Ashland tidings. [volume] (Ashland, Or.) 1876-1919, 1914-08-06
The Home Circle
Thoughts from the Editorial Pen
Making Your Town More Valuable.

Did you ever stop to think a bit
how the right sort of civic spirit in
creases the value of property in a
town? Or even if you do not own
property, how it makes a town pleas
anter to live in?
Probably you have thought of it.
for most of us are interested in civic
matters nowadays. But it was
brought home to me very forcibly
this summer by my vacation trip.
l left a town where the civic spirit
is of high order. 1t is a town with
some delightful natural advantages,
/ but they are but the background for
the town itself and what the towns
people have done. Every person in
that little town seems filled with the
desire and ambition to make that
town as clean, as beautiful, as health
full as it is possible for a town to be-
The streets are kept as immaculate
as a good housewives kitchen. The
lawns and gardens shine as if busted
Flowers are everywhere. There is
not disfiguring spot or moor or cor
ner in the place. No matter how tiny
the house, how small the yard, all is
attractive, neat and overrun with
blossoms. Everybody who comes to
the town, and walks or rides up and
down its streets, eXclaims over its
beauty.
The streets are we'll lighted, the
drinking water good. A boulevard
has been laid out to take in all the
bits of pretty scenery. There are lit
tie parks with public croquet grounds
and tennis courts. A municipal light
ing plant has brought down the cost
of electricity until the tiniest home
can afford it. In a recent heavy
storm the commissioner of streets
and highways spent days and nights
in rain and wind trying to avert all
damage possible Everybody in the
place works with all his heart to
make it the finest little city in the
country.
What is the result?
1t is not only a delightful place to
live in, but people who go TO visit
remain to become residents. Real
estate booms. New homes are going
up all the time. The town is grow
ing rapidly, and the more it grows
the more it has to offer its citizens
The town / came to has far more
natural beauty than the one ! left.
1t has great bay with water of sap
phire sparkling in front of it. 1t has
a coast line overarched with green
pines and broken with gigantic rocks
where snowy spray dashes high. 1t
has hills climbing up behind it cloth
ed with great forests of the murmur-
ing pines. 1t has wild flowers grow
ing in the country around about till
the earth seems a magnificent Ori-
entail rug of glorious hues-yellow
poppies, Indian paint-brush, verbena,
nasturtium, geranium and great
masses of lovely little purple flower
like violets.
But the town has no civic spirit.
The houses straggle as they please
up and down little narrow streets, the
houses unpainted, the streets un-
paved. Weeds are everywhere. Va
cant lots are filled with rubbish.
Most of the houses are hideous archi-
tecturally. Dingy curtains hang at
their windows. Real estate agents
refuse to show you many of the
houses on their list, saying apologet-
ically, They are too dirty" When
you enter the one little street car
that yowls occasionally through the
town, you feel as if you do not want
your skirts to touch the floor; and
its windows still bear traces of sub
sidence of the flood. The electric
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other town. And so you might run
through the things that affect COM
fort and pleasure in living. You look
at the sea and the pines and the wild
flowers, but you have no desire to
look at much else. And you doubt
if you would take as a gift house
or lot in the place.
Yet commercially, real estate in
this town could be made worth lot
more than it is in the other, If the
townspeople would take hold of their
little place and make it beautiful.
They have a fortune right within
their borders. But they are sound
asleep. or else lazy, Indifferent or
ignorant
So you see that the right kind of
civic spirit pays, does it not? 1t is
a good commercial asset.
And the best of it is, every one of
us can help make civic cpirit in our
community If we will. that will in |