ne-acre tract on
Lansdowne Avenue was rented at $15 per acre per annum. Some sixteen
families became interested' and Mr. D. F. Rowe, who had been one of
the most successful gardeners, became manager They had the land
thoroughly fertilized and plowed, and then subdivided. Some took
separate allotments, as under the Vacant Lot Association's plan, and
others worked for the manager at an agreed rate of wages per hour.
The whole nine acres were thoroughly well cultivated, and a
magnificent crop harvested.

As soon as there was produce for sale, a market was established on
the ground and a regular delivery system organized which later
attracted much attention. It was carried on by the children, of nine
to twelve years of age, from the various families. Each child was
provided with a pushcart. There were many and various styles, made
from little express wagons, baby coaches, and produce boxes.

The children built up their own routes, and went regularly to their
customers for orders. They made up the orders, loaded them into
their little pushcarts, charged themselves up with the separate
amounts in a small book, and at the end of each day's sales each
child settled with the manager and was paid his commission (twenty
per cent of the receipts) in cash. These little salesmen and
salesgirls often took home four to five dollars per week and yet
never worked more than three to five hours per day. The work was
done under such circumstances that to them it was not work but play.
You can get the full report from the Philadelphia "Vacant Lot
Cultivation Associations." It's interesting.

"The greatest value that our little garden has brought us," said a
French woman, mother of a goodly number of rather small children,
"has not been in the fine vegetables it has yielded all summer, or
the good times that I and the children have had in the open air, but
in the glasses of beer and absinthe that my husband hasn't taken."
"Quite right, mother, quite right," came from a man near by. "The
world can never know the evil we men don't do while we are busy in
our little gardens."

Further, pillage of crops, which was always urged as an objection to
raising fruits or truck on open grounds, has proved to be a baseless
fear. Where any of the gardeners are allowed to camp or put up
shacks on the patches, theft does not occur and various
superintendents repeat that "the few and trivial cases of stealing
from vacant lot plots or school gardens were