Various

“ So much for what air alone can do for children. Now, it is not the "nine-day fits" of that hospital in its unventilated condition which kills our poor children in the hot months, but that other disease of infancy, which to name is like sounding a funeral knell in the ears of many a parent. This one malady, more than any other, gives Boston its place on the black list of unhealthy towns. All parents having young children leave the city during the worst part of the sickly season, if they have the means of so doing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Since that time, our city has grown and swelled, and stretched itself north and south, and east and west, striding over one arm of the sea, filling up another, swallowing the neighboring towns one by one, taking two mouthfuls for Roxbury, and one for Dorchester, and one for Charlestown and Brighton together, until it has expanded its population sevenfold, and its area almost seventy times seven, within fifty years. ”

“ Rather, let us ask, Can Boston afford to be less comfortable to live in, less attractive, less healthy, than sister cities? We can afford police, paved streets, light, sewers, scavengers, a fire department, a board of health, and a score of other agencies, not because they give salaries and employment to certain men, but because the public health and safety require it; we can afford schools, maintained at enormous cost, though it may be conceded that we could live without education; we can afford pure water in abundance, be the expense never so great, because we need it ”

“ Our climatic influences are permanent factors, and must always count in the bills of mortality. But there are certain agencies which we can, to a great extent, control. We can and do submit the dwellings of our citizens to inspection and sanitary regulation; we can and shall provide our city with proper drainage; we can and do inspect the food in our market, and condemn it if unfit for use; we can and must secure for our citizens the influences of unroofed and unwalled Nature,—air, light, space for exercise and recreation, the natural birthright of mankind. ”

“ What could be so eloquent as the hollow voice which announces the Boston annual death-rate as being 26.18 against 23.7, that of the great paved nation of London; against 19.3, that of Philadelphia; and approaching that of our two unhealthiest cities, New York and New Orleans? This high death-rate has been shown to be largely due to the excessive mortality among infants and children under five years of age. The most fatal of the diseases which assail them is that destruction which wasteth at noonday, to which our American practitioners give the name of cholera-infantum. ”

“ And in another point of view, we know that the safety of any community and society depends upon the contentment and happiness of all classes of its people.
If there is one class that is ground down, and unhappy, and living under unworthy conditions, they are, of course, immediately a dangerous element. I say that it is a matter of good policy, as a stroke of political economy, to provide for the wants of all classes of people in this way, that they may live contented and happy, and have every thing that is necessary for the health and recreation of their families. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Why, look at the progress which is inevitably made where you get great numbers of human beings together. You must have drainage, you must look to the health of the population, and then you must look to their recreation and their amusements (for they will have them) ; and, if they are not good and creditable and honorable, they will not cease to exist, but they will come before us in the most shameful and unwholesome form. We used to be told, gentlemen, that Boston had natural parks all about her, and she did not need any artificial parks. ”

“ But the mass of the community,—the artisans and work-people, whose necessities compel them to remain within the limits of the city,—their families, children, sick ones and all, have at present no such escape from close and impure air.
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. ”

“ And this, again, is most true as regards those who live in those suburbs, and those whose wealth enables them to pass to and fro in their carriages, and regale their senses with the luxury of what they there find. But what application has this, my friends, to the working-man, to the masses of our population, whose sole idea of the suburbs consists of an hour's rattling drive in a crowded street-car, and an hour's seat by the side of a dusty thoroughfare? ”

“ A fraction, and only a small fraction, of our population, are able to leave the city during the hot months of the year, for the country. When these favored ones reach Nahant, Swampscott, or Newport, or some modest farmhouse, or comfortable dwelling by the side of the many railroads that lead from the foulness of the city to the purity of the country, or of the mountains, how gladly and enthusiastically they speak of their escape from heat, discomfort, and disease, to coolness, comfort, and health! ”

“ Now, some philanthropists, and some political economists, have told us that the government ought always to find employment for everybody; it is the duty of the city to see that everybody has work: but, though I do not advocate any such doctrine as that, I advocate this doctrine,—that whenever the community has any thing it ought to do, and which will employ laborers (and this is a hard time on the laborers) , then is the time that they ought to do it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There being no difference of opinion as to the necessity and utility of parks, and their ultimate payment for their full cost, the only open question is the time to begin. We say that time is now,—now, while thousands of unwillingly idle hands are waiting for work, and money is cheap; cheap, because labor is unemployed. We say to you, gentlemen of the city government, respectfully but earnestly, Act upon this matter now. ”

“ 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? ”

“ We cherish the memory of our fathers, and wish to keep among us, as far as possible, signs of the good old days. This is right and noble; but equally right, and quite as unselfish, is it to think of those who shall come after us. Horace Bushnell was a scholar, and wrote many elaborate works on metaphysics and divinity; but the Bushnell Park of Hartford will probably be that for which coming generations will thank him most. Certainly it will keep his memory fragrant and green forever.
Our good city is justly famous for its hospitals and physicians, as well as its churches and clergymen. ”

“ Yet they are as good citizens, have and feel as deep interest in the growth, prosperity, and progress of our city, as their more fortunate neighbors; and in the name and behalf of the mechanics, the laborers, the great mass of men that build our cities, and whose labor contributes so much to our growth and prosperity, and whose employment is the one thing more than any other needed to-day to inaugurate the beginning of our old-time prosperity, I appeal to our city government to complete the work so opportunely and well begun. ”

“ The present truly great debt of our city, the bulk of which has been created in improvements, made enormously more costly by the failure of city governments in past times to comprehend the wants of a growing metropolis, admonishes you to act now, and secure the advantages the present favorable combination of circumstances offers. We confer on you the power to spend our money for the public good; and we ask you to act now, because we clearly see that delay means largely increased cost for what we must have in the near future. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The question of public parks has been submitted, in all its forms and probable effects, to the ablest, keenest, wisest, of our citizens; and there is but one answer. The answer is, that we need more out-door life than our sedentary race enjoys, and that public grounds, accessible to all, are not only desirable, but necessary to the moral and physical health of our crowded population. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, there are others much more able to speak of the finances of the city government than I am; but we always do find, that, when a thing ought to be done, there is a way of doing it; and we sometimes find, that, when things ought not to be done, there is a way of doing them. I wish to say one word more, before I take my seat, on the report and scheme of these Park Commissioners; and that is its entire equitableness in its attention to localities. It has left no part of the city that is not benefited. Charlestown cannot have a park, because it is built over, and there is no room for one. ”

“ The foul air of the streets will not only envelop those who pass through them, but will penetrate the houses that line them, visiting alike the sick and the well, increasing the danger of disease to the former, and diminishing the health and strength of the latter. In proportion as a city increases in size, large open spaces should be reserved. Parks are the lungs of the city. They are more than this: they are reservoirs of oxygen and fresh air. ”

“ There are men here to-night who have at heart the interests and prosperity of the city of Boston. That is what we are acting for; and I trust that that hundred men will go up to City Hall, and, if the city government will move in the matter, every true man will deem it his duty to stand behind and encourage them. ”

“ Money is cheap; labor is required; parks are wanted; and it is better to keep the men at work, and retain them in the city, than to sustain them and their families at the public cost. It is not like sending out of the country to import something for which we must pay our money. All the money is to be paid to our own citizens; and, unless some show of enterprise is made, we shall lose business-men from this city. They will not stay here, and do nothing, unless the city government makes some show of enterprise. ”

“ 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. ”