are started is the same. A loan is obtained on the joint and several security of the shareholders; annual income provides working expenses and the repayment of the loan; the balance of profit is divided between the shareholders in proportion to the pigs, milk or eggs they have supplied or the goods they have bought; and the shareholders may not supply any other buyer than their society. They may be bound to their society for ten years, at the end of which time the liabilities are often practically paid off. So far as the adoption of the joint and several guarantee and the undertaking to send all the product to the co-operative society are concerned, some of our co-operative organisations in England-whence, by the way, the Danes originally had their co-operation-have still to rise to the Danish level. And the thoroughness of Danish co-operation is seen in the number of societies a Dane will join, for every branch of agricultural activity has its corresponding society.

An obvious result of membership of these societies is that it is unnecessary for the Danish farmer to spend time on 'going to market.' His buying and selling are done for him as a separate branch of rural industry, as separate as his butter and bacon manufacture. He is able to concentrate on the farmer's proper task, the cultivation of the land and the management of stock, work for which a good farmer may have much more aptitude than for dealing.' In the case of our own agriculture, it is a fault that the system of going to market once or twice a week tends to bring to the top in a district the clever dealer among the local farmers, rather than the ablest cultivator and cattle manager, or socially worthiest. No doubt home-staying farmers have ever homely wits; and, from this point of view, as Mr Edward Strutt once impressed on the writer, there is some justification in market-day. But the Danish farmer is more than compensated by the business training and the training in character he receives in the management of his many co-operative organisations. There is also the rich life of all the agencies for intellectual selfimprovement which have their centre in his village halls and in the people's high schools, the teaching of which has been well summed up as: 'Honour physical labour; know your trade well and put your brains into it; never

neglect your intellectual development.' The device of the school for small holders is an owl sitting on a spade.

Attention is frequently directed to the indebtedness of the Danish farmer. Mention should certainly be made of the credit associations which are so largely financing him and to the extent to which he avails himself of their assistance. There are co-operative land credit associations granting loans on first mortgage, and the mortgage loan societies granting cheap loans on second mortgage. In 1913, the amount of loans granted on first mortgage was 95,000,000l., or 12,500,000l. more than in 1910. The second mortgage associations' loans amounted to 1,100,000l. As many of the first mortgage organisations do not make a distinction in their reports between rural and urban loans, exact information does not seem to be available as to the amount of the rural land debt, but it is estimated at half. The second mortgage associations' loans are on rural properties only. In the case of the first-named associations the interest has been of late years rather above 4 per cent., while in the case of the second class of associations it has been from to 1 per cent. higher. Loans are granted up to 60 per cent. of the value of the property. In the case of farms which were voluntarily sold between the years 1905-9, it was found that the loan averaged 50 per cent. On crofters' holdings it was about 34 per cent. The advances should rather be called loans than mortgages, for, so long as the interest is paid, they cannot be called in. Short or working loans to farmers are granted by about 170 short loan associations, which were started with a Government advance of 270,000l., on which 3 per cent. interest is paid. The associations may not charge more than 5 per cent., nor may a loan exceed 1667. or be for longer than nine months.

As to the extent to which the man on the land may have burdened himself with loans, in order to meet expenditure not wholly or at any rate not directly reproductive, there are differences of opinion in Denmark among people who are entitled to speak with some authority. It is not, therefore, for foreigners to form conclusions too readily. That the standard of living on the farms has risen very much is patent to any one who has had the advantage of paying casual visits to the

hospitable homesteads which dot the Danish landscape. But those who are coming to believe that the farmer all the world over is in need of learning not only to save but to spend will hesitate to judge too summarily the healthy, well-lighted rooms of the new houses, with their shiny furniture, their musical instruments, pictures and assemblages of books and papers. They will realise that the stimulus derived from self-respecting surroundings is an asset of no small value for rural civilisation.

No doubt, even in a thrifty country there will always be the thriftless. Not everyone who is able to come by the possession of land is the best sort of farmer or small holder. It can never be difficult to point to cases in which farmers have been injudicious in their expenditure or in which small holders have forgotten that the margin of profit on small plots must needs be small. But in debates on the actual cost of butter, as on the real indebtedness of the men of the land, the foreigner must be exceedingly cautious. He needs to possess fuller information than he can well hope to acquire. And, after all, he is not directly concerned in the domestic rural politics of another country. It is the question of how rural Denmark stands in relation to the rest of the world that is of most importance to him. It is the broad lessons of the policy she has adopted towards country life and industry that are of the greatest value. Every country has to work out its rural salvation according to its own conditions; and it will be enough for neighbours if, after taking account of the general results, they are able to approach with fresh confidence and quickened faith the solution of their own problems.

It is unnecessary, however, to go so far from our own shores as Denmark in order to be stimulated in the work of rural amelioration. Within the distance covered by a twenty-shilling second-class return fare from the Thames, is another country, the agricultural population of which is increasing. Since the accession of Queen Victoria, Holland, by means of the pump and the spade, has redeemed from her sea-shore, her meres and the morasses of her high moor an amazingly large acreage of land. Although only a third of the Netherlands would be flooded if the sea and river dikes

broke, it costs a little country, less populous than London, a million and a half every year to save its vulnerable area from the water. But the agricultural tourists who, content with visiting Zeeland, South and North Holland and Friesland, grasp something of the primary land problem of the Dutch-how to save themselves from drowning-seldom hear of that other national question, the transformation of the high moor. There is no story more creditable to Holland than that of how the dank wilderness of her high moor has been made to give place to 'Fen Colonies' with a population of 125,000. These Home Colonists produce, from a soil composed of sand and peat litter-and artificialsenormous crops of potatoes for the co-operative potato flour factories, the furnaces of which are fed by the peats from the reclaimed high moor, piled in black stacks as high as churches.

When the price of corn fell-it is recorded in the English book on Holland at the head of this article

'it was not only through corn-growing that Holland, like ourselves, was badly hit. The Danes were cutting into her butter trade, and her market gardening was feeling the strain of competition. Within the period, however, during which there has been free importation of agricultural products into the Netherlands, the area of land under cultivation has been increased by fifty thousand acres, and there have been brought on the farms a quarter of a million more cattle, half a million more pigs, and fifty thousand more horses. In fifteen years the bulb export has become thrice what it was. As for butter, within five years the output in a year increased by 7000 tons.'

Like Denmark and Great Britain, Holland has an excellent geographical situation. She has also the advantage of cheap water carriage-at what cost? And she has, in certain parts, excellent soil for crops and pasture. But it is a land which has been made. And the farmer has been at least partly remade.

'When one considers' (says Dr Frost), 'quite apart from their obstinacy and distaste for anything new which is characteristic of every farmer, more or less, that the general culture of the great mass of Dutch farmers is at rather a low standard, it is extraordinary with what intelligence and

what practical understanding they regard modern agricultural technique. Nearly every farmer one meets, be he in ever such a small way, can talk about phosphoric acid and nitrogen. He can tell you about the proportion of fat in the milk, and he sprays his potatoes.'

He has changed his crops and his methods. Within three years of the discovery that there was a market for a Dutch Cheshire, one province alone marketed 40,000l. worth in a twelvemonth! The Dutch farmer has had the advantage of rising prices, no doubt; but he has had the wit to obtain the fullest possible benefit from the excellent returns. Instead of seeking the merchant, he brings him to co-operative auction marts. Electric auctions, at which a barge-load or trolley-load of produce is disposed of in a few moments, are to be found all over the country. In the electric auction mart, it may be explained, the buyers are provided with raised seats. Between the knees of each one is a button communicating electrically with a big dial opposite, and with the clerks. If the mart straddles a canal, there is the water between the merchants and the dial. A barge-load of produce is poled in, the lads belonging to the mart throw to the merchants specimen 'salads' (the quality of which is guaranteed by the farmer barge-owner's co-operative society), the fact that there are 2200 head of lettuce and 1000 cucumbers in the barge is called out, and the pointer on the dial is set going. When one of the merchants touches his button, the pointer having reached a figure on the dial at which he is prepared to buy, the pointer stops and the sale is made. If the seller is dissatisfied he touches a bell suspended near the barge and the goods are again offered. Under this system there can be no dispute as to what the price was or who bid, and time is enormously economised. There are some 80 co-operative auction marts in Holland.

As to co-operation in other directions, 680 out of the 958 creameries in the country belong to the farmers themselves, and 201 of the 291 cheese factories as well. In four years the nonco-operative creameries added 1000 tons to their annual production; the co-operative creameries added 5000 tons, and now make nearly thrice as much butter as the joint stock concerns. Of the