Latest / Philosophy and Faith / 17 - Agriculture - The Conquest of Bread
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- 0:00Speaker 1: Agriculture Part one. Political economy has often been reproached withdrawing
- 0:04Speaker 1: all its deductions from the decidedly false principle that the
- 0:08Speaker 1: only incentive capable of forcing a man to augment his
- 0:10Speaker 1: power of production is personal interest. In its narrowest sense,
- 0:14Speaker 1: their approach is perfectly true, so true that epochs of
- 0:18Speaker 1: great industrial discoveries and true progress and industry are precisely
- 0:22Speaker 1: those in which the happiness of all was inspiring men,
- 0:25Speaker 1: and in which personal enrichment was the least thought of
- 0:28Speaker 1: the great investigators in science, and the great inventors aimed
- 0:31Speaker 1: above all at giving greater freedom of mankind. And if Watt, Stevenson, Jacquard,
- 0:37Speaker 1: et cetera. Could have only foreseen what a state of
- 0:40Speaker 1: misery their sleepless nights would bring to the workers, they
- 0:43Speaker 1: certainly would have burned their designs and broken their models.
- 0:46Speaker 1: Another principle that pervades political economy is just as false.
- 0:50Speaker 1: It is the tacit admission COmON to all economists that
- 0:53Speaker 1: if there is often overproduction in certain branches, a society
- 0:56Speaker 1: will nevertheless never have sufficient products to satisfy for the
- 1:00Speaker 1: once of all, and that consequently, the day will never
- 1:03Speaker 1: come when nobody will be forced to sell his labor
- 1:05Speaker 1: in exchange for wages. This tacit emission is found at
- 1:08Speaker 1: the basis of all theories and all the so called
- 1:11Speaker 1: laws taught by economists. And yet it is certain that
- 1:14Speaker 1: the day when any civilized association of individuals would ask
- 1:17Speaker 1: itself what are the needs of all and the means
- 1:19Speaker 1: of satisfying them, it would see that in industry, as
- 1:22Speaker 1: in agriculture, it already possesses sufficient to provide abundantly for
- 1:27Speaker 1: all needs, on condition that it knows how to apply
- 1:30Speaker 1: these means to satisfy real needs. That this is true
- 1:34Speaker 1: as regards industry, no one can contest. Indeed, it suffices
- 1:37Speaker 1: to study the process is already in use to extract
- 1:40Speaker 1: coals and or to obtain steel, and work it to
- 1:42Speaker 1: manufacture on a great scale what is used for clothing, etc.
- 1:46Speaker 1: In order to perceive that we could already increase our
- 1:48Speaker 1: production fourfold or more, and yet used for that less
- 1:52Speaker 1: work than we are using now, we go further. We
- 1:55Speaker 1: assert that agriculture is in the same position. Those who
- 1:58Speaker 1: cultivate the soil, like the manufacturers, already could increase the
- 2:01Speaker 1: production not only fourfold, but tenfold, And they can put
- 2:05Speaker 1: it into practice as soon as they feel the need
- 2:07Speaker 1: of it, as soon as a socialist organization of work
- 2:10Speaker 1: will be established instead of the present capitalistic one. Each
- 2:14Speaker 1: time agriculture is spoken of, men imagine a peasant bending
- 2:17Speaker 1: over the plow, throwing badly assorted corn haphazard into the ground,
- 2:20Speaker 1: and waiting anxiously for what the good or bad season
- 2:23Speaker 1: will bring forth. They think of a family working from
- 2:26Speaker 1: morn to night and reaping as reward a rude bed,
- 2:28Speaker 1: dry bread, and a coarse beverage. In a word, they
- 2:31Speaker 1: picture the savages of La Bouere. And for these men
- 2:35Speaker 1: ground down to such a misery, the utmost relief that
- 2:38Speaker 1: society proposes is to reduce their taxes or their rent.
- 2:42Speaker 1: But even the most social reformers do not care to
- 2:45Speaker 1: imagine a cultivator standing erect, taking leisure, and producing, by
- 2:49Speaker 1: a few hours work per day, sufficient food to nourish
- 2:52Speaker 1: not only his own family, but one hundred men more.
- 2:54Speaker 1: At least in their most glowing dreams of the future,
- 2:58Speaker 1: socialists do not go beyond a man and extensive culture,
- 3:01Speaker 1: which after all, is but the infancy of agricultural art.
- 3:05Speaker 1: But the thinking agriculturist has broader ideas. Today, his conceptions
- 3:09Speaker 1: are on a far grander scale. He only asks for
- 3:12Speaker 1: a fraction of an acre in order to produce sufficient
- 3:14Speaker 1: vegetables for a family and to feed twenty five horned beasts.
- 3:18Speaker 1: He needs no more space than he formerly required to
- 3:20Speaker 1: feed one. His aim is to make his own soil,
- 3:23Speaker 1: to defy seasons in climate, to warm both air and
- 3:26Speaker 1: earth around the young plant, to produce, in a word,
- 3:30Speaker 1: on one acre what he used to gather from fifty acres,
- 3:33Speaker 1: and that without any excessive fatigue. By greatly reducing, on
- 3:37Speaker 1: the contrary, the total of former labor, he knows that
- 3:41Speaker 1: he will be able to feed everybody by giving to
- 3:43Speaker 1: the culture of the fields no more time than what
- 3:46Speaker 1: each can give with pleasure and joy. This is the
- 3:49Speaker 1: present tendancy of agriculture. While scientific men, led by liebk,
- 3:54Speaker 1: the creator of the chemical theory of agriculture, often got
- 3:57Speaker 1: on the wrong tack in their love of mere theories,
- 3:59Speaker 1: unlettered axes, agriculturalists opened up new roads to prosperity. Market
- 4:03Speaker 1: gardeners of Paris Tois, Rois, Scotch and English gardeners, Flemish
- 4:08Speaker 1: and Lombardian farmers peasants of Jersey, Guernsey and farmers of
- 4:12Speaker 1: the Scilly Isles have opened up such large horizons that
- 4:16Speaker 1: the mind hesitates to grasp them. While up till lately
- 4:19Speaker 1: a family of peasants needed at least seventeen to twenty
- 4:22Speaker 1: acres to live on the produce of the soil, and
- 4:25Speaker 1: we know how peasants live, we can no longer say
- 4:28Speaker 1: what is the minimum area on which all that is
- 4:30Speaker 1: necessary to a family can be grown, even including articles
- 4:33Speaker 1: of luxury, if the soil is worked by means of
- 4:35Speaker 1: intensive culture. Twenty years ago it could already be asserted
- 4:39Speaker 1: that a population of thirty million individuals could live very
- 4:42Speaker 1: well without importing anything on what could be grown in
- 4:45Speaker 1: Great Britain. But now, when we see the progress recently
- 4:49Speaker 1: made in France, in Germany and England, and when we
- 4:51Speaker 1: contemplate the new horizons which opened before us, we can
- 4:55Speaker 1: say that in cultivating the earth as it is already
- 4:58Speaker 1: cultivated in many places, even on poor soils, fifty or
- 5:02Speaker 1: sixty million inhabitants to the territory of Great Britain would
- 5:05Speaker 1: still be a very feeble proportion to what man could
- 5:08Speaker 1: extract from the soil. In any case, as we are
- 5:12Speaker 1: about to demonstrate, we may consider it as absolutely proved
- 5:15Speaker 1: that if tomorrow Paris and the two departments of Sane
- 5:18Speaker 1: and of Seinewas organized themselves as an anarchist commune in
- 5:22Speaker 1: which all worked with their hands, and if the entire
- 5:25Speaker 1: universe refused to send them a single bushel of wheat,
- 5:28Speaker 1: a single head of cattle, a single basket of fruit,
- 5:30Speaker 1: and left them only the territory of the two departments,
- 5:33Speaker 1: they could not only produce all the corn, meat and
- 5:36Speaker 1: vegetables necessary for themselves, but also the vegetables and fruit
- 5:40Speaker 1: which are now articles of luxury and sufficient quantities for all.
- 5:44Speaker 1: And in addition, we affirm that the sum total of
- 5:46Speaker 1: this labor would be far less than that expended at
- 5:49Speaker 1: present to feed these people. With corn harvested Nolvergne and Russia,
- 5:52Speaker 1: with vegetables produced a little everywhere by extensive agriculture, and
- 5:56Speaker 1: with fruit grown in the south. It is self evident
- 5:59Speaker 1: that we and know why is desired all exchange to
- 6:01Speaker 1: be suppressed, nor that each region should strive to produce
- 6:05Speaker 1: that which will only grow in its climate by a
- 6:07Speaker 1: more or less artificial culture. But we care to draw
- 6:10Speaker 1: attention to the fact that the theory of exchange such
- 6:12Speaker 1: as is understood today is strangely exaggerated, that exchange is
- 6:17Speaker 1: often useless and even harmful. We assert moreover, that people
- 6:21Speaker 1: have never had a right conception of the immense labor
- 6:24Speaker 1: of Southern wine growers, nor that of Russian and Hungarian
- 6:27Speaker 1: corn growers, whose excessive labor could also be very much
- 6:30Speaker 1: reduced if they adopted intensive culture instead of their present
- 6:34Speaker 1: system of extensive agriculture. Part two. It would be impossible
- 6:40Speaker 1: to quote here the mass of facts on which we
- 6:43Speaker 1: base our assertions. We are therefore obliged to refer our
- 6:47Speaker 1: readers who want further information to another book, Fields, factories
- 6:51Speaker 1: and workshops. Above all, we honestly invite those who are
- 6:55Speaker 1: interested in the question to read several excellent works published
- 6:58Speaker 1: in France and elsewhere, and of which we give a
- 7:01Speaker 1: list at the close of this book. As to the
- 7:04Speaker 1: inhabitants of large towns who have as yet no real
- 7:07Speaker 1: notion of what agriculture can be, we advise them to
- 7:11Speaker 1: explore the surrounding market gardens they need, but observe and
- 7:14Speaker 1: question the market gardeners, and a new world will be
- 7:17Speaker 1: open to them. They will then be able to see
- 7:19Speaker 1: what European agriculture may be in the twentieth century, and
- 7:23Speaker 1: they will understand with what force the social revolution will
- 7:25Speaker 1: be armed when we know the secret of taking everything
- 7:28Speaker 1: we need from the soil. A few facts will suffice
- 7:31Speaker 1: to show that our assertions are in no way exaggerated.
- 7:34Speaker 1: We only wish them to be preceded by a few
- 7:36Speaker 1: general remarks. We know in what a wretched condition European
- 7:39Speaker 1: agriculture is. If the cultivator of the soil is not
- 7:43Speaker 1: plundered by the landowner, he is robbed by the state.
- 7:46Speaker 1: If the state taxes him moderately, the money lender enslaves
- 7:49Speaker 1: him by the means of permissory notes, and soon turns
- 7:52Speaker 1: him into the simple tenet of soil, belonging in reality
- 7:54Speaker 1: to a financial company. The landlord, the state, and the
- 7:57Speaker 1: banker thus plunders the cultivator by means of rent, taxes
- 8:01Speaker 1: and interest. The sum varies in each country, but it
- 8:04Speaker 1: never falls below the quarter very often the half of
- 8:07Speaker 1: the raw produce. In France and in Italy, agriculturists paid
- 8:11Speaker 1: the stake quite recently as much as forty four percent
- 8:13Speaker 1: of the gross produce. Moreover, the share of the owner
- 8:17Speaker 1: and of state always goes on increasing. As soon as
- 8:20Speaker 1: the cultivator is obtained more plentiful crops by prodigies of labor,
- 8:23Speaker 1: invention or initiative. The tribute he will owe to the landowner,
- 8:27Speaker 1: the state, and the banker will augment in proportion. If
- 8:31Speaker 1: he doubles the number of bushels reaped per acre, rent
- 8:33Speaker 1: will be doubled, and taxes too, and the state will
- 8:36Speaker 1: take care to raise them still more if the prices
- 8:39Speaker 1: go up, and so on. In short, everywhere the cultivator
- 8:43Speaker 1: of the soil works twelve to sixteen hours a day,
- 8:46Speaker 1: these three vultures take from him everything he might lay by.
- 8:50Speaker 1: They rob him everywhere of what would enable him to
- 8:53Speaker 1: improve his culture. This is why agriculture progresses so slowly.
- 8:58Speaker 1: The cultivator can only occasionally make some progress in some
- 9:01Speaker 1: exceptional regions, under quite exceptional circumstances, following upon a quarrel
- 9:05Speaker 1: between the three vampires. And yet we have said nothing
- 9:09Speaker 1: about the tribute every cultivator pays to the manufacturer. Every machine,
- 9:13Speaker 1: every spade, every barrel of chemical manure is sold to
- 9:16Speaker 1: him at three or four times its real cost. Nor
- 9:19Speaker 1: let us forget the middleman who levies the lion's share
- 9:21Speaker 1: of the oath's produce. This is why, during all this
- 9:24Speaker 1: century of invention and progress, agriculture is only improved from
- 9:27Speaker 1: time to time on very limited areas. Happily, there have
- 9:31Speaker 1: always been small oases neglected for some time by the vulture.
- 9:34Speaker 1: And here we learn what intensive agriculture can produce for mankind.
- 9:38Speaker 1: Let us mention a few examples in the American prairies,
- 9:41Speaker 1: which however, only yield meeker spring wheat crops from seven
- 9:45Speaker 1: to fifteen bushels acre, and even these are often marred
- 9:48Speaker 1: by periodical droughts. Five hundred men working only during eight
- 9:53Speaker 1: months produce the annual food of fifty thousand people. With
- 9:57Speaker 1: all the improvements of the last three years. One man's
- 9:59Speaker 1: yearly labour three hundred days yields delivered in Chicago's flower
- 10:04Speaker 1: the yearly food of two hundred and fifty men. Here,
- 10:07Speaker 1: the result is obtained by a great economy and manual labor.
- 10:11Speaker 1: On those vast plains, Plowing, harvesting, thrashing are organized in
- 10:14Speaker 1: almost military fashion. There is no useless running to and fro,
- 10:18Speaker 1: no loss of time. All is done with parade like precision.
- 10:22Speaker 1: This is agriculture on a large scale extensive agriculture, which
- 10:26Speaker 1: takes the soil from nature without seeking to improve it.
- 10:30Speaker 1: When the earth is yielded all it can, they leave it.
- 10:33Speaker 1: They seek elsewhere for a virgin soil to be exhausted
- 10:36Speaker 1: in its turn. But here is also intensive agriculture, which
- 10:41Speaker 1: is already worked and will be more and more so
- 10:44Speaker 1: by machinery. Its object is to cultivate a limited space well,
- 10:49Speaker 1: to manure, to improve, to concentrate work, and to obtain
- 10:52Speaker 1: the largest crop possible. This kind of culture spreads every year,
- 10:56Speaker 1: and whereas agriculturists in the south of France and on
- 10:59Speaker 1: the fertile plains of Western America are content with an
- 11:02Speaker 1: average crop of eleven to fifteen bushels per acre, by
- 11:05Speaker 1: extensive culture they reap regularly thirty seven, even fifty five
- 11:10Speaker 1: and sometimes sixty bushels per acre. In the North of France.
- 11:13Speaker 1: The annual consumption of man is thus obtained from less
- 11:17Speaker 1: than a quarter of an acre, and the more intense
- 11:19Speaker 1: the culture is, the less work is expended to obtain
- 11:22Speaker 1: a bushel of wheat. Machinery replaces man at the preliminary
- 11:25Speaker 1: work and for the improvements needed by the land, such
- 11:28Speaker 1: as draining, clearing of stones, which will double the crops
- 11:32Speaker 1: in future once and forever. Sometimes nothing but keeping the
- 11:37Speaker 1: soil free of weeds without maneuvering, allows an average soil
- 11:40Speaker 1: to yield excellent crops from year to year. It has
- 11:43Speaker 1: been done for forty years in succession at Rothamstead and Hertfordshire. However,
- 11:48Speaker 1: let us not write an agricultural romance, but be satisfied
- 11:51Speaker 1: with a crop of forty four bushels per acre that
- 11:55Speaker 1: needs no exceptional soil, but merely a rational culture. And
- 11:58Speaker 1: let us see what it means. The three million, six
- 12:01Speaker 1: hundred thousand individuals who inhabit the two departments of sin
- 12:05Speaker 1: and Sinewas consume yearly for their food a little less
- 12:08Speaker 1: than twenty two million bushels of cereals, chiefly wheat, and
- 12:12Speaker 1: in our hypothesis, they would have to cultivate in order
- 12:15Speaker 1: to obtain this crop four hundred and ninety four thousand,
- 12:18Speaker 1: two hundred acres out of their one million, five hundred
- 12:21Speaker 1: seven thousand, three hundred acres which they possess. It is
- 12:25Speaker 1: evident that they would not cultivate them with spades. That
- 12:27Speaker 1: would need too much time ninety six work days of
- 12:30Speaker 1: five hours per acre. It would be preferable to improve
- 12:33Speaker 1: the soil once for all, to drain what needed draining,
- 12:36Speaker 1: to level what needed leveling, to clear the soil of stones.
- 12:39Speaker 1: Were it even necessary to spend five million days of
- 12:42Speaker 1: five hours in this preparatory work, an average of ten
- 12:45Speaker 1: work days to each acre, then they would plow with
- 12:48Speaker 1: the steam digger, which would take one and three fifts
- 12:51Speaker 1: of a day per acre, and they would give another
- 12:53Speaker 1: one and three fifts of a day for working with
- 12:56Speaker 1: the double plow. Seeds would be sorted by steam instead
- 12:59Speaker 1: of taking haphazard and they would be carefully sown and
- 13:02Speaker 1: rose instead of being thrown to the four winds now.
- 13:06Speaker 1: All this work would not take ten days of five
- 13:08Speaker 1: hours per acre if the work were done under good conditions.
- 13:12Speaker 1: But if ten million work days are given to good
- 13:15Speaker 1: culture during three to four years, the result will be
- 13:18Speaker 1: that later on crops of forty four to fifty five
- 13:21Speaker 1: bushels per acre will be obtained by only working half
- 13:24Speaker 1: the time. Fifteen million work days will thus have been
- 13:28Speaker 1: spent to give bread to a population of three million,
- 13:31Speaker 1: six hundred thousand inhabitants, and the work would be such
- 13:34Speaker 1: that everyone could do it without having muscles of steel
- 13:36Speaker 1: or without having even worked the ground before the initiative,
- 13:40Speaker 1: and the general distribution of work would come from those
- 13:42Speaker 1: who know the soil. As to the work itself, there
- 13:45Speaker 1: is no townsmen of either sex so enfeebled as to
- 13:48Speaker 1: be incapable of looking after machines and of contributing his
- 13:52Speaker 1: share to agrarian work after a few hours apprenticeship. Well,
- 13:55Speaker 1: would we consider that in the present chaos there are
- 13:58Speaker 1: in a city like Paris, without counting the unemployed of
- 14:00Speaker 1: the upper class, there are always about one hundred thousand
- 14:03Speaker 1: workmen out of work in their several trades. We see
- 14:06Speaker 1: that the power loss in our present organization would alone
- 14:09Speaker 1: suffice to give, with a rational culture, all the bread
- 14:12Speaker 1: that is necessary for the three or four million inhabitants
- 14:15Speaker 1: of the two departments. We repeat that this is no
- 14:18Speaker 1: fancy dream, and we have not yet spoken of the
- 14:20Speaker 1: truly intensive agriculture. We have not depended upon the wheat
- 14:24Speaker 1: obtained in three years by mister Hallett, of which one
- 14:27Speaker 1: grain replanted produced five thousand or six thousand, and occasionally
- 14:30Speaker 1: ten thousand grains, which would give us the wheat necessary
- 14:34Speaker 1: for a family of five individuals on an area of
- 14:36Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty square yards. On the contrary, we
- 14:39Speaker 1: have only mentioned that this is being already achieved by
- 14:42Speaker 1: numerous farmers in France, England, Belgium, et cetera. And what
- 14:46Speaker 1: might be done tomorrow with the experience and knowledge acquired
- 14:48Speaker 1: already by practice on a large scale, but without a revolution.
- 14:53Speaker 1: Neither tomorrow nor after tomorrow will see it done, because
- 14:56Speaker 1: it is not to the interest of landowners and capitalists,
- 14:59Speaker 1: because peasants who would find their profit in it have
- 15:02Speaker 1: neither the knowledge, nor the money, nor the time to
- 15:05Speaker 1: obtain what is necessary to go ahead. The society of
- 15:08Speaker 1: today has not yet reached this stage. But let Parisians
- 15:11Speaker 1: proclaim an anarchist commune, and they will, if necessity, come
- 15:15Speaker 1: to it, because they will not be foolish enough to
- 15:17Speaker 1: continue making luxurious toys, which Vienna, Warsaw and Berlin make
- 15:21Speaker 1: as well already, and to run the risk of being
- 15:24Speaker 1: left without bread. Moreover, agricultural work, by the help of
- 15:28Speaker 1: machinery would soon become the most attractive and the most
- 15:31Speaker 1: joyful of all occupations. We have had enough jewelry and
- 15:35Speaker 1: enough dolls clothes, they would say, it is high time
- 15:37Speaker 1: for the workers to recruit their strength in agriculture to
- 15:40Speaker 1: go in search of vigor, of impressions of nature, of
- 15:43Speaker 1: the joy of life that they have forgotten in the
- 15:45Speaker 1: dark factories of the suburbs. In the Middle Ages, it
- 15:48Speaker 1: was alpine pasture lands, rather than guns, which allowed the
- 15:51Speaker 1: Swiss to shake off lords and kings. Modern agriculture will
- 15:54Speaker 1: allow a city in revolt to free itself from the
- 15:56Speaker 1: combined bourgeois forces. Part three. We have seen how the
- 16:04Speaker 1: three and one half million inhabitants of the two departments
- 16:07Speaker 1: around Paris could find ample bread by cultivating only a
- 16:10Speaker 1: third of their territory. Let us now pass on to cattle.
- 16:15Speaker 1: Englishmen who eat much meat consume on average a little
- 16:18Speaker 1: less than two hundred and twenty pounds a year per adult.
- 16:21Speaker 1: Supposing all meat consumed were oxen, That makes a little
- 16:24Speaker 1: less than a third of an ox an ox a
- 16:27Speaker 1: year for five individuals, including children. Is already a sufficient
- 16:31Speaker 1: ration for three and one half million inhabitants. This would
- 16:34Speaker 1: make an annual consumption of seven hundred thousand head of cattle. Today,
- 16:39Speaker 1: with the pasture system, we need at least five million
- 16:41Speaker 1: acres to nourish six hundred and sixty thousand head of cattle.
- 16:45Speaker 1: This makes nine acres per each head of horned cattle. Nevertheless,
- 16:49Speaker 1: with prairies moderately watered by spring water, as recently done
- 16:52Speaker 1: on thousands of acres in the southwest of France, one
- 16:55Speaker 1: and one fourth million acres already suffice. But if intensive
- 16:59Speaker 1: cultures practiced and beet root is grown for fodder, you
- 17:03Speaker 1: only need a quarter of that area, that is to say,
- 17:05Speaker 1: about three hundred ten thousand acres. And if we have
- 17:08Speaker 1: recourse to maize and practice ensilage the compression of fodderwall
- 17:12Speaker 1: green like Arabs. We obtain fodder on an area of
- 17:15Speaker 1: two hundred seventeen thousand, five hundred acres in the environs
- 17:19Speaker 1: of Milan, where sewer water is used to irrigate the fields.
- 17:22Speaker 1: Fodder for two to three horned cattle per each acre
- 17:25Speaker 1: is obtained on the area of twenty two thousand acres,
- 17:29Speaker 1: and on a few favored fields up to one hundred
- 17:31Speaker 1: and seventy seven tons of hay to the ten acres
- 17:35Speaker 1: have been cropped the yearly provender of thirty six milk cows.
- 17:40Speaker 1: Nearly nine acres per head of cattle are needed under
- 17:42Speaker 1: the pasture system, and only two and one half acres
- 17:45Speaker 1: for nine oxen or cows under the new system. These
- 17:49Speaker 1: are the opposite extremes of modern agriculture. In Guernsey, on
- 17:53Speaker 1: a total of nine thousand, eight hundred eighty four acres
- 17:56Speaker 1: utilize nearly half four thousand, six hundred ninety five acres
- 18:00Speaker 1: are covered with cereals and kitchen gardens. Only five thousand,
- 18:04Speaker 1: one hundred eighty nine acres remain as meadows. On these
- 18:07Speaker 1: five thousand, one hundred eighty nine acres, one thousand, four
- 18:10Speaker 1: hundred and eighty horses, seven thousand, two hundred and sixty
- 18:14Speaker 1: head of cattle, nine hundred sheep and four thousand, two
- 18:17Speaker 1: hundred pigs are fed, which makes more than three head
- 18:21Speaker 1: of cattle per two acres. Without reckoning the sheep or
- 18:23Speaker 1: the pigs. It is needless to add that the fertility
- 18:26Speaker 1: of the soil is made by seaweed and chemical manures.
- 18:30Speaker 1: Returning to our three and one half million inhabitants belonging
- 18:33Speaker 1: to Paris and its environs, we see that the land
- 18:36Speaker 1: necessary for the rearing of cattle comes down from five
- 18:39Speaker 1: million acres to one hundred and ninety seven thousand. Well,
- 18:43Speaker 1: then let us not stop at the lowest figures. Let
- 18:45Speaker 1: us take those of ordinary intensive culture. Let us liberally
- 18:49Speaker 1: add to the land necessary for smaller cattle, which must
- 18:52Speaker 1: replace some of the horned beasts, and allow three hundred
- 18:54Speaker 1: and ninety five thousand acres for the rearing of cattle
- 18:57Speaker 1: four hundred ninety four thousand, if you like, on the
- 18:59Speaker 1: one million, thirteen thousand acres remaining after the bread has
- 19:03Speaker 1: been provided for the people, Let us be generous and
- 19:06Speaker 1: give five million work days to put this land into
- 19:08Speaker 1: a productive state. After having therefore employed in the course
- 19:13Speaker 1: of a year twenty million work days, half of which
- 19:15Speaker 1: are for permanent improvements, we shall have bread and meat
- 19:18Speaker 1: assured to us, without including all the extra meat obtainable
- 19:21Speaker 1: in the shape of fowls, pigs, rabbits, et cetera, without
- 19:24Speaker 1: taking into consideration that a population provided with excellent vegetables
- 19:27Speaker 1: and fruit consumes less meat than Englishmen who supplement their
- 19:31Speaker 1: poor supply of vegetables by animal food. Now, how much
- 19:35Speaker 1: do twenty million work days of five hours make per inhabitant?
- 19:39Speaker 1: Very little. Indeed, a population of three and one half
- 19:42Speaker 1: millions must have at least one million, two hundred thousand
- 19:45Speaker 1: adult men and as many women capable of work well.
- 19:49Speaker 1: Then to give bread and meat to all, it would
- 19:52Speaker 1: need only seventeen half days of work a year per man.
- 19:57Speaker 1: Add three million work days or double that number of
- 19:59Speaker 1: you like, in order to obtain milk. That will make
- 20:02Speaker 1: twenty five work days of five hours. In all, nothing
- 20:06Speaker 1: more than a little pleasurable country exercise to obtain the
- 20:09Speaker 1: three principal products bread, meat and milk, the three products which,
- 20:14Speaker 1: after housing, cause daily anxiety to nine tenths of mankind.
- 20:18Speaker 1: And yet let us not tire of repeating these are
- 20:21Speaker 1: not fancy dreams. We have only told what is what
- 20:25Speaker 1: ben obtained by experience. On a large scale. Agriculture could
- 20:30Speaker 1: be reorganized in this way tomorrow if property laws and
- 20:32Speaker 1: general ignorance did not offer opposition. The day Paris has
- 20:37Speaker 1: understood that to know what you eat and how it
- 20:40Speaker 1: is produced is a question of public interest, the day
- 20:44Speaker 1: when everybody will have understood that this question is infinitely
- 20:47Speaker 1: more important than all the parliamentary debates of the present times.
- 20:51Speaker 1: On that day the revolution will be an accomplished fact.
- 20:55Speaker 1: Paris will take possession of the two departments and cultivate them.
- 20:58Speaker 1: And then the Parisian worker, after having labored a third
- 21:01Speaker 1: of his existence in order to buy bad and insufficient food,
- 21:05Speaker 1: or produce it himself under his walls, within the enclosure
- 21:08Speaker 1: of his forts, if they still exist, and in a
- 21:11Speaker 1: few hours of healthy and attractive work. And now we
- 21:15Speaker 1: pass on to fruit and vegetables. Let us go outside
- 21:18Speaker 1: Paris and visit the establishment of a market gardener who
- 21:22Speaker 1: accomplishes wonders ignored by learned economists, at a few miles
- 21:25Speaker 1: from the academies. Let us visit suppose Monsieur Prince, the
- 21:30Speaker 1: author of a work on market gardening, who makes no
- 21:33Speaker 1: secret of what earth yields him, and who has published
- 21:36Speaker 1: it all along. Monsieur Ponce, and especially his workmen, work hard.
- 21:41Speaker 1: It takes eight men to cultivate a plot a little
- 21:44Speaker 1: less than three acres two point seven. They work twelve
- 21:48Speaker 1: and even fifteen hours a day, that is to say,
- 21:50Speaker 1: three times more than is needed. Twenty four of them
- 21:54Speaker 1: would not be too many, to which Monsieur Ponce will
- 21:57Speaker 1: probably answer that he pays the terror ruable sum of
- 22:00Speaker 1: one hundred pound rent a year for his two point
- 22:03Speaker 1: seven acres of land, and one hundred pounds for manure
- 22:07Speaker 1: bought in the barracks. He is obliged to exploit, he
- 22:09Speaker 1: would no doubt answer being exploited, I exploit in my turn.
- 22:13Speaker 1: His installation has also cost him one thousand, two hundred pounds,
- 22:18Speaker 1: of which certainly more than half went as tribute to
- 22:20Speaker 1: the idle barrens of industry. In reality, this establishment represents
- 22:24Speaker 1: at most three thousand work days, probably much less. But
- 22:28Speaker 1: let us examine his crops. Nearly ten tons of carrots,
- 22:32Speaker 1: nearly ten tons of onions, radishes and small vegetables, six
- 22:36Speaker 1: thousand heads of cabbage, three thousand heads of cauliflower, five
- 22:41Speaker 1: thousand baskets of tomatoes, five thousand dozen of choice fruit,
- 22:46Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty four thousand salads. In short, a
- 22:49Speaker 1: total of one hundred and twenty three tons of vegetables
- 22:52Speaker 1: and fruit to two point seven acres one hundred and
- 22:54Speaker 1: twenty yards long by one hundred and nine yards broad,
- 22:57Speaker 1: which makes more than forty four tons of vegetables to
- 23:00Speaker 1: the acre. But a man does not eat more than
- 23:03Speaker 1: six hundred and sixty pounds of vegetables and fruit a year,
- 23:05Speaker 1: and two and one half acres of a market garden
- 23:08Speaker 1: yield enough vegetables and fruit to richly supply the table
- 23:12Speaker 1: of three hundred and fifty adults during the year. Thus,
- 23:15Speaker 1: twenty four persons employed a whole year in cultivating two
- 23:18Speaker 1: point seven acres of land, and only five working hours
- 23:21Speaker 1: a day would produce sufficient vegetables and fruit for three
- 23:24Speaker 1: hundred and fifty adults, which is equivalent at least to
- 23:27Speaker 1: five hundred individuals. To put it another way, in cultivating
- 23:31Speaker 1: like Monsieur Ponce, and his results have already been surpassed,
- 23:34Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty adults should each give a little
- 23:37Speaker 1: more than one hundred hours a year one hundred and
- 23:39Speaker 1: three to produce vegetables and fruit necessary for five hundred people.
- 23:43Speaker 1: Let us mention that such a production is not the exception.
- 23:46Speaker 1: It takes place under the walls of Paris on an
- 23:49Speaker 1: area of two thousand, two hundred and twenty acres by
- 23:52Speaker 1: five thousand market gardeners. Only. These market gardeners are reduced
- 23:56Speaker 1: nowadays to a state of beasts of burden in order
- 23:59Speaker 1: to pay an average rant of thirty two pounds per acre.
- 24:02Speaker 1: But do not these facts, which could be verified by
- 24:04Speaker 1: every one, prove that seventeen three hundred acres of the
- 24:09Speaker 1: five hundred and nineteen thousand remaining to us would suffice
- 24:12Speaker 1: to give all necessary vegetables, as well as a liberal
- 24:15Speaker 1: amount of fruit to the three and one half million
- 24:17Speaker 1: inhabitants of our two departments. As to the quantity of
- 24:21Speaker 1: work necessary to produce these fruits and vegetables, it would
- 24:23Speaker 1: amount to fifty million work days of five hours fifty
- 24:26Speaker 1: days per adult male if we measure by the market
- 24:29Speaker 1: gardener's standard of work. But we could reduce this quantity
- 24:33Speaker 1: if we had recourse to the process in Vogue and
- 24:35Speaker 1: Jersey and Guerncy. We must also remember that the Paris
- 24:38Speaker 1: market gardener is forced to work so hard because he
- 24:40Speaker 1: mostly produces early season fruits, the high prices of which
- 24:43Speaker 1: have to pay for fabulous rents, and that the system
- 24:46Speaker 1: of culture entails more work than is necessary for growing
- 24:49Speaker 1: the ordinary staple food, vegetables and fruit. Besides, the market
- 24:52Speaker 1: gardeners of Paris not having the means to make a
- 24:55Speaker 1: great outlay on their gardens, and being obliged to pay
- 24:57Speaker 1: heavily for glass, wood, iron, and obtain their artificial heat
- 25:02Speaker 1: out of manure, while it can be had at much
- 25:04Speaker 1: less cost in hot houses. Part four. The market gardeners,
- 25:12Speaker 1: we say, are forced to become machines and to renounce
- 25:15Speaker 1: all joys of life in order to obtain their marvelous crops.
- 25:18Speaker 1: But these hard grinders have rendered a great service to
- 25:20Speaker 1: humanity in teaching us that the soil can be made.
- 25:24Speaker 1: They make it with old hot beds of manure, which
- 25:27Speaker 1: have already served to give us a necessary warmth to
- 25:30Speaker 1: young plants and to early fruit. And they make it
- 25:32Speaker 1: in such great quantity that they are compelled to sell
- 25:34Speaker 1: it in part, otherwise it would raise the level of
- 25:37Speaker 1: their gardens by one inch every year. They do it
- 25:40Speaker 1: so well. So Barrel teaches us in his Dictionary of Agriculture,
- 25:44Speaker 1: in an article on market gardeners, that in recent contracts,
- 25:48Speaker 1: the market gardener stipulieves that he will carry away his
- 25:50Speaker 1: soil with him when he leaves the bed of ground.
- 25:52Speaker 1: He is cultivating loam carried away on carts with furniture
- 25:56Speaker 1: and glass frames. That is the answer of practical cultivators
- 25:59Speaker 1: to the learnature of Ricardo, who represented rent as a
- 26:02Speaker 1: means of equalizing the natural advantages of the soil. Quote,
- 26:06Speaker 1: the soil is worth what the man is worth. That
- 26:09Speaker 1: is the gardener's motto. And yet the market gardeners of
- 26:12Speaker 1: Paris and Rouen labor three times as hard to obtain
- 26:15Speaker 1: the same results as their fellow workers in Guernsey or
- 26:18Speaker 1: in England. Applying industry to agriculture. These last make their
- 26:22Speaker 1: climate in addition to their soil, by means of the greenhouse.
- 26:25Speaker 1: Fifty years ago, the greenhouse was the luxury of the rich.
- 26:28Speaker 1: It was kept to grow exotic plants for pleasure. But
- 26:31Speaker 1: nowadays its use begins to be generalized. A tremendous industry
- 26:35Speaker 1: has grown up lately in Guernsey and Jersey, where hundreds
- 26:38Speaker 1: of acres are already covered with glass, to say nothing
- 26:41Speaker 1: of the countless small greenhouses kept in every little farm garden.
- 26:44Speaker 1: Acres and acres of greenhouses have lately been built also
- 26:48Speaker 1: at Worthing one hundred and three acres in nineteen twelve,
- 26:51Speaker 1: in the suburbs of London, and in several other parts
- 26:53Speaker 1: of England and Scotland. They are built of all qualities,
- 26:56Speaker 1: beginning with those which have granite walls down to those
- 26:59Speaker 1: which are present mere shelters made in planks and glass
- 27:02Speaker 1: frames which cost even aisle, with all the tribute paid
- 27:04Speaker 1: to capitalists and middlemen, less than three shillings six pennies
- 27:08Speaker 1: per square yard under glass. Most of them are heated
- 27:11Speaker 1: for at least three of four months every year. But
- 27:14Speaker 1: even the cool greenhouses, which are not heated at all,
- 27:16Speaker 1: give excellent results, of course, not for growing grapes and
- 27:19Speaker 1: tropical plants, but for potatoes, carrots, peas, tomatoes, and so on.
- 27:24Speaker 1: In this way man emancipates himself from climate, and at
- 27:27Speaker 1: the same time he avoids also the heavy work with
- 27:29Speaker 1: the hotbeds, and he saves both in buying much less
- 27:32Speaker 1: manure and in work. Three men to the acre, each
- 27:35Speaker 1: of them working less than sixty hours a week, produce
- 27:38Speaker 1: on very small spaces what formerly requires acres and acres
- 27:41Speaker 1: of land. The result of all of these recent conquests
- 27:44Speaker 1: of culture is that if one half only of the
- 27:46Speaker 1: adults of a city gave each about fifty half days
- 27:49Speaker 1: for the culture of the finest fruit and vegetables out
- 27:51Speaker 1: of season, they would have all the year round an
- 27:54Speaker 1: unlimited supply of that sort of fruit and vegetables for
- 27:57Speaker 1: the whole population. But there is a still more important
- 28:00Speaker 1: fact to notice. The greenhouse has nowadays a tendency to
- 28:04Speaker 1: become a mere kitchen garden under glass, and when it
- 28:07Speaker 1: is used to such a purpose, the simplest plank and
- 28:09Speaker 1: glass unheated shelters already give fabulous crops, such as, for instance,
- 28:13Speaker 1: five hundred bushels of potatoes per acre as a first
- 28:16Speaker 1: crop ready by the end of April, after which a
- 28:20Speaker 1: second and third crop are obtained in the extremely high
- 28:23Speaker 1: temperatures which prevail in the summer. Under Glass I gave
- 28:27Speaker 1: in my fields, factories and workshops most striking facts in
- 28:30Speaker 1: this direction, sufficient to say here that at Jersey thirty
- 28:35Speaker 1: four men with one trained gardener only cultivate thirteen acres
- 28:38Speaker 1: under glass, from which they obtain one hundred and forty
- 28:41Speaker 1: three tons of fruit in early vegetables, using for this
- 28:44Speaker 1: extraordinary culture less than one thousand tons of coal. And
- 28:48Speaker 1: this is done now in Guernsey and Jersey on a
- 28:50Speaker 1: very large scale. Quite a number of steamers constantly plying
- 28:53Speaker 1: between Guernsey and London only to export the crops of
- 28:56Speaker 1: the greenhouses nowadays. In order to obtain them that same
- 29:00Speaker 1: crop of five hundred bushels of potatoes, we must plow
- 29:03Speaker 1: every year a surface of four acres, plant it, cultivate it,
- 29:06Speaker 1: weat it, and so on. Whereas with the glass, even
- 29:09Speaker 1: if we shall have to give perhaps to start half
- 29:12Speaker 1: a day's work per square yard. In order to build
- 29:15Speaker 1: the greenhouse, we shall save afterwards at least one half
- 29:18Speaker 1: in probably three quarters of the yearly labor required. Formerly,
- 29:22Speaker 1: these are facts results which everyone can verify himself. And
- 29:27Speaker 1: these facts are already a hint as to what man
- 29:29Speaker 1: could obtain from the earth if he treated it with intelligence.
- 29:34Speaker 1: Part five. In all the above we have reasoned upon
- 29:38Speaker 1: what already withstood the test of experience. Intensive culture of
- 29:41Speaker 1: the fields, irrigated meadows, and the hot house, and finally
- 29:45Speaker 1: the kitchen garden under glass are realities. Moreover, the tendency
- 29:49Speaker 1: is to extend and to generalize these methods of culture,
- 29:53Speaker 1: because they allow of obtaining more produce with less work
- 29:56Speaker 1: and with more certainty. In fact, after having studied them
- 30:00Speaker 1: most simple glass shelters of currency, we affirm that, taking
- 30:03Speaker 1: all in all, farless work is expended for obtaining potatoes
- 30:06Speaker 1: under glass in April than and growing them in the
- 30:08Speaker 1: open air, which requires digging a space four times as large,
- 30:11Speaker 1: watering it, weeding it, et cetera. Work is likewise economized,
- 30:15Speaker 1: and employing a perfected tool or machine, even when an
- 30:18Speaker 1: initial expense has to be incurred to buy the tool.
- 30:22Speaker 1: Complete figures concerning the culture and common vegetables under glass
- 30:25Speaker 1: are still wanting. This culture is of recent origin and
- 30:28Speaker 1: is only carried out on small areas. But we have
- 30:31Speaker 1: already figures concerning the fifty years old culture of early
- 30:34Speaker 1: season grapes, and these figures are conclusive. In the north
- 30:38Speaker 1: of England, on the Scotch Frontier, where coal only costs
- 30:42Speaker 1: three shillings a ton at the Pittsmouth, they have long
- 30:45Speaker 1: since taken to growing hothouse grapes. Thirty years ago these
- 30:48Speaker 1: grapes ripe in January were sold by the grower at
- 30:52Speaker 1: twenty shillings per pound and resold at forty shillings per
- 30:55Speaker 1: pound for Napoleon the Third's table. Today the same grower
- 30:59Speaker 1: sells them at only two shillings six pennies per pound.
- 31:02Speaker 1: He tells us so himself in a horticultural journal. The
- 31:05Speaker 1: fall in the prices is caused by the tons and
- 31:07Speaker 1: tons of grapes arriving in January to London and Paris.
- 31:11Speaker 1: Thanks to the cheapness of coal and intelligent culture, grapes
- 31:14Speaker 1: from the North travel now southwards in a contrary direction
- 31:17Speaker 1: to ordinary fruit. They cost so little that in May
- 31:20Speaker 1: English and Jersey grapes are sold at one shilling eight
- 31:23Speaker 1: pennies per pound by the gardeners, and yet this price,
- 31:26Speaker 1: like that of forty shillings thirty years ago, is only
- 31:30Speaker 1: kept up by slack production. In March Belgium grapes are
- 31:33Speaker 1: sold at from six pennies to eight pennies, while in
- 31:36Speaker 1: October grapes are cultivated in immense quantities under glass and
- 31:40Speaker 1: with little artificial heating in the environs of London are
- 31:42Speaker 1: sold at the same price as grapes bought by the
- 31:44Speaker 1: pound in the vineyards of Switzerland and the Rhine, which
- 31:47Speaker 1: is to say, for a few halfpence, they still cost
- 31:50Speaker 1: two thirds too much by reason of the excessive rent
- 31:54Speaker 1: of the soil and the cost of installation and heating,
- 31:57Speaker 1: on which the gardener pays a formidable tribute to the
- 31:59Speaker 1: mass manufacturer and the middleman. This being understood, we may
- 32:03Speaker 1: say that it costs next to nothing to have delicious
- 32:06Speaker 1: grapes under the latitude of and in our misty London
- 32:08Speaker 1: in autumn, in one of our suburbs, for instance, a
- 32:12Speaker 1: wretched glass and plaster shelter nine feet ten inches long
- 32:15Speaker 1: by six and one half feet wide, resting against our cottage,
- 32:19Speaker 1: gave us about fifty pounds of grapes of an exquisite
- 32:21Speaker 1: flavor in October for nine consecutive years. The crop came
- 32:26Speaker 1: from a Hamburg vine stock six years old, and the
- 32:28Speaker 1: shelter was so bad that the rain came through at night.
- 32:31Speaker 1: The temperature was always out of outside. It was evidently
- 32:34Speaker 1: not heated, for it would have been useless as heating
- 32:36Speaker 1: the street. And the care which was given was pruning
- 32:39Speaker 1: the vine half an hour every year and bringing a
- 32:42Speaker 1: wheelbarrow full of manure which was thrown over the stalk
- 32:45Speaker 1: of the vine planted in red clay outside the shelter.
- 32:48Speaker 1: On the other hand, if we estimate the amount of
- 32:49Speaker 1: care given to the vine on the borders of the
- 32:51Speaker 1: Rhine of Lake Lehmann, the terraces constructed stoned upon stone
- 32:55Speaker 1: on the slopes of the hills, the transport of manure
- 32:58Speaker 1: and also of earth to the height of two or
- 33:01Speaker 1: three hundred feet, we come to the conclusion that on
- 33:04Speaker 1: the whole, the expenditure of work necessary to cultivate vines
- 33:07Speaker 1: is more considerable in Switzerland or on the banks of
- 33:10Speaker 1: the Rhine, than it is under the glass in London suburbs.
- 33:13Speaker 1: This may seem paradoxical because it is generally believed that
- 33:16Speaker 1: vines grow of themselves in the south of Europe, and
- 33:19Speaker 1: that the vine growers work costs nothing but gardeners in
- 33:23Speaker 1: horticultural is far from contradicting us confirm our assertions. The
- 33:27Speaker 1: most advantageous culture in England is vine culture, wrote a
- 33:30Speaker 1: practical gardener, editor of the English Journal of Horticulture in
- 33:33Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. Prices speak eloquently for themselves, as we know.
- 33:37Speaker 1: Translating these facts into Communist language, we may assert that
- 33:40Speaker 1: the man or woman who takes twenty hours a year
- 33:42Speaker 1: from his leisure time to give some little care very
- 33:45Speaker 1: pleasant in the main to two or three vine stocks
- 33:47Speaker 1: sheltered by a simple glass under any European climate, will
- 33:51Speaker 1: gather as many grapes as their family and friends can eat.
- 33:53Speaker 1: And that applies not a light to vines, but to
- 33:55Speaker 1: all fruit trees. The commune that will put the processes
- 33:59Speaker 1: of intense of culture into practice on a large scale
- 34:03Speaker 1: will have all possible vegetables, indigenous or exotic, and all
- 34:06Speaker 1: desirable fruits without employing more than about ten hours a
- 34:09Speaker 1: year per inhabitant. In fact, nothing would be easier than
- 34:12Speaker 1: to verify the above statements by direct experiment, Suppose one
- 34:16Speaker 1: hundred acres of light loom, such as we have it worthing,
- 34:18Speaker 1: are transformed into a number of market gardens, each one
- 34:21Speaker 1: with its glass houses for the rearing of the seedlings
- 34:24Speaker 1: and young plants. Suppose also the fifty more acres are
- 34:27Speaker 1: covered with glass houses, and the organization of the whole
- 34:29Speaker 1: is left a practical experience. French Marichet and Guernsey and
- 34:33Speaker 1: Worthy greenhouse gardeners in basing the maintenance of these one
- 34:36Speaker 1: hundred and fifty acres on the Jersey average, requiring the
- 34:39Speaker 1: work of three men per acre under glass, which would
- 34:41Speaker 1: make less than eight thousand, six hundred hours of work
- 34:44Speaker 1: a year. It would need about one million, three hundred
- 34:46Speaker 1: thousand hours for the one hundred and fifty acres. Fifty
- 34:49Speaker 1: competent gardeners could give five hours a day to this work,
- 34:52Speaker 1: and the rest would be simply done by people who,
- 34:54Speaker 1: without being gardeners by profession, would soon learn how to
- 34:57Speaker 1: use a spade and to handle the plants. But this
- 35:00Speaker 1: work would yield at least we have seen it in
- 35:02Speaker 1: a preceding chapter. All necessities and articles of luxury in
- 35:06Speaker 1: the way of fruit and vegetables for at least forty
- 35:08Speaker 1: thousand or fifty thousand people. Let us admit that among
- 35:12Speaker 1: this number there are thirteen thousand, five hundred adults willing
- 35:15Speaker 1: to work at the kitchen garden. Then each one would
- 35:18Speaker 1: have to give one hundred hours a year, distributed over
- 35:20Speaker 1: the whole year. These hours of work would become hours
- 35:23Speaker 1: of recreation, spent among friends and children in beautiful gardens,
- 35:27Speaker 1: more beautiful probably than those of the Legendari Semyramus. This
- 35:30Speaker 1: is the balance sheet of the labor to be spent
- 35:32Speaker 1: in order to be able to eat a satiety fruit
- 35:34Speaker 1: which we are deprived of today, and to have vegetables
- 35:37Speaker 1: in abundance so scrupulously rationed out by the housewife when
- 35:41Speaker 1: she has to reckon each halfpenny which must go to
- 35:43Speaker 1: enrich capitalists and landowners. If only humanity had the consciousness
- 35:48Speaker 1: of what it can, and if that consciousness only gave
- 35:51Speaker 1: it the power to will, if it only knew that
- 35:53Speaker 1: cowardice of the spirit is the rock on which all
- 35:56Speaker 1: revolutions have stranded until now Part six, we can easily
- 36:05Speaker 1: perceive the new horizons opening before the social revolution. Each
- 36:09Speaker 1: time we speak of revolution, the face of the worker
- 36:12Speaker 1: who has seen children wanting food darkens and he asks,
- 36:15Speaker 1: what of bread? Will they be sufficient? If everyone eats
- 36:18Speaker 1: according to his appetite. What if the peasants, ignorant tools
- 36:22Speaker 1: of the reaction star of our towns, as the black
- 36:25Speaker 1: bands did in France in seventeen ninety three, what shall
- 36:28Speaker 1: we do? Let them do their worst. The large cities
- 36:32Speaker 1: will have to do without them. At what then should
- 36:35Speaker 1: the hundreds of thousands of workers who are asshyxiated today
- 36:38Speaker 1: in small workshops and factories be employed on the day
- 36:41Speaker 1: they regain their liberty. Will they continue to shut themselves
- 36:44Speaker 1: up in factories after the revolution? Will they continue to
- 36:47Speaker 1: make luxurious toys for export when they see their stock
- 36:50Speaker 1: or corn getting exhausted, meat becoming scarce, and vegetables disappearing
- 36:54Speaker 1: without being replaced. Evidently not. They will leave the town
- 36:58Speaker 1: and go into the fields, aided by machinery, which will
- 37:01Speaker 1: enable the weakest of us to put a shoulder to
- 37:03Speaker 1: the wheel. They will carry revolution into previously enslaved culture,
- 37:07Speaker 1: as they will have carried it into institutions and ideas.
- 37:10Speaker 1: Hundreds of acres will be covered with glass, and men
- 37:13Speaker 1: and women with delicate fingers will foster the growth of
- 37:16Speaker 1: young plants. Hundreds of other acres will be plowed by steam,
- 37:20Speaker 1: improved by manures, or enriched by artificial soil obtained by
- 37:23Speaker 1: the pulverization of rocks. Happy crowds of occasional labourers will
- 37:28Speaker 1: cover these acres with crops, guided in the work and experiments,
- 37:31Speaker 1: partly by those who know agriculture, but especially by the
- 37:35Speaker 1: great and practical spirit of a people roused from the
- 37:38Speaker 1: long sumber and illumined by that bright beacon the happiness
- 37:41Speaker 1: of all. And in two or three months, the early
- 37:44Speaker 1: crops will receive the most pressing wants and provide food
- 37:48Speaker 1: for a people who, after so many centuries of expectation,
- 37:51Speaker 1: will at least be able to appease their hunger and
- 37:54Speaker 1: eat according to their appetite. In the meanwhile, popular genius,
- 37:58Speaker 1: the genius of a nation which revolts and knows its ones,
- 38:01Speaker 1: will work at experimenting with new processes of culture that
- 38:03Speaker 1: we already catch a glimpse of, and that we only
- 38:06Speaker 1: need the baptism of experience to become universal. Light will
- 38:10Speaker 1: be experimented with that unknown agent of culture which makes
- 38:13Speaker 1: barley ripen in forty five days under the latitude of Kutsk.
- 38:17Speaker 1: Light concentrated or artificial will rival heat in hastening the
- 38:20Speaker 1: growth of plants. A moos shout of the future will
- 38:23Speaker 1: invent a machine to guide the rays of the sun
- 38:25Speaker 1: and make them work, so that we shall no longer
- 38:27Speaker 1: seek sun heat stored in coal. In the depths of
- 38:30Speaker 1: the earth. They will experiment the watering of the soil
- 38:34Speaker 1: with cultures of microorganisms, a rational idea conceived but yesterday,
- 38:38Speaker 1: which will permit us to give to the soil those
- 38:40Speaker 1: little living beings necessary to feed the rootlets to decompose
- 38:43Speaker 1: and assimilate the component parts of the soil. They will experiment.
- 38:48Speaker 1: But let us stop here, or we shall enter into
- 38:50Speaker 1: the realm of fancy. Let us remain in the reality
- 38:52Speaker 1: of required facts. With the processes of culture and use
- 38:56Speaker 1: applied on a large scale, and already victorious in the
- 38:59Speaker 1: struggle against industrial competition, we can give ourselves ease and
- 39:03Speaker 1: luxury in return for agreeable work. The near future will
- 39:06Speaker 1: show what is practical in the processes that recent scientific
- 39:10Speaker 1: discoveries give us a glimpse of. Let us limit ourselves
- 39:13Speaker 1: at present to opening up the new path that consists
- 39:16Speaker 1: in the study of the needs of man and the
- 39:18Speaker 1: means of satisfying them. The only thing that may be
- 39:22Speaker 1: wanting to the revolution is the boldness of initiative. With
- 39:26Speaker 1: our minds already narrowed in our youth and enslaved by
- 39:28Speaker 1: the past and our mature age, we hardly dare to
- 39:31Speaker 1: think if a new idea is mentioned, before venturing on
- 39:34Speaker 1: an opinion of our own. We consult musty books one
- 39:37Speaker 1: hundred years old to know what the ancient master's thought
- 39:39Speaker 1: on the subject. It is not food that will fail
- 39:43Speaker 1: if boldness of thought an initiative are not wanting to
- 39:46Speaker 1: the revolution. Of all the great days of the French Revolution,
- 39:50Speaker 1: the most beautiful, the greatest, was the one in which
- 39:52Speaker 1: delegates who had come from all parts of France to
- 39:55Speaker 1: Paris worked all with the spade to plain the grounds
- 39:58Speaker 1: of the Champ de Mars, prepare aring it for the
- 40:00Speaker 1: fete of the Federation. That day France was united, animated
- 40:04Speaker 1: by the new spirit. She had a vision of the
- 40:06Speaker 1: future in working in common of the soil. And it
- 40:11Speaker 1: will again be by the working in common of the
- 40:13Speaker 1: soil that the enfranchised societies will find their unity and
- 40:17Speaker 1: will obliterate the hatred and oppression which has hitherto divided them,
- 40:21Speaker 1: henceforth able to conceive solidarity, that immense power which increases
- 40:25Speaker 1: man's energy and creative forces one hundredfold. A new society
- 40:29Speaker 1: will march to the conquests of the future, with all
- 40:32Speaker 1: the vigor of youth, ceasing to produce for unknown buyers,
- 40:36Speaker 1: and looking in its mist for needs and tastes to
- 40:38Speaker 1: be satisfied. Society will liberally assure the life and ease
- 40:42Speaker 1: of each of its members, as well as that moral
- 40:45Speaker 1: satisfaction which work give when freely chosen and freely accomplished,
- 40:49Speaker 1: and the joy of living without encroaching on the life
- 40:51Speaker 1: of others. Inspired by a new daring born of the
- 40:55Speaker 1: feeling of solidarity, all will march together to the conquest
- 40:58Speaker 1: of the high joys of notedge and artistic creation. A
- 41:02Speaker 1: society thus inspired will fear neither dissensions within nor enemies without.
- 41:08Speaker 1: To the coalitions of the past, it will oppose a
- 41:10Speaker 1: new harmony, the initiatives of each and all the daring
- 41:14Speaker 1: which springs from the awakening of a people's genius. Before
- 41:18Speaker 1: such an irresistible force conspiring, kings will be powerless. Nothing
- 41:22Speaker 1: will remain for them but to bow before it and
- 41:24Speaker 1: to harness themselves to the chariot of humanity, rolling towards
- 41:27Speaker 1: new horizons opened up by the social Revolution. End of
- 41:35Speaker 1: Chapter seventeen. End of the Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin,