The needs of the poor
For garden manure.
That was bad enough.
The lack of barn litter
Makes poverty bitter.
That was worse.
Let her give us fertilizer
If she wants us not to prize her.
That was intolerable, almost.
Our need of land dressing
Is truly distressing.
That was absolutely and unpardonably intolerable.
For Miss Sisson, poor old thing, who had moved in the committee that perhaps the more elegant term of "land dressing" might be substituted for "manure," which seemed coarse, had made herself ridiculous at the time in the club. And now, when she was mourning her sister, she was made ridiculous publicly. Well, Johnnie Benton had a great deal to answer for! All the women said that.
For it had happened some years after Mrs. Benton had bought one whole freight car full of peony plants at reduced prices and had sold them off cheap to the women of her county. She had been driving through the western suburbs of Chicago, and had noticed certain sterile spots that during the war had been used as allotment gardens. It was pitiful to her to see those poor hard-working foreigners were still trying to grow a few vegetables on sandy rubbish heaps. It made her consider what a lot of manure was piled up in the barnyards around her town. She laid the matter before the garden committee of the club at once. If every farmer's wife who had bought a peony would give one sackful of manure, the committee would see that it was distributed among the needy allotments of Cook County. The county adviser had opposed the scheme bitterly. The Farm Bureau had condemned it. Every ounce of manure was needed at home, the county bulletin said. But Mrs. Benton asked how farmers working on their distant forties were going to know how many sacks of manure their wives gave away. Did they ever count them, wasteful managers that they were? She would let the women know when the truck would call for it.