INTEODUCTION 7 



dating back to very old times and handed down from generation 

 to generation. Most of the village affairs were regulated by 

 definite rules, the peasants aiding and controlling one another. 

 Many tasks were performed in common, and few w^ere the 

 undertakings which coxild be carried on except after a joint 

 decision. A humane spirit prevailed in the villages, and 

 co-operation led to many praiseworthy undertakings within 

 the community and to mutual aid and assistance in hard times, 

 when crops failed, or when sickness or fire ravaged the district. 

 Attendance at church and school was encouraged, the security 

 against floods, robbers, thieves, or wild animals was greater 

 than if each had to fend for himself, and a social life was 

 evolsred which undoubtedly had a great educational effect. 

 The conditions at these times were quite different from what 

 they are now. JTlie peasant is now in frequent contact with 

 the world outside his farm and his village, through his con- 

 nection with the school, the assembly or mission hall, the dealer, 

 the dairy, the slaughter-house, by means of easy and cheap 

 railway communications, daily papers, military service, and the 

 like. None of these things existed in olden times, when the 

 isolation, often considerable, tended to promote a brusque 

 independence, a stubborn adherence to customs and methods 

 handed down from former generations. The social life under 

 the old Bye-Laws— social gatherings, for instance, at which 

 people came together to work in common at spinning or knitting 

 in the winter evenings, or when the men congregated at meetings, 

 or in the summer evenings under the village lime tree — had a 

 salutary effect in counteracting the injurious consequences of 

 the severe isolation and in fostering a feeling of communal 

 local independence, which formed a basis for further develop- 

 ment, when circumstances later on made this feasible. 



It is beyond doubt that co-operation, joint tenure and 

 working of the soil were for centuries in harmony with the 

 requirements of agriculture, and that they therefore worked 

 for good. (But when the conditions during the eighteenth 

 century opened possibilities of progress in agriculture and in 

 agricultural technique, the hamj)ering effects of co-operation 

 gradually came to outweigh its advantages. The drawbacks 

 became irksome and hindered progress ; they deprived the 



