136 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



milk, shows how well the two services of organising collective sale 

 and ensuring purity can be combined. And co-operative dairies 

 ought accordingly to be made to serve as examples to be followed. 



However, let us look farther. There are more services that 

 co-operation can render to Rural Economy — more particularly the 

 economy of the small cultivator and his brother, the village artisan 

 or small trader, severally, wholly or else probably partially, engaged 

 in husbandry — all such services tending more or less in the direction 

 of furthering production and sale. If co-operation can, as has been 

 already intimated, on the one hand, supply the, as a rule only partially 

 instructed, small husbandman with a capable head — in the shape of 

 advisers expert in the several branches of knowledge, on the treasures 

 of which his craft is boimd to draw, such as chemistry, physiology, 

 breeding, markets, etc. — it has also, on the other, highly valuable 

 aids to offer to his hands, in the shape of help to labour or replace- 

 ment of labour. The introduction of electric power and light into 

 the operations not only of field tillage, but also of work in the rural 

 household, has in a sense revolutionised agriculture and domestic 

 arrangements in the country, wherever it has acquired a sufficiently 

 firm foothold. A remarkable stimulus has lately been given to 

 such revolution, not in this country only, by the embarrassing 

 shortage of labour caused by the War. France, even more hardly 

 visited than ourselves, has on this ground by its example spurred 

 us on by its even greater activity. Otherwise we have, as usual, 

 shown ourselves slow and immobile in the matter. As an aid to 

 labour by linking units together, co-operative action is, however, in 

 respect of labour really as old as is the settlement of small folk on 

 the land. Small folk, indeed, could not carry on their business well 

 without such linking. The one or a few pairs of arms of the occupier 

 of a small farm and his family will not suffice for all operations to be 

 performed, just as the one horse that many a small holder has to be 

 content with on his holding will not — except in a few places in 

 Scotland — suffice for his ploughing. Neighbours have come to one 

 another's assistance since they became adjoining settlers. And in 

 the new rural world now to be formed, which is to be composed of 

 village communities greatly enlarged, or else newly created, there 

 will be very frequent and urgent need for such co-operation. Primi- 

 tive men learnt to work in groups ; and generation after generation 

 has kept up the practice in a practical way. However, in later days 

 such co-operation has come to be organised and put into well-ordered 

 shape, and it functions all the better for such improvement. The 

 French have their associations syndicates, the members of which 



