AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 441 



large and generous idea of the power of collective 

 action. After all, a co-operative society functions as 

 a middleman by means of a paid officer, and the farmer 

 with fifty tons of manure to buy can often by energetic 

 inquiries get a price lower than the society is able to 

 quote ; the able farmer has to be induced to feel that 

 in the long run it is better to help his inferior colleague 

 to a living than to beat him at a bargain. It is, again, 

 possible perhaps to teach farmers new industries and 

 new methods, but it is a much surer procedure so to 

 enlarge their perceptions that they find out the oppor- 

 tunities for themselves. Men mostly learn by example, 

 by looking over the hedge ; and the bad farming one 

 sees so often in England alongside the best is not due 

 to any lack of knowledge, but to the low mental calibre 

 of many of the men occupying the land. Of course 

 this lack of intelligence, of respect for the things of 

 the mind and the bearing they have on practical life, 

 is not a specially agricultural characteristic ; it is far 

 too much an English trait, common to all professions 

 and classes ; but it is answerable for most of the 

 deficiencies that can be justly charged against our 

 farming. Let us acknowledge, however, that things 

 are changing, and more rapidly than might have been 

 expected. It is little more than twenty years since 

 any widespread attempt at agricultural education 

 began in this country ; and those who remember the 

 hostility and scorn with which agriculturists viewed 

 the establishment of colleges, of lectures and experi- 

 ments, and contrast the attitude of the farmers of 

 to-day, cannot but conclude that the first step which 

 counts has already been taken. The country, too, is 

 now in a fair way to obtain a system of agricultural 

 education and investigation which will satisfy all the 

 demands for specialist knowledge that the farmers of 



