August, 1917 
11 
« < 
T H 
E PLOUGH IS OUR HOPE 
How Canada Answered Lloyd George With War Gardens 
And Learned the Relation of Production to Patriotism 
BETTY A. THORNLEY 
1 > 
I N the matter of population, of 
immigration problems, metro¬ 
politan achievements and the de¬ 
veloping intricacies of finance, 
the Dominion of Canada is the 
little brother of the United 
States, with a great deal to learn 
and no mind to disguise the fact. 
But in the matter of this war, 
and particularly when it comes to 
plans for increasing production 
on the stalk and on the hoof, 
Canada is three years wiser than 
America, with a wisdom born of 
long black-bordered casualty 
lists, big undermanned ranches 
and small new gardens. It may 
be, therefore, that the tale of 
what Little Brother has done and 
is doing will help Big Brother to 
swing his vast forces into line. 
American women went about gar¬ 
dening scientifically—they studied 
it under instructors. Here are 
women running seeding machines 
on the farm of the New York State 
Agricultural School at Farming- 
dale, L. I. After a course they are 
qualified to teach others or take 
full charge of farms of their own 
When war gardening began here in the States, House & Garden com¬ 
missioned a staff writer to make a survey of the way Canada was hand¬ 
ling the problem after three years of the conflict. Here is her report. 
If Canada with 10,000,000 population can do this much, what can the 
United States do with 100,000,000? The pictures illustrate the zvay we 
have been going about it. 
© Underwood & Underwood 
The inhabited portion of the 
Dominion of Canada bears about 
the same relation to the mapped 
whole that the margin does to 
this magazine page. There are 
something under ten million 
people planted firmly in the set¬ 
tled strip, owning besides their 
own profitable real estate, 400,- 
000,000 acres of untouched 
arable land, to say nothing of 
pulp forests unmeasured, graz¬ 
ing fields uncounted and thun¬ 
derous water powers the hydro- 
g rap hie survey has never 
bothered about, stretching on up 
into the Hudson Bay Company’s 
infinity where 20,000,000 caribou 
wander at large, despite the pres¬ 
ent high cost of beeksteak. 
The Dominion has already 
School gardens comprise an appre¬ 
ciable proportion of the acreage 
devoted to patriotic patches. New 
York has approximately 1,150 
acres under the war plough; Bos¬ 
ton, 1,500; Chicago, 8,000; and 
the school children in Philadelphia 
are cultivating about 80 acres. 
Parks and vacant lots are used 
© Underwood & Underwood 
