Page 708

GARDENS -AND THE UNEMPLOYED
ALS 1K KAN
GARDENS AND THE UNEMPLOYED
I DO not see how the "problem of the
     unemployed" can continue to exist after
     the sap begins to run. Lately the
     newspapers have been full of all the
troubles and sorrows of people out of work,
and it seems to me that this question of un-
employment is largely a metropolitan one.
We cannot get opportunities for labor in our
cities sufficiently great and varied to meet
the immense.number of inefficient laborers
who complicate city statistics. There never
has been and never can be, as I see it, labor
enough to -meet the demand of unskilled
laborers in any seaport town; least of all in
a town like New York which holds out such
tremendous inducements to workers from
foreign countries and to our own rural com-
munities.
   All our societies and personal efforts and
 public charities to adjust the problem of the
 unemployed are born of a more or less un-
 thinking impulse,--an effort to accomplish
 an impossible philanthropy.  We may be
 able to help support the unemployed in
 cities, but at no time can we find sufficient
 work for them there. To me the solution
 is, and always has been, the Garden and the
 Farm. Once the frost is out of the ground
 there is labor encugh in our orchards and
 vineyards and fields for every unemployed
 worker in our entire land. It is an extraor-
 dinary fact that the farmer has as much
 difficulty to get the laborer into the country
 as the laborer has to find work in the city,
 and if all the societies would form them-
 selves into a bridge to connect the metropol-
 itan poor with farmers' employment bu-
 reaus in rural districts we should have a
 flourishing condition in the country and a
 less harrowing one in our cities.
   In spite of the fact that Shakespeare be-
 lieved that "there is no ancient gentlemen
 but gardeners," most of the newcomers to
 American soil seem to prefer the peanut
 stand to the plow, and this phase of the
 question has to be coped with. Most of the
 new-born "Americans" imagine that their
 chance of progress lies in the city, and they
 seem willing to sacrifice health, happiness
 and family life for a quick return from the
 little cart on the side street. What we
 really need in our cities is, in place of char-
 itv organizations, an educational campaign
 directed toward the immigrant, not only
 when he first arrives in this country, but as
 708
his children are growing up and as his boys
are coming out of our public schools unpre-
pared for practical existence. In addition
to teaching the people the advantages of the
country, we shoul plan actually to help
those who are not nkeded in cities out to the
land; we should make this effort so wide-
spread, so intelligent, so practical, that
America would become one great garden,
supplying all her own needs, and those of
foreign countries as well, with no more ef-
fort than is made today to cope with deadly
city conditions and depleted farmsteads.
  Of course something is already .being
done along these lines. Towns and cities
have co6perated with the State in forestry,
in park making, in road construction, all of
which means employing labor. The State
and the Federal effort to preserve our water
supplies and natural landscape beauties, to
develop college and experiment stations, the
splendid work of the Department of Agri-
culture at Washington, all mean an under-
standing arid a widespread effort to improve
rural conditions by preventing the devasta-
tion of our natural wealth and beauty.
   But not to any great extent as yet, has
the surplus population of our cities been
forced out into wholesome, sane, practical
and profitable country life. Our city schools
have made occasional efforts to interest chil-
dren in gardening; here and there a city has
casually organized a society for window-
box and vine-planting and for garden-mak-
ing in the poor quarters; but these sporadic
efforts rather tend to make life more endur-
able for the poor in the city than to get them
away from degrading metropolitan condi-
tions. And the whole matter as it stands
today is absolutely uneconomic. A supply
of labor far beyond the demand is allowed
to remain in cities and city suburbs, the re-
sult being that the price of labor is forced
down, the price of food forced up; children
sent into the factories, boys into the crim-
inal courts and girls into the sweatshops.
   Garden-making, from my point of view,
 can change all this. Indeed it seems to me
 that the redemption of the world, the social
 and economic world, can only be achieved
 through gardening. It has been shown by
 statistics that if the one-half million chil-
 dren who now work in factories were al-
 lowed to cultivate gardens they could pro-
 duce (with very much less effort) an an-
 nual income of more than two hundred mil-
 lion dollars, earning more in a summer than
 they at present can during the entire year;