218 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



attempt to form institutions like the Prussian Rentenbank. Excel- 

 lent as its system is under favouring circumstances, the dear price 

 of money in itself forbids that. And we have had a warning in the 

 fate of the Irish land-bonds. By the same circumstances, the late 

 Jesse Collings' very ambitious proposal to pay off vendors in ringing 

 cash is placed out of court. Conditions likewise do not appear pro- 

 pitious at present to any undertaking corresponding to the creation 

 of the German Landbank and its sister institutions — let alone that 

 under our peculiar circumstances that adventitious inducement to 

 such business in the shape of the purchase and improvement of run- 

 down properties seems lacking. The favour which tenant co-operator 

 enterprises have found with capitalists, possibly to some extent 

 influenced by philanthropic sentiment, in providing loan-money 

 for such undertakings, may appear to open a better prospect to 

 action according to Mr. Charlton's plan. However, to such capita- 

 lists, so it will have to be admitted, agricultural property destined 

 to be turned to account on new lines, with an uncertain future, is 

 likely to present itself as a different class of security to accept as 

 pledge than suburban house property, which is under the peculiar 

 circumstances sure to be well constructed, and for which there is 

 certain to be a constant demand. The project of ownership holdings 

 is therefore for the moment not over-promising. However, on 

 tenancy lines, there ought to be a decidedly good opening for 

 action, if the path here shown to have led to unquestionable suc- 

 cess in more counties than one were to be trodden. Settlement, as 

 observed, must be in groups, and it ought to be co-operative. We 

 should not find ourselves, in this more prosperous country, driven 

 to beginning in such abject feebleness as did the Italian co-opera- 

 tors. Whatever may be the condition of our agricultural labourers 

 and other small men, they are distinctly better off than Signori 

 Mori and Bissolati's proteges. And we should not have such hard 

 terms pressed upon us as only a nine years' agreement without the 

 prospect of compensation for improvements effected. 



There appears to me to be here a great opening for our co-opera- 

 tive host, whose earliest leaders, the Rochdale Pioneers, distinctly 

 placed the settlement of working folk in homes of their own on the 

 land prominently among their accepted aims. The work should be 

 all the more tempting to them, since the Agricultural Organisation 

 Society in its new form appears to be pursuing rather a different 

 line, endeavouring rather to better the position of those who are 

 already on the land than to raise up a new and larger rural popula- 

 tion. With its majors and captains doing the propaganda, it certainly 



