The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1892-07-21
CoNTUMACY AND VANDALISM.
Proposition to Destroy wichta's Distnc-
live Beauty and Her Glory.

wormy fruit and displaying their mock
modesty and cheek were promptly bounced
from that beautiful earthly paradise.
The calamity howl set up by this sweet
scented pair, for whom perfection was not
good enough, although they hadn't a
stitch to their backs, and the garden didn't
cost them a cent, with the taxes all paid
up, has come rafting down the corridors
of the ages, tainting the spirit of all time
with predisposition to kick and fault
find. Even Wichita, the eye and gem of
the Sunf1ower realm. has not escaped a
sprinkling of the descendants of these
garden GROWERS. who trigged themselves
out in bifurcated skirts and green
trousers constructed out of fig leaves
when there was nobody in 40, OO0 miles to
see whether they had anything on or not.
This transmitted spirit of dissatisfaction
has not only given rise to calamity parties,
wars and to revolutions, but to unil
versal feeling of stuckupness to envy and
to heartburnings over the cut, style and
texture of the whole fig leaf business
The latest phase of this inherited howl
heard in Wichita was raised against
female cotton woods" and IL seems to
have reached the abnormal ears-some of
them for bigness and others for dullness-
of the city council. We have heard some
thing of a connection between cotton and
females, such as ''cottoning up" etc.. but
1t was left for some nineteenth century de-
scendant of the fig-leaved female of the
Garden of Eden to discover the sex" of
Wichita shade trees, and the cry of ''cut
them down" has reached the columns of
the EAGLE
We have, in our humble way, always
held in high admiration the perfected wis
dom of the edict which set forth to Adam
and Eve that if they persisted in their
notion of hampering their beauty with fig
country where papiers and aprons were
necessity and in fashion.
This leads us up to what we want to say,
and we are going to say it in a way that
the city council nor any kicker" shall fail
to understand Knowing, or at least firmly
believing that about all of the women and
children and large majority of the men
of the city will stand by us, and if neces-
sary get up war which for warmth will
compare favorably with the red hot sword
that famed over the gates of that other
Eden.
The site of this city broad dead level.
Up to 1872 it lay monotonously open and
unprotected in the white heat of blazing
summer suns and exposed to the fierce
blasts of winter just as do the great major
ity of Kansas prairie towns of today. The
conformation of the ground being such
there was little chance of beautifying or
rendering attractive Wichita's homes and
surroundings except by the growing of
shade and of shrubbery. When the EAGLE
took this matter up-and the language
above is quoted from an issue OF April 1872
there was not a tree nor bush on the
townsite as thick as your thumb except at
two places We appealed to pride, to
interest and to comfort, and persistently
from year to year with more
or less success until we sue
ceeded in arousing such degree of in
terest that Councilman Zimmerly drafted
a compulsory shade-tree ordinance. This
the city attorney declared unconstitu-
tional. Mike came to us with discour
aged look and the announcement of the
failure of our mutually pet scheme. We
answered that no man for the amount OF
one dollar and half of tree-taX, for his
own property, would ever go into the
courts with Il case testing the constitu-
tionality of the ordinance. And We so per-
suaded the city council, The measure be-
came a law aud the result need not be
told Wichita is the finest shaded city in
America, probably Her resident streets are
practically arched for stretches OF miles
and miles. Her homes are EMPOWERED,
and scorching suns OF summer. The first
remark of every stranger is how delight
full never saw anything like it," Wichi-
ia Is, in truth, the Forest City," surpass-
ing in that particular New Haven, Con-
necticut and every other place east or
west With what solicitude has the EAGLE
encouraged and watched this growth and
how dwelt upon its comfort
and advantages, its attractiveness and pro-
lection.
Now comes the proposition to destroy
this more than ordinarily successful effort
Of twenty years work and waiting. Some
body has been annoyed by the delicate
gossamere-like white seed-parachutes
of clean cotton that are at
times found floating about and a
demand is made of the city council
for an order destroying the female" cot
tonwoods. Money can't replace these
trees Nothing but time. from ten TO
twenty years of time, will do it, and the
officer or individual who undertakes to
destroy what we have guarded for twenty
years, will md that somebody has dam
age suit in court The talk about female"
is presumably bosh. Why
not female" apple trees, female" NAPLES
and female walnuts. The tree that pro-
duces cotton this year. will not the next,
nor probably for several years. and vice
versa.
As for cottonwood foliage, with its
quiyering, waxen-green, clean leaf-what
surpasses it? The leaves of the maple.
walnut, sycamore and blackberry, all,
catch and retain dust. Not SO the