Yale University Library

. 900203023* *er

PUBUC PARKS AND THE
ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS

-Olmsted

ART
.Jav'U jB_TQ£a

UJOrvfgrW

YALE UNIVERSITY
ART LIBRARY

___ss^___s___3_

3Cn.cEica_. Social Science Association.

PUBLIC PARKS

AND THE

ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS.

READ BEFORE THE AMERICAN, SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION AT THB
LOWELL INSTITUTE, BOSTON, FEB. 25, 1870.

FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED.

PRINTED FOR THE AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION,
9t the Ilibmiitre %rssi, eamSri&sc, fil;is__.
1870.

CONTENTS OF THE FIRST PART
OP THE
JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE.
. 1869-
8yo, paper, $1.00.
Copies mai/ be obtained from Messrs. Leijpoldt Sr Holt, New Yorhi or at dt. Ojfice of
ihe Association, 13 Pembei'lon Square, Boston

I. Historical Sketch of Social Science, Ilenry Villard.
II. Inspection of Country Schools, John D. Philbrick.
III. University P.ducation, Goldwin Smith.
IV. Texas Cattle Disease, John Stanton Gould.
V. Supervision of Public Charities, F. B. Sanborn.
VI. Method of Diffusing Knowledge, Horace Greeley.
VII. Protection of the Ballot, Charles Francis Adams, Jr.
VIII. Civil Service Refuum. Samuel Eliot.
IX. Some Topics in Criminal Law, Henry TV. Torrey.
X. People's Banks in Germany, Ilenry Villard.
XI. Progress in Ecox<> Education.
XII. Correspondence. — teonomic Results of the Emancipation
of Serfs in Russia, _S". Toui'gueneff.
XIII. General Intelligence.
1. Home. — Extension of Public Libraries. — Art hi Educa
tion. — Illinois Normal School System. — Teachers' Cer
tificates in California. — Preservation of Infant Life. —
Asylums for the Insane. — Free Markets. — European
Emigration. — Financial Aspects of the United States. —
Prison Discipline. — Census of 1870. — How to observe
the United States.
2. Foreign. — Art School for Women, t— French Views of
Higher Education. — Industrial Dwellings. — The Fami-
listere. — People's Kitchens. — Cooperation in Railroad
Management. — Government Annuities and Insurance iu
Great Britain and France.
XIV. Notices of Publications.
Library of Education. — Bibliotheque Nationale. — Pro
ceedings of the International Statistical Congress. —
Investigations in the Military and Anthropological Statis
tics of American Soldiers,. — Public Parks. — Rapport
du Jury International de ['Exposition Univeiselle de 1867.
XV. ..Officers and Members of the Association.

-American Social Science Satiation.

PUBLIC PARKS

ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS.

READ BEFORE THE AMERICAS SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION -AT
LOWELL INSTITUTE, BOSTON, FEB. 25, 1870.--

BT
FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED.

PRINTED FOR THE AMERICAS SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION,
3t tf)e _ai&erisa.e $«*_, Camirt-Jge, &UH.
1870.

PUBLIC PARKS

THE .ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS.1*
'&.« fvtek,'te~- --¦¦- OUaJ^.
The last// Overland Monthly '"tells us that in California " only
an inferior class of people can he induced to live out of towns.
There is something in the country which repels men. In the city
alone can they nourish the juices of life." -J -
This of newly built and but half-equipped cities, where the
people are never quite free from dread of earthquakes, and of a
country in which the productions of agriculture and horticulture
are more varied, and the rewards of rural enterprise larger, than
in any other under civilized government ! With a hundred million
acres of arable and grazing land, with thousands of outcropping
gold veins, with the finest forests in the world, fully half the white
people live in towns, a quarter of all in one town, and this quarter
pays more than half the taxes of all. " Over the mountains the
miners," says Mr. Bowles, " talk of going to San Francisco as to
Paradise," and the rural members of the legislature declare that
" San Francisco sucks the life out of the country."
At the same time all our great interior towns are reputed to be
growing rapidly ; their newspapers complain that wheat and gold
fall much faster than house-rents, and especially that builders fail
to meet the demand for such dwellings as are mostly sought by
new-comers, who are mainly men of small means and young fam
ilies, anxious to make a lodgment in the city on any terms which
will give them a chance of earning a right to remain. In Chicao-o
alone, it is said, that there are twenty thousand people seeking
employment. To this I can add, from personal observation, that if we stand,
any day before noon, at the railway stations of these cities, we may
notice women and girls arriving by the score, who, it will be ap
parent, have just run in to do a little shopping, intending to return
by supper time to farms perhaps a hundred miles away.
\0 1 A. paper prepared as a contribution to the popular discussion of the requirements of
Boston in respect to a public park; read at the request of tile American Social Association
«t the Lowell Institute, February 25, 1870.
1

2 PUBLIC PARKS AND
It used to be a matter of pride with the better sort of our coun
try people that they could raise on their own land or manufacture
within their own households almost everything needed for domestic
consumption. But if now you leave the rail, at whatever remote
station, the very advertisements on its walls will manifest how
greatly this is changed. Push out over the prairie and make your
way to the house of any long-settled and prosperous farmer, and
the intimacy of his family with the town will constantly appear,
in dress, furniture, viands, in all the conversation. If there is a
piano, they will be expecting a man from town to tune it. If the
baby has outgrown its shoes, the measure is to be sent to town. If
a tooth is troublesome, an appointment is to be arranged by tele
graph with the dentist. The railway time-table hangs with the
almanac. The housewife complains of her servants. There is no
difficulty in getting them from the intelligence offices in town, such
as they are ; but only the poorest, who cannot find employment
in the city, will come to the country, and these as soon as they
have got a few dollars ahead, are crazy to get back to town. It
is much the same with the men, the farmer will add ; he has to
run up in the morning and get some one to take " Wolf's " place.
You will find, too, that one of his sons is in a lawyer's office,
another at a commercial college, and his oldest daughter at an
" institute," all in town. I know several girls who travel eighty
miles a day to attend school in Chicago.
If under these circumstances the occupation of the country
school-master, shoemaker, and doctor, the country store-keeper,
dressmaker and lawyer, is not actually gone, it must be that the
business they have to do is much less relatively to the population
about them than it used to be ; not less in amount only, but less
in importance. An inferior class of men will meet the require
ments. And how are things going here in Massachusetts ? A corre
spondent of the •'Springfield Republican * gave the other day an
account of a visit lately made to two or three old agricultural
neighborhoods, such as fifty years ago were the glory of New Eng
land. When he last knew them, their society was spoken of with
pride, and the influence of not a few of their citizens was felt
throughout the State, and indeed far beyond it. But as he found
them now, they might almost be sung by Goldsmith. The meet
ing-house closed, the church dilapidated ; the famous old taverns,
stores, shops, mills, and offices dropping to pieces and vacant, or

THE ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS. 5
thus far been led to gather together in towns are yet growing ;
never more rapidly than at this moment. It would seem then
more rational to prepare for a continued rising of the townward flood
than to count upon its subsidence. Examining our own country
more particularly, it is to be considered that we have been giving
away our public lands under a square form of divisien, as if for the
purpose of preventing the closer agricultural settlement which long
and narrow farms would have favored, and that we have used our
mineral deposits as premiums for the encouragement of wandering
and of forms of enterprise, individual, desultory and sequestered
in character, in distinction from those which are organized, system
atized and public. This policy has had its day ; the choicest lands
have been taken up ; the most prominent and easiest worked
metallic veins have been seized, the richest placers are abandoned
to Chinamen, and the only reaction that we can reasonably antici
pate is one from, not toward, dispersion.
The same policy, indeed, has had the effect of giving us, for a
time, great command of ready money and easy credit, and we have
thus been induced to spend an immense sum — say two thousand
millions — in providing ourselves with the fixtures and machinery
of our railroad system. This system, while encouraging the greater
dispersion of our food-producers, has tended most of all to render
them, as we have seen, independent of all the old neighborhood
agencies of demand and supply, manufacture and exchange, and
to educate them and their children in familiarity with and depend
ence on the conveniences and habits of towns-people.
To touch upon another line of argument, we all recognize that
the tastes and dispositions of women are more and more potent in
shaping the course of civilized progress, and we may see that women
are even more susceptible to this townward drift than men. Oft-
times the husband and father gives up his country occupations, takino-
others less attractive to him in town, out of consideration for his wife
and daughters. Not long since I conveyed to a very sensible and
provident man what I thought to be an offer of great preferment. I
was surprised that he hesitated to accept it, until the question was re
ferred to his wife, a bright, tidy American-born woman, -who promptly
said : " If I were offered a deed of the best farm that I ever saw, on
condition of going back to the country to live, I would not take it.
I would rather face starvation in town." She had been brought
up and lived the greater part of her life in one of the most conven
ient and agreeable farming countries in the United States.
Is it astonishing ? Compare advantages in respect simply to

6 PUBLIC PARKS AND
schools, libraries, music, and the fine arts. People of the great
est wealth can hardly command as much of these in the country
as the poorest work-girl is offered here in Boston at the mere
cost of a walk for a short distance over a good, firm, clean path
way, lighted at night and made interesting to her by shop fronts
and the varie-^ of people passing.
It is true the poorer work-girls make little use of these special
advantages, but this simply because they are not yet educated up
to them. When, however, they come from the country to town,
are they not moving in the way of this education ? In all proba
bility, as is indicated by the report (in the " New York Tribune ")
of a recent skillful examination of the condition and habits of the
poor sewing women of that city, a frantic desire to escape from the
dull lives which they have seen before them in the country, a
craving for recreation, especially for more companionship in yield
ing to playful girlish impulses, innocent in themselves, drives more
young women to the town than anything else. Dr. Holmes may
exaggerate the clumsiness and dreariness of New England village
social parties ; but go further back into the country among the out
lying farms, and if you have ever had part in the working up of
some of the rare occasions in which what stands for festivity is
attempted, you will hardly think that the ardent desire of a young
woman to escape to the town is wholly unreasonable.
The civilized woman is above all things a tidy woman. She
enjoys being surrounded by bright and gay things perhaps not less
than the savage, but she shrinks from draggling, smirching, fouling
things and " things out of keeping " more. By the keenness
with which she avoids subjecting herself to annoyances of this
class, indeed, we may judge the degree in which a woman has
advanced in civilization. Think what a country road and road
side, and what the back yard of a farm-house, commonly is, in
winter and spring-time ; and what far-away farmers' gardens are
in haying time, or most of them at any time. Think, again, how
harcTit is' when you city people "go into the country for a few weeks
in summer, to keep your things in order, to get a thousand little
thino-s done which you regard as trifles when at home, how far
you have to go, and with how much uncertainty, how much unac
customed management you have to exercise. For the perfection
and delicacy — the cleanness — with which any human want is
provided for depends on the concentration of human ingenuity and
skill upon that particular want. The greater the division of labor
at any point, the greater the perfection with which all wants may

THE ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS. 1
be satisfied. Everywhere in the country the number and variety
of workmen, not agricultural laborers, proportionately to the popu
lation, is lessening as the facility for reaching workmen in town is
increasing. In one year we find fifty-four new divisions of trade
added to the " London Directory."
Think of all these things, and you will possibly find, yourself
growing a little impatient of the common cant which assumes that
the strong tendency of women to town life, even though it involves
great privations and dangers, is a purely senseless, giddy, vain,
frivolous, and degrading one.
The consideration which most influences this tendency of women
in families, however, seems to be the amount of time and labor,
and wear and tear of nerves aud mind, which is saved to them by
the organization of labor in those forms, more especially, by
which the menial service of households is simplified and reduced.
Consider, for instance, what is done (that in the country is not
done at all or is done by each household for itself, and, if effi
ciently, with a wearing, constant effort of superintendence) by the
butcher, baker, fishmonger, grocer, by the provision venders of all
sorts, by the ice-man, dust-man, scavenger, by the postman, car
rier, expressmen, and messengers, all serving you at your house
when required ; by the sewers, gutters, pavements, crossings, side
walks, public conveyances, and gas and water works.
But here again there is every reason to suppose that what we
see is but a foretaste of what is yet to come. Take the difference
of demand upon invention in respect to cheap conveyance for
example. We began experimentally with street railways twenty
years ago. At present, in New York, one pair of horses serves to
convey one hundred people, on an average, every day at a rate of
fare about one fiftieth of the old hackney-coach rates, and the total
number of fares collected annually is equal to that of the popula
tion of the United States. And yet thousands walk a number of
miles every day because they cannot be seated in the cars. It is
impossible to fix a limit to the amount of travel which really am
ple, con- -mt, and still cheap means of transportation for short
distance .id develop. Certain improvements have caused the
whole r. -.c of people seeking conveyances in London to be
doubled :.e last five years, and yet the supply keeps nowhere
near the :.mand.
See how rapidly we are really gaming, and what we have to
expect. Two recent inventions give us the means of reducing by a
third, under favorable circumstances, the cost of good McAdam

0 PUBLIC PARKS AND
roads. There have been sixteen patents issued from one office for
other new forms of perfectly smooth and nearly noiseless street
pavement, some of which, after two or three years' trial, promise so
well as to render it certain that some improvement will soon come
by which more than one of the present special annoyances of town
life will be abated. An improvement in our sewer system seems
near at hand also, which will add considerably to the comparative
advantages of a residence in towns, and especially the more open
town suburbs.
Experiments indicate that it is feasible to send heated air through
a town in pipes like -water, and that it may be drawn upon, and the
heat which is taken measured and paid for according to quantity
required. Thus may come a great saving of fuel and trouble in a
very difficult department of domestic economy. No one will think
of applying such a system to farm-houses. ' ;
Again, it is plain that we have scarcely begun to turn to account
the advantages offered to towns-people in the electric telegraph ;
we really have not made a beginning with those offered in the
pneumatic tube, though their substantial character has been demon
strated. By the use of these two instruments, a tradesman ten
miles away on the other side of a town may be communicated with,
and goods obtained from him by a housekeeper, as quickly and
with as little personal inconvenience as now if he were in the
next block. A single tube station for five hundred families, acous
tic pipes for the transmission of orders to it from each house, with
a carriers' service for local distribution of packages, is all that is
needed for this purpose.
As to the economy which comes by systematizing and concen
trating, by the application of a. large apparatus, of processes
which are otherwise conducted in a desultory way, wasteful of
human strength, as by public laundries, bakeries, and kitchens, we
are yet, in America, even in our larger cities, far behind many of
the smaller towns of the Old World.
While in all these directions enterprise and the progress of in
vention are quite sure to add rapidly to the economy and conven
ience of town life, and thus increase its comparative attractions,
in other directions every step tends to reduce the man-power re
quired on the farms for the production of a given amount of the
raw material of food. Such is the effect, for instance, of every
improvement of apparatus or process in ploughing, mowing, reap
ing, curing, thrashing, and marketing.
Another tendency arising from the improvement of agricultural

THE ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS. 9
apparatus, which will be much accelerated when steam shall have
been as successfully applied to tillage as already to harvesting and
marketing operations, is that to the enlargement of fields and of
farms. From this will follow the greater isolation of rural home
steads ; for with our long-fronted farms, it will lie long before we
can hope to have country roads on which rapid engine-transit will
be practicable, though we may be close upon it wherever firm and
smooth roads can be afforded,1
jit should be observed that possession of all the various advan
tages of the town to which we have referred, while it very cer
tainly cannot be acquired by people living in houses a quarter or a
half a mOe apart, does not, on the other hand, by any means in
volve an unhealthy density of population. Probably the advan
tages of civilization can be found illustrated and demonstrated
under no other circumstances so completely as in some suburban
neighborhoods where each family abode stands fifty or a hundred
feet or more apart from all others, and at some distance from the
public road. And it must be remembered, also, that man's enjoy
ment of rural beauty has clearly increased rather than diminished
¦with his advance in civilization. There is no reason, except in
the loss of time, the inconvenience, discomfort, and expense of
our present arrangements for short travel, why suburban advan
tages should not be almost indefinitely extended. Let us have a
cheap and enjoyable method of conveyance, and a buildincr law
like that of old Rome, and they surely will be.
As railroads are improved, all the important stations will be
come centres or sub-centres of towns, and all the''minor stations
suburbs. For most ordinary every-day purposes, especially house
keepers' purposes, these will need no very large population before
they can obtain urban advantages. I have seen a settlement, the
resident population of which was under three hundred, in which
there was a public laundry, bath-house, barber's shop, billiard-
room, beer-garden, and bakery. Fresh rolls and fresh milk were
supplied to families before breakfast time every mornino- ; fair fruit
and succulent vegetables were delivered at house doors not half an
hour after picking ; and newspapers and magazines were distributed
by a carrier. I have seen a town of not more than twelve hun
dred inhabitants, the streets and the yards, alleys, and places of
which were swept every day as regularly as the house floors, and
all dust removed by a public dust-man.
— K Slow freighting over earth roads ia practicable,- 500 locomotives are now in regular use
on common roads.

10 PUBLIC PARKS AND
The construction of good roads and walks, the laying of sewer, -
water, and gas pipes, and the supplying of sufficiently cheap,
rapid, and comfortable conveyances to town centres, is all that is
necessary to give any farming land in a healthy and attractive sit
uation the value of town lots. And whoever has observed in the
French agricultural colonies how much more readily and cheaply
railroads, telegraph, gas, water, sewer, and nearly all other ad
vantages of towns may be made available to the whole population
than under our present helter-skelter methods of settlement, will
not believe that even the occupation of a farm laborer must neces
sarily and finally exclude his family from a very large share of
urban conveniences. ^ — H
But this opens a subject of speculation, which I am not now free I
to pursue. It is hardly a matter of speculation, I am disposed to
think, but almost of demonstration, that the larger a town becomes
because simply of its advantages for commercial purposes, the greater
will be the convenience available to those who live in and near
it for cooperation, as well with reference to the accumulation of
wealth in the higher forms, — as in seats of learning, of science, and
of art, — as with reference to merely domestic economy and the
emancipation of both men and women from petty, confining, and
narrowing cares.
It also appears to be nearly certain that the recent rapid enlarge
ment of towns and withdrawal of people from rural conditions of
living is the result mainly of circumstances of a permanent character. _
We have reason to believe, then, that towns which of late have
been increasing rapidly on account of their commercial advantages,
are likely to be still more attractive to population in the future ;
that there will in consequence soon be larger towns than any the
world has yet known, and that the further progress of civilization is
to depend mainly upon the influences by which men's minds and
characters will be affected while living in large towns^ " te
Now, knowing that the average length of the life of mankind in
towns has been much less than in the country, and that the aver
age amount of disease and misery and of vice and crime has been
much greater in towns, this would be a very dark prospect for civil
ization, if it were not that modern Science has beyond all question
determined many of the causes of the special evils by which men
are afflicted in towns, and placed means in our hands for guarding
against them. It has shown, for example, that under ordinary
circumstances, in the interior parts of large and closely built towns,
a given quantity of air contains considerably less of the elements

THE ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS. H
which we require to receive through the lungs than the air of the
country or even of the outer and more open parts of a town, and
that instead of them it carries into the lungs highly corrupt and
irritating matters, the action of which tends strongly to vitiate all
our sources of vigor — how strongly may perhaps be indicated in the
shortest way by the statement that even metallic plates and statues
coiTode and wear away under the atmospheric influences which
prevail in the midst of large towns, more rapidly than in the country.
The irritation and waste of the physical powers which result
from the same cause, doubtless indirectly affect and very seriously
affect the mind and the moral strength ; but there is a general im
pression that a class of men are bred in towns whose peculiarities
are not perhaps adequately accounted for in this way. We may un
derstand these better if we consider that whenever we walk through
the denser part of a town, to merely avoid collision with those we
meet and pass upon the sidewalks, we have constantly to watch,
to foresee, and to guard against their movements. This involves a
consideration of their intentions, a calculation of their strength and
weakness, which is not so much for their benefit as our own. Our
minds are thus brought into close dealings with other minds without
any friendly flowing toward them, but rather a drawing from them.
Much of the intercourse between men when engaged in the pur
suits of commerce has the same tendency — a tendency to regard
others in a hard if not always hardening way. Each detail of
observation and of the process of thought required in this kind of
intercourse or contact of minds is so slight and so common in the
experience of towns-people that they are seldom conscious of it. It
certainly involves some expenditure nevertheless. People from the
country are even conscious of the effect on their nerves and minds
of the street contact — often complaining that they feel confused
by it ; and if we had no relief from it at all during our waking
hours, we should all be conscious of suffering from it. It is upon
our opportunities of relief from it, therefore, that not only our com
fort in town life, but our ability to maintain a temperate, good-
natured, and healthy state of mind, depends. This is one of many
ways in which it happens that men who have been brought up, as
the saying is, in the streets, who have been most directly and com
pletely affected by town influences, so generally show, along with
a remarkable quickness of apprehension, a peculiarly hard sort of
selfishness. Every day of their lives they have seen thousands of
their fellow-men, have met them face to face, have brushed against
them, and yet have had no experience of anything in common with
them.

12 PUBLIC PARKS AND
It has happened several times within the last century, when
old artificial obstructions to the spreading out of a city have been
removed, and especially when there has been a demolition of and
rebuilding on a new ground plan of some part which had previously
been noted for the frequency of certain crimes, the prevalence of
certain diseases, and the shortness of life among its inhabitants,
that a marked improvement in all these respects has immediately
followed, and has been maintained not alone in the dark parts, but
in the city as a whole.
But although it has been demonstrated by such experiments that
we have it in our power to greatly lessen and counteract the two
classes of evils we have had under consideration, it must be remem
bered that these means are made use of only with great difficulty —
how great, one or two illustrations from experience will enable us
perhaps better to understand.
When the business quarter of New York was burnt over, thirty
years ago, there was a rare opportunity for laying out a district
expressly with a view to facilitate commerce. The old plan had been
arrived at in a desultory way ; and so far as it had been the result
of design, it had been with reference more especially to the resi
dence of a semi-rural population. This had long since passed away ;
its inconvenience for commercial purposes had been experienced for
many years ; no one supposed from the relation of the ground to
the adjacent navigable waters that it would ever be required for
other than commercial purposes. Yet the difficulties of equalizing
benefits and damages among the various owners of the land pre
vented any considerable change of the old street lines. Every
working day thousands of dollars are subtracted from the profits
of business, by the disadvantages thus reestablished. The annual
loss amounts to millions. --""
Men of barbarous habits laid out a part of London in a way
which a thousand years later was found to be a cause of an immeas
urable waste of life, strength, and property. There had been much
talk, but no effective action, looking toward improvement, when the
great fire came, and left every building a heap of ashes. Imme
diately upon this, while the fire was still burning, a great man, Sir
Christopher Wren, prepared a plan for avoiding the old evils. This
plan, a simple, excellent, and economical one, he took to the king,
who at once approved it, took a strong interest in it, and used all
his royal power to have it carried out. It was hailed with satisfac
tion by all wise and good men, and yet so difficult was it to over
come the difficulties entailed by the original rural laying out of the

THE ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS. 13
ground, that the attempt was finally abandoned, and the new citj
was built with immaterial modifications under the old barbarous
plan ; and so it remains with only slight improvement, and that
purchased at enormous cost, to this day.
Remedy for a bad plan, once built upon, being thus impracticable,
now that we understand the matter we are surely bound, wher
ever it is by any means in our power, to prevent mistakes in the
construction of towns. Strange to say, however, here in the New
World, where great towns by the hundred are springing into exist
ence, no care at all is taken to avoid bad plans. The most brutal
Pagans to whom we have sent our missionaries have never shown'
greater indifference to the sufferings of others than is exhibited in
the plans of some of our most promising cities, for which men now
living in them are responsible.
Not long since I was asked by the mayor of one of these to go
before its common council and explain the advantages of certain
suggested changes, including especially the widening of two roads
leading out of town and as yet but partially opened and not at all
built upon. After I had done so, two of the aldermen in succes
sion came to me, and each privately said in effect : " It is quite plain
that the proposition is a good one, and it ought to be adopted ; the
city would undoubtedly gain by it ; but the people of the ward I
represent have less interest in it than some others : they do not
look far ahead, and they are jealous of those who would be more
directly benefited than themselves ; consequently I don't think
that they would like it if I voted for it, and I shall not, but I hope
it will be carried."
They were unwilling that even a stranger should have so poor
an opinion of their own intelligence as to suppose that they did not
see the advantage of the change proposed; but it was not even suc-
gested to their minds that there might be something shameful in
repudiating their obligations to serve, according to the best of then-
judgment, the general and permanent interests committed to them
as legislators of the city.
It is evident that if we go on in this way, the prooress of civil
ized mankind in health, virtue, and happiness will be seriously
endangered. It is practically certain that the Boston of to-day is the mere
nucleus of the Boston that is to be. It is practically certain that
it is to extend over many miles of country now thoroughly rural
in character, in parts of which farmers are now laying out roads with
a view to shortening the teaming distance between their wood-lots

14 PUBLIC PARKS AND
and a railway station, being governed in their courses by old prop
erty lines, which were first run simply with reference to the equi
table division of heritages, and in other parts of which, perhaps,
some wild speculators are having streets staked off from plans which
they have formed with a rule and pencil in a broker's office, with a
view chiefly to the impressions they would make when seen by
other speculators on a lithographed map. And by this manner of
planning, unless views of duty or of interest prevail that are not
yet common, if Boston continues to grow at its present rate even
for but a few generations longer, and then simply holds its own
until it shall be as old as the Boston in Lincolnshire now is, more
men, women, and children are to be seriously affected in health and
morals than are now hving on this Continent.
Is this a small matter — a mere matter of taste ; a sentimental
speculation ?
It must be within the observation of most of us that where, in
the city, wheel-ways originally twenty feet wide were with great
difficulty and cost enlarged to thirty, the present width is already
less nearly adequate to the present business than the former was to
the former business ; obstructions are more frequent, movements
are slower and oftener arrested, and the liability to collision is
greater. The same is true of sidewalks. Trees thus have been cut
down, porches, bow-windows, and other encroachments removed,
but every year the-walk is less sufficient for the comfortable passing
of those who wish to use it.
It is certain that as the distance from the interior to the circum
ference of towns shall increase with the enlargement of their popu
lation, the less sufficient relatively to the service to be performed
will be any given space between buildings.
In like manner every evil to which men are specially liable when
living in towns, is likely to be aggravated in the future, unless
means are devised and adapted in advance to prevent it.
Let us proceed, then, to the question of means, and with a seri
ousness in some degree befitting a question, upon our dealing with
which we know the misery or happiness of many millions of our
ffellow-beings will depend.
We will for the present set before our minds the two sources of
wear and corruption which we have seen to be remediable and
therefore preventible. We may admit that commerce requires
that in some parts of a town there shall be an arrangement of
buildino-s, and a character of streets and of traffic in them which
will establish conditions of corruption and of irritation, physical and

THE ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS. 15
mental. But commerce does not require the same conditions to be
maintained in all parts of a town.
Air is disinfected by sunlight and foliage. Foliage also acta
mechanically to purify the air by screening it. Opportunity and
inducement to escape at frequent intervals from the confined and
vitiated air of the commercial quarter, and to supply the lungs with
air screened and purified by trees, and recently acted upou by sun
light, together with opportunity and inducement lo escape from
conditions requiring vigilance, wariness, and activity toward other
men, — if these could be supplied economically, our problem would
be solved.
In the old days of walled towns all tradesmen lived under the
roof of their shops, and their children and apprentices and servants
sat together with them in the evening about the kitchen fire. But
now that the dwelling is built by itself and there is greater room,
the inmates have a parlor to spend their evenings in ; they spread
carpets on the floor to gain in quiet, and hang drapery in their win
dows and papers on their walls to gain in seclusion and beauty.
Now that our towns are built without walls, and we can have all
the room that we like, is there any good reason why we should not
make some similar difference between parts which are likely to be
dwelt in, and those which will be required exclusively for com
merce ?
Would trees, for seclusion and shade and beauty, be out of place,
for instance, by the side of certain of our streets ? It will, perhaps,
appear to you that it is hardly necessary to ask such a question, as-'
throughout the United States trees are commonly planted at the
sides of streets. Unfortunately _they are seldom so planted as to
have fairly settled the question of the desirableness of systemat
ically maintaining trees under these circumstances. In the first
place, the streets are planned, wherever they are, essentially alike.
Trees are planted in the space assigned for sidewalks, where at
first, while they are saplings, and the vicinity is rural or suburban,
they are not much in the way, but where, as they grow larger, and
the vicinity becomes urban, they take up more and more space,
while space is more and more required for passage. That is not
all. Thousands and tens of thousands are planted every year in a
manner and under conditions as nearly certain as possible either
to kill them outright, or to so lessen their vitality as to prevent their
natural and beautiful development, and to cause premature decrepi
tude. Often, too, as their lower limbs are found inconvenient, no
space having been provided for trees in laying out the street, they

16

PUBLIC PARKS AND

are deformed by butcherly amputations. If by rare good fortune
they are suffered to become beautiful, they still stand subject to be
condemned to death at any time, as obstructions in the hio-hway.1
What I would ask is, whether we might not with economy make
special provision in some of our streets — in a twentieth or a fifti
eth part, if you please, of all — for trees to remain as a permanent
furniture of the city ? I mean, to make a place for them in which
they would have room to grow naturally and gracefully. Even if
the distance between the houses should have to be made half as
much again as it is required to be in our commercial streets, could
not the space be afforded ? Out of town space is not costly when
measures to secure it are taken early. The assessments for bene
fit where such streets were provided for, would, in nearly all cases,
defray the cost of the land required. The strips of ground re
served for the trees, six, twelve, twenty feet wide, would cost noth
ing for paving or flagging.
¦^ The change both of scene and of air which would be obtained by
people engaged for the most part in the necessarily confined interior
commercial parts of the town, on passing into a street of this char
acter after the trees had become stately and graceful, would be
worth a good deal. If such streets were made still broader in
some parts, with spacious malls, the advantage would be increased.
If each of them were given the proper capacity, and laid out with
laterals and connections in suitable directions to serve as a con
venient trunk-line of communication between two large districts
of the town or the business centre and the suburbs, a very great
number of people might thus be placed every day under influ
ences counteracting those with which we desire to contend.
These, however, would be merely very simple improvements
upon arrangements which are in common use in every considerable
town. Their advantages would be incidental to the general uses
of streets as they are. But people are willing very often to seek
1 On the border of the first street laid out in the oldest town in New England, there yet
stands what has long been known as " the Town Tree," its trunk having served for gener
ations as a publication post for official notices. "The selectmen," having last year re
moved the lower branches of all the younger roadside trees of the town, and thereby its
chief beauty, have this year deliberately resolved that they would have this tree cut down,
for no other reason, so far as appears in their official record, than that if two persons came
careleaslv together on the roadway side of it, one of them might chance to put his foot in
the adjoining shallow street-gutter. It might cost ten dollars to deepen and bridge this gut
ter substantially. The call to arms for the Old French War, for the War of the Revolu
tion the war for the freedom of the seas, the Mexican War, and the War of the Rebellion,
was first made in this town under the shade of this tree, which is an American elm, and,
notwithstanding its great age, is perfectly healthy and almost as beautiful as it is vener
able.

THE ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS. 17
recreations as well as receive it by the way. Provisions may in
deed be made expressly for public recreations, with certainty that
if convenient they will be resorted to.
We come then to the question : what accommodations for rec
reation can we provide which shall be so agreeable and so accessi
ble as to be efficiently attractive to the great body of citizens, and
which, while giving decided gratification, shall also cause those
who resort to them for pleasure to subject themselves, for the time
being, to conditions strongly counteractive to the special enervating
conditions of the town? -— te
In the study of this question all forms of recreation may, in the
first place, be conveniently arranged under two general heads.
One will include all of which the predominating influence is to
stimulate exertion of any part or parts needing it ; the other, all
which cause us to receive pleasure without conscious exertion.
Games chiefly of mental skill, as chess, or athletic sports, as base
ball, are examples of means of recreation of the first class, which .
may be termed that of exertive recreation;' music and the fine arts
generally of the second or receptive division. {
Considering the first by itself, much consideration will be needed
in determining what classes of exercises may be advantageously
provided for. In the Bois de Boulogne there is a race-course ; in
the Bois de Vincennes a ground for artillery target-practice. Mil
itary parades are held in Hyde Park. A few cricket clubs are
accommodated in most of the London parks, and swimming is per
mitted in the lakes at certain hours. In the New York Park, on
the other hand, none of these exercises are provided for or per
mitted, except that the boys of the public schoools are given the
use on holidays of certain large spaces for ball playing. It is con
sidered that the advantage to individuals which would be gained
in providing for them would not compensate for the general incon
venience and expense they would cause.
I do not propose to discuss this part of the subject at present, as
it is only necessary to my immediate purpose to point out that if
recreations requiring large spaces to be given up to the use of a
comparatively small number, are not considered essential, numer
ous small grounds so distributed through a large town that some
one of them could be easily reached by a short walk from every
house, would be more desirable than a single area of great extent,
however rich in landscape attractions it might be. Especially
would this be the case if the numerous local grounds were con
nected and supplemented by a series of trunk-roads or boulevards
such as has already been suggested. 2

18 PUBLIC PARKS AND
Proceeding to the consideration of receptive recreations, it is
necessary to ask you to adopt and bear in mind a further subdivis
ion, under two heads, according to the degree in which the aver
age enjoyment is greater when a large congregation assembles for
a purpose of receptive recreation, or when the number coming
together is small and the circumstances are favorable to the ex
ercise of personal friendliness.
The first I shall term gregarious; the second, neighborly. Re
membering that the immediate matter in hand is a study of fitting
accommodations, you will, I trust, see the practical necessity of
this classification.
Purely gregarious recreation seems to be generally looked upon
in New England society as childish and savage, because, I suppose,
there is so little of what we call intellectual gratification in it. We
are inclined to engage in it indirectly, furtively, and with compli
cation. Yet there are certain forms of recreation, a large share
of the attraction of which must, I think, lie in the gratification of
the gregarious inclination, and which, with those who can afford to
indulge in them, are so popular as to establish the importance of
the requirement.
If I ask myself where I have experienced the most complete
gratification of this instinct in public and out of doors, among
\ trees, I find that it has been in the promenade of the Champs
lElysees. As closely following it-J should name other promenades
!of Europe, and our own upon the New York parks. I have stu-
Jdiously watched the latter for several years. I have several times
seen fifty thousand people participating in them; and. the more I
have seen of them, the more highly have I been led to estimate
their value as means of counteracting the evils of town life. .— =-t
Consider that the New York Park and the Brooklyn Park are I
the only places in those associated cities where, in this eighteen
hundred and seventieth year after Christ, you will find a body of
Christians coming together, and with an evident glee in the pros
pect of coming . together, all classes largely represented, with a
common purpose, not at all intellectual, competitive with none, dis
posing to jealousy and spiritual or intellectual pride toward none,
each individual adding by his mere presence to the pleasure of all
others, all helping to the greater happiness of each. You may
thus often see vast numbers of persons brought closely together,
poor and rich, young and old, Jew and Gentile. I have seen a
hundred thousand thus congregated, and I assure you tHt tliough
there have been not a few that seemed a little dazed, a. ' they did

THE ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS. 19
not quite understand it, and were, perhaps, a little ashamed of it,
I have looked studiously but vainly among them for a single face
completely unsympathetic with the prevailing expression of good
nature and light-heartedness.
Is it doubtful that it does men good to come together in this way
in pure air and under the light of heaven, or that it must have an
influence directly counteractive to that of the ordinary hard, hus
tling working hours of town life ? I
You will agree with me, I am sure, that it is not, and that op-"
portunity, convenient, attractive opportunity, for such congrega
tion, is a very good thing to provide for, in planning the extension
of a town.
I referred especially to the Champs Elysees, because the prom
enade there is a very old custom, not a fashion of the day, and
because I must needs admit that this most striking example is one
in which no large area of ground — nothing like a park — has been
appropriated for the purpose. I must acknowledge, also, that the
alamedas of Spain and Portugal, supply another and very interesting
instance of the same fact. You will observe, however, that small
local grounds, such as we have said might be the best for most
exertive recreations, are not at all adapted to receptive recreations
of the type described.
One thing more under this head. I have but little personal
familiarity with Boston customs ; but I have lived or sojourned in
several other towns of New England, as well as of other parts of the
country, and I have never been long in any locality, south or
north, east or west, without observing a custom of rrreearious out-
of-door recreation in some miserably imperfect form, usually cov
ered by a wretched pretext of a wholly different .purpose, as per
haps, for instance, visiting a grave-yard. I am sure that it would
be much better, less expensive, less harmful in all ways, more
health-giving to body, mind, and soul, if it were admitted to be a
distinct requirement of all human beings, and appropriately pro
vided for.
I have next to see what opportunities are wanted to induce peo
ple to engage in what I have termed neighborly receptive recrea
tions, under conditions which shall be highly counteractive to the
prevailing bias to degeneration and demoralization in laro-e towns.
To make clearer what I mean, I need an illustration which I find
in a familiar domestic gathering, where the prattle of the chil
dren mingles with the easy conversation of the more sedate, the
bodily requirements satisfied with good cheer, fresh air, agreeable

20 PUBLIC PARKS AND
light, moderate temperature, snug shelter, and furniture and dec
orations adapted to please the eye, without calling for profound
admiration on the one hand, or tending to fatigue or disgust on the
other. The circumstances are all favorable to a pleasurable wake
fulness of the mind without stimulating exertion ; and the close
relation of family life, the association of children, of mothers, of
lovers, or those who may be lovers, stimulate and keep alive the
more tender sympathies, and give play to faculties such as may be
dormant in business or on the promenade ; while at the same time
the cares of providing in detail for all the wants of the family,
guidance, instruction, reproof, and the dutiful reception of guid
ance, instruction, and reproof, are, as matters of conscious exer
tion, as far as possible laid aside.
There is an instinctive inclination to this social, neighborly,
nnexertive form of recreation among all of us. In one way or
another it is sure to be constantly operating upon those millions on
millions of men and women who are to pass their lives within a
few miles of where we now stand. To what extent it shall oper
ate so as to develop health and virtue, will, on many occasions, be
simply a question of opportunity and inducement. And this ques
tion is one for the determination of which for a thousand years we
here to-day are largely responsible.
Think what the ordinary state of things to many is at this be
ginning of the town. The public is reading just now a little book
in which some of your streets of which you are not proud are
described.1 Go into one of those red cross streets an}' fine even
ing next summer, and ask how it is with their residents ? Often
times you will see half a dozen sitting together on the door-steps,
or, all in a row, on the curb-stones, with their feet in the gutter,
driven out of doors by the closeness within ; mothers among them
anxiously regarding their children who are dodging about at their
play, among the noisy wheels on the pavement.
Again, consider how often you see young men in knots of per
haps half a dozen in lounging attitudes rudely obstructing the side
walks, chiefly led in their little conversation by the suggestions
given to their minds by what or whom they may see passing in
the street, men, women, or children, whom they do not know,
and for whom they have no respect or sympathy. There is noth
ing among them or about them which is adapted to bring into play
a spark of admiration, of delicacy, manliness, or tenderness. You
see them presently descend in search of physical comfort to a bril-
1 Sybaris, by the Rev. E. E. Hale.

THE ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS. 21
liantly lighted basement, where they find others of their sort, see,
hear, smell, drink, and eat all manner of vile things.
Whether on the curb-stones or in the dram-shops, these young
men are all under the influence of the same impulse which some
satisfy about the tea-table with neighbors and wives and mothers
and children, and all things clean and wholesome, softening and
refining. ,
If the great city to arise here is to be laid out little by little,
and chiefly to suit the views of land-owners, acting only individ
ually, and thinking only of how what they do is to affect the value
in the next week or the next year of the few lots that each may
hold at the time, the opportunities of so obeying this inclination
as at the same time to give the lungs a bath of pure sunny air, to
give the mind a suggestion of rest from the devouring eagerness
and intellectual strife of town life, will always be few to any, to
many will amount to nothing.
But is it possible to make public provision for recreation of this
class, essentially domestic and secluded as it is ?
It is a question which can, of course, be conclusively answered
only from experience. And from experience in some slight degree
I shall answer it. There is one large American town, in which it
may happen that a man of any class shall say to his wife, when he
is going out in the morning : " My dear, when the children come
home from school, put some bread and butter and salad in a basket,
and go to the spring under the chestnut-tree where we found the
Johnsons last week. I will join you there as soon as I can get
away from the office. We will walk to the dairy-man's cottage
and get some tea, and some fresh milk for the children, and take
our supper by the brook-side ; " and this shall be no joke, but the
most refreshing earnest.
There will be room enough in the Brooklyn Park, when it is
finished, for several thousand little family and neighborly parties
to bivouac at frequent intervals through the summer, without dis
commoding one another, or interfering with any other purpose, to
say nothing of those who can be drawn out to make a day of it, as
many thousand were last year. And although the arrangements
for the purpose were yet very incomplete, and but little ground was
at att prepared for such use, besides these small parties, consisting
of one or two families, there came also, in companies of from thirty
to a hundred and fifty, somewhere near twenty thousand children
with their parents, Sunday-school teachers, or other guides and
friends, who spent the best part of a day under the trees and on

22 PUBLIC PARKS AND
the turf, in recreations of which the predominating element was
J_f this neighborly receptive class. Often they would bring a fid
dle, flute, and harp, or other music. Tables, seats, shade, turf,
swings, cool spring-water, and a pleasing rural prospect, stretching
off half a mile or more each vvay, unbroken by a carriage road or
the slightest evidence of the vicinity of the town, were supplied
them without charge, and bread and milk and ice-cream at moder
ate fixed charges. In all my life I have never seen such joyous
collections of people. I have, in fact, more than once observed
tears of gratitude in the eyes of poor women, as they watched
their children thus enjoying themselves. /
The whole cost of such neighborly festivals, even when they
include excursions by rail from the distant parts of the town, does
not exceed for each person, on an average, a quarter of a dollar ;
and when the arrangements are complete, I see no reason why
thousands should not come every day where hundreds come now
t_j use them ; and if so, who can measure the value, generation
after generation, of such provisions for recreation to the over-
wrouo-ht, much-confined people of the great town that is to be ?
For this purpose neither of the forms of ground we have here
tofore considered are at all suitable. We want a ground to which
people may easily go after their day's work is done, and where
they may stroll for an hour, seeing, hearing, and feeling nothing of
the bustle and jar of the streets, where they shall, in effect, find
the city put far away from them. We want the greatest possible
contrast with the streets and the shops and the rooms of the town
which will be consistent with convenience and the preservation of
good order and neatness. We want, especially, the greatest pos
sible contrast with the restraining and confining conditions of the
town, those conditions which compel us to walk circumspectly,
watchfully, jealously, wliich compel us to look closely upon others
without sympathy. Practically, what we most want is a simple,
broad, open space of clean greensward, with sufficient play of
surface and a sufficient number of trees about it to supply a vari
ety of light and shade. This we want as a central feature. We
want depth of wood enough about it not only for comfort in hot
weather, but to completely shut out the city from our landscapes.
~ The word park, in town nomenclature, should, I think, be re
served for grounds of the character and purpose thus described.
Not only as being the most valuable of all possible forms of
public places, but regarded simply as a large space which will
seriously interrupt cross-town communication wherever it occurs,

THE ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS. 23
the question of the site and bounds of the park requires to be de
termined with much more deliberation and art than is often se
cured for any problem of distant and extended municipal interests.
A Promenade may, with great advantage, be carried along the
outer part of the surrounding groves of a park ; and it will do no
harm if here and there a broad opening among the trees discloses
its open landscapes to those upon the promenade. But recollect
that the object of the latter for the time being should be to see
congregated human life under glorious and necessarily artificial con
ditions, and the natural landscape is not essential to them ; though
there is no more beautiful picture, and none can be more pleasing
incidentally to the gregarious purpose, than that of beautiful mead
ows, over which clusters of level-armed sheltering trees cast broad
shadows, and upon which are scattered dainty cows and flocks of
black-faced sheep, while men, women, and children are seen sitting
here and there, forming groups in the shade, or moving in and
out among the woody points and bays.
It may be inferred from what I have said, that very rugged
ground, abrupt eminences, and what is technically called pictur
esque in distinction from merely beautiful or simply pleasing scenery,
is not the most desirable for a town park. Decidedly not in my
opinion. The park should, as far as possible, complement the town.
Openness is the one thing you cannot get in buildings. Pictur-
esqueness you can get. Let your buildings be as picturesque as
your artists can make them. This is the beauty of a town. Con
sequently, the beauty of the park should be the other. It should be
the beauty of the fields, the meadow, the prairie, of the green
pastures, and the still waters. What we want to gain is tranquillity
and rest to the mind. Mountains suggest effort. But besides this
objection there are others of what I may indicate as the house
keeping class. It is impossible to give the public range over a
large extent of ground of a highly picturesque character, unless
under very exceptional circumstances, and sufficiently guard
against the occurrence of opportunities and temptations to shabbi-
ness, disorder, indecorum, and indecency, that will be subversive
of every good purpose the park shoidd be designed to fulfill.
Nor can I think that in the park proper, what is called garden-
esque beauty is to be courted ; still less that highly artificial and
exotic form of it, which, under the name of subtropical planting,
the French have lately introduced, and in suitable positions with
interesting and charming results, but in following which indis
creetly, the English are sacrificing the peculiar beauty of their

24 PUBLIC PARKS AND
simple and useful parks of the old time. Both these may have
places, and very important places, but they do not belong within a
park, unless as side scenes and incidents. Twenty years ago Hyde
Park had a most pleasing, open, free, and inviting expression,
though certainly it was too rude, too much wanting in art ; but now
art is vexed with long black lines of repellant iron-work, and here
and there behind it bouquets of hot house plants, between which
,the public pass like hospital convalescents, who have been turned
into the yard to walk about while their beds are making. We
should undertake nothing in a park which involves the treating of
the public as prisoners or wild beasts. A great object of all that
is done in a park, of all the art of a park, is to influence the mind
of men through their imagination, and the influence of iron hur
dles can never be good.
We have, perhaps, sufficiently defined the ideal of a park for a
large town. It will seldom happen that this ideal can be realized
fully. The next thing is to select the situation in which it can be
most nearly approached without great cost ; and by cost I do not
maan simply cost of land or of construction, but cost of inconven
ience and cost of keeping in order, which is a very much more
serious matter, and should have a great deal more study.
A park fairly well managed near a large town, will surely be
come a new centre of that town. With the determination of loca
tion, size, and boundaries should therefore- be associated the duty
of arrano-ino- new trunk routes of communication between it and
the distant parts of the town existing and forecasted.
These may be either narrow informal elongations of the park,
varyino- say from two to five hundred feet in width, and radiating
irregularly from it, or if, unfortunately, the town is already laid
out in the unhappy way that New York and Brooklyn, San Fran
cisco and Chicago, are, and, I am glad to say, Boston is not, on a
plan made long years ago by a man who never saw a spring-car-
riao-e, and who had a conscientious dread of the Graces, then we
mult probably adopt formal Park-ways. They should be so
planned and constructed as never to be noisy and seldom crowded,
and so also that the straightforward movement of pleasure-car
riages need never be obstructed, unless at absolutely necessary
crossings, by slow-going heavy vehicles used for commercial pur
poses. If possible, also, they should be branched or reticulated with
other ways of a similar class, so that no part of the town should
finally be many minutes' walk from some one of them ; and they
should be made interesting by a process of planting and decoration,

THE ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS. 25
so that in necessarily passing through them, whether in going to or
from-the park, or to and from business, some substantial recreative
advantage may be incidentally gained. It is a common error to
regard a park as something to be produced complete in itself, as a
picture to be painted on canvas. It should rather be planned as
one to be done in fresco, with constant consideration of exterior
objects, some of them quite at a distance and even existing as yet
only in the imagination of the painter.
~~" I have thus barely indicated a few of the points from which
we may perceive our duty to apply the means in our hands to
ends far distant, with reference to this problem of public recrea
tions. Large operations of construction may not soon be desirable,
but I hope you will agree with me that there is little room for
question, that reserves of ground for the purposes I have referred
to should be fixed upon as soon as possible, before the difficulty of
arranging them, which arises from private building, shall be greatly
more formidable than now.
To these reserves, — though not a dollar should be spent in con
struction during the present generation, — the plans of private con
struction would necessarily, from the moment they were estab
lished, be conformed.
I by no means wish to suggest that nothing should be done for
the present generation ; but only, that whatever happens to the
present generation, it should not be allowed to go on heaping up
difficulties and expenses for its successors, for want of a little com
prehensive and business-like foresight and study. In all probabil
ity it will be found that much can be done even for the present
generation without greatly if at all increasing taxation, as has been
found in New York.
But the question now perhaps comes up : How can a community
best take this work in hand ?
It is a work in which private and local and special interests will
be found so antagonistic one to another, in which heated prejudices
are so liable to be unconsciously established, and in which those
who would be disappointed in their personal greeds by whatever
good scheme may be studied out, are so likely to combine and con
centrate force to kill it (manufacture public opinion, as the phrase
is), that the ordinary organizations for municipal business are un
suitable agencies for the purpose. It would, perhaps, be a bold
thing to say that the public in its own interest, and in the interest
of all of whom the present public are the trustees, should see to it
that the problem is as soon as possible put clean out of its own

26

PUBLIC PARKS AND

hands, in order that it may be taken up efficiently by a small body
of select men. But I will venture to say that until this in effect
is done, the danger that public opinion may be led, by the applica
tion of industry, ingenuity, and business ability on the part of men
whose real objects are perhaps unconsciously very close to their
own pockets, to overrule the results of more comprehensive and
impartial study, is much greater than in most questions of public
interest. You will not understand me as opposing or undervaluing the
advantages of public discussion. What I would urge is, that park
questions, and even the most elementary park questions, questions
of site and outlines and approaches, are not questions to which the
rule applies, that every man should look after his own interests,
judge for himself what will favor his own interests, and exert his
influence so as to favor them ; but questions rather of that class,
which in his private affairs every man of common sense is anxious,
as soon as possible, to put into the hands of somebody who is able
to take hold of them comprehensively as a matter of direct, grave,
business responsibility.
It is upon this last point far more than upon any other that the
experience of New York is instructive to other communities. I
propose, therefore, to occupy your time a little while longer by a
narration of those parts of this experience which bear most directly
upon this point, and which will also supply certain other informa
tion which has been desired of me.
The New York legislature of 1851 passed a bill providing for a
park on the east side of the island. Afterwards, the same legis
lature, precipitately and quite as an after-thought, passed the act
under which the city took title to the site of the greater part of
the present Central Park.
This final action is said to have been the result of a counter
movement, started after the passage of the first bill merely to grat
ify a private grudge of one of the city aldermen.
When in the formation of the counter project, the question was
reached, what land shall be named in the second bill, the originator
turned to a map and asked : " Now where shall I go ? " His
comrade, looking over his shoulder, without a moment's reflection,
put his finger down and said, " Go there ; " the point indicated
appearing "to be about the middle of the island, and therefore, as it
occurred°to him, one which would least excite local prejudices.
The primary selection of the site was thus made in an off-hand
way, by a man who had no special responsibility in the premises,

THE ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS. 27
and whose previous studies had not at all led him to be well in
formed or interested in the purposes of a park.
It would have been difficult to find another body of land of six
hundred acres upon the island (unless by taking a long narrow
strip upon the precipitous side of a ridge), which possessed less of
what we have seen to be the most desirable characteristics of a
park, or upon which more time, labor, and expense would be re
quired to establish them.
But besides the topographical objections, when the work of pro
viding suitable facilities for the recreation of the people upon this
ground came to be practically and definitely considered, defects of
outline were discerned, the incomplete remedy for which has since
cost the city more than a million of dollars. The amount which
intelligent study would have saved in this way if applied at the
outset, might have provided for an amplification of some one of the
approaches to the Park, such as, if it were now possible to be
gained at a cost of two or three million dollars, I am confident
would, if fairly set forth, be ordered by an almost unanimous vote
of the tax-payers of the city. Public discussion at the time ut
terly failed to set this blundering right. Nor was public opinion
then clearly dissatisfied with what was done or with those who
did it.
During the following six years there was much public and pri
vate discussion of park questions ; but the progress of public opin
ion, judged simply by the standard which it has since formed for
itself, seems to have been chiefly backward.
This may be, to a considerable degree, accounted for by the fact
that many men of wealth and influence — who, through ignorance
and lack of mature reflection on this subject, were unable to antici
pate any personal advantage from the construction ofa park —
feared that it would only add to their taxes, and thus were led to
form a habit of crying down any hopeful anticipations.
The argument that certain towns of the old country did obtain
some advantage from their parks, could not be refuted, but it was
easy to say, and it was said, that " our circumstances are very dif
ferent : surrounded by broad waters on all sides, open to the sea
breezes, we need no artificial breathing-places ; even if we did,
nothing like the parks of the old cities under aristocratic govern
ment would be at all practicable here."
This assertion made such an impression as to lead many to be
lieve that little more had better be done than to give the name
of park to the ground which it was now too late to avoid tak-

28 PUBLIC PARKS AND
ing. A leading citizen suggested that nothing more was neces-
sary than to plough up a strip just within the boundary of the
ground and plant it with young trees, and chiefly with cuttings of
the poplar, which afterwards, as they came to good size, could be
transplanted to the interior, and thus the Park would be furnished
economically and quite well enough for the purposes it would be
required to serve.
Another of distinguished professional reputation seriously urged
through the public press, that the ground should be rented as a
sheep-walk. In going to and from their folds the flocks would be
sure to form trails which would serve the public perfectly well for
foot-paths : nature would in time supply whatever else was essen
tial to form a quite picturesque and perfectly suitable strolling
ground for such as would wish to resort to it.
It was frequently alleged, and with truth, that the use made of
the existing public grounds was such as to develop riotous and
licentious habits. A large park, it was argued, would inevitably
present larger opportunities, and would be likely to exhibit an ag
gravated form of the same tendencies, consequently anything like
refinement of treatment would be entirely wasted..
A few passages from a leading article of the " Herald " news
paper, in the seventh year of the enterprise, will indicate what
estimate its astute editor had then formed of the prevailing con-.
victions ofthe public on the subject : —
" It is all folly to expect in this country to have parks like those in old
aristocratic countries. When we open a public park Sara will air himself
in it. He will take his friends whether from Church Street, or elsewhere.
He will knock down any better dressed man who remonstrates with him.
He will talk and sing, and fill his share of the bench, and flirt-with the
nursery-maids in his own coarse way. Now we ask what chance have
William B. Astor and Edward Everett against this fellow-citizen of
theirs ? Can they and he enjoy the same place ? Is it not obvious that
he will turn them out, and that the great Central Park will be nothing
but a great bear-garden for the lowest denizens of the city, of which we
shall yet pray litanies to be delivered ? "
In the same article it was argued that the effect of the construc
tion of the Park would be unfavorable to the value of property in
its neighborhood, except as, to a limited extent, it might be taken
up by Irish and German liquor dealers as sites for dram-shops and
lager-bier gardens.
There were many eminent citizens, who to my personal knowl
edge, in the sixth, seventh, and eighth year after the passage of
the act, entertained similar views to those I have quoted.

THE ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS. 29
I have been asked if I supposed that " gentlemen " would ever
resort to the Park, or would allow their wives and daughters to
visit it? I heard a renowned lawyer argue that it was preposter
ous to suppose that a police force would do anything toward pre
serving order and decency in any broad piece of ground open to
the general public of New York. And after the work began, I
often heard the conviction expressed that if what was called the
reckless, extravagant, inconsiderate policy of those who had the
making of the Park in charge, could not be arrested, the weight of
taxation and the general disgust which would be aroused among
the wealthy classes would drive them from the city, and thus prove
a serious injury to its prosperity.
" Why," said one, a man whom you all know by reputation, and
many personally, " I should not ask for anything finer in my pri
vate grounds for the use of my own family." To whom it was
replied that possibly grounds might not unwisely be prepared even
more carefully when designed for the use of two hundred thousand
families and their guests, than when designed for the use of one.
The constantly growing conviction that it was a rash and ill-
considered undertaking, and the apprehension that a great deal
would be spent upon it for no good purpose, doubtless had some
thing to do with the choice of men, who in the sixth year were
appointed by the Governor of the State, commissioners to manao-e
the work and the very extraordinary powers given them. At all
events, it so happened that a majority of them were much better
known from their places in the directory of banks, railroads, min
ing, and manufacturing enterprises, than from their previous ser
vices in politics -T and their freedom to follow their own judgment
and will, in respect to all the interior matters of the Park, was
larger than had for a long time been given to any body of men
charged with a public duty of similar importance.
I suppose that few of them knew or cared more about the sub
ject of their duties at the time of their appointment, than most
other active business men. They probably embodied very fairly
the average opinion of the public, as to the way in which it was
desirable that the work should be managed. If, then, it is asked,
how did they come to adopt and resolutely pursue a course so very
different from that which the public opinion seemed to expect of
them, I think that the answer must be found in the fact that
they had not wanted or asked the appointment ; that it was made
absolutely free from any condition or obligation to serve a party, a
faction, or a person ; that owing to the extraordinary powers given

30 PUBLIC PARKS AND
them, their sense of responsibility in the matter was of an uncom
monly simple and direct character, and led them with the trained
skill of business men to go straight to the question : —
" Here is a piece of property put into our hands. By what
policy can we turn it to the best account for our stockholders ? "
It has happened that instead of being turned out about the time
they had got to know something about their special business, these
commissioners have been allowed to remain in office to this time —
a period of twelve years.
As to their method of work, it was as like as possible to that of
a board of directors of a commercial corporation. They quite set
at defiance the ordinary ideas of propriety applied to public ser
vants, by holding their sessions with closed doors, their clerk being
directed merely to supply the newspapers with reports of their acts.
They spent the whole of the first year on questions simply of pol
icy, organization, and plan, doing no practical work, as it was said,
at all.
When the business of construction was taken hold of, they re
fused to occupy themselves personally with questions of the class
which in New York usually take up nine tenths of the time and
mind of all public servants, who have it in their power to arrange
contracts and determine appointments, promotions, and discharges.
All of these they turned over to the heads of the executive opera
tions. Now, when these deviations from usage were conjoined with the
adoption of a policy of construction for which the public was
entirely unprepared, and to which the largest tax-payers of the
city were strono-ly opposed, when also those who had a variety of
-private axes to grind, found themselves and their influence, and
their friends' influence, made nothing of by the commissioners, you
may be sure that public opinion was manufactured against them at
a great rate. The Mayor denounced them in his messages ; the
Common Council and other departments of the city government
refused to cooperate with them, and were frequently induced to
put obstructions in their way ; they were threatened with im
peachment and indictment ; some of the city newspapers attacked
them for a time in every issue ; they were caricatured and lam
pooned ; their session was once broken up by a mob, their business
was five times examined (once or twice at great expense, lawyers,
accountants, engineers, and other experts being employed for the
purpose) by legislative investigating committees. Thus for a time
public opinion, through nearly all the channels open to it, apparently
set ao-ainst them like a torrent.

THE ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS. 81
No men less strong, and no men less confident in their strength
than these men — by virtue in part of personal character, in part of
the extraordinary powers vested in them by the legislature, and in
part by the accident of certain anomalous political circumstances
— happened to be, could have carried through a policy and a
method which commanded so little immediate public favor. As it
was, nothing but personal character, the common impression that
after all they were honest, saved them. By barely a sabre's length
they kept ahead of their pursuers, and of this you may still see
evidence here and there in the park, chiefly where something left
to stop a gap for the time being has been suffered to produce last
ing defects. At one time nearly four thousand laborers were em
ployed ; and for a year at one point, work went on night and day
in order to put it as quickly as possible beyond the reach of those
who were bent on stopping it. Necessarily, under such circum
stances, the rule obtains : " Look out for the main chance ; we
may save the horses, we must save the guns ; " and if now you
do not find everything in perfect parade order, the guns, at all
events, were saved.
To fully understand the significance of the result so far, it
must be considered that the Park is to this day, at some points, in
complete ; that from the centre of population to the midst of the
Park the distance is still four miles ; that there is no steam transit ;
that other means of communication are indirect and excessively
uncomfortable, or too expensive. For practical every-day purposes
to the great mass of the people, the Park might as well be a hun
dred miles away. There are hundreds of thousands who have
never seen it, more hundreds of thousands who have seen it only
on a Sunday or holiday. The children of the city to whom it
should be of the greatest use, can only get to it on holidays or in
vacations, and then must pay car-fare both ways.
It must be remembered, also, that the Park is not planned for
such use as is now made of it, but with regard to the future use,
when it will be in the centre of a population of two millions hemmed
in by water at a short distance on all sides ; and that much of the
work done upon it is, for this reason, as yet quite barren of re
sults. The question of the relative value of what is called off-hand
common sense, and of special, deliberate, business-like study, must
be settled in the case of the Central Park, by a comparison of ben
efit with cost. During the last four years over thirty million visits
have been made to the Park by actual count, and many have passed

32 PUBLIC PARKS AND
uncounted. From fifty to eighty thousand persons on foot, thirty
thousand in carriages, and four to five thousand on horseback, have
often entered it in a day.
Among the frequent visitors, I have found all those who, a few
years ago, believed it impossible that there should ever be a park
in this republican country, — and especially in New York of all
places in this country, — which would be a suitable place of resort
for " gentlemen." They, their wives and daughters, frequent the
Park more than they do the opera or the church.
There are many men of wealth who resort to the Park habit
ually and regularly, as much so as business men to their places of
business. Of course, there is a reason for it, and a reason based
upon their experience.
As to the effect on public health, there is no question that it is
already great. The testimony of the older physicians of the city
will be found unanimous on this point. Says one : " Where I for-
jnerly ordered patients of a certain -class to give up their business
altogether and go out of town, I now often advise simply modera
tion, and prescribe a ride in the Park before going to their offices,
and again a drive with their families before dinner. By simply
adopting this course as a habit, men who have been breaking
down frequently recover tone rapidly, and are able to retain an
active and controlling influence in an important business, from
which they would have otherwise been forced to retire. I direct
school-girls, under certain circumstances, to be taken wholly, or in
part, from their studies, and sent to spend several hours a day
rambling on foot in the Park."
The lives of women and children too poor to be sent to the
country, can now be saved in thousands of instances, by making
them go to the Park. During a hot day in July last, I counted at
one time in the Park eighteen separate groups, consisting of moth
ers with their children, most of whom were under school-age,
takino- picnic dinners which they had brought from home with
them. The practice is increasing under medical advice, especially
when summer complaint is rife.
The much greater rapidity with which patients convalesce, and
may be returned with safety to their ordinary occupations after
severe illness, when they can be sent to the Park for a few hours a
day is beginning to be understood. The addition thus made to
the productive labor of the city is not unimportant.
The Park, moreover, has had a very marked effect in making the
city attractive to visitors, and in thus increasing its trade, and caus-

THE ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS. 33
ing many who have made fortunes elsewhere to take up their resi
dence and become tax-payers in it, — a much greater effect in this
way, beyond all question, than all the colleges, schools, libraries,
museums, and art-galleries which the city possesses. It has also in
duced many foreigners who have grown rich in the country, and
who would otherwise have gone to Europe to enjoy their wealth,
to settle permanently in the city.
And what has become of the great Bugaboo ? This is what the
" Herald " of later date answers : —
" When one is inclined to despair of the country, let him go to the
Central Park on a Saturday, and spend a few hours there in looking at
the people, not at those who come in gorgeous carriages, but at those who
arrive on foot, or in those exceedingly democratic conveyances, the street
cars ; and if, when the sun begins to sink behind the trees, he doe3 not
arise and go homeward with a happy swelling heart," and so on, the effu
sion winding up thus : " We regret to say that the more brilliant becomes
the display of vehicles and toilettes, tbe more shameful is the display of
bad manners on the part of the  extremely tine-looking people who
ride in carriages and wear the fine dresses. We must add that the pedes
trians always behave well."
Here we touch a fact of more value to social science than any
other in the history of the Park ; but to fully set it before you would
take an evening by itself. The difficulty of preventing ruffianism
and disorder in a park to be frequented indiscriminately by such a
population as that of New York, was from the first regarded as the
greatest of all those which the commission had to meet, and the
means of overcoming it cost more study than all other thino-s.
It is, perhaps, too soon to judge of _the value of the expedients
resorted to, but there are as yet a great many parents who are will
ing to trust their school-girl daughters to ramble without special
protection in the Park, as they would almost nowhere else in New
York. One is no more likely to see ruffianism or indecencies in
the Park than in the churches, and the arrests for offenses of all
classes, including the most venial, which arise simply from the
ignorance of country people, have amounted to but twenty in the
million of the number of visitors, and of these, an exceedingly
small proportion have been of that class which was so confidently
expected to take possession of the Park and make it a place unsafe
and unfit for decent people.
There is a good deal of delicate work on the Park, some of it
placed there by private liberality — much that a girl with a parasol.

34 PUBLIC PARKS AND
or a boy throwing a pebble, could render valueless in a minute
Except in one or two cases where the ruling policy ofthe manage
ment has been departed from, — cases which prove the rule, — not
the slightest injury from wantonness, carelessness, or ruffianism ha3
occurred. Jeremy Bentham, in treating of " The Means of Preventing
Crimes," remarks that any innocent amusement that the human
heart can invent is useful under a double point of view : first, for
the pleasure itself which results from it ; second, from its tendency
to weaken the dangerous inclinations which man derives from his
nature. No one who has closely observed the conduct of the people who
visit the Park, can doubt that it exercises a distinctly harmonizing
and refining influence upon the most unfortunate and most law
less classes of the city, — an influence favorable to courtesy, self-
control, and temperance.
At three or four points in the midst of the Park, beer, wine, and
cider are sold with other refreshments to visitors, not at bars, but
served at tables where men sit in company with women. What
ever harm may have resulted, it has apparently had the good
effect of preventing the establishment of drinking-places on the
borders of the Park, these not having increased in number since
it was opened, as it was originally supposed they would.
I have never seen or heard of a man or woman the worse for
liquor taken at the Park, except in a few instances where visitors
had brought it with them, and in which it had been drank secretly
and unsocially. The present arrangements for refreshments I
should say are makeshift and most discordant with the design.
Every Sunday in summer from thirty to forty thousand persons,
on an average, enter the Park on foot, the number on a very fine
day being sometimes nearly a hundred thousand. While most of
the o-roo--shops of the city were effectually closed by the police
under the Excise Law on Sunday, the number of visitors to the
Park was considerably larger .than before. There was no similar
increase at the churches.
Shortly after the Park first :became attractive, and before any-
serious attempt was made to interfere with the Sunday liquor trade,
the bead-keeper told me that he saw among the visitors the propri
etor of one of the largest "saloons ",in the city. He accosted him
and expressed some surprise ; the man replied, "I came to se<_ what
the devil you'd got here that took off so many of my Sunday cus
tomers."

THE ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS. 35
I believe it may be justly inferred that the Park stands in com
petition with grog-shops and worse places, and not with the churches
and Sunday-schools.
Land immediately about the Park, the frontage on it being seven
miles in length, instead of taking the course anticipated by those
opposed to the policy of the Commission, has advanced in value at
the rate of two hundred per cent, per annum.
The cost of forming the Park, owing to the necessity of over
coming the special difficulties of the locality by extraordinary ex
pedients, has been very great (35,000,000) ; but the interest on
it would even now be fully met by a toll of three cents on visitors
coming on foot, and six cents on all others ; and it should be re
membered that nearly every visitor in coming from a distance vol
untarily pays much more than this for the privilege.
It is universally admitted, however, that the cost, including that
of the original off-hand common-sense blunders, has been long
since much more than compensated by the additional capital drawn
to the city through the influence of the Park.
A few facts will show you what the change in public opinion has
been. When the Commissioners began their work, six hundred
acres of ground was thought by many of the friends of the enter
prise to be too much, by none too little for all park purposes. Since
the Park has come into use, the amount of land laid out and re
served for parks in the two principal cities on the bay of New
York, has been increased to more than three times that amount,
the total reserve for parks alone now being about two thousand
acres, and the public demand is now for more, not less. Twelve
years ago there was almost no pleasure-driving in New York.
There are now, at least, ten thousand horses kept for pleasure-.
driving. Twelve -years ago there were no roadways adapted to
hght carriages. There are now fourteen miles of rural drive
within the parks complete and in use, and often crowded, and
ground has been reserved in the two cities and their suburbs for
fifty miles of park-ways, averaging, with their planted borders and
inter-spaces, at least one hundred and fifty feet wide.1
The land-owners had been trying for years to agree upon a new
plan of roads for the upper part of Manhattan Island. A special
commission of their own number had been appointed at their solic
itation, but had utterly failed to harmonize conflicting interests. A
1 The completion of a few miles of these will much relieve the drives of the park, which,
on many accounts, should never be wider than ordinary public requirements imperatively
demand.

36 PUBLIC PARKS AND THE ENLARGEMENT OF TOWNS.
year or two after the Park was opened, they went again to the
Legislature and asked that the work might be put upon the Park
Commissioners, which was done, giving them absolute control of
the matter, and under them it has been arranged in a manner,
which appears to be generally satisfactory, and has caused an enor
mous advance of the property of all those interested.
At the petition of the people of the adjoining counties, the field
of the Commissioners' operations has been extended over their ter
ritory, and their scheme of trunk-ways for pleasure-driving, riding,
and walking has thus already been carried far out into what are
still perfectly rural districts.
On the west side of the harbor there are other commissioners
forming plans for extending a similar system thirty or forty miles
back into the country, and the Legislature of New Jersey has a
bill before it for laying out another park of seven hundred acres.
I could enforce the chief lesson of this history from other ex
amples at home and abroad. I could show you that where parks
have been laid out and managed in a temporary, off-hand, common-
sense way, it has proved a penny-wise pound-foolish way, injurious
to the property in their neighborhood. I could show you more
particularly how the experience of New York, on the other hand.
has been repeated over the river in Brooklyn.
But I have already held you too long. I hope that I have fully
satisfied you that this problem of public recreation grounds is one
which, from its necessary relation to the larger problem of the
future growth of your honored city, should at once be made a
subject of responsibility of a very definite, very exacting, and, con
sequently, very generous character. In no other way can it be
adequately dealt with.

CONTEXTS OF THE SECOND PART
OF THE
JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE.
1870.
8vo, paper, $1.50.
Copies may be obtained from Messrs. Leypoldt §• Holt, New York, or at tlie Office of
the Association, 13 Pemberton Sfjuare, Boston.

Curkf.nt Record of the Association.
I. Immigration, Friedrich Kapp.
II. The American Census, James A. Garfield.
III. The Mode of Procedure in Cases of Contested
Elections, Henry L. Dawes.
IV. The Public Charities op the State of New York,
Theodore W. Dwight.
V. The Public Libraries of the United States, Ainsworth
R. SpofTord.
-VI. The Science of Transportation, Joseph D. Potts.
VII. Vaccination. A Report presented by Francis Bacon, Wil
liam A. Hammond, and David F. Lincoln.
VIII. The Election of Presidents, Charles Francis Adams, Jr.
IX. Life Insurance, Sheppard Romans.
X. The Administration of Criminal Justice, George C.
Barrett.
XI. Health Laws and their Administration, Elisha Harris.
XIL An International Code, D. D. Field.
XIII. General Intelligence.
1. Home. — Social Reform Movements in tho United States.
— Art in Education. — Progress in Higher Education. —
International Congress on Criminal Law Reform and
Penitentiary and Reformatory Discipline. — A National
Collegiate and Musical Conservatory for tlie Blind. — Rail
way Commissions. — State Charities. — Deaf-Mute In-
- struction. — State Boards of Health. — Hospitals for the
Insane. — Prison Reform. — Statistics of Libraries in the
United States. — Railroad Libraries.
2. Foreign. — Annual Meeting of the British Association
for the Promotion of Social Science. — Reforms in Popular
- Education in Europe. — British Mining Legislation. —
"Congress of British Trades-Unions. — Statistics of People's
Banks of Germany. — The National Association of Ger
man Economists. — Programme of the Frederick William
University at Berlin.
XTV. Constitution.
XV. List of New Members.
XVI. List of Works relating to Social Science published
in 1369.

AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION.

The American Social Science Association was organized i;
the fall of 1865, after the model of the British Association for the Pro
motion of Social Science. The objects of the Association are : —
To aid the development of Social Science, and to guide the publi
miud to the best practical means of promoting the Amendment ol
Laws, the Advancement of Education, the Prevention and Repressioi
of Crime, the Reformation of Criminals, the Furtherance of Publi
Morality, the Adoption of Sanitary Regulations, and the Diffusioi
of Sound Principles on Questions of Economy, Trade, and Finance.
To bring together the various societies and individuals now inter'
ested in these objects, for the purpose of obtaining, by discussion, tin
real elements of Truth, by which doubts are removed, conflicting opiu
ions harmonized, and a common ground afforded for treating wisely the
social problems of our times.
The labors of the Association are carried on in four Departments : —
I. Education.
. II. Public Health.
III. Economy, Trade, and Finance.
IV. Jurisprudence and the Amendment of Laws. L
Each Department is under the direction of professionally qualifier"1
members. General Meetings, at whicli papers, bearing upon all Departments.
will be read, as well as Special Meetings, relating to the separate
Departments, are held regularly in different parts of the country. The
information elicited at these meetings is published, and acted upon, as
far as practicable, by intervention with Executive, Legislative, ami
Municipal Authorities, Boards of Education, Health, and Charity, etc..
etc. The Science of Society stands, from its very nature, more than any
other, in need of associated labor. Its aim being the promotion of
human welfare by ascertaining the natural laws, whose application will
insure the greatest human happiness, reflecting men and women must
be brought together for a regular exchange of thought and information.
In order to facilitate this commerce of minds, a Central Bureau has
been opened in Boston, and a salaried officer placed in charge of it.
w"ho"is nivino- his whole time and attention to the work of the Associa
tion. r
The experience of five years has fully convinced the members ot
the A-ociation that it was not instituted a moment too soon in this
preeminently progressive country, whose very intense vitality and rapid
development call for safe guidance by Right and Truth It is this firm
conviction that leads us to ask anew the cooperation of all engaged m
Law, Medicine, Education, Commerce, and Finance, and of the friends
of human progress in general.
The Annual Subscription is Five Dollars. All the publications ot
the Association.including the "Journal of Social Science," are furnished
oratuitou=ly to members.
Letters should be addressed to the Office of the Association, \o
Pemberton Square, Boston.
HENEY VlLLAZD;Secretar,j. SAMUEL ELIOT, President.

Missing Page

Missing Page