"England, you see, is used to dealing with problems of empire--with nations
and great metropolises. When we bring her plans that mean life or death to
just villages, the matter is too small to discuss. She is bored.

"Ireland offers opposition in the person of the 'gombeen man.' He is the
local trader and money lender. And co-operative buying and selling takes
away his monopoly of business.

"Paddy Gallagher up in Dungloe in the Rosses will give you an idea of the
poverty of the Irish countryside, of the extent that the poverty is due to
the gombeen men, 'the bosses of the Rosses,' and of the ability of the
co-operative society to develop and create industry even in such a locality.

"Societies like Paddy Gallagher's are springing up all over Ireland. The
rapid growth may be estimated from the fact that in 1902 their trade
turnover was $7,500,000, and in 1918, $50,000,000. These little units do
not merely develop industry; they also bind up the economic and social
interests of the people.

"In a few years these new societies and others to be created will have
dominated their districts, and political power will follow, and we will
have new political ideals based on a democratic control of agriculture and
industry, and states and people will move harmoniously to a given end.

"Ireland might attain, by orderly evolution, to a co-operative commonwealth
in fifty to two hundred years.

"But these are dangerous times for prophecy."