134 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [18:3— Mch., 1921 



I do allow the parents to help, in many cases, especially when at 

 the beginning of the year, I have many new and young children to 

 teach all at once. The women are very eager to do this, they want 

 the vegetables. Most of them have always done gardening in the 

 old country. They will transplant a large beet with wonderful 

 success. They don't bother to cut back any of the leaves and the 

 beets don't wither after transplanting. 



During the war our Community gardens were turned into School 

 gardens. Additional land was given for our use. The size of the 

 individual plots was enlarged, and ever>^ effort made to give each 

 child an opportunity to do his part, who wished land. The school 

 superintendent of Duquesne, Prof. Wolford, has always done 

 everything possible to promote gardening in Duquesne. He and 

 the school board co-operated with me in every way, the board 

 voting to pay six of its teachers by the hour to assist me in teaching 

 home and community gardens, and we enrolled over five hundred 

 children as members of the U. S. Garden Army. The Board 

 furnished seeds for the Community gardens and high school boys 

 were excused during the last period that they might come out and 

 dig paths for the smaller children. 



It might be well to explain here that all my garden children are 

 below high school grade. In a town like Duquesne all the children 

 go to work for money the moment they reach the age when the laws 

 of the state permit them to, and as a rule every foreign child works 

 during vacation that can get a job of any kind. During war times 

 many children earned as much as grown women had before. So 

 the temptation to work was much greater. So only the smaller 

 ones were left to garden. 



Since the war our Comm.unity garden work has been reduced to 

 a minimum again. This is greatly to be regretted for may reasons. 

 But it seems best because of the constant pilfering that occurs on 

 unfenced lots. When one set of children work all the growing 

 season to produce a crop and then have it harvested for them by a 

 passer-by it produces a reaction of feeling against gardening that is 

 not conducive to harmony. Therefore this year we had just two 

 community gardens with 36 children. I did not ask the School 

 Board for a teacher for them but took over the task myself. All 

 the work on these gardens has been done after six p. m. when my 

 other work was finished. I spent three evenings a week at these 

 gardens during the season. 



