is used in them, and they produce butter worth more than nine millions sterling. The profits are divided among those who supply the cream, in proportion to the value of their supplies—a method of dividing profits characteristic of agricultural co-operation. The village dairies are united in federations to export their produce.
Side by side with the dairies are other co-operative societies, quite independent but largely composed of the same members, for buying collectively fodder, manures and other agricultural or household requisites, for collecting and exporting eggs, slaughtering hogs and curing bacon, improving the breed of stock, for bee-keeping, fruit-growing and so forth. By means of these societies the country has been greatly enriched. The farmer not uncommonly belongs to ten co-operative societies, besides probably a farmers’ club. The work of starting and administrating the societies is seldom paid, and many farmers give much time to it gratuitously. They are in the main organized on the same principles as the dairies, but with variations; the largest egg export society, for instance, has over 30,000 members. It is not a federation of village societies, but a centralized body with many branches.
The growth of the bacon-curing societies has been remarkable. The first of them was not founded until 1887, but they spread rapidly, and in seven years there were twenty, killing more than half the country’s then produce of hogs. The movement has greatly increased since then, and multiplied its output about fourfold. Co-operation in collecting, grading and exporting eggs only began in 1895, and in eight years 65,000 members had joined the various egg societies, and the value of eggs exported had reached £436,000. Taken as a whole, the effect of agricultural co-operation in Denmark has amounted to little less than a revolution. It has brought the results of science within the peasant’s reach, and he has been quick to avail himself of them: it has transformed a great part of farm work into a factory industry, increased the yield of the soil, improved the material position of the peasants, and drawn rich and poor together. Denmark, once so poor, is now, except England, probably the richest country in Europe in proportion to its population. Besides Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Ireland and many other countries have important developments of agricultural co-operation. In Germany, where it is closely connected with credit co-operation, it seems to date from 1866 only, yet in forty years agricultural co-operative societies have come to number six thousand, without counting the agricultural banks, which exceed twice that number. There are dairies, societies to purchase farm requisites, societies of grape-growers, hop-growers and beetroot-growers, distilleries, labour societies, insurance societies, societies to own warehouses and granaries and to sell produce, to purchase land and resell it in small holdings, and even several societies which purchase land to cultivate it in common. The close connexion between credit-societies and other agricultural co-operation is exemplified in the Central Union of orthodox Raiffeisen credit societies at Neuwied. Through a central bank and a trading department allied to it, it has negotiated the joint purchase of coal, feeding-stuffs, manures, machinery and so forth to large amounts, as well as the difficult business of the combined sale of agricultural produce. Moreover, several local centres connected with this union have granaries and warehouses for the storage of agricultural produce, and negotiate joint sales, while within the union facilities have been found for selling the products of one district to members in another.
In Ireland stores have not hitherto flourished, though a few exist. Irish co-operation is agricultural, and dates from the foundation of one co-operative dairy in 1889. Thence has grown a movement already of great importance, still advancing and comprising from eighty to ninety Irish agriculture.thousand members, belonging to some hundreds of societies—dairies, agricultural supply societies, banks and so forth, formed on the Danish model. To form a dairy the small working farmers of a district register a society and take up shares of £1 each, in proportion to the number of their cows. Each brings his milk to be separated, is paid for the butter-making material it contains, and receives back skim milk. If any profit is divided, it belongs nine-tenths to the suppliers of milk in proportion to the value of their supplies, and one-tenth to the dairy employees as dividend on wages in pursuance of the co-partnership principle. These dairies produce butter worth more than £1,000,000. Their rapid spread is due to their great influence in improving the quality of butter, and hence increasing the farmer’s gains. The co-operative banks are of the Raiffeisen type, though a few have limited liability. They aim at providing the peasants with necessary capital (“the lucky money” they have christened it) and expelling the usurer. They are increasing rapidly. Among other objects of Irish co-operation are selling eggs, poultry, barley and pigs, joint-grazing, potato-spraying, scutching flax, bacon curing, home industries, and of course supplying farm requisites. The movement promises much further growth in magnitude and variety. The dairy societies have federated into an agency for reaching the English market, and the supply societies into an Irish Wholesale for purchasing to the best advantage. Besides the direct profits and economies of these societies, they have greatly benefited Ireland by teaching men of all classes, parties and religions to act together for peaceful progress; they have led to a wide diffusion of better agricultural knowledge, and to the establishment by government of the Agricultural Department. (See Ireland.)
In France, which Englishmen are apt to speak of as preeminently the country of co-operative production, the agricultural is the most important branch of co-operation; and the source and mainstay of agricultural co-operation are the Syndicats Agricoles. These are not Co-operative agriculture in France and other countries.technically co-operative societies; they are rather trade unions, not indeed of wage-earners only, or mainly, but of cultivators. They cannot legally trade, being constituted for the study and protection of the general interests of the members, the spread of information, and so forth. Their principal object however, seems in many cases to be to combine their members for the purchase of all farm requisites and especially of chemical manures. This they do by collecting, sorting and passing on orders. They cannot usually manage selling in common without the intervention of a society specially registered for that object. Beginning only in 1893, their number long ago ran into thousands and their membership into hundreds of thousands, drawn from all classes of cultivators and landowners, great and little. Among much other good work they have led to the formation of a large number of strictly co-operative societies for all the purposes of agriculture, except cultivation in common. Thus there are two thousand agricultural banks, besides butter factories, distilleries, associations for threshing, for sale of fruit and vegetables, for wine-making, oil-pressing, and so on, amounting altogether to some hundreds. There are also societies, mostly of ancient date, engaged in making Gruyère cheese: a few years ago these numbered 2000, but they are dwindling. Lastly, there are some eight thousand mutual insurance societies organized as agricultural syndicates.
Everywhere the main features of this agricultural movement are similar to those we have seen in Denmark and Ireland; it is supplementary to individual cultivation; hardly ever does it appear as associations for cultivating in common, and, speaking with certain important exceptions, it has no very ideal aims, but seeks chiefly to give the farmer a better profit. In England there are a number of farms worked by stores, and several large associations for the supply of farm requisites; but the typical agricultural co-operation, based on small village societies and federations of such societies, has only recently been made known and begun to take root.
It is notable that while the Syndicats agricoles are almost exactly what Fourier, the Robert Owen of France, foresaw as the next stage of social development, the other great branch of French co-operation, the workshop movement of the Associations
