NEED OF ORGANISATION 77 



I hold, even more instructive object lessons than much-studied 

 Germany, at any rate, when regarded from a purely business point 

 of view. Too much is, I think, made of the special talent for 

 organisation with which Germans are popularly credited. Theirs 

 is not that free organisation which alone would suit us, and of our 

 capacity for devising which we have given proof in our formation 

 of the great industrial co-operative movement, which in itself 

 should supply good guidance to us on more points than one in our 

 present quest, and from which it is that the Germans have themselves 

 first learnt how to build up theirs. German penuriousness — 

 extreme economy in the use of things — would indeed undoubtedly 

 be a good point for us to copy. There is not a little waste in our 

 agriculture. To a great extent, however, German organisation is 

 an outcome from the firmly-acquired habit of rendering submission 

 to authority, which has become a fixed trait in German character — 

 a trait which would not overwell fit into our own. Their organisa- 

 tion is not in all instances happy, but by its very mistakes it teaches 

 us, among other things, what it will be altogether wise to bear in 

 mind, namely, that what suits one set of circumstances will not 

 necessarily suit a different set. German farmers thought they had 

 an Eldorado before them when they learnt by careful study how 

 much money American " elevators " are earning for their co- 

 operative owners, how they were organised and how worked. They 

 carried that Promethean spark into their Pomeranian latifundia, 

 applied it according to strict rule, the Government obligingly 

 assisting them with a grant of five million marks — and found that 

 they had an altogether wrong " sow by the ear," the enterprise 

 which was to have made Croesuses of them spelling dire loss, in which 

 the Government's five millions were almost wholly swallowed up. 

 The pretentious spark had failed to light a good fire. Less ambitious 

 men, organising on purely German lines, on a humbler scale, made 

 a moderate success of their co-operative granaries, promising well 

 for future development. Different local conditions manifestly call 

 for different action. There ought to be a lesson in this. All that 

 suits America does not necessarily suit Germany, and all that suits 

 Germany well will not necessarily suit us. 



Since, in the matter of agriculture, " organisation " has thus far 

 been invariably advocated as being fully identical with " co-opera- 

 tion," and since manifestly for any organisation, which means 

 the collocation of active agents for common action, harmonising of 

 forces and " working together " in some one sense or other is indis- 

 pensable, it has generally been concluded that the two terms cover 



