Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

210V. I. LENINwe learn only that in the group of “day-labourers”, etc.,there are 60,000 men and 56,000 women, i.e., 116,000 outof a total of 972,000 of the rural population distributedaccording to occupation. As to whether these tens of thousandsof wage-workers (and in addition to them smallpeasants do “by work” for hire) are employed exclusivelyby the 30,000 big capitalist farmers (27,620 owning from40 to 120 hectares and 2,201 owning over 120 hectares each),or whether some of them are also employed by the wellto-dopeasants owning from 10 to 40 hectares, we have noinformation.Of the two highest groups, the upper Thirty Thousandof Danish agriculture, there is little to say: the capitalistcharacter of their agriculture and livestock farming is graphicallyillustrated by the figures quoted at the beginning.Finally, the last data of general interest touched uponand partly analysed in Danish agricultural statistics arethose relating to the question whether the development oflivestock farming, that main foundation of the “prosperity”of the “ideal country”, is accompanied by a process of decentralisationor concentration. The statistics for 1898,already quoted by us, provide extremely interesting datacompared with those for 1893; and for one type of livestock,the most important, it is true, namely, total cattle, we canalso make a comparison between the figures for 1876 and1898.Between 1893 and 1898 the branch of livestock farmingwhich made most progress in Denmark was pig breeding.In this period the number of pigs increased from 829,000 to1,168,000, or by 40 per cent, while the number of horsesincreased only from 410,000 to 449,000, of cattle from1,696,000 to 1,744,000, and the number of sheep even diminished.Who reaped the main benefits of this tremendousprogress of the Danish farmers, united in innumerable cooperativesocieties? The compilers of the 1898 statisticsanswer this by comparing the returns for 1893 and 1898.All the pig-owners are divided into four groups: big ownershaving 50 and more pigs; medium-big owners with from 15to 49; medium-small owners with from 4 to 14; and smallowners with from 1 to 3 pigs. The compilers give the followingfigures for these four groups: