128 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



important, since education given to adults, in addition 



to improving actual farming, unfailingly reacts sensibly 



upon the disposition for receiving education among the 



young, whom, of course, we are now anxious to educate 



up to the mark. Lord Reay's Committee clearly discerned 



this when it wrote in its Report, under the head referring 



to " winter schools " — the value of which it found to have 



as yet not been fully appreciated : " Before the children 



of the agricultural classes will fill schools, the parents must 



be convinced that the instructors have information worth 



securing." Nothing will convince them more effectively 



than the acquisition of useful information by themselves. 



In all countries where instruction has been given to the 



adult we find that the State has taken an active hand in 



the work. All the same, barring one essential item, on 



which State action is indeed essential, it is rather associative 



than official action which has conquered the ground. Lord 



Reay recognised this when, as Chairman of his Committee, 



he spoke in high praise of the veritable " wonders " which 



in this respect the syndicats agricoles of France have brought 



forth. Their work has indeed been fruitful. However, on 



the whole, German associations have done better still. And 



one important point in syndicat agricole tuition was learnt 



from the Italian cattedre amhidanti, promoted in the first 



instance by a public-spirited independent Savings Bank, that 



of Parma. The striking difference between the two kinds of 



initiative — by the State and by Associations— is perhaps 



best observed in Belgium, where the State was indeed the 



first to occupy the ground, reaping, however, but a scanty 



and indeed disappointing harvest from its labours. The 



associative spirit came in and struck root, and the whole 



face of things became changed. The effect is all the more 



remarkable because, in Belgium, in country districts. 



Co-operation was practically unknown. There were no 



Raiffeisen societies, no syndicats agricoles — at any rate, 



none to speak of. And those few were organised on faulty 



lines. Two of M. Leon d'Andrimont's hanques populaires 



styled themselves " agricultural." But they did little 



business. The rural societies of the Boerenbond, formed 



