198 Large and Small Holdings 



large and excellent. However, co-operation in England has by no 

 means yet arrived at this stage. Although it has begun to develop 

 along with the growing profitableness of the small holding and the 

 branches of production proper to it, its progress is as yet very slow. 

 The causes of this slowness of development are not difficult for 

 anyone acquainted with English agriculture to recognise. 



If the co-operative system is to flourish, it presupposes a co- 

 operative spirit ; that is to say a certain brotherliness, possibly even 

 some sentimentality, of disposition. In little village communities, 

 with old-established and traditionally respected members, families 

 which have held together, in spite no doubt of many family quarrels, 

 for hundreds of years, the ground is prepared for co-operative action. 

 Such is the case in Hesse or Denmark or Schleswig-Holstein. 

 But England is the land of capitalist agriculture. Neighbours are 

 not known to one another as they are in the village community. Few 

 of the occupiers or cultivators have their homes in the village. They 

 live outside, more as in the Celtic type of settlement, and this in 

 itself prevents the intimate and friendly relationships to be found 

 among the true villagers. The English countryman can hardly be 

 defended from the charge of being extraordinarily suspicious. He 

 does not trust his neighbours, and would rather go alone than in 

 company. Moreover the whole idea of association is much more 

 strange to him than to the peasantry of a country where the village 

 community is still a reality. In the village community any number 

 of things are already done in common ; here and there, as in the 

 southern part of Germany, in Switzerland, and elsewhere, even common 

 pastures still exist ; but the English farmer has been educated in 

 complete independence and isolation since the agricultural revolution 

 of the eighteenth century. He has to be entirely re-converted to the 

 co-operative mind. And the success which the co-operative move- 

 ment has already attained in some instances seems to show that the 

 farmers, and especially the small farmers, are increasingly realising 

 the blessings it may bring 1 . 



Co-operation is indeed full of promise for the large holder as well 

 as for the small ; but in a different manner. The large farmer finds 

 in it a means of increasing his net profits. The question of com- 

 petition between the various units of holding is not what moves him 



1 Cp. Mr E. A. Pratt on this subject in his Small Holders : What they must do to succeed, 

 1909, a very useful book so far as the presentment of facts is concerned, but to be used 

 with caution in regard of its conclusions and theories of a general and economic nature. 

 Mr G. Radford's Agricultural Co-operation, Westminster, n. d., is also worthy of mention. 



