256 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



is very desirable that there should be such. They cannot 

 dive quite so low among the strata of society as the others ; 

 but they can go fairly low down. There are plenty of such 

 banks abroad, composed of small cultivators, and doing 

 well. What members gain by them is this : they secure a 

 lending and depositing institution of their own, from which 

 so long as there is money, and provided that they comply 

 with the conditions laid down, they have a right to claim 

 credit — credit which, once more, may in respect of time 

 and otherwise be more fully adjusted to their own require- 

 ments than would be that conceded by an ordinary bank ; an 

 institution working without taking toll from its customers 

 in the shape of profit, endowed with permanence, so long 

 as the members decide to maintain it, and a very great help 

 to other Co-operation, all of which requires money for 

 carrying on. That institution is within their easiest pos- 

 sible reach. 



Between the two types our farmers ought to be able to 

 find one to suit their own case. 



It would carry me too far to go in detail into the subject 

 of their organisation. I have dealt with that matter 

 elsewhere.^ But it may be in place, by way of further 

 recommendation, to call attention to the fact that all that 

 imposing fabric of German Agricultural Education, all 

 that technical knowledge and technical proficiency, bearing 

 such magnificent fruit, which Mr. Middleton has described 

 in his masterly Report, took their rise in the creation of co- 

 operative credit institutions. Before such became general, 

 Co-operation in Agriculture there was none in Germany 

 — absolutely none. Co-operation for Credit placed its 

 Midas' hand upon the land, and former dross became turned 

 into gold. Education in technical institutions undoubtedly 

 did much. But Co-operation — by far the most precious 

 component part of which is Education — did more. It 

 made the education given outside its own limits effective, 



^ See " People's Banks : a Record of Social and Economic Success," 

 Third Edition, 1910. " Co-operative Banking : Its Principles and 

 Practice," 1907. "A Co-operative Banks Handbook, with 

 Rules," 1909. All published by P. S. King & Son, Orchard House, 

 Westminster. 



