WORKING CREDIT FOR FARMERS. 265 



movement of Italy, Belgium, and parts of Germany (mainly 

 in "Peasants' Associations "), and to some extent in France 

 and in the Netherlands. 



All these types of " Co-operation " make a very proud 

 show. With the aid of influential patronage, kept very 

 much in evidence by liberal supplies of money, the various 

 movements have advanced rapidly, and spread out, and 

 the business done is considerable. But at bottom it is 

 not " Co-operation." It provides pence — and pounds. 

 But it does not raise the man. It does not educate and 

 emancipate. It leaves him dependent upon the sunshine 

 of his patron's favour — which sunshine may be succeeded 

 by a sunset. It creates nothing with a prospect of perma- 

 nence about it. And it abets — certainly tolerates — bad 

 practices, which may lead to disaster, as they have done 

 in Hesse. 



And the outside help given to co-operative societies has 

 been proved to be quite unnecessary. There is no Co- 

 operative Union which has raised more money — in truth 

 there is none which has raised anything like as much — as 

 has the Schulze Delitzsch Union, which has acted through- 

 out without a stiver received from either State or any outside 

 source. M. Luzzatti's hanclie popolari likewise, doing a 

 prodigious business, have never received a farthing from 

 the State or from any one else. All that they have required 

 they have been able to produce out of their own resources. 

 The Raiffeisen Union Hkewise has been reared up upon 

 self-help- — save not quite willingly accepted advances from 

 the State Bank while the short-lived relations with that 

 body lasted. And that connection was, as has already been 

 shown, discovered to mean a loss rather than a gain. Hence 

 it was promptly broken off. 



We are much pressed to follow the example of the State- 

 aided institutions. The reasons pleaded are the .same 

 that have been put forward elsewhere — dislike of irksome 

 restrictions, impatience for results, a wish to have things 

 made easy for us. The peas for walking on which the 

 pilgrim is promised his pardon are to be first boiled. Things 

 may indeed be made easier by that, but they are not made 



