Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1940, Blaðsíða 172

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LE NORD
co-operative enterprises nor included co-operation in their curri-
culum as a subject of teaching, these various tendencies undoubt-
edly interacted in important respects to shape the general line of
development.
Another important foundation of the co-operative movement
is the tradition of collaboration, which is still to some extent alive
in the peasant population, and which dates back to the time of
the village communities when common husbandry was the form
under which the land was worked. But besides these factors there
are general aspects of the national character which must also be
taken into account. In the Danish landscape you meet no high
mountains, no deep crevasses and no rushing waterfalls, in fact
no features measured in large geographical figures. In all fields
of trade and industry the predominant unit of enterprise is of an
average normal size. In the same way the nature of the Dane is
level, accomodating, democratic and without snobbery — quali-
ties suited to facilitate fellowship and co-operation.
Similarly, general historical developments have decisively in-
fluenced the co-operative movement. A few main points from its
history will suffice to illustrate this fact. Thus, the earliest initia-
tive of a definitely co-operative nature, viz. the establishment
about the year 1850 of mortgage credit associations for the pur-
pose of supplying agriculture with ample mortgage credits, was
part of a general tendency at the time to intensify agricultural
production with a view to increasing crops, in fact it was a pre-
cursor of the industrialisation which was carried into effect be-
fore the end of the century. The special legislation applying to
credit associations, however, led to a distinction in important re-
spects between this form of organisation and that of the later co-
operative movement; hence credit associations and secondary
mortgage associations are neither generally considered institutions
of the co-operative movement nor terminologically referred to the
movement. This is in itself of importance, but it is worth em-
phasising also in view of the fact that the later co-operative enter-
prises have not to any greater extent taken up the extensive task
of organising the mortgage credit of modern Danish farming, as
this has already been done through the special credit associations.
The co-operative movement proper dates back to the year
1866 when the first co-operative store was established in Den-
mark on the model of the world’s first co-operative store in Roch-
dale in Northern England. At this time a group of socially minded
men undertook to assist the common unpropertied population by