Horace Plunkett - Pioneering Co-operation

Pioneering Co-operation

At first, Plunkett resolved to hold himself aloof from party politics, and he set himself to bring together men of all political views for the promotion of the material prosperity of the Irish people. In 1891 he was appointed to the Congested Districts Board and learned at first-hand of the wretched conditions of the rural population west of the River Shannon. The experience only hardened his conviction that the one remedy for social and economic ill was co-operative self-help. Around him he saw a troubled economy, racked with dissension, denuded by emigration, impoverished in its countryside and economically stagnant in its towns. He immediately took a leading part in developing agricultural co-operation, of which he had learned from isolated American farmers, and also took account of Scandinavian co-operation models and the invention of the steam-powered cream separator. Working with a few colleagues, including two members of the clergy, and advocating the value of self-reliance, he set his ideas into practise first amongst dairy farmers in the south, establishing Ireland’s first co-operative at Doneraile, County Cork and opening the first creamery in Dromcollogher, County Limerick. That Cork also fostered an earlier pioneer of the co-operative movement in the name of William Thompson, deserves mentioning.

In the setting up of creameries the co-operative movement experienced its greatest success. Plunkett got farmers to join together and establish these in order to process and market their own butter, milk and cheese to standards suitable for the British market, rather than producing unhygienic poor quality output in their homes, for local traders. This enabled farmers to deal directly with companies established by themselves, who could guarantee fair prices without middlemen absorbing the profits. He believed that the industrial revolution needed to be redressed by an agricultural revolution through co-operation and promulgated his ideals under the slogan "Better farming, better business, better living" (President Theodore Roosevelt adopted the slogan for his conservation and country life policy).