So, likewise, a keen observer of Danish coöperation describes its influence in creating scientific and social attitudes:
"Among the indirect, but equally tangible results of coöperation, I should be inclined to put the development of mind and character among those by whom it is practised. The peasant or little farmer, who is a member of one or more of these societies, who helps to build up their success and enjoy their benefits, acquires a new outlook. The jealousies and suspicions which are in most countries so common among those who live by the land fall from him. Feeling that he has a voice in great affairs he acquires an added value and a healthy importance in his own eyes. He knows also that in his degree and according to his output he is on an equal footing with the largest producer and proportionately is doing as well. There is no longer any fear that because he is a little man he will be browbeaten or forced to accept a worse price for what he has to sell than does his rich and powerful neighbor. The skilled minds which direct his business work as zealously for him as for that important neighbor."[36]
It is interesting to note that the three highest authorities on the coöperative movement in Ireland all lay great stress on its importance as a means of community organization and value its social effects as highly as its economic benefits. Thus Sir Horace Plunkett says:
"Gradually the (coöperative) Society becomes the most important institution in the district, the most important in a social as well as an economic sense. The members feel a pride in its material expansion. They accumulate large profits, which in time become a sort of communal fund. In some cases this is used for the erection of village halls where social entertainments, concerts and dances are held, lectures delivered and libraries stored. Finally, the association assumes the character of a rural commune, where, instead of the old basis of the commune, the joint ownership of land, a new basis for union is found in the voluntary communism of effort."[37]
In the same vein Smith-Gordon and Staples in their account of the coöperative movement in Ireland, see it as the most important force for socialization because it makes the most immediate and practical appeal to men of all parties and sects and establishes a business system which develops the community attitude: