THE CALL FOR RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 15 



betimes to reconcile from the outset interests which there is no 

 need whatever to make antagonistic, and which may well be brought 

 into peaceful harmony ? That question calls for consideration. 



Evidently, then, there are quite a number of different issues 

 wrapped up in the great problem of rural reconstruction. And to 

 every one of them will due thought and reflection have to be given 

 at the most opportune time of the beginning of the transformation, 

 when the clay is still soft and can be moulded, when antagonism has 

 not yet hardened into stiffness, when the plant is still tender and 

 can be trained. 



As it happens, on most of these subjects, opinions go far apart. 

 Take the question of the land. There are Cesarean operators who 

 would settle the question by the rough cut of land nationalisation, 

 sacrificing the mother to the unborn child of untried merit. Next, 

 there are the co-operators, grown very powerful, who claim the land 

 and its cultivation for " the consumer," making a bondman of the 

 hapless farmer and the small cultivator. On the other side there 

 are the struldbrugs of old time, who, like the Bourbons, have learnt 

 nothing, who go on harping on the worn-out string of " property " — 

 like the southern planters in the American civil war. Take land 

 settlement : there is war between ownership Guelphs and tenancy 

 Ghibellines, each jealously narrowing the issue to their one idea, 

 like the big-enders and the little-enders. There are, in respect of 

 agriculture, the champions of large wheat breaks and the advocates 

 of small gardenlike holdings, each apparently determined to ignore 

 differences in situation and condition of the land, and proposing to 

 apply a procrustean measure to all land alike. There are agricultural 

 reformers and land settlers who, realising the urgent want of ample 

 working capital, make large claims upon the State. It is in their 

 opinion " the others " who should be made to pay for what the 

 cultivator or the settler is being persuaded to do. " Co-operation " 

 is on every one's lips, as the nostrum to be applied indiscriminately. 

 But in very few minds is there any understanding what " co-opera- 

 tion " means. There is hopeless confusion of thought on this score. 

 Like the proverbial " charity " " co-operation " is by not a few 

 supposed to imply " asking some one else to do something for some 

 third person." With money taken from the taxpayer, the State is to 

 assist people brigaded together by its influence and authority — and 

 the persuasion of gentlemen of the " robe " and the " tunic " 

 enlisted in its service — to do for themselves what their own interest 

 ought to prompt them to do of themselves as a matter of business, 

 of which they will reap the gains, and what under the spur of self- 



