第58章 TO THE COUNTRY!--THE FARM COLONY.(5)

One advantage of the cosmopolitan nature of the Army is that we have Officers in almost every country in the world.When this Scheme is well on the way every Salvation Officer in every I and will have it imposed upon him as one of the duties of his calling to keep his eyes open for every useful notion and every conceivable contrivance for increasing the yield of the soil and utilising the employment of waste labour.By this means I hope that there will not be an idea in the world which will not be made available for our Scheme.If an Officer in Sweden can give us practical hints as to how they manage food kitchens for the people,or an Officer in the South of France can explain how the peasants are able to rear eggs and poultry not only for their own use,but so as to be able to export them by the million to England;if a Sergeant in Belgium understands how it is that the rabbit farmers there can feed and fatten and supply our market with millions of rabbits we shall have him over,tap his brains,and set him to work to benefit our people.

By the establishment of this Farm Colony we should create a great school of technical agricultural education.It would be a Working Men's Agricultural University,training people for the life which they would have to lead in the new countries they will go forth to colonise and possess.

Every man who goes to our Farm Colony does so,not to acquire his fortune,but to obtain a knowledge of an occupation and that mastery of his tools which will enable him to play his part in the battle of life.

He will be provided with a cheap uniform,which we shall find no difficulty in rigging up from the old clothes of London,and it will go hardly with us,and we shall have worse luck than the ordinary market gardener,if we do not succeed in making sufficient profit to pay all the expenses of the concern,and leave something over for the maintenance of the hopelessly incompetent,and those who,to put it roughly,are not worth their keep.

Every person in the Farm Colony will be taught the elementary lesson of obedience,and will be instructed in the needful arts of husbandry,or some other method of earning his bread.The Agricultural Section will learn the lesson of the seasons and of the best kind of seeds and plants.Those belonging to this Section will learn how to hedge and ditch,how to make roads and build bridges,and generally to subdue the earth and make it yield to him the riches which it never withholds from the industrious and skilful workman.But the Farm Colony,any more than the City Colony,although an abiding institution,will not provide permanently for those with whom we have to deal.It is a Training School for Emigrants,a place where those indispensably practical lessons are given which will enable the Colonists to know their way about and to feel themselves at home wherever there is land to till,stock to rear,and harvests to reap.We shall rely greatly for the peace and prosperity of the Colony upon the sense of brotherhood which will be universal in it from the highest to the lowest.While there will be no systematic wage-paying there will be some sort of rewards and remuneration for honest industry,which will be stored up,for his benefit,as afterwards explained.They will in the main work each for all,and,therefore,the needs of all will be supplied,and any overplus will go to make the bridge over which any poor fellow may escape from the horrible pit and the miry clay from which they themselves have been rescued.

The dulness and deadness of country life,especially in the Colonies,leads many men to prefer a life of hardship and privation in a City slum.But in our Colony they would be near to each other,and would enjoy the advantages of country life and the association and companionship of life in town.

SECTION 2.--THE INDUSTRIAL VILLAGE.

In describing the operations of the Household Salvage Brigade I have referred to the enormous quantities of good sound food which would be collected from door to door every day of the year.Much of this food would be suitable for human consumption,its waste being next door to sinful.Imagine,for instance,the quantities of soup which might be made from boiling the good fresh meaty bones of the great City!

Think of the dainty dishes which a French cook would be able to serve up from the scraps and odds and ends of a single West End kitchen.

Good cookery is not an extravagance but an economy,and many a tasty dish is made by our Continental friends out of materials which would be discarded indignantly by the poorest tramp in Whitechapel.

But after all that is done there will remain a mass of food which cannot be eaten by man,but can be converted into food for him by the simple process of passing it through another digestive apparatus.

The old bread of London,the soiled,stale crusts can be used in foddering the horses which are employed in collecting the waste.

It will help to feed the rabbits,whose hutches will be close by every cottage on the estate,and the hens of the Colony will flourish on the crumbs which fall from the table of Dives.But after the horses and the rabbits and poultry have been served,there will remain a residuum of eatable matter,which can only be profitably disposed of to the voracious and necessary pig.I foresee the rise of a piggery in connection with the new Social Scheme,which will dwarf into insignificance all that exist in Great Britain and Ireland.We have the advantage of the experience of the whole world as to the choice of breeds,the construction of sties,and the rearing of stock.We shall have the major part of our food practically for the cost of collection,and be able to adopt all the latest methods of Chicago for the killing,curing,and disposing of our pork,ham,and bacon.