in a less marked degree, at home, an army of middlemen between the producer and the consumer attends to this business for a share of the profits accruing from it, whilst in many parts of the Continent the farmers themselves attend, partially at any rate, to the business side of their industry instead of paying others to do it all for them.  I say all, for middlemen are necessary at the distributive end:  but it is absolutely essential, in a country like Ireland, that at the producing end the farmers should be so organised that they themselves can manage the first stages of distribution, and exercise some control over the middlemen who do the rest.  The foreign agricultural producers have long been alive to this necessity, for their superior education enabled them to grasp the economic situation and even to realise that the matter is not one of acute political controversy.

Here, then, was a definite practical problem to the solution of which the promoters of the new movement could apply their principle of co-operative effort.  The more we studied the question the more apparent it became that the enormous advantage which the Continental farmers had over the Irish farmers, both in production and in distribution, was due to superior organisation combined with better education.  State-aid had no doubt done a great deal abroad, but in every case it was manifest that it had been preceded, or at least accompanied, by the organised voluntary effort without which the interference of the Government with the business of the people is simply demoralising.

Generally speaking, the task before us in Ireland was the adaptation to the special circumstances of our country of methods successfully pursued by communities similarly situated in foreign countries.  We had to urge upon farmers that combination was just as necessary to their economic salvation as it was recognised to be by their own class, and by those engaged in other industries, elsewhere.  They must combine, so we urged on them, for example, to buy their agricultural