CHAPTER X. 



THE ORGANISATION OF DISTRIBUTION. 



§ 1. Co-operative Marketing. 



A GRICULTURE carries more middlemen on its back 

 /-\ than any other industry. If it is to flourish as it 

 -*- ^* could were the necessaries of life brought to the 

 vast masses of our population at a price within their pur- 

 chasing power, the middlemen must be largely eliminated. 



There is no more necessary article of food than milk. It is 

 the only food for an infant ; it means bone and muscle and 

 brain in after life, and the consumption of milk should be 

 universal in every household. Yet there are thousands of 

 households in every large town where it is never seen at all, 

 or only in a tinned form ; while to find milk in a rural cottage 

 is the exception rather than the rule. There is no greater 

 tragedy in all the world than to see village children literally 

 dyincr for want of the milk which their fathers help to produce. 

 Milk is sent off to the towns to be sold at a price often more 

 than double what it has cost to produce. The high price of 

 milk prevalent in England is due to two causes. First, the 

 unscientific feeding of the cows on most farms and the 

 failure of the farmer properly to test the milking capacity 



the following table, given in the Statistical Abstract relating to British 

 (Cd. 6637, 1913) :— 



