The American Garden. 



Vol. XI. 



FEBRUARY, 1890. 



No. 



2. 



LOOKING BACKWARD. 



FROM A TIME WHEN AGRICULTURE HAS BECOME A BETTER HORTICULTURE. 



OU ASK me to put on my 

 seer's cap, transport my- 

 self to the glorious future 

 that Edward Bellamy 

 prophesies in his now cele- 

 brated novel, " Looking 

 Backward," and paint the 

 fields and pastures as they 

 will then appear. While I 

 am about it, is it not just as well to use a telescope 

 as an opera-glass, and precipitate the reader into 

 the forty-ninth instead of the twenty-first century ? 

 Then we may truly hope to see the foundations of gov- 

 ernment and of society based upon truth and justice , 

 and life's possibilities realized to some extent. 



My cap is on : I see, as through a glass, darkly at 

 first, but the outlines gradually strengthen ; the 

 films of shadow and of gray light separate into sea- 

 shore, river basin and prairie ; cumulous balloons, 

 glowing with sunshine, settle down into broad-based 

 mountain ranges, and great cities sparkle wherever 

 the highways of communication make cross-roads. 

 This is Continental America, a true Democracy, 

 where The Government is only another phrase for 

 The People — where The Government is The People ! 



A population, vast beyond the dreams of the 

 nineteenth century, now covers the continent. 

 River banks that the beaver once overflowed by his 

 engineering feats are now populous with towns ; 

 every town of old has become a citj', every city a 

 metropolis, every metropolis a cosmopclis — with its 

 every human dwelling and workshop a little city in 

 itself, towering to the sky. 



And the fields, the pastures, the grain prairies, 

 the woodlands — they are still here, although scarcely 



recognizable. To support a population, whereof 

 every thousand of old represents a present million, 

 and where every unit of this million now lives in 

 comfort and plenty — this means myriad changes in 

 methods of production and distribution. There are 

 now no waste places ; nature never wastes, and man 

 has learned to take nature at her best and conform 

 his ways to hers. Horticulture has supplanted ag- 

 riculture, and every acre is studied and stimulated 

 to do what it best can do, just as every man is ex- 

 pected to exert his best faculties in his most suit- 

 able field of action. 



Whatever is produced is preserved, for waste is 

 recognized as a form of wickedness that must mean 

 want to' some one, even if the waster himself is ex- 

 empted from the inevitable penalty. Every berry, 

 every fruit, however perishable, is promptly sub- 

 mitted to the improved processes that chemistry has 

 taught, and so prepared that it shall be ready for 

 future need. The waste of past ages constitutes 

 the riches of the present era, and fills to overflow- 

 ing vast storehouses of food products that now gird 

 the globe and prevent all possibility of hunger. 



The problem of transportation has been solved. 

 No one center is allowed to become overstocked with 

 the world's goods at the expense of less favored out- 

 skirting provinces. Where the need is, there fly 

 the needfuls. Railways, and road vehicles pro- 

 pelled by power, now net the land ; while the seas 

 are highways over which processions of electrical 

 ships bear their brimming food-baskets. Thereby, 

 the Grand Council of nations is able to deal with 

 the globe as the market gardener of old did with his 

 garden plat ; whatever corner is best suited to a 

 certain product, that corner is devoted to that pro- 



COPVRIGHT, 1S9O. 



