FOR A BETTER AND MORE BEAUTIFUL AMERICA
THOSE who attended the convention of the American Civic Association held in Washington during December, and who were able to compare its program and its enthusiasm with those of previous meetings,...
...The meeting reflected not only the growing power of the Civic Association but also the widespread desire of all classes of people to learn how they may save their towns from dirt, from unnecessary disease, and from ugliness...
...God is teaching us, in ways made costly by our ineptitude, to begin at the beginning and to meet the demands of the situation by conforming to fundamental principles.—From "The Child and Social Reform," by Philip Stafford Maxom, in the December North American Review...
...We take the brook after it has become a torrent...
...Gerald Stanley Lee in "Inspired Millionaires...
...The subjects ranged from flies to be exterminated, to forest parks to be created...
...The sentiment of the majority of the delegates seemed to be in favor of meeting every year in the National Capital...
...It is because we are working against nature...
...The convention was made the opportunity to launch the work of securing for the United States as a forest park the great stretch of woodland that lies between Washington and Baltimore and which never fails to charm those who travel from one place to the other and hardly ever fails to make them wonder how there can be so much virgin country so near to great crowded cities...
...We take the twig after it is bent and has stiffened into a tree...
...There was a paper, tco, by Professor Hodge of Clark University, who urged particularly that the first flies that come in the spring be trapped out-of doors as well as indoors and killed...
...second, by the increasing number of ways it is devising for bringing its ideals before people...
...The speakers were Dr...
...David Fairchild, in charge of the Bureau of Plant Introduction in Washington should be passed along...
...R. B. Watrous, who showed the Asso-ciaton's moving pictures...
...The meetings, like those of the Federation of Arts, were held in the Red Room of the New Willard Hotel...
...L. 0. Howard, Chief Entomologist of the Department of Agriculture, and the secretary, Mr...
...Woods Hutchinson, Dr...
...Miss Zona Gale who has found time from her art to assist in the town housekeeping of Portage, Wisconsin...
...It was the outward sign of a great awakening on the part of the American people to their responsibilities and their opportunities...
...Edward Biddle...
...the methods of presentation varied from children's catchy songs of civic pride, and moving pictures, to Zona Gale's beautiful story of "Friendship Village Improvement Sodality," read for the first time at this meeting...
...If only we did not waste so shamefully, we could pass on all sorts of beauties and comforts to the people of the future...
...We know now that much of our labor for the radical betterment of society is costly and fruitless...
...The next meeting place is not yet decided uoon...
...So secluded, not to say exclusive and aristocratic a spot is not the place for organizations which seek to bring together all kinds of people to work for a common end...
...Caroline Bartlett Crane, "the physician to cities...
...It occurred to him that Amercan children might get fun and also profit out of experimenting with plants which are as strange to them as cabbages are to the little Ceylonese...
...The way of the transgressor is hard in a world with the printing press and with the electric light in it, and Ida Tarbell...
...and, third, by the variety in the people it is enlisting in its service...
...Frederick Law Olmsted made the chief address on this subject and John Nolen talked of the need of "Comprehensive Planning for Small Towns and Villages...
...Begin at the Beginning THE fate of the world is determined by the influences which prevail with the child from birth to seven years of age, cetainly from birth to fourteen years of age...
...He told how he found the children of Ceylon raising cabbages for decorative purposes...
...One meeting was given entirely to the campaign against the fly...
...president of the Pennsylvania Federation of Women's Clubs whose work in Carlisle has been touched on in this department...
...He announced that the Department of Agriculture is prepared to supply foreign plants for school gardens...
...The large part which women are taking in the work of ordering our towns aright was demonstrated...
...But so long as there is no suitable meeting place provided at the Capital for the large number of societies that hold their conventions there, we shall be obliged to take what is offered...
...Emphasis upon the great and timely subject of town-planning was another feature of the meeting and at all times it was urged that town-planning does not mean the creation of a few beauty spots and show places but the ordering of all the town-home in such a way that it will contribute to the health and happiness of all of the town-family, the poor as well as the rich...
...All our problems go back to the child—corrupt politics, dishonesty and greed in commerce, war, anarchism, drunkenness, incompetence and criminality...
...and Louise Klein Miller, in charge of the School Gardens of Cleveland, were all on the program...
...Such is substantially the unanimous judgment of living psychologists...
...THOSE who attended the convention of the American Civic Association held in Washington during December, and who were able to compare its program and its enthusiasm with those of previous meetings, could hardly have failed to be impressed, first, by the increasing number of subjects in which the society is interesting itself...
...We are rich enough to buy the great forest, which could now be secured for six million dollars, and to bequeath to those who are to come after us its "Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire,— Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire, * * * Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves, Pure wth a sense of the passing of saints through the wood Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good...
...We take the fire after it has become a conflagration...
...One practical suggestion made by Mr...
...Agnes McGiffert Bailey of Cleveland, organizer of Junior Civic Leagues...
...the line of those who are interested in civic improvement was shown to extend from school children to eminent artists and scientists...
Vol. 3 • January 1911 • No. 2
