Reports of the National War Garden Commission 



Conservation Follows Production, to Win Next Year's Campaign Now 



THE lighthouse is an aid to the com- 

 merce of the world; but this year the 

 lighthouses of the United States are 

 shedding their bright rays in other 

 ways also. War gardens are growing around 

 many of them, helping to send the light of 

 democracy around the world. Along the Atlan- 

 tic and the Pacific coasts they are doing their 

 part. H. \\ . Rhodes, superintendent of light- 

 houses of the California district, reports as follows: 

 "At a number of the light stations in this dis- 

 trict the keepers or assistant keepers have laid 

 out large areas in war vegetable gardens. At 

 Point Loma, Point Fermin, Santa Cruz, Crescent 

 City and other places this has been done. At 

 Santa Cruz Light Station authority was granted 

 a postal employee, Thomas Place, to cultivate 

 two acres of the reservation not already culti- 

 vated by the lighthouse keeper. Mr. Place 

 planted these two acres in beans." 



* * * 



Communities, organizations of all kinds, 

 chambers of commerce, women's clubs, manu- 

 facturing concerns, business houses and indi- 

 viduals this year are not only helping to produce 

 food. They are encouraging the conservation 

 of as much as possible. In this work the drying 

 process will be found a big factor, and it cannot 

 be encouraged too strongly. 



* * * 



Two hundred American bluejackets were 

 greeted with two familiar posters, "Sow the 

 Seeds of Victory" by James Montgomery Flagg 

 and "Can the Kaiser" by the Belgian soldier- 

 artist, Paul Verrees, both issued by the Na- 

 tional War Garden Com- 

 mission, when they en- 

 tered the Sociedad 

 Anonima "La Blanca" 

 at Buenos Aires, Argen- 

 tina, when the U. S. S. 

 Newcastle visited that 

 port recently. The 

 "jackies" were 'royally 

 entertained by the Bo- 

 narenes, writes C. D. 

 Middlebrook of the So- 

 ciety to President 

 Charles Lathrop Pack 

 of the Commission and 

 the posters arrived just 

 in time for display. 

 " Down here we appre- 

 ciate this class of propa- 

 ganda," writes Mr. Mid- 

 dlebrook, "and we are 



in a position to exhibit the posters where they 

 can be seen readily by the public. Practically 

 every American home and sympathizer displays 

 them. We will do our part in making this 



propaganda public." 



* * * 



I HE Woman's Relief Society of Freedom, 

 I tah, is doing a work which matches the town's 

 name. In writing to the National War Garden 

 Commission, Mrs. Martha A. Gee, the presi- 

 dent, says: "We are a fruit-raising community 

 and the canning books which you contributed 

 will greatly help us in our efforts to conserve 

 our fruits and vegetables and so assist the 



nation." 



* * * 



Dl vkikk, New York, has a newly establish- 

 ed I hrift Kitchen, which will teach proper 

 •ds of community canning and dehydrating. 

 I he war garden work of the town lias been very 

 and a school supervisor of gardening, 

 II as a supervisor of adults' gardens, have 

 been added. Results, will be ten times greater 

 than , Dr. William J. Sullivan writes 



to the National War Garden Commission. 



The fifty branch libraries of the Chicago 

 Public Library distributed the window hangers 

 bearing a spade and the words: "We Have a 

 War Garden" which home "soldiers of the soil" 

 all over the country displayed to show how they 

 were helping to win the war with food. 



A spirit of cooperation between the United 

 States and Canada is being fostered by the assis- 

 tance which this country has given to the Do- 

 minion in its war garden campaign, according to 

 a letter to the National War Garden Commis- 

 sion from Mrs. W. P. Hodges, president of the 

 Garden Club of Notre Dame de Grace. She 

 thanks the Commission for the supply of, garden 

 and canning manuals and other literature which 

 it furnished to help the home food production 

 campaign in that city. 



* * * 



Gardening was made one of the primary 

 activities of school work in Cincinnati this year; 

 and about fifty acres were planted in school 

 gardens. Altogether the busy Ohio city boasted 

 of more than 15,000 home gardeners. Roland 

 W. Guss, director of the school gardening end 

 of the campaign, reported most encouraging 



results. 



* * * 



The Department of Horticulture, Ontario 

 Agricultural College, Guelph, Canada, has- been 

 very active in encouraging the planting of war 

 gardens and the conservation of surplus vege- 

 tables and fruits so grown. The authorities 

 at that institution as well as many other food 

 committees and organizations in the Dominion, 



War Garden at Crescent City, California, Light Station, 75 by 92 feet. This is a splendid illustration of how neglected acres 



can be made productive 



were assisted in their work by garden, canning 

 and drying booklets, posters, window hangers 

 and other literature from the National War 

 Garden Commission of Washington. 



* * * 



Stella A. Harman, emergency home demon- 

 stration agent, North Vernon, Indiana, has 

 charge of the canning clubs in her county. In 

 her work she distributed a large number of can- 

 ning and drying books sent by the National War 

 Garden Commission of Washington. 



* * * 



J. H. Richmond, director of the War Garden 

 Committee in Louisville, Ky., has seen large 

 results there both in the home production as 

 well as conservation of food as an outcome of 

 the active garden campaign. 



* *. * 



Miss CATHERINE S. Eastwood, of the Arling- 

 ton, Mass., School has enrolled 209 girls in a 

 canning class. They have been supplied with 

 canning manuals and war garden window 

 hangers by the National War Garden Com- 

 mission of Washington. 



58 



More than 500 persons attended the canning 

 and drying demonstrations which Miss Mathilde 

 Hawkins, director of the School of Domestic 

 Science, Y. W. C. A., held at New Haven in 

 connection with the Home Economics Depart-, 

 ment of the New Haven Gas Light Company. 

 Dr. Robert Scoville, State Food Administrator, 

 highly praised the demonstrations. 



Officials of the International Wheat Show 

 and the eighth annual Wichita Fair and Exposi- 

 tion, to be held at Wichita, Kansas, Sept. 30 to 

 Oct. 12, will enter the prize winner in their 

 canning contest for a National Capitol Prize 

 Certificate, accompanied by the book half-filled 

 with thrift stamps, which the National War 

 Garden Commission is offering to prize winners 

 in canning contests throughout the country. 



* * * 



John W. Strohm, registrar of deeds, Clinton 

 County, Clinton, Iowa, combined pleasure and 

 patriotism in a recent motor trip when he dis- 

 tributed 2,000 canning and drying manuals of 

 the National War Garden Commission. 



* * * 



Roslyn, L. I., has a community canning 

 kitchen under the direction of the Patriotic Thrift 

 League, of which Mrs. Ernest C. Brower is 



chairman. 



* * * 



Six thousand war gardeners in Norfolk, Va., 

 are being mobilized in the Virginia canning 

 campaign. H. N. Castle, secretary of the Com- 

 mission on Beautifying the City, has, at his re-, 

 quest, been furnished with 300 canning and 

 drying manuals by the 

 Nationl War Garden 

 Commission, and every 

 gardener will become a 



canner. 



* * * 



"Turn on the steam, 

 boys." The employees 

 in the machine shop of 

 the Carolina and North 

 Western Railway Com- 

 pany at Hickory, N. C, 

 turned the cylinder of 

 an old engine into a 

 canning plant. They 

 connected the cylinder 

 with the shop steam 

 boiler, put on a steam 

 gauge, pop valve and 

 drain cock; and arranged 

 three shelves of heavy 

 wire screen in the cylinder to hold the jars and 

 cans of vegetables. They did their war garden 



canning work after regular hours. 



* * * 



The Miami Conservancy District, which has 

 at each of the sites of the retarding basins a small 

 town which will house four or five hundred 

 people, has provided gardens for each family 

 living at the camp site. At the request of C. W. 

 Porter-Shirley, camp inspector, 100 canning and 

 gardening manuals have been contributed to 

 these war gardeners by the National War Gar- 

 den Commission of Washington. 



Employees at the various Du Pont plants are 

 competing for the #10,000 in thrift stamp prizes 

 and National Capitol Prize Certificates which 

 have been ofFered by the National War Garden 

 Commission for the best canned vegetables 

 grown in war gardens. Three thousand copies 

 of the Commission's canning and drying 

 booklets were distributed among the company's 

 workers at Wilmington, Del.; Carney's Point, 

 Haskell, Parlin and Paulsboro, N. J.; Nashville, 

 Tenn.; and Williamsburg, Va. 



