The Conquest of BreadKropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kniaz
Philosophy
The Conquest of Bread
Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kniaz
Anarchism; Communism
But without a revolution, neither to-morrow, nor after to-morrow will
see it done, because it is not to the interest of landowners and
capitalists; and because peasants who would find their profit in it have
neither the knowledge nor the money, nor the time to obtain what is
necessary to go ahead.
The society of to-day has not yet reached this stage. But let Parisians
proclaim an Anarchist Commune, and they will of necessity come to it,
because they will not be foolish enough to continue making luxurious
toys (which Vienna, Warsaw, and Berlin make as well already), and to run
the risk of being left without bread.
Moreover, agricultural work, by the help of machinery, would soon become
the most attractive and the most joyful of all occupations.
"We have had enough jewelery and enough dolls' clothes," they would say;
"it is high time for the workers to recruit their strength in
agriculture, to go in search of vigour, of impressions of nature, of the
joy of life, that they have forgotten in the dark factories of the
suburbs."
In the Middle Ages it was Alpine pasture lands, rather than guns, which
allowed the Swiss to shake off lords and kings. Modern agriculture will
allow a city in revolt to free itself from the combined bourgeois
forces.
III
We have seen how the three and one-half million inhabitants of the two
departments round Paris could find ample bread by cultivating only a
third of their territory. Let us now pass on to cattle.
Englishmen, who eat much meat, consume on an average a little less than
220 pounds a year per adult. Supposing all meats consumed were oxen,
that makes a little less than the third of an ox. An ox a year for five
individuals (including children) is already a sufficient ration. For
three and one-half million inhabitants this would make an annual
consumption of 700,000 head of cattle.
To-day, with the pasture system, we need at least five million acres to
nourish 660,000 head of cattle. This makes nine acres per each head of
horned cattle. Nevertheless, with prairies moderately watered by spring
water (as recently done on thousands of acres in the southwest of
France), one and one-fourth million acres already suffice. But if
intensive culture is practiced, and beet-root is grown for fodder, you
only need a quarter of that area, that is to say, about 310,000 acres.
And if we have recourse to maize and practice ensilage (the compression
of fodder while green) like Arabs, we obtain fodder on an area of
217,500 acres.
In the environs of Milan, where sewer water is used to irrigate the
fields, fodder for two to three horned cattle per each acre is obtained
on an area of 22,000 acres; and on a few favoured fields, up to 177 tons
of hay to the 10 acres have been cropped, the yearly provender of 36
milch cows. Nearly nine acres per head of cattle are needed under the
pasture system, and only two and one-half acres for nine oxen or cows
under the new system. These are the opposite extremes in modern
agriculture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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