26 INFORMATION RELATING TO CO-OPERATION AND ASSOCIATION 



The non-credit societies include a milk supply society which suppUes 

 milk to a depot in the town, a milk consumers' societ}- which distributes 

 this milk to residents in the town, and an agricultural society which supplies 

 water for purposes of irrigation. 



The eighteen non-agricultural societies include five government ser- 

 vants' credit societies, eleven weavers' societies, a municipal scavengers' 

 society and another society of this last type. 



The registrar acknowledges great help received from the officers of 

 the Revenue Department who were asked, by a special resolution passed 

 by the Honourable Council, to forward the movement. 



" If ", he states, " the co-operative movement is to be developed, 

 well organized efforts should be made to educate the farmers in the prin- 

 ciples of co-operation. A hand-book on co-operation for use in primary 

 schools has been prepared ". 



ITAI^Y. 



I. THE RESOI^UTIONS OF THE NATIONAI, MEETING OF THE AGRICUI^TURAI, 

 CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES AT MII^AN. — La Cooperazione Italiana (Italian Co-opera- 

 tion), organ of the Lega Nazionale delle Cooperative (National I^eague of Co-ojierative 

 Societies), No. 1223, 22 December 1916. 



On the initiative of the National League of Co-operative Societies 

 there were held at Milan on the 17th and i8th of last December three na- 

 tional meetings of the co-operative societies of consumption, production, 

 labour and agriculture (i). The last-named, which interest us most di- 

 rectly, dealt with agricultural and co-operative colonization, in relation to 

 which the following motion was approved : " i) The meeting reaffirms its 

 preceding resolutions in favour of giving a legal sanction, where the lands 

 of public bodies are concerned, to letting these, on lease or otherwise, or 

 selling them by preference to labouiers' co-operative societies, such prefer- 

 ence being analogous to that given to co-operative labour societies in pub- 

 lic auctions, 2) The meeting declares the need to be urgent and immediate 

 for public works of hydraulics destined to increase the area of land permit- 

 ting of cultivation and to remove one of the more important causes of ill 

 health and of the abandonment of much land. It demands also that there 

 should be agricultural enterprise — internal colonization — the words 

 being understood in their largest sense. The extension of the legislation 

 for the Roman Campagna to all lands in which there is public agricultural 

 enterprise is the first and fundamental action v^hich the meeting demands 



(i) A few days earlier at Naples the meeting of the co-operative societies of the south was 

 held, and passed resolutions for the constitution of provincial or district federations of the va- 

 rious kinds of co-operative societies, which should help these societies in matters of technique, 

 book-keeping or administration, or legally. 



