Fehér György szerk.: A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum Közleményei 1992-1994 (Budapest, 1994)

11. Nemzetközi Gazdaságtörténeti Kongresszus, 1994., Milánó (llth International Economic History Congress) - FEHÉR GYÖRGY: Agricultural associations in Hungary in the late 19th century

named Crom thai lime "Országos Magyar Gazdasági Egyesület" (National Hungarian Agricultural Association) (further: OMGE) — namely, it was then that the emperor Francis Joseph assured it full liberty of activity. Moreover, he contributed with a significant donation to the establishment of a viticultural school on the Gellért hill in Buda, as a spectacular gesture of reconciliation. After the rehabilitation of OMGE local and regional associations began to revive, loo. Activity was best organized undoubtedly in the centre, where the high level professional work went on divided into 7 trade departments and 14 subdepartments. In the period called absolutism (between 1850 and 1867) the Association had to come up to two expectations: a/ to give agriculture professional aid in its transition from traditional to modern farming; b/ as the only legal public forum during a long period, to make a home for the very cautious political movements. This latter expectation — due to the gradual consolidation of internal situation — gradually faded away from the early 60s, while, on the other hand, the number of purely professional, interestsafeguarding duties increased. The task was gigantic: establishing the conditions for a market-oriented capitalistic farming based on modern bourgeois property. After the attainment of the country's independence (reckoned from 1867) local and regional professional interest-safeguarding organizations with various number of members were established al a quick pace in the sphere of agriculture. If not by the number of members but considering its professional recognition and influence, OMGE played undoubtedly a decisive role in the determination of the trends of Hungarian agrarian production and in deciding questions of agrarian policy. Further on in my lecture I wish to make more detailed investigations first of all into the activity of this association. An association which undertook solving the problems concerning nearly every field of the transformation of Hungarian agriculture, where almost each of these problems was of such a great importance that the work involved in solving them would have been enough even for several offices and governmental organs. OMGE was the most significant interest-safeguarding and representing organization of Hungarian big and medium landowners throughout the period under investigation, and this limited social basis decisively determined its tasks and margin. Consequently, the number of its members was never high: 890 in 1858, 1221 in 1862, but statistical records from the year of the Austro-Hungarian compromise, 1867, show merely 1019 foundation and yearly due-paying members. The transitory decline is due to the fact — as we have already referred to it — that those considering the Association as political forum in the years of absolutism discontinued their membership when legal channels of political activity were opened. This explains the fact that even in 1888 only 930 members were registered, and it was only by the end of the century that their number amounted to 3000, while before the world War I. the double of this figure was registered. However, owing to the social position of its members, that is, the great number of big landowners having great influence in social and political life, and their decisive influence within the Association, OMGE had greater reputation than it would follow from