180 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [12:4— April, 1916 



scattered seeds and later weeds. Contrast results in stimulation 

 oft repeated and usually fructifies in a prize garden next season. 

 In the garden care and patience brine their rich reward and create 

 confident expectation as the result of energy and application, a 

 valuable asset to any individual throughout life. Here the child 

 comes face to face with the forces of nature and learns to organize 

 his energies in harmony and co-operation therewith and is forced 

 to realize that antagonism reaps disaster. 



(2) Soil contact creates producers. The School Garden for the 

 first time in most cases brings a feeling of possession; it is all his 

 own. The child reaps the reward of his industry and labors and 

 there rises in his soul the exhilaration of self-expression, the joy of 

 producing and the satisfaction of honorable profit. Herein lies 

 the secret of making producers of our children and instilling a dig- 

 nity in labor. 



The world moans with an over-production of non-producers — 

 that great class of middle men — those of the "clean-handed" 

 occupation who prey upon the producer and the needs of others. 

 What the world needs is less second-rate citizens and more first- 

 rate producers. This is the great economic and social need. It 

 is so easy for our boys and girls (this 60%) to drift into the "go- 

 betweens." They have never experienced the exhilaration of 

 adding to the world's supply, so are sucked as by a whirlpool into 

 the rising flood of consumers. We have scarcely evaluated the 

 potential social force thus diverted. Upon our souls rests a 

 serious social crime when we fail to provide this opportunity for 

 our children, and obviously the duty lies at the door of the public 

 school system. 



(3) School Gardening instils civic interest and engenders the 

 aesthetic. The possession of a garden plot brings the child at once 

 to the realization of property rights; first his own and then his 

 neighbor's; a lesson frequently fought out as man to man. This 

 golden rule of property right rises primarily from the savage instinct 

 to defend his own but is ameliorated through contact and the child 

 has forced upon him a great lesson. Individual rights develop 

 into general rights of all and an interest and pride in school and 

 public property results. The child thus becomes a civic guardian 

 of law and order. And particularly is this important in the 

 Americanization of the children of our alien population. 



Garden possession during the elementary school years would go 

 far toward the elimination of many of our social and economic 



