If now we ask what are the grounds of the hostility of the Nationalist Party to the most hopeful Irish movement of recent years, the answer appears to be twofold.  The first is economic, or purports to be economic:  the second is frankly political.

1.  Co-operation, it is urged, injures the middleman and the small trader.

To encourage farmers to do well and economically for themselves what is now done indifferently and expensively for them by the middleman, must of course act injuriously on some existing interests.  This is not disputed.  But the change is absolutely necessary for the regeneration of rural Ireland, and this objection cannot be allowed to stand in the way.  Looked at in its broader and more enduring aspects, co-operation is bound to stimulate and improve general trade by increasing the spending power of the farmers.  The Chambers of Commerce of Dublin and Belfast have not been slow to perceive this, and have warmly endorsed the Society’s application for a grant from the Development Commissioners.

2.  The political objection to the movement, so far as it takes the definite form of charging the I.A.O.S. with being a propagandist body aiming under the mask of economic reform at the covert spread of Unionist opinions, will not stand a moment’s examination.  There is not a particle of evidence in support of such a charge, and the presumption against it is overwhelming.  To mix political propagandism with organisation would be the certain ruin of the movement.  The Committee of the I.A.O.S. consists of men of all shades of political faith.  These men could never have joined hands except on the basis that politics should be rigidly excluded from the work of the Society.  The members of the co-operative societies founded by the I.A.O.S. number nearly 100,000.  Probably at least three-fourths of these are Nationalists.

In order, however, that all doubt on the subject might be finally removed, the I.A.O.S. issued a circular to all its societies, in which the following question was directly put:—­

“Has the I.A.O.S., as a body, or the Committee acting for it, done, in your opinion, any act in the interest of any political party, or any act calculated to offend the political principles of any section of your members?”

The answers received have been published and form very interesting reading.  Not a single society, of the many hundreds that have replied from all parts of Ireland, has been found to assert that politics have ever been mentioned by the agents of the parent association.

The hostility of the politicians to the co-operative movement rests, it is safe to surmise, upon some other foundation than these flimsy charges against the I.A.O.S.