In a previous volume entitled, “The Country Church,” Mr. Gill had pointed out that there is no satisfactory solution of the problem of rural life apart from the reorganization of rural business. For this reason it was determined to make a study of European countries that had given serious attention to the organization of farmers for business purposes. One object of the study was to learn what part the rural churches should take in a movement necessary for the preservation of a high standard of country life and for insuring the possibility of a successful rural church. It was found that in most of the area covered the coöperative movement had passed beyond the experimental stage. Rural coöperation in Europe is more than half a century old. Probably the best known example of the success of rural coöperation is found in Denmark. Much has been written about the wonderful transformation wrought in that country by union of effort among her farmers. Coöperation has been one of the most essential factors by which the people of Denmark have rescued themselves from a condition of extreme economic distress and attained a prosperity which, considering Denmark’s limited natural resources, is most remarkable, it is due chiefly to this that Denmark has more wealth per capita than any other country in Europe. In Italy, the business of the Federation of Coöperative Agricultural Associations has grown since 1895 not less than 43 per cent. in any five year period, while the number of its agricultural societies grew from 1892 to 1910 no less than ten-fold. The business of its coöperative credit institutions more than doubled in the four-year period from 1908 to 1912. The movement has also been successful in Hungary. In 1912 there were 8,000 parishes into which the activities of coöperative societies extended. Up to the outbreak of the war coöperation had also made great progress in Belgium, while in Holland the coöperative idea has been making leaps and bounds during the past ten years. Here, as in other countries, including Austria, Russia, France, and Switzerland, it has been demonstrated that coöperation is a necessary condition of general agricultural prosperity. But Germany affords the best example of agricultural coöperation on a large scale. In the twenty-year period from 1890 to 1910 the number of German coöperative agricultural societies grew from 3,000 to 25,000. From 1892 to 1908 the membership of coöperative societies for collective purposes grew from 12,000 to 213,000, and the membership of coöperative dairy societies from 51,500 to more than 1,250,000. Mr. Gill remarks: “It is due to coöperation more than to any other one thing that Germany has been able to increase her agricultural productivity fifty per cent. in fifty years, until now, though smaller in area than our state of Texas, it produces 95 per cent. of the food of 66,000,000 people.”