The citizen. (Honesdale, Pa.) 1908-1914, 1910-05-11

OlTCle. wei huOWn magazine,
from the pen of J. Horace McFar-
land. president of the American
Civic Association. MIR. Mcfarland is
one of the best authorities on muni-
cipal matters and any thing he
writes can always be read with profit.
The article is as follows:
THE time was not so long ago,
when few persons cared to do any
thing for the communities in which
they lived. Civic interest" was an
uncomprehended phrase, and only
approach to it by the average citi-
zen was in his regular and continu-
Gus kicking" at the taxes he had
to pay. Dirty streets, filthy back
yards and vacant lots, almost tree
less highways, ugly public build
ings, dumps here and there, and es-
pecially over the banks of any con-
venient water course, all these were
accepted without question as matter
of course.
1t was expected that the children
should play in the streets. Why
not? Parks were conceived to be
could drive on week days only
past more or less contorted flower
beds, with marble adornments and
cast iron fountains, if the town was
flush The school yard was a
modified ash heap, or was not in
existence-for what was the use of
wasting the money of the taxpayers
in buying more ground than the
building would cover?
Black smoke was considered
healthy" and a sure sign of pros
perity; flies and mosquitoes were
gravely mentioned as important
scavengers which were sometimes an
noying; poles and wires were eagerly
welcomed to the perpetual use of the
streets and bill boards were an evil
dence of prosperity.
The railroad station was more or
less of a shack, useful to hurry
through, except for the loafers who
haunted the red hot stove in the
winter and irrigated the nearby
tracks with tobacco extract in sum-
mer The surroundings were dusty,
dirty and defiantly ugly.
Manufacturing establishm n S
were also made perfectly practical"
with no least suspicion of ornamen-
| tation or orderliness or beauty.
Beauty? Were we not taught the
vanity of beauty, right in the
| churches es-themselves inconsistently
as beautiful as our raw ideals and
small contributions could make them
And while the dear women and chill
/ dren, in whom God kept alive, aided
| by the flowers and the trees, the
sense of beauty and the sight of
! beauty, were considered as unfit to
worry with town affairs, we men went
on our practical way of high
prosperity, using up the natural re-
sources we never made gain of,
and never can replace a grain of,
while we gashed the face of nature,
polluted the river, and blamed on
Providence the deaths that followed
our filth.
But what a change a decade has
wrought, First stirred into the sus-
picion of the power of man made
beauty by the glory of Chicago's
White City, in 1898, we have grad
ually come to care about things that
make our home towns better places
to live in. We have discovered the
avoidable cause of typhoid fever and
malaria, and the value of grass
green trees and fresh air. We find
that parks are cheaper than police
men. and school gardens teach what
the three RS" cannot, and that
clean and slightly streets are mighty
nice to live on. We have established
some Fairgrounds, cleaned up some
water fronts, choked some of the
dirty smoke, put few wires under
ground, and come to understand a
little about the value of 'city plan
ming"
That is. some of us thought OF
those things and some of us have
done some of them in some places
| Civic Improvement means vague
of something more than it did, and
actually a few of us realize that we
get mighty good value for the taxes
we pay when we try to see about il
in a businesslike way.
Now there are many communities
large and small, where civic impulse
is awake, or at least awakening in
which there may well be done good
things in 1910. There are 914 com.
munities in these United States hav-
ing five thousand population or over
and probably twice as many between
that population and a numbering OF
one thousand. | do not believe there
is one of these three thousand old
communities in which live man oI
woman, and a more live boy or girl
cannot make an distinct civic i'm
preston before the next New Years
Day. This viii not be done by dream
ing over a big scheme, but by doinl
something seemingly little and clos,
by for the good of all, at least at first
So great is the power of multiplica
tion in the civic germ that imitation
of good thing can be prevented onl!
by surrounding it with a sound anC