ABSTRACT
Slow Progress of Co-operative Experiments, changes mainly due to Agricultural Community, individual initiative most hopeful, decline in number of Agricultural Workers. Co-operative agriculture has been a perennial subject of discussion from the time of Robert Owen, and from even before the days of the well-known Ralahine experiment in Ireland, so successful and, through the lapse of the man to whom it was due, so sadly-ended, something has been always attempted in this direction. In 1871, exclusive of women and girls, the agricultural classes of every description numbered 1,470,442 in England and Wales, and in 1901, 1,094,765. During the same period the males of all ages have been increasing from something over 11 to nearly 15 million, and it is not surprising, therefore, that by many people the 'depopulation of the rural districts' should be regarded as an evil second only in its importance to the correlative evil of 'urban congestion'.
