120 AN AGRICULTURAL FAGGOT. 



conveyance, distribution and sale probably amounts to 

 something like £50,000,000 per annum. Whatever the 

 figures may be, we are all agreed that a considerable 

 reduction — to the advantage mainly of the producer — 

 might be made by an improvement in the existing methods 

 of distribution and sale. 



The first essential to improvement is organisation. 

 Co-operation, of course, includes organisation, though 

 organisation does not necessarily involve co-operation. 

 Two instances may be quoted which happen to have 

 come under my personal observation, of successful 

 organisation without co-operation. One is the French 

 butter trade. This has been built up by the merchants 

 in Normandy and Brittany — some of whom are English- 

 men — who purchase the butter at the local markets from 

 the individual farmers, and work it up in their blending 

 houses. Another instance is the poultry trade in the 

 Heathfield district of Sussex. There the system is 

 that the fatteners, or "higglers" as they are termed, 

 purchase and collect the chickens from those who rear 

 them ; they are then duly fattened, killed and prepared 

 for market, and again collected by the carrier or railway 

 agent, by whom they are forwarded to London and other 

 markets. Both these are instances of complete organisa- 

 tion without co-operation. The producer in each case 

 sells his produce outright, and has no interest in it subse- 

 quently ; and the organisation, it is well to note, is a 

 system arranged for the producer, in a sense, but not by 

 him. 



Co-operation with its attendant organisation has already 

 been partially adopted in the United Kingdom among 

 farmers. The most notable example is that which Irish 

 farmers owe to the energy and constructive ability of 

 Mr. Horace Plunkett. According to a statement published 

 in June last in the Journal of the Board of Agriculture, no 

 less than fifty co-operative dairy societies were then opened, 

 and this number is now, I believe, considerably exceeded. 



