to introduce the system, I am not aware that it has anywhere stood the test of two or three successive bad seasons or that it is spreading.
A certain gentleman of note as a manufacturer bought a large farm in the Cotswold hills and tried the experiment. The rules under which his manager and labourers were to participate in the profits of the farm and gradually invest these profits in the capital employed were admirably conceived and drawn up. But the scheme failed because the men had not enough confidence in the profits of the business to leave their shares in it, and perhaps they were right. They knew, as farmers know, that a bad season or two might swallow up the fruits of three or four years’ hard work, and when they had got a few pounds added to their wages at the end of a good year they preferred to take them out rather than to leave them invested in the farm.
I paid a visit to this farm about ten years ago with my farm manager to sce how it worked. We found the manager out and were able to discuss the working of the scheme with the shepherd, the carter and some of the labourers in private. We particularly enquired whether the knowledge that they would all receive a share of the profit, if any, made the men individually work harder or better, and encourage the others to do so; and whether they wasted less time in beginning and leaving off work, took more care of stock implements, and generally tried to avoid the many little acts of neglect and waste which are so trying to the temper and pocket of an employer. They told us that it might be so with one or two who had been there longest, but that most of those with whom the scheme was begun had left, and they did not see much difference as long as the bailiff was absolute master and the men had nothing to say in the general management of the farm, When the gentleman died, his trustees were unable to carry on the co-operative system, which indeed had failed in all but the name.
More recently another attempt was made in a parish in this county, and as this village had a most successful co-operative shop, the idea of co-operation was better understood by the labourers. The capital was mostly provided by a gentleman of means in the district, who took much interest in the scheme and who has given much assistance on the board of management, As a small shareholder myself I can say that it has paid a very fair interest on the original capital, this being due however, as I think, much more to the ability of the manager, who is himself a con- siderable shareholder, than to the labourers, of whom only a few are shareholders themselves,
I had already tried to form an association among the landowners of the district which I thought must prove mutually beneficial in meeting the difficulties which surrounded us, and in deciding how best to deal with various questions affecting our common interests which from time to time arose. But though a good many of the most influential were willing to join it, there was so much apathy and unwillingness to recognise these common interests among others, that the idea did not, in the absence of an energetic secretary, produce any practical result.
When, however, a little later the late Lord Winchilsea, at a speech made at a great meeting held in St. James’s Hall, first publicly brought out
