It is a great
industry, this of supplying the farmer with his fertilizers, feeding-
stuffs, cake, machinery. These rural co-operative societies are
increasing in number year by year. Farmers want clothes, hats, and
boots: and the necessary machinery for their industry is almost
entirely of urban manufacture--ploughs, binders, separators, harrows,
and many other implements of tillage. It is an immense industry and yet
to be co-operatively exploited. In the towns some progress has been made
in distribution. But a nation depends upon its wealth producers and not
upon its consumers. Co-operators might double, treble, or quadruple the
distributive trade, and still occupy only a very secondary position in
national life unless they enter more largely upon production. We will
never make the co-operative idea the fundamental one in the civilization
of Ireland until we employ a very large part of the population in
production. Now we have at present, thanks to the energy of the
pioneers of agricultural co-operation, a new market opening in the
country for things which the townsman can produce.
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