HOW FARMERS CAN SAVE 175 



farmers, they effect a substantial saving by obtaining 

 their requirements through the association. Coal, for 

 instance, is naturally got at a lower price direct from 

 a colliery than through local dealers, and when the 

 association takes 15 tons of binder-twine from a manu- 

 facturer on a single order, it can well offer advantages 

 to members who have previously bought their 2, 3, or 

 5 cwt. at a time, according to requirements. There is 

 all the difference, in such instances as these, between 

 wholesale and retail, and no cause for surprise remains 

 that even the largest of farmers in the Eastern 

 Counties should have readily joined the association, 

 or that the most far-seeing of manufacturers should be 

 hastening to secure for themselves a business that 

 promises to become exceptionally important. Such 

 is the chairman's own conviction of the practical 

 utility of the organization, that, in the course of the 

 conversation I had with him at Ipswich, he said to me : 

 ' I am convinced that if any working farmer in the 

 Eastern Counties, farming anything up to 100 acres, 

 were to do the whole of his business through the 

 association, both buying and selling, he would save 

 enough money to pay the larger proportion, if not the 

 whole, of his rent.' 



Nor have the benefits been shared exclusively by the 

 members. The further effect of the competition repre- 

 sented by the association's proceedings has been to 

 reduce prices generally, and non-members have been 

 able to purchase goods from the ordinary traders at 

 lower rates than they have ever done before, although 

 in some instances they have not generally recognised 

 that it is combination which has brought this about. 

 Presumably, in the very unlikely event of the combi- 

 nation collapsing, the prices would at once be raised 

 again. 



