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"There is some reason to hope," says Mr. Middleton, "that after the war agriculturalists will show a greater disposition to co-operate; but we cannot expect co-operation to do as much for British agriculture as it has done for the Germans, who so readily join societies and support co-operative efforts." So much the worse for us!
A co-operative telephone company has been the means of supplying several adjacent communities with easy communication. Co-operative banks are a convenient means of securing capital for agricultural use, and co-operative insurance companies have proved serviceable in carrying mutual risks. The advantages of such co-operation are by no means confined to economic interests.
In co-operative buying of supplies, co-operative selling of products, and co-operative insurance the volume of transactions reaches large figures. A host of societies of a purely educational nature exists among stock-breeders, fruit-growers, dairymen. It is true that no one general organization of farmers, embracing a large proportion of the class, has as yet been perfected.
Under the reign of the competitive system, this is a conclusive demonstration of the truth of the saying, 'That the necessities of the poor, are the opportunities of the rich. Is anything further needed, to prove that the competitive system is the essence of a cruel barbarism, which blots the civilization and shames the humanity of the republic? Why not change it for the co-operative system?
A co-operative creamery, for instance, is organized on the basis of a product butter; the Grange is organized on the basis of manhood and each man may have his crop or stock specialty. This difficulty, though grave, is not, perhaps, insuperable, and will tend to disappear as membership enlarges.
The units of a co-operative society, are sound and healthy to the core. Co-operation, insures self-employment. Self-employment brings freedom, ambition, independence, self-respect, leisure and education; with all the comforts and refinements of life. With these insured, the co-operator cannot be bought or corrupted by wealth.
It is possible that there might be a profit on the enclosure of Epping Forest: who will now support that reclamation? It is very desirable that wealthy private philanthropic individuals and wealthy private philosophic societies, should try experiments in small farming, market-gardening, co-operative farming, reclamation of wastes, etc.
T. W. Rolleston to a correspondent at St. Louis. Mr. Rolleston accompanied his letter with a copy of a speech by Sir Horace Plunkett. In his letter he remarked plainly upon the antagonism displayed by the Irish Nationalists to the co-operative movement.
If farmers will not, on their part, advance towards their laborers and bring them into the co-operative community, then labor will be organized outside their community and will be hostile, and will be always brooding and scheming to strike a blow when the farmer can least bear it, when the ground must be tilled or the harvest gathered.
A large number of Socialistic communities have been established and come to grief in the United States, in Germany, and elsewhere, but they have all, both in principle and practice, strikingly differed from what we are proposing here: Take one particular alone, the great bulk of these societies have not only been fashioned without any regard to the principles of Christianity, but, in the vast majority of instances, have been in direct opposition to them; and the only communities based on co-operative principles that have survived the first few months of their existence have been based upon Christian truth.
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