SEED-TIME AMO HARVEST. 
3 
France is literally one large garden. Every 
inch of soil is cultivated. In riding from 
Paris to Dijon, 150 miles we counted only 
thirty cattle. We saw no sheep or hogs. 
The farms have usually from one to ten 
acres. Some farms have half an acre, and 
some have as many as twenty acres. They 
are usually from thirty to 300 feet wide and 
from 1500 to 2000 feet long. There are no 
fences between them. 
When I asked a French farmer how his 
farm happened, like all the rest, to be so 
long and narrow, he said : 
“It has been divided up so often. When a 
French father dies, he divides his farm, and 
each one of his children has an equal share. 
He always divides it lengthwise, so as to 
give each one a long strip. The long strips 
are easily cultivated, because w T e plow 
lengthwise. These strips always run north 
and south, so that the sun can shine into 
the rows” 
‘•How large is your farm?” I asked. 
“My father’s farm was 300 feet wide and 
2000 feet long. When he died my brother 
had half. Now t my farm is 150 feet wide 
and 2000 feet long. It is quite a large farm. 
There are many farms much smaller than 
mine.” 
“What do you plant in it?” I asked. 
“See over there,” he said, pointing to 
what seemed to be a gigantic piece of striped 
carpet, “is a strip of wheat sixty feet wide. 
Then comes a strip of potatoes twenty-five 
feet wide. Then comes forty feet of oats, 
then ten feet of carrots, tw enty feet of alfalfa 
(lucerne),ten feet of mangel-wurtzels, five 
feet of onions, five feet of cabbages and the 
rest is in flowers, peas, currants, gooseberries 
and little vegetables.” 
“Can you support your family on a farm 
150 feet wide and5000feet long?” I asked ; 
for the narrow strip seemed like a man’s 
dooryard in America. 
“Support my family?” he exclaimed. 
“Why, the farm is too large for us. I rent 
part of it out now.” 
“But your house,” I said, “where is 
that?” 
“Oh, that is in town. Five families of us 
live in one house there. My wife and I 
come out every morning to work and go in 
at night.” 
“Does your wife always work in the field?” 
“Yes. My wife,” he continued, pointing 
to a barefooted and bareheaded woman, at 
least six feet around the waist, “she cand* 
more work than I can. She pitches the hay 
to me on the stack. All French womei 
work in the field. Why not? They hav* 
nothing to do at home.” 
This is true. The wife of a French, Eng¬ 
lish, Irish or German farmer has nothing te 
do at home. They do not “keep house 7 ’ 
like the wives of American farmers. They 
have no houses to keep. The huts they live 
in are like stables. They live in the same 
building with their horses, hens and pigs. 
They never wash a floor. There is never 
a table cloth. They live like brutes. The 
handsome farmhouse off by itself, surround¬ 
ed by trees and gardens, does not exist in 
France. They live no better and are really 
no better off than we) e the slaves of the 
South before the war. French farmers 
always congregate in little, tumble-down 
villages, situated about two miles apart. 
These villages may have been built three 
hundred years ago. The roofs are moss- 
covered, the houses are dirty, and remind 
one of a country poorhouse in New Eng¬ 
land. 
There are millions of farms in France con¬ 
taining from a quarter of an acre to tour 
acres. 
I find that an acre and a half is about all 
the most ambitious man wants. The rent 
for land is always one-half the crop. The 
land is worth about $400 an acre, or, if in 
grapevines, $600. 
This is why France is like a garden. In 
England there are 227,000 land-owners; in 
France there are 7,000,000 land-owners. The 
Frenchman on his two acres, with his bare¬ 
footed wife cutting grain with a sickle by 
his side, is happy and cuntented because he 
knows no better. Such a degrading life 
would drive an American farmer mad. The 
Frenchman thrives because he spends 
nothing. He has no wants beyond the 
coarsest food and the washings of the grape 
skins after the wine is made. Yes, he is 
thrifty. He saves money, too. The aggre¬ 
gated wealth of 30,000,000 poor, degraded, 
bare-footed peasants makes France rich. 
The ignorance of the French farmer is ap- 
