A FRIENDLY CONFERENCE 329 



cognition of the actual requirements of the 

 position. 



In the month of October, 1895 (a year when 

 much was being said as to the depressed con- 

 dition of British agriculture), the Great Eastern 

 Railway Company summoned a conference of 

 farmers from the Eastern Counties to consider 

 what could be done by the railway to further 

 their interests, and Lord Claud Hamilton, the 

 chairman of the Board of Directors, accompanied 

 by Colonel Makins, the deputy chairman, and 

 the leading officials, met a number of representa- 

 tives of agriculture, headed by the late Lord 

 Winchilsea. In an article on the subject which 

 I contributed to The Times of November 2nd, 

 1895, I wrote : — 



The primary object of the Great Eastern Railway Com- 

 pany in calling the conference was to impress on the 

 agriculturists that while there should, in the interests 

 of" all parties concerned, be a certain co-operation between 

 the railways and the producers, it is also essential that 

 each side should, at the same time, have its distinct 

 organization, complete in itself, and not intrenching on 

 the legitimate domain of the other. Thus it was 

 pointed out that the duty of a railway company, as 

 carriers, is to organize a carrying service, and that it was 

 for the producers in their turn to organize their consign- 

 ments for delivery to the railway company, and the 



subsequent sale thereof, in such a way as t<> secure a maxi- 

 mum of profit at a minimum of expense. Hut it was 



