June 1907.] 



895 



Miscellaneous. 



for drainage and irrigation and especially for the purpose of reclaiming bogs and 

 moorlands. The extent of land so reclaimed between 1878 and 1890 is estimated at 

 over 700,000 acres and much of this land on which nothing but heath had grown 

 before now ranks as among the most productive soil in the Empire. In regard to 

 the use of machinery, it is stated that steam threshing machines are used on no 

 fewer than 35,000 farms of less than five acres each. Without co-operation, such a 

 thing would be altogether impossible. In some instances the farmers of a particular 

 district will organise a society for the purchase of a steam-plough letting it out on 

 hire to their neighbours when not using it themselves. It is stated that the 

 number of registered agricultural co-operative societies on 1st July 1903 was no less 

 than 17,162, and some idea of the enormous benefit conferred upon the people by 

 these societies will be formed when it is realised that in 1902, the total amount of 

 the purchases of agricultural necessaries effected by the German credit banks or by 

 the special associations for the purpose was alone valued at 3£ million pounds. 



What, therefore, with her very practical and comprehensive system of agri- 

 cultural education, her elaborate development of an easy and most effective agri- 

 cultural credit, and, finally, her great variety of agricultural co-operative asso- 

 ciations, Germany may well claim to have reorganised the position of the cultivators 

 of her soil in a way that has brought to them a measure of success, to herself a degree 

 of economic advantage, that would have been impossible, if, when they were 

 threatened with agricultural depression, they had clung tenaciously to old ideas 

 and antiquated methods. 



Denmark. 



But it is in the little kingdom of Denmark, a kingdom much smaller in 

 size than the Presidency of Madras, that the farmer will find the most impressive 

 object lessons as to the henefits to be derived from agricultural co-operation. 

 After the Napoleonic wars, and, later on, the disastrous wars with Prussia and 

 Austria when Denmark lost two of the fairest and most fertile of her Provinces, 

 he was reduced to the narrow limits of the Islands and Jutland and even of this 

 area a considerable portion consisted of moor, marsh and dune land, practically 

 unfit for cultivation. On the top of all this came the fall in the price of corn which 

 led to a severe agricultural depression which left the people in a most deplorable 

 condition. But the country fought against adversity with the courage of a giant, and, 

 crippled though she was, she not only regained her strength but became a power 

 in the commercial world with which other nations have had seriously to reckon. 

 It was in the development of the dairy industry that the Danes mainly found the 

 means of recovering from the crisis which had overtaken them. Originally the 

 butter exported from Denmark came from what were little more than blending 

 mills, the supplies produced by the individual farmers and representing a variety 

 of qualities and different degrees of freshness, being bought up and mixed together 

 with results that were not always satisfactory to the purchaser, while the expense 

 to which each farmer was put in producing his own particular lot of butter left, 

 as a rule, a very small margin for profit. Then there was adopted the system of 

 creameries to which the farmers would take their cream only. This represented 

 a distinct advance, as it affected a saving alike of time and of cost to the farmer ; 

 but the greatest degree of progress began with the perfection of the centrifugal 

 cream separator which left the farmer to do no more than send his milk to the 

 factory, where the cream was taken from it by the separator, and the skim milk 

 given back to him for the feeding of his pigs. In other ways the researches of the 

 Professors had placed the working of the industry on a more scientific basis, thus 

 facilitating operation, reducing expenses and allowing of far better and much more 

 profitable results being obtained than had been the case before. Then, also, the 

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