THE SUBURBAN FARM.
The connecting link between the City Colony and the Country Colony will
be the Suburban Farm. Situated conveniently near to the largest cities,
it will serve many important purposes.
1. It will form the channel, or outlet, by which the agricultural
portion of the labor overflow in the cities will make its way back to
the country. In fact, it will constitute a sort of sluice which will in
time act with the same regularity and ease as those which are attached
to any reservoir of water, directing to the most needy places, and
distributing without waste, those very waters which if uncontrolled
would sweep everything before them as a devastating flood.
2. It will at the same time find a ready market in the city, not only
for its own produce, but for that of the other branches of the country
colony, with which it would be in constant and close communication.
3. It will supply the city with wholesome and unadulterated dairy
produce, together with the best fruits and vegetables, at the ordinary
market rates. These could be disposed of either wholesale to city
merchants, or by moans of stalls in the various markets, or we could
undertake to retail them in connection with our Household Salvage
Brigade. The Suburban Farm would consist of, say, from fifty to five
hundred acres of land in the immediate neighbourhood of a city. It would
combine three or more separate departments.
1. _The Dairy._ Buffaloes and cows would be given us by friends,
besides being purchased and reared by us, in large numbers. To tend
them, milk them, prepare the ghee, cream and butter, and to convey it
all to town, would find employment for a large number of the Submerged
Tenth.
2. The _Market Garden_ would employ a still larger number. Bananas grow
quickly in all parts of India, and with them we could make an immediate
beginning, introducing from different districts the best species.
Sugar-cane and other popular native products would receive special
attention, and where the European population in the neighbourhood was
sufficiently numerous we could include the cultivation of such fruits
and vegetables as would be liked by them. In the case of seaport towns
we should no doubt do a large business with the steamers in the harbour,
as for instance, in Bombay, Colombo, or Calcutta.
3. We should probably at an early period transfer some of the industrial
brigades enumerated in Chapter VI to our Suburban Farm. In doing this
there would be several obvious advantages:
(a) We should have more elbow room for them on the Farm, than in the
Labor Yards, where land would be so expensive that we should be
obliged to crowd everything into the smallest possible compass,
both in regard to work sheds and sleeping accommodation.
(b) In removing them from the contaminating influences of city life,
we should be able to exercise a more personal and powerful influence
upon these members of the Submerged Tenth and should stand a far
better chance of effectively carrying out that spiritual and moral
regeneration, without which we reckon that any mere temporal
reformation would be ineffective and evanescent.
(c) We should prevent our labor yards from getting gorged, and would
keep them within manageable dimensions. At the same time that we
should cope more effectively with all existing distress.
(d) The Suburban Farm being closely connected with other portions of
our Country Colony, we should be able to use the latter to relieve
it in case of its becoming in turn overcrowded by the influx from
the City.
(e) It would thus form a natural stepping-stone to the Industrial
Village, which we have next to describe.