Ageless wisdom
‘Antiques Roadshow” is in Spokane today. Welcome! In honor of the visit, we dusted off an antique editorial. We chose one from May 3, 1910, when The Spokesman-Review editorialized in favor of a $1 million “City Beautiful” bond issue that was used to create new parks in Spokane and upgrade existing ones, including the then-run-down Manito Park. Its greenhouses and glorious gardens came into being, thanks to the 1910 bond. Spokane’s voters learned this week that they may be asked in November to pass a $78.4 million bond to upgrade five city pools, build some new pools and improve parks, too.
Antiques fascinate people; more than 6,000 are expected to attend “Antiques Roadshow.” One reason? The form of a desk or a teapot may change over the years, but the function remains constant. The writing in today’s antique editorial is more ornate than modern writing, but its opinion function remains intact.
When the earl of Chatham, the great commoner who during the revolutionary era was a chief friend of America in England, was pleading with the house of lords for justice to the United States, he ended with the clarion call: “Do it tonight!” Do it before you sleep!”
Opportunity, that so seldom knocks twice at men’s doors, calls to Spokane again: “Do it today! Do it before you forget! Vote for parks and playgrounds, for health and happiness for your children, for the prosperity and beauty of Spokane.”
Every man who has kept in touch with the progress of Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., San Francisco or Seattle knows that every one of these metropolitan cities owes no small part of its prosperity as well as of its attractiveness as a place of residence to its investment in parks.
Chicago 40 years ago spent millions in bonding itself to buy land for parks. Its investment paid for itself in 1890, when one of the arguments that won the Columbian exposition for Chicago was the possession of parks that offered ideal sites for world-fairs. The tens of millions spent on the exposition, the other tens of millions disbursed by visitors, tided Chicago over the panic of 1893-4 with less distress than any other American city suffered. Yet the financial benefit thus secured was due, among other sources, to possessing parks.
Now Chicago, not content with its present system, is extending it enormously. Shall Spokane, the Chicago of the Inland Empire, let itself be outdone by Portland, Seattle or Tacoma? The visitors to the Spokane expositions – the apple exhibition, the dry farming congress and the like – ask why the city neglects its scenic opportunities and ask where is its system of parks.
The possession of such a system is no mere luxury of the rich. It is the indispensable necessity of the poor. It means attracting visitors and new residents whose expenditures enrich all. It means but a slight addition to the city’s debt and the citizen’s tax. It means that greater Spokane which all of us desire.