166 AGRICULTURAL ORGANIZATION 



upon new developments.' What direction the new 

 developments are taking we have seen. When we 

 come to look at the possible economies, what we find 

 is that the British producer stands between two vast 

 armies, each of which expects not only to live upon 

 him, but to prosper at his expense. On the one hand 

 there is an army of manufacturers, agents, and traders, 

 who sell him the various things he requires for the 

 purposes of production, too often exploiting his 

 ignorance, his simplicity, or his isolation to their own 

 advantage ; on the other, there is an army of salesmen, 

 traders, andj middlemen of various ranks and grades, 

 through whose hands his produce will pass before it 

 reaches the consumer, each wanting to get out of it a 

 profit for himself, without much consideration for the 

 one on whom they seek to thrive. But so long as the 

 British farmer is an individual unit he must expect to 

 be thus exploited, and to have to buy retail while he sells 

 wholesale. Unfortunately, too, even when he buys 

 retail he does not always get good value for his money. 

 During a visit to some of the dairy districts in 

 Yorkshire, I met a farmer who had very strong views 

 on this particular question. ' The amount wasted by 

 British farmers in their purchase of feeding-stuffs,' he 

 said, ' would have sufficed to buy up all the land there 

 is in the country,' and he went on to tell me a story 

 that was full of significance. He had induced some 

 other farmers in his neighbourhood to join him in 

 forming a society, one of the main objects of which 

 was to enable them to purchase their feeding-stuffs in 

 large quantities, according to a guaranteed analysis 

 which they were careful to check. One day his society 

 refused acceptance from a manufacturer of 1,000 tons 

 of cake, not of the stipulated quality, and, as a matter 

 of curiosity, he asked the manufacturer : ' What shall 



