Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

And, supposing it is, are we not yet bound to analyse that compound result which we call price, rather than to accept it as a supreme and blind ruler of our actions?

We know what an amount of labour must be spent to scratch the soil with a primitive plough, to spin and weave by hand; and we know also how much less labour it costs to grow the same amount of food and weave the same cloth with the help of…

We know that highly productive labour is impossible so long as men are scattered, few in numbers, over wide territories, and are thus unable to combine together for the higher achievements of civilisation.

We know that a crowded population is a necessary condition for permitting man to increase the productive powers of his labour.

But we, who see in each new-born babe a future worker capable of producing much more than his own share of the common stock--we greet his appearance.

We thus see that the over-population fallacy does not stand the very first attempt at submitting it to a closer examination.

Each day widens former limits, and opens new and wide horizons.

And each new branch of activity calls into existence more and more new branches, which steadily increase the power of man over the forces of nature.

The resources of science, both in enlarging the circle of our production and in new discoveries, are inexhaustible.

Such a state of things will not last for ever; and the day is not far when we shall be compelled to look to our own resources to provide many of the things which we now import.

Home-grown fruit is always preferable to the half-ripe produce which is imported from abroad, and the additional work required for keeping a young plant under glass is largely repaid by the incomparable superiority of the crops.

Any soil, of any desired composition, can be made by machinery.

The soil can be improved by hand, but it need not be made by hand.

Our ambition is, that he should produce even more than he does with less labour, and should enjoy all the joys of human life.

He knows no leisure; he has no time to live the life of a human being; the commonwealth does not exist for him; his world is his garden, more than his family.

In the painful work of civilisation he has shown us the way to follow; but the ideal of modern civilisation is elsewhere.

But now the Paris gardener not only defies the soil--he would grow the same crops on an asphalt pavement--he defies climate.

As to the different degrees of fertility of the soil--always the stumbling-block of those who write about agriculture--the fact is that in market-gardening the soil is always made, whatever it originally may have been.

Early vegetables pay best, and in order to obtain early produce not only the air but the soil as well must be warmed; and this is done by putting great quantities of properly mixed manure into the soil; its fermentation heats it.

What chiefly attracts the gardener to the great cities is stable manure; and this is not wanted so much for increasing the richness of the soil--one-tenth part of the manure used by the French gardeners would do for that purpose--but for…

The seeds are carefully tried, the seedlings receive proper attention, and there is no fear of drought, because of the variety of crops, the liberal watering with the help of a steam engine, and the stock of plants always kept ready to…

They do not understand our talk about good and bad soils, because they make the soil themselves, and make it in such quantities as to be compelled yearly to sell some of it: otherwise it would raise up the level of their gardens by half an…

They smile when we boast about the rotation system, having permitted us to take from the field one crop every year, or four crops each three years, because their ambition is to have six and nine crops from the very same plot of land during…

Science seldom guided them, and sometimes misguided--as was the case with Liebig’s theories, developed to the extreme by his followers, who induced us to treat plants as glass recipients of chemical drugs, and who forgot that the only…

All these are not fancy dreams, but mere realities; nothing but the modest conclusions from what we see round about us, without any allusion to the agriculture of the future.