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CHAPTER XXXII.

CO-OPERATIVE FARMING

SEEING that social schemes of life are as old as Society, and that the first form was that of communism, which meant co-operative uses of the land, it is singular that the first idea should be the last in realisation.

    A much-needed employment of Co-operation is in agriculture.  The most important application of it occurred in the restless land of potatoes and whiteboys.  Amid the bogs of Ralahine an experiment of co-operative agriculture produced great results.  The story of its singular success has been given in the chapter on "Lost Communities."

    Mr. James B. Bernard, who dated from King's College, Cambridge, wrote in the New Moral World November 29, 1834, in favour of a scheme of raising the status of the agricultural labourer as well as the mechanic.  A committee of twenty-two members of Parliament published a small 2d. monthly paper at 11, Waterloo Place, Pall Mall, in promotion of this object.  Mr. E. S. Cayley, M.P. for the North Riding of Yorkshire, was chairman of this early project.  Mr. Bernard was a Fellow of Cambridge.  It was not often that the New Moral World had so respectable a contributor.  We are apt to think when we hear of a baronet or a lord contemplating setting apart 300 acres of land for the purposes of co-operative farms, that the agricultural millennium is arriving by an express train; but we may read in the Morning Herald of 1830 that a peer had several years before set off 500 lots of land, consisting of about five acres each, for a similar purpose.

    The testimony of Lord Brougham as to what might be accomplished by uniting agricultural and other industries with instruction and culture, was very explicit.  Mr. Fellenberg, of Hofwyl, in Switzerland, made a famous attempt to prove this.  In the beginning of the eighteenth century Mr. Fellenberg's agricultural college was the talk of Europe.  Robert Owen sent his sons to it, and Lord, then Mr., Brougham went to see it.  He declared that the habits of common labour are perfectly reconcilable with those of a contemplative and even scientific life, and that a keen relish for the pleasures of speculation may be united with the most ordinary pursuits of the poor.  "All this," he said, "seems to be proved by the experiment of Mr. Fellenberg.  His farm is under 220 acres; his income, independent of the profit he derives from breeding horses (in which he is very skilful), and his manufacture of husbandry implements, does not exceed £500 a year. . . . The extraordinary economy," he observed, "is requisite to explain the matter: for although the academy and institute are supported by the richer pupils, these pay a very moderate sum; and the family, who are wholly supported and lodged at Hofwyl, amounts to 180 persons.  These dine at six different tables, and their food though simple is extremely good."  When Mr. Brougham was there he found seven or eight German princes among the pupils, besides several sons of German nobles, and the Prince and Princess of Wurtemberg were expected to visit the place to arrange for placing another young prince there.  There never has been a doubt among men of observation that the agricultural life of England is the dullest and most ignominious known, as far as the labourers in southern and western counties are concerned.  Mr. Mill has applauded the métayer system of other countries as including co-operative usages attended with many advantages.  The cultivator is a métayer.

    In former days any relation between labourers and farmers, in which the labourers did all the work and the farmer did not take everything, was called "co-operative" farming, Mr. John Gurdon's paternal arrangements of this kind with certain labourers at Assington, was thought much of.  In 1862 the Times sent a commissioner to Rochdale to report upon co-operative proceedings there.  In consequence of what the editor said upon the subject Mr. Gurdon wrote to the Times, giving his own account of what he had done, saying: "About thirty years ago, upon a small farm in Suffolk becoming vacant, I called together twenty labourers and offered to lend them capital without interest if they would undertake to farm it, subject to my rules and regulations.  They gladly availed themselves of my offer.  In the course of ten years they paid me back my capital, so that I was induced to let another farm of 150 acres to thirty men upon the same terms.  These have also nearly paid me back the capital lent to them, and instead of eating dry bread, as I regret to say many of the agricultural labourers are now doing, each man has his bacon, and numberless comforts which he never possessed before; thus the rates are reduced, as these fifty families are no longer burdensome.  The farmers are sure to meet with honest men, as conviction of crime would debar them of their share, and the men themselves have become much more intelligent and present happy, cheerful countenances.  If every country gentleman would follow my example, distress among the agricultural poor would not be known.  I merely add I have no land so well farmed."  At the same time the Rev. Banks Robinson, vicar of Little Wallingfield, Suffolk, living near Mr. Gurdon's place, wrote to the Co-operator to say he had visited Assington and thought highly of Mr. Gurdon's friendliness to the labourers and the kind intention of his plans, but they were not co-operative as the word was understood in Rochdale.  Ten years later my colleague, Mr. E. R. Edger, visited Mr. Crisell, the manager of the farm whom the Rev. Mr. Robinson had found to be of "manly, open, and ingenious appearance," beyond what he expected of one belonging to the "depressed" class.  Mr. Edger sent me this report:—

"I paid a visit to Assington, and had a conversation with the manager, Mr. Crisell (pronounced with i long, 'Cry-sell').  I can feel no enthusiasm at all about the Assington Farm.  There seems no 'co-operation' in the right sense of the term, but only bounty of the squire towards poor neighbours.

    "(1) It is limited to inhabitants of the parish.
    "(2) Each member can hold only one share.
    "(3) Members have no voice in the management.
    "(4) Wages to workmen same as usual.
    "(5) No special inducement offered to the workmen to become shareholders.  The manager remarked that they did not care particularly to employ the members; this seems to me very significant.

    "It has been in existence forty-one years, so it will take a long time to renovate society that way.  Remember, I only give my impressions."

    Still they are the "impressions" any one has who looks at the matter from a co-operative point of view.  Mr. Gurdon's merit was that he did something for labourers around him when few squires did anything; and his isolated example has served to call the attention of others to what may be done without loss by squires of ordinary good intentions.  That what Mr. Gurdon did in this way should be the only notable effort of his class during forty years in England, is the most melancholy measure of the tardiness of thought for the agricultural labourer's improvement the reader will find anywhere.

    What an honourable stride from Assington is that made by Lord George Manners at Ditton Lodge Farm, near Newmarket!  Writing to the Agricultural Gazette, in 1873, his lordship states:—

    "At my harvest supper in August, 1871, I informed my labourers that, commencing from Michaelmas, 1872, I should take them into a qualified partnership, paying them their ordinary wages, but dividing between capital and labour any surplus above the sum required to pay 10 per cent. (5 per cent. as interest, and 5 per cent. as profit) on the capital invested in the business: or, in other words, that I should take half such surplus, and divide the other half among those who had laboured on the farm the whole of the preceding twelve months.  I have recently made up accounts for the twelve months ending Michaelmas, 1873, and I have a surplus, after paying capital l0 per cent., of £71 16s. 6d.; there will, therefore, be a sum of £36 18s. 3d, for division among the labourers, which will give each man a sum of £3.  Many will shake their heads and say, 'All very well; but if the next is a bad year, you will have to bear the whole loss.'  My answer is, 'Quite true; but who can say that my loss may not be less than it would otherwise have been, owing to the stimulus which this system can scarcely fail to exert on the labourer in his daily work?"

    The answer here italicised denotes greater knowledge of Co-operation than many co-operators show. Mr. William Lawson, of Blennerhasset Farm, had a famous stallion which he named "Co-operation." Some Newmarket breeder would find " Industrial Partnership " a good name for the favourite at the Derby.

    Lord Hampton, when Sir John Pakington, spoke in 1872 with great liberality upon the same subject.  He said "he supported the idea of co-operative farms and an extension or the system of co-operative stores into every village of the kingdom.  As to the question of compensation for unexhausted improvements, he considered that such compensation was only simple justice.  In the lease there should be covenants to protect the landlord in the concluding years of the term, and there should be equal justice to the tenant for unexhausted improvements."

    Mr. Walter Morrison has afforded the means for farm hands conducting a real co-operative farm at Brampton Bryan, in Herefordshire.  As a rule few landowners think seriously of the advantages of this form of industry, and labourers have fewer facilities of learning how to conduct farms than artisans have of learning how to conduct manufactories, so that co-operative farming will make slower progress than co-operative workshops.  For a farm to succeed in the hands of labourers requires the presence and guidance of a good farmer, until they acquire the habits of management.  The Assington labourers would not have made much of the facilities Mr. Gurdon kindly provided, had he not been near to countenance and control the results.

    The most remarkable of all the experiments of agricultural co-operation is that recorded by Mr. William Lawson (a brother of Sir Wilfrid Lawson, M.P.) in his "Ten Years of Gentleman Farming."  Mr. Lawson spent more than £30,000 in this way.  Though this large sum was spent it could hardly be said to be lost, since at any point of his many experiments he might have made money had he been so minded.  But he proceeded on the plan of a man who built one-storey houses, and as soon as he found that they let at a paying rent, pulled them down and built two-storey houses to see if they would pay, and when he found that they answered, he demolished them, and put up houses of three storeys, and no sooner were they profitably occupied, than he turned out the inhabitants and pulled them down.  What he lost was by the rapidity of his changes, rather than by the failure of his plans, for he had sagacity as great as the generosity of his intentions.  His chief farm was at Blennerhasset, in Cumberland.  He was the first to introduce the steam plough into the country, and every form of scientific farming matured between 1860 and 1870.  He maintained for the use of his neighbours, two travelling steam engines, which he named Cain and Abel.  He founded co-operative stores, supplying the capital himself, which ill-judged paternalism destroyed self-helping effort in the members.  At Blennerhasset he founded a People's Parliament, where all those employed upon the various farms and all the villagers, periodically assembled and discussed the management of the co-operative farms and the qualities and characters of the managers.  This was a dangerous feature borrowed from Oneida.  The result to the farm was great variety of counsel, and some of the drollest debates and votes ever recorded.  The effect upon the people was, however, very good.  Mr. Lawson's plan of inviting miscellaneous criticism is not so silly as it looks.  If you do not feel bound to take all the advice you get, and are strong enough not to be confused by contradictory opinions, there is no more economical way known of getting wisdom.  Even disagreeable people have their value in this way.  There must be education of some kind, at least of neighbourly feeling, for it is easy to promote the welfare of those you like, but how about the people you do not like?  When quarrelsome people come into such a society they begin to discuss, not the merits of the society, but each other.  It is a difficult thing for people to act together—neither people devoted to politics nor people devoted to religion can do it without training.  Some years after the farms were sold, I found more intelligence and ready sense among the villagers than I ever met with elsewhere.  On a plot of land at Aspatria, bearing the name of Noble, Mr. Lawson built Noble Temple, a public hall, always available for lectures.  He also established medical dispensaries, schools, and news-rooms.  No agricultural population was ever so liberally or generously cared for in England.  Mr. Lawson's "Ten Years of Gentleman Farming " is the most interesting and amusing book in co-operative literature.  Never was landowner more sagacious, inventive, genial, liberal or changeable—not in his generous purpose but in his methods.  Had he been less paternal and taught his people the art of self-help, he had been a great benefactor.

    The rise of the Agricultural Labourers' Union had the effect of promoting Distributive Co-operation.  Many labourers never heard of Co-operation, or did not
think much of it, though acquainted with it.  The general impression was that it might do very well for mechanics in towns.  This kind of impression is not peculiar to agricultural labourers.  Most people consider new improvement may suit somebody else.  The comfortable sense of self-perfection, with which many persons are endowed, leads to a complacent judgment we so well know.  One of the co-operative stores recently set up by the members of the Agricultural Union numbered sixty persons.  Their business and profits being in considerable confusion, Mr. John Butcher was asked to look into their affairs.  He saw at once that they needed an intelligent secretary.  "Have you no carpenter among you," was his first inquiry, "one with a little skill in figures, who could keep your books?"  The answer was, "We have no such person."  "Surely," Mr. Butcher observed, "you do not mean to say that there is no carpenter in the village?"  "Oh yes," was the answer—"we have several, but they are not members of the Union."  "You do not mean to say that you require every member of the store to be a member of the Union?"  The unhesitating reply was, "Oh, but we do.  The doctor and the parson would have joined our store, to have encouraged us to improve our position, but we would not have them because they were not members of the Union."  And it turned out that the lawyer would have joined the store, but did not see his way to becoming a member of the Union.  It transpired that a noble earl, having property in the neighbourhood, and a seat hard by, would have joined the store, from an honourable feeling of encouraging the poor men in efforts of social self-help, but he was refused because he had not qualified himself by entering his name as a member of the Agricultural Labourers' Union.  Mr. Butcher explained to the exacting labourers that Co-operation took no account of politics, religion, or social station, and regarded members only as they subscribed capital and purchased goods.  Thus, some of these stipulating Unionists, whom exclusiveness treated as a caste, and whom isolation kept poor, came to see that it ill became them to imitate the narrowness which degraded them, and the jealousy which impoverished them.

    In 1867 the Society of Agricultural Co-operation named previously was formed under the title of the Agricultural and Horticultural Association, Limited.  The following table shows its progress from 1868 to 1877:—
 

    Some of the Northern stores possess farm property, but agricultural Co-operation has not made distinctive way.  Landowners, friendly to self-help among the people, are now disposed to encourage these attempts.  Mr. Arthur Trevelyan, of Tyneholm, always foremost where social improvement can be promoted, offered the Wolfstar and Wester Pencaitiand farms for co-operative purposes.  It is quite worth the while of squires to efface the feeling Bloomfield described among the agricultural poor of his day, who were—

 
CHAPTER XXXIII.

ECCENTRIC AND SINGULAR SOCIETIES

"An obstacle to the co-operation of working men is the difficulty of getting good, sufficient, and trustworthy instruments for giving it effect; but wherever that can be done, I commend it without limit.  I cannot say what I think of the value of it.  I hope it will extend to other things which it has scarcely yet touched.  I hope it will extend to all the amusements and recreations of the working man.  It fosters a strong sentiment of self-respect among working men."—THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE at Hawarden, Speech to Leigh and Tyldesley Liberal Clubs, September, 1877.

No rapidity of narration, no compression of sentences, consistent with explicitness, can bring into a small compass all the incidents and all the societies which deservedly challenge notice.  There is no choice save that of noticing the salient features only of those societies which stand as it were upon the highway of Co-operation.  There are always incidents, amusing or tragical, in beginnings by small means where success came by the economy of combination.

    The societies which reported themselves in 1877 to the Registrar of Friendly Societies, and those which did not (and are not given in detail), numbered upwards of a thousand.  The reader must therefore imagine for himself the prolonged panorama on which these thousand stores might be depicted, as interesting in their way as the Thousand and One Arabian Nights.

    Professor Masson tells us that Herodotus mentions 100, Aristotle 120 forms of diverse life: communal in some sort, all succeeding in their day.  In hundreds of places in Great Britain where Co-operation has arisen again and again and had its stores and workshops, no tradition remains that such stores existed among their forefathers long ago.  Most of the stores mentioned in the following list are deader than the Dead Cities of the Zuyder Zee, for not a trace of them remains.  But happily live co-operative cities stand on their ruins.

    The six earliest societies in England on the co-operative plan were the following:—

MANCHESTER AND SALFORD SOCIETIES,
EXISTING IN 1829 AND 1830.

FIRST CHARLTON ROW, Evan Street, Charlton Row, established May 3, 1829—18 members—weekly subscriptions is 1s. 1d.—capital £100—weekly dealings £20—principle to divide at four years' end.

ECONOMICAL, Frederick Street, Salford, established August 22, 1829—30 members—weekly subscription 3d.—capital £57—weekly dealings £25—principle, division.

TEMPERANCE, 15, Oldfield Road Salford, established October 26, 1829—40 members—weekly subscription 3d.—capital £42—weekly dealings £14—principle, non-division. [230]

INDEPENDENT HOPE, Hope Street, Salford, established February 26, 1830—45 members—weekly subscription 3d.—capital £70—weekly dealings £60—principle, non-division.

PERSEVERANCE, 13, Shepley Street, London Road, Manchester, established April 12, 1830—56 members—weekly subscription 4d.—capital £24—weekly dealings £11—principle, non-division.

AMICABLE, Ormond Street, Charlton Row, established May 1, 1830—24 members—weekly subscription 4d.—capital £10—weekly dealings £7—principle, non-division.

FRIENDLY, Bentley's Court, Miles Platting, established April 10, 1830—27 members—weekly subscription 4d.—capital £18—weekly dealings £6—principle, non-division.

BENEVOLENT, Sandford Street, Ancoats, established April 22, 1830—124 members—weekly subscription 4d.—capital £45—weekly dealings £46—library 50 books—principle, non-division.

GOOD INTENT, Hope Town, Salford, established May 8, 1830—48 members—weekly subscription 3d.—capital £10—weekly dealings £7—principle, non-division.

FORTITUDE, Long Millgate, established June 1, 1830—15 members—weekly subscription 3d.—capital £2—weekly dealings £1—principle, non-division. [231]

    The following is a list of the Societies existing in London and around of which mention is made in co-operative publications of 1830—3.  A few of later date are included from subsequent periodicals:—

LONDON SOCIETIES.

    "None of these societies," it was stated, "are at present manufacturing, but the Owenian expects to begin shortly.  With the exception of the Benevolent they are not yet provided with libraries." They had the sense in those days to make apologetic confession of the absence of means of acquiring knowledge.

    The following societies are placed alphabetically for convenience of reference.  The year of their formation is given where it has been traced.  Those without dates mostly existed between 1830 and 1833:—