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Peasant Indebtedness and Rural Credit in Thailand. In all the developing countries where most of the population is rural, the peasants are much indebted and their indebtedness is growing. It is often difficult to know and explain this situation. The author has used an exceptional documentation in order to study this problem in Thailand. He has calculated the peasant indebtedness by the number of the families in debt and the average debt of each one. This situation is explained by the difference between the resources and the needs of the peasants, but the less poor families borrow as much as the most unprovided. The peasants have not many possibilities to borrow: co-operatives are still embryonary; banks prefer the most efficient sectors; Government has not really faced this problem. Usury may be growing and ruin the weak stability of the thai agriculture, slowly but surely.

Income and the Situation of Peasants. Gross Income and Available Income as a Means of Evaluation. The method employed consists first of all in collecting all the items in the column of receipts, then substracting the operating costs and the salaries of the extra-familial labourers; one thus obtains the gross income. Various large holdings with different policies of production illustrate the manner in which particular types of income can influence the gross earnings. For the period before the emancipation of the peasants it is necessary to refine the method somewhat; the peasant family could not dispose for its own use of the totality of the gross income; it had to pay out of this income taxes, land rent and services. Once these items were deducted the truly available income remained. The share demanded by those with claims upon the gross income of the peasants shows to what extent it was shrinking. If the peasant held land according to an unfavourable legislation, the lord appropriated the greater part of the gross income.

The Ideal of a Co-operative System Confronted with Capitalism. The Case of a Dehydrating Plant in Western France. Within a group of small and medium-sized farmers who already share labour and machines, the creation of a forage dehydrating plant causes more dissension than concord. The cost of dehydrating is such that farmers tend to use forage as a complementary food rather than a basic one. Thus in their rotation cycle they tend to favour lucern (alfalfa) which contains the highest percentage of proteinic substances, neglecting to supply the plant regularly with grass and hence affecting its efficiency. The plant workers, who carry out harvesting as well, react by stretching the cutting period as much as possible, which is harmful to the quality of the forage and the structure of the soils. Besides, the small-holders, once useful for the creation of the capital, turn out to be a handicap for the commercial efficiency of the plant because of their small and scattered fields. Moreover, the yields of their milch-cows are generally too low to justify the dehydrating of forage. Hence a double contradiction develops: on the one hand, between the farmers and the plant; on the other hand, between the small and medium-sized farms. This opposition brings to light the fact that the family holdings of this area are badly adapted to the heavy investments required for undertakings such as a dehydrating plant. This results in an evolution of the politics of recruitment, which tend to be based exclusively on principles of commercial efficiency at any cost, according to the logic of capital, and thus disregard the ideal of cooperation out of which the project of a dehydrating plant grew.

Industry Workers and Rural Development. For over a hundred years rural society in the north-eastern part of the Vendée has been through the psychological and social disturbances inherent in industrialization. During the 19th century mores and customs already differentiated the farmer from the weavers and the paper-makers. Nowadays workers from a traditional working-class background and those from an agricultural milieu are still characterized by a dual mentality in their perception of each other based on cultural and professional differences. However, the traditional division between workers and farmers is not automatically reconducted within the working-class struggles. As a matter of fact, workers under forty appear to have an original vision of strikes and the working-class crisis, and hold their own views on trade-unionism. Their conceptions, values and attitudes do not belong to the culture of the traditional rural workers, but they are also different from the agricultural world. Thus a working-class pattern is progressively emerging which will deeply affect the evolution of this rural milieu.