Three Acres and Liberty

, surrounded by acres of fruit and vegetables, flowers and

tific methods of agriculture have revealed possibilities in the soil that make farming the most fascinating occupation known to man.

opulation toward the cities. Seeing the overcrowding, the want and misery of our great t

n crowds. To transport him to the country, even if he would stay, which happily he won't, would be to doctor a

can be done by restoring the natural condition of living, and among other things, by showing that it is easier and

bserve that everything we eat or use or make comes from the earth by labor; but no one knows how abundantly th

ed and fifty or two hundred bushels of potatoes from an ac

or thirty-four tons and nine hundreds weight (about 34 bushels to the ton), on a single acre; and at a recent competition in Minnesota, 1120

of land. A New York City avenue block is about 200 feet long from house corner to house corner.

bushels, so then a full crop of potato

ot less than a dozen times, plowing, harrowing, marking, planting, cultivating, three tim

es him walk at least thirty-three miles over each acre. If he has a twenty-acre lot in potatoes, he walks each year more than

need plant only five acres, walk only 200 miles, and, because his potatoes are choice and early, get many times the price

ooking and to tend the crop as you would tend your animals.

est 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

ck till he accumulates enough for proper buildings. Many of the successful vac

n, it is more profitable to cultivate on a large scale than on a small one, because in that

the little end of the horn. They get poor or poorly situated land, because it costs less, and then put three or four hu

ed his cattle, and that he must have cattle to

esting is high and the margin of profit small. A week of wet weather at cutting time or the imp

is fodder by wandering over the fields in search of tid-bits of grass or clover, o

, feeds them on cut fodder, and

needs little. To exploit the cattle as employers exploit the factory hands, he gives the c

y cows for a number of years past, and finds that complete soiling is entirely practicable, i.e. that green foliage crops may serve as the

ven acreage and by allowing open-air exercises in a large yard or pasture

, crimson clover, alfalfa, oats and peas, and millets have been found to furnish food more economically tha

s, she needs to be milked every day at regular hours, and the milk, as

lds and grass; but if time and available labor is limited,

e the land intelligently. They are mostly cut off from the edu

imes it is because, also, the land is poor or worn out; more often because it is thoughtlessly managed, nearly always because the land-hungry farmer has taken ten times as much land

he towns, leaving behind the duller and more conservative to the mercy of the railroads and other monopolies. What wonder, then, that the over

aining for, nor knowledge of, his business. Those who have the knowledge seldom

areas of wheat are worked by machines with labor employed only in the seed time and harvest, is rapidly breaking up. As the land becomes valuable and is taxed, such wasteful, wholesale methods do not pay as well as it pays to rent or sell the land to farmers, who each for themselves attend to details

th and 13th United States Censuses in the bonanz

and shows 23.5

99 In

14.5 bu. p

a 13.5 bu.

a 10.5 bu.

y increased, but the

(2.471 acres), less than two and a half acres. ("Japan in the Beginning of the Twentiet

of whom two and a half persons per family may be r

supporting more than two persons, notwithstanding that their 22,000,000 tenant

countries and probably one of the ha

ms of 250

s averaging

s averaging

ative dairie

advantage of this that the Government will supply the poor w

ncluded, it nourishes a population of about two inhabitants to each acre, or 1300 inhabitants to the square mile, and there is not one writer on agriculture who, after having paid a visit to this island, does not p

organic matter in it, is not at all of surprising fertility, and that its climate, though more sunny than the climate of the Bri

ence, and inheritance very different from those which prevail elsewhere; to freedom from State taxation; and to the fact that communal institutions have been maintained down to

Jersey obtain agricultural products to the value of $250 to e

ce. We hear of one garden in New York City on the roof of a big

arth rug, one yard by two, show how to use a very small patch of land

ges (seventy-five cents a day with board and lodging for the worker), but mechanics' wages (four dollars per day) for every working day; as, for instance, a stone-

garden-it needs but a small plot of land. Nor need we be discouraged because acquaintances

the selection of crops and the purchase of seeds left to an uneduc

mer" who runs a model farm, a model of how not to do it

that his farm is run? We know the story of the white sparrow to find which would bring luck to the farm-but it was out only at daybreak; the farmer got up each morn

healthy reaction setting in. 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

les in your garden: you rai

he last chapter of the Apocalypse leaves us with the vision of the garden in the Holy City, on either side of the river, where the trees yield their fru