work alone was required. The usual objects were drainage, road-making, irrigation, levelling, and similar works of reclamation or reconstruction. The greater part of this work was provided by the authorities, with the dual purpose of finding employment for large bodies of poor and discontented labourers and of carrying out, at a small cost, necessary improvements which would later bring in a large national return. Naturally enough, the amount of work of this kind which was available gradually diminished, and the less-skilled members of the societies found themselves once more threatened with unemployment. As most of them were in the first place drawn from the rural population and had a certain amount of familiarity with agricultural methods, their tendency was to look to the land to provide an alternative means of support when other work was not available. Consequently we find the same societies which took contracts for labour also renting land from public bodies and landed proprietors, to the exclusion of the prevailing middleman tenant, and using this land to give agricultural work to their unemployed members. It was no later than 1887 that the first co-operative labour society, which was itself founded at Ravenna in 1883, took up land in this way and started farming on a small scale. The example was speedily followed by others; and of the considerable number of co-operative farms now to be found in Emilia practically all had their origin in, and are now closely connected with, the Co-operativa di Produzione e Lavoro. The example thus set was imitated by the small tenant farmers (coloni) and purely agricultural labourers who had no connexion with the socialist workers with whom we have been dealing so far. Thus it is that in the domain of collective farming, as in other branches of co-operation in Italy, we find the familiar semi-political, semi-religious cleavage between the Socialist' and the 'Catholic' type of society-a division reminiscent of the conditions existing before the war in the co-operative movement of Belgium. The part played by the two divergent bodies of doctrine is illustrated by the existence of two types of farming societies known respectively as the 'affitanze a conduzione divisa' and those 'a conduzione collettiva.' In each type the land, which may consist of one large farm or a number of smaller ones, is rented direct from the owner by a group of workers organised in a co-operative society. The difference consists in the manner in which this land is afterwards administered. In the collective type, which corresponds to the socialist ideal, the land is worked in common under the guidance of a foreman or expert technical manager; the produce is sold on behalf of the society; and the proceeds, after payment of rent and provision for reserve fund, are divided among the members in proportion to the number of days worked by each. In the Catholic type, where the sanctity of individual property is upheld and any experiments in communism are deprecated, the land is parcelled out among individuals, and the collective element is confined to bargaining over the rent and to a certain amount of combined purchase, and sale. The collective type obviously suits those districts where the primary object is to provide occasional employment for unskilled labours, while the Catholic is more adapted to the population which aspires to live entirely by farming and has a natural desire for fixity of tenure. Accordingly we find that one type predominates among the semi-industrial population of the North, the other in the more backward districts of the Sonth. But this general statement must not be accepted without qualification; in practice there has been a disinclination on the part even of the labourers, except in the best-disciplined districts, to accept the full measure of communism; and considerable compromises have been made by the Socialist leaders for the sake of expediency. In general it may be said that the number of farms where the collective system is worked in its entirety is comparatively small; but the results attained by them in recent years have been so striking that it is probable that they will shortly come to predominate over the other type. So many descriptions have been given of the detailed workings of these societies that it is unnecessary to go into the matter at greater length. But it is of particular interest to note that, just as the methods of the labour societies are being paralleled by the new guilds in industrial England, so there is a movement in Ireland to adapt to the peculiar needs of that country the lesson of Italy's co-operative farming societies. The newly-founded Vol. 285.-No. 467. F National Land Bank is partially modelled on the li of the Instituto Nazionale, and is rapidly bringing i existence local societies which will take up land on o or other of the two methods described above. There a of course, certain outstanding differences between t conditions in the two countries. The Irishman, as history has clearly indicated, has a passion for the actu ownership of land which is as yet unknown in Ital and, as a consequence, the co-operative farming societi will seek to buy and not to rent estates. For the san reason collectivism in the actual farming of the land w be a new and delicate experiment; and this type society is likely to be rare at the outset. Yet it is worth of note that the first successful instance of actual collectiv farming, to which many of the Italian leaders point a their most encouraging precedent, was that carried ou nearly a hundred years ago on the Vandeleur estate a Ralahine, in the most disturbed district of County Clare. Those who take a gloomy view of the present stat of Ireland, and find it impossible to believe that a experiment in economic reconstruction can succeed i the midst of political turmoil, may find matter of good augury in the fact that the original account of this experiment, now many years out of print, has just been republished in Dublin, under the title of An Irish Commune,' and given a warm welcome. Simultaneously a practical attempt is being made to revive the spirit of Ralahine, and there is every hope that it may succeed. There can be no doubt that the establishment of a number of co-operative communities on these lines would do more than any other single measure to allay the land agitation, which is once more raging, and to solve the vexed problem of the relations, social as well as economic, between the employing farmer and the landless labourer. England, no doubt, is less keenly interested in these particular questions, but she has her own difficulties to face; and it may well be that a thorough investigation of the practical working of the guild system in Italy, carried out by leaders of the English Labour party, would indicate the way of approach to a better and more harmonious social order. LIONEL SMITH-GORDON. |
