106 THE STATE AS FARMER 



stores which had previously taken their goods, but 

 without success, the societies preferring to forgo 

 the opportunity for exceptional profits in the interests 

 of their previous customers and of the public generally. 

 It thus became evident that if organisation on both sides 

 had been more extended, so that the stores could have 

 drawn from organised sources the bulk of those supplies 

 which can be produced at home, the steadying effect 

 upon prices would have been still more marked. 



I have put into italics what looks like 

 the despairing cry of a society which has 

 worked nobly, and recently with government 

 assistance, to bring co-operation to the 

 farming fraternity. But the A.O.S. strikes 

 too feeble a note. It never claims for the 

 State the right to organise production and 

 distribution. It comes cap in hand, and 

 seems to admit that the farmer who does 

 a good thing for himself as well as for his 

 fellow-citizens should be looked upon as a 

 self-denying saint. War tells us, what we 

 ought to have insisted upon before, that the 

 production of food is a very vital and funda- 

 mental State affair, it is not a House of Lords 

 or a farmer's concern except as delegates of 

 the nation, and cannot be left to be attended 

 to or not at their pleasure. The A.O.S., 



