Apart from the possibility of political complications, there is one strong reason to recommend this course. The movement will accomplish its best and most permanent results as an advocate of self-reliance; it will seek to make self-help effective through organisation; it will concern itself much more for those things which the farmers can do for themselves by coöperation than with those things which the Government can do for them.[12] The selection, however, between the two alternative courses is a question which the foreign critic cannot decide. The work to which I now return will be the same, whatever agency is charged with its execution.
The central body (which for brevity I will call the Association) will have as its general aim the economic and social development of rural communities. The work will be mainly that of active organisation. For reasons explained in the earlier chapters, the organisation must be coöperative in character, and will be concentrated upon the business methods of the farmers. This will, it is believed, cure a radical defect in their system--a defect which, as I have argued, is responsible for a restricted production, and for a course of distribution injurious alike to producer and consumer, besides exercising a depressing influence upon the economic efficiency and social life of rural communities. It follows that the first step towards a general reconstruction of country life, which has the promise of giving to the country a social attraction strong enough to stem the tide of the townward migration, is agricultural coöperation.
Such being the general aim and the definite procedure, the first practical question that arises will be, how to apply this solvent--agricultural coöperation. It will not suffice to throw these two long words at the hardy rustic; shorter and more emphatic words might come back. Two equally necessary things must be done; the principle must be made clear, and the practical details of this rural equivalent of urban business combination must be explained in language understanded of the people. It is not difficult to draft a paper scheme for this purpose, but the fitting of the plan to local conditions is a very expert business. Hence the central agency should have at its disposal a corps of experts in coöperative organisation for agricultural purposes. After a short visit to a likely district by a competent exponent of the theory and practice, local volunteers would be found to carry on the work. Experience shows that once a well-organised coöperative association of farmers is permanently established, similar associations spring up spontaneously under the magic influence of proved success in known conditions. I should strongly recommend concentration at first on a few selected districts, with the aim of making standard models to which other communities could work. I need hardly say that all this work would be done in coöperation with whatever other agencies would lend their aid. The Country Life movement would be extremely useful to the great educational foundations centred in New York. I happen to know that the Trustees of the Rockefeller, Carnegie and Russell Sage endowments are keenly desirous to promote such a redirection of rural education as will bring it into a more helpful relation with the working lives of the rural population. Then there are such bodies as the Y. M. C. A., whose leaders, I am told, are alive to the value of the open air life, and are anxious to extend their country work in the rural districts. The great army of rural teachers, the Farmers' Union, and other farmers' organisations I have already named would gladly coöperate with schemes making for rural progress.
