The Cordova daily times., 1923-03-19
MONDAY, MARCH 19, 1923
THE POWER OF AN IDEA

Some years ago, Tn the Spring Ot l9l2, an idea was born that has saved the American people millions of dollars and that also has saved the lives of thousands of the American people themselves.
 This idea was not born in some great eX- permental laboratory, nor in some university. It came into the mind of plain citizen who possessed the power of straight thinking and the executive ability and the energy to trans mute his thoughts into practical action For example, when the Psalmist exclaimed that there was nothing new under the sun he cer- tainlv nad no vision of our electrified world of today. There are new things and thou sands Of them; also there are millions of va grant ideas that amount to nothing for lack of the conviction and effort that bring them respect and power.
 .'> This man was not the first who saw. that our American cities and towns, for all their comparative neWness, are woefully dirty ana unkempt; but he was the first to conceive a practical and popular plan to make them clean and attractive and kept in that condition. The desire to clean them up was not new ldea What was new was the plan that solved the problem of how to do it and keep 1t done
 The idea also was novel in the fact that at the outset this man realized its bigness, its unlimited scope. Various writers about other novel enterprises whose success has startled the public have said that its creator "never imagineo'' what he was starting-as if all the visions and future that men see Tn thelr braln children. were told from the housetops! Mo- body knows everything that the author of this idea imagined for it's future when he launched it through the press in May, 1912. But he saw and said this much in that announcement: "The object is the organization of national campaign, recognized, observed and practced everywhere, every year; national in its scope and it's recognition and utilization by the public, the press the civic organizations, and the business community
 That definite plan and object was the result of clear thinking, and once he had thought out the big idea and it's scope, he felt that it should be put to the test Like most new ideas, however, it's inventor had difficulty in getting others to see it-they declared it ''too theoretical' and even "too altruistc'' Indeed, th' plan itself would have amounted to not ing if he himself had been without the determination and ability to put it through. Therefore, ever since he has been directing a nationwide campaign for cleaning up Ameri- can cities, destroying disease breeding refuse, and making 'homes and towns beautiful, '' with net results in the saving of lives and property values that cannot be computed and he is still on the job.
 Tllis the idea of Allen w. Clark a St. Louis II an, was simply to organize local cam paigna to make the cities and towns through out the nation, sanitary and attractive and to keeo them sc, by strai ghtforward reason-why arelr cnts for "cleanliness, thrift and civic ,,ri1o and hv Dractical methods for thair methodical and continuous expression, rather than in any of the annual and inadequate explosions of hyster1cal, transient effort that had been tried and abandoned by so many communities.