Salt Lake Tribune | 1917-01-22 | Page 12 | Has Unique Plan to Aid War Sufferers

HAS PUE PLAN TO AID WOFFEBER5 Colorado Man Wants Farmers Farm-ers to Contribute Products of Acre of Ground. Utah, together with Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, Mon-tana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and California, is to be asked to jo'n with Colorado in a unique plan for the relief of the war sufferers in Europe. The idea, broached by President O. D. Gardner of the Colorado farmers' congress, con-gress, a San Luis valley rancher and student pastor at Princeton university at present, is, in substance, that every western west-ern farmer give the proceeds of one acre of la nd from his next crop for this humanitarian hu-manitarian purpose. He estimates tiiat shiploads of foodstuffs, valued at $2,500.-Ooo, $2,500.-Ooo, would cross the Atlantic from Colorado Colo-rado alone if tiie plan is carried out. President Gardner's idea germinated afLer reading the magazine statement of Gertrude Atherion in effect that western people were without heart or sympathy and that western farmers did riot know there was a war, with people staiving, in Europe, and that if they did they did not care. Developing his idea, President Gardner is asking the Colorado legislature and the legislatures of other states taking up the movement to make an appropriation for the design and production of a "cross of service" to the man who makes the acre he donates yield the most, even as crosses of honor are being awarded for valor on the battlefields In Europe. So far as possible the gifts of the western west-ern st a tes are to consist of the things actually produced on the gift acres to be shipped in carload lots to easlern ports for transshipment to European points. Where it is impossible to ship the raw-product raw-product because of its perishable nature, it is proposed lo have the manufacturers of the various states contribute an equal amount of prepared goods.