ot 
When a city endeavors to bring to itself a larger factory, 
inducements can outweigh the educational and cultural advantages 
which the place offers as a residence for the families of the pro- 
prietor and his employees. What boots it that one can make 
large dividends or high wages if the community does not afford 
a healthy environment and enriching cultural opportunities for 
owners and employees and their families. 
These paragraphs, which may seem far a field in the report of 
a botanic garden, are preparatory to the statement that an educa- 
tional institution like the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, having more 
than 1,000,000 visitors yearly in a city of two and one half million 
population, and which renders to the community such diversified 
and extensive services as have been recorded in these annual re- 
ports for the past twenty years, should receive support in propor- 
tion to the value of its services and the resources of the community. 
One might, for example, expect that more than 627 persons could 
be found to enroll as annual members as the result of daily can- 
vassing for several years by all the methods that have been found 
effective elsewhere. Such expectations might be increased by 
knowledge of the fact that cities less than half the size of Brooklyn 
far exceed Brooklyn in such matters. 
It would be difficult to exaggerate the cultural impoverishment 
of Brooklyn if it were to be deprived of such institutions as the 
Botanic Garden, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Children’s 
Museum, all open free to the public, and not only carrying on 
their own educational programs, for children and adults, but 
supplementing and enriching the work of practically every other 
educational institution in the city. 
3rooklyn has been placed under an everlasting debt of gratitude 
to the small handful of citizens whose contributions of services, 
moral support, and funds, in supplement to the annual tax budget 
appropriations, have made the Brooklyn Botanic Garden possible. 
Without this private initiative and support much of the beauty 
of our grounds, and much—very much—of our scientific and 
educational work, including a large part of our service to the 
public schools, would have been quite impossible. 
t the close of these first twenty years the director wishes to 
express again his appreciation and deep sense of personal obliga- 
