INFORMATION RELATING TO CO-OPERATION AND ASSOCIATION 27 



that the government should take, requisitioning uncultivated land and 

 bringing it within such extension. 3) The necessity of increasing agricultu- 

 ral production, the need for employing on agriculture much of the labour 

 wliich in the past emigrated, and the recognized opportunity for reconsti- 

 tuting collective agriculture show the close relationship between internal 

 colonization and co-operative labour and production (collective farms) . Thus 

 wherever the private capitalist might withdraw, because profits were scarce or 

 non-existent, the association of labourers, which w^ouldaim above all at a 

 large gross return to be directly consumed by its members, would have ever}- 

 opportunity to enter and to intensify agriculture. 4) The meeting asks 

 that a large part of the lands which will gradually be bought up, be given 

 to the agricultural co-operative societies. These involve a minimum ini- 

 tial cost, and afford, as compared with land settled for centuries, more em- 

 ployment for labour, and employment both more and more lastingly renumer- 

 ative. For this end the meeting passed a special resolution addressed 

 to the government and the competent bodies. 5) The meeting considered 

 that for the social and economic ends towards which the collective farms 

 were directed, joint and divided management of the lands taken over were 

 equally to be recommended, so long as under one and the other system 

 more intimate and fruitful association linked individual to social activity 

 and vice versa, and so long as there were no lack of technical knowledge 

 or of credit. The essential point was that the land should be given to the 

 labourers, who always had cultivated it and who would cultivate it more 

 and better, for themselves and others, on the day on which they would 

 by their associated efforts derive from it a larger profit ". An order of 

 the day was then approved by which, since the movement for agricultural 

 co-operation was assuming in Italy a steadily growing importance, the 

 National Institute of Credit for Co-operation {Istituto Nazionale di Credito 

 per la Cooperazione) was invited to form an agricultural office which should 

 co-ordinate and direct the action and development of agricultural co-opera- 

 tive societies among labourers. In accordance with thJs vote such an office 

 has already been founded (i) b}^ the institute at Bologna and aims at 

 giving assistance and technical advice to these societies. 



2. the; COIvLECTIVE farm of SAN GIOVANNI in CROCE. — L« Cooperazione Ua- 

 liana, Milan, no. 1220, i December 1916. 



The peasants of San Giovanni in Croce (Cremona), a centre in which 

 class organization, completed by a consumers' co-operative society, has had 

 a noteworthy development, have recently formed a collective farm, underta- 

 king the management of about 800 Cremonese perches (2) of land belonging 



(i) See La Cooperazione Italiana, Milan, no. 1225, 5 January 1917. 

 (2) I Cremonese perch = 966.45 square yards. 



