150 HUNGARY 



to receive these weekly subscriptions, and the 

 occasion is one for the meeting together of the 

 villagers, who avail themselves of the opportunity 

 to talk over their common requirements. Arti- 

 ficial manures are not much required in the 

 plains of Hungary, but there is a good demand 

 for feeding - stuffs, and the peasants at their 

 weekly gathering will add together the quantities 

 that each may want, and so make up a fairly 

 good combined order. Their village bank is 

 probably in touch with a co-operative supply 

 association, and the local officials will, accord- 

 ingly, arrange the whole transaction for the 

 peasants, obtaining and distributing the supplies, 

 and debiting each purchaser with the amount 

 due from him, if he cannot pay at once. Other 

 agricultural necessaries are obtained in the same 

 way, so that although there may not be any 

 actual purchase associations in particular locali- 

 ties, a good deal of combined buying may go on, 

 all the same. 



The material benefits derived from these new 

 conditions are self-evident ; but the moral results 

 have been still more remarkable. It was left 

 for some of the Hungarian clergy to discover a 

 fact which had escaped the notice of the leaders 

 of the movement, and one which they had cer- 

 tainly not aimed at producing, namely, that since 



