Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 92, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 April 1910 — NO WORRY IN DENMARK. [ARTICLE]

NO WORRY IN DENMARK.

Problem of Coat of lilvlng Settled There Long Ago, A little neck of land In the Baltic sea, about the size of Maryland, supports an agricultural population equal to that of kebraska and the two Dakotas. Yet an American fanner would pass by the soil and climate of Denmark as being unsuited for agriculture. The problem of the cost of living, which means the elimination of waste, was an Issue in Denmark when Daniel Boone was hunting buffalo in Kentucky, writes Milo Hastings. So the Danes, realizing that society left to itself becomes a game where one man draws a chalk mark on the sidewalk and charges the rest of the crowd for the privilege of walking across, took early measures for the establishment of co-operative marketing of farm produce. The Danish oon«nwier. goes no t worry about the food trust or middlemen, for the creameries, eggeries and packing houses are co-operative, and

if tne price of food is too high the farmer is the only one to blame. Under tliifl regime Danish food exports have grown from practically nothing forty years ago, until now the little country sends to England every year nearly a hundred mlllloh dollars worth of butter, eggs and bacon. That a country more densely populated than New England should export large quantities of foodstuffs la a condition hardly conceivable to the American who realizes that if railroad connections west of Buffalo were shut off we would have bread riots from Portland, Me., to Jacksonville, Fla. Another good thing In Denmark is the custom of taxing and selling land by the “Hartkorn,” which is a unit of productivity rather than of area. This productivity of the land is reappraised every five years, and is the basis of all legal and popular estimates of land value. Such a custom should interest a public that for two generations has accepted a homestead law which places 160 acres of Florida celery land (sufficient to support the members of the United States Senate and their familes) upon a par with a quarter section in eastern Colorado, where a goat would require a motorcycle to glean a living.