i66 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



common to it in that successful Store business whicii has 

 become so famihar to us. It also seems — but only seems — 

 at first glance to confirm the grounds of the objections 

 raised by some large farmers, who hold Co-operation to 

 be valuable, if at all, only for small cultivators — the 

 number of whom of course we are now eager to increase 

 greatly — but quite unnecessary for the large farmer who, 

 in the words of the late Clare Sewell Reade, a typical large 

 farmer of his time, should be (the phrase is not altogether 

 happy) " his own co-operator." No doubt Co-operation is 

 above all things valuable for the small farmer, who in the 

 present day would find it impossible to do without it. He 

 wants the acquisition, or the use, of things which he is not 

 in a position to obtain singly for himself, and he also wants to 

 sell on better terms than in marketing for himself, with his 

 small output, he has a chance of obtaining. However, 

 business has generally assumed so gigantic proportions that 

 the large farmer has no reason to contemn collective action. 

 Large as he may be, the market is infinitely larger. And 

 the question to be taken into account is not purely one of 

 price, nor even of the purchase of goods only, but of 

 guarantee and of common use of articles such as electric 

 power, which require very large participation, of common 

 work and of sale. The German agricultural co-operative 

 societies of the Haas type, which has produced the largest 

 Union, that is, the societies now so freely held up to us as 

 objects for study, being greatly favoured by their several 

 Governments on the ground of their political value as a sup- 

 port for junkerdom and the Crown, are made up to a very 

 great extent of large farmers, that is, cultivating squires, who 

 distinctly find it profitable and amply worth supporting. 

 Among the members of the thousands and tens of thousands 

 of American " co-operative " associations you may find a 

 vast number of large farmers. In Austria and Hungary 

 their number is very great. The host of French agricultural 

 co-operators — and also the host of Italian — includes a 

 substantial portion of owners and tenants of considerable 

 properties, who are all very well satisfied with the results 

 of their Co-operation. The large farmers of the Lodigiano, 



