§ 4. Farm Colonies
The first farm colony was established in Holland. The system has since taken root all through Europe, but has reached its finest development in the Canton of Berne, in Switzerland. It proceeds upon the principle that while it is difficult to make money out of farm land, it is easy to get nourishment from it, and that the most obvious remedy for idle labor is to apply it to idle land.
In Switzerland it is also recognized that idle labor is divided into two distinct classes—the unemployed and the unemployable—and the unemployable must be again classified into those unable to work through physical defect and those unable to work through moral defect; that is to say, those who are morally willing and physically unable and those physically able and morally unwilling. There are therefore in Switzerland two different kinds of farm colonies: forced colonies which deal with the tramp, the drunkard, and the misdemeanant—all those persons upon whom discipline has to be exercised; and free colonies for those physically disabled or who are out of employment through causes over which they have no control.
It is in the poorest countries in Europe that farm colonies have reached their highest development. Switzerland has been driven to organize farm colonies by the fact that she is too poor to disregard the burden of the unemployed and unemployables. It is in the richest countries, England, France, and America, that the farm colony system has been most neglected. The farm colony plan is the cheapest as well as the best way of solving the problem of pauperism, deserving or undeserving. This question has been fully treated elsewhere[165] and it is only referred to here in sufficient detail to explain why it is believed that the farm colony system will form an essential feature of every Socialistic community. For although there will be an enormous diminution in the number of those unwilling or unable to work (for the reason that under a coöperative commonwealth no one need be overworked and, therefore, no one need be reduced to the physical exhaustion which is the prime cause of pauperism), and although there will be fewer drunkards because drunkenness, also, is largely due to overwork, nevertheless, until the coöperative commonwealth has been in operation several generations, that part of the population that is unwilling or unable to work will have to be provided for. And even later there will certainly be some part of the population that will require discipline as regards work. The farm colony system, more and more indispensable in our existing civilization, will perform an important rôle in the gradual transformation of society from the competitive to the coöperative form. It probably presents to-day one of the most perfect pieces of constructive Socialistic work in which legislators can engage. For it has the extraordinary advantage of satisfying an immediate necessity of the competitive system and at the same time realizing some fundamental principles of Socialism; for example, that every man and woman is entitled to work; that the aged are entitled to support; and that the state should own enough land to assure both these things.
The fact that our railroads are now awakening to the necessity of handling the tramp proves the necessity of the system, and the fact that in Switzerland the forced colonies have been made to pay their own expenses indicates its economy. Indeed, no proposed legislation illustrates so well the power driving us towards Socialism as the history of attempts at legislation in this direction in New York State.
Twelve years ago a farm colony bill was drawn by a committee appointed by the charitable societies in New York; but it did not secure at Albany a moment's serious attention. We were told by our legislators that poverty is not a crime. When we answered that our bill did not make it a crime more than the penal code, but only purposed to substitute for the expensive and degenerating system of the misnamed workhouse, inexpensive and regenerating work on a state farm, and that the plan had operated effectually in Holland and Belgium for over a hundred years, we were told that the plan might do in Holland, but would not do here. So in the archives of the French senate may still be read the report made by Thiers, when appointed by Louis Philippe on a committee to investigate the first railroad ever built, which concludes as follows: "Railroads may serve a purpose in England, but they are not suited to France."
A similar bill, improved by borrowing from late experience in Switzerland, drawn by a similar committee (to which was added the Commissioner of Charities, Mr. Hebberd) was presented at Albany at the session of 1909, and although not passed, was sufficiently well received to encourage the hope that it will pass at the session of 1910. It had the support of the great railroads in New York state; for the railroads have discovered that the tramp is an intolerable nuisance.[166] Colonel Pangborn of the Baltimore & Ohio has lately estimated that the damage occasioned by tramps to railroads in the United States amounts in a single year to twenty-five million dollars.[167] For the tramp in America does not tramp; he rides on railroads; he sets fire to freight cars and freight stations; he obstructs the lines, wrecks trains, and is a fruitful cause of action for damages. The measure, therefore, which was thrown out by the Assembly when proposed from motives of humanity, may be passed as a measure of self-defence, and self-defence thus constitutes an element of the power always at work on the side of progress that neither ignorance nor interest will be able to resist.
The reason for believing that the farm colony will perform an important function not only during the period which must elapse before the coöperative commonwealth, but also after the coöperative commonwealth has been attained, is that work on land seems to be the only work to which the unemployed and unemployables can be suitably put.
Every day we seem to be increasing our capacity to make land productive. We not only make new discoveries, but profit by those of more ancient civilizations than our own. It has long been known that in the East they subject grain to the same system of replanting that truck gardeners do early vegetables.[168]
Dr. Fesca informs us that in Japan rice is treated in the same way: "It is allowed first to germinate; then it is sown in special warm corners, well inundated with water and protected from the birds by strings drawn over the ground. Thirty-five to fifty-five days later, the young plants, now fully developed and possessed of a thick network of rootlets, are replanted in the open ground. In this way the Japanese obtain from twenty to thirty-two bushels of dressed rice to the acre in the poor provinces, forty bushels in the better ones, and from sixty to sixty-seven bushels in the best lands. The average, in six rice-growing States of North America, is at the same time only nine and a half bushels."[169]