ON AGRICULTURE TO DENMARK 15 



They were also set in a social structure of extreme simplicity. 

 The conditions of one farmer were practically the conditions of 

 all ; the needs of one were the needs of all ; the ambitions of one 

 could be made the ambitions of all. A people with a great 

 diversity of crafts could not have been so readily unified. 



The Danes were also a most intelligent family, both by reason 

 of native gift and by education. Denmark was well ahead of the 

 rest of the world in enacting compulsory attendance in common 

 schools. Accordingly, the soil was prepared for Bishop Grundtvig's 

 idea of assembling young men and young women, the sons 

 and daughters of farmers, during certain summer and winter 

 months, to receive, in the residential High Schools, a physical, moral, 

 and religious training — tiiis at a stage of life when youn^ persons 

 in other countries, of more complex industrial structure, are 

 engaged in wage-earning. Not the least of the blessings of these 

 High Schools was the habit of mutual trust formed in their 

 atmosphere. They made it possible for the banks of Denmark to 

 grant on personal security, that is the security of character, the 

 loans, without which the peasant farmers could not have erected 

 co-operative factories. 



Further, the tenure of land in Denmark had long had a bias 

 towards peasant proprietorship. Away back in the eighteenth 

 century the process of sub-division of estates had begun. The 

 calamity of 1H64, followed by the disappearance of profit from 

 corn-growing, accentuated this process. 



Given an intelligent people and land held in small lots by 

 cultivating-owners, and we have the pre-conditions of successful 

 co-operation. The application of this principle to agriculture with 

 highest effect depends, it would appear, upon a multiplication of 

 similar interests and desires ; upon farmers working by the same 

 means, aiming at the same ends, and numerously grouped upon a 

 suitable area. The small-holding tenures preceded co-operation, 

 and have grown concurrently with co-operation. The secret of the 

 economic collection and distribution of produce into and from 

 centres is also in the grouping of farms to which the geographical 

 laying out of Denmark lends itself. Once the co-operative 

 principle was set in motion and gathered force it became itself an 

 instrument of education, the meetings of associations and com- 

 mittees quickening the mental aptitudes of the population, and 

 rendering them responsive to the expert advice, theoretic and 

 practical, disseminated by the State departments. 



This action of the State, partly following up, partly originating, 

 partly controlling, everywhere assisting, whether by counsel or by 

 grants of money, is the only remaining element in Danish agricul- 

 tural success that need be included in this general view. 



Perhaps the effect of all this personal competence and this 

 voluntary associated work combined with State-help may be most 

 keenly realised by the British public in the following five yeara' 

 statement of the principal articles of Danish agricultural produce 

 imported into Great Britain : — 



