council of the community would meet once a week; for their enterprises
would have grown, and the business of such a parish community might
easily be over one hundred thousand pounds, and would require constant
thought. There would be no slackness on the part of the council in
attending, because their fortunes would depend on their communal
enterprises, and they would have to consider reports from the managers
and officials of the various departments. The co-operative community
would be a busy place. In years when the society was exceptionally
prosperous, and earned larger profits than usual on its trade, we should
expect to find discussions in which all the members would join as to the
use to be made of these profits: whether they should be altogether
divided or what portion of them should be devoted to some public
purpose. We may be certain that there would be animated discussions,
because a real solidarity of feeling would have arisen and a pride in
the work of the community engendered, and they would like to be able to
outdo the good work done by the neighboring communities.

One might like to endow the village school with a chemical laboratory,
another might want to decorate the village hall with reproductions of
famous pictures, another might suggest removing all the hedges and
planting the roadsides and lanes with gooseberry bushes, currant bushes,
and fruit trees, as they do in some German communes today. There would
be eloquent pleadings for this or that, for an intellectual heat would
be engendered in this human hive, and there would be no more illiterates
or ignoramuses. The teaching in the village school would be altered to
suit the new social order, and the children of the community would, we
may be certain, be instructed in everything necessary for the
intelligent conduct of the communal business. The spirit of rivalry
between one community and another, which exists today between
neighboring creameries, would excite the imagination of the members, and