m produce has to bear too many profits it will be
expensive for the consumer, and there will be a lessened demand. So
associations like the co-operative stores, which aim at the elimination
of the element of profit in distribution, should be approved of by the
farmers.

Now we come to the townsman again. Is it his interest to support the
farmers in his own country or to regard the world as his farm? The
argument on the economic side is not so clear, but it is, I think,
just as sound. If agriculture is neglected in any country the rural
population pour into the towns. The country becomes a fountain of
blackleg labor. Rural labor has no traditions of trade unionism, and
takes any work at any price. There are fewer people engaged in producing
food, and its cost rises. Food must be imported from abroad; and there
is national insecurity, as in times of war their is always the danger of
the trade routes overseas being blocked by an enemy, and this again has
to be provided against by heavy expenditure for militarist purposes. The
farther away an army is from its base the more insecure is its
position, and the same thing is true in the industrial life of nations.
International trade there must always be. It is one of the means by
which the larger solidarity of humanity is to be achieved; but that will
never come about until there is a nobler and more human life within the
states, and we must begin by perfecting national life before we consider
empires and world federations. So in this essay only the national being
is considered.

I desire to unite countryman and townsman in one movement, and to make
the co-operative principle the basis of a national civilization. How
are we to prevent them fighting the old battle between producer and
consumer? I think that this can best be brought about by co-operative
federations, which will act for both in manufacture, purchase, and sale,
and with which both rural and urban associations will find it to their
interest to be affiliated. Now the townsman cannot to any extent supply
food for his stores by buying farms. To control agricultural production
in that way would necessitate a financial operation which the
State would shrink from, and which it would be impossible for urban
cooperators to finance. We had better make up our minds to let farmers
be syndicalists, controlling entirely the processes of agricultural
production themselves. They will do it better than the townsman could,
more ef