THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE--(_continued_).
Extension of market-gardening and fruit growing: in France;
in the United States--Culture under glass--Kitchen gardens
under glass--Hothouse culture: in Guernsey and Jersey: in
Belgium--Conclusion.
One of the most interesting features of the present evolution
of agriculture is the extension lately taken by intensive
market-gardening of the same sort as has been described in the
third chapter. What formerly was limited to a few hundreds of small
gardens, is now spreading with an astonishing rapidity. In this
country the area given to market-gardens, after having more than
doubled within the years 1879 to 1894, when it attained 88,210 acres,
has continued steadily to increase.[98] But it is especially in
France, Belgium, and America that this branch of culture has lately
taken a great development. (See Appendix P.)
At the present time no less than 1,075,000 acres are given in France
to market-gardening and intensive fruit culture, and a few years ago
it was estimated that the _average_ yield of every acre given to
these cultures attains £33, 10s.[99] Their character, as well as the
amount of skill displayed in, and labour given to, these cultures,
will best appear from the following illustrations.
About Roscoff, which is a great centre in Brittany for the export to
England of such potatoes as will keep till late in summer, and of
all sorts of vegetables, a territory, twenty-six miles in diameter,
is entirely given to these cultures, and the rents attain and exceed
£5 per acre. Nearly 300 steamers call at Roscoff to ship potatoes,
onions and other vegetables to London and different English ports, as
far north as Newcastle. Moreover, as much as 4,000 tons of vegetables
are sent every year to Paris.[100] And although the Roscoff peninsula
enjoys a specially warm climate, small stone walls are erected
everywhere, and rushes are grown on their tops in order to give still
more protection and heat to the vegetables.[101] The climate is
improved as well as the soil.
In the neighbourhoods of Cherbourg it is upon land conquered from
the sea that the best vegetables are grown--more than 800 acres of
that land being given to potatoes exported to London; another 500
acres are given to cauliflower; 125 acres to Brussels sprouts; and
so on. Potatoes grown under glass are also sent to the London market
from the middle of April, and the total export of vegetables from
Cherbourg to England attains 300,000 cwts., while from the small port
of Barfleur another 100,000 cwts. are sent to this country, and about
60,000 cwts. to Paris. Nay, in a quite small commune, Surtainville,
near Cherbourg, £2,800 are made out of 180 acres of market-gardens,
three crops being taken every year: cabbage in February, early
potatoes next, and various crops in the autumn--to say nothing of the
catch crops.
At Plougastel one hardly believes that he is in Brittany. Melons used
to be grown at that spot, long since, in the open fields, with glass
frames to protect them from the spring frost, and green peas were
grown under the protection of rows of furze which sheltered them from
the northern winds. Now, whole fields are covered with strawberries,
roses, violets, cherries and plums, down to the very sea beach.[102]
Even the _landes_ are reclaimed, and we are told that in five years
or so there will be no more _landes_ in that district (p. 265). Nay,
the marshes of the Dol--“The Holland of Brittany”--protected from the
sea by a wall (5,050 acres), have been turned into market-gardens,
covered with cauliflowers, onions, radishes, haricot beans and so on,
the acre of that land being rented at from £2, 10s. to £4.
The neighbourhoods of Nantes could also be mentioned. Green peas are
cultivated there on a very large scale. During the months of May and
June quite an army of working people, especially women and children,
are picking them. The roads leading to the great preserving factories
are covered at certain hours with rows of carts, upon which the
peas and onions are carted one way, while another row of carts are
carrying the empty pods which are used for manure. For two months the
children are missing in the schools; and in the peasant families of
the neighbourhood, when the question comes about some expenditure to
be made, the usual saying is, “Wait till the season of the green peas
has come.”
About Paris no less than 50,000 acres are given to the field culture
of vegetables and 25,000 acres to the forced culture of the same.
Sixty years ago the yearly rent paid by market-gardeners attained
already as much as £18 and £24 per acre, and yet it has been
increased since, as well as the gross receipts, which were valued by
Courtois Gérard at £240 per acre for the larger market-gardeners,
and twice as much for the smaller ones in which early vegetables are
grown in frames.
The fruit culture in the neighbourhoods of Paris is equally
wonderful. At Montreuil, for instance, 750 acres, belonging to 400
gardeners, are literally covered with stone walls, specially erected
for growing fruit, and having an aggregate length of 400 miles.
Upon these walls, peach trees, pear trees and vines are spread, and
every year something like 12,000,000 peaches are gathered, as well
as a considerable amount of the finest pears and grapes. The acre
in such conditions brings in £56. This is how a “warmer climate”
was made, at a time when the greenhouse was still a costly luxury.
All taken, 1,250 acres are given to peaches (25,000,000 peaches
every year) in the close neighbourhood of Paris. Acres and acres
are also covered with pear trees which yield three to five tons of
fruit per acre, such crop being sold at from £50 to £60. Nay, at
Angers, on the Loire, where pears are eight days in advance of the
suburbs of Paris, Baltet knows an orchard of five acres, covered with
pears (pyramid trees), which brings in £400 every year; and at a
distance of thirty-three miles from Paris one pear plantation brings
in £24 per acre--the cost of package, transport and selling being
deducted. Likewise, the plantations of plums, of which 80,000 cwts.
are consumed every year at Paris alone, give an annual money income
of from £29 to £48 per acre every year; and yet, pears, plums and
cherries are sold at Paris, fresh and juicy, at such a price that the
poor, too, can eat fresh home-grown fruit.
In the province of Anjou one may see how a heavy clay, improved with
sand taken from the Loire and with manure, has been turned, in the
neighbourhoods of Angers, and especially at Saint Laud, into a soil
which is rented at from £2, 10s. to £5 the acre, and upon that soil
fruit is grown which a few years ago was exported to America.[103]
At Bennecour, a quite small village of 850 inhabitants, near Paris,
one sees what man can make out of the most unproductive soil. Quite
recently the steep slopes of its hills were only _mergers_ from which
stone was extracted for the pavements of Paris. Now these slopes
are entirely covered with apricot and cherry trees, black-currant
shrubs, and plantations of asparagus, green peas and the like. In
1881, £5,600 worth of apricots alone was sold out of this village,
and it must be borne in mind that competition is so acute in the
neighbourhoods of Paris that a delay of twenty-four hours in
the sending of apricots to the market will often mean a loss of
8s.--one-seventh of the sale price on each hundred-weight.[104]
At Perpignan, green artichokes--a favourite vegetable in France--are
grown, from October till June, on an area covering 2,500 acres, and
the net revenue is estimated at £32 per acre. In Central France,
artichokes are even cultivated in the open fields, and nevertheless
the crops are valued (by Baltet) at from £48 to £100 per acre. In
the Loiret, 1,500 gardeners, who occasionally employ 5,000 workmen,
obtain from £400,000 to £480,000 worth of vegetables, and their
yearly expenditure for manure is £60,000. This figure alone is the
best answer to those who are fond of talking about the extraordinary
fertility of the soil, each time they are told of some success
in agriculture. At Lyons, a population of 430,000 inhabitants is
entirely supplied with vegetables by the local gardeners. The same
is in Amiens, which is another big industrial city. The districts
surrounding Orléans form another great centre for market-gardening,
and it is especially worthy of notice that the shrubberies of Orléans
supply even America with large quantities of young trees.[105]
It would take, however, a volume to describe the chief centres of
market-gardening and fruit-growing in France; and I will mention
only one region more, where vegetables and fruit-growing go hand in
hand. It lies on the banks of the Rhône, about Vienne, where we find
a narrow strip of land, partly composed of granite rocks, which has
now become a garden of an incredible richness. The origin of that
wealth, we are told by Ardouin Dumazet, dates from some thirty years
ago, when the vineyards, ravaged by phylloxera, had to be destroyed
and some new culture had to be found. The village of Ampuis became
then renowned for its apricots. At the present time, for a full 100
miles along the Rhône, and in the lateral valleys of the Ardèche and
the Drôme, the country is an admirable orchard, from which millions’
worth of fruit is exported, and the land attains the selling price
of from £325 to £400 the acre. Small plots of land are continually
reclaimed for culture upon every crag. On both sides of the roads
one sees the plantations of apricot and cherry trees, while between
the rows of trees early beans and peas, strawberries, and all sorts
of early vegetables are grown. In the spring the fine perfume of the
apricot trees in bloom floats over the whole valley. Strawberries,
cherries, apricots, peaches and grapes follow each other in rapid
succession, and at the same time cartloads of French beans, salads,
cabbages, leeks, and potatoes are sent towards the industrial cities
of the region. It would be impossible to estimate the quantity and
value of all that is grown in that region. Suffice it to say that a
tiny commune, Saint Désirat, exported during Ardouin Dumazet’s visit
about 2,000 cwts. of cherries every day.[106]
* * * * *
The results of this development are simply striking. Thus it appears,
from an inquest made in 1906 by the French professors of agriculture,
that the yearly export of fresh flowers from the _département_ of the
Alpes Maritimes attains as much as £400,000, and that of the flowers
used for perfumes gives from £280,000 to £320,000 in addition to the
just mentioned sum.[107] From the _département_ of the Var, 3,475
tons of flowers, valued from £160,000 to £200,000, were exported in
1902.
* * * * *
I must refer the reader to the work of Charles Baltet if he will
know more about the extension taken by market-gardening in different
countries, and will only mention Belgium and America.
* * * * *
The exports of vegetables from Belgium have increased twofold within
the last twenty years of the nineteenth century, and whole regions,
like Flanders, claim to be now the market-garden of England, even
seeds of the vegetables preferred in this country being distributed
free by one horticultural society in order to increase the export.
Not only the best lands are appropriated for that purpose, but even
the sand deserts of the Ardennes and peat-bogs are turned into rich
market-gardens, while large plains (namely at Haeren) are irrigated
for the same purpose. Scores of schools, experimental farms, and
small experimental stations, evening lectures, and so on, are opened
by the communes, the private societies, and the State, in order to
promote horticulture, and hundreds of acres of land are covered with
thousands of greenhouses.
Here we see one small commune exporting 5,500 tons of potatoes and
£4,000 worth of pears to Stratford and Scotland, and keeping for
that purpose its own line of steamers. Another commune supplies the
north of France and the Rhenish provinces with strawberries, and
occasionally sends some of them to Covent Garden as well. Elsewhere
early carrots, which are grown amidst flax, barley and white poppies,
give a considerable addition to the farmer’s income. In another place
we learn that land is rented at £24 and £27 the acre, not for grapes
or melon-growing but for the modest culture of onions; or that the
gardeners have done away with such a nuisance as natural soil in
their frames, and prefer to make their loam out of wood sawings,
tannery refuse and hemp dust, “animalised” by various composts.[108]
In short, Belgium, which is one of the chief manufacturing countries
of Europe, is now becoming one of the chief centres of horticulture.
(See Appendix R.)
* * * * *
The other country which must especially be recommended to the
attention of horticulturists is America. When we see the mountains
of fruit imported from America we are inclined to think that fruit
in that country grows by itself. “Beautiful climate,” “virgin
soil,” “immeasurable spaces”--these words continually recur in the
papers. The reality, however, is that horticulture--that is, both
market-gardening and fruit culture--has been brought in America to
a high degree of perfection. Prof. Baltet, a practical gardener
himself, originally from the classical _marais_ (market-gardens) of
Troyes, describes the “truck farms” of Norfolk in Virginia as real
“model farms.” A highly complimentary appreciation from the lips of
a practical _maraîcher_ who has learned from his infancy that only
in fairyland do the golden apples grow by the fairies’ magic wand.
As to the perfection to which apple-growing has been brought in
Canada, the aid which the apple-growers receive from the Canadian
experimental farms, and the means which are resorted to, on a truly
American scale, to spread information amongst the farmers and to
supply them with new varieties of fruit trees--all this ought to be
carefully studied in this country, instead of inducing Englishmen to
believe that the American supremacy is due to the golden fairies’
hands. If one tenth part of what is done in the States and in Canada
for favouring agriculture and horticulture were done in this country,
English fruit would not have been so shamefully driven out of the
market as it was a few years ago.
The extension given to horticulture in America is immense. The “truck
farms” alone--that is, the farms which work for export by rail or
steam--covered in the States in 1892 no less than 400,000 acres. At
the very doors of Chicago one single market-gardening farm covers 500
acres, and out of these, 150 acres are given to cucumbers, 50 acres
to early peas, and so on. During the Chicago Exhibition a special
“strawberry express,” composed of thirty waggons, brought in every
day 324,000 quarts of the freshly gathered fruit, and there are
days that over 10,000 bushels of strawberries are imported in New
York--three-fourths of that amount coming from the “truck farms” of
Virginia by steamer.[109]
This is what can be achieved by an intelligent combination of
agriculture with industry, and undoubtedly will be applied on a still
larger scale in the future.
* * * * *
However, a further advance is being made in order to emancipate
horticulture from climate. I mean the glasshouse culture of fruit and
vegetables.
Formerly the greenhouse was the luxury of the rich mansion. It was
kept at a high temperature, and was made use of for growing, under
cold skies, the golden fruit and the bewitching flowers of the South.
Now, and especially since the progress of technics allows of making
cheap glass and of having all the woodwork, sashes and bars of a
greenhouse made by machinery, the glasshouse becomes appropriated for
growing fruit for the million, as well as for the culture of common
vegetables. The aristocratic hothouse, stocked with the rarest fruit
trees and flowers, remains; nay, it spreads more and more for growing
luxuries which become more and more accessible to the great number.
But by its side we have the plebeian greenhouse, which is heated for
only a couple of months in winter and the still more economically
built “cool greenhouse,” which is a simple glass shelter--a big “cool
frame”--and is stuffed with the humble vegetables of the kitchen
garden: the potatoes, the carrots, the French beans, the peas and the
like. The heat of the sun, passing through the glass, but prevented
by the same glass from escaping by radiation, is sufficient to keep
it at a very high temperature during spring and early summer. A
new system of horticulture--the market-garden under glass--is thus
rapidly gaining ground.
The greenhouse for commercial purposes is essentially of British,
or perhaps Scottish, origin. Already in 1851, Mr. Th. Rivers had
published a book, _The Orchard Houses and the Cultivation of Fruit
Trees in Pots under Glass_; and we were told by Mr. D. Thomson, in
the _Journal of Horticulture_ (31st January, 1889), that nearly fifty
years ago grapes in February were sold at 25s. the pound by a grower
in the north of England, and that part of them was sent by the buyer
to Paris for Napoleon III.’s table, at 50s. the pound. “Now,” Mr.
Thomson added, “they are sold at the tenth or twentieth part of the
above prices. Cheap coal--cheap grapes; that is the whole secret.”
Large vineries and immense establishments for growing flowers under
glass are of an old standing in this country, and new ones are
continually built on a grand scale. Entire fields are covered with
glass at Cheshunt, at Broxburn (fifty acres), at Finchley, at Bexley,
at Swanley, at Whetstone, and so on, to say nothing of Scotland.
Worthing is also a well-known centre for growing grapes and tomatoes;
while the greenhouses given to flowers and ferns at Upper Edmonton,
at Chelsea, at Orpington, and so on, have a world-wide reputation.
And the tendency is, on the one side, to bring grape culture to the
highest degree of perfection, and, on the other side, to cover acres
and acres with glass for growing tomatoes, French beans and peas,
which undoubtedly will soon be followed by the culture of still
plainer vegetables. This movement, as will be seen further on, has
been steadily continuing for the last twenty years.
However, the Channel Islands and Belgium still hold the lead in the
development of glasshouse culture. The glory of Jersey is, of course,
Mr. Bashford’s establishment. When I visited it in 1890, it contained
490,000 square feet under glass--that is, nearly thirteen acres--but
seven more acres under glass have been added to it since. A long
row of glasshouses, interspersed with high chimneys, covers the
ground--the largest of the houses being 900 feet long and forty-six
feet wide; this means that about one acre of land, in one piece, is
under glass. The whole is built most substantially; granite walls,
great height, thick “twenty-seven oz. glass” (of the thickness of
three pennies),[110] ventilators which open upon a length of 200
and 300 feet by working one single handle; and so on. And yet the
most luxurious of these greenhouses was said by the owners to have
cost less than 1s. the square foot of glass (13d. the square foot
of ground), while the other houses have cost much less than that.
From 5d. to 9d. the square foot of glass[111] is the habitual cost,
without the heating apparatus--6d. being a current price for the
ordinary glasshouses.
But it would be hardly possible to give an idea of all that is grown
in such glasshouses, without producing photographs of their insides.
In 1890, on the 3rd of May, exquisite grapes began to be cut in
Mr. Bashford’s vineries, and the crop was continued till October.
In other houses, cartloads of peas had already been gathered, and
tomatoes were going to take their place after a thorough cleaning of
the house. The 20,000 tomato plants, which were going to be planted,
had to yield no less than eighty tons of excellent fruit (eight to
ten pounds per plant). In other houses melons were grown instead
of the tomatoes. Thirty tons of early potatoes, six tons of early
peas, and two tons of early French beans had already been sent away
in April. As to the vineries, they yielded no less than twenty-five
tons of grapes every year. Besides, very many other things were grown
in the open air, or as catch crops, and all that amount of fruit
and vegetables was the result of the labour of thirty-six men and
boys only, under the supervision of one single gardener--the owner
himself; true that in Jersey, and especially in Guernsey, everyone is
a gardener. About 1,000 tons of coke were burnt to heat these houses.
Mr. W. Bear, who had visited the same establishment in 1886, was
quite right to say that from these thirteen acres they obtained money
returns equivalent to what a farmer would obtain from 1,300 acres of
land.
I hardly need say that Mr. Rider Haggard, who visited Jersey and
Guernsey in 1901, gave of these two islands the same enthusiastic
description as his predecessors. “I can only state in conclusion,”
he wrote, “that for my part, here (in Jersey) as in Guernsey, I was
amazed at the prosperity of the place. That so small an area of
land can produce so much wealth is nothing short of astonishing. It
is true, as I have shown, that the inquirer hears some grumblings
and fears for the future; but when on the top of them he sees a
little patch of twenty-three and one-third acres of land, such as I
have instanced, and is informed that quite recently it sold at an
auction for £5,760, to be used, not for building sites but for the
cultivation of potatoes, he is perhaps justified in drawing his own
conclusions.” It need not be added that, like all his predecessors,
Mr. Haggard disposes of the legend of extraordinary natural fertility
of the soil, and shows at what a considerable expenditure the heavy
crops of potatoes are obtained.[112]
However, it is in the small “vineries” that one sees, perhaps,
the most admirable results. As I walked through such glass-roofed
kitchen gardens, I could not but admire this recent conquest of man.
I saw, for instance, three-fourths of an acre heated for the first
three months of the year, from which about eight tons of tomatoes
and about 200 lb. of French beans had been taken as a first crop
in April, to be followed by two crops more. In these houses one
gardener was employed with two assistants, a small amount of coke was
consumed, and there was a gas engine for watering purposes, consuming
only 13s. worth of gas during the quarter. I saw again, in cool
greenhouses--simple plank and glass shelters--pea plants covering the
walls, for the length of one quarter of a mile, which already had
yielded by the end of April 3,200 lb. of exquisite peas and were yet
as full of pods as if not one had been taken off.
I saw potatoes dug from the soil in a cool greenhouse, in April, to
the amount of five bushels to the twenty-one feet square. And when
chance brought me, in 1896, in company with a local gardener, to a
tiny, retired “vinery” of a veteran grower, I could see there, and
admire, what a lover of gardening can obtain from so small a space as
the two-thirds of an acre. Two small “houses” about forty feet long
and twelve feet wide, and a third--formerly a pigsty, twenty feet
by twelve--contained vine trees which many a professional gardener
would be happy to have a look at; especially the whilom pigsty,
fitted with “Muscats”! Some grapes (in June) were already in full
beauty, and one fully understands that the owner could get in 1895,
from a local dealer, £4 for three bunches of grapes (one of them
was a “Colmar,” 13¾ lb. weight). The tomatoes and strawberries in
the open air, as well as the fruit trees, all on tiny spaces, were
equal to the grapes; and when one is shown on what a space half a ton
of strawberries can be gathered under proper culture, it is hardly
believable.
It is especially in Guernsey that the simplification of the
greenhouse must be studied. Every house in the suburbs of St. Peter
has some sort of greenhouse, big or small. All over the island,
especially in the north, wherever you look, you see greenhouses.
They rise amid the fields and from behind the trees; they are piled
upon one another on the steep crags facing the harbour of St.
Peter; and with them a whole generation of practical gardeners has
grown up. Every farmer is more or less of a gardener, and he gives
free scope to his inventive powers for devising some cheap type of
greenhouses. Some of them have almost no front and back walls--the
glass roofs coming low down and the two or three feet of glass in
front simply reaching the ground; in some houses the lower sheet of
glass was simply plunged into a wooden trough standing on the ground
and filled with sand. Many houses have only two or three planks, laid
horizontally, instead of the usual stone wall, in the front of the
greenhouse.
The large houses of one big company are built close to each
other, and have no partitions between. But this system cannot be
recommended. Altogether, when I revisited Guernsey in 1903, I saw
that the system of greenhouses which prevailed was that of long
two-roofed glass “tents,” placed by the side of each other, but
separated from each other by partitions preventing the circulation of
the air over the whole block. As to the extensive _cool_ greenhouses
on the Grande Maison estate, which are built by a company and are
rented to gardeners for so much the 100 feet, they are simply made of
thin deal board and glass. They are on the “lean to” or “one roof”
system, and the back wall, ten feet high, and the two side walls are
in simple grooved boards, standing upright. The whole is supported by
uprights inserted into concrete pillars. They are said to cost not
more than 5d. the square foot, of glass-covered ground. And yet, even
such plain and cheap houses yield excellent results. The potato crop
which had been grown in some of them was excellent, as also the green
peas.[113]
In Jersey I even saw a row of five houses, the walls of which were
made of corrugated iron, for the sake of cheapness. Of course, the
owner himself was not over-sanguine about his houses. “They are too
cold in winter and too hot in summer.” But although the five houses
cover only less than one-fifth of an acre, 2,000 lb. of green peas
had already been sold as a first crop; and, in the first days of
June, the second crop (about 1,500 plants of tomatoes) was already in
good progress.
It is always difficult, of course, to know what are the money returns
of the growers, first of all because Thorold Rogers’ complaint about
modern farmers keeping no accounts holds good, even for the best
gardening establishments, and next because when the returns are known
to me in all details, it would not be right for me to publish them.
“Don’t prove too much; beware of the landlord!” a practical gardener
once wrote to me. Roughly speaking, I can only confirm Mr. Bear’s
estimate to the effect that under proper management even a cool
greenhouse, which covers 4,050 square feet, can give a gross return
of £180.
As a rule, the Guernsey and Jersey growers have only three crops
every year from their greenhouses. They will start, for instance,
potatoes in December. The house will, of course, not be heated,
fires being made only when a sharp frost is expected at night; and
the potato crop (from eight to ten tons per acre) will be ready
in April or May before the open-air potatoes begin to be dug out.
Tomatoes will be planted next and be ready by the end of the summer.
Various catch crops of peas, radishes, lettuce and other small things
will be taken in the meantime. Or else the house will be “started”
in November with melons, which will be ready in April. They will
be followed by tomatoes, either in pots, or trained as vines, and
the last crop of tomatoes will be in October. Beans may follow and
be ready for Christmas. I need not say that every grower has his
preference method for utilising his houses, and it entirely depends
upon his skill and watchfulness to have all sorts of small catch
crops. These last begin to have a greater and greater importance, and
one can already foresee that the growers under glass will be forced
to accept the methods of the French _maraîchers_, so as to have five
and six crops every year, so far as it can be done without spoiling
the present high quality of the produce.
All this industry is of a relatively recent origin. One may see it
still working out its methods. And yet the exports from Guernsey
alone are already represented by quite extraordinary figures. It was
estimated some years ago that they were as follows: Grapes, 502 tons,
£37,500 worth at the average price of 9d. the pound; tomatoes, 1,000
tons, about £30,000; early potatoes (chiefly in the fields), £20,000;
radishes and broccoli, £9,250; cut flowers, £3,000; mushrooms, £200;
total, £99,950--to which total the local consumption in the houses
and hotels, which have to feed nearly 30,000 tourists, must be added.
Since then these figures have grown considerably. In June, 1896, I
saw the Southampton steamers taking every day from 9,000 to 12,000,
and occasionally more, baskets of fruit (grapes, tomatoes, French
beans and peas), each basket representing from twelve to fourteen
pounds of fruit. Taking into account what was sent by other channels,
one could say that from 400 to 500 tons of tomatoes, grapes, beans
and peas, worth from £20,000 to £25,000, were exported there every
week in June.
When I returned to Guernsey in 1903, I found that the industry of
fruit-growing under glass had grown immensely since 1896, so that
the whole system of export had to be reorganised. In 1896 it was
the tourists’ boats which transported the fruit and vegetables to
Southampton, and the gardeners paid one shilling for each basket
taken at Guernsey and delivered at the Covent Garden market. In 1903
there was already a Guernsey Growers’ Association, which had its own
boats keeping, during the summer, a regular daily service direct from
Guernsey to London. The Association had its own storehouses on the
quay and its own cranes, which lifted immense cubic boxes containing
on their shelves twenty or even a hundred baskets, and carrying
them to the boats. The cost of transport was thus reduced to 4d.
per basket. All this crop is sold every morning at Covent Garden to
the London dealers and greengrocers. The importance of this export
is seen from the fact that a special steamer has to leave Guernsey
every morning with its cargo of fruit and vegetables. As to the
total exports of fresh flowers, plants and shrubs, various fruit
and vegetables (including £555,275 worth of potatoes), they reached
£1,115,650 in 1910.
All this is obtained from an island whose total area, rocks and
barren hill-tops included, is only 16,000 acres, of which only 9,884
acres are under culture, and 5,189 acres are given to green crops and
meadows. An island, moreover, on which 1,480 horses, 7,260 head of
cattle and 900 sheep find their existence. How many men’s food is,
then, grown on these 10,000 acres?
Belgium has also made, within the last few years, an immense progress
in the same direction. While no more than 250 acres, all taken, were
covered with glass some thirty years ago, more than 800 acres are
under glass by this time.[114] In the village of Hoeilaert, which is
perched upon a stony hill, nearly 200 acres are under glass, given up
to grape-growing. One single establishment, Baltet remarks, has 200
greenhouses and consumes 1,500 tons of coal for the vineries.[115]
“Cheap coal--cheap grapes,” as the editor of the _Journal of
Horticulture_ wrote. Grapes in Brussels are certainly not dearer in
the beginning of the summer than they are in Switzerland in October.
Even _in March_, Belgian grapes were sold in Covent Garden at from
4d. and 6d. the pound.[116] This price alone shows sufficiently how
small are the amounts of labour which are required to grow grapes in
our latitudes with the aid of glass. _It certainly costs less labour
to grow grapes in Belgium than to grow them on the coasts of Lake
Leman._[117]
I will not conclude this chapter without casting a glance on the
progress that has been made in this country since the first edition
of this book was published, in 1898, by fruit and flower farming, as
also by culture under glass, and on the attempts recently made to
introduce in different parts of England “French Gardening,”--that is,
the _culture maraîchère_ of the French gardeners.
There is not the slightest doubt that fruit-growing has notably
increased--the area under fruit orchards having grown in Great
Britain from 200,000 acres in 1888 to 250,000 acres in 1908; while
the area under small fruit (gooseberries, currants, strawberries)
has grown from 75,000 acres in 1901 to 85,000 in 1908.[118] In fact,
in some counties the acreage has trebled.[119] Large plantations
of fruit have grown lately round London and all the large cities,
and the counties of Kent, Devon, Hereford, Somerset, Worcester and
Gloucester have now more than 20,000 acres each under fruit orchards,
a great proportion of them being of a recent origin. Not only was
the area of fruit-growing considerably increased, but, owing to the
experiments carried on since 1894 at the Woburn Experimental Farm,
where different sorts of fruit-trees and small fruit are tested,
new varieties have been introduced; and the system is spreading of
growing fruit trees of the pyramidal or “bush” form (instead of
the old-fashioned standards)--a step the advantages of which I was
enabled fully to appreciate in 1897 at the Agassiz Experimental Farm
in British Columbia.
At the same time the culture of small fruit--gooseberries,
raspberries, currants, and especially strawberries--took an immense
development. Enormous quantities of strawberries are now grown in
Mid and South Kent, where we find the culture of fruit combined with
large jam factories. One of such factories is connected with great
fruit farms covering 2,000 acres at Swanley, and its yearly output
attains 3,500 tons of jam, 850 tons of candied peel, and more than
100,000 bottles of bottled fruit. An extensive horticulture has also
developed of late in Cambridgeshire, wherefrom fruit is sent partly
fresh to London and Manchester, and partly is transformed on the
spot in the jam factory at Histon. No less than 250 workpeople were
employed at this factory at the time of Rider Haggard’s visit in
1900, and no less than 7,600 tons were exported; the most interesting
result of this industry combined with agriculture being that quite
a number of small farmers, renting from three to twenty acres each,
have grown round the jam factory. “Altogether,” Mr. Haggard wrote,
“fruit and flower culture has increased enormously; so that, in
1901, from 4,000 to 5,000 acres in the neighbourhood of Wisbech
were devoted to this trade. Plums, apples, pears, small fruit, as
also cauliflowers, asparagus, rhubarb, narcissi, pansies and other
flowers were grown here on a grand scale, and as much as from 130
to 140 tons of gooseberries and from 60 to 70 tons of strawberries
were despatched from Wisbech in one single day.” “The result of this
industry,” Mr. Haggard adds, “was that the population of Wisbech and
the number of houses in this little town have rapidly increased; the
land has increased in value considerably in the past twenty years,
and as much as £200 an acre had been given for choice land-holdings
suitable for fruit culture.” (_Rural England_, vol. ii., pp. 52,
54, 55.) In other words, the net result of the labour spent by the
farmers and of the intelligent enterprise of the industrials was,
as everywhere, immensely to increase the value of the land for
the benefit of the landlords. Mr. Haggard’s conclusion is worth
mentioning, as he writes as follows: “Broadly, however, I may say
that where the farms are large and corn is chiefly grown, there is
little or no prosperity, while where they are small and assisted by
pastures or fruit culture, both owners and tenants are doing fairly
well.”[120] A recognition well worth mentioning, as it comes from an
explorer who took at the outset of his inquest a most pessimistic
view on unprotected agriculture.
I also ought to mention Essex, where fruit-growing has taken of
late a notable development, and Hampshire, where the acreage under
fruit has trebled since 1880, according to the testimony of the
author of the already mentioned _Britannica_ article. The same
must be said of Worcestershire, and especially of the Evesham
district. This last is a most instructive region. Owing to certain
peculiarities of its soil, which render it very profitable for
growing asparagus and plum trees, and partly owing to the maintenance
in this region of the old “Evesham custom” (according to which
from times immemorial the ingoing tenant had to pay the outgoing
tenant, not the landlord, for the agricultural improvements)--a
custom maintained till nowadays[121]--the small-holdings system and
the culture of vegetables and fruit have developed to a remarkable
extent. The result is that out of a rural area of 10,000 acres,
7,000 have already been taken in small holdings of under fifty acres
each, and the demand for them, far from being satisfied, is still on
the increase, so that in 1911 there were still nearly four hundred
farmers waiting for 2,000 acres. A new town has grown at Evesham,
its population of 8,340 persons being almost entirely composed of
gardeners and gardeners’ labourers; its markets, held twice a week,
remind one of markets in the south of France; and the export traffic
on the railways radiating from that little town is as lively as if it
were a busy industrial spot.
One cannot read the pages given by Mr. Rider Haggard to the Bewdley
and Evesham districts without being impressed by what can be obtained
from the soil in England, and by what has to be done by the nation
and all those who care for its well-being in obtaining from the soil
what it is ready to give, if only _labour_ be applied to it.
In the Bewdley district we see very well how the efforts of a
Small Holdings Society are giving the opportunity to a number
of small farmers to transform an indifferent and sometimes very
poor or stony land into a fertile soil which yields rich crops of
fruit, and upon which the keeping of milch-cows is combined with
fruit-growing. We see also how in the big farms, as well as in the
small ones, fruit-growing is carried on with knowledge and care--and,
consequently, with a substantial profit for both the community and
the farmers--which makes the author exclaim: “How different in most
counties! In Norfolk, for instance (and I may add in Devonshire), the
ordinary farm orchard is stocked as a rule with faggot-headed trees
pruned only by the wind. Even the dead wood is left uncut; yet it is
common to hear farmers complain of the quality of the fruit, and
that it will not pay to grow” (vol. i., p. 338).
Speaking of Catshill, Mr. Haggard gives also a very interesting
instance of how a colony of people called “Nailers,” who lived
formerly by making nails by hand, and compelled to abandon this trade
when machine-made nails were introduced, took to agriculture, and how
they succeed with it. Some intelligent people having bought a farm of
140 acres and divided it into small farms, from 2½ to 8 acres, these
small holdings were offered to the nailers; and at the time of Mr.
Haggard’s visit “every instalment which was due had been paid up.” No
able-bodied man out of them has gone on to the rates.
But the vale of Evesham is still more interesting. Suffice it to say,
that while in most rural parishes the population is decreasing, _it
rose in the six parishes of the Evesham Union_ from 7,327 to 9,012 in
the ten years, 1891 to 1901.
Although the soil of this district offers nothing extraordinary,
and the conditions of sale are as bad as anywhere, owing to the
importance acquired by the middlemen, we see that an extremely
important industry of fruit-growing has developed; so important that
in the year 1900 about 20,000 tons of fruit and vegetables were sent
from the Evesham stations, in addition to large quantities exported
from the small stations within a radius of ten miles round Evesham
(vol. i., p. 350). The soil, of course, is improved by digging into
it large quantities of all sorts of manure--soot, fish guano, leather
dust for cabbage (chamois dust being the best), and so on--and the
most profitable sorts of fruit-trees and vegetables are continually
tested; all this being, of course, not the work of some scientist or
of one single man, but the product of the collective experience of
the district.
It must not be thought, however, that fruit-growing has been
overdone. On the contrary, the imports of fruit into the United
Kingdom, both for food and for jam-making, continue to be enormous,
and to increase every year. Suffice it to say, that this country
imports every year about £1,000,000 of tomatoes and £2,000,000 of
apples, half a million worth of pears, nearly £730,000 worth of
grapes--giving thus a total of £4,200,000 worth of all fruit. And
at the same time we learn that immense quantities of land go every
year out of culture, to be transformed into game reserves for rich
Englishmen and foreigners.
Finally, I also ought to mention the recent development of fruit
culture near the Broads of Norfolk, and especially in Ireland; but
the examples just given will do to show what is obtained from the
land in England where no obstacle is laid to the development of
horticulture, and what amount of food can be obtained in the climate
and from the soil of this country whenever it is properly cultivated.
Let me only add that a similar development of fruit culture has
taken place within the last thirty years everywhere in the civilised
countries; and that in France, in Belgium, and in Germany the
extension taken by horticulture during the last twenty or thirty
years has been much greater than in this country.[122]
As regards _market-gardening_, it has undoubtedly made remarkable
progress in the United Kingdom within recent years. However, accurate
data are failing, and those who have travelled over this country with
the special purpose of studying its agriculture have not yet given
sufficient attention to the recent developments of market-gardening;
but it is quite certain that within the last five-and-twenty years
it has taken a great development, especially in Ireland, but also in
several parts of England, Scotland, and Wales.
Such are, for instance, the neighbourhoods of Penzance, in
Cornwall; those of St. Neots, in Huntingdonshire; Scotter, in
Lincolnshire, where the agricultural depression--we are told by Mr.
Rider Haggard--was not so badly felt as elsewhere on account of
market-gardening; Benington, in the same county, where the soil is
a rich loam with silty subsoil, and where all sorts of vegetables,
potatoes, and flower-bulbs are grown on a large scale, together with
wheat.[123] Orpington is a well-known centre for market-gardening, as
well as for fruit-growing, and in this district culture under glass
has also taken lately some extension.
There are many other interesting centres of market-gardening,
especially in the neighbourhoods of all large cities, but I will
mention only one more--namely, Potton, in Huntingdonshire. It is--we
are told by Mr. Haggard--“a stronghold of small cultivators who
grow vegetables upon holdings of land varying in size from one up
to twenty acres, or even more.” It has thus become an important
centre for market-gardening, “120 trucks of produce leaving Potton
daily during the season for London, in addition to fifty trucks
which pass over the Great Northern line from Sandy station, together
with much more from sidings and other stations.” This is the more
interesting as within a short distance from this animated centre
“thousands of acres are quite or very nearly derelict, and the
farmhouses, buildings, and cottages are slowly rotting down.” The
worst is that “all this land was cultivated, and grew crops up to the
’eighties.”[124]
Another oasis of market-gardening is offered by the county of
Bedfordshire. “Being a county of natural small-holdings, carved out
before the passing of the 1907 Act,” it is rapidly becoming--we are
told by Mr. F. E. Green--“a county of market-gardens.” The fertility
of its soil, the fact that it can easily be worked at any time of the
year, and that a race of skilled gardeners has developed there long
since, have contributed to that growth; but, of course, the whole
is hampered by the heavy rents, which have grown up to £4 an acre
for the sites near the station, where manure is received in large
quantities from London.[125] Happily enough, the Bedfordshire County
Council has been eager to acquire land for small holdings, and, after
having spent £40,000 in the acquisition of land, they have, up to
30th June, 1911, provided one-third of the applicants with 2,759
acres--the total demand, by a thousand applicants, having already
attained 12,350 acres.
And yet all this progress still appears insignificant by the
side of the demand for vegetables which grows every year (and
necessarily _must_ grow, as is seen by comparing the low consumption
of vegetables in this country with the consumption of home-grown
vegetables in Belgium, indicated by Mr. Rowntree in his _Lessons
from Belgium_). The result is a steadily increasing importation
of vegetables to this country, which has attained now more than
£8,000,000.[126]
A branch of horticulture which has increased enormously since the
first edition of this book was published, is the _growing of fruit
and vegetables in greenhouses_, in the same way as it is done in the
Channel Islands. All round London--we are told by Mr. John Weathers
in the last edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_--the hothouse
culture has taken a great development, and, in fact, along the
railways which radiate from London in all directions the glass-houses
have already become a familiar feature of the landscape. Immense
quantities of grapes, tomatoes, figs, and of all sorts of early
vegetables are grown at Worthing, where eighty-two acres are covered
now with glass-houses, as also in the parish of Cheshunt, in Herts,
where the area under hothouses is already 130 acres; while a careful
estimate put in 1908 the area of individual hothouses in England at
about 1,200 acres (_Encyclopædia Britannica_, vol. xi., p. 266). The
elements of this culture having been developed by the experience
of the Channel Islands growers, and by the wide extension which
hothouses for the growing of flowers had taken long since in this
country, it may be concluded from the various evidence we have at
hand that on the whole this sort of culture is finding its reward,
and is now firmly established.
The same, however, cannot yet be said of the _culture maraîchère_
of the French market-gardeners which is being introduced now into
this country. Many attempts have been made in this direction in
different parts of the country with varied degrees of success; but
little or nothing is known about the results. An attempt on a large
scale was made, as is known, by some Evesham gardeners. Having read
about this sort of culture in France, and the wonderful results
obtained by it, some of the Evesham gardeners went to Paris with
the intention of learning that culture from the Paris _maraîchers_.
Finding that impossible, they invited a French gardener to Evesham,
gave him three-quarters of an acre, and, after he had brought from
his Paris _marais_ his glass-bells, frames and lights, and, above
all, his knowledge, he began gardening under the eyes of his Evesham
colleagues. “Happily enough,” he said to an interviewer, “I do not
speak English; otherwise I should have had to talk all the time
and give explanations, instead of working. So I show them my black
trousers, and tell them in signs: ‘Begin by making the soil as
black as these trousers, then everything will be all right.’” Of
course, to be profitable, immense quantities of stable manure are
required, as also immense numbers of glass-bells and glass-frames,
which represent a very costly outlay, and plenty of watering, to say
nothing of the powers of observation required for developing a new
branch of gardening in new surroundings.
What were the results obtained at Evesham it is difficult to say, the
more so as the money results which, according to some papers, were
obtained the first year (_brutto_ income of £750 from three-quarters
of an acre) seem to have been exaggerated for a first-year crop,
and thus awakened scepticism with regard to that sort of culture
altogether.
Another experiment in the same direction was made on the estate of
Mayland, in Essex, which was bought by Mr. Joseph Fels in order
to promote small farming in England. It must be said that, apart
from the cold, damp climate of this part of England, the heavy clay
of Essex represents the least appropriate soil for spade culture.
In England, as everywhere, this sort of culture has always been
developing in preference _on a light loam_, or in such places, like
Jersey, where a meagre granitic soil could easily be manured--in this
special case by sea-weeds.
Nevertheless, the aim of Mr. Fels having been chiefly educational,
this aim has certainly been achieved, as we have now, in three
different works of Mr. Thomas Smith, the manager of the farm,
practical manuals teaching the would-be gardener the essentials of
“French Gardening.”[127]
A French _maraîcher_ having been invited for this purpose, and 2,500
glass-bells, 1,000 lights for frames, a windmill pump, etc., having
been bought at a considerable cost, the work of the French gardener
on two acres of land was carefully followed by the manager of the
farm, Mr. T. Smith, day by day, to be afterwards described and
illustrated by photographs for the use of those who would like to try
their hand at the same work.
Most of my readers will probably ask first of all: What were the
money results of this venture? But it would have been foolish to
expect that in this first experiment everything should have run as
smoothly as it runs, let us say, in the Channel Islands, where the
many years’ practice of a whole population has worked out the best
methods of culture.
Thus the frames were not ready in time for giving an early crop of
melons; and although the melons grown at Mayland were excellent, and
gave the first year as much as £188, they would have given much more
than that had they been ready in the middle of June, which would have
been possible if the frames and lights had been supplied in time.
With all that, the results obtained during the first year were
really striking. All taken, Mr. Smith shows that if the gardener
has a one-acre garden, and if £494 (say, £550) be spent for 1,000
glass-bells, 300 lights and 100 frames, 500 mats, the water-supply,
the packing-shed, the fencing, the cart, horse and harness, etc.,
and £413 (say, £450) for 500 tons of manure, the rent, rates and
water, and the wages and salaries (£250), the gross returns for the
first year would reach £300 (making full allowance for “inexperience
in this _special_ work”). They would reach from £400 to £450 during
the second year, there being greater productiveness and a lower
expenditure after the loam has been _made_ by heavy manuring, and
personal experience has been won, as well as experience for a given
locality.
Taking a one-acre farm, of which only one-third is used for a French
garden, the first year’s expenditure for bells, lights, fencing,
horse manure, water, and rent and taxes would be a little less than
£300, and the returns by the end of the first year would be about
£150. “Afterwards the returns ought to reach from £200 to £250 each
year,” Mr. Smith writes.
All that need be added to these words is, that Mr. Smith is extremely
cautious in his estimates, and that, seeing the high crops obtained
at Mayland, and fully dealt with in Mr. Smith’s works, one is
entitled to expect even better money results.
Unfortunately, after having worked at the farm for one year, the
experienced French gardener, who had obtained the just-mentioned
results, left Mayland. Two young French gardeners, far less
experienced, were invited instead, and they began to undo what their
predecessor had done, in order to carry on the work on the lines they
had learned themselves. So that it is impossible to know yet what the
results of these new methods will be.
Every pioneer work has its unforeseen difficulties. But, so far
as can be judged from the facts I have at my disposal, the two
ventures have proved that the climate of England is no obstacle
to French gardening. Of course, the small amount of sunshine is
a great obstacle for ripening the produce as early as it can be
ripened in France, even in the suburbs of Paris. But home-grown
fruit and vegetables have always many advantages in comparison with
imported produce. Another disadvantage--the lack of horse manure--a
disadvantage which will go on increasing with the spread of motor
cars--is felt in France as well. This is why the French growers
are eagerly experimenting with the direct heating of the soil with
_thermosiphons_.
Let me add to these remarks that a decided awakening is to be noticed
in this country for making a better use of the land than has been
made for the last fifty years. There are a few counties where the
County Councils, and still more so, the Parish Councils, are doing
their best to break at last the land monopoly, and to permit those
small farmers who intend to cultivate the soil to do so. Here and
there we see a few timid attempts at imparting to the farmers and
their children some knowledge of agriculture and horticulture. But
all this is being made on too small a scale, and without a sincere
desire to learn from other European nations, and still more so from
the United States and Canada, what is being done in these countries
to give to agriculture the new character of intensive culture
combined with industry, which is imposed upon it by the recent
progress of civilisation.
* * * * *
The various data which have been brought together on the preceding
pages make short work of the over-population fallacy. It is
precisely in the most densely populated parts of the world that
agriculture has lately made such strides as hardly could have been
guessed twenty years ago. A dense population, a high development of
industry, and a high development of agriculture and horticulture,
go hand in hand: they are inseparable. As to the future, the
possibilities of agriculture are such that, in truth, we cannot yet
foretell what would be the limit of the population which could live
from the produce of a given area. Recent progress, already tested on
a great scale, has widened the limits of agricultural production to
a quite unforeseen extent; and recent discoveries, now tested on a
small scale, promise to widen those limits still farther, to a quite
unknown degree.[128]
The present tendency of economical development in the world is--we
have seen--to induce more and more every nation, or rather every
region, taken in its geographical sense, to rely chiefly upon a home
production of all the chief necessaries of life. Not to reduce, I
mean, the world-exchange: it may still grow in bulk; but to limit it
to the exchange of what really _must_ be exchanged, and, at the same
time, immensely to increase the exchange of novelties, produce of
local or national art, new discoveries and inventions, knowledge and
ideas. Such being the tendency of present development, there is not
the slightest ground to be alarmed by it. There is not one nation in
the world which, being armed with the present powers of agriculture,
could not grow on its cultivable area all the food and most of the
raw materials derived from agriculture which are required for its
population, even if the requirements of that population were rapidly
increased as they certainly ought to be. Taking the powers of man
over the land and over the forces of nature--_such as they are at
the present day_--we can maintain that two to three inhabitants to
each cultivable acre of land would not yet be too much. But neither
in this densely populated country nor in Belgium are we yet in such
numbers. In this country we have, roughly speaking, one acre of the
cultivable area per inhabitant.
Supposing, then, that each inhabitant of Great Britain were compelled
to live on the produce of his own land, all he would have to do
would be, first, to consider the land of this country as a common
inheritance, which must be disposed of to the best advantage of each
and all--this is, evidently, an absolutely necessary condition. And
next, he would have to cultivate his soil, not in some extravagant
way, but no better than land is already cultivated upon thousands
and thousands of acres in Europe and America. He would not be bound
to invent some new methods, but could simply generalise and widely
apply those which have stood the test of experience. He can do it;
and in so doing he would save an immense quantity of the work which
is now given for buying his food abroad, and for paying all the
intermediaries who live upon this trade. Under a rational culture,
those necessaries and those luxuries which must be obtained from
the soil, undoubtedly _can_ be obtained with much less work than is
required now for buying these commodities. I have made elsewhere (in
_The Conquest of Bread_) approximate calculations to that effect, but
with the data given in this book everyone can himself easily test the
truth of this assertion. If we take, indeed, the masses of produce
which are obtained under rational culture, and compare them with
the amount of labour which must be spent for obtaining them under
an irrational culture, for collecting them abroad, for transporting
them, and for keeping armies of middlemen, we see at once how few
days and hours need be given, under proper culture, for growing man’s
food.
For improving our methods of culture to that extent, we surely
need not divide the land into one-acre plots, and attempt to grow
what we are in need of by everyone’s separate individual exertions,
on everyone’s separate plot with no better tools than the spade;
under such conditions we inevitably should fail. Those who have
been so much struck with the wonderful results obtained in the
_petite culture_, that they go about representing the small culture
of the French peasant, or _maraîcher_, as an ideal for mankind,
are evidently mistaken. They are as much mistaken as those other
extremists who would like to turn every country into a small number
of huge Bonanza farms, worked by militarily organised “labour
battalions.” In Bonanza farms human labour is certainly reduced, but
the crops taken from the soil are far too small, and the whole system
is robbery-culture, taking no heed of the exhaustion of the soil.
This is why the Bonanza farms have disappeared from their former
home, Ohio; and when I crossed part of this State in 1901 I saw its
plains thickly dotted with medium-sized farms, from 100 to 200 acres,
and with windmills pumping water for the orchards and the vegetable
gardens. On the other side, in the spade culture, on isolated small
plots, by isolated men or families, too much human labour is wasted,
even though the crops are heavy; so that real economy--of both space
and labour--requires different methods, representing a combination of
machinery work with hand work.
In agriculture, as in everything else, associated labour is the only
reasonable solution. Two hundred families of five persons each,
owning five acres per family, having no common ties between the
families, and compelled to find their living, each family on its
five acres, almost certainly would be an economical failure. Even
leaving aside all _personal_ difficulties resulting from different
education and tastes and from the want of knowledge as to what has
to be done with the land, and admitting for the sake of argument
that these causes do not interfere, the experiment would end in
a failure, merely for _economical_, for _agricultural_ reasons.
Whatever improvement upon the present conditions such an organisation
might be, that improvement would not last; it would have to undergo a
further transformation or disappear.
But the same two hundred families, if they consider themselves, say,
as tenants of the nation, and treat the thousand acres as a common
tenancy--again leaving aside the _personal_ conditions--would have,
economically speaking, from the point of view of the agriculturist,
every chance of succeeding, _if they know what is the best use to
make of that land_.
In such case they probably would first of all associate for
permanently improving the land which is in need of immediate
improvement, and would consider it necessary to improve more
of it every year, until they had brought it all into a perfect
condition. On an area of 340 acres they could most easily grow all
the cereals--wheat, oats, etc.--required for both the thousand
inhabitants and their live stock, without resorting for that purpose
to replanted or planted cereals. They could grow on 400 acres,
properly cultivated, and irrigated if necessary and possible, all
the green crops and fodder required to keep the thirty to forty
milch cows which would supply them with milk and butter, and, let us
say, the 300 head of cattle required to supply them with meat. On
twenty acres, two of which would be under glass, they would grow more
vegetables, fruit and luxuries than they could consume. And supposing
that half an acre of land is attached to each house for hobbies
and amusement (poultry keeping, or any fancy culture, flowers, and
the like)--they would still have some 140 acres for all sorts of
purposes: public gardens, squares, manufactures and so on. The labour
that would be required for such an intensive culture would not be
the hard labour of the serf or slave. It would be accessible to
everyone, strong or weak, town bred or country born; it would also
have many charms besides. And its total amount would be far smaller
than the amount of labour which every thousand persons, taken from
this or from any other nation, have now to spend in getting their
present food, much smaller in quantity and of worse quality. I mean,
of course, the technically necessary labour, without even considering
the labour which we now have to give in order to maintain all our
middlemen, armies, and the like. The amount of labour required to
grow food under a rational culture is so small, indeed, that our
hypothetical inhabitants would be led necessarily to employ their
leisure in manufacturing, artistic, scientific, and other pursuits.
From the technical point of view there is no obstacle whatever for
such an organisation being started to-morrow with full success. The
obstacles against it are not in the imperfection of the agricultural
art, or in the infertility of the soil, or in climate. They are
entirely in our institutions, in our inheritances and survivals from
the past--in the “Ghosts” which oppress us. But to some extent they
lie also--taking society as a whole--in our phenomenal ignorance. We,
civilised men and women, know everything, we have settled opinions
upon everything, we take an interest in everything. We only know
nothing about whence the bread comes which we eat--even though we
pretend to know something about that subject as well--we do not know
how it is grown, what pains it costs to those who grow it, what is
being done to reduce their pains, what sort of men those feeders of
our grand selves are ... we are more ignorant than savages in this
respect, and we prevent our children from obtaining this sort of
knowledge--even those of our children who would prefer it to the
heaps of useless stuff with which they are crammed at school.
FOOTNOTES:
[98] Charles Whitehead, _Hints on Vegetable and Fruit Farming_,
London (J. Murray), 1890. _The Gardener’s Chronicle_, 20th April,
1895.
[99] Charles Baltet, _L’Horticulture dans les cinq Parties du Monde.
Ouvrage couronné par la Société Nationale d’Horticulture._ Paris
(Hachette), 1895.
[100] Charles Baltet, _loc. cit._
[101] Ardouin Dumazet, _Voyage en France_, vol. v., p. 10.
[102] Ardouin Dumazet, _Voyage en France_, vol. v., p. 200.
[103] Baudrillart, _Les Populations agricoles de la France: Anjou_,
pp. 70, 71.
[104] The total production of dessert fruit as well as dried or
preserved fruit in France was estimated, in 1876, at 84,000 tons, and
its value was taken at about 3,000,000,000 fr. (£120,000,000)--more
than one-half of the war contribution levied by Germany. It must have
largely increased since 1876.
[105] Ardouin Dumazet, i., 204.
[106] Ardouin Dumazet, vol. vii., pp. 124, 125.
[107] M. Augé-Laribé, _L’évolution de la France agricole_, Paris
(Armand Colin), 1912, p. 74. Professor Fontgalland estimates that the
total exports of flowers, living plants, fruit and vegetables, both
in season and out of season (_primeurs_), from the Alpes Maritimes,
reach the enormous sum of £1,188,000, the gross income from an acre
reaching as much as £200.
[108] Charles Baltet, _L’Horticulture_, etc.
[109] Charles Baltet, _L’Horticulture_, etc.
[110] “Twenty-one oz.” and even “fifteen oz.” glass is used in the
cheaper greenhouses.
[111] It is reckoned by measuring the height of the front and back
walls and the length of the two slopes of the roof.
[112] _Rural England_, i., p. 103.
[113] Growing peas along the wall seems, however, to be a bad system.
It requires too much work in attaching the plants to the wall. This
system, however, excellent though it may be for a provisory start for
gardeners who have not much capital to spend, is not profitable in
the long run. The gardeners with whom I spoke in 1903, after having
made some money with these light greenhouses, preferred to build more
substantial ones, which could be heated from January to March or
April.
[114] I take these figures from the notes which a Belgian professor
of agriculture was kind enough to send me. The greenhouses in Belgium
are mostly with iron frames.
[115] A friend, who has studied practical horticulture in the Channel
Islands, writes me of the vineries about Brussels: “You have no idea
to what an extent it is done there. Bashford is nothing against it.”
[116] A quotation which I took at random, in 1895, from a London
daily, was: “Covent Garden, 19th March, 1895. Quotations: Belgian
grapes, 4d. to 6d.; Jersey ditto, 6d. to 10d.; Muscats, 1s. 6d. to
2s.; and tomatoes, 3d. to 5d. per lb.”
[117] See Appendix S.
[118] Out of them, 27,000 acres are grown in the fruit orchards,
between the apple and cherry tree, so that the total area under fruit
orchards and small fruit was reckoned at 308,000 acres in 1908.
[119] “Fruit and Flower Farming,” in _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 11th
edition, article by J. Weathers.
[120] _Rural England_, 2 vols., London (Longmans, Green), 1902, vol.
ii., p. 57.
[121] F. E. Green, _The Awakening of England_, London (Nelson’s),
1911, pp. 49, 50. Speaking of a certain farmer, Mr. Green says: “In
the autumn of 1910, when I visited him, he was offered £100 an acre
for his standing crops, and £100 _for the tenant rights_. He refused
the offer. _His rent still stands at £2 an acre._”
[122] According to the researches made by the French Ministry of
Agriculture, the yearly produce of the French horticulturists attains
the value of £16,000,000.
[123] _Rural England_, ii., pp. 76, 212. Spalding, also in
Lincolnshire, is another centre for the trade in spring flowers, as
well as for intensive farming, co-operative small-holding having been
introduced there by the Provident and Small-Holdings Club (same work,
ii., pp. 238-240). More than 1,000 acres are now given to the growing
of flowers--an industry which was introduced only fifteen years ago,
when it came from Holland. On p. 242 of the same work the reader will
find some interesting information about a new “mutualist” venture,
the Lincoln Equitable Co-operative Society.
[124] _Rural England_, ii., 59.
[125] F. E. Green, _The Awakening of England_, pp. 116, 117.
[126] The imports of fruit and vegetables, fresh and preserved, were
£12,900,000 in 1909, and £14,193,000 in 1911, out of which fruit
alone must have figured for at least £4,000,000. Potatoes alone,
imported and retained for home consumption in the United Kingdom,
figure in this item for the sums of from £6,908,550 in 1908 to
£3,314,200 in 1910. The industry of dried fruit, and especially of
dried vegetables, has not yet developed in this country, the result
being that during the Boer War Britain paid a weekly tribute to
Germany for dried vegetables, which attained many thousands of pounds
every week. A nation cannot let its land be transformed into hunting
reserves at the rate it is being done in this country without having
to send the best and the most enterprising portion of its population
overseas, and without relying for its daily food upon its neighbours
and commercial rivals.
[127] Thomas Smith, _French Gardening_, London (Utopia Press), 1909,
128 pp.; _Profitable Culture of Vegetables, for Market Gardeners,
Small Holders, and Others_, London (Longmans, Green), 1911, 452 pp.;
and a short summing up of the first of these works.
[128] See Appendix T.