The Middleman in Agriculture. 
75 
of farm produce. More than one is known to have come to 
financial grief. It would be of little avail to speculate on the 
causes of their failure, but it may be observed that not all who 
take the name of “ co-operation ” really adopt its principles. A 
real co-operative association of producers, dealing only — or, at 
any rate, mainly — in the products grown by its members, and 
dividing all profits fairly among the producers, has seldom, 
if ever, been tried on such a large and well-organised scale 
as to afford a complete test of the principle. Theoretically, the 
idea seems unassailable, but there are considerable practical diffi- 
culties on the dealing with which success or failure depends. 
The most successful application of the co-operative principle, 
hitherto, in agricultural production has been in cheese factories 
and creameries. The former have in a few cases been estab- 
lished for some time, but they have not been multiplied ; the latter 
have never become very popular in Great Britain, but in Ireland 
a large number have been started and appear to be flourishing. 
Reference has already been made to the fraudulent profits 
which are still obtanied by some unscrupulous middlemen in the 
case of margarine and meat. As regards the former commodity, 
two suggestions have been made for the amendment of the law. 
One is that all margarine, or butter containing an admixture 
of it, shall be sold uncoloured, or coloured in a distinctive 
manner; and the other is that travelling inspectors shall be 
appointed by a central authority to carry out the law against 
adulteration. 
As regards meat, the figures given of the supply at the 
Central Market showed that nearly half of it was foreign. 
When we see in the butchers’ shops anything like that propor- 
tion of foreign meat we shall believe that it is all sold openly 
and honestly, but until then it is justifiable to assert that a 
fraudulent profit is systematically made by selling foreign meat 
as English. There are several bills before Parliament this 
session which propose to deal with the matter, and a Select 
Committee of the House of Lords is promised on the subject. 
In summing up these rather disjointed observations on a 
subject of which it may fairly be said that age does not wither, 
nor custom stale — but indeed increase — its infinite variety, let it 
be admitted that to talk of eliminating the middleman, in a 
country such as this, is absurd. He is at once the product and 
the organiser of civilisation. 
“ Even in modern England we find now and then a village 
artisan who adheres to primitive methods, and makes things on 
his own account for sale to his neighbours, managing his own 
