RISE AND DEVELOPMENT 19 



All the same, one cannot deny that in some countries the 

 great advance of agricultural organisation has been materially 

 due to the influence of the clergy, and in many countries to 

 the sympathetic support, if not the direct action, of the 

 States concerned. 



The Roman Catholic clergy in Belgium, for instance, went 

 into the matter of agricultural organisation with a thorough- 

 ness that in itself deserved success. The knowledge they 

 acquired of the science of agriculture would have done credit 

 to agricultural-college professors. They learned all about 

 the use of fertilisers at a time when the peasantry regarded 

 artificial manures with the greatest suspicion ; they enforced 

 their arguments by cultivating experimental plots of their 

 own ; they gave sacks of fertilisers to doubting farmers in 

 order that the latter, in turn, should make experiments on 

 their own account ; they acquired a knowledge of agricul- 

 tural machinery, and in some instances, at least, were them- 

 selves able to put such machinery right for farmers when it 

 broke down ; they spread an active propaganda in support 

 of credit banks, societies for purchase, production and sale, 

 federations, insurance societies, etc. ; and, eventually, with 

 the support alike of the landed gentry and of the Belgian 

 Government, they succeeded so well that to-day there is not 

 a single district of Belgium without its federation of agri- 

 cultural societies operating under clerical guidance. 



In the Catholic districts of Holland the movement has 

 likewise received much active encouragement from the 

 clergy ; in Italy the establishment of a large proportion of 

 the credit banks there has been due to the Catholic clergy ; 

 in Austria the priests and the elementary school teachers 

 give instruction or advice to the peasants in agricultural 

 science and on the advantages of co-operation ; and in 

 Hungary like action has been taken by the clergy, who find 

 that one incidental result of their activities has been an 

 increase of sobriety, since the Hungarian peasant now spends 

 at the headquarters of his society the time he once spent 

 in the public-house. 



As against these examples of clerical influence might, of 



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