OF AGRICULTURE. 235 



cultivate his soil, not in some extravagant way, 

 but no better than land is already cultivated 

 upon thousands and thousands of acres in 

 Europe and America. He would not be bound 

 to invent some new methods, but could simply 

 generalise and widely apply those which have 

 stood the test of experience. He can do it ; 

 and in so doing he would save an immense 

 quantity of the work which is now given for 

 buying his food abroad, and for paying all the 

 intermediaries who live upon this trade. Under 

 a rational culture, those necessaries and those 

 luxuries which must be obtained from the 

 soil, undoubtedly can be obtained with much 

 less work than is required now for buying these 

 commodities. I have made elsewhere (in The 

 Conquest of Bread) approximate calculations to 

 that effect, but with the data given in this 

 book everyone can himself easily test the truth 

 of this assertion. If we take, indeed, the 

 masses of produce which are obtained under 

 rational culture, and compare them with the 

 amount of labour which must be spent for 

 obtaining them under an irrational culture, for 

 collecting them abroad, for transporting them, 

 and for keeping armies of middlemen, we see 

 at once how few days and hours need be given, 

 under proper culture, for growing man's food. 

 For improving our methods of culture to 



