264 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



and excited not over well grounded admiration. Great 

 things arc indeed being done there. And on the part of 

 many of the leaders and givers of gifts — such as the late 

 Count Alexander Karolyi — ^with the purest and most benevo- 

 lent of intentions. However, the " Co-operation " there 

 practised is not Co-operation in our sense. It is in no sense 

 self-governing or emancipating, raising character and " man- 

 making." On the contrary, the money assistance afforded 

 by Crown and Magnates is distinctly given to keep the pea- 

 santry in subjection to the Throne and to its leaders of the 

 very large squire class. It is Patronage, not Co-operation, 

 brigading the peasantry under the Crown or Magnate chiefs. 



State assistance in Austria is of much the same stamp. 

 In the words, uttered with unmistakable pride, of one of 

 its chief administrators — who contributed a paper on the 

 subject to the International Co-operative Alliance, for its 

 Budapest Congress held in 1904 — ^there is no country in 

 which the State does so much in proportion to its size 

 for Co-operation in Agriculture as Austria. However, 

 outside the non-German Unions, which, spurred on by 

 nationalist sentiment — just as are the Poles in Prussia — 

 throw a most creditable amount of spirit into their Co- 

 operation, all self-governed as it is, for economic purposes, 

 there is a very notable want of stability in the fabrics set 

 up. Provincial officers exert themselves to start " co- 

 operative " societies, for the sake of getting promotion. 

 Then they go, and the societies collapse. Very much 

 money contributed to " co-operative undertakings " by 

 the State or by provincial Diets has also been lost owing 

 to unbusinesslike management naturally resulting from 

 such organisation. The movement cannot be pronounced 

 remarkable for its success. 



Of the action of the Church of Rome in the province of 

 Co-operative Credit there is scarcely any occasion to speak 

 here, since there is nothing like the same likelihood of 

 denominational ecclesiastical bodies fastening upon this 

 otherwise convenient means of bringing populations under 

 their influence. The " Catholic " object of Church patron- 

 age and interference is very pronounced in the " Catholic " 



