Evening star., 1895-04-30
T HE PINGREE PLAN N
DR.. Edward Everett Hale Indorses
It.
How the Poor Had Enough to Eat Or
to Sell for Good Silver Money
to Put In the Bank.
From the Boston Commonwealth.

From the Boston Commonwealth.
To the horror of the scientific philan-
thropists. and to the amazement and indig-
nation of the political economists Mayor
Pingree Of Detroit has succeeded in what
people begin to call the potato plan." This
means that the mayor had the sense to see
that the good God, in His arrangements for
feeding people, requests, not to say re-
quires them, to put into the ground certain
seeds. for which he prepares such har-
vest that the man who does his duty by
these seeds receives ten-fold, thirty-fold,
sixty-fold, or in some cases hundred-fold.
This rate of increase is such that even
the boldest usurer is staggered when he is
told that 1t is possible, as he occasionally
reads some ancient Scripture. And the hab-
1t of the philanthropists and the political
economists, and other people who work
by book-rtdden systems, Is to show that it
ID Idle to try any such experiment now.
The habit is to say that the raising of food
had better be relegated to a small section
OF the community, and that for the rest
certain artificial employments had better
be provided, such as inSuring the lives of
their fellow men, or sweeping out officesT;-
or scrubblng floors, or possibly building
cause their ancestors or somebody's ances-
tors happened to have orchards in certain
situations in Boston or in New York.
In face of all this theory, which may be
found in five hundred books published with
In the last fifty years. the mayor of De-
troit said squarely last spring. to every
unemployed man who asked him for work:
Go to. here is a half-acre of land; here
are certain potatoes, with eyes in them;
mere is hoe. With the hoe scratch the
land. in the hole you have made place
piece of a potato with one eye. God will
send rain, God will send sunshine, and at
the end of this year you will have many
more potatoes than have given you to put
in
Strange to say. the result followed as
the mayor of Detroit said The conditions
of society were such that nobody in De-
troit wanted to purchase these lots of land
as the summer went by. and at the end of
the summer the various unemployed peo-
pie who had come to him found themselves
the proprietors of enough potatoes. say,
for their families to live on through the
winter. or for them to carry into the potato
market and sell for good silver money,
which they put into the savings bank and
with which they were credited as if it had
been gold.
There is nothing like a concrete lesson in
visible affairs; the modern fashion Is to call
1t an object lesson. People who believe in
the books of political economy, looked up
on the bags of potatoes which the trampS
carried home on their shoulders somewhat
upon miracles. There never had been
miracle, there never could be miracle,
and they did not mean that there should be
miracle; but all the same the lame man
stood up and took his bed on his shoulders
and walked. The economists and philoso-
piers did not believe that anybody could
put seed into the ground and get harvests
from it, excepting under the rules of polit-
ical economy. But all the same these De-
trot tramps had something to eat in the
winter, without going round to the Office of
the overseers of the poor.
: The result is that the experiment IS to be
tried nearer home. In the city of New
York arrangements are being made al
ready, by which the lands which are wait
ing for people to give a hundred dollars a
square foot for them may be utilized this
summer in as simple enterprises as those
which Mayor Pingree set on foot. While
we are waiting for Henry George and Mr..
Garrison and other people TO show us how
these lands ought to be held. arrangements
are in progress that they shall be made of
use for the present summer, In receiving
the dews of heaven and the sunshine of
heaven upon certain germs of potatoes,
which are to be placed In them for trial.
What will probably happen will be that a
great many good fellows, some boys and
perhaps some girls may contract an inter-
est in the business of agriculture, which in
our elegant high civilization, involving
many life policies and insurance agents and
sixteen.story tenements, they would not
have had. 1t may follow that a man will
see that it Is a better thing for him to
earn a living than to earn salary which
only pays for half his living; or to earn
wages paid on Saturday night, which do
not meet his expenses more than half way
through the week which follows.
If any person studying this subject cares
to see who was the pioneer in improving a
corner lot in New York, such a reader is
respectfully referred to the adventures CT
Crusoe in New York, as published by Har-
pers first and by Roberts Bros. afterward.
some thirteen years ago.
And If it should prove that the people
who have made this first experiment choose
afterward to take up twenty acres of ir-
risated land in Idaho, to buy at Sc an
acre the land which the Northern Pacific
railroad offers to them, or to accept in
Florida the small lots which are given
away to people who choose to raise their
own food upon them, the persons who have
made this bold step in the beginning Will
not be sorry.
How 1t Goes Elsewhere.
In New York they now have an associa-
ton for the cultivation of vacant lots,
which has opened application stations at
the Bible House, Mission House, New York
Employment Society, Federation of East
Side Workers. st. Vincent de Paul. La
fayette place. and at the Industrial Chris
tian Alliance.
by the Industrial Aid Society. Several Of
fers of land have been made already, and a
meeting of other charitable organizations
are cooperating with the Industrial Aid
Society.
1t has been suggested, says Mr.. File
brown of the committee. that if the city
of Boston would divert it's usual Fourth of
July $4,000 appropriation for fireworks to
this specific object it would make more peo-
pie happier; also, that If the lands were
further from the center of the city than
in the case of some other cities, hope was
expressed that the railroads would sell
tickets for this purpose at small fraction
Of the regular fare.
The Secretary of Agriculture has written
that he has sent 1000 packages of seed to
be used by the New York society,"
Toronto, Ont, and Victoria, B. c., have
decided to try the cultivation of vacant lots
plan.
UNIVERSITY NOTES.