^e6 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



up as well as pull down. By their professors teaching technical 

 knowledge, by their laboratories and their monthly publications, 

 the prized Bulletin, which in most districts has had a decided 

 success, by the prize competitions organized, the prizes offered 

 for better cultivation, for the construction of liquid-manure tanks, 

 for the use of perfected implements, by the advice freely given 

 on the use of artificial manures, and by similar action, the syndi- 

 cates have become one of the most serviceable agents of technical 

 education in France. Beyond that they proposed effectively to 

 defend agricultural interests on the political battlefield. And in 

 one instance, at the general election of 1889, the Syndicat 

 Economique Agricole of Paris really was fortunate enough to 

 score a success of this kind, by inducing a majority of the candi- 

 dates for the new Chamber to accept openly the agricultural 

 programme, rejection of the proposed commercial treaty with 

 Switzerland, lowering of the railway tariff, and a reduction of 

 the land tax, all which measures have been carried. They also 

 aimed at organizing codperative sales of agricultural produce, 

 combination for productive purposes, in the shape of cooperative 

 dairies, vintries, and the like. 



All this really is on paper the most interesting portion of the 

 work done. One seems to feel from Count Rocquigny's account 

 as if the great problem, the favorite problem with agriculturists 

 of all nations, had at length been solved, and farmers had been 

 taught to become their own salesmen, altogether independent of 

 intermediaries. We read of horses and cider sold by syndicates 

 in Normandy, of a syndicate taking an army contract for straw, 

 and of similar transactions. But, in truth, all this amounts to 

 very little. The practical successes which at all deserve speaking 

 of are on this ground still to come. On the other hand, the 

 syndicates have really been surprisingly successful in their organ- 

 ization of supply cooperation, and, beyond that, in their organiza- 

 tion of cooperation for common work, much of which Anglo-Saxon 

 and German farmers accomplish in combination, without resort to 

 a formally constituted union. In France the spirit of combination 

 was before 1883 altogether undeveloped, but the Syndicats must 

 not take all the credit for this success exclusively to themselves. 



