PARK AND CEMETERY. 
358 
ments will be possibly greater than 
the sure income applicable to these 
purposes during periods of industrial 
depression. Still more fundamental 
is the principle that money should 
not be borrowed unless it can be prof- 
itably employed. In the case of 
money borrowed for the acquisition of 
park land it should be borne in mind 
that the land is an asset that will be 
worth more in almost every instance, 
by the time the loan becomes payable, 
than the amount of the loan. More- 
orer, as a general rule, the special 
increase in the assessor’s valuatioiTs 
of adjoining private lands and in the 
improvements subsequently erected 
upon them, will yield increased taxes 
sufficient to meet the interest and the 
annual contributions to the sinking 
fund of the park-land loan. Of course 
there should be limitations, but ex- 
perience indicates that the limits for 
park-land loans may safely be set 
very much higher than for other mu- 
nicipal loans. Examination of the facts 
by experts would be required, doubt- 
less, to fully satisfy those in author- 
ity; but it requires very little knowl- 
edge of municipal finances to satisfy 
one of the general rule that parks are 
a better asset, when the loan by which 
they have been acquired becomes pay- 
able, than school buildings, fire engine 
houses, city halls, street improvements 
and most other things for which cities 
berrow money, and all of which de- 
teriorate and some of which become 
almost valueless, even if they are not 
destroyed to make room for ’oetter 
structures. 
The experience of the larger cities 
has been that by far the most satis- 
factory and profitable results have 
been obtained by improving their 
parks as rapidly as such difficult and 
complex work can wisely be effected, 
usually in from three to five years 
after the acquisition of the land, de- 
pending upon various circumstances, 
but mainly upon the prospect of a 
consequent rapid rise in the values 
of adjoining lands. In general, it is 
safe to say that some parks and park- 
ways or some portions of them should 
be rapidly improved, at least to such 
degree as is necessary to perfect their 
landscape and to render them at once 
available for the public to use with 
reasonable convenience and satisfac- 
tion and without undue injury to the 
verdure of the parks. Such rapid im- 
provement cannot, as a rule, be ac- 
complished by means of such appro- 
priations as can be spared from an- 
nual taxes. In certain cases money 
can be raised in large amounts by 
special assessments on adjoining 
properties. Such special assessments 
are levied only when the land can be 
shown to have derived special bene- 
fits, and only to a less amount in each 
case than the estimated increase in 
valuation. Such special assessments 
may generally be levied first when the 
land for a park or parkway is taken 
. or soon after the taking and again 
when the improvements have ad- 
vanced far enough to affect favorably 
the valuation of adjoining and neigh- 
boring properties. In the case of 
land only part of which is taken, the 
benefit and damage should be consid- 
ered at the same time and the award 
or assessment should be for the bal- 
ance between the two only. Minor 
improvements and even the land pur- 
chases for additions or for squares, 
play grounds, small parks and short 
or inexpensive parkways may be paid 
for out of annual taxation, especially 
during prosperous times. 
Like many public institutions, rail- 
roads and industrial plants, the im- 
provement of parks is done from time 
to time by occasional relatively large 
expenditures such as would be paid 
for by borrowing money or by espe- 
cially large appropriations for specific 
purposes and also more or less conti- 
uously out of ordinary annual appro- 
priations. A new park situated where 
it can be used conveniently by the 
public should be considerably im- 
proved according to a comprehensive 
plan at the outset, and presumably by 
means of borrowed money. There 
may be a lull and for, perhaps, ten or 
twenty years further improvements 
may be limited to what can be done 
annually by means of small appropria- 
tions and mainly by occasional mod- 
erate increase of the regular mainte- 
nance force. Practically the improve- 
ment takes place more rapidly during 
times of commercial prosperity or 
else during times of extreme indus- 
trial depression when it may be ad- 
visable to use the credit of the city to 
provide work for the poorest class of 
laborers who suffer most from lack 
of employment. The loans for im- 
provement of parks and still more de- 
cidedly those for the purchase of land 
should be authorized during good 
times and expended during hard times. 
Since the burden is evenly distributed 
over so long a period as to cover sev- 
eral good times and their intervening 
hard times it can make but little dif- 
ference when the burden begins or 
when additional burdens are assumed, 
while it makes tremendously for econ- 
omy to purchase lands during hard 
times when land owners often are 
more eager to obtain cash than to 
hold on for a possible future profit 
and it is far more advantageous to 
employ common labor for park im- 
provement during hard times either 
to prevent or to diminish the suffer- 
ings of the poor and to get the W'ork 
done at minimum wages. 
Park systems, like other large, com- 
plex and costly creations of human 
intelligence, should be carefully de- 
signed by trained designers. 
Like a large public building, every 
large park is composed of various 
parts and numerous details and it is 
just as important to employ an expert 
designer to devise a general plan for 
such parks as it is to employ an archi- 
tect to design a correspondingly im- 
portant public building. For reasons 
rather difficult to explain there are 
in every city many more persons who 
consider themselves competent to di- 
rect the expenditure of public money 
on parks without plans prepared by 
experts than are persons who would 
be willing to direct the expenditure 
of similar amounts on a large city 
hall, and yet, as a matter of fact, the 
ability to design landscape is very 
much rarer than the ability to design 
monumental public buildings. 
The designing of a park should be- 
gin with the selection of the site, in 
doing which many important consid- 
erations of a technical nature should 
receive far more attention than they 
generally get from those usually en- 
trusted with this duty. 
The determination of the boundaries 
of a park is often very intimately 
related to radical questions of design. 
The boundaries adopted for a park 
are often the boundaries used by the 
previous private owners and in the 
west almost all such boundaries are 
the straight lines of the original gov- 
ernment land surveys or of subdivi- 
sions based upon them and which are 
generally purely arbitrary rectangular 
boundaries bearing no harmonious re- 
lation with the topography except in 
the few cases where the land is flat. 
Such arbitrarj" rectangular boundaries 
are often hideous misfits with respect 
to the local topography, particularly 
if, as is often the case, the site has 
been selected for a park because of 
its strongly marked topography. Such 
arbitrary boundaries are also some- 
times badly out of accord with cer- 
tain requirements of a good design 
for the improvement of the particu- 
lar ground in question. The artist 
painter usually selects a size and 
shape for his picture with regard to 
