PREFATORY NOTE ix 



alike with Lord Winchilsea and the Great Eastern Railway 

 Company in regard to the conferences between them alluded 

 to on pp. 93 4, and the publication in The Times of various 

 articles thereon, which I was enabled to contribute to that 

 journal, had the effect of bringing the whole subject of " The 

 Railways and Agriculture " under public attention. Of the 

 conferences between both the South Eastern (pp. 141 2) 

 and the Great Western (pp. 142 3) Railway Companies and 

 the agriculturists in their respective districts I can speak 

 from personal knowledge, since I was permitted to be 

 present thereat on each occasion. Lord Winchilsea further 

 enabled me to be the means of communicating to the world 

 the steps taken by him in connection with the British 

 Produce Supply Association (see pp. 95 9) in the earliest 

 phases of its unfortunate career. 



A series of articles on " The Organisation of Agriculture," 

 published in The Times at Easter, 1904, became the basis 

 of the book which Mr. Murray brought out for me under the 

 same title and in the same year. This book, of which three 

 editions were issued and 10,000 copies sold, gave details as 

 to the policy adopted in regard to agricultural organisation 

 in over twenty different countries, and it more especially 

 pointed to the fact that in most of these countries the 

 movement had been started on such simple lines as combina- 

 tion for purchase of agricultural necessaries or for credit, 

 those more complicated forms of combination in respect to 

 transport and sale which it had been sought to establish 

 at the outset in Great Britain having elsewhere been regarded 

 as the final achievement, rather than as the beginning, 

 of an agricultural organisation which could, also, be expected 

 in the United Kingdom only through the establishment 

 and successful operation of a specially qualified propagan- 

 dist agency. My later works on the general subject have 

 been " The Transition in Agriculture " (1906), " Small 

 Holders : What they must do to succeed " (1909), and 



