204 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



make it effective over a large area, in fact now in the whole 

 world. But each society works for one particular small 

 district only, in which there is — or, thanks to other minis- 

 trations, there may be — close touch among all members, a 

 common understanding readily ripening into confidence, 

 true neighbourly feeling and a readiness of each to assist 

 the other. In this way it is that communities are built 

 up — small in each case, but of great worth, and helping 

 greatly to keep the country populated. Agriculture prosper- 

 ous, and rural society united in a brotherly spirit, and 

 therefore well conducted and happy. 



These things want to be seen. I have elsewhere told the 

 story of Frankenheim, a God-forsaken parish if there was one, 

 in which each inhabitant, indebted up to the ears, inhabiting 

 a ramshackle cottage, with that and his famished cow or 

 cows all pledged to " the Jew," was as a matter of course 

 credited with being a thief and a robber. There was 

 extreme poverty — poverty so great and so pinching that 

 in mercy the princess of the land, the late Grand Duchess 

 of Saxe Weimar, felt moved to set up cottages with gardens 

 for the population, to be let at a purely nominal rent. 

 Those cottages would not fill. At the same time the morals 

 of the parish did not mend. Every misdeed committed 

 in the neighbourhood was as a matter of course set down 

 to the debit of the Frankenheimers. An energetic and 

 judicious parson coming into the living set up a Raiffeisen 

 society. That society built cottages which were let at an 

 economic rent. There was no charity, no patronage in 

 this. It was all the people's own self-help. But the cot- 

 tages filled. People came to be humanised and educated. 

 They became industrious and moral. They would and 

 did payoff the usurers. Thefts and robberies ceased. And 

 the parish is now one of the best conducted in all Thuringia. 



There are hundreds of cases like this — not in Germany 

 only. Under my friend M. Michael Avramovitch's guidance 

 the system has been introduced into Serbia. It has taken 

 root there. And so far as it extends it has transformed the 

 face of the country. Public-houses have lost the majority 

 of their whilom customers, and a good many have had to 



