Co-operation 1 9 5 



foreign producers who are organised for co-operative export 1 . If 

 English small holders are to be protected from foreign competition it 

 is of the first importance that co-operative sale, by means of the 

 concentration of the produce at one centre, should be organised. If 

 this were done, the small holders would be able to demand for their 

 now concentrated productions better prices and better transport terms 

 than the owner of sixty or seventy cows, and even large farmers 

 would probably soon find it advisable to join the association. In the 

 case of butter the steam-dairy is already the centre for sales. Much 

 complaint of Danish competition is heard among English butter- 

 makers : and it is not seldom ascribed to the " unfair " railway tariffs, 

 which are said to differentiate in favour of the foreign product. But 

 the reason for this differentiation is simply that the English makers 

 for the most part send small quantities at irregular intervals. 

 Mr Harris, the Secretary of the Agricultural Organisation Society, 

 told me that various railway companies had informed him that they 

 were quite ready to give the English producers the same tariff as 

 they gave the foreigners, if the former could undertake to send similar 

 quantities and with equal regularity. But it is not only in cost of 

 transport that the small sellers would find co-operation useful ; they 

 would get much better prices than they are able to get as individuals; 

 better, very likely, than the individual large farmer himself. The 

 association would set such a price on its milk or any part of it as 

 would be most profitable in view of the existing state of the market. 

 It would engage special agents charged with finding the best markets 

 and making the best bargains possible, and such agents would 

 be in a better position to do so than the most influential large farmer. 

 In this way the disadvantage at which the small holder stands in the 

 marketing of his produce could be entirely overcome. Where such 

 attempts have been made they have proved successful. Thus for 

 example Lord Hampden formed an organisation for the purpose of 



1 The evidence of Mr Biddell, a Suffolk farmer, as given in the Report of 1894 

 (qu. 39,432), is instructive : " The complaint is that we cannot make butter to sell in 

 London as the foreign butter is sold, that no merchant in London can secure a supply 

 worth any consideration at all. While each individual farmer makes his own butter he has 

 to sell it in small quantities, and you cannot get it twice alike ; the farmers do not make it 

 alike ; no merchant in London will come and buy it, so it will have to be sold in a kind of 

 local retail trade ; but if we can secure butter factories by having them in certain centres, 

 and the butter companies would send round and fetch the milk, and would apportion the 

 returns according to the milk produced, I think something might be done. A farmer only 

 keeping eight to ten cows cannot profitably send the milk in the morning to a station unless 

 it is quite close by, and therefore that stops the milk trade, and the milk trade is better than 

 the dairying at any time." 



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