[13] Summing up the figures given on agriculture, figures proving that
the inhabitants of the two departments of Seine and Seine-et-Oise can
live perfectly well on their own territory by employing very little time
annually to obtain food, we have:--

DEPARTMENTS OF SEINE AND SEINE-ET-OISE

Number of inhabitants in 1889 3,900,000

Area in acres 1,507,300

Average number of inhabitants per acre 2.6

Areas to be cultivated to feed the inhabitants (in acres):--

Corn and Cereals 494,000

Natural and artificial meadows 494,000

Vegetables and fruit from 17,300 to 25,000

Leaving a balance for houses, roads, parks, forests 494,000

Quantity of annual work necessary to improve and cultivate
the above surfaces in five-hour workdays:--

Cereals (culture and crop) 15,000,000

Meadows, milk, rearing of cattle 10,000,000

Market-gardening culture, high-class fruit 33,000,000

Extras 12,000,000
----------
Total 70,000,000

If we suppose that only half of the able-bodied adults (men and women)
are willing to work at agriculture, we see that 70 million work-days
must be divided among 1,200,000 individuals, which gives us fifty-eight
work-days of 5 hours for each of these workers. With that the population
of the two departments would have all necessary bread, meat, milk,
vegetables, and fruit, both for ordinary and even luxurious consumption.
To-day a workman spends for the necessary food of his family (generally
less than what is necessary) at least one-third of his 300 work-days a
year, about 1,000 hours be it, instead of 290. That is, he thus gives
about 700 hours too much to fatten the idle and the would-be
administrators, because he does not produce his own food, but buys it of
middlemen, who in their turn buy it of peasants who exhaust themselves
by working with bad tools, because, being robbed by the landowners and
the State, they cannot procure better ones.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Conquest of Bread, by Peter Krop