In union with his fellows, he is progressive, open to ideas, and wonderfully keen at grasping the essential features of any new proposal for his advancement.

He was, then, himself eminently a subject for co-operative treatment, and his circumstances were equally so.

The smallness of his holding, the lack of capital, and the backwardness of his methods made him helpless in competition with his rivals abroad.

The process of organisation was also, to some extent, facilitated by the insight the people had been given by the Land League into the power of combination, and by the education they had received in the conduct of meetings.

It was a great advantage that there was a machinery ready at hand for getting people together, and a procedure fully understood for giving expression to the sense of the meeting.