THOMAS] CHILDREN'S GARDENS IN A STEEL TOWN 137 



now I doubt if any place of its size contains more gardens than 

 Duquesne. Gardens are the rule not the exception, wherever there 

 is space for them. People have found that all hardy vegetables 

 and flowers will grow there if given a little care. That the soil 

 there is pure clay and requires tim.e and heavy applications of 

 manure and matter to make himius has been the great drawback, 

 a garden can not be made out of it in one year. Many people get 

 discouraged after the first effort. 



The smoke and gases discharged 'from the mills do form a dirty 

 oily coating over the leaves so thick that they look almost black. 

 They become so dirty that it is not a pleasure but an unpleasant 

 task to cut the flowers we raise. Whatever I wear while doing it 

 becomes as black as tho I had been working in it for a month. I 

 always have to wash the flowers before giving them away. We 

 raise only hardy blossoms like Zinnia and sunflowers, of which 

 there are many varieties as beautiful as chrysanthemimis, and which 

 attract to our garden htimming birds and yellow warblers; before 

 raising the sunflowers I never saw any birds but sparrows in the 

 region of the mills. Now they are a constant wonder and 

 delight to the children. 



We also have a constant stream of butterfly visitors and I think 

 all the caterpillars known to man come to feed upon our produce. 

 I think probably this is because ours is the only feeding ground 

 in that part of the town, at any rate we have ceased to enjoy them. 

 To us they mean only more hard work. We put on arsenate of lead 

 till I am ashamed to ask^the mill to buy any more. It seem.s to me 

 that we never yet got on a nice coating of it that one of our torren- 

 tial rains did not come and wash it all off. The children are 

 many of them superstitious. They call it a sin to kill the worms. 

 I talk till I am tired trying to explain that it is a choice between 

 bugs and vegetables. 



Sometimes a chance toad comes visiting the garden. The 

 children know that the toads eat the bugs and there is mad rivalry 

 trying to keep that poor toad in their individual garden. They 

 forget that it is a sin to kill bugs then. 



Before the war there were scarcely any colored families in the 

 vicinity of the gardens, the scarcity of labor resulted in the bring- 

 ing in of a large colored population as laborers in the mill. There 

 has been a large bunk house built exclusively to house them. It is 

 on a bluff at the north end of my gardens, looking almost directly 



