that they should grow up with the gregarious instinct very strongly developed. This is why I believe women are much better prepared for co-operative housekeeping than may generally be supposed. There is already a continual feminine yearning for common action which manifests itself in the sewing circles, fairs, and festivals so frequent among them; so that, after an unusual period of lull from these excitements, you will hear them say to each other, "Do let us get up something." It is because unconsciously they are bored and wearied with their disconnected interests; and if this be true of them, of course it must be still more largely true of men, since combined action has become with them almost second nature.
How much easier and pleasanter, then, farming might be, if co-operation were the fundamental principle of the industrial community? Suppose a dozen farmers were to form a joint-stock company, and in the centre of their farm of two or three thousand acres were to range their dozen cottages crescent-fashion on a wide lawn of pleasant grass and trees (with, as they grew rich, a fountain and a statue or two). Behind them would be a common kitchen, laundry, dairy, smoke-house, etc., in one of which every farmer's wife would have her own domestic function, and attend to that only. A quarter of a mile distant would be the barns and out-houses, and also the cottages of the labourers, whose wives would be the servants of the common kitchen and laundry. The labourers and their families would have their meals in common in a dining-room opening out of the kitchen, which might also serve them as a sort of club-room in the evening, if they wished it, while the meals of the farmers and their wives should be sent them from the kitchen, as in the town co-operative societies. No sewing excepting mending need be done on the farm, for all the farmers' wives would be members of a co-operative clothing-house in the nearest town, and they would not take their sewing home unless they chose. Opposite the middle of the crescent, and half the length of its diameter, should be the little Gothic school-house and chapel. Thus all would go
