heir agreements. After pledging
their crops to the company they would sometimes yield to the temptations
offered by outside buyers, for the sake of greater temporary profit; but
after a few lawsuits this tendency to break cooperative contracts was
entirely checked.

_Our Debt to Immigrants_

Unquestionably this great cooperative movement of the last two decades
means an entire redirection of rural life and the ultimate conquest of its
worst enemy, individualism. We must thank our adopted citizens for the
main impulse given to this movement. Cooperative principles and the
cooperative spirit have been imported from Denmark, Germany and Italy,
where they had already proved successful, and have taken deep root in our
middle-western and north-central states, gradually overcoming the native
Yankee individualism characteristic of the older settlers. Dr. Eyerly of
Amherst is authority for the statement that the only successful
cooperative stores organized in New England for a generation past have
been, with one or two exceptions, among foreigners.

In connection with the interesting fact that _interstate_ immigration
also stimulates cooperation, the same writer says: "In those parts of the
country into which there has recently been a considerable influx of
interstate immigrants, as in the Pacific coast states, in Texas and
certain other parts of the south and southwest, the cooperative movement
has rapidly developed. While this is due in part to the intensive and
specialized agriculture practiced and to the nature of the crops grown,
e. g., fruits and vegetables, it is due also in part to the _transplanting
of individuals into new social groups_ in which the 'cake of custom' is
likely to be broken up and new adjustments made under some intellectual
leadership."[30]

_The Cooperative Success of Denmark_

Sir Horace Plunkett in Ireland, Raiffeisen in Germany and Wollemborg in
Italy have led the cooperative movement in their respective countries to
remarkable success; but the classic illustration of the wonderful
possibilities for rural transformation through cooperation is the story of
modern Denmark. Space forbids adequate description here. Suffice it to say
that from a condition close to bankruptcy, following a devastating war in
1864, and with sadly depleted fertility, that enterprising little nation
of farmers has become the richest in Europe in per capita wealth and about
the most productive. An enlightened patrioti