"Among the indirect, but equally tangible results of coöperation, I should be inclined to put the development of mind and character among those by whom it is practised. The peasant or little farmer, who is a member of one or more of these societies, who helps to build up their success and enjoy their benefits, acquires a new outlook. The jealousies and suspicions which are in most countries so common among those who live by the land fall from him. Feeling that he has a voice in great affairs he acquires an added value and a healthy importance in his own eyes. He knows also that in his degree and according to his output he is on an equal footing with the largest producer and proportionately is doing as well. There is no longer any fear that because he is a little man he will be browbeaten or forced to accept a worse price for what he has to sell than does his rich and powerful neighbor. The skilled minds which direct his business work as zealously for him as for that important neighbor."[36]
It is interesting to note that the three highest authorities on the coöperative movement in Ireland all lay great stress on its importance as a means of community organization and value its social effects as highly as its economic benefits. Thus Sir Horace Plunkett says:
"Gradually the (coöperative) Society becomes the most important institution in the district, the most important in a social as well as an economic sense. The members feel a pride in its material expansion. They accumulate large profits, which in time become a sort of communal fund. In some cases this is used for the erection of village halls where social entertainments, concerts and dances are held, lectures delivered and libraries stored. Finally, the association assumes the character of a rural commune, where, instead of the old basis of the commune, the joint ownership of land, a new basis for union is found in the voluntary communism of effort."[37]
In the same vein Smith-Gordon and Staples in their account of the coöperative movement in Ireland, see it as the most important force for socialization because it makes the most immediate and practical appeal to men of all parties and sects and establishes a business system which develops the community attitude:
"The present individualist system which takes care of the business interests of the farmer is a dividing and disintegrating force. It tends to destroy the natural associative character and to set each man against his neighbor.... But as a member of a society with interests in common with others, the individual consciously and unconsciously develops the social virtues.... The society is in miniature a community, and the community is but a part of the larger social group."[38]
George William Russell ("A.E."), the poet-prophet of Irish agriculture, bases his whole conception of a desirable polity for the Irish State upon coöperative communities, and considers coöperative societies as a prerequisite to rural organization. After describing the marked economic and social changes which have taken place in a typical Irish community as the result of coöperation, he says:
"I have tried to indicate the difference between a rural population and a rural community, between a people loosely knit together by the vague ties of a common latitude and longitude, and people who are closely knit together in an association and who form a true social organism, a true rural community, where the general will can find expression and society is malleable to the general will. I will assert that there never can be any progress in rural districts or any real prosperity without such farmers' organizations or guilds. Wherever rural prosperity is reported in any country inquire into it, and it will be found that it depends on rural organization. Wherever there is rural decay, if it is inquired into, it will be found that there was a rural population but no rural community, no organization, no guild to promote common interests and unite the countrymen in defence of them."[39]
The same observations might be made upon the effect of coöperative enterprises in solidifying rural communities in the United States. It seems doubtful whether coöperative associations in the United States will develop a general social program as they have done in Ireland, Belgium, and Russia. On account of a different social inheritance and account of our facility in forming and belonging to numerous organizations, it seems probable that we will limit our coöperative societies to strictly economic functions, and will use the increased income secured through them in other organizations for social purposes.
Commercial farming is breaking down the old individualism of the farmer, for the exigencies of the economic situation are forcing him to market collectively through coöperative selling associations, and as he learns that his own best interests are bound up with those of the whole community, he becomes increasingly concerned for the common welfare; he commences to think in terms of "us" and "ours," instead of only "me" and "mine." The community becomes a reality to him.