210 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICUUIURE. 



only to a very trifling extent upon money originally put 

 into shares, but in the main upon purchases, which he is 

 in any case bound to make. He becomes his own middleman, 

 and, putting his middleman's profits into the society's 

 funds, he in due course becomes a shareholder and to that 

 extent a capitalist. The agricultural co-operator begins 

 with larger requirements and smaller available resources. 

 Even for mere supply, the collective purchase of require- 

 ments, he wants a little money at starting. And his main 

 aim in co-operative supply, perhaps, is not simply to get 

 what he now gets more cheaply, but to get it more cheaply 

 for the purpose of enabling him to get more of it and so 

 improve his farming. It is therefore not only arguable, 

 but appears quite reasonable, that in ver}^ backward and 

 poor countries, such as India and Egypt, for instance, some 

 little vState aid may be given in the earliest stages. The 

 proper qualification to this is, that it should be limited to 

 what is absolutely necessary, and made distinctly a tempo- 

 rary business only. That has been done both in India, 

 according to what Lord Curzon as Viceroy laid down, and 

 — in matters of supply of goods — in Egypt, where the 

 Khedivial Agricultural Society found after a few years 

 that, in view of the considerable proportions which the 

 business in agricultural requirements — which it had saddled 

 itself with temporarily for the benefit of the fellaheen — 

 assumed, it could not go on supplying such goods, but 

 must look to the fellaheen to help themselves. 



In our own country it cannot be pretended that farmers 

 or small holders are in anything like such an equally helpless 

 position as Indian rayats or Egyptian fellaheen. Even our 

 very small folk have sufficient material stamina to work 

 out their own salvation, if only led in the proper way. Our 

 two Governments — the English and the Irish — have gra- 

 tuitously dabbled in State help, in Pauhne phrase, with 

 " zeal, but not according to knowledge." In Ireland, which 

 has preceded England in the movement, the Government 

 has for a time provided money in aid of slowly growing 

 agricultural Co-operation. Circumstances seemed to neces- 

 sitate that. However, when all was over, one of the chief 



