Agricultural colonies; Poor -- Great Britain; Salvation Army; Unemployed -- Great Britain
"What is the scientific way?" I shall be asked impatiently. I am not
an agriculturist; I do not dogmatize. I have read much from many pens,
and have noted the experiences of many colonies, and I have learned the
lesson that it is in the school of practical labour that the most
valuable knowledge is to be obtained. Nevertheless, the bulk of my
proposals are based upon the experience of many who have devoted their
lives to the study of the subject, and have been endorsed by
specialists whose experience gives them authority to speak with
unquestioning confidence.
SECTION 1.--THE FARM PROPER.
My present idea is to take an estate from five hundred to a thousand
acres within reasonable distance of London. It should be of such land
as will be suitable for market gardening, while having some clay on it
for brick-making and for crops requiring a heavier soil. If possible,
it should not only be on a line of railway which is managed by
intelligent and progressive directors, but it should have access to the
sea and to the river. It should be freehold land, and it should lie at
some considerable distance from any town or village. The reason for
the latter desideratum is obvious. We must be near London for the sake
of our market and for the transmission of the commodities collected by
our Household Salvage Brigade, but it must be some little distance from
any town or village in order that the Colony may be planted clear out
in the open away from the public house, that upas tree of civilisation.
A sine qua non of the new Farm Colony is that no intoxicating liquors
will be permitted within its confines on any pretext whatever.
The doctors will have to prescribe some other stimulant than alcohol
for residents in this Colony. But it will be little use excluding
alcohol with a strong hand and by cast-iron regulations if the
Colonists have only to take a short walk in order to find themselves in
the midst of the "Red Lions," and the "Blue Dragons," and the
"George the Fourths," which abound in every country town.
Having obtained the land I should proceed to prepare it for the
Colonists. This is an operation which is essentially the same in any
country. You need water supply, provisions and shelter. All this
would be done at first in the simplest possible style. Our pioneer
brigade, carefully selected from the competent Out-of-Works in the City
Colony, would be sent down to layout the estate and prepare it for
those who would come after. And here let me say that it is a great
delusion to imagine that in the riffraff and waste of the labour market
there are no workmen to be had except those that are worthless.
Worthless under the present conditions, exposed to constant temptations
to intemperance no doubt they are, but some of the brightest men in
London, with some of the smartest pairs of hands, and the cleverest
brains, are at the present moment weltering helplessly in the sludge
from which we propose to rescue them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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