regard to public services like railways, gas works, mines, the
distribution of goods, manufacture, purchase and sale, which are almost
entirely under private control and where public interference is bitterly
resented and effectively opposed. What chance has the individual who is
aggrieved against the great carrying companies? To come lower down, let
us take the farmer in the fairs. What way has he of influencing the
jobbers and dealers to act honestly by him--they who have formed rings
to keep down the prices of cattle? Are they malleable to public
opinion? The farmers who have waited all day through a fair know they
are not.

When we consider the agencies through which people buy we find the same
thing. The increase of multiple shops, combines, and rings makes the
use of the limited power a man had to affect a dealer by transferring
his custom to another merchant to dwindle yearly. Everywhere we turn we
find this adamantine front presented by the legislature, the State
departments, by the agencies of production, distribution, or credit, and
it is the undemocratic organization of society which is responsible for
nine-tenths of our social troubles. All the vested interests backed up
by economic and political power conflict with the public welfare, and
the general will, which intends the good of all, can act no more than a
paralyzed cripple can walk. We would all choose the physique of the
athlete, with his swift, unfettered, easy movements, rather than the
body of the cripple if we could, and we have this choice before us in
Ireland.

If we concentrate our efforts mainly on voluntary action, striving to
make the co-operative spirit predominant, the general will would
manifest itself through organizations malleable to that will, flexible
and readily adjusting themselves to the desires of the community. To