10 THE WAR GARDEN VICTORIOUS 



son, former Secretary of Agriculture, Iowa; Assistant 

 Secretary of Agriculture, Hon. Carl Vrooman, (for the 

 year 1917); P. S. Ridsdale, Executive Secretary, who 

 was also Executive Secretary of the American Forestry 

 Association, with the Conservation Department of 

 which the Commission was affiliated, and Norman C. 

 McLoud, Associate Secretary. 



The sole aim of the National War Garden Commis- 

 sion was to arouse the patriots of America to the im- 

 portance of putting all idle land to work, to teach them 

 how to do it, and to educate them to conserve by can- 

 ning and drying all food they could not use while fresh. 

 The idea of the "city farmer" came into being. In 

 every part of the country were communities where 

 land and labor were already together, where it would 

 be necessary to move neither the mountain nor Maho- 

 met. Near every city were vacant lots, "slacker 

 lands," as useless as the human loafer, to whom, per- 

 haps, Mahomet must be brought. Whether the land 

 to be cultivated was a back yard or a vacant lot, it was 

 a potential source of food supply, and the raising of food 

 on these areas would solve many problems besides that 

 of food production. Food raised by the householder 

 in his yard or a near-by lot, was "Food F. O. B. the 

 Kitchen Door. " There were no problems of transporta- 

 tion or distribution to be solved in such food production. 



The creation of an army of soldiers of the soil pre- 

 sented much the same difficulties presented by the 

 creation of any other army. First of all there was the 

 matter of recruiting. This was a purely volunteer move- 



