Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

At present the park commissioners are men, although the constituency they serve is largely one of women and children. Were the women represented on every park board—which is an impossibility until there is at least some measure of consolidation—the needs of the women and children using the parks would be more closely studied, the value of the parks in ways now overlooked would be emphasized, and the playgrounds would return to the public a larger dividend than heretofore on the public’s expenditure.

As it is hardly practicable to get the voters’ consent in every park district before merging them—as Attorney General Lucey says must be done—the advocates of consolidation are pinning their hopes to the proposal for a constitutional convention. This convention would result in a wholesale unification of Chicago’s present chaotic welter of nineteen separate governments, and the various park boards, thirteen out of the nineteen of those unrelated governing and taxing bodies, would undoubtedly be welded without any legal trouble arising.

And then the women of the city will have their chance to put efficiency into the Chicago parks.

Municipal Art

To descend to particulars and localities, we may first record that women are becoming concerned about the transit approaches to cities and about the hideous stations which are all too frequently to be found in our towns, villages, and cities. The first approach to a city or village is of supreme importance in the feeling that residents, if they ever leave their home town and return, or visitors have about the place. The railway station therefore assumes a rôle that is by no means insignificant. A most capable railroad station improver is Mrs. Annette McCrae, of the American Civic Association, who has worked for the Chicago and Northwestern. A story illustrating her point of view is told by Mr. McFarland in The American City:

“I remember that ... Mrs. McCrea ... discussed with the president of one of the eastern railroads the crude, glaring and unreasonably ugly manner in which his stations were painted. He listened with reasonable impatience, because Mrs. McCrea is a lady, and finally burst out with, ‘After all, Mrs. McCrea, it is a question of taste, isn’t it?’ To this, quick as a flash, Mrs. McCrea replied: ‘Yes, Mr. President; it is a question of taste—of good taste or of bad taste!’ After this the discussion languished, for there was no defense left to the apologist for mixing orange and brown before the eyes of the defenseless millions who had to use his steel highway.” Mrs. McCrae’s work is the result of a recognized demand on the part of the people, and of women as an aggressive element among the people, for attractive and inviting front and back doors to their urban dwellings.

Every section of the country has felt the urge of the request for attractive stations. In some sections, railroad companies have been induced to assume the responsibility for the improvement and in new sections railroads are glad to build attractive stations and beautify the grounds to draw residents. In other sections, railroads have been the greatest foe to station improvement and have absolutely prevented beautification of buildings and the grounds through their ownership of the surrounding area. Sometimes benevolently minded individuals and organizations have themselves financed or have aided in the building and beautification of the railway approach. Again where the villagers were rich colonists or the size of the center required rebuilding frequently, as in New York, a suitable station has resulted through the adaptation of the company to the environment.

Billboards were among the first items on the programs of the women’s clubs of the country as an evil to be attacked. A campaign for cleaner billboards in St. Paul, Minnesota, is thus described by Mrs. Backus:

It is impossible to be a teacher without realizing the tremendous influence upon the young of the books they read, the pictures they see and the plays they hear.

Miss Caroline Fairchild, a public school teacher of St. Paul, knowing this psychological truth, was very much impressed with the influence of poverty of thought and flabby morals exerted by the penny parlors, cheap “shows,” and by the billboards with their fierce men throttling shrinking girls or stabbing to the heart a hated rival.