32 THE WAR GARDEN VICTORIOUS 



suits were almost double that figure, the estimated 

 value of our war-garden crops for 191 8 having been 

 ^525,000,000! A half billion dollars! Enough to cover 

 the expenses of the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A., and all 

 other similar war-work agencies for a long time; or to 

 build 500 great ships; or to pay for one-twelfth of the 

 fourth Liberty Loan issue! 



In thousands of cases his war garden meant to its 

 owner the difference between ability and inability to 

 subscribe to a war loan. There were more than 21,000,- 

 000 subscribers to the fourth Liberty Loan. The esti- 

 mate of war-garden production means that the money 

 saved through war gardening enabled at least one- 

 fourth of these subscribers to become holders of their 

 country's war-purpose bonds. 



Of the three M's there yet remains the third — men. 

 Just as money saved through gardening can be used 

 for the purchase of bonds instead of food, so labor saved 

 in one field can be shifted to another. Specifically, men 

 released from food handling were free for service else- 

 where. And the name of the men so released through 

 war gardening is legion. The products of the little 

 Pennsylvania garden already discussed, weighed in 

 excess of half a ton. Had these products not been 

 raised at home, it would have been necessary to bring 

 their equivalent to the gardener's home. He has a 

 family of three. Families of three do not buy food in 

 lialf-ton lots — seldom even in one-hundred-pound lots. 

 To put an equivalent amount of food in his home, there- 

 fore, would have required many trips on the part of a 



