14 REPORT OF THE SCOTTISH COMMISSION 



even to penuriousness, the man of lew acres must be, reckoning up 

 the mmutite of income and expenditure ; but he pays his way ; his 

 life is a self-respecting one ; his home shows a sense of refinement 

 as well as comfort ; he is not sunk in mortgages, although his land 

 may cairy a loan. As for the farmer of 40 acres and upwards, he 

 houses himself in a style that never ceases to surprise. Mulhall's 

 calculation of wealth per head of population places Denmark second 

 to Great Britain. Such a calculation hardly does justice to Den- 

 mark. In the nature of the case it takes no account of the diffusion 

 of wellbeing. A minority of very rich, a majority with a bare 

 living wage, and a heavy fringe of extremely poor, are lumped in 

 the one statistic for Great Britain, Danish wealth is spread over 

 a larger proportion of the people. 



The ability of the Danish farmer to capture a good share of 

 the produce of his industry ; the how and why of his success in 

 benefiting himself and thereby the State — that is the true subject 

 of tlie following pages. But the feature of individual progress in 

 Denmark is that, with few exceptions, it is bound up with the 

 progiess of the whole ; the organised efforts on which progress 

 chiefly depends are coextensive with the people ; the efficient 

 motive is national ; the resultant lift is national. Usually, and no 

 doubt truthfully, this movement of the State as with a single 

 mind is attributed to one or two sharp shocks of experience. 

 The Napoleonic wars had the eff*ect of placing the Danes for a 

 considerable time amongst the stationary races. The country was 

 worn and waste. After a period the recuperative processes set in, 

 one of the most deliberate attempts to reanimate the national spirit 

 being the High Schools founded in 1845 by Bishop Grundtvig with 

 their appeal to history, poetry, and music, and their care to lay a 

 moral and religious foundation for character. Then there came 

 the fateful year of 1864, the Prussian War, the loss of the 

 Duchies, agricultural depression, commercial straits of every sort. 

 Corn-growing, then the staple concern of Denmark, was seen 

 to be incompatible with sound economic health. Radical changes 

 were necessary. As part of a general movement of reconstruction 

 after the war, Denmark's ruling minds began to foster some 

 institutions of which the germs already existed and to plant some 

 new ones. Increase of the High Schools and all other agencies of 

 education, multiplication of small holdings, resort to co-operation, 

 systeniatised Government assistance followed. In how far these 

 things were in their beginnings experimental or resulted from 

 a sagacious thinking-out of Denmark's possibilities need not 

 now be asked ; certain it is that they have rapidly and amply 

 justified themselves. They have given to Europe a recreated 

 Denmark. 



Some of the elements that counted for success may here be 

 briefly set down. 



The Danes were a small family. It is easier to infuse with a 

 common sentiment a population of two miUions, to form the 

 clannish spirit, so to speak, than it is to make a great population, 

 with its clash of wills and medley of interests, think and act alike. 



