BY WAY OF PROTEST 167 



organization, and to do all they can for its 

 extension. 



The extreme development of State aid has 

 given rise to a certain degree of dissatisfaction 

 in Austria, and a further group of agricultural 

 co-operative associations has been created on 

 strictly self-help principles, representing a revolt 

 against the conditions above described. The 

 general position is thus lamented by a writer 

 in the issue for January 2nd, 1904, of Die 

 Genossenschaft, the organ of the independent 

 party : — 



It was a terrible economic crisis that, in 1844, led the 

 poor flannel weavers of Rochdale to establish their first 

 co-operative stores, and in spite of — or rather, because of 

 — the great distress then prevailing, success did not fail 

 them. For fifty years was the model thus set up regarded 

 as a pattern for others to follow. But in our country, and 

 in other countries besides — though not in England — the 

 position has been very different. Governments and 

 political parties are interesting themselves in the com- 

 bination movement, and striving to secure an influence 

 over it. The people, in their turn, are willing to surrender 

 any practical proof of self-help for a mess of pottage 

 in the shape of a subvention or a cheap loan. Many 

 Members of Parliament consider that they are conferring 

 a favour on their constituents if they can, in any possible 

 way, get various subventions for them from the national 

 Budget, or, to speak more correctly, cast the obligations 

 of those constituents upon the country. The State, they 

 argue, must support the citizens, not the citizens support 



