THE HOME AND ITS SURROUNDINGS. 395 



XVI. 



RARMS FX>R POOR MEN. 



THERE is in every community a large class of men whose 

 tastes would lead them to become tillers of the soil, but 

 who are deterred from attempting it because they have 

 not the capital to buy and stock a farm of fifty or one hundred 

 acres, which they imagine would be necessary for the support 

 of their families. 



France is one of the best cultivated and most prosperous 

 countries on the globe, and its prosperity is largely due to the 

 fact that it abounds in small farms of from one to five acres. 

 If, as I believe, a very few acres can be so managed as to give 

 a comfortable support to a family, it is clearly within the scope 

 of this book to show how it can be done. 



The tendency of the age in nearly all callings is for capital 

 to combine, and form great corporations, so that the mechanic na 

 longer works for an individual who may have a feeling of inter- 

 est in and some compassion for him, but for a soulless corpora- 

 tion, whose only interest in him is to get his labor for the small- 

 est possible sum that will keep his family from the poor-house. 

 To counteract this "trades unions," and various forms of labor 

 combinations have been formed, and the laborer who belongs to 

 one of these must stop work whenever a strike is ordered, even 

 if he has no money to support his family. If he stands aloof 

 from the labor organizations he is denominated a " scab," and is 

 often subjected to petty persecution, or, if he attempts to take 

 the place of a striking workman, to bodily injury. The dishon- 

 esty or reckless speculation of a single member of the corpora- 

 tion, or some unforeseen and unavoidable financial disaster, may, 

 and often does throw thousands of laborers out of employment, 



