104 BELGIUM - MISCELLANEOUS 



In Belgium the butter is generally made on the farm, which is supplied 

 for the purpose with a cream separator and the necessary implements. 



Some is, however, made in the co-operative and industrial dairies, of 

 which there are about 600, and which may be classified under the two foll- 

 owing heads : 



(a) the central dairy, collecting the previous evening's and the mornijig's 

 milk from the different farms, and separating the cream in a special chamber 

 for the manufacture of the butter, after which the separated milk is 

 returned to the respective owners. 



(b) the regional dairy, a form exclusively adopted in the province of 

 Ivuxembourg, with local divisions for the work of separation, and a 

 central dairy. 



Each division has a chamber for the separation of the cream, provided 

 with the necessary apparatus for weighing the milk, sampling etc. 



Three times a day the fa.rmers of the division bring their milk, immedi- 

 ately after the milking. The cream is separated, and the milk taken back by 

 the owners themselves. 



The central dairy not only undertakes the making but also the sale of 

 the butter. 



The Melotte dairy exhibited represented an intermediate type betv.een 

 the above regional dairy and the private farm. Substantially, it gets rid 

 of the local separating divisions, and keeps the necessary apparatus for 

 each operation on the different farms. Its motor car fetches the cream from 

 these and brings it to the central dairy. 



The group of agricultural labourers' houses at the Exhibition was also 

 interesting and suggestive. 



One of these was exhibited by the limited Hability society, " Eigen 

 Heerd is good Weerd " of Ghent for the pro\'ision of cheap credit to labourers 

 for house purchase. It was surrounded by 500 square metres of garden land 

 arranged and exhibited by the Ligue du Coin de terre et du Foyer insaisissable, 

 of which the Minister of State, M. Auguste Beernaert, the great Belgian 

 philanthropist and sociologist, is President. The work of the society is 

 modest and certainly it does not claim to remedy all the evils in the world; 

 but it is good and salutary and is associated with those principles of Christian 

 soHdarity and moral regeneration which will, to a continually greater extent, 

 govern the future. It is well, therefore, that the labourer should love the 

 land, to which his life belongs and where human laboiir is associated uith 

 the eternal creative force. 



The object of the Belgian Homestead League is precisely to pro\nde the 

 labourer with a house and garden, an important matter in Belgium, which, 

 while small in area, is extremely populous and well supplied with the 

 means of production, and to make it easy for the thrifty workman to 

 become proprietor of the house he inhabits. 



Belgium, as we know, is the country in which the consumption of chem- 

 ical manure is greatest in proportion to the area. There small farms are 

 extremely common and the comfort derived from the advanced state of 

 agriculture very widespread, which makes one think of the truth of another 



