WORK DONE OR PROJECTED 191 



is also good scope for the Society's action. In some parts 

 of the country Cornwall for example the trade in eggs and 

 poultry is almost entirely in the hands of higglers, who give 

 what prices they like, and, as a rule, pay only just sufficient 

 to induce the farmers or small holders to keep on providing 

 them with supplies. In some districts the barter system is 

 still very prevalent, eggs and poultry being given to a local 

 shopkeeper who himself fixes the values in exchange for 

 groceries or other household goods, the cottager or small 

 holder thus, possibly, being allowed too little in the one case 

 and paying, in effect, too much in the other. 



So it often happens that the whole marketing system is 

 conducted on the most antiquated lines. The produce itself 

 may not be worth so much as it would be if put on the market 

 under better conditions ; but the material difference, even 

 then, between the prices paid to the producers in the country 

 and the prices paid by the consumers in the towns represents 

 a considerable range of middlemen's profits which it is one 

 of the objects and purposes of agricultural organisation 

 supplementing efforts in the direction of improving the 

 production to abolish. 



SOCIETIES AND EGG-COLLECTING. 



This particular purpose can only be achieved through 

 co-operation, and the one debatable point is, not as to the 

 principle itself, but as to the particular form of co-operation 

 that may best be recommended. 



In actual practice, co-operation as applied to the sale of 

 eggs means that, as far as possible, the members of an agricul- 

 tural co-operative society should send all their eggs, as fre- 

 quently as possible, to their society's depot, where they will 

 be tested, graded and paid for according to size, freshness 

 and shape, and thence be despatched for sale in accordance 

 with the arrangements made to that end by the society. 

 The producer is thus saved all trouble and expense in market- 

 ing ; he should, where the quality is satisfactory, get a better 

 price for what he supplies, and any sum left as profits, after 



