CO-OPEEATIVE DISTKTBUTIVE SOCIETIES 29 



was succeeded by L. Broberg, member of the Upper House of 

 the Eigsdag. The Wholesale Society has branches and ware- 

 houses in twelve provincial towns, besides its head offices and 

 warehouses in Copenhagen. The Society has built several 

 factories, for roasting coffee ; making chocolate, confectionery, 

 tobacco and cigars ; a rope walk ; a soap, a mustard, and a 

 margarine factory ; a chemical works ; a spice mill ; a hosiery 

 factory ; a factory for men's ready-made clothing ; a cycle 

 factory ; a share in a shoe factory ; its own import of tea. Only 

 Co-operative Distributive Societies can be members of the 

 Wholesale Society. In 1916, 1537 societies were entered as 

 members, having themselves 240,000 members ; the Wholesale 

 Society had a turnover by sales of £4,700,000, with a net 

 surplus of £393,000, while the total turnover of the various 

 factories was nearly £1 ,000,000 ; the reserve fund was £315,000, 

 the book value of the buildings £280,000. 



A special feature of this Society, which began in the 

 eighties a joint purchase of seed and manures to mem- 

 bers, has in later years reached a development unknown 

 outside Denmark. It is the work done to further and 

 improve the production and sale of guaranteed seed from 

 improved selected strains of various agricultural plants, 

 such as roots, clover, grasses, and the hke. In 1904 the 

 society bought a piece of land at Lyngby.near Copenhagen, 

 18 acres in extent, for comparative trials of the various kinds 

 of seed bought and distributed to members, and in order to 

 produce improved strains by selection. In 1911 a farm of 

 177 acres near Lyngby was rented for the purpose of producing 

 seed from selected strains. Since 1913 a scheme of co-opera- 

 tion has been in force between the Co-operative Wholesale 

 Society and a " Society for Supplying Seed, formed by the 

 Associated Danish Agricultural Societies," which has had a 

 very considerable influence on the production and sale of seed 

 in Denmark. The latter Society, which was founded in 1906, 

 undertakes the production under control of seed from selected 

 strains, while the Wholesale Society takes over the sale of all 

 seed produced by the other Society. A Committee of the 

 Agricultural Societies control the production and the sale, 

 and may even decide which kinds and strains of seed are to be 



\a7 



