THE NEW ERA IN POLITICS 265 



last chapter. It requires but little imagination to 

 visualize a farm life that would be alluring to mil- 

 lions of people. It has been done in the garden 

 villages of England and Germany, where expert 

 town-planners, architects, builders, and educators 

 have built new towns or subui-bs in which every 

 possible convenience has been provided at a very 

 moderate cost by the substitution of the co-operative 

 motive for the speculative motive. Increasing land 

 values have been kept for the community. The 

 houses have been designed not to rent, but to sell 

 on easy terms. Water, gas, and electric light and 

 power have been produced by the community and 

 sold at cost. Co-operative buying and selling have 

 cut out the unnecessary middlemen, while provision 

 for education and recreation has added cultivation 

 and happiness to persons of small means, who have 

 been lifted from the sordid siu"roundings of the tene- 

 ment into a standard of reasonable comfort by the 

 substitution of the co-operative motive for that of 

 private profit and the elimination of the specula- 

 tive element from the community. 



The same thing can be done for agriculture. It 

 can not only be made attractive to millions, but 

 profitable as well. And such a programme of agri- 

 culture-building involves the various elements de- 

 scribed in the preceding chapters, just as the prob- 

 lem of city-building, which has made such progress 

 in other countries, involves the combination of simi- 



