The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe

by Booker T. Washington; Robert Ezra Park

I might add, as showing the extent to which Danish agriculture has been organized in the way I have described, that now Denmark produces about 253,000,000 pounds of butter every year. Of this amount 220,000,000 pounds come from the coöperative dairies.

Behind all other organizations which have served to increase efficiency of the farming population are the schools, particularly the rural high schools and the agricultural schools. It is generally agreed in Denmark that the coöperative organizations which have done so much for the farming population of that country could not exist if the rural high schools had not prepared the way for them.

I have described at some length, in another place, my impressions of the Danish schools, and shall not attempt to repeat here what I have said elsewhere.[5] I would like to emphasize, however, certain peculiarities about these schools that have particularly impressed me. In the first place, the schools that I visited, and, as I understand, practically all the schools that have been erected for the benefit of the rural population, are located either in the neighbourhood of the small towns or in the open country. In other words, they are close to the land and the people they are designed to help. In the second place, and this is just as true of the rural high schools, where almost no technical training is attempted, as it is of the agricultural schools, the courses have been especially worked out, after years of experiment and study, to fit the needs of the people for whom they are intended. There is no attempt to import into these schools the learning or style or methods of the city high schools or colleges. There is in fact, so far as I know, no school in existence that corresponds to or of which the Danish rural high school is in any way a copy.

In the third place, all these schools are for older pupils. The ages of the students range from sixteen to twenty-four years, and, in addition to the regular courses, conferences and short courses for the older people have been established, as is the case with many of the Negro industrial schools in the South. In fact, everything possible is done to wed the work in the school to the life and work on the land.

Finally, and this seems to me quite as important as anything else, these schools, like the coöperative societies to which I have referred, have grown up as the result of private initiative. The high schools had their origin in a popular movement begun more than fifty years ago by Nicola Frederik Severin Grundvig, a great religious reformer, who is sometimes referred to as the Luther of Denmark.

Denmark was at this time almost in despair. England in the course of the war with Napoleon had destroyed the Danish fleet, and later, in 1864, Germany had taken from Denmark two of her best provinces and one third of her territory. Grundvig believed that the work of reconstructing and regenerating Denmark must begin at the bottom. He preached the doctrine that what Denmark had lost without she must regain within, and, with this motto, he set to work to develop the neglected resources of the country—namely, those which were in the people themselves.

The work begun by Grundvig has been taken up and carried on in the same spirit by those who have followed him. The results of this movement show themselves in every department of life in Denmark—in the rapid increase of Danish exports and in the healthy democratic spirit of the whole Danish population. The Danish people are probably the best educated and best informed people in Europe. This is not simply my impression; it is that of more experienced travellers than myself.

On my way from Copenhagen to London I fell in with an English gentleman who was just returning from five weeks of study and observation of farming conditions in Denmark. From him I was able to obtain a great many interesting details which confirmed my own impressions.

He told me, I remember, that he had noticed in the cottage of a peasant, a man who did not farm more than four or five acres of land, copies of at least four periodicals to which he was a regular subscriber.