PROGRESS OF THE MOVEMENT 169 



much greater measure of public support and encourage- 

 ment. 



The Agricultural Organization Society itself is mainly 

 a propagandist body, but in 1904 it formed an ' Advisory 

 Business Department,' and in the autumn of 1905 this 

 department was developed into an 'Agricultural Co- 

 operative Federation,' the purpose of which is to group 

 the orders of the different societies in the same way as 

 the societies group the orders of their members. By 

 this time, in fact, the difficulties at first experienced in 

 regard to collective trading had been mainly sur- 

 mounted. Manufacturers who, at the outset, refused 

 to have any direct dealings with the societies are now 

 surrendering to the logic of exceptionally big orders 

 as well they may, considering that the turnover of the 

 various local bodies affiliated with the Agricultural 

 Organization Society is already close on 250,000 a 

 year. 



The Agricultural Co-operative Federation now, in 

 fact, gets wholesale merchants' prices and discounts, 

 representing much more favourable terms than those 

 on which the largest of individual farmers could pur- 

 chase even if such individual farmers were in every 

 case able to deal with the manufacturers at all. On 

 this point I may relate a story told to me by a certain 

 ' large ' farmer. He is a purchaser of feeding-stuffs to 

 the value of over 1,000 a year, and he had bought 

 for a long time through an agent. Becoming dissatis- 

 fied with that person, he applied to the manufacturers 

 to be allowed to buy direct from them. They agreed, 

 and fulfilled one order ; but there was delay with the 

 second. He then found that the agent had threatened 

 the manufacturers that he would withdraw all his 

 business from them if they persisted in direct dealings 

 with the farmer in question. In the result the manu- 



