Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 January 1917 — HOME TOWN HELPS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HOME TOWN HELPS

SCOTCH cm HAS SIDE LINE Glasgow Reports Gratifying Succeed of Its Municipal Agriculture— Lesson for America. The individual efforts of many • city man to convert himself Into a farmer may perhaps remain a subject of occasional Jest, but Glasgow, in Scotland, has shown the world that a city, as a city, may tak<» up a farming enterprise and come off with the smile quite neatly turned t’other-way about" By " the reports Just returned to Glasgow** lord.provost, the municipality has accrued a round $9,000 of profit from the, products of Its farming. It all began in 1879. At that tlrke It. was found that the city refuse destructor was becoming less and less adequate to deal with the ever-increasing volume of the city's refuse —the ashes from its furnaces and pots from its households, the paper from the streets and all this manner of collectible material. So a tract of bogland was taken on a lease, and turned over to the uses of the cleansing department. The experiment of filling in these t lands proved so successful that more territory was taken in 1891 and later at a combined cost of about SIOO,OOO. The soil was "cold and uncongenial,” says the Glasgow Herald, b%t its handicaps have been gradually neutralized by the work of the department the enrichment of the land. According, to the repdrt of Glasgow’s; farming, “the produce grown Includes oats, wheat, barley, potatoes, turnips, bay and grass, and the total amount reaped during last season Is valued at £10,306, thus sum being exclusive of produce sold, which realized £2,728. The present hay crop Is so abundant that after the needs of the department’s stud of horses are met, It is so abundant that there will be a surplus for sale of about 500 tons.” Surely such tuj-ecord as this should counsel American cities to see what they can do after Glasgow’s example.