Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1909-03-18

from uglness to practical, helpful beauty in our sur.
%rQundings.
Our big cities, which have the hardest problems of
nnlovelness and inconvenience (Which usually go hand
in handl are employing commissions OF learned experts
to tell them what they should and can do. The smaller
cities are following suit with local art commissions and
sometimes they send for an expert. The towns and vii
lagos have local improvement associations and art cul
ture clubs and they are all working in the same direc
ton.
Whats all this fuss about our town being not good
enough?" asks the hard-headed business man, who pTides
himself on his scorn for all this art fol-de-rol. 1T was
good enough for my folks before me and it's good enough
for me. I'm making money. Amt we all pretty pros
perous?"
Eyes, but answers the culture club, look at our
rival down the line. It's got a new postofice that's a
beauty. It's on a square with trees around it and the new
town hall opposite and a fine new hotel and three new
stores are coming in on the square. The farmers are
saying that we haven't any attractions over here and
they are going over there to do their buying"
Il wondered why that man Jenkins hadn't been in
with an order for three weeks" growls the hard-headed
business man, and scratches his head to aid in the perco-
laHon of the new idea.
And so a new convert is made to the belief that good
looks pay, whether it is the good looks of the stock or
of the package and label or of the seller or the store,
the building, the street or the town. A pleasant view
gives pleasure just as surely as does a pleasant face,
whether the view be of canned goods or dress goods or
factories or mountains.
And the fact must be admitted that with the American
people as a whole looks have been considered less in the
past than almost anything else. So true Is this that we
even forgot what we did once know about beauty, about
building farmhouses that were pleasant and attractive
and public buildings that We're dignifed and really hand
some. We may have thought We did but now we are
being taught how little We really understood.
Our forefathers knew. though, and they set us an ex-
ample, the excellence of which we are just beginning to
appreciate.
The founders of the republic, the men of Washington's
time, brought with them from the old world fine tradi-
ton of the beautiful and an inherited instinct for the
value of simplicity. They built courthouses still stand
ing In many little towns in the old south and Of New
England that later generations despised but which to-
day have become the models for much of our best new
architecture. These old courthouses, set in the midst Of
fine old trees, are genuinely beautiful, but 1t has taken
us a hundred years to find it out and profit by 1t be-
cause we lost the traditions OF the f~orefathers and didn't
have time to go back to the old world for a new stock.
So. we built queer, ungainy things that didn't fit and
now we are finding out what is the matter with us that
foreigners should laugh at our buildings and go home
and call us barbarians.
The same is true Of the homes. All through the south
and New England the traveller finds charming old resi-