CO-OPERATION 139 



interest of Irish small holders, and very small holders, encouraged 

 the extension of the practice. And very rightly, once more, did 

 the English Board of Agriculture some years ago secure the services 

 of that pioneer of modern husbandry, Professor Wibberley, of Cork 

 University — the inventor of " continuous cropping " — to spread the 

 knowledge of such co-operative implement keeping abroad all over 

 England and Wales. Some useful articles upon the subject by 

 Professor Wibberley will be found in the Journal of the Board of 

 Agriculture and Fisheries for 1915. We shall want a great deal 

 more such co-operative implement owning as our countryside comes 

 to be repeopled with small and tiny cultivators, grouped in commu- 

 nities and extracting at the same time produce and happiness from 

 the soil. 



Of such co-operative implement keeping the co-operative employ- 

 ment of electric power and electric light, already referred to, is one 

 bound to be taken up, and in one respect it is the most beneficial 

 and most valuable. On the benefits which it has brought to large 

 farming there is scarcely any need to dwell. That is by this time 

 widely understood. Electric power will move any variety of 

 machinery, whatever be the force required, from the largest to the 

 smallest, without wearing out human muscles, and carry light into 

 recesses where, with inflammable material stored all round, other 

 illuminants would be quite out of the question. The power is now 

 so adaptable and so easy to transform and to carry about in a movable 

 distributor, that there is no difficulty in fitting it on to any imple- 

 ment — the chaffcutter, the gristmill, the liquid manure pump, the 

 mechanical milker, anything — any more than to the mechanical 

 plough or the threshing machine. It will work in the fields, thresh 

 the corn, move heavy loads. It will light up the farmyard, the 

 inside of barns, stables, sheds or houses. In Germany, where its 

 employment was, in the face of difficulties which we know nothing 

 of, first resorted to on a large scale, there are large installations, 

 spreading out over many square miles, the installation being originally 

 planned for agricultural work only, but now taking in little towns, 

 both for lighting and power purposes. Thus, while ministering to 

 Agriculture in the first instance, it has become a public benefactor. 

 It is also largely used for domestic purposes, not for lighting only, 

 and has in this way proved a most acceptable innovation. In the 

 farmyard the introduction of this new power has exercised a most 

 telling effect for good upon the servant and labour question. Ser- 

 vants and labourers not unaccountably grew tired of, and disgusted 

 with, the heavy jobs which, for want of any other moving force to 



