Part 31 (1/2)
The enthusiasm with which the reporter describes this artificial ”vineyard” in a serious paper testifies to the deep impression made upon him by this extraordinary artificial cultivation. There is nothing to prevent similar establishments, on a much more stupendous scale and for other branches of vegetation. The luxury of a double crop is obtainable in many agricultural products. To-day all such undertakings are a question of money, and their products are accessible only to the privileged cla.s.ses. A Socialist society knows no other question than that of sufficient labor-power. If that is in existence, the work is done in the interest of all.
Another new invention on the field of food is that of Dr. Johann Hundhausen of Hamm in Westphalia, who succeeded in extracting the alb.u.men of wheat--the secret of whose utilization in the legume was not yet known--in the shape of a thoroughly nutritive flour. This is a far-reaching invention. It is now possible to render the alb.u.men of plants useful in substantial form for human food.
The inventor erected a large factory which produces vegetal alb.u.men or aleurone meal from 80 to 83 per cent. of alb.u.men, and a second quality of about 50 per cent. That the so-called aleurone meal represents a very concentrated alb.u.minous food appears from the following comparison with our best elements of nourishment:
Carbon- Water Alb.u.men Fat hydrate Cellulose Salt Aleurone meal 8.83 82.67 0.27 7.01 0.45 0.78 Hen's eggs 73.67 12.55 12.11 0.55 0.55 1.12 Beef 55.42 17.19 26.58 .... .... 1.08
Aleurone meal is not only eaten directly, it is also used as a condiment in all sorts of bakery products, as well as soups and vegetables.
Aleurone meal subst.i.tutes in a high degree meat preserves in point of nutrition; moreover, it is by far the cheapest alb.u.men obtainable to-day. One kilogram of alb.u.men costs:
In aleurone meal 1.45 marks In white bread or white flour 4 to 4.5 ”
In hen's eggs, according to the season 8 to 16 ”
In beef 12 to 13 ”
Beef, accordingly, is about eight times dearer, as alb.u.minous food, than aleurone meal; eggs five times as dear; white bread or common white flour about three times as dear. Aleurone meal also has the advantage that, with the addition of about one-eighth of the weight of a potato, it not only furnishes a considerable quant.i.ty of alb.u.men to the body, but produces a complete digestion of the starch contained in the potato.
Dogs, that have a nose for alb.u.men, eat aleurone meal with the same avidity as meat, even if they otherwise refuse bread, and they are then better able to stand hards.h.i.+ps.
Aleurone meal, as a dry vegetal alb.u.men, is of great use as food on s.h.i.+ps, in fortresses and in military hospitals during war. It renders large supplies of meat unnecessary. At present aleurone meal is a side product in starch factories. Within short, starch will become a side product of aleurone meal. A further result will be that the cultivation of cereals will crowd out that of potatoes and other less productive food plants; the volume of nutrition of a given field of wheat or rye is tripled or quadrupled at one stroke.
Dr. Rudolf Meyer of Vienna, whose attention was called by us to the aleurone meal says[199] that he furnished himself with a quant.i.ty of it and had it examined on June 19, 1893, by the bureau of experiments of the Board of Soil Cultivation of the Kingdom of Bohemia. The examination fully confirmed our statements. For further details Meyer's work should be read. Meyer also calls attention to a discovery made by Otto Redemann of Bockenheim near Frankfort-on-the-Main. After granulating the peanut and removing its oil, he a.n.a.lyzed its component elements of nutrition.
The a.n.a.lysis showed 47 per cent. of alb.u.men, 19 of fat and 19 of starch--altogether 2,135 units of nutritious matter in one kilo.
According to this a.n.a.lysis the peanut is one of the most nutritious vegetal products. The pharmacist Rud. Simpson of Mohrungen discovered a process by which to remove the bitterness from the lupine, which, as may be known, thrives best on sandy soil, and is used both as fodder and as a fertilizer; and he then produced from it a meal, which, according to expert authority, baked as bread tastes very good, is solid, is said to be more nutritious than rye-bread, and, besides all that, much cheaper.
Even under present conditions a regular revolution is plowing its way in the matter of human food. _The utilization of all these discoveries is, however, slow, for the reason that mighty cla.s.ses--the farmer element together with its social and political props--have the liveliest interest in suppressing them._ To our agrarians, a good crop is to-day a horror--although the same is prayed for in all the churches--because it lowers prices. Consequently, they are no wise anxious for a double and threefold nutritive power of their cereals; it would likewise tend to lower prices. Present society is everywhere at fisticuffs with its own development.
The preservation of the soil in a state of fertility depends primarily upon fertilization. The obtaining of fertilizers is, accordingly, for future society also one of the princ.i.p.al tasks.[200] Manure is to the soil what food is to man, and just as every kind of food is not equally nouris.h.i.+ng to man, neither is every kind of manure of equal benefit to the soil. The soil must receive back exactly the same chemical substances that it gave up through a crop; and the chemical substances especially needed by a certain vegetable must be given to the soil in larger quant.i.ties. Hence the study of chemistry and its practical application will experience a development unknown to-day.
Animal and human excrements are particularly rich in the chemical elements that are fittest for the reproduction of human food. Hence the endeavor must be to secure the same in the fullest quant.i.ty and cause its proper distribution. On this head too modern society sins grievously. Cities and industrial centers, that receive large ma.s.ses of foodstuffs, return to the soil but a slight part of their valuable offal.[201] The consequence is that the fields, situated at great distances from the cities and industrial centers, and which yearly send their products to the same, suffer greatly from a dearth of manure; the offal that these farms themselves yield is often not enough, because the men and beasts who live on them consume but a small part of the product.
Thus frequently a soil-vandalism is practiced, that cripples the land and decreases the crops. All countries that export agricultural products mainly, but receive no manure back, inevitably go to ruin through the gradual impoverishment of the soil. This is the case with Hungary, Russia, the Danubian Princ.i.p.alities, North America, etc. Artificial fertilizers, guano in particular, indeed subst.i.tute the offal of men and beasts; but many farmers can not obtain the same in sufficient quant.i.ty; it is too dear; at any rate, it is an inversion of nature to import manure from great distances, while it is allowed to go to waste nearby.
Several years since has the Thomas-slag been recognized as an eminently fit manure for certain soils. The manufacturers, however, who grind the Thomas-slag into flour and carry it to market, have built a ring, and, to the injury of the farming interests who make bitter complaints on that score, they keep the prices high. Thus every progress is crippled by greed in bourgeois society. Another and at present inexhaustable source of fertilizers is offered by the deposits of potash in the province of Saxony and contiguous regions. The Prussian State owns a number of potash works and it also made the attempt to monopolize the industry, to the end of raising the largest possible revenues for the Treasury.
If the opinion of Julius Hensel on the subject of fertilizers proves correct, it will mean a revolution in the theory of fertilization, and a complete saving of the expenses now made for the importation of fertilizers, amounting for guano and Chile saltpeter to from 80 to 100 million marks a year.[202] Hensel makes the emphatic claim, and produces numerous proofs of the correctness of his views, that the mineral of our mountains contain an inexhaustible supply of the best fertilizing stuffs. Granite, porphyry, basalt, broken and ground up, spread upon the fields or vineyards and furnished with a sufficiency of water, furnished a fertilizer that excelled all others, even animal and human refuse.[203] These minerals, he claims, contain all the elements for the cultivation of plants: potash, chalk, magnesia, phosphoric, sulphuric and silicic acids, and also hydrochlorides. According to Hensel, the Sudeton, Riesen, Erz, Tichtel, Hartz, Rhone, Vogel, Taunus, Eisel and Weser mountains, the woods of Thuringen, Spessart and Oden had an inexhaustible supply of fertilizers. It will be literally possible to ”make bread out of stones.” The dust and dirt of our highways also are, according to Hensel, inexhaustible sources of the same blessing. In this matter we are laymen and can not test the correctness of Hensel's theories; a part of them, however, sound most plausible. Hensel charges the manufacturers of and dealers in artificial fertilizers with hostility to his discovery and with systematic opposition, because they would suffer great loss.
According to Heider, a healthy adult secretes on an average 48.8 kilograms of solid and 438 of liquid matter a year. Estimated by the present standard of the prices of manure, and if utilized without loss by evaporation, etc., this offal represents a money value of 11.8 marks. Calculating the population of Germany to be 50,000,000 in round figures, and estimating the average value of the human offal at 8 marks, the sum of 400,000,000 marks is obtained, which now is almost totally lost to agriculture, owing to the present imperfect methods for utilizing it. The great difficulty in the way of a full utilization of these stuffs lies in the establishment of proper and extensive provisions for their collection, and in the cost of transportation.
Relatively, this cost is now higher than the importation of guano from far-away transmarine deposits, which, however, decline in ma.s.s in the measure that the demand increases. Every living being, however, casts off regularly an annual supply of manure about enough for a field that yields food for one person. The enormous loss is obvious. A large portion of the city excrement runs out into our rivers and streams, and pollutes them. Likewise is the refuse from kitchens and factories, also serviceable as manure, recklessly squandered.
Future society will find means and ways to stop this waste. What is done to-day in this direction is mere patchwork, and utterly inadequate. As an ill.u.s.tration of what could be done to-day, may be cited the ca.n.a.lization and the laying out of vast fields in the capital of the Empire, on whose value, however, experts are of divided opinion.
Socialist society will solve the question more easily, due, in a great measure, to the fact that _large cities will gradually cease to exist, and population will decentralize_.
No one will regard our modern rise of metropoles as a healthy phenomenon. The modern system of manufacture and production in general, steadily draws large ma.s.ses of the population to the large cities.[204]
There is the seat of manufacture and commerce; there the avenues of communication converge; there the owners of large wealth have their headquarters, the central authorities, the military staffs, the higher tribunals. There large inst.i.tutions rear their heads--the academies of art, large pleasure resorts, exhibitions, museums, theaters, concert halls, etc. Hundreds are drawn thither by their professions, thousands by pleasure, and many more thousands by the hope of easier work and an agreeable life.
But, speaking figuratively, the rise of metropolitan cities makes the impression of a person whose girth gains steadily in size, while his legs as steadily become thinner, and finally will be unable to carry the burden. All around, in the immediate vicinity of the cities, the villages also a.s.sume a city aspect, in which the proletariat is heaped up in large ma.s.ses. The munic.i.p.alities, generally out of funds, are forced to lay on taxes to the utmost, and still remain unable to meet the demand made upon them. When finally they have grown up to the large city and it up to them, they rush into and are absorbed by it, as happens with planets that have swung too close to the sun. But the fact does not improve the conditions of life. On the contrary, they grow worse through the crowding of people in already overcrowded s.p.a.ces.
These gatherings of ma.s.ses--inevitable under modern development, and, to a certain extent, the raisers of revolutionary centers,--will have fulfilled their mission in Socialist society. Their gradual dissolution then becomes necessary: _the current will then run the other way: population will migrate from the cities to the country: it will there raise new munic.i.p.alities corresponding with the altered conditions, and they will join their industrial with their agricultural activities_.