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.

We know already that the natural and healthy life is, that in the
sweat of our faces we should eat bread. We observe that everything
we eat or use or make comes from the earth by labor; but no one
knows how abundantly the Mother can supply her children. It is well
said that no man yet knows the capacity of a square yard of earth.

The farmer thinks that he has done well if he gets a hundred and
fifty or two hundred bushels of potatoes from an acre; he does not
know that others have gotten 1284 bushels.

("Mr. Knight, whose name is well known to every horticulturist in
England, Once dug out of his fields no less than 1284 bushels of
potatoes, or thirty-four tons and nine hundreds weight (about 34
bushels to the ton), on a single acre; and at a recent competition
in Minnesota, 1120 bushels, or thirty tons, could be ascertained as
having been grown on one acre." P. Kropotkin's "Fields, Factories
and Workshops," page 114.)

Let us realize what an acre means. An acre is a square about 209
feet each way, 4840 square yards of land. A New York City avenue
block is about 200 feet long from house corner to house corner. It
has eight city lots 25 X 100 in its front; about double that space
(17-2/5 lots) makes an acre.