There must be a competent superintendent, for everything depends
upon him, who would show the men what land they should use, what
they should put in, instruct them how to do it, and market their
products cooperatively. Experience in Philadelphia, and in some
score of other cities where they have established Vacant Lot
Gardens, shows that about ten per cent annually of the people prefer
to work for others, and consequently take places in the country
after they have learned to do market gardening. Some others, being
dissatisfied with so little land, and wanting to own their own
place, go off and buy land or lease it for themselves. This makes a
constant drain from the gardens, leaving openings for others who
will learn in time their trade; it is possible to make in this way a
steady drain out of the cities to the country, and what is better
still, an automatic drain.
The land must be so near to a center of population that it may be
possible to take a gang of men down there in the morning, show them
what it is, and send back those who do not seem likely to make good,
or who are dissatisfied; and that when men get their gardens
successfully running, they may be able to bring their friends there
to see what they have done, and say to them, "Go thou and do
likewise."
I have been at Trudeau, Saranac Lake, and at Stony Wold, the
consumptive sanitariums, and found there both by observation and by
testimony that to send back the convalescents to the bench or the
workshop from which they came is practically to repronounce upon
them the sentence of death from which the sanitarium has offered
them a reprieve. The only practical thing to do with such
convalescents, and with such persons who are not capable of their
ordinary avocations, is to get them in some way upon the land. There
is a large demand for persons who understand the new intensive
gardening, and places can be found for more than we can hope to
educate in that line.
There should be buildings upon the land sufficient to bunk one
hundred to one hundred and fifty men; accommodations could be made
with the small timber for a considerable number. Many of these men
would need some help, but most of them would shift for themselves if
only they could get the opportunity to build upon the land and to
have a secure tenure of it. A mere tenant knows that it is bunkum
when he says "Our Country."
It is perfectly practicable to sell about one half of the land in a
year or two, and have a thousand acres or more left free and clear,
which will cost the promoters nothing. Renting this out or selling
it will repay the whole cost, and probably bring a large profit
besides.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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