108 THE HIGH COST OF LIVING 



onto the peasants. They kept theni in ignorance. 

 They refused to amehorate the condition of the 

 agricultural worker, who was little better than a 

 serf. Denmark was a landed oligarchy, the upper 

 house of parliament being a kind of House of Lords. 



All this has been changed. The Danish farmer 

 is no longer a tenant. He owns his own farm. 

 And being an owning famier, he has eveiy stimulus 

 and ambition to improve his farm. In this he is 

 like the French, Swiss, and Dutch peasant. To-day 

 90 per cent, of the farmers of Denmark own their 

 own farms as compared with 63 per cent, in the 

 United States. In the South and West the percent- 

 age of farm ownership in this country is very much 

 lower. In the new State of Oklahoma farm owner- 

 ship amounts to only 45 per cent., in Alabama to 

 40 per cent., and in Texas to 48 per cent. And in 

 many counties throughout the West farm owner- 

 ship has dwindled to 30 per cent, of the farming 

 population. 



The Dane appreciated that the first necessity of 

 successful agriculture was ownership. For the his- 

 tory of every country shows that tenant farming is 

 wasteful and indifferent. It leads to the exhaustion 

 of the soil. The tenant has no ambition ; he makes 

 no effort to improve his farm; he has little politi- 

 cal and social interest whether it is in Ireland or 

 America. And home ownership has changed the 

 entire psychology of Denmark. It has changed 



