44 CO-OPEEATION IN DANISH AGRICULTUKE 



just the same vote as the smallholder with one cow. The 

 manager of the dairy generally engages and pays for the 

 necessary help. The assistant managers are now as a rule well 

 instructed and have attended a dairy or agricultural school. 



The quality of Danish butter has been greatly improved by 

 the work of the co-operative dairies. Not only has the large pro- 

 duction of indifferent or bad and always variable peasant butter 

 completely disappeared, and has been replaced by the *' dairy 

 butter," but this has by degrees come to surpass the formerly 

 so renowned ** estate butter," both in quantity and in quahty. 

 At a large butter show in 1888. the '' estates " took 15 out of 

 16 silver medals, and 14 out of 18 bronze medals ; at a similar 

 show in 1894 the co-operative dairies took 6 out of 7 silver 

 medals and 14 out of 16 bronze medals. At a show in 1900, 

 670 exhibits out of 718 were from co-operative dairies, and they 

 took all the silver medals and almost all the bronze medals. 

 The objection to the peasant butter before 1882, that it came 

 in too small quantities, and was of unrehable quality, was after 

 1900 applied to the estate butter. More and more of the 

 large estates ceased, theitefore, to make butter themselves and 

 joined a co-operative dairy. The improvement attained in the 

 quality of Danish butter has been accompanied, as will readily 

 be seen, by an increased uniformity. The butter of no other 

 country is sold in England at so uniform a price for all the 

 different makes as Danish butter, and no other country's butter 

 obtains as high prices, with the sole exception at times of a 

 quite small amount of French fresh butter. If the average 

 prices paid in England for butter from the various countries 

 be compared, the price realised by Danish butter will be found 

 to be considerably above that realised by the butter from any 

 other country, owing to its uniformly high quahty. And this 

 result is decidedly due to the co-operative dairies. 



The higher prices realised for the butter meant higher 

 prices paid to the farmers for their milk, and that, thanks to 

 the co-operative dairies, meant the same price to the small- 

 holder with his one gallon as to the large farmer with his several 

 hundred gallons ; that meant such an improvement in the 

 percentage of profit on the smallholder's milk production, that 

 he soon saw his way to increase the number of his cows, and to 



