Perth Amboy evening news., 1912-08-28

cattle and hogs. This is an example
of the way in which the Danish gov
eminent encourages the multiplied
ton Of small farms.
Education Compulsory.
Now, as to the question of educa-
ton. 1t Is compulsory. 1t has been
compulsory for many years and the
awakening OF Denmark to the care
full use Of its natural is
due to two things-the Danish sense
of the practical value of practical
education, and a series of disasters.
The first disaster occurred in the
late ~forties, when the discovery was
made that the Danes had so i'm
poverished their soil by the continu-
Gus growing of grain tina bankruptcy
threatened, even the great land ,wn-
ers being in danger. Then came the
closing of British ports to Danish
grain and the growth of American
competition, which killed off what
ever prospects of profit the Danes
might have made from their impov-
erished land.
A very admirable Lutheran bishop,
~Grundtwig, saw that the Danes must
be kept at home, but that they must
be SO educated as to make their
country fit for them to live in. He
saw that patriotism on an empty
stomach would not work, and he
began to form the high-schools, of
which there are some twelve humid
red in Denmark today, which fos-
tered and made possible the idea of
cooperation.
Learned a New Lesson.
From 1848, the year in which,
under the new constitution, it was
possible for the poor Dane to own
land in fee simple-the constitution
meaning the breaking up of the fed
eral system of land tenures-until
1853, when Denmark lost Schleswig-
Holstein to Prussia, the Danes strug-
gled against terrible adverse circum-
stances, and then, under the impetus
which the high schools had given
them, they began to cooperate. In
the high schools, whic are open only
to men over the age of 20 years,
the Danish farmers learned to trust
one another; they also learned that
with impoverished land and no capt.
tai they could not compete there with
the great land owners who were be-
ginning to sell great quantities of
butter and hogs to England and
Germany.
The tendency in Denmark was and
is to constant increase of the small
farmers, but the small farmer was
practically nothing as an individual.
To control the British market for
fresh butter and the colonial market
for canned butter, it was necessary
that their product be the same in
quantity all the year and always the
same in quality. To standardize any
product one must have an enormous
quantity of that product and the
power of controlling it's quality. The
Danish farmers, in order to do this,
began to form cooperative societies.
Farm Societies Organized.
This movement, fostered as | said,
by Bishop Grundtwig's highschools,
began by the organization of small
societies of farmers of various dist
riots. In these each MAJ was allowed
n vote, but he guaranteed hat he
would supply to the cooperative
creamery Just so many pounds of
butter fat-butter fat being the COM
modify in which he dealt-and make
himself liable independently, plus
the unlimited liability of the co-ope-
rative society to the government bank
for the amount of capital borrowed.
The province of the bank in this
transaction is not the main thing
to be considered. The bank must
make a fair profit, but the bank
really exists for the benefit of the
farmers through the cooperative
societies, which they themselves
formed and which they themselves
govern.
Today the Danish farmer buys
nothing individually. He uses no
seeds till they have been tested by
the experts furnished by the cooper
ative society. He buys his fertiliz-
ers, soya beans from Manchuria, cot
ton and meal from the United States
through the cooperative society. He
never kills his own hogs, though
there are 500 hogs to every 1000
persons in Denmark, but sends them
to the cooperative bacon factories,
| which were founded some time in
the SOS when Germany refused the
Danish hvg because of an outbreak
of swine fever. The Danes instantly
founded, with the assistance of the
government, large cooperative bacon
factories. In order to make dairying
! possible, he Danes had to regener-
ate the land exhausted by the lack
of scientific treatment.
Denmark Is not a good grazing
country. The climate for grazing
purposes is probably the worst in the
world. There are only ID weeks in
the year when cattle can Craze in
the open. In the COS and 70's, the
49, L.
land-found that he must root or
die, or become an exile, as the Irish
were, for the lack of assistance from