Want is practically unknown in Denmark outside the slums of Copenhagen. The condition of the common people has steadily improved since the beginning of the nineteenth century, when nearly all the land was in the hands of the nobility; at the present time, six-sevenths is owned by the peasants. While this change has been going on, another, of even greater significance, has taken place. Improved methods of cultivation, in the course of a hundred years, have multiplied the productive power of the land by ten, which is equivalent to increasing tenfold the available area of the kingdom. No nation, except the United States and Canada, has in recent times had such agricultural prosperity.[139] [139] Bille, _History of the Danes in America_, 8 n2, summarizing H. Weitemeyer, _Denmark_, 100. As already noted, the activity of the Mormon missionaries drew off into the wilderness of Utah nearly 2000 Danes between 1850 and 1860, and nearly 5000 more in the next decade. In the two Prussian duchies after 1866, the discontent of Danes who preferred emigration to German rule drove a large number to the United States; and as these were far from being sympathizers with Mormonism, they found homes in the middle west. Settlements sprang up after 1870 in Wisconsin, at Racine; in Iowa, at Elk Horn in Shelby County and in the adjoining counties of Audubon and Pottawatomie; and in Douglas County (Omaha), Nebraska, just across the line from Pottawatomie County, Iowa. It should be noted in this connection that all the Danish settlements save those in Utah, were well within the frontier line, and hence are not to be classed as pioneering work, for which the Danes have shown little inclination.