NEED OF ORGANISATION 73 



us in support and prosecution of it. Our inborn practical sense 

 and native energy, once aroused, lead us to make a thorough success 

 of the change. Let us hope that it may be so in the case of agricul- 

 tural and rural organisation. 



We have, moreover, this excuse to plead in our apology for past 

 inaction, that there is a marked difference in our disfavour, observ- 

 able in our insular circumstances, as compared with those prevailing 

 in other, in this matter more forward, countries. North America 

 had practically a tabula rasa to begin upon, without any traditions, 

 more especially feudal, to hinder it, no class distinctions or prejudices, 

 and an agricultural, or more generally rural, population to deal with, 

 largely composed of small farmers, willing to learn and thankful 

 to be taught, with new communities to create out of waste. Denmark 

 has its small husmand actually driven to organisation by conditions 

 which make it impossible for him to stand successfully by himself ; 

 and in such action he derives invaluable support from the advantages 

 which his good education in the " People's High Schools " affords 

 him. In Denmark the rural population is in truth better educated— 

 without any prejudice existing against rural callings — than the 

 urban. France has its millions of small landowners, gregarious 

 folk that they are, and on the top of this, driven by the dearness 

 of bread, caused by an insense — the late Paul Leroy Beaulieu's 

 term for it — duty on corn, to co-operate in rural baking societies 

 for the obtainment of their daily bread at a reasonable price. 

 Organisation becomes a necessity for them, and Germany — not to 

 prolong the list — has a rural population which might be held to 

 have been specially created for organisation, with a preponderance 

 of small but active and intelligent farmers, freeholders, having 

 natural teachers, themselves directly interested in the success of 

 agriculture, in the persons of larger proprietors farming their own 

 land, scattered among them in just sufficient number. 



We, on the other hand, have institutions handed down to us, 

 from time immemorial, and old-world prejudices clinging to us 

 defying time, binding us at all points, with more relics of a feudal 

 system surviving than are to be met with anywhere. Our rural 

 population accordingly, whether directly engaged in agriculture or 

 not, is divided into castes, by bulk-headed divisions — landlords, 

 tenants, working folk, gentry and plebeians. It is all division and 

 separation. 



Such separation of sectional interests is scarcely calculated to 

 benefit the collective interests of agriculture or the nation. We see 

 it in Parliament and in public action. We had a " country party " 



