PUBLIC PARKS OF IOWA 203 



lions of dollars purchasing and developing parks for the people. Life in 

 the cities is far more enjoyable than it used to be because men with 

 vision and goo'd judgment have provided these places of beauty and 

 freedom where tired workers may find rest from their labors and heal- 

 ing for their hurts suffered in the battle of life. But there have been 

 no such men of vision in the Iowa legislature; or if there may have been 

 one now and then, he has found it impossible to impart his vision to the 

 men who listened coldly, and sometimes impatiently, while he tried to 

 describe for them some of the most notable bits of beauty here and 

 there in the state and to give reasons why they ought not to be despoiled 

 but to be passed on more beautiful to succeeding generations. 



A member of the present Iowa senate wrote me less than two weeks 

 ago. He said that he had hoped to get support enough for a measure 

 to appoint a legislative committee of five to select at least one little bit 

 of beauty for a state park and with an appropriation large enough to pur- 

 chase the spot that seemed to offer the most for the money. But after 

 interviewing a number of the senators, he gave it up. It was like trying 

 to kindle a campfire with wet wood. They could not catch the flam of 

 his enthusiasm. He could not interest them in any bill that carried an 

 appropriation. They talked economy. This, like all other general assem- 

 blies is to be one of economy and in the end, we shall find as we have 

 always found before that it will spend more money than any previous 

 legislature and will waste enough to buy two or three state parks. 



The state s<pent $50,000,000 last year. Of this amount, $19,000,000 

 was spent for education and $10,000,000 for good roads. That was fine 

 and no one has or should have complaint to make. But it would not take 

 $10,000,000, or even $10,000 a year to buy a tract of scenic beauty like 

 the Backbone in Delaware county, or the caves in Jackson county, -or 

 Bixby park in Clayton county, a Wildcat den in Muscatine county, or 

 the Palisades in Linn county, or Steamboat Rock in Hardin county, or the 

 Balsam fir grove in Allamakee county, or Woodman's Hollow in Webster 

 county, and to keep one or two men in each of them to prevent their 

 further spoliation and to protect the fish and game within them. 



A year ago, Governor Clarke made a ringing address to this associa- 

 tion in which he called attention to the deplorable loss of animate and 

 inanimate beauty that once made the state so famous. He declared 

 that there should be a voice going up and down the state, like John the 

 Baptist of old, warning the people against the loss of that which every 

 good citizen should hold dear and pleading with them to conserve the 

 fine old forest trees, the wealth of blossoming shrubs, the great sheets of 

 prairie flowers spread in splendor among the billowy grasses and the little 

 lakes that made homes for the wild fowl and made some of the counties 

 of Iowa as beautiful as the lake country in England which was made 

 famous by a whole school ol poets. 



That has been done. There have been, not one but many voices going 

 up and down the state during the past year, some of them far sweeter 

 and more persuasive than the voice of the prophet by the Jordan. The 

 Iowa Federation of Women's Clubs has a special division of natural 

 scenery and a number of good women, such as Mrs. Whitely, Mrs. Me- 



