£02 
PARK AND CEMETERY 
Annual reports or extracts from them, historical sketches, 
descriptive circulars, photographs of improvements or dis- 
I ti active features are requested for use in this department 
The South Park Improvement Association, of Chicago, has 
closed its first year with a very successful record. It started 
January i, 1904, with 130 members and a monthly income 
of $165, and now has a membership of nearly 500 with an an- 
nual income from subscriptions of $9,500. The association 
employs a force of uniformed men, with hand carts, who 
collect rubbish from the streets, maintains sprinkling carts and 
snow plows, and wagons for the removal of garbage. One 
of the latest steps of the association to improve the appear- 
ance of the district is the offering of three prizes to the 
children bringing proof of having induced the greatest num- 
ber of trees to be planted between November 1, 1904, and 
November 1, 1905. 
* * * 
Chicago’s comparative municipal museum, which is to have 
what is said to be the best collection in the world, is now 
being established in the Public Library building, and will be 
open to the public this month. Five carloads of exhibits from 
the St. Louis exposition have arrived, and are being put into 
position for the opening of the first permanent, compre- 
hensive, municipal museum in this country. Some of the 
most valuable exhibits have been donated to the collections. 
Others have been loaned for a short time. The museum will 
have for its purpose the development of municipal life, by 
showing what is being done elsewhere in this country, in 
Europe, and in South America. The foreign exhibits, which 
in many cases show a growth far in advance of anything in 
the United States, have been given to the museum and will 
be permanent sources of information. The exhibits consist 
chiefly of photographs, maps and relief models. Street clean- 
ing, trade schools, tenement houses, street cars and garbage 
disposal are among the subjects treated. Models show most 
of the interesting attempts of New York to relieve the condi- 
tion of the poor in that city. Mrs.. Conde Hamlin, of St. Paul, 
has been appointed temporary curator of the museum. 
* * * 
A bill 'is now before the Legislature of Massachusetts pro- 
viding for an appropriation of $600, 600 for the extermination 
of the gypsy and brown-tail moths. 
The Auburndale Village Improvement Society, Auburndale, 
Mass., has appointed a committee to purchase implements and 
formulate plans for the destruction of the gypsy and brown- 
tail moths. 
The City Improvement Society of Portsmouth, N. H., which 
has been offering prizes for the destruction of brown-tail 
moth nests, reports that over 10,000 nests have been taken 
from the trees of that city, at an expenditure of $50. About 
60 boys were engaged in the work. 
The Village Improvement Society of Peabody, Mass., has 
issued a circular calling attention to the danger to health 
and damage to trees from the brown-tail and gypsy moths. 
The circular tells about the pests, how to discover their nests 
and how to exterminate them, and urges all citizens to join 
in the movement. The society has bought ladders and tools 
and distributed them to the various engine houses and other 
public places in town. 
* * * * 
One of the most Energetic departments of the Village Im- 
provement Society of Framingham, Mass., is the press com- 
mittee, which conducts an interesting improvement depart- 
ment in the South Framingham Tribune. It contains from 
one to two columns of discussion of live improvement topics 
or news notes of what other societies are doing. Prizes have 
been offered for the most interesting and helpful papers on 
subjects related to improvement work, and a series of local 
sketches, entitled “Little Stories of Village Life,” are to be 
published at frequent intervals. These will be essentially true 
and are to set forth the results of individual endeavor in 
some field of improvement work. The following verses re- 
cently appeared in this department : 
He wanted a city beautiful, 
A city that should be fair, 
A city where smoke should never roll 
In billows upon the air. 
He wanted a city where art should be : 
A city of splendid halls, 
Where culture’s touch should appear upon 
The battlements and walls. j 
He called for a city beautiful : 
He shouted it day by day ; 
. He wanted a city where noise was not, 
Where the spirit of art should sway; 
He wanted a city that should be fair. 
Where filth might never be seen, 
And forgot, in spite of the zeal he had. 
To keep his back yard clean! 
* * * 
A recent bulletin of the Department of Nuisances of the 
American Civic Association says : All that is necessary to put 
a stop to a real nuisance is for somebody to make it his busi- 
ness : first, to notify the responsible person and request him 
to abate the nuisance ; second, to follow the matter up sys- 
tematically and, if it is not abated, to go through the proper 
steps for bringing the evidence before the courts. So far as 
results are concerned, it makes little difference whether the 
initiative is taken by a private citizen, by the officers of an 
improvement society, or by the police, the public prosecutor 
the health officer or other public official. Bushels of statutes 
and ordinances will accomplish nothing unless sorpebody will 
take the trouble to do this. Somebody — not an abstract em- 
bodiment of the great public, but a common, ordinary, every- 
day human being, who has his work to do in the world, and 
lives just twenty-four hours a day, like the rest of us. An 
efficient health officer, an enterprising chief of police, a good 
special officer, such as a smoke inspector ; any of these, or 
anybody else who will put his hand to the work and follow 
it up, can greatly reduce the occurrence of nuisances in his 
community; but nuisances will surely be rampant if their 
abatement depends upon people whose interests and energy 
are otherwise engaged; whether they be good public servants 
with too much work and too little help, or political appointees, 
more intent on personal advancement and profit than on the 
public good, or private citizens similarly preoccupied. 
It is the purpose of the Department of Nuisances of the 
American Civic Association to furnish suggestive informa- 
tion, upon inquiry, to those who wish to bring about the abate- 
ment of public nuisances in their own communities. 
More specific information and suggestion in regard to deal- 
ing with certain kinds of nuisances may be obtained from the 
office of the association, North American Bldg., Philadelphia. 
