RM LIFE CONDITIONS IN SOUTH 7v,V:. :*::*&* ; 7V?T-- V V .:V~" S ■ jv> "v^'. \ V : , :■ • . ■: - ? A ^ : . .. v 4 ^ 4 - ; S!' u;. i- sf \ •: ; ' ■ ; 1 '.< 'U V. K :•;•• i >•■■,'■;: ■_, ■■ ■■ ■ ■■ • . ' ;V '■•■- : ': N -.'.. ' ' '’ • < •■ ■ "■■■■„ •■■>.. V. y;v :• :■■ ■ : ■smm r W/- ujfc”’-" THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA THE COLLECTION OF NORTH CAROLINIANA Cp378 UMb8l. 2 c .2 i v This BOOK may be kept out ONE MONTH unless a recall notice is sent to you. A book may be renewed only once; it must be brought to the library for renewal. / a Farm Life Conditions in the South Chapter IV. Denmark’s Remedies: Education and Co-operation E. C. BRANSON, President State Normal School ATHENS, GA.* Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding, from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill https://archive.org/details/farmlifeconditio02bran ? 30 4/4 Farm Life Conditions in the South Chapter IV. Denmark’s Remedies: Education and Co-operation. E. C. BRANSON, State Normal School Athens, Georgia. No remedies for farm life decline are worth considering if they do not tend to make farm life profitable, comfortable, at¬ tractive, and safe. Moreover they need to be simple and direct, practical and possible. The remedies are of varied sort. Funda¬ mentally they are educational in the very widest sense of that term, but also they are economic and social as well. And again, the/y are self-help remedies as certainly as they are legislative remedies. Before taking up in -detail the suggestions barely outlined above, it is tremendously worth while to study a concrete exam¬ ple of conspicuous success by farmers, amid discouraging sur¬ roundings and circumstances. The Danish farmers spelled their way out of difficulties even more direful than Southern farmers have ever yet faced, and it is instructive to know just how they did it. The Danish Farmer State —Denmark is a little country on the western coast of Europe. It is about one-fourth the size of Georgia, and has a population about equal to that of Georgia. The western side of the Danish mainland, or Jutland, is a barren waste of sand-dunes, blown up by prevailing westerly winds through long ages. The central portion running north and south was, until 18 65, a waste region covered with heather and other wilderness growths. Until adversity taught them how to reclaim it, this heath country was supposedly worthless for 3 farming. The eastern side of Jutland and the Danish islands in the Baltic were for a long time almost the only portion of Den¬ mark fit for agriculture. When the Napoleonic wars were over, early in the last century, the people of Denmark were stripped bare, almost to the very bone. Their shipping had been des¬ troyed and their trade and commerce utterly ruined. They had lost Sweden and later in the century were to lose Schleswig- Holstein. The peasant farmers were in a condition barely re¬ moved from serfdom. Indeed, they did not win their freedom until 184 5. We have never seen in this country, and I hope may never see, such dire poverty and distress. And yet the people of this same ruined state are today the wealthiest people in Europe. That is to say, their per capita wealth is the greatest. The inter¬ ests of the people are almost entirely agricultural. They culti¬ vate only ten million acres of ground, or about one-third the farm area of Georgia; but they maintain a population equal to ours, and in addition, they export every year more than ninety million dollars worth of butter, eggs, and meats. If Georgia were cultivated with the same kind of intensity, diversity, and skill that are put into these Danish acres, we would raise twenty- five billion dollars worth of agricultural products yearly, or enough to maintain a population three times as great as the present population of the entire United States. Our soil and seasons are incomparably better than Denmark ever had. If not driven by poverty, certainly we can be tempted by greed to develop our agricultural resources, the present and apparently the permanent high prices of farm products considered. There is little poverty in Denmark and there are no slums in her cities. In 19 06, they had two hundred and eighty million • dollars in their savings banks. Eighty-nine people out of every one hundred own their own homes and farms. Daily wage earners, tenants, number only eleven in the hundred of population. They are few, because land holdings can be easily acquired upon fifty-year loans at four per cent., a rate which pays the interest and creates a sinking fund to pay the debt. If only the laborer can raise one-tenth the purchase money, he can borrow the balance on the land itself, either from the state banks or from one of the five hundred and thirty-six co-operative savings banks. The farmers are in the majority in both houses of the legisla¬ ture. The majority of the cabinets are farmers. The govern¬ ment is essentially democratic, but as in every other country where the population is largely, or most largely, land-owning farmers, there is stable opposition to revolutionary socialism. 4 How in the world did the Danish people work this miracle, and all within a hundred years? How the Danish Farmers Did It. —In the first place, the Danish people are reaping the full benefit of widely diffused education of all sorts and kinds whatsoever—long term element¬ ary schools, high schools, continuation schools, night schools, trade schools, technical schools, itinerant schools from the agri¬ cultural colleges and experiment stations, traveling experts, school and state bulletins, folk-fests or circles of farmers and farmers’ wives, meeting to discuss life problems and business, educational camp-meetings, the great University at Copenhagen, and so on and on. The Dane believes in education with all his heart and soul and pocket. And if ever we get out of the woods in Georgia, we shall have to put into education ten times as much money as we are now spending, both privately and publicly. The sooner we realize this fundamental fact, the bet¬ ter. Illiteracy is a blasting, blistering, withering curse, and makes nearly every progressive measure impossible. Long ago in the bad old days of the absolute monarchy it could be said of the Danes, “The common people do generally write and read.” The Danish high school is worth speaking of. There is no other high school in the world just like it and no other with which to compare it. There are now seventy of these high schools, with seven thousand students in attendance. These schools are the children of the great heart of good Bishop Grundtvig, who went from one end of the state to the other, begging and pleading and thundering his message of social redemption. They were established by means of independent local support, although almost all of them now receive state aid. I have said they were unique. There are no examinations, no certificates, no prizes, no course of study, and almost no books. Strange to say, neither in the elementary schools nor in the high schools is agriculture taught, and almost no techni¬ cal instruction of any other kind is given. The aim of the Danes is to arouse and stimulate and inflame the minds of their young peo¬ ple in order to make them hungry for all the education and learning that can come to them later in the twenty-nine agri¬ cultural colleges and the great University at Copenhagen; or, what is just as important, perhaps, to prepare them for all the self-education that comes through newspapers, magazines, bulle¬ tins, books and life itself. 5 Four teachers are essential in these high schools. First ot all is the teacher who is in love with and saturated with the old sagas and chronicles, and the stories of heroes and heroism in Danish life and letters. The Dane is intensely patriotic, and his first care is to make the chifdren so. Next comes the teacher who is a master of his mother tongue and who himself has charms, gifts, and graces of literary sort. The third teacher is learned in all that concerns his country’s industries and means of existence. (Economics). The (fourth must be acquainted with the laws of his country. (Civics and Law). After these subjects and next in importance are mathematics and science. The young people leave their work in the fields, the work¬ shops and kitchens, and swarm into these schools; young women in the summer and the young men in the winter months, for lectures on history, literature, political economy, psychology, physics and chemistry; indeed upon every subject that has fed human intelligence since the beginning of time. In the early fall the old people flock into these high schools with their bed¬ ding, for a week’s camp-meeting, and sit down to a feast of lectures on Islam, Armenia, Martin Luther, Wagner’s operas, Gladstone, on just anything and everything that is quickening and cultural. Afterwards these young people go into the twenty- nine agricultural colleges of the state, some nine thousand yearly; others into the great University. The government has experiment stations everywhere and a small army of experts moving about among the farmers, advising with them about the diseases of swine or cattle or horses, plant diseases and remedies, methods of cultivation, the marketing of crops, and so on. Not only do the government bulletins upon agriculture flood the country, but the farmers read them, and in every com¬ munity organizations are, year in and year out, discussing agri¬ cultural questions, questions of business and trade, the finances and management of every organization, and every other con¬ ceivable question that has to do with the welfare of Denmark. • No stupid people could ever have accomplished the wonders that Denmark has accomplished, and no such results could ever have come to an ignorant, illiterate, unalert, and self-satisfied people. Ignorance and illiteracy are expensive disqualifications for a man or a people. To an intelligent folk, like the Danes, everything is possible. 2. In the second place, the Dane had intelligence enough to know that the ownership of land was the hope of safety in 6 politics and the bed-rock of security in the business of farming. When the fortunes of this state were at the very lowest in the nineteenth century, the peasant farmers began to acquire small land holdings. Sixty-eight thousand of these farms are less than one and one-half acres; sixty-five thousand are from one and one-half to thirteen and one-half acres; forty-six thousand from thirteen and one-half to forty acres; and sixty-one thou¬ sand from forty to one hundred and fifty acres. Eighty-nine per cent, of the farmers own their own farms. The large estates have great difficulty in getting daily wage earners, because it is so easy for industrious and thrifty laborers to buy and own their own farms. These estates must periodically import help from Germany and Sweden at great expense and with such difficulty that the old feudal properties are being sold off, little by little, year by year. The ratio of independent farm owners is steadily increasing. One thing worth noticing is the effect upon the cities. The Danish cities are not troubled by acute slum problems for the sim¬ ple reason that country life is too attractive, too profitable, and too comfortable for any industrious and thrifty man to live in the cities amid the squalor and discomforts of tenement slums. Denmark is one of the few countries in the world in which the cities have not flourished at the expense of the country, and where there is no need to cry “Back to the farm.” 3. In the third place the Danish farmers were intelligent enough to see the power of union, organization, and co-opera¬ tion, and to see it without argument. The farmers of Denmark organize almost as unconsciously as they breathe. Fortunately they are settled upon a comparatively small area, one hundred and fifty people to the square mile, and so do not face our dif¬ ficulties of sparse population, scattered widely over a great ter¬ ritory like Georgia. The Danish farmer from the beginning was a social creature, and so did not need to overcome the rani individualism bred by isolation and loneliness. The organization of co-operative enterprises began less than thirty years ago, but now the Danes have one thousand, eighty seven co-operative dairies, embracing ninety-five per cent, of all the farmers. They ship nearly one million dollar’s worth of but¬ ter every week to England. They have thirty-four co-operative slaughter houses. Their co-operative Egg Export Society num¬ bers fifty-seven thousand members. The eggs are collected and stamped each day. If a farmer has only one egg, he can market that one egg. His market comes to his door everyday. In 190S, 7 the egg- business amounted to $6,600,000. Danish eggs bring fancy prices. They are always fresh, they are better packed than any others and are carefully graded. The farmer who slips in a bad egg is promptly fined. There are five hundred and thirty- six co-operative savings banks and the depositors number more than one-half the entire population. It goes without saying that they have a parcels post. But the farmer also does his buying at wholesale. It is co¬ operative buying through their great wholesale agency, and last year’s business amounted to $17,500,000. It is safe to say that the Danish peasant is saturated with the culture of his nation, with the culture which comes from a mastery of subjects and an understanding of conditions of life in his own country and every other. He knows that in the business management of industrial enterprises, business is strictly business, without favoritism or politics. He long ago learned that both are ex¬ pensive. Two men must be credited with a great part of the success of the Danish co-operative enterprises. They are J. C. la Cour and N. J. Fjord, who were not farmers at all, but organizers and inventors. Their genius and talents would have made them abundantly rich in any country in the world. They have, how¬ ever, been patriotic, disinterested servants of their people— worth their weight in very diamonds to Denmark. Co-operation in the United States. —Co-operative enterprises among the farmers of the United States is making great head¬ way. Whenever success has been won it has been after years of struggle with doubt, faint-heartedness, incompetency, and failure over and over again. It is a long, steady, up-hill pull against difficulties that are inconceivable until the effort is made. But the prize is worth the risk and the struggle. The grain growers of the middle West have now more than fifteen hundred co-operative grain elevators with 200,000 mem¬ bers. Iowa alone has about 3 00 grain elevator associations and Illinois about as many. Other hundreds are scattered throughout Minnesota, Nebraska and the Dakotas. They have finally solved the difficulties of marketing their grains in the great centers where the commission merchants used to be under the duress of railway influences. The grape growers of Wisconsin are organized for business purposes and after years of struggle are winning success at last. After thirty years of failure the Fruit Growers’ Associa¬ tion of California has finally won its fight, at least in the 8 marketing of citrus fruits. And the same thing may be said of the Georgia Fruit Growers’ Association. The Southern Texas Truck Growers’ Association sold last year nearly thirty-four hundred cars of onions, grown upon about eight thousand acres, yielding some twenty thousand pounds to the acre. They keep their own marketing agent in New York city and another in St. Louis. The Association turns back to the farmer a net profit of from $1.04 to $2.34 a hundred pounds, after paying handsome salaries to their general mana¬ ger, their district managers and assistants, their inspectors and marketing agents in the big cities. In the South for the present, the great problem is the ware¬ housing and marketing of our cotton crop. The Farmers’ Union has made astonishing headway toward this end, the dif¬ ficulties considered. In Alabama its members own and operate more than one hundred warehouses. They sell cotton direct to European spin¬ ners, while the Mobile and Birmingham exchanges buy in whole¬ sale lots and give their members reduced prices on fertilizers, farm implements, dry goods, staple groceries, etc. In Arkansas the Union has 9 8 cotton warehouses and as many gins and cotton-seed houses. They have many co-operative stores, the one at Jonesboro being capitalized at $300,000. In three counties of the State a Union co-operative enterprise handled $500,000 worth of fruit in one season. The Georgia Unions have 134 cotton warehouses, 600 acres of phosphate land and a factory, and also a farm implement factory. They sell cotton direct to the spinners and have nego¬ tiated cotton loans amounting to three million dollars. In Mississippi the Farmers’ Union Warehouse Company at Jackson, has a capital of one million dollars and 63 allied Union warehouses. It handles farm supplies for its members in car load quantities. Oklahoma has several flour mills and 25 co-operative associa¬ tions. In South Carolina the Union has a newspaper, a bank, a trust company, a brokerage company and ten cotton warehouses. The Tennessee Union owns 28 cotton warehouses and as many gins and seed-houses; seven peanut warehouses, one peanut re¬ cleaning plant, 15 union stores, canning and tobacco factories, and one chair factory. The Arkansas, Missouri and Mississippi Unions have estab¬ lished a great cotton company at Memphis, which last year 9 negotiated one loan of nearly two and a half million dollars. Texas has 136 co-operative cotton gins, 321 cotton ware¬ houses, an oil mill, an electric light plant, and flour mills. The mortgage indebtedness of the farms of the State has been re¬ duced more than one-half in six years and the banks of Texas have agreed to furnish more and cheaper money than hereto¬ fore on cotton grain and cattle. The Union clearing houses buy and sell and post farmers on the markets. They have suc¬ cessfully struggled with the railroads for lower rates on in¬ terstate commodities. The Union has a central cotton selling agency at Galveston with its own classer in charge, to whom cotton can be consigned for sale or for borrowing money. The Unions in Virginia own fertilizer and mixing plants, and do extensive co-operative buying. It is an inspiring story of Union and co-operation; neverthe¬ less the (farmers of the South need to extend and perfect their co-operative enterprises. Mr. James J. Hill is quite right in saying, “When the farmer has produced the share of natural wealth that corresponds to his best effort he must be able to find a purchaser that will enable him to live in comfort and enjoy at least a moderate degree of prosperity.” And this can never be the case so long as the transporters and exchangers get $65.00 out of every $100.00 worth of farm stuff that reaches the final purchaser. Prosperity for all the rest of the world might come under such conditions as these, without a just and equal share of prosperity for the farmer. The farmer is, there¬ fore, obliged to organize and co-operate in self-defense, not only in marketing his products at the greatest possible figure, but in buying farm supplies at the least possible cost. The farmers of Denmark co-operate almost to a man. They not only determine the prices they get for their products, but also the prices they pay for farm supplies. At least, they do not buy and sell at the utter mercy of other organized busi¬ nesses. 10