Page:The Conquest of Bread (1906).djvu/298

 Fifteen million work-days will have thus been spent to give bread to a population of 3,600,000 inhabitants. And the work would be such that each could do it without having muscles of steel, or without having even worked the ground before. The initiative and the general distribution of work would come from those who know the soil. As to the work itself, there is no townsman of either sex so enfeebled as to be incapable of looking after machines and of contributing his share to agrarian work after a few hours' apprenticeship.

Well, when we consider that in the present chaos there are, in a city like Paris, without counting the unemployed of the upper classes, about 100,000 men out of work in their several trades, we see that the power lost in our present organization would alone suffice to give, with a rational culture, bread necessary to the three or four million inhabitants of the two departments.

We repeat, this is no fancy dream, and we have not spoken of the truly intensive agriculture. We have not depended upon the wheat (obtained in three years by Mr. Hallett) of which one grain, replanted, produced 5000 or 6000, and occasionally 10,000 grains, which would give the wheat necessary for a family of five individuals on an area of 120 square yards. On the contrary, we have only mentioned what has been already achieved by numerous farmers in France, England, Belgium, etc., and what might be done to-morrow