Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin

This figure alone is the best answer to those who are fond of talking about the extraordinary fertility of the soil, each time they are told of some success in agriculture.

Strawberries, cherries, apricots, peaches and grapes follow each other in rapid succession, and at the same time cartloads of French beans, salads, cabbages, leeks, and potatoes are sent towards the industrial cities of the region.

The results of this development are simply striking.

The reality, however, is that horticulture--that is, both market-gardening and fruit culture--has been brought in America to a high degree of perfection.

If one tenth part of what is done in the States and in Canada for favouring agriculture and horticulture were done in this country, English fruit would not have been so shamefully driven out of the market as it was a few years ago.

This is what can be achieved by an intelligent combination of agriculture with industry, and undoubtedly will be applied on a still larger scale in the future.

A new system of horticulture--the market-garden under glass--is thus rapidly gaining ground.

As I walked through such glass-roofed kitchen gardens, I could not but admire this recent conquest of man.

I saw, for instance, three-fourths of an acre heated for the first three months of the year, from which about eight tons of tomatoes and about 200 lb. of French beans had been taken as a first crop in April, to be followed by two crops…

I saw again, in cool greenhouses--simple plank and glass shelters--pea plants covering the walls, for the length of one quarter of a mile, which already had yielded by the end of April 3,200 lb. of exquisite peas and were yet as full of…

And when chance brought me, in 1896, in company with a local gardener, to a tiny, retired “vinery” of a veteran grower, I could see there, and admire, what a lover of gardening can obtain from so small a space as the two-thirds of an acre.

The tomatoes and strawberries in the open air, as well as the fruit trees, all on tiny spaces, were equal to the grapes; and when one is shown on what a space half a ton of strawberries can be gathered under proper culture, it is hardly…

And yet, even such plain and cheap houses yield excellent results.

Don’t prove too much; beware of the landlord!” a practical gardener once wrote to me.

But, so far as can be judged from the facts I have at my disposal, the two ventures have proved that the climate of England is no obstacle to French gardening.

But home-grown fruit and vegetables have always many advantages in comparison with imported produce.

Let me add to these remarks that a decided awakening is to be noticed in this country for making a better use of the land than has been made for the last fifty years.

There are a few counties where the County Councils, and still more so, the Parish Councils, are doing their best to break at last the land monopoly, and to permit those small farmers who intend to cultivate the soil to do so.

It is precisely in the most densely populated parts of the world that agriculture has lately made such strides as hardly could have been guessed twenty years ago.

A dense population, a high development of industry, and a high development of agriculture and horticulture, go hand in hand: they are inseparable.

The present tendency of economical development in the world is--we have seen--to induce more and more every nation, or rather every region, taken in its geographical sense, to rely chiefly upon a home production of all the chief…

Not to reduce, I mean, the world-exchange: it may still grow in bulk; but to limit it to the exchange of what really must be exchanged, and, at the same time, immensely to increase the exchange of novelties, produce of local or national…

Taking the powers of man over the land and over the forces of nature--such as they are at the present day--we can maintain that two to three inhabitants to each cultivable acre of land would not yet be too much.

He would not be bound to invent some new methods, but could simply generalise and widely apply those which have stood the test of experience.

And the division and subdivision--the permanent subdivision--of functions has been pushed so far as to divide humanity into castes which are almost as firmly established as those of old India.