y; these three vultures take from him
everything he might lay by; they rob him everywhere of what would enable
him to improve his culture. This is why agriculture progresses so
slowly.

The cultivator can only occasionally make some progress, in some
exceptional regions, under quite exceptional circumstances, following
upon a quarrel between the three vampires. And yet we have said nothing
about the tribute every cultivator pays to the manufacturer. Every
machine, every spade, every barrel of chemical manure, is sold to him at
three or four times its real cost. Nor let us forget the middleman, who
levies the lion's share of the earth's produce.

This is why, during all this century of invention and progress,
agriculture has only improved from time to time on very limited areas.

Happily there have always been small oases, neglected for some time by
the vulture; and here we learn what intensive agriculture can produce
for mankind. Let us mention a few examples.

In the American prairies (which, however, only yield meagre spring wheat
crops, from 7 to 15 bushels acre, and even these are often marred by
periodical droughts), 500 men, working only during eight months, produce
the annual food of 50,000 people. With all the improvements of the last
three years, one man's yearly labour (300 days) yields, delivered in
Chicago as flour, the yearly food of 250 men. Here the result is
obtained by a great economy in manual labour: on those vast plains,
ploughing, harvesting, thrashing, are organized in almost military
fashion. There is no useless running to and fro, no loss of time--all is
done with parade-like precision.

This is agriculture on a large scale--extensive agriculture, which takes
the soil from nature without seeking to improve it. When the earth has
yielded all it can, they leave it; they seek elsewhere for a virgin
soil, to be exhausted in its turn. But here is also "intensive"
agriculture, which is already worked, and will be more and more so, by
machinery. Its object is to cultivate a limited space well, to manure,
to improve, to concentrate work, and to obtain the largest crop
possible. This kind of culture spreads every year, and whereas
agriculturists in the south of France and on the fertile plains of
western America are content with an average crop of 11 to 15 bushels
per acre by extensive culture, they reap regularly 39, even 55, and
sometimes 60 bushels per acre in the north of France. The annual
cons