CO-OPERATION IN FOOD-SUPPLY 179 



of life on the land is seen in the common charac- 

 teristics which are displayed by agriculturists all over 

 the world. Their life of comparative isolation on the 

 land and their very intimate contact with nature, the 

 fact that they have successfully adapted themselves, 

 on the basis of inherited tradition and the very slowly 

 accumulated results of experience through the cen- 

 turies, to the great yearly cycle of nature, with all the 

 danger and uncertainty of seed-time and harvest, have 

 an inevitable effect on the mind and character. It is 

 these things that make them less anxious to try ex- 

 periments and less susceptible to new ideas than is 

 the case with townspeople, nor do they easily organize 

 themselves in the common interest. But this applies, 

 as I say, not specially to people living on this island, 

 but to people living on the land everywhere. 



Now the isolation, which is at present, at any rate, 

 a pretty constant factor of life on the land in most 

 countries, together with the slowness of mind which 

 it engenders, brings about another result. It makes 

 the agriculturist, particularly the small agriculturist, 

 the easy prey of unscrupulous people of various kinds 

 money-lenders and vendors of things which the 

 agriculturist needs, such as his agricultural imple- 

 ments, seeds, fertilizers, and so on. And that very 

 fact has brought its own remedy, because it makes a 

 suitable seed-bed in which can be planted the seed of 

 a co-operative movement, and it is in this way that the 

 development of co-operation amongst agriculturists 

 has actually taken place. 



The first important movement of the kind originated 

 in Germany in the middle of last century. The German 

 peasants and small farmers were in many places the 

 prey of unscrupulous money-lenders, and the disease 

 produced its remedy. The agriculturist is particu- 

 larly in need of obtaining credit easily. The ordinary 



