68 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



altogether from ours, more instructive and more thorough-going, 

 occupying sometimes several days. They gladly form associations 

 and local clubs in which the social side is not forgotten, but the 

 piece de resistance in which invariably is the discussion of technical 

 questions, not purely tenants' grievances. In truth, the whole 

 aspect of things appears to have become changed. The most 

 telling proof of its utility probably is the rapid pace at which the 

 movement is extending. The annual additions to its strength are 

 considerable. And it ought to be borne in mind that the movement 

 is still only in its early stage. 



Now I would ask : have we not here a most useful object lesson, 

 a lesson which it might not be altogether amiss that our authorities, 

 such as it concerns, and our farmers and small holders and their 

 friends would do well to study ? The pith and kernel of it all is the 

 getting hold of the individual, securing his confidence, bringing home 

 to him by applications directly concerning himself, his farming, his 

 stock-keeping, his sowing and reaping, the truths which the two pro- 

 gressive forces of science and practice, which between them supply 

 the rays which make up the clear guiding light by which he is to 

 walk, each by itself being incomplete, show him that his " lazy 

 farming," though it seems to suffice to ensure to him his " living," 

 really loses him money, which is within his reach, and is an offence — 

 in certain circumstances it may be judged a crime — committed 

 against the nation whose land he is tilling. It is the individual that 

 wants to be got hold of, be the cost what it may. We speak in high 

 falutin words of the great importance of our agriculture, of the 

 absolute imperative necessity of making it produce a maximum 

 yield. But, in comparison with our cousins across the Atlantic, we 

 spend as good as nothing upon it. And what we do spend we do not 

 spend all in the right way. We draw upon the Development Fund, 

 which seems kind to its bons enfans — quod licet Jovi (in Anglia), non 

 licet bom (in Hibernia), for organisations which make a good show, but 

 are likely to turn out Potemkin villages, put up to please the eye of 

 an imperial mistress, but with no stay in them. There is a discount 

 in them for purchasers. But there is no sort of self-reliance which 

 is the one pledge that there is of enduring success. The proof of 

 co-operation is not in the size of the organisation created, nor in the 

 official recognition accorded to it, but in its genuineness, in the 

 co-operative spirit which pervades it. And that is, after all, only 

 one point in the scheme to be worked out, one little plot in the area 

 to be cultivated. Our farmers may save their 5 or 10 per cent, on 

 the purchase of fertilisers and feeding stuffs, and with all that remain 



