99 VACANT LOT 



GARDENING 



as has been done at Philadelphia, where in 1904 

 sixteen families who had gardens in 1903, leased 

 nine acres at $15 per acre per year and made 

 one of their number manager. Their children 

 from nine to twelve years old sold the products 

 to consumers; organizing their own routes, and 

 receiving daily twenty per cent, of their sales in 

 payment. They often made four to five dollars 

 a week each, never working over five hours daily, 

 and at work that seemed to them more like play. 



Such results encouraged the New York Com- 

 mittee. In New York the cost to contributors is 

 about ten dollars per family. Against this the 

 families have products of nearly $10 for every 

 dollar expended. 



The opportunity to cultivate was especially 

 welcome to wage earners whose large families 

 found no room for healthy activity in the nar- 

 row streets of Manhattan. A single man, too 

 old for active work, had one of the best gardens. 

 A consumptive, aided by his wife and two small 

 children, cultivated an eighth of an acre, pro- 

 ducing fifty dollars worth of products. This 

 man lived in a tent all summer and built a shack 



