The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-06 00:00:00

CO-OPERATIVE FARMS.

Several interesting experiments in co-operative farming
have been tried of late years in various parts of England,
and are said to have been attended with great success.
Mr. Gurdon, of Assington Hall, in Suffolk, was the
bold innovator who first conceived this idea. The
' system at Assington is wholly unconnected either
with the small farm system or the allotment sytem.
The members form an agricultural company, but the
land is not divided among them so as to give each one a
piece to himself, and in fact they have no
more to do with its cultivation than the share-
holders in a railway company have to do
with its traffic. The profits are divided among them every
year and are supposed to be paid partly in money
and partly in kind • but for all they have to do with the
actual tillage of the land they might as well live a hun-
dred miles off, or have their money in the Crystal Palace.
The " co-operative farm " is not intended to be a.
means of turning the labourer into a farmer; nor
is it, except in point of money, any substitute for the
allotment. The members continue what they ever were—
ordinary day labourers, who work for the farmers of the
parish at the ordinary weekly wages ; as, indeed, they
may work under their own manager on the same terms if
they choose, and if out of employment they have a prefe-
rential claim upon him. But that is all. The only farmer
in the case is the paid manager, and he is little, if at all,
above the rank of an ordinary peasant. The manager
occupies what corresponds to the farmhouse upon the
farm, and he and his colleagues are supposed to meet in
council once a week, when questions of crop-
pin, manuring, and what not are, if necessary, put
to the Tote ; but practically the whole working of the
machine is in the hands of the one man who stands in the
place of the ordinary tenant farmer. No member is
allowed to live more than three miles from the parish to
accept parish relief, or to retain his share, if convicted of
a felonious offence. All are obliged to belong to an ap-
proved benefit club, and the widow of a member may
retain her husband's share during her own lifetime. Assing-
ton is a pretty little retired village some distance from any
railway, lying in a thickly wooded but rather flat country
between Colchester and Sudbury. The late Mr. Gurdon
began his scheme as long ago as 1830, and at the
present time there are two farms on the property,
cultivated by two different companies, one of 133 acres and
21 members, the other of 213 acres and 36 members.
In each case the company was formed by means of a loan
from the landlord, supplementing the subscriptions of the
members. In each case the loan was the same—namely,
£400: but in the first company the subscriptions were £3
a piece, and in the second £3 10s. Both the size of the
farms and number of members have gone on increasing till
they have reached the figures above given. The value of
each share in the larger farm is estimated by the sum
which the holder would receive if the whole stock were
sold off, and that is calculated at about £3O. The
shares on the smaller farm, as they yield a
larger income, are worth nearly £5O. When a
labourer buys a share he has to pay not less than
£5 down, and he surrenders his proportion of the profits
till the balancei is discharged. The rent paid is about 30s.
an acre, which is something below the average rental of
the neighbourhood. These societies started on the whole,
then, under favourable circumstances. It is true that
the original capital in each case was rather below the
amount which is thought desirable for farming in general.
But still it seems to have been about £7 an acre. No
interest was charged for the money advanced. In the
next place, the expenditure was and is limited entirely to
the necessary expenses of cultivation. There is no establish-
ment to keep up. There is no "black-coated man," as the
local phrase runs, who has a station to maintain or
luxuries to purchase. The farmer or manager lives like a
peasant, and nothing goes in unproductive expenditure.
Under these circumstances one is naturally very curious
to know what the profits are, and how much each
member really receives per annum. But this is just the
point on which a good deal of secrecy is preserved.
Every member gets a ton of coals, a certain number
of sacks of potatoes, and one if not two fat pigs every
year. But how much money is divided between them
could not be discovered with exactness. The general
opinion in the village among non-members was that a
share in the old farm was worth in money and goods from
£2O to £3O a year.