ORGANISATION. 163 



" bania " has his paradise, rayats 111 borrowing pawn the 

 ungotten child of the daughter for whose wedding they 

 borrow money. And the child, come to maturity, recog- 

 nises the debt. So the fetters of debt come to be handed 

 down from father to son and grandson, and descendants 

 beyond that, as a permanent burden. In Ireland " gom- 

 beening " has no better record, favoured as it is, politically, 

 by parliamentary electors, and also higher up. In German 

 Rhineland it was the extortions of the wily usurer which 

 drove Raiffeisen into inventing rural Co-operation, with 

 which weapon he went to battle — and so far as he could do so, 

 has gloriously conquered. In France it was the exorbitant 

 charges of the middleman dealing in agricultural necessaries. 

 In the United States, as already stated, it was the all too 

 cute cornerers and groups of railway companies which 

 practically forced farmers to try to do the work required 

 for themselves. The cornerers and railway harpies were 

 successfully fought by the Elevator Companies, acting 

 under the name of Co-operation, which in a good many 

 cases really means only Combination. However, for busi- 

 ness purposes even pure Combination is effective. It 

 emancipates the producer. It secures to him his own 

 market, in which he is master. In Germany and the Nether- 

 lands he has got it even for his live stock. We ourselves 

 have our beginnings. We sell some live stock co-opera- 

 tively, to manifest advantage, through skilled agents. And 

 we have other co-operative societies for various purposes, 

 dairies, egg-selling societies and others, which do well. In 

 Germany corn is freely sold on co-operative lines, and, by 

 a curious coincidence, such sale is realising the very same 

 2s. per quarter which Mr. Chamberlain promised as a 

 reward for the acceptance of his Tariff Reform. In Hanover 

 the co-operative trade in live stock, as organised by co- 

 operative societies, has been perfected to such a point, that 

 beasts are bought and sold unseen, as we buy and sell 

 inanimate commodities of known quality. It is some years 

 since the President of the " Farmers' Educational and 

 Co-operative Union," already mentioned, in the United 

 States publicly stated : 



