156 ADDENDA TO THE MINORITY REPORT 



1912, is better than any scheme which is either purely 

 official or purely voluntary. 



The new Agricultural Organisation Society has only 

 been at work four years, and the war years must 

 inevitably have caused it great difficulties. No doubt 

 its methods of working can be improved ; and no 

 doubt it could have achieved more with more money. 

 But the field of work is vast, the subject is complex, 

 and British farmers are slow to adopt co-operative 

 methods ; and we desire to record the opinion that 

 the Agricultural Organisation Society is, broadly 

 speaking, constituted on right lines, and ought to be 

 developed and improved, and not, as certain people 

 think, scrapped or deprived of its semi-official char- 

 acter by the loss of its annual grant. If we may 

 put forward a suggestion without attempting to 

 develop it in detail, it is that the central body, with 

 its twofold character partly official and partly volun- 

 tary, should find its counterpart in every county with 

 a local association in which also the two elements — 

 the official and the voluntary — ^are both represented : 

 the local associations working with and receiving 

 assistance and guidance from the central body. 

 Agricultural organisation may be planned centrally, 

 but it must be carried out locally ; and the local 

 body must be permanently on the spot to assist 

 when wanted. One of the chief difficulties of the 

 Agricultural Organisation Society has undoubtedly 

 been its inability to remain continuously on the spot 

 in the many districts of England and Wales in which 

 it has started movements. 



Great as is the indirect importance of agricultural 



