y--but no one can know
more than his own bit of country. On these and similar matters we ought
to think and watch and meet together to report and discuss. We need more
Maurice Hewletts and Mrs. Sturge Grettons to tell us how things really
are, for nothing is so difficult to visualise as what is going on slowly
in one's own parish.

CO-OPERATION

I come lastly to co-operation. You will think me biased when I speak of
its possibilities. I am. I have been for eighteen years on the governing
body of the Agricultural Organisation Society, and happen now to be its
chairman, and am therefore closely in touch with the work of organising
co-operative effort. One sees fairly clearly how difficult it is to make
any class of English agriculturists combine for any mutual purpose, how
worth while it is, and what almost unexpected opportunities of useful
work still exist. Thanks largely to untiring work by Sir Leslie
Scott--who gave up the chairmanship of the society on his recent
appointment as Solicitor-General--the country is now fairly covered by
societies for purchasing requirements co-operatively--principally
fertilisers, feeding-stuffs, and seeds. There are also affiliated to the
movement I have mentioned, many useful co-operative auction marts,
slaughter-house societies, bacon factories, wool societies, egg and
poultry societies, and fruit and garden produce societies (but not
nearly enough), besides a thousand or so societies of allotment holders
which, thanks largely to our friend, George Nicholls, set all the others
an example in keenness and loyalty to their parent body.

The _ideal_ is that where a society exists the main raw materials of the
industry shall be bought wholesale instead of retail, and the main
products of the industry sold retail instead of wholesale; that thereby
middlemen's and other profits shall be reduced to a reasonable figure,
and that the consumer shall get the most efficient possible service with
regard to his supplies. It is also the ideal that farmers and others
shall learn more comradeship and brotherhood; that the big and small men
alike shall become one community bound together for many common
purposes, and that thus the cultivators of the soil shall lose that
isolation and selfishness which is a reproach against them. The ideal
is, however, not always realised. The farmer likes to have a
co-operative society to keep down other people's prices, but, having
helped to form a society, he doe