THE SOCIAL QUAGMIRE 425 



plot which the capitalist farmer cannot possibly give to 

 his hundreds of acres ; he works early and late at critical 

 periods of the growth of each crop ; and as a result he 

 often obtains double the produce at less than half the 

 money cost. 



There is yet another objection made to peasant culti- 

 vators, and repeated again and again with the greatest 

 confidence, but which is shown to be equally unfounded 

 by the inexorable logic of facts. Peasants and small 

 farmers, it is said, cannot afford to have the best machinery, 

 neither can they make those great improvements which 

 require large expenditure of capital ; therefore they should 

 not be encouraged. Yet fifty years ago Mr. S. Laing, in 

 his Journal of a Residence in Norway, showed how 

 far advanced were the peasant farmers of Scandinavia in 

 co-operative works. The droughts of summer are very 

 severe ; and to prevent their evil consequences, the 

 peasants have combined to carry out extensive irrigation 

 works. The water is brought in wooden troughs from 

 high up the valleys and then distributed to the several 

 plots. In one case the main troughs extended along a 

 valley for forty miles. Another writer, Mr. Kay, in his 

 work on the Social Condition of the People in Europe, 

 shows that the countries where the most extensive irri- 

 gation works are carried on are always those where small 

 proprietors prevail, such as Vaucluse and the Bouches-du- 

 Rhone in France, Sienna, Lucca, and other portions of Italy, 

 and also in parts of Germany. 



Again, in the French Jura and in Switzerland, the peas- 

 ants of each parish combine together for co-operative cheese- 

 making, each receiving his share of the product when sold, 

 in proportion to the quantity of milk he has contributed. 

 This system is also at work in Australia, where in the dis- 

 tricts suited to dairying, co-operative butter and cheese 

 factories are established, where the best machinery and the 

 newest methods are used, the result being that some of 

 the butter is so good that, after supplying the great cities, 

 the surplus is exported to England. Of course it would be 

 easy to apply the same principle to mowing machines, 

 harvesters, or even flour mills, all of which might be 



