Small Holders What they Must Do to Succeed Witb a Chapter on The Revival ol Rural Life EDWIN A. PRATT TWO SHILLINGS NET iJ'tate GtolUge of Agricultutc Kt CfarneU IniUBraitB 3tt|aca, «. 11. Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013761774 SMALL HOLDERS WHAT THEY MUST DO TO SUCCEED SMALL HOLDERS What they Must Do to Succeed WITH A CHAPTER ON THE REVIVAL OF COUNTRY LIFE BY EDWIN A. PRATT Author o{ "The Organisation of Agriculture," "The Transition in Agriculture," , Etc. Xiondon: P. S. KING & SON ORCHARD HOUSE, WESTMINSTER. 1909 PREFATORY NOTE. The main purposes of the present volume are : — (i) To urge the need for co-operation on the part of small holders, if their production of commodities for sale (as distinct from the growing of produce for their own domestic consumption) is to be a commercial success, such co-operative action being especially applied to tenancy, purchase of necessaries, transport, and sale ; (2) To gain confidence for this principle by showing what either can be, or is being, done by agricultural co-operation ; and (3) To bring before the minds of the- British public that problem of the Revival of Country Life which has already attracted much earnest attention in the United States (thanks to the patriotic action of Mr. Roosevelt), and is, at the present moment, especially deserving of consideration here vi Prefatory Note. not ony by reason of the social and economic conditions of our rural districts in general, but also because of the needs and possibilities of improvement which would be opened up by an efficient administration of the Small Holdings and Allotments Act on the lines, not simply of providing town dwellers with suburban fields or gardens, but of actually settling more people on the land itself. I have, also, discussed the question of ownership or tenancy, as applied to small holdings, and I have dealt in some detail with the subject of agricultural credit, which, acute as it is already among the farming fraternity, is certain to be a primary factor in the success or failure of many a newly- created small holder in the not far distant future. Edwin A. Pratt. June, 1909. CONTENTS. CHAP. I. THE NEED FOR ORGANISATION H. PROPRIETORS OR TENANTS ? III. CO-OPERATIVE TENANCY . IV. THE BUSINESS OF FARMING V. COST OF PRODUCTION VI. COMBINATION FOR SALE . VII. WHAT CO-OPERATION IS DOING VIII. THE EGG AND POULTRY INDUSTRY IX. COMBINATION FOR TRANSPORT . X. CO-OPERATIVE CREDIT XI. CO-OPERATIVE INSURANCE . XII. THE HUMAN ELEMENT XIII. THE REVIVAL OF COUNTRY LIFE APPENDIX : FARMERS AND SEEDS INDEX I 20 40 59 67 9 126 134 158 191 199 210 239 243 SMALL HOLDERS: WHAT THEY MUST DO TO SUCCEED CHAPTER I. THE NEED FOR ORGANISATION. On what lines can the movement in favour of settling a greater number of people on the land, and bringing a greater area of land under cultivation, by means of small holdings, best be developed? What may we consider as the conditions especially needed to ensure the individual and collective success of the small holders them- selves ? In what manner, also, should the movement be directed so as best to promote our social and economic progress in general, and the revival of country life in particular? We have here three problems of to-day which may well be commended to the serious atten- tion of the British people, and much, indeed, will depend on their right solution during the course of the next few years. S.H. B 2 Small Holders. To such solution; for example, we must look mainly for any practical results to follow from the " Back to the land I " cry which has been inspired by (i)the flocking of the agricul- tural population into towns already too often overcrowded ; (2) the depressed condition of so many of our: agricultural interests ; '(3 ) the prevalence of so much unemployment in urbari centres ; (4) the falling off, iri national stamina ; and (5) the fact, also, that we are importing vast quantities of food supplies we might very well raise for ourselves, with the further effect of thereby nullifying materially the various disadvantages here indicated. The reply to the questions thus advanced is a most complicated one,- based, as it must be,- on so many conflicting interests and consider- ations ; but,- although I cordially endorse the general principle that such solution will best be found iri a more .wide -spread settlement,- under suitable conditions, of small holders on the land, it is a matter o'f supreme importance that what may be called the working details,; forming the practical and fundamental basis,- of this general principle should be wisely planned and effectively carried out. The orig- inal ideas may be excellent,- and the measures of reform admirable in theory ; but the whole question of success 01; failure, especially where many thousands of persons of varying capacity, character, and financial resources are concerned. The Need for OReANiSAXioN. 3 may really depend on the way in which the movement is developed. To my own mind it seems perfectly clear that we are not going to remedy the existing social and economic disadvantages here in question simply by the creation of small hold- ings by the thousand, through the opera- tion of State machinery (and with or without any consequent burden on the taxpayers), if, when we have so done, we regard these small holders as so many individual units,- leaving them to struggle as best they can with fate and fortune, and especially with the competition on home markets of foreign supplies produced, transported, and sold under, it may be, far more favourable conditions. The individual unit who "(as distinct fronl the; labourer or the artisan growing supplies only for his own family) aims at gaining a liveli- hood from his holding, may, perhaps, suc- ceed in so doing as long as he can dispose of his produce to advantage in a neighbouring town. He may be able to do this notwithstand- ing the fact that he pays a comparatively high rent for land situate near to the town ; that he is producing at an unduly high cost,- and is marketing under conditions absorbing a good deal of time which might far, better be devoted to production. Though a gain may be secured under these circumstances, the position of the producer B 2 4 Small Holders. is, assuredly, not economically sound. But it will become still less so when, owing to the creation, by Act of Parliament, of thousands more of small holders, material changes are brought about in market conditions, on the one hand because a large number of labourers and artisans will grow for themselves, thus diminishing the local demand ; and, on the other, because the largely increased local pro- duction for sale may be in excess of local requirements. Under these conditions an out- let on the markets of the country in general will, in many a centre of production, become still more necessary than it is already ; but the economic unsoundness of the small holder must, in turn, become greater if, as an indi- vidual unit, he then sends out his own small supplies of commodities, produced at a rela- tively high cost, to conipete with a. great volume of other home or foreign supplies,. From this point of view it is material to bear in mind the extent to which small hold- ings and allotments are already held in this country, a matter of detail apt to be overlooked by those of the land reformers who are gene-^ rally content to point to tlie so-called " scandal " of the ownership of exceptionally large estates by a comparatively small number: of persons. Turning to the Board of Agriculture " Acre- age and Live Stock Returns " for 1907 (that The NEEEf FOR Organisation. 5 is to say, for the year before the present boom of small holdings set in), I obtain therefrom the figures given on page 6, showing the number of agricultural holdings of various classes on June 4, 1907, the proportion that each class; then bore to the total, and the average size per holding in eacli country. There were, I find, in Great Britain in June, 1907, or six months before the Allotments and Small Holdings Act of that year came into existence, over 342,000 persons in posr session of or cultivating holdihgs (as distinct from rough grazing land not cultivated or farmed) which ranged in size from i to . jjo acres, and so came within the small holdings limit. But the figures giveri, the reader will notice, refer only to holdings of one acre in size or over, and allowance must natur- ally be made, also, for allotments of less than one acre. In another part of the same Return there are some calculations as to the extent of the cultivated area of Great Britain, and the land thus accounted for comprises 47,754,469 acres, or about 85 per cent, of the total surface of the country. The Return continues : — - A substantial addition must be made to this, not only for the gardens attached to private houses, which make in the aggregate no small contribution to the food of the people, but also" for the large Small HolderSt Average Size of Holding (Acres). PI P fH U3 to M M VO i lO «3 " r-- rn -^ * vq » IH O CO t-. ID r» «1- o" M o s s ? CO b ro .■4- "m d 5?, & i§ H m H Ol "O to lO t~ p o\ o\ o^ « w « d 12; IS 3- « 0» 0_ M_ Qi OD en 6 H N H 1 i-T M K U < 1. si § g g Tf IT) Tf o 5? 1 qj o> in ID CO m H 8 1 r 00 H O 1% ON TJ- H lb ro N M « ^0 M d o cT oo" 00 M H di o w > 5 1 s 1 « 3 8 W P m 1 la The Need for Organisation. 7 number of allotments and other plots of cultivated land not exceeding one acre in extent which do not come within the scope of these Returns. According to the special Return published by the Board in 1890 (C. — 6144) the total number of allotments (detached from cottages) not ex- ceeding one acre in Great Britain was 455,005, and the number of " small holdings " of a quarter, but under one, acre was 28,652. From an earlier return (C. — 4848) it appeared that in 1886 the total number of allotments attached to cottages,, potato runs, and cow runs was 436,319. If, therefore, these figures, in default of later infor- mation of similar completeness, might be assumed to be applicable at the present time, it would appear that in addition to the holdings exceeding one acre which are accounted for in these Annual Returns there are nearly a million plots of land below that limit which might be described as coming within the agricultural area. Incidentally, one may conclude from all this that, notwithstanding the comparatively poor direct results of the Small Holdings arid Allot r ments Acts passed prior; to 1907,- the land- owners of Great Britain mUst, as a whole (and allowing for individual exceptions), have done far more in the way of granting land to small cultivators than certain sections of re- formers are generally disposed to give them credit for. But the point I wish especially to make in this connection is that while, on the one hand, there is already in the country a con- siderable body of what we may call non-statu- tory small holders (many of whom, notwith- 8 Small Holders. standing the helping hand of land owners and also their own energy and enterprise, carry on a keen struggle for existence, so far as they rely for a living on the sale of their commodities), on the other hand, there is now being created a further considerable body of statutory small holders who, in proportion as they become producers for sale, are to com- pete more or less in the markets of the country, not alone with the foreigner, having his right of free access thereto, but, also, with the norir statutory British small holders who have pre- ceded them'. For a full understanding of the situation thus being brought about, it is necessary to con- sider briefly the position to which the Small Holdings and Allotments Act of 1 907 (now incor- porated in the Act of 1908) and the still earlier legislation on the subject have led. Dealing first with small holdings,* I may explain that Commissioners have been ap- pointed whose duty it is to ascertain the extent to which there is a demand for small holdings, or would be a demand if suitable land were available, and the extent to which it is reasonably practicable to meet such de- mand, reporting thereon to the Board of • A "small holding," under the Act, is interpreted as "an agricultural holding which exceeds one acre, and either does not exceed fifty acres, or, if exceeding fifty acres, is at the date of sale or letting of an annual value for the purpose of income tax not exceeding fifty pounds." The Need for Organisation. 9 Agriculture. That body may, in turn, re- quire the County Council concerned to prepare one or more draft schemes for giving effect to the report ; while, should the County Council refrain from so doing, the Board may instruct the Commissioners themselves to pre- pare the schemes, and carry them out at the cost of the local authority. A County Council need not, however, wait for the receipt of a report from the Commissioners, but can itself prepare a scheme (to be submitted to the Board) for the provision of small holdings. If it should appear to the Board of Agricul- ture that the carrying out of a scheme has; resulted, or is likely to ' result, in a loss, the Board may pay the whole or any part of that loss out of a fund of £100,000 provided by Parliament under the name o'f " The Small. Holdings Account " ; but it will be seen that when a sufficient demand for land for small holdings is considered to exist, the County Council is practically forced, under the Act, to take steps to meet it. For the purpose of providing small hold- ings for persons who desire to " buy or lease," and will themselves cultivate the holdings,; the County Council may, by agreement, either purchase land or take land on lease, within or without their county ; and if they are unable to acquire, by agreement and on reasonable \erms, suitable land for persons who desire to lo" Small Holders. lease small holdings,- they, may, under cer- tain conditions specified by the Act,- acquire land compulsorily. These compulsory powers apply, however, exclusively to the case of per- sons wanting to lease a small holding, the County Council not being authorised to com- pel one proprietor to sell, in order that ariothei; may be set up in his place. Among many other provisions — the whole of whi'ch I need not here stay to discuss in detail — it is enacted that a County Council shall not acquire land for: small holdings save at such price or rent that all expenses incurred will be recouped out of the receipts from sales or rent, the price they ask or the rent they fix: being " such reasonable amount " as will secure them against loss. As regards the provision of allotments, the Act says that if the Council of any borough,- urban district, or parish are of opinion that there is a demand for allotments for the labour- ing population therein,- and that such allot- ments cannot be obtained at a reasonable rent and on reasonable conditions by voluntary arrangement between the landowners iand thei applicants, they shall provide a sufficient number of allotments and shall "let " (not sell) them to persons of the class mentioned ; but the statutory duty of a local authority to provide allotments does not go beyond the pro- vision of plots of one acre or less in extent, and The Neec for Orcjanisation. .i i no one allotment holder may have more than five acres. Subject to these limitations in the meeting of individual demands,- compulsory powers for acquiring suitable land for allot- ments are conferred on the local authorities ; while the obligation is thrown upon tTie County Councils, should a demand for allotments exist,- of themselves providing for it, in default of action being taken by the District or Parish' Councils. '. .We have here, iri effect,- an elaborate piece of State machinery for the provision, on a whole- sale scale,- and under compulsory clauses, if necessary, of small holdings and allotments throughout England and Wales (the Act does not extend to Scotland arid Ireland)' ; and the extent of the " demand " which has heeri made for them is indicated by some figures given by Sir E. Strachey in the House of Comtnoris dri November 14, 1908. Up to that date, the total number of applications received under the Small Holdings and Allotments Act had been 23,097, and the total acreage applied for was 363,678. The approximate number of applicants "ap- proved " was 12,575, and the estimated acreage required by them was 175,412, while the num- ber of acres then already acquired or arranged for was 14,982. In giving later figures, on May 6, 1909, Sir E. Strachey said that of the " some 23,000 persons " who had sent in appli- cations, 13,203 had been approved by the 12 Small Holders. County Councils. In the course of sixteen months 30,250 acres had been acquired or sub- mi^tted by scheme, and the area actually in pos- session of the Councils was 1 1,346 acres, purchased at a cost of £370,965, and exclusive of 10,071 acres leased. In addition to the land acquired, 53 compulsory orders in respect to 4,170 acres had been applied for. Provision had been made for the wants of about 2,200 applicants, though all of these were not then in possession. In some quarters — and especially in certain quarters not free from suspicions of political motives— strong complaints have been made of the alleged unreasonable slowness of the rate of progress thus made in the administration of the Act ; though these complaints are not endorsed by Sir E. Strachey, who, in his statement on May '6, further said that " as a whole he thought the County Councils had worked both willingly and well, though some were more forward and others had lagged behind." I have no wish to discuss here all the different aspects of this particular question ; but I would, in passing, suggest as extenuating circumstances for the County Councils that they have not only had to face various difficulties in obtaining land (I shall revert to this subject later oh), but they have required to act with circumspectipn lest, as the result of an excess of zeal in the interests of the applicants, they might throw undesirable burdens on the ratepayers. The Need for: Organisation. ;i3 The financial aspects of the position are, indeed, in no way a negligible quantity. Apart from the heavy liabilities that may be incurred in the purchase or in the leasing of land, there are the further expenses in regard to transfer, new buildings, repairs, tithe, property tax, land tax, and insurance. There may be the cost of adapting the land for small holders ; and iri regard to this item' Section 8. of the Act of 1908 says : — A County Council may, if they think fit, before sale or letting, adapt for small holdings any land acquired by them for that purpose, by dividing it and fencing it, making occupation roads, and exe- cuting any other works, such as works for the provision of drainage or water supply, which can, in the opinion of the Council, be more economically and efficiently executed for the land as a whole. There is the salary of the special officer whom, on the recommendation of the Board of Agriculture, a considerable number of County Councils are appointing to deal with the busi- ness arising under the local application of the Act . Then it is understood that County Councils are at liberty to impose not only interest on loans, but sinking fund charges, so that at the end of a stated period the tenants will have recouped the amount of the purchase -money, and virtually made the local authority a free gift of the land. AH these various expenses and charges must needs swell the amount of 14 Small Holders. the rents charged, and already there are com- plaints from many quarters oT the disappoint- ingly high rents that are being asked, especi- ally in the case of land within easy distance of an urban centre. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the financial obligations incurred by the County Councils are not covered by the rents and other receipts,- then, as specified in a Treasury Minute dated December 31, .1907, one-half of the loss may be made good (subject to certain stipulations) out of the Public Funds. "The Minute in question says : — In the absence of any experience of the working of the Act, the Chancellor of the Exchequer does not think it possible to define very closely the circumstances in which the Public Funds will be called upon to provide for such losses. If the proceedings of the local authorities are conducted with ordinary discrimination and prudence no losses should be incurred. But if, after all reasonable precautions have been taken, an unavoidable loss ensues, the Chancellor of the Exchequer thinks that the taxpayer may fairly be expected to share it to the extent of one -half. That is to say, brie half of the loss is to fall on the taxpayer, and the other half on the ratepayer. ; Personally, therefore, I am riot disposed to blame the Courity Councils for acting with caution, notwithstanding the impatience both of applicants eager for land and of politici,ans who. The Need for Organisation. .15 with an eye to the future, may be no less eager to convince these applicants of the sincerity of their own devotion. What concerns me more, however, on the pre- sent occasion is to point out that if, apart from the total of 23,000 persons who have sent in applications, the 13,000 who have already been " approved " are, in due course, provided with what they want (with, it may be, others to follow), then we get the fact that the consider- able number of small cultivators already existing in Great Britain is, in the case of England and Wales, to be swollen under the Small Holdings and Allotments Act by thousands of new comers, a large proportion of whom, though producing for sale, will be persons alike of limited capital, and of limited experience in agriculture. These individuals, having been provided by the State and the local authorities with so much land, will then, apparently, be left to work out their own salvation thereon as best they can ; and ques- tions must needs arise that concern not only their own prospects of success, but, also, the extent to which their added competition on the markets of the country may affect the position of the small holders who have preceded them there. It may, and doubtless will, be said, " There is room enough for both." To this I would respond, " There will be room enough for both — provided you organise the forces concerned ; 1 6 Small Holders. but if you simply leave one mass of disorganised home producers to compete with another on the markets of the country (each individual a soli- tary unit struggling with hi's fellow units) as well as with the highly organised foreign pro- ducers,- you will simply make confusion worse confounded, and the entire body will become more than ever the prey of middlemeni flourishing at the expense of classes whom land- lords and reformers,- legislature and local authorities,- have combined to create." These possible conditions may be illustrated by what is already happening in a certain market town of an unprogressive type in the South-west of England. The small farmers,- the small holders, and the cottagers, bring their little lots of produce to the market, and there set them out for inspection by the middlemen "higglers." The latter make the tour of the market, indicate which lots they are prepared to take, and then retire to decide among them- selves the prices they will give. The sellers have no voice in the matter, and, under existing conditions, are left with no alternative between accepting what is offered and taking their pro- duce home again. The main concern of the higgler is to give only just as much as will encourage them to continue bringing in their: supplies. If the number of individual pro- ducers and the quantities of produce on offer were doubled, the prices would fall still lower. The Need for Organisation. 17 and the struggle for existence on the small holdings would become keener than ever. The only possible remedy is to be found in the adoption of some well-devised scheme of organisation, under which the producers would either become independent of the local middlef- men, or, at least, be enabled to control the market. It is, again, notorious that many a producer who forwards his supplies to a dealer in Covent Garden or elsewhere is — rightly or wrongly — too often grievously disappointed with the result, and says bitter things against those at whose mercy he considers himself placed. The dealer, in turn, may have something to say about the lowness of prices being due to a " glut " of particular commodities — owing, among other things, to what may be called a non-scientific distribution of the produce, quan- tities in excess of requi^rements being sent, more or less indiscriminately, to certain large markets, while smaller but still available mar- kets are neglected. Alternatively, there may be questions of bad packing, insignificant indi- vidual lots, and so on. There are thus two sides to the question ; but the result, from either point of view, may well be that the unorganised small holder carries on an arduous conflict with adverse cir- cumstances,- declares that farming or market gardening " does not pay," and finally leaves S.H. c 1 8 Small Holders. his holding to be taken over by some new comer who, with ttiore hope, but, possibly, less experience, joins afresh in the struggle, only to achieve a like result. If the full story of the cultivation of small holdings from a j business standpoint could be told, it would irtClude the record of many a heart-breaking failure, due not so much to some fault in the all -important personal equation as to the economically un- sound conditions of small holders as individual units. The coriclu'siori to Which these considerations lead is that, if a greatly expanded system of small holdings, even under State and local government auspices, is to be made a success for the holders themselves, and if, also, possible losses to taxpayer and ratepayer are to be avoided, that system must be developed on lines of effective combination or co-operation for the purpose of (i) acquiring land ; (2)' production" of commodities for sale ; and (3) the marketing thereof,- thus enabling small cultivators to operate with the advantages of large ones, and establishing the economic soundness of an otherwise economically unsound position. These different aspects of the question I propose to discuss in the chapters that follow ; and the whole subject may, I would suggest, well be commended to the attention of thosei who are in any way concerned in the wide variety of interests involved. Sympathy with i The Need: for Organisation. :i9 the small holdings movement and with all that depends thereon is deserving of hearty com- mendation ; but the greatest degree of service, alike to the small holders and to the country at large,- will be rendered by those who seek, not only to extend so excellent a movement, but to direct it along essentially practical lines . c 2 CHAPTER II. PROPRIETORS OR TENANTS ? The question as to whether or not small holders should be the owners or only the tenants of their holdings requires to be dealt with at the outset as one of the fundamental problems of the whole situation. The case for ownership is based mainly on three considerations — (i) sentiment, (2) poli- tics, and (3) security of tenure. In regard to sentiment there is, undoubtedly, something attractive in the idea of being the actual owner of a plot of land, of whatever dimensions ; and the desire of almost every successful merchant, trader, or professional man to have a " place " of his own in the country may well be shared by the modest cultivatofy for whom fhe land has the further attraction of being the possible means by which he can gain a living. But while persons of the former type may have ample resources with which to gratify their sentimental leanings, it is quite possible that those of the latter type may not ; and, if they are to cultivate their holding with the idea of growing thereon produce for sale on the . Proprietors or Tenants? 21 market, the question will inevitably arise whether or not indulgence in the sentitnental idea of ownership will so far hamper their free- dom of action, or impose such additional strain on their financial resources, that they will be placed at a disadvantage when they dispose of their commodities on the marliet in competi- tion with others who, having produced under more economical conditions, can make a better profit on the basis even of identically the same prices . There is, of course, the assumption that the peasant proprietor will work harder than the tenant in the cultivation of his holding ; but there is also the certainty that the Covent Garden dealers, for example, would not give a cultivator a single penny more for his produce because he had purchased, instead of renting, the land on which it had been grown. It is, there- fore, essential that the small holder who grows for sale should look at the whole matter as a business proposition. If he can really afford the luxury of ownership, without prejudicing his balance-sheet, then he may well be allowed to indulge in his sentimental leanings ;'but, what- ever his means may be, he must remember that the actual market value of sentiment is nil. Politically, there is one party in the State which advocates the creation of a system of peasant proprietary because it thinks that the existence of a sturdy race of yeoman peasants. 22 Small Holders. who have a " stake " in the country, and are endowed with a sense of " property," will be " a bulwark against the advance of Socialism." While sympathising with this vew, I cannot but think that in some instances it has been advo- cated without sufficient regard for those purely economic considerations to which the small holders themselves must needs attach a greater degree of importance. There is another party^ in the State which supports the principle of ownershipi not by individual cultivators, but by the local authori- ties, whose tenants the small holders would then become. Here the main idea is that, by taking full advantage of the opportunity oifere'd to them under the Small Holdings and Allotments Act, the County "Councils and the Parish Councils might acquire properties on such a scale that they would practically create a system of land nationalisation without any need for a special Act of Parliament directed to the attaih- ment of this end. Indirectly, therefore, there could thus be brought about some revolutionary Socialistic changes in the ownership of land which the country might not be disposed to tolerate by direct action. By way of showing that I aan not here raising a mere bogey, I would direct attention to the following statements made in the course of an article on " The Rural Revival," written by Mr. Montague Fprdham, hon. secretary of the Proprietors or Tenants? 23 Land Club Union, and published in " The Socialist Review" for October, 1908: — The more intelligent villagers . . . now see that something is possible, and, unless they are paralysed by their disappointment at the way the Act is being administered, they will be prepared to work and fight for practical land nationalisa- tion through the gradual transfer of land to the Parish and County Councils on the lines suggested to their minds by the Small Holdings Act. It is for this policy that we should work. . . . We want the land transferred to controlling authorities who will represent and be in touch with the people. There is a 'good deal to be said for small areas of control .... I am myself inclined to recommend the extension of the powers of Parish Councils. I believe strongly in the right of one parish to control its own destinies . . . . Our ultimate object should, I think, be to vest the land of each parish in the parish itself, as represented by its Council. . . . Every Parish Council should have a parish map with the value of every field marked upon it, and at that price, with reasonable compensation for severance, the Council could buy. Payment might be made in land bonds, guaranteed by Government. Under some such scheme as this the land would gradually pass into public hands. Leaving my readers to make their own re- flections on the various political considerations which here present themselves, I would onlyj suggest that if ari artificial creation of small holders is to be aimed at either, on the qne hand, as a bulwark against Socialism, or, on the other, as a Socialistic preliminary to land nationalisation, without adequate guarantees in 24 Small Holders. either case for fhe economic soundness of the small holders themselves, then these unfortunate victims of rival political programmes may, in the result, have cause to exclaim — " A plague o' both the houses 1 " I come next to the proposition that ownership is preferable to tenancy because it ensures greater security of tenure ; and here, at first sight the case for peasant proprietary may appear to be on stronger ground. If, however, inquiry be made among the farmers themselves, it will be found that the insecurity-of-tenure argument is much ex- aggerated, and that where tenants have been offered leases of their farms, in order that they may, if they so desire, have a perfectly secure| tenure thereof for a term of years, they have invariably declined to accept them . The reasons they adduce for their disinclination are mainly founded on uncertainty as to what may happen when they themselves have " gone." The farmer is generally advanced in years before he has sufficiently established his position for the question of a lease to arise ; he does not know whether t"hose who come alter him will farm the holding as well as he has done himself ; while he does know that bis widow — shoulci he leave one,- and should she survive him for the full period — will be responsible for payment of the rent as long as the lease remains in operation. In the result, he declines to saddle himself with Proprietors or Tenants? 25 the responsibility a lease involves, and prefers to keep to tenancy. In many instances, again, tenants seem to become as much fixtures on the land as the owners thereof are themselves. At a meeting of the Cardiganshire County Council on February 18, 1909, Mr. J. C. Harford said, during a discussion as to v/hether or not the compulsory clauses of the Small Holdings and Allotments Act should be put into operation there : — The whole county was one mass of small hold- ings, and there were very very few farms that were applicable. In many cases the farms had been held for generations by the same family, and he had a flarm on which, he believed, the same family had been for over two hundred years. Then, in connection with the sale of a portion of Lord Ancaster's estates, in Lincolnshire, the Daily Chronicle of February 2, 1909, said : — Included in the sale is Manor House, a farm of 300 acres, in Thurlby. The estate sold is farmed by some fifty small holders. It is under- stood their tenancy will not be disturbed. Some of the holdings have been occupied by the same families for three generations. What, again, are the actual risks, under the Small Holdings and Allotments Act, either of insecurity of tenure or of the rents being raised on a tenant's improvements? I will here assume that the land is first leased 26 Small Holders. by the County Council from the landowner, and then sub -let to the small holders. This arrangement (as distinct from the purchase of land by the Council) may be thought to give the two-fold risk, on renewal, of (i) the land- owner demanding unreasonable terms from the Council ; and (2) the Council raising the rents unduly to the occupiers. Thus if a Council, unable to arrange terms voluntarily with a land owner, has compulsorily leased some land from him for a period of " not less than 14 nor more than 35 years," the question may be asked — What will be the posi- tion of the Council at the end of that period? The answer thereto will be found in Clause 44 of the Act of 1908, which reads as follows : — (i) Where a Council has hired land compul- sorily for small holdings or allotments, the Council may, by giving to the landlord not more than two years nor less than one year before the expira- tion of the tenancy notice in writing, renew the tenancy for such term, not being less than four- teen nor more than thirty-five years, as may be specified in the notice, and at such rent as, in default of agreement, may be determined by valua- tion by a valuer appointed by the Board, but otherwise on the same terms and conditions as the original lease, and so from time to time : Provided that, if on any such notice being given, the landlord proves to the satisfaction of the Board that any land included in the tenancy is required for the amenity or convenience of any dwelling house, then such land shall be excluded from the renewed tenancy. Proprietors or Tenants? 27^ (2) In assessing the rent to be paid under this section the valuer shall not take into account any increase in the value of the holding — {a) due to improvements in respect of which' the Council would have been entitled to compensation, if instead of renewing the tenancy the Council had quitted the land on the determination of the tenancy ; or (d) due to any use to which the land might otherwise be put during the renewed term, being a use in respect of which the land- lord is entitled to resume possession of the land under this Act ; or (c) due to the establishment by the Council of other small holdings or allotments in the neighbourhood, or any depreciation in the value of the land in respect of which the landlord would have been entitled to compensation if the Council had so quitted the land as aforesaid. Here, then, there would seem to be an ample guarantee that the rent paid by the Council to the landowner would not be raised to unfair proportions when a further lease for from 14 to 35 years was desired » All the same, there is aii element of risk as long as the County Council leases land, instead of purchasing it outright ; for, as against the power of a Council to renew the tenancy of land compulsorily hired, there is the power of the landowner to resume possession of land so hired from him. Provision to this effect is made by Section 46, which enacts that where such land, or any part thereof, is shown to the satisfaction of tKe Board of Agriculture, during 28 Small Holders. any part of the tenancy, " to be required by the landlord to be used for building, mining, or other industrial purposes, or for roads neces- sary therefor," it shall be lawful for him to resume possession on his giving twelve months' notice . I can understand that this provision may increase the circumspection with which the County Councils are acting, and that it may sometimes dispose them to purchase (where land can be obtained at a satisfactory price) rather than to lease. The tenant, also, of the Council would run the same risk of a notice to quit, under these jjarticular circumstances, as if he hired direct from the landowner. He would avoid this risk if the Council did buy the land instead of leasing it, so that a further argument can here be advanced for purchase, under the Act, by a County Council . The Act does, indeed, seem to encourage somewhat the aforesaid Socalistic idea, in favouring the owner- ship rather than the leasing of land by local authorities ; and it is open to consideration whether in this respect the Act should not be modified so as to leave the County Councils with a better choice between the minor and the major responsibility. It must, however, also be remembered that while a landowner, having the protection of Section 46, might be willing to let at its agricultural value, and, therefore, at an " economic " rent, land designed to be used Proprietors or Tenants? 29 eventually for building, but not yet ripe for development, he would want much more fhan its agricultural value if he sold it outright to a County Council for small holdings, and his terms might, from this standpoint, well be prohibitive. Subject to these various conditions, there is no reason why the small holder should not enjoy practical security of tenure. The Council must not charge higher rents than will cover its risks ; it may not run small holdings as a " municipal enterprise " in " relief of rates ", ; it would have no interest in refusing renewal of tenancy to a person, or the family of a person, against whom no reasonable complaint could be made ; while if its members should adopt any unreasonable attitude towards applicants or tenants, or involve the ratepayers in unduly serious risks, they can be called to account whenever they present themselves for re-election. The man who can no longer depend on security of tenure, under the conditions of to- day, whether he be proprietor or tenant, is the one who is farming over 50 acres, and is thus liable to the possible operation of the com- pulsory clauses of the Small Holdings and Allotments Act. He may consider himself a small holder, but he will not be one within the meaning of the Act, and he, therefore, may run the risk of being disturbed in order that his neighbours may be accommodated. 30 Small Holders. There is, also, that question of compensation for improvements which may be regarded as a matter of no less concern than security of tenure and amount oF rent. Here it will be found that provision is made for the payment of such compensation (i) to the tenant as against the County Council ; and (2) to the County Council as against the landowner. Ci) Under Section 47, of the Act of .1908 the tenant of a small holding or of an allot- ment hired from a 'Council is to have the same rights with regard io certain specified improve- ments as he .would have had if the holding ha'd been one to which' Section 42 of the Agricul- tural Holdings Act, 1908, applied ; though he will not be entitled to compensation in respect to any improvements executed contrary to an express prohibition in writilng by the Council. The said improvements, as given in Part I. of the Second Schedule, comprise the planting of '(i) standard or other fruit trees permanently set out ; (2) fruit bushes, ditto ; (3) straw- berry plants ; and (4) asparagus, rhubarb, and other vegetable crops which continue produc- tive for two or more years. The tenant of an allotment may, alternatively, claim under the Allotments and Cottage Gardens Compensation for Crops Act, 1887; while it is further pro- vided that— A tenant of any small holding or allotment may, before the expiration of his tenancy, remove any Proprietors or Tenants? 31: fruit and other trees and bushes planted or acquired by him for which lie has no claim for compensation, and may remove any toolhouse, shed, greenhouse, fowl-house, or pigsty built or acquired by him for which he has no claim for compensa- tion. (2) Under the same Section, a Council which has hired land for small holdings or allotments is (subject to any agreement to the contrary) entitled, on the determination of the tenancy, to compensation for any of the improvements already mentioned, or for any other of a further series, also scheduled, " which was necessary or proper to adapt the land for small holdings or allotments '\ ; provided that, in the case of land hired compulsorily, the amount of the compen- sation payable to the Council shall be such sum as " fairly represents the increase (if any) in the value to the landlord and his successors in title of the holding due to these improvements." Here the guarantee of compensation is com- plete for t"he tenant, though not for the County Council, inasmuch as the latter body may have spent on the land a substantial sum of money for improvements or buildings which would be of no va'Iue to a landlord requiring to use the land " for building, mining, or other industrial purposes." We thus have a further example of the need for cautious action on the part of a County Council desirous of saving its ratepayers from financial risks. There are various other arguments in regard 32 Small Holders. to the general question which seem to me to discourage the idea of ownership when once we consent to leave sentiment and politics on one side, and look at the whole matter mainly from its economic or business standpoint. There is, for example, the question of the small holder's capital. A cultivator of, pos- sibly, small means who desires to own his plot of land, must begin by paying down a certain propoi-tion, at least, of the purchase -rrioriey,- arid, whatever the sum, such payment reduces to a corresponding extent the amount of his avail- able capital at a time when he may need all the money he can control, either for the purposes of cultivation, or for the maintenance of his family until his holding begins to bring him a return on his investment. If, buying through a County Council, he puts down one-fifth of the purchase price, and under- takes to pay the remainder, with interest, in half-yearly sums stretching over a term not to exceed fifty years, the " proprietor " may still pay the equivalent of " rent " for the full term of his working life ; he will be only nominally a land -owner until he has cleared off the debt ; and for twenty years, at least, he will be subject, under the Act, to a series of conditions which may deprive him of any real sense of ownership. Various writers on the remarkable progress of agriculture in Denmark have traced one of the reasons for that progress to the fact that the Proprietors or Tenants? 33 holdings there are almost entirely, " owned' " — or assumed to be " owned " — by the peasants cultivating them. But such ownership is quali- fied by the fact that not many years ago sixty per cent, of the value of all agriculture pro- perty in Denmark had been mortgaged/ while the proportion since then has everi increased. It is true that a good deal of the debt is due; to advances made by the Government on fairly easy terms ; but much is the result of loans obtained years ago from German bankers or German land companies. In either case the peasant proprietor has to meet heavier finan- cial obligations, and to lead a more strenuous life, in spite of his splendid system of organisation, than is generally supposed . On this point I might quote the following from an address, on " The Economic Effects of Small Holdings," delivered by Mr. Erik Givskov to the National Liberal Club Political and Economic Circle on Novemr ber II, 1907: — Even in Denmark the peasant generally lives on black bread, skim milk, margarine, and Ameri- can pork and bacon,* while he has to export all the good things he produces to England to obtain cash for his taxes and interest on mortgage debt\ I have before me, while writing this, a consider- able number of accounts of Danish peasant farmers who have obtained all the prizes it is possible to get for excellent culture ; but their net income * One might believe, add- " together with eggs from Siberia." S.H. D 34 Small Holders. only in exceptional cases exceeds £50 a year, and often it is much less. ... A Danish economist, Mr. N. P. Jensen, has recently written a book on " Danish Agriculture at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century," in which he shows that a peasant farmer with thirteen acres of land earns on an average £23 to £24 after having paid his taxes and interest on his purchase money. In my book on " The Transition in Agricul- ture," published (by Mr. John Murray) in 1906, I summed up the economic position of the peasant proprietor in Denmark by; saying : — Many a Danish farmer is, with all his family, working for long hours, and looking to Eng- land for the profits he makes on his produce, not so much for his own gain as to satisfy the demands of his German creditors. Between rent and instalments of purchase money there is, again, a material difference. In the bad seasons, when crops fail and money is scarce, a generous landlord will accept a reduced rent, and even a local authority might consent to take a lower amount for the time being on the tenant agreeing to make up the differ- ence when the good seasons came round again ; whereas the man who is paying off principal and interest on purchase money has saddled himselif with a financiiil responsibility which may become far more burdensome than ordinary rent. Even when the small holder, who is also a small owner, has paid off, the whole of the pur- chase money, he may readily yield in bad Proprietors or Tenants? 35 seasons or in times of domestic trouble to the temptation of raising money on mortgage, so that, for one or other of these reasons, there is probably only a small proportion of peasant proprietors in our own country who hold their land entirely free from more or less burdensome mortgage charges. On this point Mr. Rider Haggard has said : — There are great dangers about snxall holdings which are owned and not hired. The proprietor may be tempted to mortgage them, and thus have to pay a rent to the lender of the money which sometimes becomes heavier than he can bear. The results are, of course, that these people have to work dreadfully hard to pay the interest on the borrowed money. Is it not likely, also, that as the unsuccessful or unfortunate cultivators either sold out or had their land seized by mortgagees, other small holders, of the successful and fortunate type, would acquire the land vacated, and steadily develop from small into large holders, with the prospect of thus reviving a rather worse type of landlordism, since the peasant who had himself become a landlord would pro- bably be much more exacting and inconsiderate than the present race of landed gentry? Alternatively, there is the risk that, if the small holder were absolute owner of his hold- ing, he might (whether successful or not) be tempted to accept a good offer either from D 2 36 Small Holders. another small holder or from someone who desired to have his plot for residential or other non-agricultural purposes, the land available for small holdings being thus reduced propor- tionately. I may be told that restrictions would or could be imposed on a purchaser (especially when he buys through a local authority) to prevent him from mortgaging his land, from allowing it to be absorbed into other holdings, or from disposing of it for other than small holding purposes. But ownership hedged round with such restrictions as these would be reduced to little better thari a farce. .The sense of personal property which is put forward as the great factor in: the situation would be destroyed, and the poetry of sentimentalism changed into a distinctly delusive prose. But, supposing that the question of mort- gage or sale did not arise, there would still remain the question as to what is to be done with the holding on the death of the peasant proprietor. In Holland and in at least five departments in France the sub-division of land under these conditions has been carried to in- ordinate extremes, so that the cultivators to-day may have a series of little patches of land scattered over a wide -spread area, involving in their cultivation a vast amount of toil. In an appendix to " The Transition in Agriculture," I reproduce a plan of the commune of Vledder Proprietors or Tenants? 37 (Drenthe), Holland, showing the extraordinary lengths to which sub -division has been carried there. The average dimensions of a certain group of holdings indicated on the plan are 380 yards by 14 yards. In another group there is also one with a width of only 14 yards though with a length of 1,275 yards ; while of such holdings as these (even allowing for several being joined together) one cultivator has no fewer than 23 in different parts of the same village. There are still other possibilities to be borne in mind in regard to this question of pro- prietary V. tenancy. The small holder who buys the land he wants to cultivate will have no landlord at his back to help him in the matter of buildings and other equipment, repairs, upkeep, and improvements generally. In most instances his little stock of capital would not stand the strain of these items in addition to the payment of purchase money, or even a portion thereof. Even if he arranged for these things, as far as he could, in addition to actual purchase of land, through a County Council, he would still create a debt which it would take him many years to clear off, and give him a sense of the responsibilities rather than of the joys of ownership. The small owner, playing the role of an independent unit, would thus be hampered at every turn where the tenant of a good landlord, a County Council, 38 Small Holders. or a well-organised co-operative land society might thrive. Once more, a capable and industrious worker who begins on a small holding of not more than a few acres may be able- in a year or so to take over a larger one, and after this a larger one still. Should he then purchase his land, he will at least have had a better chance of gainihg experience and of establishing his financial posi- tion. But if he should have burdened himself with ownership from the start, he will naturally be less ready to sell out one holding and buy another, and he is tolerably certain to reach a certain point beyond which he will not want to progress. With each purchase and sale, also, there will be legal charges and lawyer's fees to pay, and these will form an additional burden on the land, adding to expenses which can only be met out of the receipts from sales. There are certain districts in England where the law- yers are said to get far more out of groups of holdings belonging to peasant proprietors than is gained by the cultivators themselves. Considerations such as those here presented are certainly appealing more to the prospective small holders- than the views of politiciarts and land reformers who favour peasant proprietary ideals ; so that in his statement in the House of Commons on May 6, 1909, Sir E. Strachey was able to announce that of the 23,295 persons in England and Waleg who had applied for land Proprietors or Tenants? 39 under the Act, only 629, or 2.7 per cent., desired to purchase. Of this number 281 came from Wales, 191 being from Brecknockshire. For England the percentage of applicants desirous of purchasing land was only 1.6. These figures fully confirm some remarks made at a meeting of the Norfolk County Council on April 17, 1909, by Mr. Le Strange, who, in presenting the report of the Allotments and Small Holdings Committee of that body said, in reference to the applicants : — There does not seem to be any great demand on the part of these people to become absolute owners of the soil. There does not seem to be any great virtue in that " magic of property " about which we used to hear a great deal. Apart, therefore, from all questions alike of sHhtiment and of politics, and regarding the matter solely as one of economic expediency, there can be no doubt that, under the prac- tical security now offered to small holders, not only the balance of argument but the general sense of the agricultural community favours the tenancy of small holdings in preference to any general movement for the extension of owner- ship ; and this preference is likely to increase still further as Chancellors of the Exchequer setek to extract more and still more out of the land in the way of taxation . CHAPTER III. .CO-OPERATIVE TENANCY. Assuming, on the basis of what I have already said, that the tenancy of small holdings is alike more practical and more generally desired in Great Britain than ownership, we may pass on to some important matters of detail as to the particular methods by which tenancy can best be established. As against the various uncertainties to which the situation, as a whole, has given rise, we have the certainty that, if the County and Parish Councils are themselves to superintend the arrangements in regard to each and every small holding and allotment set up under the Act, they will have a great increase in their labours arid responsibilities, apart altogether from the financial risks they are also likely to incur. Instead of devoting themselves to those duties of local government for the discharge of which they have been more especially ap- pointed, they will rec^uire to spend a good de^I Co-operative Tenancy. 41 of tKeir time in Sealing with' such" matters as buying or leasing land, choosing tenants, adapt- ing holdings to requirements, rent -collecting, and keeping a close watch over the tenants in order to see tha,t they cultivate their land as they ought, and pay due regard to a variety of rules and regulations. In other words, the Councils are to undertake the labours and the worries of estate agents in dealing with collec- tions of individuals under conditions calling for close supervision — that is, unless the schemes adopted are to prove failures, the land bought or leased by the Councils reverting to those bodies as in the case of many a private landowner before them. But the whole situation can be greatly improved if the Council lease the . land they acquire to a group of applicants constituting a registered co-operative land society, which body would itself arrange distribution, supervision, collection of rent, etc., and leave the Council with little to do beyond receiving the rent, for which the society would hold itself responsible. Under these arrangements the County or Parish Council would avoid most of the toils and troubles that must otherwise fall on them, while the business would be greatly facilitated as regards not only the original distribution of land, to suit present requirements, but, also, the inevitable demands, later on, from the more §Vicc^ssful l}olders for additional plots, 42 Small Holders. The tenants, in their turn, should be able to get their holdings at lower rentals. When the entire acreage is taken from the Council by a co-operative land society, the law expenses will be less ; the County Council will get its rent in a lump sum, arid thus require no special rent collector, while having greater security ; the members of the society will them- selves undertake the work of adapting the land to requirements, and they' will do it more economically than the local authorities ; added to which a committee formed from among the small holders would exercise a more stringent control over the holdings, with less friction than would be possible in the case of a public official. Hence, even on these grounds alone, the Council could afford to lease the whole of the plot of land to a co-operative land society at a less rental than the sum total of the rents they would require to charge to individual tenants, for separate fioldings ; while, for this reason, coupled with the comparatively small outlay on management expenses, the society could naturally sub -let fo its menibers at lower rents than they would have to pay if each dealt indi - vidually with the County or Parish Council. It is true that if a member failed to pay his rent to the society his fellow -members would have to make it up, since they would be jointly ^nd severally responsible for the rent due to the Co-operative Tenancy. 43 Council. But, for this very reason, the com- mittee of the society would be especially care- ful to accept only trustworthy persons as members. Prom their intimate acquaintance, however, with the dwellers in the locality, they would run less risk, and, also, cause less irrita- tion, than if these delicate matters were left to a county or a parish officer. In the result, the rent paid by the co-opera- tive society to the Council would approximate to the rent paid by the large farmer to his landlord ; and this fact should, incidentally, meet the objection to small holdings often raised by large farmers on the ground that they tend to send up rents. Then the rents now being asked, or likely to be asked, for small holdings are further swollen in amount by the fact that the applicants gener- ally want land in the immediate proximity of the town or village in whicli they live. Small holdings, it has been repeatedly said, are of no value unless they are so situated. But various conditions may send up the value of small holdings in the neighbourhood of towns or villages until the rents that must be charged assume uneconomic proportions for small holders growing for sale. There are tradesmen who require accommo- dation land near to their shops for the purposes of their business. The grocer, the carrier, or the publican may want ^ field in which to 44 Small Holders. graze his horses ; the butcher may need one, also, for his sheep and cattle, before he slaughters them ; and each, if he can get just what he needs, will be ready to pay more for it than would constitute a strictly agricultural rental . There are, again, the factory workers, the artisans, and the tradespeople who want allot- ments in which they can spend their leisure hours, get healthy exercise and relaxation in gardening, and contribute to the requirements ot'tEeir household ; though such allotments they must have as close to their back door as pos- sible, in order that they may not have far to walk to get to them. These tendencies have gone so far that Sir E. Strachey has confessed in the House of Commons (May 6, 1909) that of the applications received under the Act only 34 per cent, came from agricultural labourers . A return relating to Here - fordshire showed, he added, that among the 306 applicants were 75 farmers, 65 agricultural labourers, 16 bailiffs, 18 shepherds, 18 joiners, carpenters and wheelwrights, 16 gardeners, 14 masons and bricklayers, 1 3 blacksmiths, and 1 2 carriers and carters. It is open to consideration whether the Small Holdings and Allotments Act is not, after all, in danger of being diverted, to a certain extent, from what had been understood to be its main purposes, namely, the advance of agriculture Co-operative Tenancy. 45 and the fostering of land settlement. These purposes appeared to be of such paramount im- portance to the national interests that powers were given to the local authorities to acquire land compulsorily, if need be, in order that they could be duly accomplished. Yet, surely, it is going somewhat beyond the scope of these particular purposes when the local authorities find themselves obliged to take land compulsorily from farmers who may already be using it for agricultural purposes, and have it cut up into holdings to satisfy the demands of traders who want it for the purposes of their business — in the interests, that is, not of agriculture, but of trade.* Even in the case of allotments designed as gardens for factory workers and others wishing to grow fruit and vegetables for their own families, the effect on agriculture is infinites- imal, and such allotments constitute, rather, grants in aid of industry, at the ratepayer's risk, since they enable the artisan, by devoting his leisure to gardening, to make a given wage go further than it would otherwise do.j; * At a meeting of the Norfolk County Council, Lord Cranworth (as reported in the Lynn News of April 24, 1909), said, during a discussion on the report of the Allotments and Small Holdings Committee, that he "thought the committee had spent too much of their time in finding land which was already in the possession of tenants, and applying it to fill up the spare time of the local blacksmith, the shopkeeper, and people of that sort. He did not believe that this was in accordance with the intention of the Act." ■j- I do not suggest that employers of labour in the towns will 46 Small Holders. I am in no way hostile to the provision of allotments for town workers, especially where this can be done without dispossessing farmers already settled on suburban land. On the contrary, I regard an artisan's allotment as, apart from its immediate advantages, a possibly valuable introduction to a future agricultural career, many of the most successful of small holders having started in this way. But I do submit that the Act has a far wider purpose to accomplish, and is concerned much more with the interests of agriculture than with those of urban industries. Coupled with the demands from tradesmen and artisans in the immediate neighbourhood of the towns there is the competition of well- to-do town workers who prefer to live in the country, without being too far from a village or a railway station, and are ready enough to pay much more than agricultural value for choice building plots and more or less generous areas for grounds or gardens. Under this combination of circumstances it is not surprising that land near to towns or villages is apt to acquire an artificial value which may well make the renting thereof almost prohibitive from the point of view of cultiva- be likely to take advantage of such a position as this by reducing the standard of wages. But it may make the workers content with a small wage where otherwise they might want more, and in this way industry should gain, even though agriculture may not. Co-operative Tenancy. 47 tors who desire holdings for the purposes of production on a commercial basis. The rent demanded becomes, in fact, a non -commercial rent — that is to say, it adds so materially to the cost of producing commodities designed for the market that the margin of profit is reduced to unduly low proportions, and may even dis- appear altogether. As regards the selection of land for smallhold- ings and allotments, the impression seems to prevail that the applicants need only go and sur- vey their neighbour's property, choose the parti- cular slices or sections thereof that would best satisfy their wishes or meet their requirements (sometimes they will so pick out for them- selves what is known as " the eye of the farm "), and then have the machinery of the Act put in operation to assure for them what they want. In one instance, at least, a public inquiry under the Act has been held because a single indi- vidual coveted a particular portion of a farm which the tenant in possession has been steadily developing for years without having yet received any adequate return therefrom, and the extraction from which of the portion in question would be to the detriment of the remainder . The view widely entertained to-day was, in fact, well summed up by a member of the Oxford County Council, who, in moving the adoption of the County Council's Small Hold- 48 SMALL Holders. ings and Allotments Committee's report at a recent meeting, said : — They had to ask for land where they wanted it, and where the population was. Outlying farms were of no use to them. There was no idea in the county of colonisation, and the burden, if burden it was, fell exclusively on the owners and occupiers who had land in the vicinity of towns and villages, and nowhere else.- This may be sound philanthropy, when urban traders and urban workers are alone con- sidered ; but it certainly is not sound econo- mics, regarded from what has been aptly de- scribed as " the business side of agriculture ", ; and I fail to see how agriculture itself is going to be revived, the settlement of the land ex- tended, and the competition of foreign pro- ducers on British markets met, by encouraging town dwellers to compete with tradespeople and artisans for suburban plots for which they will have to pay unduly high rents, and from which agriculturists or dairy farmers much more ex- perienced, and having much more capital, than themselves, may have been compulsorily ejected in order to make room for them. There has been much outpouring of elo- quence, in connection with the small holdings movement, as to the results that should follow therefrom in the creation of a " peasant yeo- manry." But the country will not create a peasant yeomanry out of individuals who want Co-operative Tenancy. 49 holdings situate not more than a mile or so from their urban dwelling. We shall only get such a peasantry, together with genuine land colonisation, if the cultivators are actually settled on the land, being furnished there not alone w,ith holdings, but also with suitable houses and adequate opportunities for re- munerative trading'. If, on the other hand, small holdings and allotments are to be provided mainly within easy walking distance of urban centres, then, instead of relieving the congestion in the towns, the local authorities having to meet statutory obli- gations may actually increase it by offering an incentive, not only to people already in the towns to stay there, but even to others now in the country to join thertl, in order to take advantage of the facilities thus made available . Should the Small Holdings and Allotments Act, compulsory clauses included, produce no better results than these, then from the point of view of the advancement of British agricul- ture it will be little better than a fiasco — with the possible accompaniment of a keen sense of injustice on the part of the ejected. Already vigorous protests are being made in various quarters, and there would probably be no lack of persons disposed to concur in the observa- tions of a correspondent of the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, Mr. H. W. Hancock, who, in a S.H, ■ E 50 Small Holders. letter published on March" 6, 1 909, said : — Is it reasonable, fair, or sensible that County Councils and other local authorities should be expected to acquire land by fair means or foul (compulsory measures would, in many cases, come within the latter category) in districts where a vast majority of the existing farms are already in acreage only small holdings, or little removed from that?* As a rule, in counties and districts where cities, towns, and large villages are most numerous, the farms are of very moderate size. Are the pre- sent occupiers, men of experience who, genera- tion after generation in many cases, have been tenants of the farms, to be turned out neck and crop to make way for enthusiastic experimen- talists, possessing little or no experience in agriculture, and that, mind you, at the .ratepayers' expense and risk? The Ttmes of MarcK 1 5, 1 909, reported : — On Saturday, at the Chester Farmers' Club', Mr. Joseph Beecroft, a local farmer, complained that the Chester County Council were letting small holdings to men engaged in business in town. These men were getting a house and 20 acres of land and all the pleasures of rural life for their wives and families for the same rental that they would pay in the town for bare walls. It was the farm labourer who should be encouraged, and it was a monstrous shame that other classes of men should be put on the land. It was not the intention of Lord Carrington, but there was a loophole in the Act. * In Lancashire these remarks would apply to about 75 per cent, of the existing farms. Co-operative Tenancy. 5 1 In a pamphlet on " The Repopulation of the Rural Districts," by Mr. J. W. Root, of Liver- pool, I also read : — To get rid of the substantial farmer, possessed of intelligence, and very often of abundant capital, in ojrder to replace him by a number of smaller men whose cultivation in the aggregate may be more intense, is anything but desirable, because when a rim of bad seasons follow one another . . . it is the big man who has the staying power. Looking, then, at the whole subject from the broader standpoint I have ventured to suggest, and while admitting frankly that the provision of suburban allotments may be of great personal advantage to urban workers, I would urge that the Act must fail to accomplish its real pur- pose unless, apart altogether from the require- ments of town -dwellers, it should (i) lead to the establishment of small holdings in rural as distinct from suburban districts ; '(2) encourage the spreading of the population over the land ; and (3) promote the real interests of agricul- ture as a great national industry. Here, no doubt, the objection will at once be raised that, unless small holders growing com- modities for sale have their land .within quite easy reach of a market, either they will not be able to dispose of their produce, or else they will incur so much expense for road transport in getting it to market that little or no margin for profit will remain. E 3 52 Small Holders. These conditions would, most assuredly, exist so long as tlie small holders concerned remained individual units. But the essence of my proposal is that they should group them- selves into registered co-operative societies, which would first obtain suitable land in rural districts where, in addition to the advantages of combination for land purchase, as already men- tioned, urban or suburban competition would not raise the price or the rent of land unduly ; and then supplement their land society by a variety of other co-operative arrangements, in- cluding therein the joint marketing of their produce, or, at least, its joint transport, by motor wagon or otherwise, to the nearest town or the nearest railway station. We have here, surely, a sounder business pro- position than leaving small cultivators, who want to gain their livelihood by raising produce or supplies for the market, to struggle along by themselves on suburban plots for which they must needs pay those non-commereial rents. Happily the principle of leasing land to co- operative bodies for the purposes of small hold- ings and allotments has been already thoroughly well established in this country, as the result of negotiations between a number of different associations and various private owners, who have been sympathetic towards the small hold- ings movement, but have not unnaturally pre- ferred to deal with an organised body rather Co-operative Tenancy. 53 than with, perhaps, 50 or 100 individual tenants . "The new factor in the position to-day is that the principle which has thus passed through the experimental stage, and proved an unques- tionable success, has now been definitely incor- porated in the Small Holdings and Allotments Acts. The present law on the subject is shown by the Act of 1908, where Section 9, Sub-sec- tion (2), says : — A County Council shall have power — («) ic sell or to let one or more small hold- ings to a number of persons working on a co-operative system, provided such system be approved by the County Council ; and (d) with the consent of the Board, to let one or more small holdings to any associa- tion formed for the purpose of creating or promoting the creation of small hold- ings, and so constituted that the division of profits amongst the members of the association is prohibited or restricted. Section 27, Sub-section (6), also states : — A Council shall have the same power of letting one or more allotments to persons working on a co-operative system or to an association formed for the purposes of creating or promoting the creation of allotments as may be exercised in respect to small holdings by a County Council. The inclusion of these powers in the Small Holdings and Allotments Acts has given an 54 Small Holders. impetus to a system which is of no less advan- tage to the Councils than to the would-be small holders, land obtained by the former being let en bloc to the societies formed by the latter. The mutual advantages, in fact, are so far recognised that a number of small holding asso- ciations have either . been already formed, or are in process of formation, while the system is deservedly receiving much encouragement from certain of the County Councils ;* though in other instances the officials of the local authorities are hostile to the system, entertaining strong but distinctly misplaced prejudices to dealing with groups of applicants instead of with individuals . If, as seems to be admitted on all hands, the adoption of co-operation is vital to the small holder, there surely cannot be any reason why he should not begin by a co-operative renting of the raw material — the land. A further advantage of the co-operative ten- ancy which I thus advocate as the most practical * Sir E. Strachey, in the course of his speech in the House of Commons on May 6, igog, in reference to the administration of the Small Holdings and Allotments Act, said : — " The amount of land which co-operative societies had taken amounted to I,ii6 acres, and would probably provide for about 200 applicants. . . . By the Act of Parliament County Councils were not obliged to let to co-operative societies unless they so desired. The Board, however, had very strongly, and in many cases successfully, urged upon County Councils the desirability of letting to co- operative societies both in the interests of the men and the interests of the County Councils themselves. The principle had been adopted in Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Northamptonshire, the Kesteven division of Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Somerset, and Wiltshire." Co-operative Tenancy. 55 method of carrying out the Small Holdings and Allotments Act is that when a combination for the joint acquiring of land has once been suc- cessfully formed, the way is opened out for an application of the co-operative principle to the further stages of production,- transport, and sale. In fact, the co-operative land societites now being formed all over the country in afiSlia- tion with the Agricultural Organisation Society (and these numbered at the end of December,- 1 908, no fewer than Xii) axe established on this dual basis, as shown by the following state- ment of " Objects," included in some model rules issued by the central bodyj — The objects of the Society shall be — (i) To carry on the business of creating or promoting the creation of small holdings or allot-, ments, and encouraging their proper cultivation/ with power to acquire land from local authorities acting under the provisions of any Act for the time being in force relating to small holdings or allotments or from any other person or body ; to adapt any land so acquired for small holdings or allotments by the erection of dwelling houses or other buildings or the execution of any other improvement, and to let the land to members of the Society to be cultivated by them as small holdings or allotments. (2) To carry on the business of wholesale and retail dealers in agricultural requirements, dairy, farm and garden produce, eggs and poultry ; and any other trades, industries or businesses which may seem calculated to develop the Society's pro- perty or conduce to the more profitable working of small holdings or allotments. 56 Small Holders. I shall deal in subsequent chapters with the matters referred to in the second paragraph of this extract ; but the reader will see, I think, from what I have already said, how much easier the work of administering the Act would become if the local authorities could deal generally with organised bodies instead of in- dividual units ; and how,- when the applicants for land form part of a well -designed organisation, operating on a more or less considerable scale, there will either be less need for their remain- ing within a suburban area, or a better chance, if they must so remain, of their getting holdings at lower rentals than if each stood alone. To conclude this chapter with an illustration of co-operative tenancy in practice, I might re- fer to the Norton Small Holdings Society, Ltd., formed for the establishment of small holdings on the " agricultural belt " at the Garden City, Letchworth. It has leased 150 acres of land at Norton, together with Norton Hall farm and buildings, for 21 years, at an inclusive rent of 25s. per acre, and has the first offer of a further '257, acres of an adjoining farm, at present let. The annual report for 1908 (the third issued) contains a recommendation that a dividend of 4 per cent, be paid, and mentions, among other things, that — During the year there has been some improve- ment in the cultivation of the farm, and better crops were obtained. In order to assist the smaller Co-operative Tenancy. 57 tenants, the local committee has purchased loo tons of manure, which have been supplied to five of the tenants. The tenants have given promissory notes for the amount due, payable in equal instal- ments after the next two harvests. It has been necessary to make three changes of tenancy, the tenant in one case wishing to leave Norton, and the others proving unsatisfactory. The land was readily re-let, and one tenant who began with three acres now has six, and another has increased from 9^ acres to i2| acres. Another tenant (a market gardener) had erected a glass house and frames, for which the material had been supplied by the society at the cost of £137, the tenant undertaking to repay the amount, with interest, in ten annual instalments . From these brief details one sees that a small holdings society can confer on its members subsidiary advantages which they could hardly expect were they to deal direct with a County Council ; and it can,- at the same time, get rid of " unsatisfactory " tenants without the friction that might arise in the case of a public body. Nor should we overlook the evident facility with which a tenant (as distinguished from a peasant proprietor) can either give up "his hold- ing, or add to his plot of land as he finds he can do with more. Among the society's 23 tenants are : A market gardener who has 9 acres 3 roods arable (including 4 acres fruit trees), 2 acres S8 Small Holders. orcKard (grass), stabling, barn and green- house ; a contractor, 1 6 acres i; rood arable, 2 acres pasture, and stabling ; a publican, '2 1 acres 2 roods arable ; a farmer, 2i acres i rood 13 poles arable, and stabling ; a farmer, :i9 acres 2 roods 34 poles arable ; a chimney sweep, etc., 10 acres i rood arable ; an exca- vator, 6 acres 2 roods arable, stabling, and cottage ; a labourer, 2 acres 2 roods arable, and cottage ; a carter, 3 acres arable, i acre 2 roods pasture, and cottage ; a mechanic, 2 roods arable and cottage ; and several labourers who have allotments. CHAPTER IV. , THE BUSINESS OF, FARMING. Co-operative tenancy is only the beginning of things for the cultivator who regards his small holding not merely in the light of a hobby, a domestic adjunct, an aid to town- earned wages, or a convenience in retail trade, but as the equivalent of a factory for the pro- duction of commodities from the sale of which he can gain a livelihood. Here we come at once to the question of foreign competition. The British farmer has, perhaps, not yet ade- quately realised how complete is the change that has been effected in our economic condi- tions by the progress of science and trans- port. For all practical purposes, refrigera- tion and steamships have brought Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina as close to the shores of Great Britain as Ireland itself. In the consignment from those lands of butter, meat, fruit, or other perishable commodities,- distance is a negligible quantity ; while nearer countries, such as Denmark, France, Belgium and Holland, seek no less actively to cater for our needs, to their own advantage. 6o Small Holders. The British farmer feels the effect of all this compet'ition ; but in his more or less isolated situation in some country district or other he may not have kept in touch with the world's progress, and, finding his profits growing less, he has been apt to lay the blame mainly on the railway companies, accusing them of unfair treatment because they charge a higher rate per ton for his comparatively small lots of pro- duce, picked up, perhaps, at some wayside station, than for truck loads, if not tram loads, of imported produce, handled and transported with less trouble and less proportionate cost for working expenses. It is time, therefore, that the farmer and the small holder realised that what they have to do is, not mefely to attack the railway com- panies, in the hope of compelling them to carry home produce at unremunerative rates, and so reduce to still lower proportions theit already small earnings ; but (i) to cultivate the markets in which they have good chances of success, foreign competition notwithstanding ; (2) to stu^y production, transport, and sale under the most economic and most practical conditions, more especially in order to meet foreign competition successfully ; and (3) to aim at ensuring to British markets and British consumers, by means of combination, those adequate and regular supplies of commodities of uhiforiTi quality which constitute to so large The Business of Farming. 6i an extent the open secret of the foreigner's success. The statistics as to the magnitude of our imports of foreign or colonial food supplies are certainly striking enough. Here, for ex- ample, are a few items from the Board of Trade returns for 1908 : — Commodities. Quantities. Value. Wheat . 4.556,635 tons ;f38,295,940 Animals, living, for food 6,671,810 Beef, fresh 281,559 » 10,308,380 Mutton, fresh . 219,563 „ 8,148,457 Pork, fresh 28,611 „ 1,331,437 Bacon 284,287 „ 14,480,579 Hams 61,261 „ 3,084,669 Dead meat (includ- ing above) 983,962 „ 41,763,430 Poultry, alive or dead 934.679 Butter 210,560 „ 24,082,537 Cheese 115,304 .- 6,684,203 Eggs . 18,110,070 gt. hunds. 7,183,112 Fruit (raw) 10,372,244 Hops 13,996 tons 767,012 Potatoes . 351,916 „ 1,970,216 It may be frankly admitted that under no practicable combination of circumstances could we become entirely independent of all these food supplies from abroad. It may be equally admitted that the average British dairy farmer makes more out of sending his new milk to the towns than he would get if he sought to com- pete actively with the Dane and the Austra- lasian in the British butter market, The item 62 Small Holders. of fruit, again, includes certain varieties — such as bananas — which could not be grown here at all, and others— like early French cher- ries—which anticipate those that we can and do grow. Yet no less certain is it that all the items specified above, and others besides, could be supplied to us in, at least, greater volume by home growers or producers, and that all of them come more or less within the scope of the small holder's activity. One must further admit that, concurrently with the increase of the im- ports in question, there has been an education and a development of public taste no less favourable to the chances of the British pro- ducer, if he were in a position to take advan- tage of them. He could not, as I have said, himself grow bananas ; yet bananais — the taste for which, in this country, had at first to be created — have stimulated the popular demand for fruit, and the consumption of fruit of all kinds, by all classes of the community, has enormously increased during the last 20 years. The same may be said of eggs and poultry, of all descriptions of vegetables, of fresh meat and bacon, and other undeniably important sources of food supply, even apart from wheat. The foreigner, while helping to foster the taste for all these things, has been much more ready to supply us with them than we have been to supply theni for ourselves. He, bow- The Business of Farming. 63 ever, has looked on the whole matter as a busi- ness that calls for combined action rather than for the independent efforts of individuals ; and it is to the example thus set that the British producer has especially to look. I do not wish to enter here oh a discussion of tariff reform"; but although there is much in that movement with which I sympathise, I doubt if tariff reform alone will suflfice to establish the position of the small holder on satisfactory lines. A cartoon issued by the Tariff Reform League represents a British farmer on the plat- foxm of a wayside railway station,- waiting, apparently, for a local train' to pick up his small collection of boxes, hampers, arid crates destined for the market, and watching a goods train,- labelled " Foreign Produce Express," with truck loads of foreign eggs, butter, poultry, fruit, etc.,- going through the station, while he exclaims : " There they go to market, tax free. What's the use of a ' small holding ' without tariff reform ? " Now the essence of the situation depicted in the cartoon in question is, riot simply that this foreign produce is admitted tax free, but that it represents the combined output of a. consider- able number of producers, and is being Carried, in bulk, from the port of arrival under condi- tions allowing of the most economical rail transport, and, therefore, justifying the conces- sion of low railway rates ; whereas the British 64 Small Holders. farmer on his country station platform is an individual consignor who requires that a train shall be stopped there specially for (as the cartoon shows) his two boxes of eggs, his crate of five "live geese, his baskets of fruit, and his other small items, for the transport of which, under these circumstances (and allow- ing, also, for the fact that his mixed consign- ment could not be so well loaded into the vans as the foreign produce)", he is naturally called on to pay a higher rate per ton. So, for these and other reasons, his commodi- ties have to bear a higher proportion of cost than the foreign before they reach the market ; and, even when they d9 get there, they may be far less acceptable than the foreign to dealers who want big quantities of uniform quality, and not mere handfuls of miscellaneous lots, all more or less different, from a swarm of wholly independent growers. Whether, therefore, a tax is or is not even- tually put on the foreign imports here in ques- tion, the British farmer cannot make any great advance so long as he simply fills the same role as the aforesaid country station unit. Assum- ing that any such tax be not absolutely prohibi- tive, the foreigner, with his methods of combination, would still retain his great economic advantage over any number of indi- viduals at home, each of whom was producing, consigning, and marketing his small lots inde- The Business of Farming. 65 pendently of every one else. Apart from any question of better packing and large and regular supplies, the sum total of expenditure, plus tax, to be covered by the foreigner, before any profit was secured, might still be lower, in proportion, than the total expenses, minus tax, of the home producer. If the foreigner included the tax in his own expenses, and was content to receive less profit, the competition the British producer had to face would remain practically the same as before, unless he fought the foreigner on his own ground — that of com- bination. Then, and not till then, would taxa- tion of the foreign produce really, benefit the British producer, if import taxes were still found desirable, in the furtherance of his partilcular interests. But, unless combination be, also, or alternatively, adopted, small holders of the country station soliloquist type here in question, who would bas'e fheir hopes for the success of their holdings entirely on the taxipg of foreign imports, are doomed to the most bitter of disappointments. Without combination, the struggle of the British small holder against his foreign com- petitor will be equivalent to the struggle of the handicraftsman against the manufacturer, of the small shop against the stores, or of the retail man against the wholesale man. With the neglect of combina,tion, any such taxes on food supplies as the country would be likely S.H. F 66 Small Holders. to tolerate must prove as unavailing for the small holder as would be any changes in land tenure, even including therein a substitution of peasant proprietary for tenancy. The problem of the moment, in ensuring the success of these small holdings, is, indeed, not one either of taxing the foreigner or of chang- ing bleak rocks into gardens by what Arthur Young described a century ago (when the economic conditions were altogether different) as " the magic of property." The real question is, rather : Under what conditions can the gar- dens — when they have been secured— best be cultivated, and their produce, in turn, best be disposed of on the market, so as alike to over- come foreign competition, to meet British re- quirements, and to afford the guarantee of a reasonable profit for the gardeners? CHAPTER V. COST OF. PRODUCTION. In considering the possibilities of profit -mak- ing on small holdings there are two factors we require to bear in mind: (i) cost of produc- tion ; and (2) the prices realised by the sale of the commodities produced. From the standpoint of the eventual financial result, these factors may be of equal importance. But, in practice, while one hears much as to the un- satisfactory market prices of agricultural pro- duce, one hears comparatively little of efforts to effect such lowering in the cost of produc- tion as, even with the same prices, miight leave a fair scope for profit thereon. In the industrial world the prudent manu- facturer looks closely at every item of cost,- and sees that he gets the best attainable results from the machinery employed or the money expended. He watches outgoings as closely as receipts ; and it may be that his profit will depend much more upon low cost, or efiScient methods, of production, than upon the possi- bility of his securing high prices for the goods he makes. F 2 68 Small Holders. TKe same general principle applies to the farm or holding which, operated from a commercial standpoint, is the agricultural equivalent of an industrial enterprise producing commodities for sale. But, though the British farmer may have a thoroughly good technical knowledge of his business, and though he may watch market prices with the closest of attention, he is not, as a rule, so careful in regard to cost of pro- duction as the average manufacturer, who. is generally a better all-round business man than himself ; and, in the end, the farmer may lose money even though he has obtained a very fair price for excellent commodities, such loss being mainly due to the fact that the sum total of his cost of production has been too high. With the first of the possible items under this head — the rent paid for farm or holding — I have already dealt. Should the rent be so high (because of the nearness of the land to a town, or for some other reason) that it consti- tutes what I have called a " non -commercial " rent, this fact alone may so far swell the culti- vator's working expenses that he cannot hope to do more than cover them by his receipts from markets where he competes with home or foreign growers more favourably circumstanced, it may be, than himself. But, apart from rent, there are the possibili- ties of various nioney leakages which may tend Cost of Production. 69 no less effectively to raise the cost of produc- tion to excessive proportions, either because the necessaries purchased are defective in quality, or because, though the quality is good, the small cultivator pays more for them than, in the interests of eventual profit, he ought. Take, for example, the item of seeds. So long as he remains an individual unit, the farmer or small holder is generally at tlie mercy of some trader who may be thoroughly honest, or — may not" ! In the latter case the seeds, or alleged seeds, supplied may either be deficient in yield or else produce mainly a good crop of weeds. The farmer thus buys a bad article, losing money thereon ; he reaps a poor harvest ; and he may be put to additional expense in trying to clear his land again. In the result, he not only sends less to market than he should, but even on what he does send he gets a poor return because he has spent more on producing it than he ought. There was a time — before agricultural organisation became an active force in the United King(Jom' — when Ireland and South Wales especially were dumping grounds for the most worthless seeds that traders of an unscrupulous type could get together. It was a case of little less than downright robbery ; for even when the refuse and sweepings sold (say) as grass seed did not produce actual weeds^ they might yield only a soft grass from JO Small Holders. which the cattle could not get sufficient nourish- ment. Alternatively, there were growers who did not sufficiently distinguish between cheap- ness in price and excellence in quality. For instance, in an article on " Permanent Pas- ture Grasses and the Adulteration of their Seeds," published in a trade catalogue, I read : — It must be obvious that the higher the per- centage of germination of any seed, the greater its money value. One pound of seed, germinating 90 per cent., will produce as many plants as, and of more vigorous growth than, i| lbs. of seed whose germination is only 60 per cent. ; so that if the value of the former is is. 6d. per lb., the latter is dear at i.f. per lb. One of the functions of a co-operative society formed for the joint purchase of agricultural requisites is to obtain trustworthy guarantees of the quality of the seed it buys and passes on to its members, thus checking at least one form of leakage which must have involved British farmers in the past in losses almost incredible in amount. In this way the whole position is now changing. Not long ago a seed merchant, in the course of conversation with a gentleman concerned in the agricultural organisation movement, said : — Our firm do a large business in supplying seeds to shopkeepers in North and South Wales ; but Cost of Production. 71 down to a f aw years ago our customers never asked for guarantees of purity and of germinating quali- ties. Now that the members of your societies get these guarantees, 'the farmers outside the move- ment are asking for them from the shopkeepers, who, in turn, and for their own protection, are requiring them from ourselves. Welsh farmers, it seems, are becoming as keen in these matters to-day as the farmer in the most advanced districts of England, arid the seeds they now get are among the best that are produced. The money leakage has also been great in regard to the purchase of feeding stuffs. Writ- ing on this subject in " The Transition in Agriculture" (pp. 166 — 7) I said: — During a visit to some of the dairy districts in Yorkshire^; I .met a farmer who had very strong views on this particular question. " The amount wasted by British farmers in their purchase of feeding -stuffs," he said, " would have sufificed to buy up all the land there is in the country " ; and he went on to tell me a story that was full of significance. He had induced some other farmers in his neighbourhood to join him in forming a society, one of the main objects of which was to enable them to purchase their feeding-stuffs in large quantities, according to a guaranteed analysis which they were careful to check. One day his society refused acceptance from a manufacturer of 1,000 tons of cake, not of stipulated quality, and, as a matter of curiosity, he asked the manu- facturer : " What shall you do with it? " " Oh," was the reply, " I shall send it to some place where they know nothing about analysis." 72 Small Holders. In this same district I found there were dairy farmers, not members of the society in question, who were spending £300 or £400 a year on cake — more than they paid for rent. They judged of the value of the cake by the effect it had on the animals, (never troubling to ask for analyses, which they would not have understood,) and they bought through some neighbour, who knew as little about analysis as they did themselves, but who got a commission from the manufacturers on the orders he secured. I may supplement this statement by men- tioning that at a meeting of the Carmarthen - sTiire Chamber of Agriculture on February 3, 1909, Mr. E. U. David, of Cardiff, in referring to the subject of compound feeding cakes, said : — He deplored "the general use of them in the Principality. He had before him the other day an analysis from the Board of Agriculture of these compound feeding stuffs, and it showed that the ingredients in the sample consisted entirely of sawdust and mineral oils. It would be far better if farmers made their own compounds, as they did not know what some of these feeding cakes contained. The significance of these facts, in respect to the possibilities of leakage in expenditure, will be better appreciated from the statement made by another member, at the same meeting, to the effect that, " within a radius of ten miles of Carmarthen the farmers paid at least £100,000 a year for feeding stuffs." Cost of Production. 73 Fertilisers were at one time judged of by the average farmer Ky their smell and their price. If they gave ofif a sufificiently pungent odour, and if a high price were asked for them, it was assumed that they must be good. In this way many a British farmer in the past has paid his £4 or £5 a ton for fertilisers inferior in quality to the supplies he can now get through his co-operative supply association for about £3. The obvious remedy for all this leakage of money in the purchase of agricultural require- ments is a system of organisation under which the producers in each district form a society that will group the orders of all its members, and (it may be) pass on this -bulked order to a district or a national federation, the com- modities thus obtained being of guaranteed quality (as verified by frequent analyses), bought in the best markets, at the very lowest price, transported on the railway at the lowest available rates, and distributed from central depots, the smallest purchasers obtaining all the advantages that could possibly be secured by the largest. Combination for the joint purchase of re- quirements has, in fact, been universally found to be the simplest form of agricultural co- operation. It is the basis on which an elaborate superstructure of organisation, in the manifold forms adopted in Denmark, France, and else- 74 Small Holders. where, can, if desired, afterwards be built up. It appeals direct to the pockets, and, therefore, to the personal interests of those concerned, since the buying, at a lower cost than before, of requisites which may be of substantially better quality than before, represents a double gain. From the point of view I am here enforcing, it especially constitutes a double saving in the cost of production. Following the leakage in purchase of sup- plies, when the producer remains an isolated unit, comes the leakage in cost of labour. Before the cultivator can get from his hold- ing all that the land is capable of producing, he must have, not only such efficient fertilisers as may be necessary, but good tools and machinery, as well. Without these, either the work will not be done properly, or the doing of it will involve excessive toil — the result, in either case, being that the cultivator is once more at an economic disadvantage. On the other hand, the individual cultivator may not possess sufficient means to be able to buy the machinery he should really have ; while, even if he should have adequate capital, jn sinking his money in acquiring costly machinery which he may require to use only, perhaps, once a year, he would still be at the aforesaid economic disadvantage as compared with a group of associated producers who had obtained similar machinery by means of joint Cost of Production. 75 purchase, arranging among themselves for its use in rotation. The general position in regard to the em- ployment of machinery on small holdings is well described by Mr. F. E. Green, in an article contributed by him to the Co-operative News of April 25, 1908 : — In the growing of grass for hay it would be false policy, even if he could aflford it, for the holder of even the maximum size of fifty acres to expend £17, for instance, on a mowing machine. It would certainly be a wasteful economy for anyone with less than fifty acres to buy a roller or a chain harrow to be used for the one opera- tion in the year. . . . Then there is carrying the hay, and I have never come across a small holder in possession of a hay waggon. . . . The horse-rake, tedder, to say nothing of the elevator, are beside the means of the small holder ; and yet, without the mowing machine, the horse -rake and the turner he would have to go back to the laborious, idyllic days of the scythe and the hand -rake. .When we come to work the arable fields, we find difficulties in the way of economic production without the aid of modern machinery more forcibly even than in the hayfield. It would be quite fitting and picturesque in the days of Ruth for the fields of Boaz to be garnered with the sickle. America was then an undiscovered country, and the grain elevator and the Atlantic liner troubled not the dreams of the Syrian peasant. He would have been horrified to have been asked to pay between £40 and £50 for a self-binder ; and probably at that primitive age civilisation had not advanced far enough to evolve the accommodating usurer. Even in the present day ... it would be sheer 76 Small Holders. folly for a small holder to borrow money to buy a self-binder for his sole use ; and yet every modern farmer who grows corn knows that with- out a self-binder he would be left behind in the race of reaping the golden ears of corn. The difficulties of cutting and harvesting corn on small arable farms in an efficient manner with- out the aid of machinery are small compared with the supreme and final act of threshing. In fact the difficulty of getting his threshing done often prevents a small holder from growing an acre or two of oats for his pony or his cow, even if he is perfectly willing to laboriously cut his plot with a sickle. The expense involved in engag- ing a threshing machine to thresh a few quarters of corn, including the cost of fuel for the engine and liquid for a gang of men, makes this opera- tion too expensive to be considered by any indi- vidual small holder. He is obliged, then, to let this snorting but efifective instrument of science pass on to the cultivator of broad acres, and fall back on the antique flail. I should like, also, in this connection, to call attention to the following passages from the " Notes on Agriculture," published in the Morning Post of November 17, 1908 : — December and January are generally the months when most of the threshing is done. Those farmers who are fortunate enough to possess their own steam tackle often thresh the grain on its way to the stackyard. But very few farms are thus equipped, and on the others the grain must be threshed as the opportunity presents itself. In Scotland the homesteads are usually furnished with built-in machines, so that the farmer may choose his own time to thresh and winnow the grain. Not so in England. The threshing mill Cost of Production. ^y must be hired, and invariably the farmer has to make his arrangements to suit those of the con- tractors who own steam plant. Very often an early market is missed because of the congestion of work in the threshing season .... Steam culture is more used to-day than it has been in the past, and the day will come when complete sets of steam tackle, which are very costly, will be owned on co-operative lines by rural communities, and the order of use determined by ballot. That is one direction in which co-operative effort might be concentrated with distinct benefit to the industry. WKen the necessary machines are secured by co-operative societies, for joint use by the members, not only do the corresponding diffi- culties attendant on agricultural individualism vanish, but the cost of production in regard to a larger output of commodities, under better conditions, is materially reduced, and the position of the growers when they dispose of these commodities on the market is propor- tionately improved. In the case of dairy farmers, the checking of waste, the guarantee that the best results are being obtained from the working capital, and the consequent avoidance of undue cost of production, may be carried still further, should they be willing to take a lesson from the example already offered in these respects by the dairy farmers of Denmark. Here I would allude, not so much to the " factory " system of butter production — with 78 Small Holders. which everyone is already more or less familiar —as to the " control " system in regard to milk production. Practically every dairy farmer in Denmark who supplies milk to a co-operative creamery is a member, also, of a Control Society, the special functions of which are to weed out such cows as are not sufficiently profitable, and to ensure the breeding of fresh stock from those that yield the best results. The experts of the Control Society make periodical visits to the farms, obtain samples of milk from the different cows, analyse them for proportion of butter fat, and compare the results from time to time with the complete records (kept by the farmer) of pedigree, daily yield of milk, and so on, in respect to each and every cow. If the experts find from the milk of certain of the animals that the percentage of butter fat (according to which the farmer is paid) is in- adequate, they advise accordingly. The farmer is thus put on his guard against keeping un- profitable animals, and he finds out, also, which are paying him best. As the result of judicious selection and careful breeding, the milk-pro- ducing capacity of the Danish cattle has greatly increased. "Average yields of 800 gallons of milk," the Scottish Commissioners to Den- mark state in their report, " are quite common. . . . The carefully kept records over a number of years show how the average milk yield has Cost of Production. 79 increased at some of the best -managed farms a hundred or more gallons in a few years." Referring to the same subject, in a paper on " Successful Dairying," published in the report, for 1907, of the Royal Ulster Agricultural Society, Mr. James Dunlop, of Midland, Fen- wick, Kilmarnock, says the system was estab- lished in Denmark nearly twenty years ago, and he proceeds : — This system enables the farmer to see at a glance the quantity and quality each cow has given him at the end of the season ; and, by elimina- ting the worst ones and breeding from the heaviest milkers, they estimate that they have so increased the milk yield of their cows as to reduce the cost of producing a pound of butter by 3^., equal to i^d. per gallon of milk. Taking as an average yield of milk per cow in Denmark the figure already mentioned — 800 gallons — this saving of i^d. per gallon is equal to one of £4 3s. 4d. per cow per year, giving, as I am seeking to show, an increase of profits even on the basis of the same market prices. The cost of the system, when shared by a considerable number of persons, is little more than nominal ; yet, by joining one of the co- operative control societies, the owner of a few cows gains all the advantages which could be secured by a wealthy company acting indepen- defitly. In the United Kingdom; — wherey I under- stand, the average yield of milk per cow is 8o Small Holders. under 600 gallons a year — some private owners of dairy cows have adopted the system, and certain Milk Record Societies have already been established ; but a really comprehensive control system, on Danish lines, is still lacking here. That it would be of great direct benefit to any group of small holders starting operations as dairy farmers is certain, judging from the results already obtained in Denmark ; while, incidentally, it would offer an indirect advan- tage- worth considering. With a periodical inspection of dairies by a co-operative control society's experts, there would be less ground ifor the demands now being raised by those medical officers of health who are advocating the en- forcement of legislative restrictions on dairy farms in order to ensure a greater purity of milk supply ; the effect of which restrictions may well be to increase the cost Of jjroduction, and so decrease the farmer's profits, unless he can get a higher price for his milk; All these, and various other methods, both of economising in expenditure and of getting the best attainable return therefrom, as the result of efficient combination must, under present-day conditions, be regarded as an almost indispensable condition to the succesis of farming, and niore~ especially to the suc- cess of small holders who, if depending wholly or, mainly on their plots of land, must needs' lead a life of arduous toil, with the prospect Cost of Production. 8i of a very narrow margin of profit in which any possible saving in cost of production might make a very appreciable difference. I urge, therefore, that, whether or not the principle of co-operative tenancy be adopted by the small holders, they should, under any pos- sible conditions of occupancy, regard as abso- lutely indispensable a schepie of well -designed combination for the purchase of their agricul- tural necessaries, and for the cultivation or operation generally of their holdings on the soundest economic basis. S.H. CHAPTER VI. COMBINATION FOR SALE. Having produced his commodities under the best conditions, the small holder has next to consider how he can dispose of them to the greatest advantage. • Here he must once more regard his holding as a commercial enterprise, and bear in mind that, just as he required to avoid money leakage in production, so, in distribution, while striv- ing to get the best terms he can, he must avoid any undue waste of that time and energy which in his case may be the equivalent of money. In the industrial world the handicraftsman and the artisan would not necessarily make good merchants. They may be excellent pro- ducers, and yet have none of the qualities necessary for carrying on a successful business. Such qualities would include knowledge of mar- kets, promptness in discovering and taking ad- vantage of opportunities, and capacity for deal- ing with traders who will probably have an eye exclusively to their own interests. An actual producer might have none of these qualities, just as an excellent business man who possessed Combination for Sale. 83 them all in a pre-eminent degree might be no less a failure if he tried to make the goods he can sell to a!dvantage. Nor does the commercial expert himself necessarily undertake all the details of sale, even though he may be abundantly qualified so to do. His time, perhaps, can be more pro- fitably devoted to supervision, and he may pre- fer to leave the said details to commer- cial travellers, salesmen, or distributing agents who are specialists in their particular depart- ment. In the agricultural world there has been far too great a tendency to combine in one and the same person these two distinct functions of producer and distributor. When such person comes under the definition of a " gentleman farmer " to whom time is no great object, the combination may be quite allowable ; but when the producer is a working farmer— or a small holder who may be regarded as the equivalent thereto — then, apart from the material con- sideration of business capacity, it is a matter for serious concern whether such a person can really afford to be his own salesman. Should he attend a weekly market in search of buyers, he loses (allowing for Sunday rest) one-sixth of his working time. Should he turn coster- monger as well as market gardener, and him- self vend his produce in a neighbouring town, the cultivation of his holding must suffer. G 2 84 Small Holders. Should he avoid these disadvantages by sending his commodities haphazard to a dealer in some wholesale market, he runs other risks which may be no less prejudicial to his prospects of securing an adequate return on his labour. Once raore, then, we find that as long as the small holder, producing for sale, remains an individual unit, he will suffer all the disad- vantages of a thoroughly unsound economic position. He may work as hard as a slave on his holding, he may even acquire all the scien- tific knowledge about production that his head will hold, and still reap nothing but failure by reason of that final and all -important test of marketing. Before, therefore, he becomes too sanguine as to what he can do — provided only his County Council will obtain for him tlie land he wants — he may be invited to consider how it is that the produce mainly of small holders on the Cpntinent is enabled to cotnpete so vigorously here wijth the produce of hoine growers . The Continental system is based on a two- fold application of one main principle — the elimination, in the process of distribution, of the individual unit by the substitution of or- ganised effort either through private enterprise, or through co-operation among the producers themselves . The advantages of the principle itself are undeniable . Combination for Sale. 85 The peasant proprietor in Denmark, acting independently, could no more send his own little lot of butter to the English market than the cottager in Galicia or Northern Italy could forward his basket of eggs week by week to the same destination. There must, then, in the first instance, be consignment in bulk of the produce of a number of farmers. Such consignment in bulk allows, in turn, of the lowest rates for transport being obtaine'd, while the guarantee is afforded of constant supplies in large quantities and of uniform quality, exactly meeting market requirements, and consequently securing the best possible prices . This guarantee may be further ensured, in the case of butter and bacon, by the estab- lishment of factories to which the individual farmers send the raw material only, for conver- sion by another set of workers into the manu- factured article. The associated farmer or small holder is spared all trouble in connection with either these intermediate processes or the eventual sale of the produce, and is enabled to confine his attention exclusively to his farm or holding. The fact, again, that the marketing is left in the hands of men of business aptitude, devoting themselves specially thereto, allows of the whole system of distribution being organised on sound commercial lines. 86 Small Holders. In many instances on the Continent these various phases of the main principle in ques- tion are undertaken by private firms, operating on a large scale in the hope and expectation of personal advantage. They may be looked on as something more than ordinary " middlemen," inasmuch as they, have important functions of their own to discharge, apart from simply buying from one set of persons and selling to another ; but, in any case, they effect that grouping of commodities for sale and transport which is here the material consideration. The alternative to this particular system is a resort to co-operation among the farmers and small holders themselves, whether for manufac- ture (as in the case of butter, cheese or bacon), or for collection (as in that of eggs, fruit, or garden produce), together with, of course,- joint consignment to markets, the savings effected or the profits gained being shared among those who join in the combination. Here, then, co-operative sale might be simply the ultimate outcome of a whole network of co-operative efforts directed to cheapening and facilitating production, and to other objects. In Holland, a third system, combining some- what the two just mentioned, has been tried. Some years ago the Dutch market gardeners in what is known as the Westland district of South Holland found they were suffering under two disadvantages — (i) their produce was Combination for Sale. 87 getting into discredit on the English market because of dishonest packing, good qualities being put only on the top of the hampers ; and (2) they were the prey of dealers who went round to the farms and gave just what price they thought fit for whatever they bought. Finding their interests doubly prejudiced, the cultivators proceeded to set their house in order. This they did by forming co-operative societies \vhich (i) took effective measures against dishonest packing ; and (2) opened co- operative marts — with members of their own societies as auctioneers — to which, thencefor- ward, the dealers had to go for the commodi- ties they bought, a greater guarantee for fair prices thus being obtained. So the middle- man remained, but the interests of the pro- ducers were protected by co-operation. The results are thus described in an account published in " The Rural World," in July, 1905, of a visit paid to Holland by a group of English journalists : — Turning to another feature, we went through what is known as the Westland district, which . . . comprises a number of villages. It is devoted largely to market gardening, and to the supplying of early vegetables, etc., for our own and other markets. . . . Over 500 acres are oc- cupied by some 1,400 small holders. . . . During the last few years considerable attention has been devoted to culture under glass. The price of land is increasing, so much so that at the present 88 Small Holders. time it varies from £135 to £170 per acre, and in one district a good deal over £200 per acre is charged. Cauliflowers, carrots, cucumbers, grapes, early beans and peas, endive and other salading, sprouts, currants, apples, pears, strawberries, etc., are cultivated, and it was extraordinary to observe how every inch of the land seemed to be put under cultivation. . . . The produce is taken to a mar- ket centre, where it is sold by auction either daily, every other day, or once a week. Then from a little pamphlet on " Les Asso- ciations Agricoles dans le Brabant HoIIandais," by A. Malet (published in Paris by Victor Lecoffre, 90, Rue Bonaparte), I learn that at one time the dairy farmers of Dutch Brabant, though tHey had joined together in establishing dairies, acted independently in sending the butter made therein to Eindhoven, where the dealers and shopkeepers who controlled the market gave whatever prices they pleased, and grew rich and powerful at the expense of the producers. The individual unit, who was not a member of a dairy society, had even to "be content to barter his little lot of butter for other goods. The dairy farmers tliereupon set up a mart of their own, took measures to ensure the purity of their produce, and, also, adopted the " butter control " stamp of the Netherlands Government. The dealers retal- iated by declaring a boycott against the farmers in the combination, and they, in turn, established a rival mart. The dairy farmers Combination for Sale. 89 responded by transferring their consignments from Eindhoven to an auction mart in Brussels, and by seeking further outlets in Antwerp and Liege, where " stamped " butter is alone accepted. Begun in May, 1904, this "butter war," as it is called, has since been waged with great determination on both sides ; but the writer of the pamphlet (the date of which is not given) seems to have every confidence that the dairy farmers' association is going to win. The examples thus offered will suffice, I hope, to illustrate the weakness of the position which the English small holder must needs occupy if he should stand alone in seeking an outlet for the commodities he is producing, and especially if he should consign to markets already receiving large, uniform, and well- graded supplies sent from foreign countries under one or other of the conditions indicated. Even if, notwithstanding a substantial increase in competition from other small holders in his own neighbourhood, he could still sell his pro- duce in the nearest town, he would find it of advantage to trade through a local co-opera- tive society of small holders, thus saving time and expense ; but his great trouble would begin when his local markets were fully supplied, and he had to look for patrons elsewhere. In this connection there are two courses which might be more especially commended 90 Small Holders. to the notice of small holders prepared to adopt the principle of combination I am here advocating. ' (i) Agricultural co-operative societies for the sale of agricultural produce should not only organise and grade their supplies exactly on the lines best adapted to meet market require- ments, but they should avoid both undue com- petition between themselves and the glutting oi certain large markets, organisihg, instead, a more scientific method of distribution, under which they would keep in close touch with one another (by the telephone or otherwise), and seek to supply the smaller markets of the coun- try, to which consignments could be sent direct without the intervention of such leading centres as London and Manchester. In this latter respect the market gardeners of Evesham, making extensive use of telephonic communi- cation with different towns, have established a most -excellent system which, coupled with the railway arrangements in force there, has done much to make the market gardening industry in that fertile Worcestershire valley the grekt success it has been. (2) The societies should further seek to open up direct dealings with hotels, hydros, board- ing-houses. State departments, municipalities, institutions, stores, and other possibly sub- stantial buyers, and should more especially aim at establishing business arrangements with the Combination for Sale. 91 great wholesale and other industrial co-opera- tive societies which now do so much of the trade of distribution in this country. Theoretically, there should be a strong affinity between the two groups of representa- tives of the co-operative principle. But the leaders of the co-operative distributing move- ment are essentially men of business. They cannot allow sentiment to run away with them and lead them (to their own disadvantage) to rely on British producers who either cannot, or will not, provide what they really require. A co-operative wholesale society, doing a very big business, wants — no less than a dealer on an extensive scale — to have regular consign- ments, in bulk, of uniform quality, so that cus- tomers can rely on having the same goods week by week ; and the producers who can fulfil this requirement will get the business, whether thej; are foreigners or Britishers. If the latter can supply exactly what is wanted, they may reason- ably expect to get a preference ; but, as a rule^ and allowing for exceptions, the offers they make to these very big consumers are on too small a scale, while the making of a number of small contracts — even if uniformity of quality could be depended on — would be so much trouble that the preference may go, rather, to the foreigner who is able to siipply just what is needed . The reader may, perhaps, be interested in 92 Small Holders. a statement of the views on this particular sub- ject (though not written for the purpose of publication) of an authority who buys weekly some £600 worth of supplies for a co-operative and industrial society with which he is asso- ciated. Writing to an active supporter of the agricultural organisation movement he said : — I look upon co-operation as the only salvation of the English agricultural industry. But those who grow our food want bringing into closer con- tact with those who eat it ; and although, theo- retically, it appears all plain sailing, as soon as we start work we find the little practical difficul- ties stepping in to hinder progress .... You must do the work of the dealer who, under our present system of trade, does useful and necessary work. He buys in irregular quantities, at irregular times, and at irregular prices, according to all sorts of circumstances, and sells in regular quantities de- livered at regular times and at much more regular prices, suiting the ordinary retailer or retail co- operative society, whose trade is the same week in and week out. All this work can be done much better by co-operation than by any other method ; but it has to be done, and the farmer or society of farmers must realise this, as they will never get the retailers and shopkeepers to take the place of the dealer, and be a dumping ground for pro- duce just as it chances to come along. The day- by-day trade of the retail shopkeeper leads to more or less hand-to-mouth dealing, and, there- fore, necessitates regular supplies. ... I have often noticed on the part of the actual producers of our food a want of knowledge of the require- ments of retail traders. ... I think, too, there is a great opening for co-operation in the way of collection and marketing of produce by motor. . . . Combination for Sale. 93 Any retailer would be in the bankruptcy court in a month if the selling of his goods consumed the same time as the dairy farmer spends over the same amount of work. To afford to the reader some idea of the business done by industrial co-operative distri- buting societies in commodities which Britijsh producers should be able to furnish to them, I give the foUovs^ing list of supplies purchased (among others) during 1908 by the Leeds Industrial Co-operative Society, Ltd., to meet the wants of its members : — Wheat Oats Barley Peas for Mill Department Beans „ „ Indian Corn Hay and Straw Beasts Sheep Lambs Pigs Calves Potatoes Onions Peas (Green, in pecks) ... Swede Turnips Carrots Butter Bacon and Ham Lard Cheese Apples Tomatoes Gooseberries Black and Red Currants Plums Pears Cauliflower . 130,000 qrs. • 5i5oo qrs. 1,500 qrs. 500 qrs. 500 qrs. 4,100 qrs. 326 tons. S,720 12,900 1,350 4,260 460 480,000 scores. 42,000 stones. 44 tons. 63 tons. 51 tons. 25,500 cwts. 15,000 cwts. 13,000 cwts. 3,000 cwts. 14,000 stones. 6 tons. 2 tons. I ton, ■3 tons. 3 tons. 4C0 doz. 94 Small Holders. Celery 700 doz. bundles. Rhubarb 4.175 doz. bundles. Eggs 86,000 hundreds. The same society took, in the same year, 426,950 gallons of milkj and 29,000 sacks of flour, of which 10,982 were converted into bread. The proportions in whicH the quantities com- prised in the above list represented home or foreign produce respectively cannot be told ; though it is probable that in the case of a manufacturing centre like Leeds the foreign supplies would be especially plentiful. Turning, however, to the Lincoln Equitable Co-operation Industrial Society, it is interest- ing to learn that that society buys largely from the small holders settled in its district, included in those purchased from country mem- bers in 1908 being butter and eggs to the value of £8,272. Among the other purchases made by the same society were : — English Wheat 7,967 qrs. Oats 2,018 qrs. Barley 1,406 qrs. Rye 65 qrs. Hay and Seeds 260 tons. Straw 75 tons. Potatoes 450 tons. Carrots 37 tons. Other Roots 15 tons. Green Peas and Kidney Beans ... 720 bushels. Greens 10,800 heads. I find, also, that the Norwich Co-operatiVe Society bought in the district, during 1908, Combination for Sale. 95 produce, fruit, vegetables, etc., to the value of £3,000. Then the example of a small society of market gardeners at Littleton and Badsey, near Evesham, is especially worth mentioning. Instead of running any risk in consigning their produce to the ordinary markets, the members opened up communications with the Co-opera- tive Wholesale Society in Manchester. A re- presentative of this body called on them, ex- plained exactly what would be required, and they have since so well adapted themselveis to these requirements that the Manchester organi- sation takes practically all they can grow. The advantage of combination such as this over leaving each grower to his own resources in getting rid of his produce is undeniable, while the principle involved is capable of appli- cation in many different directions by coloni'es of small holders working together on well- organised lines. There should, for example, be no great difficulty in getting the members of a colony of this kind all to grow the same quality of wTieat, potatoes, or vegetables, and offering to a dealer or to an industrial co-operative society a quantity thereof worth consideration, instead of their growing half-a-dozen different varieties in small quantities that neither the dealer nor the society would care to look at. The same considerations apply to fruit (especi- ally in combination with an efficient gradijag system, which should here be regarded as in- 96 Small Holders. dispensable) and other conunodities besides. Indeed, without combination not only for pro- duction but for sale, the British small holder must expect to see some of the most promising markets in the country closed against him. CHAPTER VII. WHAT CO-OPERATION IS DOING. The great incentive for a resort to agri- cultural co-operation at home comes from the examples offered by foreign countries. The system is generally assumed to have reached its highest stage of development in Denmark, where every possible phase of agricultural pro- duction and sale has its separate co-operative societies, themselves grouped into more or less powerful federations ; but, as shown in " The Organisation of Agriculture," the movement has now spread to practically every civilised country throughout the world. The story of Denmark has, in fact, rather overshadowed the record of what has been done elsewhere ; and for this reason I might, in passing, make some reference to the position in France. I will not attempt to deal with that position in detail, because it has already been so clearly recorded by M. ie Comte de Rocquigny in " Les Syndicats Agricoles et leur CEuvre," published (under the authority of the Musee Social) by Armand Colin et Cie., Paris ; while readers with a prejudice in' favour of the S.H. H 9? Small Holders. English language will find an admirable digest of the Comte de Rocqiiigny's facts— and others besides— in a pamphlet entitled " Notes on Agricultural Co-operation in France," by Mr. E. A. Stopford, reprinted from the Irish Home- stead, and obtainable from the Irish Agricul- tural Organisation Society, Merrion Square, Dublin. Leaving the reader to fall back on these sources of information as regards the general situation in France, I will here only mention that there is published by the " Libraire des Sciences Agricoles " (ii. Rue "de Mezieres, Paris), an " Annuaire de I'Agriculture et les Associations Agricoles," and that a catalogue, with very brief descriptions, of the agricultural associations m the different departments 6F France is mainly responsible for the swell- ing of the volume into one of considerably over 1,000 closely printed pages, the size of those in our own Post Office directories. On seeing a "copy of fhis woflc, I at 'Erst thought of making an analysis of its contents ; but the task looked so formidable that, clos- ing the book again, I allowed it to fall open where it would, resolved to content myself with just whatever details might then present them- selves on the page before me. The section I lighted on referred to the " Union des Syndi- cats Agricoles et Horticoles Bretons," and I can only trusit that the particular body which What Co-operation is Doing. 99 chance thus brought under my notice is typical of French agricultural organisation in general. In any case, I learned that the Union in question was founded in 1895, with head-quar- ters at Rennes, embraces the whole of Brittany, and has 30,000 members, divided among 35 syndicates. It makes collective purchases of manures, implements, and all agricultural neces- saries for the different syndicates ; it under- takes the sale of agricultural products (cereals, potatoes, vegetables, fruit, fodder, butter, cheese, fruit and forest trees, etc!) ; it carries on commercial and financial negotiations either for the syndicates acting collectively or for individual members, having a broker of its own who watches over their interests ; it encourages agricultural education by organising classes in both theory and practice, arranging lectures and shows, and holding examinations ; it has in affiliation a number of agricul- tural credit banks ; it occupies itself with accident, life and fire insurance, and has obtained from the insurance com- panies reduced terms and specially favourable conditions for agricultural societies ; it has arranged a system of arbitration between the syndicates and their members ; it studies all questions affecting the advancement of the national agricultural interests, and collects com- mercial information likely to be of service to its members ; while, as an intermediary of con- H 2 lOo Small Holders. siderable standing and influence, and being associated with a committee of experts on traffic questions, it is able to press the rights and defend the interests of agricultural traders far more effectively than they could do as indivi- duals in questions arising out of what my authority describes as " the irregularities more and more frequent in the matters of transport (delay, damage, loss of consignments, etc.)." My purpose in offering these details is to show once more how hopeless the position of the newly-created small holder at home must be if he is simply provided with a plot of land by a County Council, acting under the auspices — if not under the compulsion — of an Act of Parliament, and then left to compete with Con- tinental producers backed up by an elaborate net -work of organised effort such as this. The situation is so obviously absurd that, instead of commenting on it further, I would, pre- ferably, glance at what is already being done in the United Kingdom to place bur own agri- culturists on the same footing as the foreigner. In " The Organisation of Agriculture " I have already 'dealt with the early history of the movement in England and Wales, and I may here proceed at once to refer to the enormous development which the movement, as centred in the Agricultural Organisation Society, has undergone since that body was formed in 1901. The progress made has not only been great What Co-operation is Doing, toi but wide -spread," the operations of the Society now embracing every branch of agricultural co-operation. Succeeding to the well-meant but unsuccessful efforts of the late Lord Win- chilsea, who had devoted a vast amount of energy— if not sacrificing life itself— to hip endeavours to organise agriculture on its most difficult side — co-operative sale — the new body, with Mr. R. A. Yerburgh as president, Mr. J. Nugent Harris as secretary, and a most earnest body of workers to help them, began their organisation of agriculture with the sim- plest phase of all — that of co-operative purchase of agricultural necessaries. This proved to be a far sounder basis to work upon. The practical advantages secured by co-operative purchase led by an easy transi- tion to other developments, including co-opera- tive sale of produce, which might once more have proved a failure had it again been started first. Societies that began with purchase are now selling for their members such commodities as milk, com, eggs, poultry, fruit, market garden produce, clover, hay and straw, pigs, etc., some of them doing a considerable trade therein. In two instances societies have set up their own auction mart. Other subsidiary tranches of activity have likewise been developed. One society has been specially formed for the opera- tion of a mill. Others have mills as part of io2 Small Holders. their ordinary workV grinding corii, or pre- paring feeding stuff for live stock. At Ipswich the Eastern Counties Farmers' Co -operative Association have (among other things) an up- to-date seed cleaning plant. In fact, so many; phases of local activity are linked up that individual societies delegate different branches of their work to different committees. The Eastern Counties Farmers' Co-operative Association has not only a committee of management but a finance sub -committee, an estate sub -committee, a pigs sub -committee, an egg sub-committee, a mill sub -committee, a roots sub-committee, and trading sub -com- mittees at Beccles,- Ipswich and Norwich ; though the reader may be less surprised at this elaborate organisation when he learns that the turnover of the Association increased from £15,400 in 1904-5 to £212,992 in 1908. It is true that this amount of business, as done' by a single society, is exceptionally large ; but there is a steadily increasing tendency among most of the societies affiliated to the Agricul- tural Organisation Society to cultivate a variety of interests in addition to the particular purpose for which they were originally formed. The actual number of these societies at the end of 1908 was no fewer t"han 292, and their official classification was as follows : — Societies for supply of requirements or sale of produce,- 131:; small holdings and allotments societies,- What Co-operation is Doing. 103 III; dairy societies, 13; agricultural credit societies, 21 ; farming societies, 3 ; fruit -grad- ing societies, 2 ; motor service societies,2 ; industries societies, 3 ; auction markets, 2 ; milling society, i ; Agricultural Co-operative Federation, i ; Central Co-operative Agricul- tural Bank, i ; Agricultural and General Co- operative Society, i . The great increase in the turnover of these various bodies since the Agricultural Organi- sation Society was formed in 1 90 1 is shown by the following figures : — I90I ... ;f 9,467 1905 ... ;f22I,52I 1902 ... 16,274 1906 ••• 375,000 1903 ... ... 38,909 1907 610,000 1904 ... ... 136,677 1908 860,000 It is estimated that the turnover for 1909 will be close on £1,000,000. In the case of the Carmarthen Farmers' Co- operative Society, the turnover increased from £5,910 in 1904 to £40,781 in 1908. The Eastern Counties Dairy Farmers' Co-operative Society, which has a depot, with complete refri- gerating apparatus, at Stratford, is doing for its members a business to the extent of £37,000 a year, and has now started a depdi at Ongar, Essex, for making up their surplus milk into cheese. The sales of the Newport (Salop) and I04 Small Holders. District Agricultural Trading Society, which stood at about £8,000 in 1906, rose to £11,800 in 1907, and to £23,000 in ^igoS, with the promise of a further big advance in 1909, inas- much as the total for the first quarter of the year amounted to £10,500. Not only, too, are the societies widening the scope of their individual activities, and increasing the dimensions of the business done, but they are developing a system of inter- trading which is no less deserving of mention. For example, there is at Farnham, Surrey, a Farmers' Co-operative Association whose members fatten Welsh cattle for the market. Formerly these cattle were obtained by them from the markets, in the usual way ; but, owing to the exertions of Mr. J. A. Eggar, the hon. secretary of the Farnham Society, direct rela- tions have been established with the agricul- tural co-operative societies in Wales, and the cattle are now sent direct to Surrey — arriving there in better condition than if they had first gone through a market — while various inter- mediate expenses are saved. A like system is now being adopted at Farnham with regard to Scotch cattle. Another form of inter -trading is that carried on between members of individual societies through the intermediary of their paid manager, who charges a small commission, which goes to the society's funds. Societies and members ■What Co-operation is Doing. :io5 are thus brought into close touch in regard not only to joint purchase and joint sale, but also in supplying one another's wants, their mutual interests being still further strengthened. To facilitate both the joint purchase of agri- cultural requirements and the joint sale of pro- duce on behalf of the various societies, and, also, to meet the further expansion of the move- ment likely to be brought about by the setting up of so many more small holders, the various organisations concerned are now carrying out a scheme of district trading federations, to take the place of the Agricultural Co-operative Federation originally designed to operate for the societies generally. Under this new schetne England and Wales will be divided into at least nine trading areas, in each of which the societies therein which are affiliated to the Agricultural Organisation Society will be grouped into a district federation, having a managing committee and experts of its own, and with headquarters at the best point of distribution. Representatives of these district iederations will, in turn, form a Central Board for agricultural co-operative trade, designed to take united action in regard to purchases or common policy as occasion may require. The advantages to small holders of being connected through even the most unpretend- ing of agricultural co-operative societies with such a combination as the one here indi- io6 Small Holders. cated hardly require any demonstration ; but I might, in passing, show' how they may be shared in even by allotment holders. In the annual report of the Winchester and District Agricultural Trading Society — a co-operative body consisting mainly of large farmers — I read : — An arrangement has' been made to enable allot- ment holders to take advantage of the co-operative trading movement. The Winchester Allotment Society and the Sparsholt Allotment Society have both been elected members of your society. In the case of the former society, consisting, as it does, of over 500 members, your committee sug- gests that arrangements shall be made for their representation on the general committee. This action certainly shows a fine spirit on the part of the farmers, who are willing not only to allow the allotment holders to share in the advantages of their combination, but even to give them representation on their general committee. It means more than this, however ; for the allotment holder, cultivating his few roods of land, and buying his J lb. or J lb. of seeds, and his '^ cwt. or i cwt. of fertilisers, will get just the same advantages in price and quality as the biggest farmer in the society. Following the propagandist and the trading federations already mentioned come still other federations formed by the Agricultural Organ- isation Society (as I shall show in subsequent chapters) foi; centralising such special classes What Co-operation is Doing. 107 of business as co-operative credit and co-opera- tive insurance ; the intention being that, with the help of a happy combination of centralisa- tion and devolution, the movement shall be a self-contained one, and meet all those wants of the agricultural community to which the principle of co-operative effort can apply. The small local societies, mainly for the' co-operative purchase of necessaries, with which the pioneers of agricultural organisation were wisely content to begin, are thus undergoing a wide -spread expansion ; while the whole move- ment, with its many phases of possible use- fulness to himself, may be commended to the small holder with the greater degree of con- fidence inasmuch as the Agricultural Organisa- tion Society is now receiving from the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries direct financial support, expressly designed to enable it better to assist ill the successful settlement of small holders ori the land. The opinion which the Board of Agriculture has formed of the Society, and the extent of the grant it has decided to make to its funds, are alike shown in the following extract from the Interim Report of the Board of Agricul- ture of " Proceedings under the Small Holdings and Allotments Acts for the six months ending 30th June, 1908": — The Board have had under consideration the ques- tion of the -assistance which they are empowered io8 Small Holders. by section 39 (4) of the Act of I907 to give to a society having as its object or one of its objects the promotion of co-operation in connection with the cultivation of small holdings or allotments, and they have come to the conclusion that the Agricultural Organisation Society is a body which is well fitted to undertake such work. The society is entirely non-political, it exists for propagandist purposes only, and is not a trading body. For the last seven years it has been engaged in the work of promoting co-operation among agricul- turists generally, and of assisting in the formation of registered agricultural co-operative trading societies. The Board have, therefore, decided, with the sanction of the Treasury, to make a grant of £1,200 a year to the society out of the Small Holdings Account for a period of three years from April i, 1908, provided that the income of the society from subscriptions and dona- tions in each previous year is not less than £1,200. If the income of the society from subscriptions and donations exceeds £1,200, the grant will be in- creased to an amount equal to such income, with a maximum of £1,600. Under the conditions of this grant, the Agri- cultural Organisation Society has appointed three additional organisers. It was stipulated that one of them should be conversant with the organisation of co-operative societies for the production and sale of poultry and eggs ; and a better appointment to this post than that of Mr. Edward Brown, secretary of the National Poultry Organisation Society, could not have been made. Of the other organisers appointed, one is an expert in the grading, packing, and What Co-operation is Doing. 109 sale of market garden produce, and the other has been closely associated with the co-opera- tive distributive movement, and should thus be able to render good service in securing an outlet in that direction for small holders' produce. Another condition of the grant was that the Board of Agriculture should nominate six mem- bers of the comniittee of the Agricultural Organisation Society, which has thus been reconstituted as follows : — President, Mr. R. A. Yerburgh ; Deputy Chairmen, the Lord Lucas and Mr. W. Fitzherbert-Brockholes ; Com-; mittee of Management : Elected : Mr. Francis D. Acland, M.P., Mr. C. Adeane, Mr. Charles Bathurst, Mr. E. E. Bennett, the Hon. Edward Strutt, Mr, A. Brigstocke, Mr. Noel Buxton, Mr. H. C. Fairfax-Cholmeley, Mr. ,W. Fitz- herbert-Brockholes, Mr. F. Impey, the Lord Lucas, Mr. Rouse Orlebar, the Earl of Strad- broke, Mr. R. N. Sutton -Nelthorpe, Mr. H. W. Wolff, the Rev. Rollo Meyer ; nominated by the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries : Mr. M. T. Baines and Mr. E. J. Cheney (Small Holdings Commissioners under the Small Hold- ings and Allotments Aets, 1908), Mr. C. Roden Buxton and Mrs. Wilkins (representing the Central Small Holdings Society), Mr. J. C. Gray and Mr. D. Mclnnes (representing the Co-operative Union, Ltd.) ; by the National Poultry Organisation Society : The Marchioness iTo Small Holders. of Salisbury, Colonel R. Williams, M.P.'; Secretary, Mr. J. Nugent Harris.* So, with the very practical help and en- couragement of the Board of Agriculture, the Society is entering upon fresh lines of useful- ness, designed in the special interests of those concerned in the cultivation Of small holdings and allotments, full official recognition thus being given to that principle of organised effort which I am here regarding as essential to any real success the small holders, especi- ally, may hope to achieve. It should, how- ever, be pointed out that the grant niade to the Society by the Board of Agriculture is ear -marked for fresh work to be taken in hand, so that the need for practical help from the British public, also, is as great as before. The one and only absurdity in the whole situation, indeed, is to be found in the fact that what is practically the regeneration of agriculture in England (since about three -fourths of the agri- culturists here are already small holders, or little more) should have been taken in hand by a Society whose total income, Government grant included, does not yet exceed £2,500 a year ! Although Scotland and Ireland do not come within the scope of the Small Holdings and Allotments Act, it may be considered not out of place if, in relation to the general subject * The offices of the Society are at Dacre House, Dacre' Street, Westminster, S.W. What Co-operatidn is Doing, i i i of agricultural organisation, I indicate briefly what is being done in this direction there. Scotland was for some years included in tlie work of the Agricultural Organisation Society ; but the difiSculty, expense and inconvenience of organising Scottish developments from London led, in October, 1905, to the formation of a Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society, with Sir John Gilmour (who had taken an especially keen interest in the movement) as first presi- dent. The secretary is Mr. John Drysdale, and the offices are at 5, St. Andrew Square, Edinburgh . Although only in its fourth year, the Scottish Agricultural Orgariisation Society is already at the head of 23 local societies, concerning which the executive committee say in their report for 1908 : — These societies have been enabled to assist their members to obtain very substantial advantages, either in the purchase of seeds, manures, feeding stuffs, implements and other requisites, or in the sale of produce, especially of eggs and milk. In almost every instance where district societies have taken to buying collectively the agricultural seeds, manures, feeding stuffs, implements, etc., required by their members, an immediate effect has been not only a direct advantage to the mem- bers but a considerable lowering of the prices quoted for these commodities by local traders and merchants ; and, on the other hand, wherever the produce, such as milk or its manufactured products, eggs, and certain products of the fishing industry, such as crabs, lobsters, etc., have been Hi Small Holders. collectively put on the market, higher prices have been obtained, which has had the effect of stimu- lating local traders to offer increased prices for such produce. Unfortunately, there are too many farmers who are content to take advantage of the benefits which the co-operative movement has con- ferred, without doing anything themselves to strengthen or help the work of organisation. TKe reference here to crabs and lobsters (which', even with the greatest stretch of imag- ination, could not be brought under the Head of " Agriculture ") is the more interesting because it confirms what I have already said as to the wide -spread nature of the usefulness which these agricultural co-operative societies may develop. Formed at Freswick in March, 1907, the John O' Groat Agricultural Co-opera- tive Society, Ltd., was joined during the first year by 161 members, and began operations with the purchase of goods for members, the principal commodities thus obtained being man- ures (;i7 tons) and various seeds (over 3 tons). The total outlay on these requisites, includi'ng carriage and carting, was £498, and the society was so anxious to keep prices to members as low as possible that it made an initial loss of £8. But the general outlook in regard to co- operative effort was so favourable that the society took in hand, also, the organisation of the lobster and crab industry of the district. TKe fishermen had previously sent their shell fi§H to the southern markets on their; own What Co -operation is Doincj. :i;i3; account, and the average price per barrel, they had realised in this way was 8s. The Society arranged to dispose of the fish through a representative of the A.O.S. in London, and between May and October, 1 907, they thus sold 2,670 barrels, the total amount realised being £1,228 9s. 3^. Hence, the fishermen obtained an average return of gs.. 2^d., instead of the previous average of Ss.., and the total gain to themselves was £160 9s. 3d. The yield for Keiss vil- lage was especially favourable, the figures there working out at i is. ^d. per barrel, instead of 8s;. So, to-day, some of the sturdiest cham- pions in Scotland of the organisation of agricul- ture are to be found among the fishermen of John O 'Groats 1 One especially interesting phase of the Scot- tish Agricultural Organisation Society's work is that which relates to the development of the dairying industry, though here the action taken has been on lines similar to those already adopted in England by the Eastern Counties Dairy Farmers' Association. Under the old system of milk supply the Scottish farmer made a contract for one year with a milk retailer in some town, and it was the usual practice for that person to try to cut down: the price, on the ground that there were occasions when, either through over-supply or on account of holiddy seasons, the demand fell off and a g;ood deal of the milk he received s.H. I 114 Small Holders. was wasted, witK the result that he sustained a loss. This position has been met by the organ- isation of depdts to which the milk is first sent by the farmer, being there passe'd through refrigerators, and then consigned to the retailers in accordance with orders received by telephone or otherwise. The milk keeps better, owing to the refrigeration, waste is prevented alike in this way and by avoidance of over -supply, and the surplus can be worked up into cheese or butter at the depot. To show how all these things tend to the benefit of the associated farmers, I might men- tion that in the course of six months one little group of between 20 arid 30 farmers in Ayrshire received £700 more for their milk than they would have done under the former system. In other words, a gain at the rate of £1,400 a year was the difference between their old posi- tion as individual units and their new position as members of a co-operative agricultural society. The trading prospects of the societies might be still further improved if the Scottish Whole- sale Co-operative Society, or other of the trading bodies engaged in the distribution of farm produce in the large towns and cities, were to draw direct from the farmers' depdts the considerable supplies of milk of which these bodies are distributors. The attitude of the Scottish farmers in regard What Co-operation is Doing. 115 to the distribution of their produce was very clearly defined by the secretary of their own Agricultural Organisation Society, Mr. John Drysdale, in a conversation I had with hiin. He said on this point : — iWe are organising the producing end, and we are quite willing that the co-operative or other trading bodies in the large centres of consump- tion shall organise the distributing end. Distri- bution is a separate business, and one which dairy fanners, at least for the present, should not attempt . We equally recognise the fact that in one form or another the middleman may be indispensable. We do not object to his making a fair profit from work we do not care to undertake ourselves, and for which he is better fitted ; but we do want to check waste, to put the business on the best possible basils, and to see that the farmers themselves get the full amount of profit to which they are entitled. The number of co-operative dairies already set up by the Scottish societies afhliated to the central body is five, though more are in course of formation. Building and equi|pment generally cost from £1,500 to £2,000; and the cost of running these depdts, including interest on capital, wages, and other charges, works out at from \d. to 11-32^?. per gallon of milk dealt with. One especially interesting fact in connection with the depots is that the Scottish landlords, by taking up shares in them according to their ability, have rendered material help in provid- ing the necessary capital. In addition to their I 2 i:i;6 Small Holders. faith in the agricultural co-operation principle, and to their desire to further the prosperity of their tenants, they have, presumably, seen a benefit to themselves in the fact that the provision of a co-operative milk depot for a group of farmers should lessen the necessity for that expenditure on improvements or build- ings which generally forms so heavy an item in the management of a dairy estate. When, again, these buildings are no longer requited to the same extent as before, there is less risk of demands, involving more or less outlay, being presented by the health authorities. In agricultural co-operation, therefore, the interests of landlord and tenant are found, in Scotland, aLt least, to be identical ; and, con- sidering that many of the Scottish landowners are now getting little or nothing out of their estates — owing, among other things, to the effects of heavy death and succession duties, the cost of elaborate steadings and' equipment, etc. — it is satisfactory to know that they are sharing with their tenants in the economises and the gains which co-operative effort is calculated to effect. ' In Ireland the societies registered to the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society at the date of the last available annual report (June 30, 1908) were : — What Co-operation is Doing. 'i>7 Class of Society. No. OF So- cie- ties. Mem- bership. Paid up Shake Capital. Loan Capital, TUHNOVER. Dairy Societies Auxiliary Agricultural „ Credit „ Poultry Home Industries „ Bee-keepers' „ Flax „ Federations „ Miscellaneous (in- cluding Bacon Curing Societies) 288 57 168 261 32 49 18 IS S 20 41,294 not 12,490 14,875 1.795 1,792 114 571 198 4,182 114,635 separately 5,118 2,330 2,700 7 383 3,833 11,655 £ 75.072 regis 30.379 48.718 5,493 1,209 3,197 3,327 815 £ 1,634,083 tared 86,525 53,112 72,437 14,232 21 17,103 130,444 9,666 913 82,311 140,661 168,210 2,017,623 It will be seen from this list that in Ireland the creameries are more numerous than any other type of society, and account for the greater part of the £2,000,000 turnover. From the point of view of the English small holder, however, the most interesting phase of the Irish movement is the development of agricultural credit, concerning which I shall speak later on ; but special mention should also be made of what the Irish Agricultural Wholesale Society is doing. This last -mentioned body has carried on a sturdy fight for success, and, though its position is now well established, its turnover of £73,000 in 1908 was. certainly less than it should have ii8 Small Holders. been.* But the food things it has done are not to be looked at solely from the point of view of the balance sheet. It Has, for example, introduced the sale of seeds which have been thoroughly tested and are fully guaranteed in respect to purity and germination, the standard for seeds having" thus been raised throughout Ireland. Instead of buying from a~ local shop- keeper — himself ignorant of the quality of the seeds he sells — the Irish" peasant of to-day can send a list of his requirements to his society, which collects similar lists from other members and forwards them all to Dublin. There the orders are made up into separate bags (the smallest buyer getting the same quality of seeds, and at as low a price, as the largest) ; the bags are sealed and put into a sack, and this sack goes as a single consignment to the secretary of the local society, so that, inciden- tally, there is also a saving in transport charges. So great is the confidence created in this system in Ireland that the Wholesale Society's business in seeds is increasing 50 per cent, every year. Fertilisers and feeding stuffs are analysed by or for the Society before they are sent out ; or, alternatively, they are purchased subject to a guarantee, the manufacturers, being obliged * As the Society has now secured an egg business worth ^30,000 a year, the turnover for 1909 should show a substantial increase. What Co-operation rs Doing. 119; to refund any amount paid to them in" excess of actual values'. Owing mainly to the undue profits made by middlemen, the prices for fer- tilisers were enormous before the Agricultural Wholesale Society started operations. Nor did the farmers know what they were buying. To- day the middleman element has been substan- tially reduced, and, though the manufacturer himself has not been so much affected, the prices are about half what they used to be ; while Irish farmers now understand the use of fertilisers so well (thanks to the Department of Agriculture's instructors) that in 1906 they bought a total of 175,000 tons; in place of the 120,000 tons they had in 1900 — though these quantities were not all obtained through the Wholesale Society. Once more, also, the small farmer is placed on a footing of equality with' thie large farmer, a society ordering six tons of fertilisers getting the same qualities, at the same price, as a society ordering 600 tons. The same general conditions apply to feeding stuffs. Here it has been especially noted in Ireland that the qualifies have gone up, that the stock is better nourished, and that the farmers get better returns. The activity of the Irish" Agricultural Whole- sale Society has gone still further. An especially noticeable phase of its enterprise is to be found in the encouragement it offers for a co-opera- tive owning of agricultural machinery. A 120 Small Holders. group of farmers in a certain district will raise a loan from a bank' on tlieir joint and several security, obtain a threshing machine on the lowest possible terms through the Agricultural Wholesale, and arrange a fixed scale of charges to be paid by those who use it, so that in some cases the original loan and the interest thereon are paid off in the course of three years. In Wexford county eight threshing machines, to- gether with a number of wagons, have been acquired by different societies. This brief outline of the situation in regard to co-operative trading in Ireland may serve to show the general operation of the principles involved in such trading as applying to that country, to England and Wales, to Scotland, or to any other country, allowing for differences in local conditions. It again shows the great advantage possessed by the associated over the non -associated cultivator, especially of the " small " type ; but it shows, also, that, to ■gain the full possible value of agricultural co- operation, the societies must themselves form, or be connected with, some large federation, able to ensure to them, as societies, tlie same kind of advantage they themselves confer oh their members, as individuals. The reader will easily perceive that a group of very small pro- ducers, forming a local co-operative agricul^ tural society, may be in no more favourable position, in their collective capacity, and get no What Co-operation is Doing. 121 more consideration from a " ring " of manufac- turers than an ordinary large farmer, since their combined order might be no larger than his. But they strengthen their position when their modest society forms part of a county, a district, or a national federation, securing thereby even greater advantages tlian the largest of all buyers could hope to obtain for himself so long as he acted individually. In Ireland, too, as in England, a devolution scheme in connection with the general move- ment is being carried out, the Irish Wholesale Society now having depots, at Sligo and Lim- erick, with others to follow, under the charge of District Advisory Boards, so that, for in- stance, a shipload of agricultural necessaries can be imported at Sligo and distributed thence at less cost than if the same ^oods were sent from Dublin to their various destinations. It is anticipated in Ireland that the creation of these District "Advisory Boards will not only tend to the consolidation and extension of co- operative agricultural trading, but also provide a means whereby every district in the country may ultimately secure adequate representation on the Central Board of the Irish Agricultural Wholesale Society. While the local societies in the United King- dom have thus been increasing in number, in importance, and in usefulness, efforts have been made to place the movement as a whole on a 122 Small Holders. firmer basis by organising permanent machinery which would allow of mutual consultation and mutual aid between the central bodies in Eng- land, Scotland, and Ireland. This policy has led to the formation of two Joint Boards, ' one for agricultural organisation (the central societies themselves being purely propagandist bodies), and one for agricultural cO -operative trade (as carried on by the trading federations affiliated with the central societies). Each of these developments is simply a further expansion of the co-operative idea, and is in direct accordance wi'th the best examples of Continental policy. As pointed out in a Memorandum issued by Sir Horace Plurikett, the Joint Board for Organisatiion will aid in the collection and dissemination of useful infor- mation in furtherance of what that authority describes as, in effect, " an economic revolu- tion " ; and the Joint Board for Trade should facilitate (i) the acquisition of farmers' sup- plies of the best quality at the lowest price ; (2) the marketing of produce in the most economical manner ; and (3) the interchange of certain products between the movements. In regard to the first of these three objects Sir Horace says in his Memorandum : — The need for the new development was well illustrated at the conferences held in Dublin and London. It was ascertained that important agri- cultural requirements were purchased through the What Co-operation is Doing. 123 three movements from the trades supplying them, upon wholly different terms, and that this was due to the fact that the three movements were organ- ised on different lines . The manufacturers of these articles have in most cases joined in a combina- tion which is spread over the United Kingdom. An organisation of farmers on a similar scale is clearly indicated as a means of obtaining their requirements upon satisfactory terms. It ought not to be beyond the resources of such a body as is now being constituted to procure for the organ- ised farmers of each country the best terms pre- vailing in any. But this will require a levelling up of the co-operative movements to the highest degree of trade efficiency. ... If a reasonable attitude towards trading interests be adopted, my belief is that we shall be able to come at once to terms with important combinations, now supply- ing farmers' requirements, on a basis advantageous to organised farmers. The conditions which' agriculturists' — includ- ing small holders — may have to face in obtaining their supplies are shown with still greater force in a report inade, in March, 1908, by the Scottish Chamber of Agriculture to the Board of Agriculture, in reply to a request from the latter body for information as to the exist- ence and operations of manure and fertiliser " rings," referred to in resolutions passed by the Chamber from time to time. In this report it was stated : — There is a certain amount of collaboration among the producers of most kinds of manures in the determining of prices on the same lines as, say, the fixing of the Bank rate, or the 124 Small Holders. price of bread, etc., according to the law of supply and demand. Such action may be permissible or even commendable ; but there is one combine — The Fertiliser Manu- facturers' Association — in this country, and em- bracing every producer therein, which acts in a most arbitrary manner irrespective of the law of supply and demand, and secretly dominates the market. The members of this Association have a monopoly in the supply of superphosphate of lime — the principal ingredient in all the mixtures for the different crops — and of dissolved bones and bone compounds. Their manufactures con- stitute by far the largest quantity of manures used by the British farmer. They are pledged to secrecy, and also to fidelity to the prices in their official list, under very heavy penalties. They not only fix the price at which they will sell to mer- chants, but also fix the minimum price at which merchants must sell to customers. A retail price- book is issued to merchants from each centre, with carriage -paid prices to every station and port within the sphere of the centre. There are eight different centres distributed over Great Britain and Ireland. If merchants break the prices, their bonus is cancelled on the quantity they have received ; their contracts for further quantities are also cancelled ; and they are liable to be boycotted for the future. . . . The restrictions of the Association apply only to manures used in the United Kingdom. There is no levy on tonnage, or restriction on price of export cargoes, and the export price of the manure sold, according to the law of supply and demand, is usually lo per cent, to 20 per cent, under,' that fixed for home distribution. It is estimated that the sum paid to the mem- bers of the Association for all the manures supplied by them annually under these restrictions will What Co-operation is Doing. 125 amount to at least £3,000,000, and if the excess profit exacted be taken at 10 per cent, over that which would be charged if the manures were sold according to the law of supply and demand, it shows a " toll " of £300,000 which the agricul- turists of this country are paying to the manure " ring." So the small holder who has secured his plot of land, and starts operations with the idea that he is going to get his living from it, may find himself faced, on the one hand, by thoroughly well organised foreign competitors, producing under, it may be, much better econo- mic conditions than himself ; and, on the other, by powerful trading rings at home, ready enough to ofifer him a cordial welcome, but with the idea of exploiting him, as they have exploited the farmer before hi'm, to their own profit and advantage. Only in one way can he possibly hope to make a stand agaiinst such influences, and tliat is by joining a movement which seeks to meet organisation by organisation, and to resist trading trusts by defensive federations that embrace, not alone localities, districts or countries, but the United Kingdom itself. CHAPTER VIII. THE EGG AND POULTRY INDUSTRY. In no section of production may we expect to see greater development, as the result of any increase in the number of small holdings in this country, than in the egg and poultry industry. The small holder who sought to depend entirely on the possible profits of poultry-keeping on such scale as might be within his powers would pro- bably soon meet with disastrous failure ; but, alike as a means of supplementing earnings in other directions and as an adjunct to general culture, poultry-keeping cannot fail to commend itself to the small holder's attention. The returns from poultry are speedy and constant. Chickens can be brought into condition for marketing in less than four months, and ducklings in less than three months; eggs are always saleable, while on a small holding the poultry can be looked after by the members of the household in the intervals of other work, so that all the world over poultry- keeping for profit is much more generally followed on small farms or holdings than on large ones. No less certain is it that within recent years there has been a rapid expansion of poultry-keeping The Egg and Poultry Industry. [127, in the United Kingdom. The need for adopting subsidiary branches of agricultural activity, the large importations of eggs and poultry which, as every one has admitted, ought to be produced in greater volume at home, and the improved methods of marketing (learnt in part from France, Denmark and other of our active competitors) have all led to more attention being paid to a branch of rural industry too much neglected in the past. Con- currently with these developments, the consump- tion of eggs and poultry has enormously increased ; the demand for the home in preference to the foreign produce has become more general; and the better marketing here of what are now better qualities has further aided in the realisation of prices in excess of any that had been obtained before ; though in this matter of marketing the experts say that there is yet room for great improvement, much of the home produce still being sent to market in a condition that is really very unsatisfactory. The questions, however, of special interest as regards small holders are : (i) Should we be justified in encouraging them to devote greater attention to poultry-keeping for profit ? ; (a) In what way can organisation assist them in gaining such profit ? On these direct issues I have sought the friendly counsel of Mr. Edward Brown, secretary of the National Poultry Organisation Society, and the leading authority in the United Kingdom on the matters here under consideration. As regards the 128 Small Holders. present position and future prospects of the industry itself, Mr. Brown writes to me : — The extension pf poultry -keeping in this country has been very great, but it is only part of what can be looked for. At the present time in Great Britain the average number of fowls kept on the farms is probably only about one per acre of cultivated land, which means that in this direction production is only about one-third what it might be, without interfering with any other pursuit. On small holdings the average might, in fact, be higher ; though where cultivation is followed it would be undesirable to go beyond four or five per acre. All the same, the present number is pro- bably double that found on the farms of the country twenty years ago. So far as the future is concerned, the signs on all sides are that the maximum of foreign supplies has been reached, and, with a rapidly increasing demand, an opportunity is now afforded for home producers to regain the greater part of this trade. With falling imports from abroad and a sharp rise in value it is, also, essential that home production should be correspondingly advanced, as other- wise consumption will be checked on the prices attaining a point beyond the purchasing power of the great bulk of our people. Some striking facts, in this connection, recorded in the annual summary of the poultry industry in 1908, recently issued by the National Poultry Organisation Society, should greatly encourage in- creased production in this country. The imports of eggs from the Colonies and foreign countries attained in 1906 a total of 18,874,059 great hundreds; they fell in 1907 to 18,567,901 great hundreds ; and in 1908 there was a further reduction to 18,210,070 great hundreds, a decline in two years of nearly eighty The Egg and Poultry Industry. J29 millions of eggs imported. The declared values were as follows: 1906, £7,098,122; 1907, £7.185,530; 1908, £7,183,112. Thus from 1906 to 1908 the value increased by £84,980, for 80,000,000 fewer eggs. In six years the declared values of Colonial and foreign eggs have increased by 2s. o\d. per 120. The year 1909 is showing the same tendencies in the reduction of supplies and the enhancement of prices, though in a still greater degree. In the two months ending February 28, 1909, the reduction in the number of eggs imported, as compared with the same period in 1908, was 769,757 great hundreds (92,370,840 eggs), or nearly 30 per cent. As a consequence of this decline in imports the declared values in the two months named were is. 2d. per 120 greater than in the corresponding months of 1908. These conditions may be abnormal, but they suggest that the foreign stocks were exhausted earlier than usual owing to the greater consumption in the producing countries. From every Continental country, in fact, we get the same story of a reduc- tion in the supplies available for export. This increasing demand for eggs and poultry for home consumption alike in foreign lands and in British Colonies is a material factor in the pre- sent situation. For instance, a few years ago an attempt was made in Canada to work up. a business in the export of eggs to Britain. A start was made, and, for a time, the trade grew rapidly. But the consumption of eggs in Canada has in- creased to such a degree that shipments to this country have greatly diminished, the total value of Canadian eggs imported here in 1908 — £24,000 — being only one -fourth the value of those sent to us from the Dominion two years previously. In Australia the -working up of a good export business in eggs, consigned here under the cold S,H. K I30 Small Holders. storage system, lias also been attempted. Im- proved methods of production and marketing were adopted, quality was advanced, and supplies were increased. But following on all this, if not as the result thereof, came an expanded local consump- tion. Prices went up, and the export to England has now almost ceased. For some time to come, therefore, it is improb- able that supplies in any volume will be received from British Colonies. It is true that the Colonial eggs could never compete here with the better qualities of home supplies ; but their absence nevertheless means less competition generally, and a greater opportunity for our own farmers and small holders. The same influences are operating in regard to imports of table poultry. Some time ago the Canadians took up this business, and sent large quantities of chickens, geese and turkeys to our markets. But improved quality once more created a greater local demand, and it is now found more profitable to sell in Canada than to ship to Britain. In the W.est of the United States, large fattening stations were established especially in view of the English trade, and in 1906 the value of imports of poultry from the United States was £243,750, or 28 per cent, of the total poultry supplies received from abroad. But again improved quality stimulated local demand, and in 1908 the corres- ponding imports fell to £155,544, a little more than 16 per cent, of the total. The indications are that ultimately this source of supply will be unreliable, and of very minor importance. The facts here stated, taken from official returns, together with the increasing demand for home produce and the enhanced prices available, reveal an opportunity for home producers never known at any previous period. Traders of all kinds are clamouring for native supplies, and inquiries are The Egg and Poultry Industry. 131 being received from merchants who heretofore have dealt only in foreign produce. Such, then, being the possibilities, open alike to farmers, to small holders, to allotment holders, and others, the further question arises how these individuals can best take advantage of this large, increasing, and profitable demand for commodities which they should be able readily to supply. A wide- spread experience in country districts at home is that it is one thing — and a comparatively easy thing — to raise poultry and get eggs, but quite another thing to make a satisfactory profit from selling them. This must inevitably be the case when the farmer or the small holder depends on his own resources in the matter of marketing, and especially so when he lives some distance from a centre of population, and has more eggs and poultry to sell than he can dispose of to advantage locally. The difficulty, however, is once more met by efficient combination. Among the individual societies engaged in the egg industry, the greatest degree of success has beien gained by that at Framlingham, Suffolk. As the result of six years' operations, the Framlingham and District Agri- cultural Co-operative Society, which is affiliated with the Agricultural Organisation Society, has worked up so good a business that it put on the market in 1908 over 2,000,000 eggs, valued at about ^g,ooo, while the total amount paid to members for eggs was at least ^^2,000 more than K as 132 Small Holders. they would have had on the basis of the prices obtained before the Society was started. But a circular recently issued by the Framling- ham Society recalls another no less important aspect of the advantages which organisation is conferring on the egg and poultry industry, and that is in respect to the improvement of stock. The committee address an "urgent appeal" to the members on this subject, saying that the great difficulty the Society has to deal with is the large supply of small eggs, and suggesting various ways in which this disadvantage can be overcome. The influence exerted by the National Poultry Organisation Society within the past few years on the extension and improvement of poultry keeping in Great Britain has been very great indeed. It has kept prominently in view an increase of pro- duction and adoption of better methods, both by example and by precept, recognising, also, that an essential factor was the need for a system of marketing in accordance with modern require- ments. To this end co-operation has been urged upon producers for sale of eggs and poultry with great success. The growth of agricultural co-operative societies affiliated with the Agricultural Organisation Society, many of which have excellent opportunities for dealing with eggs and poultry, made possible the danger of overlapping and a consequent waste of effort, if not actual rivalry. To avoid this the The Egg and Poultry Industry. :r33 two societies have entered into an arrangement by which (i) all questions relating to poultry and egg production and the promotion of the poultry indus- try will be dealt with solely by the National Poultry Organisation Society ; (2) the organisation of local societies, no matter what their scope or operations, will be entirely the work of the Agricultural Organ- isation Society, and (3) such societies as deal with eggs and poultry, whether special or general, will market these products through the National Poultry Organisation Society. These arrange- ments form part of the Scheme in connection with the grant made by the Board of Agriculture to the Agricultural Organisation Society of which I have already spoken on pp. 107 — 9. CHAPTER IX. COMBINATION FOR TRANSPORT. Properly speaking, perhaps, I should have dealt' with the question of combination for transport after " Cost of Production," and before " Co-operation for Sale," inasmuch as the transport expenses incurred by the small holder must be either added to his original out- lay or else deducted from his eventual receipts. But economy in the carriage of agri'icultural necessaries or of agricultural produce depends to a material degree on the grouping or bulking of small into large consignments, in order that advantage may be gained of the lowest avail- able railway rates ; and it seemed to me desir- able, before dealing with the possibilities in this direction, to state the facts mentioned in Chapter VII., showing what has already been done to bring about those combinations by which such grouping of consignments can best be effected. Some of my readers may remember that in 1895 and 1896 the leading railway companies either had conferences with representative farmers and others or else, at considerable cost to Combination for Transport. 135 tKemselves, made exhaustive inquiries, through special agents, among the agriculturists in their own districts with a view to seeing what could best be done bjj the railways to promote the interests of agriculture. The movement began' with the Great Eastern Railway Company,- whose chairman, Lord Claud Hamilton, deputy chairman, Colonel Makins, and chief officers,- met a deputation headed by the late Lord Win- chilsea ; and in an article on the subject, pub- lished in The Times of Novernber '2, 1895, it was said : — The primary object of the Great Eastern Rail-, way Company in calling the conference was to impress on the agriculturists that while there should, in the interests of all parties concerned, b'e, a certain co-operation between the railways and the producers, it is also essential that each side should, at the same time, have its distinct organisa- tion, complete in itself, and not entrenching on the legitimate domain of the other. Thus it was pointed out that the duty of a railway company, as carriers, is to organise a carrying service, and that it was for the producers, in their turn, to organise their consignments for delivery to the railway company, and the subsequent Sale thereof, in such' a way as to secure a maximum of profit at a mini- mum of expense. But it was further pointed out, in effect, that this minimum of expense cannot be obtained when each producer acts independently of every other producer, and that it can, in fact, only be secured when a considerable body of producers work together in concert. The fundamental princi- ple laid down was that, if the railway companies are to help agriculture, then agriculture should. 136 Small Holders. in its turn, facilitate the operations of the railway companies, and so make retluctions of rates much more practicable than they would otherwise be . This was the tone generally taken by the companies ; but their own efforts to promote combination among the producers were a failure, and the chief practical result of the movement was the establishment of the system |(introduced by the Great Eastern Railway Com- pany) under which individual farmers were to send, at exceptionally low rates for carriage and delivery, boxes of produce to individual house- holders, the said boxes to be supplied (in uniform sizes, at practically, cost price) by the companies ; though even this system has had pitich less success than was anticipated. The reasons for the failure of the railway; companies' attempts to promote combination are now sufificiently obvious, though they were not fully recognised at the time. It was not alone that the farmers, with an inveterate mis- trust born of the soil, suspected the motives of the railway companies, and did not give them the credit for a genuine desire to help them where they could.* This feeling of suspicion * That the said desire did exist I am able to testify from my personal knowledge. As a member, in those days, of the staff of The Times, I wrote for that journal several articles on the movement in question, and was not only brought into touch with the railway officers, but, in the case of two of the com- panies — the Great Western and the South Eastern — I was privileged to attend the otherwise private conferences between the directors and the agriculturists invited to meet Combination for Transport. 137 certainly prevailed ; but the railway companies themselves made, the mistake of supposing that agricultural organisation could be started straight off with collective transport of com- modities for a more or less collective sale. The experiences of foreign countries, fully confirmed by the later experiences of organisati'on at home, show that there are initial and simpler stages of agricultural co-operative action which must needs be jiassed through before agricul- turists are sufficiently educated in, or accus- tomed to, the co-operative idea first, to clear their minds of mistrust, not alone of the rail- ways, but of one another ; and, next, to act together 'in that matter of joint consignment which may, possibly, involve the disclosure of such jealously-guarded secrets as the names of their salesman or customers . As for the box system of consignment, that was certainly introduced by the companies with the best intentions, and for these intentions they deserve every possible credit. But although, especially at first, many of the farmers may thus have made welcome additions them in London. I thus had good opportunity for forming my own jiidgment on the matter. In the same way I had repeated interviews with Lord Winchilsea (on whose further schemes in connection with his Long Acre Depot I was permitted to con- tribute several articles to The Times), and I found that he fully appreciated the sympathetic attitude of the companies, and was himself convinced that, while the railways could materially assist, the most important factor in the situation was the need for combination among the producers. 138 Small Holders. to their income, the effect of the system as a whole was to encourage that individualism •which has so long been a drawback to tlie posi- tion of the English farmer, rather than to develop the collective action to which is mainly due the success of his foreign competitor. Even from the railwa.y point of view, the box system: must mean such an increase in the amount of labour in the handling and delivery of so many small separate consignments (a kind of traffic American railway managers pre- fer to leave to the express companies) that it cannot have been particularly remunerative to them. But while these efforts of fourteen years ago were either a failure or only a qualified success, other attempts, made on different lines, and in directions where it would have been impossible for the railway companies themselves to act, have at last brought about precisely those con- ditions which are necessary to secure the results originally desired. What the British' railway companies, with all their resources, their in- fluence, and their staffs pf able officers could not effect, has been, or, at least, is being achieved by a society of earnest workers operat- ing from some unpretending offices in West- minster, with an income from subscriptions, donations and affiliated societies' contributions scarcely equal to the salary of a single leading officer on a second-class railway. Combination for Transport. 139 These earnest workers, constituting the Agri- cultural Organisation Society, began by teach- ing the very A B C of agricultural economics. They started with object lessons in the simplest forms of agricultural combination — such as the joint purchase of manures, seeds and fertilisers — and they gradually accustomed the minds of their kindergarten pupils to the idea of co-operative effort, without directly attacking prejudices, jealousies, and old-standing difficul- ties destined to be at least greatly weakened, by an almost natural transition, as the said idea took root, developed its many branches, and began to bear its abundant fruit . In the result we have seen that the Agricultural OrganisAti'ori Society now has in England and Wales no fewer than 292 affiliated bodies, doing an aggregate business turnover likely to amount in 1909 to nearly £1,000,000, and covering, either in- dividually or collectively, amost every pos- sible type of agricultural combination ; that these local bodies are being linked up into a series of district federations embracing the whole of the country, and forming from among themselves a Central Board for co-operative agricultural trade ; while the separate organi- sations for England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland respectively are, in turn, to constitute a still greater federation, operating, when necessary, for the associated agriculturists throughout the whole of the United Kingdom'. I40 Small Holders. It is true there are districts where co-opera- tion in agriculture has not yet become a very active force, and, in the furtherance of that principle, there is still scope for a great amount of energy and hard work, especially in view of the further need for activity opened up by the Small Holdings and Allotments Act. But the developments of to-day, as compared with the position fourteen years ago, when Lord Winchilsea was wearing out his strength over the futile efforts he was then making,* afford evidence of a progress alike great in itself and all the more encouraging because it seems to have been built up on a thoroughly, firm and solid foundation. The -question, however, is being asked — " What is the actual advantage that Britiish producers, whether farmers or small holders, are likely to get in regard to the cost of trans- port, now that they have either adopted, or are preparing to adopt, the principle of combinatipn so long preached to them by the railway com- panies ? " In this connection I would first allude to a meeting of the Newport (Salop) and District Agricultural Co-operative Trading Society, held at Lillieshall Hall, on February 9, 1905, under the presidency of the Duke of Sutherland, at * He died September 7, 1898, from a breakdown in health directly due to his excessive labours in the interests of the farming community. Combination for Transport. 141 which addresses were given by, among others, Mr. Frank Ree, then chief goods manager, now general manager, of the London and North Western Railway Company, and Mr. J. Nugent Harris, secretary of the Agricultural Organi- sation Society. In the course of the speech delivered by; Mr. Ree (as recorded in the official report of the proceedings), that gentleman said, ih regard to the matters of history to which I have already alluded : — As an indication of what the London and North Western Railway Company had already done, he would remind them that in 1896 the Company sent representatives to interview something like 1,000 farmers having farms contiguous to their railway, and explain to them that, if they would only com- bine, and have their commodities sent in bulk, they could avail themselves of much lower railway rates than those they were then paying, owing to t,he retail character of their trade. In spite of the efforts thus made, barely half-a-dozen farmers showed a willingness even to consider the matter, and the renewal of these efforts in 1903 led to no better results than before. It might be that they hoped for too much to begin with. Mr. Ree paid me the compliment of saying that my book on " The Organisation of Agri- culture " had " brought out very clearly that on the Continent of Europe combination for the cheapening of production had invariably pre- ceded combination for the marketing of sup- plies," and he assured the Newport 'Society that 142 Small Holders. his Company " regarded with peculiar interest " the efforts there being made to promote com- bination for the cheapening of production. He mentioned that the Company had constructed at Newport railway station", for the Society, a depot for the use of which they were to pay a rental that simply covered interest on capital ; and he proceeded : — The Society then asked the Railway Company what reduction would be made in the railway rates, in consideration of the consignment of larger quantities. To this inquiry he replied that the consignment of large quantities at very low rates was provided for by the charges already open to the farmers for lo-ton or 4-ton lots, and, in effect, although these rates were fixed with the idea that larger quantities than those stated would be sent, the minimum quantity was kept low in each in- stance in orHer that the best possible advantage might be taken o'f them. He then learned that this reply had been regarded as disheartening, the Society's main object having been to secure lower charges for their traffic over the railway ; but he thought that any disappointment they might have felt was due chiefly to a misapprehension as to the actual facts. The interesting point to consider was whether due advantage was being taken of the low rates already referred to, and he was able to give them some figures, based on information which had not yet been available to the Society, but which put a wholly different complexion on the matter from that which they supposed. The information to which he alluded was derived from a table giving details not only as to traffic in the district, but also as to the actual rates paid per consignment by the Combination for Transport. ;i43 farmers therein, whether members of the Society or not. W.hat they learned from that table was that, under existing conditions, over 80 per cent. of consignments were carried at the higher rates, and only 20 per cent, at the lower rates for larger quantities. Taking the difference between what was actually paid and what might have been paid, they found that, if the 82 members of the Society had combined their lots, so as to form large con- signments, and thus secure the lower rates, they would have paid the Railway Company about 12 to 13 per cent, less in carriage than they did. A saving of 12 or 13 per cent, was one that should surely not be despised. The London and North iWestern Company thought themselves lucky if they could pay seven per cent. On eliminating from the table in question consignments of four tons and upwards for the big men (who were often able to buy in large quantities), and taking only con- siigntaients for the smaller farmers (to whom the value of such' an organisation was proportionately greater), he found that, by combining their con- signments, the members of the Society might have effected! a saving on their actual payments in rail- way carriage alone of something like 19 per cent. Regarding the big farmers themselves, the figures afforded interesting evidence of the fact that only in few cases did even they send individual con- signments in bulk to come within the lowest rates on the Railway Company's books. Considering that there were 178 farmers and others in the Newport district who drew their feeding stuffs from the Company's stations, the figures quoted showed what a substantial gain might be secured by them on the basis of lower rates which were ailreaily available, but of which, as statistics proved, so little use was now being made. Thinlcing it would be of interest to the reader 144 Small Holders. if I could give some examples of the actual rates included in the tables on which these conclu- sions were based, I have asked Mr. Ree to favour me with a few, and he has responded by placing the entire series at my disposal. They are far too voluminous for reproduction here, but I have selected the following as referring to points between which, as I understand, there is traffic in more or less substantial quantities of the commodities mentioned * : — RATES PER TON FOR COMMODITIES CONSIGNED TO NEWPORT. From. io-To» 4-ToN 2-TOH Less Lots. Lots. Lots. Lots, s. d. s. d. s. d. s. d. Liverpool (No. i Docks) . 10 C 10 6 C II 8 C 15 oC&D Liverpool (No. 2 Docks) . 10 4 „ 10 10 „ II n „ 15 7 M Cardiff II 8 „ 13 I .. 23 I .. Hull . 13 » 18 4 „ 23 I » From. 4-ToM Lots. a-ToN Lots. Less Lots. Frodsham . Liverpool Spital . s. d. 8 9 S. to S. 92,, 8 loP. S.toS. s. d. 9 11 S.toS. 10 10 „ 10 a P. S.toS. s. d. 14 8C, &D. 14 II D. 14 4 ., • The following abbreviations should be noted : — C. means Collected. C. & D. „ Collected and delivered. S. to S. „ Station to station, p. S. to S. „ Private sidinj to station, Combination for Transport. :i;45 PACKED MANURES. From. 4-ToN LOTSi a-ToN Lots. Less Lots. Rookery Bridge St. Helens Saltney Wharf (Chester) . Widnes . s. d. 5 p. S. to S. 7. I S. to S. 6 8 „ 7 I „ s. d. 5 loP. S. toS. 7 II S. to S. 7 II 7 II P. S.toS. .. d. 10 7D. IS II „ 13 4 ,. 14 4 C. & D. RATES PER TON FOR COMMODITIES CONSIGNED FROM NEWPORT. To 4-ToN Lots. 2-ToN Lots. Less Lots. Birmingham Oldbury . Stoke Wolverhampton s. d. 5 4 S. to S. 5 10 ,. 5 10 ,. 4 4D. s. d. 6 I S. to S. 7 5 ., 6 II „ 5 3D. S. d. 9 I C. & D. 10 10 „ 9 7.. 7 4.. VEGETABLES IN CLASS C. To .(■Ton Lots. 2-ToN Lots. Less Lots. Birmingham Manchester Stafford . Wolverhampton S. d. 5 10 S. to S. 8 4 ,. 5 s. d. 6 8 S. to S. 10 6 „ 4 5 .. 5 9.. s. d. 9 4 C. & D. 15 4 .. 7 5.. 85.. Then, in reply to a letter of inquiry I have addressed to him, the secretary of the Newport (Salop) and District Agricultural Co-operative Trading Society, Mr. William Judd, writes to me that since the meeting in 1905 " every S.H. L 146 Small Holders. advantage has been taken " by; Tiis Society of the reduced railway rates for larger quanti- ties ; and he adds : " The turnover of this Society has increased tremendously, not entirely owing to the reduced railway rates, but largely through the increased confidence amongst farmers in co-operation." Mr . Judd also gives me the figures already quoted on p. 104, show- ing that the actual turnover of his Society increased from about £8,000 in 1906 to £23,000 in 1908. The rates I have given above may be regarded as typical of the general practice of railway companies ip decreasing the rate per ton for agricultural produce according as certain maxima — generally ranging from I -ton lots to 4-ton lots — are offered. Most of the companies publish special lists giving such rates as applying to their system generally, and in the case of Evesham the -Great Western and the Midland publish lists of rates (all based on the like principle) for the conveyance of fruit and vegetables from that station to practically all parts of the country. I am disposed to think, however, that the opportunities open to the producer are not yet sufficiently known. A gentleman actively en- gaged in agricultural organisation recently put the question to me : " Suppose that a group of small holders were to combine in producing Combination for Transport. ,147 one particular kind of vegetable — onions, for example — would the railway companies give them a lower rate provided they could make up, say, a 2 -ton or a 4 -ton load? " A reference to the published lists of various companies shows that low rates for such quantities of onions and other vegetables are already quoted therein. I would especially call attention to the following announcement made on the " Fruit and Vegetable TariffI " issued by the South Eastern and Chatham Railway Com- pany : — Reduced chargeis for large consignments. — iWhep a sender forwards from the same station or siding to the same salesman and market in Lon- don a consignmenlt of fruit or vegetables, or a consignment consisting partly of fruit and partly of vegetables, and elects to lump and tender such consignment at one time, the rate or rates appli- cable to such consignment will be subject to a reduction of lo per cent, when the aggregate weight exceeds 2 tons, and 1 5 per cent . when the aggregate weight exceeds 4 tons . The same allowance will be made when a consignment of fruit or vegetables, or consisting partly of fruit and partly of vegetables, is the property of two or more senders ; but in such cases one of their number is, by arrangement among themselves, to be selected as the nominal sender. His name is to appear as such on the consignment note handed to the Company, and he is to be authorised by his co-senders to receive, on their behalf, the allowances above referred to. These facilities have been available on the L 2 148 Small Holders. South Eastern and Chatham' Railway since 1900, at least ; and, on my asking at head- quarters what advantage had hitherto been taken of them, the reply I received was — " Very little." It is sufficiently obvious, from such exarnples as I have offered, that there are possibilities of great savings on the basis of existing low rates for large quantities of agricultural com- modities, such rates having been conceded, in part, for the express purpose of encouraging the combination now being brought about. To a certain extent, therefore, the question whi'ch is being put to the railways — " You have been" telling us all these years to combine ; now that we are combining, what are you going to do for us ? " does not make sufficient allowance for what has already been done as a direct in- centive to combination. There is, however, a further question" how being asked,- the answer to which is not quite so simple. Certain of the organisers are say- ing, in effect — '" We admit that the railway companies have conceded low rates for 2-tori or 4-ton lots not only of iactual produce but of such raw materials as, for example, fertilisers. But, under our present condition of steadily progressing co-operation we are, or shall be, able to group orders for such raw materials in far greater quantities. Will those rates remain the same if we should offer, instead of Combination for Transport. 149 4 -ton lots, a single consignment of some hun- dreds of tons ? Can it be encouraging to us to know that, when a bulked consignment of ferti- lisers, making 1 5 or 20 truck loads, was offered to a certain company, no reduction in rate could be secured? " As the result of inquiries I have made in various quarters, I gather that the position in regard to this question may be stated thus : — It is true that the minimum quantities for the low rates conceded for fertilisers, grain, and various other agricultural necessaries or products have been fixed by most of the rail- way companies at 2 tons and 4 tons. But when the minima were so arranged there was a full expectation that consignments of 10, 20, or 40 tons or more would be offered under them, the minimum of 2 tons or of 4 tons as that to which the rates should apply being placed on so low a basis in order, mainly, that small as well as large producers should be able to take advantage of them, the former not being penalised in the interests of the latter. The intention was to satisfy the multitude rather than the few ; but there was no idea that as soon as a trader, or a combination of traders, could offer consignments of 10, 20, or 40 tons or over, fresh series of minimum rates would be fixed at each step in the ascending scale. Turning to another great industry, I believe ISO Small Holders. I am right in saying that the enormous coal transport by rail in this country (apart, of course, from that of locomotive coal) is based on 4 -ton minimum rates, and that on this basis one firm of coal dealers pay a certain railway company about £250,000 a year for the carriage of some 750,000 tons of coal for themselves alone. If this firm could obtain special rates, or an eventual rebate, on account of the magnitude of the business they do with the company, they would gain an advantage over smaller dealers which might, perhaps, be construed into undue preference. Although, again, the coal rates are on the 4 -ton basis, the railway companies naturally expect to carry more than 4 tons of coal at a time, so that the 4-ton rate for fertilisers, grain, etc., is simply a further application of the same principle of a " minimum." Nor would a single consignment of (say) 20 truck loads of fertilisers confer any such advan- tage on a railway company as would warrant a specially low rate. The contrary, in fact, is thp case. As the 20 trucks could not be added to an ordinary goods train, they would have to go as a special, involving the use of an extra locomotive, and, possibly, disorganising the regular trgiffic ; while if the 20 trucks went to some country station they might block up the sidings until they had been unloaded (causing inconvenience to other traders), and Combination for Transport. .151 might then have to be sent back as empties, inasmuch as the station in question would pro- bably not have sufficient traffic available to fill them. An exceptionally big consignment would thus involve both an increase in working expenses and no little inconvenience ; whereas if the same quantity of stufif were sent in well- filled truck loads at the rate of one or twio on alternate days, so as to fit in with the| ordinary railway working, the normal condi- tions would apply, and the traffic in this form would be much more acceptable. Nor should there be any difficulty in making such an arrangement because, though a society or a federation might purchase a large quan- tity of a given commodity at a stated price,' the manufacturer or the dealer would naturally undertake to deliver as desired. " My conl- pany," as one railway manager said to me, " make a contract for thousands of tons of coal at a time ; but we don't have it sent to us all at once." In any case, it is clearly hopeless for the agricultural organisers to expect specially low rates for these occasional big consignments ; and the only practical question is whether or not, regarding the full truck load as the desir- able and most economic unit from the rail- way point of view, the companies would be disposed to make any further concession, on this basis, provided that the societies or their 152 Small Holders. federations could show that the business they were doing would enable thenl to ofTer a con- tinuous series of full truck loads, rather than spasmodic big lots. In some quarters it is suggested that such a position might afford an occasion for approach- ing the railway companies on the subject ; though in others it is declared that, apart from' the fact that the rates on the 2 -ton and the 4-ton minima have already been fixed at Jjrac- tically the lowest remunerative proportions, there is the consideration that to accept the " full truck load " as the unit for any new mini- mum rates would give rise to great difficulties,' because of (among other reasons) the variations both in the sizes of the trucks and in the weight of different descriptions of grain, fertilisers, etc. ; while past experience is said to show that traders who failed to make up the minimum load would consider it a grievance if they could not have the same rate as those who did. Additional trouble, it is feared, would arise in this way,- and, also, in regard to the rate to be charged for that portion of the consignment which might exceed the given minimum. It was further pointed out to me, when I made the inquiries on which this statement is based, that although the full truck load undoubtedly is a desirable unit for railway operation, it does not follow, even when particular consignments are kept to 2 tons or 4 tons, that the Combination FOR Transport. :i53 remainder of the space in the wagon is unoccupied. It is only fair to set against these argu- ments the fact that the London and South Wes- tern Railway Company issued some years ago a series of rates described on the ofHcial circular as follows : — Rates for the conveyance of wheat, barley, oats, rye, maize, beans, peas,- flour, tares, vetches,' oil cake, packed manure, potatoes, carrots, turnips and parsnips in Class " C " of General Railway Classification, in loads of not less than six tons per ordinary goods truck, exclusive of loading and unloading!; between non- competitive stations. Consignments may be made up of any or all of the articles named. (N.B. — The reduced rates only apply when the goods are sent under such conditions that six tons can be loaded in an ordinary goods truck.) ... If consignments in excess of six tons are tendered, the rates will only apply to that portion which is loaded in 6 -ton truck loads, the remainder, if any, to be charged at the ordinary rates. The rates given on this list are oh a mileage basis, ranging from! 2S. id. per ton for fiv^ miles to 135. 4rf. per ton for 250 miles. At first very little advantage was taken of these rates ; though of late years the agriculturists in the London and South Western Railway Com- pany's district have been much more ready to avail themselves of the increased facilities, and have shown a great willingness to adapt them- selves to the 6 -ton truck load unit. I under- 154 Small Holders. stand, however, that none of the other com- panies have adopted the same scale. Into the question of the respective merits of a 4 -ton or a 6 -ton minimum — and even of the intermediate 5 -ton minimum adopted by the Great Eastern Railway Company — I cannot attempt here to enter. But I should like to add that, when inquiring into the general subject, some observations were made to me by vari- ous authorities as to the general attitude of the railways towards agriculture and its organi- sation ; ;and I was the more interested therein because of what I proposed to say in the final chapter of the present work on the revival of country life. The remarks in question were substantially to the following effect : — " The sympathetic attitude of the railways towards the principle of agricultural organisa- tion^ — and sympathetic it is, even though they may not be able to accede to every suggestion made to them — is the outcome of a broader policy than might be apparent to an ordinary observer. " You must see that in proportion as the agriculturists combine, and take advantage of the lower rates already at their disposal, the railway companies stand to lose by the conse- quent lower receipts — unless the traffic should increase, or unless they can effect economies in operation as the result of the improved piethods of consignment. On the other hand^ Combination for Transport. 155 the greater the degree of cultivation of the land ; the lower the cost of production of com- modities thereon ; the larger the profit from sales ; and the greater, consequently, the amount of money available in a particular district, the more may the railways themselves expect to gain because of the greater prosperity of the people. As more houses are wanted, so we shall carry more materials for building them. As more people settle in a district, so we shall convey to them food, drink, clothing, furniture, household utensils, and other things, from the towns. As the country people earn more, so they will travel more, and we shall get increased receipts from passengers as well as goods. " If we simply carry foreign produce from a port, we certainly get the rates paid thereon ; but we gain none of these subsidiary advan- tages. Nor do we carry the fertilisers and other agricultural necessaries which the agri- cultural districts at home would want. Depend- ence, again, on foreign produce means that money which should be spent here on labour in the fields or on the market gardens goes, instead, to support labour abroad. We want to see that money circulating among the farmers, the small holders and the labourers in the counties where we have our lines. " You may say, if you like, that our primary object is a selfish one. But if we achieve that object, it will be because the increased pros- 156 Small Holders. perity we gain for ourselves is due to the greater prosperity of the land. So the country will benefit at the same time that we do. " The idea that we seek to encourage the foreign to the prejudice of the British pro- ducer is a fallacy. The Departmental Com- mittee of the Board of Agriculture which sat to investigate the allegations as to preferen- tial railway rates for foreign agricultural pro- duce reported in 1906 that the evidence had not established the existence of any undue preference ; while the Departmental Com- mittee on combinations in the meat trade — a Committee on which there was not a single railway man — has just presented its report, in which it is said : ' As , to the suggestion that the American firms have received from the rail- way companies specially favourable terms not obtainable in like circumstances by, British traders, we have had no real evidence in support of such a charge, and in our judgment it is without foundation.'* * On referring to this report, I also find the following, in paragraph 65: — "Certain allegations were made in respect of the Cold Storage Co., at Southampton, and the scheme put forward some time ago for the establishment of a foreign cattle wharf there. They had, however, little relevance to our inquiry, and were unsupported by evidence, so that it was unnecessary to discuss them. It was, however, stated to us by the general manager of the London and South Western Railway that he had been pressed on behalf of five of the principal American firms to make a reduction on the rates for chilled beef from Southampton to London either in the form of a rebate or directly ; but that as a matter of fairness to traders in home- produced and killed meat he did not see his way to accede to Combination FOR Transport. 157 " Any railway manager who gave any pre- ference to foreign produce when he had the slightest chance of conveying it from the dis- trict his company serves would be absolutely blind to the best interests of his railway." These remarks — reproduced here in, as near as possible, the words in which they were made to me — further throw light on what we can pre- sume will be the attitude of the railway com- panies towards any increased settlement on the land which the Small Holdings and Allotments Act may be the means of effecting. the request." The members of the Departmental Committee were :— Lord Robert Cecil, K.C., M.P. (chairman), Mr. C. W. Bowerman, M.P., Sir T. H. Elliott, K.C.B., Mr. W. Field, M.P., Mr. H. Fountain, Mr. W. Dudley Ward, M.P., and Mr. William Weddel. CHAPTER X. CO-OPERATIVE CREDIT. In the world of agriculture th^re is even greater need than in the world of commerce for an effective credit system under which capital can be made readily accessible at a sufficiently low rate of interest. The landowner, after sinking, perhaps, consider- able sums of money in farm roads, buildings, drainage, improvements, etc., must wait for his rents; and the working farmer, after preparing his land and sowing his seed, must wait the due course of nature for the growing and the ripening of his crops, while, if a breeder of live stock, he may have no less tedious delays before the returns begin to come in from the markets. Capital is thus necessary at the start, and, pending the receipt of the said rents or returns, money will also be wanted for household and other expenses, as well as (in the case of the farmer) for fresh farming requisites — implements, stock, feeding stuffs, fertilisers, and so on. Even, again, when the harvest has been gathered in, the cultivator may find it of advantage to keep back his corn for a time in order to sell when the market prices Co-operative Credit. 159 will be more favourable ; but this he can only do if his financial resources permit. The average landowner has naturally greater facilities open to him for raising capital through the ordinary joint stock banks than the average working farmer or small cultivator ; yet in some Continental countries even the greatest land- owners and the largest farmers have long had their special banks. In Hungary, for example, the earliest development of agricultural credit was in connection with those exceptionally large estates which are typical of agricultural conditions there. Both the owners and the occupiers of big farms or properties in Hungary desired to have banking facilities to suit their particular purposes, and in 1862 they formed a National Land Bank which, established on the basis of mutual and unlimited liability, was to afford them easy credit for landed property. So successful was this insti- tution that it was followed, in 1879, by a Small Farmers' National Credit Bank. In Germany there have been credit associations of landowners for over a century. In France the Credit Foncier was established in 1852 to enable landowners and property owners to raise money on mortgages at a low rate of interest, with facilities for repayment by an annuity including redemption of capital. If these special banks have been found desirable in the case of land and property owners, and, also, of large farmers, there would seem to be still greater reason for them among peasant pro- i6o Small Holders. prietors, working farmers, and small cultivators to whom the possibility of raising a little fresh capital, under favourable conditions, may often be an invaluable assistance. A would-be borrower of this type might well be met by the difficulty that he could offer nothing in the way of security which would satisfy the ordinary banker; or, alternatively, even if the ordinary banker could be satisfied in this respect, the business itself might be too small for him to be disposed to trouble about. In these circumstances small cultivators with nothing but personal credit as security for even the smallest of loans have, failing other resources, too often either drifted into the hands of usurers, or, alternatively, been subject to the tender mercies of traders who, giving them long credit on lucrative terms, have retained their custom under more or less compul- sion, and have further gained by charging high prices for inferior goods. Conditions such as these led to the introduction into Germany, some half century or so ago, of a system of co-operative credit which may be specially recommended to the attention of all who are interested in the welfare of the small holders in process of creation in this country to-day. Under the system in question, two main types of co-operative credit banks were developed — the Schulze-Delitzsch and the Raiffeisen, so named after their respective founders. The Schulze-Delitzsch credit banks are designed Co-operative Credit. [i:6i principally for mechanics and tradesmen in want of small loans, and these are granted on pro- missory notes or bills for from three to nine months, the liability of the members who sub- scribe for shares being now mainly limited. It. is the Raiffeisen banks which are specially designed to meet the needs of small agricultural communities, and with which, therefore, we are here mainly concerned. In banks of this type no shares are issued, the capital being raised by entrance fees, subscriptions, deposits by members or out- siders, and, when necessary, from loans. The difference between the interest paid on deposits or for loans and the interest charged on sums lent to members yields a certain profit, and this passes into the reserve fund, no dividends being paid. The liability is unlimited, the members being jointly and severally responsible for any losses sustained, though the actual risks are reduced to a minimum. Thus, the operations of each Raiff- eisen bank are confined to a small area, usually a single parish, where the personal character, needs and circumstances of the borrower are well known to his fellow-members, upon whom will fall the liability in respect to any loss that is made. An individual who had not the confidence of his neighbours would not be allowed to join the society at all. Incidentally, therefore, a Raiffeisen bank has a moral as well as a material value< Then the loans are granted exclusively for repro- ductive purposes offering a reasonable guarantee S.H. M 1 62 Small Holders. that the position of the borrower will be improved, and that he will be able to repay the amount advanced to him. In addition to this, the borrower is generally required to get either one or two of his fellow-members to act as guarantors. Losses falling on the societies are practically unknown. The essence of this system of banking has been well described as the capitalisation of honesty. It gives a market value to personal character when a trustworthy man has no other security to offer than that of a good name. The good name becomes, in fact, as good an asset for the small holder or the labourer wanting to borrow a few pounds from a Raiffeisen bank as an estate or bricks and mortar may be in the estimation of an ordinary banker for an owner of land or property who seeks to raise thereon a loan of ;fi,ooo or more. Experience in the actual operation of Raiffeisen banks soon showed, however, that, so long as they themselves remained individual units, they were under no less a disadvantage in their way than the solitary cultivator was in his, combination being as necessary in the one case as it was in the other. By forming provincial central banks, which could group the requirements of the local banks, it was found much easier, on the basis of combined liability, to raise the money needed to meet the sum total of their needs. These central banks may themselves, in turn, be formed into still greater federations. In Prussia it is with these Co-operative Credit. [1:63 federations exclusively that the Prussian Central State Bank will have any dealings in granting loans from the ^2,500,000 which (following a sum, first, of £'250,000, and then of £1,000,000) has been placed at its disposal by the Prussian Government for the eventual support (through the intermediary bodies) of the local agricultural credit banks. Though the subject is an attractive one, there is no need to reproduce here the elaborate details I have before me showing the position of the various countries in Continental Europe in regard to this question of agricultural credit, and the measures taken there — mainly with active Government support — in order to meet alike the evils and the difficulties that had arisen. One or two very brief examples must suffice. The absolute necessity for Raiffeisen banks in" Hungary was shown at the Cremona Congress of the International Co-operative Alliance, in September, 1907, when Mr. H. W. Wolff, who has specially identified himself with the agricul- tural banks movement, told how the late Count Alexander Karolyi had assured him that "the ravaging cancer from which the country popula- tion jn Hungary was suffering was the village tradesman's usury." Throughout a large part of Lombardy, Venetia, and Piedmont, say Mr. Bolton King and Mr. Thomas Okey in their book, " Italy To-day," the village banks have " banished the usurer." In Austria the turnover of the co-opera- M 2 1 64 Smali; Holders. tive agricultural credit federations is about ;f 20,000,000 a year. In France the Government lend money at 3 per cent, to the Credit Mutuel Agricole (the total amount advanced in igo8 was 3^1,641,000), and that body makes loans to the farmers at 4 per cent., the results on the efficiency of the farming being described by a correspondent of The 'Times, in the issue of that journal for March 19, 1909, as " incalculable." * The general position vi^as well summed up by Mr. Harold Cox, M.P., in an article on " The Taxation of Land Values," contributed by him to "The Nineteenth Century and After" for February, 1909, in the course of which he said : iWhat is wanted is not easier access to land, but easier access to capital. Any man who has the enterprise to go across the Atlantic can get a free grant of 160 acres of land from the Canadian Government ; but land, whether in Canada or in England, is useless without capital to cultivate it. From the point of view of employment, a small reduction in the. rate of interest is far more im-, portant than the complete abolition of rent. In the United Kingdom the greatest degree of progress in meeting the requirements of agricultural * Anyone desirous of obtaining a comprehensive survey of the history and operation of agricultural credit in Europe may be advised to consult " People's Banks," " Co-operative Bank- ing : Its Principles and Practice," and " A Cb-operative Credit Handbook," by Mr. Henry W. Wolff ; and, filsp, the following pamphlets, issued by the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland : " The Best Methods of Organisation for Agricultural Co-operation and Credit," by Mr. Herbert G. Smith, M.A., LL.D. (1905), and " Notes on Agricultural Co-operation and Co-operative Agricultural Credit in Germany," by Mr. H. de F. Montgoinery, D.L. (1906). Co-operative Credit. y6$ credit has been made in Ireland ; though it is in Ireland, perhaps, that the greatest need for such advance has existed. The most pernicious phase of the general condi- tions from which the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society is rescuing the Irish peasant is that under which the peasant became the victim of the " gombeen man," as the Irish trader, who com- bines the occupation of money-lender with that of auctioneer, baker, or dealer in general stores, is called. Requiring small loans from time to time, the peasant was accustomed to borrow money from this trader, with whom he also bartered his produce, and got into debt for agricultural or domestic supplies obtained. But, keeping no accounts, he generally failed to realise the extent of his liabilities, until the trader, having let the account run as long as he thought safe or desirable, called on him for payment in full. The interest on loans advanced under these conditions has been known to amount to 60 per cent. If the peasant could not pay, the gombeen man would take possession of his land and his stock, leaving him with no alternative but to emigrate to the United States, and there start life afresh. In one locality in the West of Ireland there is a certain trader who, by such tactics as these, has acquired practically the ownership of the entire district within a radius of about twenty miles.* * In giving evidence before the Royal Commission on Conges- lion in Ireland, on September 18, 1907 (as reported in Blue 1 66 SMALL Holders. Under the other system, once in vogue, the Irish peasant borrowed from a joint stock bank, and was more mercifully treated"; but he still raised his loan under thoroughly uneconomic conditions. Supposing that he wanted to borrow £5, he had to take either one or two securities with him to the bank in the market town (paying alike travelling expenses and refreshments for the party, and giving remuneration to the surety or sureties for the loss of a day's work), and he got the £5, at a charge to himself of 2S. 6d., for a period of three months only. Should he wish to renew the loan at the end of that period, he had to repeat these processes and this expenditure on each occasion. An Irish authority has estimated that, under these conditions, a peasant borrowing Book Cd. 4007), the Rev. John Flatley, who said he had been for 37 years a priest in the congested districts, declared that worse there than all the other causes of poverty was the habit the people had acquired of living on credit and paying exorbi- tant prices for the goods supplied to them ; while the man who got into debt with the shopkeeper became "his actual slave." The small holders bartered their eggs or other produce with the shopkeeper for such things as tea, sugar, and soap, or they drifted into debt until the gombeen man had them thoroughly " in his grip," and could "pillage and plunder " them by getting their cattle, their pigs, or their land. The peasants thus indebted to the shopkeeper were, also, practically bound to elect him or his nominee to the District Council, the County Council, or any other public body on which there might be a vacancy. Most of the members of these bodies were provision dealers. There was, again, much canvassing among the same traders to get appointed as magistrates, because of the advantages they gained thereby over their trade rivals. Such men, the witness averred, utilised their position on the Bench for the purpose of promoting their business; and he further declared that they coached witnesses as to the evidence they should give, and allowed themselves to be treated to whisky by the litigants. The whole system was leading to " the most frightful results " in the district. Co-operative Credit. '167^ £5 for a period of twelve months might have to pay a sum total of charges and expenses equivalent to a rate of interest at 30 per cent. Raiffeisen banks were established in Ireland by the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society in 1894, and the difference between the old conditions and the new is remarkable in the extreme. To-day the Irish peasant who desires to borrow a sum of (say) ^5 presents his request to the committee of the local society, and attends a meeting held in the evening in his own village, taking his two sureties with him. To begin with, therefore, there is no loss of work, and there are no travelling expenses to pay or meals to provide. Having satisfied the committee that he wants the money for some reproductive purpose, he secures the loan at the rate of, in some cases, 5 per cent, per annum (equal to id. per £ per month), and in others at 6J per cent, (or i^d. per £ per month). The period for which the loan is advanced is determined by the purpose it is to serve. As a rule the borrower is expected to repay loan and interest by the tinie he has realised the profit on his investment; but in any case he must repay within eighteen months. The amount borrowed ranges from £2 to £5, £10, or even ^20, according to the district. A loan of ;^io for five months would cost the borrower 4J. zd. The loans are granted mainly for such purposes as the purchase of seeds, manures, or pigs, and the gains, both direct and indirect, are often very substantial. 1 68 Small Holders. The borrowers are, in the first place, economically redeemed by being rescued from the gombeen man, or from the tradesman who would give them trust and get them into his power. Then, not only do they now buy for cash, but, by purchasing through the local agricultural society, they obtain commodities of guaranteed quality in place of the rubbish they may formerly have had to accept. A peasant who raises a loan from a Raiffeisen bank in order to buy a sow can sell the litter when ready for market, and gain a profit of from 25 to 75 per cent, on the transaction. Another, who would like to hold over his cattle until the animals are in better condition, can borrow money for the purchase of feeding stuffs, and eventually get higher prices than he would otherwise have done. Of these Raiffeisen credit banks in Ireland, affiliated to the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, there are now 260 in operation. The membership in 1907 was 14,875, and the total amount of the loans granted was ,^53,112. On the recommendation of the I.A.O.S., the Depart- ment of Agriculture and the Congested Districts' Board have both lent considerable sums of money to these banks. Wherever it is possible to do so, the organisers of local credit banks recommend that the societies should rely for their working capital on deposits, or on money borrowed on an overdraft from the joint stock banks, rather than on loans from Government departments, there being Co-operative Credit. 1:69; too great a tendency in Ireland to regard a Government loan in the light of a Government grant ! Some of the banks are worked altogether on local deposits ; and others derive almost all their capital from money advanced by the joint stock banks at the fixed rate of interest of 4 per cent., irrespective of fluctuations in the Bank rate. This concession was agreed to by the joint stock banks some years ago on the representation of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society ; but, inasmuch as Irish joint stock banks obtain their funds mainly from depositors, small and large, to whom they pay very low rates of interest, some of them stipulated, when making the concession in question, that the local credit societies should not themselves take deposits. In several instances the credit societies hold on to the money lent to them by the Department or the Congested Districts' Board even when they no longer actually require it. The reason they give is that the fact of their having been trusted with public funds by a Government Department is a testimonial of great value to them in securing public confidence ; and this is the more likely to be the case with so inexperienced and timorous an investor as the average Irish peasant. The total capital of the Irish Credit Societies in 1907 was ^48,718, of which sum £31,620 was represented by loans, and £17,098 by deposits made by members of the societies. 17 6 Small Holders. Local credit societies, organised on the Raiifeisen principle, might appear to be thoroughly unsound from the point of view of the average financier, the novel assumption being that a group of persons, without means, become financially sound as soon as they are banded together on the basis of unlimited liability! But the actual experience of these societies in Ireland is that although there certainly have been cases where the sureties have been called on to pay up for a defaulter, or where the reserve funds have had to be resorted to, in no case has any loss fallen on the society ; while in thousands of instances the loans are known to have been the salvation of the borrower. Nor are the benefits to be looked at solely from the financial standpoint. " In many districts," said Mr. R. A, Anderson, the secretary of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, in dis- cussing the subject with me in his room at the Plunkett House, Dublin, " the farmers meet one another too seldom, owing to bad roads, wet weather, or other causes ; but they will walk miles to attend the meetings of the local bank, and those meetings become, in a small way, informal centres of agricultural education. A group even of unlettered farmers will develop a good deal of natural shrewdness when they come together and exchange ideas. The committeemen are often able to give practical advice to a borrower, and guide him in making a sound investment ; but they may, also, learn much themselves, especially as Co-operative Credit. [1-7:1; regards the diiference between borrowing money to make money and borrowing money to spend. Then the average Irish farmer does not keep accounts ; but the committeeman's relations with a co-operative bank develop an economic state of mind which he may, in turn, apply to his own farming." England and Scotland may be thought not to offer the same facilities as Ireland for the setting up of Raiffeisen banks, one apparent essential of these institutions being a comparative equality of position on the part of those concerned. It is obvious that, where the liability of members is unlimited, the farmer who has means may run a greater financial risk than the labourer who has none ; while the farmer, when he himself wanted a loan, would need a substantially higher sum than the labourer. Alternatively, the labourer who does not ask for more than £5 or £6 might hesitate to be responsible for the farmer who is raising ^40 or -f 50. There are also the inevitable questions as to the differences in the social standing of the various individuals concerned. In Great Britain these financial and social diver- gencies in the agricultural classes have been much more marked than in Ireland, or in those countries on the Continent of Europe where the existence of a large group of cultivators of approximately the same standing has rendered the creation of Raiffeisen banks, in the interests of the modest cultivator, a much easier matter. But if small 17? Small Holders. holdings are to be established here in any materi- ally increased number, we shall have in Great Britain a substantial body of cultivators belong- ing to the type for whom Raiffeisen banks are specially intended ; while circumstances which are developing in other directions make it a matter for serious consideration whether the agriculturist who occupies a somewhat higher position in the social scale than the labourer or the small holder should not join in the organisation of such a scheme of agricultural credit as would meet his own steadily growing requirements as well as theirs. The new developments in question materi- ally concern, in fact, the welfare not alone of Small holders but of many an agricultural com- munity throughout the la,nd. Until a few years ago there were in the provinces a good number of private banks whose managers were personally acquainted with the small farmers of the district who were included among their customers, and, in the case of those they knew to be men of honour more than men of substance, they would advance loans to them on the basis of their good character, instead of being too exacting in the matter of visible securities which the borrower might have found it difficult to provide. Trans- actions on this basis were extremely helpful to the small farmer, and there is reason to believe that the banks also gained an advantage from them. But a complete change in the situation is being brought about by the policy of the big London Co-oPEiiATiVE Credit. if; 3 banking companies in buying up these small private country banks, and converting them into branches of their own, designed to serve the pur- poses of London financiers rather than to meet, as heretofore, the special needs of the country districts themselves. Even if the local manager, under these new conditions, should be personally, acquainted with the small farmer, he has not the same freedom in making an advance to him. He can only follow the instructions of his chiefs in London, and they do not favour the granting of loans on character in lieu of ordinary commercial security ; while it is complained against them that,, even when adequate security is offered, they are too often reluctant to grant short loans at all to country customers. One authority in the agricul- tural world who gave me his views on the subject said : — ■ Under existing conditions, the London banks are draining the country districts of their money in or-der to have more funds available for big urban enterprises or for lending out to foreign countries. They are absorbing the savings and capturing the investments of the dweller on the land, and are returning little or nothing for the development of the land itself. The large farmer may still be able to command credit ; but the small man is being cruelly prejudiced, and not only his but the national interests, also, must suffer unless you create a system' of co-operative land banks which will enable the working agriculturist to obtain an easy credit, apart from the great joint stock banks that no . longer meet his particular requirements . 174 Small Holders. From another quarter I get the following account of the position in a certain district in Yorkshire : — Down to quite recently there were, in this 'dis- trict, two local private banks which, having full local knowledge, supplied short loans without security. Farming in the district is almost wholly grazing, in farms from £50 to £60 rental. Rents are due on the 6th of April, and it is usual for the small farmers to borrow their rents for six months, and repay when they sell their stocks in the autumn. Consternation has now been caused by these two banks being bought up by big London amalgama- tions, and the system of lending on character stopped altogether. Not only that, but the mana- gers seem to have received instructions to discourage short loans, even on security. It will easily be seen that all this leaves the farmers in rather a fix, and it is not surprising that the local farlmers' association should be looking closely into the co-operative land bank system, of which some of the members have already acquired a good knowledge. I am told the number of persons here likely to join such a bank as is proposed might be 250, and that the immediate yearly business would be about £5,000. Deposits would provide a good deal of the necessary capital at 4 per cent., and interest on loans could be charged at not more than 5 per cent., the rate at which the banks them- selves lend. This amount of business would, of course, necessitate the employment of a paid manager. A Scottish agricultural authority, whose views I sought with regard to the position in his own country, said, in the course of conversation : — 5Ve have, as you are doubtless aware, a very strong and successful banking system in Scotland ; Co-operative Credit. [175 but there is, I think", a general feeling — and one that is increasing in intensity rather than dimin- ishing — that our banks exist mainly for the pur- pose of paying big dividends to their shareholders. Financially, their position may be regarded as eminently satisfactory, inasmuch as they have paid dividends up to 12 or 16 per cent. They have, however, practically a monopoly ; they are formed into a ring, or close corporation ; and they quote always the same rates, there being, consequently, nothing like free trade in money. Then, centred in towns and cities, they concern 'themselves almost exclusively with urban affairs. They devote but little attention, generally speaking, to agricultural interests, and they no longer supply the needs of the small farmer, the market gardener, or the average tradesman. They do not care to deal with individuals who, when in want of advances, can- not offer what they themselves regard as adequate security. Nor does a decent, industrious Scotch farmer like to go to his neighbour and say, " Come to the bank with me, and guarantee a loan I want to raise." The difficulty is being met, in too many cases at present, in another way, somewhat simpler, but, unfortunately, on'e that operates to the serious 9,isad vantage of the indjiyidual. Instead of getting a loan from the bank and being enabled to pay cash down for his purchases, the Scottish small farmer of to-day runs into debt with his seedsman, who gives him credit for twelve months, or even for two years, and charges him a price equivalent to from 25 to 30 per cent, for the accommodation-. He does the same with the dealer in fertilisers, and the same, again, with the implement maker, so you can judge what he has to pay, before he is finished, for the necessaries of a calling in which the margin of profit would be sufSciently small even under the most favour, able conditions. 17,6 Small Holders. There is another form of agricultural credit which is on the increase in Scotland. We have now a great many powerful auction companies, and it would be a revelation if some one could get a look at their books, and see how thoroughly they havp got many of the Scottish farmers in their grip. The practice followed is this : The farmer [(say) wants toi buy some sheep or cattle to feed up for the market ; but he cannot pay cash ' for them. He attends a sale and buys the stock, for which the auctioneer accepts his bill for three or four months. The auctioneer also has a lien on the stock, the purchaser being obliged to take the aninials back to the same auction mart for re- sale when he is ready to dispose of them again. In the result the auctioneer has a firm hold over the farmer, and secures several profits, though the most lucrative part of his business is the loan- ing of the purchase money. If the banks were performing the useful func- tion they ought to undertake towards the agricul- tural community, they would provide for the needs of the small farmer, and save nim from the position to which he has thus been reduced. As it is, many of the small farmers in Scotland do no banking business at all. Their financial relations are ex- clusively with the dealers and the auctioneers. Even their grain they dispose of to merchants from whom they get seed and cake, cross accounts being kept which are settled up once a year, often very much, I fear, to the disadvantage of the grower. The whole position would be vastly improved if the small farmer, like the larger one, could get an overdraft from a bank, enabling him to pay cash down for whatever he buys. But in Scotland, as in England, the joint stock banks are just scooping up all the deposits they can get in the rural dis- tricts, and employing them elsewhere, the agents Co-operative Credit. 177 being discouraged from loaning the monej out again to meet local agricultural requirements. They tell us that '.' the head office wants it " ; and so we are drifting into a system of centralised finance in London, with a consequent financial starvation of the rural districts . The only hope for the small Scottish farmers to-day lies in the possibility of our being able to get a Central Agricultural Credit Bank for Scot- land which would finance a group of district agri- cultural credit banks, and enable them to lend out inoney at a cheap rate of interest, thus offering a practical solution to what is becoming a very grave economic problem. Without stopping to discuss in detail all the views and opinions offered by these various authori- ties, I think their testimony does, at least, show that agricultural credit is. a " live " question of to-day; that it materially concerns both small holders and small farmers; and that these two classes should be prepared to regard it — and also seek to encourage the application of an adequate remedy— -from the standpoint of their common interests. Granted then, that Ireland has found a satisfactory solution of the agricultural credit problem, as applying to her own particular condi- tions, it may be of interest to consider what the sister countries of England and Wales and Scot- land are doing in the same direction. Hitherto the development of agricultural credit in England and Wales has not gone beyond banks of the Raiffeisen type, and even of these the number is still extremely small. An Agricul- tural Banks Association was formed in 1893 for S.H. N 178 Small Holders. the creation of banks of this type in rural districts, in accordance with the general principles I have already indicated ; but the basis of operation was subsequently extended to the setting up of co- operative credit societies in towns, the name being changed to that of the Co-operative Banks Associa- tion. This body was amalgamated, in 1903, with the Agricultural Organisation Society, so far as regarded the formation of agricultural credit banks, the work of dealing with credit societies in towns being left to a new society, the Urban Co-operative Banks Association, formed for that purpose. In the early part of 1909 the number of agricul- tural credit societies of the Raiffeisen type in England and Wales did not exceed 20, and of these six had been formed during 1908, chiefly for the benefit of applicants for land under the Small Holdings and Allotments Act of 1907, and had not yet begun active operations. As regards the remainder, the balance sheets of eleven of the societies show that in 1907 (the accounts for 1908 are not all available at the moment of writing) the loans granted amounted to £646, the totals in the case of individual societies ranging from ^^5 to ;f 125. As indicating the nature of the advantages conferred by these societies on individual members, I might mention the following examples of loans granted : — A loan of £z, for a period of six months, to a labourer and allotment holder to enable him to buy some pigs ; a loan of £xo to a member Co-operative Credit. [tyg wanting to buy some breeding ewes (the borrower gained loo per cent, profit in the twelve months allowed him for repayment) ; a loan of ;^20 to a member for the repair of his cucumber and tomato houses ; and other loans for the purchase of cows, young cattle, sheep or pigs; for the purchase of food to allow of stock being properly finished off for market ; for the hiring of horse or manual labour, the purchase of seed corn, seed potatoes, manure, implements, etc. These, it will be seen, are precisely the directions in which small holders might appreciate timely assistance. One fact which hampered the spread of the movement in England and Wales was the difficulty of providing the local co-operative banks with sufficient working capital so long as they depended exclusively on their local resources. It became inevitable, in fact, that here, as on the Continent, the Raiffeisen banks should have the support of a central credit organisation, and the Central Co- operative Agricultural Bank, Ltd., with offices at Dacre House, Westminster, has now been duly created. It makes advances to local credit banks, (though not direct to individual borrowers), on the collective and individual responsibility of the members thereof, and also receives deposits from societies having surplus funds, or, alternatively, will itself obtain loans from joint stock banks under conditions more favourable than those which the local societies could command when acting separately. N 2 i8o Smallholders. The Central Co-operative Agricultural Bank is, however, anxious to enlarge still further the scope of its possible usefulness, and it is especially desirous of being in a position to make advances, not alone to local credit banks, but also to local agricultural co-operative societies which may need funds for (i) the erection, for trade purposes, of such build- ings as dairy factories or sheds for the storage of feeding stuffs and other agricultural requirements ; (2) the holding of large stocks, the societies finding, in many instances, that it is impossible to develop any considerable business when they buy only against orders; (3) the appointment of expert managers ; (4) purchase of expensive implements for hiring to members; (5) organisation of the sale of products on such lines as — apart from cost of dep6ts — will enable a society to pay for the produce on receipt, and thus to compete with the higglers and others who pay cash down ; and (6) purchase of pedigree animals for the improvement of the members' live stock. In this way a far larger range of agricultural interests could be embraced than is possible under present con- ditions, and all these things would undoubtedly operate to the advantage of both the small holder and the small farmer. Before, however, this full programme can be entered on, the Central Co-operative Agricultural Bank (which has been registered under the Indus- trial and Provident Societies Act) desires to have a credit of £10,000 in order that it can itself draw Co-operative Credit. i8i to this amount, if necessary, on the security of its members ; and the wish is entertained that such credit should be granted by the Treasury, with the further idea of thereby encouraging private persons to put down their names to a substantially larger guarantee fund. When one recalls what the Governments, not alone of Prussia, but of Bavaria, Saxony and Wiir- temberg, of Austria, Hungary, Denmark, Belgium, and other countries have done to support agricul- tural banks, and the great benefits conferred on the peasantry thereby, the suggestion that our own Government should assist the movement here, not by making an actual grant of ;fio,ooo, but by giving to a central organisation credit to that amount, certainly appears to be sufficiently modest. Personally, I favour a combination of self-help and mutual-help rather than an undue reliance on State aid ; and I am disposed to think that in some Continental countries the latter principle has been developed to an extent that tends both to deprive the people of self-reliance and to weaken their moral stamina. I would hot, therefore, suggest that we must necessarily regard Continental pre- cedents in State aid as examples we should our- selves always follow. All the same, this little matter of a ^^10,000 credit should not involve any moral decadence on the part of the British farmer or small-holder, or, indeed, any financial risk to the Imperial Exchequer, considering that the registered rules of the Central Bank in question 1 82 Small Holders. have been signed by such influential persons as the Marquis of Zetland, the Earl of Stamford, the Earl of Coventry, Lord Lucas, the Hon. T. A. Brassey, the Hon. W. F. D. Smith, M.P., Mr. Hugh Andrews, Mr. R. N. Sutton Nelthorpe, the Rev. T. H. L. Jellicoe, and Mr. R. A. Yerburgh. On the other hand there is the greater reason why the Government should take the desired action — if only " to encourage the others " — because one result of their policy in the creation, by Act of Parliament, of so many small holdings and allotments must be to add considerably to the number of individuals of extremely limited means who will seek to gain more or less of a living from the cultivation of the soil ; and it must, assuredly, soon be found that the initial capital of £5, £6, or even £10 an acre which the County Councils expect the applicants to possess will not carry these individuals very far, especially if they should depend entirely on their own resources as individual units. I can hardly think that the obligation of the State will cease if, after deliberately encourag- ing small holders to settle on the land (ejecting, perhaps, experienced farmers in order to make way for them), it simply provides them with plots of land, and then leaves them to their fate. The very least it could do, in addition to providing land, would be to facilitate for them the means of obtaining that easy agricultural credit on which their success or failure may eventually depend more than on any other single condition. Co-operative Credit, 183 It is true that under the Small Holdings and Allotments Act County Councils are authorised to promote the creation or the extension of, and also to " assist," societies formed on a co-operative basis which have for their object, or one of their objects, " the provision or the profitable working of small holdings and allotments, whether in relation to the purchase of requisites, the sale of produce, credit banking, or insurance or otherwise." But although the concession of the principle is of value, the suggestion here made that a County Council should have direct dealings with village agricultural credit banks — running the risk of seeing its financial relations therewith made a subject of local politics, especially at election times — is unsound, undesirable, and (as the reader must have seen from what I have already stated), altogether inconsistent with the practice followed on the Continent. If, therefore, the County Coun- cils should be disposed to make advances for the encouragement of credit banking, they should act through the Central Bank, leaving that body with the responsibility of all details — repayment included — and relieving themselves of various financial and other complications from which a popularly- elected body had much better be free. While, however, as we have seen, England does compare unfavourably with Continental countries and with Ireland in the present extent of her development of co-operative agricultural credit, the foundations for a national system have already 184 Small Holders. been laid, and all that now remains is to build up such system on them. There is no need whatever for starting afresh to construct an elaborate piece of State machinery designed after Continental models. Taking the foundations as already laid by private effort, a comparatively insignificant amount of Government encouragement, involving no real risk to the public purse, would suffice now to give to the general movement such an impetus that the speedy provision of an effective organisa- tion of co-operative agricultural credit should be no longer in doubt. Part of the organisation, as it seems to me, should aim at securing for rural cultivators the use of the savings of urban workers, by way of supple- menting alike State support and the use of the rural banks for rural deposits. In Italy the wide- spread adoption of this principle has been an important element in the success of the village banks. In Belgium a law of June 21, 1894, authorised the State Savings Bank to place a por- tion of its funds at the disposal of the Comptoirs Agricoles (a somewhat higher type of agricultural credit bank than the Raiffeisen bank) ; but there has been the less need to take advantage of this provision as the Belgian agricultural banks are largely used as savings banks, and thus have their independent sources of capital available for loan purposes. In Ireland, also, the Raiffeisen banks are coming more and more into favour as savings banks, the 3J or 4 per cent, allowed by them on Co-operative Credit. 185 deposits being better than the interest paid in the Post Office Savings Bank, while the security, as already shown, is, in actual operation, practically complete. As regards the action being taken in Scotland, I read in the report for 1908 of the Scottish Agricul- tural Organisation Society : — The formation of agricultural banks has engaged the attention of the executive committee, and preliminary steps are being taken for the forma- tion of a Credit Bank. It is hoped that before long a definite beginning may be made in this important branch of agricultural organisation. The subject came up for consideration at the third annual meeting of the Society, held in Edin- burgh on March 24, 1909, when the following resolution was carried : — That the Society should cordially assent to a movement to found a Central Bank, with a view to assisting the development of agriculture on large as well as small holdings ; that such a bank should operate through the medium of branches and rural agricultural credit banks ; and that the Society should appoint a committee to confer with a com- mittee appointed by any other body with the view of founding such a bank. On ^his same occasion the value of agricultural credit and the position of the ordinary joint stock banks in relation thereto were brought out very clearly by Sir Horace Plunkett, who, in the course of his speech, said : — So far at least as the poorer members of the community are concerned, I hold that co-operative 1 86 Small Holders. credit is by far the most valuable branch of co- operation. I do so because I found in my own organising days that, once the mysteries of finance could be explained to a body of men, all the other forms of co-operation became comparatively easy. Having pointed to the results obtained " among the very poorest of the Irish peasantry, people as poor as those in the outer Hebrides," as " a very remarkable proof of the soundness of the Raiffeisen system," Sir Horace proceeded : — In so far, therefore, as the poorer members of your agricultural community are concerned, you cannot do better than take over and adopt that system. " But," you may ask, " what is the neces- sity for adopting it? Have we not our joint stock banks ? What is wrong with agricultural credit as things are to-day? " I answer that, like every- thing else, the banking arrangements of these islands are made entirely for the convenience of town folk, and that they have no regard whatso- ever for the circumstances of the farmers' industry. Let us take a simple instance, that of a farmer who borrows money to sow a crop. Because a towns- man borrows at 90 days, the farmer has to pay back the money without any regard to when his harvest is cut. He borrows money to purchase live stock which will take a certain time to mature, but the banker will not lend him money except for such time as he finds that the majority of his customers require their money. The banker's case, which is perfectly good, is this : He says, " How am I to know that 'a farmer will apply the loan to the purpose for which he says he will ; and how am I to know that it is a sound purpose? I know absolutely nothing about agriculture." That is perfectly true ; and, though I have not Co-operative Credit. [iSy, attempted to go into detail, it brings me to my main point : Agricultural co-operation is the only possible way of solving the difficulty. In order to obtain some further details as to the nature of the agricultural credit banks movement set on foot in Scotland, I have been in communica- tion with the secretary of the Scottish Chamber of Agriculture, Mr. Isaac Connell, solicitor, Supreme Courts, Edinburgh, who has devoted much atten- tion to the subject of agricultural credit, and is, I understand, mainly responsible for the particular scheme now under consideration in Scotland. Mr. Connell has favoured me with the following notes on the subject : — iWhat is necessary in order to deal with agricul- tural credit on a basis sufficiently large and broad is to form a central bank which — operating of course, on the principle of limited liability — would have for one of its main objects the making of advances to small agricultural credit societies such as I should like to see formed throughout .Scotland. It might, also, make advances, on ordinary business lines, to large individual farmers. iWith this object in view it could open branches in different districts ; and such branches might, also, to some extent, control or supervise the opera- tions of the rural credit societies. Jif a central bank established, say, in Edinburgh, on these lines were operated under the direction of a body of influential persons of business training and experience, it might, in the first place, be able to attract a considerable amount of capital from investors as a foundation for its business ; and objects such as those I have mentioned should 1 88 Small Holders. especially encourage landed proprietors to sup- port the bank by taking shares. Having secured this foundation, the bank should next make efforts to collect, in the form of de- posits^ savings made in the towns as well as those made in the country districts. The adoption of this policy would, perhaps, necessitate the organisa- tion of a net -work of small thrift banks, or branches thereof, throughout the whole of Scot- land. To ensure success, however, such a move- ment would require to be more aggressive than either the Post Office Savings Bank or the ordinary savings banks. These, as you know, simply sit down and wait for money to be brought to them ; whereas, under my scheme, there would be a certain amount of propaganda work, directed to the inculcating of thrift habits on the young, on classes such as domestic servants, and on working people generally. Then, with the provision of the financial basis and the assurance of the skilled management already mentioned, encouragement would also be given to persons in a higher social scale to place their savings on deposit in such a bank as the one I recommend. Having in this way obtained the funds it re- quired, the bank ought to be able to make a reasonable return to its shareholders — though here I would suggest that the dividends paid should not exceed five or six per cent. — and to give valu- able assistance in the development of agriculture, and, perhaps, of other industries, also. This, of course, is a pretty big scheme ; but I believe it is feasible, and I am convinced it would be productive of much good in various directions. The subject was further discussed at a confer- ence convened by the Scottish Chamber of Agriculture, and held at Edinburgh on June i, Co-operative Credit. :i89 1909. In the result a resolution was passed declaring — That there being a clamant need for a bank or banks having as one of their leading objects the development of the agricultural industry, the following be appointed a committee to investigate and report on the matter to another conference, viz., seven members to be appointed by the direc- tors and one member to be appointed by each associated society. In the attempts to secure the use of both town and country savings to promote the special pur- poses of agricultural credit banks a certain amount of opposition from joint stock banks favouring the small depositor may naturally be anticipated ; though, perhaps, apart from the fresh business that might be developed, any possible transfer of accounts would be much more likely to affect the Post Office Savings Bank, There are, however, two reasons why the utilisation especially of urban savings for rural purposes seems to me to be eminently desirable. In the first place, there would be the economic advantage of securing a steady flow of money from town to country, where it would not only aid in the revival of agriculture, and tend to the promotion of the general welfare, but, while assuring the urban depositors a fair rate of interest on their invested savings, give them a bonus in the form of additional employment, since the more that agri- culture prospers the greater will be the demand for agricultural implements and machinery, and 1 90 Small Holders. the many other necessaries of rural life which town workers would be directly interested in producing. Secondly, there would be a great social and educational advantage in showing the direct com- munity of interest between town and country, and in strengthening that bond of common sympathy and that spirit of mutual help which should do much to promote the welfare alike of agriculture, of industry, and of the community in general. To the attainment of these ainis, the provision of special agricultural credit banks, meeting the needs of all classes of the rural community, would seem to be clearly indispensable ; but to none of those classes are such banks more necessary than to the small holder. CHAPTER XI. CO-OPERATIVE INSURANCE. Reverting to the general proposition already enunciated — that the small holder producing com- modities for sale needs to keep his cost of production and his general working expenses as low as pos- sible — mention should be made of the opportunities for saving which may be secured through a resort to that principle of co-operative agricultural insurance which, in various forms, has already undergone great expansion in other countries. To deal first with the question of fire insurance, many persons will probably be at a loss to know how such insurance, carried out by a small society acting co-operatively in a village or other limited area, may be able to offer greater advantages to cultivators of the soil than some powerful company whose operations extend throughout the entire country. One reason given for this position is that the co- operative agricultural insurance society, through the strict limitation of its risks, and especially because it does operate in a limited area, avoids that " conflagration hazard " (as it is technically 192 Small Holders. called) against which the large general insurance company must needs provide. This consideration has had great weight in the United States and Canada, where mutual fire insurance societies have established a good position for themselves. Leaders of the movement in those countries point to the loss of ;£'38,ooo,ooo sustained through the fire at Chicago in 1871, and to that of £25,000,000 through the fire at Baltimore. To these examples I may add that, as the result of the more recent disaster at San Francisco eighteen British com- panies were called on to pay an aggregate of £11,000,000. In London, also, we have had instances of wide areas being cleared by reason of great fires. The organisers of mutual or co- operative fire insurance begin, therefore, by avoid- ing urban risks, and base their financial calculations exclusively on such purely rural risks as are actually run by the agriculturists insured. Even " hazardous " agricultural risks are care- fully avoided by the farmers' mutual insurance societies in Canada. Cheese factories, for example, are not accepted for insurance by these institutions, risks of this kind being left to the ordinary fire insurance companies. Then the mutual or co-operative insurance prin- ciple eliminates what is known as the " moral hazard." A company in a big way of business cannot investigate the personal character of each and every individual proposing to take out a fire insurance policy. It accepts the premiums offered Co-operative Insurance. 193 and takes the risk, the premiums being, presum- ably, such as will cover this particular risk, as well as the others already mentioned. Apart from the question of moral hazard in the commercial world, it is found that even in the world of agri- culture there may be a connection between bad seasons and the " spontaneous combustion " of farm property which cannot always be accounted for on purely scientific grounds. In the case, how- ever, of a mutual insurance company, operating only in a small district, where everybody knows everybody else, not only would individuals regarded as actual or possible " wrong ones " not be accepted as members, but it would be to the general interest of a man's neighbours to detect any misdemeanour of which he might have been guilty, since the making good of the loss would otherwise fall upon themselves — a very different matter from winking at a suspected delinquency of which an insurance company would be the victim ! In these various ways the risks of a small-scale mutual agricultural insurance society are substan- tially reduced as compared with those run by ordinary large insurance companies. The working expenses, also, are kept very low, there are no dividends to be paid, and there is no need to build up huge reserve funds. The system has, in fact, answered so well in Canada that in the Province of Ontario the mutual societies do three-fourths of the agricultural insurance business. The practice adopted by most of the societies S.H. o 194 Small Holders. there is that of insuring the members for a series of years, a small fixed payment being taken in advance to cover the very moderate expenses of management and to meet any ordinary losses, the members further giving a guarantee or premium note on which a call may be made — on the basis of a certain percentage of the insurance policy — should there occur an unusually heavy loss which cannot be covered out of the funds in hand. The liability of the members is, however, limited to the unpaid proportion of their guarantee note. In the United States there have been some failures, attri- buted mainly to indiscretions in management ; but the mutual insurance societies there are said to have been, on the whole, remarkably successful. The officials of the New York State Grange, which body is especially interested in them, also lay great stress on the " moral effect " of the societies in " binding together the farmers and strengthening their organisations." Another form of mutual insurance, and one which is more especially in vogue in Continental countries, relates to the insurance of live stock. In France this system of agricultural co-operative insurance seems to be carried much further than the corresponding method of insurance against agricultural fire risks, as shown by the following note published in " The Journal of the Board of Agriculture " for May, igo6 : — The formation of mutual agricultural insurance societies has made very rapid progress in France Co-operative Insurance. 195 during the past seven years. Up to 1898 there were about 1,400 of these associations in exist- ence, of which some 700 alone were in the Depart- ment of Landes, where the mutual insurarice of cattle has long existed in a somewhat rudimentary form. In that year, however, the French Govern- ment included in the Budget of the Department of Agriculture a sum of £20,000, out of which small amounts (not less than £20) are granted, usually to assist in the foundation of new societies by the payment of preliminary expenses, etc., or, in the case of established societies, to help tide them over any exceptional losses which they may have incurred. According to a return recently issued by the French Minister of Agriculture, it appears that there were on March 15, 1906, 6,556 mutual insurance societies, having 376,000 members, the capital insured amounting to nearly £21,000,000. Of this number, 5,993 are for the insurance of cattle, 495 for insurance against fire (agricul- tural risks), 28 against hail, 4 against accidents, and 36 are re-insurance societies. The total grants have amounted to £157,000. Cattle insurance societies are by far the most numerous, and this is explained by the fact that the risks are smaller and less dangerous than in the case of insurance against fire, hail or accidents. The value of the cattle insured was £13,520,000 belonging to 324,000 members. For several years the efforts of the administration have been directed to the grouping of small local societies into unions or federations, with a view to the diminution of risks, and to enable them to sustain exceptional losses. Re-insurance societies now exist in 25 departments, representing 1,719 afiSliated societies, and about £3,500,000 value insured. Insurance against fire is undertaken by 495 societies having 18,074 members, the value insured being about £6,400,000. Most of these societies are federated in three unions . O 2 19.6 Small Holders. I might supplement this statement by mention- ing that at the Cremona Congress of the Inter- national Co-operative Alliance a French speaker, M. de Fontgalland, said: — In Paris there' is a Central Insurance Society, the policies of which cover over £4,000,000 worth of purely agricultural risks. If, for example, a landowner has a house near his farm, this society would insure the farm, but not the house, because the latter is not used for agricultural purposes. The society, in fact, takes nothing but agricultural business. Our premiums work out on an average ,at 3 5 to 40 per cent, less than the rates paid to other insurance societies, even those which grant the most favourable terms. In October, 1908, there was created an Agricul- tural and General Co-operative Insurance Society, Ltd., which aims at developing co-operative insur- ance in the interests of the bodies affiliated with the Agricultural Organisation Society; though at first it will deal mainly with fire and fidelity guarantee insurance. Registered under the Industrial Pro- vident Societies Act,* it operates on the main * The Society is constituted as follows : Trustee for the bond- holders, R. A. Yerburgh, President of the Agricultural Organisa- tion Society; chairman, *the Hon. R. D. Denman, Director of the Marine and General Mutual Life Assurance Society ; deputy- chairman, *C. A. Montague Barlow, L.C.C., LL.D., Barrister-at- Law ; directors, J. A. Eggar, Managing Director of the Agricul- tural Co-operative Federation, Limited, Secretary of the Farnham, Alton and District Farmers' and Hop-growers' Co- operative Association, Limited; W. Fitzherbert-Brockholes, J.P., D.L., Chairman of the Lancashire Farmers' Association ; E. Hearle, Secretary of the Beckford Farmers' Association, Limited ; G. W. Hill; G. M. Maryon- Wilson, President of the Chail^y and District Farmers' Co-operative Society, Limited Co-operative Insurance. 197 principle already mentioned. The basis of the scheme is the local element, the effect of which will be that any local society sending in a proposal will have a personal knowledge of and interest in the integrity and bona fides of the policy holder. The Canadian and Continental system of a " whip round " in case of a big fire will not be followed, the Society's original fund of £20,000 being supplemented by each new member taking one or more shares, so that as the liabilities of the Society increase, the funds also increase. As an additional safeguard the directors have also entered into a re-insurance contract (on advantageous terms to the Society) which limits the liability 0x1 any one loss. The general gain to policy holders will be through a system of bonuses rather than through a reduction in the amount of ordinary premiums. At present there does not appear to be the same prospect of developing live stock co-operative insurance as in France, the general conditions of the two countries being different ; though more oppor- tunities in this particular direction are expected to present themselves with any substantial increase in the number of small holders, to whom the loss even of a single cow might be a matter of serious A. E. Bromehead Soulby, Secretary of the Yorkshire Union of Agricuhural Clubs ; 'the Hon. A. L. Stanley, M.P. ; 'K. G. R. Vaizey, Chairman of Messrs. Bevington Vaizey & Foster, Limited, Insurance Brokers (members of the Executive Com- mittee are indicated by an asterisk) ; agricultural expert, W. M. Tod ; manager, K. W. Hopkinson ; offices, Dacre House, Dacre Street, Victoria Street, London, S.W. 1 98 Small Holders. consequence. Other forms of insurance — accident, life, etc. — are also undertaken, the Society acting here as agents, and getting specially advantageous terms by grouping proposals and saying agents' commission. So, although England once more compares un- favourably with other countries in her effective organisation of agricultural business methods, the foundations of progress have been laid in this instance also, and the opportunity is now at least open to English cultivators of the soil to share in the economic advantages already so well developed elsewhere. The small holder who, as a would-be agri- culturist, not only has risks against which he ought to insure, but must needs watch his out- goings with the most scrupulous care, would do well to study what the farmers and cultivators in Canada, in the United States, and in France and most of the other countries on the Continent are doing in this matter of mutual or co-operative insurance, and consider whether it would not be wise on his part to lose no time in following their example. CHAPTER XII, THE HUMAN ELEMENT. Thus far I have deg.lt only with the economic phases of that policy of combined effort which, in my judgment, offers the most solid basis for possible success in any wide-spread development of small holdings. ' Primary importance must needs be attached to the phases in question as regards their application to individuals proposing to look upon their holdings as a business proposi- tion. For them, at least, the main considerations will be " Can the holdings be made to pay ; and, if so, what are the best means of rendering them profitable ? " Unless the small holders are satisfied on these points, it will be of no use to attempt to interest them in side issues. Nor, on the other hand, has the community any right to burden them with side issues which may involve un- economic conditions in the operation of their holdings, and endanger the financial success that must necessarily be their chief aim. But, assuming that the arguments I have already advanced as to the way in which the holdings should be held and worked are economically sound; and assuming also that there are indeed 200 Small Holders. certain side issues, presenting important ethical, social, and other considerations which would not really endanger this economic soundness, but tend rather to strengthen it, then these further issues may, in turn, fairly be presented to the reader. There is, for example, the fact that the small holder who forms part of a little community associated for the promotion of mutual interests should derive therefrom more than a purely finan- cial advantage, inasmuch as he stands to gain also in developing wider sympathies and greater intelli- gence, in acquiring a broader view of life, and in recognising that he and his neighbours have interests in common which they would do well to foster and protect in common. It is not surprising that the average agriculturist should, when he remains an individual unit, show a disposition to regard his fellow-men with mistrust, if not with actual suspicion. His comparative isolation and the nature of his calling naturally lead to a certain degree of circumspection in all that he does ; while he realises from a more or less bitter experience that there is a whole army of middlemen who, even though they may not directly prey upon him, depend on his produce as the foundation of their own perhaps much more , successful enterprises. These tendencies have, indeed, offered various difficulties in the development of the principle of combination. In Denmark it was found in the early days of the co-operative bacon factories that The Human Element. 201 the members, suspecting even the managers thereof, used to have their pigs weighed privately before sending them in, so as to be able to check the official figures; though their initial distrust dis- appeared when they found that the managers of the factories were really not trying to cheat them. Mutual help encourages mutual confidence. As the agriculturist gains a more intimate acquaint- ance with his neighbours, suspicion gives way to an assumption of honesty of purpose where all are joined together to promote common interests. Should there be any genuine grounds for distrust of a particular individual who may be idle, drunken, or untrustworthy, he is not accepted for co-opera- tive society membership. Should a person who has been admitted a member feel tempted in any way to be disloyal to those with whom he has combined, he is probably held in check by the strong force of local public opinion ; while the consciousness that confidence is reposed in him by his neighbours, upon whom (in the case of a credit society) any losses resulting from his own miscon- duct or indiscretions would fall, makes him more scrupulous and more careful than if he were dealing, perhaps, with a money-lender or a purely commer- cial concern. The trust which the member of a co-operative agricultural society learns to place in his neighbours is thus followed by a desire that those neighbours shall have confidence in himself. In either of these two ways a sense of association takes the place of the former sense of isolation. 202 • Small Holders. With closer acquaintance, again, comes greater interest in the success of one's neighbours, and especially in that of any neighbour to whom a loan may have been advanced on the credit of the com- munity. Should the operations of that neighbour fail, the others may have to bear the loss. They trust him, but they themselves accept the responsi- bility, and it is for them to see that he is not only an honest man but a prudent cultivator who is laying out his loan to the best advantage. In this case his fellow-members may be alike his financial helpers and his friendly advisers, and their practical commonsense may be of no less value to him than the money they advance. This, at least, is certain : that the very fact of their having a practical con- cern in what their neighbour is doing must keep them from being selfishly absorbed in their own purely personal concerns. With the broader sympathies and the wider outlook on life thus brought about comes a new sense of moral obligation. Members of these little communities learn that they have duties, not alone towards their neighbour, but towards the world at large. They are taught why they should be honest in their dealings, and not put good qualities on the top of their box or barrel, and bad qualities underneath. They find that though, in so doing, they may trick the purchaser, they will bring down upon themselves the re- proaches of those around who have themselves learned the value of fair trading and of a good The Human Element. 203 name ; and here the local appeal to the offender's conscience — supported, perhaps, by the imposition of fines or threats of expulsion from the Society — may be of much more avail than protests from a dealer on some distant market. To the growth of the sense of brotherhood and to the expansion of the moral consciousness may be added a mental development due to the wider range of knowledge acquired. Apart from avowedly educational efforts, the business meet- ings of agricultural societies of the various types here dealt with become occasions for the exchange of experiences and ideas on subjects with which the individual cultivator, keeping exclusively to himself, might be but little acquainted. The associated farmer of to-day talks almost a different language from that of the average farmer of the last generation. The one can discuss " phos- phates," "soil fertilisation," " bacteria," "diseases of plants," " butter fat," new machinery, and other such subjects in a way that would be so much Greek to the other, were he to come back to life. Nor is it a matter of talk alone. It is a matter, also, of an actual application of new processes to the work of production. With increased know- ledge and a change of mental attitude on the part of the farmer towards his business, there is a change in that business itself. The difficulties presented alike by new systems of cultivation and by the keener competition on available markets become less as the cultivator finds himself both 204 Small Holders. encouraged and enabled to adopt improved and more economical methods in meeting what might otherwise appear to him an almost hopeless situation. Writing in the Irish Homestead of December 19, 1908, on " The Social and Human Side of Agri- cultural Co-operation," as experienced in Den- mark, Mr. J. G. Brooks quotes a Danish school- master as saying : — The material betterment has quite changed our village life ; but thkt is by no means the most note- worthy. The courage and confidence which this co-operation has given us is a great deal more important. They not only now believe that busi- ness obstacles can be overcome ; they have grown open-minded about their ability to cope with an entirely different order of obstacles. .W.hen I now talk to them about germs, about health conditions, about sanitation in the home or the school, the old scoffing habit is gone. The ordinary working of co-operation, and the applied science that goes with it, makes an avenue for teaching that carries its own proofs with it. I used to think I could do it by lectures and exhortations. Here and there I could influence an individual ; but these co-operative societies reach every member. Not a day's work can be done with milk, eggs, poultry, bacon, with- out seeing so many applications of science in some form that the education reaches even tlie most stupid. All these things are tending to build up a finer type of individual character and to create a new type of rural mind. They are having no less remarkable results, also, in bringing about a new The Human Element. 205 basis of social relations, inasmuch as agricultural co-operation is a platform on which individuals otherwise having widely different ideas and interests now meet in perfect harmony for the promotion of common advantages. This fact has been abundantly proved in Ireland, where, as everyone knows, political and religious differences are especially acute. In the early days of the movement in that country the outlook was not always promising. This the reader will gather from the following remarks made by Mr. R. A. Anderson, secretary of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, in the course of some reminiscences contributed by him to the Irish Homestead : — It was hard and thankless, work. There was the apathy of the people and the active opposition of the Press and the politicians. . ^. . Once, when I thought I had planted a creamery within the precincts of the town of Rathkeale^ my co-opera- tive apple cart was upset by a local solicitor who, having elicited the fact that our movement recog-; nised neither political nor religious differences — that the Unionist-Protestant cow was as dear to us as her Nationalist-Catholic sister — gravely in- formed me that our programme would not suit Rathkeale. " Rathkeale," said he, pompously, " is a Nationalist town — Nationalist to the backbone — and every pound of butter made in this creamery must be made on Nationalist principles, or it shan't be made at all." This sentiment was applauded loudly, and the proceedings terminated. But the position in Ireland has greatly changed since these early days. It is no longer considered 2o6 Small Holders. necessary there that co-operative butter shall be made on Nationalist principles, while Protestants, Catholics, and Presbyterians, clerical and lay, meet and discuss organisation propaganda, or business details in connection with the co-opera- tive agricultural societies, on a footing of perfect harmony, keeping religious differences entirely in the background. In one instance, nine-tenths of the members of a certain co-operative credit bank are Roman Catholics, but they have appointed a Protestant clergyman as their president; and it was he, and not the local priest, whom they selected to act for them when they negotiated for the purchase of their land. In another instance the members of a local Orange Society, who were organising a procession, with a drum and fife band accompaniment, for July 12, found on the previous day that their big drum was out of order. But they were also, members of a local agricultural co-operative society with which the parish priest was connected ; and such was the good feeling in the district that the priest helped the Orangemen out of their difficulty by lending them the big drum of a local Catholic society to aid in the production of their anti-Catholic tunes ! An incident such as this was probably unprece- dented in Ireland. It might have remained impossible but for the change of feeling brought about by action in common for the promotion for common agricultural interests. Still more remarkable is the story that can be The Human Element. '207 told of Cape Colony, where, following on an enquiry as to the causes of the deplorable con- dition into which agriculture had fallen, a scheme of systematic organisation was decided on in 1905, thanks to the enterprise and public spirit of Dr. Jameson, then Prime Minister of the Colony. For the purposes of this scheme the Government of Cape Colony secured the services of Mr. P. J. Hannon, who had then already been engaged for eleven years in the work of agricultural organisa- tion in Ireland, and had also had considerable experience of agricultural methods in most European countries, in Canada, and in the United States. " Thus it came about," said Mr. Hannon, in reading a paper on " The New Agricultural Movement in Cape Colony," before the Colonial Institute, on April 4, igo6, "that it fell to the lot of an Irishman to take charge of the scheme propounded by the Cape Government for the improvement of the Cape farmer." Mr. Hannon has recently returned home, after having success- fully accomplished his task of planting agricultural organisation firmly in Cape Colony, whence it has spread to the neighbouring colonies in South Africa; and he has now favoured me with the following note on the results already achieved : — Co-operative enterprise in South Africa, as you will doubtless have seen from my annual reports, has had exceptional and very serious difficulties to overcome ; but, on the whole, most valuable work has been done during the past four years. 2o8 Small Holders. and the foundations of vigorous progress have been laid in almost every part of the great sub- continent. The most valuable result, however, which, in large measure, is attributable to agricul- tural co-operation, is the elimination of racial feeling between the white races. The formation of associations for the purpose of improving the economic position of the farmer has been, in South Africa, as indeed everywhere else, a most salutary influence in bridging over differences acutely poli- tical — differences which, following upon the war, were almost everywhere very sharply defined. It was soon discovered that the interests of Britain and Boer were mutual, and that, if agricultural and industrial prosperity were to be achieved, it was only through a union of all interests and forces that national material advancement could be fostered and maintained.' Co-operation brought abou|t a Steady fusion of the races which has now resulted in the establishment of a great South' African Union. Mr. Hannon, I understand, is engaged on a book in which he will tell the full story of his mission to South Africa, and the results thereof ; and, judging from the example I am here privileged to offer, the facts he will be able to relate should not only be profoundly interesting in themselves, but constitute a valuable addition to the records of recent developments in South Africa. Results such as those here indicated may be thought to go beyond the limits of the question of organised effort in the acquiring and cultivation of small holdings in the United Kingdom; but they help to show that, however great the The Human Element. 209 economic importance of the agricultural organi- sation movement, there is also a human element which in itself must add to the value of the main principle, and raise it above the purely material benefits that, nevertheless, rank first in the order of practical importance. If the small holders in being organised on sound economic lines can be further led to adopt these wider sympathies, to attain this wider knowledge, and to take these broader views of life and its responsibilities, they should become not only better farmers but, what may be no less important to themselves and to the community — better men and better citizens. S.H. CHAPTER XIII. THE REVIVAL OF COUNTRY LIFE. One of the most interesting and most important of the various side issues arising out of the question as to the settlement of small holders on the land, under an effective application of co-operative principles, is the possibility of bringing about a revival of country life through the creation, in rural districts, of new economic conditions and of a new social order — always provided that the small holders and the agriculturists concerned are to have their own prospects improved thereby, rather than be simply made use of (perhaps to their own disadvantage) as instruments for the promotion of schemes designed to advance the welfare of the community in general. The possibilities of effecting some such revival constitute a problem which concerns not alone rural districts but the cities ; and not alone our own country but all countries, old and new, where the population is either drifting to or remaining mainly in the towns and cities, creating so many more or less congested areas, instead of spreading out over the land and taking advantage of the ample space there available. It is one of the The Revival of Country Life. '211 commonplaces of economics that the towns of to-day draw their chief suppHes of strong, active, virile men and women from the country, and that while the towns themselves may thus gain the town-workers are placed at a disadvantage in an over-supplied labour market in which the more sturdy new-comers get a preference of employ- ment. Yet the new-comers in turn run the risk of losing their rural strength and healthfulness after a few years residence in the slums of an urban centre, and unless the supply of these rural forces can be adequately maintained, there must needs be a gradual deterioration in national stamina. One result of this migration from the country to the towns has been seen in the tendency to regard social questions as essentially urban ques- tions. Because the towns have become congested, therefore it has been too generally assumed that the towns alone are concerned in social problems. Pohticians have been much more anxious to secure legislative reforms for the great masses of electors in urban centres than for the scattered populations in the country districts. Social reformers have looked at urban effects rather than at rural causes, and have sought to apply remedies instead of preventing the actual disease. Even when legis- lative and social efforts have been directed to the country, this has been done too much from the urban point of view, without any adequate appreciation of specific rural needs. P 3 2 12 Small Holders. Economically, the country districts have been regarded more and more as places whence certain groups of wholesale dealers or retail traders in the towns can draw the supplies out of which they hope to gain a maximum of possible profit for themselves. In this way the producer has existed for the distributor, rather than the distributor for the producer; and, so long as the latter has received just sufficient return on his outlay and his labour to encourage him to continue his supplies (assuming that these could not be obtained cheaper and better from abroad), this has been considered sufficient ; while, as long as he remains isolated and unorganised, the home producer is unable to hold his own against the organised or otherwise powerful forces of the interests he has to meet. So, while the towns have been undergoing great expansion, not only drawing their population from the country but also exploiting agricultural pro- duction to their own advantage, the rural districts have declined alike in their economic and their social interests, with the result that they present to-day an appearance less of actual growth than of arrested development. These conditions — themselves in no way peculiar to our own land — are attracting the attention of thoughtful and patriotic men in various countries ; and it is especially significant that the "town versus country " problem is being studied with no less earnestness in a new country like the United The Revival of Country Life. 213 States than in any of the old countries of Europe. But this fact is no way surprising, considering that in the New England States alone there were, a year or two ago, no fewer than 26,000 derelict farms. The main reason for this remarkable decline has been an economic one. The New England farmers were mostly owners of the land they cultivated, and had thus all the advantages that, in the view of many persons, ownership should afford. They were, however, wholly unorganised, and, as individual units, were at a distinct dis- advantage in dealing with the big city trusts and interests. Whenever these bodies wanted to cut prices, to cover losses on speculations, or to get a few more dollars in the way of profits, the screw was applied to the unfortunate farmers, who had no power to oppose the reductions forced upon them. The farmers adopted what they thought their only remedy — that of effecting economies. They reduced wages, but found matters still worse when the wage-earners left them and went off to the cities, where they thought they could do better. Added to this main reason was a subsidiary one. Country life was too dull and too " slow " for the young people at least — farmers' sons and daughters, as well as the more active of the labourers. If the fathers cared to persevere in the struggle, the rising generation would not ; and in course of time, there was so wholesale an abandon- 214 Small Holders. ment of farms that the population in the rural districts of the New England States to-day is said to be less than it was a hundred years ago. Conditions such as these have especially impressed so earnest and so practical a reformer as Mr. Roosevelt, who, on repeated occasions during his tenure of office as President of the United States, dwelt on the need of improving the position of the cultivator of the soil. In his Message to the Fifty-eighth Congress (1903) he spoke of " the loneliness and lack of mental com- panionship " in country life, against which " the more active and restless young men and women rebel," and to escape which they fly from the farms to the cities ; and he suggested various remedies for " lessening the isolation of farm life, and making it brighter and more attractive." In August, 1908, he appointed a " Country Life Commission," saying in his letter of instructions : — In the United States, disregarding certain sec- tions, and taking the nation as a whole, I believe it to be true that the farmers in general are better off to-day than they ever were before. . . . But it is equally true that the social and economic institutions of the open country are not keeping pace with the development of the nation as a whole. ... I doubt if any other nation can bear comparison with our own in the amount of atten- tion given by the Government, both Federal and State, to agricultural matters. But practically the whole of this effort has hitherto been directed towards the increasing of crops. Our attention has been concentrated almost exclusively on get- ting better farming. In the beginning this was The Revival of Country Life. 215 unquestionably the right thing to do. The farmer must first of all grow good crops in order to sup- port himself and his family. But when this has been secured the effort for better farming should cease to stand alone, and should be accompanied by the effort for better business and better living on the farm. . . . Agriculture is not the whole of country life. The great rural interests are human interests, and good crops are of little value to the farmer unless they open the door to a good kind of life on the farm. This problem of country life is in the truest sense a national problem, ... It is especially important that whatever will serve to prepare country cTiildren for life on the farm, and what- ever will brighten home life in the country, and make it richer and more attractive for the mothers, wives, and daughters of farmers, should be done promptly, thoroughly, and gladly. . . - The farmers have hitherto had less than their full share of attention aloiig the lines of business and social life. There is too much belief among all our people that the prizes of life lie away from the farm. I am, therefore, anxious to bring before the people of the United States the question of securing better business and better living on the farm, whether by co-operation between farmers for buying, selling and borrowing, by promoting social advantages and opportunities in the country, or by other legitimate means that will help to make country life more gainful, more attractive, and fuller of opportunities, pleasures, and rewards for the inen, Vvt>men, and' children on the farms. The Commission held thirty public sittings, heard the evidence of farmers and farmers' wives from forty States and territories, and, early in igog, presented a report, to which Mr. Roosevelt, 21 6 Small Holders. then still President of the United States, prefaced a "Special Message," dated February 9, 1909. In the course of this document he pointed to the fact that various agencies already existing had combined to place within the reach of the American farmer an amount and quality of agri- cultural information which, if applied, would enable him, over large areas, to double the production of the farm. He proceeded : — The object of the Commission on Country Life, therefore, is not to help the farmer to raise better crops, but to call his attention to the opportunities for better business and better living on the farm. If country life is to become what it should be, and what I believe it ultimately will be — one of the most dignified, desirable and sought-after ways of earning a living — the farmer must take advan- tage not only of the agricultural knowledge which is at his disposal but of the methods which have raised, and continue to raise, the standards of living and of intelligence in other callings. Those engaged in all other industrial and com- mercial callings have found it necessary, under modern economic conditions, to organise themselves for mutual advantage and for the protection of their own particular interests- in relation to other interests. The farmers of every progressive Euro- pean country have realised this essential fact, "and have found in the co-operative system exactly the form of business combination they needed. . . . One of the chief difficulties is the failure of country life, as it exists at present, to satisfy the higher social and intellectual aspirations of country people. ... No one at all familiar with farm life throughout the 'United States can fail to recog- nise the necessity for building up the life of the The Revival of Country Life. 217 farm upon its social as well as upon its produc- tive side. It is true that country life has improved greatly in attractiveness, health, and comfort, and that the farmer's earnings are higher than they were. But city life is advancing even more rapidly, because of the greater attention which is being given by the citizens of the towns to their own betterment. For just this reason the introduction of effective agricultural co-operation throughout the United States is of the first importance. Where farmers are organised co-operatively they not oiily avail themselves much more readily of business oppor- tunities and improved methods, but it is found that the organisations which bring them together in the work of their lives are used also for social and intellectual advancement. The co-operative plan is the best plan of organi- sation wherever men have the right spirit to carry it out. . . . I desire only to take counsel with the farmers as fellow-citizens. It is not the problem of the farmers alone that I am discussing with them, but a problem which affects every city as well as every farm in the country. It is a problem which the working farmers will have to solve for them- selves ; but it is a problem which also affects in only less degree all the rest of us. . . . The welfare of the farmer is of vital consequence to the welfare of the whole community. The strengthening of country life, therefore, is the strengthening of the whole nation. . . . The growing of crops, though an essential part, is only a part of country life. Crop-growing is the essential foundation ; but it is no less essential — indeed it is literally vital — that the farmer and his wife shall lead the right kind of life. For this reason, it is of the first importance that the United States Department of Agriculture, 2i8 Small Holders. through which, as prime agent, the ideas the Commission stands for inust reach the people, should become without delay in fact a Depart- ment of Country Life, fitted to deal not only with crops, but with all the larger aspects of life in the open country. . . . To improve our system of agriculture seems to me the most urgent of the tasks which lie before us. But it cannot, in my judgment, be effected by measures which touch only the material and technical side of the subject ; the whole business and life of the farmer must, also, be taken into account. Such considerations led me to appoint the Commission on Country Life. Our object should be to help develop in the country community the great ideals of community life as well as of personal character. . . . The great recent progress made in the city life is not a full measure of our civilisation ; for our civilisation rests, at bottom, on the whole- someness, the attractiveness, and the completeness, as well as the prosperity, of life in the country. . . . Upon the development of country life rests ultimately our ability, by methods of farming requiring the highest intelligence, to continue to feed and clothe the hungry nations ; to supply the city with fresh blood, clean bodies, and clear brains that can endure the terrific strain of modern life ; we need the development of men in the open country who will be in the future, as in the past, the stay and strength of the nation in time of war, and its guiding and controlling spirit in time of peace. In their report the members of the Commission say that although, judged by historical standards, agriculture has prospered in the United States, it has not been commercially so profitable to the The Revival of Country Life. 219 farmer himself, in view of the extent of his labour and energy, and the risks he runs ; while the social conditions in the open country are far short of their possibilities. They continue : — We must measure our agricultural efficiency by its possibilities rather than by comparison with previous conditions. The farmer is almost neces- sarily handicapped in the development of his business because his capital is small and the volume of his transactions limited, and he usually stands practically alone against organised interests. In the general re-adjustment of modern life, due to the great changes in manufactures and commerce, inequalities and discriminations have arisen, and naturally the separate man suffers most. The unattached man has problems that Government should understand. The Commissioners deal in detail with the reasons for the lack in the United States of a "highly organised rural society " (among these being the absence of " good training for country life in the schools " ; " the disadvantage or handicap of the farmer as against the established business systems and interests, preventing him from securing adequate returns from his products"; and "lack of any adequate system of agricultural credit,'whereby the farmer may readily secure loans on fair terms") ; they suggest a number of remedies, including " a more widespread conviction of, the necessity of organisation, not only for economic, but for social purposes, this organisation to be more or less co-operative, so that all the people may share equally in the benefits, and have a voice in the 220 Small Holders. essential affairs of the community " ; and they recommend (i) that there should be organised, under Government leadership, a comprehensive plan for an exhaustive study or survey of all the conditions that surround the business of farming and the people who live in the country; (2), that each State College of Agriculture should be empowered to organise a complete department of college extension, so managed as to reach with both information and inspiration every person on the land in its State ; and (3), that there should be held local, State, and even National conferences on rural progress, " designed to unite the interests of education, organisation, and religion into one for- ward movement for the rebuilding of country life." It is interesting to know that the action thus taken in the United States (and one, I understand, that is likely to lead to practical results) was materially influenced by Sir Horace Plunkett, president of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, with whom Mr. Roosevelt had been in close and (on the occasion of Sir Horace's annual visits to the United States) personal communica- tion on the subject, and of whose valuable counsel and assistance he has spoken in extremely appre- ciative terms.* * Three days before he ceased to be President Of the United States, Mr. Roosevelt sent the following letter to the British Ambassador at Washington : — " White House, Washington, March 2, 1909. " Dear Mr. Bryce.— You have, I know, followed with keen interest the work of the Country Life Commission, which has The Revival of Country Life. 221 Sir Horace Plunkett was an especially capable adviser, inasmuch as the Irish problem, though diifering somewhat in its details from the American, has been no less acute than that of the United States. Agricultural organisation is now doing much to improve economic conditions in Ireland ; but there is still great need for action on the social side. At one time (as I have heard from Mr. G. W. Russell, the gifted editor of the Irish Homestead, who mingles with sound economics a strong vein of pointed the way, as I think, to a better handling of country problems and a more satisfying life on th^ farms. But I do not know how far you are acquainted with the origin of the move- ment in the United States. Of course I have been interested for many years in farm life, and especially in the tasks and troubles of the women on the farm. But my interest did not reach the point of action until I began to follow what was being accomplished through the farmers' co-operative movement in Ireland. My old friend, Horace Plunkett, whom I saw on his periodical journeys to America, kept me informed of the Irish agricultural situation and of the movement for better living on the farms of Ireland. We Americans owe much to Ireland and to Plunkett in the work we have been trying to do in the United States, and before I leave the Presidency I want to acknowledge our debt and to send through you my thanks for the help we have had, and not only my thanks, but the thanks of every man who knows what has been done and sees the need and the sure results of this great movement to help the men and women who feed the nation and stand at the foundation of its greatness and its progress. — Sincerely yours, Theodore Roosevelt." This letter was, presumably, forwarded in due course by Mr. Bryce to the British Government, but it was not com- municated by them to Sir Horace Plunkett. Published in the American paper, Wallace's Farmer (edited by Mr. Henry Wallace, a member of Mr. Roosevelt's Country Life Commission, who had been making inquiries with a view to throwing some light on the origin of the Country Life movement in the United States, and had thus heard of the letter), the communication was reproduced therefrom in the Irish Homestead of May 29, 1909, and then first became publicly known on this side of the Atlantic. 222 "Small Holders. poetry and a profound knowledge of Irish life and character), Ireland had a distinct type of village life in the holding of celidhs, or social gather- ings in the cottages, where neighbours would meet together to dance, to. join in singing the old folk-songs, or to gather round the fire as the recognised story-teller of the district poured out his wealth of traditions, of folk-lore, or of fairy-stories, all, perhaps familiar enough to his hearers, but never lacking in interest, however often re-told. With the famine and the later political controversies these old customs declined, and the mcreasing dulness of Irish village life has been at least one reason why the younger people have, not (in their case) migrated to the towns, but emigrated to the United States as the Irish equivalent thereto. Efforts are now being actively made to promote a revival of the old village life in Ireland. The co-operative creameries already opened in con- siderable numbers may have a room available for concerts, entertainments, etc. ; the Gaelic League, in addition to its somewhat quixotic aims in regard to the Irish language, is doing an excellent work in the organisation of social gatherings, which are reviving what is far more needed — Irish life and culture ; and the trustees of a fund left by the late Countess of Pembroke have transferred to the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society a sum of money which has enabled that body to make grants of ^^200 each to six societies (viz., three The Revival of Country Life, 223 dairy societies, one agricultural and poultry society, one home industries society, and one credit society) for the erection of village halls to be used specially for social and other gatherings. Schemes are also on foot for the promotion of village libraries in Ireland, while Sir Horace Plunkett and the Rev. T. A. Finlay, S.J. (Father Finlay is a vice-president of the I.A.O.S.), have organised a Home Improve- ment Scheme, under which competent teachers of domestic economy will visit the houses of the peasantry and give friendly advice and guidance as to the best way in which wives and daughters can cook or otherwise use such materials as they may possess or have the means to acquire.* These efforts are now being supplemented by the establishment at the Plunkett House, in Dublin, of a CountryXife Institute which, though started on a small scale, is designed to become a centre for the study of social and economic questions relating to country life, and a head-quarters of information for all who are concerned in rural problems in general. It is hoped that such financial support will be given to the Institute as will also allow of special investigations being carried out in regard * On the occasion of a visit of the Committee of the Home Improvement Society to Wexford, on May 30, 1909, Sir Horace Plunkett said " the main objects were, first, to lighten the toil of those who were applying the immensely improved methods of agriculture to the land in order that they might take advantage of the better conditions of tenure and of the new knowledge that was being made available in every country ; secondly, they wanted to brighten the lives of the people of the country in order that the terrible rush to the towns, which meant in Ireland the rush to America, might be stayed. " 2 24 Small Holders. to certain questions in which there is, at present, a great lack of accurate data ; but the whole scheme is so eminently practical, and the good purposes it should achieve (as explained by Sir Horace Plunkett in a pamphlet on " A Country Life Institute," which can be obtained from the Plunkett House for threepence) are so eminently calculated to meet a growing want among social reformers, that the necessary funds ought to be made speedily available. In these and other directions Sir Horace Plunkett and his very able group of helpers and supporters are working with great earnestness and vigour to effect in Irish conditions a social revival which will supplement and complete the important economic changes already brought about through the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society. English conditions differ in many essential details from those either of the United States or of Ireland. But, dealing with main principles only, I think it may be said that here, as in those other countries — if not in most of the countries where the same problem has arisen — a two-fold course of action should be taken in order alike to retain on the land those who are already there ; to offer greater inducements to small holders to settle on it ; and to effect a revival of rural life in general : (i) there must be increased efficiency in both the production and the sale of agricultural commodities, so that better financial prospects may be assured to the cultivator ; (2) accompany- The Revival of Country Life. 225 ing these material improvements there should be a betterment of the social and intellectual conditions of rural life. As regards the former of these two essentials, the practical advantages of co-operation are no longer in doubt ; but it may be necessary to show that, with the help of this principle, the land still offers fair scope for the gaining of a livelihood, so that, as far as prospects alone are concerned, there may be less need for. active, industrious, and ambitious men to resort to town life in search of opportunities for rising in the world. To this end there is needed, especially for the small holder, first, a greater knowledge of agricultural processes and of the possibilities of soil cultivation, more particularly from the intensive standpoint; and, secondly, such resort to co-operation in all its manifold phases that the cultivator will be enabled to carry on his business under the very best possible conditions, and with a reasonable prospect of gaining therefrom an adequate return on his outlay and his labour. Assuming that this feeling of confidence in small holdings, or in agriculture generally, with organised effort as the basis of operation, can be duly secured, increased settlement on the soil may still be impracticable should the second of the two essentials — that of the betterment of country life — remain unfulfilled. The necessity that exists in England for making rural conditions less dull and unattractive was well s.H. 226 Small Holders. shown by the Rev. J. B. Paton in the course of an address he gave at the autumnal assembly of the Congregational Union at Blackpool, in October, 1907. Alluding to the present conditions of country life, he said : — One thing more than any other, I believe, has driven the people from the land. It is the in- tolerable bovine dulness of the country — the lack of those interests and pleasures that are needed to refresh and inspire human life. A friend of mine, in Norfolk, who had a class of youths in the village in which he lived, found that some of these lads, on dark winter nights, would trudge two miles or more to the station and back again. ,When he asked what led them to take that dreary walk, their reply was that they went to the rail- way station to see the red and green lights signalling the trains.* We cannot wonder if such youths look forward to the day when the trains signalled by those red and green lights will take them, also, off to the big towns to which they may be going. The " bovine dulness " is, indeed, beyond dispute. The real question at issue is the way in which it can be cured. Concerning this point there is a certain diversity of opinion. * I am reminded by this of what I observed once in the Eifel district in Germany. Travelling there by train one Sunday I noticed, at each station we passed through, a group of village people gathered at the crossing-gates alongside. It occurred to me that they were expecting to see some important person in the train. I asked if that was so, but was told : " Not at all. They always come down to the stations on Sundays to see the trains go by. That is the only bit of excitement they get." The Revival of Country Life. 227 One set of reformers advocate the introduction into rural districts of what are at present regarded as urban amusements and recreations. "The countryman," they say, " goes to the town for these pleasures. Take the pleasures to him, and he will stay where he is." Other reformers respond : — " If you, take town pleasures to the rural districts, you will only increase the countryman's taste for urban life, and he will be all the more disposed to go to the town at the first opportunity in order to enjoy that life to the full." A leading representative of the latter school of thought is Professor L. H. Bailey, of the New York State College of Agriculture, and Chairman of Mr. Roosevelt's Coiintry Life Commission. Professor Bailey is also the author of an excellent little book, " The State and the Farmer," in the course of which he says : — My city friends are proposing ways whereby country people may have entertainment ; but they are making a fundamental error in fashioning their schemes on city ways. The real countryman does not think of theatres, and recitals, and recep- tions, and functions in the way that the city man dtoesy and it i's not at all necessary that he should. On the contrary, it is very important that he should not. The countryman needs more social life ; but his entertainment and contentment must come largely out of his occupation and his contact with Nature, not from mere extraneous attractions. Herein lies the root of my concern in Nature study and Nature sympathy ; the countryman must be 2 228 Small Holders. able to interest himself spiritually in his native environment as the chief resource of power and happiness . Professor Bailey thinks it desirable to prevent the country from " tumbling headlong into the small city or town." He considers that the country problem must be approached sympathet- ically from the standpoint of the countryman, and that those who can only judge of country life by city standards had better leave the problem alone. This opinion is fully shared by Sir Horace Plunkett, who, in his pamphlet on " A Country Life Institute," declares he is " strongly convinced that the solution of the psychological part of the country life problem is not to be found by intro- ducing town attractions into the country." His view was more fully expressed in a paper he read at the meeting of the British Association in Dublin, in igo8, when he said : — We want two changes in the rural mind. The physical environment of the farmer is replete with interest to the followers of almost every branch of natural science. That interest must be communi- cated to the agricultural classes according to their capabilities. " Nature study," I believe, is the latest term of the pedagogues for the revelation of the simple natural processes ; but to make these processes interesting to the child you must first .make them interesting to the teacher. The second change in the outlook relates to the spiritual rather than to the utilitarian side of education. Somehow or other, that intimacy with' and affection for The Revival of Country Life. 2:29 Nature to which Wordsworth has given the highest expression, must be engendered in the mind of rural youth. In this way only will the countryman come to realise the beauty of the life about him, as through the teaching of science he will come to realise the truth. There is certainly no reason why the intelligent cultivator of the soil, whether small holder or farmer, should not find in the wonders of agricul- tural science and in the attractions of Nature and Nature's handiwork a pleasure as keen as that which the urban worker might find in the latest music hall song or sensation. The scope of interest in agricultural pursuits, great as it is already, is constantly widening, and there should be a possibility of bringing this interest home to the mind of the average small holder, settling fresh on the land, even more successfully than to that of the average agricultural labourer, already oppressed by what Mr. Paton calls the " bovine dulness of the country." But social as well as intellectual relaxation will be wanted ; and here we have the consideration that, as an alternative to the introduction of music halls and other town amusements into rural parishes, the co-operative agricultural societies already formed for various economic purposes would be no less available in Great Britain as in Ireland for arranging dances, concerts, and other social gatherings of a kind which, while involving very little expense, would meet village require- ments. The amenities of rural life could thus be 230 Small Holders. enjoyed without any attempt to introduce the wholly different amenities of town life. While the latter might encourage country people to go to the towns, the former would tend to make them better satisfied with the country. The still broader possibilities of the co-operative movement in regard to its influences for good on country life were shown at the Cremona Congress of the International Co-operative Alliance by M. le Comte de Rocquigny. Referring to the agricultural syndicais (co-operative societies) in France, the number of which he gave as 4,000, he said : — These syndicats have not confined themselves to the organisation of co-operative sale and pur- chase and the improvement of agriculture. They have done more. They have . . . endeavoured by all means at their command to improve the productivity of the land. . . . They have sought, by new methods, to exercise a social influence on the masses of the rural population, and to carry on educational work — in a. word, to improve the lot of the agricultural classes. . . . We have persuaded the wives of the landowners to aid in this essen- tially social mission by helping the societies to form and carry on schools of housewifery, where farmers' wives and future housekeepers can learn about household management, the care and training of children, health, and various matters relating to rural life and good farming. Then we have formed boards of conciliation for the prevention or the settlement of labour disputes between far- mers and agricultural labourers. . . . We have, also, established out-of-work funds, and there are other benefit or thrift institutions which may be The Revival of Countrv Life. 5231; included in the operation of the societies. . . . The agricultural syndicat, as we know it, is an instrument of social peace and progress, tending to embrace, in one uniting and harmonious and pacific whole, all classes of the rural population. It rests with the future to show whether or not co-operative agricultural societies will be developed in the United Kingdom to the full extent of the French agricultural syndicats, as here shown. But the reader will gather from what I have already said that if the country life problem is a dual one, having both a material and a social side, agricultural organisation provides a two-fold solution based, in turn, on precisely the same two phases. There are, however, other aspects of the general situation, apart from what co-operation can do, which come into consideration in this matter of the revival of village life. The need for re-organising the system of educa- tion carried on in village schools is generally admitted. That system shows too close an adherence to ideas mainly based on town require- ments (or assumed requirements) without sufficient allowance for the special needs of country life. Inste'ad of creating a taste for that life, it is more likely to create a distaste for it, and to qualify agricultural youths, rather, for some such post as that of a second-rate city clerk — a position they hasten to assume as soon as they can shake the dust of the village off their feet. Lt is an educa- tion which has little direct bearing on the actual 523.2 Small Holders. future requirements of those taught. It taxes their memory and wearies their brain instead of develop- ing their sense of initiative, strengthening their self-reliance, and awakening those powers oi observation and that interest [in experiment which are all-important in the pursuit of agricultural occupations into which an acquaintance with scientific processes may enter so largely. In the result, coupled with the " bovine dulness " of country life in general, we get conditions such as those spoken of by Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer in " The Heart of the Country," where he says : — It is, I think, a truism to anyone who knows the country, though I have found townsmen to deny it, that there are whole stretches of territory in England where a really fuU-witted and alert youth of 1 6 or 17 will absolutely not be found. I visited lately 1 8 farms in my own neighbourhood, coverinl;^ a space of about four miles by two miles, and on this amount of ground only five boys found employment ; four of these were below the average intelligence, who had not at school passed the fourth standard, and the fifth was more stupid than they ; and of all the farm labourers' families I know well — some 46 in number — only two have youths at home, and one of these has an infirmity. Makin'g a irough calculation of other figures which have been presented to me, I find that just 5 per cent, of the country-bom boys I have known have stay«d of their own free will on the land. Nor should one lose sight of the possibility of developing various rural industries, apart from the actual cultivation of the soil, the breeding of live stock, or other purely agricultural pursuits. The The Revival of Country Life. '233 merciless town has taken away from the country districts most of the handicrafts and occupations of which they could be deprived ; but though it would be hopeless to attempt again to set up domestic weaving and spinning in the country, there are certain industries still peculiarly suited to rural conditions — such as milling, jam produc- tion, or the making of baskets, tins, or packing- cases for produce — which might be resorted to as a means of extending the scope of employment. Thanks to the extreme elasticity of the agricultural organisation movement, efforts are already being made in this, direction, so that, for example, as I have shown on page loi, co-operative agricultural societies are either being formed for the express purpose of operating mills of their own, or alter- natively are establishing mills as part of their general operations. We have here some further phases of rural advancement which are capable of expansion, and should certainly be encouraged. Another factor in the development of the economic side of village life would be found in a greater resort to motor goods services, placing communities some miles distant from a railway in direct communication therewith, and rendering it no longer indispensable that colonies 'of small holders should be set up on the immediate out- skirts of a town. These motor services are best arranged, in conjunction with some railway com- pany, by a society formed for that purpose, and able to provide a depdt where the commodities 234 Small Holders. destined for consignment can be collected, or whence those received by rail can be distributed. There are now two of these motor services in operation. The first was established by the North Eastern Railway Company by arrangement with the Agricultural Trading Association of Brandsby, Easingwold, Yorkshire, with whose founder, Mr. H. C. Fairfax-Cholmeley, the idea originated. The motors first ran between Brandsby and Tollerton station, a distance of iij miles, but they now run between the society's substantial depdt at Brandsby and Easingwold station (the terminus of a short branch line), a distance of four miles. Since the service was started, in August, 1905, the motors have carried between g,ooo and 10,000 tons of agricultural produce or necessaries, and the society in this somewhat out-of-the-way Yorkshire village has now a business turnover of nearly £20,000 a year. The other motor service was set up in the Teme Valley, Worcestershire, also in 1905, by the Great Western Railway Com- pany, at the request of the Agricultural Organisa- tion Society, a local society being formed to organise the traffic ; but the Teme Valley farmers have hitherto given only a fluctuating support to the service, the running of which is understood to be a loss to the railway company. All the same, the main idea is excellent, and a wider extension of the system — provided the agriculturists give it sufficient encouragement — should be of great practical value to many a village or hamlet now The Revival of Country Life. 235 handicapped in dealing with the markets of the country by reason of its distance from a railway. Then, if I may allude once more to the social aspects of the question, I would put in a plea for that " country inn " of which Richard Monckton Milnes once wrote : — " Manhood its cares, childhood its petfulness. Woman her wrongs, for a while may lay by. Here at a draught you have food and forgetful - ness ; Weary world traveller, turn in and try." The village inn has for generations been the social centre of many an agricultural community, and what is wanted to-day is, not its abolition in accordance with the demands of teetotal senti- ment, but its improvement, in order that it may better serve its special and perfectly legitimate function. Those who interfere with the village inn will simply add to the many reasons the country- man already finds for abandoning the dulness of the country for the attractions of the town, and will check that revival of rural life which has already assumed the proportions of a national problem. No one would wish to encourage excessive drink- ing in the country, though of this the typical village inn sees little or none; but there is no reason whatever why an essential factor in the social life of the English village should be sacri- ficed to the ideas mainly of urban "reformers" having, it may be, no real knowledge of the actual conditions and requirements of country life. '236 Small Holders. The question of rural housing, also, is a crucial one, if more people, whether small holders or otherwise, are to be induced to remove to or remain on the land. In many villages there is an absolute lack of cottages because the local land- owners object to more being built, and couples who wish to marry, and are willing to stay in the country, are forced either to remain single or to set up housekeeping in a town. In other villages many of the cottages are of such a type, or in so insanitary a condition, as to afford neither proper physical comfort nor even common decency. Still more generally it may happen that the local building by-laws have been based mainly on urban conditions, and are not only in excess of ■ rural requirements, but would involve the payment of higher rents than the prospective occupants could afford to pay. All these things will have to be taken into con- sideration as part of any well-devised scheme for settling smallholders "on the land," (instead of merely letting them have plots within the limits of suburban areas,) and for the revival of country life in general. The results will be awaited with an interest not unmixed with a certain degree of anxiety alike for the new settlers, for the rural districts, and for the country at large. The old social order has now either disappeared or is disappearing. The institu- tion of the squirearchy is likely soon to be as extinct as that of the feudal lords. New men with The Revival of Country Life. :2"37 new minds and new interests are coming, under new conditions, on to the old acres ; a community idea is taking the place both of the autocracy idea and of an isolated individualism. Country life is thus in a state of transition. It has been gravely threatened by the towns, which, as I have shown, have robbed it of population and industries, are exploiting it to their own advantage, and would have the world believe that they alone are con- cerned in the social problems of the day. It is now making a struggle for , increased vitality with which we may well be invited to sympathise. But, assuming that success is secured, what will be the new social order, taking the place of the old ? And what part will small holders and organised agricultural effort be likely to play therein ? These are questions worth thinking over, and they are not less material, from a national stand- point, than those I have, already raised as to the personal prospects and possibilities of the small holders themselves. APPENDIX. FARMERS AND SEEDS. At the New. Zealand Agricultural Conference, held on August i, 1907, there was read, by Mr. Edwin Hall, a paper which had a direct bearing on various miatteirs. iiiscussed in the preceding pages . In the firsft part of his paper, Mr. Hall gave an account of an interview he had had in Canada with Professor Robertson, the Canadian Commis- sioner for Agriculture, and told what he had learned from that gentleman concerning the " good seed " movement in the Dominion. For many years, it seems. Professor Robertson had been urging that the farmers might largely increase their crops by a more careful selection of their seed, lii 1899, in order to stimulate the rising generation of farmers to take an interest in the question, he offered $100 in prizes to boys and girls for a number of the largest heads from the most vigorous plants of wheat and oats from their own fathers' farms, and the results were so encouraging that h^ induced Sir William Mac- donald to provide $10,000 for prizes to be spread over a period of three years. The competitor was to pick by hand from a quarter-acre plot a number of the largest heads ifrom the most vigorous and productive plants, and the finest and plumpest seeds from these heads were to be used for sowing another plot of the same size, the process being repeated in the 240 Appendix. following year. From the largest heads which the competitor gathered each year, he selected loo for despatch to Ottawa for competition. .Out of 800 young people who entered, 450 carried through the experiment^ for the full three years, the results showing an increase of 10 bushels of wheat to the acre, and 20 bushels of oats. Some of the childreny in fact, were found to be growing better wheat than their fathers. Then the step was taken of sending to the three - year competitors a circular letter inviting them, or their parents, to assist in forming a Canadian Seed Growers' Association, which would seek to induce farmers to make a speciality of growing high -class seedi in order to increase the yield and quality of the field arid grass crops of Canada. About 160 persons joined, and the Association was duly started. The arrangements made in- cluded the keeping of records of seeds grown by the operating members, arid the granting of certifi- cates each year for the hand!- selected, the improved, arid the general crop seed that might be eligible for registration. The work was taken up with an enthusiasm that was riot only great, but lasting ; and before long the members were able to report that they had obtained a better quality of straw, plumper grain, an increase in yield, arid a greater freedom from rust and smut. Further advance was made wHen the Dominion Government organised a special Seed Commis- sioner's Branch, designed to stimulate interest amiong farmers in the growing and' selecting of seeds of superior quality ; to secure the distri- bution among farmers of the best seed produced iri any district ; and', also, through the operation of a 'Seed' Control Act, which came into operation iri September, 1905, to check the sale of seed's containing noxious impurities. The seed branch Farmers and Seeds. 2^41 also tested seeds for farmers j it distributed infor- mation as to the most prevalent wped seed'?, sending out sampjl^s thereof, so that they could be readily detected ; and it co-operated with the Seed Growers' Association in the holding of seed fairs, in order to facilitate the sale of specially selected seeds, assisting in defraying the expenses, and supplying trained lecturers and judges who gave addresses at meetings held in connection with the fairs. The next great dleVelopmeint, Mr. Hall pro- ceieded, wias inspired by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. There was, in 1905, a serious outbreak of smiUt iri thje wheat crops of Manitoba, Saskatcbejwan, an'dl Alberta, together with an alarming increase of weeds ; and " the far-sighted railway people, whose interests were those of the community," not only suggested a special educa- tional oarnJpaign on the seed question in the disti'icts concerned, but offered to proVide, free of charge, special trains of lecture cars which oould be equipped with material for demonstration lectures, and' be stopped at any point on the Canadian Pacific Railway system where the Seed Commissioner might wish to hold a meeting. So wiell were the arrangemehts planned that in thte cotir^ of a three months tour oVer 200 m'eet- ingsi, which' had an aggregate attendance of 25,000 persons, were held, among the subjects dealt with being wteeds and' thejr* eradication ; the^ best methods of preventing smut ; and the benefits likely to result from the systematic use of selected seeds. The force of the facts adduced and of the ai'guments advanced' was greatly increased by the exhibition of seed specimens Which' the farmers '(who formed' 90 per cent, of the audiences) were allow'ed freely to hanldle ; and in the opinion of the Hon. Sidney Fisher', the Dominion Minister S.H, R 242 Appendix. for Agriculture, this educational tour in the .West was "one of the greatest agricultural revivals that had ev'e;r taken place in CanaJda." Incidentally, and as showing how advance in agriculture tends to the advantage also of industry, it is inter^esting to know; that in the year following the tour in quefstion the Canadian manufacturers were unable to cope with the demand for seed'- cleaning machinery. Mr. Hall further dealt in his paper with the similar efforts whiqh had .been made in various parts of the United States to interest farmers in the use of good' seeds. He also spoke of the encouragement given in Australia to what he called " our new plant -breeding " ; while, as showiijg the vast importance of the .whole subject, he concluded with the dfeclaration that — " iThe man who can .'rai^e a new variety of wheat that is worth sixpenoej per bushel more than the oi'diniiry kind may create more wealth for his countrymi'en than thej finder of a Mount Morgan minle." INDEX. AcLAND, M.P., Mr. F. D., 109 Adeane, Mr. C, 109 Agricultural and General Co- operative Insurance Society, 196 Agricultural Organisation So- ciety, 55, 100— no, III, 113, 131, 132—3, 138—9, 178, 196 Allotments, 3, 7, 10, 45, 46, 58, 106 Ancaster, Lord, 25 Anderson, Mr, R. A., 170, 203 Andrews, Mr. Hugh, 182 Auction Marts, Co-operative, lOI Australia, Eggs from, 129 — 130 Austria, Agricultural Banks in, 163—4 Bailey, Professor L. H., 227 Baines, Mr. M. T., 109 Barlow, Mr. C. A. Montague, ig6 Bathurst, Mr. C, 109 Belgium, Agricultural Banks in, 184 Bennett, Mr. E. E., 109 Board of Agriculture, 8 — 9, 107—8, no, 123 Bowerman, M.P., Mr. C. W., 157 Brandsby Agricultural Trading Association, 234 Brassey, The Hon. T. A., 182 Brigstocke, Mr. A., 109 Brooks, Mr. J. G., 204 Brown, Mr. Edward, 108, 127 Buxton, Mr. C. Roden, 109 Buxton, Mr. Noel, 109 Canada, Eggs from, 129; Poultry Industry in, 130; Mutual Agricultural Insur- ance in, 192, 193—4. 197 Cape Colony, Agricultural Organisation in, 207 — 8 Carmarthen Farmers' Co- operative Society, 103 Carrington, Lord, 30 Cecil, K.C., M.P., Lord Robert, 157 Central Co-operative Agricul- tural Bank, 179 — 182 Central Small Holdings So- ciety, 109 Cheney, Mr. E. J., 109 Competition, Foreign, 59 — 66 Connell, Mr. Isaac, 187 Control System in Denmark, 77—9 Co-operation, for Land Ten- ancy, 41, 32 — 8 ; Purchase of Necessaries, 73, 101, 103 ; Joint Ownership of Machi- nery, 74 — 7, 120 ; " Con- trol " System, 77—80; Sale, 82 — 96, loi, 104 ; for Trans- port, 134 — 148 Co-operative Banks Associa- tion, 178 Co-operative Land Societies, 52—8 Co-operative Union, The, 109 Co-operative Wholesale So- ciety (Manchester), 95 244 Index. Country Inn, The, 235 Country Life Commission (U.S.A.), 214 — 220, 227 Country Life Institute, The, 223 County Councils, Powers or Obligations of, 9 — 14, 26 — 9, 31, 40—1, 50, 54, 183 Coventry, The Earl of, 182 Cox, M.P., Mr. Harold, 164 Cranworth, Lord, 45 Credit, Co-operative, need for, 158 — 9; Land Banks in Hun- gary, Germany and France, 159 ; Schulze-Delitzsch and Raiffeisen Credit Banks, 162 — 3; Conditions Abroad, 163 — 4 ; Position at Home, 164 ; in Ireland, 165 — 171 ; Eng- land, 172 — 4, 177 — 185 ; Scotland, 174 — 7, 185 — 9 ; Utilisation of Town Savings, 189 Dairy Farmers, 77 — 80; 113 — 4 David, Mr. E. U., 72 Denman, The Hon. R. D., 196 Denmark, 32 — 4, 59, 77—9, 97, 200, 204 District Trading Federations, 105 Drysdale, Mr. John, iii, 115 Dunlop, Mr. James, 79 Eastern Counties Dairy Far- mers' Co-operative Society, 103, 113 Eastern Counties Farmers' Co-operative Association, 102 Education, Rural, 231 Eggar, Mr. J. A., 104, 196 Eggs and Poultry, 126 — 33 Elliott, Sir T. H., 157 Fairfax-Cholmeley, Mr. H. C, 109, 234 Farmers, Ejection of, 49-^51 ; Business of, 59 — 66; Attitude towards Allotment Holders, 106: Farmers and Credit, 159, 172—7 Farnham Farmers' Co-opera- tive Association, 104, 140 Feeding Stuffs, 71 — 2, 118 — 9 Fertilisers, 73, 118 — 9, 123 — 3 Field, M.P., Mr. W., 157 Finlay, S. J., The Rev. T. A., 223 Fitzherbert-Brockholes, Mr. W., 109, 196 Flatley, The Rev. John, i66 Food Imports, 2, 59 — 61 Fordham, Mr. Montague, 22 — 3 Fountain, Mr. H., 157 Framlingham Agricultural Co- operative Society, 131, 132 France, Agricultural Co-opera- tion in, 97 — 100, 230 — J ; Agricultural Credit, 159, 164 ; Mutual Agricultural Insurance 194 — 6, 197 Germany, Agricultural Banks in, 159, 160—3 Gilmour, Sir John, iii Givskov, Mr. Erik, 33 Gray, Mr. J. C, 109 Great Eastern Railway Com- pany, 135, 136, IS4 Great Western Railway Com- pany, 136, 234 Green, Mr. F. E., 75 Haggard, Mr. Rider, 33 Hamilton, Lord Claud, 135 Hancock, Mr. H. W., 49 Hannon, Mr. P. J., 207 — 8 Harford, Mr. J. C., 25 Harris, Mr. J. Nugent, loi, no, 141 Hearle, Mr. E., 196 Hill, Mr. G. W., 196 Holland, 37, 86—9 Index. 245 Hopkinson, Mr. K. W., 197 Housing, Rural, 236 Hungary, Agricultural Banks in, 159, 163 Impey, Mr. F., 109 Implements and Machines, 74—7, 119, 120 Improvements, Compensation for, 30 — I Industrial Co-operative Socie- ties, 92 — 6 Industries, Rural, 232 — 3 Insurance, Co-operative; The Question of Risks, 191 — 9 ; Position in France, 194 — 6 ; in England, 196—8 International Co-operative Alliance, 163, 196, 230 Irish Agricultural Organisa- tion Society, 116— 7, 167—9, 170, 222, 224 Irish Agricultural Wholesale Society, 117 — 121 Italy, Agricultural Banks in, 163, 184 Jameson, Dr., 207 Jellicoe, The Rev, T. H. L., 182 Jensen, Mr. N. P., 34 John o'Groats Agricultural Co-operative Society, 112 — 3 Judd, Mr. W., 145 King, Mr. Bolton, 163 Land Club Union, 22—3 Land : Cost of, near Towns, 3, 43—7 ; Ownership or Tenancy, 20 — 39 ; Co-opera- tive Land Societies, 41 — 3 ; Selection of Land by Appli- cants, 47 ; Question of Land Settlement, 48— 9; Co-opera- tiveTenancy,52— 8; County Councils and Co-operative Land Societies, 53 — 4 ; Price of Land in Holland, 87 — 8 Landlords and Co-operative Dairies, 115 — 6 Land Nationalisation, 2a — 3 Leeds Industrial Co-operative Society, 93 Le Strange, Mr., 39 Lincoln Equitable Co-opera- tive Industrial Society, 94 London and North Western Railway Company, 141 — 5 London and South Western Railway Company, 153, 156 Lucas, Lord, 109, 182 McInnes, Mr. D., 109 Makins, Col., 135 Malet, A., 88 Marketing of Produce, 3 — 4, 16—17, 63—6, 82 — g6, 122, 127 Maryon- Wilson, Mr. G. M., 196 Meyer, The Rev. RoUo, 109 Milk Record Societies, 80 Milk Supply, 77—80, 113—5 Mills, Co-operative, 101 Motor Services, 333—4 National Poultry Organisa- tion Society, 109, 127, 128, 132—3 Nelthorpe, Mr. R. N. Sutton, 182 Newport (Salop) Agricultural Trading Society, 104, 140, 145—6 North-Eastern Railway Com- pany, 234 Norton Small Holdings Society, 56 Norwich Co-operative Society, 94—5 Okby, Mr. Thomas, 163 Orlebar, Mr. Rouse, 109 24^ Index. Ownership of Holdings ; Sen- timental Considerations, 20 — I ; Political, 21 — 4 ; Security of Tenure, 24 — 9 ; Compensation for Improve- ments, 30—1 ; Capital and Purchase Price, 32 ; Position in Denmark, 33 — 4; Mort- gages, 35 ; Sub-division on Death, 36 ; Position in Hol- land, 37 ; Number of Appli- cants wishing to purchase, 38-9 Parish Councils, 22, 23 Paton, The Rev. J. B., 226 Peasant Proprietary. See Ownership. Plunkett, Sir Horace, 122, 185 — 6, 220, 221, 223, 224, 228 Production, Cost of : Rent, 68 ; Seeds, 69 — 71 ; Feeding Stuffs, 71 — 2 ; Fertilisers, 73 ; Labour and Machinery, 74—7; "Control" System, 77—80 Railway Companies, Attitude of, 134—157 Railway Rates, 142 — 153 Ree, Mr. Frank, 141 — 4 Rents of Holdings, 14, 25 — 7, 42—3. 47. 68 " Rings " of Traders, 123 — 5 Risks to Taxpayers and Rate- payers, 14 Rocquigny, M. le Comte de, 97. 230 Roosevelt, Mr. 214 — 8, 220 — 1 Root, Mr. J. W., 51 Royal Ulster Agricultural Society, 79 Russell, Mr. G. W., 221 Salisbury, The Marchioness of, 109 Scottish Agricultural Organisa- tion Society, in — 6, 185 Scottish Chamber of Agricul- ture, 123, 187, 188 Scottish Wholesale Co-opera- tive Society, 114 Seeds, 69 — 71, 118 Small Holders: Numbers Exist- ing prior to Act of 1907, 5 — 7 ; definition of, under Act, 8 ; number of applicants, II — 2 ; need for organisa- tion, 15 — 9 ; ownership v. tenancy, 20 — 39 ; small hold- ings societies, 40 — 58 ; need to regard production for sale as a business, 59 — 66 ; avoid- ance of money leakage, 67 — 81 ; combination for sale, 82 — 96 ; opportunities in egg and poultry industry, 126 — 131 ; interest in question of co-operative credit, 160, 190; co-operative insurance, 198 Small Holdings Account, 9 Small Holdings and Allotments Act, 8, 13, 26—8, 30—1, 44, 49. 53—4 Socialism, 22, 23, 28 Soulby, Mr. A. E. B., 197 South Eastern and Chatham Railway Company, 147 — 8 Smith, M.P., The Hon. W. F. D., 182 Stamford, The Earl of, 182 Stanley, M.P., The Hon. A. L., 197 Stopford, Mr. E. A., 98 Strachey, Sir E. , 11, 12, 38, 44, 54 Stradbroke, The Earl of, 109 Strutt, The Hon. Edward, 109 Sutherland, The Duke of, 140 Sutton-Nelthorpe, Mr. R. N., 109 Tariff Reform League, 63 Tenancy of Holdings ; Com- parison with Ownership, 20 —39 ; Advantages of Co- Index. 247 operative Action, 40 — 2, 52 ; Opportunities under Act, 53. See also Ownership, Tenure, Security of, 24 — 29 Tod, Mr. W. M., 197 Tradesmen, Competition of, for Land, 43—5 Transport. 63—5, 134—157 United States ; Mutual Agri- cultural Insurance in, 192 ; Farmers in New England Slates, 213 ; Country Life Commission, 214 — 220 Vaizey, Mr. K. G. R., 197 Wallace, Mr. Henry, 221 Ward, M.P., Mr. W. Dudley, 157 Weddel, Mr. William, 157 Wilkins, Mrs., 109 Williams, M.P., Col. R., 109 Winchester Agricultural Society, 106 Winchester Allotment Society, 106 Winchilsea, Lord, loi, 137, 140 Wolff, Mr. H. W., 109 Yerburgh, Mr. R.A., loi, log, 182, 196 Young, Arthur, 66 Zetland, The Marquis of, 182 IKADBUKY, AGNEW, Si CO. LD., FRTNTEKS LONDON AND TONBHIDOE. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. The Organisation of Agriculture. THIRD EDITION (1908). 474 pp. PAPER COVERS, is. net. Deals with the development of Agricultural Organisation in Denmark, Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Holland, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and Norway, Fin- land, Siberia, Servia, .Poland, Luxemburg, the United States, Argentina, Canada, Australasia, Ireland, England and Wales. In the Appendix are further articles on " The British Egg Industry," "The Economic Revival of the Scilly Isles," " The Agricultural Development of Fenland," "Canada's Agricultural Progress," and "Agricultural Organisation in Japan." The Transition in Agriculture. ILLUSTRATIONS AND PLAN5. 364 pp. CLOTH. 5s. net. In this volume an attempt is made to show that, as against the decline in the growing of wheat in Great Britain, there has been a steady increase in subsidiary agricultural and kindred industries for the supply of such commodities as milk, vegetables, fruit, flowers, bulbs, eggs, poultry, etc., mostly offering greater opportunities for work- ing farmers and small cultivators, "the subjects of Organi- sation, Peasant Proprietary Abroad and at Home, Small Holdings and Allotments, and the "Possibilities of the Situation," are also dealt with. In the Appendix will be found an especially significant plan illustrating the evils of the excessive sub-division of the land as practised in Holland. <. LONDON : JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. a-