IV.



In Ireland we begin naturally our consideration of this problem with the
folk of the country, pondering all the time upon our ideal--the linking
up of individuals with each other and with the nation. Since the
destruction of the ancient clans in Ireland almost every economic factor
in rural life has tended to separate the farmers from each other and
from the nation, and to bring about an isolation of action; and that
was so until the movement for the organization of agriculture was
initiated by Sir Horace Plunkett and his colleagues in that patriotic
association, the Irish Agricultural Organization Society. Though its
actual achievement is great; though it may be said to be the pivot
round which Ireland has begun to swing back to its traditional and
natural communism in work, we still have over the larger part of Ireland
conditions prevailing which tend to isolate the individual from the
community.

When we examine rural Ireland, outside this new movement, we find
everywhere isolated and individualistic agricultural production, served
with regard to purchase and sale by private traders and dealers, who are
independent of economic control from the consumers or producers, or the
State. The tendency in the modern world to conduct industry in the
grand manner is not observable here. The first thing which strikes one