Small Fruits in Chicago. 189 



tation to every other point, where fruits long since became 

 a necessity of life, may be distributed in good, and com- 

 paratively fresh condition from where they were grown. 

 The average man who has a suburban home will not raise 

 the fruits his family consumes. There is a valid reason for 

 this. Being near to some large city market he can buy 

 them cheaper than he can produce them. 



Why? 



He must not only hire the labor to do the work, but he 

 must hire expert labor — a man who understands not only 

 how to plant and cultivate, but why a thing should be done 

 in a c< rtaiu wa}' and at a certain time. The citizen oi' 

 suburban resident has no time to give his supervision to this 

 work, even if he knew how. It will bear repeating: He can 

 buy cheaper than he can produce. 



THE FARMER MUST RAISE HIS OWN. 



Not so the farmer; the farmer, whose average distance 

 from railways is somewhere about fifteen miles from the 

 railway, city or village must either raise his vegetables 

 and fruits or go without. The consequence is he goes with- 

 out, oftentimes a long life, without the enjoyment by him- 

 self and family, of vegetables and fruits, that ought to 

 furnish fully one-half of his daily fare. There are notable 

 exceptions. I am not speaking of this class. The average 

 man with the soil, and the means at hand, for cheaply pro- 

 ducing these necessary adjuncts to profitable living, denies 

 himself and family, year by year, except at comparatively 

 long intervals, of articles of food that should daily grace 

 his table. It costs him more each year to do without, than 

 even to buy them. He could produce them for about one- 

 half their cost in his village market. He neither raises nor 

 buys. He pays doctors' bills that he rnight otherwise avoid. 

 He and his family also lack that perfect nourishment of 

 body, which also renders the mind acute, and hence lacks 

 the ability to perform even labor in the most perfect man- 

 ner. Labor is never perfect except thoughtful. Many 

 farmers will even contend that his soil and climate is not 

 congenial to fruit, when in fact it is only uncongenial to 



