22 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



and for this reason the small farmer was the one who felt the 

 misfortune of the country in the greatest degree, and upon whom 

 it naturally fell to pay the cost of it. For a long time he stag- 

 gered under the heavy burden, and if it had not been for the co- 

 operative system the world would probably never have heard of 

 Denmark as a dairy state. But as soon as the Danish farmer 

 began to co-operate with his fellow farmer the prospects for 

 the nation began to grow brighter. 



It is difficult to determine what particular man should have 

 the credit for the institution of the co-operative movement. Den- 

 mark had heretofore been an exporter of grain, beef and horses. 

 Of these articles the horses went mostly to France, and the grain 

 and beef to England. But it occurred to the English farmer 

 that he might as well raise his own beef and supply the EngrHsh 

 market himself, instead of sending all that money out of the 

 country, and laws were passed restricting the importing of Dan- 

 ish beef. Without any market, beef raising became prohibitory, 

 and the Danish farmer had lost one of his best sources of in- 

 come. The government had, in the meantime, conducted num- 

 erous experiments in an endeavor to find some other field or sys- 

 tem which would make its chief resource, the cultivator of the 

 soil, more prosperous, for he was the one to whom they had to 

 look for the payment of the national debt. It was as the result 

 of these experiments that experts were employed to go out 

 among the farmers and try to get them interested in dairying. 



There were, in the farmers' stables at that time a lot of 

 cows of a more or less beefy type, and which did not yield a great 

 profit when used for dairy purposes. The stastitics show that 

 the average production of butter per cow in 1884 was only 107 

 pounds. The problem was to make these cows more profitable, 

 and after much experimenting and more discussion it was finally 

 determined that this could be done by better feeding in connec- 

 tion with better breeding. This called for better bulls, or bulls 

 of the dairy type, and the demand for this kind of bulls became 

 so great and the supply was so limited that the price mounted 

 sky-high; in fact beyond the reach of the common farmer. It 



