ORGANISATION. 215 



to the co-operative Labour movement, which latter more 

 particularly is in a peculiarly favourable position, and ready 

 also, to pour recruits into the agricultural ranks for the 

 purpose of repeopling and cultivating the long neglected 

 land, by means of small holdings. Now the three move- 

 ments have rightly resolved to become one. And each of 

 them promises to benefit by the Union. But most of all 

 benefit is likely to accrue to the Nation, which bids fair to 

 have a reproach of generations wiped off it, and see its land, 

 which has been running ruinously to waste, turned to good 

 use by a thrifty and laborious rural population. 



If our agricultural co-operative movement is to succeed, 

 we shall have to do something of the same kind, taking the 

 industrial co-operative movement for a model, and evincing 

 a readiness to join with it — not merely as a safeguard for 

 the avoidance of friction by overlapping, but as a means 

 of bringing about heart-union, and getting up the steam 

 which is now wanting, to carry us forward on the way to 

 success. " Bejunkering " and " besquiring " will not do 

 it. It is the cultivators themselves who must build up their 

 Co-operation. 



There is another point in organisation which deserves 

 a word of mention. Do not, for goodness' sake, let us be 

 pedantic ! Co-operation, to be suitable to different occu- 

 pations and different localities, wants to be flexible and 

 elastic. Rules are good. But principles stand above 

 rules ; and rules must be pliant. We have all but drummed 

 out of our ranks what was, from a business point of view, at 

 the time our out and out most successful society of farmers, 

 simply because it would not submit to a rigid formula of 

 formation in parish units, but from the outset covered a 

 wide district, which gave it that " bulk " which of course 

 Co-operation needs to achieve success. No doubt in ordi- 

 nary circumstances the most advisable and the most natural 

 form of organisation is by parishes or small districts, such 

 small district societies afterwards combining to as powerful 

 unions as can be got together, even were it only for the 

 education imparted to small men by making them manage 

 their own affairs in a little district society, and the closer 



