260 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY 



It is perfectly practicable to sell about one half of the land 

 in a year or two, and have a thousand acres or more left free 

 and clear, which will cost the promoters nothing. Renting 

 this out or selling it will repay the whole cost, and probably 

 bring a large profit besides. 



This is no experiment, it is only to do the thing that we 

 have been doing under various conditions with various 

 sorts of men in different localities for the past twenty years 

 in the Vacant Lot Gardens : namely, to give men the oppor- 

 tunity of living upon and cultivating land, putting up their 

 own tents, shacks, or bungalows, and giving them such in- 

 struction and such help as does not cost anything more 

 than the salary of the superintendent. There are abundant 

 men who can make good and shift for themselves under those 

 circumstances ; the men who are available are single men, 

 such men as those for whom Mr. Hallimond, a clergyman 

 working in the Bowery, has been finding rural employment in 

 the past ten years. Also many families will come to us through 

 the Vacant Lot Gardens and the Little Land agitation. 



People such as these will increase the land value, for every 

 decent man carries around with him at least five hundred 

 dollars' worth of increase in land values which his presence 

 adds to somebody's holdings of land. The struggle to pocket 

 this increase accounts for much of the human drift from the 

 field to the factory. 



God made the country ; man made the city and the 

 devil made the suburbs, by the aid of the speculator. 



Alpha of the Plough says in the London Star: "I was 

 walking with a friend along the Spaniards-road the other 

 evening talking on the inexhaustible theme of these days, 

 when he asked, 'What is the biggest thing that has happened 

 to this country as the outcome of the war?' 



