societies, where the farmer's wife can purchase her d omestic
requirements as well as her man his machinery, fertilizers, feeding-
stuffs, and seeds. It would be to the interest of rural societies to
deal with co-operative wholesales just as much as it is in the interest
of urban stores to do so. It would be to their interest to take shares
in these wholesales and productive federations, and see that they cater
for the farmer's interests as much as for the townsman's.

The urban co-operators, on their side, will see the opportunities for
productive co-operation the union of rural and urban movements would
create. They naturally will desire to employ as many people as possible
in co-operative production. Farmers are surrounded by rings of all
kinds: machinery manufacturers who will not sell to their societies,
manure manufacturers' alliances who keep up prices. 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. Does not this