est figures, let us take those of ordinary
intensive culture; let us liberally add to the land necessary for
smaller cattle which must replace some of the horned beasts and allow
395,000 acres for the rearing of cattle--494,000 if you like, on the
1,013,000 acres remaining after bread has been provided for the people.

Let us be generous and give five million work-days to put this land into
a productive state.

After having therefore employed in the course of a year twenty million
work-days, half of which are for permanent improvements, we shall have
bread and meat assured to us, without including all the extra meat
obtainable in the shape of fowls, pigs, rabbits, etc.; without taking
into consideration that a population provided with excellent vegetables
and fruit consumes less meat than Englishmen, who supplement their poor
supply of vegetables by animal food. Now, how much do twenty million
work-days of five hours make per inhabitant? Very little indeed. A
population of three and one-half millions must have at least 1,200,000
adult men, and as many women capable of work. Well, then, to give bread
and meat to all, it would need only seventeen half-days of work a year
per man. Add three million work-days, or double that number if you like,
in order to obtain milk. That will make twenty-five work-days of five
hours in all--nothing more than a little pleasureable country
exercise--to obtain the three principal products: bread, meat, and milk.
The three products which, after housing, cause daily anxiety to
nine-tenths of mankind.

And yet--let us not tire of repeating--these are not fancy dreams. We
have only told what is, what been, obtained by experience on a large
scale. Agriculture could be reorganized in this way to-morrow if
property laws and general ignorance did not offer opposition.

The day Paris has understood that to know what you eat and how it is
produced, is a question of public interest; the day when everybody will
have understood that this question is infinitely more important than all
the parliamentary debates of the present times--on that day the
Revolution will be an accomplished fact. Paris will take possession of
the two departments and cultivate them. And then the Parisian worker,
after having laboured a third of his existence in order to buy bad and
insufficient food, will produce it himself, under his walls, within the
enclosure of his forts (if they still exist), and in a few hours of
healthy