Generally speaking, the task before us in Ireland was the adaptation to the special circumstances of our country of methods successfully pursued by communities similarly situated in foreign countries. We had to urge upon farmers that combination was just as necessary to their economic salvation as it was recognised to be by their own class, and by those engaged in other industries, elsewhere. They must combine, so we urged on them, for example, to buy their agricultural requirements at the cheapest rate and of the best quality in order to produce more efficiently and more economically; they must combine to avail themselves of improved appliances beyond the reach of individual producers, whether it be by the erection of creameries, for which there was urgent need, or of cheese factories and jam factories which might come later; or in ordinary farm operations, to secure the use of the latest agricultural machinery and the most suitable pure-bred stock; they must combine--not to abolish middle profits in distribution, whether those of the carrying companies or those of the dealers in agricultural produce--but to keep those profits within reasonable limits, and to collect in bulk and regularise consignments so that they could be carried and marketed at a moderate cost; they must combine, as we afterwards learned, for the purpose of creating, by mutual support, the credit required to bring in the fresh working capital which each new development of their industry would demand and justify. In short, whenever and wherever the individuals in a farming community could be brought to see that they might advantageously substitute associated for isolated production or distribution, they must be taught to form themselves into associations in order to reap the anticipated advantages. This brief statement of our general aims will furnish a rough idea of the economic propaganda which we initiated, and if I give a few illustrations of the practical application of the new principle to the farming industry, I shall have done all that will be required to leave on the reader's mind a true though perhaps an incomplete impression of the character and scope of the self-help side of the new movement. I shall first give a sketch of the unrecorded struggles of its pioneers, because these struggles prove to those engaged in social and economic work in Ireland that, in the wholly abnormal condition of our national life, no project which is theoretically sound need be rejected because everybody says it is impracticable. The work of the morrow will largely consist of the impossible of to-day. If this adds to the difficulty, it also adds to the fun.