CHAPTER X 



AGRICULTURAL CO-OPERATION 



THERE is no need to waste many words on proving that the 

 characteristic disadvantage of the large holding in the matters of stock- 

 farming, market-gardening and petite culture generally is one which 

 no ingenuity can abolish. The personal interest of the occupier 

 doing his own work cannot be supplied by any outside labourer. 

 Moreover, as the rural exodus proceeds, it becomes increasingly diffi- 

 cult to find any labourers to undertake work which is irregular or 

 unpleasant : and therefore the personal work of the occupier becomes 

 increasingly important. The fact that the large farmer is unable to 

 increase the quantitative, and still more the qualitative, intensiveness 

 of the labour applied to his holding is bound to drive him more and 

 more into the background, especially where such increased intensive- 

 ness of labour is the essential condition of the profitableness of the 

 undertaking. The case is otherwise, of course, where corn-growing 

 still remains profitable, and large and small holdings compete in 

 this branch of production. The question which then arises is whether 

 the small holder can in any way overcome the disadvantage at which 

 he stands. 



It has been held that this can be done by means of co-operation. 

 More particularly it has been supposed that small arable farmers 

 might acquire machinery in common, and plough, thresh and so forth 

 in association. In this way a number of small holdings could achieve 

 the same economies as one farmer on a large holding is able to do. 

 Such co-operative association has theoretically much to be said 

 for it ; but when the corresponding practice is looked for, English 

 agriculture has little to show. The student naturally enquires why 

 such co-operation did not arise long ago; why between 1760 and 

 1880, the period when corn-growing flourished, the large farm and 

 not some association of small farms was the predominant form of 

 holding. The enquiry is the more justifiable inasmuch as attempts 

 were not lacking during that period to organise small corn-growing 

 holdings into co-operative associations. The chief of these was per- 

 haps the Assington Agricultural Co-operative Society, founded on 



