THE NEW AGRICULTURE 



207 



contact with men and affairs. This is not fair, you say ; and 

 yet how often is expert advice met by farmers with dogged 

 silence, or sometimes with such frankness as "I don't want 

 any book larnin'; nobody from Washington need tell me 

 how to raise corn." There always appear on the scene, in 

 slightly varying dress, the same old hindrances, — ignorance 

 and isolation. 



Still, how can it reasonably be expected that natures which 

 for years have been chilled by a lonely, breadwinning life, 

 and which perhaps have been further stiffened by local or 

 family prejudices passed down with the farm (for a prejudice 

 is sometimes as real as a mortgage), will suddenly warm to 

 a cooperative suggestion ? This would be asking too much. 

 The effective use of cooperation, — its technic, so to speak, 

 — can come only with practice. 



And yet, is association for a common cause so artificial a 

 means of attaining results ? Is it merely a floating spar, to be 

 clutched at in social shipwreck and then tossed aside when 

 the unfortunates have drifted safely to shore ? No ; it is a force 

 which underlies and shapes the whole structure of society. 

 Possibly some of the phrases commonly used in connection 

 with evolution, — "struggle for existence," "survival of the 

 fittest," and other biological terms, — may be a little mis- 

 leading ; they may be responsible for the assumption that the 

 great fundamental law of life is competition. There is really 

 no foothold for such a belief, although no one would deny 

 that competition has its place. 



Within recent years research has brought to light the great 

 social impulses that belong to all primitive peoples, as well as 

 those social impulses shown to be dominant even among ani- 

 mals, — for animals enjoy many hitherto unsuspected forms 

 of social life. 1 Science, indeed, leaves no room for doubt 



1 Kropotkin, Mutual Aid. 



