The citizen. (Honesdale, Pa.) 1908-1914, 1909-01-20
A Greater HOnesdale.
Shall We Have It?-If So Hustle
Is Necessary-What VIII the
Next Census Show?

The coming census is commencing to
attract general attention from people in
all parts of the country, and in this State
much importance is being given to it by
ambitious and would-be up-to-date
towns. The fact that the next decennial
census comes next year is stirring up
ether towns to get together, consolidate,
and get right rating in the 1910 census
report; and Honesdale must get move
on this year if it desires to make good
showing in the next census.
1t is all we'll enough to tell Of our nu-
nerous and flourishing industries; our
Ane public buildings, our superior mer-
camille establishments from department
stores down; our splendid theatre, with
several subordinate places of continuous
amusement; our four we'll managed and
prosperous banks; our three semi-weekly
newspapers our commodious and we'll
kept hotels; our elegant churches, and
parsonages; our numerous handsome
bridges; our clearwater rivers, with
Park Lake at their junction our historic
Irving Cliff; our fine bands and orches-
tras our maple and elm fringed streets;
our beautiful parks-in fact of all of the
essentials and characteristics of -four
ishing and beautiful town; but 80 long
rs that official black-eye stares at us
from the census tables most of our stories
are regarded by investigators as hot air.
We may say with Haman, "All this
availeth me not, so long as Mordecai
sitteth at the Kings gate" Nothing will
avail to give us our proper standing
among the boroughs of the State so long
as we are content to be credited with
less than half our actual population in
che official records.
Who that knows anything about it at
all can doubt that Honesdale has been
growing in population as well as in bust
ness for years and years past? But the
numbering of the people" don't show
il, and can't show it so long as we con-
ane ourselves to "the pent-up Utica" of
eur present boundaries-lines established
when half of the territory was thought
70 be ample for all possible growth.
A "Greater Honesdale" has been talk
cd about for many years-a Honesdale
which, shall include the territory and
population really belonging to the town
the people who work in its factories,
trade in its stores, attend its churches,
enjoy its amusements, are accommodate
cd by its post Office, and are in every
other essential respect our townspeople,
barring the fact that a river, or an
imaginary line separates them from us.
Shall we allow another ten years to
roll around with our 1000 population
cut down to 5000 or less, in the census
tables, and Smull's Handbook, and other
statistical documents, and dropped out
of diary lists of Clowns of 5000 and
over" altogether? Or shall the official
government records, and all subordinate
gazetteers, for the next decade, and
thereafter, give us the relative position
among the thriving towns of the State to
which we are justly entitled?
If we say Eyes" to the latter propo.
stion, the movement for a consolidation
of the present borough and its Texas
suburbs, must be inaugurated very soon,
or the census-taker of 1910 will find US
still in our figurative swaddling clothes
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