CHAPTER XVII THE ORGANIZATION OF COUNTRY LIFE IN DENMARK
In Europe the man whose situation most nearly corresponds to that of the Negro in the Southern States is the peasant. I had seen pictures of peasants before I went to Europe, but I confess that I was very hazy as to what a peasant was. I knew that he was a small farmer, like the majority of the Negro farmers in the Southern States, and that, like the Negro farmer again, he had in most cases descended from a class that had at one time been held in some sort of subjection to the large landowners, the difference being that, whereas the peasant had been a serf, the Negro farmer had been a slave.
In regard to the present position of the peasant in the life about him, in regard to his manner of living, his opportunities and ambitions, I had but the vaguest sort of an idea. The pictures which I had seen were not reassuring in this regard. The picture which made the deepest impression upon my mind was that of a heavy, stupid, half-human looking creature, standing in the midst of a desolate field. The mud and the clay were clinging to him and he was leaning on a great, heavy, wrought-iron hoe, such as were formerly used by the Negro slaves. This picture represented about my idea of a peasant.
In the course of my journey through Italy and through Austria-Hungary I saw a number of individuals who reminded me of this and other pictures of peasants that I can recall. I saw, as I have already said, peasant women sleeping, like tired animals, in the city streets; I saw others living in a single room with their cattle; at one time I entered a little cottage and saw the whole family eating out of a single bowl. In Sicily I found peasants living in a condition of dirt, poverty, and squalor almost beyond description. But everywhere I found among these people, even the lowest, individuals who, when I had an opportunity to talk with them, invariably displayed an amount of shrewd, practical wisdom, kindly good nature, and common sense that reminded me of some of the old Negro farmers with whom I am acquainted at home. It is very curious what a difference it makes in the impression that a man makes upon you if you stop and shake hands with him, instead of merely squinting at him critically in order to take a cold sociological inventory of his character and condition.
Some of the pleasantest recollections I have of Europe are the talks I had, through an interpreter, of course, with some of these same ignorant but hard-working, sometimes barefoot, but always kindly peasants. The result was that long before I had completed my journey I had ceased to take some of the pictures of peasants I had seen literally. I discovered that the artist whose pictures had made so deep an impression upon me had sought to compress into the figure of a single individual the misery and wretchedness of a whole class; that he had tried, also, to bring to the surface and make visible in his picture all the hardships and the degradation which the casual observer does not see, perhaps does not want to see.
It was not until I reached Denmark, however, that I began to feel that I had really begun to know the European peasant, because it was not until I reached that country that I saw what the possibilities of the peasant were. Before this I had seen a man who was struggling up under the weight of ignorance and the remains of an ancient oppression. In Denmark, however, this man has come to his own. Peasants already own a majority of the land. Three fourths of the farms are in their hands and the number of small farms is steadily increasing. In Denmark the peasant, as a certain gentleman whom I met there observed, is not only free, but he rules. The peasant is the leader in everything that relates to the progress of agriculture. The products of the coöperative dairies, the coöperative egg-collecting and pork-packing societies, organized and controlled by the peasants, bring in the markets of the world higher prices than similar products from any other country in Europe.
The peasants are now the controlling influence in the Danish Parliament. When I was there half the members of the ministry in power were peasants, and half the members of the cabinet were either peasants or peasants' sons.