204 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY 



live on the charitable, only because of the known difficulties 

 of finding work. 



The farmers should be utilized as far as possible in the 

 purchasing and sales department, and should divide into 

 committees to try various experiments connected with their 

 business, that through their reports all may be benefited 

 by the knowledge gained. Dairying and large orchards on 

 land suitable and not of use in the general farming plan could 

 be conducted by the community, each farmer being a stock- 

 holder. The labor performed on these cooperative under- 

 takings should be paid for and charged to cost of production, 

 each one who performs a share of the labor participating in 

 the profits as near as may be. As money is received by the 

 company from products, it can be used in similar operations. 

 When the farms are paid for, the farmers can continue the 

 cooperative features that experience has proved useful and 

 extend the business principle to other fields, such as heating, 

 light, and power by electricity, machinery for preparing prod- 

 ucts for market, drying, canning, etc., as well as for the culti- 

 vation of the soil. 



Where the land is level the farms can be laid out on a 

 general plan that will admit of the use of steam plows to 

 reduce the cost of plowing, save hard labor, and reduce the 

 number of work animals. 



Among the multitude of advantages the individual would 

 have in these communities, social, educational, and economic, 

 health and physical development appear as not the least. 



The farm, as it is, still furnishes a horde of recruits for 

 insane asylums ; its isolation and monotony of everyday life, 

 with its lack of social intercourse and educational advantages, 

 nearly counterbalance the strain and poverty of the cities. 



But the greatest difficulty is the growing inability of the 



