WHERE TO GO 167 



the owners allow to be overrun with fire almost every year. 

 A large part of this land has soil two or three feet deep under- 

 laid with gravel. The best water in the world is abundant 

 and the climate is more equable than on the mainland, and 

 in each locality where any reasonable effort has been made 

 to cultivate the soil, it has produced plentifully of all fruits 

 and vegetables which can be grown in this latitude." 



Long Island should produce all the fruit, vegetables, poultry, 

 eggs, and milk needed by its own residents, with a large sur- 

 plus for the city markets, instead of getting, as it does, a 

 large part of its supply of these things from the city. 



When it is considered that about a quarter of a million acres 

 of this land so close to the city is now scrub oak and uncul- 

 tivated waste, and that there are about a million adult 

 workers in the city, the importance of the experiment is ob- 

 vious ; especially as we learn from the United States census 

 that over ten thousand of these workers are already in agri- 

 cultural pursuits within the city limits. 



" Here midway on Long Island, and just beyond the limits 

 for a man to locate who expects to earn his living by daily 

 work in the city, is a territory about forty miles long and ten 

 miles wide which by intensive farming would yield a good 

 living for more than two hundred thousand inhabitants. 

 In this agricultural section, a man of small means who ex- 

 pects to live on the land the year round, should purchase a 

 plot not too small to produce enough to support himself and 

 family and a surplus to sell, not less than six acres. Probably 

 all men have more or less land hunger a desire to own land 

 and it is a worthy object to encourage to the extent of in- 

 ducing a man to purchase what he can pay for and be satisfied 

 with, but it is a shameful thing to induce a poor man, who has 

 to earn his living hi New York, to buy on the installment 



