The news in this publi
cation is released for the
press on receipt.
Library, Univ. of
North Carolina
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
NEWS LETTEH
Published Weekly by the
University of North Caro
lina Press for the Univer
sity Extension Division.
NOVEMBER 7,1923
CHAPEL HILL, N. C.
VOL. X, NO. 1
Bdiioriaii 3.>ac(Ii B. G, Sranaon, S. H. Hobba, Jr.. L. R. Wilson, E. W. Snijjht. D. D. Carroll. J. B. Bullitt, H. W. Olum.
Bntered as aecond-claas matter Noyerabar 14, 1914. at the Postoffice at Chapel Hill. N. C.. under the actof Auprust 24, 1911
A FARMER-MADE DEMOCRACY
XVn-A LITTLE ACCOUNT OF THE DANES
A people that can rise out of poverty
and build a rich state on agriculture a-
lone in one hundred and thirty-five
years is a people worth studying. The
geographies call Denmark a kingdom,
and so it is in name but in fact it is a
democratic commonwealth, more demo
cratic than England and more nearly a
commonwealth than any state*"! know
in America. There are very few rich
people among the Danes; there could
not well be many in an agricultural
state on any continent. The answer to
Solomon's prayer for neither poverty
nor riches seems to have been reserved
for the latter-day Danes. Denmark
almost realizes today the dream that
Bishop Grundtvig had for it in the last
century; it is “a land in which few have
too mach and still fewer too little.”
There is no peacock-parade of wealth
in Copenhagen or any other Danish
city. Also there are no slums, no beg
gars, and no palpable poverty. Or none
that I have yet discovered, and I look
for these everywhere I go, for I have a
conviction that the essential character
of a civilization is best judged by the
poverty it is willing to create and ex
cuse with Pharisaic complacency.
How They Deal With Poverty
I was discussing this proposition with
a Dane at a cafe table the other day in
Copenhagen, when my eye was attract
ed to a disreputable wretch loitering
hungrily along the edge of the restau
rant sidewalk. “Isn’tthat a beggar?”
I asked. “Oh no,” was* the answer.
* ‘ He won't beg, or at least not in
words. It is a jailable offense in Den
mark. He's a drink-ravaged wreck, a
victim of schnaps. Practically all the
poverty we have in Denmark is among
the feeble-minded fools of his sort.
He’s on his way to the ladegaard or
municipal workhouse. Tomorrow he'll
be in a dark uniform cleaning the
streets. That’s the particular job of
the ladegaard-lemmers. You payjyour
White Wings five dollars a day to clean
the streets of New York, we pay our
Dark Wings board, clothes, and medi
cal attention in the public workhouse.
We have some disreputable poverty of
this sort, but not much. Come a little
way with me and I’ll show you what
Copenhagen and every other Danish
city does for the reputable poverty of
old age and illness and other providen
tial dispensations. ” I went with him
into the Home for the Aged, located in
the City Hal! Square. The immaculate
cleanness of the place and the bright
happy faces of the old men and women
were a revelation. No wonder Bishop
Grundtvig was proud to have this es
tablishment under his pastorial care
during the last years of his life. I
doubt if such poorhouses exist any
where in America. But they are com
mon in Denmark. The care of the poor,
the feeble, and the aged is even more
wonderful in Elsinore. The mayor is
sending me a brief story of the muni
cipal social enterprises of this little
city, and later I shall be passing it on
to North Carolina.
Looking Backward
The Danes are not a perfect people.
There are no perfect people in this im
perfect world. But Shaw Desmond’s
chapter on their imperfections is e-
nough for readers with horse-fly instead
of honey-bee in.stincts. I refer such
readers to his Soul of Denmark and
pass on rapidly to consider in a letter
or two the Danish people, and the ob
stacles they overcame in developing a
wealth-retaining agriculture and a
farm-helping state.
One hundred thirty-five years ago the
masses of Denmark were serfs bound
to the land, and sold with it like the
trees, the cattle, and the wild animals
of the fields. All the land belonged to
the crown, the court, and the church.
Unlike the peasants of France who then
owned one-third of the land, the fourth
estate in Denmark owned nothing. They
were not property owning creatures
under the law of the realm. Never
theless it was true, as an old chronicler
says, the Panes did generally read and
write. Even in their -days of slavery
they deemed illiteracy a disgrace. In
1788 they received their freedom from
serfdom, but little else—nothing else
indeed but the occasional gift of some
noble lord to a beloved retainer of low
estate. Such property as they owned
was very like the property owned by
free persons of color in the Southern
States of America in 1860.
Self-Effacing Sovereignty
The middle years of the last century
were another period of social upheaval
in Europe, and again the masses of Den
mark won without a struggle. In 1849,
they were given the right to vote and
to hold public office. Denmark is still
a kingdom because during the last ceh-
tury or so no king has been witless e-
nough to oppose the common people in
their efforts to rise into full-statured
citizenship. The 4>id«iborgers have
been wise, they have stooped to con
quer, and as a result no king wears a
crown with less uneasiness than Christ
ian X. The self-effacement of
the crown is complete. Like the
national flag, the king is a symbol of
statehood, merely that and little more.
In the annual volume of parliamentary
acts his official title is The Civil List to
which is voted a million kroner a year,
which is around $200,000 in our money.
Like the dowager queen and most of
the hereditary nobles he lives on a
country estate and occupies his royal
residence at the capital only upon state
occasions or during the opera season or
the yacht races, and such like events.
His arrival, stay or departure is so un
ostentatious that the Copenhageners
are occustomed to disregard it altogeth
er. Such a display of royal grandeur
as the King of England makes when he
moves in state from Buckingham Pal
ace to dine with the Lord Mayor in the
Mansion House has not been ventured
by any King of Denmark in a half cen
tury or more. Count the princes, the
people are nothing, was long a common
saying in Germany and Scandinavia.
Count the people, the princes are noth
ing, is now a fact so common in Den
mark that apparently nobody has stop
ped to phrase it.
Hereditary Nobles Few
As for the hereditary nobles, they
are perhaps a thousand all told in a
population of three and a third million
people. The counts and barons who
claim their titles are fewer than three
hundred. No new titles have been
created in more than a century. The
nobles that remain are becomingly mod
est. If they own estates, they claim
their titles as a rule, but they make no
parade of their rank. They know full
well that hereditary titles are a liabili
ty and not an asset in Denmark. I
have in my pocket book the card of a
young baron whose estate of eight hun
dred acres in North Jutland I visited a
few weeks ago. He is a grandson of
the baron who so nobly supported Dal-
gas in his struggles to establish the
Heath Reclamation Society and whose
bust in bronze arrests attention as one
enters the home of that society in the
market square of Viborg. But no title
appears on the young man’s card, and
it was quite by accident that I learned
of his descent from a noble ancestry—
noble in fact as well as in name.
Democracy’s Nobles Many
Hereditary titles count for little or
nothing in Denmark. But official titles
earned by personal worth and conferr
ed J)y popular vote in a free democracy
are quite another matter. The souls
of the Danes fairly itch for such titles
and their meticulous parade of them is
highly diverting to plain Americans.
And the wives are the worst of all in
this particular. If Henry, for instance,
lived in Denmark, his wife would be
mortally affronted if she were not ad
dressed as Fru Professor Henry. And
our Mayor’s wife, if he had the wit or
the nerve to have a wife, would have
to be addressed as Fru Mayor Rober
son, or Borgmesterinde or some other
mouth-filling title that recognized her
rank in an official aristocracy. I brought
with me into Denmark a letter of in
troduction to the wife of a former
minister of state. It was addressed to
The Honorable Mrs Blank, EJtatsraa-
TEACH COOPERATION
We have failed to teach the essen
tial principles of co-operation and
group action made necessary to our
social organization. We have failed
to teach group interrelationship, so
that farmers have little ability to
see the effect upon the farming
group of other group programs.
Those who have led in rural thought
have failed to convince farmers in
general that organization, as "a
means of economy in distribution
and self-preservation, in the strug
gle for existence against other or
ganized groups bent upon their ex
ploitation, is a necessity. This ex
plains why the farmer of the United
States, although the most efficient
agricultural worker of the world,
has not bettered his lot even though
he has bettered his practice. Un
economical distribution and inabili
ty to compete against organizations
have robbed him of a considerable
portion of his profits. He has man
aged to live and accumulate wealth.
He has not been pauperized, but he'
has avoided it in too many cases on
ly through drudgery, exploitation of
his wife, and children, and'adopting
a standard of living such as is un
just. His lot is little better than in
pioneering days. He is entitled to
more of the rewards of his toil than
he has been able to get.—From
School Leaflet No. II, U. S. Bureau
of Education.
dine. There are nine grades of these
official titles and the owners of them
pay annual taxes of three to forty dol
lars for the right to flourish their hon
ors. An official title once enjoyed nev.-
er dies in the immediate social circle
and the family chronicles. It lives on
forever, like Dickens’s postboys and
mules. All of which means that De
mocracy when it feels its feed breeds
aristocracies as rapidly as a Dutch
cheese breeds maggots. So it has done
in Denmark and so it has already be
gun to do in Germany.
A Peasant-Made Democracy
So much by way of making it clear
that royalty and nobility are unconsid
ered trifles in Denmark, that the peo
ple of hereditary rank are a small and
rapidly disappearing group in the pop
ulation census, and that Denmark is to
day a peasant-made democracy. The
remains of feudalism are few and faint.
The crown lands and properties or most
of them have been surrendered to the
state, and quite freely surrendered.
The glebe lands have passed into peas
ant ownership and the church has been
compensated by support from the state
treasury. And in 1919 the Danish par
liament blotted out the law of entail,
took over one-fourth of the land of en
tailed estates along with a fifth to a
fourth of the accrued capital wealth of
such estates, the purpose being to mul
tiply more rapidly the number of small
farm owners. This invasion of the pri
vate rights of property ownership is
probably a violation of the constitution
of 1849, but no large estate owner has
cared or dared to contest the issue in
the courts and so the law has been in
full effect for nearly three years. The
Danes justify it on the grounds of pub
lic necessity, and they decorously de
cline to argue, as they say, about a
last year’s bird nest.
A Country-Loving People
The population of Denmark is three
million, two hundred and sixty-eight
thousand. Twelve hundred thousand
or forty percent of the total are living
on the land directly engaged in farm'
ing. Twelve hundred thousand more
are living under semi-agricultural con
ditions in country towns and cities that
owe their existence or their prosperity
to the cooperative enterprises of the
farm organizations. They handle the
products of the farmers for the farm
ers, frequently they are farmers them
selves in a small way in the neighbor'
ing farm territory, and universally they
are poultry raisers and growers of veg
etables, fruits, and flowers. A Dane
will fill his dwelling with conveniences
and comforts, but he will spend twice
as much money in making a little para
dise of the land around it. And always
he must have a shady place in some
corner of his yard or garden for chairs
and a table on which he can have a
summer evening meal with his family.
These little Danish towns make one
think of Southern California where a
man spends more money in beautifying
his lot than he spends on his bungalow
and the furnishings within it. The
Danes explain the loveliness of their
town dwellings and farm homes by say
ing that the Danish masses are des
cended from landless ancestors, who
lived next to nature, hungry for long
centuries for land of their own, and
when they came into possession of it
the passion of their lives was to im
prove it and beautify it for their child-
dren and children’s children to the re
motest generation. Whatever the ex
planation, the Danish towns and farm
steads are charming.
Feeding Copenhagen
The rest of the Danes, some seven
hundred thousand in number, live in
the ancient city of Copenhagen. There
are more people in this one city than
the combined population of all the cities
and small towns of North Carolina. It
is a great local market for the products
of a little farm state— an unfailing
source of ready cash for the food-pro
ducing farmers of Denmark. Filling
the mouths of Copenhageners alone is a
trade proposition of a hundred and fif
ty million dollars a year, and the Danish
farmers get the bulk of it. The larg
est cooperative dairy in Denmark ca
ters to the Copenhagen trade in whole
milk, butter and cheese, and does not
bother to reach any other consumers.
The truck farmers of Amager, the little
island joined to the city by bridges,
trolley cars and trains, have thrived for
centuries on the appetites of Copen
hagen. They hardly know or care a-
bout any other city on earth. The same
thing is true of other farm organiza
tions and other farm territories in Den
mark.
City and Country Balance
A city of this size in North Carolina
would give our farmers a chance to
base their cash-crop farming on food
production. Lacking a chance to turn
food and feed products into instant
ready cash, our farmers have concen
trated on cotton and tobacco the only
cash-crops they know much about. And
it must always be so Cl) until the cities
of the state are more in number and
larger in size, (2) until country produc
ers and city consumers work together
to solve the problem of local markets
for home-raised food supplies, and (3)
until' our farmers learn the arts of
salesmanship in cooperative enterpris
es that reach the ends of the earth as
well as the nearby towns. Our Caro
lina cities are too few and too small to
give our farmers a fair chance at any
large volume of profits in surplus food
production. Farm producers outnumb
er city consumers more than two to one
in North Carolina. It is the other way
around in Denmark where the city con
sumers outnumber the food producers
in the ratio of three to two. It is a
safe ratio and it is likely to persist be
cause it conditions prosperitv for the
home-owning farmers and the city con
sumers alike. I have yet to hear of a
Danish farmer with a city bee in his
bonnet, ready to sell out and move into
town at the drop of anybody’s hat. The
cityward drift is a fact in Denmark as
in every other land of multiplying fac
tories—in Denmark mainly because the
holdings are too small for division a-
mong heirs, one of whom may stay on
the farm while the rest must go into
the cities, most of them into Copenha
gen or into other countries. It is for
this reason that Denmark is already
developing areas of static populations,
in Funen for instance where the cen
sus shows no increase of resident in
habitants in twenty years. The country
exodus in North Carolina and the Uni
ted States in general is produced by a
combination of very different causes.
Unless it is promptly and properly
checked, the country life of the nation
will disappear in another generation or
two. Our statesmen will be stupid to
blink this problem much longer.
Banking on the Farmers
A final word about Copenhagen—a
word that concerns its relation to the
surrounding civilization that sustains
it. It is suggested by a conversation
with the foreign credit chief of a
Landsmans Bank, the oldest and larg
est bank in the city. Upon my first
visit for money on my letter of credit,
I said to him: By token of its name
this is a farmer bank, and by the same
token every other bank in Copenhagen
is a farmer bank. Are they the coop
erative farm banks that we hear of in
America? Do the farmers own the
capital stock of these landman banks
or a majority of it? Is their business
long-term loans to farmers mainly or
short-term loans mainly to merchants,
manufacturers, and shippers?
His reply was; “Oh no, this is a com
mercial bank, not a farm bank of the
sort you have in mind. To be sure the
farmers own large blocks of stock in
all these landman banks. Their depos
its are largely farm deposits and
their securities are largely farm paper
—credit society bonds based on farm
lands, and the like. Farm collateral is a
large part of the total bank resources of
the city. There are no better securities
and the banks all know it. The land-
man banks are all farmer banks in this
sense, but their business is mainly com
mercial banking. The Andelsbanken
are the cooperative farm banks and
they are slowly but certainly develop
ing a farm business of large propor
tions. Landman is simply a popular
word in a bank name. The bankers
know that it is a word to conjure with
in Denmark. They know perfectly
well on which side of their bread the
butter is. The farmer creates much
the biggest business in Denmark and
no bank with any name is unaware of
the fact.”
So! I said. And tried impossibly to
say it as the Danes say it. I am not
surprised, i continued, tolind the bank
ers of Denmark with a sensitive finger
on the community pulse. What the
bankers do not know about the folks
and the fundamental facts of existence
everywhere is less than nothing. If
the teachers and the preachers knew as
much about this work-a-day world as
the bankers know, the levels of civili
zation might be jacked up in a jiffy.
He smiled at my youthfulness, as I bade
him good morning.—E. C. Branson,
Copenhagen. August 16, 1923.
CURRITUCK SETS PACE
Currituck, long noted principally for
ducks and sweet potatoes and for that
classic North Carolina phrase “From
Currituck to Cherokee,” has climbed
into the limelight from an entirely un
expected quarter.
This historic Tar Heel county has
undertaken to set the pace for rural
school efficiency in northeastern North
Carolina and starts right off the bat
with a record that is going to be hard
to beat or even to equal.
All the school work above the sixth
grade in Currituck will be done in two
superior junior-senior high schools,
which will be accessible to almost all
the children in the county by motor
truck. These schools will run nine
months in the year, and will make it
possible for all the children in the coun
ty to have the advantage of a high
school education which is something
that few counties in the State can boast
of.
The schools of the county have been
organized in accordance with the
standards approved by the Federal
Department of Education under the
direction of an expert from that de
partment. Country schools will run
eight months in the year.
Now watch Currituck go forward by
leaps and bounds. If one reason more
than another can be ascribed as to
why North Carolina is progressing so
rapidly in the Soath, it is her school
system.—News and Observer.