[26] See the account of Mr. A. G. Gardiner, Manchester Guardian, Weekly Edition, Feb. 6, 1920, quoted by Norman Angell in "The Fruits of Victory," p. 27: "Suddenly all this elaborate structure of economic life was swept away. Vienna, instead of being the vital center of fifty millions of people, finds itself a derelict city, with a province of six millions. It is cut off from its coal supplies, from its food supplies, from its factories, from everything that means existence. It is enveloped by tariff walls."
[27] "The Fruits of Victory," p. 12, New York, 1921.
[28] Ibid., p. 14.
[29] (George William Russell), "The National Being," p. 167.
CHAPTER VIII
HOW COÖPERATION STRENGTHENS THE COMMUNITY
The greatest improvements in marketing are being effected through coöperation. We have indicated that willingness to work together for the common good and loyalty to this principle are essential for successful coöperative enterprises. As these same attitudes are the basis of community life, it seems obvious that to the extent that membership in coöperative associations becomes general throughout a community, the stronger will be the community life. Indeed, the very etymology of the two words, coöperate—to work together, and community—having in common, indicate that community activities are essentially a form of coöperation—of working together. Inasmuch as coöperative enterprises are rapidly increasing and that they must, therefore, exercise a powerful influence upon community life, it is necessary to gain a clear idea of just what is involved in the principle of coöperation and to what types of organization the term is applicable.
In a general way there has always been a certain amount of coöperation between neighboring farmers in the exchange of work in barn-raisings, threshing, silo-filling, slaughtering, etc. Out of this have grown such coöperative organizations as threshing rings, and groups for the common ownership and use of all sorts of more expensive machinery, the coöperative ownership of sires, cow-test associations, and many other forms of organization for mutual aid in farm operations. All of these are coöperative associations in the common usage of the word coöperation, but in recent years the term has come to have a more technical meaning to denote a form of organization in contrast to the corporation or stock company, which has been the most prevalent type of business organization in recent years.