104 THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 



poverty. All classes of people seemed to have 

 leisure. They frequented the restaurants and caf^s, 

 they went to the Tivoli — the city's pleasure resort — 

 in the evening by thousands, where rich and poor 

 enjoyed themselves in a simple, democratic way. 

 Everything suggested personal and poHtical freedom, 

 democracy in politics as well as in life. 



Denmark has a king, it is true, but he exercises 

 little power, while the parliament, I learned, was 

 ruled by the peasants, or small farmers, working 

 in co-operation with the radicals and socialists. 

 Women have recently been granted the ballot. 

 And the upper house of parliament, which is the 

 obstacle to progressive legislation in most of the 

 countries of the world, has been shorn of its power. 



But Denmark is particularly interesting at the 

 present time because of what she has done for 

 agriculture, for keeping her people upon the land, 

 for the many experiments which she offers to the 

 world. For Denmark is an experiment station 

 whose achievements must be copied, in part at least, 

 if the United States is to save agriculture from de- 

 cay and keep her people on the soil. Denmark has 

 done this in the face of natural obstacles far greater 

 than those which confront any other country unless 

 it be Holland. And she has done it by law, by the 

 use of legislation and the control of politics in the 

 interest of the farmere. 



Fifty years ago Denmark lost her choicest posses- 



