Excerpt from Rural Reconstruction in Ireland: A Record of Co-Operative Organisation

This volume contains the most complete and accurate history of a movement which has come to be of the highest importance to Ireland. It has in it the promise of a more real unity among Irish people than has before seemed possible. The unity of a people may be brought about by acceptance of common religious, cultural, or political ideals, but it is doubtful whether that unity can be made real by any of these unless at the same time there is an identity of economic interest among the majority of the citizens. Without this identity of economic interest made obvious to the average man the unity is without depth. The forces of the material world are more powerful on their own plane than the forces of light, and are continually thrusting into a kind of powerless pre-eminence the religious, cultural, and political ideals ostensibly ruling the minds of men. The material forces are stronger on their own plane, but are not by their nature antagonistic to spiritual forces. The need of the body to be fed, clothed and housed is a need which for the vast majority pushes aside all cultural ideals until it is first satisfied. The satisfaction of that need is the motive prompting all economic organisation, and by virtue of that necessity which brings them into being they war successfully with religion and culture where these do not afford practical solutions of the economic problems of the ordinary man. The body of man is the most egoistic of all things, and in winning satisfaction for its desires its first natural manifestation is by way of economic individualism, and every man is for himself and his family.

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