26 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



larger sums of money ; however, his organisation for 

 agricultm"al purposes did not extend farther than to credit. 

 The fame of Raiffeisen, which has since filled the world — 

 among other countries also Ireland and India — penetrated 

 into the palace of Berlin. And in 1874 the late Emperor 

 William nominated a Royal Commission — consisting of 

 three very eminent men, namely, the two professors of 

 political economy, Nasse and Held, and Professor K. G. 

 Siemens (who first introduced beet-sugar making into Ger- 

 many) — to inquire into his system. Their Report was vwst 

 favourable — not at all like that of the three gentlemen of 

 Gotham of our Central Chamber of Argiculture just twenty 

 years later, who found that it represented simply our 

 system of overdraft " already sufficiently practised in this 

 country." The Raiffeisen organisation, which extended, 

 in its small way, to all branches of Co-operation, was 

 accordingly approved and befriended, and began to spread. 

 The year 1883 saw the first farmers' co-operative supply 

 society — a very humble institution — established in Hesse. 

 In this matter we had really forestalled the Germans. For 

 on my return from Germany in 1869 I learnt, on inquiry, 

 from the late Dr. Voelcker, that we then already possessed 

 nine County Associations — almost entirely for the collective 

 purchase of phosphates, of bones and coprolites — besides, 

 so Mr. E. O. Greening informed me, an unknown number of 

 unregistered little farmers' clubs for the same purpose — 

 and two more ambitious societies, severally in London and 

 in Leith, which aimed at covering the whole field of at any 

 rate co-operative supply in connection with Agriculture in 

 their several countries. However, at that point we practi- 

 cally stood still — indeed, we retrograded from it — until 

 the year 1899, when under the chairmanship of the late 

 Lord Wenlock we formed the " British Agricultural Organi- 

 sation Society," avowedly in imitation of Sir Horace 

 Plunkett's " Irish Agricultural Organisation Society," 

 formed in 1894. Our " British " Society eventually coalesced 

 with the " rump " of Lord Winchilsea's abortive " National 

 Agricultural Union," to become the " Agricultural Organi- 

 sation Societj'." Germany, on the other hand, pushed on. 



