418 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



the workers, these workers, being everywhere in the 

 majority, will determine that beyond the central business 

 part of the town, the land shall be let in lots of from one 

 to five or ten acres, at fair agricultural rents and on a 

 permanent tenure. Such small lots would be a twofold 

 benefit to the community. In the first place they would 

 constitute homesteads for workers, where they and their 

 families could utilize every portion of spare time in the 

 production of vegetables, fruit, poultry, eggs, pork, and 

 other foodstuffs, which would supply their families with a 

 considerable portion of their daily food. In the second 

 place they would supply the town itself with fresh and 

 wholesome vegetables, fruit, eggs, &c., and also, from the 

 larger plots of five or ten acres, abundance of fresh milk 

 and butter and other farm and garden produce. A little 

 farther off, the regular farms, held in the same way, 

 would provide the town with wheat, corn, hay, beef, 

 mutton, and other necessaries ; and thus each town and 

 the surrounding district would be to a large extent self- 

 contained and self-supporting. 



But at the present time the very reverse of this is the 

 case ; most of the towns and cities drawing their supplies 

 mainly from great distances, the country immediately 

 around them being often but half cultivated. Certain 

 districts grow cattle, others wheat, others vegetables, 

 others again fruit, each kind having its special district 

 where it is raised on an enormous scale and sent by rail 

 for hundreds or even thousands of miles to where it is to 

 be consumed. This is thought to be economy, but it is 

 really waste from every point of view except that of the 

 capitalist farmer. He chooses a place where land can be 

 had cheaply (though probably not more suitable for the 

 special purpose than plenty of land within a few miles of 

 every city), where communication is easy, and labour 

 abundant, and therefore cheap ; and by growing on a 

 large scale, and employing the greatest amount of 

 machinery and the least amount of labour, he obtains 

 large profits. But this profit is derived, not from superior 

 cultivation, but from the practical monopoly of a large 

 area of land, and by the labour of hundreds of men and 



