CHAPTER IV 



Organisation 



Next to Education probably the most urgent want of our 

 national Agriculture at present is Organisation, Practically 

 speaking our Agriculture lacks all such. And what feeble 

 beginnings there are, scattered thinly over a wide area, are 

 the result purely of a quite new movement (copied from the 

 Irish), which has not yet made nearly the headway which 

 it is desirable should have been made. And yet, never 

 was there a business interest which by its very nature was 

 more dependent upon Organisation. Never also was there 

 a business interest confronted by such a serried army of 

 thoroughly organised other interests, against which it is 

 called upon to try its strength in daily strivings. In the 

 American Senator Mr. Gronna's words, " there is no industry 

 except farming in which a man has to accept the price offered 

 by the buyer." And never was there a business interest to 

 which better examples were set, all round, of organisation 

 accompanied by convincing proofs of its success. It is 

 not only Germany, the constantly quoted, with its close 

 upon thirty thousand agricultural co-operative societies, 

 which instructively points the way. There is France, with 

 its imposing phalanx of " Agricultural Syndicates " ; 

 Denmark, premier country that it is in respect of Co-opera- 

 tion for agricultural purposes, with its multitude of local 

 societies, carefully adapted to every particular need, and 

 its great Egg export and Butter and Bacon centres ; and 

 Russia, in which the emancipation lately completed has 

 conjured a whole host of co-operative societies, so to speak, 

 out of the earth, so as to give it first rank in Europe in 



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