CHAPTER IX 



CO-OPERATION AND CREDIT 



EVERY student of rural life deplores the 

 lamentable absence of co-operation amongst 

 our farmers and small-holders. We still refuse 

 as a nation to treat agriculture on business 

 lines pure and simple. Exports have been 

 regarded as the tests of prosperity in the case 

 of our manufactures. Our farmers export 

 nothing ; the outstanding features in their 

 case is the ever-increasing volume of agri- 

 cultural imports. France, able in normal 

 years to feed her own people, has felt com- 

 pelled to organize her agriculture against the 

 competition of lands like the Argentine, with 

 better climates and unexhausted soils. The 

 use of refrigeration has given fresh impetus 

 to the trade in imported foodstuffs. Ocean 

 freights have become so low that frozen meat 

 can be brought from Australia for slightly over 

 |d. per Ib. Despite these facts co-operative 

 effort in rural England is either non-existent 

 or advancing at a snail's pace. Nevertheless, 

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