four o'clock
in the morning
To picture the great potato-digging machine , run by electricity , perhaps , and moving across a thousand-acre field , scooping up earth and potatoes , and dropping the latter into sacks ! To every other kind of vegetable and fruit handled in the same way -- apples and oranges picked by machinery , cows milked by electricity -- things which are already done , as you may know . To picture the harvest fields of the future , to which millions of happy men and women come for a summer holiday , brought by special trains , the exactly needful number to each place ! And to contrast all this with our present agonizing system of independent small farming , -- a stunted , haggard , ignorant man , mated with a yellow , lean , and sad-eyed drudge , and toiling from four o'clock in the morning until nine at night , working the children as soon as they are able to walk , scratching the soil with its primitive tools , and shut out from all knowledge and hope , from all their benefits of science and invention , and all the joys of the spirit -- held to a bare existence by competition in labor , and boasting of his freedom because he is too blind to see his chains ! '' Dr. Schliemann paused a moment . `` And then , '' he continued , `` place beside this fact of an unlimited food supply , the newest discovery of physiologists , that most of the ills of the human system are due to overfeeding ! And then again , it has been proven that meat is unnecessary as a food ; and meat is obviously more difficult to produce than vegetable food , less pleasant to prepare and handle , and more likely to be unclean .