Bolton Hall

“ Can you walk through a working-class district or a Lancashire cotton town, with their huddle of airless streets, without a feeling of despair coming over you at the sense of this enormous perversion of life into the arid channels of death? Can you take pride in an Empire on which the sun never sets when you think of the courts in which, as Will Crooks says, the sun never rises? ”

“ By thought and courage, we can help ourselves to own a home, surrounded by acres of fruit and vegetables, flowers and poultry, and learn the best methods so as to insure success.
In olden times any one could "farm," but it is necessary to-day to teach people to obtain a livelihood directly from the earth. Scientific methods of agriculture have revealed possibilities in the soil that make farming the most fascinating occupation known to man. People in every city are longing for the freedom of country life, yet hesitate to enter into its liberty because no one points the way. ”

“ What wonder, then, that the overworked and struggling farmer finds little chance to study, or to investigate and invest in fertilizers or even in modern methods of agriculture.
No wonder farming does not pay if a "farmer" means a stupid man with neither training for, nor knowledge of, his business. Those who have the knowledge seldom have the experience and those who have the experience seldom have the knowledge.
The bonanza farms of the West are other samples of great areas of the most productive land in the United States being used most unscientifically. ”

“ The low-priced 'cheap greenhouse' is a makeshift of some sort. Perhaps its roof is constructed of hotbed sash, a perfectly feasible method of construction, which for ordinary, commonplace gardening will answer admirably. Or, its foundation is merely the plain earth. Such a building does admirably in the summer time, and even in the late spring and early autumn; but woe betide the enthusiastic amateur in winter, who, being possessed of one of these light greenhouse structures, has indulged in a few costly, exotic plants. ”

“ Light and air and labor—these are the medicines not of the body only, but of the soul. It is not ponderable things alone that are found in gardens, but the great wonder of life, the peace of nature, the influences of sunsets and seasons and of all the intangible things to which we can give no name, not because they are small, but because they are outside the compass of our speech. The God that dwells in gardens is sufficient for all our needs—let the theologians say what they will. ”

“ With the improvements in steam and electricity, the revolutionizing of transportation, the cutting of the arbitrary telephone charges, it is becoming possible to live at a distance from our business. May we not expect in the near future to see one portion of our cities devoted entirely to business, with the homes of the people so separated as to give light, sunshine, and air to all, besides a piece of ground for a garden sufficient to supply the table with vegetables?
You raise more than vegetables in your garden: you raise your expectation of life.
Life belongs in the garden. ”

“ Gardening is not a rule of thumb business. Each gardener must bring his plants up in his own way in the light of his own experience and in accordance with the conditions of his own garden. A garden lover who has a bit of land will speedily learn if his eyes and his mind, as well as his hands, are always busy, no matter how meager his knowledge at the beginning. ”

“ FIFTY-EIGHT years ago Abraham Lincoln said "Population must increase rapidly, more rapidly than in former times, and ere long the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving subsistence from the smallest area of soil. No community whose every member possesses this art can ever be the victim of oppression in any of its forms. ”

“ Even if he lives at home, the boy who is forced to the street or into the factory before he has the strength or education to do good work remains an unskilled worker all his life.
"Manufacturing is upon a larger and larger scale. The division of labor is greater and greater. Not only does the gulf between capitalist and laborer widen, but with it the gulf between skilled and unskilled labor." ”

“ With the aids which science has given, a farmer can now make good profits with less labor than was formerly necessary to get a bare living. The amount that a single well-managed, well-tilled acre will produce in a season is simply incredible. This accounts for the increased demand for farming lands wherever they are to be had on reasonable terms. The wage earners are learning this, and it is only a question of a little time when manufacturing plants will have to be convenient to lands where the families of the hands can have a small tract of land to cultivate. ”

“ The cases where those whose labor creates dividends get more than wages have been rare. "A living wage" has been the ambition of labor itself: all profit beyond this is supposed to be the right of capital. There is with some persons an unconscious reluctance to share profits with labor lest the laborers become independent, and thus reduce their number to an extent to raise the labor market, so that it is difficult to get fair consideration of any business proposition that promises better conditions for the producer or independence for the laborer. ”

“ After four years our people awoke, as from a nightmare, to find the old life swept away forever. In the South, the Confederates, bitter and sullen, groping amid the ruins of their institutions, sought to find some substitute for the agricultural despotism exercised for generations by their slaveholding families. In the East, the first families of the Revolution, secure in their preeminence, assumed again the manufacturing-banking-social prestige. ”

“ Here in Hampstead allotments are as plentiful as blackberries in autumn. A friend of mine who lives in Beckenham tells me there are fifteen hundred in his parish. In the neighborhood of London there must be many thousands. In the country as a whole there must be hundreds of thousands. If dear old Joseph Fels could revisit the glimpses of the moon and see what is happening, see the vacant lots and waste spaces bursting into onion beds and potato patches, what joy would be his! ”

“ As almost all industries to-day are specialized, so is floriculture; in one place we see ten acres of glass given over to the rose, in another thousands of dollars devoted to the carnation or the violet, while one grower in Queens, Long Island, has 75,000 square feet of glass for carnations.
The specialist who devotes his thoughts and energies to raising one flower can produce better results than if he raised a variety. He has only one crop to market, and can do it more successfully than with a number of crops. ”

“ Anyhow the small gardener is more likely to succeed raising pheasants than to muss with a hippopotamus, at least in the suburbs. Pigs are more practical and make prettier pets.
Our population bids fair to approximate two hundred million within the next fifty years, and, because of the exigencies of business, an increasing number of people will be engaged in non-food-producing vocations. These people, however, are all consumers and must be fed and clothed, and even now America offers the greatest market for the produce of the farm that any farmer in any country has ever had in all history. ”

“ If I were a small clerk, say, or an old man who wanted to get out of city life, and I had $500 I really wanted to venture in drug raising, I should divide it in half—half I should put in the bank and the other half I should throw into the Hudson River. Then I should be sure of $250 instead of being drawn on to spend it all."
"Most of the people who have been in the business, notably the Shakers, who used to do the most of it, are gradually getting out of it. The few men who make money raising drugs keep it to themselves." ”

“ If your land is so situated that you can put your individuality into the crop and can control all the circumstances, preparation of land, planting, cultivation, harvesting, and marketing, your chances of success are immeasurably increased. As soon as any important part must be trusted to some one beyond your control, danger arises. Assiduous care in planting, cultivating, and packing will avail nothing if the product falls into the hands of transportation companies or commission merchants indifferent as to what becomes of it. ”

“ If there is a vacant lot in your neighborhood, see if you cannot get the use of it for yourself and your neighbors, and raise your own vegetables. An hour a day spent in this way will not only increase wealth and help your family, but will help you personally by adding to your strength and well-being and making you appreciate the Eden joy of gardening. An hour in the open air is worth more than a dozen expensive prescriptions by an expensive doctor.
The only tools necessary for a small garden are a spade or spading fork, a hoe, a rake, and a line or piece of cord. ”

“ To cultivate is to watch the soil as you would watch your cooking and to tend the crop as you would tend your animals. The crop is as alive as the stock and as easily gets sick.
If an ordinary farmer rents 60 acres at $5.00 per acre, a moderate rent for good land, he pays out in cash $300, besides farm wages. If he buys it, his interest and taxes will amount to nearly as much; but if he tills but five acres intelligently, he can get as much out of it as out of an ordinary farm, and even if his rent be as high as $30 per acre for well situated land, he is $150 to the good ”

“ But when we consider the great masses of people in the slums of all cities who are always underfed and whose constant thought is about their next meal; when we see hundreds of able-bodied men waiting in line until midnight for half a loaf of stale bread, surely it seems that there is a possibility of keeping all of the present farmers at work, if not of finding new fields for others, if we make our conditions such that there will be opportunities for every able-bodied worker to labor at remunerative employment. ”

“ The only way to form a correct idea of the production of any given section is to examine a particular farm in detail. Within well-recognized limits, all the farms thereabouts will be found of similar character. Before spending money to look at land, learn all you can by correspondence. Whether it is more profitable in the long run to buy that good plot of land in a high state of cultivation with good buildings on it, at a high price, than to buy this exhausted piece of land with poor buildings or none at all, is a question for the individual to decide. ”

“ We know already that the natural and healthy life is, that in the sweat of our faces we should eat bread. We observe that everything we eat or use or make comes from the earth by labor; but no one knows how abundantly the Mother can supply her children. It is well said that no man yet knows the capacity of a square yard of earth.
The farmer thinks that he has done well if he gets a hundred and fifty or two hundred bushels of potatoes from an acre; he does not know that others have gotten 1284 bushels. ”

“ It is not necessary to bury oneself in the country, nor, with the new facilities of transportation, need we, unless we wish to, pay the extravagant rents and enormous cost of living in the city. A little bit of land near the town or the city can be rented or bought on easy terms; and merchandising will bring one to the city often enough. Neither is hard labor needed; but it is to work alone that the earth yields her increase, and if, although unskilled, we would succeed in gardening, we must attend constantly and intelligently to the home acres. ”

“ If he has a twenty-acre lot in potatoes, he walks each year more than 650 miles over the field and gets, let us say, 150 bushels of poor potatoes per acre, or 3000 bushels off his twenty-acre field.
Now suppose he cultivates the soil, instead of just "raising a crop," and gets 600 bushels of fine potatoes to the acre, he need plant only five acres, walk only 200 miles, and, because his potatoes are choice and early, get many times the price that his pedestrian neighbor gets. It is much easier to grow 200,000 lb. of feed on one acre than to grow them on ten acres. ”

“ The lands about Miles, Michigan, were considered sterile until some one found out that they would grow mint, a valuable crop, which made the land salable at high prices.
Get hold of a desirable bit of the earth. All that men wear or eat or use; everything—shelter, food, tools, and toys comes from the land by labor. Even the capital used to make more of those things is taken from the land. The employer and the capitalist are, at bottom, only men who control the land or its products, who own rights of way, mining rights, or the fee of valuable lands. ”

“ The rivers are valuable to the farmers as drainage lines, as irrigation supply, as carriers and equalizers of transportation rates, as a readily available power resource, and for raising food fish. The wise development of these and other uses is important to both agricultural and other interests; their protection from monopoly is one of the first responsibilities of government. The streams belong to the people; under a proper system of development their resources would remain an estate of all the people, and become available as needed. ”

“ Passing by the obvious fact that production must precede distribution, notice that, with all the energy that has been devoted to production of farm products by the government experts, it is clear that not only is there a shortage, but that it has required all kinds of inducements, from the President down, to get the farmers to increase their output, the most potent of all being the cry of patriotism. ”

“ They do not need much land, because a man working at intensive culture with only the rough plowing done for him cannot take good care of much more than one acre of land. He will probably make as much money out of one acre of land as he will out of two. Those who are willing to work should be given one acre of land, with the assurance that they can have it as long as they work it faithfully and comply with the simple rules which we have found so effective in the Vacant Lot Gardening work,—which are practically, that a man should attend to business and not annoy his neighbors. ”