The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1895-06-07
WICHITA'S STREETS AND PARKS.

are begging for something to do. There
are too many wistful faces on the street
corners. and too many wan-eyed
mothers and meagerly fed children in
the homes of Wichita. The profes-
sional tramp is being impelled to move
on. Everybody deplores the want and
need with which they are confronted
almost daily. The mayor and mem
beers of the city council and county Of
fcials are worried and distracted over
their inability to meet the demands and
suppiications for employment The
charitably constituted worry and blame
by turns. But one and all are hope
| lessly helpless to relieve a stress which
is q very pressing one. Taxes are al
ready high and municipal burthens are
anything but light, 50 the daily ques-
ton goes on being asked Cont some
thing be done?'
Wichita boasts the finest streets and
resident avenues, the greatest number
of miles long, smooth, shady drives and
! the largest number of natural parks of
any city in Kansas, if not Of any city
/ OF its size anywhere. There are some
/ twenty-five miles of ree-cmhowered
! street drives, a dozen miles or more
of winding wooded drives and as many
more of open hillside ways for earlier
mornings and later evenings.
| Yet with all these perections of park
and drive there is no end to possible
| improvement. There is net Il resident
street in the city but that could be i'm
proved by labor under practical SUI
pervision, improved by grading, by
| parking and by trimming Of trees. As
! for LinwoOd, Riverside and other
natural parks, and that wooded por-
ton of the city lying on the banks Of
the Little river known as the Grieffen-
stein park, their streets and winding
roads, there is hardly any limit to the
work that might be expended IN days
labor with picl, and shovel and plow
and scrapel. No cost Of improvement
in parks has ever proved Improbable
to any city, and no city ever expended
too much in the purchase Of such
grounds. The more delightful are
streets and parks rendered the more
attractive becomes the city for
strangers. the stronger the attachment
and love of its residents.
Some years ago the Eagle in advocat-
ing the acquisition by the city Of the
two Riverside parks and that known
as the Grieaenstein park, submitted
an Illustrated plan for drives and i'm
provementS. We would favor some
thing of the kind today, not only in
the interest of the future of the town
but in the interest of the unemployed.
The situation in Wichita is not an
isolated or exceptional one. Outside
Of the greater cities the complaint is
well nigh universal. Especially is this
true of the younger cities in the newer
west. A number Of them are finding
relief for the distress of their labOrers
through projected improvements. Kan
sas City, Missouri, is making a move
to so succor its unemployed and at the
same time render the city more at
tractive. Twenty-Five, fifty, or an
hundred thousand dollars. raised on
long time, low interest bonds. might he
p ofitably expended in labor in i'm
growing Wichita's streets and drives
and parks.
Can anybody suggest better or more
practical way and way more eGuit-
able and acceptable to those who would
have to pay the interest. or who must
otherwise endure state of affairs more
diSagreeable and worrying than the
payment Of additional taxes:
The Eagles heart is enlisted in the
strait OF him who would work but is
denied, in the despair Of his wife and
in his poorly fed child, and it hereby
pledges itself to assist the administra-
ton in any movement it may make to
give that man employment and to bring
comfort and as much of happiness and
sunshine to his home as possible, in
these depressing times of low tariff
prices and single standard squeezes.
not only to assist but to defend.
What can be done?