CO-OPERATION IN DENMARK 191 



they were prospering. He added that only owners 

 of land will co-operate, and I may say for what it is 

 worth that I am much of the same opinion. 



But the thing goes deeper, indeed to the bed-rock 

 of the British nature. Most farmers in this country 

 do not co-operate simply because they will not. Co- 

 operation is against their traditions, their ideas, and 

 above all, their prejudices. In any given village 

 three of them will send three carts to the station, each 

 carrying one churn of milk, when one cart could carry 

 all three, rather than arrange together that two-thirds 

 of this daily expense and labour should be saved. 

 Any observer may see the process in operation. 



So it is with everything, and so, I believe, it will 

 remain, unless in the future some great change should 

 come over our system of land-ownership. This of 

 course has happened, or is happening in Ireland, with 

 the result that there co-operation is beginning to 

 flourish. 



Moreover, it is not only among large farmers 

 that this tendency, or negation of tendency, is to be 

 observed. It goes down, at any rate in some in- 

 stances, to the smallest small-holders. I will instance 

 a case taken from that melancholy document " The 

 Report on the Small- Holdings established by Mr. 

 Joseph Fels at Mayland, Essex." 



Mr. Thomas Smith, the supervisor, states in this 

 report that in 1907 the tenants in residence formed 

 themselves into a co-operative society, as their agree- 

 ment provided that they should do. This society was 

 ruled by the votes of the members. In 1908 "there 

 arose dissensions amongst the members of the co- 

 operative society " ; the small-holders took the matter 

 of the disposal of produce out of the hands of the 



