CIVIC IMPROVEMENT
The humanitarian and wise planning of beautiful cities and towns is the
climax of municipal endeavor, because it represents the coördination of
all civic movements looking toward the health, comfort, recreation,
education and happiness of urban people.
City planning like all other interests has grown in purpose and scope.
From desire for ornamental lampposts has grown a desire for effective
light, and not too expensive either. Well-lighted streets become
recognized as foes to crime, and out of interest in the lamppost comes
an interest in the causes of crime; proper housing, wholesome amusement,
and employment may thus be intimately connected with an artistic street
lamp.
City planners have not all begun with a lamppost. Some of them began
with billboards and thought of billboards exclusively for a long time;
then they moved on to municipal art, education, censorship of movies,
recreation, housing and labor. Some began with parks and advanced to
health and transportation.
There is no one thing in city planning that stands out conspicuously
today as the crowning achievement of its purpose. City planning is thus
not a finished ideal, but one capable of, and exhibiting, indefinite
expansion. In fact, city planning is in its infancy in this country, but
its promoters are enthusiasts with a developing sense of values and they
are meeting an increasing response among the people for whose interest
they are working.
Every movement for civic art has been an attempt to make the contrast
“less disgraceful between the fields where the beasts live and the
streets where men live,” in the words of William Morris.
The movement for municipal beauty has been the strongest phase of city
planning up to the present time and the element that has appealed to
women’s civic leagues in their early days very strongly. It is a most
legitimate object of civic endeavor and it is comparatively easy of
accomplishment where it touches no vital economic interests. “The City
Beautiful” only a short time ago was a city with a few wide boulevards,
a civic center, handsome parkways with “Keep Off the Grass” signs in
abundance, statues in public squares, public fountains, and public
buildings with mural decorations. Alleys and indecent river-front
tenements, filthy and narrow side streets, were ignored in the more
ostentatious display of mere ornamentation and no provision was made for
playgrounds and well-located schools and social centers.
CITY PLANNING
The new spirit is rapidly permeating conferences on city planning,
however, with an insistence on the elimination of plague spots and
unsightly congestion as well as on the creation of boulevards and civic
centers. This new spirit is being instilled by women as well as by men.
Jane Addams’ “The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets” has helped
arouse the feeling that the children are the first to be considered in
city plans. Women who have worked for shade trees so extensively have
not been unmindful of the fact that mothers have to push baby carriages
up and down through the hot sun, oftentimes to the detriment of both
mother and child, and they have taught us that mothers should be
considered in city plans. In regulating movies women have learned that
men are ready to go with their families to a five-cent show in
preference to the saloon alone, that the movie has made real inroads
upon the saloon, and so they have taught that men should be included in
city plans. Thus city planning is becoming of decided human interest and
is no longer merely a cultural or artistic recreation.
City planning moreover has an economic value even when it is confined to
beauty. Mr. J. Horace McFarland elucidated this point at the annual
meeting of the American Federation of Arts in Washington. He said: “The
ripened civic art of Europe is nowhere better shown than in its
water-fronts and the water approaches. Consider, for instance,
Stockholm, with the Royal Museum, the Houses of Parliament, the Royal
Palace, and the greatest hotels and theaters, all grouped along that arm
of Lake Mälar which gives access to the Baltic. Europeans develop their
water-fronts in this way because they have learned the money and social
values of such things. We spoil all such advantages and ‘when we look at
the approaches to such cities as Hoboken, Newark, New York,
Philadelphia, Camden, and realize that the residents of these prosperous
communities take the money made in making ugly their water-fronts with
which to travel abroad to see beautiful water-fronts, we are confronted
with a most incongruous and uncommercial point of view.’ One hundred and
seventy millions of dollars of American money is spent in Paris every
year, mainly because Paris is beautiful. Ex-Mayor McClellan has well
said that healthy, wealthy and wise cities excite pride, ‘but it is the
city beautiful which retains the love of her people.’... Our best
efforts have on the whole been put into our cemeteries. We are shy on
parks, but strong on cemeteries, in careless, illogical America.”
That women in some cases have concentrated their local activities on
cemeteries is undeniable. Story after story comes in with pride of the
care of a town burial ground, its beautification, its glorification. In
one instance, a woman’s organization bought a plot for the town
cemetery, improved it with their bazaar money and then presented it to
the town. This too has been a legitimate interest on the part of women
as it has just been a case again of caring for loved ones. It is an easy
transition, fortunately, from caring for loved ones who have gone on
ahead to caring for those who remain, and that the step is taken is
illustrated by the testimony of club after club, league after league,
that when they had beautified the cemetery, they began to beautify the
school grounds, and then the library, and strange to say, last of all
the homes of the people.
From small and circumscribed beginnings women have advanced to larger
ideals—just as men have. In the city planning movement, of which we hear
so much today and which is so ably forwarded by the National Conference
on City Planning, women are to be found working side by side with the
men. They are giving serious attention to specific elements of the city
plan, like parks, playgrounds, housing, billboards, street cleaning,
waste disposal, social centers, and so on; and they are helping to
coördinate all of these elements in a more comprehensive way by serving
on commissions and committees, by making surveys, by preparing lectures,
articles, and books, and by aiding in the organization of public
exhibitions, designed to show in graphic form the needs of cities and
possible definite methods of improvement.
Women have hailed with pleasure the new slogan “Know Your City,” which
means that when it is properly known constructive work for improvement
will inevitably set in. A good way to know one’s city is to have a
survey made of it. As we have seen in the chapter on housing reform,
women have often organized and made local surveys. In many cities, like
Pittsburgh, Scranton, Newburgh, Poughkeepsie, and Cleveland, women
helped in working out special features of the surveys.
PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN
In the national magazines and associations which deal with civic
improvement the work of women in this field is frankly recognized. _The
American City_, a live magazine of municipal advance, published in New
York, has on its advisory board Mrs. Philip N. Moore, of St. Louis,
president of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, who has stimulated
civic work in many cities, and Mrs. Thomas M. Scruggs, who is the moving
spirit in welfare work for children in that city.
That men greatly outnumber women on this board is not surprising, but
numbers do not necessarily determine the relative amount of service, for
Mrs. Moore and Mrs. Scruggs have a country-wide influence and practical
experiences which make them valuable members of the Board. Furthermore
many of the men on the Board like Benjamin Marsh, Irving Fisher, John
Nolen, and J. Horace McFarland have testified to the splendid
coöperation and stimulating work of women in the cities everywhere.
_The American City_ recently devoted one issue, and it was a large one,
to the civic work of women representing phases of modern city planning.
Testimonials and detailed descriptions of the work of women poured in
from all over the country.
Richard Watrous, of the American Civic Association, which is primarily
concerned with the improvement of towns and cities, is not unmindful of
the municipal services of women. He says:
To the enthusiasm, the untiring efforts and the practical
suggestions of women, as individuals and in clubs, must be credited
much of the splendid headway attained by the general improvement
propaganda. They have been leaders in organized effort and have
enlisted the sympathy and actual coöperation of men and associations
of men in their laudable undertakings. Hundreds of cities that have
distinguished themselves for notable achievements can point to some
society or several societies of women that have been the first
inspiration to do things. Hundreds of these women’s clubs are
affiliated members of the American Civic Association, so that its
influence is made powerful by having back of it the moral support of
hundreds of thousands of men and women. Commercial organizations are
beginning now, as never before, to recognize that it is just as much
within their province to assist and to originate improvement work as
it is to promote the industrial growth and power of the communities
they represent. Thus it is that the most active of these
organizations in all parts of the United States are identifying
themselves with the American Civic Association and appointing
committees on such special improvements as parks, streets,
illumination, nuisances—the billboard and smoke—and lending material
assistance to those committees in carrying out various plans for the
physical development and upbuilding of their cities. These business
organizations are realizing that in their effort to induce the
investment of capital and labor with them, they must be in a
position to offer superior advantages, such as are afforded by ample
park areas, broad clean streets, intelligently planted and carefully
kept trees, pure water and sanitary housing conditions.
With all such admirable enterprises the American Civic Association
is most intimately connected. It strives to arouse communities,
large and small, to the necessity of such work and assists them in
it, whether it be merely an awakening to the desirability of
maintaining clean back yards, or undertaking a comprehensive
development along plans laid down by landscape architects, involving
large bond issues and the rebuilding of cities according to the
latest and most approved methods of city planning.[50]
The president of the same Association, Mr. J. Horace McFarland, when
introduced, on one occasion, as “the man who made over Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania,” said that it was not he, nor any man or set of men, who
should have the credit for that. “It was the women of Harrisburg who
dinned and dinned into our ears until at last we men got ashamed of our
laziness and selfishness as citizens; and then the women and the men of
Harrisburg made Harrisburg over into the beautiful and favored city that
it is.” The vice-president-at-large, the Hon. Franklin MacVeagh, then
said it was the women of Chicago who had started every one of the
fifty-seven civic improvement centers in that city, and that after they
were started, the men joined in and helped. This he believed to be the
history of civic improvement everywhere.
The civic leagues that have sprung up everywhere in towns and even in
villages in the past decade are often composed entirely of women,
sometimes of both sexes, but rarely exclusively of men. The leagues are
in a great many cases, perhaps the majority of cases, affiliated with
the American Civic Association. To its conferences they send
representatives who bring back fresh ideas and increased fervor as a
result of the mingling of varied views and the leadership of experienced
workers. To those conferences they often carry, on the other hand,
stimulating stories of the rewards of persistence and a steadfast
vision.
The National Municipal League, under whose auspices this volume is
published, like _The American City_ and the American Civic Association,
recognizes the work of women in municipal improvement. Women’s
associations are affiliated with it; women attend its annual conferences
and read papers and take part in the discussions; its official organ,
the _National Municipal Review_, contains many articles by women on
civic improvement and on women’s work in cities; and Miss Hasse, of the
New York Public Library, is one of its able associate editors.
Some light is shed on the attitude of women voters toward civic
improvement by an account of their action in a recent election in
Chicago, as related by Llewellyn Jones in the Chicago _Evening Post_ of
April 30, 1914.
While many of Chicago’s first women voters left the booths with the
idea that they had done all that was necessary until the next
election came around, the more far-seeing among them are
popularizing the idea that women’s participation must be a perpetual
and not a merely periodical performance.
The particular plot of the local political field which many of these
women mean to cultivate is the administration of the city’s parks.
The parks of Chicago are preëminently the concern of the homemakers
of the city, as they take up, widen and socialize the best
activities of the home—the activities of the child and social
intercourse.
Dancing, music and such festivals as those recently celebrated in
the parks in honor of Arbor Day; the meeting of the young and old
for pleasure and the exchange of ideas—these things the park
managements have fostered, broadened and put on a democratic basis
which sweeps away racial and other barriers that do more than walls
and doors to isolate the families that dwell in the crowded parts of
the city.
Women who would otherwise lack opportunity to hear and discuss civic
matters find an opportunity to do so in non-partisan organizations
that avail themselves of fieldhouse facilities for getting together;
people who would otherwise not hear good music hear it in the
open-air of the parks in summer or in the assembly halls in winter;
while those same halls afford opportunity for lectures to the
dwellers in their neighborhoods or for debates, dances or other
activities by those residents.
All that is in addition to the provision made for the enjoyment and
physical welfare of the children through swimming, supervised games
and physical culture.
The women who have been interested in these activities find,
however, that political action will be necessary before the parks
can be used to the greatest advantage. As things are now, there are
thirteen different park governments in Chicago, and the bill passed
at the last session of the legislature to consolidate them was
vetoed. Attorney General Lucey advised the governor that it was
unconstitutional because the park districts were really separate
municipalities and could not be eliminated without consent given
through the ballot of their inhabitants.
That the park governments should be unified is admitted on all
hands. Now there are districts in Chicago which are not in any park
district and so escape taxation while enjoying the privileges of the
parks, while the crowded districts, not being able to pay for park
facilities, do not get any to speak of, although there is a crying
need for them.
For instance, the South Park area is three times that of either the
North or West Sides, but there are three times as many children on
the North and West Sides as there are on the South Side. Meanwhile
the South Park commission has a surplus in the bank which has
frequently been over a million dollars, while the other park
commissions often find it impossible to carry on the projects which
would mean so much to their constituents.
With consolidation, too, would come a reform which it is not now
possible to obtain—the standardization of the services which the
parks render the public. At the present time, for instance, the
South Park system employs only three social-play leaders—who perform
a very valuable social function in bringing the various users of the
parks together in games and conferences—although it has eleven
recreation centers, while on the West Side the social-play leader is
considered as necessary an adjunct to the park staff as are the
gymnasium directors.
Women have a further interest in the parks, however, than in their
consolidation, for they see in their administration the need as well
as the opportunity for woman’s service.
At present the park commissioners are men, although the constituency
they serve is largely one of women and children. Were the women
represented on every park board—which is an impossibility until
there is at least some measure of consolidation—the needs of the
women and children using the parks would be more closely studied,
the value of the parks in ways now overlooked would be emphasized,
and the playgrounds would return to the public a larger dividend
than heretofore on the public’s expenditure.
As it is hardly practicable to get the voters’ consent in every park
district before merging them—as Attorney General Lucey says must be
done—the advocates of consolidation are pinning their hopes to the
proposal for a constitutional convention. This convention would
result in a wholesale unification of Chicago’s present chaotic
welter of nineteen separate governments, and the various park
boards, thirteen out of the nineteen of those unrelated governing
and taxing bodies, would undoubtedly be welded without any legal
trouble arising.
And then the women of the city will have their chance to put
efficiency into the Chicago parks.
MUNICIPAL ART
To descend to particulars and localities, we may first record that women
are becoming concerned about the transit approaches to cities and about
the hideous stations which are all too frequently to be found in our
towns, villages, and cities. The first approach to a city or village is
of supreme importance in the feeling that residents, if they ever leave
their home town and return, or visitors have about the place. The
railway station therefore assumes a rôle that is by no means
insignificant. A most capable railroad station improver is Mrs. Annette
McCrae, of the American Civic Association, who has worked for the
Chicago and Northwestern. A story illustrating her point of view is told
by Mr. McFarland in _The American City_:
“I remember that ... Mrs. McCrea ... discussed with the president of one
of the eastern railroads the crude, glaring and unreasonably ugly manner
in which his stations were painted. He listened with reasonable
impatience, because Mrs. McCrea is a lady, and finally burst out with,
‘After all, Mrs. McCrea, it is a question of taste, isn’t it?’ To this,
quick as a flash, Mrs. McCrea replied: ‘Yes, Mr. President; it is a
question of taste—of good taste or of bad taste!’ After this the
discussion languished, for there was no defense left to the apologist
for mixing orange and brown before the eyes of the defenseless millions
who had to use his steel highway.” Mrs. McCrae’s work is the result of a
recognized demand on the part of the people, and of women as an
aggressive element among the people, for attractive and inviting front
and back doors to their urban dwellings.
Every section of the country has felt the urge of the request for
attractive stations. In some sections, railroad companies have been
induced to assume the responsibility for the improvement and in new
sections railroads are glad to build attractive stations and beautify
the grounds to draw residents. In other sections, railroads have been
the greatest foe to station improvement and have absolutely prevented
beautification of buildings and the grounds through their ownership of
the surrounding area. Sometimes benevolently minded individuals and
organizations have themselves financed or have aided in the building and
beautification of the railway approach. Again where the villagers were
rich colonists or the size of the center required rebuilding frequently,
as in New York, a suitable station has resulted through the adaptation
of the company to the environment.
Billboards were among the first items on the programs of the women’s
clubs of the country as an evil to be attacked. A campaign for cleaner
billboards in St. Paul, Minnesota, is thus described by Mrs. Backus:
It is impossible to be a teacher without realizing the tremendous
influence upon the young of the books they read, the pictures they
see and the plays they hear.
Miss Caroline Fairchild, a public school teacher of St. Paul,
knowing this psychological truth, was very much impressed with the
influence of poverty of thought and flabby morals exerted by the
penny parlors, cheap “shows,” and by the billboards with their
fierce men throttling shrinking girls or stabbing to the heart a
hated rival.
She decided to attack first the evil which could be seen by every
citizen riding in our street cars or walking along our streets—the
billboard—and that her protest might carry more weight she secured
the coöperation of the Thursday Club and the public press.
The first step was a call upon one of the leading theaters, whose
manager suggested a visit to the local billboard manager; this
courteous gentleman referred the committee to the eastern theatrical
managers. New York being almost too far away for a personal visit,
it was decided that the campaign must be made general, so the
following letter was drawn up to be sent to all managers of
theatrical productions:
“GENTLEMEN: The club women of St. Paul have objected for a long time
to many of the bill posters, advertising plays in this city. We feel
that they have a demoralizing influence on the youth, and we would
urge that posters presenting undesirable scenes, women clad in
tights, or any pictures that will leave a bad impression on the
minds of the young, be eliminated. St. Paul is not the only city
which objects to this class of advertising, and we hope that the
movement will become nation-wide.”
This step of the Civic Department of the Thursday Club had been indorsed
by the Fourth District of the Federation, and members of other clubs had
pledged their coöperation.
To the joy of the committee, it was met more than halfway by the Poster
Printers’ Association of America and by one or two journals devoted to
the interests of poster printers and theatrical managers.
In March, 1911, the chairman of the Poster Printers’ Association issued
a statement to poster printers, lithographers and theatrical managers,
in which they were urged to use their influence against posters that
might be deemed objectionable because of the titles used or the scenes
illustrated.
The next step was the sending of lists of the leading producing
managers—the men who control nearly all of the first class and popular
priced theaters in the country—to every state president of the General
Federation of Women’s Clubs in the United States, with a request that
each state body take up the campaign for better plays and higher class
advertising and make it a national movement.
Inquiries began to come in from other states in regard to a plan of
work, showing the awakening of public interest. Local theatrical
managers offered assistance, one manager asking that a committee be sent
each week on the opening night to censor the play to run that week,
promising to act upon suggestions made by the women—and he kept his
word.
On November 10, 1911, we find the following notice in one of our daily
papers:
“The civic committee of the Thursday Club is much pleased at the
very evident results of its recent campaign for cleaner billboards.
‘I have noticed nothing objectionable in any of the posters
advertising theatrical productions in St. Paul this season,’ says
Miss Fairchild, ‘and the radical change in even the posters put up
by the burlesque companies shows that the work of the club women of
the country in appealing to producing managers and poster printers
has had good results and been well worth while.’ Women have been on
the lookout in many parts of the city and no protest has been
disregarded; in one case the objectionable bill was found to be an
old one which had ‘slipped in,’ but it quickly slipped off.”[51]
The Commercial Club and the Woman’s Civic League of Pensacola, Florida,
have worked together to restrict the billboard industry.
The Civic Club of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, “spent much effort and
thought upon the regulation and taxation of billboards in Pittsburgh.
Two bills and a tentative ordinance were drawn up and submitted to the
proper authorities; the committee on statistics handed in a complete
report covering the city and a number of telling photographs were
taken.” The Civic Club is an organization in which men and women work in
the closest and most responsible coöperation.
The American Civic Association has for years been carrying on a campaign
of education against billboards through lectures, bulletins, and press
work. Its influence has undoubtedly stimulated local activities both of
men and women but anti-billboard work knows no sex. The national
association stands ready to help in local anti-billboard contests and it
is showing now how definite results may be obtained in cities and
states.
TREE PLANTING
While seeking to clear our city streets of unsightly and even
demoralizing billboards, women have given equal attention to the
constructive work of beautifying streets by the encouragement of tree
planting. Of woman’s service in this field, one competent to speak, Mr.
J. J. Levinson, Forester of Brooklyn and Queens Parks, New York City,
has written as follows:
Never before have people cared so much about other people as they do
today. Social thought and sympathy are growing more intense every
day, both among men and women. The woman of today is different from
the woman of yesterday, not so much in her ideals or sympathies as
in the expression of these ideals. Women have always been naturally
idealistic and always will be, but the difference between their
present and past idealism lies in the fact that today it is more
far-reaching, extending to the interests of their neighbors and the
community at large.
There is a new field opening for women as factors in civic
improvement. Women have always set the moral and esthetic standard
in the community in which they lived, and when they once get into
this new field of making our cities more beautiful—a field which is
really closest to their natural bent, they ought to accomplish
wonders. Their confined life of former years gave them no chance to
demonstrate their fitness for this sort of work. But today new
interest in outdoor life together with new social relations is
bringing out the wonderful esthetic and moral qualities that have
been so long diverted from the problems of the city beautiful, and
are now demonstrating a woman’s superior fitness to do much in this
new field. The instances where women have helped to improve their
cities with trees are numerous.
In Brooklyn it was women who organized a national city tree
association and who started the first tree clubs among school
children in this country. The association is located at the
Children’s Museum in Brooklyn. In my own work, I find that it is
always the women who fight for the preservation of their trees when
some public service corporation tries to injure them. It was a woman
and an energetic one at that who started our Children’s Farms in
Brooklyn.
Last winter, I was invited by the ladies of Rome, N. Y., to come to
that city and tell them what to do for their trees. Those ladies
formed a civic organization, and collected sufficient funds to care
for their trees all the year. In less than a year they have
demonstrated the value of their work, and are now influencing the
city authorities to appropriate sufficient funds for the
preservation and planting of their city trees. In Morristown, N. J.,
the same thing occurred. It was a Massachusetts woman who founded
the first improvement society in the United States. About ten years
ago women formed a civic improvement association in South Park,
Chicago, and within a few years not only changed the esthetic and
sanitary appearance of their own section, but extended their
influence to the whole city. At Lincoln, Nebraska, the women started
their civic work on the school grounds, where they planted trees,
and tried by this means to inculcate in the children a love for the
beautiful. How much better are such practical lessons in civics than
much of our routine teaching! Only the other day, I was in
communication with the mothers’ club of a public school in Flatbush
which started a campaign to plant trees around their school and in
the neighborhood. In California women saved the famous Calaveras
grove of big trees, a matter that has become a question of national
interest, and has received the commendation of Congress and the
leading men of the country.
I will not cite the hundreds of other cases where women have been
the prime factors in beautifying our cities with shade trees and
well-kept parks, but I will say that here is a broad and interesting
field awaiting the modern woman, a field that tends to make our
surroundings worth living in and our citizens better and healthier;
a field that requires every virtue a woman possesses—her good taste,
her moral instincts, her love of the beautiful, her patience and
perseverance. Because of these, her natural gifts, she is bound to
excel man in this field of endeavor, for, after all, man’s sphere of
influence, in a general way, is his work and this work too often
tends to become a matter of such routine that there is absolutely no
inspiration in it. Men too often cannot see the moral issues at
stake in living on treeless streets or in sections devoid of parks.
Here we are spending so many millions of dollars on our schools, and
out of the 166 public schools in Brooklyn, 86 have not even one tree
in front of them, and only 10 are completely surrounded by trees. I
do not believe that women would tolerate this if they could help it.
There is no doubt that women are the natural leaders for the
realization of the city beautiful—beautiful not with a lot of
expensive cut stone, formidable fences or marble columns, but
beautiful with natural parks, with avenues lined with fine trees and
with front yards covered with verdure and blossoms, and beautiful
with children, healthy mentally and physically.
The whole subject of city trees and its vast opportunities for
helping mankind has been greatly overlooked. Our schools and many
other forms of civic improvement have received our attention because
we have realized their importance to our health and development, but
our trees, both in the parks and on the streets, have been slighted
in spite of the fact that as a civic problem they are as important
to our health and development and are as influential in the making
of our future citizens as any other institution or form of civic
improvement today.[52]
Women have had to resort to law courts occasionally in their struggle
for shade trees. In San José, California, they won in the courts against
a corporation or mercenary property owner who wanted to override their
love of beauty.
VARIED ACTIVITIES
While coöperating with state and national associations for civic
improvement and aiding in specific reforms, such as the removal of
billboard nuisances and the planting of trees, women in many localities
have taken a large view of municipal advance and stirred their towns to
important action. What a few women accomplished in a small community,
New London, Iowa, is thus interestingly related by Mrs. Mary M. Pierson,
president of the local Women’s Improvement Association:
It would not be correct to speak of the civic work “of the women of
New London,” for many of them have not approved of women’s taking
part in such matters. Ours is a town of about 1,400, and only 24
women belong to our organization.
One spring morning I was called to the telephone by Mayor T. E.
Rhoades, who asked, “Will you act with two other ladies in town on
the Internal Improvement Committee of the City Council?” I replied,
“Yes, if the Mayor and City Council wish it.” “All right,” said he.
“I will appoint you, Mrs. C. E. Magers and Miss Anna von Colen
(assistant editor on our home paper) as members of the City Council
Improvement Committee.” Thus was the ball set rolling.
We saw at once a great deal that was necessary to be done for the
health and comfort of our little city. After counseling together,
always consulting our Mayor, we called a meeting of the women of the
town at the City Hall, and organized a women’s improvement
association. The subject of finance came up at once, and it was
decided to make the membership fee twenty-five cents. Quite a number
did not see what we needed money for, and declined to join us.
However, about 48 paid in their quarters and began work.
During our first efforts some very laughable things happened, but
with the coöperation of the Mayor we made progress. By his order a
clean-up day was appointed, and on that day a tremendous amount of
boxes, tin cans and trash rolled out of the town.
We then turned our attention to our little city park. We bought a
$10 lawn mower and set the City Marshal and his assistants to mowing
the grass, and finally brought the park into respectable and
attractive condition. The Council made us a donation of $15.
Oh, how we worked! Finally, others, seeing that there was no
stopping us, began to beautify their yards, and before long the town
was a flower garden.
Then came the need for more money. Our band had gone to pieces, but
wished to reorganize. There was a fine bandstand in the park, and we
ordered it repainted. Then we gave an ice cream social, the proceeds
of which served to get the band together again. We now have one of
the best bands in the state, and the weekly band concert, from April
to November, draws crowds of appreciative listeners.
As winter came on we saw the necessity of having money with which to
purchase seats for the park; and as we live in the corn belt of
Iowa, we decided to give a “Corn Carnival.” This was the biggest
undertaking of the kind ever carried through in our part of the
state, and was attended by Governor Cummins, who seemed well pleased
with our efforts. A substantial sum was realized, and we ordered a
car load of iron seats. When these were placed on the short-cut
green grass in the park, facing the bandstand, and were filled with
people listening to the sweet music of our band, we felt that we had
indeed accomplished something the first year.
Our company of workers has dwindled, but our influence is felt and
respected, and when there is a question of bonding the town for
schools, electric light, sewerage or water works, we not only go to
the polls ourselves, but we see that the other women of the city go
and that they have a right view of the matter under consideration.
Our electric plant burned down, and for a while there were so many
objections to bonding again the already heavily burdened town that
the loss of the plant seemed likely. The Mayor came and talked with
me, and I called a meeting of the Association, which resulted in our
starting out electioneering. Election day came, and New London got
her lights. The City Council was strong in praise of the work done
by the women.
The question of water works and sewerage is now before us. It was
voted on recently, when 143 women cast their ballots. The water
works question was carried, but the sewerage undertaking was lost by
23 votes, probably because there are but few modern homes in New
London. The question will be voted on again in April, and the result
will probably be different.
Last summer we were instrumental in organizing our first Chautauqua
assembly. We pledged the sale of 300 tickets, and advanced $25. We
sold over $700 worth of tickets, gave the people a fine week of
instruction and social pleasure, advanced $25 for another Chautauqua
next July, and cleared $200, which will buy more seats this spring.
We have had a great many things to discourage us, have been held up
to ridicule, and have thought many times, “Does it pay?” But when a
year ago our town was visited by an epidemic of typhoid fever and
there were 60 nurses here where a professional nurse had never been;
when so many homes were darkened by death, all because of the filthy
condition of one drain that ran into an alley and poisoned a near-by
well that supplied the water for our popular restaurant; then our
physicians and men of better judgment (and women, too) realized the
need of getting the help of the Improvement Association in cleansing
and purifying our town. We are now considered an asset, and I
believe we have come into our own.[53]
Among the varied activities of women for civic improvement may be listed
the following, paraphrased from _The American Club Woman_ which is
exceedingly rich in such data:
The Woman’s Club of Corte Madera, California, installed street lights
costing $500 and maintained them until the town realized their value and
took over the management and maintenance.
The Woman’s Board of Trade of Santa Fé, New Mexico, founded the town
library, and created an attractive plaza with seats, among other things.
The Women’s League for Good Government of Philadelphia in its
educational campaign has given a series of illustrated lectures urging
public support of such municipal improvements as have already been
obtained in that city and suggesting others that are needed.
About $11,000 has been raised for an art gallery by the Woman’s Club of
Des Moines, Iowa. The balance of the necessary $25,000 for the building
will probably be secured by an extension of the present system of
selling bonds.
Every new town in the state of Idaho is being laid out with a civic
center around a city park or square, and every club is working for a
city park, and planting trees, shrubs and flowers in public places.
Nearly every club specializes in city sanitation and pure food.
Mrs. E. R. Michaux of the North Carolina Federation of Clubs has urged
all the clubs in that state to work for municipal art commissions in the
various towns and make their approval necessary before any public
buildings, statues, etc., can be erected or streets laid off. Elsewhere
women have secured such commissions and in many cities they are now
serving on them.
The Municipal Order League of Chicago, a women’s society, has for its
object the education of the people to the point of insisting upon
health, cleanliness and beauty for the city of Chicago.
Many of the clubs of the various states have forestry committees whose
object is to work both for the conservation of forest lands in the state
and to secure local foresters and tree planting commissions. They have
been responsible in numerous cities for the installation of a municipal
forester and have been his main support in his proposals for shade trees
and shrubs and their proper care. Arboriculture for decorative purposes
has always been an interest of theirs in their own home plots and now
they have extended it to the decoration of their municipal homes. They
have also been largely instrumental in securing the general observance
of Arbor Day by schools and outside agencies.
The State Federation of Club Women of California worked faithfully for
forestry and Big Tree bills, cleaned up vacant yards, removed unsightly
poles from streets, secured the care and beautification of the ocean
front, secured the retention of street flower markets, the purchase and
preservation of Telegraph Hill and of the Calaveras Big Tree Grove, the
parking of the grounds and street about the Mission Dolores, and planted
vines and trees on the barren slopes belonging to the Federal Government
at Yerba Buena Island. In San Francisco they worked against the overhead
trolley system which is so derogatory to the appearance of a city.
Throughout the South the work of civic improvement is being taken hold
of by women with energy and idealism and practical sense. Parks and
gardens that dot the states everywhere now testify to the labor and
enthusiasm of women as well as of men.
The Civic Club of Nowata, Oklahoma, secured a twenty-acre park which now
has 1,000 trees growing on it; in Shawnee, Oklahoma, the park in the
center of the city was laid out by a landscape artist employed by women
who also offered cash prizes for the best lawns and alleys in the city.
The Palmetto Club of Daytona, Florida, raised $75,000 for a public park.
The Quincy, Illinois, Boulevard and Park Association saw fit to elect
Mrs. Edward J. Parker president upon the death of her husband, under
whose skillful and enthusiastic guidance, Quincy obtained results that
are quite famous in that part of the country. Mr. Parker had worked for
a parking system in the face not only of indifference but of hostility
on the part of the public and of the city government. Since that
attitude has not yet been overcome, but is merely in the process of
changing, the election of the wife as president is an indication of the
belief in the wisdom and ability of her leadership.
The club women of Minnesota have recommended town planning commissions
for the beautifying of the villages and cities of the state.
A moving-picture film, “The City Beautiful,” has been prepared and
circulated as educational propaganda by the civics committee of one
enterprising woman’s organization which appreciates the value of public
opinion.
In Idaho Falls, Idaho, the members of the Village Improvement Society
are called “City Mothers.” “Fifteen years ago,” we are told, “this place
was a treeless, grassless desert village. Today it is a city and an
oasis. The hundreds of trees that line the streets were planted by the
women of the Society. The lawns and flowers have been fostered by them
through the giving of annual prizes. They have bought the land and are
developing a town park. They have established and operated the town
hospital and have founded a library and secured a tax levy for its
support. They have supplied the alleys with garbage boxes and caused the
passage of an anti-spitting ordinance. They have bought the site of a
nest of vile resorts and caused the removal of tenants. They have also
improved the cemetery.”
The Woman’s Town Improvement Association of Westport, Connecticut, laid
2,000 feet of sidewalk and generally beautified the town.
The Good Roads Committee of a woman’s organization in New Canaan,
Connecticut, cut down the undergrowth, leveled hills and set up danger
markers. What they did for the water supply has been told in the chapter
on Health.
The Woman’s Book Club of Osceola, Arkansas, filled mud holes in three
streets and planted trees along the sides.
The Woman’s Improvement Club of Roseville, California, planted 400
trees, set out 1,000 calla lilies and roses and magnolia trees to
beautify the approach to the station, made a park in the triangle formed
by the intersection of three streets and planted it with date palms.
The Woman’s Civic League and the Woman’s Club of Colorado Springs asked
the city for an appropriation of $2,500 for a comprehensive city plan
and at their further instigation Charles Mulford Robinson was engaged to
devise a plan for the improvement of the city. They then arranged a
conference between Mr. Robinson and citizens. When his plan was
submitted it met the approval of the women, but the City Fathers did not
manifest the same concern and the women of the Club have been constantly
urging upon them the wisdom of adherence to the plan. The women also
followed the city budget with this end in view. After conferring with
city planning commissions in other cities, the Civic Club drew up the
plan for a permanent commission for Colorado Springs and secured it from
the Council. Members have been appointed from nominations made by the
Chamber of Commerce, the Federated Trades Council, the Woman’s Club and
the Civic League.
While in many places the work of women for civic improvement has won
marked public favor, the spirit of fair play is not always in evidence
as we learn from letters like this from Mrs. Harmon, vice-president of
the Civic League of Yankton, South Dakota: “At first our existence was
looked upon with much disfavor by the city officials, being regarded as
a standing criticism of their administration. Our speedy demise was
predicted. Now, after a year of existence and a campaign of education,
the Civic League is referred to as an arbiter of difficulties and a
court of complaint. We have largely succeeded in shutting up chickens.
Alleys may no longer be used as dumping grounds. We have become the
sponsors for the development of a new park to be donated to the city. We
have interested the Commissioners in employing a landscape architect to
make a permanent city plan. Further, we are in the field to stay.”
The women of the Lock Haven Civic Club have the distinction of having
raised the money for a city plan for the smallest city in the state of
Pennsylvania in order that it may be prepared for its possible growth
and development. The Board of Trade is energetic in this little town and
the women find coöperation with it pleasant and sincere. The Outdoor
Department of this league of women laid out and planted the Court House
Park and assisted the city government in planting a city parkway. It has
also induced property owners to supplant fences with private hedges and
otherwise beautify home surroundings.
From an adobe pueblo, Los Angeles has grown in some thirty years to a
commercial metropolis. Of city planning in this rapid development there
has been none. Now, however, a Municipal Art Commission composed of five
persons, two women and three men, has undertaken to bring some order out
of chaos in Los Angeles and doubtless in the reorganization of the city
the women who have worked so earnestly there for housing and district
nursing and public health will exert some influence over the plans.
The Wichita, Kansas, Improvement Association began as a woman’s
organization but soon felt that it had made a great mistake in limiting
its membership to women. “Obviously,” it says, “the concerns of any
town-development organization are the concerns of everybody in that town
and the membership should consist of the members of that community.” A
reorganization was therefore effected and men were brought into the
Association. In writing about this change the Association says: “The
keynote of the new society thus became the keynote of all society: ‘The
responsibility of adults for conditions which shall conduce to the
health, morality, happiness and general good citizenship of the young
people.’ For, if the adult society is working for this, then its own
health, morality and happiness are finding promotion.”
Boston has a city planning board on which Emily Greene Balch is serving.
Its duty is to “make careful studies of the resources, possibilities,
and needs of Boston, particularly with respect to conditions which may
be injurious to the public health, and to make plans for the development
of the municipality, with special reference to the proper housing of its
people.” The secretary of the board is Miss Elizabeth M. Hurlihy. The
Women’s Municipal League is rendering valuable assistance to this board.
CONTROLLING SUBURBS
Where civic pride and organization promote intelligent efforts in a city
to control real estate speculation, unregulated building and congestion,
it often happens that the area just outside the city accepts all the
evils cast forth by the city. A factory or plant, pushed to the
outskirts where a suburb is quickly developed by land speculators to
meet the new housing situation, may easily, and does often, become the
center of a community totally without plan and where the evils of
congestion appear in their most exaggerated form. In some cases, civic
leagues of men and women are forming to prevent suburbs coming under
such influences, as the city, to which they are neighbor, agitates for
the removal of its factories to the outskirts.
Attention has been directed to this serious matter, and some suburban
planning started in time, by Mrs. Rollin Norris and others in the
suburbs of Philadelphia, organized in the Main Line Housing Association.
The work of this association doubtless had its effect on the legislation
in Pennsylvania which provides metropolitan planning districts for the
cities of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Scranton, in order that they may
control developments at their borders for a radius of twenty-five miles.
Other states—six of them—have made a similar attempt to prevent unwise
expansion at the rims of cities, but Massachusetts now leads with city
planning by its recent law providing for city planning commissions
throughout the state for towns and villages. It is interesting in this
connection to observe how well women have worked in Massachusetts on the
problems of housing and allied questions which are vital elements in
this planning.
At present these schemes and ideals for suburban planning are in the
stage of agitation only and have not been concretely applied on any
extensive scale. A private achievement of notable worth has been
obtained in Roland Park, Baltimore, but it is a high-class residential
neighborhood. The Roland Park Civic League, an incorporated association
of the citizens of this district, maintains a controlling interest in
the Roland Park Roads and Maintenance Corporation and elects nine of the
twelve directors. They prohibit certain nuisances, the erection of any
building for other than residence purposes and the submission and
approval of all construction plans. Women are members of the Civic
League and share equally with the men in the government of this
residential district which is comprehensive enough to include: tax
collection and expenditure, labor employed in the sewerage system, the
repairing and cleaning of roads, care of hedges and sidewalks, removal
of ashes and rubbish and other services. It is a marvelously beautiful
place. “Woman suffrage is in action in Roland Park.”
Forest Hills Gardens, the New York suburb built by the Russell Sage
Foundation, financed by Mrs. Russell Sage, is also a beautiful
middle-class residential district, with the same restrictions that
safeguard Roland Park.
VALUE OF CIVIC IMPROVEMENT
From this cursory and necessarily imperfect review of women’s work in
civic improvement, it is evident that whoever labors for the city or
town or village beautiful in the United States may find intelligent and
hearty support on the part of women’s associations, even though they
are, in many places, merely organized for literary or “cultural”
purposes. Thousands of men may loaf around clubs without ever showing
the slightest concern about the great battle for decent living
conditions that is now going on in our cities; but it is a rare woman’s
club that long remains indifferent to such momentous matters. Nor, as we
have seen, is this movement for civic betterment confined to the greater
cities. In thousands of out-of-the-way places which hardly appear on the
map, unknown women with large visions are bent on improving their minds
for no mere selfish advancement, but for the purpose of equipping
themselves to serve their little communities. They form local
associations. These local associations are federated into state and
national associations. The best thought and experience of one community
soon become the common possession of all. Thus we see in the making,
before our very eyes, a conscious national womanhood. Here is a power
that will soon disturb others than the village politicians.