2o6 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



industrial despotism, or bureaucratic inefficiency, of individual 

 indifference and of an all-pervading collective ownership." 



It we want to repeople our own countryside and restore 

 the " Sweet Auburn " of happier days, surely here we have 

 an apt instrument for doing so ready to our hand — the 

 most effective that has ever been invented and that human 

 ingenuity could think of. Let us cultivate and promote 

 Co-operation, not merely for its economical attainments 

 — great as they are — but even more, in our depopulated, 

 deserted, impoverished and dreary rural districts, for social 

 and moral blessings which it has it in its power to bring, 

 the drawing together of neighbours to mutual helpfulness 

 and mutual confidence, to the gilding of the humiliated 

 and despised agricultural labourer's home with a touch, 

 not only of justified hope for a better economic future, 

 but also of that happiness which true neighbourly contact 

 with others brings about, a little community in which class 

 distinctions do not mean a separating wall, but in which 

 rich and poor, employer and employed, can without forget- 

 fulness of what is due to each, but still on a footing of 

 equality, as man and man, meet on common ground, united 

 by the bond of common humanity ! At the end of the 

 lane along which co-operative effort pushes its way, dropping 

 material blessings as it goes, should stand a happier country 

 life, enriching the deserted fields with renewed fertility, 

 and at the same time repeopling the depleted villages with 

 contented, hopeful human beings bound together by mutual 

 consideration for one another. 



It may be asked : If Co-operation is so advantageous to 

 Agriculture and to rural folk generally, in both an economic 

 and a social sense, how is it to be organised ? 



The question has of course attracted the attention of 

 Governments claiming to be " paternally " interested in the 

 welfare of those whom they govern. Governments, appre- 

 ciating its value, have tried their hand at promoting agricul- 

 tural Co-operation, and have in some cases managed to 

 set up imposing structures of organisation, bearing the 

 title " Co-operation " conspicuously on their fagade ; but 

 they have never yet succeeded in producing quite the right 



