Mat 1907.] 



307 



Miscellaneous 



wait for the balance until such time as the sale could be effected to their advantage. 

 So well has this further development in the way of agricultural combination 

 answered in Hungary, that a centi'al organization is being projected for the express 

 purpose of encouraging and facilitating the construction of co-operative corn eleva- 

 tors in all tne corn growing districts of the country. 



An excellent example of what can be done in a small way is afforded by the 

 Muskham (Notts.) Co-operative Agricultural Society. This village organization was 

 started in 1899, with seven members and a secretary, and several months elapsed 

 before the membership was increased. The shares were 5s. each, Is. 3d. being called 

 up. Just prior to the harvest of 1899, the society resolved to purchase a reaper and 

 a binder at a cost of £32 (although their paid up capital was only £15), and the 

 members obtained an advance from the local bank on their giving a guarantee to 

 hold themselves collectively and individually responsible for the repayment. A scale 

 of charges for using the machine was drawn up, and the receipts have since then 

 been sufficient to clear off the loan, so that the machine now belongs to the society, 

 and the further income derived from it, over and above the wear and tare, repre- 

 sents so much profit. 



Once co-operation is started in this small way, the advantages of it become 

 so clearly realised that it soon spreads and is utilised for other purposes. Mr. 

 Montgomery, of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for 

 Ireland, mentions the case of a parish of 1,600 inhabitants in Hanover, which can 

 boast of five flourishing co-operative societies, a savings and credit bank, an agricul- 

 tural supply society, a dairy society, as egg society, a milling society, and a society 

 for the sale of cattle. 



It is a cardinal rule with all co-operative societies, in whatever country they 

 may be situated, that politics and religion are barred. As a matter of fact, these 

 co-operative societies have been the means of bringing into friendly relations 

 members of opposite political factions and of various religious, between whom pre- 

 viously feud and enmity had prevailed. In Belgium and in Italy these societies 

 have been actively propagated and fostered by the Roman Catholic Clergy as an 

 antidote— and a very successful antidote — to socialism. 



Co-operation can be used for innumerable purposes, among which are the 

 purchase of manures, the purchase of steam threshers, the sale of cattle, the sale of 

 corn, cattle breeding, horse breeding, egg and poultry, manufacture of jam, steam 

 ploughs, cultivation and sale of fruit, milling, improvement of cart horses, allotments 

 and small holdings, bee keeping, flax, cheese, dairy and butter making industries, 

 purchase of seeds, purchase of agricultural implements ; and many societies have 

 started merely as a co-operation to forward goods in bulk so as to get the advantage 

 of truck load rates, and co-operation to purchase goods at one and the same time 

 with the same object. 



The movement started in Ireland with Sir Horace Plunkett, in 1899, but it was 

 tremendously up-hill work, and he had to address fifty meetings before he got the 

 first co-operative dairy started, and it was not until another twelve months had 

 passed that he saw the second. The success gradually became more assured, so that, 

 in 1891, the creameries and co-operative societies numbered 17, until, in 1894, the Irish 

 Agricultural Organization Society was formed with a view of controlling the whole 

 movement, supplying all the necessary information required, and fostering it in 

 every possible way. The year following the formation of this society, the number of 

 creameries and societies increased to 67. 



The movement in England was of a later date than that in Ireland, and it 

 was not until 1901, seven years after the Irish Society had been formed, that the 

 British Agricultural Organization Society came into existence as a result of, and to 

 further the establishment of co-operative societies in England, 



