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A system of life which rejects animal food will include a system of agriculture which rejects animal fertilizers—at least until they have been returned to the inorganic condition, by decay, composting with lime etc. While the human (or animal) organism cannot be built up with unorganized substance, the plant world requires it and cannot be nourished with any other. Vegetable or animal substances used as fertilizers, until they may be mechanically absorbed as foreign matter, cannot be appropriated by the growing plant, until they have been decomposed and returned to the inorganic realm. Fresh animal fertilizers in contact with plants induce an irritation or stimulation, by premature absorption, and generate disease. Vegetables thus treated may grow rapidly but they are frail and feverish, will not endure drouth, decay early and are not so clean and wholesome.
8. ECONOMICAL AND LABORIAL.
In point of economy, in both labor and money, it is a great mistake to use flesh. To "own" animals is to be owned by animals.
It is proved by chemical deduction that as much real nutriment can be obtained for a given sum, from farinaceous food and fruits, as for several times that sum expended on the flesh and juices of animals. The economy of labor in favor of vegetarianism (or of fruit-eating) is beyond estimation. Who that has ever had charge of animals, has produced their food and fed it to them etc., does not know what an incessant slavery it imposes? Who that has ever cooked on the usual plan, with flesh and its concomitants, has not inwardly sighed, yea, groaned in spirit, at the endless complications and never ending demands of the kitchen? At least nine-tenths of the labor of the kitchen, especially of the disagreeable portion thereof, would be dispensed with by a simple
