milk, poultry, pigs, cattle, grain, and wheat produced on the farm and
not consumed, or required for further agricultural production, will
automatically be delivered to the co-operative business centre of the
district, where the manager of the dairy will turn the milk into butter
or cheese, and the skim milk will be returned to feed the community's
pigs. The poultry and egg department will pack and dispatch the fowl
and eggs to market. The mill will grind the corn and return it ground to
the member, or there may be a co-operative bakery to which some of it
may go. The pigs will be dealt with in the abattoir, sent as fresh pork
to the market or be turned into bacon to feed the members. We may be
certain that any intelligent rural community will try to feed itself
first, and will only sell the surplus. It will realize that it will be
unable to buy any food half as good as the food it produces. The
community will hold in common all the best machinery too expensive for
the members to buy individually. The agricultural laborers will
gradually become skilled mechanics, able to direct threshers, binders,
diggers, cultivators, and new implements we have no conception of now.
They will be members of the society, sharing in its profits in
proportion to their wages, even as the farmer will in proportion to his
trade. The co-operative community will have its own carpenters, smiths,
mechanics, employed in its workshop at repairs or in making those things
which can profitably be made locally. There may be a laundry where the
washing--a heavy burden for the women--will be done: for we may be sure
that every scrap of power generated will be utilized. One happy
invention after another will come to lighten the labor of life. There
will be, of course, a village hall with a library and gymnasium, where
the boys and girls will be made straight, athletic, and graceful. In the
evenings, when the work of the day is done, if we went into the village
hall we would find a dance going on or perhaps a concert. There might be
a village choir or band. There would be a committee-room where the