NEED OF ORGANISATION 81 



And the existing co-operative movement is, as has been already 

 observed, in a position to render most valuable service to the cause 

 of agricultural organisation, while at the same time, in return, 

 reaping substantial benefit from the extension of its own sway. 

 However, by the side of that, it wants to be distinctly borne in mind 

 that the agricultural movement is primarily, essentially and charac- 

 teristically 'productive, and only secondarily distributive, or rather, 

 according to the nomenclature now in vogue, one of " supply." 

 Agriculture without doubt wants to buy cheaply and under 

 guarantees of good quality, but its main object in practising co- 

 operation and organisation generally is to produce more and to 

 sell to better advantage — realising, in practice, the motto which 

 President Roosevelt selected for his " Country Life Inquiry," a motto 

 which Sir Horace Plunkett has not hesitated to make his own in 

 Ireland : ' Better business, better farming and better living." In 

 agricultural co-operation the productive side most imperatively 

 predominates, and agricultural co-operation can have nothing to 

 do with the distributive programme of the country being turned 

 into one large farm owned by and cultivated avowedly for the 

 benefit of the Co-operative Store. We cannot expect to " repeople 

 the land " in that way. Whoever tills wants also to reap. Nor 

 is agriculture, tied to the car of distribution, likely to hold its own 

 as a progressive and advancing force. It is the company commander 

 using his wits who becomes the great general. The individual 

 cultivator wants to have the marshal's baton in view as a possible 

 prize, if he is to do his best for the country. Co-operation is greatly 

 wanted for agriculture, but mere co-operative purchase is an easy 

 thing to organise. We have, in fact, had it, as already shown, on a 

 small scale a long time ago, before any other country resorted to it, 

 when, upon artificial fertilisers coming into vogue in England and 

 Scotland sooner than they did anywhere else, farmers, small and 

 large, united — either in registered county organisations (of which 

 I in 1870 found nine in existence), or else in unregistered nondescript 

 little local unions, such as in the United States still go by the name 

 of " buying clubs " — for the cheaper purchase of superphosphate, 

 then the favourite fertiliser, in some cases under a guarantee of 

 quality. The most formidable obstacle in the way of the extension 

 of such purchase is the lack of ready cash — of which many of our 

 farmers know the pinch well. For under co-operation dealer's 

 credit is taboo. I found this difficulty obstructing my intended 

 path in 1883, when attempting to form a co-operative purchase 

 society for farmers in my district of East Sussex. Everybody 



B.B. Q 



