237 
PARK AND CEMETERY, 
taken in accomplishing what we want. The 
bill posters themselves are seeing the light 
in this direction. 
“Local, state and national authorities 
have the unquestioned power and it is their 
duty to prohibit the posting of any private 
advertising on public property, at least 
without most careful provision and charging 
adequate fees for such rights — such fees to 
be paid into the public treasury — not into 
some public official’s pocket. But their 
powers even to grant such permits is or 
may be limited. 
“Ordinances may entirely prohibit dis- 
tributing handbills on the streets or throw- 
ing them on doorsteps. Penalties may be 
imposed and enforced for using the private 
property of another for affixing private ad- 
vertising without permit in writing from the 
owner, who may always sue for trespass 
where permit is not given. The height, ma- 
terial, {nethod of construction and location 
of fences and billboards may be properly 
regulated by law, where they come within 
the police powers as regards health or 
menace to public safety, as in case of fire, 
wind, etc. Billboards on private property 
may be taxed as income-producing property. 
This should prove the most efficacious means 
and apparently at present is the oniy gen- 
eral legal means of regulating the number 
of billboards, otherwise erected and main- 
tained legally. If a storekeeper displays 
his wares in an objectionable manner, one 
is fully justified in buying of a merchant 
m.ore responsive to public sentiment and 
desires. But first warn offenders, and if 
they get wise, well enough; if not, they 
cannot thereafter complain of lost trade. 
“Now we have left to consider only 
these billboards otherwise passing the test, 
yet esthetically wrong — either out of place, 
as on private property, along parkways, or 
as seen from the train, or in design or col- 
or bad. For this educate public opinion — 
first, last and always.” 
Henry Lewis Johnson of Cambridge, 
Mass., presented some of the views of 
the bill posters against the agitators, on 
the principle, he said, that the revela- 
tions would be likely to stir up still 
more energetic effort against the nui- 
sances. 
Referring to a recent meeting of the 
American Civic Association held in Milwau- 
kee. at which it was agreed that the bill 
board should be “taxed out of existence,” a 
publication on the side of the bill posters 
said; 
“It is used to excess, no doubt, and there 
is no question but that in many rural locali- 
ties of the East it is so prevalent and so 
vulgarly conspicuous as to mar otherwise 
beautiful landscapes. 
“In the city, however, if restricted to 
dead walls and fences about vacant lots, 
it has a legitimate field, and any attempt 
to ‘tax it out of existence’ there would be 
met with an organized resistance that even 
the American Civic Association probably 
could not overthrow. There is a question if 
the billboard does not at times serve even 
an aesthetic purpose, as. for instance, when 
it hides from view the weed patches, heaps 
of garbage and piles of waste material seen 
in some of our vacant lots.” 
“A Detroit exchange very truthfully and 
pointedly sums up the situation in regard to 
the fanatical anti-billboard agitators in the 
following words: ‘The mighty reform in- 
stituted by the American Scenic and His- 
toric Preservation Society under the aus- 
pices of the sisterly magazines is dying a 
natural death.’ 
“Another hypocritical howl of reform, 
to enable the magazines to kill off com- 
petitors who are getting their share of 
advertising patronage. Personally we can 
see as much artistic beauty in a billboard 
advertisement as when the same is printed 
on a magazine page. The infallible test of 
a reform movement is to look for the 
graft.” 
Edward T. Hartman of Boston, sec- 
retary of the Massachusetts Civic 
League, emphasized the boycott method 
in getting rid of objectional billboards, 
and humorously referred to certain well 
advertised articles which he said he 
would not use and which he advised the 
ladies not to use. 
The subject of billboards was then 
discussed, more or less informally, 
among those who took part being 
Thomas Raeburn White of Philadel- 
phia, a member of the National Muni- 
cipal League’s executive committee ; 
President McFarland; Mrs. Pell of 
Newark, N. J. ; Dr. John Quincy 
Adams ; Mr. Ewing of Boston ; Mr. 
Van Patten, Burlington, Vt. ; Amasa 
M. Eaton, Providence; Mrs. Edwin F. 
Moulton, Warren, O. ; Mrs. George F. 
French, Portland, Me., and N. C. Fow- 
ler, Jr., of Boston. 
William B. Howland, treasurer of 
the American Civic Association, read 
the annual report showing receipts of 
$8,734 and expenditures amounting to 
$8,097, showing a gain of $636, which 
will be applied toward the deficit of last 
year. 
Wednesday Afternoon. 
The afternoon meeting was devoted 
largely to the subject of “Forest 
Preservation.” President McFarland 
opened the meeting with a few remarks 
on the necessity of forest preservation 
— comparing the American public with 
a man with $100 in the bank with an 
income of $1 a day living at a $3. a day 
hotel. He said we have civilized the 
Indian out of the way — nearly civilized 
forests — by destroying them, and were 
also trying to civilize Niagara Falls in 
the same way. He introduced as the 
fi.rst speaker, Mira Lloyd Dock of Fay- 
etteville, Pa., member of the Pennsyl- 
vania Forestry Commission. Miss Dock 
illustrated her talk by a map of the 
state of Pennsylvania and specimens of 
forest trees in various stages of growth. 
She said that the cost of establishing a 
forest reserve and even of maintaining 
it for some time without expectation 
of revenue is not only relatively but 
absolutely less than the loss from for- 
est fires and from the devastating na- 
ture of floods originating on waste open 
lands. 
Herbert A. Smith of Washington, 
D. C., was the next speaker. Among 
other things he said : 
“The decrease In the supply of woods of 
all sorts, and the consequent rapid rise in 
prices, show what a condition exists at the 
present time, a condition the only remedy 
for which is in the preservation of the re- 
maininer resources as forest reserves. Ac- 
tion of this sort, he said, is demanded, not 
alone in the United States, but in the en- 
tire world, since the same lessening of the* 
supply is apparent everywhere. 
“Nor should the National Government be 
expected to do all, for each state can as- 
sist, both directly and indirectly. Indirectly 
the practice of forestry may be promoted 
by the private owner, and direct action 
v/ould mean the purchase of land for state 
forests. The present area of state forests 
in the "East is about 2,500,000 acres and this 
should be greatly enlarged.” 
On motion of Edwin A. Start, secre- 
tary of the Massachusetts Forestry As- 
sociation, the following resolution was 
adopted ; 
“Whereas, The timber supply of the United 
States is approaching exhaustion and al- 
ready the pinch of scarcity is felt; and the 
people of the United States now hold more 
than 150,000,000 acres of national forests 
west of the Mississippi river, ensuring to- 
the west a moderate local timber supply for 
the future; and 
“Whereas, The States east of the Mis- 
sissippi must depend for their local timber 
upon the forests, existing or restored, upon 
the Appalachian ranges, which are now be- 
ing rapidly destroyed for private gain, as- 
suring in the near future a disastrous tim- 
ber famine; and 
“Whereas, These Appalachian forests con- 
serve and equalize the supply and flow of 
water in the lakes and rivers of the At- 
lantic coast, Mississippi and Gulf systems 
upon which great populations and great in- 
dustries depend. 
“Be it resolved, That the American Civic 
Association emphatically approves the pro- 
ject of creating national forests in the 
Appalachian ranges, north and south, and 
urges the members of both houses of Con- 
gress irrespective of party to work and 
vote for this measure.” 
Henry A. Barker of Providence, pre- 
sented a paper on “Parks and Public 
Reservations.” Among other things he 
said : 
“The park promoters of two decades ago 
builded better than they knew. Beset by 
obstacles, well-nigh discouraged by popu- 
lar indifference, opposed by that impractical 
army of sordid citizens who live but for 
the present hour and take no heed for the 
morrow, and who regard the herald of the 
dawn but as an interloper, it seemed as if 
progress were never to be made. Great cit- 
ies were growing up as cities had never 
grown before; great aggregations of toiling, 
crowding humanity in long rows of prisons 
that stretched on and on in hopeless ugli- 
ness overwhelming all the things of fresh- 
ness and bloom that nature had lavished 
upon the landscape, and denying to their 
dwellers the birthright of fresh air and 
happy surroundings, which are the two 
greatest factors for the well being of the 
people. 
“Suddenly there swept over the country 
a movement for the extension and acquire- 
ment of parks, a movement -which spread 
even to the remotest hamlet. It took a 
long time, however, for the park promoters 
to convince the people that it was not 
caricatures of nature that were the crying 
need, but rather the preservation and re- 
storation of those assets of nature which a 
new civilization had been attempting to 
destroy. Most of our American cities might- 
have saved millions if they had early re- 
served appropriate park sites. Most of the 
towns that are ugliest might have become 
attractive and picturesque had the relation 
between municipal economy and the public 
reservation system been properly under- 
stood. 
“The playgrounds and the little parks, 
the civic center and the boulevard stretch- 
ing away to the delights of the outer reser- 
vations, the river-edge promenades and the 
water-front improvements, all are related 
parts of a great sign for making the Ameri- 
