Appendix XII: Mutual-Aid Arrangements in the Villages of Netherlands at the Present Day

The Report of the Agricultural Commission of Netherlands contains many illustrations relative to this subject, and my friend, M. Cornelissen, was kind enough to pick out for me the corresponding passages from these bulky volumes (Uitkomsten van het Onderzoek naar den Toestand van den Landbouw in Nederland [Results of the Research into the State of Agriculture in the Netherlands], 2 vols. 1890).

The habit of having one thrashing-machine, which makes the round of many farms, hiring it in turn, is very widely spread, as it is by this time in nearly every other country. But one finds here and there a commune which keeps one thrashing-machine for the community (vol. I. xviii. p. 31).

The farmers who have not the necessary numbers of horses for the plough borrow the horses from their neighbours. The habit of keeping one communal ox, or one communal stallion, is very common.

When the village has to raise the ground (in the low districts) in order to build a communal school, or for one of the peasants in order to build a new house, a bede is usually convoked. The same is done for those farmers who have to move. The bede is altogether a widely-spread custom, and no one, rich or poor, will fail to come with his horse and cart.

The renting in common, by several agricultural labourers, of a meadow, for keeping their cows, is found in several parts of the land; it is also frequent that the farmer, who has plough and horses, ploughs the land for his hired labourers (vol. I. xxii. p. 18, etc.).

As to the farmers’ unions for buying seed, exporting vegetables to England and so on, they become universal. The same is seen in Belgium. In 1896, seven years after peasants’ guilds had been started, first in the Flemish part of the country, and four years only after they were introduced in the Walloon portion of Belgium, there were already 207 such guilds, with a membership of 10,000 (Annuaire de la Science Agronomique [Yearbook of Agronomic Science], vol. I. (2), 1896, pp. 148 and 149).