V

In all the above we have reasoned upon what already withstood the test of experience. Intensive culture of the fields, irrigated meadows, the hothouse, and finally the kitchen garden under glass are realities. Moreover, the tendency is to extend and to generalize these methods of culture, because they allow of obtaining more produce with less work and with more certainty.

In fact, after having studied the most simple glass shelters of Guernsey, we affirm that, taking all in all, far less work is expended for obtaining potatoes under glass in April, than in growing them in the open air, which requires digging a space four times as large, watering it, weeding it, etc. Work is likewise economized in employing a perfected tool or machine, even when an initial expense had to be incurred to buy the tool.

Complete figures concerning the culture of common vegetables under glass are still wanting. This culture is of recent origin, and is only carried out on small areas. But we have already figures concerning the fifty years old culture of early season grapes, and these figures are conclusive.

In the north of England, on the Scotch frontier, where coal only costs 3s. a ton at the pit’s mouth, they have long since taken to growing hothouse grapes. Thirty years ago these grapes, ripe in January, were sold by the grower at 20s. per lb. and resold at 40s. per lb. for Napoleon III’s table. To-day the same grower sells them at only 2s. 6d. per lb. He tells us so himself in a horticultural journal. The fall is caused by tons and tons of grapes arriving in January to London and Paris.

Thanks to the cheapness of coal and an intelligent culture, grapes from the north travel now southwards, in a contrary direction to ordinary fruit. They cost so little that in May, English and Jersey grapes are sold at 1s. 8d. per lb. by the gardeners, and yet this price, like that of 40s. thirty years ago, is only kept up by slack production.

In March, Belgium grapes are sold at from 6d. to 8d., while in October, grapes cultivated in immense quantities — under glass, and with a little artificial heating in the environs of London — are sold at the same price as grapes bought by the pound in the vineyards of Switzerland and the Rhine, that is to say, for a few halfpence. Yet they still cost two-thirds too much, by reason of the excessive rent of the soil and the cost of installation and heating, on which the gardener pays a formidable tribute to the manufacturer and middleman. This being understood, we may say that it costs “next to nothing” to have delicious grapes under the latitude of, and in our misty London in autumn. In one of the suburbs, for instance, a wretched glass and plaster shelter, 9 ft. 10 in. long by 6½ ft. wide, resting against our cottage, gave us about fifty pounds of grapes of an exquisite taste in October, for nine consecutive years. The crop came from a Hamburg vine-stalk, six years old. And the shelter was so bad that the rain came through. At night the temperature was always that of outside. It was evidently not heated, for that would be as useless as to heat the street! And the cares to be given were: pruning the vine half an hour every year; and bringing a wheelbarrowful of manure, which is thrown over the stalk of the vine, planted in red clay outside the shelter.

On the other hand, if we estimate the amount of care given to the vine on the borders of the Rhine or Lake Leman, the terraces constructed stone upon stone on the slopes of the hills, the transport of manure and also of earth to a height of two or three hundred feet, we come to the conclusion that on the whole the expenditure of work necessary to cultivate vines is more considerable in Switzerland or on the banks of the Rhine than it is under glass in London suburbs.

This may seem paradoxical, because it is generally believed that vines grow of themselves in the south of Europe, and that the vinegrower’s work costs nothing. But gardeners and horticulturists, far from contradicting us, confirm our assertions. “The most advantageous culture in England is vine culture,” wrote a practical gardener, editor of the “English Journal of Horticulture.” Prices speak eloquently for themselves, as we know.

Translating these facts into communist language, we may assert that the man or woman who takes twenty hours a year from his leisure time to give some little care — very pleasant in the main — to two or three vine-stalks sheltered by simple glass under any European climate, will gather as many grapes as their family and friends can eat. And that applies not only to vines, but to all fruit trees.

The Commune that will put the processes of intensive culture into practice on a large scale will have all possible vegetables, indigenous or exotic, and all desirable fruits, without employing more than about ten hours a year per inhabitant.

In fact, nothing would be easier than to verify the above statements by direct experiment. Suppose 100 acres of a light loam (such as we have at Worthing) are transformed into a number of market gardens, each one with its glass houses for the rearing of the seedlings and young plants. Suppose also that 50 more acres are covered with glass, houses, and the organization of the whole is left to practical experienced French maraîchers, and Guernsey or Worthing greenhouse gardeners.

In basing the maintenance of these 150 acres on the Jersey average, requiring the work of three men per acre under glass — which makes less than 8,600 hours of work a year — it would need about 1,300,000 hours for the 150 acres. Fifty competent gardeners could give five hours a day to this work, and the rest would be simply done by people who, without being gardeners by profession, would soon learn how to use a spade, and to handle the plants. But this work would yield at least — we have seen it in a preceding chapter — all necessaries and articles of luxury in the way of fruit and vegetables for at least 40,000 or 50,000 people. Let us admit that among this number there are 13,500 adults, willing to work at the kitchen-garden; then, each one would have to give 100 hours a year distributed over the whole year. These hours of work would become hours of recreation spent among friends and children in beautiful gardens, more beautiful probably than those of the legendary Semiramis.

This is the balance sheet of the labour to be spent in order to be able to eat to satiety fruit which we are deprived of to-day, and to have vegetables in abundance, now so scrupulously rationed out by the housewife, when she has to reckon each halfpenny which must go to enrich capitalists and landowners Summing up the figures given on agriculture, figures proving that the inhabitants of the two départements of Seine and Seine-et-Oise can perfectly well live on their own territory by employing very little time annually to obtain food, we have:      DEPARTMENTS OF SEINE AND SEINE-ET-OISE Number of inhabitants in 1889 3,900,000 Area in acres 1,507,300 Average number of inhabitants per acre 2.6 Areas to be cultivated to feed the inhabitants (in acres): Corn and cereals 494,000 Natural and artificial meadows 494,000 Vegetables and fruit from 17,300 to 25,000 Leaving a balance for houses, roads, parks, forests 494,000 Quantity of annual work necessary to improve and cultivate the above surfaces in five-hour work-days: Cereals (culture and crop) 15,000,000 Meadows, milk, rearing of cattle 10,000,000 Market-gardening culture, high-class fruit, 33,000,000 Extras 12,000,000 Total 70,000,000 If we suppose that half only of the able-bodied adults (men and women) are willing to work at agriculture, we see that 70 million work-days must be divided among 1,200,000 individuals, which gives us 58 work-days of 5 hours for each of these workers. With that the population of the two departments would have all necessary bread, meat, milk, vegetables, and fruit, both ordinary and luxury. To-day a workman spends for the necessary food of his family (generally less than what is necessary) at least one-third of his 300 work-days a year, about 1000 hours be it, instead of 290. That is, he thus gives about 700 hours too much to fatten the idle and the would-be administrators, because he does not produce his own food, but buys it of middlemen, who in their turn buy it of peasants who exhaust themselves by working with bad tools, because, being robbed by the landowners and the State, they cannot procure better ones. ¹⁰.

If only humanity had the consciousness of what it CAN, and if that consciousness only gave it the power to will!

If it only knew that cowardice of the spirit is the rock on which all revolutions have stranded until now.