VACANT LOTS CULTIVATION IN PHILADELPHIA 
By Allan Sutherland 
A/IEN are, as a rule, extravagant, especially 
•I** here in America- the very vastness of 
our resources tending to make us prodigal. 
A peasant family in France lives comfortably 
on less than the average American housewife 
throws into her garbage can; and frequently 
the Italian immigrant, by commendable 
self-denial and thrift, amasses a competency 
while his improvident American neigh¬ 
bor continues his struggles to support 
himself and family. And prodi¬ 
gal as we are in many other 
things, we are in nothing 
more so, perhaps, than in 
our indifference to utiliz¬ 
ing waste lands and 
making them contrib¬ 
ute to our sustenance 
and to that of our fel¬ 
lows. In this respect 
our Japanese friends 
teach us a useful les¬ 
son. A recent writer 
has said : “ If all the 
tillable acres of Japan 
were merged into one 
field, a man in an auto¬ 
mobile, traveling at the 
rate of fifty miles an hour, 
could skirt its entire peri¬ 
meter in eleven hours. 
And yet upon this narrow 
freehold Japan has reared a 
nation of imperial power. I he 
humblest peasant farmer is clean, 
industrious and comfortable. 1 he 
area of fence corners abandoned on 
many American farms, would fur¬ 
nish comfortable living to a whole family 
in rural Japan.” 
1 he Vacant Lots Cultivation Association, 
now operating in several of our large cities, 
emphasizes the value of the example set by 
our Pacific neighbors in utilizing waste lands. 
With commendable zeal and broad philan¬ 
thropy, the members secure vacant lots in 
and near congested districts in the city and 
in the suburbs, seeing in their cultivation by 
the worthy poor a partial solution of one of 
the gravest social and industrial problems 
of the day: the problem of finding profitable 
employment for the ever present army of 
unemployed men and women in our densely 
populated centres. From the very beginning 
of the movement during the great commercial 
depression in 1894, when large numbers of 
men were out of employment, it appealed 
to many as being a wise and practi¬ 
cal way of helping men to help 
themselves; the results have 
eminently justified this 
opinion. 1 he enterprise 
has been remarkably suc¬ 
cessful wherever it has 
had a fair trial. Indi¬ 
gent people have been 
encouraged to enter 
upon the cultivation 
of these abandoned 
lots and other waste 
places; and they have 
done so with energy 
and have produced 
results as astonishing 
as gratifying. The sug¬ 
gestion to cultivate tlie 
vacant lots of the cities 
had its inception with 
Mayor H. S. Pingree, of 
Detroit, when thousands of 
unemployed people were 
clamoring for assistance. “If we 
but cultivate the vacant land in 
and about the city,” he said, 
“much of this want will cease.” 
I he experiment was successfully 
made, and other cities quickly adopted the 
plan to give relief to their poor. 
In no city has the work been placed on a 
more permanent or profitable basis than in 
Philadelphia. This result is largely due to 
the able management of the superintendent, 
Mr. R. F. Powell, who is not only a practical 
farmer, but a man of ideas and a whole¬ 
hearted philanthropist. With untiring de¬ 
votion and patience he gives himself to the 
MR. R. F. POWELL 
General Manager of the Work 
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