AGRICULTURAL ALCOHOL IN GERMANY. on 
distillery is equipped with two distilling outfits: (1) A modified 
hand equipment—that is, a still ordinarily operated without ma- 
chinery, such as pumps, etc., and therefore of necessity interrupted 
after each operation—and (2) a modern equipment on a larger scale. 
Even this, however, is smaller than a minimum-efficiency apparatus 
should be in accordance with the computations of the engineering 
department of the Institute for Ferment Industries at Berlin. 
In order to get the Bavarian distillers to adopt the plan of alcohol 
allotment, various concessions had to be made. Therefore, they 
occupy a favored position of which the northern distillers are 
envious. They are also permitted to utilize maize (from the Balkan 
States) whenever the potato crop is insufficient. They are, there- 
fore, not agricultural distillers in the strict sense of the legal defini- 
tion of this term as used in Prussia. Moreover, it has been the 
tendency of the State governments to favor the small distillers in 
proportion to their smallness. Whereas in the northern States and 
Provinces the hand equipment has been replaced almost entirely by 
mechanical operations, in Bavaria there are still a number of small 
distilleries. This appears to be due to two or three factors, namely, 
to the large number of small farms and to the conservatism of the 
farmers. | 
At the close of the eighteenth century the central Government of 
Bavaria permitted the villages to dispose of their communal prop- 
erty in small parcels to the villagers, a policy which was also 
adopted by other German States, but in no State was this process 
carried out in so short a time as in Bavaria. The result, from an 
agricultural and economic point of view, was very detrimental. A 
single instance may here be mentioned. Large tracts of land for- 
merly used as meadow were placed under cultivation, and in a short 
time the cattle of Bavaria were literally decimated. The reaction on 
agriculture as a whole was harmful. 
As an indirect outcome of this condition, the Bavarian system of 
agricultural education during the period near the middle of the 
nineteenth century lagged far behind that of other German States, 
although at the beginning the Bavarian Government had made a 
good start in the education of the newly created farmers. A hundred 
years ago their education by means of bulletins, etc., was out of the 
question, because the large majority here, as in many other places, 
could not read. Systematic education was even less possible. 
‘Therefore, education by example had to be resorted to, but even then 
the farmers availed themselves so little of the opportunity that at 
Weihenstephan it was abandoned for a time. 
This condition of affairs not only explains why there are so many 
small distilleries in Bavaria, but it also explains the attitude of the 
scientific institutions which constitute their technical advisers. Side 
