Chapter I:  Making a Living—­Where and How

Chapter II:  Present Conditions

Chapter III:  How To Buy The Farm

Chapter iv:  Vacant City Lot Cultivation

Chapter V:  Results To Be Expected

Chapter VI:  What An Acre May Produce

Chapter VII:  Some Methods

Chapter VIII:  The Kitchen Garden

Chapter IX:  Tools And Equipment

Chapter X:  Advantages From Capital

Chapter XI:  Hotbeds And Greenhouses

Chapter XII:  Other Uses Of Land

Chapter XIII:  Fruits

Chapter XIV:  Flowers

Chapter XV:  Drug Plants

Chapter XVI:  Novel Live Stock

Chapter XVII:  Where To Go

Chapter XVIII:  Clearing The Land

Chapter XIX:  How To Build

Chapter XX:  Back To The Land

Chapter XXI:  Coming Profession For Boys

Chapter XXII:  The Wood Lot

Chapter XXIII:  Some Practical Experiments

Chapter XXIV:  Some Experimental Foods

Chapter XXV:  Dried Truck

Chapter XXVI:  Home Cold Pack Canning

Chapter XXVII:  Retail Cooperation

Chapter XXVIII:  Summer Colonies For City People

CHAPTER I

MAKING A LIVING—­WHERE AND HOW

By thought and courage, we can help ourselves to own a home, surrounded by acres of fruit and vegetables, flowers and poultry, and learn the best methods so as to insure success.

In olden times any one could “farm,” but it is necessary to-day to teach people to obtain a livelihood directly from the earth.  Scientific methods of agriculture have revealed possibilities in the soil that make farming the most fascinating occupation known to man.  People in every city are longing for the freedom of country life, yet hesitate to enter into its liberty because no one points the way.

Most sociologists are agreed that the great problem of our day is to stop the drift of population toward the cities.  Seeing the overcrowding, the want and misery of our great towns, the philanthropist chimes in with “Get the people to the country, that is the need.”

But there is no such need.  Man is a social animal, he naturally goes in flocks, he earns more and learns more in crowds.  To transport him to the country, even if he would stay, which happily he won’t, would be to doctor a symptom.  As in typhoid, what is needed is not to suppress the fever, that is easy, but to remove the cause of it.

It is not the growth of the cities that we want to check, but the needless want and misery in the cities, and this can be done by restoring the natural condition of living, and among other things, by showing that it is easier and making it more attractive to live in comfort on the outskirts of the city as producers, than in the slums as paupers.