NA TURE 



509 



THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 191 1. 



RURAL DENMARK. 

 Rural Denmark and its Lessons. By H. Rider Hag- 

 S^ard. Pp. xi + 335. (London : Longmans, Green 

 and Co., 191 1.) Price 6s. 6d. net. 



TV/r R. RIDER HAGGARD'S book is the outcome 

 i*» of a recent visit to Denmark, made in order 

 to inquire into the actual conditions of farming pre- 

 vailing there, and particularly into the success of the 

 small holders, who form so marked a feature of Danish 

 agriculture. Mr. Rider Haggard's further object was 

 to gather information as to whether such small hold- 

 ings are likely to succeed better on the leasehold system 

 that has been established in this country bv the recent 

 Act, or whether, as advocated by the other party in 

 the State, it is essential for success that small holdings 

 should be owned by their occupiers. Mr. Rider 

 Haggard also wished to ascertain the working of the 

 various forms of credit banks and State loans to 

 farmers to enable them either to purchase their hold- 

 ings or to provide working capital when they were 

 already in occupation. For the last generation Den- 

 mark has been the standard example to all agricul- 

 ti.ral reformers of how the farming of a country can 

 be made eflRcient by taking thought, either through 

 the medium of cooperation or more directly by State 

 aid. Denmark has to live by its agriculture alone, 

 and it is well known that the productivity of the 

 country, the wealth of its population, and the value 

 of its exports have been raised to an astonishing 

 degree during the forty years or more that have 

 elapsed since the war with Germany; so that, despite 

 many natural disadvantages, Denmark has been able 

 tD maintain its position as a free-trade country in face 

 of the unprecedented competition from America, whi'-'- 

 has so severely shaken the status of agriculture in 

 other European countries. 



Mr. Rider Haggard went provided with the best 

 introductions, and he reports, with the clearness and 

 the power of description for which he is so well 

 known, the impressions which he formed as he passed 

 from one agricultural enterprise to another. For 

 example, he tells us of the operations of a cooperative 

 dairv, of a milk supply company, and of an egg export 

 association ; he visited one of the great capitalist farms 

 worked by its owner, carrying more than 1000 cows, 

 and earning a net profit estimated at 2o,oooZ. a year. 

 As a contrast, he also describes in detail the mode of 

 working some of the State-created small holdings of 

 about six acres each, and compares them later with 

 other privately acquired peasant properties of from 

 five to thirty acres. 



In his survey education also bulks largely; the 

 elementary schools, the high schools which take young 

 men and women between seventeen and twenty-five 

 for three months in the winter, the agricultural school 

 proper, and the great central college at Copenhagen 

 were all visited, and one cannot fail to be impressed 

 throughout the whole of the book by the manner in 

 which the success of the Danish farmer seems to 

 NO. 2172, VOL. 86] 



depend upon the high standard of education he has 

 reached, and his attitude towards the things of the 

 mind. 



Finally, Mr. Rider Haggard reports the substance 

 of his discussions with various authorities on the par- 

 ticular questions about which he was making in- 

 quiries. For example, he shows that even in Den- 

 mark men are not agreed as to the v^i'ue of small 

 farms as compared with large, still less so as to the 

 desirability of the State making loans and subventions 

 in order to create a community of small farmers. 

 .A^fter a general discussion of the present position of 

 Danish agriculture, he emphasises the fact that the 

 success of the small farmers, even the possibility of 

 their existence, is dependent upon the way they have 

 learned to work together, and the almost universal 

 adoption of the form of cooperation in both buying 

 and selling. Not only is cooperation necessary to enable 

 the small man to buy somewhere near prime cost and 

 to realise a due return for his produce, but the co- 

 operative societies form the great medium for the 

 technical education of the farmer. For unless men 

 in a district have learned to act together it is impos- 

 sible to deal properly with such questions as the im- 

 provement of stock and crops, the eradication of 

 disease, &c. 



Mr. Rider Haggard's book is extremely interesting 

 reading, and though at times we may feel a little 

 inclined to doubt whether his working knowledge of 

 agriculture was quite sufficient to enable him to appre- 

 ciate the real bearing on the situation before him, his 

 book is most valuable because it is free from that 

 indiscriminate laudation of the Danish farmer and his 

 methods, which has been preached somewhat ad 

 nauseam to the English agricultural community. 



Mr. Rider Haggard has been too wise to suppose 

 that an economic revolution can be effected in the 

 English countryside by merely copying Danish 

 methods, and he sees that any attempt to impose 

 Danish organisation upon our farmers at the present 

 time would only end in disaster. Organisations, 

 methods, institutions, really count for little except in 

 so far as they are the outcome of the spirit of the men 

 and women who are working through them, and 

 agriculture on a Danish model will be impossible here 

 until we have a community possessing the same mental 

 outlook. Mr. Rider Haggard rightly lays stress in 

 almost everv section of his book on the high pitch of 

 education to which many of even the smallest occu- 

 piers of land in Denmark have reached, and again and 

 again it comes out that this education is general and 

 not merely technical. The Danish small farmers, 

 even the Danish peasant or milkmaid, seek for educa- 

 tion in order to become free and effective men and 

 women, and it is almost incidentally that they learn 

 certain other things which they can turn to direct 

 pecuniary account. It is through education, and 

 through an education founded on a respect of things 

 of the mind, that cooperation has become possible 

 there, and it has made so little headway in this country 

 just because its immediate returns are but a small 

 inducement to men who live in an atmosphere of dis- 

 trust of the unknown and suspicion of all joint actions. 



R 



