ORGANISATION. 175 



necessaries — and others as well ; for the business rapidly 

 extended. Fertilisers, seeds, implements, feeding-stuffs, 

 and sundry other things found their way into the Society's 

 price list. About the same time a similar society was formed 

 at Leith, for Scotland. At that point, unfortunately, having 

 taken the lead among European countries, after our accus- 

 tomed manner, we stood still. The Continent took the 

 same business up only at later dates. (For the Co-operative 

 Society formed in 1866 at Thisted in Denmark was a Store.) 

 In Germany Raiffeisen had planned the way, with his little 

 parish societies, catering for all the wants of his humble 

 little proteges, which of course included agricultural require- 

 ments, among them " the poor man's cow." In the early 

 'eighties things took a bolder shape. By a curious coinci- 

 dence the same year, 1883, saw the late Professor Tanviray 

 forming the first French Agricultural Syndicate at Blois, 

 and Dr. Haas starting his little Hessian co-operative union 

 of only a handful of little local societies — both for the same 

 purpose, that of collectively purchasing goods. 



So far is it from wonderful that this movement should 

 have grown rapidly and greatly extended, that one may 

 rather feel surprise at the fact that it failed to be taken 

 up among ourselves with the same readiness which had 

 been long evinced among our neighbours. However, the 

 British farmer loves plodding on in the same old beaten 

 track, like those East African natives who still will recognise 

 no other money except the familiar " thaler " of the Empress 

 Maria Theresa, who died about 140 years ago.^ It is rather 

 curious to note the effect which the remarkable spread of 

 agricultural co-operative supply has had upon the trades 

 purveying the articles in which the new societies dealt, 

 after the first shock of surprise and annoyance had been 

 got over. If they did not exactly welcome them afterwards, 

 at any rate they learnt to contemplate them with a dis- 

 tinctly smiling face, because they found that, although their 

 deliveries to the persons concerned decreased, and their profits 

 on a given quantity grew less, yet on the other hand their 

 collective sales generally went up considerably in volume. 



1 See M. M. Fischel— "Le Thaler de Marie Theresa." Giard et 

 Briere, Paris, 1912. 



