NEED OF ORGANISATION 79 



made the chief object of business dealings, are not altogether 

 congenial and attractive. Not a few farmers are apt to consider 

 such mere " store " dealing beneath their dignity — at any rate 

 until they are brought to taste its sweets for themselves, as will 

 still be shown. 



Another, even more potent, reason for the indifference shown by 

 farmers to " co-operation " is this, that " co-operation " has thus 

 far been distinctly identified with the cause of small holdings, which 

 is gall and wormwood to most of our " sitting " farmers, because 

 they suspect in it a pretext upon which it is proposed to cut the 

 " heart " out of their holdings, for transfer to the proposed host 

 of new settlers, whom farmers certainly do not regard with an over- 

 favourable eye. In taking such a view opponents manifestly place 

 the cart before the horse, for it is small holdings that we want first, 

 and co-operation is only to come in to help them on their course. 

 However, prejudice will not readily be reasoned with. 



In spite of all this, since co-operation is unmistakably wanted to 

 give agriculture a new lease of life, and since practically the only 

 form of co-operation extensively known in this country is the 

 distributive, it is not surprising to find that those who directed our 

 little beginnings in agricultural co-operation — that is, since 1913, 

 the Government — should have sought assistance more particularly 

 from the body representing that form — at any rate up to quite 

 recently, when the representatives of the Co-operative Union were 

 very unceremoniously and ungraciously, and most foolishly, shown 

 the door without the slightest provocation or good reason for such 

 action. As it happens, such assistance had been sought and 

 virtually obtained in not quite the right way, that is, on a point 

 on which it could be of no practical service, while it was unwisely 

 rejected on the veiy important point on which it might have proved 

 most helpful. For our industrial co-operators, admirably grounded 

 as they are in the great principles of co-operation, are emphatically 

 working men or administrative officers drawn from the industrial 

 working class, and therefore, although fully familiar with working 

 men's — and therefore also small cultivators' — wants, not overwell 

 acquainted with questions of agriculture, at any rate of large and 

 medium agriculture. But in agricultural organisation it is agri- 

 culture that we have to do with first — agriculture, which for the 

 moment is still for the larger part not small holders' husbandry. 

 Some of these co-operative assessors know — better than do the 

 squires and " gentlemen " sitting at the same board of " governors " 

 — about the economic needs of the small holders, though not about 



