any present experiment or model gardens. These show what can
be done even by unskilled labor, with hardly any capital, on small
plots where the soil was poor, but which are well situated.

The directors say: "The first Vacant Lot Cultivation Associations
were organized when relief agencies were vainly striving to provide
adequate assistance for the host of unemployed. The cultivation of
vacant city lots by the unemployed had already been tried
successfully in other cities. The first year we provided gardens,
seeds, tools, and instruction only, for about one hundred families
on twenty-seven acres of ground. At a total cost to contributors of
about $1800, our gardeners produced $46,000 worth of crops."

The applicant is allowed a garden on the sole condition that he
cultivate it well through the season, and that he do not trespass
upon his neighbors. He must respect their right to what their labor
produces. A failure to observe these rules forfeits his privilege.

During twenty years, more than eight thousand families have been
assisted, many old people who could no longer keep up the rapid pace
of our industrial life, cripples whose physical condition held them
back in the race for work, persons who on account of sickness or
other misfortunes have been thrown out of the competition in modern
business, and unfortunate beings who, though clear in mind and
strong in muscle, have been forced to the ranks of the
unemployed--these have all had an opportunity opened to them:
opportunity to enjoy all of the fruits from nature's great
storehouse which their own labor and skill might secure.

The war has forced France, Italy, and England similarly to utilize
natural opportunities for subsistence in their enormous tracts of
unproductive lands. In Mexico all proprietors will be required to
designate what they propose to cultivate and the remainder will
either be allotted temporarily for agricultural purposes to those
desiring them or it will be cultivated under government management.
There is no remedy like that for poverty.

The first man who applied for a vacant lot garden came to the
Philadelphia office after the announcement in the papers, so weak
and emaciated that the doctor was afraid the poor fellow would be
unable to get out of his office without assistance. He was a widower
with three girls and a boy, the oldest girl about seventeen.

He received a garden which contained only about one fifth of an
acre. Later he ob