RETAIL COOPERATION 259 



place, go off and buy land or lease it for themselves. This 

 makes a constant drain from the gardens, leaving openings 

 for others who will learn in time their trade ; it is possible to 

 make in this way a steady drain out of the cities to the coun- 

 try, and what is better still, an automatic drain. 



The land must be so near to a center of population that 

 it may be possible to take a gang of men down there in 

 the morning, show them what it is, and send back those who 

 do not seem likely to make good, or who are dissatisfied ; and 

 that when men get then* gardens successfully running, they 

 may be able to bring then* friends there to see what they 

 have done, and say to them, "Go thou and do likewise." 



I have been at Trudeau, Saranac Lake, and at Stony Wold, 

 the consumptive sanitariums, and found there both by 

 observation and by testimony that to send back the convales- 

 cents to the bench or the workshop from which they came is 

 practically to repronounce upon them the sentence of death 

 from which the sanitarium has offered them a reprieve. The 

 only practical thing to do with such convalescents, and with 

 such persons who are not capable of their ordinary avocations, 

 is to get them in some way upon the land. There is a large 

 demand for persons who understand the new intensive garden- 

 ing, and places can be found for more than we can hope 

 to educate in that line. 



There should be buildings upon the land sufficient to bunk 

 one hundred to one hundred and fifty men ; accommodations 

 could be made with the small timber for a considerable 

 number. Many of these men would need some help, but 

 most of them would shift for themselves if only they could get 

 the opportunity to build upon the land and to have a secure 

 tenure of it. A mere tenant knows that it is bunkum 

 when he says "Our Country." 



