CO-OPERATIVE ORGANISATION 149 



It is in this matter of co-operative organisation 

 that we get to the root of foreign agricultural 

 success, and the consideration of what Belgium and 

 other foreign countries have done and are doing 

 suggests much for a thinking gardener to ponder 

 over. Amongst many things to which those in 

 authority should lend more energetic encourage- 

 ment are the increase of small-holdings worked by 

 able, well-trained rural men and women, quicker 

 and cheaper transit than that which is at present 

 obtainable, co-operation, and better, more helpful 

 agricultural education adapted to men and women 

 growers and producers. 



These improvements are sorely needed and 

 now would seem to be the fitting moment for 

 them to be speedily taken in hand whilst a cessa- 

 tion from an habitually too-engrossing party 

 political consideration of land questions is possible. 

 They can only be introduced if strongly supported 

 by landowners, who have it largely in their power 

 to influence smaller folk and to teach them that 

 in all professions there must be expansion and 

 development of new ideas. We have only to look 

 at the changes that have taken place in modern 

 warfare during the last twenty years to perceive 

 that there has been a complete upheaval and 

 alteration of methods. So, too, in agriculture and 

 horticulture we stand upon the borderland of fresh 

 effort, and unless we enlighten the farmer, market- 

 gardener and allotment-holder, who are hard- 

 worked people, without spare time for reading 

 and thinking outside their individual sphere, other 

 countries will remain ahead of us. It is an intense 



