CHAPTER III.
TO THE COUNTRY!—THE FARM COLONY.
I leave on one side for a moment various features of the operations which will be indispensable but subsidiary to the City Colony, such as the Rescue Homes for Lost Women, the Retreats for Inebriates, the Homes for Discharged Prisoners, the Enquiry Office for the Discovery of Lost Friends and Relatives, and the Advice Bureau, which will, in time, become an institution that will be invaluable as a poor man's Tribune. All these and other suggestions for saving the lost and helping the poof, although they form essential elements of the City Colony, will be better dealt with after I have explained the relation which the Farm Colony will occupy to the City Colony, and set forth the way in which the former will act as a feeder to the Colony Over Sea.
I have already described how I propose to deal, in the first case, with the mass of surplus labour which will infallibly accumulate on our hands as soon as the Shelters are more extensively established and in good working order. But I fully recognise that when all has been done that can be done in the direction of disposing of the unhired men and women of the town, there will still remain many whom you can neither employ in the Household Salvage Brigade, nor for whom employers, be they registered never so carefully, can be found. What, then, must be done with them ? The answer to that question seems to me obvious. They must go upon the land !
The land is the source of all food ; only by the application of labour can the land be made fully pr®ductive. There is any amount of waste land in the world, not far away in distant Continents, next door to the North Pole, but here at our very doors. Have you ever calculated, for instance, the square miles of unused land which fringe the sides of all our railroads ? No doubt some embankments are ot