III

We have seen how the 3½ million inhabitants of the two departments round Paris could find ample bread by cultivating only a third of their territory. Let us now pass on to cattle.

Englishmen, who eat much meat, consume on an average a little less than 220 lb. a year per adult. Supposing all meats consumed were oxen, that makes a little less than the third of an ox. An ox a year for 5 individuals (including children) is already a sufficient ration. For 3½ million inhabitants this would make an annual consumption of 700,000 head of cattle.

To-day, with the pasture system, we need at least 5 million acres to nourish 660,000 head of cattle. This makes 9 acres per each head of horned cattle. Nevertheless, with prairies moderately watered by spring water (as recently done on thousands of acres in the south-west of France), 1¼ million acres already suffice. But if intensive culture is practiced, and beetroot is grown for fodder, you only need a quarter of that area, that is to say, about 310,000 acres. And if we have recourse to maize and practice ensilage (the compression of fodder while green) like Arabs, we obtain fodder on an area of 217,500 acres.

In the environs of Milan, where sewer water is used to irrigate the fields, fodder for 2 to 3 horned cattle per each acre is obtained on an area of 22,000 acres; and on a few favoured fields, up to 177 tons of hay to the 10 acres have been cropped, the yearly provender of 36 milch cows. Nearly nine acres per head of cattle are needed under the pasture system, and only 2½ acres for 9 oxen or cows under the new system. These are the opposite extremes in modern agriculture.

In Guernsey, on a total of 9884 acres utilized, nearly half (4695 acres) are covered with cereals and kitchen-gardens; only 5189 acres remain as meadows. On these 5189 acres, 1480 horses, 7260 head of cattle, 900 sheep, and 4200 pigs are fed, which makes more than 3 head of cattle per 2 acres, without reckoning the sheep or the pigs. It is needless to add that the fertility of the soil is made by seaweed and chemical manures.

Returning to our 3½ million inhabitants belonging to Paris and its environs, we see that the land necessary for the rearing of cattle comes down from 5 million acres to 197,000. Well, then, let us not stop at the lowest figures, let us take those of ordinary intensive culture; let us liberally add to the land necessary for smaller cattle which must replace some of the horned beasts and allow 395,000 acres for the rearing of cattle — 494,000 if you like, on the 1,013,000 acres remaining after bread has been provided for the people.

Let us be generous and give 5 million work-days to put this land into a productive state.

After having therefore employed in the course of a year 20 million work-days, half of which are for permanent improvements, we shall have bread and meat assured to us, without including all the extra meat obtainable in the shape of fowls, pigs, rabbits, etc.; without taking into consideration that a population provided with excellent vegetables and fruit consumes less meat than Englishmen, who supplement their poor supply of vegetables by animal food. Now, how much do 20 million work-days of 5 hours make per inhabitant? Very little indeed. A population of 3½ millions must have at least 1,200,000 adult men, and as many women capable of work. Well, then, to give bread and meat to all, it would need only 17 half-days of work a year per man. Add 3 million work-days, or double that number if you like, in order to obtain milk. That will make 25 work-days of 5 hours in all — nothing more than a little pleasurable country exercise — to obtain the three principal products bread, meat, and milk. The three products which, after housing, cause daily anxiety to nine-tenths of mankind.

And yet — let us not tire of repeating — these are not fancy dreams. We have only told what is, what has been, obtained by experience on a large scale. Agriculture could be reorganized in this way to-morrow if property laws and general ignorance did not offer opposition.

The day Paris has understood that to know what you eat and how it is produced, is a question of public interest; the day when everybody will have understood that this questions is infinitely more important than all the parliamentary debates of the present times — on that day the Revolution will be an accomplished fact. Paris will take possession of the two departments and cultivate them. And then the Parisian worker, after having laboured a third of his existence in order to buy bad and insufficient food, will produce it himself, under his walls, within the enclosure of his forts (if they still exist), in a few hours of healthy and attractive work.

And now we pass on to fruit and vegetables. Let us go outside Paris and visit the establishment of a market-gardener who accomplishes wonders (ignored by learned economists) at a few miles from the academies.

Let us visit, suppose, M. Ponce, the author of a work on market-gardening, who makes no secret of what the earth yields him, and who has published it all along.

M. Ponce, and especially his workmen, work like niggers. It takes eight men to cultivate a plot a little less than 3 acres (27/10). They work 12, and even 15 hours a day, that is to say, three times more than is needed. Twenty-four of them would not be too many. To which M. Ponce will probably answer that as he pays the terrible sum of £100 rent a year for his 27/10 acres of land, and £100 for manure bought in the barracks, he is obliged to exploit. He would no doubt answer, “Being exploited, I exploit in my turn.” His installation has also cost him £1200, of which certainly more than half went as tribute to the idle barons of industry. In reality, this establishment represents at most 3000 work-days, probably much less.

But let us examine his crops: nearly 10 tons of carrots, nearly 10 tons of onions, radishes, and small vegetables, 6000 heads of cabbage, 3000 heads of cauliflower, 5000 baskets of tomatoes, 5000 dozen of choice fruit, 154,000 salads; in short, a total of 123 tons of vegetables and fruit to 27/10 acres — 120 yards long by 109 yards broad, which makes more than 44 tons of vegetables to the acre.

But a man does not eat more than 660 lb. of vegetables and fruit a year, and 2½ acres of a market-garden yield enough vegetables and fruit to richly supply the table of 350 adults during the year. Thus 24 persons employed a whole year in cultivating 27/10 acres of land, and only working 5 hours a day, would produce sufficient vegetables and fruit for 350 adults, which is equivalent at least to 500 individuals.

To put it in another way: in cultivating like M. Ponce — and his results have already been surpassed — 350 adults should each give a little more than 100 hours a year (103) to produce vegetables and fruit necessary for 500 people.

Let us mention that such a production is not the exception. It takes place, under the walls of Paris, on an area of 2220 acres, by 5000 market-gardeners. Only these market-gardeners are reduced nowadays to a state of beasts of burden, in order to pay an average rent of £32 per acre.

But do not these facts, which can be verified by every one, prove that 17,300 acres (of the 519,000 remaining to us) would suffice to give all necessary vegetables, as well as a liberal amount of fruit to the 3½ millions inhabitants of our two departments?

As to the quantity of work necessary to produce these fruits and vegetables, it would amount to 50 million work-days of 5 hours (50 days per adult male), if we measure by the market-gardeners’ standard of work. But we could reduce this quantity if we had recourse to the process in vogue in Jersey and Guernsey. We must also remember that the Paris market-gardener is forced to work so hard because he mostly produces early season fruits, the high prices of which have to pay for fabulous rents, and that this system of culture entails more work than is really necessary. The market-gardeners of Paris, not having the means to make a great outlay on their gardens, and being obliged to pay heavily for glass, wood, iron, an coal, obtain their artificial heat out of manure, while it can be had at much less cost in hothouses.