32 
THE WAR GARDEN VICTORIOUS 
suits were almost double that figure, the estimated 
value of our war-garden crops for 1918 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 
half-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 
