THE BEGINNING OF CO-OPERATION 171 



association. This lesson he can only learn by finding 

 in association the remedy for the ills of which he is 

 already acutely conscious. It is, therefore, to co- 

 operative village banks that we must look to teach 

 the cultivator the virtue of co - operation. These 

 societies have often in Europe proved to be the 

 1 growing spot ' of agricultural reform, and it is re- 

 ported that Sir Horace Plunkett has declared that if 

 he had to begin his economic work in Ireland over 

 again, he would begin with village banks. In India 

 the ground is already prepared for the foundation of 

 small co-operative banks ; the villager is fully conscious 

 of his need for capital to buy bullocks or seed, and he 

 is painfully aware of the burden imposed upon him 

 by the village money-lender. If he can be got to 

 realize that by association he may borrow, not perhaps 

 as much as he wants, but as much as his fellow- 

 villagers think good for him, the foundation may be 

 laid of a genuine co-operative movement which will 

 easily extend to co-operative buying and the main- 

 tenance of co-operative industries. At present the 

 obstacles to this movement are not either legal or 

 economic, but moral, and the great virtue of the co- 

 operative movement is that it educates in thrift and 

 self-reliance at the same time as it provides the desired 

 capital. At the heart of every economic problem lies 

 a moral problem ; and the surest cure of economic evils 

 is one which gives the people the means of overcoming 

 their troubles themselves. The experience of Europe 

 seems to show that co-operative banks are such a means, 

 and there is, therefore, no nobler or more genuinely 

 patriotic work to be done in India than to teach the 

 people to organize village associations upon the prin- 

 ciple of mutual credit. 



Before closing this chapter theoretical accuracy 

 demands that some reference should be made to one 

 other form in which capital has been sunk in perma- 

 nent improvements, and that is to the capital sunk 



