Agricultural Population in France and Denmark. 19 
turn. We hear a great deal of Denmark and the use made of its 
soil. Here we have a very small State, nearly as much smaller 
than England (still keeping to England proper) as England is 
smaller than France. Its 8,897,000 acres are little more than 
a fourth of our 32,500,000, and like the Irish, but unlike 
ourselves, the Danes seem to account for nearly all their surface 
in the area of their 250,000 separate agricultural holdings ; 
while we divide only the 24,000,000 of cultivated land, or 
three-fourths of the surface, into our English quota of 372,000 
holdings. Now, the entire Danish population is just over 
2,500,000. Of these, three-fifths, or 1,500,000, are resident in 
rural communes, although not quite 1,000,000 of them are 
classified as agriculturists or their dependents, the active 
section of the class being 510,000, of whom 152,000 were 
employers, and 358,000 were employed. The interesting 
account of the progress of Danish agriculture given last year 
to the Royal Statistical Society by Mr. R. J. Thompson, brought 
out the small ratio of the dependent population, the large 
proportion of female workers, and the considerable labour force 
required. Upon 1,000 acres of Danish territory, the persons 
employed were seventy-three, compared with thirty-six in 
this country, and these figures will raise more than a passing 
criticism, that, after all, as a matter of economic production, 
the Danish development Has another side not entirely to be 
overlooked. 
The Memorandum appended to the Report of the Small 
Holdings Committee calls attention to some other features 
of the Danish case which have not perhaps yet received the 
attention they require. But no one has really worked out the 
aggregate production and aggregate expenditure and net profits 
of the Dane as we might like to see it done. It is, however, 
obvious that the Danish agricultural system is not one of 
extremely small units of management such as may be met with 
elsewhere on the Continent. The Danish average holding 
would be very much that of the Irish, or over thirty-five 
acres ; but if the holdings under one and a third acre were 
excluded for better comparison with our own, the average 
would rise to forty-nine acres per holding, which is not so very 
much below the English average of sixty-six acres. Half of 
the Danish area — and it includes some land not used agricul- 
turally — is farmed in groups of holdings between thirty-seven 
and 147 acres in extent, or with an average of seventy-three 
acres per farm. 
West Wellow, Romsey, Hants. 
P. G. Craigie. 
