OF AGRICULTURE. 133 



Of course, the necessity of creating for the 

 earlier life of the plant a warm soil and atmos- 

 phere will always remain, and sixty years ago 

 Leonce de Lavergne foretold that the next step 

 hi culture would be to warm the soil. But 

 heating pipes give the same results as the 

 fermenting manures at a much smaller expense 

 of human labour. And already the system 

 works on a large scale, as will be seen from 

 the next chapter. Through it the productive 

 powers of a given area of land are increased 

 more than a hundred times. 



It is obvious that now, when the capitalist 

 system makes us pay for everything three or 

 four times its labour value, we often spend 

 about 1 for each square yard of a heated 

 conservatory. But how many middlemen are 

 making fortunes on the wooden sashes imported 

 from Drontheim ? If we only could reckon our 

 expenses in labour, we should discover to our 

 amazement that, thanks to the use of machinery, 

 the square yard of a conservatory does not 

 cost more than half a day of human labour ; 

 and we will see presently that the Jersey and 

 Guernsey average for cultivating one acre under 

 glass is only three men working ten hours a day. 

 Therefore the conservatory, which formerly was 

 a luxury, is rapidly entering into the domain 

 of high culture. And we may foresee the day 



