Agricultural Finance & Co-operation. 232 



[September, 1910. 



derive from the force of economic 

 circumstances. The old order of a separ- 

 ate economic life for each individual has 

 given place to a new state of affairs, in 

 which every man's participation in the 

 struggle for existence is severely gov- 

 erned by his relations with those who 

 are his rivals or partners. The indus- 

 tries of the towns are mainly carried on 

 under the control of great combinations, 

 of workers, of employers, of merchants. 

 At the same time the growth of co- 

 operative distribution and the steady 

 drift of distributive as well as of manu- 

 facturing operations into larger and 

 larger concerns are tendencies which are 

 rapidly eliminating intown and country 

 the small independent businesses whose 

 proprietors were once so important a 

 class. 



This influence has been more slowly 

 felt in the country than in the towns. 

 Yet here also it begins unmistakably 

 to assert itself. The great revival of 

 rural life and industry, which has made 

 itself felt throughout the Avorld during 

 the last twenty years, and which seems 

 to gather force as it goes on, has im- 

 ported into rural pursuits some of the 

 conditions of towu industry. In parti- 

 cular it has gradually allied itself, 

 almost everywhere, with a new tendency 

 to combination among farmers for the 

 promotion of their common interests. 



This i-, in fact, an inevitable result of 

 combination in other industries. Not 

 only is that combination a constant 

 object lesson in the revision of business 

 methods. It is no less a compelling force 

 that makes for the reconstruction of the 

 mercantile side of farming. 



The farmer who finds that when he 

 buys he buys from combined merchants 

 and operatives, and when he sells he 

 sells to combined customers, must indeed 

 be slow to learn if he does not in the 

 end discover that the very necessities 

 of his existence compel him to make 

 common cause with those whose in- 

 terest are identical with his own. 



Co-operation and the Business Side 

 op Farming. 

 It is with the business side of farming, 

 primarily, that the co-operative organ- 

 isation of agriculture takes to do. Its 

 utility consists in its placing the 

 individual farmer in the most favour- 

 able position in the trading departments 

 of his work. The object of every 

 merchant is to buy at wholesale prices 

 an I sell at retail; but too often it 

 happens that for the farmer, in his 

 mercantile capacity, this desirable pro- 

 cess is reversed, and he finds himself in 

 respect of all the materials of his 



industry a retail buyer, and in respect 

 of his saleable products a wholesale 

 seller. It is as a remedy for this state 

 of affairs that co-operative trading com- 

 mends itself first to farmers. 



It is perhaps natural that the neces- 

 ity for co-operation in agricultural 

 trading should have been felt later in 

 Great Britain than in other countries. 

 Every such necessity arises first in the 

 least prosperous and least remunerative 

 branches of an industry ; and depressed 

 as British agriculture has been during 

 the last generation, acutely as those 

 engaged in it have felt the pressure 

 of foreign competition, it is yet true 

 that British farmers have on the 

 whole till recently been much better 

 off than their rivals in other countries. 

 Denmark, for example, was driven into co- 

 operation, and particularly into co-oper- 

 ative dairying by the ruin of her 

 general agriculture ; and, with all the 

 advantages which the Danish farmer 

 derives from co-operation and from the 

 wise assistance of the State, it still 

 remains true that he receives for the 

 milk, which is his staple product, a 

 smaller price than his British rival. It 

 is perhaps not without some illustrative 

 significance that [agricultural co-oper- 

 ation has made way in the three countries 

 of the United Kingdom in inverse propor- 

 tion to thei. 1 general agricultural pro- 

 sperity, — Ireland being in this respect 

 greatly in advance of either of the other 

 countries, while Scotlaud still lags be- 

 hind England. Yet the extent to which 

 combination and co-operative methods 

 have been adopted in other countries 

 alters the conditions for the British 

 farmer. No skill in the other work of 

 the farm can enable him to compete 

 successfully with his foreign rivals unless 

 he also adopts their more developed 

 business methods. He is surrounded in 

 his own markets by competitors who are 

 effecting savings and securing advant- 

 ages by co-operation. He cannot afford, 

 any more than persons engaged in other 

 business cau, to neglect methods by 

 which he may increase the efficiency and 

 diminish the cost of production. 



The extent to which combined trading 

 has displaced elsewhere the older and 

 less efficient business methods still pre- 

 valent in this country, is probably not 

 fully realised by many of those who are 

 actually engaged in agriculture, and who 

 cannot explain the practical difficulty 

 which they experience daily in com- 

 peting with foreign producers ; and 

 figures are perhaps not fitted to give a 

 really clear and adequate impression of 

 the extent of the co-operative movement 

 in agriculture, But the broad fact is 



