No program for the conservation and improvement of rural life will succeed unless it provides for the successful promotion of coÖperative agricultural business organization. Even if all the reforms we have suggested are made, the need to stimulate, assist, and guide the business organization of farmers will still remain. Strong modern country churches will not flourish in unprogressive communities whose business is not successful.

Rural business must be effectively organized to enable the farmers to get a just money return for the service they give. A sound economic basis for a more attractive rural life can be provided in no other way. Through training and experience in successful coÖperative enterprises, farmers may achieve a greater degree of solidarity, and acquire a larger share in the direction and control of industrial, political, and economic life of the Nation. With it will come larger respect for rural occupations, an added prestige and attractiveness to agricultural life, and the chance of real success for the modern country church.

The field of agricultural coÖperation cannot be filled by any government agency. However excellent the provisions of the Smith-Lever bill, under which an agricultural adviser will be placed in every county in the United States, however valuable the instruction and advice of the State Agricultural Colleges, when the Government and the churches have done all that can reasonably be expected of them, the task of organizing rural business will remain undone until it is accomplished by the farmers themselves, acting through associations of their own which are formally allied with neither church nor government.Conclusive evidence on this point is supplied by more than fifty years of experience in Europe, and by somewhat less in the United States. Within the past five years an attempt to promote coÖperative agricultural business organization has been made by the National Government. It failed, in general, because the Government cannot successfully undertake such work, and in particular because special interests which were making large profits by the exploitation of farmers had laws passed which effectually defeated the attempt. Within the past three years agricultural agents of the Government in Ohio who attempted to promote a coÖperative movement among farmers were forced by similar interests to abandon the work or leave the county where they were employed. It is well known that the faculties of certain State Agricultural colleges, though fully aware of the need for sound coÖperative agricultural business, do not attempt to give instructions in its principles because of the effective opposition they anticipate from persons and corporations whose business makes their interests hostile to those of the farmer.

If the Government cannot meet the whole need, no more can the churches. Business coÖperation, which they should encourage but cannot supply, is indispensable. For more than fifty years churches and clergymen in Europe have been rendering most effective service in the promotion of coÖperative agricultural organization in business. In America likewise they can and should be of essential help in the same good work, for the principles of successful agricultural business are in close harmony with Christian ethics. Moreover, the social and moral effects of coÖperative business on communities and individuals are of a most favorable character. In the year 1913 Mr. Gill was present at a meeting of representatives of government agricultural departments of fifteen nations, where it was asserted that agricultural coÖperation was the application of Christianity to the business of the farm.

Rural business, however, should not be organically allied with the church any more than it should be with the State. While the ministers and churches may do much to educate the farmers in regard to coÖperation, to interpret it, to increase the good results of it, and in many ways give valuable assistance to it, the movement for coÖperation can only be made successful when promoted by voluntary secular organizations entirely independent both of church and state.

CoÖperation is most needed where the people are poorest. In such districts it is easiest to inaugurate it, and then by demonstration to show the high and important character of its benefits. From the poorer regions it tends to spread into the richer ones and in this way to diffuse itself widely.

Not long ago it was found that farmers in Pike County were selling their eggs to merchants for 16 cents a dozen when in the towns nearby the market price was 25 cents. Almost the entire potato crop of this county in 1916 was handled by middlemen at a profit of more than 100 per cent. Fruit raising could be made most profitable in large parts of Ohio which at present are not prosperous, but without coÖperative organization the difficulty of marketing fruit is very great. In the purchase of farm implements, fertilizers, and other supplies, great savings to the farmers are undoubtedly possible.

There are few regions where coÖperative organization is more needed, and would be more likely to succeed, if properly directed, than in southeastern Ohio. It would not only increase the economic prosperity of this region, but it would exert also a most wholesome moral and social effect, whereby the work of the church would be accelerated. The constant application of the principles of brotherhood in everyday business is an influence of the highest value, and it cannot safely be neglected as a means for the Christianizing of rural society.