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has not the required touch with those who are to be attracted to 

 the land, in order to people it with comfortably-off cultivators, nor 

 the required understanding of their ways' and needs that the Co- 

 operative Union would possess. What, so it may be asked, have we 

 thus far accomplished in the way of land settlement ? We have 

 disposed of a fairly respectable quantity of land ; but such land dis- 

 posal, though it has provided land for householders who lacked such, 

 extended the possessions of others who had some, and provided — 

 or else, at any rate, promised — allotments to a number of working 

 folk, has infused only a little new blood into our rural community, 

 created only few new rural homes, and done little to " repeople the 

 land." That is, however, just the point at which the shoe pinches. 

 The Co-operative Union, with its army of members, its huge re- 

 sources, its effective machinery, fully constructed, appears to me, 

 with the power of discharging it, to have also a duty laid upon 

 it to go out into the fields and the rural plains, and to begin the 

 democratisation of the land there. That will be the nationalisation 

 so often clamoured for in one, and that a practical and unobjection- 

 able, sense. And rural folk are pretty sure to accept such leadership 

 and range themselves under such banner. To me it seems a grand 

 opportunity. When, a good time ago, hoping to do something 

 towards helping to break the junker rule in Prussia, I suggested 

 to German socialists that they should go out into the country 

 and strive to organise people there, some of the leaders heartily 

 welcomed the suggestion — apparently, however, without suc- 

 ceeding in carrying it out. We have, happily, no junker rule to 

 break through here. But we have the land waiting to be occupied. 

 And we have plenty of scope for a useful thinning of the ranks of 

 urban and industrial labour, sometimes seriously bent upon reducing 

 production as a supposed safeguard against threatening unemploy- 

 ment, and diverting the excess number to the task of cultivating 

 our fields. Our co-operative societies, flush of money, are intent 

 upon buying more and more land for their own exploitation. Let 

 them devote some of it to the gradual creation of the rural portion 

 — so long forgotten — of their hoped-for and desired " Co-operative 

 Commonwealth " ! 



