" By means of
this and by reducing the variation of autumn prices to
a mathematical curve, those men not only knew already in
the middle of May the exact yield of their farm to within
half a bushel (they allowed, they said, a variation of
half a bushel per fifty acres), but they knew beforehand
within a few cents the market value that they would
receive. The figures, as I remember them, were simply
amazing. It seemed incredible that fifty acres could
produce so much. Yet there were the plain facts in front
of one, calculated out. The thing amounted practically
to a revolution in farming. At least it ought to have.
And it would have if those young men had come again to
hoe their field. But it turned out, most unfortunately,
that they were busy. To their great regret they were too
busy to come. They had been working under a free-and-easy
arrangement. Each man was to give what time he could
every Saturday. It was left to every man's honour to do
what he could. There was no compulsion. Each man trusted
the others to be there. In fact the thing was not only
an experiment in food production, it was also a new
departure in social co-operation. The first Saturday that
those young men worked there were, so I have been told,
seventy-five of them driving in white stakes and running
lines.
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