8 THE NATIONAL LAND COMPANY. [May 



manufactories must exist co-ordinately. Do not the present 

 Eussian war complications point to this as a suitable time, by the 

 help of the small culture, whether at home or in the colonies, to 

 "row our own fibres ? What a larcfe farmer will not trouble himself 

 with, may be the staff of life to the small grower, provided, as in 

 Belgium, steady markets are at his door. The Flax Supply Associa- 

 tion appears to have languished in Ulster, mainly because the small 

 cultivators have not an agency ready to buy from them the flax 

 crops of their fields, subsequently preparing them by the most 

 approved processes for the market. Thus, too, jam factories or the 

 like should be near fruit-growing colonies. Here, again, is a distinct 

 outlet for such societies as the National Land Company. 



Further, might not estates near great cities, and having proper 

 railway facilities, subdivided in the fashion of the National Land 

 Company, afford healthy and profitable outlet for the great middle 

 class besides merely labourers ? Professor Arnold has been telling 

 Americans how well his farm of five acres, within three miles of 

 Rochester, is doing. One acre is in apple trees, one to two in corn, 

 manured in part by poultry manure, one in raspberries (Doolittle), 

 grown chiefly for drying. He has forty hens and one cow, kept 

 solely on the soiling system, as there is not a rod of pasture on the 

 place. He estimates his profits at 600 dollars. Now this is a 

 moderate profit in the light of some British instances of fruit- 

 growing. But there is also the health and happiness unknown to 

 toilers in populous city pent. Schemes such as Mechanics' 

 Institutes, started expressly for the intellectual advantage of the 

 labouring masses, have, in fact, bettered those immediately above 

 them in the social scale. Such, perhaps, may also be the fate of 

 the operations of the National Land Company. Whether by fruit 

 or fibre farming, or more directly by the way of such mutual help 

 we have indicated as outlined in the Company's prospectus of 

 colonists tilling their eight or ten acre lots by mutual co-operation 

 in ploughing and the like, a more intense cultivation with a 

 corresponding increase in the crops might follow. In any case, the 

 experience of reformatory schools when cultivating good land, of 

 £15 instead of £8 per acre, might be obtained. Of course the 

 laying out of plantations should be an important and profitable 

 feature of ail such schemes. 



