106 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



The Development Fund agreed to allow itself to be drawn upon for 

 very large sums. The old committee was dismissed and a Board 

 nominated by the Minister was substituted. From that date 

 forward the word " society " was a mere euphemism. Whitehall 

 Place ruled. The result was soon to disclose itself. 



As a society beginning on tabula rasa, decided to proceed on the lines 

 of co-operation, we had felt that we wanted members, we wanted 

 genuinely co-operative organisation — which only few of our mem- 

 bers understood ; and the great acknowledged need of agriculture 

 as a business undoubtedly was a market, ready and friendly, on 

 whose support one might at all times safely rely. Well, there was the 

 Co-operative Union. It had members for us ready — one might say 

 waiting. It had well-trained and seasoned co-operators to keep us 

 on the right tack. It had a fully-organised apparatus for business, 

 perfect in its constitution, its depots, its centres, branches dis- 

 seminated all over the country, with an admirable transport service 

 at its disposal, which could not fail to be of the greatest value to us, 

 and a truly ideal and absolutely willing market favouring us. What 

 shifts and devices have foreign Governments not found themselves 

 driven to, to provide a receptive market for favoured agriculture, 

 which gave them its votes ! Taxing the community to the top of 

 their bent, they have given agriculture cheap railway rates at the 

 cost of other interests ; moreover, lavishly endowed credit institu- 

 tions ; money besides ; and they have directed their " spending 

 departments " to make their purchases preferentially from agricul- 

 tural co-operative societies, not looking over-scrutinisingly at the 

 prices. The market was thus designedly bought. But here, among 

 ourselves, we had a market ready made, with receiving offices 

 scattered all over the country, with a practically insatiable appetite 

 for agricultural produce, with an expressed and truly sincere desire 

 to buy preferentially from co-operative societies — quality and price 

 being of course in accord with those of the ordinary market — and 

 ready money in the till waiting to be picked up, Those same 

 emporia were at the same time handy for agriculturists to buy their 

 domestic or vocational requirements from. There was a wholesale 

 society ready made, already versed in agricultural business and 

 doing a large amount of such, with an unequalled transport service 

 at its command, the very thing that our society needed, if, in its 

 blindness, it did not really desire it. And that same wholesale 

 society had a banking department which would serve us admirably 

 as a ready-made central bank for our proposed credit service. Seeing 

 what trouble Whitehall Place had — altogether gratuitously — taken 



