w 



E SHALL have 



our flowers this 

 year, after all. 

 With the tre- 





UNCLE SAM'S GARDENING 



mendous insistence on gar- 

 dening for a food supply, 

 many of us began to fear 

 that the flowers would be left out completely and 

 that we should be almost wholly bereft of their joy- 

 ousness and beauty — and that at a time when 

 they are most surely needed! But we shall have 

 them! \\ hat is more, the soldiers will have them 

 — those in the camps, and those returned invalided 

 from the other side. 



No less than 38,000 florists, through the Society 

 of American Florists and Ornamental Horticul- 

 turists have pledged themselves to a nation-wide 

 giving of flowers to hospitals for sick and wounded 

 soldiers. The flowers are to be distributed by the 

 National League for Women's Service in the 

 40 states in which the organization works. 



"When it is remembered that the florists' 

 business has suffered severely under war con- 

 ditions, and that many florists will be obliged to 

 close their greenhouses during the coming winter 

 because of the recent order of the Fuel Admin- 

 istration cutting down the florists' supply of 

 coal 50 per cent., this precious gift takes rank 

 with the most self-sacrificing deeds the war has 

 ■railed forth" says the Government report. 



In spite of the war, in some ways, perhaps, 

 because of it, the demand for flowers is increasing, 

 instead of lessening as florists had good reason 

 to fear. Flowers are proving anew their age-old 

 and most beautiful mission of being an antidote to 

 the horrors of war — they are craved by soldiers 

 returning from the trenches, they serve to soften 

 the hard facts of life as lived under war condi- 

 tions at home. One florist — a woman — reports 

 selling many more flowers to the working people 

 than before the war began. If this year, flowers 

 may be had in abundance and cheaply, it will be 

 a boon indeed to many of us. 



The cutting down of the coal will prove a 

 serious problem for the florists and we shall see 

 radical changes in the type of flowers supplied. 

 There will be a great increase in the growing of 



Elants that require little heat. We shall see 

 arkspurs, Columbines, Canterbury Bells brought 

 into bloom; also Lilacs and Forsythia in greater 



E refusion than ever, the old-fashioned Calla 

 ily will again be used; we shall have Flowering 

 Almond, Dwarf Plums, and Cherries all grown 

 with but little heat as the Japanese grow them — ■ 

 probably Marigolds taken up and flowered in- 

 doors. It will be interesting to see. 



* * * 



A new movement has lately been launched in 

 New York by the National Plant, Flower and 

 fruit Guild which insures flowers for the soldiers. 

 I his guild is a well known organization with an 

 excellent reputation for sincere and very practical 

 work. Its president is Mrs. John Wood Stewart, 

 and Mrs. Margaret Deland, of Boston, is one of 

 the national vice-presidents. The new move- 

 ment is the formation of the Soldiers' Camp 

 (iarden Committee, under the direction of Mr. 

 Maurice Fuld (chairman, I suppose, of the 

 Committee) each of the sixteen great soldiers' 

 cantonments is to have its garden— not only a 

 vegetable garden, but a flower garden. Florists 

 and seedsmen are already supplying the camps 

 with all the seeds and bedding-out plants that 

 they can spare. And since some of the soldiers 

 have had Hardening experience, and some are 

 gardeners by profession, there is every chance 

 that the depressing bleakness and sameness of 

 these cantonments will be wiped out. On the other 

 side, many soldiers have made attractive lirrle 

 gardens around their shacks and tents. This 

 new work of the National Plant, Flower and 

 fruit Guild will be certain to have the cooper- 

 ation of garden organizations and garden clubs 

 near the cantonments. 



* * * 



The assertion that "the city boy would be 



A News Feature of National Current Activities 



more bother than he's worth on the farm," has 

 this year been hoed and raked and cultivated 

 out of existence. The demand from the Mass- 

 achusetts farmers is for "more of the boys." 

 Farmers at first were reluctant to try them and a 

 company of boys in Dorchester High School 

 challenged thus — "Just let us come and we will 

 show you!" And the farmers have been 

 "shown." The supervisor of the triple unit at 

 Concord, Mass., Mr. Carlton Staples, says he 

 has demand for more than the 83 boys in his 

 command, and the enthusiasm of these youngsters 

 is very infectious. Of course there are farmers 

 and farmers. These who knew something of 

 boy nature have gotten "almost unbelievable 

 results," that fair and generous treatment 

 usually yields. These who have tried driving 

 and exploitation have found that the average 

 boy has something of the mule in his nature and 

 becomes difficult. Camp Thomas, this "Farm- 

 ing Fifth" which is located in Concord town, had 

 a Parents' and Employers' Day with prominent 

 state officials present, and an informal coming- 

 together time for employers and relatives of the 

 boys. Representing as it does many nation- 

 alities and many extremes of social life the farm 

 camp may be said to be a school of very practical 

 democracy. 



Connecticut has been giving her boys a six 

 weeks' training at the state Agricultural College 

 before sending them to the farms. In Chicago, 

 the boys from the technical high schools were 

 taught to handle heavy draft horses, and to drive 

 them successfully through the city streets, 

 steering them past the posts of the elevated rail- 

 way and avoiding collision with other vehicles. 

 After this practice, it was thought they might 

 safely steer an uncharted way between haycocks 

 and enter a barn without taking off the barndoors. 

 The boys also had lessons in the care of farm 

 machinery. These and the traffic lessons were 

 extremely popular. Two hundred and odd 

 thousand boys have responded to the call for the 

 Boys' Working Reserve. "This summer must 

 not see an idle boy in America" has been the 

 slogan. 



* * * 



An invaluable by-product of this "call to 

 the farms," is that it gives the adolescent boy 

 something of the advantages and few of the dis- 

 advantages of the old system of apprenticeship, 

 when he learned by working with an older man 

 as a learner at the older man's job. It has also 

 given the city boy an idea he never had before 

 of the value of farm work and the real skill and 

 patience and industry involved. After this 

 summer, never will he wish to make fun of the 

 "Rube." Also the city and the farm folk will 

 have a better understanding of each other. 



Never before have our "prominent state 

 officials" been kept so busy. They cannot be be- 

 hind their electorate in patriotism, so for many 

 of them life is as busy as for an opera star in the 

 height of the season. And they must set an 

 example. Patriotism now means work, not a 

 single Fourth of July oration. It is pleasant to 

 record that in Evansville, Illinois, the Mayor and 

 members of the Board of Public Works worked 

 in the fields, the Mayor driving the binder and 

 his colleagues shocking the wheat. In Conners- 

 ville the entire town stopped its business and 

 went into the wheat fields, in Huntington 2,000 

 men each offered to give a day's work to the 

 local harvest. Governor Capper of Kansas 

 issued a proclamation calling on all ablebodied 

 men and boys to enlist for the harvest and in 

 ten days 40,000 men had enrolled, 10,000 of 

 them in Kansas City. 



59 



One difficulty is "up' 

 to Uncle Sam. There has 

 been no hesitation about 

 people volunteering to 

 work to save the crops. 

 Women have even re- 

 sponded to the call to cook 

 and wash dishes and otherwise labor to feed the 

 harvesters, but in states like Montana, where 

 the harvest time is August, the increase in wheat 

 acreage 43 per cent, and in rye no per cent., the 

 demand for labor is very heavy nor is there a 

 large city population to draw from. This labor 

 situation could be met by bringing men from 

 states farther south, where the work is over. 

 The lien in the path is the increased cost of trans- 

 portation and the impossibility of getting special 

 rates as in former years under private ownership 

 of the railroad. How is this, Mr. McAdoo? 

 Can't you lend army trucks, or airplanes, or 

 consider these soldiers of the soil as real soldiers 

 and transport them for nothing? 



* * * 



And here is another problem up to Uncle Sam, 

 or perhaps the Florida branch of the Women's 

 National Farm and Garden Association can 

 solve it, whose president, if I remember rightly is 

 the very energetic lady Mayor of Jacksonville. 

 Florida farmers responded to the Administration's 

 call for food production with a record acreage 

 of white potatoes — 37,750 acres, with the fore- 

 cast of a production of 3,668,000 bushels — an in- 

 crease of 1,500,000 bushels more than last year. 

 And now the scarcity of labor and low price in the 

 market, do not in many sections warrant gather- 

 ing the potatoes. This news of the potatoes is from 

 Clearwater. A representative of the growers 

 in the Everglades region was lately in Washington 

 conferring with the Food Administration. Farm- 

 ers, who, urged by the Administration to plant 

 food crops, have had to let many carloads of 

 onions, cabbages, and many other vegetables go to 

 waste in the fields. After they were produced 

 there was no market for ' them. And while 

 their onions were spoiling in the fields with 

 market offerings not enough to pay for the 

 gathering, people were paying seven cents a 

 pound for onions at the very doorway of the Ever- 

 glades. About 7,000 acres in the Everglades 

 were planted to food crops, and that acreage can 

 be doubled this autumn. The problem now be- 

 fore the country is to grow necessary food and 

 get it to the consumer at as low a price as pos- 

 sible, and no carloads of onions or cabbages or 

 potatoes must go to waste. 



One would like to report that Uncle Sam 

 had rushed driers and dehydraters to the 

 Everglade farms, bought the crops himself and 

 rushed some of his new camp-farmers to salvage 

 the luckless onions and potatoes and store 

 them for future use. But we only hear that a 

 Food Administration official was surprised to hear 

 the region was so productive! He had thought 

 climatic conditions made production impossible. 



* * * 



The California Development Board is 

 backing a plan to give genuine assistance to a 

 class greatly in need of it. They will finance 

 the small farmers who at present cannot get 

 assistance through the banks. Money will be 

 lent farmers, renters, farmers with mortgaged 

 lands, and others who are unable to increase their 

 production. The borrower must be of good 

 reputation in the community, a good farmer, 

 and his lands adapted to the crops he proposes 

 planting. "The big land owners must be in- 

 duced to provide tractors for their tenants. 

 Community fruit driers must be installed or 

 financed where necessary, especially along the 

 mother lode lands from Shasta to Mariposa, 

 also along the north coast where, in Humboldt 

 county more than one third of the apple crop 

 went to waste last year for lack of driers." This 

 is a long stop in the right direction. 



Frances Duncan 



