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THERE have been meetings around 

 here between the townspeople and 

 the farmers. The farmers have 

 pledged themselves to make more use of 

 wood, and to supply it to the town if they 

 can get the labor to cut it. And if the 

 town people wish to come out and cut 

 for themselves the farmers will charge 

 only a very small price for the wood 

 itself, and let them cut all they want, if 

 they will take the trees that will leave 

 the woodlots in better condition. 



Since the day the minister started us 

 off, the county fuel man has been help- 

 ing. The plans we worked out have been 

 used in a lot of other places, and the 

 farmers around here have set the pace 

 for the rest of the State, and even for 

 the country. 



They have put their word to paper in 

 black and white, and it goes about like 

 this: 



During the war, no person and no 

 business doing war work must suffer for 

 lack of fuel. 



We will do all we can to help in the 

 use of wood for coal wherever it can be 

 so used. 



We will get out all the wood we can, 

 and we will burn wood ourselves. 



We can furnish only one-fourth of the 

 labor needed to get out our own wood 

 supply because so many of our sons 

 have gone to the war, and so many of 

 our hired men have gone to work in the 

 cities, so it must be understood that we 

 can not pay high prices for help and 

 still sell wood cheaper than coal. 



We will let any one cut wood from our 

 land for from seventy-five cents to one 

 dollar and a half for a cord, if the cutter 

 will take the trees we pick out, and will 

 clean up the brush afterwards, and will 

 pay for the wood before it is taken away. 



MAYBE all that is not very interest- 

 ing, but it shows that even the 

 boys can help work for the war, 

 and that wood-bees or wood-cutting bees 

 may be made a new form of picnic, for 

 the cool weather on both sides of the 

 coming summer. 



THE minister said that he was sorry 

 that he had started any wood-bee 

 reform, because he was supposed 

 to start only real ones. But we told him 

 that cord-wood bees, and chopping bees, 

 and the like were good things to start. 

 If our countryside had more of the old 

 "bees" that were once so well known it 

 would be a great deal better off. There 

 were husking bees, barn-raising bees, 

 quilting bees, and other chances for the 

 folks to get together. In a way, the war 

 is helping us to find new ways to do these 

 old things over again. The minister's 

 study is given up one day each week to 

 sewing for the Red Cross, and six 

 machines are busily humming there in 

 turning out supplies for the soldiers and 

 hospitals. In a way we are too big to 

 fully go back to the old ways, but the 

 family idea is growing and we learn each 

 day that U. S. means us. 



I RECALL that Toto came in quite 

 breathless one day and dashed down 

 the cellar without his usual cheery 

 greeting to his mother and the rest of 

 the family, to emerge a moment later 

 with the gleeful statement: 

 "Tagged your shovel!" 



Then he explained that he had run all 

 the way home from school so that he 

 might put a tag on the furnace shovel 

 "before Ev did it." The tag is to remind 

 the old man he must be careful with the 

 coal supply. Not that he needs a re- 

 minder! But the tag stays there even if 

 it does catch on one's coat buttons. 



When Ev got home he decided that he 

 would have to go over to a neighbor's 

 home with his tag, because this neigh- 

 bor did not have any boy to bring him 

 a tag from school. 



We are all pretty sure that tagging 

 the shovel of itself is not going to help 

 much next year unless everybody adds 

 to the coal supply by using more wood. 

 Ministers, and farmers, and housewives, 

 and boys, and girls all will have to 

 help. 



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