ORGANISATION. 207 



article. It is indeed difficult to see how they could produce 

 it. For Co-operation, to be worth anything, requires to be 

 the production of those who participate in it, being based 

 upon pure self-help and self-reliance, which qualities evi- 

 dently the Government, be it ever so powerful, cannot 

 produce for and in others. Apart from that, the mere fact 

 that Co-operation, which consists in persons doing for 

 themselves what otherwise necessarily others would have 

 to do for them, of necessity involves competition with 

 other established interests, and so from the very outset 

 injustice places a bar in the way of Government assistance. 

 For Governments cannot with fairness interfere between 

 competing legitimate interests, nor take the people's money, 

 in order with it to subsidise one single interest. Govern- 

 ments may, indeed, do a great deal for Co-operation ; but 

 not in the way of direct interference of assistance with 

 money for trading purposes. Their attempting to do so 

 has necessarily led to difficulties. Of course they have 

 given grave offence to the interests with which Co-operation 

 is led into competition. Nevertheless Governments have 

 persisted in their attempts. But even in doing so they 

 have not been able to maintain even a semblance of fair- 

 ness. For in the distribution of their favours they have 

 exercised curious discrimination. Very generally they have 

 set the claims of purveyors of specifically agricultural 

 requirements — that is, makers of and dealers in agricultural 

 machinery, implements, fertilisers, feeding stuffs, and the 

 like — aside with very Httle ceremony. These people must 

 take their chance. In Ireland the Government is even 

 reported to have gone so far as to set up a direct compe- 

 tition with these Cinderellas by selling the articles in which 

 they deal directly itself to its favourites at less than market 

 price. But, on the other hand. Governments have shown 

 quite peculiar tenderness for traders in general and in 

 domestic articles, the " banias " and " gombeen men " of 

 their several countries, whom they have selected as their 

 " anointed," who must not be " touched." An explana- 

 tion of this fact presumably is this, that the traders have a 

 larger number of votes, which must not be estranged, as 



