Some of these factories, for example, the sugar factories, owe
a good deal to the bigger farmers. Among others, Sir Frederick Hiam has been a general benefactor. This is all the more agreeable to contemplate since in the past such farmers have been the chief barriers to progress in co-operation, and in some measure still are. The reason is not obscure. The National Farmers' Union is controlled by its richer members. Many of them have interests outside farming proper ; and have many friends and relations concerned with distribution. They are out of touch, it may be out of active sympathy, with the small-holder or Family Farmer, who is dependent for any real success on co-operative machinery, of which his bigger neighbours are independent. By a most unhappy provision the N.F.U. was made the sole official agent for co-operation, after the Agricultural Organisation Society died ; and work that is done without gusto, or it may be without sympathy, is foredoomed to failure. Nothing is more depressing in the excellent yearly record of the N.F.U. than the section devoted to co-operative progress—or regress. Once again " nothing interferes with progress like not wanting
to make it."
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