Genuine co-operative poultry societies, even when
confining themselves to the egg trade only, take a bolder
flight. But it deserves to be pointed out that everywhere,
even when operating on a fairly large scale, their business
must always remain to some extent circumscribed by the
very nature of the case. Eggs alone produce in each case,
after all, only a small amount of business. The Danes
liave gone on the principle of organising one particular
type of society for every distinct business, so that a farmer
having eggs to sell and implements to buy, pigs to sell and
so on, may have to belong to nine or ten distinct societies,
in every one of which he will probably meet many of the
old faces. However, even in their genuine separation,
these societies are locally so closely clustered together
that — among the intelligent past students of the "High
Schools " composing them — the evils of separation are
not much felt. Things are different in this country.
And the trade in eggs, more in particular, is likely to remain
in many localities within such humble proportions as of
themselves among ourselves appear to dictate combination
with some other business. The Danes practically admit
the necessity of some such combination by entrusting the
sale of eggs (by exportation), also to their Wholesale
Butter and Bacon Exportation Societies. The most
convenient arrangement that we could aim at would be
that actually practised by the Lincoln Society, and probably,
also by other Industrial Distributive Societies, of com-
bining the egg business with rural distribution — the
Society's cart, which distributes goods from the Store,



112 CO-OPERATION IN AGRICULTURE.
