CONCLUSION. 469 



and laboured for. The best educated country folk, that is, 

 the Danes, have, of course, been the first to realise the 

 necessity of Organisation, as a means of defence, and also 

 as a method of progress and an avenue to profit — just because 

 they were best educated. However raw, untaught settlers 

 on American prairies, moujiks in Siberia, and peasants 

 in the various Balkan kingdoms, even backward cultivators 

 under the Turkish crescent, and fellaheen in Egypt, and 

 uncultured men down to the aborigines of India, have shown 

 understanding enough to accept organisation, once it was 

 offered to them, and they were shown what advantages it 

 holds in store for them. And all alike have benefited by it. 

 Do what we will, on this side of the North Sea, in our 

 unorganised way, the Danish dairyman successfully holds 

 his own even in our own market. The organised Frenchman 

 sends us his flowers, his fruit and his early vegetables by 

 specially provided fast trains and specially chartered boats. 

 The Dutch zuivel co-operator, with the help of his co-opera- 

 tive markets, dominates in his trade, as does also the German 

 organised landwirth with his co-operatively organised sale 

 of live stock. We have beginnings in this country. But 

 we are backward — lamentably backward. The Eastern 

 Counties farmer of large holdings demonstrates to us the 

 value of co-operative organization ; so does the Pershore 

 fruitgrower ; so does the petty Irish farmer. It is the same 

 all round. Co-operation is a friend and benefactor equally 

 to all. But we do not seem generally able to mend our 

 snail's pace. More than twenty years ago Mr. Jesse Collings 

 wrote in the Contemporary Review about " £35,000,000 

 worth of agricultural produce " that we annually imported 

 into our kingdom, which we might just as well have grown 

 at home, if we only would adopt progressive methods, as 

 samples of which he quoted the practice of German Wiirtem- 

 bergers, whose ways he had observed on the spot. There 

 is really very much more that we import from abroad and 

 that we might produce ourselves in competition with our 

 Continental rivals. And our doing that would after all 

 be worth more, alike for our Agriculture and for the Nation 

 generally, than a duty clapped upon wheat, to the discourage- 



