M.— AGRICULTURE. 235 



summer, to place on the market in the late autumn and winter, when 

 their commercial value is highest. 



The co-operative use of motor-lorries for carrying farm produce to 

 populous centres of distribution. 



The co-operative ownership of portable timber-felling and centralised 

 timber-seasoning plant. 



The conversion of the timber of one or (by joint ownership of plant) 

 of several estates into planks, barrels, gates, fencing, mattock handles, 

 clogs, &c., and its preservation by creosote or other preservative. 



The organisation of the cultivation of sugar-beet, and its conversion 

 into beet-sugar, alcohol, and cattle foods. 



The establishment of co-operative central markets, auction marts, 

 and slaughter-houses. 



The organisation of comprehensive schemes of local drainage. 



The use of draining machines for excavating drains and laying drain- 

 pipes. 



The utilisation of village sewage in the production of osiers, and 

 their conversion into baskets. 



The erection of centralised waste-product plants for the utiHsation 

 as pig and poultry foods of animal carcases of low commercial value. 



The organisation of periodical pilgrimages of local farmers to centres 

 of research and demonstration, or to skilfully worked and wisely 

 equipped farms. 



And, above all, the elimination of superfluous and unnecessary 

 middlemen. 



There is probably no worse consequence of the lack of cohesion, 

 organisation, and leadership in British agriculture than the extent and 

 power of the middleman interest^ — unparalleled elsewhere in the civilised 

 world — whose parasitic tentacles have slowly yet sm-ely fastened them- 

 selves upon the industry and are sucking out its life's blood to the 

 detriment of producer and consumer alike. It is largely a ' horizontal ' 

 interest of useless speculators, and not a ' vertical ' interest of helpful 

 distributors. While it thrives the industry decays. Where it is itself 

 sufficiently organised it has even been known to dictate imperiously the 

 price of some essential fai-m product to producer and consumer alike — a 

 price which would have left no margin of profit to the former — and 

 thereby to compel Government intervention in order to avoid helpless 

 acquiescence, a dangerous departure and indicative of the inherent 

 weakness of the industry. 



Apart from the heavy burden of local and Imperial taxation, the 

 toll levied by the middleman is the main cause of the poverty-stricken 

 condition of the English agricultural labourer. While companies whose 

 main object and justification are the distribution of British agricultural 

 produce are paying dividends of 25 per cent, or more, or issuing bonu>» 

 shares to their urban shareholders and to those who ' toil not, neither 

 do they spin,' the countryside is being slowly denuded of its physically 

 and mentally robust manhood owing tO' the indigence of the agi-icultural 

 producer, their emigration is being fostered by statutory enactment, and 

 foreign produce of the same or a like description is being sold in increas- 

 ing quantities in British markets. It is an unedifying spectacle which 



