_Dear Sir_,--I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of
the 2d inst., requesting me, in the name of the committee who have
called a public meeting on the park question, to address to them a
letter which shall contain my views upon "the necessity existing at the
present time for action on this subject, and upon the Report of the Park
Commissioners."
If my views are of any value to the community on this question, or if I
could exert any influence, however little, in bringing about a result so
necessary to the comfort, prosperity, and health of all the citizens of
Boston, as the establishment of a public park within the limits of the
city, I should esteem it not less a privilege than a duty to present
those views, and exert that influence.
Among the many and weighty considerations that might be appropriately
urged in favor of the establishment of a park in this city, three stand
out so prominently, that their importance can scarcely be overestimated.
These are, first, the sanitary, second, the educational, and, third, the
economic aspects of the question. Let me call your attention briefly to
these three points.
The first is the sanitary aspect of the park. The discussion of sewerage
and drainage, and of the ventilation of sewers, drains, and houses, with
which our community have latterly been made familiar, has impressed upon
our citizens, to some extent, the importance of introducing pure air
into our houses, and of keeping foul air out of them. The importance of
such ventilation cannot be overstated. But we are in danger of
forgetting that the importance of ventilating a city is as great as that
of ventilating all the houses in it, with this difference, that if a
city is not well ventilated, so as to bring fresh air into it, and to
keep foul air and poisonous gases out of it, the ventilation of
individual dwellings will be of little avail.
The foul air of the streets will not only envelop those who pass through
them, but will penetrate the houses that line them, visiting alike the
sick and the well, increasing the danger of disease to the former, and
diminishing the health and strength of the latter. In proportion as a
city increases in size, large open spaces should be reserved. Parks are
the lungs of the city. They are more than this: they are reservoirs of
oxygen and fresh air. They produce atmospheric currents, which sweep
through and purify the streets. Parks not only offer oxygen to all who
visit them, but distribute a large amount of this prime necessity of
life everywhere in their neighborhood. Without open spaces appropriately
placed, it is impossible, in a large city, to have well ventilated
streets, and to keep the air of the houses sweet and clean. Let us
remember, moreover, that bad ventilation means poisoned air, and that
poisoned air is sure to be followed by a ghastly train of diseases, with
an occasional pestilence to remind the inhabitants what a terrible thing
it is to disregard sanitary laws.
Improved ventilation is by no means the only sanitary good that parks
yield to a city wise enough to possess them. A fraction, and only a
small fraction, of our population, are able to leave the city during the
hot months of the year, for the country. When these favored ones reach
Nahant, Swampscott, or Newport, or some modest farmhouse, or comfortable
dwelling by the side of the many railroads that lead from the foulness
of the city to the purity of the country, or of the mountains, how
gladly and enthusiastically they speak of their escape from heat,
discomfort, and disease, to coolness, comfort, and health! But the mass
of the community,--the artisans and work-people, whose necessities
compel them to remain within the limits of the city,--their families,
children, sick ones and all, have at present no such escape from close
and impure air.
The carrying of little children who are pinched by cholera-infantum, or
spotted by scarlet-fever, or of those who are paralyzed by diphtheria,
or distorted by scrofula, or emaciated by consumption, for a few hours a
day into the pure air and bright sunlight of an open square, has saved
many a life. Many a needless death has occurred, because the city
afforded no such opportunity for escape. A few hours' exposure of a
child on a mother's lap, or in a basket or carriage, to the freshness of
a park, will produce a sleep that never follows opium, chloral, or
ether, and will yield a chance for health that no drug can give. For the
last few years, Philadelphia has shown a diminished death-rate. Dr.
WILLIAM PEPPER, who has lately investigated the sanitary condition of
that city, commenting upon the gratifying fact just stated, says, "While
thus showing an average rate of mortality more favorable than that found
in any other city containing over 500,000 inhabitants, Philadelphia has
recently (1874) attained a degree of healthfulness almost unparalleled;
namely, with a population at that time of 775,000, the number of deaths
was but 14,966, giving a death-rate of only 19.3 per thousand. These
very favorable results are largely due to the abundant and cheap
water-supply, and to the opportunities given, even to the poorest
citizens, for the enjoyment of pure country air in the great Fairmount
Park, which contains 2,991 acres. The extent to which this is valued by
the citizens may be inferred from the fact, that, during the year 1875,
the park was visited by over eleven million persons." There is no
reason why a park in Boston should not yield as good a sanitary result
as one in Philadelphia.
While looking at the sanitary aspects of this subject, let us not forget
that a park laid out in accordance with the plan of the Park
Commissioners will utilize localities that would otherwise become
plague-spots, and nurseries of disease. The low lands along the banks of
Charles River, portions of the Back Bay, and other sections that might
be mentioned, are sure to become unhealthy localities,--stations for
distributing the germs of disease throughout their neighborhood and at a
distance from them,--unless they are reserved, and left unoccupied. The
most extravagant way of disposing of such localities is for the city to
permit them to be built over, "improved" is the phrase, I believe, and
then suffer the consequences, in the way of increase of disease and
taxes, which follow such sort of improvements.
Let us now pass from the sanitary to the educational aspect of our
subject. The educational value of a park to the community of a large
city is second only to its sanitary value. We are too apt to think that
education is the exclusive function of the school, and that books and
school-teachers are the only educators. This is a grievous mistake. The
education of the home and street, of the workshop and store, of the
church and theatre, of the base-ball club and the evening party, of the
rum-shop and dance-hall, and of the numerous other influences of a great
city, is more potent than that of the school. The evil of all evil
agencies is intensified, and the good of the good ones diminished, by
uncleanness and impure air. Clean hands and a pure heart go together.
Foul air prompts to vice, and oxygen to virtue, as surely as sunlight
paints the flowers, and ripens the fruits, of our gardens. The tired
workman, who, after a day's labor, needs the repose and relaxation of
home, is apt to be driven from it by the close atmosphere of the street
and house in which he lives. He would, if he could, get into the fresh
air of the country; but, as he cannot do this, he seeks the relief which
drink or other excitement yields. If there were a park accessible to
him, he with his family would seek it as instinctively as a plant
stretches towards the light. The varied opportunities of a park would
educate him and his family into the enjoyment of innocent amusements and
open-air pleasures. Deprived of these, he and his are educated into the
ways of disease and vice by the character of their surroundings. Who
that has watched the groups of families, neighbors, and friends, that
bivouac by hundreds and thousands on the parks which cluster around,
adorn, and invigorate the great cities of Europe, can have failed to
notice the innocent amusements and enjoyment of these crowds of young
and old, or to be impressed with the fact that the influence of the
natural scenes around them, of the trees and plants and flowers, of the
pure air and bright skies, is a humanizing and elevating one? It is
difficult to compute the value of such an influence in dollars and
cents, or to measure it by any scale that the market acknowledges; but
it is, nevertheless, a real, substantial, and potent one. If our large
cities are the pride and boast of the republic, they also contain the
greatest elements of danger to the state and the nation. Ignorance and
vice, disease and crime, crowd themselves into cities. There they find
their best hiding-places, their surest protection, and their most
defenceless victims. It makes one tremble to think of the thousands of
youth in our cities whom the school and the church do not reach, and who
are moulded by these influences into the worst and lowest forms of
humanity. They can not and will not go out into the country themselves,
except upon some errand of violence and crime. The city should therefore
bring the country to them, and give them a chance, at least, to
experience its humanizing and blessed influence.
A park, or a series of parks, with its trees and running waters, its
grass and plants and flowers, its variegated surface and changing views,
and all the beauty with which such scenes are flooded, supplements the
labor of the church and school in educating, refining, and elevating the
community. There will be less gambling, drinking, and quarrelling in
Boston, when the mass of its inhabitants shall be allowed to partake of
the blessing and beauty of a public park.
These considerations naturally bring us to the third point which has
been mentioned, viz., the economic aspect of the matter. Few will deny
the truth of the above statements; but the admission of their truth is
apt to be coupled with the reply, "The park will cost so much, we cannot
afford it." It is true that it will cost a good deal, but not so much to
each household as the inevitable cost of the sickness, vice, and death,
which the opportunities that a park provides would prevent. Are human
life and health and virtue so cheap, that we can afford to count the
cost of procuring and maintaining them? Are vice, crime, and disease so
unimportant, that we can afford to let them thrive, and propagate
themselves indefinitely? We cannot repeat too often, or ponder too
seriously, the statement made in the first report of the Park
Commissioners: "Nothing is so costly as sickness and disease: nothing so
cheap as health. Whatever promotes the former is the worst sort of
extravagance: whatever fosters the latter is the truest economy." The
truth is, it will cost the city of Boston more to get on without a park
than to incur the expense of buying and taking care of one. We pay at
present an enormous sum yearly for the maintenance of hospitals,
prisons, jails, and workhouses. It is not asserted that the
establishment of a park will depopulate these institutions, or render
them unnecessary; but no sanitarian will deny that one result, and a
most important one, of the establishment of a park, would be to diminish
the number of those who are compelled to resort to these institutions. A
greater economy than all this would be found to accrue to each household
in the increased comfort, diminished sickness, more vigorous health, and
ample enjoyment, that would be added to all its members.
Boston has been long and justly celebrated for its health, beauty, and
wealth. If it loses the two first of these distinctions, how long will
it retain the last? Business and population will turn away from an
unhealthy and unattractive town. Defective sewerage and imperfect
drainage are sapping the health; and the occupation of the suburbs by
houses, manufactories, workshops, and stores, is destroying the beauty
of the city. Will the merchants of Boston, whose reputation for
intelligence, sagacity, and enterprise has gone out to the ends of the
world, permit a false economy to blind them to the importance of this
whole matter?
Of the details of the financial question, I am not qualified to speak;
but I will venture a single remark. It seems only a piece of common
sense to one unfamiliar with the intricate problems of finance to say,
that, if the present time is one of great depression of values, it is
precisely the time when a wealthy corporation like the city of Boston
can purchase the land for a park at the lowest price, and therefore
should do it.
Permit me to add a single word with regard to the plan proposed by the
Commissioners. It offers more advantages, and fewer disadvantages, than
any other that has been proposed. This might be expected, when we
reflect that it was prepared in accordance with the advice of Mr.
OLMSTEAD, than whom no one is better qualified to advise in such
matters. It may be safely asserted, that if Boston should accept this
plan, and authorize it to be carried out, the city would possess a park
unique in its character, of unrivalled beauty, and one which all our
citizens, young and old, rich and poor, would greatly enjoy, and of
which, if they once obtained it, they would never be bribed to
dispossess themselves.
The Rev. Dr. ELLIS, in his recent eloquent address at the centennial
anniversary of the evacuation of Boston, used the following language,
"As I read the history of our fathers in all their generations, their
toil and virtue seem to me to have been the noblest, in their steady
regard for the welfare and happiness of their posterity. And as I firmly
believe that no single individual can follow the highest pattern of an
earthly life, unless his hope and faith link on to a future, so I find
it proved in all biographies and annals, that all unselfish, noble, and
heroic lives are those which parents lead for their children and their
children's children. We have such lives among us in city, state, and
nation, private and public, high and humble." May we be true to the
reputation and tradition of our fathers, and provide as intelligently
for the well-being of ourselves and our posterity as they provided for
themselves and for us!