CH. Ill] VILLAGE AGRICULTURE AND LOCAL MARKETS 157 



the famous island who eked out a precarious living by taking 

 in one another's washing. This small amount of capital, if it 

 cannot be got from local capitalists, might very well be advanced 

 by the Government at a low rate of interest. The successful 

 working of any such schemes in tropical countries of course 

 largely depends in any case upon the warm support and coun- 

 tenance of the Government and its local officers. 



An organisation perhaps even better for the majority of 

 tropical villagers than the Cooperative Credit Society, at least 

 for a start, is the Cooperative Seed Supply Store, which is 

 already in operation in several places in Ceylon. A small store 

 of good rice or other seed is opened at headquarters, by the 

 assistance of local capitalists, or of the Government, and from 

 this store the villagers can get their seed rice at an interest of 

 say 12 J %, paid in kind at harvest time. There is no need in 

 such a case for the villagers at first to be actual shareholders in 

 the concern, and by the time that it has repaid its commencing 

 loans, they will have come to trust it, and to join in it definitely. 

 Such a store should at first confine its operations to rice, or 

 whatever may be the staple crop of the district, but as time 

 goes on, and the villagers come to support it, it may go in for 

 other crops also, and instead of issuing the local rice again in 

 the following year, may take to getting better qualities of rice 

 and other things from elsewhere. 



Following the Credit Societies, or the Seed Supply Stores, 

 some more ambitious scheme of Agricultural Banks, say on the 

 lines of the Credit Foncier of France, may be put into operation, 

 and will benefit the small village capitalist, but as yet it would 

 seem too early for any such scheme to be tried with much 

 chance of success in a tropical village. 



Similarly, organisations for the purchase of the manure or 

 other things required in a village may be commenced. The 

 local agricultural society at Baddegama in Ceylon, for instance, 

 has organised the purchase of manure from one of the large 

 Colombo firms, first of all finding out how much each villager 

 will require, and then ordering the whole amount in bulk and 

 distributing it to the villagers at the actual cost of purchase 

 and transport. In this way the villagers have got a very much 



