2 AGRICULTURAL ORGANISATION 



and no system of agricultural organisation adopted in any 

 one of them might be suitable for exact reproduction in 

 any other country ; but there are main principles which 

 are, nevertheless, capable of general application. These 

 general principles are invariably determined by what have 

 been called " the urgent exigencies of economic life " ; and 

 in few, if any, countries are such exigencies more urgent, 

 from an agricultural point of view, than in a land like our 

 own where there is so great an industrial population to be 

 fed, and where, at the same time, so active a competition 

 has had to be faced by home agriculture in providing the 

 needed supplies. 



To the economist the subject here under consideration 

 must be a matter of particular interest, since agricultural 

 organisation is effecting material changes in the circum- 

 stances of many different countries ; the politician will 

 see the growth in those countries of an Agricultural Party 

 which, in carrying on a new " Peasants' War " not against 

 rulers, but against economic conditions represents a 

 steadily-increasing force to be reckoned with by the makers 

 of laws ; and the psychologist will observe how a section 

 of the community hitherto distinguished in almost every 

 land for inveterate suspicion and distrust of neighbours 

 has itself mainly taken the initiative in a movement 

 essentially democratic in its origin whatever the degree 

 to which State-aid has subsequently been rendered and 

 directly designed to lead the agricultural classes to abandon 

 their said suspicion and distrust and operate on the lines 

 of common action for the securing of common advantages, 

 the social and individual results brought about having 

 thus been no less remarkable even than the economic. 



AGRICULTURAL COMBINATION IN THE PAST. 



In the principle of combination for the purpose of 

 fostering the interests either of agriculture as a science 

 or of agriculturists as a class there is, of course, nothing 

 new. Just as the cultivation of the soil is the oldest of 

 callings, so do we find in the agricultural industry some of 



