Chapter IV 



NEED OF OKGANISATION 



Appropriate education being assumed to have been provided for, 

 the next, and under modern conditions, under all circumstances, an 

 indispensable postulate for successful rural reconstruction will have 

 to be reckoned to be appropriate organisation. Now at the present 

 time agricultural organisation stands in no need of special advocacy. 

 The necessity of it may now be said to be almost universally recog- 

 nised. The world, indeed, rings with demands for it. Excessive 

 prices, dealers' rings and wiles, the raised cost of labour, all these have 

 pressed it upon farmers' attention. All the world seems organised 

 against them and they alone stand unorganised, and therefore defence- 

 less, opposed to a host of foes. It has taken a long time to bring 

 about such general agreement in our country. Agricultural calling 

 and social and economic relations alike, which go to make up country 

 life, have been subjected to methodical organisation long since all 

 around us, both in European countries and across the Atlantic, in 

 both the New World communities peopled by our kith and kin. Agri- 

 cultural organisation has also reached far Japan, and it is struggling 

 for a promising beginning in India. We have read with admiration 

 of Denmark's splendid organising achievements, which have made 

 that little country rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of national 

 humiliation, under the remorseless tread of Bismarck's jackboots, to 

 new, and even more brilliant, prosperity and productive capacity. 

 We have heard of similar organisation in Switzerland, the cradle of 

 those co-operative creameries, without which we should probably, in 

 the early stages of newly-restored peace, amid a general disorganisa- 

 tion of business, both agricultural and industrial, have been driven 

 to go for a time altogether without milk and its products. Once 

 more, we have heard of the successful organisation practised among 

 Dutch farmers with trustworthy guarantees given for the purity and 

 high quality of the articles offered for sale. We have heard of effec- 

 tive organisation in France, which, so we have the testimony of 

 Lord Reay, has there " worked wonders." We have heard our late 

 King expressing admiration for the admirable work accomplished by 

 means of agricultural and rural organisation, under Sir Horace 

 Plunkett's judicious leading, in Ireland — which country, as the late 

 chief of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction 



