September, 1910.] 



bacon- factory ; and the bacon factories 

 now carry on almost all the growing 

 bacon trade of the country. In 1895 the 

 first egg society was started.Co-operative 

 credit societies have accompanied and 

 fostered the growth of the whole move- 

 ment, and this carefully designed and 

 perfected organisation lays coustant and 

 deliberate siege to the British market. 

 It is guided by a far clearer knowledge 

 of our demands than our own farmers 

 possess. It effects economies which are 

 imposssible for unorganised producers. 

 It secures for the Danish farmer a more 

 profitable access to the best market in 

 the world than is enjoyed by those who 

 have that at their doors, 



In Germany a similar advance has 

 been made by kindred though less 

 developed organisation. There purchase 

 societies, supported by a carefully or- 

 ganised system of co-operative bauks, 

 economise the expenditure of millions 

 of pounds on the materials of farming, 

 while in more recent years there has 

 been an enormously rapid growth of co- 

 operative dairies. 



Co-operative purchase has bulked 

 largely in France also. The Syndicates 

 Agricoles, instituted in 1884 to economise 

 cost and to spread information about 

 artificial fertilisers, were grouped in 1886 

 into the " Union Centrale des Syndicats 

 des Agriculteurs,'" and now the buying 

 syndicates of French farmers form per- 

 haps the strongest buying organisation 

 in the world, while a dozen great co- 

 operative syndicates of fruit growers 

 devote unceasing attention to the 

 English market. 



In Belgium there has been, since 1895, 

 an extremely rapid development of co- 

 operative societies, which have greatly 

 added to the agricultural wealth and 

 resources of the country. 



Italy has copied in her co-operative 

 development all the best models of other 

 countries, and presents in many respects 

 the most perfectly systematised and the 

 broadest national effort that is any- 

 where to be found. Driven by outside 

 competition to betake itself to more 

 intensive farming, Italian agriculture 

 found help in developing a system of co- 

 operative banks, which, while encourag- 

 ing thrift and finding a productive use 

 for the savings of artisans, provided the 

 capital required for those new develop- 

 ments of agriculture which circumstansce 

 made imperative. 



The banks instituted by Signor 

 Luzatti developed in 1883 into the great 

 system of Village Banks which has irri- 

 gated the small agriculture of Italy 

 with much needed and well invested 



237 Agricultural Finance & Co-operation, 



capital ; and it has been through the 

 spread of these binks that the co-oper- 

 ative purchasing syndicates instituted 

 in 1887 have baen able to develop their 

 usefulness. It is worth while to note 

 that in Italy, as in France, the co-oper- 

 ative movement has been thy chief 

 factor in introducing improved methods 

 of cultivation, while it has also greatly 

 increased the utility of the banks by 

 guiding the expenditure of reproductive 

 loans into the best channels. 



These are instances cf the manner iu 

 which agricultural organisation is sti- 

 mulating the rural life of foreign 

 countries. 



Ireland. 



Ireland possesses a much more develop- 

 ed system of co-operation thau either 

 England or Scotland. That it does so 

 is perhaps partly the result at onca of 

 its almost complete dependence upon 

 agriculture and ot the acute depression 

 of its agriculture through social econ- 

 omic causes. But its progress is much 

 more due to the untiring and eventually 

 successful labours of Sir Horace Plunkett, 

 whose seven years of steady pro- 

 pagandism brought about at last the 

 famous Recess Committee of 1896, Den- 

 mark became the model for Irelaud, 

 and it has been copied with a singular 

 degree of success. Creameries, egg socie- 

 ties, purchase societies, credit societies, 

 have not only increased the profits of 

 Irish farmers, but have raised the quality 

 of Irish produce from the low level at 

 which it formerly stood to one which, 

 in many cases, may well excite the envy 

 as well as the admiration of English and 

 Scottish farmers. 



The Irish Agricultural Organisation 

 Society has been, and still is, the inspiring 

 force of agricultural progress in Ireland. 

 It has affiliated to it 345 creameries, 261 

 credit societies, and 307 societies for 

 other purposes. The trade of the cream- 

 eries in 1907 amounted to £2,017,623; 

 the turnover of the societies in the same 

 year was £266,416. The Irish Agri- 

 cultural Organisation Society was partly 

 supported by a Government subsidy, 

 which was withdrawn in 1908. 



England, 

 The development of agricultural or- 

 ganisation has been both later in its 

 origin and slower in its progress in 

 England than iu Ireland, 



Isolated societies, some of them 

 originating forty years ago, existed in 

 different parts of the country ; and in 

 1896 the British Produce Supply Asso- 

 ciation was formed by Lord Winchilsea 

 to act as a centre for marketing farm 



