It is evident that before a body of men who have never worked together can form a successful commercial combination, they must be provided with a constitution and set of rules and regulations for the conduct of their business.

These must be so skilfully contrived that they will harmonise all the interests involved.
And when an arrangement has been come to which is, not only in fact but also obviously, equitable, it remains as part of the process of organisation to teach the participants in the new project the meaning, and to imbue them with the spirit, of the joint enterprise into which they have been persuaded to enter with perhaps no very clear understanding of all that is involved.

There were in Ireland no precedents to guide us and no examples to follow, but the co-operative movement in England appeared to furnish most of the principles involved and a perfect machinery for their application.[37] So Lord Monteagle and Mr.R.A.Anderson, my first two associates in the New Movement, joined me as regular attendants at the annual Co-operative congresses.

We were assiduous seekers after information at the head-quarters of the Co-operative Union in Manchester.

We had the good fortune to fall in with Vansittart Neale, and Tom Hughes, both of whom have passed away, and with Mr.Holyoake, who, with the exception of Mr.Ludlow, is now the sole survivor of that noble group of practical philanthropists, the Christian Socialists.