58 POSSIBLE DEVELOPMENTS 



but to ensure that they are only remunerated for the 

 services they render and do not also capture the profits 

 of production, as they do when the producers are un- 

 organized and can be induced to compete with their 

 fellows to bring down prices. At present the producer 

 is often allowed only a bare living wage ; the 

 middleman engrosses all the margin of profit. By 

 co-operation the situation can be equalized, if not 

 reversed. 



The conception of a co-operative colony of small 

 farmers is certainly attractive, and in its elements is to 

 be found at work in numerous agricultural co-operative 

 enterprises in Great Britain and Ireland. But no com- 

 plete colony, organized for cultivation, buying and 

 selling, has yet been realized ; there is this great in- 

 herent difficulty in its foundation, that the tempera- 

 ment of the men who make the best small holders — one 

 of independence and self-reliance — is averse to the 

 discipline and subordination involved in co-operative 

 working. It must be remembered also that the co- 

 operative society is itself a middleman like any other, 

 and that the organization for advice and management 

 is a charge upon the enterprise as costly if not more so 

 than the parallel organization upon a large farm. Com- 

 pared with the industrialized farm the small-holding 

 colony will be a less efficient and more expensive pro- 

 ducer ; it is also indifferently adapted to farming for 

 wheat and the other staple crops, and to the breed- 

 ing and fattening of cattle and sheep. The establish- 

 ment of a colony of small holders would also require 

 more capital than would be wanted for an industrialized 

 farm of the same area and giving employment to the 

 same number of men, because of the extra cost of 



