62 FRANCE 



the same as fertilizers. So were tools and agri- 

 cultural appliances of various kinds, while special 

 syndicates either procured agricultural machinery 

 too costly for individual farmers to get for them- 

 selves and let it out on hire, or enabled farmers 

 to purchase on special terms. 



In these and other ways there was, in the first 

 instance, a direct appeal to the material interests 

 of the agriculturists. Other considerations were 

 to be advanced later on, but the leaders of the 

 new movement had the good fortune to win the 

 early sympathy of the farming community by 

 the offer of practical advantages which prepared 

 for further considerable developments of the 

 combination principle a class of men who, in 

 France, as in England, might well be regarded 

 as the least likely to co-operate for the achieve- 

 ment of a common purpose. 



By 1886 there were already so many of the 

 new type of associations in existence that a 

 "Union Centrale des Syndicats des Agricul- 

 teurs de France " was created through the inter- 

 mediary of the Societe des Agriculteurs de 

 France, which society was formed in 1868, and 

 has 12,000 members, but represents a body of 

 a more academical type than the syndicates, 

 though it is one that has done much for the 

 promotion of the agricultural interests of the 



