430 



Progress of Agricultural Co-operation. [Aug., 



extension in co-operative organisation, and these anticipations 

 were more than reahsed during the following year. 



Propaganda Campaign. — The first essential was to preach the 

 principles and expound the methods of co-operation in every 

 agricultural district throughout the country, and a special propa- 

 ganda campaign was instituted in February, 1919, in the course 

 of which public meetings were held at all the principal market 

 towns in England and Wales, with supplementary village meet- 

 ings in the evenings in the areas where market towns were scat- 

 tered and difficult of access. The actual results of this campaign 

 exceeded the most sanguine expectations, and at its conclusion 

 in January, 1920, the Society was able to report that some 300 

 propaganda meetings had been held during the year, that these 

 meetings had recruited on the average 100 farmers a day as 

 members of the local societies, and that fresh capital had been 

 raised for these societies to the extent of over £300,000. 

 During the period of just under twelve months the membership 

 of farmers' co-operative societies in England and Wales 

 increased by over 40 per cent., and their share capital by well 

 over 100 per cent. 



Organisation of AlSiliated Societies. —The results, from the 

 point of view of co-ordination and systematic organisation, were 

 even more important. A careful study of the distribution, 

 types and operations of the affiliated farmers' societies in 1918, 

 in conjunction with the map of England and Wales, revealed 

 the fact that societies had been started in the country without 

 reference to each other and on no preconceived plan which 

 would admit of proper co-ordination. Every imaginable type, 

 from the large general trading society covering two or three 

 counties and dealing with every aspect of its members' business, 

 down to the village society of a dozen members co-operatively 

 owning a single threshing machine, v/as in existence, and Uttle 

 attempt had been made to bring these scattered units together 

 and to work out schemes appropriate to each area which could 

 be developed so as to provide for all the needs of the local agri- 

 cultural community. Many important producing areas were 

 unprovided with any form of co-operative organisation. Others 

 were congested with small societies competing with each other 

 for existence. What was obviously needed was an application 

 of the principles inherent in modern town planning, combined 

 with an intelligent appreciation of the individual characteristics 



