EDITORIAL 



THE FOOD GARDEN AS A CHARACTER BUILDER 



THE main business of life is to leam how to live. 

 How few of us choose wisely in what we strive for ! 

 Experience and results are the only sure tests of 

 value. Yet our standards must be fixed, and our ideals 

 formed largely before we are fifteen, when the wisdom of 

 our elders too often seems dry as dust and overcharged 

 with caution. To the typical young American pleasure 

 and amusement appear not as relaxation from duty, but 

 too often as the chief aim in life. And too often, also, 

 overindulgent parents seek only their children's happi- 

 ness, and themselves forget that contentment can come 

 only from a normal balance between work and play. 



The American boy, especially the boy who lives in the 

 city or small town, either has far more time for play than 

 is good for him, or else he is employed at routine labor in 

 which he has no interest, and which robs him of his youth 

 and initiative. Every child should be encouraged to 

 undertake some constructive task in which he can reap the 

 fruit of his own exertions. 



A vegetable garden is a golden opportunity for the 

 development of character. The youth should be given 

 his own plot of grovmd, and, if possible, he should buy his 

 own seed, make his own choice of crops, guided by a word 

 or two of advice — and, above all, he should receive market 

 prices for the products which he raises, paid in cash by his 

 parents or neighbors, on delivery. Many farmers' sons 

 forsake the home place for poorly paid positions in the city, 

 not because of the drudgery of the farm, but for the sole 

 reason that they are given no tangible return or personal 

 interest in the product of their labor. Most city boys grow 

 up in the densest ignorance of that partnership between 

 man and nature, the cultivation of the soil, upon which 

 rests the prosperity of any nation. The planting, tending 

 and harvesting of a crop of vegetables, and the final real- 



ization of a money income from its sale, teach the young 

 proprietor perseverance, responsibiHty, and initiative and 

 the greatest lesson of all — the fact that success in actual 

 business undertakings is attained only by continuous at- 

 tention and industry. Such an tindertaking will help to 

 overcome the desire to make money by trickery and with- 

 out exertion — an idea so often absorbed by young people 

 to their ultimate undoing. The boy who will forego his 

 pleasures when the garden needs weeding and who will 

 carry through his enterprise can be trusted to make good 

 in other fields of endeavor which have nothing to do with 

 agriculture. His outlook, too, is permanently broadened 

 and his interest in life increased. But a child must have 

 incentive for what he does. Patriotism has a strong appeal 

 to the young and the thought that in this way he is actually 

 helping our nation to win the war for human liberty will 

 be a powerful motive for the undertaking. But boys from 

 eight to twelve years old cannot be expected to grasp the 

 abstract idea of service for the sake of principle, when the 

 effort is shorn of all tangible rewards and mother simply 

 appropriates the results for the family dinner table. 

 Parents will do well to remember that the few dollars 

 which they may be called upon to pay to the boy, when 

 he proudly offers them the products of his own garden, 

 are worth many times their value in character building. 

 The greatest good is accomplished with youths under 

 twelve to fourteen. These little fellows cannot very well 

 prepare the soil as thoroughly as it should be done; the 

 initial spading should be done for them by some older per- 

 son. A plot of ground as small as 10 by 50 feet will yield 

 produce worth as much as $20.00, and a boy can easily 

 care for this much ground. Has this aspect of the food 

 garden ever received from American parents the attention 

 it deserves? 



PROCRASTINATION IN INDIANA 



DURING the fall of 1916 the American Forestry Asso- 

 ciation endeavored to point out to the people of Indi- 

 ana the reason for the almost complete failure of the 

 state forestry law to secure efficient results. This law has 

 been in operation for twelve years. In its general plan of 

 organization it followed the pattern of those states which 

 have been successful in forestry — in that a State Forestry 

 Board was created, composed of five men chosen for pro- 

 fessional or personal interest in the subject. 



But there was one fatal defect — this board was not given 

 control over its own agent. The secretary, who was in- 

 tended as the executive and forester, and who should 

 have been appointed by the board and been under its 

 direct oversight, was instead made a member, of equal au- 

 thority with the others, and was appointed by the Governor. 



It would have been possible for the Governors of the 

 state to have appointed to this position men of the proper 

 professional training in forestry, without which progress 

 and initiative are practically impossible. The law even re- 

 quired that the secretary should have forestry training. 

 But out of three appointees, each holding for four years, 

 only one had even a rudimentary knowledge of trees from 

 a botanical standpoint, and the last appointee, whose term 

 expires July 1st, was frankly ignorant of the entire subject. 



A vigorous effort was made in the legislature this last 

 winter to remedy this defect by giving the board the con- 

 trol of its own affairs, but the bill failed of passage, thus 

 permitting the old and discredited plan to remain in force 

 for another term. The Governor has appointed as secretary 

 a public-spirited citizen, who has no professional knowledge 



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