There are some who say: Let government carry laborers thrown out
of work to points where private industry is not established,
where individual enterprise cannot reach. We have mountains to
plant again with trees, ten or twelve million acres of land to
clear, canals to dig, in short, a thousand things of immediate
and general utility to undertake.
"We certainly ask our readers' pardon for it," answers M. Fix;
"but here again we are obliged to call for the intervention of
capital. These surfaces, certain communal lands excepted, are
fallow, because, if cultivated, they would yield no net product,
and very likely not even the costs of cultivation. These lands
are possessed by proprietors who either have or have not the
capital necessary to cultivate them. In the former case, the
proprietor would very probably content himself, if he cultivated
these lands, with a very small profit, and perhaps would forego
what is called the rent of the land: but he has found that,
in undertaking such cultivation, he would lose his original
capital, and his other calculations have shown him that the sale
of the products would not cover the costs of cultivation.
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