Parks for the People / Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876

by Various

The carrying of little children who are pinched by cholera-infantum, or spotted by scarlet-fever, or of those who are paralyzed by diphtheria, or distorted by scrofula, or emaciated by consumption, for a few hours a day into the pure air and bright sunlight of an open square, has saved many a life. Many a needless death has occurred, because the city afforded no such opportunity for escape. A few hours' exposure of a child on a mother's lap, or in a basket or carriage, to the freshness of a park, will produce a sleep that never follows opium, chloral, or ether, and will yield a chance for health that no drug can give. For the last few years, Philadelphia has shown a diminished death-rate. Dr. William Pepper, who has lately investigated the sanitary condition of that city, commenting upon the gratifying fact just stated, says, "While thus showing an average rate of mortality more favorable than that found in any other city containing over 500,000 inhabitants, Philadelphia has recently (1874) attained a degree of healthfulness almost unparalleled; namely, with a population at that time of 775,000, the number of deaths was but 14,966, giving a death-rate of only 19.3 per thousand. These very favorable results are largely due to the abundant and cheap water-supply, and to the opportunities given, even to the poorest citizens, for the enjoyment of pure country air in the great Fairmount Park, which contains 2,991 acres. The extent to which this is valued by the citizens may be inferred from the fact, that, during the year 1875, the park was visited by over eleven million persons." There is no reason why a park in Boston should not yield as good a sanitary result as one in Philadelphia.

While looking at the sanitary aspects of this subject, let us not forget that a park laid out in accordance with the plan of the Park Commissioners will utilize localities that would otherwise become plague-spots, and nurseries of disease. The low lands along the banks of Charles River, portions of the Back Bay, and other sections that might be mentioned, are sure to become unhealthy localities,—stations for distributing the germs of disease throughout their neighborhood and at a distance from them,—unless they are reserved, and left unoccupied. The most extravagant way of disposing of such localities is for the city to permit them to be built over, "improved" is the phrase, I believe, and then suffer the consequences, in the way of increase of disease and taxes, which follow such sort of improvements.

Let us now pass from the sanitary to the educational aspect of our subject. The educational value of a park to the community of a large city is second only to its sanitary value. We are too apt to think that education is the exclusive function of the school, and that books and school-teachers are the only educators. This is a grievous mistake. The education of the home and street, of the workshop and store, of the church and theatre, of the base-ball club and the evening party, of the rum-shop and dance-hall, and of the numerous other influences of a great city, is more potent than that of the school. The evil of all evil agencies is intensified, and the good of the good ones diminished, by uncleanness and impure air. Clean hands and a pure heart go together. Foul air prompts to vice, and oxygen to virtue, as surely as sunlight paints the flowers, and ripens the fruits, of our gardens. The tired workman, who, after a day's labor, needs the repose and relaxation of home, is apt to be driven from it by the close atmosphere of the street and house in which he lives. He would, if he could, get into the fresh air of the country; but, as he cannot do this, he seeks the relief which drink or other excitement yields. If there were a park accessible to him, he with his family would seek it as instinctively as a plant stretches towards the light. The varied opportunities of a park would educate him and his family into the enjoyment of innocent amusements and open-air pleasures. Deprived of these, he and his are educated into the ways of disease and vice by the character of their surroundings. Who that has watched the groups of families, neighbors, and friends, that bivouac by hundreds and thousands on the parks which cluster around, adorn, and invigorate the great cities of Europe, can have failed to notice the innocent amusements and enjoyment of these crowds of young and old, or to be impressed with the fact that the influence of the natural scenes around them, of the trees and plants and flowers, of the pure air and bright skies, is a humanizing and elevating one? It is difficult to compute the value of such an influence in dollars and cents, or to measure it by any scale that the market acknowledges; but it is, nevertheless, a real, substantial, and potent one. If our large cities are the pride and boast of the republic, they also contain the greatest elements of danger to the state and the nation. Ignorance and vice, disease and crime, crowd themselves into cities. There they find their best hiding-places, their surest protection, and their most defenceless victims. It makes one tremble to think of the thousands of youth in our cities whom the school and the church do not reach, and who are moulded by these influences into the worst and lowest forms of humanity. They can not and will not go out into the country themselves, except upon some errand of violence and crime. The city should therefore bring the country to them, and give them a chance, at least, to experience its humanizing and blessed influence.

A park, or a series of parks, with its trees and running waters, its grass and plants and flowers, its variegated surface and changing views, and all the beauty with which such scenes are flooded, supplements the labor of the church and school in educating, refining, and elevating the community. There will be less gambling, drinking, and quarrelling in Boston, when the mass of its inhabitants shall be allowed to partake of the blessing and beauty of a public park.

These considerations naturally bring us to the third point which has been mentioned, viz., the economic aspect of the matter. Few will deny the truth of the above statements; but the admission of their truth is apt to be coupled with the reply, "The park will cost so much, we cannot afford it." It is true that it will cost a good deal, but not so much to each household as the inevitable cost of the sickness, vice, and death, which the opportunities that a park provides would prevent. Are human life and health and virtue so cheap, that we can afford to count the cost of procuring and maintaining them? Are vice, crime, and disease so unimportant, that we can afford to let them thrive, and propagate themselves indefinitely? We cannot repeat too often, or ponder too seriously, the statement made in the first report of the Park Commissioners: "Nothing is so costly as sickness and disease: nothing so cheap as health. Whatever promotes the former is the worst sort of extravagance: whatever fosters the latter is the truest economy." The truth is, it will cost the city of Boston more to get on without a park than to incur the expense of buying and taking care of one. We pay at present an enormous sum yearly for the maintenance of hospitals, prisons, jails, and workhouses. It is not asserted that the establishment of a park will depopulate these institutions, or render them unnecessary; but no sanitarian will deny that one result, and a most important one, of the establishment of a park, would be to diminish the number of those who are compelled to resort to these institutions. A greater economy than all this would be found to accrue to each household in the increased comfort, diminished sickness, more vigorous health, and ample enjoyment, that would be added to all its members.

Boston has been long and justly celebrated for its health, beauty, and wealth. If it loses the two first of these distinctions, how long will it retain the last? Business and population will turn away from an unhealthy and unattractive town. Defective sewerage and imperfect drainage are sapping the health; and the occupation of the suburbs by houses, manufactories, workshops, and stores, is destroying the beauty of the city. Will the merchants of Boston, whose reputation for intelligence, sagacity, and enterprise has gone out to the ends of the world, permit a false economy to blind them to the importance of this whole matter?

Of the details of the financial question, I am not qualified to speak; but I will venture a single remark. It seems only a piece of common sense to one unfamiliar with the intricate problems of finance to say, that, if the present time is one of great depression of values, it is precisely the time when a wealthy corporation like the city of Boston can purchase the land for a park at the lowest price, and therefore should do it.

Permit me to add a single word with regard to the plan proposed by the Commissioners. It offers more advantages, and fewer disadvantages, than any other that has been proposed. This might be expected, when we reflect that it was prepared in accordance with the advice of Mr. Olmstead, than whom no one is better qualified to advise in such matters. It may be safely asserted, that if Boston should accept this plan, and authorize it to be carried out, the city would possess a park unique in its character, of unrivalled beauty, and one which all our citizens, young and old, rich and poor, would greatly enjoy, and of which, if they once obtained it, they would never be bribed to dispossess themselves.

The Rev. Dr. Ellis, in his recent eloquent address at the centennial anniversary of the evacuation of Boston, used the following language, "As I read the history of our fathers in all their generations, their toil and virtue seem to me to have been the noblest, in their steady regard for the welfare and happiness of their posterity. And as I firmly believe that no single individual can follow the highest pattern of an earthly life, unless his hope and faith link on to a future, so I find it proved in all biographies and annals, that all unselfish, noble, and heroic lives are those which parents lead for their children and their children's children. We have such lives among us in city, state, and nation, private and public, high and humble." May we be true to the reputation and tradition of our fathers, and provide as intelligently for the well-being of ourselves and our posterity as they provided for themselves and for us!