The Washington herald., 1922-01-01

and II 1t isn't you have had no idea where
to get repairman. You have got town
or a city. Maybe you live right in the middle
Of il. or maybe. you live out in the country
and just come in once in a while. But you
use that town or city as a place to do your
shopping. or to obtain your amusement, or
an education. or earn livelihood.
Well, is your town working right, or is it
humping along on a fiat tire? Is it giving
you the maximum of service, or does it fail
you in half the ways it might serve you:
Is it pulling its load economically, or does
ifs carburetor waste your gas and its bear
ings grind for lack Of intelligent oiling?
Here Is a man who maintains a service
station for ailing cities. Here is a man .who
can be called in to look over your town and
sec that all essential parts are present; who
may listen to the hum of the engine of your
industries and see whether or not it is work
, ing right; who may examine the enamel Of
its surface that is necessary for its>per-
sonal appearance; who may tell you of the
existence of this or that new appliance which
may be attached to it to keep it abreast of
the times.
The name of this man is Colvin B. Brown,
active life to diagnosing the ailments of COM
munities and prescribing the treatment that
will put them on their feet. He is in charge
of the field work of the Chamber of Com
merce Of the United States, is paid by that
organization and his business is to travel
from one community to another, lead each
community to a proper understanding OF
what it needs and to point the way to the
acquisition of whatever it lacks. He works
always through the local chamber of com
merce, gives it the best that is in him and
shows it how to make the repair. So great
is the need of his service that he goes hurry
ing about from place TO place all over the
United States, all the time as busy as a
doctor in influenza time.
Your garage man." said Mr.. Brown,
'+has developed the capacity of finding out
what is the matter with a disabled automo-
bile and repairing it through the fact Of a
long experience with many automobiles.
Now, since a municipality is machine
through which the community transacts its
business, the same principle of understanding
and improving its operations holds. Munich
palities, however, are somewhat isolated one
from the other, and for long time there
was no agency wnlcn nad e1peTiehce NHi'i
led to the study of great numbers of them
Within the last decade. however, an organi-
tation has come into being which does have
the experience of studying many communi-
ties in all parts of the country. That organi-
ration is the Chamber of Commerce of the
United States, which operates as a clearing
house for information for all the cities, AMI
towns that are bound together in it.
SDEFORE this clearing house was created
here were many hundreds of towns
and cities throughout the country which had
established chambers of commerce, all Of
. which were working in an endeavor to
further the interests of their respective COM
munities. These chambers of commerce
were usually wide awake and progressive
Institutions. They were made up of for
ward looking men and were very likely to try
experiments for the betterment of these COM
munities. Many of these experiments would
fail. but occasionally one would be demon.
strated as a great success. When an expert
nent proved a given idea to be wrong there
vas no way in which that lesson was likely