Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1914-05-24

aries were pushed further and further outward and as fast as they went the means of transportation improved The slow and numbering old stage or bus, was followed by the horsecar, drawn more swiftly and smoothly up on rails. Then came the cable car, and then the trolley. A point four miles from the center of town became as near by street car as a point only one mile out had been. As the streets were extended mile upon mile, they created a need for parks and open spaces, and these in their turn, ab- sorbing city land, hastened the towns expansion. Now 4.the telephone and automobile have been developed, and are facilitating the outward march of the town. It has been we'll said that there has been more change in urban conditions ill the last fifty years than ill the two thousand years preceding.
 What wonder that such new and strange demands have swamped the facilities of cities built on the old plan; what wonder that the new and now seriously studied science of city planning is suddenly finding a broad field of usefulness; what wonder that cities everywhere are calling for re- adjustment, and calling the more loudly as they are the more progress sive? 1t is prooN of virility, not of weakness, when community takes up town planning. In Massachusetts, indeed, the legislature has enacted a law requiring every community of 10000 or more population to have al planning board.
 T0day's PiOneers-City Planners.
 To the present generation there has been thus given the working out of problem that is brand new The planning of towns for demands that were undreamed of twenty years ago, the building of cities on a scale that must have seemed impossible a gen. eration since. The pioneers of the last century were the tanners of the wilderness; the pioneers of the pres ent are the builders of cities. In London, said John Burns speaking late in 1913, upwards of 100000 acres had been absorbed in the urban area in the preceding six years and more than eleven hundred streets had been constructed.
 From twentye-five to forty per cent of all the land in modern cities is ac- counted for by streets. In New York City, it was stated last summer, there were 2,677 miles of public streets The value of the land they occupied was estimated, with it's improvements, at ,000-"one-fourt as great as !, yo1r of oil @1,1 fcv United States"
 If the city planners should find some way of plating streets that would effect saving of as little as one per cent in their area, think of the high finance that it would spell. One per cent for New York alone would have meant $94,69O OO0-and New York is only one city. The wise planning of towns is evidently big and vital problem, even aside from it's efficiency and social benefits which are the aspects of it of which one hears the most.
 ''To make cities," said Henry Drum mond, "that is what we are here for. For the city is strategic. It makes the towns; the towns make the villages; Lne V1lldSeS Hdke the country. lie who makes the city makes the world. After all, though men make cities, it is cities which make men. Whether our national life is great or mean, whether our social virtues are mature or stunted, whether our sons are mor- al or vicious, whether religion is pos sible or impossible depends upon the city" That is the justification of city planning.