PRACTICAL CO-OPERATION. 83 



ment, as of great importauce to farmers and to the agricultural inter- 

 ests of the State of Maine. It is a matter for farmers to consider 

 and inform themselves upon, and to act upon as their best knowledge 

 dictates. It is a matter that requires the best practical cooperation 

 in its intelligent and proper solution. 



Singly and alone man accomplishes but little. The most inde- 

 pendent are at the same time very much dependent. It is when 

 efforts are joined that power is developed and results attained. It 

 would take one man a long time to build even a small vessel alone, 

 but hundreds cooperating together build a large ship in a few^ months. 

 Thousands of laborers soon construct a railroad connecting^ widelv 

 separated points. By cooperative effort mountains are tunnelled and 

 great rivers bridged. Man is so constituted that it is necessary for 

 him to cooperate with his fellow man if he would prosper. 



The greatest objects accomplished in past ages have been done by 

 practical and persistent cooperation. Not that it went by that name 

 or was recognized in the acceptance we now attach to the term, but 

 it was that principle all the same. If the gathered force was dic- 

 tated b}^ priest, king, emperor, t3'rant, dictator or general, its appli- 

 cation worked out the desired results the same as though each 

 individual volunteered to the task in hand. The p3Taraids were 

 raised from the quarry', moved in huge blocks long distances, and 

 completed into their present wonderful size and altitude by the com- 

 bined strength of tens of thousands of men. So we may say of Baby- 

 lon, of Nineveh, of Thebes and of the Chinese Wall. It was the 

 combined force of human beings that gave the result. 



This country was settled by practical cooperative methods. Every 

 effort in our early settlements that was not practical failed. James- 

 town and Plymouth survived, and this survival was the pure out- 

 come of that which was practically fit for the demands of the oc- 

 casion. Never before in written history had men greater need of 

 acting together than had our ancestors — the ocean on the one hand 

 with its storms and perils cutting off alike retreat and succor ; the 

 wnlderness on the other with its uncleared soil, its savage beasts and 

 savage men. In the face of these difficulties alone the wonder is 

 that these little bands of settlers, here and there, were enabled even 

 b}' heroism, hardship and endurance, amid that which was so new 

 and strange and unknown, to maintain a foothold and plant the seeds 

 whose mature harvest is a sjreat nation. 



