The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, January 10, 1921, Page 10

; i The competition of Danish butter was the most e e, > 14 4 per cent. But in 1911 the population of England, urgent ma};’ter that faced the farmers of Ireland. TO BACK UP CO-OPERATION : 1 Scotland and Wales, which had become largely in- “Don’t you know what is the matter ?” Sir Horace Before the war the co-operative credit societies, il dustrial, had grown to 40,831,396, an increase of plynkett (to give him his present title) asked the on this joint guarantee, were able to borrow money i il more than 100 per cent, while the population of ypish farmers. “Danish farmers are outselling you at rates of between 3 and 4 per cent. This money 2N Ireland had dl_'opped to 4,390,219, barely more than j, the English market because they have learned was loaned out to individual farmers at the popular f i half of what it had 70 years before, and less than {he Jesson of organizing and co-operating and you rate of a penny a pound per month, or 5 per cent’ - W H 10 per cent of the total population of the United paven’t learned it. L per annum. The loan was repaid in accordance with i Kingdom. b “Ireland ca;l pfroduce ?ls 1’lgood buttea as Denmark, the purpose for wlfiich it was secured.. A man bor- b} {“ ut every little farm and hamlet produces a differ- = rowing money to buy a cow would make payments fig%Egggq‘égggé‘gglfii%n ent grade of butter. The English housewife who by monthly installments, as he got his milk check -r? L buys butter wants the same color and grade that from the co-operative creamery. Another farmer The original basis of Ireland’s trouble was the she bought last week. The Danish butter makers buying pigs or fertilizer would havé to wait six | & absentee landlord system. It was the system of can give it to her, because all their product is grad-"> months or more before his pigs were fat or his landlord and tenant that is threatening America ed and standardized, and yours isn’t.” crop ready to market and would repay in a lump 1% today, made more serious by the fact that the owner Plunkett got little help at first. For two years he sum. of the land was generally of a different race and could interest only two or three people, but these Under the co-operative plans agriculture in Ire- S IE religion from the tenant. There was no incentive friends were so deeply interested that they gave up land has made great strides. But it would be idle for the tenant to improve the land he farmed; if he their time and with him toured all of Ireland, to pretend that the co-operative movement has solv- aci] il did it meant merely larger rent. Civil warfare preaching the doctrine of co-operation, showing the ed all the farmers’ problems. In the 10 yeass be- b sprang up. The landlords lost, in depreciated value = farmers what the farmers of Denmark had done tween 1901 and 1911, when the co-operative move- <4 ¥ of their property, as well as the tenants. Thou- and telling them that they could do the same. ment was winning its success, the population- of : sands of Irish starved and millions emigrated. Finally a start was made. In a few localities'co- Ireland declined 68,5566. This was a smaller decline v i ¥ The English ruling classes in the course of time operative creameries were started. These cream- than during any previous 10-year period for 70 discovered the evils of the tenancy system and took eries turned out a uniform grade of butter that years, but it was a decline. The Irish fariner, like 7 $ steps to allow tenants to the American farmer, is acquire land of t{xeir own ~ convinced that-he must ~ i on comparatively easy & have political power to M Sl el CO-OPERATION MAKES THIS SEED VALUABLE bl g o0 300 i« - - TheCo- Operatwe Movementin Ireland Farmers Forced to Orgamze to Protect Themselves From Total Ruin at Hands of “Gombeen Man”—Their Success : This is the second of a series of articles on agricultural co-operation in European countries. The first article, on agricultural co-operation in France, appeared in the issue of December 27. The next article will appear in an early issue. S MOST people know, England, Ire- land, Scotland and Wales together comprise what is known as “the Unit- ed Kingdom,” though it doesn’t re- quire five minutes’ reading of a daily paper to form the conclusion that the four divisions are by no means as closely “united” as they might be. Ireland is the farming section of the United Kingdom. Three-fourths of its pepulation either depend directly upon agriculture for a living, or indirectly, through direct business with the farmers. In the United States the farming sections have lost population in the last 80 years, compared with other sections, because farming has become a less profitable business. The same thing has happened to the United ngdom It has happened there to a greater extent than in the United States, possxbly because the Irish farmers not only follow & different occupation but also are of different race and religion from the business classes which govern them. Rather than attempt a struggle that seemed un- equal millions of Irish farmers and members of their families gave up the fight and enng'rated to America. To show the immense change in the farming and industrial population of the United Kingdom, com- pare the census of 1841 with the census of 1911, the last British census. In 1841 the population of Eng- land, Scotland and Wales was 18,534,332 and the populatlon of Ireland 8,196,597. Ireland had over 30 per cent of the populatlon of the United King- dom; England, Scotland and Wales less than 70 difficult for the tenant farmer to get a farm large enough to work profitably. Today in Ireland there are 450,000 “farms” of less than 30 acres each, nearly 300,- 000 of these are less than 15 acres in extent and 84,869 are of one acre or less! In addition the Irish farmer who had gotten hold of a small tract of land found, in many cases, that he had mere- ly exchanged masters. In place of the absentee English lord he now had the “gombeen man” to serve. The “gombeen man” is what would be known in ‘our own South as a being co-operative associations. “credit merchant.” He generally operates a small store. At the beginning of the season he extends to the Irish farmer a limited amount of credit at a high rate of interest. Thereafter the farmer is in his grip. He must sell his produce to the “gombeen man’’ at the prices which he is offered and when the “gombeen man” tells.him to. After every sale the farmer had to repay the “gombeen man” whatever was demanded on the original loan and-renew it. Hundreds of farmers, unable to meet their pay- ments, of course lost their farms. The “gombeen” men held themselves above the rest of the com- munity. Their sons and daughters intermarried and the tendency was to create a caste system lit- tle if any better than that maintained by the Eng- lish aristocracy. To make matters worse at this stage English buyers in the early ’80s began to refuse to buy Irish butter. Ireland’s butter had been one of its prin- cipal exports, an industry on which thousands of farm families, with a tract of one or two acres of land and a few cows, depended for their entire liv- ing. Instead of buying Irish butter, however, the housewives of England began demanding Danish butter and in consequence thousands of Irish fami- lies again were faced with starvation. MAN FROM AMERICA SAVED DAY FOR THE IRISH This was the conditien that existed in 1889 when Horace Plunkett returned from America to Ireland. Plunkett, a native of Ireland, had emigrated to America and had made a fortune. there, raising cat- tle on the broad prairies of Nebraska and nearby states. With his fortune made he returned to Ireland and there scenes of disaster and desolation met him on every hand: Here are 4,694 pounds of Grimm alfalfa seed sold for $4,045.82. The sale was made by the North Dakota Grimm Alfalfa Seed Producers’ association to the Michigan Crop Improvement association, both parties By co-operating and having their seed officially tested, just as Irish farmers did with their butter, North Dakota seed producers have established a reputation for their product that they could never have secured without the co-operative organization and the state help. PAGE TEN - ‘tural societies.” —credit societies. could' be depended upon. They found no difficulty in selling their product on the English market. As- the non-organized farmers saw the.success being won by the organized farmers they began to or- ganize, too. One-early result of the new market that was opened for Irish butter was that the price of milk, which had been 3 pence per gallon (1% cents per quart) increased to 4 pence per gallon. This was, of course, long before the era of war - prices. After having proved that " co-operatlon would work in the dairy industry the Irish farmers next started their attack upon the “gombeen man.” They did this by organizing -what are called “agricul- These societies are distributive societies. They are for the farmers of Ireland what co-operative stores are for the farmers of North Dakota and other states. These societies buy fer- tilizers and cattle feed at wholesale prices for their members, agricultural machinery and other neces- sities. - As in the case of the French, co-operatives, in many cases the agricultural societies buy the ma- chinery and rent it out to the members, who have farms too small to make such purchases for them- selves alone. Next the Irish co-operative movemeént took the same step, which, as we have previously seen, was taken by the farmers of France. This was the or- ganization of “agricultural banks” or co-operative This was a direct blow at the “gombeen man” and was bitterly fought. In the - co-operative societies personal credit is the rule rather than basing the loans upon land. That is, if there are 20 members of an agricultural credit so- ciety the loan made to one member is guaranteed by the other 19. POLITICAL POWER NEEDED = abuses that co-operation can'not reach. The fight for .Irish freedom has gone on ever since Eng- land first acquired do- - minion there. The Eng- lish parliament has now passed a so-called home rule bill granting partial political freedom. When the Irish -gain the opportunity to make their own laws, either under the modified plan of home rule that Eng- . land 1s- now willing to republic, for which Sinn Fein is fighting, . the farmers of Ireland be- lieve they can remedy the ills which co-opera~* to reach. grant or under the Irish . tion has yet been unable o - U -"—«L-c\u—‘tr‘«mnflu“"v!lfifi—m&fi'&mm"r"’r-‘:vr.,‘:'mifil\“\vflm&:":'."fifl.‘em T et