(c) Land along the railways.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE SUBURBAN FARM.
The connecting link between the City Colony and the Country Colony will be the Suburban Farm. Situated conveniently near to the largest cities, it will serve many important purposes.
1. It will form the channel, or outlet, by which the agricultural portion of the labor overflow in the cities will make its way back to the country. In fact, it will constitute a sort of sluice which will in time act with the same regularity and ease as those which are attached to any reservoir of water, directing to the most needy places, and distributing without waste, those very waters which if uncontrolled would sweep everything before them as a devastating flood.
2. It will at the same time find a ready market in the city, not only for its own produce, but for that of the other branches of the country colony, with which it would be in constant and close communication.
3. It will supply the city with wholesome and unadulterated dairy produce, together with the best fruits and vegetables, at the ordinary market rates. These could be disposed of either wholesale to city merchants, or by moans of stalls in the various markets, or we could undertake to retail them in connection with our Household Salvage Brigade. The Suburban Farm would consist of, say, from fifty to five hundred acres of land in the immediate neighbourhood of a city. It would combine three or more separate departments.
1. The Dairy. Buffaloes and cows would be given us by friends, besides being purchased and reared by us, in large numbers. To tend them, milk them, prepare the ghee, cream and butter, and to convey it all to town, would find employment for a large number of the Submerged Tenth.
2. The Market Garden would employ a still larger number. Bananas grow quickly in all parts of India, and with them we could make an immediate beginning, introducing from different districts the best species. Sugar-cane and other popular native products would receive special attention, and where the European population in the neighbourhood was sufficiently numerous we could include the cultivation of such fruits and vegetables as would be liked by them. In the case of seaport towns we should no doubt do a large business with the steamers in the harbour, as for instance, in Bombay, Colombo, or Calcutta.
3. We should probably at an early period transfer some of the industrial brigades enumerated in Chapter VI to our Suburban Farm. In doing this there would be several obvious advantages: