SMALL-HOLDINGS AND CO-OPERATION 59 



is, about $7 P er cent, of the State advance instead of 

 10 per cent, as at present. 



I may say that this suggestion is one with which I 

 entirely agree. 



Also he endorsed Mr. Waage's point that the 

 State small-holder obtains a considerable advantage 

 over what may be called the natural small-holder, 

 inasmuch as he gets the State at his back at a very 

 low rate of interest. It seemed to him scarcely fair 

 that the man who is made should be put in so much 

 better a position than the man who makes himself a 

 proposition with which again I must agree. 



On the general question Mr. Schou said that 

 although some of the small-holders fail, as a rule they 

 win through in the end. Also he considered that 

 acre for acre they produce more than do the larger 

 farmers, to which output must be added the work 

 they do for others outside of their own holdings, that 

 averages about 170 days in each year. The real 

 raison d'etre of the impulse towards small-holdings 

 in Denmark was the desire of the peasants to stand 

 on their own feet, or, as another gentleman put it to 

 me, * to get their legs under their own table." It was 

 an outward and visible sign of an inward and natural 

 aspiration towards freedom. This resulted in a better 

 population, as the children that such people bred were 

 more industrious than those born in the towns. They 

 kept in closer touch with nature, and therefore grew 

 into finer men and women. The land-dweller had 

 to think for himself and to do for himself. Town 

 life was not true life, it was but a shadow and carica- 

 ture of a rural existence. 



As regarded the question of freehold versus long 

 leasehold, his views differed from those of Mr. Waage. 



