38 EGYPT - CO-OPERATION AND ASSOCIATION 



Egypt is therefore a country of small holdings, eminently developed. 

 Indeed, small holdings are markedly characteristic of the Egyptian agricultur- 

 al system. Under these conditions not onlj^ should the position of the Egypt- 

 ian peasant, the jellah be highly satisfactor^^ but Egypt should have foll- 

 owed with especial readiness the advance movement that has been seen 

 in every country, and that, while, on the one hand, it tends to improve agri- 

 cultural produce, also tends to provide for the security and real material 

 welfare of the peasant. If something has been done in Egypt, it is only 

 the first step towards an action that must hereafter be continued with 

 great intensit}-. The Egyptian Government has already begun the work 

 of agricultural legislation and is likely to continue it activeh' : this is wit- 

 nessed to by the formation of the Khedivial Society of Agriculture, founded in 

 1898, on the initiative of Prince Hussein ; the promulgation of the very im- 

 portant law of March ist., 1913, declaring undistrainable those farms the 

 area of which is less than 5 feddans, with which we have already dealt in 

 this Bulletin more than once (i); not to mention the co-operative movement 

 initiated by Omar Lufty Bey and continued in Ribet's new scheme 

 for the constitution of agricultural co-operative societies in Egj'pt. of 

 which we intend now to speak. But, before entering on the subject, 

 we think it well to say a little more with regard to the present position of 

 the Egyptian /eWa^ in order that the reader may understand the difficulties 

 that the Government and the authorities have met with in their efforts 

 for the economic and social improvement of the rural classes. 



M. Ribet writes " The fellah is soher, tough and hard working, but 

 thriftless and fatalistic, and, thus not easily accessible to the idea of 

 sacrifices to be made today for a benefit to be reaped tomorrow. Be- 

 sides, he is uninstructed and the victim of the most odious usury. Of 

 1,000 fellaheen (men) hardly 85 can read and write. I do not speak of 

 the women, of whom only 3 % can read and write. In every village there is 

 a Greek druggist, a person as extraordinary as he is harmful, called " bakal", 

 who sets himself, by means of a clever system of usurious loans, to obtain 

 possession of the fellaheen's farms and their profits. The famous law rend- 

 ering farms of less than 5 feddans undistrainable, which excited so much at- 

 tention in Egypt, was principally intended to liberate the peasants from the 

 yoke of the " bakal ". But, besides the ignorance of the peasants and the 

 intolerable advantages taken of them, other causes united to make the 

 necessity of agricultural association felt profoundly, just as in other count- 

 ries, only perhaps more here. And amongst these we should mention ; 

 the cotton crisis of 1911, the serious injurj'^ done to the cotton crop by 

 parasites and the continuous increase in recent years in the number of farms 

 expropriated, to which the 5 feddans law will now put a certain limit. For 

 all these evils there could only be one efficacious remedy : that remedy which 

 has not failed of beneficial results in all countries which have suffered from 



(i) Cfr. Bulletin of Economic and Social Intelligence. Year III, No. 9. September, 1912, page 

 157 and Year IV, No. 7, July, igis.page 93. 



