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THREE ACRES
AND
LIBERTY
BY
BOLTON HALL
AUTHOR OF
"THINGS AS THEY ARE," "THRIFT," ETC.
REVISED EDITION
_"A sower went out to sow and he sowed that which was in his
heart--for what can a man sow else!"_ From "THE GAME OF LIFE."
Or, as the Vulgate has it,--
_"Exitt qui seminat seminare semen suum."_
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1918
All rights reserved._
Copyright 1907 and 1918
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1907.
Reprinted April, July, 1907; March, 1908; June,
September, 1910; April, 1912; April 1914.
New edition, revised February, 1918.
FOREWORD
We are not tied to a desk or to a bench; we stay there only because
we think we are tied.
In Montana I had a horse, which was hobbled every night to keep him
from wandering; that is, straps joined by a short chain were put
around his forefeet, so that he could only hop. The hobbles were
taken off in the morning, but he would still hop until he saw his
mate trotting off.
This book is intended to show how any one can trot off if he will.
It is not a textbook; there are plenty of good textbooks, which are
referred to herein. Intensive cultivation cannot be comprised in any
one book.
It shows what is needed for a city man or woman to support a family
on the proceeds of a little bit of land; it shows how in truth, as
the old Book prophesied, the earth brings forth abundantly after its
kind to satisfy the desire of every living thing. It is not
necessary to bury oneself in the country, nor, with the new
facilities of transportation, need we, unless we wish to, pay the
extravagant rents and enormous cost of living in the city. A little
bit of land near the town or the city can be rented or bought on
easy terms; and merchandising will bring one to the city often
enough. Neither is hard labor needed; but it is to work alone that
the earth yields her increase, and if, although unskilled, we would
succeed in gardening, we must attend constantly and intelligently to
the home acres.
Every chapter of this book has been revised by a specialist, and the
authors wish to express their appreciation of the aid given them,
particularly by Mr. E. H. Moore, Arboriculturist in the Brooklyn
Department of Parks; Mr. Collingwood of the Rural New Yorker and Mr.
George T. Powell; and to thank Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright, and also
Mr. Joseph Morwitz, for many valuable suggestions; also all those
from whom we have quoted directly or in substance.
We have endeavored in the text to give full acknowledgment to all,
but in some cases it has been impossible to credit to the originator
every paragraph or thought, since these have been selected and
placed as needed, believing that all true teachers and gardeners are
more anxious to have their message sent than to be seen delivering
it.
In truth, teaching is but another department of gardening.
Practical points and criticisms from practical men and women,
especially from those experiences in trying to get to the land, will
be welcomed by the authors. Address in care of the publishers.
The Report of the Country Life Commission, with Special Message from
the President of the United States, is especially important as
showing the connection of Intensive Cultivation with Thrift for war
time.
It tells us that:
"The handicaps (on getting out of town) that we now have specially
in mind may be stated under four heads: Speculative holding of
lands; monopolistic control of streams; wastage and monopolistic
control of forests; restraint of trade.
"Certain landowners procure large areas of agricultural land in the
most available location, sometimes by questionable methods, and hold
it for speculative purposes. This not only withdraws the land itself
from settlement, but in many cases prevents the development of an
agricultural community. The smaller landowners are isolated and
unable to establish their necessary institutions or to reach the
market. The holding of large areas by one party tends to develop a
system of tenantry and absentee farming. The whole development may
be in the direction of social and economic ineffectiveness.
"A similar problem arises in the utilization of swamp lands.
According to the reports of the Geological Survey, there are more
than 75,000,000 acres of swamp land in this country, the greater
part of which are capable of reclamation at probably a nominal cost
as compared to their value. It is important to the development of
the best type of country life that the reclamation proceed under
conditions insuring subdivision into small farms and settlement by
men who would both own them and till them.
"Some of these lands are near the centers of population. They become
a menace to health, and they often prevent the development of good
social conditions in very large areas. As a rule they are extremely
fertile. They are capable of sustaining an agricultural population
numbering many millions, and the conditions under which these
millions must live are a matter of national concern. The Federal
Government should act to the fullest extent of its constitutional
powers in the reclamation of these lands under proper safeguards
against speculative holding and landlordism.
"The rivers are valuable to the farmers as drainage lines, as
irrigation supply, as carriers and equalizers of transportation
rates, as a readily available power resource, and for raising food
fish. The wise development of these and other uses is important to
both agricultural and other interests; their protection from
monopoly is one of the first responsibilities of government. The
streams belong to the people; under a proper system of development
their resources would remain an estate of all the people, and become
available as needed.
"River transportation is not usually antagonistic to railway
interests. Population and production are increasing rapidly, with
corresponding increase in the demands made on transportation
facilities. It may be reasonably expected that the river will
eventually carry a large part of the freight that does not require
prompt delivery, while the railway will carry that requiring
expedition. This is already foreseen by leading railway men; and its
importance to the farmer is such that he should encourage and aid,
by every means in his power, the large use of the rivers. The
country will produce enough business to tax both streams and
railroads to their utmost.
"In many regions the streams afford facilities for power, which,
since the inauguration of electrical transmission, is available for
local rail lines and offers the best solution of local
transportation problems. In many parts of the country local and
interurban lines are providing transportation to farm areas, thereby
increasing facilities for moving crops and adding to the profit and
convenience of farm life. However, there seems to be a very general
lack of appreciation of the possibilities of this water-power
resource as governing transportation costs.
"The streams may be also used as small water power on thousands of
farms. This is particularly true of small streams. Much of the labor
about the house and barn can be performed by transmission of power
from small water wheels running on the farms themselves or in the
neighborhood. This power could be used for electric lighting and for
small manufacture. It is more important that small power be
developed on the farms of the United States than that we harness
Niagara.
"Unfortunately, the tendency of the present laws is to encourage the
acquisition of these resources on easy terms, or on their own terms,
by the first applicants, and the power of the streams is rapidly
being acquired under conditions that lead to the concentration of
ownership in the hands of the monopolies. This constitutes a real
and immediate danger, not to the country-life interests alone, but
to the entire nation, and it is time that the whole people become
aroused to it.
"The forests have been exploited for private gain not only until the
timber has been seriously reduced, but until streams have been
ruined for navigation, power, irrigation, and common water supplies,
and whole regions have been exposed to floods and disastrous soil
erosion. Probably there has never occurred a more reckless
destruction of property that of right should belong to all the
people.
"The wood-lot property of the country needs to be saved and
increased. Wood-lot yield is one of the most important crops of the
farms, and is of great value to the public in con trolling streams,
saving the run-off, checking winds, and adding to the attractiveness
of the region. [Taken up in a special chapter of this book.]
"In many regions where poor and hilly lands prevail, the town or
county could well afford to purchase forest land, expecting thereby
to add to the value of the property and to make the forests a source
of revenue. Such communal forests in Europe yield revenue to the
cities and towns by which they are owned and managed."
These revenues would furnish good roads even in the poorest and most
sparsely settled districts.
There are a number of other reasons why people do not like to live
outside of cities--or do not succeed in farm work. There is the
difficulty of finding help. This, however, rejoices the heart of
the modern sociologist. Consider--we first teach our children
independence and train them for everything but farm help or
household services. Then we degrade the "help" below a mill "hand"
so that people will not even sit at table with them at an hotel.
Next we fix a theory of conduct for them that keeps them constantly
under orders and pay them wages that make it hardly possible for
them to rise above the station to which we have appointed them.
Finally, when we move away from the haunts of men out to
Sandtown-by-the-Puddle we blame them that they do not rush to join
us. Most of them would be happier in penal servitude than in the
country. The work is as hard and requires as much skill as a
mechanic's work, besides personal qualities that are demanded of no
mechanic, and commands half its wages.
Those who, like Henry Ford, can afford to pay mechanics' wages for
help can get all they want.
Many people go to the country without plan, preparation, or
vocation, to make a living. They usually start to build a bungalow
but seldom get further than the bungle. Don't build anything without
plan. Get a comfortable house proof against cold and heat as soon as
possible and, above all, well ventilated. At present the air in the
country is good, because the farmers shut all the bad air up in
their bedrooms.
They say
"The farmer works from sun to sun
For the summer's work is never done."
We might add, it's never even half done--naturally. A donkey engine
can work like that, but then it hasn't any brains. No man can work
from sun to sun all summer and think at all or be good for anything
at the end of it.
Above all things don't work long hours, even in learning, with the
idea of saving that way. All up-to-date employers are agreed that an
eight-hour day produces more and better results than a ten-hour day
and that a twelve-hour day brings sheriffs and suicides instead of
profits.
That's just as true of the individual worker as it is of the factory
"hand." Yet most men and a few women proudly say that they "work
like a horse" (it's usually not true). They don't; a horse won't
work and can't work over eight hours a day steadily. Neither can
you: you may keep buzzing around much longer--but the best work
requires the best conditions and the best hours. You think, or you
flatter yourself that you think, that it is necessary; but nothing
is necessary that is stupid and wrong. It is hardly too much to say
that when we are tired out or ill either we have been doing the
wrong thing or doing it wrong.
There is besides, as an anti-rusticant, railroad discrimination in
favor of long hauls, but the main reason that the small farms of the
Eastern Coast are less settled than those farther west is the great
difficulty in getting farm loans or loans on farm buildings. New
York companies and others in the great cities will loan on farms
west of the Alleghenies, but even the otherwise excellent eastern
Building Loan Associations usually restrict themselves to places
within twenty-five miles of a city. The Jewish Agricultural and
Industrial Aid Society will help approved Jewish farmers to buy and
build: and there is a Federal Land Bank in Springfield, Mass., which
lends to some Farmers' Associations, of which some four thousand are
already formed. It is hoped that the State Land Bank of New York
City may improve the situation in New York for Farmers'
Organizations, but "generally nearly all available funds of the
local banks seem to be drawn off for investments in Wall Street."
However, it is not to be forgotten that this difficulty is reflected
in the lower prices of eastern Land.
One more thing that keeps many people from the country and drives
some people back to the city is the mosquito (of course there are
mosquitoes in town, but we are not out as much, so we notice them
less). Mosquitoes breed or rather we breed them, in still water in
which there are no fish, in pools, hollows in trees, wells, etc.,
and above all in old tin cans. They can no more breed without water
than sharks could.
Mosquitoes do not breed in grass, but rank growths of weeds or grass
may conceal small breeding puddles, and form a favorite nursery for
Mamma Skeet. A teacupful of water standing ten days is enough for
250 wrigglers; their needs are modest.
Different species of mosquitoes have as well-defined habits as other
birds and are classified as follows: Domestic, Migratory, and
Woodland.
The common domestic or pet species breed in fresh water, usually in
the house yard, fly comparatively short distances, and habitually
enter houses. They winter in cellars, barns, and outhouses. Some of
them are conveyors of malaria.
The Migratory Species breed on the salt marshes, fly long distances,
do not habitually enter houses, and are not carriers of diseases so
far as known.
Certain varieties of Woodland Mosquitoes breed only in woodland
pools, appearing in the early spring, and travel a greater distance
than the domestic species. They are not usually troublesome indoors.
It has been proved that malaria is transmitted only by certain
species of Anopheles, one of which is the domestic mosquito.
Eliminate this one species of mosquito and the disease will
disappear as a direct consequence. So if you hear that pretty little
song in the house, don't swear, thank the Lord that effects always
follow causes. You need never be without a bite in the house if you
have a nice cesspool handy for Sis Mosquito, for each one will have
a first-class feed with you every second or third day.
They are needless and dangerous pests or pets. Their propagation can
be prevented by draining or filling wet areas, by emptying or
screening water receptacles, and by spraying with oil where better
measures are not available. Oil should be sprinkled in any
cesspools, sewers, and catch basins, rain barrels, water troughs,
roof gutters, marshes, swamps, and puddles that cannot be done away
with. All ponds and large bodies of water should have clean sharp
edges, because in shallow, grassy edges larvae of the malarial
species are commonly found. Large ponds with clean edges, inhabited
by fish or predatory insects, are safe; smaller ponds, if wind
swept, and all ponds in the "ripple area" are safe. All rain pools,
stagnant gutters, overgrown edges of large ponds, and all
receptacles holding water not constantly renewed, are dangerous. You
raise most of your own mosquitoes.
Now a word specially concerning this revised edition.
The farm papers are supported mainly by men with large acreage, it
is the rise in value of these acres more than the rise in farm
products that has pulled the land-owning farmers out of the hole
that they were in up to about the year 1900. Farmers' knowledge,
liking, and equipment was for big fields, half cultivated, and at
first they did not like to hear that they had been wasting so much
of the labor that had bent their backs. Nor did they want to hear
that it would have been far more profitable to them to have
cultivated a few acres and left the goats and hogs or sheep to
attend to the rest as wild land until the long-expected settlers
came along to buy the land at dreamland prices.
Consequently, all the faults in the book there were, and some more
besides, have been picked out by these critics. It is surprising as
well as a notable compliment to the agricultural experts who revised
the first edition that, with one exception, no material error or
omission has been pointed out.
The more so because there is absolutely no limit to the advances in
methods and results in doing things, and in growing things, all born
of intelligent toil. Your suggestions may help the world to better
and bigger things. If you will listen at the 'phone you may sometime
hear a conversation like this:
"Hello, this is Mrs. Wise, send me two strawberries, please." "You'd
better take three, Madam, I've none larger than peaches to-day."
"All right; good-bye."
You may sometime see that kind of strawberry in New Jersey at
Kevitt's Athenia, or Henry Joralamon's, or in the berry known by
various names, such as Giant and different Joe's. But lots of people
have failed in their war garden work even on common things; lots
more ought to have failed but haven't--yet. Years ago, we, the book
and its helpers, started the forward-to-the-land movement which has
resulted in probably two million extra garden patches this war year.
I have had carloads of letters, at least hand carloads, about the
book, but not one worker who even tried to follow its counsels has
reported failure.
So don't let us have a wail from you because your "garden stuff
never comes up." Of course it doesn't; you have to bring it up, just
like a baby. That's what I've been crying for long years in the
wilderness ever since the first edition of this book. The Three
Acres may be bought on credit but eternal vigilance is the price of
Liberty and crops. To raise good crops costs time and attention and
sweat of body and of brains.
Here is a chunk of wisdom out of the excellent Garden Primer (which
you can get free by asking me for it):
"One hour a day spent in a garden ten yards long by seven wide will
supply vegetables enough for a family of six"; but the value of this
remark lies in the application of it. If you figure a bit on that
you will find that ten minutes a day will provide enough for one
person, but six hours once a week won't do. Six hours a day will
bring up a baby; but two days a week is criminal neglect for the
other five days. If you once let the weeds get a good start, say
after a rain, they will make even the angels swear. It's regular
attention that the baby and the garden and your education and your
best girl will require.
If you want more minute instructions about how to grow each
vegetable, put in words that anybody can understand without getting
a headache or a dictionary, look up "The Garden Yard" by the Author.
It is in nearly all libraries now, and it is the only book that
makes perfectly plain everything that a plain man needs to know
about growing plain things.
So there is little to add in this new edition except to reinforce
what was not strong enough. In the present jumping market to revise
the prices quoted would be absurd, but it may be noted that, as in
the prices of 'cowers, the minimum prices are still about correct,
but the maximum prices have jumped almost out of sight. Every year
there are more and more very wealthy people who will pay nearly any
price for the very best. The world seems to be dividing into those
who have to count their pennies and those who couldn't count their
thousands. Of course, where war has prohibited the importation of
the strong bulbs and roots needed for forcing flowers, the prices
are about what any one who has any chooses to ask. Monopoly can
always get its own price.
This New Edition does not attempt to bring prices quoted up to date.
In these times not even a stock exchange telegraph ticker can do
that. Prices of goods in general have advanced at least 80 per cent.
By the day that this book is off the press they may have decreased,
or more likely advanced some more. The next day they may slump.
Prices of labor advance more slowly and do not slump so fast. Wages
of men gardeners have risen perhaps 50 per cent in the last ten
years, but women and children have learned to do much of the work.
They do the work cheaper because most of them have some one on whom
they can partly depend for support.
Similarly, when an example of total product given in the earlier
edition is still typical and has stood investigation, it is not
discarded in favor of a more modern instance.
It would have been easy to have revised all the figures, but of
little advantage to our readers. For example, it is encouraging to
the citizen to know that the average wheat yield per acre has
increased more than two bushels since the first edition of this
book, but it would not help the garden maker. The increase of
possible products tends to counterbalance the increased cost of
labor. So only the musty parts have been cut out of the book, which
is more needed now than ever.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter I: Making a Living--Where and How
Chapter II: Present Conditions
Chapter III: How To Buy The Farm
Chapter IV: Vacant City Lot Cultivation
Chapter V: Results To Be Expected
Chapter VI: What An Acre May Produce
Chapter VII: Some Methods
Chapter VIII: The Kitchen Garden
Chapter IX: Tools And Equipment
Chapter X: Advantages From Capital
Chapter XI: Hotbeds And Greenhouses
Chapter XII: Other Uses Of Land
Chapter XIII: Fruits
Chapter XIV: Flowers
Chapter XV: Drug Plants
Chapter XVI: Novel Live Stock
Chapter XVII: Where To Go
Chapter XVIII: Clearing The Land
Chapter XIX: How To Build
Chapter XX: Back To The Land
Chapter XXI: Coming Profession For Boys
Chapter XXII: The Wood Lot
Chapter XXIII: Some Practical Experiments
Chapter XXIV: Some Experimental Foods
Chapter XXV: Dried Truck
Chapter XXVI: Home Cold Pack Canning
Chapter XXVII: Retail Cooperation
Chapter XXVIII: Summer Colonies For City People
CHAPTER I
MAKING A LIVING--WHERE AND HOW
By thought and courage, we can help ourselves to own a home,
surrounded by acres of fruit and vegetables, flowers and poultry,
and learn the best methods so as to insure success.
In olden times any one could "farm," but it is necessary to-day to
teach people to obtain a livelihood directly from the earth.
Scientific methods of agriculture have revealed possibilities in the
soil that make farming the most fascinating occupation known to man.
People in every city are longing for the freedom of country life,
yet hesitate to enter into its liberty because no one points the
way.
Most sociologists are agreed that the great problem of our day is to
stop the drift of population toward the cities. Seeing the
overcrowding, the want and misery of our great towns, the
philanthropist chimes in with "Get the people to the country, that
is the need."
But there is no such need. Man is a social animal, he naturally goes
in flocks, he earns more and learns more in crowds. To transport him
to the country, even if he would stay, which happily he won't, would
be to doctor a symptom. As in typhoid, what is needed is not to
suppress the fever, that is easy, but to remove the cause of it.
It is not the growth of the cities that we want to check, but the
needless want and misery in the cities, and this can be done by
restoring the natural condition of living, and among other things,
by showing that it is easier and making it more attractive to live
in comfort on the outskirts of the city as producers, than in the
slums as paupers.
We know already that the natural and healthy life is, that in the
sweat of our faces we should eat bread. We observe that everything
we eat or use or make comes from the earth by labor; but no one
knows how abundantly the Mother can supply her children. It is well
said that no man yet knows the capacity of a square yard of earth.
The farmer thinks that he has done well if he gets a hundred and
fifty or two hundred bushels of potatoes from an acre; he does not
know that others have gotten 1284 bushels.
("Mr. Knight, whose name is well known to every horticulturist in
England, Once dug out of his fields no less than 1284 bushels of
potatoes, or thirty-four tons and nine hundreds weight (about 34
bushels to the ton), on a single acre; and at a recent competition
in Minnesota, 1120 bushels, or thirty tons, could be ascertained as
having been grown on one acre." P. Kropotkin's "Fields, Factories
and Workshops," page 114.)
Let us realize what an acre means. An acre is a square about 209
feet each way, 4840 square yards of land. A New York City avenue
block is about 200 feet long from house corner to house corner. It
has eight city lots 25 X 100 in its front; about double that space
(17-2/5 lots) makes an acre.
An ordinary one-horse cart holds twenty bushels, so then a full crop
of potatoes from that space would fill 56 carts.
To raise potatoes as an ordinary farmer raises them, requires him to
go over the ground not less than a dozen times, plowing, harrowing,
marking, planting, cultivating, three times weeding, three times for
bugs, and digging; it would pay him to go over it much oftener.
If he plants his rows of potatoes three feet apart, to allow for
horse cultivation, he has 69 rows of 200 feet each; which makes him
walk at least thirty-three miles over each acre. If he has a
twenty-acre lot in potatoes, he walks each year more than 650 miles
over the field and gets, let us say, 150 bushels of poor potatoes
per acre, or 3000 bushels off his twenty-acre field.
Now suppose he cultivates the soil, instead of just "raising a
crop," and gets 600 bushels of fine potatoes to the acre, he need
plant only five acres, walk only 200 miles, and, because his
potatoes are choice and early, get many times the price that his
pedestrian neighbor gets. It is much easier to grow 200,000 lb. of
feed on one acre than to grow them on ten acres.
To cultivate is to watch the soil as you would watch your cooking
and to tend the crop as you would tend your animals. The crop is as
alive as the stock and as easily gets sick.
If an ordinary farmer rents 60 acres at $5.00 per acre, a moderate
rent for good land, he pays out in cash $300, besides farm wages. If
he buys it, his interest and taxes will amount to nearly as much;
but if he tills but five acres intelligently, he can get as much out
of it as out of an ordinary farm, and even if his rent be as high as
$30 per acre for well situated land, he is $150 to the good;
besides, doing the work himself, he has no drain of capital for
wages.
Large barns and shelter for help being unnecessary, he can live in a
cheap shack till he accumulates enough for proper buildings. Many of
the successful vacant lot farmers live in a tent or in shanties made
of old boxes and such like.
Of course, if we have the knowledge and ability and the capital and
can give it the attention, it is more profitable to cultivate on a
large scale than on a small one, because in that case each worker
necessarily produces more than he gets as wages--and we pocket the
difference.
Most American farmers are holding land that somebody ought to pay
them a bonus for working, else they must come out of the little end
of the horn. They get poor or poorly situated land, because it costs
less, and then put three or four hundred dollars' worth of labor and
money a year into the land and take out four or five hundred
dollars' worth of crops.
The farmer thinks he must have big fields to feed his cattle, and
that he must have cattle to keep the big fields fertilized, so he
raises hay.
In that he makes two mistakes; hay, like most other low-priced
crops, is risky--the cost of harvesting is high and the margin of
profit small. A week of wet weather at cutting time or the
impossibility of getting enough men and machines in the week when it
should be cut, may make a loss.
But the scientific dairy man does not take that risk, nor let his
cattle use up this fodder by wandering over the fields in search of
tid-bits of grass or clover, or, goaded by the flies, trampling more
grass than they eat and wasting their manure.
He keeps the cows in cool sheds, feeds them on cut fodder, and saves
every ounce of the manure.
The modern cow is a ruminating machine for producing milk and cares
little for exercise and needs little. To exploit the cattle as
employers exploit the factory hands, he gives the cows a cool, shady
place and food, and they stand there all day long to their profit
and his.
(United States Agricultural Bulletin No. 22 says: "The New Jersey
Experiment Station has been conducting a practical trial in soiling
dairy cows for a number of years past, and finds that complete
soiling is entirely practicable, i.e. that green foliage crops may
serve as the sole food of the dewy herd, aside from the grain
ration, without injury to the animals and with a considerable saving
in the cost of milk.
"Under the soiling system a large number of animals can be kept upon
a given acreage and by allowing open-air exercises in a large yard
or pasture the practice has been demonstrated as entirely feasible
for dairy animals.
"One acre of soiling crops produced sufficient fodder for an
equivalent of 3 cows for six months. Rye, corn, crimson clover,
alfalfa, oats and peas, and millets have been found to furnish food
more economically than any other green crops in that locality. A
grain rotation was always fed in addition to the soiling crops.")
Although we can feed a cow on less than an acre by raising forage
crops, she needs to be milked every day at regular hours, and the
milk, as well as the cans and the cow, need to be cared for--and she
cannot wait.
The stock-raiser has a different proposition; he needs fields and
grass; but if time and available labor is limited, we had better
specialize on the garden--unlike the farmers.
The farmers are not to blame that they do not usually cultivate the
land intelligently. They are mostly cut off from the educational
advantages of the cities by distance and by bad roads.
Usually, that is because, desirable land being held at speculative
prices, they are forced to places where the farm itself is worth
less than the good improvements on it cost. Sometimes it is because,
also, the land is poor or worn out; more often because it is
thoughtlessly managed, nearly always because the land-hungry farmer
has taken ten times as much land as he needs for farming. In the
hope of a rise that often does not come, nearly all have bought more
land than they can take good care of with limited capital and
scarcity of help.
In addition, the farms have held out such poor prospects of fortune
that the smarter and more enterprising boys and girls have left them
for the towns, leaving behind the duller and more conservative to
the mercy of the railroads and other monopolies. What wonder, then,
that the overworked and struggling farmer finds little chance to
study, or to investigate and invest in fertilizers or even in modern
methods of agriculture.
No wonder farming does not pay if a "farmer" means a stupid man with
neither training for, nor knowledge of, his business. Those who have
the knowledge seldom have the experience and those who have the
experience seldom have the knowledge.
The bonanza farms of the West are other samples of great areas of
the most productive land in the United States being used most
unscientifically. By the methods used, the land produces less per
acre than land in the East which is not so good. Accordingly, we
find that the bonanza farm plan, where great areas of wheat are
worked by machines with labor employed only in the seed time and
harvest, is rapidly breaking up. As the land becomes valuable and is
taxed, such wasteful, wholesale methods do not pay as well as it
pays to rent or sell the land to farmers, who each for themselves
attend to details of the business. Consequently, most of those farms
are being sold off. The whole amount of wheat ever raised on them,
however, is small compared to the rice, millet, and wheat raised in
China, India, and Russia, and is insignificant compared to the
amount of produce grown on the myriad little farm plots.
A comparison of productions as taken from the 12th and 13th United
States Censuses in the bonanza farm states shows that the yield of
wheat was:
while New England shows 23.5 bu. per acre.
In 1899 In 1909
Minnesota 14.5 bu. per acre 17.4
North Dakota 13.5 bu. per acre 14.3
South Dakota 10.5 bu. per acre 14.6
By 1917 these largely increased, but the differences remain.
"The average extent of land tilled by one family in Japan does not
exceed one hectare" (2.471 acres), less than two and a half acres.
("Japan in the Beginning of the Twentieth Century," page 89.
Published by the Department of Agriculture and Commerce of Japan.)
"Farm households contain on an average 5.8 persons, of whom two and
a half persons per family may be regarded of an age capable of doing
effective work."
"So that here we have more than one person working on each acre and
each acre supporting more than two persons, notwithstanding that
their 22,000,000 tenant farmers pay sometimes four fifths of their
product as rent." (Same, page 103.)
Denmark, one of the best agricultural countries and probably one of
the happiest communities on earth, reported
1,900 farms of 250-300 acres,
74,000 farms averaging 100 acres,
150,000 farms averaging 7 to 10 acres,
1,050 cooperative dairies, and so on.
And so impressed has the ruling class there become with the
advantage of this that the Government will supply the poor worker
nine tenths of the means necessary to buy a small farm.
Says Kropotkin, "the small island of Jersey, eight miles long and
less than six miles wide, still remains a land of open field
culture; but, although it comprises only 28,707 acres (nearly 45
square miles), rocks included, it nourishes a population of about
two inhabitants to each acre, or 1300 inhabitants to the square
mile, and there is not one writer on agriculture who, after having
paid a visit to this island, does not praise the well-being of the
Jersey peasants and the admirable results which they obtain in their
small farms of from five to twenty acres--very often less than five
acres--by means of a rational and intensive culture.
"Most of my readers will probably be astonished to learn that the
soil of Jersey, which consists of decomposed granite, with no
organic matter in it, is not at all of surprising fertility, and
that its climate, though more sunny than the climate of the British
Isles, offers many drawbacks on account of the small amount of sun
heat during the summer and of the cold winds in spring."
("The successes accomplished lately in Jersey are entirely due to
the amount of labor which a dense population is putting on the land;
to a system of land-tenure, land-transference, and inheritance very
different from those which prevail elsewhere; to freedom from State
taxation; and to the fact that communal institutions have been
maintained down to quite a recent period, while a number of communal
habits and customs of mutual support, derived there-from, are alive
to the present time." ("Fields, Factories and Workshops.")
"It will suffice to say that on the whole the inhabitants of Jersey
obtain agricultural products to the value of $250 to each acre of
the aggregate surface of land." (Same, page 113.))
In a small plot the character of the soil is of little consequence.
We hear of one garden in New York City on the roof of a big building
where the janitor smuggled up the needed soil in baskets.
The school gardens in New York City, some in a space as small as a
hearth rug, one yard by two, show how to use a very small patch of
land to the best advantage. Nor need it take more time than you can
afford.
"Some of the cultivators of city lots on Long Island who kept count
of the number of days they worked, show the surprising conclusion
that they earned, not farm wages (seventy-five cents a day with
board and lodging for the worker), but mechanics' wages (four
dollars per day) for every working day; as, for instance, a
stone-cutter, assisted by his two boys, worked fifty hours and made
$120.23." ("Cultivation of Vacant Lots, New York," page 12); and
four city lots is a very little farm.
But though one may not own even a little farm, almost any one who
wants to can have a home garden--it needs but a small plot of land.
Nor need we be discouraged because acquaintances who play at
gardening tell us that their vegetables cost them more than if they
bought them.
They naturally would, with thoughtless methods of cultivation, with
the selection of crops and the purchase of seeds left to an
uneducated man who does all his work the way he saw his grandfather
do it.
Nor are we to be discouraged even by the "gentleman farmer" who
runs a model farm, a model of how not to do it, for, notwithstanding
its large capital, it seldom pays.
I am passing such a farm now as I write in the train--it is
surrounded by a cut stone wall. Do you suppose the owner business
would pay if it were run in the same way that his farm is run? We
know the story of the white sparrow to find which would bring luck
to the farm--but it was out only at daybreak; the farmer got up each
morning to find the sparrow and found a lot of other things to
attend to, which did bring luck to the farm. I don't think the owner
of that wall worked at it, at daybreak.
The time is not far distant when the builders of homes in our
American cities will be compelled to leave room for a garden, in
order to meet the requirements of the people In the mad rush for
wealth we have overlooked the natural state, but we see a healthy
reaction setting in. With the improvements in steam and electricity,
the revolutionizing of transportation, the cutting of the arbitrary
telephone charges, it is becoming possible to live at a distance
from our business. May we not expect in the near future to see one
portion of our cities devoted entirely to business, with the homes
of the people so separated as to give light, sunshine, and air to
all, besides a piece of ground for a garden sufficient to supply the
table with vegetables?
You raise more than vegetables in your garden: you raise your
expectation of life.
Life belongs in the garden. Do you remember--the first chapters of
Genesis show us our babyhood in a garden--the garden that all
babyhood remembers, and the last chapter of the Apocalypse leaves us
with the vision of the garden in the Holy City, on either side of
the river, where the trees yield their fruits every month and bear
leaves of universal healing. Just so will it be in our holy cities
of the future--the garden will be right there "in the midst."