PAR K AND C EM ETER Y. 
376 
usually be attained by men who thor- 
oughly appreciate the purposes to be 
accomplished and who have by natural 
aptitude and by long special training 
the required ability to accomplish these 
purposes. Unfortunately the number of 
men who know how to make and main- 
tain beautiful parks is very small. Park 
commissioners are therefore apt to em- 
ploy men who seem to know something 
of at least the practical parts of 'the 
work, and they often flounder around in 
all the vitally important matters of de- 
sign, using their own taste and knowl- 
edge as far as they have time and in- 
clination to do so and leaving the rest 
to their practical men. Even those park 
commissioners who know and appreci- 
ate beautiful landscape when they see it 
are rarely able to select and adopt a 
particular type of landscape to the par- 
ticular land with which they are dealing. 
Perhaps they can appreciate good actiiig 
or good music, but they would be un- 
able to write the play or compose the 
music. Yet they will order a wood 
cleaned of underbrush, feel gratified by 
the effort of the gardener in the way of 
so-called rock work, rustic bridges, 
formal flower beds in informal surround- 
ings, and by walks leading hither and 
yon without any purpose that one can 
discover, and by all the injuries which 
even good gardeners (because they are 
mostly mechanics and not artists) will 
inflict on a park landscape already natu- 
rally beautiful or which needs only na- 
tive trees and wild hushes in proper 
places to make it sor Many of the civil 
engineers employed on park work do 
more even to injure naturally beautiful 
scenery, because their operations in grad- 
ing for road building and bridges are 
apt to be larger, and more conspicuous, 
and so expensive that once done, it is 
practically impossible to change them 
and because most of their training has 
been in smashing beautiful landscape 
with railroads, streets, dams and bridges 
and other constructions, all of which 
might be the same, or at moderate addi- 
tional cost, be made beautiful in form 
and location, even if without ornament. 
But the civil engineer who should be 
caught by his employers spending money 
for beauty, as, for instance, by curving 
a road around a hill instead of cutting 
through it or by having vines and wild 
flowers planted on rough railroad slopes, 
would be reprimanded if not discharged. 
Civil engineers are not to be blamed for 
this. Their education and experience 
has compelled them to it. Nor are gar- 
<leners to be blamed for being mechan- 
ics instead of artists. If a park com- 
mission cannot find artistic gardeners 
and artistic civil engineers, the next best 
thing is to “catch them young” — those 
who have innate artistic feeling — and 
help them to become such. 
It has been demonstrated by experi- 
ence in many cities that the park system 
more than any other of the undertak- 
ings of a city should be managed inde- 
pendently of the common council or leg- 
islative body of the city government. 
The reason for this is, of course, 
that the majority of the members of the 
city government is composed of prac- 
tical politicians or of men who have 
about the same education, the same im- 
pulses and ideas and about the same 
taste. It should be clearly understood 
that, as in the cases of gardeners and 
civil engineers already touched upon, 
no blame is meant to be cast upon 
practical politicians. It is simply a fact 
that when they control the management 
of parks, the results attained from the 
point of view of art are poor, sometimes 
ver}- bad indeed. 
Parks, like public libraries and art 
museums, must meet the public needs 
in the main, else they will lose their 
power for educating the people to better 
things, but they should be managed by 
wise and public-spirited men who have 
high ideals and who will strive to gradu- 
aih' and considerately improve the pub- 
lic taste. The people can he led toward 
higher ideals, but they must in the main 
be led unconsciously and by force of ex- 
ample rather than hy scolding. It is 
in this direction that the managers of 
parks, libraries and art museums can do 
much good or, on the contrary, can work 
much evil in matters of taste. 
Parks should not be brought into poli- 
tics not only for the important business 
reasons that apply in all departments of 
municipal administration, but for the 
more important reason that the essential 
requirement of parks is that they should 
be naturally and artistically beautiful 
and because politicians as a class give 
small consideration to matters of art and 
beauty of natural scenery and are care- 
less whenever they conflict with their 
business interests. The schools may not 
be beautiful, but yet may serve all prac- 
tical purposes ; bridges may be and usu- 
ally are hideous, but we can use them 
and hope for better things some day, but 
if parks are not beautiful, they are very 
nearly useless. 
Politicians, as a class, work as hard 
for power and pecuniary success as any 
other class of business men, but like 
most business men, especially retailers, 
they do not waste much time or money 
in trying to inspire the masses with high 
ideals or in improving and refining their 
taste. Politicians do not make good park 
commissioners, not alone because they 
are not good judges of landscape beauty, 
hut because they are strongly biased in 
the direction of deciding every question 
in the way that will gain them and their 
party friends and votes, and because they 
will inevitably sacrifice what seems to 
them such trivial things as matters of 
appearance to oblige people who gen- 
erally have some personal or selfish or 
party end in view. The number of cases 
that arise in park administration in which 
a politician will decide contrary to the 
requirements of good taste are far more 
numerous than anyone who has not had 
long experience of park matters could 
imagine, or believe if told. 
A political park commissioner will be 
apt to favor the determination of the 
number of and the selection of sites for 
parks that will gain him or his party the 
most votes, or that will please pecuniar- 
ily interested persons or corporations. 
He will usually prefer to decide all such 
questions without expert advice, know-, 
ing that without such guidance he can 
surely decide according to his own in- 
terest and that of his party, while with 
it he may be hampered in securing what 
he wants done, hi e will favor the em- 
ployment of experts if they must be em- 
ployed, who will be subservient and 
“easy to get along with,” and he will pre- 
fer a superintendent who will purchase 
supplies from the “right” dealer. He 
will want to grant licenses for all sorts 
of amusement concerns regardless of the 
park landscape, provided only they are 
likely to be popular and are run by the 
“right” men ; and so on. As they know 
the public admire gaudy effects, they 
cover the park lawns with the most bril- 
liantly colored foliage plants and park 
buildings with novel and conspicuous de- 
tails painted with showy and contrasting 
colors. Naturally, with park commis- 
sioners of this type of mind, the higher 
beauties of nature and of art in tlie 
parks stand very little show to be pre- 
served or created. 
Parks should be kept out of politics, 
not only by not having politicians ap- 
pointed as park commissioners, but, re- 
membering that “money is power,” hy 
taking the power of making the annual 
park appropriations from the city gov- 
ernment by means of a law giving the 
park commission a certain minimum and 
maximum percentage of the total of the 
assessor’s valuation of the taxable prop- 
erty in the city, and providing the long- 
term loans for land purchases and short- 
term loans for improvement, each based 
on a percentage of tlic total of assessors' 
valuations of taxable property in the city 
and requiring compulsory issue hy the 
city government in some cases, after they 
have been approved by a referendum in 
some cases. Additional voluntary appro- 
priations by the city government may 
also he permitted l)y law. 
