483 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
THE AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION’S WORK 
The announced purpose of the American 
Civic Association to work toward “A Bet- 
ter and More Beautiful America,” while 
properly stating its aims, conveys but a 
vague impression to those who look upon 
public beauty as an unimportant by-product 
and who think of betterment work as a 
fleeting fad. Nor, indeed, does it give even 
to the sympathetic any adequate idea of 
the definite and continual benefit to general 
living and working conditions which is se- 
cured in the practical pursuit of eventual 
community and national beauty. It is, 
therefore, not surprising that the path which 
broadens into the betterment and beauty 
of our ideal America is alive with the 
thorns of thoughtlessness and indifference, 
and that there are in the way not only 
the rocks of ignorance and custom, but the 
fighting giants of selfish private interest 
and entrenched special privileges. The 
practical civic warriors who tread this any- 
thing but sympathetic and easy way sel- 
dom meet direct hostility to the end in 
view, but they do constantly encounter 
sharp resistance to definite progress toward 
that end. The billboard man, the pro- 
ducer of wasteful black smoke, the Niagara 
power promoter, the careless miner and 
lumberman, the erector of the network of 
overhead wires — all these will promptly sub- 
scribe ■'to the doctrine of ‘‘a better and 
more beautiful America” — but they as 
promptly fall afoul of the progress toward 
that end which interferes in the least with 
their gainful occupation. 
Under this condition the work of the as- 
sociation must necessarily be definite and 
practical to succeed. It must and it does 
educate the men and the interests it seeks 
to change into factors for the public good, 
endeavoring to have them see their greater 
advantage in promoting the health, happi- 
ness and efficiency of all. Aside from that 
mushroom of advertising, that parasite on 
legitimate business, the billboard horror, 
every interest touched by the uplifting work 
of the American Civic Association is di- 
rectly benefited, not only in the immediate 
economic result, but in the general sum of 
increased human efficiency. The factory 
owner whose chimneys have been rendered 
smokeless can contemplate the saving in 
coal while he himself breathes with pleas- 
ure the purer air that results. The corpo- 
rate owners of the mazes of overhead wires 
are not insensible to the beauty of poleless 
highways any more than they are regardless 
of the largely decreased cost of maintenance 
which results when they have been forced 
to put their wires underground. I believe 
that certain of the Niagara interests would 
w'elcome a final and definite limitation* of 
the use of the great cataract for power 
production which would remove it from the 
field of engineering cat-skinning, because 
they would not only have a splendid scenic 
certainty, but a hardly less pleasing eco- 
nomic advantage. 
Therefore, our work is strong in educa- 
tion, in inquiry, in suggestion and co-opera- 
tion, in dealing with those who are, mostly 
through no definite thought of wrong, in 
the way of an advance tow'ard the more 
beautiful and the more efficient America. 
I count as least excusable among my own 
errors of administration, those which have 
occurred when I have unsheathed the sword 
before asking peaceful passage, thus arous- 
Address of President J. Horace McFar- 
land at the Pittsburg Con- 
vention. 
ing needless rancor and making difficult 
that fair-minded consideration which is 
increasingly an American characteristic. 
Equally important in the work of the 
association is the information and educa- 
tion of the thoughtless and indifferent. 
Familiarity more surely breeds unthinking 
acceptance than irritating contempt; where- 
fore the good-humored word in season is 
often most effective. I have found in many 
communities, after an address in this 
country-wide crusade against ugliness had 
been delivered, that the scales of indiffer- 
ence were falling from the eyes of men 
who only needed to see the wrong to be 
ready to act toward its removal. The Wis- 
consin river flows beautifully through a 
pleasant little city in the state of the same 
name, but the banks of the river had been 
allowed to become unpleasant, and with no 
thought, save in the minds of the Women’s 
Club of the city, that the public should own 
and use these banks and that they should 
be beautiful. In June last attention was 
called, in connection with a general illus- 
trated address, to the fine opportunity here 
presented. But two weeks ago a letter 
came telling me how the men of the town 
had in consequence formed an improvement 
association, raising money with which they 
had bought the river banks and granted 
them for the public use of the city under 
equitable terms. Moreover, the awakening 
had resulted in guiding individual enter- 
prises in connection with the water front 
so as to largely promote available public 
beauty. These men needed only to be 
shown, and there are thousands like them 
in hundreds of communities, to which I 
wish the arousing facilities of the American 
Civic Association might be progressively ex- 
tended. 
In yet another way the association’s work 
promotes education — through projected leg- 
islation. Under the confused and anomalous 
conditions surrounding city government in 
America, arising partly out of a too great 
regard for the claimed constitutional right 
of an American to injure his neighbor as 
much as he pleases so long as he does it 
from his own premises, adequate laws are 
lacking to promote the general welfare 
through harmonious civic beauty, sane tree 
planting and care and the restraint of un- 
necessary billboard ugliness. As a result 
of such inquiry, correspondence, study and 
revision, the association has now put for- 
ward model enactments governing tree 
planting and outdoor advertising which it 
is hoped to have many states adapt and 
adopt within the coming year. These en- 
actments are not claimed to be ideal, but 
they are expected to stand in the courts. 
As has been wisely said, ‘‘The banner of 
reform should not be so far in advance 
that the procession cannot see it.” A law 
to effect any good and so drawn as to be too 
far in advance of current judicial con- 
struction is worse than no law at all. 
Just here there arises a feeling of satis- 
faction at the definite restraint and prac- 
ticability of some of this constructive work 
of the association. Our conservatism does 
not always please some of our good mem- 
bers whose splendid idealism takes them 
beyond the horizon of a slowly following 
support, and who do not realize that all 
true advance is made by keeping just in 
front of present-day public knowledge and 
sentiment. The magical mango tree of the 
Indian juggler springs up in an hour, and 
vanishes in somewhat less time, while the 
slow-sprouting acorn grows into the lusty 
sapling and the towering oak, and continues 
for ages its steady and sturdy increase in 
vigor. 
Looking backward through the five years 
that have elapsed since the American Civic 
Association was formed, I can now realize 
better the gradual but progressively in- 
creasing rise of civic interest to the point 
of enthusiasm throughout America. It is 
distinctly an awakening, not a revival, for 
that which did not previously exist could 
hardly be revived. We of the administra- 
tion of the association have had occasion 
frequently to feel thankful that the simple 
efficiency of our organization, in which red 
tape has no part, has enabled us to respond 
immediately to many calls coming in con- 
sequence of this awakening. 
The rapid increase in interest, and con- 
sequently in acquired knowledge, is com- 
pletely reflected in the changing character 
of the publications we have issued to our 
members during these five years. Compared 
with those in existence and taken over from 
the organizations constituting the American 
Civic Association, it is seen that our bulle- 
tins and pamphlets have evolved into defi- 
nite and authoritative documents, free from 
hysteria or generalization, and treating com- 
prehensively and with suggestive detail the 
subjects discussed. Our bulletin on ‘‘Play 
and Playgrounds,” for instance, at once be- 
came a classic on the subject, and has had 
the fortune not only to require a second 
edition to supply the demand, but to seem 
so valuable to the Playground Association, 
of America that that excellent organization 
has absorbed and republished it bodily, 
without permission or credit! The bulletins 
on ‘‘Removal of Overhead Wires” and on 
‘‘Public Comfort Stations,” prepared by the 
City-Making Department, are as completely 
valuable, while the issues on ‘‘The Billboard 
•Nuisance” and on ‘‘The Smoke Nuisance” 
bring those subjects fully up to the present 
progress. Indeed, all . the publications we 
issue have definite and authoritative char- 
acter. 
The successive clipping-sheets, sent out 
with current information in carefully para- 
graphed form, have not only served as prog- 
ress reports for our members, but have been 
extensively used by the press, always 
willing to aid and advance a genuine uplift 
movement. 
In this retrospect I may properly call at- 
tention to the fact that it was from our 
Cleveland convention in 1905 that sprang 
the action and impulse which have made 
the falls of Niagara a national concern 
rather than a state possession. Despised 
at first, our efforts toward saving for all 
the world this great scenic beneficence have 
come to be respected even by those who are 
in opposition to us. A prominent member 
of the association represents it on the 
Landscape Commission appointed by the 
Secretary of War, under which a notable 
improvement in the conditions surrounding 
the manufacturing use of water in the 
