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1917 – City ‘Farmers’ in Vegetable Drive

Movement All Over The Country Has Had A Healthy Influence in Cutting Down the Excessively High Price of Commodities – 700 Acres in St. Louis City Lots Turned Under and Cultivated in Concerted Drive on High Cost of Living

St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat
June 24 1917

(Must read. Mike)

A war of the wolf, which threatens America no less than European nations in the great military and naval conflict, has been won in St. Louis by an army of thrift gardeners composed of society women, boy scouts, business men, police and firemen.

Before the first crop of spring vegetables has entirely matured, the thrifty army of gardeners in St. Louis has succeeded in knocking the bottom out of high prices.

Seven hundred acres of city lots have been plowed and turned from weed patches into beds of lettuce, radishes, onions, potatoes, beans, peas, cabbage. etc. A thousand patriotic city ‘farmers’,
men, women and children have worked this wonderful transformation and have driven the wolf of hunger from the door of the city.

Throwing this much extra produce into the market, and cutting this much from the normal demand has resulted in the reduction of living cost that President Wilson and his advisors calculated on.

The thrift garden movement is nation wide but nowhere has it been conducted along more intelligent lines and with more general enthusiasm than in St. Louis. The effect of the thrift gardening in each city is determined by the efforts of the particular locality, as garden products are handled largely at short range. The produce is perishable freight and cannot by shipped great distances without risk of damage.

The effect of the gardening in St. Louis to date is as follows:
Pease are sold in the spring of 1916 for $3.50 a box are now selling at $1.25

Spinach that sold at $1.75 for a hamper of 30 pounds is now selling at 25 cents the most striking reduction that has been accomplished.

Lettuce that formally sold for 15 cents a box of 15 pounds is now quoted at 10 cents a box and a promise to become cheaper as the season grows older.

These are examples that seem to prove that thrift gardening has been a tremendous success in St. Louis at least and that it benefits not alone the gardener, who enjoys the products at almost no cost except a little wholesale labour, but it benefits the entire consuming public of the community by forcing lower prices on the produce that is raised by the professional truck gardeners.

The same conclusion may be drawn from the fact that some vegetables that are not popular with city thrift farmers for various reasons have not decreased in price this year.

Potatoes is an example of this. They are very difficult to raise, and most beginners have avoided them entirely or planted only a few tubers. Potatoes have showed a decided tendency in the market to increase in price, as the crop is to be drawn this year from practically the same sources as last year.

Onions seem to have been neglected somewhat by the thrift gardener for some reason, and in St Louis, the price of onions has so far shown no downward tendency.

Beets, which could be raised very handily by city gardeners, according to experts, have been neglected by the St. Louis fraternity, and as a consequence the price of beets today is even greater than that of a year ago.

Leading Up To Next Year

The deduction drawn by these those who are studying the effect of city gardens is that the city ‘farmer’ can break the back of the high price of any vegetable that he is able to produce himself, if he will. It is to be expected that a failure in any line this year will result in special efforts the following season to protect this line.

The thrift garden, an accidental development of the war, seems to be a fixture in American life, judged by its brief career.

The hundreds who are thriftily producing garden truck where only weeds grew before will not only profit by the cash saving in their food stuffs, but to a man, boy and woman, they are reaping dividends already in better health, strength and spirits.

The thrift garden is now recognized in St Louis and many other cities as an institution that has come to stay. The happy city ‘farmers’, young and old, find pleasure in raising their own vegetables. Instead of an arduous task, thrift gardening has become a pleasant recreation and a wholesome, profitable training.

And all the time the workers realize with the deepest sense of satisfaction that they are doing a patriotic thing for the good of their fellow countrymen. The thrift garden may win the war in the long run, when manly brawn and muscle would otherwise fail to triumph. And whether it ever comes to a point of keeping the nation alive with home-grown foodstuffs, it is certain that the 700 acres in St. Louis and the many thousands over the country will keep the price of vegetables at a point where no one who works will have to go hungry.

The thriving gardens loom up everywhere today as oases in a great dessert of brick buildings and hard paved streets. They are real beauty spots that gladden the eye not alone of the proud city farmer who admits it is his handiwork, but of everyone else who looks upon them.

Only one peevish city dweller so far has failed to appreciate the aesthetic side of thrift gardening. This unpatriotic and inartistic soul – dweller on Castleman avenue, St. Louis, had the hardihood to threaten the extermination of a thrift garden by legal process on the ground that the property in use was restricted to residence purposes. The net result of his crusade against the garden was to get himself labeled in the archives of the St. Louis Chamber of Congress as a “codfish aristocrat,” whose idea of patriotism were far from exalted.

Frank H. Wielandy, a successful merchant and leader of the thrift garden movement in St. Louis, as chairman of the committee appointed by the Chamber of Commerce, is the thrifty sentinel, who hung the label on Mr. Castleman avenue. Wielandy is the outer guard of the thrifty gardeners in St. Louis, and is spending most of his time protecting their interests and instructing novices in the mysterious art of changing a tiny seed into a luscious radish.

Wielandy’s right-hand man in the movement is not a man at all, but a society woman, Mrs. Gus V. R. Mechin. His chief lieutenants are Oliver Raller and George Mereto.

Between them they have assisted 350 gardeners to get permits for cultivating city lots that average in size about 30 by 125 feet. In addition they have assisted in establishing many community plots that keep a number of neighbours busy gardening, and there are two large gardens under cultivation by city firemen, one at Broadway and East Grand avenue and the other on the River Des Peres.

The firemen at engine house No. 20 have developed a prize garden at the North End, and the fire laddies at engine house No. 7 are going to make the River des Peres as famous as the fertile Nile, they say. (continued in attached PDF)

(This is a very long article. Download the PDF below to read it all.)