12 
House & Garden 
The farmerettes study gardening 
plans the way the rookies study 
war maps and apply the practical 
principles in work which extends 
far into the evenings. Farmers in 
New York State are paying these 
girls $2.50 a day after they graduate 
supplied 500,000 of the most 
cold-bloodedly efficient soldiers 
that the Allied forces can boast, to 
say nothing of millions of money 
and shiploads of shells. But what 
the fighters need more than 
pence or projectiles is that for 
which Canada has put up the 
greatest grain port in the world— 
Fort William and Port Arthur 
with their combined elevator capacity of 
43,000,000 bushels. Number One Hard 
Wheat is, in the last analysis, the shot that 
will wing the Prussian Eagle. 
Patriotism, Production and Thrift 
January, 1915, say the Dominion Govern¬ 
ment launch its advertising campaign for 
“Patriotism and Production,” and despite 
the thousands of men who had exchanged 
a seat on the tractor for a stand at attention, 
18% more of the billiard table prairie was 
put under cultivation, the sun shone ac¬ 
cording to the best Canadian traditions, the 
showers came in on the chorus, and the re¬ 
sult was a joint Thanksgiving Service held 
by the Baltic Exchange and the National 
Foodstuffs Association in the little old 
church of St. Andrew Undershaft in Lon¬ 
don, England. There never had been such 
a harvest nor, incidentally, such profit to 
the farmer for his $2 wheat. 
But January, 1916, intensified the problem. 
It still took 25,000,000 pounds of food a 
week to satisfy the French troops around 
Verdun alone, and the Allies still called for 
more Canadians in khaki. Production could 
be increased, but not with such leaping per¬ 
centages as last year. The second cam¬ 
paign was therefore called “Production— 
Underwood & Underwood 
and Thrift.” Canada would consume less 
of her own product if she were careful and 
there would be more to send to England. 
One ship out of Halifax can make two 
Liverpool trips to the South American 
ship’s one—and four trips to the single ar¬ 
rival reported by the bark from India or 
Australia. 
The course of 1916 saw all the Provincial 
Governments lined up under the Federal 
banner, and wig-wagging from the tops of 
their respective grain elevators. This year 
also brought out the Vacant Lot gardener 
who believed that the man with the hoe 
who raised his own vegetables could free 
the hands of the man with the gasoline 
plough who wanted to work for the Allies. 
In addition he would help the harassed 
railroads who had contributed thousands of 
men and hundreds of miles of torn-up track 
to the Allies. John Smith’s potato, f.o.b. 
the kitchen door, would make Lord 
Shaughnessy sleep o’nights, and would even 
bring a smile to the austere lips of the little 
Welshman himself. 
Toronto had had 120 vacant lot gardens 
back in 1915. Nineteen sixteen trebled the 
number, cleared $9,000, and convinced 
everybody that the Medical Health Officer 
knew what he was talking about when he 
declared that enough vegetables 
could be grown on the 2,000 
acres of available backyard space 
within the city limits to feed the 
500,000 Torontonians all year. 
Ottawa, the capital of Canada, 
is a sleek, conservative and slum¬ 
less little city. St. Andrew’s 
Presbyterian Church owned a 
considerable area of unoccupied 
land known as the Glebe. The elders 
brought their brains to bear on it; had it 
ploughed, harrowed, divided into 128 plots 
and advertised in the papers. Any citizen 
who wanted exercise and potatoes would 
please step forward. One hundred and 
seventy-five applicants presented them¬ 
selves, the lucky section of which toiled 
successfully, took part in a “patriotic vege¬ 
table contest” and are at it again this year. 
Regina was another city that made the 
desert blossom as the rose, adding a co¬ 
operative seed buying scheme to its achieve¬ 
ments. Flowers were grown along the front 
of the potato plots, and the street car sight¬ 
seer’s impression of the capital of Saskat¬ 
chewan was, in consequence, better than 
it had ever been before. 
Gardening O. H. M. S. 
But it wasn’t until the blood-red sun of 
January 1st, 1917, boiled over the edge of a 
war-wearied world that Canada really called 
up the reserves in her production campaign 
and prepared, as one blithe newspaper song¬ 
ster expressed it, “to beat the Kaiser with 
a spade—in—your—own—backyard !” 
The Dominion Government now has 
seventeen distinct advertising campaigns in 
(Continued on page 60) 
© Underwood & Underwood 
The private schools are not far be¬ 
hind the public. At Rosemary School 
in Greenwich, Conn., (illustrated 
above) each girl is responsible for 
twenty-five hills of potatoes. The 
gardening classes are under the in¬ 
struction of Ernest Thompson Seton 
