220 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



recognition of dominant economic force must go hand in hand with 

 agricultural research and education in the various branches of science 

 upon which agricultura is based, if the latter are to receive their full 

 fruition, and if the business of farming is to be profitably conducted. 

 The highest skill in the task of actual production may, in the absence of 

 efficient business management and of the organisation in the interests of 

 the agricultural producer of the conversion, transport, distribution and 

 sale of his produce, fail to prevent the bankruptcy court being his ultimate 

 destination. A good recent illustration of the anomalous and unfor- 

 tunate result of lack of such organisation is the sale to millers by 

 thousands of farmers last autumn of exceptionally high quality 

 wheat at a relatively low value, and the subsequent purchase by the 

 same farmers, in many cases from the same somxe, of residual wheat 

 offals for the feeding of their pigs or cattle at considerably higher prices 

 than those paid to them for the whole gi-ain; or again, the crisis among 

 dairy farmers last spring arising out of the attempt on the part of a power- 

 ful combination of milk distributors to compel them to enter into 

 summer milk contracts at prices which left them no prospective margin 

 of profit, while retailing the same commodity to the public in the towns 

 at nearly three times the price paid to the producer, thus incidentally 

 putting a premium upon the increased importation from abroad of milk 

 powder and other milk substitutes. 



The crying need of such organisation is admitted. But how is it 

 to be supplied ? Numerous public-spirited efforts have been made for 

 at least thirty years by the Agricultural Organisation Society and other 

 like bodies, with Government encouragement, to develop co-operative 

 effort among British farmers, comparable to that which has attended 

 the same movement in Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Italy, 

 Hungary and (in more recent years) Ireland, but without any very 

 marked or persistent success, largely owing to the somewhat obstinate 

 individuality and mutual suspicion of our agricultural population, and 

 partly and chiefly owing to the lack of the initiative and control in such 

 enterprises of outstanding and universally acknowledged leaders of 

 indisputable integrity and business capacity. 



If efficient organisation is the chief desideratum of British rural J 

 industry, and if its availability depends upon trained leadership, where | 

 is such leadership to be found ? 



Let us glance at the other side of the picture. There is a strong., 

 political movement in favour of Land Nationalisation. It is part of the j 

 accepted creed of organised labour in this country; it is, significantly,- 

 the chief political tenet of the two national groups of organised agricul- 

 tural workers. It implies no hostility amongst its adherents to agricul- 

 tural landowners, either individually or as a class. In fact, the country 

 squire, especially one who is, so to speak, ' ascriptus glebte ' — ^whose 

 family has become deep-rooted for several generations in the soil of the ; 

 locality as well as in honourable traditions of public service and philan- ' 

 thropic utility — is, or at least, speaking generally, was (until post-War 

 impoverishment threatened his continuing stability) an object of respect, 

 and often of affection, among the local working population, more so 

 veiy often than the farm tenants upon his estate. Every reputable 



