The news in this publi
cation is released tor the
press on receipts
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
NEWS LETTER
Published Weekly by the
University of North Caro
lina for the University Ex
tension Division.
JULY 16, 1924
CHAPEL HILL, N. C.
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTHICAHOLINA PRESS
VOL. X, NO. 35
Editorial Board, B. C. Bratigoii. 3. H. Hobbl. Jr.. L. R. Wllsoii, B. W, EniKbt. D. D. Carroll. J. B.BallItt. H. W. Odom.
Entered aa Beeend-elaaa matter Nevember 14.1914, at the PsateSceat Chapel Hill, N. C.. nnder the aetef Aofftut 24, 1111
COOPERATION VS. COMMUNISM
XXXI-COOPEHATION VS. COMMUNISM IN DENMARK
On an August evening in 1923 I
had a chance to study at close range
the humor and attitudes of the Copen
hageners. I stood with a great crowd
in the city hall square, a four-acre
space in the heart of the city, and
listened to the speeches of welcome to
the Soviet International Trade Delega
tion from Moscow. By my side stood
an English-speaking Dane who passed
on to me the pith of the addresses and
responses. Communism apparently
gets a hearty welcome in Denmark, I
said as I listened to the eulogies of
Trotsky and Lenin by the Russian com
munists. Meanwhile we were moving
into cafe seats on the sidewalk of the
Palace hotel fronting the square.
A Dane Discourses on DenmarH
Oh well, said he, Denmark is ar
open forum for every variety of opinion,
Any speaker may say anywhere ir
Denmark anything he pleases as freely
as the soap-box orator on Tower Hill
or around the Marble Arch in London.
The Danes like the English, he went on
to say, are assertive, argumentative
chaps, but they expect to settle issues
with ballots and not with bullets. They
do not believe in revolution, they be
lieve in orderly progress—in evolution,
if you please to use that term. Of
course, the Soviet orators can get a
hearing in Copenhagen or almost any
where else in Denmark. They may
orate and organize all they please
without let or hindrance. There is a
communist element in Copenhagen, a
communist party, and communistnews-
papers, but they probably signify less
in Denmark than anywere else in Eu
rope. And don't forget as you look at
this crowd that the Copenhageners are
newsmongers drawn together by curi
osity like the Athenians of old to hear
any news or to consider any strange
thing whatsoever. This crowd isn't
communist, it is mainly curious. In
the very nature of things the commun
ists are a small party in Copenhagen and
communism is an even smaller matter
in Denmark.' Our discussion of Danish
racial traits, institutions, and agencies
went far into the small hours of the
morning.
1 came over on an English boat in
ship’s company of Americans, said I.
What on earth are you going to Little
Denmark for? was a question frequent
ly speired at me. I am going, was
my response, for the sole purpose of
studying a cooperative commonwealth
at the closest possible range. Where
upon the usual inquiry was. But coop
eration is socialism, isn't it? or com
munism or some other ism that we
ought to hate and fight and suppress
if possible in America? At least that
is the way we feel about it in big-busi
ness circles at home. Upon this prov
ocation my Danish friend squared
himself for the first monologue of the
evening.
The Antidote for Communism
Ciioperation in Denmark is not social
ism, said he, nor communism nor any
thing else of the sort. Cooperation is
precisely the opposite of communism—
not only the opposite but the antidote.
Danish cooperators hold fast to the
sacred rights of private property own
ership. They would fight to the last
ditch for the right to do what they
please with themselves and their own,
but the Danish farmers have sense
enough to know with your Ben Frank
lin that if they do not all hang together
they will all hang separate. No argu
ment is needed to convince a Dane that
a bundle of twigs is stronger than any
single twig, or that a rope is many
times stronger than any single fiber of
it. They believe in massing their little
sums of private capital, in pooling their
chances, in taking charge of their own
enterprises, in learning to the last syl
lable the devices of business and the
intricate details of trade practice. They
have learned to choose the best man in
the group for the business-end of their
enterprises and they watch him, trust
him, and back him to the limit. But
every farm cooperation no matter what
its nature is firmly based upon home
and farm ownership, on the private
ownership of property in general, on
private initiative and private enter
prise. Our cooperative groups demand
and receive legal sanctions and legal
protection on the basis of equal rights
for all businesses and special privileges
for none. Corporations and coopera
tions enjoy equal rights to live and
thrive in Denmark. These two forms
of business organization have learned
to work in collusion, and they are
rarely ever betrayed into collision. The
Danish farmers are as fundamentally
individual as the Americans, but their
individualism has been tempered and
disciplined by the life-and-death neces
sity for cooperation. You must re
member that it was in the dark days of
our country that the individualistic
Danes began to develop the temper,
the virtues, and the practices of group
effort.
In contrast, the Russian communist
does not believe in the rights of private
property ownership or in private mer
chandizing, mining, manufacturing,
transportation, or banking. Natural
resources, capital wealth and produc
ing enterprises are the property of the
state alone or so the Soviets say. They
believe in the nationalization of land,
in leasehold rights and not in fee sim
ple deeds to homes and farms. The
Danes are firmly convinced that lease
hold rights will not forever satisfy the
peasants, and that the next revolution
in Russia will be fought for the free
hold possession of the homes and farms
they now occupy but do not own. Farm
cooperation, as you doubtless know,
had made spectacular progress in Russia
before the revolution. The Russian
cooperators still preserve their organi
zations but they are everywhere taxed,
robbed and harassed beyond endurance,
and not even the Russian peasants will
forever suffer persecution wi,thout re
volt. It may be long delayed but in the
end it is as certain as death. The doom
of communism lies in the passion of
human nature for home and farm
ownership and in the right of property
owners to use their own in freedom.
State Socialism in DenmarH
The Danes believe in th^ pooling of
private capital, and in*'the private
management of producing businesses,
corporate or cooperative as the groups
may choose. They emphatically do not
believe any more than you believe in
America in the state ownership and
operation of business enterprises. Den
mark is however a little country and
we are undoubtedly moving faster than
America into state ownership and
operation of businesses that fundamen
tally concern the common weal—
that affect the public interest, as the
phrase goes on your side of the Atlan
tic. We believe with Edmund Burke
that the state can and ought to do
whatever it can do better than local
groups or private organizations. For
instance, your federal .government
operates the postal service and even
the parcels post. So do the Danes. The
American states believe in taking over
almost the entire burden of public edu
cation. So do the Danes. But we do
not go as far in this matter as the
people of any state in America. For
instance, you have state high school
systems practically everywhere, but we
have no state high school system in
Denmark. We have high schools, prob
ably aa many as you have and probably
they are just as good, but our2 high
school education of every type is left
to community pride and local tax
willingness—to the free self-determ
ination of local communities. They pay
the high-school bills and they must
have Latin schools, farm schools, folk
high schools, trade schools, what not,
just as they choose.
Cooperative Democracy
State-Operated postal service and
state-supported public schools are
forms of state socialism but they
frighten us as little as they frighten
the people of America. The state of
Denmark takes over and operates its
own railroads, telephone andjtelegraph
lines, but it leaves public highways to
local pride, local effort, and local sup
port. The Danes believe in supporting
civic and social enterprises, as far as it
humanly possible, by volunteer
contributions, by friendly societies or
N. C. CLUB YEAR-BOOK
The Year-Book of the North Ca
rolina Club for the year 1922-23 is
off the press. The title of the book
is What Next in North Carolina.
The subjects treated are as follows:
1. The Boll Weevil and a Re-Or
ganized Agriculture.
2. Country Community Life and
Cooperative Farm Enterprise.
3. Cooperative Marketing.
4. State Aid to Home Ownership.
5. State Aid to Farm Ownership
in North Carolina.
6. Farm Ownership in North Ca
rolina.
7. County-Wide Library Service.
8. The Taxation of Corporation
Stocks in North Carolina.
9. Taxation of Stock in North Ca
rolina Corporations.
30. Labor, Capital, and the Public
in North Carolina.
11. Preventing Labor Troubles.
12. Primary Reforms in North Ca
rolina.
13. The Retention and Accumula
tion of Wealth by Farmers.
14. A Four-Year Medical School
and Teaching Hospital for North
Carolina.
16. School Consolidation and the
County Unit System.
The edition of the Year-Book is
small. Copies will be sent free of
charge to North Carolinians apply
ing in time. The cost to others will
be $1.00 postpaid. If you want a
copy please send your request to ihe
Department of Rural Social Eco
nomics, Chapel Hill, N. C.
fraternal orders as you call them, by
dinner-plate clubs, and by local tax
rates. We believe in laying the small
est possible burden upon the state
treasury. Nursing personal pride,
community pride, community activity,
and community purse-willingness to the
last possible degree is a state-wide
feature of Danish life. We deliberate
ly adopt a state attitude and policy
of this sort, and every municipality re
lieves its own treasury in exactly the
same way. For instance, any man or
woman who has honorably reached the
age of seventy years receives an an
nual old-age pension of seventy dollars
from the state treasury; but the old-
age homes are a local matter. These
homes are all over Denmark and there
are no better institutions of their sort
anywhere in the world. But the state
pensions are small, therefore themuni-
palities increase it a little out of their
own treasuries. Before the old-age
alumni of any community are settled
down for the rest of their lives in love
ly comfortable surroundings the private
social organizations of the various
communities have voluntarily taxed
themselves more heavily than the
state and municipalities have done. In
England old-age pensions are entirely
a state expense; they are on a con
tributory basis in Denmark. And the
same thing is true of the various forms
of social insurance. Part of the fund
comes out of the state treasury, part out
of the profits of employers, and part
out of the weekly wages of the workers.
On the other hand the state of Den
mark establishes and supports all sorts
of institutions for liberal learning,
technical training and research. The
state trains executives and leaders for
every type of economic and social
organization, but the salaries and ex
penses of these public servants are paid
in the main out of local public treasuries
re-enforced by the private contribu
tions of generous individuals and groups
devoted to this or that particular social
purpose. It recognizes the efficiency of
this or that private agency and makes
it a semi-official body in the state
system, but whatever it does, it lays
the least possible burden on the state
treasury. The burden of support and
activity falls upon the generosity of
individuals, local agencies and local tax
treasuries.
We understand perfectly well that
when a state undertakes to be some
thing more than a big policeman busy
with the problems of law and order and
begins to move over into the field of civic
services, the ^supporting funds must be
enormously increased. We believe
that these burdens of support ought to
fall least of all on the state treasury
and most of all upon local treasuries,
local organizations, and private bene
ficence. Denmark has gone far
social-civic services to its people—in
the state ownership and operation
of transportation and communication
facilities, in public education and public
health, in old-age pensions, working
men’s compensation, mothers’ aid,
maternity pensions, social insurance
and the like. But wherever it is possi
ble, these enterprises are based on
cooperation between the state and
local governments, on cooperation be
tween local governments and private or
ganizations—churches, fraternal socie
ties, and social-work organizations; and
on cooperation between private organi
zations and their individual members.
And more, every member is encouraged
to give himself with his gift to the
particular purpose of his organization.
In other words, Denmark is a common
wealth based on cooperation, economic,
social, and civic, with the result that
greater attention is given to the social
ills of Denmark and given in more de
tail than in any other country of the
world. So because the sense of local re
sponsibility and private initiative is pre
served and developed to the limit. Each
community believes that its own social
problems are first of all its own prob-
ems and that each community is
charged most of all with solving these
problems without calling upon the state
treasury for anything the community
can do for itself.
Bureaucracy and Bankruptcy
munism, it is cooperation, and the two
are as far apart as the poles.
In all my wanderings about Denmark,
I never once chanced upon a Dane
whose mind was overly busy with
church dogmas and''religiou8 theories.
Apparently the chapter of The Book
that has most impressed the Danes is
Matthew twenty-five. At all events
he would be a stupid observer who
missed the fact that the Danes are
bent on making “this dirty little spot
in space that men call earth’’ a cleaner
place for children to be born into, a
safer place for boys and girls to grow
up in, a happier ^lace for men and
women to work in, and a happier place
for departing saints to look back upon.
Religion in Denmark is cooperation,
and cooperation is religion. It is not a
periodic phrenzy but a placid work-a-
day faith and practice. The Danes be
lieve—really believe—with Saint Paul
that they are members one of another
and all members of one body. Base
dow’s doctrine of All for each and each
for all, meant little in Holland but it
means everything in Denmark. Such
are the fruits of cooperation in busi
ness effort, social life, and civic ser
vice.
Cooperation as the Danes have real
ized it is the farthest possible remove
from sovietism, for the soviet is the
last word in occupational organization
for class advantage. We have no end of
occupational organizations in America
for group advantage alone, and such
organizations, no matter what we call
If you do not adopt some such princi- | them, are soviets. The Russians have
pie as this in America you will at last
find two perplexities confronting you:
(1) bankruptcy in your public treasu
ries, and (2) the immense multiplication
of state and federal officials doing in
home communities what the home com
munities could very much better do for
themselves. I understand, said he,
that already one of every twelve voters
in the United States is a federal, state,
county, or city official of some sort.
Denmark isn’t rich enough to pay such a
bill, and not even your own rich country
will be able to pay it in a few years.
The multiplication of public officials—
what the French call fonctionnaires—is
a tremendous problem in France to
day- It is government by bureaucrats,
and bureaucracy in Spain and Italy
haunts these two countries like a ghost
day and night. In Denmark we are
trying to side-step these two menacing
ills of modern civilization. And we be
lieve we are doing so without neglect
ing any of the essential social problems
of a wholesome civilization. We think
we are developing a civilization based
on private property ownership, on self'
regulated individualism, on the com
radeships of cooperation, on personal
and community responsibility, and on
local community pride. We do not be
lieve in a centralization of authority.
We believe in the universal diffusion of
social responsibilities, opportunities,
and rewards.
I am faithfully reporting what per
haps was the longest speech this diffi
dent Dane ever delivered and I am re
porting it in some detail because it
throws light on Denmark as a coopera
tive commonwealth. These sanely bal
anced Danes are safely threading a
maze in which almost every other coun
try of the world is bewildered or lost.
They are not falling into heartless in
dividualism on the one hand or into de
structive socialism on the other.
As we bade each other good night I
felt sure that Denmark would side-step
communism and most of the other isms
that perplex and affright the world to
day, and that the fundamental good
sense of the Danes would preserve their
civilization long after other countries
in Europe had disappeared in political
conflagrations.
I moved along to my pensionnat un
der the eaves of the State University
wondering if we would ever solve our
public welfare problems in North Ca
rolina without county welfare boards
and comtnunity councils busy in their
own bailiwicks helping the state offi
cials in the myriad details of social ser
vice. And also, whether a cotton or a
tobacco growers central in Raleigh
could weather the inevitable storms of
farm business without local groups bent
on learning the principles and intricate
details of cooperative effort, busy
teaching cooperation to their neigh
bors, and good humoredly but grimly
screwing their courage to the sticking
place. Work of this sort is not com-
merely given us a new name for a very
old fact in American history. We shud
der at the name but we tolerate the
fact. To make democracy safe in a
harassed world means to give to every
citizen freedom to do his best for the
common welfare and the will to use
that freedom with energy, says Charles
W. Eliot. The Danes are doing this
very thing, and we need to get busier
at this task in my own state and coun
try.—E. C. Branson, Copenhagen.
THE BEST THING
A Cherryville school teacher, some
time ago, asked her pupils what they
regarded as the best and most valua
ble thing in this community. The
children wrinkled their brows, looked
perplexed, and some of them answered
the question. But they were all wide
of the mark.
The teacher indicated the answers
were wrong as each pupil made his or
her supreme effort to find the correct
answer to the knotty problem. Finally
the teacher, when they were all ex
pectant and very much excited over
what really was the best thing in this
community, told them that they them
selves were the best and most valua
ble.
It was somewhat of a jolt for little
folks, especially those with a keen
imagination, who had conjured up many
wonderful things. The teacher’s an
swer brought them back to earth, but
it gave them a sense of their importance
in the world.
It should also give every person liv
ing in the community, regardless of
whether they have children in the
public schools, something to think
about, when we think along lines of
community development.
For we cannot build for the future
any better than by making better boys
and girls who will become better men
and women and make this a better com
munity in the next generation.
We can build for the future, not
alone by teaching children at home how
to live right, but by supporting the
teacher, the school authorities, and the
whole public school system to the best
of our ability and to the limit of our
means.
We cannot hope for our community
to rise any higher in the future than
our public school system.—Cherryville
Eagle.
ONE OF THE BEST
The report of Dr. L. R. Wilson of the
University Library reveals that this li
brary has become one of the leading
university libraries of the country. It
is included for the first time in the list
of the leading 32 libraries of the coun
try whose statistics are annually made
the subject of special consideration in
library and educational periodicals.