8 THE RAILWAYS AND AGRICULTURE 



spread of agricultural education, and in combina- 

 tions among the agricultural community for an 

 endless variety of purposes, including the virtual 

 transformation of farming methods in accord- 

 ance with the latest developments of agricul- 

 tural science ; organizations for obtaining agri- 

 cultural necessaries of reliable qualities at 

 lesser cost ; the purchase in common of costly 

 machinery which would otherwise be beyond 

 the means of a small cultivator ; the formation 

 of co-operative societies for purposes both of 

 production and of sale ; the setting up of agri- 

 cultural credit banks as a means of keeping the 

 farmer out of the hands of the usurer, and 

 enabling him to carry on his operations more 

 successfully ; and the improvement of the indi- 

 vidual lot of the agriculturist in many different 

 ways. The special circumstances in which this 

 network of organization has been developed differ 

 in each particular country, and it is a funda- 

 mental principle of the movement, regarded as a 

 whole, that not only has each of the countries 

 concerned differed from every other in establish- 

 ing agricultural organizations suited to its 

 national conditions, but the greatest degree of 

 success has been obtained where the associations 

 have been started on a very small scale in rural 

 districts to meet local, or even strictly parochial, 



