procure. The population of Socialist society needs none of that, hence
the raising of potatoes and corn for that purpose, together with the
labor therein expended, are set free for the production of healthy
food.[196] The speculative purposes that our most fertile fields are put
to in the matter of the sugar beet for the exportation of sugar, have
been pointed out in a previous chapter. About 400,000 hectares of the
best wheat fields are yearly devoted to the cultivation of sugar beet,
in order to supply England, the United States and Northern Europe with
sugar. The countries whose climate favors the growth of sugar cane
succumb to this competition. Furthermore, our system of a standing army,
the disintegration of production, the disintegration of the means of
transportation and communication, the disintegration of agriculture,
etc.,--all these demand hundreds of thousands of horses, with the
corresponding fields to feed them and to raise colts. The completely
transformed social and political conditions free the bulk of the lands
that are now given up to these various purposes; and again large areas
and rich labor-power are reclaimed for purposes of civilization.
Latterly, extensive fields, covering many square kilometers, have been
withdrawn from cultivation, being needed for the manoeuvering and
exercising of army corps in the new methods of warfare and long
distance firearms. All this falls away.

The vast field of agriculture, forestry and irrigation has become the
subject of an extensive scientific literature. No special branch has
been left untouched: irrigation and drainage, forestry, the cultivation
of cereals, of leguminous and tuberous plants, of vegetables, of fruit
trees, of berries, of flowers and ornamental plants; fodder for cattle
raising; meadows; rational methods of breeding cattle, fish and poultry
and bees, and the utilization of their excrements; utilization of manure
and refuse in agriculture and manufacture; chemical examinations of
seeds and of the soil, to ascertain its fitness for this or that crop;
investigations in the rotations of crops and in agricultural machinery
and implements; the profitable construction of agricultural buildings of
all nature; the weather;--all have been drawn within the circle of
scientific treatment. Hardly a day goes by without some new discovery,
some new experience being made towards improving and ennobling one or
other of these several branches. With the work of