The working man's green space: allotment gardens in England, France, and Germany, 1870-1919 9780813935089, 9780813935379

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
List of Illustrations (page ix)
Acknowledgments (page xiii)
Introduction (page 1)
1. Definitions and Commonalities (page 7)
2. Allotments in England (page 21)
3. Kleingärten in Germany (page 58)
4. Jardins ouvriers in France (page 98)
5. Is There an Aesthetics of Allotments? (page 126)
6. Allotments and the Design Professions (page 148)
Conclusion (page 157)
Chronology (page 177)
List of Organizations and Terms (page 185)
Notes (page 189)
Bibliography (page 211)
Index (page 225)

Citation preview

THE WORKING MAN’S GREEN SPACE

University of Virginia Press Charlottesville and London

THE

WORKING MAN'S

GREEN

SPACE

Allotment Gardens in England, France, and Germany, 1870-1919 MICHELINE NILSEN

University of Virginia Press © 2014 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper First published 2014

987654321 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Nilsen, Micheline.

The working man’s green space : allotment gardens in England, France, and Germany, 1870-1919 / Micheline Nilsen. — 1st ed.

p- cm. Allotment gardens in England, France, and Germany, 1870-1919 Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8139-3508-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8139-3537-9 (e-book) 1. Allotment gardens— England— History—19th century. 2. Allotment gardens— England— History—2oth century. 3. Allotment gardens— France— History—1g9th century. 4. Allotment gardens— France— History—2oth century. 5. Allotment gardens— Germany— History—1gth century. 6. Allotment gardens— Germany— History—2oth century. 7. Landscape design—England—History—1oth century. 8. Landscape design— England— History—2oth century. 9. Landscape design— France— History—1g9th century. 10. Landscape design— France— History—2oth century. 11. Landscape design— Germany— History—19th century. 12. Landscape design— Germany— History—2oth century. I. Title. II. Title: Allotment gardens in England, France, and Germany, 1870-1919. SB457.3.N55 2013

635.0942—dc23 2013018146

For Marcel and Sabine: May their gardens feed their bodies and nourish their souls

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List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments _ Xiii

Introduction 1 1. Definitions and Commonalities 7 2. Allotments in England 21 3. Kleingdrten in Germany 58 4. Jardins ouvriers in France 98 5. Is There an Aesthetics of Allotments? 126

6. Allotments and the Design Professions 148

Conclusion 157 Chronology 177 List of Organizations and Terms 185

Notes 189 Bibliography 211

Index 225

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Figures 1. General view of a phalanstere, 1847, Arnout and Lemercier 12 2. Harvest festival, allotment site “Gemiitliche Rehberger,’ Berlin, wedding, August 1906 18 3. Autumn vegetable competition display from seeds sown in July and August1916 18 4. Paris fortifications with allotment gardens in the moat along the walls, 1917-19, Jules Girard 19 5. Railway-side allotments, 1918 26 6. Garden City and rural belt, 1902, Ebenezer Howard 38 7. Ward and center of Garden City, 1902, Ebenezer Howard 39 8. Hampstead Heath with allotments, 1917-22 46 9. Plan of Ladywell and District Horticultural Society Allotments, Lewisham, London, 1896 49 10. Register of Small Holdings and Allotments, entry for East Ham allotments, ca.1902 52 11. Register of Small Holdings and Allotments, plan of East Ham allotments, ca.1902 52 12. Register of Small Holdings and Allotments, entry for Millmeads allotments, West Ham, ca.1902 53 13. Register of Small Holdings and Allotments, plan of Millmeads allotments, ca.1902 53 14. Register of Small Holdings and Allotments, map of West Norwood small holding, original holding, 1902 54 15. Register of Small Holdings and Allotments, map of West Norwood small holding, present holding, 1904 54 16. Register of Small Holdings and Allotments, register page for West Norwood small holdings, after 1892 55 17. Postcard of Berlin allotment showing open shelter as required by police regulations, early twentieth century 60 18. Allotments near Mietskasernen, Berlin, Neuk6lln, Colonie zum

Nordpol, 1900 75

19. Allotments on the Laubenkolonie Rehberge, Berlin, wedding,

ca.1924 76 20. Allotment site Marienthal in Berlin with the Neuk6lln gasworks in the background, 1912 77 21. Social gathering outside the canteen on the allotment site “Ost-Elbien,” Berlin, Neuk6élln, 1900-1905 78 22. Skat (card) players on the allotment site “Ost-Elbien,’ Berlin, Neukélln,

1900-1905 79 23. Bowling and drinking on the allotment site “Ost-Elbien,” Berlin,

Neukolln, ca.1900 79 24. Wilmersdorf Gardening School, Berlin, 1915-19 92 25. Portrait of abbé Lemire 104 26. Abbé Lemire during a visit to the jardins ouvriers in Roubaix, 1907 113 27. A consultation in the jardins ouvriers in Roubaix, 1907 114 28. Allotments and sheds in the moat of the Paris fortifications, 1917-19, Jules Girard 117 29. Gate to the Renaudin gardens in Sceaux, 1907 122 30. Interior of house in Renaudin garden and housing project, Sceaux,

1907 124 31. Allotment site with cart and gardener assessing the rough terrain, 1911-19, Jules Girard 127 32. Coffee and Sunday-afternoon respite enhanced by the rituals of sociability for the Rohnke family on the allotment site “Rudow,’ Berlin, Neukolln, 1910 129 33. Allotment site laid out near Paris with plots, paths, rudimentary fences, and gates, 1911-19, Jules Girard 132 34. Model cropping for allotment or small kitchen garden, 1917 134 35. Members’ meeting on the allotment site “Ost-Elbien,’ Berlin, Neukolln, 17 November 1898 135 36. Functional layout of allotments near Paris with parceled plots, paths, and sheds, with water tower in background, 1911-19, Jules Girard 137 37. Working-class family life on the allotment site “Ost-Elbien,’ Berlin,

Neukolln, 1900-1905 142 38. Allotment garden near Paris with vegetable beds and sheds, 1911-19,

Jules Girard 145 39. Model allotment (miister Kleingarten), 1925, Leberecht Migge 152 40.German People’s Park of the Future, plan with allotments, 1913,

Harry Maasz 153 41. Bird’s-eye view of an allotment, 1913, Harry Maasz 154

x Illustrations

Tables

1. Enclosure of commons in England between 1690 and 1957 23 2. Allotments in England and Wales between 1840 and1970 41 3. German allotments between 1912 and 2005 88 4. French allotment gardens between 1903 and 1996 111

Illustrations = xi

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The research for this book was supported by a Seed Grant in summer 2010 and a Faculty Research Grant in summer 2011, both from Indiana University, South Bend, as well as an Overseas Research Grant from Indiana University in November 2010 and a postdoctoral stipend from the Garden and Landscape Studies Program at Dumbarton Oaks in May 2011. Writing the book was facilitated by a sabbatical leave from Indiana University, South Bend, during the academic year 2011-12. A generous 2012 David R. Coffin Publication Grant awarded by the Foundation for Landscape Studies supported the inclusion of illustrations. Special thanks are owed to Gert Groning, deputy executive director of the Institute for the History and Theory of Design at the Berlin University of the Arts, who introduced me to the resources of the Gartenbaubiicherei at Technische Universitat in Berlin and met with me during my visits to Berlin in November 2010 and September 2011. Other scholars who have supported my research include Joseph Chaney, Mike Keen, and Scott Sernau at Indiana University, South Bend; Michael Lee at Dumbarton Oaks; David Brownlee at the University of Pennsylvania; and Laura Lawson at Rutgers University. Professor Damie Stillman, my dissertation advisor, has continued to provide his unfailing, enthusiastic encouragements and support. Research for this book was conducted at the following institutions: the British Library in London; the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris; the Staatsbibliothek

in Berlin; and the specialized collections of the London School of Economics (general collection, government documents, pamphlet collection and archives), the London Metropolitan Archives, the Friends’ Library in London, the Camden Local History Collection, the Royal Horticultural Society Library, the Guildhall Library of the City of London, the Bibliotheque Historique de la Ville de Paris, the Bibliotheque de l'Hotel de Ville (formerly the Bibliotheque Administrative de la Ville de Paris), the Société nationale dhorticulture de France, the Biicherei des Deutschen Gartenbaues Berlin, Architecture collections of the Technische Universitat Berlin, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Kunstbibliothek, the Landesarchiv Berlin, and the Zentrum fiir Berlin Studien

of the Berlin Public Library. In the United States, the collections of my home institution at Indiana University provided access to most secondary sources. In addition, the University of Notre Dame, Brown University, and Dumbarton Oaks granted me generous privileges that greatly facilitated my research. I am immensely grateful to the staff of all these libraries who were responsible for developing and providing access to these collections. I also thank the librarians and media specialists who responded to my queries about the availability of illustrations. Many of them went beyond the call of duty and sent me by return email the requested information and documents. At the University of Virginia Press, Boyd Zenner has enthusiastically championed this project since our first conversation in April 2010. Angie Hogan, Mark Mones, and Ellen Satrom provided invaluable help with the preparation of the manuscript, as did Carol Sickman-Garner. In addition to these individuals, I also thank the anonymous reviewers who recommended the manuscript for publication and my colleagues, who encouraged me to publish this research when I presented some portions of its early stages at conferences.

Although I have been fortunate to have access to a garden for most of my adult life, it was not until I started working on this book that gardening became more than an occasional pastime. It seemed somewhat dishonest to read, research, and write about vegetable gardening without having grown more than a few herbs and some tomatoes. My attempts at vegetable gardening began in two raised beds of four-by-twelve and four-by-eight feet. They soon

expanded to six beds, and this year, a rabbit- and deer-proof fence secures a twenty-four-by-fifty-foot garden, with satellite herb, pumpkin, potato, and berry patches. Dug in the bony terrain of the Rhode Island glacial moraine, this garden made me appreciate the significance of New England stone walls and

the hardships survived by the settlers who relied on what they grew for survival. It was created and cultivated using techniques available to the allotment holders described in this book. The man who built the raised beds and did the lion’s share of digging, manuring, and fence building deserves most of my gratitude. Although his vision for the layout of the garden resembled the parterres at Versailles, he humored my preference for the orderly rows and cropping schemes that emulate those in the gardens of my European relatives and the allotment manuals of my research. He shared my enthusiasm for watching seedlings emerge from the ground and my enjoyment of the daily contributions from the garden to the kitchen table. Without his love and support, this book would have been a lonely journey.

xiv Acknowledgments

THE WORKING MAN’S GREEN SPACE

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Introduction

llotments are a very specific type of garden: usually of small size, not attached to a dwelling, they are cultivated by their tenant and family for individual consumption of the produce they yield. Flowers, herbs, berry bushes, or fruit-bearing trees may also add to their harvest. Their most common names are allotment in England," jardin ouvrier or later jardin familial in France, and Kleingarten or Schrebergarten in Germany. With or without sheds, small gardens are visible along rail lines, most prominently in Germany.* Whether seen along the rail loop between Brussels’s stations, during travels in Germany, or along Philadelphia suburban regional train lines, these small gardens and the people in work clothes who tend them appear incongruous amid today’s urban or railway landscapes. The curiosity sparked by these railway-side gardens prompted the investigations that led to this study. Railway allotments or railway agriculture (in German Eisenbahnlandwirtschaft) can be considered a subcategory of allotment gardens, akin to employer-provided gardens. ‘Their trackside location attracts the attention of the train traveler, but these gardens are only one aspect of the more widespread and diversified practice of allotment gardening. Initial research on the practice of allotment gardening quickly revealed that much more was at stake in these gardens than the provision of vegetables and a few flowers. Poor relief, access to land, social reform, public health, education, civic agency, and the political voice of the worker were all imbricated in the cultivation of these small garden plots. The cultural institution of the allotment garden as it developed in Britain, France, and Germany in the decades just before and after 1900 is the focus

of this book. During these decades, allotments became primarily an urban phenomenon. In England, the British historian Jeremy Burchardt proposed the date of 1873 as the beginning of a third English allotment movement, doc-

umented with extensive printed evidence. Burchardt ends his own study of allotments in that year, when detailed national statistics about these gardens became available.” In Germany, the garden plots created by the Schreber Association in Leipzig assumed a form akin to allotments around 1869-70. In France, although allotments did not acquire a significant presence until the

18908, the Third Republic, which provided the political, social, and cultural context for their development, was instituted in 1870, in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War. As for the closing date of this study, the food shortages of World War I led to a large increase in the number of allotments, and in all three countries significant legislation was passed shortly after the end of the war. This legislation codified the status of allotments at a pivotal moment in European history.

Three Questions The powerful societal changes of the nineteenth century engendered the creation of new building types such as administration buildings, railway stations, and museums. New types of gardens also emerged, including public gardens, sport fields, garden cities, kindergartens, and allotment gardens for the working class.* As a vernacular intervention on the landscape and a form of land use, the allotment warrants study. For an art historian drawn to social history, allotment gardens raise three main questions that have guided this research: the effectiveness of allotments as a social measure, their land use implications, and their aesthetic dimension. First, as a form of assistance to the poor, how did allotment gardens perform that function within the social, political, and cultural context of the time when they became a significant phenomenon? This first question seeks to define the role played by allotment gardens between 1870 and the end of World War I, the decades when they developed most extensively in England, Germany, and France and when they acquired some legal standing. During the decades considered here, allotment gardens were a small component of the social safety net developed by these three countries through their legislation and other institutions. These social measures responded to unprecedented urban growth and increasing pressure from the left, as well as some factions on the right, to give labor a voice in the political arena. Beyond the social safety net provided by allotments, a second question pertains to landscape studies, as well as to urban planning and design, while also tapping deeper roots in the nature of landownership. As green spaces, allotment gardens had the potential to contribute to the efforts of urban planners seeking to insert “lungs” in cities. In the last decades of the nineteenth and first decades of the twentieth century, planners and designers increasingly voiced concern with mitigating the impact caused by forms of urban expansion that catered to industrial development. Allotments were, however, not usually included as a component of city plans at that time.’ Their working-class tenants, their piecemeal insertion in urban fabrics, and their precarious standing resulted in a slow process of integrating the provision of allotments into urban

2 The Working Man’s Green Space

planning and design. As small parcels of land claimed by the relentless process of urban expansion, allotment sites were expendable, tolerated only until the buildable land was claimed for its intended purpose or for more profit-yielding ventures. As outdoor spaces, they competed for land with other types of pub-

lic amenities such as parks, playgrounds, and sports facilities. Recognition of the allotments’ unique, valued, and valuable contribution would not result in their insertion into municipal or regional planning until after World War II.

This question, which we would characterize today as one of land use, reveals another underlying theme in the study of allotments, namely that of access to land. The monopoly over land control by the landed elite went hand in hand with political control. For both those in the emerging middle class, who were acquiring real estate, and for those in the working class, who lived and worked on land they could not aspire to own, the landed elite were a common obstacle to social and land reform. The socially stabilizing provision of carefully controlled access to land for the working class was a means for the landed class to defuse social unrest and retain both their estates and their political power. Access to a plot of land for the working class emulated, on a small scale, the benefits of landownership and fostered adhesion to the existing social order, with its political status quo. Allotments were therefore not high on the agenda of the political left, which focused its organizing efforts on wages, working conditions, and voting rights. A third question addresses the significance of allotments for those who cultivated them. Why were these gardens in such great demand, generating waiting lists wherever they were created? What was it about the experience of gardening that was so compelling for the working-class men (primarily) who had access to or sought this opportunity? Was the utilitarian imperative predominant, or did the experience of the garden provide something else? Was the demand for these gardens tied to an innate, unexpressed, or unarticulated desire to till the earth, to be close to nature? Did the gardens provide a space for individual agency and even creativity? In short, did the gardens relate to a form of aesthetic experience? Answers to these questions are predicated on an understanding of the meaning of gardens in the European context (as, maybe, distinct from its American counterpart)° in the second half of the nineteenth century, an investigation falling within the purview of landscape studies. Trying to understand a potential aesthetic dimension would also encourage ferreting out the “voices” of the gardeners.’ These voices are elusive, often presented secondhand, but they surface through the gardeners’ actions and activities as kernels of support for the claim that the gardens had greater significance than the potatoes and turnips set aside for the winter months.

Introduction 3

Disciplinary Framework and Outline of Chapters Within the broad umbrella of landscape studies, this book straddles the divide between landscape and horticulture. By highlighting the significant aesthetic

considerations that drove allotment-gardening practices within their social context, this work addresses landscape concerns. For instance, the contribution of allotment sites as green enclaves is a leitmotiv for the advocates of workers gardens, be they landowners, philanthropists, physicians, social reformists, politicians, or, occasionally, designers. From the horticultural vantage point, overwhelming focus on order and neatness may reflect management concerns with retaining control over the potentially unruly lower class, although social conditioning and personal pride may play a part in the actual gardening performance of the workers and their families. The belief in the potential of allotments to effect social change reflects the environmental determinism articulated during the second half of the nineteenth century by cultural geographers such as Friedrich Ratzel.* More recently, the work of two British scholars, Lisa Taylor and Jeremy Burchardt, sheds light on the cultural and social significance

of allotments.” Taylor argues for the existence of a distinct lower-class aesthetic in gardening. Burchardt demonstrates that allotment practices included greater social diversity than originally assumed. Both these studies invite a more careful assessment of allotment practices and their impact. Beyond the work of these two scholars, a transdisciplinary history of allotments is to be inscribed in a tradition of social history dealing with land reform, labor, landscape, and horticulture, with connections to the history of other domains such as industry, housing, and agriculture. Answers to the first two questions raised in this study, regarding social measures and land use, rely on the work of scholars in multiple disciplines such as political, social, agricultural, and labor history; sociology; cultural geography; urban planning; com-

munity studies; and landscape history. Relevant sources and scholarship are scattered among multiple publications and depositories. Further, as pointed out by Elizabeth Scott, a Marxist bend in social history has emphasized the organization of labor and marginalized alternative approaches to improving working-class conditions.*°

The complexity of the allotment movement has tended to encourage its study within national, regional, or local contexts, and the scholarship generated by allotments has remained within individual countries. David Crouch and Colin Ward provided a general overview of the British allotment, with one chapter on its international manifestations, in 1988."* This is an enjoyable book for the general reader that predates more current scholarship. A decade ago, Jeremy Burchardt provided meticulous research on allotments in England

4 The Working Man’s Green Space

until 1873.'* In France the work of Béatrice Cabedoce and Philippe Pierson is less scholarly but nonetheless useful. Although more general, the writings of Francoise Dubost are also directly relevant.** In Germany, the research and advocacy of Gert Gréning and his students have yielded seminal publications.“ More recently, Hartwig Stein has contributed a comprehensive examination of the Kleingarten, primarily in Germany.” These works provide a core for the examination of allotments in order to transcend national boundaries and present similarities as well as significant differences among allotment practices

in three European countries where small-scale produce gardening became a significant cultural phenomenon.”®

Primary sources for this research are to be found in official documents, as well as writings issued at the time by advocates or opponents of allotments

in the form of books, pamphlets, reports, and contributions to newspapers, newsletters, and established trade periodicals.’’ These sources are abundant, especially in Germany, predominantly because of the large number of associations and their federation in regional or national organizations that generated records and publications. Published and archival documents provide both textual and visual documentation.

This book is divided into six chapters. The first provides definitions and examines common features of allotments in England, Germany, and France. The second, third, and fourth chapters examine the development of allotments in each country individually, including antecedents preceding 1870, and in greater detail between 1870 and 1919. The fifth chapter examines the aesthetic dimension of allotments in the three countries. The sixth chapter considers the small contribution of the design professions in support of the provision of allotments. The conclusion summarizes milestones in allotment history between 1919 and the present and briefly outlines reasons for the continued significance of allotments today.

After the period examined in this study, allotment gardens underwent significant growth until about 1950, due to the depression of the 1930s and to the food shortages of World War II. They declined significantly during the years of postwar prosperity to regain popularity in the past three decades. In the decades after the primary focus of this study, the field of leisure studies becomes relevant as allotment gardens competed with organized sports and, after World War II, with tourism for time, support, and, most significantly, land. Allotments have evolved from a vital contribution to a nation’s food supply, to an outdated pastime for the retired, to a socially engaged commitment. This development will be outlined in broad strokes in the conclusion. Significant as the factors driving the provision and cultivation of allotments are for us today,

Introduction 5

one must be cautious not to project them onto a context where they did not yet exist in their current form and instead to carefully examine the true nature of turn-of-the-twentieth-century workers’ gardens to assess their social contribution, as well as the aesthetic experience they provided. Today, allotments and community gardens contribute in a modest but significant way to efforts to work toward a sustainable future. Their current resurgence in popularity encourages the study of their origins and their history. A careful historical assessment of the origins of allotment gardens encourages us to unravel the strands of the forces that compelled their development and is a prerequisite to understanding the conditions that led to their contemporary manifestations. During the decades under consideration here, allotments represented a dynamic approach to addressing evolving social circumstances.**

6 The Working Man’s Green Space

Definitions and Commonalities

Definitions As indicated in the introduction, an allotment garden is a small plot of land, not attached to a dwelling, that is cultivated to produce food intended for the consumption of the gardener and his or her family. Under a variety of names, the practice of allotment or community gardening assumes slightly different forms all over the world.’ The German allotment historian Gert Groning defines these gardens as a “specific expression of the human interest in the growth of plants for food and for aesthetic reasons.” An examination of how allotments were defined in the three countries considered here provides a stepping-stone toward establishing subtle nuances in the understanding of the concept.

England In his comprehensive treatise on legislation related to allotments up to 1886, the barrister Theodore Hall wrote: The word “allotment” is generally used in this book in its popular meaning... a small piece of land let to a person to be cultivated by him as an aid to his sustenance, but not in substitution for his labour for wages. When the land is large enough to become the main object of the tenant's labour, it is in the phrase of the day called a “small holding,’ rather than an allotment. It is important to distinguish the two things, as their political and social import differs widely, though in point of law there is not much difference. Also by an allotment is usually meant a piece of land apart from the tenant’s cottage; that is to say an allotment is distinguished from a cottage garden, which is usually considered a better thing for the tenant, and the lack of which an allotment is intended to supply. In the Inclosure Acts the word has another and more accurate meaning, viz. a piece of land appropriated under an inclosure award; and the phrase “fieldvarden” is used to express what is popularly called an “allotment.”

Hall’s text indicates that the distinction between an allotment, meant as a supplemental source of support, and a small holding, intended to provide a

livelihood for its tenant or owner, was frequently blurred, even in official documents. Although allotments were initially believed to have the potential to retain rural workers in the countryside and stem urban migration, it was not until the end of the nineteenth century that small holdings were legislated, as

distinct from allotments, to encourage resettlement into the countryside in order to counter the effects of rural depopulation. Jeremy Burchardt, whose research focuses on pre-1873 England, provides a much more concise definition of the English allotment as “a plot of land, not attached to a house, in a field divided in similar plots, surrounded by a common external fence but without internal partitions.’* For the twentieth century, the Allotment Acts of 1922 and 1950 both consistently define the subcategory of allotment garden: “The expression ‘allotment garden’ means an allotment not exceeding forty poles [a quarter of an acre or one thousand square meters] in extent which is wholly or mainly cultivated by the occupier for the production of vegetable or fruit crops for consumption by himself or his family:

Due to the decline of interest in allotments after World War II and the condition of those that remained, the Departmental Committee of Inquiry into Allotments, chaired by Harry Thorpe, a professor of geography at the University of Birmingham, was appointed by the minister of land and natural resources in 1965. The committee report, commonly known as the Thorpe Report, was published in 1969. It relied on the definitions in the acts of 1922 and 1950 cited above. There are five requirements for an allotment garden: 1. it must be an allotment; 2. it must be forty poles or less in extent; 3. it must be wholly or mainly for the production of vegetables and fruit for home consumption; 4. it must not be used for trade or business; 5. it must not be used for keeping pigs or any form of livestock except hens and rabbits (permitted on allotments as of 1950, although restricted by some local ordinances). The legislation provides for three types of allotments: statutory allotments, on land that is owned by the

allotments authority and used for allotments; temporary allotments, on land that is either rented by the allotments authority or owned by the allotments authority but intended, ultimately, for another use; and private allotments, on land neither owned nor administered by the allotments authority within the authority’s area.° A subset of this last category includes railway allotments. The committee's most salient recommendation was to replace the term allotment with leisure garden, a phrase that allegedly reflected more accurately the recreational gardening function of the plots in the second half of the 1960s.’ Leisure garden reduced emphasis on vegetable production, polished the image of the plebeian gardens, and eliminated the top-down implications of the term allotment.* The committee also placed emphasis on updating the image of allotments, replacing ad-hoc fencing and sheds made out of recycled

8 The Working Man’s Green Space

materials with uniformly designed equipment that reflected contemporary centralized-planning strategies.” To date, the term allotment remains in active use, and the practice of allotment gardening has regained momentum.

Germany Article 1 of the 31 July 1919 Allotment and Small Holdings Ordinance (Klein-

garten- und Kleinpachtlandordnung—KGO) states that “for the purpose of non-gainful garden exploitation, parcels of land may be leased at a rate not higher than that established by the competent authorities”*” The determination of the rent is contingent on local circumstances, the productivity of the land, and the recommendation of experts. This definition establishes that the allotment (Kleingarten) is rented land that is not intended for commercial use. According to Crouch and Ward, this ordinance stipulated that, on each plot, a third should be allocated to vegetables; a third to fruit; and the last third to flowers, grass, and a shed."* Although this stipulation is not included in the text of the KGO, it does reflect practice on many German allotments.

France The French rural code defined the family garden (jardin familial) as “an individual exploitation of a land parcel by a head of family in order to meet the needs of his household, excluding any commercial use”** Mostly urban, the plots were to range between one-twentieth and one-thirteenth of an acre (between two hundred and three hundred square meters); they were not attached to a dwelling; they included shelter, water distribution, and common facilities; and they were managed by associations that were recognized as public utilities. The law of 31 October 1941, passed under the Vichy government, differentiated among several categories of allotments: Defined as workers’ gardens [ jardins ouvriers] are the plots of land placed at the

disposal of the father of a family as a disinterested initiative, without any other consideration, so that he can cultivate and make use of them for the needs of his household. Defined as industrial gardens | jardins industriels] or rural gardens [jardins ruraux]| are the plots of land conceded by industrial or agricultural enterprises to their employees, as individuals. Defined as family gardens [ jardins familiaux] are the plots of land that are obtained by those who exploit them at their own initiative and are cultivated by them to meet the needs of their household, excluding any commercial use.*°

It was for this last category that the Vichy government provided subsidies and initiated additional legislation.

Definitions and Commonalities 9

Allotment Sites or Colonies In his extensive study of allotment gardens in Germany, Hartwig Stein draws a parallel between the Berlin arbor colonies (Laubenkolonien), which laid claim to wastelands outside the city walls, and late-nineteenth-century European colonial expansion all over the world.” This parallel entails strategies for dominating, civilizing, and exploiting. Stein points out that allotment holders, who were required by police regulations to name their garden sites, selected the names of colonized African territories for their “colonies.’*” He mentions Hartmut DiefSenbacker’s assessment of influential philanthropists such as Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, William Booth, and Henri Dunant as “altruistic adventurers of the middle class,” akin to explorers and colonists.*® And he also suggests similarities between the Laubenkolonien and “inner colonization” (Binnenkolonisation), deployed by Frederick the Great as a strategy against social revolution.*’ During the last decades of the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth, the question of land reform in Germany was articulated around the concept of settlement (Siedlung) by representatives of all political factions. The most outspoken among the early Siedlung movement advocates were the Berlin

Jewish physician Franz Oppenheimer and the journalist Adolf Damaschke, who focused most of his professional activity on the cause of land reform.”* The Siedlung was envisioned as providing an alternative to the overcrowded, insalubrious, urban industrial environment and as decentralizing populations into healthier, less dense, or rural communities. The Latin etymology of the word colony refers to tilling the earth (colonus, colere). The use of the term in the Bible (Acts 9:12) implies satellite urban settle-

ment. Indeed, if population growth drove the ancient Greeks to found cities outside of Attica and the Peloponnese, and if Frederick the Great encouraged small-scale agricultural exploitation in newly annexed territories, equating allotment garden sites to nineteenth-century colonial expansion is questionable. The term colonies is used in German, and other Germanic languages, for allotment sites. For instance, the Scandinavian names for allotment sites are koloni-

have in Denmark, kolonihage in Norway, and kolonitraedgard in Sweden. On the other hand, the term volkstuin (people's garden), in use in the Netherlands and the Dutch-speaking Belgian provinces, does not include the word colony. However, the allotment phenomenon was not exclusively Germanic. Similar developments occurred in Britain and in France, in response to intensification of agricultural techniques, unprecedented urban growth, and the social problems both engendered. In addition to referring to overseas colonies, the French term colonie is used in biology, as, for instance, for bees or bacteria, and to refer to satellite groups such as penal colonies, artists’ colonies, or holiday colonies,

10 The Working Man’s Green Space

organized to send working-class children to the country or the seaside during the summer. The 1948 Nouveau Larousse universel also includes an entry for colonies agricoles (agricultural colonies), as charitable institutions for poor orphans, juvenile delinquents, or disadvantaged workers who were employed at clearing land for cultivation.*’ The French term colon (settler, colonist) is used in the title of a Belgian gardening manual originally issued in 1917 (with additional editions in 1925, 1941, 1943, and 1950). The introduction of this booklet

refers to the work of the “Ligue du Coin de Terre” (League of the plot of land) and the “Jardinet des Colons” (colonist’s small garden).”° In the Belgian context, during World War I, the use of the term colon may stem from local Germanic usage, influenced by the Dutch term kolonist, and possibly also reflects common German usage during territorial occupation. The Belgian manual is focused exclusively on gardening techniques, with the stated goal of enabling small-scale gardeners to optimize the productivity of their small plots, not to occupy or settle domestic or foreign territory. Whether as jardins ouvriers or jardins familiaux, French allotments are not referred to as “colonies”; the same holds true for English usage pertaining to allotments in the United Kingdom. The eighteenth-century concept of “inner colonization” was revived at the end of the nineteenth century to encourage family communities to settle and farm the German countryside, a phenomenon parallel to attempts to encourage small holdings in Britain as of the 1880s.** Both in the eighteenth century

and at the end of the nineteenth, back-to-the-land movements attempted to promote a form of agricultural development that was intended to have some impact on national agricultural production and to help stem the tide of urban migration. The allotment movement, on the other hand, was not intended to (and never did, except in wartime) have an impact on the national food supply. In fact, the small scale of allotments and the frequent prohibition on marketing the cultivated produce were used as arguments to support their development, precisely because they would not impact the farmers or market gardeners who were accounted for in agricultural statistics. It seems, therefore, that Stein’s attempt at a postcolonial reading of the allotment movement, and the parallels he points out, may be seductive, but a broader view of the western European allotment movement suggests a more cautious interpretation of a complex social phenomenon that should not be read as tainted by expansionist and imperialist colonialism.

Antecedents It is likely that small plots of land not attached to a dwelling were in existence since prehistoric or early historic times. Most histories of allotments indicate

Definitions and Commonalities fl

that they have medieval antecedents. Small gardens are visible on medieval maps on the outskirts of cities and are associated with the history of allotments, probably erroneously, as they were most likely either pleasure gardens or a form of market gardening. Gardens that approach more closely our understanding of allotments begin to be documented in the seventeenth century. The vegetable garden has had a modest but continuous presence in urban utopian writings.** Its role, however, was understated in the communities proposed by progressive nineteenth-century utopian thinkers such as Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, Victor Considérant, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Etienne Cabet, and Jean-Baptiste Godin. An illustration of Fourier’s ideal community, the phalansteére, includes formal gardens but no kitchen gardens (see fig. 1). A group of children is shown in the left foreground, heading for work in the fields. Influenced by Fourier, Godin differed from him in his emphasis on the role of gardening in the education of children, which justified the presence of a teaching garden in his model community, called a familistere. Godin believed

in “improving the fate of the working class by providing them the equivalent of wealth,” a significant component of which was retaining contact with the land.**

A fundamental question connected to the provision of allotments pertained

to the mode of access to land. Private property had been defended by John Locke as a natural right of man, when he mixed his own labor with the earth.**

eo ne oe

2 “aaa

FIGURE 1. General view of a phalansteére, 1847, Arnout and Lemercier. (Bibliotheque nationale de France, Département des Estampes et de la photographie, Boite Fol- HD MAT-3, NO.°3172)

12 The Working Man’s Green Space

By the nineteenth century, the men whose livelihood depended on working the earth by and large did not own property. And those who did had a stake in ensuring that their rights and privileges would not be eroded by granting access to landownership, with the political control this entailed, to members of the laboring class. This connection between landed estates and political control would cause reticence not only to facilitate working-class landownership but also to make even small plots of land available for rent to laborers. According to a nineteenth-century follower of John Stuart Mill, the scheme of providing allotments “must be either nugatory or mischievious.””’ On the other hand, the stabilizing power of some attachment to the land was viewed as an asset of the allotment system, credited with promoting conservative values and the status quo, as well as countering potentially volatile lower-class activism. Once the practice of rural allotments gradually proved beneficial and gained acceptance during the course of the nineteenth century, resistance shifted from reluctance to rent to insistence on allowing landowners to retain control of that process, rather than delegating it to public authorities or self-administered associations of laborers.

British thinkers such as John Ruskin and William Morris promoted an antiurban and antiindustrialist aesthetic that sought to reduce the opposition between country and city. They laid the groundwork for the vision of the selftaught socialist Ebenezer Howard, whose Garden Cities of Letchworth and Welwyn sought to implement a compromise between rural and urban environments.”° During the first decades of the twentieth century in France, the garden city (cité-jardin) primarily assumed the form of low-cost housing (habitations a bon marché —HBM), promoted by Henri Sellier. As the mayor of the Seine community of Suresnes, Sellier advocated for gardens, as they exemplified the moral and physical benefits of “good socialism.’*’ In Germany, the housing settlements influenced by members of the Bauhaus, such as Walter Gropius, would include attached gardens. The 1933 Athens Charta, compiled by the Congres internationaux d’architecture moderne (CIAM), described gardens as communal spaces in its Article 35. Even if gardens were to be divided

into small plots, their cultivation and productivity were to be enhanced by common ploughing and water distribution. For Le Corbusier, one of the compilers of the Athens Charta, individual gardening was not healthy exercise, but a job with a set of endless chores that yielded poor results. In the mid-1930s, Le Corbusier proposed “radiant farms,’ or small-scale fifty-acre (twenty-hectare) rural exploitations that would not be submitted to the abolishment of private property and the division of time into the three eight-hour segments (for work, leisure, and sleep) that were applicable to the “radiant city” he had promoted in the 1920s.*° In addition to the Bauhaus and the CIAM, Soviet ideology was a

Definitions and Commonalities 13

third source of influence on twentieth-century Europe. Although private plots would eventually account for close to half of vegetable production in the USSR, the vision of the new Soviet citizen that was promoted abroad cast the modest gardener in the role of an outmoded anachronism.”

Commonalities Between 1800 and 1919, which was a period of dramatic social and political change, allotments played a significant role in feeding Europe’s population.

Motivations for Providing Allotments Those who provided allotments were motivated by a complex set of factors that included a desire to help the needy, a concern with curbing unrest and controlling potentially volatile populations, a paternalist desire to educate and inculcate moral values in workers, an incentive to reduce poor-relief taxes,

and the opportunity to rent land under conditions that were at least as favorable as agricultural leases. Some employers, both rural and industrial, did have genuine concern for the welfare of their employees and their families. Allotments provided a workable, rewarding means to address this concern. In general, during the early years of the allotment movement, when the practice was primarily conceived as poor relief, providers were concerned with ensuring that allotment holders were among the deserving poor who warranted the investment. The self-help aspect of allotments was considered to have a more lasting impact than mere charity. Other institutions of poor relief, such as the English workhouse and the French national workshops (ateliers nationaux),°° were ineffective. The workhouse was an unpopular last resort perceived as akin to the penal system, and the French workshops were assessed as being very costly for meager results. Allotments were promoted as helping to build character, to educate, and to encourage sociability as well as socially responsible civic engagement.** The French journalist Jules Huret, writing about German allotments in 1910, described them as “an embryo of the transformation of workers’ mores” and a “practical means of countering the liberal and socialist influence of the workers’ milieu.”** Although allotments could shield workers from leftist influence and promote a conservative agenda, they also provided a forum for political education by encouraging participation in site management, elected representation, active membership in associations, and advocacy for land access.”

The Civilizing Impact of Allotments In the urban context, housing conditions, health, and morality were viewed as related. Hygienic factors were a strong motivator to provide healthier liv-

14 The Working Man’s Green Space

ing conditions for the working class: cholera epidemics and tuberculosis affected all levels of society. Allotments were credited with improving health by providing a more nourishing diet, as well as exposure to cleansing fresh air and purifying sunlight, which were believed to have a therapeutic impact on tuberculosis.** If public parks provided similar lung-cleansing benefits and were inserted more systematically into urban plans during the second half of the nineteenth century, they did not have the same moralizing impact as allotments on the working class, who frequently found public park rules prohibitive and coercive.** Allotments went further than parks in their civilizing mission:

allotment holders were to gain a sense of ownership that connected them to the land and was meant to deter them from subversive political action. The land extended beyond the cultivated earth to the homeland, which the allotment holder and his children, fortified by healthful living, would be in a better position to serve than would the disease-ridden, developmentally deficient proletarian masses. One main cause of this physical and mental deficiency was attributed to excessive consumption of alcohol. By luring the head of the family away from drinking establishments, and from the political activism they fostered, allotments strengthened the family and supported a conservative political agenda.*°

Allotment Rules Rules governing the rental of allotments included remarkably similar clauses in the three countries. Many accounts of allotments in periodicals, official reports, pamphlets, and monographs routinely included copies of rules and agreements.°’ Landowners who granted allotments usually included a copy of their rules in contributions to publications such as the Gardener’s Chronicle. As an encouragement to fellow landowners to follow suit, the rules also reflected the values and priorities of the landowner and some pride in having devised a successful paternalist solution to a social problem, while promoting goodwill and producing noteworthy results. As central components of the allotment practice, rules and agreements provided a concise snapshot of what leasing an allotment entailed. The rules for early allotments reflected the concern of those who provided them to ensure that the holders were deserving of the privilege and morally worthy. As the practice gained currency, the rules evolved to reflect a business transaction, where clauses were determined more by circumstances and local practice than by paternalist oversight.** As for the contents of the rules, the British historian Robert Ruegg divides these into three categories: administrative, practical, and behavioral.*” Under the administrative category, leasing arrangements are the most prevalent. Rental agreements, often combined with the rules, included the length of tenure (usually at least a year), the length of time required to give notice, the

Definitions and Commonalities 15

amount of the rent, and when it was due. Rents were usually due either in the spring (on Lady Day) or in the fall (on Michaelmas or later), on dates that took into consideration the traditional growing and harvesting seasons.*” Most accounts about allotments stress that the overwhelming majority of tenants paid their rent and paid it on time. Subletting was usually not allowed. Responsibility for taxes, tithes, and other local real estate expenses that were charged to the landowner was frequently stipulated. These costs were usually assessed to the tenant: they were either included as part of the rent or passed on as a separate charge, but they were paid by the landowner for the whole allotment site.** Reasons for loss or forfeit of the plot were routinely stated in agreements and might include nonpayment of rent, violation of the rules, and noncultivation, as well as behavioral infractions. Some compensation for crops might be stipulated in cases of termination of agreement but usually not awarded if the end of tenancy was due to violation of the rules. Responsibility for site administration and authority to enforce the rules, levy fines, and evict tenants were stated explicitly. The responsibility might rest with the owner, an overseer, a governing body, or an appointed or elected delegate. Other administrative clauses might include eligibility to rent or receive a plot, size limitations for allotments, and restrictions on the number of plots or other land that a tenant could lease or cultivate.

Among practical rules, the most prevalent pertained to spade husbandry, which was usually required (although some rural owners did lend the use of a horse or ploughed and helped manure, especially for allotments over one acre).** Asa rule, productive cultivation and regular manuring were required, while crop rotation might be. A clause about types of crops was usually included, especially in the earlier years: wheat might or might not be allowed, and the proportion of potatoes to other crops might be stipulated. Fruit trees or berry bushes might be allowed, be prohibited, or require specific approval. They tended to be accommodated on long-term sites, but prohibited on plots of more precarious tenure, and on the whole were encouraged in Germany more than in the other two countries.** Flowers were usually allowed, sometimes recommended, but only on a small portion of the plot. Maintenance of hedges or fences, paths, the water supply, drains, and other physical features was mandated. The erection of individual structures on the plots, such as a tool shed, shelter, or arbor, was allowed, regulated as to size and location, or explicitly prohibited. Small-animal husbandry or the keeping of larger livestock, especially pigs, might be encouraged, tolerated, or prohibited.** Rules differed on whether the resale of cultivated produce was allowed. Some allotment providers considered the resale of surplus a desirable contribution to the allotment holder’s household budget. Others were emphatic about prohibiting

16 The Working Man’s Green Space

resale as potential competition with farming or professional market gardening. After the early experimental years, before 1850, resale or exchange tended to be tolerated on a small scale. As for behavioral rules, whether or not work was allowed on the Sabbath and religious holidays was usually stipulated.*” Church attendance might be required. This point led to much debate and a diversity of stipulations in allotment rules. For instance, harvesting for the day’s meal, watering, and light weeding might be tolerated on Sundays, but more demanding gardening tasks prohibited. German documents tend to mention gardening on Sundays as a matter of course, as the only available time for the worker. Daytime work during the workweek might also be prohibited for the worker, although work by his children, his wife, and older parents might be encouraged. There is, however, no disagreement regarding enjoyment of the garden as an appropriate family activity for the Sabbath in all three countries. Among other behavioral considerations, civility, a collaborative spirit, and respect for other allotment

holders and their plots could be mandated. Children were held to the same standards. Disturbing the peace and disorderly conduct, including drunkenness, swearing, and immorality, were frequently prohibited. Conviction for a criminal offense or for actions such as stealing or poaching would result in loss of the allotment. These rules reflect the fact that the practice of providing allotments evolved from poor relief and that the landlords who became involved in

renting allotments were intent on reforming, maintaining control, and—one might say—policing as well as assisting. As the associative allotment culture developed, the language of statutes and consensual regulation superseded such behavioral clauses.

Celebrations similar to those of the agricultural calendar would become part of allotment life (see fig. 2). Annual shows, with prizes for the best produce and for the best-kept or most productive allotments, whether included in the rules or not, also became part of allotment culture. They could be site specific and sponsored by the site provider or integrated into the horticultural traditions at the local or national level. Allotment holders held their own at the competitions in which they participated (see fig. 3). Allotment holders frequently donated the produce entered in shows to charity after it had been judged.*°

Access to Horticultural Expertise and to Land As a rule, the yield of allotment plots per surface unit was reported as higher than that of agricultural exploitations. A dissenting voice on this point is that of Peter Schmidt, who, writing in 1897, attributed what he described as the lower yield on allotments to the fact that their cultivators were usually not part

Definitions and Commonalities 17

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.adne 2eee eee oe Nese” ; In order alrecommendation aeee. to demonstrate that the of the Royal Horticul-

F ees tural Society to sowandseed of Vegetables in July August was quite practicable, Messrs. SUTTON, of Reading, nade sowings in their grounds between July 29th and August

= 3rd, and staged the above exhibit on October 26th, of over 20 distinct kinds of Vegetables, grown in the manner suggested by the Society. To this exhibit the Council

awarded a Silver-gilt Knightian Medal for its educational value.

FIGURE 3. Autumn vegetable competition display from seeds sown in July and August 1916. (From Royal Horticultural Society, Autumn Vegetables, 1st ed. [London: Royal Horticultural Society, 1916; LIBo005209, © RHS Library], between pp. 8-9)

of agricultural or horticultural associations where progressive techniques were

communicated.*’ In all three countries, most socially concerned allotment providers were intent on enhancing the chances of success for plot holders by ensuring that the latter had access to horticultural expertise. This expertise took the form of education programs, access to libraries, advice in the field, and

informal contacts between experienced and novice gardeners.** In addition to expertise, it was not uncommon for an allotment provider to supply seeds, tools, and fertilizers at least during the first years. Later on, plot holders would organize or rely on associations for cooperative purchases of seeds and other gardening supplies. Some of the land that became available for urban allotments had recently been freed by the dismantling of fortifications from 1860 onward, in part to allow for rail access and because city walls had become outdated for modern warfare (see fig. 4). The disabling of fortifications was a complex process of negotiations among the state, municipalities, and military authorities that differed for each city. This process, which began in 1860 for Berlin and Paris, was not undertaken until around 1880 for other cities. Ironically, in Paris, the land vacated by fortifications would be put under cultivation as allotments during World War I. All three countries were slow to enlist allotments in the drive to

increase the wartime food supply, significant measures not being taken by the authorities until 1916. Once allotments were integrated into the war effort, their

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FIGURE 4. Jules Girard. Paris fortifications with allotment gardens in the moat along the walls, 1917-19. (Archives photographiques, Médiatheque de l’architecture et du patrimoine, Caisse nationale des Monuments historiques et des Sites, Saint-Quentin-enYvelines, sapo1_grdi490x_p)

Definitions and Commonalities 19

numbers grew significantly.*” Nevertheless, later efforts to retain the land converted into allotments during the war were usually unsuccessful, although the wartime increase did lead to significant progress on the legislative front. In the aftermath of the war, obtaining and retaining land, especially in conveniently close proximity to housing, remained a struggle.

20 The Working Man’s Green Space

2 Allotments in England

Allotments before 1870 in England According to the English allotment historian Jeremy Burchardt, the provision of allotments prior to 1873 in England was a response to events that were disrupting the order of landed society." Two major factors had an impact on the origins of the allotment movement: radical agrarianism and the practice of enclosures.

Radical Agrarianism and Land Reform In the decade following the French Revolution, the demand for universal adult male suffrage as the main avenue to political agency challenged the aristocratic control of landownership that, within the British system, secured political power. A number of radical social thinkers connected landownership

with advocacy for political representation. Among these thinkers, Thomas Spence incorporated within his social radicalism the biblical concept of the jubilee (Leviticus 25), whereby land is redistributed every fifty years to ensure an equitable share for all members of the community. Subsequent influential reformists include Robert Owen, whose community experiments on both sides of the Atlantic (from New Lanark to New Harmony) led him to advocate for an agrarian society where industry would remain subservient to land exploitation. Feargus O'Connor proposed the Chartist Land Plan, which would establish a fund from a subscription among working-class members to acquire land that would be redistributed as small holdings to subscribers. Also, the political journalist William Cobbett articulated for the urban working class an agrarian ideal that was, according to him, compromised by aristocratic land control.’ Despite the failure of the Chartist Land Plan and O'Connor's land acquisition and redistribution scheme in 1847, a continued commitment to agrarian ideas and to Spencean, Owenite, and Chartist ideals would gradually achieve land reforms by implementation of three types of activities on a smaller scale.° First, freehold land societies were created to provide their members with land in order to build a house, often with a garden or small holding.* The 1832 Representation of the People Act, commonly referred to as the Reform Act (2 & 3

Will. 4, c. 45), also enabled those purchasing land through freehold land societies to acquire the right to vote, thereby eroding aristocratic landholding privileges. Freehold land societies became more focused on financial profit, turning into building societies catering to the lower middle class and the upper echelons of the working class. Second, the Land and Labour League was formed in 1869 by socialists and former Chartists in the context of the 1860s trade depression and the political activity preceding the Second Reform Act (1867, Representation of the People Act, 30 & 31 Vict., c. 102). The league’s program included land nationalization and provision of small holdings, but it failed due to poor organization and an upward trend in the economy. And third, a parallel middle-class movement of the 1850s—60s, related to the anticorn agitation of the 1840s, sought to reform the tax structure and undermine the aristocracy by purchasing freeholds and their attached votes, shifting voting power to the middle class. After repeal of the Corn Laws (1849), some AntiCorn Law League supporters, along with others influenced by John Stuart Mill, joined the Land Tenure Reform Association, founded by Mill to voice calls for land-law reform. Land reform thus encompassed a complex set of movements and allegiances that pitted the landed aristocracy and its rural concerns against reformers advocating for the lower classes and for the middle class, with its rising urban- and industry-based financial power. Enclosures Enclosure of common land, sanctioned by Parliament, had deprived the working class of access to and use of the “waste” lands that had provided a means of modest subsistence for centuries, and it had increased the resources of the landowning class. The topic of enclosure of the commons has a long history. As of 1235 the Statute of Merton (specifically chapter 4) included clauses that provided legal sanction for enclosing common land. “Commons” or “common waste” refers to land that was not exploited for agriculture as fields or meadows. Although it could provide shelter and a means of subsistence to local residents, such land did have an owner. The right of use or “common” was available to local commoners, but not to the general public.” Restriction of land access for the poor occurred in rural and urban areas, but it is primarily the exclusion from agrarian use that is connected to the development of allotments. Jeremy Burchardt attributes a more aggressive assertion of property rights at the expense of collective-use rights to the rise of a market economy in the eighteenth century.° Enclosure by Act of Parliament, begun in 1730, became more common in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Accurate figures remain elusive, but several attempts to account for common land have been made since the seventeenth century. In the 1690s, Gregory King accounted

22 The Working Man’s Green Space

TABLE 1. Enclosure of commons in England between 1690 and 1957

Acres of Percentage

common land of total area 1690 8—9 million acres (3.2—3.6 million hectares) 25.0 ca. 1800 4—6 million acres (1.6-2.4 million hectares) 12.5

1873 1.7 million acres (680,000 hectares) 5.3 1955-57 1.055 million acres (422,000 hectares) 3.3

for 8 to 9 million acres (3.2 to 3.6 million hectares) of commons in England, or one-quarter of England’s 32.2 million acres (12.8 million hectares). Three early nineteenth-century estimates suggest 4 to 6 million acres of commons (1.62 to 2.43 million hectares). By 1873, the figure had dropped to 1.7 million acres (680,000 hectares). The Royal Commission on Common Land of 195557 accounted for 1.055 million acres (422,000 hectares), or 3.3 percent of the country’s total area. This means that approximately 85 percent of the common land available in 1690 had been put to other use. Due to Bills for Enclosures of Commons, between 1760 and 1867, about 7 million acres (2,828,800 hectares) of commons were enclosed (see table 1).’ As the late British local historian Alan Everitt indicated, commons could also be enclosed by means other than Acts of Parliament, as for instance through cases brought before Quarter Sessions or manorial courts and through legal or personal agreements between landowners.” The 1845 Enclosure Act (8 & 9 Vict., c. 118) was a general enclosure act and the first to include substantial allotments clauses. It was followed by legislation that amended and extended it in 1846, 1847, 1848, 1849, 1851, 1852, 1854, 1857, 1859, and 1868. Enclosures created conditions that were conducive to the

development of the allotment movement, and these conditions were further aggravated by demographic changes.’ The thousands who were either landless or unable to fence the small land parcel they had been granted as an enclosure award had three options: to work for landowners at poverty wages, to move to the city, or to seek poor relief.*° The concept of making land available to the lower classes did not originate with allotments. An Act of Parliament of 1589 (31 Eliz., c. 7) stipulated that each cottage should be provided with four acres (1.2 hectares), but this clause had not been enforced." Between 1793 and 1810, providing land for the needy was advocated under different forms in response to the Napoleonic War and poor economic conditions. Among different possibilities, such as home colonization (as an alternative to emigration) and providing pasture, arable fields, or potato grounds, the provision of allotments became a primary means to make some

Allotments in England 23

land available to agricultural laborers. Defined as small rented plots made available for social as well as economic reasons, a first example of allotments in England is believed to date to around 1795.” Sir Thomas Estcourt of Shipton Moyne began renting allotments to laborers on his estate in order to provide them with a means of subsistence during a crisis year and to reduce the poor rates. Estcourt’s account of his experiment was published in a report of the Society for Bettering the Conditions and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor, but the practice was not readily adopted elsewhere at the time. Also in 1795, a select committee of the House of Commons was appointed to gather evidence on instituting allotments as national policy, but no legislation followed, despite the committee’s favorable report. Even landowners such as Lord Carrington, who provided allotments on his Lincolnshire estates, considered that private initiative was more appropriate than legislation.** Attempts to institute allotments by the Board of Agriculture, created in 1793, were defeated in 1800, primarily due to the resistance of landowners.** The first allotment site, created by an Act of Parliament in 1806, was at Great Somerford in Wiltshire.’” In 1819, the Sturges Bourne's Select Vestries Act (59 Geo. 3, c. 12), which included an allotments clause, and the Poor Law Amendment Act resulted in boroughs having the right to lease land and sublet it to indigents as allotments. ‘The first corporate town to avail itself of the provisions of the 1819 act was the town of Saffron Walden, which, during an economic downturn in 1829, rented 157 plots to 144 holders, with an estimated impact on seven hundred residents.*®

Legislation and Associations before 1873 Concern about rural unemployment in 1831 led to the passing of three Acts of Parliament related to allotments within a year. The first (1 & 2 Will. 4, c. 42) amended the 1819 act and allowed parishes to enclose up to fifty acres of waste to rent as allotments. The second (1 & 2 Will. 4, c. 59) applied the same regulations to Crown land. The third (2 Will. 4, c. 42) required that the trustees of land awarded for the benefit of the poor, in compensation for enclosure, lease this land as allotments. In addition to this cluster of laws, the 1834 report by the Poor Law Commissioners compiled collected data and indicated that allotments had immediate benefits. This report recommended that plots not exceed a half acre (0.2 hectare), even for large families, and reported that the system was successful when carried out by individuals but usually not when managed by parish officers.’’ The report did not recommend additional legislation.

In addition to this government activity, the formation of the Labourer’s Friend Society (LFS) in 1830 and of the Agricultural Employment Institution (AEI) by 1832 garnered influential support for allotments. The LFS and its 1844 successor, the Society for Improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes

24 The Working Man’s Green Space

(SICLC), assumed a leading role in the promotion of allotments for several decades.** The LFS was national in scope and disseminated its support for allotments through its successive publications (Facts and Illustrations, the Labourer’s Friend Magazine [1834-44], and the Labourer’s Friend [1844-84]), as well as through field agents. It did not rent allotments or secure financing, but its activity paralleled significant growth in the number of allotments and most likely contributed to it. The SICLC would attempt to lease allotments, but by diversifying its endeavors to include urban and industrial concerns, especially in London, it did not maintain the momentum that the LFS had provided for allotments. As early as 1806, private enclosure acts included clauses that stipulated the provision of allotment gardens for the poor to compensate for the loss of access to open land. Both the General Enclosure Act of 1845 (8 & 9 Vict., c. 118) and the Commons Act of 1876 (39 & 40 Vict., c. 56) sought to enforce this practice for all enclosures. The 1845 General Enclosure Act stated that a condition of enclosure could stipulate the use of allotments for exercise and recreation

according to a predetermined quota: four acres (1.6 hectares) in communities of under two thousand inhabitants, five acres (2 hectares) for two to five thousand, eight acres (3.25 hectares) for five to ten thousand, and ten acres (4 hectares) for over ten thousand inhabitants. Although seldom applied, this stipulation established the potential recreational function of allotments, which would take precedence over their economic role in the twentieth century.

Rural Allotments During the “Captain Swing” riots of the 1830s, laborers protested, among other concerns, against the introduction of new threshing machines that threatened

their livelihood. These riots, accompanied by arson and machine breaking, resulted in the provision of rural allotments by landowners on a larger scale. The rural poor needed allotments because, after enclosures, fields made use of most arable land, and modest cottages, as a rule, had not been provided with gardens. By 1840, the provision of allotments had become a socially responsible Victorian practice.’” The protests and riots between 1816 and 1830 had resulted in the reform of poor laws in 1834. They had also encouraged the landed gentry to become more attentive to the duties of property.*° Landowners who were actively involved in their agricultural exploitation followed the allotments situation, reported on regularly in the publications of the LFS and other publications such as the Gardener’s Chronicle. Specific conditions for allotments

included spade cultivation, in order to prevent competition with farming, as tenant farmers tended to be wary of or opposed to allotments.** Some farmers even threatened to deny employment to allotment holders.** This antagonism

Allotments in England 25

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oe Sy he ee, | neal — nt Stee Lb: te nk eek, a Se ere” — 3 ees: 7 es eee c SS ES, See a —~— ee ns Pie ~ ae FIGURE 5. Railway-side allotments, 1918. (From Guides to Allotments, London & NWRW [London: Royal Horticultural Society, 1918; LIBoo05208, © RHS Library], pp. 18-19)

between farmers and allotment holders may have been exacerbated by the greater yield produced by spade cultivation. Practices that would increase land value, such as crop rotation and regular application of manure, were also frequently stipulated in rental agreements. The size of allotments was carefully determined by landowners to provide the intended relief without impairing farming profits or decreasing the tenant’s availability for employment. By 1840 landlords who provided allotments included landowners, clergy who occupied church land (glebes), parish officers, parish charities, allotment societies, and some tenant farmers (despite their initial wariness).** Railway companies owned awkward trackside land parcels, frequently unworkable for conventional agriculture (see fig. 5). They would also provide significant allotment acreage by the end of the nineteenth century. The 1843 Select Committee on the Labouring Poor (Allotment of Land) made specific recommendations for allotments. They should not exceed onequarter of an acre (0.1 hectare), they should be as near as possible to the la-

borer’s residence, and they should be rented at a cost equivalent to that of farmland. Allotments rented at the landowners’ initiative were preferable, but since these were not sufficient, the committee recommended that future enclosure bills include stipulations for renting allotments to the poor. The provision of allotments grew steadily after 1830, but their distribution varied geographically. As pointed out in 1886 by the Earl of Onslow (William Hillier Onslow, Fourth Earl of Onslow), there was, for instance, little demand for allotments

26 The Working Man’s Green Space

in the northern English counties.** Burchardt and Cooper’s 2010 Family and Community Historical Research Society project also documents regional and local differences in the availability and number of allotments.”

Urban Allotments In the urban context, leisure gardens existed as early as 1740 in Nottingham.”° Small rented gardens were common around the West Midland cities of Birmingham, Coventry, and Warwick during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Not attached to houses, these so-called guinea gardens were separated by hedges and served recreational purposes for well-to-do artisans and their families.*” As flower and ornamental gardening appears to have been

more common than cultivating produce, and the plots were separated by hedges, the gardens were not technically allotments.** The provision of allotments was initially conceived as a rural practice.*” Still, urban allotments that were akin to their rural counterparts did exist prior to 1845, when, for instance, migrants from rural areas rented land, or parishes with allotments adjacent to urban areas were redistricted into city limits. However, allotments that were specifically urban, created for urban residents on undeveloped land subdivided into plots for rent, began around 1850. Paternalist employers also made urban land available to their workers. These allotment providers included industrialists such as the Leeds textile manufacturer Marshalls, as well as railway and mining companies.*” However, any attention paid to allotments at the national

level prior to the last third of the nineteenth century was primarily focused on their potential impact on rural poverty. This reflected the fact that rural areas were more heavily represented in the House of Commons until the Second Reform Act (1867), when cities acquired more of a voice. By 1865, rural

allotments had failed to stem urban migration and failed to entice the rural poor to remain on the land. Between the 1845 General Enclosure Act and 1869, only 2,223 acres (889 hectares) had been made available to the poor as allotments, while another 614,800 acres (246,000 hectares) had been enclosed.*’ The Commission to Enquire into the Employment of Children, Young Persons,

and Women in Agriculture, appointed in 1867, recommended incorporating data on allotments for each agricultural parish into surveys conducted by the Inland Revenue Department, but this recommendation was followed only sporadically.

The development of urban allotments remained limited until earlytwentieth-century legislation made public authorities responsible for providing allotments when demand existed. This lag in the provision of urban allotments is in part attributable to greater pressure on land use in urban areas, which resulted in demand for plots always exceeding availability.°* By

Allotments in England 27

the 1860s, the evolution of the allotment movement must be framed within broader social changes. The British Whig historian George Macaulay Trevelyan points out the significance of the organization of unions in the skilled trades and the growth of the cooperative movement. Trevelyan significantly credits

unions and cooperatives with “train[ing] so many of the working classes in business habits, thrift, and mutual reliance, releas[ing] them from exploitation by the shopkeeper, and [giving] them a ‘stake in the country-”** Trevelyan’s statement reflects the privileging of trade unionism in historical studies, but it is noteworthy that the impact attributed to unions was closely aligned with the social agenda that allotments were credited with supporting and enhancing.

Allotments in England between 1870 and 1919 Allotments in England between 1870 and 1919 remained inscribed within the ongoing debate about who should have access to landownership. This debate would not be resolved during the period under consideration here. Several significant factors provide the background for this debate: first, by 1851, the majority of the population had migrated to the cities. Second, the period between 1875 and 1896 is characterized as an agricultural depression, coming at the tail end of a period of relative agricultural prosperity between 1850 and 1875. This agricultural depression, aggravated by increased importation of American products, accelerated the depopulation of rural areas and caused the decline and sale of great estates. Third, the extension of male suffrage contributed to making allotments a significant political factor. The Second Reform Act of 1867 had granted all male householders the right to vote, and the Third Reform Act of 1884 extended this right to most male agricultural laborers.** Although this legislation still excluded 40 percent of laborers and women (who would not have voting parity with men until 1928), it did expand voting power to the echelons of society that had a stake in allotments and small holdings. This expanded suffrage was followed by the establishment of elected local selfgovernment in rural districts. County councils in 1888 and rural district councils and parish councils in 1894 broadened the workings of the democratic process into rural areas. Fourth, the social progress realized under Liberal and Conservative governments during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, and Queen Victoria's reign, resulted in the improvement of urban infrastructures and the provision of services that included working-class housing; baths; libraries; museums; and open spaces such as parks, gardens, and allotments.*” Further, during the last four years of the five decades considered here, war shortages provided impetus to put under intensive cultivation land that had not been slotted for agricultural use in the past.*°

28 The Working Man’s Green Space

Land Reform and Legislation up to 1914 The failure of the Chartist Land Plan had been followed by a series of small-scale land-reform measures. Land-reform concerns would again experience a strong

revival for three decades starting in the 1880s, within a context that had become predominantly urban and industrial. Economic problems in agriculture and industry, as well as the political crisis of Irish landownership, would bring land access and management to the fore. The increase in world food supplies and several poor domestic harvests prompted farmers to use costcutting machinery, sending agricultural workers to the urban centers, which were suffering from sluggish industrial conditions, with worrisome effects on employment wages. Workers and politicians argued for land-law reform and for dividing large estates into small holdings to encourage agricultural laborers to stay on or return to the land. Two approaches were brought forward. At the suggestion of Alfred Russell Wallace, influenced by the Irish Land League, the Land Nationalization Society (1881) proposed to nationalize land (not buildings) and to compensate owners. A second strategy, suggested by Henry George, who considered landowners as passive beneficiaries of land production, was to tax all unearned incre-

ment, making taxes on capital and industry superfluous, hence the name the “Single Tax” program. Georgists organized as the Land Reform Union (1883), which became the English Land Restoration League in 1884 and the English League for the Taxation of Land Value in 1902. Despite the program differences between the Land Nationalization Society and the English Land Restoration

League, both were based on a common understanding of land as a natural, inalienable right, essential to support life, given by God. Control of land by a small land-owning class was against divine will, prevented an active land market, and allowed landowners to demand high rents. The efforts of these two organizations were boosted by the adoption of a land-reform program by the politician and statesman Joseph Chamberlain, a radical Liberal who had been a member of John Stuart Mill’s Land Tenure Association. As the Third Reform Act of 1884 had given most agricultural male workers the right to vote, rural constituencies now provided the Liberals with an agenda and potential support. Chamberlain’s 1885 program proposed to give local authorities greater powers of compulsory land acquisition to provide allotments and small holdings; to increase the taxation of land; and to request an inquiry into the effects of the Enclosure Acts, with the return to public use of improperly enclosed land. Chamberlain's program did not espouse the radical goals of land nationalization and of abolishing or taxing private property out of existence. Rather, it promoted rural landownership, creating in 1883 the

Allotments in England 29

Allotments Extension Association (which became the Allotments and Smallholdings Association in 1884). The campaign for more effective allotments legislation was promulgated by Chamberlain's colleague Jesse Collings, the president of the Allotments and Small Holdings Association, and publicized in the writings of Frederic Impey, the association's secretary, with the slogan “Three Acres and a Cow.’ According to Impey, this phrase described the arrangements on the Cheshire estate of the Conservative but notoriously provident landowner Lord Tollemache, whom he quoted as stating that he “never knew a case where a man was granted three acres of land, where there was not very speedily a cow to be seen.”*’ The Cham-

berlain program, banking on the expanded rural vote, advocated for one acre (0.4 hectare) of land for cultivation and four acres (1.6 hectares) for pasture. The Allotments and Small Holdings Association stated as its fifth objective to “facilitate by all legitimate methods the restoration of the rural population to direct connection with the soil,’ a goal more easily achieved with larger plots than with the customary allotment size of one-eighth to one-quarter of an acre (five hundred to one thousand square meters).°* Impey, citing multiple examples, argued that given the opportunity and reasonable conditions, rural laborers who had access to land had the ability to exploit it profitably for themselves and their family and had the potential to become contributing, ratepaying citizens. This campaign to bring about more effective allotment legislation encountered resistance, primarily from the landowning class. In 1886, as the honorary secretary of the Land and Glebe Owners’ Association for the Voluntary Extension of the Allotments System, the Earl of Onslow published a position statement in the form of a compilation of information from multiple sources, including a detailed survey of landowners who rented allotments.*? Chaired by the Duke of Westminster, the Land and Glebe Owners’ Association advocated against legislating the provision of allotments, suggesting instead the extension of the system already in place “on every well-managed estate [where] allotments exist, at rents only higher than adjoining farm land by reason of the outgoings having to be borne by the landowner, or because, if devoted to other than agricultural purposes, they would command a high rent.”*° According to Onslow, landowners were the only group with the power to control a system that had been in operation for over a century, and he thus attempted to counter the electoral rhetoric presenting landowners as unwilling to rent their land for allotments. With the help of the clergy, who could make glebe lands available for rent, and of the Land and Glebe Owner’s Association, which could provide information and advice, landowners were in a position to meet the demand for allotments at affordable rents and to promote the enforcement of the Al-

30 The Working Man’s Green Space

lotment Act of 1882 (45 & 46 Vict., c. 80) among the trustees of charity lands. Onslow acknowledged that the present agricultural depression contributed to low wages for laborers and that allotments helped to improve their economic situation “without diverting for [their] benefit the property of any other class of the community.’** The poor man’s additional labor on his allotment resulted in “a material improvement in his social as well as financial position,’ and, as Onslow remarked, farmers had gradually come to accept that the practice was not detrimental to their own operations.** Landowners, especially those who were actively involved in the agricultural work on their estates, had a paternalistic view of their responsibility for the welfare of their tenants and laborers within a hierarchical rural social structure

that was perceived as stable and enduring. Urban industrial areas were more prone to social and market-driven fluctuations and gradually pulled more rural labor away from the land.** Cities were perceived as fraught with moral and physical danger and as constituting a threat to the social and political order of the landed gentry. Providing allotments, or small holdings, would temper the nefarious effects of the urban environment by improving public health. Also, and most significantly, laborers with a stake in the land, in the form of a patch they could cultivate and consider as their own, might be enlisted in the cause of property rights rather than be seduced by socialism. It is this political potential of allotments that prompted Jeremy Burchardt to describe them as the “most important cultivated urban green space of the nineteenth century.’™* As mentioned above, on the legislative front, several Acts of Parliament allowing public provision of allotments had been passed by the middle of the nineteenth century but remained ineffective. By the 1870s, land tenure and more specifically allotments had become a national political concern.*? In 1873, the Poor Allotments Management Act (36 & 37 Vict., c. 19) increased oversight of allotments provided with enclosure awards. In 1876, the Commons Act (39 & 40 Vict., c. 56) required enclosure commissioners to provide land for the poor. By the 1880s, gradual enfranchisement of the poor had made land tenure a national concern. The 1882 Allotments Extension Act (45 & 46 Vict., c. 80) required those charged with administering land for the benefit of the poor to make it available as allotments of up to one acre (0.4 hectare) at fair farm rent (unless it was already used as recreational land). The Allotments and Small Holdings Association was established in the wake of this legislation, in part to prod the trustees of charity land to comply with the terms of the act or to assist in obtaining access to allotments through other means. The association also encouraged laborers to vote for the members of Parliament who advocated transferring enforcement of the act from the hands of charity land trustees to local authorities.*® The promotion of more effective allotments Allotments in England = 31

and small holdings legislation by Chamberlain and Collings in the early 1880s would eventually result in the 1887 Allotment Act (50 & 51 Vict., c. 48). In early 1887, a candidate supporting allotments won a by-election at Spalding in Lincolnshire.*’ Then, later that same year, the Allotment Act was passed, the first comprehensive allotment legislation, with powers of compulsory purchase for local authorities to create allotments. Authored by the Tory government, modified by the Liberals, and passed by the House of Lords, the act included too many restrictions to be easily enforceable. It maintained the one-acre limit (0.4 hectare) stipulated in the act of 1882, elaborating that only one allotment could be rented and that no structure could be built on it (except a toolshed or pigsty). As for access to land, compulsory purchase had been used extensively for railways and other public works in the second third of the nineteenth century, but this was a lengthy, cumbersome process. The incorporation of the terms from the Land Clauses Consolidation Act (1845 and 1860) in the 1887 act impaired the ability, as stipulated by the act, for local authorities to provide allotments where a demand for them existed.** Demand was determined to

exist when four or more applications had been submitted by four or more local residents.** Six parliamentary electors or rate payers in the district (urban) or parish (rural) were entitled to petition to the Sanitary Authority (the Board of Guardians in rural areas), now established as the authority responsible for providing, managing, and publicizing its intention to provide allotments. Restricted to laborers only, the act did not compel local authorities to act on behalf of allotment petitioners if they did not choose to.”” The act thus fell short of breaking the landowning monopoly, an intention made plainly clear in the terms of the bill, which restricted compulsory purchase to land, not buildings, and stipulated that “directions [were] given not to interfere with any park, mansion, dwelling-house, cottage, garden, private ground, or allotment gardens.””* Passed the same year, the 1887 Allotments and Cottage Gardens Compensation for Crops Act (50 & 51 Vict., c. 26) provided for compensation to the holders of allotments and cottage gardens for the crops remaining at the end of their rental agreement. The 1890 Allotment Act (53 & 54 Vict., c. 65) was passed to provide for an appeals process against a Sanitary Authority that failed to carry out the 1887 Allotments Act. In such cases, the responsibility to comply with the 1887 act was transferred to the county council. The Georgist English Land Restoration League agenda eventually prevailed in the Liberal Party, and in 1889, the National Liberal Federation adopted reso-

lutions for taxation of land values. In 1891 the federation’s “Newcastle Programme’ included the letting of small holdings, the taxation of land values, free land transfer, and the reform of leasehold tenures. It resulted in the 1892 Smallholdings Act (55 & 56 Vict., c. 31) which, again, had limited impact be-

32 The Working Man’s Green Space

cause it did not include compulsory purchase clauses. Further, land acquired was intended for sale to small holders, and although the terms of the 1892 act did mention leasing in some clauses, it was not until the 1908 Small Holdings and Allotments Act (8 Edw. 7, c. 36) that leasing became a primary option for small cultivators. Between 1892 and 1902, only 652 acres (264 hectares) were acquired under the 1892 act.** Despite efforts by both the English Land Restoration League and the Land Nationalization Society during the 1890s to enlist the support of rural laborers, the Liberal government of 1892-95 was prevented from implementing its “Newcastle Programme’ by opposition from the House of Lords. Between 1895 and 1906, the Conservative administration in power did not include land reform among its priorities. With the return of the Liberal Party to power in 1906, allotments and small holdings, the less controversial components of land reform, returned to the foreground. Attempts at landtaxation reform in 1907 and 1908 encountered strong Conservative resistance, and the Liberals shifted focus toward more moderate policy to foster ownership for small holders. The 1908 Small Holdings and Allotments Act (8 Edw. 7, c. 36) increased the maximum size of allotments and created small holdings commissioners charged with ensuring that small holdings were available for rent, by resorting to compulsory purchase if necessary. Although the procedures to provide allotments and small holdings continued to differ, the 1908 act placed both under the ministration of the county council, small holdings commissioners, and the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries. The 1908 act defined an allotment or field garden as a plot of up to five acres (2 hectares) but restricted the obligation to provide allotments to plots of up to one acre (0.4 hectare). A small holding was defined as an agricultural parcel between one and fifty acres (0.4 to 20 hectares) or, if more than fifty acres, of an annual taxable value of up to fifty pounds. A given parcel between one and five acres (0.4 to 2 hectares) could thus be considered either an allotment or a small holding. The 1908 act maintained the responsibility to provide allotments with urban district councils and parish councils (in rural areas).°’ For the County of London, the London County Council was responsible for providing allotments. For small holdings, the responsibility rested with the county council or its designate. The 1908 act required every county council to appoint a small holdings and allotments committee to deal with all matters relating to allotments and small holdings before action could be taken by the county council. The 1908 act also created a new supervisory authority, small holdings commissioners, who were charged with investigating the ability to create small holdings within a county and to report to the Board of Agriculture. The board might then mandate the provision of small holdings and, in some cases, obtain approval for Treasury funds. The

Allotments in England 33

1908 act provided for the compulsory leasing of land for small holdings and for either compulsory purchase or lease of land for allotments, with approval of the Board of Agriculture. It also prescribed the procedures required for compulsory lease or purchase, the latter in observation of the Lands Clauses acts (with some adjustments). Land acquired compulsorily for small holdings could only be rented, not sold. Leased land was subject to repossession with twelve months’ notice if it could be documented that it was needed for building, mining, or other industrial purpose or for roads servicing such facilities. The legislation also granted borrowing powers at a minimum interest rate in order to provide small holdings. The land could be adapted as required for the needs of small holdings or allotments, but no residential structure could be erected on an allotment smaller than one acre (0.4 hectare). At the end of his tenancy, a tenant might expect compensation for improvements, except if these had been specifically prohibited in writing. Cooperative schemes and voluntary societies were supported by the terms of the legislation. As the Board of Agriculture was required to submit an annual report to Parliament on all proceedings under the Small Holdings and Allotments acts, county, district, and parish councils were also required to submit an annual report to the board.”* This act provided the basis for subsequent twentieth-century legislation for allotments and small holdings.

The Labour Party, founded in 1900, espoused the Liberal land-reform agenda, but with greater emphasis on land nationalization. Efforts to introduce legislation for land-taxation reform by the Liberal chancellor of the exchequer, Lloyd George, in 1909 and 1910, would lead to legislation that reduced the powers of the Lords (Parliament Act of 1911, 1 & 2 Geo. 5, c. 13). By 1914, land reform

was a major component of both the Liberal and the Labour agendas, with the Conservative Party cautiously following suit with gradual recognition of landownership for laborers. Land as a contested asset created a divide, pitting socialists and radical Liberals against the elite, who were accused of having appropriated and wasted this national resource. The deep-seated notion of land

as the source of wealth retained currency, and the rural depopulation, with reduced land exploitation in the wake of the agricultural depression between 1870 and 1895, gave urgency to the question of rural land use. Land that was unused, reserved for game or for the enjoyment of the elite, was presented as a source of unemployment, a concept illustrated by a poster with the caption “Idle Land Means Idle Men,’ showing unemployed farm laborers confronted by a gate marked “Game Preserve—Trespassers will be prosecuted.’’’ The depth of the divide between those who owned land and those who wanted it made accessible lent a revolutionary intensity to the leftist agenda. In preparation for anticipated elections in 1915, a land campaign was initiated, and the

34 The Working Man’s Green Space

fact-finding Land Enquiry Committee was established to explore landholding and taxation reform. The committee issued two reports, in 1913 and in 1914, the war bringing land-reform legislative activity to a halt. After the war, the coalition of the Lloyd George faction of the Liberals with the Conservatives prevented a return to aggressive land-taxation reform. The Land Settlement Act of 1919 (9 & 10 Geo. 5, c. 59), aimed at providing small

holdings for ex-servicemen, was passed but underfunded, resettling only 24,000 rather than 750,000 ex-servicemen, as originally intended.*° The Liberals were eased out of power by the rise of the Labour Party, and after 1918, political advocacy shifted from challenging the aristocracy to pitting labor against capital. Land reform never regained the impetus it had garnered between 1880 and 1914. Although the primary targets of land reform were the large landowners, hundreds of thousands of middle-class voters also owned their homes and the land on which they were built. This large electoral constituency was unlikely to support a challenge to their property and financial status. The Conservative Party strategy to encourage small holdings policy and more widespread lower-class home ownership would trump the land-reform agenda.

Model Housing or Communities Allotments were not the only manifestation of concern for the conditions of the working class. For instance, the London World Exposition of 1851 included

model workers’ housing designed by Henry Roberts, and a number of other solutions were also proposed and implemented during the course of the nineteenth century. A brief examination of some of them provides a framework for understanding the role of allotments. NINETEENTH-CENTURY COMMUNITIES Among strategies to improve the conditions of the working class, a parallel development to the expansion of the allotment system was to be found in the building of model housing or communities. This can be attributed to a number of factors. To begin, the persistence of aristocratic paternalism encouraged assumption of the duties of property as a corollary to the rights that land afforded. Concern for the impact of derelict housing on the health and morality of the laboring classes was accompanied by increased awareness of the link between poor housing conditions and public health, which affected all classes. Whether prompted by social concern or not, housing improvements on rural estates increased property values and aesthetic appeal. Model cottages were also believed to have moral implications for both

their sponsors and their residents: they improved living conditions and reflected responsible social involvement. They also improved the estate on which they were built, and they did not require dealing with the question of wages.”’

Allotments in England 35

In urban areas, paternalism also prompted some industrialists to undertake housing experiments. A significant number of housing schemes also came about due to the private initiative of philanthropists and in the urban context usually did not include gardens.”* This topic has been covered extensively by architecture historians, but some significant landmarks should be mentioned

here.’ First, Robert Owen’s New Lanark experiment, establishing a model community in Scotland, was initiated by 1799 and had failed by 1829. Colonel Edward Akroyd, a West Riding textile manufacturer, retained the services of the prominent architect Sir George Gilbert Scott to design housing developments at Copley (1849-53) and Akroyden (1861-63). The latter, designed in the vernacular mode, included gardens and allotments. Also in the West Riding, Titus Salt initiated the construction of classical-style housing in Saltaire, near Bradford, in 1851. In addition to a large textile mill and housing, social services and amenities were planned to create a residential community at Saltaire that included gardens along the River Aire. When completed in 1879, Saltaire housed a population of four thousand inhabitants on forty-nine acres (20 hectares), fourteen acres (5.5 hectares) of which were devoted to parks and allotments. Along the River Mersey, in Bromborough Pool, the Price’s Patent Candle Company hired the Lanark architects George Wilson and James Wilson in 1853 to develop housing for its workers, and in 1888, the community of Aintree was developed for the Hartley Jam Company. Both preceded the efforts of Unilever, the chemical company of William Hesketh Lever, along the Mersey. In 1891, Lever purchased the Thornton Manor rural estate and built an ideal village with vernacular features including half-timbering and thatched roofs. In 1888, Lever had also started Port Sunlight close to his Merseyside factory, the first large-scale urban housing in the rural vernacular style, which included gardens. Two other housing projects were initiated by Quaker chocolate manufacturers. In Bournville, George Cadbury sponsored economically sustainable low-density low-cost housing with front and back gardens between 1898 and 1905. At New Earswick, the Rowntree chocolate company hired the architects Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin in 1902 to design housing sited along curved roads with footpath access to dwellings. Parker and Unwin would later work for the Garden Cities Association at Letchworth and prepare the master plan for the Hampstead Garden Suburb.”

EBENEZER HOWARD In the lineage of these model projects, the work of Ebenezer Howard stands out for a number of reasons. Not the least of these reasons is his inclusion of allotments as a staple fixture in his Garden City program. Also, his vision for the implementation of the Garden City concept ona larger scale suggested that the ensuing reduction of overcrowding in London

36 The Working Man’s Green Space

would enable the demolition of slums and provide sites for “parks, recreation grounds, and allotment gardens:’®* Howard was neither a landowner nor an industrialist. He was born in a modest London shopkeeper’s family. Employed as a clerk from the age of fifteen, he spent the years from 1871 to 1876 in the United States, where, after a brief attempt at farming in Nebraska, he worked in Chicago, witnessing the rebuilding of the city after the devastating 1871 fire. Back in England in 1876, he began working for Hansard, the official parliamentary reporter, a position he held for the rest of his life. His responsibilities included recording debates, committees, and commissions, a charge from which he gained intimate exposure to the political process and, by the 1880s, frustration with the government’s inability to devise solutions for worsening urban and labor conditions. Somewhat of a tinkerer and inventor, who had his own workshop, he was interested in new inventions such as the typewriter. Influenced by the writings of Henry George and Peter Kropotkin, as well as the architectural thinking of John Ruskin and William Morris, he was further inspired by reading the American novelist Edward Bellamy’s utopian novel Looking Backward (1888). Howard’s own book, first published as Tomorrow; a Peaceful Path to Real Reform in 1898, provided a new approach to urban design. In what he termed a “Town-Country Magnet” model, he examined what attracted people to the city or to the country. He suggested that the communications and services benefits of the city typically reach an optimal size limit beyond which they lose their efficiency. To remedy this and to incorporate the benefits of the rural environment, he proposed a new form of “town-country” community that would combine the desirable features of both. Located on six thousand acres (2,430 hectares) and designed for thirty thousand people, this community, as envisioned by Howard, would be centered around a circular urban core of one thousand acres (405 hectares) with a .75-mile radius (1.2 kilometers). Six 120-foot-wide (36 meters) boulevards, stretching from center to circumference, would divide the city into six equal wards, further subdivided by five circular concentric avenues. Park areas were planned at the center and within the 420-foot-wide (128 meters) third avenue, to be named Grand Avenue. The proposed average residential lot would be 20 by 130 feet (6 by 40 meters), thus providing each resident space for a garden. The whole would be encircled by a railway, with sidings connecting to a main rail line. Small industries were to be located on the community’s outside circumference, in proximity to the rail line. Beyond the rail belt, the community’s rural belt would include agricultural exploitations and institutions, where various forms of cultivation would be determined by their appropriateness for their intended purpose. These agricultural exploitations were to be connected to the town’s infrastructure and, as Leberecht Migge would also advocate a decade later in

Allotments in England 37

Germany, designed to recycle urban waste. In two diagrams provided by Howard (figs. 6 and 7), allotments, to be rented by laborers, are shown both within and outside the rail belt, the latter rubbing elbows with large farms, small holdings, cow pastures, and so on.” Like the mode of cultivation of these agricultural spaces, which was left to be determined by actual need, many features of this community were not mandated but suggested by Howard as possibilities that might need to be adjusted in the course of development. What he did not leave to be determined was precisely how to finance this operation. As pointed out by Lewis Mumford, Howard was not a dreamer, but a self-made sociologist who gave priority to social and economic factors.®** The land, purchased with long-term financing, was to be owned by the city administration, and the rent was to be used for municipal expenses, including social, educational, and cultural services. The arithmetic provided by Howard is comprehensive and detailed, accounting for every penny of the operation, from building to administration, and taking into account intermediate stages where land earmarked for building could be put into temporary service as allotments, cow pastures, or brickfields.** Howard followed his 1898 publication of Tomorrow with lectures around the country to promote the “Garden City” plan. In 1899 the Garden City Association was founded and began meeting to consider means to implement

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gardens, and certificates for outstanding horticultural accomplishments (see fig. 24). Italso fostered collaboration among associations, federations, and municipalities, and it performed data collection. Voluntary staffing maximized the funding available for assistance, and although it operated with limited means, the Central Office provided institutional consolidation for the implementation

of allotments-related Reichsrat orders. Further, the role of Alwin Bielefeldt at the head of the office provided a link between the Central Office and the ZdASG that was of national import. The office was also instrumental in the issuance of the 4 April 1916 imperial declarations on rental fees and access to municipal land. A 6 March 1916 decree on artificial fertilizers was also due to the work of the Central Office. The Central Office strove to mitigate the greatest obstacles facing allotments: obtaining free land, preventing inordinate increases in rent prices, and controlling the supply of artificial fertilizers. The office was also active in the preparation of the Allotment and Small Holdings Ordinance (Kleingarten und Kleinpachtlandordnung—KGO) of 31 July 1919," as well as the guidelines issued by the state minister of economic affairs on 1 October 1919. Its activities also laid the groundwork for the consolidation of the ZdASG and the ZVKV into the RVKD in 1921. Despite the support of some of the larger allotments federations and of the allotment community in general, the activity of the Central Office was suspended on 1 April 1921 by the Food and Finance ministers.

92 The Working Man’s Green Space

Hartwig Stein challenges the customary rhetoric touting the heroic patriotic contributions of allotment holders, including women and children, to national self-sufficiency during the war. Some of the land made available was unsuitable for cultivation, the results were limited, and most of the land was

gradually turned over to potatoes (ironically a foreign import) or, as a last resort, to rutabaga.*** Stein cites the example of Hamburg, where during the shortages of 1916-17, all harvested potatoes were used for consumption by allotment holders, assuming seeds would be available. For the next growing season, seed potatoes were in short supply, and they were made available first to market gardeners and cultivators, allotment holders only receiving seeds for

late crops and not enough even then. Allotment holders were forced to decide between consuming potatoes and holding back seeds from their meager harvest. If productivity was the sole concern, larger-scale production would have been more effective than allotments. Despite the failure of potato crops to meet the citizenry’s needs, allotments did provide psychological benefits. They were also of therapeutic value, as underscored by the use of gardening in hospitals for wounded and recovering soldiers. Gardens restored a sense of personal agency in a time of helplessness and contributed to making life tolerable. Overnight stays in allotment sheds also came to be gradually tolerated in large cities, as many residents became unable to keep up rent payments, or their homes were destroyed.**? Despite a prevailing shift to potato cultivation in allotments to address basic food-supply needs, the rhetoric of the social, cultural, and educational benefits of allotments retained currency. Toward the end of the war, the concern with

retaining allotments after the end of hostilities, or even converting them to permanent sites, was voiced repeatedly, stressing the importance of gardening activity, not as a matter of the stomach (Magenfrage) but as a way of life (Lebensfrage). The Berlin Federation sought to expand the allotment concept to housing and city planning and established a relocation fund to assist with persons displaced due to the expected postwar resumption of building activity.**° Neither initiative met with substantial support. In 1918, the large number of evictions in the Siidgelande area of the Schoneberg Berlin district led to widespread protest.*** The role of allotments was highlighted in a number of expositions in Altona (28 September-1 October 1917), Hamburg (7-10 September 1918), Frankfurt (“Courtyard and Garden”: Hof und Garten, 13-21 September 1919), and Dresden (“Garden and Child”: Garten und Kind, 18-22 September 1920).'*° During the months following the war, living conditions were aggravated by a number of factors: the return of the soldiers from the front, the repatriation of populations from territories conceded to the enemy, renewed migration to cities, a return to the prewar conservative agricultural strategy, and the slow

Kleingarten in Germany 93

delivery of foreign food assistance. These conditions led to the development of Laubenkolonien in most cities. And unlike in the 1870s, when the Berlin police attempted to eradicate these spontaneous settlements, the Prussian minister for public welfare (Minister fiir Volkswohlfahrt) instructed the police on 7 July 1920 to act with consideration toward the settlers.'*® The allotments became primary residences, still housing thirty-five thousand Berlin families in 1923. The role allotments were capable of playing in food supply, housing, and unemployment, and the recognition of these factors by the authorities, created a climate where the previously debated concept of land reform could take a

firmer hold among various segments of the population. Allotments, small holdings, and Siedlungen represented a three-pronged approach to greater selfsufficiency and enjoyed support from progressive landscape designers such as Leberecht Migge.**’ War shortages had encouraged local authorities to recognize allotments as valuable and had prompted national support through a series of emergency decrees that mandated putting vacant land under cultivation and protected tenants against abusive rents as well as lease terminations. These measures formed the basis of the 1919 Allotment and Small Holdings Ordinance (Kleingarten und Kleinpachtlandordnung—KGO).

Allotment and Small Holding Ordinance of 1919 (Kleingarten- und Kleinpachtlandordnung) Allotment holders hoped that the postwar German government would promote land reform. Since the founding of the League of Land Reformers (Bund Deutscher Bodenreformer) on 4 April 1898 by the Berlin journalist and former educator (Volksschullehrer) Adolf Damaschke, land reform (Bodenreform) had gradually shifted from agricultural socialism inspired by Thomas Spence to advocacy for taxing land value as outlined by Henry George. This shift from the reform of landownership to the reform of land taxation was reflected in the constitution of the Weimar Republic, adopted on 11 August 1919. The landreform Article 155 of the German Reich constitution was closely connected to its Article 153, which guaranteed private ownership of land.*** Between 1919 and 1929, only 22,600 small holdings were settled nationwide, 18,630 as a result of the 10 May 1919 settlement law (Reichsheimstdttengesetz), the rest for resettled civil servants. A clause in the land-reform article stipulated that, in exceptional cases of special need, homesteading land parcels could be made available for nonprofit gardening. By 1931, only 2,141 acres (867 hectares) out of the 41,637 acres (16.857 hectares, or 5.1 percent) under allotment cultivation had been granted under this clause, according to RVKD statistics.**” On 8 January 1919 the Central Association of Allotment Holders, Settlers,

94 The Working Man’s Green Space

and Cultivating Landowners (Zentralverband der Kleingartner, Siedler und bodennutzenden Grundbesitzer e.V.) submitted a petition through the War Committee of the Greater Berlin Laubenkolonien (Kriegsausschuf$ der GrofsBerliner Laubenkolonien) to the Council of Representatives and to the Ministry of the Food Supply, but the matter had already reached the attention of the Ministry of Agriculture. This petition included a substantial list of requests: the

extension of allotment measures to communities of fewer than ten thousand inhabitants; the determination of rents based on agricultural rates; the increase of fines for excessive rent increases; the limitation of expulsions to reasons of public utility such as construction; the need for the majority vote of allotment holders on a given site for eviction of individual holders; the institution of a grievance process; multiyear leases; the appointment of municipalities as responsible authorities; reform of the lease system; and the abolition of commercial rental agents, to be replaced by public interest societies. In response to this petition, Alwin Bielefeldt, then president of the Central Office for Produce Cultivation in Allotments (Zentralstelle fiir den Gemiisebau im Kleingarten), was charged on 1 February 1919 by the national Ministry of Food Supply (Reichsernahrungsministerium) with issuing a position statement on allotments.**° This statement was presented to a council meeting of the Central Office on 23 February 1919, in the presence of a representative from the National Ministry of Agriculture.*** With some encouragement from the press, this resulted in draft legislation submitted to the National Assembly on 12 May, with amendments suggested by the Berlin Federation of Allotment Holders on 23 June. The law was adopted on 19 July 1919 and published on 31 July.*** The resulting Allotment and Small Holdings Ordinance (Kleingarten- und Kleinpachtlandordnung—KGO) was a short document of ten paragraphs. Its preamble outlined the significance and agricultural, health, and moral benefits of allotments for urban populations."** According to this introductory text, these benefits had already been acknowledged before 1914, and they had earned greater recognition during the war. They included healthful activity, substantial production of produce, small animal husbandry, assistance to the underprivileged, education, and continued contact of urban residents with the land. The first article of the KGO defined allotments as a form of land use for non-income-producing gardening. Beyond restricting allotments to private use, the first article prohibited raising rental fees for land above those determined by the administrative authorities, based on local circumstances, the production capacity of the terrain, and expert assessment. The second article determined that the applicability of the first article included payments to be made as of the date when the KGO became

effective on rental agreements predating the legislation. Article 3 stipulated

Kleingarten in Germany 95

that renewal of leases was to be the norm, evictions or nonrenewals justified only by “an important reason” (wichtiger Grund). The fourth article instituted provisions for the administrative and legal disposition of disagreements pertaining to rental arrangements, fees, and fines by local authorities. Article 5 restricted rental and management of allotments to public utility associations or public authorities and granted the latter the prerogative to lease parcels to be offered as allotments by eminent domain against the will of the owner. Article 6 defined the competence of district offices of the ombudsman in matters pertaining to dealings between lessor and lessees. Article 7 determined the respective competence of the local and regional authorities for districts without an ombudsman. Article 8 stated the applicability of articles 1 to 7 of this legislation to rental of plots of up to 1.24 acres (0.5 hectare) for agricultural use. Article 9 stipulated that all commercial land-rental agreements would expire on 30 September 1919 and provided for compensation claims for lessors affected by this clause. The last article stipulated when the law was to become effective and listed the prior legislation it superseded. The KGO thus included provisions that offered rent and eviction protection, did away with speculation as well as abusive rental agreements, and made it possible to shake off the yoke of the Generalpdchter.‘** The recommended extent of an allotment was articulated in guidelines issued by the Central Ministry of Commerce (Reichswirtschaftsminister) to the federal states (Lander) on 1 October 1919. The recommended maximal area for an allotment was 747 square yards (625 square meters), which could exceptionally be increased up to 1,196 square yards (1,000 square meters). The war regulations that promoted allotment cultivation fell short of providing full protection for allotment holders and could not address the issue of land shortage, but these regulations served as the basis for the KGO. This law provided enhanced legal protection for the allotment movement but fell short of a legal reconfiguration of allotments that integrated them into rural or urban development plans and guaranteed lasting tenure on cultivated plots. In the aftermath of the passing of the KGO and the new political context at the state and local levels, allotment associations were prompted to recalibrate their efforts and redefine the role of allotments. The charitable and utilitarian aspects of the gardens were gradually superseded. The charitable patronage of allotments was a significant issue in the 1921 consolidation of the two federations, the ZdASG and the ZVKYV, as the patriarchal administration of the Red

Cross gardens had been a constituting member of the ZdASG. This matter was successfully negotiated during a 1921 Pentecost meeting in Neuk6lln.** As for the utilitarian nature of allotments, a gradual shift from agricultural use to educational, public health, and leisure functions took place during the

96 The Working Man’s Green Space

following decades. However, post-1919 instability in the Weimar Republic and

the postwar resumption of building activity prevented the RVKD, instituted in 1921, from furthering the cause of allotments. The organization was put in a precarious position by currency inflation and forced to operate in a defensive rather than an offensive mode in its efforts to foster the implementation of the KGO. The RVKD struggled to maintain the status quo, rather than deploying its resources to gain terrain.

Kleingarten in Germany 97

4 Jardins ouvriers in France

Antecedents in France As of the Middle Ages, plots of land on the outskirts of French cities were made available to the needy or to tradesmen by guilds and convents." They were given different names: the “poor man’s furrows” (sillons du pauvre) in the Ardennes or Vendée or the “poor man’s field” (champ du pauvre) in Lower Brittany. During the seventeenth century, St. Vincent de Paul created family gardens called “gardens of St. Fiacre” (jardins de Saint-Fiacre), honoring the patron saint of gardeners. As of 1850, a conference of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul began giving gardens to the needy in the Ardennes. ‘This practice was adopted later in the century by other conferences, also under the auspices of the society, which had been established in 1833 by French students under the guidance of Blessed

Frederic Ozanam. The gardens were one of a number of forms of assistance through labor that conferences began deploying during the second half of the nineteenth century. The conferences would provide seeds and loan tools to cultivate parcels made available free of charge to needy families, allowing them to grow their own potatoes. St. Vincent de Paul conferences would also work on enlisting the support of municipalities and well-to-do landowners. For instance, in 1853 land was made available in Nancy by the city and local landowners, while the conference donated seeds and fertilizer and lent tenants tools. In

addition to contributing to the material welfare of the garden recipients, the St. Vincent de Paul projects also began to promote the concept of the moralizing impact of self-help through labor. The efforts of the St. Vincent de Paul conferences were inscribed within the wider context of social Catholicism addressing working-class poverty. A report to the Committee of Public Utility (Comité d'utilité publique), made in 1852 by Dr. Perrot, proposed allotments as a solution to social problems: “If we give everyone a little garden, where, awaiting his humble harvest, he will learn to appreciate the instinct of ownership that Providence has given us, shall we not have solved one of the problems of social economics? Shall we not have contributed to tightening the sacred bounds of the family and provided a genuine service to our working class and to society?” In addition to the initiatives of the conferences of the Society of St. Vincent

de Paul, miners from the town of Anzin, in the department of the Nord, organized a small cooperative for seed procurement around 1875. This operation gradually extended to the whole northern mining region. In 1920 the cooperative was taken over by an industrialist from nearby Valenciennes, who turned it into a philanthropic foundation while organizing the seed-distribution program as a successful business.” During the first half of the nineteenth century, industrialists were prompted by fermenting proletarian unrest to adopt a number of steps to reduce threats to social order and to promote social peace. Home ownership and the possession of a small field were viewed as an antidote to rootlessness and as prerequisites to individuals becoming full participating members of society. In the Nivernais, Emile Martin, who founded the Fourchambault works in 1825, was intent on operating his factory according to moral principles. He wanted to set up a number of families as small cultivators, believing that the ability to work the land after the factory shift was the worker’s most valuable resource.

Martin wanted to see workers provided with enough land to cover part of their expenses, buy a cow, and keep a pig. Grazing pasture, as well as plowing and manuring of the land, should also be provided. Martin’s moralizing strategy sought to turn the factory worker into a small cultivator in order to make the family a cornerstone of the industrial concern.* Other industrialists also made housing and a garden available to their workers, but unlike Martin, their primary goal was to stabilize their workforce. Mining and metallurgy concerns such as Le Creusot provided workers with amenities that created a company-centered culture.’ At the 1867 Paris Universal Exposition, prizes in a special category were awarded to industrialists who had initiated programs to achieve harmonious collaboration between owners and workers. One of the most highly prized initiatives was the alliance of factory and agricultural labor. These projects took different forms, including factory workers cultivating gardens that were rented or sold with their dwelling, workers owning and cultivating land, large agricultural concerns associated with a factory and cultivated by

the owner or the workers, and agricultural workers operating a manufacturing plant.° The allotment (jardin ouvrier) of the turn of the twentieth century would emerge from these initiatives by industrialists. Also, as will be discussed

later in this chapter, gardens provided by industrial concerns would experience another wave of development during the 1930s, for example, the gardens provided by Peugeot and the French railways.

Jardins ouvriers in France from 1871 to 1919 The organized institution of French allotment gardens had a later start than its counterparts in Britain or Germany. This can be attributed to the general social

Jardins ouvriers in France 99

and political context in France. In the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789, greater emphasis was placed on political rather than social equality.’ The concept of the right to assistance, which had been articulated along with other revolutionary tenets, assumed a low profile as of the Directory (1795-99). It did not resurface until the end of the nineteenth century, when the French Republic became stable enough to address social issues. As occurred in most other

European countries during the course of the nineteenth century, the state’s role expanded to regulate trade, stimulate industry, and seek to redress social inequities.* In France, legislation protecting the right to work and introducing social-welfare provisions emerged slowly during the two decades beginning around 1890. This late deployment of social initiatives by the French Republic contrasts markedly with Germany, where Bismarck provided the impetus for a comprehensive pioneering body of social legislation as of 1880.’ In addi-

tion, unlike with education, for instance, no branch of the government had responsibility for social welfare, leaving assistance to the private initiative of prominent figures, who were frequently influenced by their religious or political afhliation. Since the Restoration (1815), French political life had been polarized among

four competing factions: bonapartists, royalists, constitutional monarchists, and republicans. After the Second Empire (1852-70), ending with the FrancoPrussian War and the Paris Commune (1871), these four factions resurfaced during the first decades of the Third Republic, which governed France from 1870 until 1940. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, another group emerged, the Christian Democrats, who attempted to reconcile their allegiance to the lawfully established Republic with their Catholic faith and values. The Christian Democrats constituted an assertion of the right as the left gained currency among industrial labor and reduced clerical influence on working-class populations. Mindful of the evolutionary forces that were putting in question the role of the Church, Pope Leo XIII (pope, 1878-1903) issued the encyclical Rerum Novarum (Of new things) on 15 May 1891. In this document, he encouraged a more socially engaged form of Catholic ministry. Intent on making the

life and work of Roman Catholics an integral part of the modern world, the influential pope pointed to the Christian principles inherent in certain aspects of socialism and to the practice of Christian values as a means to eliminate class struggle. He thus opened the way for dissociating the Roman Catholic Church from the paternalistic, conservative political and social structures of capitalism. Although French bishops were the appropriate channel for disseminating papal directives, they responded to the papal edict in a lukewarm and cautious manner. The encyclical had more impact on some of the lower echelons of the clerical hierarchy, among priests who had direct contact with the working class.

100 The Working Man’s Green Space

Three Catholic Initiatives

Among the Catholic social programs initiated during the Third Republic, workers’ gardens ( jardins ouvriers) were the most significant.*® Within a politi-

cally divided context, aggravated by industrialization and urbanization, three separate welfare and social-hygiene initiatives constituted the foundations of the workers’ gardens movement during the last decade of the nineteenth century: The development of the doctrine of an earth-bound program called terrianisme, advocated by Dr. Lancry; the philanthropic work of Madame Félicie Hervieu in Sedan; and that of Father Volpette in Saint-Etienne. DR. LANCRY AND TERRIANISME Asa young physician in Dunkirk, Dr. Gustave Lancry encouraged his relative Dr. Louis Lancry to write a doctoral thesis

on the population of neighboring Fort-Mardick, on which he had collected data.** This small fishing community had been granted territorial privileges under Louis XIV and continued the custom of awarding every marrying couple

that met residency criteria the use of six-tenths of an acre (twenty-four ares, or twenty-four hundred square meters) on which they would build a modest home that could be expanded as their young family grew. Enjoying remarkably good health, the family-oriented population also lived in a tightly knit community free of social strife and alcoholism. Dr. Gustave Lancry was keenly aware of the sharp contrast in public health between the small seafaring village, on which he had focused his research, and the city of Dunkirk, where he worked as a physician for the workers’ union. At a lecture he delivered to a mostly socialist audience on 4 September 1892, his proposal to advocate for twenty-four ares for every family was so well received that he began an active campaign for what he called “family property” (bien de famille). In collaboration with some members of the clergy, he gave lectures and promoted his agenda in publications such as La Terre de France (Soil of France) and La Justice Sociale (Social justice). This activity led to the foundation of an earth-bound movement

that Lancry termed terrianisme. The terrianiste doctrine advocated making twenty-four ares available to each family, an allocation that it justified as a natural entitlement of man to a parcel of land where his labor could provide for his needs.**

MADAME HERVIEU IN SEDAN In the northern town of Sedan, Madame Feé-

licie Hervieu, the head of a textile business, had provided assistance for many years to a large indigent family, without any lasting impact on its material circumstances.** She asked the father of the family to set aside a monthly sum (3 francs), and she contributed double that amount (6 francs) each month. At

Jardins ouvriers in France 101

the end of the year, she persuaded the father to invest the savings (108 francs) into renting and cultivating a plot of land that would soon yield produce for the family and a small income from the sale of the surplus. This strategy had a more enduring impact in providing for the family. In addition to cultivat-

ing the plot, the family developed the habit of spending leisure time in the garden. Inspired by the success of this project, Madame Hervieu decided to expand her program. In 1892, she founded the Association for the Reconstitution of the Family (Oeuvre de la reconstitution de la famille), which distrib-

uted land to needy families and provided assistance in obtaining seeds and fertilizer, as well as some horticultural expertise. By the third year, gardeners were able to purchase their own seeds and fertilizer. Madame Hervieu developed additional components of her family-oriented assistance with the aims of supporting the honest worker in his efforts to raise his family and of offering each child the necessary moral protection in his progress toward productive adulthood. Thanks to Dr. Lancry’s influence and activity, the terrianiste program, which supported the election of the Catholic abbé Lemire to the House of Representatives in 1893, had received some national notoriety. Now, the abbé’s agenda—to provide each worker with a permanent home

and garden acquired by his own labor, exempt from property and inheritance taxes—encouraged Madame Hervieu to send him a report on her own project.**

FATHER VOLPETTE IN SAINT-ETIENNE In the mining and industrial southeastern town of Saint-Etienne, Father Volpette would implement jardins ouvriers on an unprecedented scale.*’ As part of the faculty of the Jesuit College Saint-Michel, Father Volpette had witnessed firsthand the ineffectiveness of conventional assistance among the large unemployed population of the city. An economic crisis was paralyzing the three major local industries: mining, metallurgy (state and private weapons manufacturing), and ribbon making. After reading an article about Madame Hervieu’s Sedan program, published in the 4 January 1895 issue of the newspaper Le Temps, Father Volpette shared the information with workers and management. The workers’ favorable response and the availability of land for lease in the city encouraged him to rent a field on the hill past the railway station, which he divided into some thirty lots, each averaging one-tenth of an acre (four hundred square meters). The plots in this field, along with those on two smaller parcels that occupied a total of almost five acres (two hectares), were assigned to workers by drawing lots. During the first year, 1894-95, ninety-eight families including 608 people obtained gardens, along with tools, seeds, and fertilizer. The individual plots were delineated fairly easily, but bringing water to this raised location presented more of

102 The Working Man’s Green Space

a challenge. The workers were enlisted to help address this crucial need, and by 1899, the project included 375 gardens (with the groundwork laid for 410 and plans for an additional 170 plots). Despite the availability of more land and additional requests for gardens, Father Volpette was unable to stretch his fundraising efforts to support further expansion. Still, a conservative estimate of the value of the harvested produce and potatoes over the past four years amounted to a fourfold return on the invested funds, including operating expenses. Father Volpette devised a set of simple rules to administer the gardens. These rules included only four conditions: that the land be carefully cultivated, that the Sabbath be observed (on Sunday and public holidays), that the plot not be subletted, and that no action be taken that could harm the good name of the project. The gardens were managed by a two-tier structure of elected representatives. A lower echelon, which managed the field, included one representative per every five families and held quarterly meetings. The upper-level council met once a year to determine the budget for each field, accept new applications, expel families who had violated the rules, mediate conflicts between individual families and the lower-level councils, and edit the by-laws as needed (without modifying the four basic rules). Despite this participatory structure, where Father Volpette only had ex-officio capacity as an observer, he remained in fact the main driving force and administrator of the gardens. Some of these gardens had been established in areas of the city considered socialist territory, but the awarding of plots was not based on denominational preferences or priorities, although the potential impact of the Catholic values inherent in the project was not discouraged, and the gardens were credited with resulting in some baptisms, marriages, and more regular church attendance among the gardeners and their families. In addition to the gardens, Father Volpette also enabled some housing development on a very small scale (twelve houses by 1899).*° Initially, some of the sheds built on the gardens were expanded into makeshift housing with recycled materials. More solid construction for large families required some capital, which Father Volpette procured at low interest by establishing a guarantee fund as collateral for bank financing. He also experimented with developing an inexpensive brick constructed from mining residues. While Father Volpette did actively support other social programs, such as the development of the National Fund for Old Age Pensions (Caisse nationale des retraites pour la vieillesse), the gardens were his most noteworthy and successful project.

Labbé Lemire Against the backdrop of the divided Catholic context during the last decade of the nineteenth century, the figure of the abbé Jules Auguste Lemire is central to

Jardins ouvriers in France 103

a ee 25 ae , wad 2 Co FIGURE 25. Portrait of abbé Lemire, Studio Anthony. (Bibliotheque nationale

i de France, Département des Estampes et

a” _ de la photographie, N 2, fol. Portraits, vol. 3—,@25 1026, D188163) the rise of the workers’ garden movement (see fig. 25). Born in Vieux-Berquin near Hazebrouck (French Flanders), in a family of farmers with a tradition of church service, he was ordained a priest in 1878."’ The first years of his ministry were spent as a teacher of rhetoric and philosophy in Catholic preparatory schools, most notably at St. Francis of Assisi College and the seminary in Hazebrouck, where he had been a student. During his teaching years, his contributions to the Catholic press provided a public forum for his dedication to the Republic, as advocated by Leo XII. He was also strongly influenced by the founder of social Catholicism, Cardinal Henry Manning, whom he visited in England in 1888. The abbé Lemire’s commitment to social democracy was rooted in a deep attachment to the working class, agricultural and industrial, from which he originated, and a desire to bring about social justice that would improve living conditions for all. His political activity was frowned upon by the diocesan administration, which objected to but could not prevent his decision to run for national office. In 1893, after an energetic populist campaign, he was elected a deputy to the House of Representatives, representing Hazebrouck, a town in the Nord department. As noted above, Gustave Lancry and his group, including a number of Catholic priests, had supported the abbé Lemire in his campaign after the latter agreed to adopt and promote the terrianiste agenda. Shortly after his election, the abbé Lemire was the most seriously wounded victim of a bomb attack in the House Chamber on 9 December 1893. His injuries and his compassionate response to the perpetrator earned him sympathetic national notoriety and acceptance among his peers. Consistently reelected until his death, he would eventually sit on the left, unconcerned by radical anticleri-

104 The Working Man’s Green Space

calism. Earning popularity with his unassuming ways, dedication, rhetorical skills, tenacity, and consistent social agenda, he would be elected to the vice presidency of the House on 13 January 1914, as a token of support in response to his recent suspension as a priest by the ecclesiastical authorities.** This suspension was rescinded in July 1916, with the encouragement of Pope Benedict XV (pope, 1914-22), who considered it advisable, given the lack of substantial religious grounds for the sanction and the support enjoyed by the deputy, to “give the abbé his mass back.”*”

The abbé Lemire’s liberal position was based on a few simple principles to which he remained consistently dedicated. The republican state was not a rupture with the royalist past and its traditions, but a historical development. Like the clergy who had joined with the third estate to draft the Déclaration des droits de [Homme et du Citoyen (Declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen) during the French Revolution, the Catholic clergy now were dutybound to be integral participants in the Third Republic. Lemire believed that democracy included everybody, although he did not support universal suffrage: he considered that a family man should have more political weight than a bachelor. His support for the family rested on his belief that its disintegration was at the root of social problems. The cohesiveness of family life had always been tied to landownership, and the government had an obligation to support measures that enabled workers to retain their attachment to the land and to own a plot to cultivate. In 1894, the abbé Lemire spoke in support of the law of 1884 that guaranteed the right of association, a law that was supported by the church since it discouraged individualism. He saw professional associations or trade unions as a way to solve conflicts between labor and capital and a means to achieve his vision of political and social democracy.*° Other parliamentary activity by Lemire focused on legislation regarding observance of Sunday rest, the payment of workers’ wages at the factory (not at the local café), the sixty-hour work week and eleven-hour workday, night shifts, women and children in factories, assistance to women after childbirth, financial assistance to families with at least three children, and the simplification of marriage procedures. In 1899 he also requested the creation of a Labor Ministry. He remained consistently hostile to financial capitalism and speculation. He rejected the anonymous flow of capital, described by Georg Simmel as the hallmark of urban life, to instead advocate attachment to the land, which he conceived as remaining constant.** However, his position on capital did not espouse the anti-Semitism frequently associated with distrust of financial establishments.* In addition to his public mandate in the House of Representatives, in 1914 the abbé Lemire was also elected mayor of Hazebrouck, where the significant

Jardins ouvriers in France 105

modern developments he initiated were designed to remain congenial to rural constituents. TERRIANISME Influenced by his rural roots, the abbé Lemire was also mindful of the twenty-six million voters in the French rural districts who supported a conservative “Christian democracy.’ His first electoral campaign had been

supported by Gustave Lancry’s terrianistes, who advocated providing each man with his own patch of land. Imbricated in the social Catholicism spurred by De Rerum Novarum, support for landownership remained a major concern in the political career of the abbé Lemire. He advocated small, dispossessionproof estates to be considered as a family patrimony, sometimes referred to as homesteads, as understood in the American context. Promulgated under the name terrianisme, this doctrine was influenced by the social theories of Frédéric Le Play and other social reformers. First formulated in an address to the Christian Workers’ Congress on 13 May 1894, the abbé Lemire’s terrianiste program consistently advocated the intrinsic goodness of the earth, the fruit of creation and man’s natural domain, as well as the redemptive value of agricul-

tural as opposed to industrial labor. In the political arena this position translated into proposals promoting protectionist measures for agriculture, land-tax reduction or exemption, the creation of agricultural chambers, and measures to provide permanent family homesteads consisting of a home and land with a total value not exceeding eight thousand francs (thirty thousand dollars). The abbé Lemire also advocated that the property not be divided among heirs but passed on whole to one of them, which would encourage more rural settlement and a shift to a growing agricultural economy. His first proposal for legislation, on 18 July 1894, aimed at creating the fam-

ily estate or homestead (bien de famille). Submitted again on 23 June 1898, the proposal did not reap concrete results until 1908,*° but its content gained currency in public opinion. Opposed to nineteenth-century industrialism, terrianisme proposed to put workers back in contact with the earth and the clean air of the fields, which would reinvigorate their bodies and their moral fiber, countering the anticlerical and debilitating influence of the factory. A sturdier, patriotic stock would also defend the land of its forefathers, the French nation and its soil, rather than support international socialism. This patriotism was conceived by the abbé Lemire as a quintessential support of the Republic, its institutions, and the principle of individual freedom they implied and guaranteed: “One can say that [the social project of access to land] is in harmony with the social mission of the Republic because it guarantees human dignity and the rights of man and of the citizen that are inscribed in the principles of 89, it gives

roots and a footing on the very soil of the homeland ... this earth we came from, and where, according to the words of the Bible, as dust, we will return?**

106 The Working Man’s Green Space

By the time the abbé Lemire received Madame Hervieu’s report describing the Sedan experiment in late 1893, he had been in office for a few weeks. He had already determined that legislation promoting family homesteads would require a lengthy, hard-fought battle. A garden would be a first step that could be achieved much more quickly. He forwarded Madame Hervieu's report to Gustave Lancry, who coined the phrase jardin ouvrier (worker's garden) and publicized the project through his own communication channels.*” During his first speech in Paris in February 1894, the abbé Lemire mentioned jardins ouvriers as a first step toward the family homestead.*° From then on, he would make a point of mentioning workers gardens in every speech he made, while Lancry included mention of them in every issue of Justice Sociale.*’ As of 1894, such gardens had been established in Montreuil-sur-Mer, Saint-Etienne, Besancon, and Boulogne-sur-Mer. The abbé Lemire’s assessment that gardens were a more realistic goal than housing turned out to be accurate. After the groundbreaking for an initial workers’ housing project in 1888, the French Society for Moderately Priced Housing (Société francaise des habitations a bon marché) was founded in 1889, presided over by Deputy Jules Siegfried. The 1891 national census revealed disturbing conditions that encouraged the passing of a housing reform act, the law of 30 November 1894, known as the Loi Siegfried.** This legislation failed to shift funding for housing from the private sector to public subsidies, resulting in encouragement for privately financed housing societies to build low-cost housing (habitations a bon marché—HBM). Despite subsequent legislative attempts to increase the scope of the Loi Sieg-

fried and address the problems of insalubrious housing, during the prewar years building remained in the hands of private societies whose returns were more secure in the higher-end housing market. LIGUE DU COIN DE TERRE ET DU FOYER Within his district, the abbé Lemire promoted the terrianiste agenda by creating agricultural associations and, most significantly for the jardins ouvriers, the French League of the Plot of Land and Hearth (Ligue francaise du coin de terre et du foyer). The abbé Gruel, a French priest, had created gardens for his parishioners in the Pas-de-Calais village of Oignies, where he had ministered before retiring in Belgium. There he met the much younger printer and publisher Joseph Goemaere and with him founded in Brussels the League of the Plot of Land and Permanent Home for the Reconstitution of the Working-Class Family (Ligue du coin de terre et du foyer insaisissable pour la reconstitution de la famille ouvriére). He met with the abbé Lemire during the summer of 1896 and came to Hazebrouck on 21 October 1896 for a meeting that brought together the abbé Lemire, Gustave Lancry, and a number of terrianiste supporters. This group founded the French sister league, the League of the Plot of Land and Hearth (Ligue du coin de terre

Jardins ouvriers in France 107

et du foyer). The founding of the league was announced publicly at the Christian Democrat Congress in Lyon on 19 November 1896. The French league proposed to “study, propagate, and implement by all means within its powers all the measures to establish the family on its natural and divine base, which is the possession of land and home.””’ Its statutes included such agenda items as permanent use of a patch of land for cultivation, a suitable home for the honest laboring family, support for the construction of affordable workers’ housing, and advocacy of family homestead legislation. The league's ambitious program was off to a slow start, with publication of its first newsletter in November 1897. Approved as an association on 27 June 1897, the league established its headquarters at the abbé Lemire’s Paris residence, 26 rue Lhomond. Its tangible accomplishments would primarily be in creation of and support for workers’ gardens (jardins ouvriers).°° The development of jardins ouvriers with the encouragement of the league would take place while the Catholic context was becoming increasingly polarized during the first decade of the twentieth century. The division became more acute, with conservative Catholics beholden to the clerical hierarchy and more liberal members of the church seeking ways to adapt the practice of their faith to a secular republic. This was due in part to the papacy of Pius X (pope, 1903-14), who only partially espoused Leo XIII’s encouragement to social action, advocating instead emphasis on spiritual concerns and a return to a more conservative social agenda. ‘This division was further exacerbated during the papacy of Pius X when the Concordat of 1801 between Napoleon I and Pius VII, which determined the status of the Catholic Church in France, was replaced by the July 1905 law on the separation of church and state.** Catholic resistance to this separation and its implementation, especially in the area of education,

remained divisive and had lasting impact on public opinion. Although the abbé Lemire had voted, with all Catholics, against the law of separation, his addresses to the House and other statements of his position had been more nuanced. He stated his belief that the church could redefine its status and mission within a secular state, and he supported free public education common to all with provisions for religious instruction in any denomination as requested by each family. This position was considered subversive enough to encourage his suspension as cleric from 1914 to 1916. Although this sanction did not prevent his reelection in the House until his death in 1928 or his election as mayor of Hazebrouck in 1914, the abbé Lemire no longer enjoyed full Catholic endorsement and progressively veered to the left, where he had consistently enjoyed significant support. The eroding of the abbé’s electoral base resulted in his more isolated position as a politician and in limited endorsement for what would become reduced legislative activity.°* Further, although jardins ouvriers

108 The Working Man’s Green Space

tended to be viewed in a positive light, even by the abbé Lemire’s opponents and the church hierarchy, his reduced political stature impaired the potential for the gardens’ full social impact.*° THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS, 1903 As jardins ouvriers had been

considerably developed by 1903, the abbé Lemire organized a meeting of all involved parties, including foreign delegates who, in some capacity, participated in providing gardens for workers. The First International Congress of the Jardins ouvriers was held in Paris on 24 and 25 October 1903, attracting eight hundred participants.** Approved by a significant number of bishops, the congress brought together members of the clergy, philanthropists, Christian Democrats, politicians, academics, and physicians. Keynote speakers included prominent politicians, members of the clergy, and physicians. In his address to the congress, Louis Riviere (the vice president of the league) reported on the recent nationwide survey he had conducted: 134 projects were providing 6,453 gardens administered by 294 associations over 665 acres (269 hectares). As the gardens were a family-oriented activity, he estimated that with an average of seven family members per garden, 46,144 individuals were affected by their operation. Many gardens were organized by individuals (including twenty-two priests),°” but many were also managed by societies of mutual assistance, private associations such as the Anti-Alcohol League, conferences of the Society of St. Vincent-de-Paul, welfare organizations, and municipalities. Although there had been a handful of outright land donations, the common pattern for most associations (legally constituted and approved under the stipulations of the law of 1 July 1901) was to rent the land for the gardens. The associations used a wide array of strategies to obtain and make accessible seeds, fertilizer, and tools for the plot holders. They also differed on whether they allowed resale of the produce or required observance of Sunday rest, a point that resulted in a heated debate in which ecclesiastics were, unexpectedly, more open-minded than some of the other participants. Many of these gardens were organized for members of specific trades such as customs officers, state police, lock workers, military personnel, school employees, and clergy. The railway companies also provided land for their employees. Associations could be independent or afhliated with the league, either as dues-paying autonomous members or through local chapters of the central league. As the financial investment required to create a garden was not substantial, state or municipal subsidies were rare, private donations of funds being the most common means of obtaining start-up capital.*°

The congress fostered communication and exchanges of information related

to the gardens’ physical features, such as the construction of sheds, arbors,

Jardins ouvriers in France 109

and communal facilities. It also provided a forum for statements about the gardens impact on public-health concerns, such as infantile mortality, rickets, tuberculosis, and alcoholism, and on their role within social programs such as mutual-assistance societies and church patronal activities. The name to be used for the gardens was also debated. Madame Hervieu advocated energetically in favor of the phrase “reconstitution of the family” (reconstitution de la famille), but Gustave Lancry pointed out that the term jardins ouvriers, which he had coined, encapsulated the two key concepts of factory labor and tilling the earth. The gardens were also a step toward the reconstitution of the family, which the league supported. The term jardins ouvriers prevailed, but Madame Hervieu’s attempts to stress the importance of the family were nonetheless significant.’ Social legislation to protect women and children, including the 1892 law limiting women’s and children’s labor, sought to increase a national birth rate that had remained flat since 1870, increasing France’s vulnerability to Germany. Paid maternity leave and subsidies for mothers of large families would not be voted into law until 1913. Madame Hervieu’s emphasis on the family, no doubt grounded in her Catholic values, also reflected a national agenda. SUBSEQUENT CONGRESSES Subsequent congresses in 1906, 1909, and 1912 also featured notable speakers and gathered clergy, politicians, philanthropists,

and physicians.** Although the number of attendants remained similar, episcopal support was withdrawn after the 1905 separation of church and state. This resulted in decreased participation by the clergy, offset by increased participation among physicians. Recurring themes discussed at these congresses included the role of private initiative in providing assistance and the superiority of assistance through labor over charity because self-assistance stressed the dignity of labor and the benefits of individual agency. Gardening was seen as a fresh-air activity that encouraged spending time with the family rather than at the cabaret. Like members of the upper classes who enjoyed their villas on Sundays, the worker could rest on his little bit of “country estate” The garden instilled in the lower class a love for the land, encouraging responsibility, frugality, and planning, thus providing training toward home ownership and discouraging revolutionary activity.*” Even in the more populous Paris suburbs such as Ivry, Saint-Ouen, and Saint-Denis, hotbeds of social activism, the gardens brought peace, turning factory comrades into men.*” Contact with nature was also thought to bring man closer to God. Although jardins ouvriers were frequently the result of Catholic initiative, they were usually nondenominational in their implementation, bringing together Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and nonbelievers. As noted by JeanBaptiste Piolet in his 1899 account of Father Volpette’s work in Saint-Etienne,

110 The Working Man’s Green Space

TABLE 4. French allotment gardens between 1903 and 1996

Projects Gardens Area (in acres)

1903 134 6,453 665 1906 216 12,081 1,122 1909 260 15,415 1,149 1912 281 17,825 1,359

1920 47,000 1927 56,700 1946 600,000 1970 140,000 1975 1996 135,000 170,000

more information was made public on Protestant or Jewish charities than on their Catholic counterparts.** For the abbé Lemire, denominational neutrality implied respect for the human freedom of conscience. Other garden advocates hoped that the Catholic example, provided by both benefactors and gardeners, would pave the way for greater clerical influence.** On the other hand, the debate over work on Sunday and concern that the initiative and responsibility fostered by cultivating a plot of land might lead to collectivist subversion revealed reservations on the part of some Catholics about the benefits of the gardens.*°

Statistics included in the reports of the congresses show rapid garden growth between 1903 and 1906, followed by slower development— in 1903: 134 projects with 6,453 gardens on 665 acres (269 hectares); in 1906: 216 projects with 12,081 gardens on 1,122 acres (454 hectares); in 1909: 260 projects with 15,415 gardens on 1,149 acres (465 hectares); and in 1912: 281 projects with 17,825 gardens on 1,359 acres (550 hectares) (see table 4). Across the French territory, most of the gardens were located in the north and east; they were, for the most part, absent from the southwest. Jean-Marie Mayeur, the abbé Lemire’s biographer, suggests that jardins ouvriers were most successful where a gardening

tradition existed, such as in Flanders or Picardy, within smaller communities where land was accessible and where the population had retained rural ways.** In order to encourage gardens around Paris, the abbé Lemire founded the Society for the Jardins ouvriers of Paris and Suburbs (Société des jardins ouvriers de Paris et de la banlieue) in 1904, resulting in projects such as those in Ivry, Saint-Ouen, and on the fortifications. It is possible that the implantation of jardins ouvriers in the Paris region was facilitated by the receding role of market gardening by 1900. This was due in part to the promotion of public parks

Jardins ouvriers in France Ill

by Jean-Charles Alphand, an associate of the Second Empire Paris administrator George-Eugene Haussmann, which had resulted in the appropriation of market-gardening land for landscaping projects; the development of sewer gardening further away from the city; and the ensuing retreat of the market gardeners into a smaller, upscale market for early primeur vegetables.*” THE EVOLUTION OF LEGISLATION Societies of jardins ouvriers had several

options to gain legal standing. The form of a declared association (association déclarée), according to the law of 1901, was the most prevalent. Two other options were to organize as low-cost housing associations (habitations a bon marché —HBM,), according to the laws of 1894 and 1906 (and later 1922), or as civil societies (sociétés civiles) or cooperative societies (sociétés cooperatives), under 1867 legislation. Gardening associations were not eligible to organize as societies of mutual aid (sociétés de secours mutuel), according to the law of 5 April 1898, or as professional organizations (syndicats professionnels), ruled by the law of 30 November 1884, since their members did not share a common employment. The law of 12 April 1906, known as the Strauss Law, authorized societies or individuals to obtain loans financed by their revenues or by one-

fifth of the capital held by savings societies (as provided for housing by the law of 25 July 1895), in order to purchase for resale or for lease as gardens land

parcels of up to one-quarter of an acre (one thousand square meters). This limit was extended to 2.5 acres (one hectare) and a value of twelve hundred francs by the so-called Loi Ribot of 10 April 1908, essentially granting land parcels the same status as working-class housing (HBM).*° A decree from the Council of State (Conseil d’etat) on 3 August 1909 granted the league public utility status. A law passed on 23 December 1912, the Loi Bonnevay, extended to societies of jardins ouvriers all the provisions of the 1906 legislation (except for the exemption from real estate tax). The laws of 1906, 1908, and 1912 failed to provide significant impetus for the development of jardins ouvriers: tied to HBM legislation, at times contradictory, and difficult to interpret, these laws would not enjoy widespread application. By 1912, the abbé Lemire articulated the three-pronged effort on behalf of working-class access to land and home as originating from generous private initiative, strengthened by associations, and sanctioned and protected by legislation.*” Despite this progressive development of a legal footing, promotion of the gardens suffered from a lack of staff and availability among the league's leadership, stretched thin among multiple commitments. The league's bulletin, written almost single-handedly by the abbé Lemire, had fewer than five hundred subscribers.

Although workers’ gardens constituted only a portion of the league's agenda and only one of the abbé Lemire’s multiple responsibilities, Lemire left

112 The Working Man’s Green Space

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no stone unturned in his efforts on behalf of these gardens. He deployed his rhetorical powers to present multiple arguments that would appeal to different constituencies, he used his literary skill to write extensively about the gardens, and he was a tireless visitor to garden sites (see fig. 26). For the cultivation of the gardens, he advocated the inclusion of three different kinds of plants: those that nourish, those that provide pleasure, and those that heal. His work for the gardens also permeated other forms of social advocacy. For instance, as early as 1905, a model for a working-class home was designed by the socially minded architect Eugene Bliault for that year’s Exposition of Social Economy and Hygiene (Exposition d’économie et d’hygiene sociales), organized by the publication Le Journal at the Grand Palais in Paris. The garden attached to this model home is described by the architect as planned according to the abbé's guidelines for jardins ouvriers, which were to contain nourishing, pleasurable, and healing plants.** For the abbé Lemire the phrase “Give us today our daily bread, from the Lord’s Prayer, was not a rhetorical request: he genuinely believed that “man finds himself whole [in the garden], his individuality is given back to him with the setting of the primitive paradise?” HORTICULTURAL EXPERTISE AND OTHER SUPPORT At the1909 congress,

J. Curé, by then the director of the Marguerite Renaudin allotment program in Sceaux (see the case study below), reported that horticultural societies had been successful at enhancing the recognized benefits of the urban jardins Jardins ouvriers in France’ 113

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edge and skill, agriculture and horticulture were trades as progressive and “noble” as those of urban workers.

In addition to Curé, the workers’ garden movement included a number of other devoted advocates. Louis Lancry and Gustave Lancry, both physicians, have been mentioned as promoters of terrianisme through their publications and political activity.°* Robert Georges-Picot, an attorney at the Paris Court of Justice, coauthored the 1906 and 1909 congress reports, held the offices of secretary and president of the league, and authored a monograph on jardins ouvriers in 1923 as a member of the Fédération des jardins ouvriers de France.”°

Paul-J. Bacquet, who wrote his doctoral thesis on jardins ouvriers in France for the Faculté de droit of the University of Paris in 1906, contributed articles to the publication L’Action Populaire between 1906 and 1908; coauthored the 1909 congress report of the league; and in 1938, as the deputy for the Pas-de Calais, was still contributing to the journal Le Coin de Terre et le Foyer.°* The published historical contributions of Louis Riviere reach from an 1898 address to the Société d’economie sociale to a pamphlet on the contribution of jardins

114 The Working Man’s Green Space

ouvriers to the food supply in 1916, written in his capacity as the vice president

of the league and a board member of the Société francaise des habitations a bon marché. They also include, among others, coauthorship of the 1903 congress report and the 1904 publication of the monograph La terre et l’atelier.°° The physician Albert Calmette, whose name is associated with immunization against tuberculosis as the director of the Institut Pasteur in Lille between 1895 and 1919 and the assistant director in Paris thereafter, was a regular participant in league congresses.

The War Effort The World War I mobilization into the armed forces of all men between the ages of eighteen and forty-eight resulted in much land previously under cultivation becoming fallow, despite the efforts of remaining rural residents, including women and children, to maintain agricultural production. Rising food prices and concern about maintaining supplies for both the armed forces and the civilian population prompted both the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Agriculture to issue circulars on 10 and 11 May 1916 to upper-level military

authorities and to civilian departmental prefects (préfets).°° The procedures for the establishment of vegetable gardens to supply the armed forces being too lengthy and cumbersome, the minister of agriculture proposed that local civilian groups organize the rental and cultivation of unused land near facilities where military personnel awaited deployment. The agricultural labor for these gardens was to be provided during leisure hours by lower-level military personnel waiting to be sent to the front. According to the minister of agriculture, Jules Méline, the associations of jardins ouvriers were ideally suited for the task of organizing these gardens as they were already in existence all over the country and had solved a similar problem of putting land under cultivation for urban workers, usually much less experienced in agricultural labor than the majority of military recruits.°’ Other possible contributors to this effort could include horticultural societies, directors of agricultural services, faculty members in agriculture, agricultural associations, committees that sponsored low-cost housing (HBM), and associations for social welfare. This was to be a nonprofit undertaking deployed with expedient flexibility and resourcefulness. Any proceeds were to be returned to the military coffers, and military labor was to be provided on a voluntary basis, possibly with a small monetary incentive.

To the civilian populations the minister of agriculture stressed the heroic efforts of women and those who assisted them, which had resulted in an increase of production levels in an effort to salvage whatever was possible of what he termed “big agriculture” ( grande agriculture). In addition, the minister

Jardins ouvriers in France 115

pointed to the potential cumulative significance of “small agriculture” (petite agriculture), which consisted of a number of efforts at small-scale cultivation and small animal husbandry. He encouraged the large-scale implementation of a number of programs already initiated at the time by individuals, municipalities, teachers, and agricultural associations and requested that prefects compile and report statistics on this activity to the ministry. He also instructed the prefects to draw from these statistics and to promptly initiate a campaign to multiply the number of existing gardens with the help of agricultural associations. In addition to manpower among local families and “humble” residents, most likely to be receptive to the program, refugees from areas occupied by the enemy could also be enlisted. For displaced refugees, access to a plot of land had the double benefit of providing both assistance and a much-needed form of employment. Prefects were instructed to establish ongoing contacts with municipalities in order to locate and obtain land, including uncultivated fields. Seeds and tools were to be acquired with the assistance of municipalities, agricultural associations, agricultural credit societies, and private donations. Prefects were also informed of and enjoined to support military efforts to create gardens. The main organizer of jardins ouvriers for the North of France was appointed as liaison to elaborate a plan for the implementation of civilian and military gardens. In addition to contributing to the welfare of the population, these gardens, according to the minister, had a moralizing impact and constituted an act of patriotism. Although jardins ouvriers had previously been only of marginal interest for the Ministry of Agriculture, it is noteworthy that they were presented in 1916 circulars as having strategic importance for the war effort: they could assist the military in setting up gardens, and one of their leaders was put in charge of coordinating national civilian and military efforts. With the wartime pressures on agricultural production, the jardins ouvriers contribution to the national food supply was being acknowledged by the government. In July 1916, the minister of agriculture assigned the league responsibility to distribute state subsidies for encouraging the creation and extension of vegetable gardens. Distributed as seeds and tools, these subsidies would be extended for the following years. On 1 January 1917, the league was awarded a lease from military authorities for the land along fortifications that surrounded Paris in order to convert it into gardens (see fig. 28). By March, demand for these gardens exceeded the available area of the thirty-five hundred plots created on the leased fortifications land. Maxime Ducrocgq, the director of civilian and military garden services for the Ministry of Agriculture, initiated the creation of committees in each of the seventy-eight towns of the Paris suburbs and charged them with finding open land to be made available to the Parisian

116 The Working Man’s Green Space

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FIGURE 31. Allotment site with cart and gardener assessing the rough terrain, 1911-19, Jules Girard. (Archives photographiques, Médiatheque de l'architecture et du patrimoine, Caisse nationale des Monuments historiques et des Sites, Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, sapo1_grdo562x_p)

Is There an Aesthetics of Allotments? 127

and the presence of an arbor, seating area, or small lawn where the family could enjoy the garden. As suggested by the sociologist and landscape theorist Michel Conan, John Dewey’s focus on the aesthetic experience, rather than on the work of art, may provide a way to frame the aesthetics of the allotment.”

Conan describes visiting a garden as a “vicarious experience of somebody else’s life.” Although Conan is referring to historical gardens, the observation is also applicable, in the absence of the gardeners’ “voices,” to narratives about allotment gardens. A common feature of these narratives is the presentation of some vicarious experience as it was believed to be perceived by the allotment holder: the pleasure of harvesting and eating the fresh produce, spending time in the fresh air, solitude or family time, and the Sunday-afternoon respite enhanced by rituals of sociability. Participation in horticultural events, sanctioned with prizes, was also presented as providing satisfaction and encouragement. Conan continues: “gardens are undoubtedly about everyday life, at the same time that they offer moments of aesthetic enjoyment:’*® He thus appears to make a distinction between the everyday and the aesthetic, whereas the aesthetics of the allotment is predicated on the aesthetics of the everyday. On this point the work of the French scholar Francoise Dubost, writing about common, everyday gardens, provides justification: “Aesthetic expression occupies a large part of these ordinary gardens. But it cannot be separated from the other dimensions of daily life’** She questions the learned dogma of pure aesthetic perception that separates beauty from the rest of life. The ways and uses of the garden reflect the values and milieu of their owners (see fig. 32). And according to Dubost, these owners develop their own ways to make use of the products or codes that are provided to them by reinterpreting, adapting, and transforming them. As the British historians David Crouch and Colin

Ward point out, the allotments we are considering here used space and resources thriftily, and they followed the conventions of order and neatness that obtained for gardens among all social classes.** Even if means were modest, the vegetable garden need not be an eyesore. Dubost reminds us that Le Notre, Louis XIV’s garden designer, was as proud of his orchards as of his parterres and felt that the garden promenade should not be disfigured by service gardens for herbs, medicinal plants, vegetables, fruit, or cut flowers, which could be laid out with pleasing visual effect as part of elite pleasure gardens.*° John Dixon Hunt has argued that nature, and especially gardens, is socially

constructed and central to cultural and social life, not “charmingly peripheral”** He invites the broadening of garden history beyond the study of privileged sites designed for the elite to include other manifestations of nature and culture, including the vernacular garden.*” In The Afterlife of Gardens, he proposes the adoption of reception theory as an alternative approach to the study of gardens, including vernacular gardens.*° Rather than records of design and

128 The Working Man’s Green Space

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