78 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



precisely the same ground and that there can be no other organisa- 

 tion except by what is technically known as " co-operation." 



Now with regard to " co-operation " among ourselves, there are 

 distinct factors to reckon with which do not arise elsewhere. " Co- 

 operation " has in our country acquired quite a peculiar meaning. 

 Germany and the American Commonwealths have, among the 

 various forms of co-operation there adopted, agricultural co-opera- 

 tion standing in the forefront ; also France, in which, moreover, 

 industrial production rather takes the pas of distribution. Italy 

 leads with a — strongly socialist — co-operative movement of rural 

 workers of every description, whether agriculturists or not, capturing 

 for themselves employment and the occupation of land, which latter 

 they cultivate in freedom. Our own co-operation is almost exclu- 

 sively distributive. And not only is it distributive, but our dis- 

 tributive co-operators — who, by almost monopolising the ground, 

 have actually become to the outside world the accepted expositors 

 of the co-operative principle — also emphatically urge that there 

 is no co-operation deserving to be recognised as such except that of 

 the distributive form, and that whatever other form is practised 

 should be placed absolutely under the domination, and be exercised 

 for the benefit of, distribution. And since it was working men's 

 poverty — at the time when working men were still poor — which 

 first suggested co-operation, and working men have ever been its 

 stoutest adherents, co-operation has among ourselves distinctly 

 become peculiarly a working men's movement, " giving up to party 

 what was meant for mankind," constituting itself specifically the 

 champion of " labour " rights and " labour " claims, pursuing 

 " labour " ends, and — as happened at the Congress of Aberdeen, 

 held in 1913 — openly and officially proclaiming its aim to secure 

 " supremacy " in the country. This " labour " side of our co- 

 operation has become all the more pronounced since — thanks, no 

 doubt, in great part to the admirable administration under which 

 it has stood — " poverty " has long since disappeared among its 

 principal adherents, and in the words of a late general secretary 

 of the great Co-operative Union, its members have come to consist 

 in the main of the " better paid artisans " — the poor, barring the 

 kind help generously given them by the Women's Guild, being to a 

 great extent left practically out in the cold. Quite apart from the 

 political side of the question, which certainly does not fit in to an 

 " agricultural " and " rural " programme — to a large number of 

 farmers this identification of " co-operation " with working men's 

 politics, and the mere cheapening of articles of daily want being 



