ORGANISATION. 203 



farming processes, from the first stage to the last, from 

 the selection of the seed to the marketing of the product, 

 as well as for the promotion of general social well-being 

 in farm life, Organisation has proved its value, and, as 

 this field is being reclaimed more and more fully, organised 

 methods are being employed in increasing measure." So 

 be it ! We see in the past and present what Pliny saw only 

 in the dim and distant future, namely, that " caring for 

 wheat more than for men " must needs lead to disaster 

 and ruin — in his case the conversion of the smiling, fertile 

 plain, such as was the Agro Romano in his time one of the 

 granaries of Rome, into a barren, unproductive, desolate, 

 ruin-stricken, miasma-poisoned, scarcely habitable desert. 

 Italian statesmen are now labouring to repair what has 

 been done amiss. The results of a similar policy could 

 not be equally serious among ourselves, for obvious reasons. 

 But the care for men and women should certainly stand 

 first, if we really want to make our country the wealthier 

 and the happier. 



Co-operation applied to Agriculture has shown that it 

 can do much more than cheapen fertilisers and feeding stuffs 

 — just as Industrial Co-operation has shown that it can do 

 more than cheapen groceries and hardware. Rural Co- 

 operation can do even more than industrial, more in respect 

 of social and moral results, because with reference to them 

 it stands, under our present aspect, at any rate, on more 

 favouring ground, inasmuch as it has, in every single case, 

 a smaller community to deal with, upon which its efforts 

 can the better tell. Our Industrial Co-operation, being 

 on the look out for " bigness," has run away from that 

 condition. Rural co-operative work is, as a late German 

 Chancellor has very properly put it, addressing more 

 specifically the beneficent Raiffeisen societies, whose great 

 aim is what Mr. Gladstone happily called " man-making," 

 in the main " detail work " — work applying in each several 

 instance to only small things — the " little things " which " are 

 great to little men." The Raiffeisen society is a parish 

 society. Its units have combined to a large Union, professing 

 and practising the same principle throughout and trying to 



