470 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



ment of the cultivation of more paying crops. If we are 

 to make a success of sugar-beet growing, of the cultivation 

 of tobacco, and of that most promising branch of modern 

 Agriculture, the growing of large crops of potatoes for 

 industrial purposes, it is almost indispensable that we should 

 grow those crops and market, or else work them into market- 

 able shape, in a co-operative way. And that multitude of 

 Small Holdings upon which we have set our heart, and 

 which is the hope of our small folk, and the promise of a 

 revival of our coimtry life, repeopling deserted square miles 

 with prosperous and contented folk, cannot possibly be set 

 up upon any other foundation than that of Co-operation, 

 which unites small forces, providing equality for the small 

 holder economically with the large farmer, and knits society 

 together to something like a family, with realised community 

 of interest, of aim, of sentiment. 



And Organisation is not difficult, if you will only look at 

 it in a practical, plain and matter-of-fact way. We have 

 specimens to follow all round. But we scarcely need them. 

 Although our national sentiment, more particularly among 

 country folk, appears to predispose us to segregation and 

 individualist aloofness, wherever we do associate, our 

 national bent leads us to associate in a more practical and 

 really more simple way than our Continental neighbours, 

 used as they are to having tout regie et reglemente for them. 

 There are no societies more simply and yet more efficiently 

 organised than our co-operative societies, consisting mainly 

 of industrial working meu' — plain, uncultured men that 

 they were at the outset, educated now out of recognition 

 of their former selves, but maintaining their simple, effec- 

 tively working machinery in its primitive plainness, though 

 it has had to be magnified more than a hundredfold. On 

 this ground the Germans are miles behind us. It is for 

 that reason, not least, that, in taking up the matter in 1905, 

 at the Birmingham Congress, I have laboured so earnestly 

 for a close connection and dovetailing between industrial 

 Co-operation and agricultural. Our industrial co-operators 

 will prove our best co-operative schoolmasters for agri- 

 cultural Co-operation, at any rate among small farmers 



