I am familiar with a district--in the northwest of Ireland. It was a
most wretchedly poor district. The farmers were at the mercy of the
gombeen traders and the agricultural middlemen. Then a dozen years ago
a co-operative society was formed. I am sure that the oldest inhabitant
would agree with me that more changes for the better for farmers have
taken place since the co-operative society was started than he could
remember in all his previous life. The reign of the gombeen man is
over. The farmers control their own buying and selling. Their
organization markets for them the eggs and poultry. It procures seeds,
fertilizers, and domestic requirements. It turns the members' pigs into
bacon. They have a village hall and a woman's organization. They sell
the products of the women's industry. They have a co-operative band,
social gatherings, and concerts. They have spread out into half-a-dozen
parishes, going southward and westward with their propaganda, and in
half-a-dozen years, in all that district, previously without
organization, there will be well-organized farmers' guilds,
concentrating in themselves the trade of their district, having meeting-
places where the opinion of the members can be taken, having a
machinery, committees, and executive officers to carry out whatever may
be decided on: and having funds, or profits, the joint property of the
community, which can be drawn upon to finance their undertakings.
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