Thus the broader democratic classes of the country, the workmen and peasants, were represented in the somewhat popular institutions that had developed under the old regime. But the actual control was in the hands of the less democratic elements--the landlords, the manufacturers, men of the liberal professions, and of the so-called Intelligentsia class. Most of these men were of liberal and democratic tendencies, but they were in actual fact, as compared with the broader masses, of the privileged classes. They had emphasized always the essentially democratic character of the activity of the institutions in which they were the leaders. They put particular stress on the fact that the activities of the local provincial councils, for example, were directed mainly toward the amelioration of conditions of life among the peasantry. But the fact that the control over these institutions, even in the cooperative movement (so far as independent control was allowed by the bureaucracy of the old regime), was secured to the less democratic elements of the community, did contradict the idea of coalition, of the bringing together of all interests and forces. These institutions had been permitted to exist and develop only because they were controlled by the more conservative groups. The cooperative societies represented more truly the idea of coalition. Here in the cooperative movement the leaders of political liberalism had always noted with relief that one was gradually attaining the end toward which they knew they must work--the organic union between the so-called Intelligentsia, and the "people," meaning the broader, democratic classes.