122 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



cultivated upon thousands and thousands of acres in 

 Europe and America. He would not be bound to in- 

 vent some new methods, but could simply generalise and 

 widely apply those which have stood the test of experi- 

 ence. 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 La Conquete du Pain) approximate calculations to 

 that effect, but with the data given in this book every one 

 can himself easily test the truth of this assertion. If 

 we take, indeed, the masses of produce which are ob- 

 tained 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 ex- 

 tent, we surely need not divide the land into one-acre 

 plots, and attempt to grow what we are in need of by 

 every one's separate individual exertions, on every one'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 maraicher, 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 mili- 

 tarily organised " labour battalions ". In Bonanza farms 



