The Conquest of Bread Part 23

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

Quant.i.ty 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-cla.s.s 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.