THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
273 
neglected by American botanists, and among them are 
handsome tre(!s. Some of these are growing in the Ar¬ 
boretum, and it is not im|)rol)ahle that the AiLoretum col¬ 
lection will he impioved at the end of a few years when 
it is hoped the Americat) Lindens will he belter known. 
Lindens haY(‘ always been more valued as ornamental 
and shade tr(‘es in Liiro[)e than in the Unitc'd Stahls. No 
olhei' ti(*(*s have Ikmmi more gcmerally planh'd in some of 
the coimiries of c(*nti’al Kurop(;, and in these countries 
attention has h(*en paid to the collection and perpetuation 
ol several interesting and valuable varieties and hybrids. 
I he Arboretum collection, which is arranged in the mea¬ 
dow on the right-hand side of the M(‘adow" Road, now 
contains torty-five species, varieties and hybrids. Many 
of these trees hav(‘ llowered for s(‘veral years, and some 
of them are large enough to show tlu' habit of tho dilTer- 
ent species when thirty or forty years old. .lodging by 
the ArbonMum colhrtion. llu' handsomest of Ihest* trees 
which-can be grow n in this |)art of llu* coui iry are the 
European 7’. vuUjarh, T. rordala, T. lonirntosn, and T. 
peliolaris and tin* Anu'i ican T. h(>U>roplu/ll(i, T. Micfi/ u.rii 
and T. nef/lec/fi, and the hybrid T. s}>o<‘laf)U.is. This tre<* 
is believed to be a hybrid of T. (imarirano with T. prf- 
iolaris or T. lomenlom. It has l(‘av(‘s as large as thos(‘ of 
the American tree but silveiy wdiil(^ on the lower surface. 
The variety Mollkei has ratiu'r thicker but «*(pially large 
leaves. The.sc* trees are among the handsomest of all 
Limh'iis, and no Limh'ns in the Arborc'lum (*oll(*elion 
grow^ more rapidly. 
Essentials to a Food Program for Next Year 
By Gifford Pinchot, LL. D., Milford, Pennsylvania. 
Pood has been our greatest contribution to the war, and it is 
likely to continue so. Heroic France is today actually so short 
of food that she has been obliged to cut down her consumption of 
w'heat 25 per cent, her consumption of sugar 49 per cent, and her 
consumption of fats 48 per cent, in spite of all we could do to 
help. That fact brings home the part the food we alone can 
supply has been playing and is to play in winning the war. 
Great Britain, also, is dependent still for 65 per cent of her es¬ 
sential foodstuffs on Canada and the United States. 
Food is our greatest contribution to the war, and our greatest 
domestic problem as well. From March 1, 1916, to March 1, 1917, 
the reserve of the six principal grains in the United States was 
reduced by an amount equal to one pound per day for every man, 
woman, and child in America. The difference between the 
amount of grain in our country at the beginning and at the end 
of that one year was greater than any crop ever raised in the 
United States, with three exceptions. We are not only faced with 
the duty which has been laid upon us to supply food to our 
Allies and to the neutral nations of the world, a duty which we 
must perform or lose the war, but also with the duty to restore 
our own reserve of grain to a point where a single bad crop can¬ 
not mean famine in the land. The food situation is serious, if 
anything can be. 
The amount of food available can be increased by producing 
more or by using less. Nine-tenths of our attention in the 
United States seems to have been given to saving what we had 
instead of to the vastly more fundamental question of producing 
more. If we had concentrated on the question of larger produc¬ 
tion a reasonable fraction of the attention, ingenuity, and effort 
that has been given to conservation, there would have been far 
more foor for our Allies and our own people, and much of the 
painful need for saving as well as the anxiety over supply would 
have disappeared. It would be hard to imagine a more grievous 
and unnecessary mistake. 
It is substantially too late to increase the crop of 1918—that is 
fixed, except as cultivation and the weather may affect it still. 
It will be large or small, as may happen, and there is little we 
can do about it. The indications are that an exceptional spring 
will give us far more wheat than we had a right to expect from 
the area planted. But we cannot safely count on a repetition of 
such good luck. Now is the time, while action can still produce 
results, to plan for the crop of 1919. 
Increase of crop production is mainly a question of dealing with 
men. To secure a larger crop is a matter of getting the farmers 
to produce more, and in order to do that we must deal with them 
as they are, and take measures such as will fit their circum¬ 
stances, meet with their approval, and therefore produc’e results. 
One of the main difficulties in our food situation has been that 
the officials in control have not understood the farmer. We have 
had the city man’s point of view in control of the food question, 
and not the point of view of the man who produces the food. 
But the farmer is the man who grows the crop, and to get him 
to increase his crop you must reach his heart and his mind. But 
he cannot be reached along the lines that appeal to the banker, 
or the merchant, or the brick-layer, or the hand in a factory, 
but only along lines that fit in with the ways of thinking and liv¬ 
ing of the man who actually walks in the furrow and milks the 
cow. And that has not been done. 
I am not going into the question of the mistakes that have 
been made. We are at war, and the past is valuable mainly as a 
warning. The thing to be done now is to provide for the next 
crop, leaving the story of what has already happened to be writ¬ 
ten afterward. When that story is told, the facts concerning the 
relation of our government to the farmers during our first year 
in the war will make the story of our blunders in aircraft pro¬ 
duction look small in comparison. If our farmers, in spite of 
the failure of the government in organization and understanding, 
in spite of the lack of labor, credit, and supplies, still increase 
or maintain the crop production of last year, it will be an achieve¬ 
ment far beyond all praise, and it will have saved the nation 
from losing the war. 
The farmer is a member of a highly skilled profession. There 
is no other man who works for as small a wage who is as skilled 
a worker as the farmer, and there is no other man who requires 
as large a field of knowledge to be successful with the work he 
does. In talking recently to a body of farmers, I assumed that it 
takes about three years to make a skilled farm hand. Imme¬ 
diately a gray-haired man in the audience spoke up and said, 
“Ten.” To make a farmer capable of directing the work of a 
farm of course takes very much longer. All this is not generally 
understood in town. I had occasion, the other day, to tell an 
energetic, robust and intelligent city man that he could not earn 
his keep on a farm. He was inclined to be hurt, and very much 
surprised. “Why,” said he, “I supposed anybody could work on 
a farm.” Said I, “A farmer wouldn’t have you on his place,” and 
it was true. 
A farmer is not only a member of a highly specialized pro¬ 
fession,—we must remember that he is also a business man in a 
business which involves taking larger risks than almost any 
other business. In addition to all the ordinary chances of bus¬ 
iness, he is subject to the weather to a degree that is otherwise 
practically unknown. More than that, he has his own way of 
thinking, and having reached a decision he is slower to change 
than the city man. Our city people are inclined to look down on 
the farmer. They sometimes think of him as being different from 
them, and therefore inferior. But this is very far from true. 
When all is said and done the man who owns the land from 
which he makes his living is the backbone of the country. Fur¬ 
thermore, with his family he makes up one-third of the population. 
Even from the point of view of organization he is not to be de¬ 
spised, for our organized farmers are more in number than the 
whole membership of the American Federation of Labor. 
The demands which will be made upon us for food in 1919 and 
1920 will be enormous, and they will be made absolutely irrespec¬ 
tive of whether the war ends or not. When victory comes we shall 
have more, and not less, people to feed than before, for the de¬ 
mands of half-starved Germany and Austria will be added. The 
ending of the war will produce no more food and no more ships. 
It will not bring the wheat of India or Argentina or Australia a 
mile nearer to London or Berlin. The demand on us in 1919 will 
be colossal whether the war ends or not. 
What then must be done to reach the farmer, supply his indis¬ 
pensable needs, and make it possible for him to produce in 1919. 
when he would like to produce what the nation and the world 
vitally needs that he should produce, but what the bungling of 
men in high places bids fair to keep him from being able to pro¬ 
duce this year? 
First, wipe out the distinction which has been held, and nicst 
harmfully held, between the production of food and the use of 
food. Our conservation measures have been directed upon the 
