n, open-air playgrounds are instituted, and similar efforts
are made tending to mitigate the evil effects of city life; but all
these efforts are merely sporadic or temporary; they do not attack
the evil at the roots; moreover they are only drops in the bucket
when compared with that which is necessary.

This tendency to cooperative and collective action has resulted in
this particular case in thousands of the children's _"Arbor
Gardens"_ round about the city. It is an experience "en gros," one
of such dimensions that cavil ceases and admiration rises supreme.

The German poor are very poor indeed, but parents were induced to
rent, at a price of 4 marks ($1) or about 20 cents a month from May
to October for the summer season, a patch of land in the suburbs of
Berlin unfit for farmland because cut up by railroad tracks and
newly laid-out streets. On one of these patches a family might erect
an arbor, or a small structure of boards with a wide veranda and a
corrugated iron roof, for housing themselves and children during the
summer months. The dwellings are of the most primitive kind and
rather flimsy; no permanent structure can be allowed, for at any
time the owner of the land may give notice to vacate for the purpose
of erecting a row of houses, railroad buildings, or other permanent
structures. The tenants themselves build fences of wire or plant
hedges to keep the different plots apart. On these patches the
children, under the guidance of teachers, parents, and appointed
guardians, began to sow flower seeds, plant shrubs, vines, and
trees, or raise kitchen vegetables, each group or family according
to its own desires and needs. Since the "arbors" are small they do
not decrease the arable land of the allotments much, and there is
still room left for swings, gymnastic apparatus, and similar
contrivances, as well as bare sandy spots for little tots to play
in. The various allotments are mostly uniform in size and are
reached by narrow three- or four-foot lanes, on which occasionally
are seen probationary officers or guardians who keep the peace and
settle cases of disturbance.

The "arbor gardens" are established on every square rod of unused
land round about the city, on vacant lots, far out to the borders of
the well-trained woods and royal forests. Small tradesmen, laboring
men, civil officials of low degrees, etc., have found it profitable
to forsake their tenements in the city and move kith and kin into
those "a