82 JAMESTOWN CONGRESS OF HORTICULTURE 



Government engineers are building the Panama Canal and great irri- 

 gation works ; are building them cheaper, better and faster than private 

 capital could build them. Government engineers and architects are 

 building great battleships; are building them as efficient in all respects 

 and as cheaply and quickly as private contractors can do. 



Let it not be said that the government cannot handle large busi- 

 ness affairs. Present experience shows that it can. If it can dig the 

 Panama Canal, construct great irrigation systems, and build enormous 

 battleships, it can purchase and manage the lands necessary for national 

 forests in the Appalachian Mountains. 



EVENING SESSION. 

 CHAIRMAN, PROFESSOR S. A. BEACH. 



CIVIC HORTICULTURE AND CIVIC IMPROVEMENT. 

 WARREN H. MANNING, BOSTON, MASS. 



Civic improvement is the work that organizations and individuals 

 plan and execute to improve their surroundings and civic horticulturists 

 are they who so cultivate ornamental plants in public or private grounds 

 as to give pleasure and benefit to the public as well as themselves. 

 Ornamental plants become in the hands of the civic horticulturists the 

 garments of civic improvement, for they clothe parks, buildings, lawns, 

 streets and landscapes. 



The broadest aspect of the civic improvement movement, however, 

 lies in permanently preserving and improving the natural beauty of a 

 region and securing convenient and attractive access thereto for all 

 citizens. Toward this end vast numbers of powerful interests have been 

 unconsciously working while they have at the same time been destroy- 

 ing nature. 



Railroads are now the national parkways to nearly all sections hav- 

 ing special landscape interests, and they recognize very clearly the value 

 of such interests as an asset in the extension of their lines, in the 

 acquirement of land adjoining their right of way to protect beautiful 

 outlooks and in the almost universal improvement of right of way and 

 station grounds; they often are the only attractive objects in unattrac- 

 tive outlooks. Their rails have now largely superseded the river and 

 canal with all their charm for the traveler, but having a limited out 

 look, as compared with the rapidly shifting vistas and broad panoramas 

 of the train. 



Electric roads, state roads, merging into national roads are open 

 ing up regions of even greater beauty and variety and electric cars and 

 automobiles are making the range of pleasure driving so wide now that 

 a fraction of a day's ride only is required to cover a city park system, 

 although some cities have included therein as much as one-sixth of their 

 total area and the average park area of the fourteen cities above 300,000 

 population is one in twenty-eight acres. 



City systems have broadened to county systems, as in Essex County, 



