Careful investigation of the movement for beautifying our 
cities having been made, and the experiments of other cities 
taken into consideration, the Commission found that it was the 
concensus of opinion of nearly all cities that the work could 
be successfully accomplished only by municipal control and 
management of its street trees and parkways areas, and care 
of all trees and shubbery upon the streets and avenues of the 
public grounds of the city. Whatever ordinances have been 
passed by other cities, as well as our own, have centered around 
this prevailing idea. One nas but to !ook at the remnants of the 
attempts at beautifying and tree planting upon the streets of 
our own city to be perfectly certain of the lamentable failure 
that has been made by trusting to individual enterprise. It 
clearly shows that individual action does not and cannot secure 
uniformity of results. A public-spirited citizen would improve 
his property and plant his street trees. His next door neighbor 
takes no interest whatever or perchance is a non-resident lot 
owner, and thoroughly believing in the “sacred rights of pri- 
vate property” is utterly indifferent to anything but the rise 
in value of his property by his neighbor’s improvements. Trust- 
ing to the beautiful cuts and glowing descriptions of cata- 
logues, undersirable and inharmonious varities of trees would 
be ordered and planted, and thus instead of harmony and beauty 
would appear all sorts and varities of trees good, bad and in- 
different, as well as lack of trees along the streets of our city. 
And then the public spirited citizen would die or sell his pro- 
perty, and his successor either not liking the trees or not car- 
ing for them would cut them down, or allow them to go to decay. 
The time will come, even in Virginia, when the public in- 
terest of the hundreds and thousands of citizens who daily pass 
along the streets, and who pass under the trees, will be con- 
sidered of a greater and paramount interest than of any single 
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