A second policy open to agricultural labor when it becomes organized is the policy of collective farming. This I believe will and ought to receive attention in the future. Cooperative societies of agricultural laborers in Italy, Romania, and elsewhere have rented land from landowners. They then reallotted the land among themselves for individual cultivation, or else worked it as a true cooperative enterprise with labor, purchase and sale all communal enterprises, with considerable benefit to the members. We can well understand a landowner not liking to divide his land into small holdings, with all the attendant troubles which in Ireland beset a landlord with small farmers on his estate. But I think landowners in Ireland could be found who would rent land to a cooperative society of skilled laborers who approached the owner with a well-thought-out scheme. The success of one colony would lead to others being started, as happened in Italy.
This solution of the problem of agricultural labor will be forced on us for many reasons. The economic effects of the great European War, the burden of debt piled on the participating nations, will make Ministers shun schemes of reform involving a large use of national credit, or which would increase the sum of national obligations. Land purchase on the old term I believe cannot be continued. Yet we will demand the intensive cultivation of the national estate, and increased production of wealth, especially of foodstuffs. The large area of agricultural land laid down for pasture is not so productive as tilled land, does not sustain so large a population, and there will be more reasons in the future than in the past for changing the character of farming in these areas. The policy of collective farming offers a solution, and whatever Government is in power should facilitate the settlement of men in cooperative colonies and provide expert instructors as managers for the first year or two if necessary. Such a policy would not be so expensive as land purchase, and with fair rent fixed, hundreds of thousands of people could be planted comfortably on the land in Ireland and produce more wealth from it than could ever be produced from grazing lands, and agricultural workers and the sons of farmers who now emigrate could become economically independent.
I hope, also, that farmers, becoming more brotherly as their own enterprises flourish, will welcome laborers into their cooperative stores, credit banks, poultry and beekeeping societies, and allow them the benefits of cheap purchase, cheap credit, and of efficient marketing of whatever the laborer may produce on his allotment. The growth of national conscience and the spirit of human brotherhood, and a feeling of shame that any should be poor and neglected in the national household, will be needed to bring the rural laborer into the circle of national life, and make him a willing worker in the general scheme. If farmers will not, on their part, advance towards their laborers and bring them into the cooperative community, then labor will be organized outside their community and will be hostile, and will be always brooding and scheming to strike a blow when the farmer can least bear it—when the ground must be tilled or the harvest gathered. And this, if peace cannot be made, will result in a still greater decline of tillage and the continued flight of the rural laborers, and the increase of the area in grass, and the impoverishing of human life and national well-being.
Some policy to bring contentment to small holders and rural workers must be formulated and acted upon. Agriculture is of more importance to the nation than industry. Our task is to truly democratize civilization and its agencies; to spread in widest commonalty culture, comfort, intelligence, and happiness, and to give to the average man those things which in an earlier age were the privileges of a few. The country is the fountain of the life and health of a race. And this organization of the country people into cooperative communities will educate them and make them citizens in the true sense of the word, that is, people continually conscious of their identity of interest with those about them.
It is by this conscious sense of solidarity of interest, which only the organized cooperative community can engender in modern times, that the higher achievements of humanity become possible. Religion has created this spirit at times—witness the majestic cathedrals the Middle Ages raised to manifest their faith. Political organization engendered the passion of citizenship in the Greek States, and the Parthenon and a host of lordly buildings crowned the hills and uplifted and filled with pride the heart of the citizen. Our big countries, our big empires, and republics, for all their military strength and science, and the wealth which science has made it possible for man to win, do not create citizenship because of the loose organization of society; because individualism is rampant, and men, failing to understand the intricacies of the vast and complex life of their country, fall back on private life and private ambitions, and leave the honor of their country and the making of laws and the application of the national revenues to a class of professional politicians, in their turn in servitude to the interests which supply party funds, and so we find corruption in high places and cynicism in the people. It is necessary for the creation of citizens, for the building up of a noble national life, that the social order should be so organized that this sense of interdependence will be constantly felt. It is also necessary for the preservation of the physical health and beauty of our race that our people should live more in the country and less in the cities. I believe it would be an excellent thing for humanity if its civilization could be based on rural industry mainly and not
