Page 4 Advertisements Column 4

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 57, 29 August 1911, Page 4

IP ENGLAND WERE DENMARK! Mr. Rider Haggard, the well-known novelist, is a great believer in peasant proprietorship, and is liveliest in preaching its advantages to British agriculturalists. In "Rural Denmark and its Lessons," he says:—"Let us suppose that a few generations ago a new Danish invasion of England had taken place, and that the East Anglian and some adjoining counties had been re-populated, or were dominated, by Danes, as happened in the days of King Canute. In that event what would be the agricultural condition of those counties at the present time? By the working of the Danish laws of inheritance, and of the general customs and instincts of that people, the large estates would be broken up into much smaller holdings. All the fen and other suitable lands would be divided among a multitude of little freeholders, or perhaps of State tenants holding perpetual lease. In every country town would be seen the tall chimneys of the butter, sugar-beet and bacon factories; and in every city great cooperative milk-distributing companies would be established. Dotted about the countryside would appear more, many more, farmsteads than are to be found to-day, each of them the residence of a small landholder. In every one of these houses and in a great number of the small-holders' cottages the telephone would be installed. Also every village of more than a certain size would be lit by electric light, as in Denmark—no small boon in the long winter season. The great cottage question, too, now so insoluble, would have been met by the erection, with the aid of co-operative building societies, of a sufficient number of wholesome and suitable dwellings, most of which would be owned by their occupiers. The railways would belong to' the Government', and carry' passengers and goods at about one-half of the present rates. The general prevalence of co-operation would have brought into existence great numbers of local societies, large and small, thus favoring intercourse and mutual trust between man and man. Corn-growing would still be practised to a considerable extent, especially upon the heavy lands to which it is naturally adapted; but the number of cows and horned stock, and also of pigs, that were kept would be visited fortnightly, not by a Government inspector, but by a skilled person, probably a woman highly trained in the State colleges, who would test its milk, prescribe the exact proportions of the food it should receive, and if it were sick, how it would be treated. Moreover, there would be hospitals to which ailing beasts could be sent for a small fee. In the towns not far from the factories would stand the high schools, to which young men and women would flock to complete the edu-. cation that thev had begun in the State elementary and secondary schools."