CO-OPERATRE DAIRY SOCIETIES 37 



The milk delivered was often badly treated, and by the methods 

 then in use it was difficult to raise the cream from collected 

 milk, so that too many pounds of milk were used to produce one 

 pound of butter. The introduction of the cream separator 

 altered this, as the separator is able to extract the cream even 

 from collected milk better than it could be done from freshly 

 drawn milk by the older methods. Estate dairies bought 

 separators and began to buy milk from neighbouring farms ; 

 or farmers combined to form joint stock dairies, buying milk. 

 From about 1880 many dairies were started by private enter- 

 prise for making butter from milk bought by contract ; but they 

 often gave but a poor result, particularly where they were worked 

 independently of a farm. As the milk supphers were not inte- 

 rested in the success of the undertaking, they were not careful 

 in the treatment of the milk ; the skim milk was difficult to 

 dispose of ; for such and many other reasons these collective 

 dairies did not succeed. It was the Swiss and American forms 

 of co-operative production which appealed to Danish farmers 

 when, in the seventies, they discussed the important problem 

 of how to treat the milk. Even as late as 1883 and 1884 there 

 were serious debates at large agricultural meetings as to whether 

 it was better to have a butter blending mill established in each 

 village, where the farmers' butter could be blended ; or whether 

 the milk from the different farms should be brought together 

 to one dairy, there to be worked into butter. 



The solution was found by the peasant farmers themselves. 

 In 1875 seven farmers in Kaslunde, Funen, built and worked a 

 dairy in common. The surplus was divided between them in 

 proportion to the value of the milk delivered by each. Each 

 memb'er had one vote, and all questions were settled by a 

 simple majority. For some reason or other this co-operative 

 dairy, which still exists, remained unknown for years, and had 

 no imitators. Hjedding dairy, built in 1882, in the south-west 

 of Jutland, not far from the North Sea, is generally mentioned 

 as the first co-operative dairy in Denmark, because it gave the 

 impulse by which the movement spread all over the country. 

 The main principles laid down from the first by the men who 

 started Hjedding Co-operative Dairy were these : members 

 bind themselves to deliver to the dairy all the milk they produce 



