306 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



philanthropists, who go there of set purpose to support an institution 

 in which they take an interest. They do not attract the great mass 

 of buyers to whom our appeal ought to be made. Now, apart from 

 what is done in Templecrone, we have in this country no example 

 of what may be accomplished by co-operative organisation of a 

 wider sale. For our productive co-operative societies find their 

 market more or less ready made in the Co-operative Union, whose 

 members as a matter of course favour co-operative workshops, 

 and at their gatherings and through their press learn of those 

 productive societies. They know that they can buy co-operatively- 

 made shoes, boots and cloths at Kettering, silks at Macclesfield, 

 and, in former days, hosiery goods at Leicester. Their work requires 

 no touting. Moreover, the productive societies rightly have their 

 distributive society members, who naturally purchase at their 

 own productive workshop. The support freely given by distri- 

 butive societies to their productive sister-institution in the Mid- 

 lands is a thing to rejoice the heart of a sincere co-operator. 

 Society deals with society and co-operation is all one, without 

 divisions, thriving on such unity. And it affects the labouring 

 class stimulatingly under the very aspect with which we are here 

 dealing. For shoe- and boot-making for the productive society is 

 an industry to a large extent of the "home" type, with all 

 danger of " sweating " or " cutting " obviously absolutely excluded. 

 And where the men make shoes, the women and girls may in 

 their off-time do sewing for the Co-operative Clothing Society, 

 which is near at hand. Abroad, where co-operative produc- 

 tion is more varied, where there are very much fewer distributive 

 societies interested in productive works, and there is no equally 

 large co-operative community, equally united : things are different. 

 The French Charpentiers, the Travail, the Tapissiers and similar 

 societies would be making only a poor thing of their business if they 

 did not look about them for orders outside. They do so look for 

 them, to some purpose ; for they secure the orders that they want 

 from all sorts of quarters, even outside their own country. That 

 may be said to be in respect of large industry. However, the same 

 thing is done with admirable effect for the benefit also of small 

 industry of the domestic kind. The Russian Jcustars, being productive 

 co-operators in small industry, cater for themselves in this way with 

 success. And truly remarkable success has been achieved on similar 

 ground by the silk ribbon weavers of the Lower Rhine, united in 

 co-operative societies ; and theirs is distinctively a domestic industry. 

 The large mass of domestic workers at small industries in the 



