PARK AND CEMETERY 
85 
their own maintenance. Cities destroy everything where they 
locate and are compelled, in order to exist, to be industrious 
and have commerce, money and government. All cities must 
have all these, and they use them for self-preservation or self- 
development in varying extent. 
If a city manufactures more than it consumes and uses the 
surplus product for the supplies of others, then it is an in- 
dustrial city. If the city becomes a receiving and distributing 
center, receiving more than it needs for consumption and dis- 
tributing it without materially changing its condition, then 
so far as it does this it should be classed as a commercial 
city; if money comes to a city more than it needs, to be 
loaned again, then it is a financial city ; if governmental func- 
tions are concentrated in a city, the legislation, the judicial, 
and executive powers being located there, then it is a capital 
city. 
The study of cities of a governmental, financial, commercial 
and educational character indicates that their needs, as far as 
parks are concerned, are well understood and partially pro- 
vided for; but for industrial cities, what is needed in parks is 
but little known. 
Take the list of our park cities and you will find every one of 
them has other large interests besides industrial. Take a 
list of our industrial cities and you will find every one of them 
either has no parks or inadequate parks, and those which do 
exist are more for the brain worker than the hand worker. 
Even as the better residences and grounds have been built 
for those well-to-do, while the wage earner has been left to 
the tenement house district. 
In theory the working man has all the privileges of the park 
that the capitalist has, but those who study park problems 
first-hand, know that the working man and his family, who 
are nine-tenths of the population, is not one-tenth of the fre- 
quenters of municipal parks, not that there is any restriction 
but simply that they do not satisfy his needs. 
The industrial city is a brand new thing in this world’s life. 
If it does not appear so, it is because it had existed during our 
short life. It is probably the only type of city which will ma- 
terially increase in number in the future, for every country and 
state has now its capital city. There is little probability of 
there being additional ones, and financial cities are growing 
greater in influence but fewer in numbers. As the influence of 
Paris, London, and New York becomes stronger as financial 
cepters, the influence of the lesser cities decrease. 
The gathering together and the distribution of merchandise 
is also becoming centralized, and slowly one city after another 
loses its importance as a distributing center. 
The tendency is also to increase the importance of cities of 
special functions, such as the college cities, rather than to in- 
crease their numbers. 
Commercial, governmental, and financial cities existed thou- 
sands of years before the first page of history was written. 
They seemed to have reached their greatest proportionate 
powers at the time of the Hanseatic League, five centuries ago. 
If it is a fact that such cities decrease rather than increase in 
numbers in proportion to population, then comes the question 
how to account for the tremendous increase in the population 
of the cities during the last sixty years. 
A century ago the population of the United States was about 
3 per cent urban and 97 per cent rural, while now with a 
twenty-fold increase in population, there is about 40 per cent 
urban and 60 per cent rural. The number of cities and towns 
of over 8,000 population has increased from 6 to 545. The 
total number of people living in such towns in 1790 was only 
131,472, while in 1900 it was 24,992,199. How can we account 
for this unprecedented growth of urban population if we can- 
not account for it by the forces which have made cities hereto- 
fore. I once called a gentleman’s attention to this, and he re- 
plied, “No trouble in explaining that, for the country was 
young then in its swaddling clothes, now it is full grown and 
wears a business suit.” An explanation which satisfied him, but 
the reply is misleading and put us on the wrong scent in solv- 
ing the problem, for the changes were not confined to the United 
States, but were world-wide and especially strong in Europe. It 
was not the youth of this country or the youth of the world 
that was the cause, but a new social condition had come. For 
during 99 and eighty-one hundredths per cent of the time that 
cities are known to have existed, the world has acquired less 
than three per cent of its population to live under urban condi- 
tions, while during that very small proportionate time of 
twenty-one one hundredths of one per cent of the life of cities, 
conditions have so changed that twenty-five per cent of the 
world’s population must live in cities, and what is known as 
civilized country. The per cent of urban population is much 
increased ; in some cases as high as seventy-five per cent of all 
the people. Truly, a new social condition has come, a new 
force is exerting itself ; as new as, and coincident with steam, 
electricity, railroading, and our improved methods of manu- 
facture and transportation. A social force greater than these 
is here, for it makes use of them all in fulfilling its mission. 
We speak of modern improvements, indeed they are modern, 
so brand new they occupy an exceedingly small portion of time 
since man existed. Let us see what this force is doing : 
Recorded history goes back 3,000 years. Cities are known to 
have existed 3,000 years before history began. Until one-quar- 
ter of one per cent of that time the old distaff, without even the 
big spinning wheel of our grandmothers was the method used 
for making a thread to be woven, and the hand hammer con- 
structed all our metal and woodwork. There was no occasion 
for an industrial city, and none existed. About the time of 
the Revolutionary War the spinning jenny was invented and 
had in it in embryo every, textural manufacture of the world. 
The trip hammer and the circular saw, steam, the blast fur- 
nace, Bessemer steel are of much later date, chemistry and 
necromancy were much the same a century ago. During the 
last sixty years improved machinery, rapid and mighty 
agencies of transportation and increased knowledge has made 
industrial cities not only possible but compulsory. This 
accounts for the per cent of increase in urban population; but 
the decrease in the per cent of rural which has taken place in 
the same time has had another cause, although a similar one ; 
that is, the continual decrease of the element of human labor in 
the production of food and manufacturing supplies. Let me 
illustrate with wheat, which sixty years ago took 54 cents 
worth of human labor to produce one bushel, while now it 
may be grown for less than six cents. This is an extreme 
case, for usually the decrease of the human element in pro- 
duction is from one-quarter to two-thirds of its former cost. 
For fifty years on the average there has been added to the 
urban population every month enough to make a city of 33,000 
people. Think of it, this has been the average increase per 
month for fifty years in urban population. Enough to make 
a city every year of 400,000 people. During the last twenty 
years the difference every year has been sufficient to make a 
city of 650,000, which would be a city greater than Boston 
or St. Louis, and a city as large as Buffalo could have been 
made every seven months during the last twenty years. It is 
hard work to realize these figures. 
The world has never required over one-fifth of its popula- 
tion to perform the functions of the old cities; then four-fifths 
of this addition are industrial cities, either as workmen or 
connected with manufacturing, outside of selling and dis- 
tributing agents. The industrial factor is an important one 
to most cities, and a primary one of many, and will become 
increasingly so in the future. The industrial city is very, 
very new to the world, and the world has not yet learned just 
what to do with it, and like all infants in spite of the ignorance 
of its mother or the neglect of its nurse it continues to grow 
and reach out towards maturity, but its growth produces 
problems which must be met and are not easily solved. It 
takes centuries, not generations to solve such mighty ques- 
tions, but we all can contribute our mite according to our 
light, and it is the park problem of industrial cities for which 
I would offer suggestions, the result of compiling and study- 
ing park statistics. 
There are 78 cities of over 50,000 population in the United 
States. At least thirty of them might be classed as industrial 
cities, of which Allegheny, Scranton, Lowell, Fall River and 
Elizabeth are types. It will be found that the stronger a city 
is industrially the weaker it is in parks. Take the list of 135 
cities of over 30,000 population and mark those whose indus- 
trial interests outrank any other one interest and you will find 
that every city so marked is either deficient or entirely desti- 
tute of parks. 
If now you take the list of cities which have a park or a 
system of parks, which they are proud of and which is recog- 
nized as being good, and you will find every one of those cities 
have some one or more of the old functions of a city outrank- 
ing the new industrial factor. 
From these facts I believe it is reasonable to assume that 
either the workman does not need parks at all or else the park 
that he does need has not been discovered. Now I be- 
lieve that if there is any city which needs parks and public 
grounds, it is the industrial city, but I also believe that the 
park which is needed there has not yet been built. 
Does the workingman’s nature and circumstances require a 
different park from the professional man and the capitalist? 
And if so, what is that difference? I believe that the Amer- 
ican park methods are the best in the world for those who are 
head tired and have reached that standard whereby they in- 
