REPORT OF THE AMERICAN CIVIC ASSOCIATION
I have already had the honor of presenting some statement of Rhode Island's interest in the Conservation movement, and of the ways in which she proposes to demonstrate it. But I also bear messages from the American Civic Association and other organizations. Perhaps one might think, on first consideration, that there was nothing very closely related, or perhaps related at all, in the purposes of the Conservation Commission of the State of Rhode Island and those of the American Civic Association, the Providence Board of Trade, the Metropolitan Park Commission of Providence Plantations, the Atlantic Deeper Waterways Association, and the Rhode Island Chapter of the American Institute of Architects; yet I bring you greetings from all of these. I want to tell you that they are all working with all the enthusiasm there is in them for some phase or other of the mighty movement for Conservation.
Some people have said—half contemptuously perhaps (I am afraid so)—that Conservation is made to cover about every kind of a movement there is on this great footstool, but perhaps the statement is about true so far as these movements are concerned with the preservation and development of any of the great assets of nature or artificial achievements of man that are necessary or useful to the well-being of our own or future generations. Whether we are considering the forests upon the mountain sides that control the floods and affect the farms and the water-powers and the navigable streams below, or are thinking how to plan and lay out and construct our towns and cities so that they shall most worthily and efficiently fulfill their two great purposes as places (1) to live happily in and (2) to work most successfully in, we find their principles overlapping and leading from one end of the line clear to the other. You cannot separate them, and it is not worth while to try.
The interests of the American Civic Association, of course, are not restricted to any State or section. Its activities are Nation-wide. "For a Better and More Beautiful America" is its motto, and it believes that a more beautiful America is bound to be a better and more prosperous America. It believes also that the Conservation of beauty means the Conservation of patriotism; and its distinguished president has paraphrased a well-known utterance of Ex-Mayor McClellan to the effect that "The country healthy, the country wealthy, and the country wise, may excite satisfaction, complaisance, and pride: but it is the country beautiful that compels and retains the love of its citizens." It is the love of country that lights and keeps glowing the holy fire of patriotism, and this love is excited primarily by the beauty of the country and the environments of the citizens.
The American Institute of Architects believes that when a thing is most usefully done it is most beautifully done. It believes that Conservation deals with two great departments closely related in human endeavor, and that you cannot divorce the necessity of city planning from the development of the resources of nations. A properly planned structure, whether it be of a single building or of a whole city, with all its homes and shops and streets, means the Conservation of the people's efficiency through all the generations that shall ever come to dwell therein. Similarly, the park movement, as we see it scientifically promoted, is almost wholly a measure of Conservation. It is not, as the previous generation believed, primarily to tack on ornate luxuries to the urban fabric, but to preserve the necessary recreation places that would otherwise be obliterated, but without which the race of city-bred dwellers cannot survive. It is to safeguard human efficiency and happiness.
The Atlantic Deeper Waterways Association, whose president, Honorable J. Hampton Moore, has bidden me extend his greetings, calls for things that mean much Conservation of effort. Its project would remove much of the material burden of unnecessary cost. There is Conservation of vast energy and the saving of huge National burdens in the present eastern ambition for the fuller improvement of harbors and development of connecting inland waterways. Let me tell you how the improvement of the harbors related to the handling of at least 80 percent of the $1,500,000,000 worth of all our imports, for this is the proportion that comes into the eastern harbors of the Nation. It relates to the transportation of products of the eastern States worth over $14,000,000,000 a year—of 85 percent of all the cotton that the Nation raises, and 58 percent of all our manufactures; to the 765,000,000 tons of merchandise that has to be transported through these States in which more than 50 percent of all our people dwell, and then transferred in various ways for the equal benefit of the other 50 percent. No item in the cost of our existence is of more importance than that of transportation.
Well, of course, the Board of Trade is interested in all these things, though it looks upon them primarily as they bear upon the up-building of a city. It believes that it is working to assist the logical development of a city of glorious possibilities where certain services to the Nation may best be performed. If there were not sound economic reasons for the up-building of a great city at any given place, it would be foolish and wicked to attempt by artificial means to talk it into being, or try to force it by the hothouse method of overheated air. But if you have the necessary natural assets and opportunities that but await intelligent handling, why here comes the need of Conservation as a vital obligation.
[Signed] Henry A. Barker Delegate