32 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



patriotic key, that message did not offend any one else. 

 For people were slow to detect that it might mean needlessly 

 dear bread and also dear everything else. 



There were two great measures then taken — bracketed 

 with smaller ones — designed really or ostensibly to benefit 

 Agriculture. One was the creation of provincial " Chambers 

 of Agriculture," which are a different thing altogether 

 from our debating " Chambers," and really a type of body 

 that, unused as we are to the same discipline and organi- 

 sation " from above," we could scarcely hope to establish 

 among ourselves. Those Chambers have served the Emperor 

 well in a manner that we could not altogether approve. 

 They have proved admirable recruiting centres for what 

 Mr. Gompers has aptly dubbed " Kaiserism." But they 

 have at the same time also done very much indeed for 

 Agriculture. Officers of the Prussian Ministry of Agricul- 

 ture, who had before 1866 held similar offices under elec- 

 toral and ducal Crowns, since " amalgamated " with the 

 Prussian, just about that time owned to me that it was 

 quite a different thing administering Agriculture in a dis- 

 trict which they could overlook, like Hesse or Nassau, and 

 in such wide districts as Prussia, with her extended terri- 

 tory, necessarily must assign to them. Here was a means 

 of better localising administration. But the new policy 

 meant a good deal more. The Chambers, composed of 

 bona-fide agriculturists interested in Agriculture, knowing 

 their district well and endowed with ample administrative 

 and rate-levying powers, might do a great deal for Agricul- 

 ture in the officially right sense, since they were continually 

 under the direction and supervision of the Central Ministry, 

 whose orders they were directed to carry out, though their 

 counsel and information were gladly sought and taken on 

 local and technical matters ; but also in a thoroughly genuine 

 way designed and adapted to bring benefit to the calling 

 and to those who practise it. Inquirers will find that in 

 matters of general policy there is complete harmony of 

 vievrs between the members of those bodies and the Minis- 

 try. But in technical matters they are given a free hand, 

 and their capacity and local knowledge make them of 



