December, 1910.] 



529 



Miscellaneous, 



villages the help of some intelligent 

 outsider is required. Such a society, 

 for instance, exists at Vavuniya in 

 Ceylon ; it buys from the local culti- 

 vators their cattle, vegetables, and 

 other things, paying to them on the spot 

 about three-quarters of their value. It 

 then sends these things to the big 

 market of Colombo in fortnightly con- 

 signments, and sells them there through 

 an agent. "In this way higher prices are 

 realised than would be <the case in 

 Vavuniya, which is only a small village. 

 After deducting the cost of freight 

 and sale, the balance is made over to the 

 original producers, and it is found that 

 in this way they (1) can get larger 

 returns than if they sold to local middle- 

 men, and (2) can get rid of produce that 

 they could not sell if they were to de- 

 pend on the local market or on middle- 

 men. 



This is probably, whenever it can be 

 arranged, the best way of organising 

 the sale of produce in a village, the 

 moment that it reaches the stage when 

 it cannot be disposed of in the imme- 

 diate neighbourhood without the aid of 

 middlemen.. If the latter class can be 

 kept out of the field, so much the better, 

 but the working of such co-operative 

 sale will in general require the aid of 

 some philanthropically minded indi- 

 vidual with more intelligence and know- 

 ledge of the world than is likely to 

 occur among the local people ; and such 

 a man may not be forthcoming. In 

 such a case the only thing to be done is 

 to depend on the arrival of the middle- 

 man, who will soon turn up when any 

 produce is to be collected in the neigh- 

 bourhood. The disadvantage of the 

 middleman method is two-fold ; (1) that 

 the middleman will not come at the very 

 start, when a few people are trying to 

 grow something for sale, and this the 

 very time when their efforts should not 

 be discouraged by any unnecessary diffi- 

 culties, and (2) that the prices obtained 

 will not on the whole be so good as by 

 means of the co-operative society. 



Whenever the '' planting " or capital- 

 ist agricultural industry exists in a 

 district, a very good local market is 

 generally provided for anything that 

 the peasant can produce of the same 

 nature as that grown upon the estates. 

 The villager can sell his own produce to 

 the estate for cash. The great point to 

 be attended to in this connection is that 

 the produce be sold at an early stage of 

 preparation, so that the estate can make 

 it up into finished material as good as 

 its own. The peasant has not in general 

 the knowledge necessary to turn out a 

 high grade of produce, but if he sella 

 67 



tea to the estate as leaf, rubber as milk, 

 cacao as freshly cut pods, and so on, the 

 estate can work these up into first-class 

 material. Very numerous native tea 

 gardens in Ceylon, for example, exist. 

 Each has an area of one to forty acres. 

 It would be impossible to turn out a good 

 grade of tea from such a small acreage, 

 but the leaf is sold to the nearest big 

 factory on a capitalist estate. 



It a market can be found in this way, 

 the progressive man need not be con- 

 fined to crops which have a market in 

 the country. He may, for instance, 

 grow tea, rubber, or other crop for 

 which the market is thousands of miles 

 away, but if there id no capitalist 

 industry, he must stick to crops for 

 which there is a local market. 



Now in both these cases the Govern- 

 ment can help without pauperising the 

 agriculturist, by aiding the man to find 

 new crops, with school gardens and the 

 like, and by providing local markets, e.g., 

 by subsidising local capitalist industries 

 to buy up his produce, if necessary. 

 The great trouble that is often expe- 

 rienced with the growth of the same 

 products as the local capitalist is that 

 the villager grows one or two trees, and 

 then steals a lot of the produce from the 

 neighbouring plantations, using his own 

 trees as a blind. But this can be got 

 over by more stringent legislation, and 

 to encourage the villager to grow the 

 same products as the neighbouring 

 estates is desirable, and sound policy in 

 more ways than one, for it makes him 

 directly interested in the success of the 

 capitalists near by, instead of regarding 

 them simply as interlopers. 



Lastly, with the money that he gets 

 for his sales, tne man must buy tools, 

 clothes, and whatever else he requires. 

 For a long time he may be content with 

 the locally made tools, &c, but sooner 

 or later the imported goods begin to 

 replace them, and then it becomes neces- 

 sary for the country to export some- 

 thing to pay for these. If there be 

 local capitalist industry there will not 

 be any need for the small growers to 

 export, but if not, they must do so, or 

 the country will be steadily drained of 

 money, 



Just as with the sale of produce, so 

 with the purchase of necessities, co- 

 operation, if it can be brought in, is very 

 desirable. Co-operative purchase may 

 be applied to many things, but of course 

 presupposes the existence in the village 

 or district of some one with sufficient 

 intelligence to attend to such matters. 

 Manure, for example, is purchased by a 

 co-operative society in southern C6ylon ; 

 they find out what each member will 



