To save vegetables and fruits by canning is a patriotic duty. The war makes the need for food conservation more imperative than at any time in history. America is mainly responsible for the food supply of the world. In this way the abundance of the summer may be made to supply the needs of the winter.
By the modern cold-pack method it is as easy to can vegetables as to can fruits. Some authorities say it is easier. At any rate, it is more useful.
In the cold-pack method of canning, sterilization does away with the danger of spoilage by fermentation or "working." Sterilization consists in raising the temperature of the filled jar or can to a germ-killing point and holding it there until bacterial life is destroyed.
The word "container" is used to designate either the tin can or the glass jar.
Single-period cold-pack canning, as distinguished from old-fashioned preserving, offers a saving in time, labor, and expense, and satisfactory results. As the foodstuffs are placed in the containers before sterilization, they are cold and may be handled quickly and easily. Then the sterilization period is frequently short. This is time-saving. Finally, no rich preservatives, such as thick syrups or heavily spiced solutions, are required. Fruits may be put up in thin syrups. Vegetables require only salt for flavoring and water to fill the container.
Another advantage of this method is that it is practicable to put up food in small quantities. It pays to put up even a single container. Thus, when there is a small surplus of some garden crop, or something left over from the order from the grocer's, one can take the short time necessary to place this food in a container and store it for future use. This is true household efficiency—the kind which, if practiced on a national scale, will conserve our war food supply and will, after the war, cut heavily into the high cost of living.
There are five principal methods of canning: (1) the cold-pack, single-period method; (2) the intermittent, or fractional sterilization method; (3) the cold-water method; (4) the open kettle or hot-pack method; and (5) the vacuum-seal method. Of these the one worked out on scientific lines by leading experts and used by many commercial canners is so much the best method for home canning, because of its simplicity and effectiveness, that it is recommended by the National Emergency Food Commission and the details are explained in their manual.
The cold-water method can be used effectively in putting up rhubarb, green gooseberries, and a few other sour berry fruits. The process is simple. The fruit is first prepared and washed and then blanched, and finally packed practically raw in containers, which are next filled with cold water and then sealed. Some sour fruits packed in this way will keep indefinitely.
A serviceable outfit may be made of materials found in any household. All that is necessary is a vessel to hold the jars or cans—such as a wash boiler or a large tin pail. This should have a tight-fitting cover. Provide a false bottom of wood or a wire rack to allow for free circulation of water under the containers.
While suburban gardeners with large surplus of vegetables find it desirable to use tin cans, being more easily handled for commercial purposes, most of us find glass jars the more satisfactory and economical containers for canned vegetables and fruits. This is especially true when there is a shortage of tin cans. All types of jars that seal perfectly may be used. Use may be made of those to which one is accustomed or which may be already on hand. The rubbers must be sound but the glass jars may be used indefinitely. Glass jars are adapted for use in any of the cold-pack canning outfits. Be sure that no jar is defective.
For use in the storing of products which are already sterilized, such as jellies, jams, and preserves, and the bottling of fruit juices, housewives may practice effective thrift by saving all jars in which they receive dried beef, bacon, peanut butter, and other products and bottles that have contained olives, catsup, and kindred goods.
Blanching is important with most vegetables and many fruits. It consists of plunging them into boiling water for a short time. Spinach and other greens should be blanched in steam. To do this, place them in an ordinary steamer or suspend them in a tightly closed vessel above an inch or two of boiling water.
Blanching should be followed by the cold dip, plunging into cold water after removal from the hot water. Cold dipping hardens the pulp and preserves the original color, enhancing the appearance. Blanching cleanses the articles and removes excess acids and strong flavors and odors. It also causes shrinkage, so that a larger quantity may be packed in a container. After blanching and cold dipping, surface moisture should be removed by placing the vegetables or fruits between two towels or by exposure to the sun.
All this is so simple and the directions so easily followed that the average 12-year-old may successfully can vegetables or fruits. The steps and the precautions are:
1. Select sound vegetables and fruits. (If possible can them the same day they are picked.) Wash, clean, and prepare them.
2. Have ready, on the stove, a can or pail of boiling water.
3. Place the vegetables or fruits in cheesecloth, or in some other porous receptacle—a wire basket is excellent—for dipping and blanching them in the boiling water.
4. Put them whole into the boiling water. The Commission gives a time-table for blanching. After the water begins to boil, begin to count the blanching time; this varies from one to twenty minutes, according to the vegetable or fruit.
5. When the blanching is complete, remove the vegetables or fruits from the boiling water and plunge them a number of times into cold water, to harden the pulp and check the flow of coloring matter. Do not leave them in cold water.
6. The containers must be thoroughly clean. It is not necessary to sterilize them in steam or boiling water before filling them, as in the cold-pack process both the insides of containers and the contents are sterilized. The jars should be heated before being filled, in order to avoid breakage.
7. Pack the product into the containers, leaving about a quarter of an inch of space at the top.
8. With vegetables add one level teaspoonful of salt to each quart container and fill with boiling water. With fruits use syrups.
9. With glass jars always use a good rubber. Test the rubber by stretching or turning inside out. Fit on the rubber and put the lid in place. If the container has a screw top do not screw up as hard as possible, but use only the thumb and little finger in tightening it. This makes it possible for the steam to escape and prevents breakage. If a glass top jar is used, snap the top bail only, leaving the lower bail loose during sterilization. Tin cans should be completely sealed.
10. Place the filled and capped containers on the rack in the sterilizer. If the homemade or commercial hot-water bath outfit is used, enough water should be in the boiler to come at least one inch above the tops of the containers, and the water, in boiling out, should never be allowed to drop to the level of these tops. Begin to count processing time when the water begins to boil.
At the end of the sterilizing period remove the containers from the sterilizer. Fasten covers on tightly at once, turn the containers upside down to test for leakage, leave in this position until cold, and then store in a cool, dry place. Be sure that no draft is allowed to blow on glass jars, as it may cause breakage.
11. If jars are to be stored where there is strong light, wrap them in paper, preferably brown, as light will fade the color of products canned in glass jars, and sometimes deteriorate the food value.
That's the whole trick.
COOPERATION in buying supplies at wholesale, in standardizing and shipping crops, in keeping grain in elevators, and fruit and some meats and poultry in cold storage has reached a high development among the farmers largely in the Northwest, much ahead of us "city folks."
There are more than five thousand active Farmers' Cooperation Associations in the United States. Minnesota alone has over six hundred cooperative creameries, some of which have a laundry annex. The associations have six hundred and sixty thousand members and do a business of nearly a thousand dollars a year for each member. These are the people that we call "hayseeds"; if we could plant some more such "seeds," it would be a good job. But in cooperative retail domestic supply we are far behind England and other countries, even behind Russia. That is partly because our better retail business methods leave less room for the savings.
A simple and easy but important beginning of cooperation was where each one took turns in delivering the milk and fetching supplies. One farmer might do it all every day for a small charge.
The new South is developing a great business in this line. When you go to New Orleans look up the stores whose letter head reads:
NELSON CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATION, INC.Food SuppliersOFFICE, 506 So. PETERS STREET. CREAMERY, ERATO ST.WAREHOUSE, 511 SO. PETERS ST. BAKERY, ELYSIAN FIELDS AVE.61 RETAIL STORES4 MEAT MARKETS
In August, 1917, N. O. Nelson of the above concern writes in answer to my request:
"It does not take 2500 words to tell all I know about Cooperation. I trust the inclosed may be serviceable for your book, and shall feel proud if it is.
"I am doing my job here for two very practical reasons; first, the immediate service of reducing the cost of living to say 15,000 families, mostly poor; second, to introduce economy in retailing.
"The readers of such a book as yours are well aware of the wasteful ways of retailing goods. In every town and city there is a multiplication of stores, advertising clerks, teams, and other incidentals.
"Likewise there is a lot of middle men and drummers, the buyers at the producer's end, the wholesalers or middle men at the consumer's end, with speculator and landowner at both ends. All of these have to be supported by the system, and the dear consumer pays for it.
"The Cooperative store system, which was started in England 73 years ago, eliminates most of these waste expenses. The system has kept spreading at an astonishing rate; in Great Britain there are now 3 1/2 million members, and more than a billion of sales a year. Other European countries are full of these stores. Many of the retail stores have from twelve thousand to fifty thousand members; their sales run into the millions. They are federated in a wholesale agency which buys for them and manufactures on an extensive scale.
"By the economies thus introduced they are able to save regularly about 15%, besides paying interest on the capital employed, and accumulating a liberal surplus. It is simply a question of people getting together (all civilization is), contributing their own money and their trade, and thus avoiding all the waste expenses.
"It is a very democratic plan; anybody is welcome to join it; every member has one vote and no more, they elect their directors, the directors elect the managers, and the managers employ the clerks. They sell at the market prices and every three or six months take account of stock and rebate the profits in proportion to each member's purchases, with half rate to non-members.
"It appeals to the economical sense of the ordinary housekeeper, and to the ethical sense of those who want no advantage of their neighbor. It prevents some from getting unduly rich and it helps to keep many from being unduly poor.
"The same principle has spread into farmer's work, especially Creameries. In Cooperative Creameries and Stores Russia has grown faster in the last 15 years than any other country, having at last reports over thirteen million members. This orderly getting together for common social needs has much to do with the orderliness of the Russian Revolution.
"The United States has made large progress in producers' cooperative associations, but not much in stores.
"I have in New Orleans a system of 65 stores on a modified system; it is a cooperative association but we sell at as low prices as can be afforded, for cash in hand. The sales amount to about 2 1/2 millions, the most of it in the winter. The Association owns a Bakery, a Creamery, Condiment Factory; and Coffee Factory, and a 1550-acre plantation. We are able to undersell the market about 20%.
"People anywhere can make a cooperative store if they take it seriously. There should be about 200 members and $2000 in cash to start with: then get an honest and intelligent manager; start with a grocery, buy and sell for cash, either on the Rochdale plan of selling at full market prices and dividing the profits periodically, or on my plan of selling as cheaply as can be afforded. In either plan it works out into producing a large part of the goods sold, thus eliminating entirely the superfluous middleman.
"Three acres and Liberty is the correct way of producing a living; with the adjunct of a cooperative store to do the selling of the surplus produced and the buying of goods needed, the small farmer is free from all the waste and trammels of trade."
Now what's the matter with your helping your county and country and humanity by organizing those two hundred waiting buyers in your own town? You can be the "honest and intelligent manager" at a decent salary. If, later, the cooperators want another manager, why you can easily organize another store. The best information on this subject is the Cooperative News, Manchester, England; subscription two dollars.
Evidence is daily accumulating that the food and farm problem is not so easy as many thought it to be a few months ago. This is made clear when economists say: "The really important question in the food problem is not distribution, it is production." It is unfortunate that this statement should gain belief at this time, when those who prey upon the producer are watching for any support from whatever direction.
Passing by the obvious fact that production must precede distribution, notice that, with all the energy that has been devoted to production of farm products by the government experts, it is clear that not only is there a shortage, but that it has required all kinds of inducements, from the President down, to get the farmers to increase their output, the most potent of all being the cry of patriotism.
Some explain this by showing how land monopoly prevents men going back to the farms. While this is perfectly true, it does not answer the question why farmers now in possession of farms are not working them near their capacity.
The answer of the ordinary man to this is inefficiency on the part of the farmer, and up to the present this idea has passed as sufficient to account for the situation. The publicity given the whole farm question during the past six months, however, has to a large extent dispelled the inefficiency answer, as the farmer has responded so completely to the call, and the amateurs are beginning to realize that there is something in farming besides tickling the earth with a feather. All the facts so far brought out show the farmer abundantly able to produce all the foodstuffs needed, provided he has a reasonable certainty that he will be able to dispose of his produce at a price that will give him a fair return for his labor. This being the case, it is easy to see that putting more men back on farms would not remedy the condition we are now in; but would rather increase the difficulty.
The fact is, the two blades of grass theory has been exploded, the increased production cry has been tried out, carried to its logical conclusion, and found wanting, and the inefficiency explanation has been proved a falsehood on its face. It is, therefore, obvious that with a proper system of distribution, the entire question of production will take care of itself; but just so long as the producers find it unprofitable to produce food, just so long will they have to figure carefully not to grow too much, or it would be better for them had they grown nothing at all.
The reason why we have such divergent ideas on this subject is that so many people write about it who have had no experience in farming, while on the other hand there are few farmers who can state the case so the public can grasp the most obvious facts.
Finally, it is a question of the government doing what it ought not to have done and leaving undone those things it ought to have done. It has granted to a few monopolies transportation and terminal facilities which enable them to hold up deliveries and thus control prices. The remedy lies in seeing that the government attend to its own business, which is securing equality of opportunity for all, and special privileges to none.
It follows that cooperation should not stop either at production or at distribution. It must embrace the source of both, nor even stop at governmental plans of small holdings.
As a business enterprise, combining philanthropy and percentage, capital has an opportunity.
Accordingly an option should be secured upon a large piece of land not over forty miles from a large city, near a railroad station. The transportation at first is not important, as the new commuters will make a demand for it, and cheap autos will largely fill the gap; it will improve rapidly.
If possible it should have a lake or a fair stream on it for irrigation and small water power; the soil should be examined by experts, to see that it is suitable for trucking and market gardening.
The object should be to make a sort of vacant lot gardening plan on a grand scale. Heretofore the trouble has been that we have been unable to get land where there was any assurance that we could have it again the second year, and that the limited amount of land makes it impossible to give the men as much as they ought to have. They do not need much land, because a man working at intensive culture with only the rough plowing done for him cannot take good care of much more than one acre of land. He will probably make as much money out of one acre of land as he will out of two. Those who are willing to work should be given one acre of land, with the assurance that they can have it as long as they work it faithfully and comply with the simple rules which we have found so effective in the Vacant Lot Gardening work,—which are practically, that a man should attend to business and not annoy his neighbors. No contract or lease should be given the men, or indeed the women, for both work such gardens, as they have been doing for the past twenty years in several large cities, making at least a living upon the land and often a very large return.
There must be a competent superintendent, for everything depends upon him, who would show the men what land they should use, what they should put in, instruct them how to do it, and market their products cooperatively. Experience in Philadelphia, and in some score of other cities where they have established Vacant Lot Gardens, shows that about ten per cent annually of the people prefer to work for others, and consequently take places in the country after they have learned to do market gardening. Some others, being dissatisfied with so little land, and wanting to own their own place, go off and buy land or lease it for themselves. This makes a constant drain from the gardens, leaving openings for others who will learn in time their trade; it is possible to make in this way a steady drain out of the cities to the country, and what is better still, an automatic drain.
The land must be so near to a center of population that it may be possible to take a gang of men down there in the morning, show them what it is, and send back those who do not seem likely to make good, or who are dissatisfied; and that when men get their gardens successfully running, they may be able to bring their friends there to see what they have done, and say to them, "Go thou and do likewise."
I have been at Trudeau, Saranac Lake, and at Stony Wold, the consumptive sanitariums, and found there both by observation and by testimony that to send back the convalescents to the bench or the workshop from which they came is practically to repronounce upon them the sentence of death from which the sanitarium has offered them a reprieve. The only practical thing to do with such convalescents, and with such persons who are not capable of their ordinary avocations, is to get them in some way upon the land. There is a large demand for persons who understand the new intensive gardening, and places can be found for more than we can hope to educate in that line.
There should be buildings upon the land sufficient to bunk one hundred to one hundred and fifty men; accommodations could be made with the small timber for a considerable number. Many of these men would need some help, but most of them would shift for themselves if only they could get the opportunity to build upon the land and to have a secure tenure of it. A mere tenant knows that it is bunkum when he says "Our Country."
It is perfectly practicable to sell about one half of the land in a year or two, and have a thousand acres or more left free and clear, which will cost the promoters nothing. Renting this out or selling it will repay the whole cost, and probably bring a large profit besides.
This is no experiment, it is only to do the thing that we have been doing under various conditions with various sorts of men in different localities for the past twenty years in the Vacant Lot Gardens: namely, to give men the opportunity of living upon and cultivating land, putting up their own tents, shacks, or bungalows, and giving them such instruction and such help as does not cost anything more than the salary of the superintendent. There are abundant men who can make good and shift for themselves under those circumstances; the men who are available are single men, such men as those for whom Mr. Hallimond, a clergyman working in the Bowery, has been finding rural employment in the past ten years. Also many families will come to us through the Vacant Lot Gardens and the Little Land agitation. People such as these will increase the land value, for every decent man carries around with him at least five hundred dollars' worth of increase in land values which his presence adds to somebody's holdings of land. The struggle to pocket this increase accounts for much of the human drift from the field to the factory.
God made the country; man made the city—and the devil made the suburbs, by the aid of the speculator.
Alpha of the Plough says in the LondonStar:"I was walking with a friend along the Spaniards-road the other evening talking on the inexhaustible theme of these days, when he asked, 'What is the biggest thing that has happened to this country as the outcome of the war?'
"'It is within two or three hundred yards from here,' I replied. 'Come this way and I'll show it to you.'
"He seemed a little surprised, but accompanied me cheerfully enough as I turned from the road and plunged through the gorse and the trees towards Parliament Fields, until we came upon a large expanse of allotments, carved out of the great playground, and alive with figures, men, women, and children, some earthing up potatoes, some weeding onion beds, some thinning out carrots, some merely walking along the patches, and looking at the fruits of their labor springing from the soil. 'There,' I said, 'is the most important result of the war.'
"He laughed, but not contemptuously. He knew what I meant, and I think he more than half agreed.
"And I think you will agree, too, if you will think what that stretch of allotments means. It is the symptom of the most important revival, the greatest spiritual awakening this country has seen for generations. Wherever you go, that symptom meets you. Here in Hampstead allotments are as plentiful as blackberries in autumn. A friend of mine who lives in Beckenham tells me there are fifteen hundred in his parish. In the neighborhood of London there must be many thousands. In the country as a whole there must be hundreds of thousands. If dear old Joseph Fels could revisit the glimpses of the moon and see what is happening, see the vacant lots and waste spaces bursting into onion beds and potato patches, what joy would be his! He was the forerunner of the revival, the passionate pilgrim of the Vacant Lot: but his hot gospel fell on deaf ears, and he died just before the trumpet of war awakened the sleeper.
"Do not suppose that the greatness of this thing that is happening can be measured in terms of food. That is important, no doubt, but it is not the most important thing. I am confident that it will add more than anything else to the spiritual resources of the nation. It is the beginning of a war on the disease that is blighting our people. What is wrong with us? What is the root of our social and spiritual ailment? Is it not the divorce of the people from the soil? For generations the wholesome red blood of the country has been sucked into the great towns, and we have built up a vast machine of industry that has made slaves of us, shut out the light of the fields from our lives, left our children to grow like weeds in the slums, rootless and waterless, poisoned the healthy instincts of nature implanted in us, and put in their place the rank growths of the streets. Can you walk through a working-class district or a Lancashire cotton town, with their huddle of airless streets, without a feeling of despair coming over you at the sense of this enormous perversion of life into the arid channels of death? Can you take pride in an Empire on which the sun never sets when you think of the courts in which, as Will Crooks says, the sun never rises?
"And now the sun is going to rise. We have started a revolution that will not end until the breath of the earth has come back to the soul of the people. The tyranny of the machine is going to be broken. The tyranny of the land monopoly is going to be lifted. Yes, you say, but these people that I see working on the allotments are not the people from the courts and the slums; but professional men, the superior artisan, and so on. That is true. But the movement must get hold of theintelligenziafirst. The important thing is that the breach in the prison is made; the fresh air is filtering in; the idea is born—not still-born, mind you, but born a living thing. It is a way of salvation that will not be lost, and that all will travel.
"We have found the land, and we are going back to possess it. Take a man out of the street and put him in a garden, and you have made a new creature of him. I have seen the miracle again and again. I know a bus conductor, for example, outwardly the most ordinary of his kind. But one night I mentioned allotments, touched the key of his soul, and discovered that this man was going about his daily work irradiated by the thought of his garden triumphs. He had got a new purpose in life. He had got the spirit of the earth in his bones. It is not only the humanizing influence of the garden, it is its democratizing influence too.
"When Adam delved and Eve spanWhere was then the gentleman?'
You can get on terms with the lowliest if you will discuss gardens."
(Condensed from the Annual Report of the U. S. Department of the Interior of the Commissioner of Education. Vol. 2, now out of print.)
BERLIN has not been boastful of a new sociological feature which it has developed within the last fifteen years, a feature so revolutionary in its bearing upon education and upon the general health of future generations, that it should be made known to the world. As yet little has been said about this new agency. It may be because it is not a governmental institution, but the result of self-help and of the recognition of a plain necessity. It may be assumed that if the summer colonies had been instituted by the government for the great majority who are poor it would not have succeeded so well as it has.
The teachers, seeing that the horizon of their pupils was limited by brick and mortar (for open park spaces are rare in Berlin), came to the conclusion that only by giving their pupils opportunity to live in the open air could they lay a sound foundation of knowledge of natural objects and processes as a basis for school studies. The teachers of themselves, however, could apply only palliative remedies, such as having sent to them, from the botanical gardens, thousands of specimens of plants, twigs, flowers, fruit, etc., for nature study in the schoolroom; planting flower beds around the schoolhouses; also, brief excursions into parks, and hanging up before the class colored pictures of landscapes and rural scenery.
While in many cases, especially in large cities, the necessity was recognized of getting the children out of the great desert of brick and mortar into the open air and into companionship with life in the field, the garden, the brooks, and the woods, it had nowhere resulted in a systematic effort to aid the children of an entire city in that way until it was tried in Berlin. Of course it is well understood, not only abroad, but in New York and in other large cities of this country, that something must be done to alleviate the want of space and fresh air, and so recreation piers and roof gardens are provided, excursions of schools into parks are undertaken, 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 "arbor colonies." The tenements in Berlin are as bad as in our own big cities, only better policed.
Not all of these arbor gardens are occupied by families during the night. Thousands return to their city homes evenings. Some parents, unable to free themselves from toil in town, send their children under guidance of servants, and spend only occasional Sundays and holidays with them.
The people, especially the children, getting some information concerning the treatment of the crops from competent advisers in school and out in the arbor colonies, derive great good from their horticultural and floricultural work. Families who are aesthetically inclined devote their space to flowers and trailing vines exclusively; others, utilitarians from necessity, plant potatoes, carrots, turnips, beets, beans, strawberries, and the like. The feeling of ownership being strongly developed in the children in seeing the results of their own labor, the crops are respected by the neighbors and pilfering rarely occurs, except perhaps in a case of great hunger.
Several hundred or a thousand of such patches of land, or gardens, situated in close proximity to each other, form an arbor colony, which has a governor, or mayor, who is an unpaid city official. He arranges the leasing of the land, collects the rents, and hands them over to the gratified landowners who don't even have to collect them. There is always a retired merchant or civil officer to fill the office, to which is attached neither title, emolument, nor special honor. He is assisted by a "colonial committee" of trustees selected from the colonists, who act as justices of the peace, in case disturbances should arise. If colonists prove frequent disturbers of the peace or are found incapable of living quietly, their leases are not renewed. Of course there are such cases, but they are rare.
Since the size of an "arbor garden" is from about two sixteenths to three sixteenths of an acre, say two or three New York City Lots, those forming a colony make a considerable community, in which the authority of the committee, or board of trustees, is absolute, and the few cases they have had to adjudicate have generally been caused by nagging women. It is claimed in the press that these colonists are literally without scandals, and that the life led by young and old is a most peaceful and happy one. People who are hard at work are not likely to be quarrelsome: good wholesome food, much exercise in play and labor, and an abundance of fresh air and sunshine are conducive to happiness, especially as the clothing may be of a primitive kind, or need not conform to the dictates of fashion.
A teacher remarked: "It is noticeable that since these school children are engaged in lucrative work which does not go beyond their strength, and since they see with their own eyes the results of their labor, a sense of responsibility is engendered which has a beneficial influence upon school work also. Respect for all kinds of labor and a decrease in the destructiveness so often found among boys are unmistakable effects of the arbor gardens. It is not easy work which the children perform, for spade and rake require muscular effort; but it is ennobling work, for it leads to self-respect, self-dependence, and respect for others, as well as willingness to aid others. The most beautiful sight is afforded when, on a certain date agreed on by the members of a colony, a harvest festival is held. Then flag raisings and illuminations and singing and music make the day a memorable one."
Most of the families had not the means to buy the lumber and hardware to erect an "arbor," and yet they were the very ones to whom the life in the open would be of the greatest benefit. Hence philanthropy erected the structures. The Patriotic Woman's League of the Red Cross built half of all the "arbors" of the colony found on the "Jungfernheide." Many colonies reach into the woods, and naturally are of a different character from those in the open, for there tents are used instead of wooden structures. For protection during the night watchmen pace up and down the lanes; this before the war entailed a cost of 7 1/2 cents a month to each family. The season lasts from May 1 to October 1.
The school-going population meanwhile attend their schools, which used to be reached by means of the elevated cars or surface tramways for 2 1/2 cents and much cheaper if they have commuters' tickets. Many schools are near enough to be reached on foot. The children do not loiter on the way, but when school is out they hurry "home" to begin work in the garden, or to sit down to a meal on the veranda, which is relished far more than a meal in a city tenement house filled with fetid air and wanting in light. Nearly every one of these gardens has a flagpole, and at night a Japanese paper lantern with a tallow dip in it illuminates the veranda. These, with flags by day, make a festive appearance. The teachers find that city children who spend the five months in the open air are well equipped with elementary ideas in physical geography and astronomy. Their mental equipment is better, indeed, in all fields of thought, their physical health is improved, as well as their ethical motives and conduct.
To realize the full extent of these wholesale efforts (for put children into close contact with nature and they will improve in all directions), it is well to take a ride on the North belt line (elevated steam railroad), the trains of which start from the Friedrich's street depot and bring one back after a ride of an hour and a half. Then one may do the same on the South belt line. On these two trips one will see, not hundreds, but tens of thousands of such "arbor gardens" full of happy women and children at work or play. The men come out on the belt line when their work in town is done. The writer was riding through the city on an open cab, and seeing hardly any children on the streets and in the parks, he asked, "How is it that we see no children out?" "Ah, sir," was the reply, "if you will see the children of Berlin you must go out to the arbor colonies outside of the city. There is where our children are." Subsequent visits to these colony gardens showed that Berlin is by no means a childless city. To judge from the multitudinous arbors to be seen from the windows of the belt line cars there must be 50,000 to 75,000 of them. As far as the eye reaches the flagpoles, the orderly fences, and the little structures can be seen; and since the city has 2,000,000 inhabitants, it is very likely that an estimate made by a city official of several hundred thousands of children thus living in the open air, is not excessive. The most beautiful and best-arranged gardens are not found in the vicinity of railroads, but several miles out toward the north and the south of the city. Here, where the soil is better, fine crops are raised.
If we turn our eyes homeward and contemplate the many thousands of small efforts made in this country toward the alleviation of city children's misery, we can say truthfully that we in America are perhaps fully alive to the necessity which has prompted the people of Berlin to action; we only need to be reminded of Mayor Pingree's potato patches on empty city lots, our children's outing camps, our occasional children's excursions, and the like. Still, there is nothing in this country to compare with the thousands of Berlin "arbor gardens" and their singularly convincing force. Like a circus, all this is supposed to be for the children, though it usually seems to need about two grown people to escort each child. The elders enjoy the gardens even more than the circus.
The arbor gardens of Berlin should not be mistaken for the numerous "forest schools" (Waldschulen) in Germany. These schools "in the woods" are for sickly children, both physically crippled and mentally weak. The pupils have their lessons in the open, and the teachers live, play, and work with them; long recesses separate the various lessons and a two-hour nap in the middle of the day out in the open is on the time-table of every one of these schools. These special open-air schools for weaklings and defectives are now found in many parts of Germany, notably in Charlottenburg, Strassburg, and the industrial regions of the Rhineland.
The example of Berlin has been followed in other German cities, such as Munich, notably in Dusseldorf on the Rhine, where the arbor gardens are called "Schreber gardens" in honor of the man who promoted their establishment. There is a large colony of such gardens along the Hans-Sachs street, where Lima beans, peas, lettuce, cucumbers, potatoes, and many other garden vegetables are raised; even strawberries, raspberries, and fruit trees are found here. But the city being more lavishly provided with parks and open spaces than others of its size, the necessity for open-air life has not made itself felt as forcibly as in Berlin.
And think of the cleansing influence of all this. Light and air and labor—these are the medicines not of the body only, but of the soul. It is not ponderable things alone that are found in gardens, but the great wonder of life, the peace of nature, the influences of sunsets and seasons and of all the intangible things to which we can give no name, not because they are small, but because they are outside the compass of our speech. The God that dwells in gardens is sufficient for all our needs—let the theologians say what they will.
"'Not God! in gardens? When the eve is cool?Nay, but I have a sign—'Tis very sure—God walks in mine.'"