EVOLUTION OF THE A.O.S. 103 



In effect, however, the great services which the Chamber had 

 already rendered in helping to direct public attention still 

 further to the general subject were not to fructify into a 

 definite carrying out of the scheme projected, and the actual 

 establishment of agricultural co-operation as a national 

 movement was to be brought about under widely different 

 conditions. 



British Agricultural Organisation Society. 



In 1900, there was formed at Newark, Nottingham, by 

 Mr. W. L. Charleton, a British Agricultural Organisation 

 Society based on lines akin to those of the Irish Agricultural 

 Organisation Society. 



The Agricultural Organisation Society Formed. 



Within a year of this British Agricultural Organisation 

 Society being established, the decision was arrived at to 

 unite it with the National Agricultural Union, and form a 

 new body, to be called the Agricultural Organisation Society. 

 Mr. R. A. Yerburgh, M.P., one of the earliest of Lord 

 Winchilsea's supporters, a member of the Central Chamber 

 of Agriculture's Committee on Co-operation for Purchase, 

 and then President of the National Agricultural Union, 

 accepted the position of President of this new body on the 

 understanding that it adopted co-operation as its funda- 

 mental principle ; l and it is in accordance with this under- 

 standing that the operations of the Agricultural Organisation 

 Society, brought into existence as the final outcome of the 

 series of events here narrated, have been conducted ever 

 since. 



B.— PROGRESS AND DEVELOPMENT. 



Registered in April, 1901, under the Industrial and 

 Provident Societies Act, the Agricultural Organisation 



1 Mr. Yerburgh had previously made it a condition of his acceptance of 

 the presidency of the National Agricultural Union that that body should 

 abandon " Protection and Politics." 



