124 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



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 ail 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 every one, 

 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, scien- 

 tific, 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 



