COOPERATIVE AGRICULTURE 79

 COPYING THE ECONOMICS OF BIG BUSINESS
 All examples of successful cooperative business ex-
emplify the possibility of conducting the distributive end of
farming on the same principles that are followed by the
big industrial corporations and trusts without the monopo-
listic extoitions for the benefit of a few stockholding
exploiters.


 Cooperation For Various Purposes
 By T. J. Brooks, Assistant Commissioner of Agriculture
 Cooperation has had many interpretations. It may be
exemplified m Productive, Commercial, Financial and
Social Life Cooperative undertakings may be based on
ideas of material profit only or on ideas of altruism or on
a combination of the two.
 Social innovations are to be found in every age of the
world However diverse the systems and theories put for-
ward or vaguely expressed, the idea of associated effort
runs through them all. Whether expressed by ancient
philosophers, as in Plato's "Republic." or by modern think-
ers as in Bacon's "Nova Atlantis", by Moore's "Utopia";
by Harrlngton's "Oceana"; by Campanella's "City of the
Sun". Making experiments in accordance with theories
have been frequent during the last half century Most of
these experiments have come to grief. Impractical theories
may be so because they are unreasonable or run counter to
the public attitude of mind A scheme may be plausible,
reasonable, worked out logically-planned on the assump-
tion that the human family will act rationally-yet fall
because human beings so often utterly fail to act rationally.
The plan is impractical. though just and reasonable, if it
will not coincide with human conduct as influenced by
heredity and environment. The Essenes were communists
and held all things m common Christ was of this tribe.
The Apostles seem to have followed this plan in their early
collaborations. Examples of this kind of cooperative effort