There is an old story about a town that had a high cliff from which was
visible a particularly beautiful view. The citizens of the town, being
enterprising people, decided to capitalize on this natural asset, and so
they proceeded at once to make it a talking point in favor of their city
as a show place and one desirable for residence.
The advertising was effective. From far and near, people came to get a
glimpse of the famous view. Needless to say, they spent their money while
they were in town, and the business men around the square were able to
note a change for the better in their bank balances.
It turned out, however, that viewing the scenery from this cliff was not
without its dangers. The precipice was high, and at its foot, the rocks
were hard and rough.
One day a visitor fell from the top of the cliff. His mangled body was
picked up from the rocks below. The story went the rounds, and business
began falling off. The merchants got together and agreed that they must
do something. They decided to organize a campaign and raise money to
build a hospital and provide an ambulance to take care of casualties.
They did so, and with due advertising, business again picked up.
One day someone suggested that a better thing would be a railing along
the top of the cliff to keep people from falling. The railing was built,
and there were no more accidents.
But the people of the town shook their heads doubtfully and said that it
seemed a great pity, after having gone to so much expense for a hospital
and an ambulance and having advertised them so widely, to have no further
use for them.
=Greatest Factors Are Not Bank Balances and Buildings=
What is of importance about a city? The most important thing is not its
views, its parks and drives, its public buildings, nor its commercial
leadership, but its people. And what makes a city? The greatest factor is
not its bank clearings, its shipments of live stock, its factories, its
stores, nor the extent of its public improvements, but the care it takes
of and the safeguards with which it surrounds its people.
A city is not made of streets, but of those who walk on them; not of
stores, but of those who trade in them; not of machinery, but of those who
drive it; not of houses, but of those who live in them. A city is its
people. It is exactly as good or bad, as strong or weak, as desirable or
undesirable, as enduring or temporary, as are they. With them it will go
forward or backward, be an object of admiration or contempt,
stand or fall, live or die.
The most important question before a city is not what its population can
be made by 1930, nor what advantages it can obtain from the next session
of the state legislature, nor how much money the merchants can take in by
organizing a bargain day or giving a street fair. The most important
question is how well founded are the homes, how normal is the type of
life, how idealistic are the labors of the people, and how safe are the
children and youth wherever they may go about the town? How many are being
helped? How few are being exploited?
When John Smith of Chicago or Abe Hopkins of Punkin Center considers
moving to a town to reside, to accept a position, to go into business, or
to put the children in school, the uppermost question in his mind is how
good a place is it in which to maintain a home? How safe a place is it in
which to rear children? In school, on the street, in their social
contacts, will their best interests always be conserved?
Only one thing constitutes a satisfactory answer to these questions, and
for it, there is no adequate substitute. It is high grade life lived by
high grade human beings. Where that is present, it will reveal itself in
every movement and institution. If it is absent, no boulevard mileage, or
volume of business, or number of railroads can make up for the lack of it.
=Failure in Homes Breeds Necessity for Substitutes=
Cities often point with pride to the number and costliness of their
substitutes for home life, but a far more prideworthy thing would be the
prevalence of a home life so beautiful and adequate as to require no
substitutes. The substitutes are all very well for those who are homeless
or who are too crude and dull to appreciate the blessing of home, but
they should not be needed by the mass of normal and average persons.
Practically all the institutions for social amelioration and correction
are parts of a widespread and inadequate attempt to make up for the
failure of the home. The family is unloading more and more of its
responsibilities on the school, church, and community. Moreover, its
unwillingness or inability to discharge its duty creates the necessity
for and the expense of juvenile courts, reform schools, and crime waves.
Therefore, whenever one truly refers to a city as one of homes, he is
making a statement of commanding importance. A real city of homes is one
with a minimum of social problems because, as a rule, the highest grade of
character and life is developed in the home atmosphere.
A city of homes is one whose people have some concern about the place
occupied and the work done in the community both by themselves and their
children. They are responsible citizens, and for such citizenship, there
is no substitute. Such people constitute a railing at the top of
the cliff.
All this may seem to be merely talk about ideals, and it is. Ideals are
the most necessary and important things in the world, even for a city.
Moreover, they have the highest cash value of anything with which we have
to do.
=Lack of Idealism Is Expensive=
The lack of idealism is the most expensive thing the people of any city
can have on their hands. The lower the level of idealism, the more bad
bills are made at the stores, the greater number of thefts is committed
with thievery’s double cost to the community, the greater is the amount
of fraud, and the higher is the degree and, therefore, the cost of crime.
Speaking from the financial viewpoint alone, and taking no account of the
other and greater values involved, anything that breaks down the idealism
of a city costs it heavily in money. The business man who helps to
inaugurate an evil with the thought that it will bring him profit will
live to realize that, for every dollar of profit it brings him in trade,
it will cost him a dollar in taxes and toward the suppression of crime and
undesirable conditions. Such is the result of the coming of undesirable
persons, practices, and situations to a community. The addition to the
population, permanently or temporarily, of a rough and rude element with
no ideals of conduct, no standards of sobriety, no regard for the sanctity
of the Lord’s Day, and no respect for property rights has never profited a
city yet. If you want thieves, hoodlums, and libertines, create a low
standard of ideals in the community, and you will get them. Your jails,
poorhouses, and insane asylums may serve in the place of a hospital and
ambulance to take care of the casualties, but a high level of idealism
would be a railing along the top of the cliff to save the people.
The history of the ages is the story of the progress of the human race
from the Garden of Eden to the New Jerusalem, from the status of a
perfect garden to that of a perfect city, from a simple but happy primal
state to a complex but ideal social order.
The drift of life is to the city. The farm is giving its products, but it
is also giving its sons and daughters to the town.
The drift of life is to the city. When the race has reached the climax of
its progress, that condition will be a perfect city—a city of justice,
righteousness, truth, faith, and brotherhood. It will have beautiful
buildings, broad avenues, flowering parks, and prosperous institutions,
but its real glory will be the quality of its people.
Destiny is waiting on the city to become all this. What dizzy distances
it will have to travel. It will have to fling aside the acknowledged
domination of Mammon. It will have to get spiritual ideals and human
values back into the first place where they belong.
Each promoter of the interests of a city is advertising a precipice from
which people may stumble to their doom, or pointing with pride to the
beautiful hospital and ambulance provided by the magnanimous people to
take care of the maimed and broken, or building railings along the tops
of cliffs to keep people from falling and to make the place safe, even
for the young, the weak, and the blind. Which one of these things are
you doing for your town?