FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
dicate how the foreigner has capitalized 
good looks and succeeds in making us 
Americans pay the most of the interest. 
It is not generally realized that the 
travel tribute to Europe paid by Americans 
every year approximates three hundred 
and fifty million dollars. This is largely 
paid to see good-looking things. There 
are some towns in Florida to which it 
would not be expected that any sane person 
would come with the thought of geting at 
good-looking things, you will all admit! 
But once inside the town we want to 
examine the places where people live. The 
views I show you indicate differences, 
and, sorrowfully enough, the advantage 
is with those communities abroad that 
have come to realize that those workers 
do best who live best, in the sense of 
clean, sightly and attractive and restful 
surroundings. We have paid in America 
a vast tribute to learn this definite truism. 
We must look carefully at the highways 
of a community concerning the appearance 
of which we are to decide. A wise city 
planner, John Nolen, has said: “Streets 
are the most important of all the features 
of a city. They are the frame work. 
They control and regulate the develop¬ 
ment in the center of the city, and ramify 
to the remotest corners. No one feature 
is so permanent, no other so difficult to 
change.” 
The sort of streets Mr. Nolen thus 
introduces to us must, if successful, be 
fitted to the uses to which they are to be 
put. It is sheer folly, for instance, to pave 
with heat-radiating material in unneces¬ 
sary width on a residence street, which on 
the contrary ought to have only adequate, 
and not excessive, traffic space, joined to 
185 
adequate sidewalks, both being united by 
the beauties of tree and grass, such as, 
for instance, I show you in connection 
with my pictures, but particularly in res¬ 
pect to Buffalo, Syracuse and Miami. 
The handling of the street is an expert 
matter, too often left to inexpert hands. 
Great trees are cut down which as in the 
instance I show you in Washington from 
the sidewalk fronting upon the White 
House enclosure, had better be left stand¬ 
ing. Few cases there are so well combin¬ 
ing efficiency, beauty and attractiveness as 
Oxford Street, Rochester. 
Trees on the street must, if they are 
tobe successful, be controlled municipally. 
If the selection, planting and care of the 
trees be left to private initiative there will 
be incongruity, inefficiency and ugliness. 
Washington has ninety-three thousand 
municipally planted trees, and many com¬ 
munities in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
and the state of New York are benefiting 
immensely by the same sort of control. 
There can be no such painful beheading as 
that I am showing you in graphic pictures 
if municipal control exists. 
A feature which makes a town good- 
looking or the contrary is often its light¬ 
ing arrangements. You will all call to 
mind towns in which the exceedingly ugly 
poles used to distribute electric energy are 
the adornment of the streets. I show you 
communities in which a better condition 
exists, and in which light is distributed 
scientifically, economically, practically and 
beautifully. I want to have you all 
realize that this is not a matter proper 
to be left to the ordinary city engineer, 
or to the ordinary electric plant manag¬ 
er. The first man usually knows noth- 
