State help.

While English and some other forms of co-operation have always
repudiated state help, and probably rightly, so far as their own work is
concerned, the state in almost all countries, and conspicuously in
England, has in fact helped to the extent of providing special
legislation, and waiving fees, so as to encourage the formation of
co-operative societies. A second form of state help is very noticeable
in the modern development of agriculture, as in Denmark, Canada, New
Zealand, Ireland and very many countries, where the state has played a
great part in performing or assisting functions which neither voluntary
association nor individual enterprise could well perform alone; in
providing technical education, expert advisers, exhibitions and prizes;
in distributing information in all forms; in finding out markets,
controlling railway rates, subsidizing steamboats, and even grading,
branding, warehousing and freezing produce, and maintaining trade agents
abroad. These things have not been done for co-operative societies
alone, but for agriculture in general; but co-operation has chiefly
benefited, and much has been done expressly to encourage the formation
of associations of cultivators, and provincial and national federations
of such associations; and government departments of agriculture are
found acting through such bodies, and with their advice and assistance.
The third and most questionable form of state help is by direct
subventions, and we have seen how much has been done in this way for
credit co-operation and particularly agricultural credit. Harm has
undoubtedly been done in certain cases by forcing co-operative
societies, whether from political motives or merely mistaken policy. Yet
even as to money subventions, good authorities, while admitting the
great dangers, remain convinced that the advantages overbalance them,
self-help being evoked, and helped over initial difficulties which would
otherwise be insuperable. Experience in fact shows that governments can
do a very great deal, at least for agricultural co-operation, but only
on condition that they encourage, and do not undermine, self-help and
private initiative. Thus while voluntary association is sometimes
advocated as a step towards, and sometimes on the other hand as a
substitute for, and bulwark against, state socialism, we find in
practice these two forces working each in its own sphere, and in ways
complementary one to the other, while unde