The Women’s League for Good Government of Philadelphia in its educational campaign has given a series of illustrated lectures urging public support of such municipal improvements as have already been obtained in that city and suggesting others that are needed.
About $11,000 has been raised for an art gallery by the Woman’s Club of Des Moines, Iowa. The balance of the necessary $25,000 for the building will probably be secured by an extension of the present system of selling bonds.
Every new town in the state of Idaho is being laid out with a civic center around a city park or square, and every club is working for a city park, and planting trees, shrubs and flowers in public places. Nearly every club specializes in city sanitation and pure food.
Mrs. E. R. Michaux of the North Carolina Federation of Clubs has urged all the clubs in that state to work for municipal art commissions in the various towns and make their approval necessary before any public buildings, statues, etc., can be erected or streets laid off. Elsewhere women have secured such commissions and in many cities they are now serving on them.
The Municipal Order League of Chicago, a women’s society, has for its object the education of the people to the point of insisting upon health, cleanliness and beauty for the city of Chicago.
Many of the clubs of the various states have forestry committees whose object is to work both for the conservation of forest lands in the state and to secure local foresters and tree planting commissions. They have been responsible in numerous cities for the installation of a municipal forester and have been his main support in his proposals for shade trees and shrubs and their proper care. Arboriculture for decorative purposes has always been an interest of theirs in their own home plots and now they have extended it to the decoration of their municipal homes. They have also been largely instrumental in securing the general observance of Arbor Day by schools and outside agencies.
The State Federation of Club Women of California worked faithfully for forestry and Big Tree bills, cleaned up vacant yards, removed unsightly poles from streets, secured the care and beautification of the ocean front, secured the retention of street flower markets, the purchase and preservation of Telegraph Hill and of the Calaveras Big Tree Grove, the parking of the grounds and street about the Mission Dolores, and planted vines and trees on the barren slopes belonging to the Federal Government at Yerba Buena Island. In San Francisco they worked against the overhead trolley system which is so derogatory to the appearance of a city.
Throughout the South the work of civic improvement is being taken hold of by women with energy and idealism and practical sense. Parks and gardens that dot the states everywhere now testify to the labor and enthusiasm of women as well as of men.
The Civic Club of Nowata, Oklahoma, secured a twenty-acre park which now has 1,000 trees growing on it; in Shawnee, Oklahoma, the park in the center of the city was laid out by a landscape artist employed by women who also offered cash prizes for the best lawns and alleys in the city.
The Palmetto Club of Daytona, Florida, raised $75,000 for a public park.