Thomas County cat. [volume] (Colby, Kan.) 1885-1891, 1888-12-27
THE FUTURE VILLAGE.
a Combination Of IndustFial with Agri-
cultural Enterprise.


a Combination of Industrial with Agri-
cultural Enterprise.
Agriculture is so much in need Of
aid from those who inhabit the cities.
that every summer thousands of men
leave their slums in the towns and go
to the country for the season of crops
The London destitutes go in thousands
to Kent and Sussex as hay-makers and
hop-pickers; whole villages in Franco
abandon their homes and their cottage
industries in the summer and wander
to the more fertile parts of the coun-
try; and in Russia there is every year
an exodus of many hundreds of thou
sands of men who journey from the
North to the Southern prairies for
harvesting the crops, while many St
Petersburg manufacturers reduce their
production in the summer, because the
operatives return to their native vil-
lagos for the culture OF their allot-
ments. Extensive agriculture can not
be carried on without additional hands
in the summer; but it still more needs
q temporary aid for improving the soil,
for tenfolding its productive powers.
Steam-digging, drainage and ma
nuring would render the heavy clays
to the northwest of London a much
richer soil than that of the American
prairies. To become fertile those
clays want only plain, unskilled human
labor. such as is necessary for digging
the soil, laying in drainage tubes, pull
verizing phosphorites, and the like;
and that labor would be gladly done by
the factory workers if it were properly
organized in free community for the
benefit of the whole society. The soil
claims that aid, and it would have it
under proper organization, even if it
were necessary to stop many mills In
the summer for that purpose. No
doubt the present factory owners would
consider it ruinous if they had to stop
their mills for several months every
year. because the capital engaged in a
factory is expected to pump money
every day and every hour, if possible.
But that is the capitalists view of the
natter-rot the community's view. As
to the workers, who ought to be the
real managers of industries, they will
find it healthy not to perform the same
monotonous work all the year round,
and they will abandon it for the sum-
mer, if indeed they do not find the
means of keeping the factory running
by relieving each other in groups.
The scattering of industries over the
cOuntry-so as to bring the factory
amidst the fields and to make agri-
culture derive all those profits which
it always finds in being combined with
industry (see the Eastern States of
America -and the combination of in
dustrial with agricultural work are
surely the next step to be made, as
soon as reorganization of our present
condition is possible. That step is i'm
posed by the very necessities of pro-
ducing for the producers themselves;
it is imposed by the necessity for each
healthy man and woman to spend
part of their lives in free work in the
free air, and it will be rendered the
more necessary when the great social
movements, which have now become
unavoidable, come to disturb the
present international trade and compel
each nation to revert to her own re-
sources for her own maintenance.-l
Prince krdpOtkin, IN Nineteenth Cent
Nry.