112 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



brotherhood ! ' Look at the confidence boldly expressed by Indians, 

 proud of their co-operative " intizam," of the regeneration through 

 co-operation of their cherished and regretted " village community " ! 

 Look at the new communities, composed entirely of workers, joining 

 in the common enterprise, growing up in Italy in the shape of 

 collective co-operative land settlements ! For the small holder 

 and the cultivator of a still humbler rank, such as allotment-owning 

 labourers and all the corona of artisans and village tradesmen of 

 our country, now so eager for the creation of such a population, 

 there is no prospect of happy upgrowing in family-like neighbour- 

 liness without co-operation. 



However, these are not the only people to be benefited. By this 

 time also the better endowed and higher-graded members of the 

 rural community have discovered and recognised the great value of 

 co-operation as an aid to business ; and there are few among them 

 now who will declare, as the late Clare Sewell Reade did some twenty- 

 five years ago, that " the large farmer is his own co-operator," or, 

 as a distinguished chairman of the Central Chamber of Agriculture 

 did a few years ago at Crewkerne : " Don't take the advice given 

 you by Mr. Wolff ; don't co-operate, stand every one for himself 

 only ! " 



What great value practical-minded men attach to co-operation, 

 on the ground of the material benefits which it will secure specifically 

 to agriculture, is apparent from the assiduity devoted to its exten- 

 sion among our dollar-seeking cousins in the United States. 



One thing it will be advisable here to point out in connection 

 with this subject. We have become so accustomed to the sight of 

 the magnificent emporia of distributive co-operation established in 

 industrial centres, that we are likely to be tempted to forget that in 

 the rural world co-operation, though retaining altogether the 

 same principles, and the same canons for practice, assumes outwardly 

 a rather different character. Distributive co-operation is " dis- 

 tributive " — which does not, indeed, mean that it limits its objects 

 narrowly to the cheapening of groceries and dry goods. It distinctly 

 proposes to itself higher aims, some of which have of late taken a 

 very ambitious turn. But it is essentially a consumers' movement. 

 It places the consumer's interest so overtoweringly above every 

 other consideration, that it now even openly and advisedly makes 

 it its aim to do away with individual farming, and asks that agri- 

 cultural, as well as industrial, production shall be placed, as a sub- 

 ordinate service, under the mastership of distribution, in the way 

 in which husbandry is already carried on on the farms already owned 



