The Washington herald., 1922-11-03
Cities From Villages.

)AN hourshing industrial center be built up
~ the Potomac? Prominent Washing
ton business men, who have studied the PROPOSE
ton from many ang.es express confidence that
the struggling villages of Arlington County can
be incorporated in a progressive metropolis with
smoking factories furnishing pay envelopes to
thousands of families, and from whose docks
great liners will leave for all the ports of the
seven
The idea appeals to the imagination. To con-
struct city from square miles of bare fields and
wooded hills with occasional clusters OF homes
it is a conception bordering the sublime. The
men who propose it dreamers but they are
intensely practical dreamers. We believe that the
work can be accomplished although the eventual
result probably will bear little resemblance the
present plans.
Great American cities seldom have been built
to order. Spots selected for metropolises by
founders of States in years past vacant
prairie while hundreds of smoke stacks break the
skyline few miles distant in locations apparently
less favorable. American industry has shown a
tendency battle the best laid plans of engineers
and statesmen 1t has built itself cumbersomely
around old farmhouse bootshops blacksmith
forges at crossroads, disrcgarding the advan-
tages OF the village.
But have planners Of factories and
homes had such unusual advantages offered them
as by the present proposal. The Washington and
Alexandria men can outsell the chambers of COM
merce in all other American cities purely the
merit of their goods
The first advantage they can offer is the
shadow of the Capitol What tremendous adyan-
tages would accrue to any American industry by
close association with Congress, with the State
Department, with the Department of Commerce.
with the Department of Labor. The government
maintains many institutions to aid industry but
a.:
bersome at best.
They can "sell" the city of Washington What
greater attraction could be offered for people from
all over the nation to and the indus
tries established the river? There is every
incentive for skilled mechanics and engineers to
establish their homes here. They can "selp' the
natural beauty of the surroundings, the unexceled
climate. the churches, the colleges, the libraries,
the parks, the art galleries.
They can sell" ideal railroad faci,ities-di-
rect connections with the coal and iron supply of
Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia, with
the cotton fields of the South, with the unex-
celled agricultural country of interior Virginia.
with the lumber reservoir of the North and the
farms of the Middle West.
They SELL" they claim. excellent har-
bor-as good any the Atlantic seaboard.
The investment required for dredging the Potomac
would be repaid thousand times if entrance
could be facilitated for ocean-goihg liners-pro-
viding direct connections between the factories Of
nearby Virginia and the ports OF the world.
Industrial America is far from the limit of
its development. New meropolises certain to
arise from time time. The great cities of the
present will grow greater, more unwieldy less
advantageous for industry.
What stands in the way of city with
all the qualities mentioned above to aid its growth?
The question can be answered only by expert
ment-but the experiment certainly seems worth
while.