94 THE WAR GARDEN VICTORIOUS 



finally move even the most indifferent reader. For 

 this reason its publicity campaign did not end with the 

 gardening season. News stories and garden statis- 

 tics of all sorts were gathered by the Commission and 

 given to the press. These stories included accounts of 

 the work of individual gardeners, of garden clubs, of 

 communities, and of the organized gardeners in great 

 industries. Likewise the Commission gathered to- 

 gether thousands of cartoons and funny stories and 

 jokes about war gardens and war gardeners, and issued 

 books of these humorous items. The press reproduced 

 this matter the country over and in this way the funny- 

 bone of America was tickled with the garden idea. The 

 Commission's publicity work was not confined to the 

 daily press. Feature stories were supplied to many 

 magazines and periodicals as well as to the magazine 

 sections of Sunday newspapers. These articles were 

 more pretentious than those prepared for the dailies. 

 They aimed not merely to be authoritative but to have 

 literary quality as well. They dealt with gardening 

 from many different points of view, but always the 

 lesson was conveyed that more food was needed and 

 that it would have to be raised by the average American, 

 irrespective of his vocation. With these magazine 

 articles, and with many of its newspaper stories as well, 

 the Commission supplied illustrations. Its agents had 

 secured hundreds and hundreds of interesting photo- 

 graphs showing different phases of garden work in al- 

 most every portion of the country. These pictures, 

 portraying war gardens from the arid sands of the 



