Co-Operation for Africa

In every continent in which it has taken root, the co-operative movement has assumed new forms and adopted fresh methods. In Europe, its original home, the consumers' stores of England and the credit and agricultural societies of Germany grew up almost independently of one another. When transplanted to America and Australia, it acquired peculiar strength in the field of large-scale marketing. In Asia the principal development has been that of credit for the peasantry, though with less emphasis on economic and more on moral elements than in Europe. In each of these continents the people, especially the poorer classes, have derived great benefits from their societies, the European in his domestic purchases, the American in the orderly disposal of his produce, the Asiatic in relief from the yoke of usury and in training of character by self-control and mutual control. The majority of Asiatic countries learned the lesson from India, whence the co-operative idea spread first to Ceylon, British Malaya, and Siam, then to the Philippine Islands and China. Japan is an exception, her national leaders after travel and observation having imitated in many respects the German system; Palestine and the Dutch East Indies, the latest recruits, also draw inspiration from both European and Asiatic sources. The general position now is that, save in a few regions where government is still unsteady, Co-operation is universal outside Africa.