increase them rather by the unavoidable multiplication of expenses; and
many of them, taking advantage of the countryman's irregularity of
income and his need for credit, allow credit to a point where the small
farmer becomes a tied customer, who cannot pay all he owes, and who
therefore dares not deal elsewhere. These agencies for distribution do
not by their nature enlarge the farmer's economic knowledge. His vision
beyond them to their sources of supply is blocked, and in this respect
he is debarred from any unity with national producers other than his own
class.

Let us now for a little consider the small farmer around whom have
gathered these multitudinous little agencies of distribution. What kind
of a being is he? We must deal with averages, and the small farmer is
the typical Irish countryman. The average area of an Irish farm is
twenty-five acres or thereabouts. There are hundreds of thousands who
have more or less. But we can imagine to ourselves an Irish farmer with
twenty-five acres to till, lord of a herd of four or five cows, a drift
of sheep, a litter of pigs, perhaps a mare and foal: call him Patrick
Maloney and accept him as symbol of his class. We will view him outside
the operation of the new co-operative policy, trying to obey the command
to be fruitful and replenish the earth. He is fruitful enough. There
is no race suicide in Ireland. His agriculture is largely traditional.
It varied little in the nineteenth century from the eighteenth, and the
beginnings of the twentieth century show little change in spite of a
huge department of agriculture. His butter, his eggs, his cattle,
horses, pigs, and sheep are sold to local dealers. He rarely knows
where his produce goes to--whether it is devoured in the next county or
is sent across the Channel. It might be pitched into the void for all
he knows about its destiny. He might be described almost as the
primitive economic cave-man, the darkness of his cave unillumined by any