Tumbledown Farm .9 Acres (give or take an acre or two)

FOREWORDS
By PRINCE KROPOTKIN

A GOOD practical manual of that form of intensive market-gardening which is now known as "French market-gardening" is a want that has been felt for some time past. Continually, during the last fifteen years, I have been receiving letters from persons in­tending to settle on the land, asking me to indicate to them a good English manual of the French culture maraîchère. But I have been compelled to refer my correspondents to French works only, namely, to the admirable practical book by Gressent--Potager Gressent--and to the excellent book by the Belgian Professor Gillekens--Culture Maraîchère.

Of course, there is no lack of excellent English books on market-gardening; but the French market-gardeners, who work in the suburbs of Paris, Rouen, and other large cities, have worked out their own special ways of culture. By making their own thick sheet of loam out of rotten manure; by transplanting twice-the seedlings first and the young plants

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next; by preparing on separate plots of very fine loam, or under frames and glass bells, the young plants to be bedded out in due time, and by so disposing their crops as to never keep the soil idle, they obtain results which are not obtained elsewhere.

It was a manual for this sort of culture that was wanted. But to write it it was necessary to study the ways and means of the French maraîchers--not in agricultural schools, but by seeing the gardeners at real work; and this could be done only lately in this country, when some Evesham gardeners induced a French maraîcher to come over to England, and to apply his methods on a plot of land at Evesham, and when the same was done at May­land, Essex, on Mr. Fels' estate, and also--if I am not mistaken--at one or two more places in England.

The result is that we have already two small works on French gardening, and now this much more exhaustive book, by Mr. Thomas Smith, which is at present before the reader.

I will say nothing about the value and the practical character of this last book. It is sure to be appreciated by everyone who will take it as a guide and apply its advice to intensive

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gardening culture. But a few words upon a more general question may not be out of place here.

It will surely be asked: "What is the use of such books? Is it possible to learn a trade so difficult as gardening is from books?" Well, from my own life-experience and from what I see of others I do not hesitate to answer this question in the most affirmative way, "Yes, it is possible--but on one condition only: that you will not be satisfied with reading through once the book you have chosen for a guide, but will keep it at your side, and continually consult it while you carry on your practical work. There are lots of hints in every such manual, the value of which you can only under­stand while you are at work or while you are reflecting about the causes of your failures and partial successes.

Another necessary condition of success in work on the land is communicativeness --continual friendly intercourse with your neigh­bors. A book gives general advice only, while every acre of land has its own individuality­--which depends upon the soil, the position, the prevailing winds of the locality, and so on. These things can only be learned by local resi-

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dents of a long experience--an experience which represents the collective knowledge of the local population. Let every beginner remember that the superior gardening of the French, the Flemish, the Jersey and Guernsey gardeners, and the work of the English green­ house growers and florists, is the result of their collective experience. Every gardener may have his own secrets on this or that special point, but the bulk of the general knowledge which has developed in a given locality is the result of collective experience, and of the con­tinual talk among the gardeners about matters which interest them. Beginners who appreciate that talk and turn it to good account will find that advice is never refused by neighbors.

Moreover, as Mr. Thomas Smith himself remarks, certain modifications of the French system, which experience will indicate, will undoubtedly be required in its application to this country. It seems even probable that an adaptation of the making of the soil, which has been brought to perfection by the French gardeners, to greenhouse culture, as it has long been practiced in Scotland and England, will give the best results.

One point more has to be noticed. The

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French gardener, who pays extremely high rents for the land he hires within a few miles from the center of a big city, is compelled to aim above all at the production of early vege­tables out of season, which fetch high prices. His inventiveness goes, therefore, in preference, towards finding the means for having his crop a few days in advance of his neighbors. There is, however, another aim far more important in the economic life of a nation, namely, the steady increase of the quantity of produce obtained from each square yard of land. And this is what constitutes real pro­gress in agriculture: an increase of the quantity of produce, together with a reduction of labor and of the area required for growing that amount of produce.

From a broad point of view of national economy the former has a value only so far as it is conducive to the latter.

Consequently, let those who look upon the land as a mere source of profit compete among themselves for the early appearance of their produce on the market. As to those who will take to work on the land with the idea of bringing their own personal contribution, how­ ever small, to the general progress of mankind,

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they must turn their attention to the working out of the ways and means which promise the greatest amount and variety of food-stuffs on the smallest area with the least expenditure of necessary work.

On these lines lies true progress in agricul­ture. And this progress, in proportion as it is achieved, will necessarily contribute to the development in civilized mankind of the idea that the land belongs to all, and that nobody has the right to appropriate more of it than he, with his family, can cultivate.

P. KROPOTKIN.

LONDON,
February 26, 1909.