Let Every Man own his Gardeji. 149 



LET EVERY MAN OWN HIS GARDEN. 



The results of human life are small differences between enormous quan- 

 tities. The babe of eight pounds grows into the man of a hundred and fifty- 

 eight by the addition of many tons of food and drink, and subtractions 

 amounting to just a hundred and fifty pounds less. The frugal mechanic 

 who has laid by a thousand dollars in twenty years, has done so, perhaps, 

 by earning ten thousand dollars, and spending but nine thousand five hun- 

 dred : the other five hundred is interest. A small amount of daily waste 

 would have swallowed this balance, and made him a recipient of the public 

 charity at the first distress. 



France utilizes such products as America wastes. Of a dead horse, not 

 an ounce fails to be turned into money. Strip that gay and gorgeous peo- 

 ple of the wealth saved by utilizing offal, and you would see it a nation 

 of starving beggars. Most poverty comes from waste, either of time, of 

 Nature's wealth, or of the results of human labor. 



If the food and clothing needed by a family for a year were composted 

 into a manure-heap, it would be a pile of no inconsiderable value. Most 

 of it ought to find its place there ultimately, and be of service to its owner. 

 There are men who have moved twenty times in thirty years, and have 

 carried in their last migration less value than they have left behind them 

 in refuse to annoy and disgust their successors. 



If the compost-heap be the poor man's savings bank, it is one that pays 

 a high rate of interest. Measure off two equal pieces of ground ; treat 

 them exactly alike, except that you give one of them six dollars' worth of 

 manure. From the other you may take forty dollars' worth of cabbages ; 

 from this, a hundred and forty.* Here is an extreme case of more than 

 a thousand per cent interest for five months ; but a hundred per cent is a 

 very common and moderate rate. 



And the poor man's savings bank pays a compound interest. The pear 

 you raise comes not from the soil alone : the soil throws up a net of 

 leaves to catch the riches of the air. To him that hath a rich soil shall be 

 given carbonic acid from the atmosphere ; but from him who hath not shall 



• See " Gardening for Profit," p. 32. 



