Full text of "Planning and civil comment 1939-40"

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1038429

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Planniilo OTii
Civic Comment

Successor to: City Planning, Civic Comment, State Recreation

CONTENTS

Page
Planning Progress in the United States 1

Editorial Comment: Conservation of Scenic Areas in Na-
tional Parks and Forests 5

Who Owns the Scenery? 7

Zoning Round Table: A Court Dissects a Planning Com-
mission 9

For Better Roadsides 11

Town Planning in Nova Scotia 15

Proposed John Muir-Kings Canyon National Park 17

State Park Notes 35

The 19th National Conference on State Parks 38

Institute on Landscape Management 39

National Resources Committee Notes 40

Watch Service Report . . 43

Hearings on the John Muir-Kings Canyon Park 44

The Senate Bill to Make Permanent the National Resources
Board 44

Boston Planning Conference, May 15-17 45

Special Summer Planning Courses to be Repeated 46

Santa Fe Park Conference, October 9-10 46

Book Reviews 47

Recent Publications 47

JANUARY- MARCH 1939

AND
jjGjIVIC COMMENT

Published Quarterly
Successor to: City Planning, Civic Comment, State Recreation

Official Organ of: American Planning and Civic Association,
National Conference on State Parks

SCOPE: National, State, Regional and City Planning; Land and Water Uses;

Conservation oj National Resources; National, State and Local Parks,

Highways and Roadsides.
AIM: To create a better physical environment which will conserve and develop

the health, happiness and culture oj the American people.

EDITORIAL BOARD

HARLEAN JAMES FLAVEL SHURTLEFF CHARLES G. SAUERS

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

FREDERICK J. ADAMS S. HERBERT HARE

HORACE M. ALBRIGHT .. P. J. HOFFMASTER

HARLAND BARTHOLOMEW HENRY V. HUBBARD

EDWARD M. BASSETT JOHN IHLDER

RUSSELL V. BLACK RAYMOND F. LEONARD

PAUL V. BROWN RICHARD LIEBER

STRUTHERS BURT THOMAS H. MACDONALD

HAROLD S. BUTTENHEIM J. HORACE MCFARLAND

ARNO B. CAMMERER HENRY T. MC!NTOSH

DAVID C. CHAPMAN KATHERINE MCNAMARA

MARSHALL N. DANA MARVIN C. NICHOLS

S. R. DEBOER JOHN NOLEN, JR.

EARLE S. DRAPER ISABELLE F. STORY

CHARLES W. ELIOT, 2o L. DEMING TILTON

L. C. GRAY TOM WALLACE
CONRAD L. WIRTH

MANAGING EDITOR

DORA A. PADGETT

$3.00 a Year

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EDITORIAL AND PUBLICATION OFFICE: 901 Union Trust Building, Washington, D. C.
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1038429 Mutt? '41

Planning and Civic Comment

Vol. 5

January-March, 1939

No. 1

Planning Progress in the United States, 1938

By F. A. PITKIN
Executive Director, Pennsylvania State Planning Board

AfY complete appraisal of
trends in planning should
give separate consideration
to planning at each level of govern-
ment, or to planning for each kind
of political or geographical unit
Federal, regional, state, district,
county, city or borough, town or
township, and neighborhood. Dis-
tinction should also be made be-
tween planning by specialized plan-
ning agencies, planning as an inci-
dental part of the operations of
administrative agencies, and plan-
ning by unofficial groups. Still
further distinction probably should
be made between the 45 varying
blends of social planning, economic
planning, physical planning and
information service which we have
been rather loosely calling State
Planning. Since only a few pages
have been provided for this ap-
praisal, I will perforce do some more
of the generalizing that the planning
fraternity should, but does not
always, avoid.

In 1938 American planning pro-
grams have given evidence of having
made a distinct advance in the
direction of practicality. It seems
to be more generally realized that
there is not an infinite time ahead
in which planning by state and
local governmental units may with-

hold, because of professional caution,
political caution, or any other sort
of caution, any contribution that
it is in their power to make to the
pressing problems of today. It may,
indeed, be that "it is later than we
think."

Planning is a relatively new field
and it has rightly been inspired
with an anxious care for accuracy
in its data, all the more because of
the fact that the very first attempts
at physical planning for neighbor-
hoods and for larger units have
revealed how little was known con-
cerning even the most essential
matters with which government
ought to be concerned.

Ten years ago we apparently did
not know, on any dependable basis,
many things of importance about a
large variety of human needs. We
did not know much about popula-
tion growth, or its laws. It was a
common practice to project the
prevailing growth on up to the
zenith, or if inclined to more con-
servative estimates, toward the
North Star, and to use those projec-
tions as our data for planning and
zoning any area, whether of a state
or a minor civil subdivision.

Ten years ago we were also pro-
jecting the American commercial
and industrial growth not only on

Pfdnriirig'dnd Civic Comment

upHoj tiit-elearthfougrr 'the-z'eVwth,
and all econom-kjAftcl social laws
were being repe^iIeSi by common
consent. The planning movement
and much of the zoning activity in
American urban centers originated
and began to develop under the
handicap of such new-era psy-
chology.

In these past ten years, planning
has had to go after facts. It has
had to develop approximate stan-
dards of all sorts. In planning for
our increasingly mobile age it has
had to work out methods of traffic
counting and the application of
traffic information to road dimen-
sion. It has had to learn to estimate
population and industrial changes
on a basis of reality far removed
from anything possible in 1910 or
even in 1920. It has arrived at a
more realistic technique for estimat-
ing the proportion of a commu-
nity's building space which should
be set aside for commercial use.

About these essentials of planning,
and the many other factors not
mentioned, much still remains to
be known. But the important point
is that progress is being made every
year and much of this progress is
due wholly to the planning move-
ment. Though our progress may
seem inconsiderable from year to
year, cumulatively it represents a
very great achievement upon which
dividends can now be collected.

In recent years planning has
proceeded from a period of "expert"
opinion to a more scientific tech-
nique that has accumulated, or is
in process of accumulating, the
essential information as to the
probable needs of States, cities,
counties and towns. It is because

of the sum of this accumulated
knowledge that a new and highly
interesting phase of the planning
movement has now begun.

Those who have been impatient
of Federal, state and local planning
boards, and are inclined to class
their work as impractical or theoret-
ical, have not considered that in
these past years the creation of a
whole new branch of applied science
has had to be undertaken. This new
science has been compelled to digest
into its practice to mention only a
few of its contributing sources the
laws of population movement and
growth, the migrations and changes
of industry, the relation of recreation
to public health, of highway trans-
portation to highway engineering,
the chemistry and geology of agri-
cultural land-use, the physics of
erosion and the bacteriology of
stream pollution. It has had to
weld into a body of practice and
administrative procedure elements
as diverse as the structural strength
of concrete and the need of a tene-
ment child for a sight of green fields.
In the year 1938 the effect of these
efforts is beginning to make itself
clear at last.

The National Resources Com-
mittee, through the effectiveness of
its work, has become more firmly
seated than ever as an essential
part of our governmental structure.
Although not yet established on a
permanent basis, it is not con-
ceivable that such action will be
long delayed by Congress.

There are today active planning
boards in 45 of our States and three
of our territories. The range of
their publications and activities
during 1938 indicates the wide

Planning and Civic Comment

variety of local interests and pres-
sures. It is impossible in so brief
a survey to do more than indicate
a few of the directions that public
planning has taken. Omissions from
this listing must be ascribed to lack
of space, rather than to any failure
to recognize important work.

Many State Planning Boards
have paid particular attention to
the stimulation of local planning
and some have prepared literature
or manuals for the use of local
planning bodies.

Some have attacked the problem
of county consolidation.

Some have given special atten-
tion to the development of rec-
reational possibilities as a source of
well-being and profit.

In several States the importance
of forestry has been stressed and
programs of forest development
suggested.

Roadside improvement has been
emphasized in a number of States.

Tax delinquency, industry, low-
cost housing, land-subdivision con-
trol, rural zoning, agriculture, public
health, public works, population
trends, flood control, public educa-
tion and governmental reorganiza-
tion are some of the subjects on
which many of the State Planning
Boards have been working.

One state board has promoted
pedestrian pathways along main
roads to save human lives, partic-
ularly the lives of children.

Roadside protection, including
control of billboards and other
deleterious developments, has made
real progress in many States, in
most cases through the cooperative
efforts of citizen groups and State
Planning Boards. Especially sig-

nificant in the field of roadside pro-
tection is recognition by California
Courts of esthetic considerations as
legitimate factors in zoning controls.
It will be seen from this very
cursory list of state planning ac-
tivities the extent of the field, and
the value of the accumulated knowl-
edge that 1938 has bequeathed to

1939-

In addition to these activities,
regional planning bodies in New
England, in the Pacific Northwest,
on the Delaware Basin and else-
where (The Baltimore-Washington-
Annapolis Area, the Ohio Valley,
the Great Plains Area and the
Tennessee Valley) have investi-
gated the resources and problems
of the areas with which they are
concerned, have continued the pub-
lication of reports on their findings
and are translating these reports
into action programs.

City planning programs have
been adopted by a number of large
and small communities and a gen-
eral program of zoning revision
seems to have begun to adapt urban
zoning to the changing conditions
of city life and to the new knowledge
accumulated during the past decade.

In many of our States the county
planning movement is gaining in
impetus, and that is particularly
true in regions where unwise ex-
haustion of soil or of forest re-
sources has left behind it a heritage
of submarginal land, and also in
counties involved in the problems
of great metropolitan areas. Such
progress and activity has been
notable in California, Washington,
Wisconsin, Michigan, Connecticut,
New York, New Jersey, Florida,
Georgia and Pennsylvania.

Planning and Civic Comment

Obviously, county planning is as
yet being undertaken mainly as a
result of the pressure of unavoidable
necessity. But in that fact is no
ground for discouragement. Let it
be used so for ten years in those
areas in our country where the
heedlessness of the past has pointed
the most severe lessons to the pres-
ent inhabitants, and planning will
become so essential a part of local
government that its true function
of preventing such unhappy neces-
sities will be readily accepted by all.

Although complete information
is not available, it appears that few,
if any, local planning agencies have
been abolished. Unfortunately, how-
ever, many of the newly estab-
lished planning bodies, as well as
many of our older ones, have re-
ceived appropriations so small that
effective work is virtually impos-
sible. Misguided attempts at gov-
ernmental economy have too often
crippled the one governmental arm
which might have contributed most
toward the attainment of real
governmental economy. This same
observation on budgetary restric-
tion applies with equal force to plan-
ning at the state and Federal levels.

Strengthening of local planning
authority, especially in the field of
subdivision control, has been ef-
fected in some States during 1938.

AP & CA Annual

The Annual Members* Meeting
will be held at the Statler Hotel,
Boston, Mass., on Monday, May
1 5th at 4:30 p. M. at the time of the
National Planning Conference An-
nual Reports by the Executive
Secretary and Counsel; election of
Board Members. At the Annual

Noteworthy is the State of Wash-
ington's new legislation, which re-
quires that real estate developers
prove that their proposed subdi-
visions are necessary from the point
of view of the public's convenience.

Among other States enacting
planning or zoning enabling legis-
lation, or strengthening subdivision
control are Georgia, Kentucky,
Mississippi, New York and Vir-
ginia. Studies of subdivision con-
trol made during 1938 will probably
result in legislative action in other
States during the 1939 legislative
sessions.

All over the United States com-
munities more and more are taking
advantage of the existing laws to
guide their growth and to protect
the interests of their citizens
through planning and zoning.

If progress over a single year may
seem small or painful, one must
again remember that though we in
the field are well aware of the
necessity of planning and zoning,
the idea is still unfamiliar to a very
great number of our citizens and is
frequently confused in their minds
with purely Utopian schemes of
social improvement. The success
of the movement may well depend
on every step now made being
justified through positive results
for the public good.

Members' Meeting

Board Meeting on Jan. 28th, the fol-
lowing officers were elected : Frederic
A. Delano, Chairman of the Board;
Horace M. Albright, Pres. ; Samuel P.
Wetherill, ist V.P.; Richard Lieber,
2nd V. P.; Earle S. Draper, 3rd V. P. ;
O. H. P. Johnson, Treas.; Harlean
James, Executive Secretary.

EDITORIAL COMMENT

Conservation of Scenic Areas in
National Parks and Forests

THERE are pending proposals
to transfer certain lands of
superlative scenic value from
the U. S. Forest Service to the
National Park Service. This is no
reflection on the Forest Service. It
is a simple question of extending the
land-use program to place lands in
the right category. Areas are not
removed from the national forests
where they were included, often, in
blanket transfers from the public
domain, to become national parks,
necessarily because they are threat-
ened with immediate danger. In
many fine scenic areas the Forest
Service has reduced or discontinued
grazing and prohibited or postponed
wholesale cutting. In the redwood
region, it is well known that the
Forest Service preserves all "big
trees."

It is no valid argument against
the proposed John Muir-Kings Can-
yon National Park to say that the
Forest Service is already protecting
the area. If these yosemites and
high mountain crests merit national-
park status, they should be made
national parks as soon as possible.
Most careful students of conserva-
tion deplore roads in such areas as
the South Fork of the Kings River,
described by John Muir in this
issue. But perhaps many people
do not realize that a highway already
has been built by the State of Cali-
fornia through national-forest lands,
well into the canyon and that work

is still proceeding to carry the road
further up the floor of the valley.
A rider on a recent pack-train trip
down the canyon and on the trail
past the famous Lookout Point to
Horse Corral, observed that big
bull-dozers were noisily pushing
their way down the walls of the
canyon to build a forest road. Per-
haps these roads were inevitable in
the present state of public opinion;
but the argument that the Kings
Canyons and surrounding high coun-
try should not become a national
park because the National Park
Service will build too many roads,
will not stand examination, nor will
the argument that the Forest Ser-
vice is already giving adequate pro-
tection to the area from other ad-
verse uses.

No doubt both Services are sub-
ject to heavy pressure for roads and
other economic uses. Many of us
hope that public sentiment will be
mobilized sufficiently to resist un-
justified pressures in both parks
and forests at least that careful
studies will be made in every case
to ascertain whether the damage of
roads will outweigh any promised
advantage, and the public informed
of the facts.

Now that the Olympic National
Park has been established, it is
devoutly to be hoped that the high-
way projected through the former
forest and monument across the
Quinault, through the Enchanted

Planning and Civic Comment

Valley, over Anderson Pass and out by
the Dosewallips will never be built.

A few years ago, the heat was
turned on the Department of the
Interior to improve an old road in
Yellowstone National Park to Cook
City. And there is a modern high-
way today! Now the Idaho legis-
lature is memorializing Congress to
authorize an entirely new highway
through the Southwest corner of
Yellowstone which we have so many
times saved from proposed reser-
voirs. There is already a very good
western entrance by way of West
Yellowstone, but this happens to
lie above the Montana line, and
Idaho claims that it must have its
entrance in the twenty-odd miles
of Yellowstone boundary which
touch that State. The argument is
that it would give Idaho an entrance
of its own, that it would "cut off"
a few miles in reaching Old Faithful
from certain points in Idaho. The
fact that the Southwest corner is
one of the precious wilderness areas
protected in Yellowstone should
command support to preserve this
part of the park from roads. Many
people think there are too many
roads in Yellowstone already.

It is true that national-park

status gives protection from certain
uses permitted in national forests,
but in the matter of road-building
both the Park and Forest Services
need the aid of their conservation
friends to protect their lands from
over-development. Neither Service
is in a position to throw stones at
the other. Both have, on occasion,
been forced by powerful local in-
terests, reflected in Congress, into
building roads not wanted by either.

Our task, in which we hope that
we may be joined by other conser-
vation associations, is to give our
very best support to both of these
Federal agencies for a program to
hold "developed areas" to a mini-
mum and give protection to highly
scenic areas which lose their scenic
qualities when cut up with roads
and over-used in other ways.

In the meantime, lands which
would have been placed in the
National Park System, had there
been an authorized Federal agency
to administer them at the time they
were reserved from the public
domain, should now be added to
the system. This is in line with the
testimony given by Chief Forester
Silcox at the House hearing on the
Gearhart Bill.

Two Important Planning Conferences

The Second Annual Indiana State-
wide Planning Conference was held
at Indiana University, Bloomington,
Indiana, March 15-16, sponsored by
the State Planning Board of Indiana
in cooperation with the Indiana
University. A wide range of plan-
ning subjects was presented and
discussed. On April 27, 28 and 29,

the Fifth Pacific Northwest Regional
Planning Conference will be held
under the sponsorship of the Pacific
Northwest Regional Planning Com-
mission and the Northwest Regional
Council. The major conference
theme will be: Migration and the
Development of Economic Oppor-
tunities in the Pacific Northwest.

Who Owns the Scenery?

Reprinted by special permission of Tie Saturday Evening Post. Copyright 1939,
by The Curtis Publishing Company.

rnpHERE are in the United
States approximately 3,068,92 1

-* miles of highways. This is the
greatest highway system in the
world. All of Europe has only a
couple of hundred thousand more
miles.

Every foot of these 3,068,921
miles of highway belong to us you,
me, and the other fellow. We paid
for these highways, we maintain
them, and we're going to build
some more. We pay, and have paid,
this gigantic but necessary and
profitable bill by means of federal
taxes, state taxes, bond issues,
gasoline taxes, and various other
moneys, all of which come directly
out of our pockets. We not only
own our highways you, I, and the
rest of us but all rights apper-
taining to or created by them.

This has already been decided by
several court decisions, including
the famous decision of the highest
court of Massachusetts, handed
down in 1935.

That decision created some in-
teresting precedents, among them:

i. That the values along a high-
way were so obviously created by
that highway that the rights in
them belong to the highway and the
people who created and use the
highway, and not to the private
property abutting. In other words,
that hot-dog stands, gasoline sta-
tions, signboards, and so on, clearly
had no value in that particular
stretch of country before the high-
way was built.

2. That the scenery of a State
was an asset and belonged to the
people of the State and the country
as a whole.

3. That the people of any com-
munity had a right to zone and
otherwise to regulate the appearance
of that community.

4. That there were visual nui-
sances that came under the same
heading as any other kind of
nuisance.

The last is to be especially noted.
As far as we know, it is the first
decision in English or American law
that definitely protects the sense of
sight in the same way that our
senses of smell, taste, touch and
hearing have long been protected.

The Massachusetts judges, more-
over, remarked upon the growing
trade resistance, the increasing re-
sentment, of the traveling public to
unnecessary ugliness and adver-
tising along our highways, and they
spoke of this sort of advertising,
whether of hot-dog stands, gasoline
stations, local or national adver-
tisers, as constituting a mental
trespass. A symbolical finger was
poked at you, in other words, and
you were forced to read. In all
other advertising you could read or
listen as you willed.

Upon this Massachusetts decision
there followed others, and so the
way is clear for us to repossess in
peace and decency, also profit, our
highway system. To increase at
once its safety by a percentage not
yet known, but certainly a large one.

Planning and Civic Comment

And to demand that wherever,
under careful zoning and other
regulations, our highways are prop-
erly used, we shall be properly
recompensed for such use. Only
inertia prevents us, and for the
past three years has prevented us,
from effecting this necessary clean-
up. The tools are at hand. But all
of us have not been idle. Millions
of men and women all over the
country, scores of organizations,
have been at work. Automobile
associations, tourist bureaus, cham-
bers of commerce, real estate boards,
service clubs, highway councils,
historical associations, garden clubs,
hotel associations, property owners,
public-spirited citizens, highway en-
gineers all have been actively en-
gaged, not to mention those national
advertisers and local business men,
a long and increasing list, patriotic
and far-visioned enough not to
desecrate our scenery and sensible
enough to know that consideration
of the other fellow's rights pays.

Now the fruits of all this work
have suddenly become startlingly
visible. For the first time the ques-
tion has reached a climax, and it is
up to us we, the owners of the
highways to do something about
it.

What can we do?

In most of the coming sessions of
state legislatures, model highway
bills will be presented. If tonight
you will send a post card to your
state representative just one line
the majority of those model bills
will be passed. If you wish to go
further, send another post card to
your highway commission it is on
your side.

Signboards are only one factor of
many. Planting, zoning of buildings,
upkeep of adjacent properties, elim-
ination of automobile graveyards
and junk heaps, of ribbon slums and
unsightliness in general, are of equal
importance.

Last year Americans on pleasure
bent spent about $5,000,000,000.
People who spend that much money
have some right to their scenery.
And it would be sensible to listen to
them.

Safety is the particular factor
stressed by the automobile asso-
ciations and the highway com-
missions. Last year we killed about
37,000 people on our highways and
injured about 1,000,000 more. Let's
put it simply. Suppose, before you
got on a train, you were told that
at unknown intervals all along the
tracks other tracks came in at any
moment, used by other trains that
had stopped off for food, drink, fuel
or other supplies. Suppose, in
addition to this, along your right-of-
way there was every known device
of human ingenuity to blind, dazzle
and distract your engineer. Suppose
the average speed of your train was
fifty miles an hour.

Would you get on that train?
You would not.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The above editorial by Struthers
Burt appeared in the January 14 issue of The
Saturday Evening Post.

Arno B. Cammerer, Director of
the National Park Service, has been
named by the American Scenic and
Historic Preservation Society of
New York to receive the 1938 Cor-
nelius Amory Pugsley Gold Medal
for distinguished service in park
development.

Zoning Round Table

Conducted by EDWARD M. BASSETT
A COURT DISSECTS A PLANNING COMMISSION

AVISORY planning commis-
sions existed numerously in
many States before 1925. In
that year George B. Ford assisted in
Cincinnati and perceived the im-
portance of the Ohio method of re-
quiring more than a majority vote
of the council if the council did not
follow the advice of the planning
commission. This stiffening of the
planning commission was pro-
claimed by Mr. Ford in a paper
read before the City Planning Di-
vision of the American Society of
Civil Engineers in New York City
on January 21, 1926. Cities grad-
ually became convinced that it was
futile to have planning commissions
that could be laughed at and whose
advice could be lightly ignored. If
it were necessary to obtain more
than a majority vote of the council
to disregard the advice of a planning
commission, or even if a report from
the commission were necessary be-
fore action, this requirement in-
creased the dignity of the commis-
sion and helped to give the studied
advice of a planning commission the
importance that it deserved. This
was done without taking away the
legislative power from the council.
It insured, however, the serious
attention of the council before the
advice was disregarded. It was a
method of putting planning com-
missions on the map without im-
pairing the legislative powers of
councils.

In 1926 the Regional Plan of New

York and Its Environs recom-
mended to the state legislature the
establishment of advisory planning
commissions whose advice must be
asked and received before the coun-
cil could act. The Village Law and
the General City Law of the State of
New York were amended in this
respect on April 30, 1926, and one
year later the same provisions were
inserted in the Town Law.

New York City could, if it wished,
resolve to come under the provi-
sions of the permissive General City
Law. Inasmuch as this city had for
several generations been developing
an excellent planning method in
its charter, New York City in this
respect as in many others did not
take advantage of the General City
Law of the State.

On December 15, 1928, the Re-
gional Plan submitted to the city
administration a carefully prepared
"set-up" as a charter amendment
providing, among other things, for
an advisory planning commission
whose advice could only be disre-
garded by the three-fourths vote of
the Board of Estimate. The forms
of charter amendment contained in
this "set-up" were passed by both
houses of the legislature but they
struck a snag in the closing hours
due to the sentiment of legislators
from outlying boroughs of the city
who feared an impairment of bor-
ough autonomy. Many of the words
of this "set-up" are used in the new
charter.

Planning and Civic Comment

New York City had no planning
commission (with the exception of a
short-lived one-man commission)
until after the new charter was
adopted in November, 1936, by a
municipal referendum. The new
charter provided for an advisory
planning commission whose recom-
mendations could not be disre-
garded except by the three-fourths
vote of the Board of Estimate. The
new Planning Commission was ap-
pointed January i, 1938. In the
meantime many municipalities in
New York State had appointed ad-
visory planning commissions whose
advisory reports must be asked for
before the council could adopt or
alter an official map. New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, California and Mas-
sachusetts passed laws providing
for such planning commissions.

The new charter of New York
City is not entirely clear in its
zoning provisions. It says that the
Commission after a hearing can
"adopt" an amendment to the
zoning regulations and report its
resolution to the Board of Estimate.
Unless the Board of Estimate shall
modify or disapprove such resolu-
tion by a three-fourths vote within
thirty days it shall take effect. Is
the legislative act in such case per-
formed by the Commission or by
the Board of Estimate? The cor-
poration counsel appears to think
that it is the Commission, which is
the same as saying that the Com-
mission is a legislative body.

The charter also says that if a
20 percent protest has been pre-
sented, the resolution shall not be
effective unless approved by the
unanimous vote of the Board of
Estimate. Should the protest be

filed with the Board of Estimate or
the Commission? The corporation
counsel favors the Commission.

A controversy involving a change
of map arose in Brooklyn Heights.
The 20 percent protest was filed
with the Board of Estimate after
the Planning Commission had acted
favorably. The vote of the Board
of Estimate was not unanimous as
required by the charter where a
valid 20 percent protest has been
filed. Inasmuch, however, as the
Planning Commission "adopted"
the change and the Board of Esti-
mate did not over-turn this deter-
mination by a three-fourths vote
within thirty days, the corporation
counsel ruled that the zoning change
in Brooklyn Heights had been
lawfully made.

Mr. McCabe, a landowner who
did not like the change, asked the
Supreme Court to declare that the
change of map had not been law-
fully made and was therefore in-
effective. On February 6th of this
year the Supreme Court decided in
favor of Mr. McCabe, ruling that
the Planning Commission is an
advisory body only, that the 20
percent protest was rightly filed
with the Board of Estimate, and
that because the vote of the Board
of Estimate to make the change was
not unanimous the change was not
made (McCabe v. City of N. Y.,
Supreme Court, Kings County,
New York Law Journal, February
7> 1 939> p. 614). In other words, the
court emphasizes the position that
the Planning Commission is an
advisory and not a legislative body.
So far as we know, this is the first
time that the question has arisen in
court.

Planning and Civic Comment

If the New York City Charter
Revision Commission had plainly
said that the non-action of the
Board of Estimate for thirty days
was tantamount to its voting in favor
of the report of the Planning Com-
mission, all would have been well.
Such a statement was omitted. It is
supplied by court interpretation.

If the courts of the various States
should decide that planning com-
missions are legislative bodies, tur-
moil would be sure to follow. The

administration of planning laws
would be made uncertain in several
States. The general rule is that an
appointed board composed of non-
elected officials is not a legislative
body.

The distribution of powers and
duties in the rapidly developing
field of community planning is not
a simple matter. Bill drafters and
legislators cannot exercise too much
care in making their provisions
fundamental, simple and clear.

For Better Roadsides

By FLAVEL SHURTLEFF

In the bulletin entitled ROADSIDE
IMPROVEMENT, published by the
American Planning and Civic Asso-
ciation last December, a program
was offered for improving conditions
along the highway and for prevent-
ing or restricting the use of land
which conflicts with the public's
right of full enjoyment of highway
travel.

Obviously the key to better travel
routes is the land bordering the
highways and the surest way to con-
trol the use of these border strips is
through public ownership. Thus,
true parkways, or roads through
elongated parks like those in West-
chester County, New York, set up a
strip of buffer park land between the
travel lanes and private land. These
park barriers automatically elimi-
nate private frontage which can be
used commercially and regulate al-
most perfectly the right of access to
the parkway from private land. The
policy of acquiring wider rights-of-
way for all kinds of highways is
almost as effective, especially when

coupled with the right to limit access
to the travel lanes from private land.
Both parkways and wider rights-of-
way for commercial highways are
limited by their cost to new routes
through undeveloped or cheap land.
On older routes where the border
land remains in private ownership,
effective control of its use is pos-
sible through state and municipal
regulation.

The three principal recommenda-
tions in the Association's roadside
improvement program are: (i) Out-
door advertising along the highway
should be regulated by the State.
Although such a measure is directed
against only one of the objectionable
uses of highway frontage, it will be
found an expedient first step in
many States. (2) State highway
departments should have the right
to establish existing roads as limited
access highways and to construct
new limited access highways in
suitable locations. (3) Highway pro-
tective areas should be established
in which a state agency should have

Planning and Civic Comment

the authority to define commercial
zones and restrict all kinds of busi-
ness to these zones. The protective
area would consist of all land within
five hundred feet or preferably one
thousand feet from the center of the
highways included in the state high-
way system.

These recommendations were ac-
companied by proposals for legisla-
tion which were to be used only as
the basis of acts in each State de-
pending on the needs, legislative
precedents and state of public
opinion.

Encouraging support for the cam-
paign for better roads has come from
the recent action by the American
Automobile Association, the Ameri-
can Association of State Highway
Officials and by organized citizen
groups in many States. The Ameri-
can Automobile Association, repre-
senting several hundred thousand
motor owners, at its annual conven-
tion in Cleveland last November,
sponsored a law which completely
adopted the principle of a highway
protective area. The Highway Offi-
cials in convention at Dallas in
December, adopted a resolution
which closely follows the three rec-
ommendations contained in ROAD-
SIDE IMPROVEMENT. At least fifteen
of the state legislatures now in ses-
sion will consider legislation based
on these same recommendations. A
brief outline of the proposed legis-
lation follows.
Regulation of Outdoor Advertising:

MAINE. Amending and strength-
ening the present outdoor advertis-
ing law chiefly by increasing both
the license fee on those in the busi-
ness .of outdoor advertising and the
permit fee for each billboard location.

VERMONT. Amending and
strengthening the present outdoor
advertising law.

CONNECTICUT. Amending and
strengthening the present outdoor
advertising law and attempting to
confine outdoor advertising to built-
up business areas by the following
provision:

No advertisements and signs in any
location where, within a quarter of a mile
of such location measured in both direc-
tions from such location along the highway
upon which the location fronts and includ-
ing the buildings on both sides of such
highway, the buildings upon such one mile
of frontage are more than one hundred
feet apart on the average or where fewer
than a majority of such buildings are in
actual use exclusively for business or
industry.

NEW YORK. A bill to regulate
outdoor advertising which provides
among other regulations that a spe-
cial commission may declare any
state highway or portion thereof a
scenic highway along which there
shall be no billboards. Up to this
year all attempts at outdoor adver-
tising regulations have been defeated
by the advertising industry.

NEW JERSEY. Amending the
present outdoor advertising law
chiefly by removing the exemption
from fees now enjoyed by about
fifty percent of the advertising
structures.

ARKANSAS. A bill to regulate out-
door advertising chiefly by imposing
license fees for the privilege and a
permit fee of two cents a square foot
for the space used for advertising.

PENNSYLVANIA. A bill to regulate
outdoor advertising, chiefly through
taxing and the establishment of pro-
hibited areas.

TEXAS. A bill to regulate out-
door advertising.

Planning and Civic Comment

Limited Access Highways:

MASSACHUSETTS. A bill to au-
thorize the State Department of
Public Works to acquire from abut-
ting property owners their easement
of access to and from state high-
ways, when required by public
safety and convenience.

WASHINGTON. A bill authorizing
freeways or limited access highways.

CONNECTICUT. A bill defining and
authorizing the establishment of
parkways and freeways.

PENNSYLVANIA. A bill to extend
the maximum right-of-way which
can be acquired for highway purposes.
Highway Protective Areas:

MARYLAND. A bill establishing a
highway protective area consisting
of all the land within five hundred
feet of the boundaries of the rights-
of-way on any public highway but
outside of the corporate limits of any
city, town or village. Within this pro-
tective area the State Roads Commis-
sion shall establish business districts
and all business structures and uses
shall be confined to these districts.

NORTH CAROLINA. A bill to
authorize the state highway and
public works commission to adopt a
set of uniform ordinances for regu-
lating the use of marginal lands
along certain public highways and
authorizing the Board of County
Commissioners to act as a county
highway zoning agency.

NEW HAMPSHIRE. A resolution
directing the State Planning and
Development Commission to make
a survey of the roadsides of the
State and report at the next session
of the legislature recommending clas-
sification of the lands bordering on the
roadsides and a program for the pro-
tection and improvement of roadsides.

OHIO. A bill establishing a high-
way protective area to consist of all
lands parallel to state highways and
within one thousand feet from the
center thereof. In this area the
State Planning Board is to prepare
a plan covering set-back lines, access
roads and the location and bounda-
ries of zones for industry, for general
business, for business limited to
roadside service and for residence.
The adoption of the plan and the
administration of it is to be by the
Director of Highways.

INDIANA. A bill creating a high-
way protective area consisting of the
lands within five hundred feet of the
center line of all highways and au-
thorizing the State Planning Board
to prepare, adopt and administer a
plan for the zoning of this area. The
zones are to be (a) for recreation,
(b) for agricultural and residential
uses, (c) for business relating to
highway motoring, (d) for general
business and (e) for unrestricted
uses with certain exceptions.

SOUTH CAROLINA. An Act for the
establishment of highway protec-
tive areas.

WASHINGTON. A bill creating a
highway protective area.

Bills are being considered in other
States and may be introduced at this
session of the legislature. Beside
these legislative proposals, highway
departments are reporting a policy
of much wider rights-of-way, and
well-organized citizen groups in at
least three States are operating
plans for the discovery of those na-
tional advertisers who insist on
using displays in rural areas.

TENNESSEE is the first State to
report new legislation for the con-
trol of outdoor advertising. Under

Planning and Civic Comment

the act regulation is limited to areas
outside of incorporated places. A
uniform permit fee of fifty cents is
required for all advertising signs
which must also exhibit a metal tag.
Advertising signs are prohibited at
or near intersections and sharp
curves where the location interferes
with the free and unobstructed view
of traffic. The act is therefore only
mildly regulative but if properly
administered it will probably free
the roadsides from the nuisance of
small "snipe" signs.

OREGON: A bill to regulate out-
door advertising, a novel provision
of which is to make illegal adver-
tising signs which are visible from
any public highway on which the
maximum driving speed permitted by
law is in excess of forty miles an hour.
No fees are imposed by the bill.

Roadside Reports

Roadside improvement is con-
sidered in two excellent reports of
November and December, 1938.
The earlier report is on roads and
highways as a part of the master
plan of Santa Barbara County.
With an interesting historical back-
ground, the report distinguishes
between state and county roads,
classifies county roads as to function
and handles the economics and
esthetics of the roadside problem.
Unusually clear and intelligible
maps illustrate the recommenda-
tions of the plan.

The later report is published by
the Washington State Planning
Council and is a study of the pro-
tection and development of road-
side areas by the Council's Advisory
Committee. A summary of the

recommendations of the report ap-
pears on page 3 and the remainder
of the report is merely argument on
which these recommendations are
based. Chief among the roadside
recommendations are: (i) The pur-
chase of roadside forest land, and
(2) the establishment of highway
protective districts. In connection
with the latter, it is pointed out
that the zoning of the land along
the highways is the duty of the
State rather than of the county or
of the community and that the
separation of commercial from non-
commercial areas is as imperative
on the highways as it is in cities
and towns.

Planning Courses

Two very successful regional
schools for planning officials and
employees of the municipalities of
New York State were held in
Rochester, January 25-27 and in
New York City February 7-9 by
the Municipal Training Institute,
an educational institution chartered
by the Regents of the State of New
York and administered by the New
York State Conference of Mayors.
Wayne D. Heydecker, Director of
State Planning, was in charge of
the administrative and instructional
staff.

The subjects covered in the
course were: "Development of Mu-
nicipalities/' "Legal Background of
Governmental Control," "Elements
of Relationship in Municipal Plan-
ning," "Making the Plan" and
"Carrying Out the Plan." There
was an attendance of 150 at both
the Rochester and New York
Schools.

Town Planning in Nova Scotia

R. M. Hattie, of Halifax, N. S.,
for many years a valued member
of the AMERICAN PLANNING AND
Civic ASSOCIATION, reports on the
progress of town planning and civic
improvement in Nova Scotia in the
"Proceedings of the 32nd Annual
Convention of the Union of Nova
Scotia Municipalities."

Mr. Hattie states that the present
Nova Scotia Town Planning Act
was passed May 23, 1915. It super-
seded a previous Act passed in 1912.
Thomas Adams, eminent town-
planner and one-time Town-plan-
ning Supervisor of the Imperial
Local Government Board, had been
secured by the Commission of
Conservation for the purpose of
promoting town-planning in Canada
as a conservation measure. It was
Mr. Adams who prepared the Nova
Scotia Act as well as the Town-
planning Acts of several Canadian
provinces.

Mr. Hattie reports: "Our Town-
planning Act, having had such able
authorship, one might have sup-
posed our cities, towns and munici-
palities would have eagerly availed
themselves of its provisions. Very
few local authorities, however, have
gone very far with it. The Halifax
Town-PIanning Board was first
appointed early in 1916, and in 1918
proceeded to prepare a town-plan-
ning scheme for a large area in the
city of Halifax. This scheme was
completed in 1921 and in April 1922
was sent to the Town-planning
Commissioner. What jinx dogged
its career after that date I do not
know, but the fact is that it reposed

in the Province House until June of
1937, when the Commissioner sent
it back to the Board for revision
and re-submission.

"About the same time, too, the
Halifax County Council appointed
a Board which took steps to prepare
town-planning schemes for four
areas around Halifax Harbour and
Bedford Basin, but it likewise did
not get to the point of submitting
its schemes for approval. Other
Councils have appointed local
boards, but these boards have done
little, and some of them seem to
have faded out. I cannot find that
many local boards are actually
under appointment now, and it is
clear that very little real use has
been made of our Town-planning
Act. . . .

"While the comprehensive Hali-
fax town-planning scheme has so
failed of accomplishment, we have
in the 'official plan/ and 'residential
area* sections of the City Charter
a good deal of what is embraced in
town-planning, and these clauses
have been a wonderful help in
shaping the development of the
city. The value of these sections,
particularly the 'residential area'
clauses, is suggested by something
that happened recently at Digby.
A town meeting was called for the
purpose of voting on a proposal to
exempt a wood-working factory
from taxation for a period of years.
The objection was made by summer
residents and owners of tourist
hotels that the smoke and noise of
the factory in the proposed location
would be detrimental to Digby's

Planning and Civic Comment

great tourist industry. Whether or
not this was the determining factor
in turning down the application for
the exemption, the fact is that
proper town-planning prevents the
intrusion of industry in places where
it will be a nuisance and a detriment,
and on more than one occasion the
Residential Area Act of Halifax
has preserved amenities and con-
served property values. As for the
'official plan* sections, by means
thereof many a wise provision for
the proper development of the street
system has been made that will save
much to the City in years to come
indeed has saved much already.

"Possibly the progress of town-
planning in this Province has been
retarded by the fact that the Com-
missioner has had no official re-
sponsible to him whose duty is the
promotion of the town-planning
idea and advising him on the merits
of schemes and by-laws presented
for approval, on their conformity
to the regulations, and on their
degree of harmony with the schemes
and by-laws of contiguous authori-
ties. When the Legislature made it
obligatory for town-planning boards
to prepare and put into effect town-
planning by-laws and town plan-
ning schemes, it ought to have
appointed an officer to acquaint the
city, town and municipal councils
of what it had in view and to be of
assistance in various ways both to
the local authorities and to the
Commissioner. If a town-planning
Controller had been appointed as
provided in the Act, that official
would have conferred with the
local authorities, explaining the
aims of the Act and how they might

be carried out, and we should by
this time have had the whole Prov-
ince developing under beneficent
town-planning resolutions. In the
failure to appoint a town-planning
Controller we may perhaps find the
explanation of the failure of town-
planning to make the progress in
Nova Scotia that the merits of the
idea would have justified.

"Another barrier to success may
possibly be found in certain features
of the Act itself. It would be well to
consider if the Act might not to
advantage be amended so as to
make the local authority responsible
for carrying the scheme or by-laws
into effect. It would seem to be
sufficient that the town-planning
board should be an advisory body,
to be consulted in matters relating
to the scheme and to the town plan;
but having prepared a scheme or set
of by-laws, the authority respon-
sible to the ratepayers ought to be
the authority to send it to the Com-
missioner and to carry out its pro-
visions after receiving the Com-
missioner's approval. In other par-
ticulars also the Act might be wisely
amended, and very particularly the
procedure regulations need amend-
ment. These regulations are cum-
bersome and sufficient to confuse
and discourage any who may have
to deal with them and are liable to
open the way to complications that
may invalidate a scheme. . . .

"My suggestion is that there
might be a great cooperative effort
in which the Provincial Govern-
ment and the city, town and munici-
pal councils would share, having in
view a comprehensive scheme of
provincial improvement."

Proposed John Muir- Kings Canyon
National Park

PLATE IX. Part of South Wall of Tehipitee Valley

AMHHH

PLATE VIII. Tehipitee Dome, Upper End of Tehipitee Valley
(Middle Fork of the Kings River)

Proposed John Muir-Kings Canyon
National Park

JOHN MUIR first visited the
Kings River Canyon in 1875.
For the fourth time he in-
spected the canyon in 1891, just
after the squeezed-down Sequoia
National Park had been established.
This gave to the American people
some of the best of the "Big Trees"
in the vicinity and some fine moun-
tain scenery, but failed to include
the spectacular Mount Whitney, the
highest peak in the United States
outside of Alaska, and the marvel-
ously beautiful valleys of the Kings
and Kern Rivers.

As far back as 1881, just 9 years
after the creation of Yellowstone
National Park, a bill was introduced
into Congress by Senator Miller of
California to create a national park
of "the whole west flank of the
Sierra Nevada from Tehipite to a
point southeast of Porterville, and
from the higher foothills eastward
to the summit of the range." The bill
never came out of committee. On
September 25, 1890, the Sequoia
National Park was established, but
the boundaries omitted Mount Whit-
ney, the Kern and Kings canyons,
and by this time, even within the
smaller area to be preserved, there
were private properties which had to
be purchased through the efforts of
public-spirited citizens. On October i
of the same year, General Grant
National Park of some 2500 acres
was created to preserve "General
Grant" and other fine big trees.

From 1916 to 1926 there was a
pending bill before each session of
Congress to enlarge the Sequoia
National Park to include the Kings
and Kern canvons and the Mount

Whitney area. In 1926 the Kern
country and Mount Whitney were
added to the Sequoia National Park,
and this with private lands pur-
chased gave to the park the custody
of 27 groves containing many thou-
sands of the great red trees of the
Sierra Nevada, the California Big
Trees (Sequoia gigantea).

During all these years, ever since
the Miller bill of 1881, repeated
efforts have been made to bring the
marvelously beautiful Kings canyons
and high country into a national
park, but the bills have always
failed of passage. Measures for the
general public good which run
counter to real or fancied finan-
cial interests are notoriously hard to
pass, especially as the commercial
exploitation of a region centers in
the population around it and this
population makes itself vocal to its
representatives in Congress, who by
custom sponsor measures affecting
the disposition of public lands in
their State and District. The bills
to bring the Kings country into the
National Park System have been no
exception. In the early days the
lumbermen and the stock men op-
posed the creation of a park, though
many of the huge trees which were
cut have never been removed from
their graves and no one was the
gainer. Then came the power com-
panies who opposed the proposed
park. When the application of the
power companies was denied by the
Federal Power Commission, they
came to the conclusion that the sites
for commercial power were not
feasible within the boundaries as
proposed in the twenties, and with-

Planning and Civic Comment

drew their opposition. Then the
irrigationists, who can find adequate
storage for irrigation purposes out-
side of the proposed park, have op-
posed the park because they may find
two or three sites for power reser-
voirs within the proposed boun-
daries which will permit them to
develop power to help them pay for
their irrigation water. Some of the
short-sighted business interests of
California have organized to oppose
any further national parks in Cali-
fornia, forgetting that the revenues
to the people of the State from
recreation tourists and sojourners
are among the principal financial
assets of California. As solutions for
the problems raised have been found,
support for the project has grown.

Even within the 75 years which
have elapsed since the early discov-
eries in this region, the untouched
wilderness in the United States has
shrunk from seemingly illimitable
regions to easily counted tracts.
Such country has steadily acquired
increased value, because of its com-
parative scarcity and increasing
demands for outdoor recreation and
refreshment.

For the benefit of those who ap-
preciate inspiring scenery, who value
the opinion of John Muir and revere
his memory, we condense an article
which he wrote for Century Maga-
zine and which appeared in Novem-
ber of 1891, together with the nine
superb illustrations which accom-
panied the eloquent words of Muir.

A Rival of the Yosemite
The Canyon of the South Fork of King's River, California

In the vast Sierra wilderness far to the
southward of the famous Yosemite Val-
ley, there is a yet grander valley of the
same kind. It is situated on the south fork
of King's River, above the most extensive
groves and forests of the giant sequoia, and
beneath the shadows of the highest moun-
tains in the range, where the canyons are
deepest and the snow-laden peaks are crowd-
ed most closely together. It is called the
Big King's River Canyon, or King's River
Yosemite, and is reached by way of
Visalia, the nearest point on the Southern
Pacific Railroad, from which the distance
is about forty-five miles, or by the Kear-
sarge Pass from the east side of the range.
It is about ten miles long, half a mile wide,
and the stupendous rocks of purplish gray
granite that form the walls are from 2500
to 5000 feet in height, while the depth of
the valley below the general surface of the
mountain mass from which it has been
carved is considerably more than a mile.
Thus it appears that this new yosemite is
longer and deeper, and lies embedded in
grander mountains, than the well-known
Yosemite of the Merced. Their general
characters, however, are wonderfully alike,
and they bear the same relationship to the
fountains of the ancient glaciers above them.

As to waterfalls, those of the new valley
are far less striking in general views, al-
though the volume of falling water is
nearly twice as great and comes from
higher sources. The descent of the King's
River streams is mostly made in the form
of cascades, which are outspread in flat
plume-like sheets on smooth slopes, or are
squeezed in narrow-throated gorges, boil-
ing, seething, in deep swirling pools,
pouring from lin to lin, and breaking into
ragged, tossing masses of spray and foam
in boulder-choked canyons making mar-
velous mixtures with the downpouring
sunbeams, displaying a thousand forms
and colors, and giving forth a great variety
of wild mountain melody, which, rolling
from side to side against the echoing cliffs,
is at length all combined into one smooth,
massy sea-like roar.

The bottom of the valley is about 5000
feet above the sea, and its level or gently
sloping surface is diversified with flowery
meadows and groves and open sunny flats,
through the midst of which the crystal
river, ever changing, ever beautiful, makes
its way; now gliding softly with scarce a
ripple over beds of brown pebbles, now
rushing and leaping in wild exultation
across avalanche rock-dams or terminal

Planning and Civic Comment

moraines, swaying from side to side, beaten
with sunshine, or embowered with leaning
pines and firs, alders, willows, and tall
balsam poplars, which with the bushes and
grass at their feet make charming banks.
Gnarled snags and stumps here and there
reach out from the banks, making cover
for trout which seem to have caught their
colors from rainbow spray, though hiding
mostly in shadows, where the current
swirls slowly and protecting sedges and
willows dip their leaves.

From tnis long, flowery, forested, well-
watered park the walls rise abruptly in
plain precipices or richly sculptured masses
partly separated by side canyons, display-
ing wonderful wealth and variety of archi-
tectural forms, which are as wonderful in
beauty of color and fineness of finish as in
colossal height and mass. The so-called
war of the elements has done them no
harm. There is no unsightly defacement as
yet; deep in the sky, inviting the onset of
storms through unnumbered centuries,
they still stand firm and seemingly as fresh
and unworn as new-born flowers.

From the brink of the walls on either
side the ground still rises in a series of ice-
carved ridges and basins, superbly forested
and adorned with many small lakes and
meadows, where deer and bear find grate-
ful homes; while from the head of the
valley mountains other mountains rise
beyond in glorious array, every one of
them shining with rock crystals and snow,
and with a network of streams that sing
their way down from lake to lake through
a labyrinth of ice-burnished canyons. The
area of the basins drained by the streams
entering the valley is about 450 square
miles, and the elevation of the rim of the
general basin is from 9000 to upward of
14,000 feet above the sea; while the general
basin of the Merced Yosemite has an area
of 250 square miles, and its elevation is
much lower.

When from some commanding summit
we view the mighty wilderness about this
central valley, and, after tracing its tribu-
tary streams, note how every converging
canyon shows in its sculpture, moraines and
shining surfaces that it was once the chan-
nel of a glacier, contemplating this dark
period of grinding ice, it would seem that
here was a center of storm and stress to
which no life would come. But it is just
where the ancient glaciers bore down on
the mountain flank with crushing and
destructive and most concentrated energy
that the most impressive displays of divine
beauty are offered to our admiration.
Even now the snow falls every winter
about the valley to a depth often to twenty

feet, and the booming of avalanches is a
common sound. Nevertheless the frailest
flowers, blue and gold and purple, bloom
on the brows of the great canyon rocks,
and on the frosty peaks, up to a height of
13,000 feet, as well as in sheltered hollows
and on level meadows and lake borders
and banks of streams.

At the head of the valley the river forks,
the heavier branch turning northward, and
on this branch there is another yosemite,
called from its flowery beauty Paradise
Valley; and the name might well be applied
to the main canyon, for notwithstanding
its tremendous rockiness, it is an Eden of
plant-beauty from end to end.

THE TRIP TO THE VALLEY

Setting out from Visalia . . from the
base of the first grand mountain plateau
we can see the outstanding pines and
sequoias 4000 feet above us, and we now
ascend rapidly, sweeping from ravine to
ravine around the brows of subordinate
ridges. The vegetation shows signs of a
cooler climate; the golden flowered Fre-
montia, manzanita, ceanothus, and other
bushes show miles of bloom; while great
beds of blue and purple bells brighten the
open spaces . . . the whole forming a
floral apron of fine texture and pattern,
let down from the verge of the forest in
graceful, flowing folds. . . . We have now
reached an elevation of 6000 feet. . . .
Down through the shadows we make our
way for a mile or two in one of the upper
ravines of Mill Creek. . . . Climbing a
steep mile from the mill we enter General
Grant National Park of Big Trees, a square
mile in extent, where a few of the giants are
now being preserved amid the industrious
destruction by ax, saw, and blasting powder
going on around them. . . .

We now descend to Bearskin Meadow,
a sheet of purple-topped grasses enameled
with violets, gilias, larkspurs, potentillas,
ivesias, and columbine; parnassia and
sedges in the wet places, and majestic
trees crowding forward in proud array to
form a curving border, while Little Boulder
Creek, a stream twenty feet wide, goes
humming and swirling merrily through
the middle of it. ...

The next place with a name in the
wilderness is Tornado Meadow. Here the
sequoia giants stand close about us, tower-
ing above the firs and sugar-pines. Then
follows another climb of a thousand feet,
after which we descend into the magnifi-
cent forest basin of Big Boulder Creek.
Crossing this boisterous stream as best we
may, up again we go 1200 feet through

Planning and Civic Comment

glorious woods, and on a few miles to the
emerald Horse Corral and Summit Mea-
dows, a short distance beyond which the
highest point on the trail is reached at
Grand Lookout, 8300 feet above the sea.
Here at length we gain a general view of
the great canyon of King's River lying
far below, and of the vast mountain-region
in the sky on either side of it, and along
the summit of the range. (See Plate I.)
Here too we see the forest in broad, dark
swaths still sweeping onward undaunted,
climbing the farther mountain-slopes to
a height of 11,000 feet. But King Sequoia
comes not thus far. The grove nearest the
valley is on one of the eastern branches of
Boulder Creek, five miles from the lower end.

CHIEF FEATURES OF THE CANYON

Going down into the valley we make a
descent of 3500 feet, over the south
shoulder, by a careless crinkled trail
which seems well-nigh endless. It offers,
however, many fine points of view of the
huge granite trough, and the river, and the
sublime rocks of the walls plunging down
and planting their feet on the shady level
floor. (See Plate II.)

At the foot of the valley we find our-
selves in a smooth, spacious park, planted
with stately groves of sugar-pine, yellow
pine, silver fir, incense-cedar, and Kellogg
oak. The floor is scarcely ruffled with
underbrush, but myriads of small flowers
spread a thin purple and yellow veil over
the brown needles and burrs beneath the
groves, and the gray ground of the open
sunny spaces. The walls lean well back
and support a fine growth of trees, espe-
cially on the south side, interrupted here
and there by sheer masses 1000 to 1500
feet high, which are thrust forward out of
the long slopes like dormer-windows.
(See Plate III.) Three miles up the valley
on the south side we come to the Roaring
Falls and Cascades. ... On the east side
of the fall the Cathedral Rocks spring
aloft with imposing majesty. . . .

Next to the Cathedral Rocks ir the
group called the Seven Gables* massive
and solid at the base, but elaborately
sculptured along the top and a consider-
able distance down the front into pointed
gothic arches, the highest of which is about
3000 feet above the valley. Beyond the
Gable group, and separated slightly from
it by the beautiful Avalanche Canyon and
Cascades, stands the bold and majestic
mass of the Grand Sentinel, 3300 feet high,
with a split vertical front presented to the
valley, as sheer, and nearly as extensive,
as the front of the Yosemite Half Dome.

Projecting out into the valley from the
base of this sheer front is the Lower
Sentinel, 2400 feet high; and on either
side, the West and East Sentinels, about
the same height, forming altogether the
boldest and most massively sculptured
group in the valley. Then follow in close
succession the Sentinel Cascade, a lace-
like strip of water 2000 feet long; the
South Tower 2500 feet high; the Bear
Cascade, longer and broader than that of
the Sentinel; Cave Dome, 3200 feet high;
the Sphinx, 4000 feet, and the Lean-
ing Dome, 3500. The Sphinx, terminating
in a curious sphinx-like figure, is the high-
est rock on the south wall, and one of the
most remarkable in the Sierra; while the
whole series from Cathedral Rocks to the
Leaning Dome at the head of the valley
is the highest, most elaborately sculptured,
and the most beautiful series of rocks of
the same extent that I have yet seen in
any yosemite in the range.

Turning our attention now to the north
wall, near the foot of the valley a grand
and impressive rock presents itself, which
with others of like structure and style of
architecture is called the Palisades. Mea-
sured from the immediate brink of the
vertical portion of the front, it is about
2000 feet high, and is gashed from top to
base by vertical planes, making it look
like a mass of huge slabs set on edge. . . .

The next notable group that catches the
eye in going up the valley is the Hermit
Towers, and next to these the Three
Hermits, forming together an exceedingly
picturesque series of complicated struc-
ture, slightly separated by the steep and
narrow Hermit Canyon. . . .

East of the Hermits a stream about the
size of Yosemite Creek enters the valley,
forming the Booming Cascades. It draws
its sources from the southern slopes of
Mount Hutchings and Mount Kellogg,
11,000 and 12,000 feet high, and on the
divide between the Middle and South Forks
of the King's River. . . .

Above the Booming Cascades, and
opposite the Grand Sentinel, stands the
North Dome, 3450 feet high. (See Plate
IV.) . . . Above the Dome the ridge still
rises in a finely drawn curve, until it
reaches its culminating point in the pyra-
mid, a lofty symmetrical rock nearly 6000
feet above the floor of the valley.

A short distance east of the Dome is
Lion Rock, a very striking mass as seen
from a favorable standpoint, but lower
than the main rocks of the wall, being only
about 2000 feet high. Beyond the Lion,
and opposite the East Sentinel, a stream
called Copper Creek comes chanting down

PLATE VI. North Tower, from Talus Slope of Glacier Monument

Planning and Civic Comment

into the valley. It takes its rise in a cluster
of beautiful lakes that lie on the top of the
divide between the South and Middle
Forks of the King's River, to the east of
Mount Kellogg. The broad, spacious
basin it drains abounds in beautiful groves
of spruce and silver fir, and small meadows
and gardens, where the bear and deer love
to feed, but (sic!) it has been badly
trampled by flocks of sheep.

From Copper Creek to the head of the
valley the precipitous portion of the north
wall is comparatively low. The most
notable features are the North Tower, a
square, boldly sculptured outstanding mass
2000 feet in height, and the Dome arches,
heavily glaciated, and offering telling sec-
tions of domed and folded structure. (See
Plate VI.) At the head of the valley, in a
position corresponding to that of the Half
Dome in Yosemite, looms the great
Glacier Monument, the broadest, loftiest,
and most sublimely beautiful of all these
wonderful rocks. It is upward of a mile in
height, and has five ornamental summits,
and an indescribable variety of sculptured
forms projecting or countersunk on its
majestic front, all balanced and combined
into one symmetrical mountain mass.
(See Plate V.)

THE VALLEY FLOOR

The bottom of the valley is covered by
heavy deposits of moraine material, mostly
outspread in comparatively smooth and
level beds, though four well-characterized
terminal moraines may still be traced
stretching across from wall to wall, di-
viding the valley into sections. . . .

With the exception of a small meadow
on the river bank, a mile or more of the
lower end of the valley is occupied by de-
lightful groves, and is called Deer Park.
Between Deer Park and the Roaring Fall
lies the Manzanita Orchard, consisting of
a remarkably even and extensive growth
of manzanita bushes scarcely interrupted
by other bushes or by trees. . . .

The largest meadow in the valley lies at
the foot of Grand Sentinel. It is noted for
its fine growth of sweet-brier rose, the foli-
age of which as well as the flower is de-
liciously fragrant, especially in the morn-
ing when the sun warms the dew. At the
foot of South Tower, near the Bear
Cascades, there is a notable garden of
Mariposa tulips. . . .

On the north side of the valley the
spaces that bear names are Bee Pasture,
Gilia Garden, and Purple Flat, all lavishly
flowery, each with its own characteristic
plants, though mostly they are the same

as those of the south side of the river,
variously developed and combined; while
aloft on a thousand niches, benches and
recesses of the walls are charming rock-
ferns, such as adiantum, pellaea, cheil-
anthes, allosurus, and brilliant rugs and
fringes of the alpine phlox, Menzies penste-
mon, bryanthus, Cassiope, alpine primula,
and many other small floral mountaineers.

PARADISE CANYON

. . . Ascending the Paradise Canyon
we find still grander scenery, at least for
the first ten miles. . . . The walls of the
canyon on either side rise to a height of
from 3000 to 5000 feet in majestic forms,
hardly inferior in any respect to those of
the main valley. The most striking of these
on the west wall is the Helmet, 4000 feet
in height; and on the east side, after the
Monument, Paradise Peak. (See Plate
VII.) . . .

FROM YOSEMITE TO KING'S RIVER
ALONG THE SIERRA

One of my visits to the great canyon
was undertaken from the old Yosemite
along the Sierra. . . . We followed the old
trail to Wawona and the Mariposa se-
quoias, then plunged into the trackless
wilderness. We traced the Chiquita San
Joaquin to its head, then crossed the
canyon of the North Fork of the San
Joaquin below the yosemite of this branch,
and made our way southward across the
Middle and South Forks of the San
Joaquin to a point on the divide between
the South Fork of the San Joaquin and the
North Fork of the King's River, 10,000 feet
above the sea. . . . Pushing on with
difficulty over the divide, we entered the
upper valley of the North Fork of the
King's River, and traced its course through
many smooth glacier-meadows, and past
many a beautiful cluster of granite domes,
developed and burnished by the ancient
glaciers. Below this dome region the canyon
closed, and we were compelled to grope our
way along its forest -clad brink until we dis-
covered a promising side canyon, which
led us down into the North Fork yosemite,
past a massive projecting rock like El
Capitan. . . . We at length made a way
out of this little yosemite by a rude trail
that we built up a gorge of the south wall,
and on to the crest of the divide between
the North and Middle Forks of the river.
Here we gained telling views of the region
about the head of the Middle Fork of
King's River, vast mountains along the
axis of the range, seemingly unapproach-

Planning and Civic Comment

able, a broad map of domes and huge
ridge-waves and canyons extending to the
summits far to the west of us in glorious
harmony. Tracing the divide through
magnificent forests we at length forded the
main King's River, passed through the
sequoia groves, and entered the great
Yosemite on the 9th of October, after a
light storm had freshened the colors. . . .

DESTRUCTIVE TENDENCIES

At first sight it would seem that these
mighty granite temples could be injured
but little by anything that man may do.
But it is surprising to find how much our
impressions in such cases depend upon the
delicate bloom of the scenery, which in all
the more accessible places is so easily
rubbed off. I saw the King's River valley
in its midsummer glory sixteen years ago,
when it was wild, and when the divine
balanced beauty of the trees and flowers
seemed to be reflected and doubled by all
the onlooking rocks and streams as though
they were mirrors, while they in turn were
mirrored in every garden and grove. In
that year (1875) I saw the following
ominous notice on a tree in the King's
River yosemite:

"We, the undersigned, claim this valley
for the purpose of raising stock.

MR. THOMAS
MR. RICHARDS
HARVEY & Co."

and I feared that the vegetation would
soon perish. This spring (1891) I made my
fourth visit to the valley, to see what
damage had been done, and to inspect the
forests. ... I left San Francisco on the
a8th of May, accompanied by Mr. Robin-
son, the artist. At the new King's River
Mills we found that the sequoia giants, as
well as the pines and firs, were being ruth-
lessly turned into lumber. Sixteen years
ago I saw five mills on or near the sequoia
belt, all of which were cutting more or less
of "big-tree" lumber. Now, as I am told,
the number of mills along the belt in the
basins of the King's, Kaweah and Tule
Rivers is doubled, and the capacity more
than doubled. As if fearing restriction of
some kind, particular attention is being
devoted to the destruction of the sequoia
groves owned by the mill companies, with
the view to get them made into lumber and
money before steps can be taken to save
them. ... It seems incredible that
Government should have abandoned so
much of the forest cover of the mountains
to destruction. As well sell the rain-clouds,
and the snow, and the rivers, to be cut up
and carried away if that were possible.

Surely it is high time that something be
done to stop the extension of the present
barbarous, indiscriminating method of
harvesting the lumber crop.

THE TEHIPITEE VALLEY

. . . By ascending the valley of Copper
Creek, and crossing the divide, you will
find a Middle Fork tributary that con-
ducts by an easy grade down into the head
of the grand Middle Fork Canyon, through
which you may pass in time of low water,
crossing the river from time to time, where
sheer headlands are brushed by the cur-
rent, leaving no space for a passage. After
a long, rough scramble, you will be
delighted when you emerge from the nar-
row bounds of the great canyon into the
spacious and enchantingly beautiful Te-
hipitee. It is about three miles long, half
a mile wide, and the walls are from 2500
to nearly 4000 feet in height. The floor of
the valley is remarkably level, and the
river flows with a gentle stately current.
Nearly half of the floor is meadow-land,
the rest sandy flat planted with the same
kind of trees and flowers as the same kind
of soil bears in the great canyon, forming
groves and gardens, the whole enclosed by
majestic granite walls which in height, and
beauty, and variety of architecture are not
surpassed in any yosemite of the range.
Several small cascades coming from a
great height sing and shine among the
intricate architecture of the south wall,
one of which when seen in front seems to
be a nearly continuous fall about 2000 feet
high. (See Plate IX.) But the grand fall
of the valley is on the north side. . . .
This is the Tehipitee Fall, about 1800 feet
high. The upper portion is broken up into
short falls and magnificent cascade dashes,
but the last plunge is made over a sheer
precipice about 400 feet in height into a
beautiful pool.

To the eastward of the Tehipitee Fall
stands Tehipitee Dome, 2500 feet high, a
gigantic round-topped tower, slender as
compared with its height, and sublimely
simple and massive in structure. It is not
set upon, but against, the general masonry
of the wall, standing well forward, and
rising free from the open sunny floor of
the valley, attached to the general mass of
the wall rocks only at the back. This is
one of the most striking and wonderful
rocks in the Sierra. (See Plate VIII.) ...

THE NEED OF ANOTHER GREAT
NATIONAL PARK

I fancy the time is not distant when this
wonderful region will be opened to the

Planning and Civic Comment

world. . . . Some of the sequoia groves
were last year included in the national
reservations of Sequoia and General Grant
Parks. But all of this wonderful King's
River region, together with the Kaweah
and Tule sequoias, should be compre-
hended in one grand national park. This
region contains no mines of consequence,
it is too high and too rocky for agriculture,
and even the lumber industry need suffer
no unreasonable restriction. Let our law-
givers then make haste before it is too late
to set apart this surpassingly glorious
region for the recreation and well-being
of humanity, and all the world will rise
up and call them blessed.

JOHN Mum

NOTE. The illustrations of this article
were drawn by Charles D. Robinson from
nature or from sketches from nature by
himself or, in three instances, by Mr. Muir.
The plates for (bis reprint were reproduced
by permission of D. Appleton - Century
Company.

No one who reads these detailed
descriptions by John Muir can fail
to believe that here in the Kings
country is found some of the most
superlatively fine scenery to be
found on the North American conti-
nent. A contemporary described
John Muir as having an eye within
an eye which could see not only
the obvious but the underlying
forces of creation. John Muir felt
his scenery, but he spent days and
years studying the Book of Nature
in the Sierra so that he could read
and interpret its story to the world.
It was he who discovered the traces
of the great glaciers which carved
the yosemites of the Sierra. He
knew its trees, its flowers and
shrubs. He knew the animals which
roamed its virgin fastnesses. He
knew its weather and its habits
of flood and storm. He knew its
sunshine.

It is fitting that this part of the
high Sierra country which he knew

and loved so well should be a
National Park. As proposed, the JOHN
MuiR-KiNGS CANYON NATIONAL
PARK would include the canyons of
the South and Middle Forks of the
Kings and a portion of the South
Fork of the San Joaquin, except
possibly for two encroachments
which may be insisted upon by the
California irrigationists to develop
power reservoirs to help pay for a
proposed irrigation reservoir lying
outside of the proposed park boun-
daries. If a way can be found to aid
the irrigationists with federal money
rather than with the sacrifice of
national-park area, there is an op-
portunity to bring into the National
Park System these lands and waters
which have been under considera-
tion for fifty years.

There would thus be brought into
the JOHN Mum-KiNGS CANYON
NATIONAL PARK the canyons and
crests of the upper Kings country,
which would be transferred from the
U. S. Forest Service to the National
Park Service. For many years, the
current Chief Forester has agreed
with other conservationists that the
superlative scenery in the Kings
country was of national-park calibre
and successive bills in Congress refer-
red to the Department of Agriculture
have received qualified or complete
approval.

In the present proposal the park
would include the famous Evolution
Valley, described by Mr. Muir in
his trip down the Sierra crests from
the fountains of the North Fork of
the Kings River until he reached
the big valley. All this, together
with the General Grant National
Park, and Redwood Canyon, now in
private ownership, containing some

PLATE VII. Paradise Peak, looking east from slopes at foot of Helmet

Planning and Civic Comment

3,000 of the Big Trees, would be
embraced in the JOHN MuiR-KiNGS
CANYON NATIONAL PARK.

The John Muir Trail already pro-
vides a foot and horse trail down the
crest of the Sierra from Tuolomne
Meadows in Yosemite National
Park to Mount Whitney in Sequoia
National Park a distance, as the
main trail runs, of 187.7 miles. In
the introduction to the "John Muir
Trail and the High Sierra Region"
by Walter Starr, Jr., published
posthumously in 1934, we read:
"The grand crescendo of the Sierra
Nevada begins in the Yosemite
National Park and culminates in
the southern group of fourteen-
thousand-foot peaks at the head-
waters of the Kings River and the
Kern." The proposed John Muir

National Park would bring some
ninety miles of the John Muir Trail
into the new national park. This
with the 13.4 miles in Yosemite and
21.5 miles in Sequoia would mean
that 126.5 miles of the main John
Muir Trail would be protected in
national parks, leaving 71.2 miles
along the headwaters of the various
forks of the San Joaquin in the
National Forests.

"Breathes there a man with soul
so dead" who does not thrill to the
opportunity offered through these
proposals for Congress to create the
JOHN MUIR-KINGS CANYON NA-
TIONAL PARK which would for all time
preserve and protect this marvelous
country from all adverse uses and
bequeath it as a worthy heritage to
the American people?

THE GEARHART BILL

On February 7, 1939, Representative Bertrand W. Gearhart, of California,
introduced into Congress H.R. 3794, to establish the John Muir-Kings Canyon
National Park, to transfer thereto the lands now included in the General Grant
National Park, to be hereafter known as the General Grant Grove, and to provide
that the Redwood Canyon, when purchased, may be brought into the park by
executive order. (See accompanying map.) The grazing rights within the area are
to continue during the life of the present holders of permits, and, as in other national
parks, will terminate when the present holders die. There is a provision to preserve
the wilderness character of the new park. No exclusive privileges are to be placed
above Copper Creek in the South Fork of the Kings River. While the measure
does not abrogate existing contracts and easements, no new housing structures may
be leased for summer homestead purposes and no exclusive privileges granted. If
the Cedar Grove and Tehipite Reclamation Dam and reservoir projects are built,
the Secretary of the Interior may administer unused lands in the withdrawals for
recreation purposes and if the projects are abandoned, after certification to that
effect to the President by the Secretary of the Interior, with the advice of the
Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, after public notice and hearings, the
President may by proclamation add these two sites to the John Muir-Kings Canyon
National Park.

PROPOSED
JOHN MUIR -KINGS CANYON NATIONAL PARK

CALIFORNIA

Palisade
Middle Palisade

CartndgeV V Tab os e Pass
Simpson Meadow ?- PassJ^ ^

,Mt. Pinchot

Granite *'
Pass'""

.Sawmill
*-Pass

1 NATIONAL PARK

Horse Corral
Meadow

Dome'i^

# % " T he Sphin
Avalanche Pk

GRANT
GROVE SECTION

~> L Cj 1 A N

ForesterPa

N A L

LEGEND

Proposed John Muir National Park boundary
John Muir Trail

'- x

t.Whitney- 1

State Park

IDAHO

The boundaries of Heyburn State
Park, Idaho, have been extended to
include Crane Mountain, the high-
est point in the locality, by the
recent purchase of 50 acres of land
adjoining the park.
IOWA

A purchase of 50 acres of virgin
timber near the City of Cedar Falls,
Iowa, has been made for the develop-
ment of Josh Higgins State Park.
It is expected that the development
will ultimately be expanded into a
recreational area stretching along
the Cedar River for the entire dis-
tance between Cedar Falls and
Waterloo.
MINNESOTA

The Minnesota State Planning
Board has been replaced by the
Minnesota Resources Commission
of thirteen men.

Dr. Richard E. Scammon is chair-
man of the new Commission, and
H. J. Miller is executive secretary.
NEW JERSEY

Dr. Charles P. Messick, Chair-
man of the New Jersey State Plan-
ning Board, has recently issued a
statement in which he says:

"The New Jersey State Planning
Board is at work upon a comprehen-
sive State Recreation Plan. . . .
Agreement has been reached on
certain points.

"Such a plan and program is
essential to the intelligent and eco-
nomical advancement of New Jer-
sey's many recreational interests

It should be comprised, in part, of
additional recreational areas to be
acquired, and, in part, of stated
policies and legislated controls relat-
ing to corollary public and private
activities. This plan should be pre-
pared with due consideration for the
growth and general development
prospects of the State as a whole.
The State forest-park system should
be correlated with county park
systems.

"Further, the State Recreation
Plan should be correlated with the
present and future State highway
system, and should be a part of a
single comprehensive plan for future
State development showing not only
future highways, parks, forests, and
game lands, but future water proj-
ects, improvements in rail, water,
and air transportation facilities,
future public institution grounds,
and other similar facilities. All pre-
viously prepared plans will be taken
into careful consideration, including
those made by State and local
agencies and those advanced by the
New York and the Philadelphia
Regional Planning groups.

"It must not be implied that there
is intent to plunge the State into

Planning and Civic Comment

reckless or abnormal spending. Mak-
ing needed improvements by com-
prehensive plan is simply another
way of doing everyday things in a
better balanced and more orderly
manner and should result ultimately
in better service at less, rather than
greater, cost.

"Accompanying the plan should
be a scheduled program and budget,
spreading both land acquisition and
park development over a long period
of years. The program probably
should emphasize land acquisition
above extensive development. So
far as possible, advancement of the
plan should be financed out of cur-
rent revenue. But in some instances
this process may be too slow to save
needed lands, and resort to bond
issues, especially for land purchase,
may be both necessary and justified.
Improvement of lands once acquired
may be left more safely to current-
revenue financing. Many recrea-
tional areas can be made self-financ-
ing in whole or in considerable part.
Bond issues for the acquisition and
development of such areas are there-
fore largely in the nature of revolv-
ing funds and are not a serious ulti-
mate charge upon the taxpayer."
NORTH DAKOTA

Faced with the necessity of cut-
ting expenses wherever possible, the
North Dakota Legislature abolished
the State Planning Board by a vote
of 96-6.
OKLAHOMA

In the first annual report of the
Division of State Parks of the Okla-
homa Planning and Resources Board,
A. R. Reeves, Director of the divi-
sion, recommends the acquisition of
a number of small scenic wayside
areas to supplement the recreational

facilities in the state parks. He de-
clares that the eight areas now being
developed are so distributed that
60 percent of the State's population
lives within 75 miles of a state park,
and it is felt that they will ade-
quately meet the need for large
recreation areas.

The report, which was released in
November, covers the activities of
the division from the time of its
organization in March 1935 up to
and through June 30, 1938.

Mr. Reeves was awarded the
Pugsley Bronze Medal for park
achievement during 1938, in recog-
nition of his contributions to the
development of the Oklahoma state
park system.
TENNESSEE

J. Charles Poe has been appointed
commissioner of conservation for the
State of Tennessee, and the former
commissioner, Sam F. Brewster, is
now director of the division of state
parks.
VIRGINIA

Visitors to Virginia's state parks
next season will find many new and
improved facilities for their comfort
and entertainment, R. E. Burson,
Director of Parks for the Vir-
ginia Conservation Commission,
announces.

The general work program out-
lined for all the parks includes roads
and trails construction and improve-
ment; replacement of wooden bridges
by new concrete structures; land-
scaping; improvement of existing
parking and picnic areas, and con-
struction of new ones.

Fairy Stone is to have a new
shelter and a store on the beach;
rangers' quarters and a Red Cross
first aid station are on the list for

Planning and Civic Comment

lungry Mother; development of
ic recently acquired 2,3OO-acre
Idition to Seashore will be started;
new restaurant and store are con-
iplated for Staunton River; and
Westmoreland is to have a new
>re on the beach, new rangers'
larters and an overnight camping

The State's parks will be officially
jned to the public on May i, this
ir.

N. Clarence Smith, of Tazewell,
been appointed Chairman of the

irginia Conservation Commission.

EST VIRGINIA

The Division of State Parks of the
West Virginia Conservation Com-
mission has issued an illustrated
folder describing the state parks of
West Virginia. The folder is well
illustrated with views of several of
the state parks and the cabin ac-
commodations with full particulars
on each area and the facilities and
rates. West Virginia has four major
park areas and six smaller ones, con-
taining in all approximately 25,000
acres. The larger state parks,
Watoga in Pocahontas County , Bab-
cock in Fayette County , Lost River
in Hardy County and Cacapon in
Morgan County, are open this season
from May 28 until late fall. A folder
contains a map which indicates the
location of each park.

RECENT REPORTS:

Illinois Park, Parkway and Rec-
reational Area Plan, 1938. Prepared
by the Division of State Parks of

the Department of Public Works
and Buildings, the Illinois State
Planning Commission, and the Chi-
cago Regional Planning Association;
the National Park Service cooperat-
ing. Published by Illinois State
Planning Commission. 142 pp.
IIIus., maps, charts. Price $1.50.

Minnesota Department of Conser-
vation Annual Report, 1938, and
fourth biennial report (for biennium
ending June 30, 1938).

Park, Parkway and Recreational
Area Study Mississippi. Tenta-
tive Final Report, January 1938.
Mississippi State Planning Com-
mission, State Board of Park Super-
visors, National Park Service, Na-
tional Resources Committee, Works
Progress Administration, cooperat-
ing. 222 pp. Mimeographed. Tables,
charts.

Montana. Eleventh report of the
State Forester and State Park
Director, Dec. 31, 1938. 44 pp.
IIIus., tables, charts.

North Carolina. Seventh bien-
nial report of Department of Con-
servation and Development, June
30, 1938. 163 pp. Tables, charts,
graphs.

Oregon's Parks, Recreational Areas
and Facilities. Vol. I Present De-
velopment. Dec. 21, 1938. Oregon
State Parks Commission, State
Planning Board, National Park
Service, cooperating. Ill -f- 72 pp.
Mimeographed. IIIus., tables,
charts, maps.

West Virginia. Annual Report of
the Conservation Commission for
the year July i, 1937 to June 30,
1938. 63 pp. IIIus., tables.

IRMINE B. KENNEDY, Washington, D. C

The 19th National Conference on State Parks

ITASCA STATE PARK, MINNESOTA, JUNE 5, 6, 7, 1939

The 1 9th National Conference
on State Parks will be held June
5, 6, 7, 1939 in Minnesota, with
headquarters at Itasca State Park.

Minnesota, which this year is
commemorating fifty years of State
Parks, was one of the first States to
set aside such areas for the benefit
and enjoyment of its people. Itasca
State Park, with an area of 31,816
acres, is one of the largest and best
known State Parks in the United
States today. It was first set aside
in 1891 as a State Forest Park; the
preservation of historic areas had
been recognized by the State Legis-
lature two years previous when
the battle ground of Birch Coulee
was set aside as a memorial to the
1862 Sioux Uprising.

Itasca State Park contains within
its boundaries Lake Itasca, which is
the source of the Mississippi River,
and also the largest remaining stands
of virgin Norway and White Pine
in the United States today.

Minnesota has 20 State Parks;
4 State Memorial Parks ; 2 Memorial
State Waysides; 6 Scenic State
Waysides; 3 State Recreational
Reserves and 8 Monuments and 3
Historic State Waysides. The total
acreage of the State Parks is
45,449 acres.

Accommodations for delegates to
the Conference will be available at
Douglas Lodge and appurtenant
Cabin located within the Park.
Additional accommodations will be
available in the 6 cabins at the
camp grounds.

Trips are being arranged to other
Minnesota state areas Chippewa

National Forest, Bemidji and Lake
Bemidji State Park. Provision
will be made for fishing, hiking,
horseback riding and boating, as
the Conference has been purposely
scheduled in June at a time which
should insure good weather for
outdoor recreation.

Topics for papers are now being
considered and ample time will be
allowed for discussion on current
State Park problems. A tentative
outline of the program follows :

Planning a State-wide Park and
Recreation Program

The Value of Naturalists in
State Parks

Regional Units as a Part of
State Plans, including Long Term
Planning for Relation of State Parks
to Regional and County Plans

Interstate Agreements

Low Cost Vacations in Organized
Group Camps

Federal Aid to the State

Proper Classification of State
Park Areas

Week-day Use of State Parks

Fees and Charges

The Importance of Civil Service

The Importance of Uniform
Records

Progress reports will be heard
from States in the Minnesota region.

Harold W. Lathrop, Director of
State Parks for Minnesota, is local
chairman of the Conference. In-
quiries should be addressed to Mr.
Lathrop at 10 State Office Building,
St. Paul, Minnesota, or to the
Executive Secretary, National Con-
ference on State Parks, 901 Union
Trust Building, Washington, D. C.

Institute on Landscape Management

The first course of its kind, known
as an Institute of Landscape Man-
agement, was inaugurated by the
National Conference on State Parks
and held for a period of one month
between the dates of February 13
and March 11. This Institute was
held at the New York State College
of Forestry at Syracuse University
and conducted by the Department
of Landscape and Recreational
Management of that institution.

The idea of a winter short course
for the administrative personnel of
organizations which deal with natu-
ral landscape areas administered for
recreational and scenic purposes has
been advocated for some time by the
National Conference on State Parks.
Dr. Laurie D. Cox developed the
program for the Institute in cooper-
ation with a special committee of
the Conference and worked out the
details as a result of correspondence
and conferences with Colonel Rich-
ard Lieber, president of the Confer-
ence, and Roberts Mann, a member
of the special committee promoting
the Institute.

The work given covered the fields
of recreational theory, planning and
program; landscape design and con-
struction; park administration and
management; forestry, including
such phases as dendrology, forest
reproduction, fire control, forest
entomology and forest pathology;
wildlife management; and a certain
amount of consideration of those
sciences such as botany, zoology,
ecology and geology, upon which an
understanding of the natural land-
scape depend. Classroom and labo-

ratory work was supplemented by
all-day field trips to various forms
of forest and park areas within a
hundred-mile radius of Syracuse, a
region rich in the variety and type
of its recreation, scenic and forest
areas.

In addition to instruction by
members of the faculty of the Col-
lege and University (some eighteen
faculty members conducting work),
the Institute had the benefit of three
or four outside speakers each week,
a total of fourteen being present dur-
ing the four weeks. These speakers
were experts of national reputation
in the landscape and recreational
field and represented state, regional
and national organizations of both
park and forest services, as well as
private practitioners representing
the professions of forestry, engineer-
ing and landscape architecture.

Among those who lectured on the
program were: H. S. Wagner, Akron
Metropolitan Park System; Robert
Marshall, U. S. Forest Service; Con-
rad Wirth, National Park Service;
A. D. Taylor, president, American
Society of Landscape Architects;
Col. Richard Lieber; Roberts Mann;
James Evans, director of N. Y. State
Parks; Robert Simon, landscape
architect, Vermont State Forest
Service; and Herman Boettjer, gen-
eral superintendent of Long Island
State Parks Commission.

Thirty-two men registered and
completed the course. They came
from twelve different States, ranging
east to west from Colorado to
Vermont, and north and south from
Minnesota to Mississippi.

National Resources Committee Notes

"Development and enactment of
appropriate legislation to provide
for continuation, correlation and
decentralization of planning work"
was advocated by President Roose-
velt in letters, made public February
13, to Senator James F. Byrnes and
Representative John J. Cochran,
as Chairmen of the Committees on
Government Reorganization in the
Senate and the House of Repre-
sentatives.

The text of the letters, which
accompanied advance copies of the
National Resources Committee's
Progress Report, follows:

I am sending you the enclosed 'Progress
Report* of the National Resources Com-
mittee because it is more than the usual
annual statement of a Federal executive
agency. This report reviews the problems
and progress with which a planning
agency has been concerned during the
last five years. It demonstrates the
usefulness of the kind of planning service
which, as I have recommended to the
Congress, should be provided as a per-
manent establishment within the Federal
Government.

I hope that this report will be helpful
to you and your colleagues on the Select
Committee on Government Organization
in the development and enactment of
appropriate legislation to provide for
continuation, correlation and decentral-
ization of planning work.

The report reviews the details of
planning progress at different levels
of government, emphasizes the sig-
nificant and wide-spread develop-
ment of direct citizen participation
in planning work by community
groups, town, city, county, and
special district agencies; the state
planning boards; regional councils
and committees; Federal depart-
ments and establishments; and the
National Resources Committee.

The Federal Government spent
on research approximately only one
dollar for each person in the United
States during the fiscal year ending
June 30, 1937, according to the
report, "Research A National Re-
source," recently transmitted to
Congress by the President. The
$120,000,000 spent in this field,
however, represented only about 2
percent of the total budget, in
contrast to industrial corporations
which spend about 4 percent of
their budgets on research and uni-
versities which spend as high as
25 percent of their annual budgets.

The report states in part, that:

The regular research activities of the
Federal Government are largely in the
fields of the natural sciences and their
applications. Researches in the social
sciences and statistics account for about
one-fourth of the expenditures made from
regular funds. Most of the expenditures
for research made from emergency funds
are in the social science fields and
statistics. . . .

Later studies will be concerned
with research by universities and
colleges, by business organizations,
by the large industrial laboratories,
and by state and municipal govern-
ments.

The study was directed by a Sub-
committee of the Science Com-
mittee, consisting of Charles H.
Judd, University of Chicago, chair-
man; William F. Ogburn, University
of Chicago; and Edwin B. Wilson,
Harvard University. The Science
Committee members are: Ross G.
Harrison, Yale University and Chair-
man, National Research Council;
John C. Merriam, former President,
Carnegie Institution; Edwin B.

Planning and Civic Comment

Wilson, Harvard University and
Social Science Research Council;
Waldo G. Leland, Secretary, Amer-
ican Council of Learned Societies;
Harry A. Millis, University of
Chicago; William F. Ogburn, Uni-
versity of Chicago; Walter D.
Cocking, University of Georgia;
Edward C. Elliott, President, Pur-
due University; Charles H. Judd,
University of Chicago. Charles M.
Wiltse was Acting Secretary.

In order to bring together Federal
officials concerned with Public
Works and citizens especially quali-
fied to advise on the economics and
timing of public construction activ-
ities, the National Resources Com-
mittee has announced the appoint-
ment of a Technical Public Works
Committee.

Colonel Henry M. Waite was
named chairman of the Committee
and Frank W. Herring, of the
American Public Works Association,
vice-chairman. Other members are
F. E. Schmitt, Engineering News
Record; Otto T. Mallery, member
Pennsylvania State Planning Board;
William Stanley Parker, Construc-
tion League of America; Frederick
J. Lawton, Bureau of the Budget;
Corrington Gill, Works Progress
Administration; Fred Schnepfe, Pub-
lic Works Administration; Lowell
Chawner, Department of Com-
merce; A. F. Hinrichs, Department
of Labor, and Lt. Col. Paul W.
Baade, War Department.

This group has been asked to
assist the National Resources Com-
mittee in continuing its preparation
of 6-year programs of Federal
public works and in stimulating the
preparation of such capital budget

programs by States and cities.

In addition the new committee
will undertake studies to determine
the most effective utilization of
state and local public works for
stabilizing the construction indus-
try and to analyze the role of public
construction activities in providing
employment and increasing the
national income.

Immediate steps on the part of
the government toward formulation
of a national energy resources
policy in the interest of national
defense, conservation and economic
betterment, are advocated in the
Committee's report on "Energy
Resources and National Policy,"
sent to Congress on February 1 5 by
President Roosevelt.

Stimulation and support of both
fundamental and applied research
by the Federal Government in the
agencies concerned with energy
resources was urged by the special
committee as a measure of conser-
vation and efficient use of energy
resources in the interest of national
welfare.

In order to provide for contin-
uous planning and studies of policies
the committee also recommended
organization of an advisory planning
group for the energy resources,
which would be part of a national
planning agency.

In concluding the report the
Committee said, in part:

It is difficult in the long run, therefore,
to envisage a national coal policy or a
national petroleum policy or a national
water-power policy without also in time a
national policy directed toward all these
energy producers that is, a national
energy resources policy. Such a broader
and integrated policy toward the problems
of coal, petroleum, natural gas, and water

Planning and Civic Comment

power cannot be evolved overnight, for
each of those problems is amazingly com-
plex and in combination they represent
more than a simple sum of problems.

Ralph J. Watkins, Assistant Ad-
ministrator, Wage and Hour Divi-
sion, and formerly Director of the
Bureau of Business Research, Uni-
versity of Pittsburgh, was the direc-
tor of the studies and served as
chairman. The Technical Com-
mittee on Energy Resources which
was responsible for the report in-
cluded: Captain F. A. Daubin,
U. S. Navy, Army and Navy Mu-
nitions Board; Charles W. Eliot
2d, Executive Officer, National
Resources Committee; A. C. Field-
ner, Bureau of Mines; John W.
Frey, Petroleum Conservation Di-
vision; Roger B. McWhorter, Fed-
eral Power Commission; W. C.
Mendenhall, Director, U. S. Geo-
logical Survey; Colonel H. K.
Rutherford, Army and Navy Muni-
tions Board; F. C. Tryon, Bitumi-
nous Coal Commission, and Joel D.
Wolfsohn, National Power Policy
Committee.

In its report on "Water Pollution
in the United States," which the
President transmitted to Congress
on February 15, the National Re-
sources Committee recommended
that the Federal Government aid
the States in abatement activities
by furnishing funds and technical
assistance. While the report em-
phasized that responsibility for pol-
lution abatement is primarily local,
it asserts that financial considera-
tions have been a major obstacle to
abatement programs in the past.

The report recommended that an
appropriate Federal agency (pre-
sumably the U. S. Public Health

Service) be authorized to study
water pollution and its abatement;
to cooperate with and stimulate
state and local agencies' efforts;
to make grants and loans to public
bodies, and make loans to industry;
and to coordinate and act as a
clearing house for all abatement
programs.

The Fourth Annual Southeastern
Planning Conference will be held at
Columbia, South Carolina, March
30-31, 1939. Conference headquar-
ters will be the Columbia Hotel and
the sponsorship will include the
South Carolina State Planning Board
and the Regional Three Field Office
of the National Resources Com-
mittee.

"Aids to State Planning" will be
the theme of the Conference, a sub-
ject especially timely to Southeast-
ern planning boards. Local planning
and development will also be in-
cluded for discussion, since many of
the subjects of forest resources,
parks, power, health, roadside im-
provement are of greater concern to
the towns and cities individually
than to the State as a whole.

The South Carolina Planning
Board will present its program
against the background of many
other public and private agencies
working for the improvement of the
State a two-day case study of
Southeastern development.

Frederic A. Delano will preside at
the banquet to be held the evening
of March 30. Governor E. D. Rivers
of Georgia will discuss : "State Plan-
ning the Governor's Aide" and
Governor Burnet R. Maybank of
South Carolina will outline "Plans
for Development of South Carolina."

Watch Service

National Parks

H. R. 3794 (Gearhart) introduced Feb. 7, 1039. To establish the John Muir-Kmgs
Canyon National Park, California, to transfer thereto the lands included in the General
Grant National Park. (See article p. 17).

H. R. 3792 (Gearhart) introduced Feb. 7, 1939. Authorizing construction of Pine
Flat Reservoir and other works in the Kings River Basin, California. Authorizes con-
struction of the Pine Flat Reservoir in the Kings River Basin, California, under Federal
reclamation laws, the costs to be allocated to irrigation, power and flood control, the
power cost to be repaid by power revenues, the flood control cost by Federal allotment
by the Chief of Engineers of the War Department, leaving only the irrigation investment
to be repaid by the water users. The Pine Flat Reservoir lies without the proposed
John Muir-Kings Canyon National Park; but it is devoutly to be hoped that the
water users, if they secure Federal aid from the War Department will relinquish their
claims to the Cedar Grove and Tehipite Power sites which are shown on the map as
intrusions in the proposed park. No claim is made that the power is needed, only that
its sale would help pay for the irrigation investment.

H. R. 3793 (Gearhart) introduced Feb. 7, 1939. A bill authorizing construction of
distribution systems required for irrigation of lands participating in the development of
the Central Valley project, California. Authorizes the Secretary of the Interior, in
connection with Central Valley Project, to construct under the Federal reclamation laws,
such distribution systems as he deems necessary for the irrigation of said lands.

H. R. 2961 (DeRouen) introduced Jan. 20. To provide for the establishment of the
Green Mountain National Park in the State of Vermont.

H. R. 36485. 1188 (DeRouen- Adams) introduced Feb. 2-Feb. 6. A bill to author-
ize the setting apart and preservation of wilderness areas in national parks and national
monuments, and for other purposes.

H. R. 3759 (DeRouen) introduced Feb. 6. To authorize a National Mississippi River
Parkway and matter relating thereto. Hearings being held by Committee on Public
Lands.

National Resources Board

S. 19 (Hayden) introduced Jan. 4, 1939. To establish a National Resources Board.
Referred to the Committee on Public Lands and Surveys.

S. 1265 (Byrnes) introduced Feb. 9, 1939. To establish a Department of Public
Works, to amend certain sections of the Social Security Act. On Feb. 17, 1939, Senator
Hayden proposed an amendment to S. 1 265 which was referred to the Special Committee
to Investigate Unemployment and Relief. As Title III National Resources Board, it
proposed the establishment of a National Resources Board to be composed of the
Secretaries of the Treasury, War, Interior, Agriculture, Labor and Public Works, and
three other members to be appointed by the President from widely separated sections
of the U. S., by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Board is authorized
and directed to investigate, examine, study, analyze, assemble and coordinate and at
suitable intervals to review and revise basic information and materials appropriate to
the formulation of plans or planning policies for the conservation, development, and
utilization of the Nation's resources, and on the basis thereof, to initiate and propose,
in an advisory capacity only, such plans and planning policies, etc.

S. 1739 (Wagner) introduced March 8, 1939. To provide for the advance planning
and regulated construction of public works, to promote the sound investment of public
funds, to diminish unemployment during periods of business depression, to conserve
national resources, to create a Federal Employment Stabilization Board. In Section 5
of this bill, the National Resources Committee shall cease to exist and stand dissolved
and the Federal Employment Stabilization Board is authorized and directed to inves-
tigate, examine, study, analyze, assemble, coordinate basic information and materials
appropriate to the formulation of plans or planning policies for the conservation, de-
velopment and utilization of the natural resources of the U. S.

The Senate Bill to Make Permanent the National
Resources Board

Senator Hayden introduced a bill
to create a National Resources
Board and later an amendment to
the Byrnes Bill to establish a
Department of Public Works. The
amendment provides for a Board of
ten, with seven ex officio cabinet
members, including Treasury, War,
Interior, Agriculture, Commerce,
Labor and Public Works, plus three
to be appointed by the President, to
be selected geographically, to serve
for overlapping terms.

The powers conferred are entirely
advisory and follow very closely the
functions now being performed by
the National Resources Committee.
The Presidential appointees would
be paid a salary, which means pre-

sumably, that they would be full-
time government employes.

Some former pending measures
provided for $50 a day and travel
recompense for actual service, with
a limitation of 30 days' service in
60 days. The difference in cost to
the Government is not significant.
The per diem compensation is ad-
vocated by those who believe that
more experienced Board members
may be secured if they are not
required to abandon all other af-
fairs. In the case of a Board so
constituted, there is the benefit,
supposedly, of superior policy-mak-
ing service, and the emphasis for
full-time service would be on the
employed executive and his staff.

Hearings on the John Muir-Kings Canyon Park

The Department of the Interior
and the Department of Agriculture
are in entire agreement on the
transfer of Forest lands to the
National Park Service to create
this national park which John Muir
advocated nearly sixty years ago.
Secretary I ekes made an excellent
statement before the House Com-
mittee on Public Lands at the
March Hearings and presented the
following letter from Secretary

Wallace: February 8, 1939

THE HONORABLE

THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.

Dear Mr. Secretary: Reference is made
to proposals to create a John Muir
National Park in California and include
within it what is known as the Kings
River Canyon country, most of which has
been part of the national forest system
administered by this department.

In one form or another this matter has,
as you know, been under discussion for
many years. This Department is clearly of
record that in its opinion much of the Kings

River country is of national park caliber.
The major issue around which discussion
has centered is that of water resources.

My understanding is that boundary
lines as shown on certain recent maps have
to a very large extent taken the matter of
water resources into consideration. This
note, however, is to let you know that the
Department of Agriculture will approve
creation of a national park within the
general territory under discussion and
will join with you in consideration of the
specific boundaries described by proposed
legislation in an effort to expedite the
situation.

My reason for making this reservation
with respect to boundaries is that I have
not yet seen the bill defining them, and
they are, of course, a matter that should
have our mutual consideration.

Sincerely,
(Sgd.) H. A. WALLACE, Secretary

The point is made that the area
is now being used almost exclusively
for inspiration and recreation, as graz-
ing has been reduced to a minimum,
and that it meets national-park stan-
dards. What more can be said?

See the New York Fair and Attend the Planning
Conference at Boston!

Planning Conference, May 15-17

Following the plan of the very
successful Planning Conference held
in Minneapolis last June, the Boston
Conference, which will be sponsored
by the American Institute of Plan-
ners (nee American City Planning
Institute), American Planning and
Civic Association, American Society
of Planning Officials, and the Na-
tional Economic and Social Plan-
ning Association, will be organized
into round table sections which will
report to a general assembly at
intervals during the meeting. An
effort will be made to avoid schedul-
ing more than two sections at the
same time.

Subjects to be covered by the
program include a keynote speech
on "Why should we plan? Our
Fathers didn't!"; Factors in Com-
munity Reclamation, divided into
Housing for all the People; Trans-
portation as an Element in Rehabili-
tation; Recreation and Social Fac-
tors; Industrial Migration, from the
Standpoint of Labor, Industry and
Sociology; Institutional Aspects oj
Resources Planning, covering Prob-
lems Inherent in a Water Resources
Study and Aids and Obstacles to the
Adoption and Execution of a Land
Utilization Plan; Rural Problems,
Programs and Policies, including
Soil on the Sidewalk; Here They
Come; There They Go; and Rurban
Land Use Planning; The National
Income Sources and Expenditures
with discussions on The Creation,
Distribution and Disposition of
National Income (Industry's Part

and Government's Part) and a
Stabilization Program; Planning as
an Instrument in Business and
Social Activities, securing the points
of view of Business, Bankers, Real
Estate, Home Economics, Manu-
facturers, Educators, and Public
Officials; Public Works; Future
Shares of Federal and Non-Federal
Agencies; stressing What Local Use
is Being Made of Surveys by WPA
Workers and Others, Analysis of
Aims and Achievements of PWA
and WPA, Analysis of Aims and
Achievements of FHA and USHA;
Planning Problems of Large Cities;
Planning Problems of Smaller Com-
munities. A suggested program for
a session on Rural Planning would
include Common Problems that
both City and Rural Planners must
be concerned with; Concrete ex-
amples and specific suggestions.

Rural Land-use Planning would
consider Guide Posts in a Present-
day No-man's-land; Examples and
Recommendations. Zoning fans will
be glad to learn that Mr. Bassett's
Zoning Round Table will again be a
feature of the meeting. Miss Elisa-
beth M. Herlihy, Chairman of the
Massachusetts State Planning
Board and a member of the Boston
City Planning Board, as Director
of the 1939 Planning Conference, is
bringing together a large local com-
mittee who will do everything pos-
sible to make this meeting one of
the most memorable in the annals
of planning.

Plan to attend this Conference!

See the San Francisco Fair and Attend the National Park
Conference at Santa Fe!

National Park Conference, October 9-10

The third National Park Con-
ference, sponsored by the American
Planning and Civic Association, will
be held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on
October 9-10 and will be followed
by a five-or-six-day trip to the
National Parks and Monuments in
the Region. Summer California
visitors may stop off at the Santa
Fe Conference on the way East
from the San Francisco Fair, and
winter visitors to California may
start a little early and stop at
Santa Fe on the way to the Fair.

A Program of unusual interest is
being arranged. The new National
Park Building, near the Laboratory
of Anthropology, will be occupied
by that time, and some of the meet-
ings will be held in this charming
building, done in the Santa Fe
manner. The National Park Super-
intendents will hold their conference
just prior to the American Planning
and Civic Association's Conference,
and will, as always, add to the in-
terest in the program.

Special Summer Planning Courses to be Repeated

A summer program in the Prin-
ciples, Techniques, Legislation, and
Administration of City and Regional
Planning will be given at the Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology in
1939, sponsored jointly by the
School of Architecture and the
American Planning and Civic Asso-
ciation.

PRINCIPLES OF PLANNING, June
12-23, inclusive tuition $30 (in-
cluding supervision of problems in
design and research), consists of a
series of lectures and seminars on
the objects and scope of city and
regional planning and the elements
that go to make up a comprehensive
plan for the physical development
of a city or region.

PLANNING LEGISLATION, June 19-
23, inclusive tuition $10, covers
the legal aspects of both planning
and zoning, including enabling legis-
lation, municipal and county or-
dinances for zoning and subdivision

control, and private deed restric-
tions.

PLANNING TECHNIQUES, June 26-
30, inclusive tuition $10, is de-
signed to present the procedure
followed by the planning technician
in the development of a comprehen-
sive plan, including the surveys, the
preparation of the plan itself and the
problems involved in its execution.

PLANNING ADMINISTRATION, June
26-30, inclusive tuition $10, con-
sists of lectures and seminars on the
principles of organization and ad-
ministration in the carrying out of
comprehensive plans and zoning
ordinances for towns, cities, and
regions.

This program is about the same
as given last year, with the addition
of a new course in Planning Legisla-
tion to be given by Flavel Shurtleff .
Frederick J. Adams will give the
Courses in Planning Techniques and
Principles of Planning.

Book Reviews

POWDER RIVER: LET 'ER BUCK, by
Struthers Burt. Illustrations by Ross
Santee. Published by Farrar & Rine-
hart, Inc., New York. 1938. Price $2.50.

Struthers Burt, whom the Amer-
ican Planning and Civic Association
is proud to claim as a member of its
Advisory Council, has turned in
another literary success in this, the
fourth volume in the Rivers of
America series. Powder River is
an epic of the range country and
Mr. Burt has made it an exciting
story. The dramatic events in
western history which have flashed
across this famous River include the
last stand of the Sioux against the
white man; the settlement by cattle-
men from Texas; the Johnson
County war, still a burning topic on
Wyoming tongues; and the gradual
breaking up of the open range and
the coming of the dude ranch.

Mr. Burt has made of Powder
River a fascinating blend of history
and folk-lore and in his dramatic
style has made a living thing of the
spirit of the prairie country. He has
succeeded in recasting into real
drama the story of the Powder
River country.

JOHN OF THE MOUNTAINS. The Unpub-
lished Journals of John Muir. Edited
by Linnie Marsh Wolfe. Houghton
Mifflin Company, Boston, 1938. Illus-
trated. Price $3.75.

For fifty years, ever since the
publication of the Century articles,
the books by John Muir have met
with a cordial, and even eager,
reception by the nature-loving read-
ing public. Besides the eight books
published by John Muir in his
lifetime, we have the "Life and
Letters" edited so sympathetically
by Professor William F. Bade. But,
because of the voluminous entries
in his many journals, these hitherto
unpublished first-hand recordings
come to us with as fresh an interest
and with as keen a dramatic appeal
as though there never had been
other John Muir books.

There has been much fine writing
about Nature, but seldom has there
been a man who has studied her so
long and so lovingly and so far
penetrated her precious secrets as
John Muir, who wrote with such
simplicity and lack of conscious
style.

Recent Publications

Compiled by Katharine McNamara, Librarian of the Departments of
Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, Harvard University

AMERICAN PLANNING AND Civic ASSO-
CIATION. Roadside improvement; sup-
plement to Planning and Civic Com-
ment, Oct.-Dec. 1938; vol. 4, No. 4.
Washington, The Association, 1938.
24 pages.

COLCORD, JOANNA C. Your community:
its provision for health, education,
safety, and welfare. New York, Russell
Sage Foundation, 1939. 249 pages.
IIIus., map, chart. Price 85 cents.

GUBBELS, JAC L. American highways and
roadsides. Introduction by Julian Mont-

gomery. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co.,
1938. 94 pages. IIIus., diagrs. Price
$2.75.

HAMPSTEAD GARDEN SUBURB TRUST LTD.,
pub. The Hampstead Garden Suburb,
its achievements and significance.
[Hampstead, Eng.], Hampstead Garden
Suburb Trust Ltd., [1937]. 24 pages.
IIIus., portrait. Price Is 6d.

HASSE, ADELAIDE R. Planning, localisa-
tion of industry, depressed areas, hous-
ing, unemployment, financing, govern-
ment, planning. Royal Commission on

Planning and Civic Comment

the Geographical Distribution of the
Industrial Population. Minutes of
evidence, 1937-1938; a summary, [pre-
pared by Adelaide R. Hasse, under the
direction of Virginia Breen]. [Wash-
ington], U. S. Works Progress Adminis-
tration, Oct. 1, 1938. 53 pages. Mimeo-
graphed. Tables. (Research Library
Abstracts. Item 554. Foreign.)

HYNNING, CLIFFORD J. State conservation
of resources. National Resources Com-
mittee. Washington, Govt. Printing
Office, 1939. 116 pages. Maps, tables,
chart. Price 15 cents.

ILLINOIS. DIVISION OF STATE PARKS, and
OTHERS. Illinois park, parkway and
recreational area plan, prepared at the
request of Governor Henry Horner, by
the Division of State Parks of the
Department of Public Works and
Buildings, the Illinois State Planning
Commission, and the Chicago Regional
Planning Association; the National
Park Service cooperating. Chicago,
Illinois State Planning Commission,
1938. 142 pages + 7 plates. IIIus.
(part colored), maps (part folded),
charts. Price $1.50.

INTERNATIONAL CITY MANAGERS' ASSO-
CIATION. Specifications for the annual
municipal report: suggested topics and
units of measurement for reporting each
activity; tentative draft. Chicago, The
Association, Nov. 1938. 15 pages.
Mimeographed. Price 50 cents.
Section on Planning, p. 7-9.

INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION FOR HOUS-
ING AND TOWN PLANNING. Planning
recreation. XVI International Housing
and Town Planning Congress, Mexico,
1938. Bruxelles, The Federation, 1938.
Various paging. IIIus., maps, plans,
cross section, tables. Price 3s.

Text in English, French and German.

KANSAS CITY (Mo.) CHAMBER OF COM-
MERCE. Where these rocky bluffs meet,
including the story of the Kansas City
ten-year plan. Kansas City, The
Chamber, 1938. 293 pages. IIIus., maps,
tables, charts. Price $2.50.
KIDD, JOHN G., comp. Cincinnati: "the
queen city." [Cincinnati, O.J, John G.
Kidd and Son, Inc., 1938. Unpaged.
IIIus.

MCDONALD, FREDERICK H. How to
promote community and industrial
development. New York, Harper and
Brothers Publishers, 1938. 260 pages.
Price $3.00.

MOSES, ROBERT. Housing and recreation.
New York, The Author, Nov. 22, 1938.

40 pages. IIIus. (part folded), map,
diagrs. (folded).

NEW YORK, N. Y. CITY PLANNING
COMMISSION. Proposed capital budget
for the calendar year 1939 and capital
program for the next succeeding five cal-
endar years. . . [New York], The Com-
mission, Nov. 1, 1938. 61 pages. Tables.

NEW YORK, N. Y. DEPT. OF CITY PLAN-
NING. Sections of the New York city
charter and administrative code relating
to and affecting the City Planning
Commission. New York, The Dept.,
Oct. 2, 1938. 23 pages. Mimeographed.

NOLTING, ORIN F., and PAUL OPPERMANN.
The parking problem in central business
districts, with special reference to off-
street parking. Chicago, Public Ad-
ministration Service, 1938. 28 pages.
IIIus., plans, tables, charts. (Publica-
tion No. 64.) Price $1.00.

REYNOLDS, HARRIS, and BREMER W.
POND. Planning to plant shade trees;
a new system proposed for greater
safety, beauty and economy, by Harris
A. Reynolds in cooperation with Bremer
W. Pond. Boston, Massachusetts For-
est and Park Association, Jan. 1939.
16 pages. IIIus., cross sections. (Bulle-
tin No. 162.) Price 25 cents.

RICK, GLENN A., [comp. and ed.] Long
term program of capital expenditures:
city of San Diego, California. [San
Diego, Calif., 1938.] 45 pages. Litho-
graphed. IIIus., maps (one folded),
tables, charts.

TAYLOR, A. D. Forest Hill Park; a report
on the proposed landscape development,
prepared for the city of Cleveland
Heights, Ohio. . . the city of East
Cleveland, Ohio. . . . Cleveland, O.,
1938. 104 pages. IIIus., maps (part
folded), plans, cross sections, portraits.

U. S. FEDERAL HOUSING ADMINISTRATION.
Planning profitable neighborhoods.
Washington, The Administration, [1938].
35 pages. IIIus., plans, diagrs. (Tech-
nical Bulletin No. 7.) Price 20 cents.

U. S. NATIONAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE.
COMMITTEE ON POPULATION PROBLEMS.
Population problems. Washington,
Govt. Printing Office, 1938. 28 pages.
Maps, charts. Price 10 cents.

. SCIENCE COMMITTEE. Re-
search: a national resource. I. Relation
of the federal government to research,
November 1938; report of the Science
Committee to the National Resources
Committee. Washington, Govt. Print-
ing Office, 1938. 255 pages. Charts,
tables. Price 50 cents.

V.V.I

Planning and
Civic Comment

Successor to: City Planning, Civic Comment, State Recreation

CONTENTS

Page

Riverside Parkway Acquired as a Civic Service . .
Editorial Comment: On Guard for Niagara . .

Kings Canyon Bill Reported by House Committee 4

Billboards: Noblesse Oblige . , 5

Coffee County, Alabama A Demonstration in County Planning 6
National Resources Committee Commended . , 9

Early Plan of Charles Town, S. C. . . . . 11

Zoning Round Table: Buildings Destroyed by Fire . .12

International Housing and Town Planning Congress 14

Strictly Personal , . .15

American Planning and Civic Association Announces a Ten-Day

Traveling National Park Meeting in the Colorful Southwest,

October 9-19, 1939

The King of Spain's Advice to Planners in 1573 . . 17

Postponement of Summer Course to July 10 . . 20

State Park Notes . . , 21

New Officers Elected at National Conference on State Parks . ,24
New Park Yearbook Ready . . . . . .25

Recent Court Decisions Affecting Zoning .26

Watch Service Report

National Resources Committee Note:; ,30

For Better Roadsides . . 34

Report on National Planning for England and Wales 36

O. H. P. Johnson Harold Allen 37

New York City Planning Commission Issues First Report .
Association's Publications Widely Distributed .39

Recent Publications . .39

APRIL -JUNE 1939

IN TWO PARTS PART I

PLANNING AND
CI[VIC COMMENT

Published Quarterly
Successor to: City Planning, Civic Comment, State Recreation

Official Organ of: American Planning and Civic Association,
National Conference on State Parks

SCOPE: National, State, Regional and City Planning; Land and Water Uses;

Conservation oj National Resources; National, State and Local Parks,

Highways and Roadsides.
AIM: To create a better physical environment which will conserve and develop

the health, happiness and culture of the American people.

HARLEAN JAMES

EDITORIAL BOARD

FLAVEL SHURTLEFF

CHARLES G. SAUERS

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

FREDERICK J. ADAMS
HORACE M. ALBRIGHT
HARLAND BARTHOLOMEW
EDWARD M. BASSETT
RUSSELL V. BLACK
PAUL V. BROWN
STRUTHERS BURT
HAROLD S. BUTTENHEIM
ARNO B. CAMMERER
DAVID C. CHAPMAN
MARSHALL N. DANA
S. R. DEBOER
EARLE S. DRAPER
CHARLES W. ELIOT 2o
L. C. GRAY
S. HERBERT HARE

CONRAD

ELISABETH M. HERLIHY

P. J. HOFFMASTER

HENRY V. HUBBARD
JOHN IHLDER
RAYMOND F. LEONARD
RICHARD LIEBER
THOMAS H. MACDONALD
J. HORACE MCFARLAND
HENRY T. MC!NTOSH
KATHERINE MCNAMARA
MARVIN C. NICHOLS
JOHN NOLEN, JR.
F. A. PITKIN
ISABELLE F. STORY
L. DEMING TILTON
TOM WALLACE
L. WIRTH

MANAGING EDITOR

DORA A. PADGETT

$3.00 a Year

Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office at Washington, D. C., under
the Act of March 3, 1879. Additional entry at Harrisburg, Pa.

EDITORIAL AND PUBLICATION OFFICE: 901 Union Trust Building, Washington, D. C.

Printed by the Mount Pleasant Press, J. Horace McFarland Company, Harris-
burg, Pa.

Planning and Civic Comment

Vol. 5

April-June, 1939

No. 2

Riverside Parkway Acquired as a Civic Service

By AUBREY L. WHITE, Spokane, Washington

EDITOR'S NOTE. The author of this
article, Aubrey L. White, Manager of the
Spokane Parkways and Roadside Protec-
tion Association, has been a leader in the
establishment of the Spokane Parkway.
As a tribute to him, the Legislature of the
State of Washington at its recent session
passed unanimously, on March 9, 1939, a
bill naming the parkway the "Aubrey L.
White Parkway."

SPOKANE, a city of 135,000,
is bisected by the Spokane
River, a swiftly flowing moun-
tain stream, which heads in the
Rockies and flows through a beauti-
ful valley by the same name, then
tumbles over three waterfalls in the
very heart of the city. From these
falls is generated much of the power
that gives the city the name of
"Spokane, the Power City."

A small group of public spirited
men, realizing the importance of
preserving the shore line, banks and
adjoining land bordering the river,
and desiring to forestall the threat of
commercial encroachment, some ten
years ago organized the Spokane
River Parkways Association, a non-
profit organization now known as
the Spokane Parkways and Road-
side Protection Association. The
Board of Directors of this Associa-
tion is made up of important busi-
ness and professional men of the
city. Working in close arrangement
with the owners and editors of the

Spokesman-Review, a daily and Sun-
day paper, this organization under-
took the task of securing the land
and the right-of-way for a riverside
parkway on both sides of the river.

As the result of a multitude of
transactions with individuals, cor-
porations and city and county tax
officials, it gradually acquired title
to a continuous body of 5,500 acres
of land, and the right-of-way for 26
miles of parkway along both sides of
the river bank. This was secured by
donations of land, by the buying of
private land and tax-sale land, with
money raised from dues or cash gifts.

The land inside the city was
deeded for city parks, and that out-
side deeded for state parks, at no
cost to either city or State. The
Riverside State Park begins at the
city limits, and the parkways con-
nect with the city parks and boule-
vard system. For several years the
development of this parkway by
grading, paving and planting has
furnished work for hundreds of the
unemployed, and for the last five
years the National Park Service has
operated a CCC camp, petitioned
for and secured by the Association.
Many miles of secondary roads,
bridle paths and trails have been
graded, beside the 26 miles of park-
way, and fine recreation areas have

Planning and Civic Comment

been developed at the Bowl and
Pitcher and Deep Creek Canyon.

This park and these parkways be-
ginning at the city center are unique
natural assets, beautiful and pictur-
esque, bordering for 15 miles the
Spokane River, with its rapids, falls,
and quiet stretches, and opening up
an unsurpassed scenic, historic and
geographical area, with great lava
rock formations and cliffs that rise
for hundreds of feet above the river.
The canyon walls tell the story of
volcanic eruption and the erosion
and building up of the present land-
scape.

From these miles of parkways can
be read the geological story of mil-
lions of years. The granite hills of
the Little Spokane and the moun-
tains of British Columbia rise in the
distance to the north; to the east,
Mount Spokane and the mountains
of Idaho; to the southeast, Mica
Peak and the Sentinel Rock. The
majestic peak of Mount Spokane,
once as high as Mount Rainier is
now, must have been in perpetual
snow, but glaciers for long periods
of time have worn it down to its
present height of 5,900 feet, yet it
is snow-capped for six months of
the year.

In many places along the park-
way glacial evidences are visible. It
is claimed that Deep Creek Canyon,
where the creek has cut its way in
ages past through great basaltic
rock with walls several hundred feet
high, tells a story covering many
more periods of the world's making
than does the Grand Canyon of the
Colorado.

Along the parkways, which some-

times skirt the bottom of the cliffs
and at other times follow the top of
the cliffs, the marks of the ice age
on one side and the three great
superimposed lava floods on the
other are in evidence. Underneath
the first laval flow are great clay
beds left by ancient bodies of water,
in which have been found fossil
leaves of the Gingko and the Sequoia
and other trees that seem to prove
this was once a semi-tropical
country.

At the terminus of the parkway is
the site of Spokane House, where the
first white settlement in the North-
west was located by the Northwest
Fur Company of Montreal, Canada,
and London, England, which estab-
lished the first fur trading post in
1810, one year before John Jacob
Astor located Astoria. In 1812 the
Astor Fur Company came up the
Columbia and Spokane Rivers and
located a friendly rival post on this
same area, so that the American and
English flags flew at the same time
over the tract that lies on the neck
of land between the junction of the
Spokane and the Little Spokane
Rivers.

This whole parkway follows the
winding of the river, disclosing on
both sides various forms of running
water with masses of native flowers,
shrubs and Ponderosa Pine. It has
been designated as a bird and wild-
life sanctuary, and both upland and
water game birds are often seen. It
is not unusual to see a deer.

This parkway and recreational
area, so near the city of Spokane,
was visited last season by over
150,000 people.

EDITORIAL COMMENT

On Guard for Niagara

It was at the 1905 Cincinnati
convention of the American Civic
Association that the first definite
national attention was called to the
rapidly proceeding destruction of
Niagara Falls, or rather to change it
from America's greatest spectacle to
a gathering of wheel pits, electric
generators, and conducting appar-
atus. In consequence of the action
there begun, and projected through
a very vigorous campaign for several
years, the Burton Bill of 1906 was
enacted, and later the Treaty of
1910 completed. These great docu-
ments took Niagara Falls away from
the State of New York and Province
of Ontario, which between them had
given, either for nothing or for a
very small consideration, rights to
the use of more water than the total
volume of the Falls.

Under administration by the War
Department and in harmony with
the Canadian authorities, diversion
was held to about 27 percent of the
average flow, and many efforts since
made have failed to increase this
legalized diversion. At this diver-
sion the American Fall was thinned
down sorrowfully, and the rocks on
the Canadian side of Goat Island
completely bared. Considering this,
Herbert Hoover when Secretary of
Commerce, had appointed what is
yet known as the Special Interna-
tional Niagara Board, including an
American and a Canadian civilian,
and an American and Canadian
engineer who were by certain mem-
orable "terms of reference" charged

with studying the situation, looking
toward remedying the damage done,
if possible, and toward the possible
use of more water if that could
safely be managed.

On this Board, Dr. J. Horace
McFarland, President of the A. C. A.
was named as the American civilian
member. This Special Board worked
unremittingly for more than two
years, having at command not only
all the records of both governments
but the airplane survey facilities of
both. The result was a memorable
presentation, including the real map-
ping of the under-water surface at
the Falls. The recommendations
finally agreed upon involved the use
of ingeniously simple remedial works,
which by taking water from the
notch in the Horseshoe Falls would
divert the flow around Goat Island
over the American Fall for an in-
crease of about 60 percent, and
would also incidentally clothe the
bare rocks on the Canadian side of
Goat Island.

It was proposed that these reme-
dial works be conducted under the
control of the engineers at the ex-
pense of the Canadian and Ameri-
can Power Companies, who would
be given in the winter non-tourist
months from October to April a
relatively small amount of addi-
tional water for producing power.

Unfortunately the remedy has not
yet been applied, though it is just
as feasible as ever.

Constituted by its "terms of
reference" as guardian of the seen-

Planning and Civic Comment

ery about Niagara Falls, the Special
International Niagara Board has
since kept its eye on the Falls. Thus,
when early this year, following the
destruction by ice of the steel arch
bridge at Prospect Point, it was
proposed to erect a structure further
down the gorge some thirty feet
higher, and with approaches which
offered man-made competition with
Niagara, Dr. McFarland as the
American civilian member insisted
on a hearing, which occurred at
Niagara Falls, April 18, 1939. At
that hearing Dr. McFarland brought
to attention the previous findings of
great landscape and engineering
authorities in opposition to con-
structions at Niagara which would

offer man-made competition with
the glory of the Falls. In the dis-
cussion it appeared that Robert
Moses, the man who has done so
much to bring New York park sur-
roundings toward civilization, had
an effective relation and he has been
interested to set up a further safe-
guard for the people at Niagara.

Thus, at present there is an ap-
proximate "stop-order" against any
action about Niagara which will
further injure its magnificence.

It will be here observed that the
guardianship of the American Civic
Association and its successor, the
American Planning and Civic Asso-
ciation, has been continuous since
1905.

Kings Canyon Bill Reported by
House Committee

The Gearhart Bill, H. R. 3794,
to establish the John Muir-Kings
Canyon National Park, was re-
ported favorably, in amended form,
by the House Public Lands Com-
mittee on May 25, 1939. The bill
would preserve as a national park
an important region in the High
Sierra described in the January-
March PLANNING AND Civic COM-
MENT; would include the General
Grant National Park; and would
authorize the purchase of one of the
last extensive remaining stands of
Big Trees, now in private ownership
and in danger of being harvested.

The boundaries as drawn in the
bill have been approved by the De-
partment of the Interior and the
Department of Agriculture. At the
hearings Chief Forester Silcox testi-
fied that the Forest Service had
eliminated practically all grazing

and other commercial uses from the
Kings Canyon country in order that
it might be devoted exclusively to
recreation. He advocated the trans-
fer to the National Park Service of
the forest lands described in the bill.
In Section 3 of the amended bill,
however, the wording would permit
works for flood control, irrigation
and power development in the park.
This would be a great mistake.
Commissioner Page of the Reclam-
ation Service testified at the hearings
that in his judgment the area was
not needed for irrigation or power
development. The Federal Water
Power Act of 1920, as amended in
1921 and 1935, eliminates all na-
tional parks from any jurisdiction of
the Federal Power Commission.
Wholesale permission to introduce
construction of reservoirs and other
works, with the consequent drying

Planning and Civic Comment

up of streams within the park, would
seriously threaten this highly scenic
country and make it unfit for park
purposes.

It is essential that Congress
further amend the bill as reported
so as to eliminate the possibility of
flood control, power and irrigation
developments from the park.

The bill as introduced by Mr.
Gearhart gave to the area the name
John Muir-Kings Canyon National
Park. As reported from the Com-
mittee, the name was changed to
Kings Canyon Wilderness National
Park, though the General Grant and
Redwood Mountain Groves included
in the bill are not in any way identi-
fied with the Kings Canyon. The
name of John Muir has been so
closely identified with the High
Sierra and with the Big Trees of

California that it would be emi-
nently proper for the park to bear
his name. If Congress sees fit to
restore the Muir name, as provided
in the original Gearhart bill, such
action would undoubtedly meet with
general approval.

But whether this is done or not, it
is absolutely imperative that the bill be
further amended so that this park may
enter the system Jree Jrom any danger
of power and irrigation development.

With the agreement of the Na-
tional Park Service, the United
States Forest Service, and the
United States Reclamation Service
that this area should be a national
park, and because after extensive
hearings the Public Lands Commit-
tee has endorsed the bill, it would
seem that the time had arrived for
Congress to act.

Billboards: Noblesse Oblige

Massachusetts believes in "prac-
ticing what you preach." Twenty
years ago her people said by adopt-
ing a constitutional amendment that
they did not like billboards within
view of the public highway and
wanted them restricted. Three years
ago the Supreme Court said that the
public will should prevail and that
travelers could be protected "from
the intrusion of unwelcome adver-
tising."

This year super billboards have
appeared on the highways of New
Jersey advertising Massachusetts as
a vacation State "See the World's
Fair and then spend your vacation
in Massachusetts" is their slogan.
The billboards are attractive and in
good taste, if billboards ever are.

Now the people of New Jersey
don't like billboards either. They

have consistently supported, in
season and out, billboard regula-
tion. So letters have gone to the
Governor of Massachusetts calling
to his attention that Massachusetts
leads the Nation in its regulation of
billboards and that one of the pro-
visions in these regulations is that
all billboards over three hundred
square feet in area shall be set back
three hundred feet from the high-
ways. The letters may well have
ended with the sentence, "Massa-
chusetts needs no advertising in
New Jersey and certainly the people
of New Jersey will be more likely to
spend vacations in Massachusetts
and New England if the billboards
on the New Jersey highways come
down." Governor Saltonstall last
week by executive order directed
their removal.

Coffee County, Alabama A Demonstration
in County Planning

By W. F. BAXTER, Farm Security Administration

DURING the past few years,
the U. S. Department of
Agriculture has placed an
increasingly large amount of em-
phasis on the necessity for develop-
ing an efficient, planned program for
agricultural counties throughout the
country. As a practical demonstra-
tion in county planning, the Farm
Security Administration has ini-
tiated its Coffee County Farms
project, in Coffee County, Alabama.

Early investigations in Coffee
County revealed that corrective
work could be undertaken along
four main lines: land-use planning,
land purchase, resettlement and
rehabilitation. But instead of em-
phasizing the separate purposes and
processes of each of these programs,
the focal point of work in Coffee
County has been the county itself,
its resources and the conditions that
arise from the need for better condi-
tions of life and work among those
who live on the land.

In a true sense, the work is neither
a land program, a resettlement pro-
gram, nor a rehabilitation program.
It is an area or county program into
which have been brought the ac-
tivities of Federal, state and local
bodies so that the problems of the
whole county might be solved.

It would perhaps be difficult to
find an area whose progress and
retrogression better demonstrate the
effects of an unplanned social and
agricultural economy. Perhaps no
other group in our population has
experienced similar periods of pros-

perity and depression, wealth and
poverty, ownership and near-slavery.
The history of Coffee County is a
history of laissez-Jaire policy with
the periods of prosperity and depres-
sion alike termed "Acts of God."

The first survey of Coffee County
presented a sorry picture. The land
was eroded, the lumber wasted, the
people illiterate, ill-nourished and
diseased. During the past few years,
careful planning has changed the
picture. Through health and wel-
fare agencies, through the Federal,
state and local agricultural bodies,
through the efforts of the people of
the county, tremendous improve-
ment has been made in the social
and economic life of the people. The
soil is being rebuilt and the forests
replenished.

No words can describe the history
of Coffee County better than un-
planned and haphazard. During the
early days of settlement, home-
steaders built along the river banks
because they thought the wooded
areas valueless. Lumbering inter-
ests followed and brought a tem-
porary boom. Large areas of newly
cleared land were put to cotton. The
land was rich and the cultivation
brought another wave of prosperity.
But the bubble burst with the com-
ing of the boll weevil and the farmers
faced starvation. Discouraged with
his efforts to grow cotton, one
farmer planted peanuts and bumper
crops resulted. Coffee County farm-
ers started a new venture, featuring
peanuts and hogs. In 1920, their

Planning and Civic Comment

enterprise brought them a return of
more than five million dollars as
compared with an average of only
one million annually from cotton.
Today, a monument to the boll
weevil, erected by grateful farmers,
stands in Coffee County.

But again forces from the outside
intervened. During the depression
the price of hogs dropped. Intensive
planting had taken fertility from
the soil. The population, nearly
100 percent rural, again faced near
starvation.

In February, 1936, Coffee County
had a population of about 35,000,
most of them rural folk. More than
two-thirds of the school popula-
tion had hookworm disease. School
buildings mostly one-room affairs
were inadequate and in disrepair.
One or both of the parents in 25 per-
cent of the households could not
read or write. Electricity, running
water, or inside toilets were prac-
tically unknown in rural homes.
Most of the houses were shacks
without adequate roofing.

Soon after the Resettlement Ad-
ministration was established, some
sixty thousand acres of land, fore-
closed by a New Orleans bank, were
turned over to that agency. The
first step toward recovery was the
establishment of a county-wide plan
for rehabilitation. First, however,
surveys w r ere undertaken to secure
information on which to base wise,
accurate and scientific economic and
social planning.

It was evident from the surveys
that the fundamental problem was
two-fold and, in order to better the
general farm economy, the future
planning must look toward (i) a
readjustment of land-use and exist-

ing agricultural practices, and (2) a
readjustment of the population to
its land-base.

As the county planning proceeded,
advice was sought and given. Con-
ferences were held with state and
county agricultural services as well
as with allied Federal agencies. To
correlate all existing and proposed
activities, the County Council was
established with representatives from
all groups operating in the county.
Problems relating to schools, roads,
public health, education, taxes, etc.,
are considered by this body and
action programs formulated.

The plan for Coffee County in-
cludes rehabilitation of the popula-
tion, reconstruction of the educa-
tional and public health systems,
land-use, education in the home and
improved recreational and social
opportunities.

The Farm Security Administra-
tion is extending financial aid and
agricultural guidance to about 600
families in the county. About 200
of these are homesteaders at the
Coffee County Farms project of
that Administration. The remain-
ing 400 are operating under reha-
bilitation loans under which credit is
made available for seed, livestock,
feed and equipment on the basis of
sound farm and home management
plans. Money for schools, teachers,
nurses and other public service
personnel is received from various
agencies. Agricultural Adjustment
Administration and Soil Conserva-
tion payments are an important
factor in the improved financial
status of Coffee County farmers.

One of the most interesting de-
velopments has been in the field of
education. The Farm Security Ad-

Planning and Civic Comment

ministration is remodeling one school
house and is constructing three
more under arrangements with pri-
vate contractors. The schools are
being located in areas where these
facilities are most needed. Voca-
tional teachers are being employed
and one-half of those available are
assigned to the schools while the
others work in the homes. The edu-
cational program has been planned
to meet the needs of the men,
women, and children of the county.
The studies include practical demon-
strations of the ways of meeting
problems encountered in everyday
life.

A new public health program,
with three county health nurses in
residence, is bringing much-needed
medical care to more than 30,000
persons. A group health plan has
been set up with the cooperation of
the State and County Medical
Boards. A total of 307 low-income
farm families had membership in
the association in 1938 and more
than 55 percent of the members
required some medical care during
the year. It has been estimated
that, without the operation of the
county-wide plan, not more than
10 percent could have secured this
attention.

In addition to medical aid to
individuals, the county plan pro-
vides for a comprehensive program
in health education. Information on
sanitation, health habits and proper
diets is brought to each family
through the public health nurses,
the schools and the vocational
teachers as they work in the homes.
A County Health unit, under the
supervision of a county medical
officer, has cooperated with the

Health Association during the year.

In addition to the health associ-
ation, other cooperative enterprises
have been established under the
county plan. Cooperative purchas-
ing, processing and marketing are
conducted in connection with an
existing cooperative organization,
the Enterprise Farmers' Exchange.
Four cooperative canning services
are being established to serve about
500 families. In many instances, the
Farm Security Administration has
loaned money to families to further
participation in the movement.

Before 1937, the Coffee County
families were denied advantages of
organized social and recreational
activities. No general farmers' or-
ganizations existed, and while par-
ent-teachers and 4-H clubs had
once been established, practically
all had languished and died. A
county supervisor, reporting on the
progress of the coordinated program,
recently stated:

As a general proposition, the boys and
girls are taking an active interest in 4-H
club work and school attendance has im-
proved. There is a new spirit of coopera-
tion between the vocational agencies of
the county and meetings are being held
and school conducted for both men and
women. ... As a result of these activ-
ities, the adults are taking an active part
in church and social affairs.

Improved school houses in four
localities are providing community
meeting places. A lake, camping
grounds and picnic areas have been
provided so that residents in differ-
ent areas of the county are not
isolated from their neighbors. The
new planning for Coffee County,
plus the active leadership of the
County Council, is beginning to
show results in the economic, civic
and social progress of Coffee County.

National Resources Committee Commended

By H. T. McINTOSH in letter to Representative Cox

MR. Henry T. Mclntosh,
Editor of the Albany (Geor-
gia) Herald, and a member
of the American Planning and Civic
Association Advisory Council, has
written a letter to Representative
E. E. Cox of Georgia which Mr.
Cox valued so highly that he caused
it to be reprinted in the Congres-
sional Record of May 22, 1939.

The letter is intended to correct
the mistaken impression that the
National Resources Committee is a
regulatory agency. In reality in all
of its previous practice, and in
conformity with planning procedure
already well established in the
United States, the National Re-
sources Committee has served as a
research and fact-finding organ-
ization to make available to the
American people and public officials
information on which the duly
constituted authorities may base
legislative and administrative ac-
tion. Its plans are purely advisory.

Mr. Mclntosh has given such a
lucid explanation of the function
of the National Resources Com-
mittee that we take pleasure in
reproducing it here in the hope that
it will aid in bringing united support
to legislation which will place the
present National Resources Com-
mittee on a permanent statutory
basis as requested by the President
of the United States in his letter
to Congress of April 25, 1939.

In the Reorganization Plan No.
i, which will go into effect July I,
the functions of the National Re-

sources Committee and of the
Federal Employment Stabilization
Office in the Department of Com-
merce will be transferred to a
National Resources Planning Board,
directly responsible to the President,
to be composed of five members
appointed by the President, and
compensated by a per diem which
will permit the selection of men and
women of broad experience and
ability. It is expected that legisla-
tion will be introduced into Congress
to give the Board permanent legis-
lative status, in conformity with
the recommendations of the
President.

The letter from Mr. Mclntosh to
Representative Cox follows:

THE ALBANY HERALD

Albany, Ga., April 20, 1939
HON. E. E. Cox,
House Office Building, Washington, D. C.

My Dear Judge: Since talking with you
several days ago I have been checking up
on the National Resources Committee,
and nowhere in its record do I find any-
thing whatsoever to justify a suspicion that
it desires to be handed a club and given a
commission to use it on State and local
governments or on anybody, or any-
thing, anywhere.

Let me repeat what I stated in the
course of our conversation that the Na-
tional Resources Committee as it is now
constituted has no power whatsoever. It
cannot compel any agency, governmental
or business or industrial or other, to do
anything.

That is not the idea in planning. As you
know, I am chairman of the Georgia State
Planning Board, and am in touch with a
number of other similar boards in the
Southeast. Not one of them has power to
compel obedience to orders or to comply
with demands. As a matter of fact plan-
ning agencies do not work that way. They
are fact-finding, coordinating, and advis-

Planning and Civic Comment

ory always that and never more than that.
They do not desire powers, for they are
not administrative agencies. Their func-
tion is to plan, to study problems, gather
and correlate information, submit reports
to executive heads and legislative bodies,
and prepare plans which may be adopted
in whole or in part or rejected in their
entirety.

The idea of a national or a State plan-
ning agency clothed with powers is fan-
tastic. It is repugnant to the whole spirit
of planning. I would not serve on a plan-
ning board or commission that was author-
ized to enforce its will to "compel
obedience." That may be zoning or in the
nature of an exercise of police powers, but
it certainly is not planning.

Permit me to quote from an amendment
to a Senate bill (S. 1265) introduced last
February by Senator Hayden. I do not
know what became of the amendment, and
I am not considering its virtues or short-
comings, but it seems so clearly to pro-
claim the functions and lay down the
limitations of planning that it is well
worth reading. This is the extract referred
to:

"The Board (National Resources Board)
is authorized and directed (a) to investi-
gate, examine, study, analyze, assemble, and
coordinate and at suitable intervals to
review and revise basic information and
materials appropriate to the formulation
of plans or planning policies for the con-
servation, development, and utilization of
the Nation's resources, and, on the basis
thereof, such plans and planning policies;
(b) to consult with all appropriate depart-
ments, bureaus, agencies, and instrumen-
talities of the United States, and Terri-
tories and possessions thereof, and of any
State or political subdivision thereof, as
well as with public or private planning or
research organizations; (c) to advise with
such departments, bureaus, agencies,
instrumentalities, and public or private
planning or research organizations, with
respect to the conservation, development,
and utilization of the Nation's resources,
and to obtain Jrom andjurnisb to them data
and information relating to sucb matters;
and (d) to prepare and submit studies,
reports, and recommendations upon matters
within its jurisdiction, upon its own initia-
tive or whenever the President or the
Congress may request such a study, re-
port, or recommendation." (Italics mine.)

I am not championing the Hayden
amendment or anything else. The point I
make is that here is a clear statement of
what planning seeks to accomplish, viz.,
find out what we have and where it is, then

plan its intelligent conservation, its
development, its use. There is not a word
in the quoted statement about powers.

For more than 5 years I have been in
touch with the National Resources Com-
mittee and its predecessors National Plan-
ning Board, National Resources Board.
Never .by statement or intimation during
that period have I heard hint of a program
which could under any conceivable cir-
cumstances be other than "advisory only."
I believe some such proposal was made
several years ago in a bill whether House
or Senate I do not know which someone
prepared, but the National Resources
Committee opposed it. It would have
ruined planning. "Planning with power"
would shake itself to pieces in short order.

Here in the Southeast we face many
grave problems related to our resources
land, water, forests, health, education,
agriculture, industrial development, and
over and above all these and the rest,
people. I have been studying these prob-
lems for years, and so have you. We have
not been making impressive progress in
dealing with them, but I make the confi-
dent assertion that planning offers the
most hopeful approach to their eventual
solution. Our weakness is due to our lack
of information about what we have, where
it is, why so much has been wasted, and
how that waste can best be stopped; what
penalties neglect and abuse now threaten,
and what price our children and their
children will pay if we fail to protect their
heritage.

A national planning agency is indispen-
sable to the States. I make that statement
without qualification, and out of my
knowledge of the situation in at least six
States. The present national agency
(National Resources Committee) furnishes
expert consultant service to State boards,
and serves as a clearing house through
which all the State boards, as well as
regional planning groups, are kept in
touch. It is a fountain of planning inspira-
tion. When a State planning board faces a
perplexing problem in planning, it asks the
National Resources Committee for guid-
ance and gets it if the committee is able,
within its available resources, to supply it.

The National Resources Committee has
made studies of very great value. A fair
sample was last year's study of population

froblems. I am sure you remember that,
t showed the whys and wherefores of a
declining birth rate which forecasts a
stationary population in the country by
1973, provided immigration restrictions
remain as at present, and the birth rate
does not increase. It was a typical plan-

Planning and Civic Comment

ning study and one of dozens made by the
National Resources Committee. I sent
you several of the reports a few weeks ago.
I am particularly anxious that you get a
picture of planning as I have come to see it.
We need intelligent planning in the South
as much or more than any other section
needs it. I mentioned to you the forest
resources study which our State planning
boards have been making and in which the
United States Forest Service has cooper-
ated. It would have been impossible with-
out the guidance and support of the
National Resources Committee. I know,
for the very good reason that the Georgia
State Planning Board initiated the study,

and I am intimately acquainted with the
entire program.

I hope I have not taxed your patience,
but I have written a long letter, because
this matter lies close to my heart. I can
think of few better ways for spending a
modest sum of Federal money than in
support of planning.

If I can be of any service, please call me.
The planning program now laces its great-
est opportunity. It has won its place in
government, Federal and State. To
abandon it would be tragic.

With cordial regards, I am,

Sincerely your friend,

H. T. MclNTOSH

Early Plan of Charles Town, S. C.

The plan of Charles Town is repro-
duced in this issue from "Narratives
of Early Carolina," 1650-1708,
edited by Alexander S. Salley, Jr.,
Secretary of the Historical Com-
mission of S. C., and published by
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York,
1911, in the same size as the original
from an engraving from James Akin,
in the second volume of Ramsay's
History of South Carolina (Charles-
ton, 1809). The plan is indicated by
Dr. Ramsay as taken "from a sur-
vey of Edward Crisp in 1704." The
original cannot now be found. It is
perhaps identical with a map which
Dr. Ramsay describes in his History
(II 262) as having been preserved
among the papers of the distin-
guished family of Prioleau. Some
doubt surrounds the origin of the
map. Mr. Salley finds a record in
South Carolina, of date 1716, recit-
ing a grant that had previously been
made to Edward Crisp of London,
but finds nothing further to identify

him with South Carolina. He sig-
nalizes two errors of fact in the
"References" which are placed be-
neath the map. N is marked as
Keating L. Smith's Bridge (wharf).
There was no Keating L. Smith of
that time; the owner was Keating
Lewis. W is indicated as the scene
of the first rice patch in Carolina;
but Mr. Salley considers this to have
no historical foundation. In general,
however, the plan is correct. It may
be compared with one by Herman
Moll which constitutes a side map
to his Map of the Dominions of the
King of Great Britain in America,
1715.

In Dr. J. L. E. W. Shecut's
Medical and Philosophical Essays
(Charleston, 1819) there is a chapter
(pp. 1-14) "Of the original Topog-
raphy of Charleston," which follows
the lines of this Ramsay map, with
explanations, and identifications of
its landmarks with those of the
author's time.

(See center-page illustration)

Zoning Round Table

Conducted by EDWARD M. BASSETT

BUILDINGS DESTROYED BY FIRE

ALL zoning ordinances contain
f-\ provisions for rebuilding law-
-* *- ful nonconforming buildings
after partial or complete destruction
by fire. At the recent National City
Planning Conference held in Boston
the subject of the gradual elimina-
tion of nonconforming uses was the
most discussed subject relating to
zoning administration. More ques-
tions were asked at the zoning
round table breakfast held on May
19 on this subject than on any
other zoning subject. The field
embraces nonconforming billboards,
gasoline stations, junk yards, shacks
for making cement blocks, skating
rinks and a hundred and one struc-
tures or land uses that ought to be
brought to an end in a well-zoned
city. Everyone has read textbook
articles on the subject. Therefore I
shall not at this time try to cover
the entire subject. As zoning is
established on the police power and
as the police power relates to the
health, safety, morals, comfort and
the general welfare of the community,
it follows that an existing noncon-
forming building can be ousted by
the courts. At least we may say that
it is in the power of the courts to
oust a nonconforming use. Courts
have been friendly to zoning, so it
seems to me. We cannot find much
fault if courts say that they will not
enforce unreasonable regulations
even if they have the power to do so.
Each judge is likely to depend on his
own thinking in deciding what regu-

lation is reasonable. For instance,
if you or I were the judge we would
have no trouble in deciding that the
ousting of an automobile disman-
tling plant or an outdoor skating
rink or a Tom Thumb golf course in
a residence district was a reasonable
regulation. Similarly we would con-
clude that the ousting of a noncon-
forming billboard in a residence dis-
trict after two or three years for
amortization was reasonable. We
would have more difficulty in decid-
ing that the ousting of a one-story
frame "taxpayer" without a cellar
in a residence district was reason-
able. When, however, it came to a
lawful nonconforming factory in a
business or residence district, per-
haps giving employment to 2,000
men, it would be difficult to make up
our minds that the ousting was
reasonable. We would consider that
the factory had been established
under a lawful permit, that it had
acquired a good will in that location
which would be injured if it were
forced to go elsewhere, and that its
employees were living within walk-
ing distance and would need to
move away. The disarrangement
would be severe if, let us say, an
ordinance endeavored to oust it
after five or ten years' amortization.
There is a point at which you or I
would say thus far and no farther.

Partial or total destruction of a
lawful nonconforming building by
fire comes under the regulations of
most zoning ordinances. Can the

Planning and Civic Comment

nonconforming building be rebuilt
if entirely destroyed? How if it is
three-fourths destroyed? How if it
is one-half destroyed? City councils
have discussed these provisions up-
hill and down and are still discussing
them. In the original zoning ordi-
nance of New York City any lawful
nonconforming building totally de-
stroyed by fire was permitted to be
rebuilt. This is still true. However
shocking this may seem to engineers
and economists who are busy fram-
ing and amending zoning ordinances,
it is a fact that this generous pro-
vision has made no appreciable dif-
ference in New York City. Strangely
enough there has been no outcry in
this city against the continuance of
this provision. It has probably
helped to preserve valuations for
taxes. If the city refused permits to
rebuilt structures that were 50%
destroyed by fire and the courts up-
held this provision in ten or twenty
cases, the owners of nonconforming
properties would insist on a reduc-
tion of assessed values for taxes.

A well-known municipal engineer
now in western New York, who has
helped in the preparation of many
zoning ordinances for villages in
New York State, wrote me a few
weeks ago that in the zoning ordi-
nance of the village where he now is,
there is a provision that a building
which is damaged less than 50% of
its cost by fire may be restored to
not more than its former dimensions
and bulk and may continue the
former use, otherwise a conforming
building must be erected. It ap-
pears that a new mortgage was de-
sired on a nonconforming factory
and the bank to whom the applica-
tion was made refused to make the

mortgage on the ground that the
50% clause greatly injured the
building as collateral for the loan.
This was to me a new suggestion. It
brings up the subject of mortgages
on all sorts of zoned property. For
instance, another correspondent sug-
gests that a gradual and propor-
tionate method of eliminating law-
ful nonconforming buildings might
be to give an amortization period of
five years for a building thirty-five
or more years old and a shorter
amortization period for newer build-
ings. His suggestion was limited to
commercial and industrial buildings
in residence districts. It occurred to
me, as I read his excellently prepared
plan, that if a city should pass a
regulation of that sort and the courts
would be willing to enforce it, all the
mortgages on lawful nonconforming
buildings of the type referred to
might become hazardous and the
institutions that held the mortgages
might ask the owners to pay them
off. If a building costing one or
two hundred thousand dollars would
become valueless in five or ten years,
it would be a matter of great con-
cern to the mortgagee.

This subject of mortgages has a
bearing on the whole matter of fixing
time limits for the ousting of valu-
able buildings. Let us say, for in-
stance, that a period of amortization
is prescribed for every lawful non-
conforming building, after which it
must be removed. The city passing
such an ordinance might have dis-
tricts for one-family detached houses
excluding multi-family houses. A
large multi-family house might have
been built three or four years before
the zoning ordinance was adopted.
Thereupon this building became a

Planning and Civic Comment

lawful nonconforming use. If the
courts would uphold the ousting of
it, in five or ten years it would be-
come almost valueless for selling or
mortgaging purposes.

These considerations show how
difficult it "is to put down in black
and white the period within which
nonconforming buildings and uses
shall be ousted or in what cases
buildings destroyed by fire can be
rebuilt. Singularly enough there are
almost no court cases on rebuilding
after fire or ousting nonconforming

buildings. In actual experience some
owners decide not to rebuild. Others
find some way to erect their new
buildings without substantial loss and
the municipality helps them do it.

A practical method for cities to
follow is first to eliminate noncon-
forming uses of vacant property, and
next to eliminate nonconforming
structures that bear only a small
relation to the value of the land.
This method of gradual approach
will open up the fair way, if there is
any, to eliminate costly structures.

International Housing and Town Planning Congress

Stockholm, July 8 to 15, 1939

The International Federation for
Housing and Town Planning is con-
vening an International Congress
which at the invitation of the City
of Stockholm is to take place in
Sweden's capital from July 8 to 15,
1939. There will be lectures and
discussions on the following subjects :

HOUSE BUILDING FOR SPECIAL GROUPS
Reviewer: J. de Jonge van Ellemeet,
formerly Director of the Municipal
Housing Department, Rotterdam.

TOWN PLANNING AND LOCAL TRAFFIC
Reviewer: Landescrat R. Niemeyer,
President of the German Academy for
Town Planning, National and Country
Planning, Berlin.

ADMINISTRATIVE BASIS OF NATIONAL
PLANNING Reviewer: A. Lilienberg,
Municipal Director of Works, Stock-
holm.

Extensive reports on these subjects
from various countries will be printed
and the reviewer in each case will
prepare a summarized report which
will be available to delegates one
month in advance of the Congress.

The City of Stockholm will
naturally afford their guests every
opportunity for becoming ac-
quainted with the town itself, its
institutions and environs, and va-
rious tours of inspection are being
arranged for the afternoons.

Following the actual sessions
there will be two extended study
tours and one shorter tour. The
first of the former will lead from
Stockholm via Trondheim, Oslo
and Gothenburg to Copenhagen.
The second will visit Central Sweden
and merge with the first in order to
visit Gothenburg and Copenhagen.
The shorter tour will be a visit to
Dalekarlien.

The International Federation
urges prospective visitors to notify
at once the Secretary, Mrs. Paula
Schafer, International Federation
for Housing and Town Planning,
47, Cantersteen, Brussels, Belgium.

Planning and Civic Comment

Strictly Personal

Horace M. Albright has been
appointed to the Board of Directors
of the Laboratory of Anthropology
at Santa Fe, New Mexico.

J. C. Nichols and his methods in
developing the Country Club Dis-
trict of Kansas City, Missouri, were
the subject of the entire February,
1939 issue of the National Real
Estate Journal. Copies of the maga-
zine have been distributed to officers
and members of the board of direc-
tors of the American Planning and
Civic Association.

$ $ $ $

Jay N. "Ding" Darling, president
of the National Wildlife Federation
since its inception in 1936, has been
succeeded by David A. Aylward of
Boston, Mass.

John D. Rockefeller, Jr., has been
awarded the Friedson Gold Medal
for 1939 by the Architectural League
of New York for conspicuous con-
tribution to the advancement of the
arts in the United States.

Hugh R. Pomeroy has been ap-
pointed director of the Virginia
Planning Board to succeed the late
Maj. C. J. Calrow.

+ + + +

Ben H. Kizer of Spokane, Wash-
ington, member of the Board of
Directors of the American Planning
and Civic Association, was elected
president of the American Society
of Planning Officials at its Board
meeting in Boston May 16.

Robert Randall has recently com-
pleted an inspection trip for the
National Resources Committee. He
visited Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles,
Berkeley, Salt Lake City, Denver,
Portland, Omaha, and Cincinnati.

* $$$

A. D. Taylor has published a very
interesting report on his proposed
landscape development of Forest
Hill Park, East Cleveland and
Cleveland Heights, Ohio. The area
covers a portion of the former Forest
Hill estate of John D. Rockefeller.
+ + + +

Fiavel Shurtleff has been retained
by the National Resources Commit-
tee as consultant on a part-time
basis to the Legislative Council of
Connecticut and will assist the
Council in the preparation of com-
prehensive planning studies.

* * $ *

"Romance of the National Parks,"
by Harlean James, was released by
the Macmillan Publishing Company
on May 16. Miss James has taken
for her subject the development of
national parks in the United States;
her previous book, "Land Planning
for the City, State and Nation,"
was devoted to planning.

$ $ $ $

The St. Louis Chamber of Com-
merce has appointed a Committee
on Transportation consisting of P.
B. Fouke, Chairman, E. T. Allen,
M. Moss Alexander, John F. Lilly,
Harold A. Osgood, William H. Teget-
hoff and Asa B. Wallace, which plans
to undertake a transportation survey
of St. Louis County.

American Planning and Civic Association Announces a

Ten-Day Traveling National Park Meeting in the

Colorful Southwest, October 9-19, 1939

Some of those who expect to at-
tend the conference plan to come a
few days or a week in advance in
order to explore the highly interest-
ing region.

The program will be enriched by
the presence of the National Park
superintendents, who will be in
Santa Fe for an official conference
to be held the week before the
American Planning and Civic Asso-
ciation meeting. Already an at-
tendance of many of the distin-
guished leaders in conservation is
assured.

After two eventful days in Santa
Fe, the conference will proceed by
motor northward to inspect the
archeological remains of Indian
habitations abandoned many cen-
turies ago.

Mesa Verde, with its well-pre-
served cliff dwellings, and Grand
Canyon, the acme of scenic grandeur,
many picturesque monuments, and
the great Boulder Dam region,
which can be explored by boat, will
be visited in company of those who
know the ancient and more recent
past, and can interpret these great
works of Nature and prehistoric man.

For particulars write to the
American Planning and Civic Asso-
ciation, 901 Union Trust Building,
Washington, D. C.

The American Planning and Civic
Association announces a ten-day
traveling National Park conference
in the Southwest to be held in the
early autumn, October 9-19. The
date has been set to enable late
summer and early autumn visitors
to take in the conference, coming or
going to the Pacific Coast.

The Conference will open at old
Santa Fe, with headquarters at La
Fonda Hotel, a Fred Harvey hostelry
which deserves its reputation for
architectural and service excellence.
Some of the sessions will be held in
the new Regional National Park
Building, erected in the Santa Fe
style of architecture, adjacent to the
buildings of the Laboratory of An-
thropology. The ground for the new
building was donated by the Labora-
tory of Anthropology. The Labora-
tory was constructed with funds
contributed for the most part by
Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Santa
Fe lies 7000 feet high on the rolling
plateau of the Upper Rio Grande.
It still has the flavor of the early
Spanish settlement of the seven-
teenth century modified by the
pioneers who came when it was the
end of the Santa Fe Trail. It is
surrounded by Indian pueblos, some
like Taos, occupied continuously for
nearly a thousand years.

"Romance of the National Parks" by Harlean James was published by
Macmillan in May, 1939. It is illustrated with 123 gorgeous scenic pho-
tographs. A limited number of copies are available postpaid from the Ameri-
can Planning and Civic Association, 901 Union Trust Building, Washing-
ton, D. C., at the list price of $3.00. IJ requested, copies will be autographed
by the author.

The King of Spain's Advice to Planners

in 1573

MR. Frederic A. Delano has
recently called attention to
an article which appeared
some years ago in the HISPANIC
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW en-
titled "Royal Ordinances Concern-
ing the Laying Out of New Towns,"
containing the original regulations
set forth by the then King of Spain
in 1573 for the laying out of towns
in foreign colonies. It is of interest
to know that the ordinance quoted
was used in the laying out of the city
of St. Augustine, Fla. Although the
regulations were written more than
360 years ago, many of the specifica-
tions or requirements are still perti-
nent. The article is as follows:

To those who, like the writer, have
observed the uniformity of the plans of so
many Hispano-American cities and en-
joyed the beauty of their central plazas
filled with trees and flowers and surrounded
by public buildings, and their picturesque
churches, the following ordinances con-
cerning the laying out of towns in the
New World, issued by King Philip II from
the Escorial in 1573 can not but be of
interest.

These ordinances are contained in the
voluminous royal decree entitled: "Ordi-
nances concerning discoveries, settlements,
and pacifications," which remarkable
document I came across in the National
Archives in Madrid in 1912. Being
particularly impressed by the wisdom and
foresight revealed in the set of ordinances
relating to the choice of the sites and the
laying out of new towns, I copied these for
future reference and use and am now
pleased to present to the readers of THE
HISPANIC AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
so interesting a legacy from the past.

It seems more than probable that these
ordinances issued by the painstaking
monarch were the outcome of long dis-
cussions with the group of the foremost
architects, engineers, and learned men of
his time whom he assembled about him at

his court when the palace of the Escorial
was in process of construction. It is
obvious that the plan he prescribed was
an ideal one which embodied all advan-
tages from the various points of view of
artists, churchmen, engineers, architects,
strategists^ meteorologists, and hygienists.
No feature that could ensure the beauty,
commodiousness, and salubrity of a town
seems to have been overlooked. . . .

When one considers the haphazard way
most North American towns have sprung
up without a thought being given to their
future beauty or sightliness, commodious-
ness, salubrity, or growth, one cannot but
regretfully realize what opportunities have
been lost, and what a benefit it would
have been if, throughout the New World,
King Philip's ordinances had been known
and followed. As it is, they constitute
what was probably the most remarkable
attempt ever made to formulate principles
of town planning and to impose their
execution, pro bono publico, on the pioneers
of a New World whose descendants to this
day have good reason to be grateful to
their authors, the Spanish king and his
counselors. ZELIA NUTTALL

TRANSLATION

ROYAL ORDINANCES FOR
NEW TOWNS, ETC

San Lorenzo, July 3, 1573. I the King.
Ordinances for discoveries, new settle-
ments, and pacifications.

no. . . . Having made the chosen
discovery of the province, district, and
land which is to be settled, and the sites
of the places where the new towns are to
be made, and the agreement in regard to
them having preceded, those who go to
execute this shall perform it in the follow-
ing manner: On arriving at the place
where the town is to be laid out (which we
order to be one of those vacant and which
by our ordinance may be taken without
doing hurt to the indians and natives, or
with their free consent), the plan of the
place shall be determined, and its plazas,
streets, and building lots laid out exactly,
beginning with the main plaza. From
thence the streets, gates, and principal
roads, shall be laid out, always leaving a
certain proportion of open space, so tnat
although the town should continue to

Planning and Civic Comment

grow, it may always grow in the same
manner. Having arranged the site and
place that shall have been chosen for
settlement, the foundation shall be made
in the following manner.

in. Having chosen the place where the
town is to be made, which as above-said
must be located in an elevated place, where
are to be found health, strength, fertility,
and abundance of land for farming and
pasturage, fuel and wood for building,
materials, fresh water, a native people,
commodiousness, supplies, entrance and
departure open to the north wind. If the
site lies along the coast, let consideration
be had to the port and that the sea be not
situated to the south or to the west. If
possible, let there be no lagoons or marshes
nearby in which are found venomous
animals and corruption of air and water.

112. The main plaza whence a begin-
ning is to be made, if the town is situated
on the seacoast, should be made at the
landing place of the port. If the town lies
inland, the main plaza should be in the
middle of the town. The plaza shall be
of an oblong form, which shall have at the
least a length equal to one and a half
times the width, inasmuch as this size is
the best for fiestas in which horses are
used and for any other fiestas that shall
be held.

113. The size of the plaza shall be pro-
portioned to the number of the inhabitants,
having consideration to the fact that in
indian towns, inasmuch as they are new,
the population will continue to increase,
and it is the purpose that it shall increase.
Consequently, the choice of a plaza shall
be made with reference to the growth that
the town may have. It shall be not less
than two hundred feet wide and three
hundred feet long, nor larger than eight
hundred feet long and thirty-two feet
[sic] wide. A moderate and good propor-
tion is six hundred feet long and four
hundred feet wide.

114. From the plaza shall run four main
streets, one from the middle of each side
of the plaza; and two streets at each
corner of the plaza. The four corners of
the plaza shall face the four principal
winds. For the streets running thus from
the plaza, they will not be exposed to the
four principal winds which cause much
inconvenience.

115. The whole plaza round about, and
the four streets running from the four
sides shall have arcades, for these are of
considerable convenience to the merchants
who generally gather there. The eight
streets running from the plaza at the four
corners shall open on the plaza without

any arcades and shall be so laid out that
they may have sidewalks even with the
street and plaza.

1 1 6. The streets in cold places shall be
wide and in hot places narrow; but for
purposes of defense, where horses are to be
had, they are better wide.

117. The streets shall run from the
main plaza in such wise that although
the town increase considerably in size, no
inconvenience may arise which may
cause what may be rebuilt to become
ugly or be prejudicial to its defense and
commodiousness.

1 1 8. Here and there in the town smaller
plazas shall be laid out, in good proportion,
where are to be built the temples of the
cathedral, the parish churches and the
monasteries, such that everything may
be distributed in good proportions for the
instruction of religion.

1 19. As for the temple of the cathedral,
if the town is situated on the coast, it
shall be built in part so that it may be
seen on leaving the sea, and in a place
where its building may serve as a means
of defense for the port itself.

1 20. For the temple of the cathedral,
the parish church, or monastery, building
lots shall be assigned, next after the plaza
and streets and they shall be so completely
isolated that no building shall be added
there except one appertaining to its com-
modiousness and ornamentation.

121. After that a site and location shall
be assigned for the royal council and
cabildo house and for the custom house
and arsenal near the temple and port
itself so that in times of need the one may
aid the other. The hospital for the poor
and those sick of non-contagious diseases
shall be built near the temple and its
cloister; and that for those sick with
contagious diseases shall be built in such
a place that no harmful wind passing
through it, may cause harm to the rest
of the town. If the latter be built in an
elevated place, so much the better.

122. The site and building lots for
slaughter houses, fisheries, tanneries, and
other things productive of filth shall be
so placed that the filth can be easily
disposed of.

123. It will be of considerable conve-
nience if those towns which are laid out
away from the port and inland be built if
possible on the shores of a navigable
river; and the attempt should be made to
have the shore where it is reached by the
cold north wind; and that all the trades
that give rise to filth be placed on the
side of the river and sea below the town.

124. The temple in inland towns shall

Planning and Civic Comment

not be placed on the plaza but distant
from it and in such a place that it may be
separated from any building which ap-
proaches it and which has no connection
with it; and so that it may be seen from
all parts. In order that it may be better
embellished and have more authority, it
must, if possible, be built somewhat
elevated above the ground in order that
steps will lead to its entrance. Nearby
close to the main plaza shall be built the
royal houses and the council and cabildo
house, and the customs house so that
they shall not cause any embarrassment
to the temple but lend it authority. The
hospital of the poor who shall be sick with
non-contagious diseases, shall be built
facing the cold north wind and so arranged
that it may enjoy the south wind.

125. The same arrangement shall be
observed in all inland places which have
no shore provided that considerable care
be given to providing the other con-
veniences which are required and which
are necessary.

126. Building lots shall not be assigned
to individual persons in the plaza where
are placed the buildings of the church and
royal houses and the public land of the
city. Shops and houses shall be built for
merchants and these shall be the first to
be built and for this all the settlers of the
town shall contribute, and a moderate tax
shall be imposed on goods so that these
buildings may be built.

127. The other building lots shall be
distributed by lot to the settlers, those
lots next to the main plaza being thus
distributed and the lots which are left
shall be held by us for assignment to those
who shall later become settlers, or for the
use which we may wish to make of them.
And so that this may be done better, the
town which is to be laid out should always
be shown on a plan.

128. Haying made the plan of the town
and the assignment of building lots, each
of the settlers shall set up his tent on his
plot if he should have one. For this
purpose the captains shall persuade them
to carry tents. Those who do not possess
tents shall build their huts of such mate-
rials that can be obtained easily, where
they may have shelter. As soon as possible
all settlers shall make some sort of a pali-
sade or ditch about the plaza so that they
may receive no harm from the indian natives.

129. A commons shall be assigned to
the town of such size that although the
town continues to grow, there may always
be sufficient space for the people to go for
recreation and for the cattle to be pastured
without any danger.

130. Adjoining the commons there shall
be assigned pastures for the work animals
and for the horses as well as for the cattle
belonging to the slaughterhouses and for
the usual number of cattle which the
settlers must have to some goodly number
according to ordinance, and so that they
may also be used as the common property
of the council. The rest of the land shall
be assigned as farm lands, of which lots
shall be cast in proportion to the amount,
so that there shall be as many farms as
there are building lots in the town. And
should there be irrigated lands, lots shall
be cast for them, and they shall be dis-
tributed in the same proportion to the
first settlers according to their lots. The
rest shall remain for ourselves so that we
may assign it to those who may become
settlers.

131. The settlers shall immediately
plant all the seeds they take with them
and all that they can obtain on the farm
lands after their distribution. For this
purpose, it is advisable that they go well
provided; and in the pastures especially
all the cattle that they take with them and
all that they can collect so that the cattle
may begin to breed and multiply im-
mediately.

132. The settlers having planted their
seeds and made arrangements for the
cattle to a goodly number, and with good
diligence (from which they may hope to
obtain abundance of food), shall commence
with great care and activity to establish
their houses and to build them with good
foundations and walls. For that purpose
they shall go provided with molds or
planks for building them, and all the other
tools for building quickly and at small cost.

133. They shall arrange the building
lots and edifices placed thereon in such a
manner that the rooms of the latter may
enjoy the air of the south and north as
these are the best. The buildings of the
houses of the whole town generally shall
be so arranged that they shall serve as a
defense and fort against those who may
try to disturb or invade the town. Each
house in particular shall be so built that
they may keep therein their horses and
work animals, and shall have yards and
corrals as large as possible for health and
cleanliness.

134. They shall try so far as possible
to have the buildings all of one form for
the sake of the beauty of the town.

135. The faithful executors and archi-
tects and persons who may be deputed
therefor by the governor shall be most
careful in the performance of the above.
They shall hurry the labor and building

Planning and Civic Comment

so that the town may be completed in a
short time.

136. Should the natives care to place
themselves under the defense of the town,
they must be made to understand that it
is desired to build a town there not in
order to do them any harm nor to take
their possessions from them, but to main-
tain friendship with them and to teach
them to live in a civilized manner, to teach
them to know God, and to teach them
His law, under which they shall be saved.
This shall be imparted to them by the
religious, ecclesiastical persons, and per-
sons deputed therefor by the governor and
by means of good interpreters. By means
of all good methods possible, the attempt
shall be made to have the town laid out
with their goodwill and consent. However,
should they not consent after having been
summoned by various means on different
occasions, the settlers shall lay out their
town, but without taking anything that
may belong in particular to the indians
and without doing them other hurt than
what may be necessary for the defense of
the settlers and so that the town should
[not] be molested.

137. Until the new town shall have

been completed, the settlers shall try as
much as possible to avoid communication
and intercourse with the indians and shall
not go to their towns and shall not amuse
themselves nor give themselves up to
sensual pleasures in the land. Neither
shall the indians enter the precincts of
the town until after it has been built and
placed in a condition of defense, and the
houses so built that when the indians see
them they shall wonder and understand
that the Spaniards settle there for good
and not for the moment only; and so that
they may fear them so much that they
will not offend them and shall respect
them so much as to desire their friendship.
When they begin to build the town, the
governor shall assign some one person to
take care of the sowing and cultivation of
the land with wheat and vegetables of
which the settlers may immediately make
use for their maintenance. He shall also
see that the cattle are put out to pasture
where they shall be safe and where they
shall cause no hurt to the cultivated land
nor to anything belonging to the indians;
and so that also the town may be served,
aided, and sustained by the aforesaid
cattle and their young. . . .

Postponement of Summer Course to July 10

The opening of the Summer
Program in Planning being spon-
sored jointly by the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and the
American Planning and Civic Asso-
ciation has been postponed from
Monday, June 12, to Monday,
July 10.

The Program, to be held at
Cambridge, Mass., will extend over
a period of three weeks and will be
divided into morning and afternoon
sessions. The sessions will consist of
a coordinated series of lectures and
discussion seminars, subjects being
divided into four distinct groups in
such a manner that a person may
register in one or more groups with-
out duplication of subject matter or
loss of continuity.

Principles of Planning will be the

subject of the morning sessions
during the first two weeks, to be
followed by Techniques of Planning
during the third week. Planning
Legislation and Administration are
the topics assigned for discussion at
the afternoon sessions of the second
and third week.

Frederick J. Adams, Associate
Professor, in charge of the Division
of City Planning and Housing,
M.I.T., and Flavel Shurtleff, Counsel
to the American Planning and Civic
Association and lecturer on Planning
Legislation and Administration,
M. I. T., compose the staff.

Further particulars may be ob-
tained from The American Plan-
ning and Civic Association, 901
Union Trust Building, Washington,
D. C

SCENES ALONG
AUBREY L. WHITE
PARKWAY, SPOKANE,
WASHINGTON

LEFT. Entrance to Deep Creek Canyon,
dry in summer but a raging torrent in
spring, displaying dense lava at base on
left, and basal conglomerate at right.

BELOW. As the Spokane River rushes
between basalt walls on to meet the Co-
lumbia a characteristic view along the
Parkway.

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W^:^?S^->. *Bfc^S. *

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PLAN OF CHARLES TOWN,

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>OUTH CAROLINA. See page 10.

Panorama of Main Street

Rutledge Tavern
RESTORATIONS AT NEW SALEM STATE PARK, ILLINOIS

fate Park

\Yith the spotlight of stage and
screen trained on the early life of
Lincoln this year, the restored town
of New Salem gains new and vivid
life.

Robert Sherwood's Pulitzer prize-
winning play, "Abe Lincoln in
Illinois," introduces many of Lin-
coln's friends whose homes, gardens,
and shops are being restored by the

I State of Illinois, and its entire first
act is set in New Salem. The

\ Rutledge Tavern is seen in a

!; particularly important sequence.

, The play's successful run on Broad-
way will probably be suspended

jj during the summer to permit filming
it with its star, Raymond Massey,
carrying his stage portrait over into

j the cinema. Thus, next year, "Abe
Lincoln in Illinois" will make its
appearance on the screens of the
nation.

In the published version of the
play, Mr. Sherwood has included a
very interesting section of historic
notes based on painstaking research
and dealing in part with the person-
alities and events of New Salem.

In the meantime, another movie,
"Young Mr. Lincoln," has just had
its world premiere at Springfield on
May 30, and a number of the earlier
Lincoln plays are being revived.
"Prologue to Glory," a play dealing
also with the young Lincoln, has

been a WPA Theater success and is
to be seen at the World's Fair in
New York.

The site of the New Salem State
Historical Park, originally acquired
in 1906 by William Randolph Hearst,
was transferred to the State of
Illinois in 1918. It was not until
1931, however, that funds were
made available by the General
Assembly for permanent improve-
ments and the restoration was
started.

With the exception of the Onstot
Cooper Shop, all the buildings in the
village where Lincoln clerked in a
store, chopped wood, fought with
the Clary's Grove boys, enlisted in
the Black Hawk War, served as
postmaster, deputy surveyor and
legislator, failed in business, studied
Blackstone, Shakespeare and Burns,
and courted Ann Rutledge, are
restorations. Incidentally, all of
these Lincoln activities are import-
ant in the season's dramas.

The State has restored the Berry-
Lincoln Store, the Rutledge Tavern,
Denton Off ut's Store, Hill-McNamar
Store, Clary's Grocery, Dr. Francis
Regnier's Office, the residences of
Henry Onstot, Joshua Miller and
Jack H. Kelso, Peter Lukins and
Alexander Ferguson, Robert John-
son, Samuel Hill, Dr. John Allen,
the Trent Brothers, Isaac Burner,

Planning and Civic Comment

Isaac Gulihur, and Martin Waddell,
the Rutledge-Camron Mill, and the
Miller Blacksmith Shop. And the
restoration continues. The State
plans to add new buildings and new
details from year to year until the
village becomes a faithful reproduc-
tion of the town in which Lincoln
lived from 1831 to 1837.

Conservation activities in the
State of Alabama have been placed
under the jurisdiction of a single
agency through the State legisla-
ture's recent establishment of a
Department of Conservation.

The act creating the Department
abolished the old Department of
Conservation of Game, Fish, and
Seafoods, the Conservation Board,
the Alabama Oyster Commission,
the State Commission of Forestry,
and the Alabama Monument Com-
mission. The new Department will
include a division of game, fish, and
seafoods, a division of forestry, and
a division of state parks, monu-
ments, and historical sites.

The act also provided for an
Advisory Board of Conservation to
consist of the Governor, the Com-
missioner of Agriculture and In-
dustry, the Director of Agricultural
Extension of the Alabama Poly-
technic Institute, ex ofFicio, and
eight other members to be appointed
by the Governor.

Dr. Walter B. Jones, Director of
the Alabama Museum of Natural
History, has been appointed Direc-
tor of the Department, and Mr.
W. G. Lunsford is chief of the
division of state parks, monuments,
and historical sites.

We quote from an editorial which
appeared in the Atlanta (Georgia)
Journal on February 7, 1939:

"In a letter to the Journal, Mr.
Charles N. Elliott, Director of the
State Park System, pays a richly
merited tribute to the late Mrs. M.
E. Judd, of Dalton, as a leader inl
the conservation and development:
of Georgia's natural resources. . . . :
Mr. Elliott points out that, although
not a native of Georgia, Mrs. Judd
spent nearly thirty-six years of her
useful and gracious life in the
commonwealth. . . .

"Among her public offices was
membership on the first State Board
of Forestry, the former State Board
of Control, and the Commission of
Forestry and Geological Develop-
ment. As a member of that Com-,
mission she did pioneer work in]
planning and creating the system of
State-owned parks in which multi-
tudes of people now find wholesome
recreation, in which scenic beauties
and historic treasures are preserved,
and to which an ever-increasing
number of visitors from all parts of
the country are attracted.

"Aptly Mr. Elliott suggests that
she be designated 'Mother of
Georgia's State Park System.' For
this and for hundreds of other con-
tributions to the civic and cultural
welfare of Georgia, Mrs. M. E. Judd
will be gratefully remembered."

Charles R. DeTurk has been
appointed director of the division
of state parks, lands and waters of
the Indiana Department of Con-
servation to succeed Myron L. Rees,
who recently resigned to take over

Planning and Civic Comment

management of the new hotel at for more than twenty years as
Spring Mill State Park. District Forester of the Michaux

A. A A* A State Forest.

Former Governor Percival P.
Baxter, who in 1931 donated 6,000
acres to the State of Maine for the
establishment of Baxter State Park,
has donated another tract contain-
ing 12,000 acres for park purposes.
The original grant took in the higher
elevations of Mt. Katahdin. The
new area is separated from it by a
Maine town, six square miles in
area; in other words, there is a dis-
tance of six miles between the two
areas. The Baxter State Park Com-
mission created in 1933 has been
abolished and beginning July 20,
1939, the administration and man-
agement of the Park will be under
the Attorney General, the Forest
Commissioner and the Commis-
sioner of Inland Fisheries and Game
of the State of Maine.

The Custer and South Dakota
State Park Boards were recently
abolished by the State legislature
and a South Dakota Park Board
created. Mr. E. B. Adams of Hot
Springs has been appointed Chair-
man of the new Board.

The Vermont legislature has ap-
propriated $59,000 per year for the
next biennium to defray the ex-
penses of the Department of Con-
servation and Development, and
$26,000 for the construction and
maintenance of forest and park
roads.

In addition, the Governor has
allotted funds for the St. Albans
Bay and Crystal Lake areas.

The North Carolina legislature
has appropriated $35,000 per year
for the 1939-41 biennium "for the
administration, development, and
maintenance of State-owned parks,'*
in addition to all other appropria-
tions for the Department of Con-
servation and Development.
+ + + +

Mr. G. Albert Stewart, a former
newspaper man of Clearfield, Penn-
sylvania, has been appointed Secre-
tary of the Pennsylvania Depart-
ment of Forests and Waters, and
Mr. John R. Williams has succeeded
Mr. James F. Pates as director of
parks for the Department.

Mr. Williams is not a newcomer
to the Department, having served

Randolph Odell, assistant director
of parks for the Virginia Conserva-
tion Commission, was appointed
acting director at a recent meeting
of the Commission. He succeeds
R. E. Burson, who had been with
the Commission since 1930.

For three years prior to his
appointment as assistant director
of parks in 1936, Mr. Odell was
employed by the National Park
Service as a technical engineer.

* # * *

A bill providing that twenty
cents from each drivers' license fee
be earmarked for the administration
of state parks has recently been
signed by Governor Martin of
Washington.

Planning and Civic Comment

It is expected that revenue from
this source will amount to approxi-
mately $130,000 for the next bien-
nium, representing comparative af-
fluence to the Washington State
Parks Committee. In the past, the
Committee has derived an uncertain
and meager income from concession
and camping fees, cash donations,

and fines and forfeitures for motor
vehicle violations occurring outside
incorporated cities and towns.

Guy D. Josserand is Director of a
new Forestry, Fish and Game Com-
mission appointed in Kansas.

IRMINE B. KENNEDY, Washington, D. C.

New Officers Elected at National Conference on State Parks

As this issue of the quarterly goes
to press, the National Conference on
State Parks is being held at Itasca
State Park, Minnesota.

Under date of June 5, 1939, the
following news statement was sent
to the editor by Herbert Evison :

Colonel Richard Lieber was elected
to the newly created position of
Chairman of the Board of the Na-
tional Conference on State Parks,
and Harold S. Wagner, Director
Secretary of the Akron Metropolitan
Park System, was chosen President
at a Board Meeting which marked
the opening of the Nineteenth An-
nual Meeting of the Conference.

William A. Welch, General Man-
ager of the Palisades Interstate Park
in New York and New Jersey, and
William E. Carson, former Chair-
man of the Virginia Conservation
Commission, were re-elected Vice-
Presidents, and Harlean James, Ex-
ecutive Secretary.

In addition to creating the new
office the conference adopted a re-
vised statement of its objectives
designed to set forth more clearly
the place it occupies in the field of
park and recreation education.

The opening session of the full
conference this morning after an
address of welcome by Harold W.

Lathrop, Director of State Parks for
Minnesota, and a response by Colo-
nel Lieber, was devoted to a sym-
posium on planning a state-wide
park and recreation program. In
this symposium the west was repre-
sented by Prof. Harry W. Shepherd,
of the University of California, the
middle-west by Robert Kingery,
Chairman of the Illinois Planning
Commission, the east by Frederick
C. Sutro, Executive Director of the
Palisades Interstate Park Commis-
sion, and the south by Mrs. Linwood
Jeffreys, of the Florida Board of
Forestry.

The sessions of the conference
opened under favorable weather
conditions in this nationally well-
known park surrounding Lake
Itasca, the headwaters of the Mis-
sissippi. Dawn found some of the
delegates hiking the wilderness trails
who reported seeing deer and the
evidence of the night work of a crew
of beavers and other natural phenom-
ena. By mid-morning delegates from
twenty-seven States had registered.

The present Board of Directors is
continued. At the Members' Meet-
ing, the three members whose terms
expired this year were re-elected. It
was decided to hold the 1940 meet-
ing in May in Illinois and Indiana.

New Park Yearbook Ready

THE 1938 Yearbook "Park
and Recreation Progress," sec-
ond issue of the annual publi-
cation inaugurated last year by the
National Park Service, Department
of the Interior, was released on May
ii. Distribution to Federal, state
and local officials and civic leaders
in the park and recreation field was
begun at once. It is available to the
general public through the Superin-
tendent of Documents, Government
Printing Office, Washington, D. C.,
at 35 cents a copy.

Considerably expanded over last
year's issue, the Yearbook offers an
interesting group of original articles,
reports and discussions on the prog-
ress of park and recreation activities
throughout the country, reflecting
especially the modern trend of
thought in park and recreation plan-
ning. Fulfilling the promise of the
National Park Service in the 1937
Yearbook that future editions would
include articles by leaders in the
park and recreation field outside the
Federal Government, the new issue
definitely establishes the annual as a
meeting ground for discussion of
current problems and presentation
of new ideas. In an introductory
statement, Secretary of the Interior
Harold L. Ickes says: "It is our hope
that the Yearbook will become the
leading organ for the assembling and
dissemination of progressive thought
on the subject of park and recrea-
tional conservation and develop-
ment. We hope that it will be re-
garded in this field as a forum or
clearing house in which to bring to-

gether the various Government
agencies for the good of the work
they are carrying out in this worthy
cause." Assurance that the Year-
book will appear as a regular Na-
tional Park Service publication is
given by Director Arno B. Cam-
merer, who says: "The enthu-
siastic reception accorded the 1937
Yearbook . . . indicated that its
publication should be continued
annually."

Following in general the policy
established last year, the Yearbook
includes a comprehensive report on
park projects carried on during the
year both in the national park sys-
tem and on state and local areas
through Federal and state coopera-
tion, and discussion by Service per-
sonnel of subjects related to these
activities and to park planning in
general.

Contributions from outside the
Federal Government include: "Fed-
eral Grants-in-Aid for Recreation,"
by Dr. V. O. Key, Jr., of the Depart-
ment of Political Science, Johns
Hopkins University, and former
staff member of the Committee on
Public Administration of the Social
Science Research Council; "Public
Participation in Park Work," by
Pearl Chase of Santa Barbara, Cali-
fornia, a leading volunteer civic
worker in the park field; "The Akron
Metropolitan Park System," by
H. S. Wagner, director-secretary,
Akron Metropolitan Park Board;
"Coordination of Developments for
Recreation," by Page S. Bunker,
state forester and director of state

Planning and Civic Comment

parks, Alabama; "The Iowa State
Park Recreational Use Program,"
by M. L. Hutton, director, Iowa
State Conservation Commission;
"Parkways for the Nation," by A. P.
Greensfelder, chairman, Civic De-
velopment Department Committee,
Chamber of Commerce of the
United States; "Roadside Develop-
ment in Michigan," by Varnum B.
Steinbaugh, deputy commissioner-
chief engineer, Michigan State High-
way Department; "Achievements in
the Camping Field," by Fay Welch,
chairman, Advisory Committee on
Camping of the National Park
Service; contributions to an omnibus
article on organized camping by
representatives of agencies which
used Federal recreational demon-
stration area facilities last summer;
"Organized Camps in South Caro-

lina," by H. A. Smith, state forester;
and "History and Archaeology in a
State Park System," by Dr. Walter
B. Jones, director, Alabama Mu-
seum of Natural History, University
of Alabama.

Marked by a distinctive cover, the
Yearbook is well illustrated with
halftone cuts and maps. As regular
features there appear again a list of
state park administrative agencies
and a current bibliography of Gov-
ernment reports, publications by
organizations, books, magazine arti-
cles, and general material on park
and recreation subjects. An exten-
sive tabulation describing state park
laws as of December, 1938, accom-
panies an article on this subject.
The general period covered by the
Yearbook is October i, 1937 to
September 30, 1938.

Recent Court Decisions Affecting Zoning

Compiled by FLAVEL SHURTLEFF

Funeral Home Unreasonableness of
Ordinance. Illinois. Johnson v.
Village oj Villa Park 18 N. E.
(2nd) 887. Re hearing denied Feb-
ruary 8, 1939.

The village authorities refused a
permit for the operation of a funeral
home located in a Class B residential
district although the following uses
were permitted in Class B districts
by the zoning ordinance: farming,
truck gardening, nurseries, green
houses, hotels, hospitals, medical
colleges and incidental accessory
uses. The ordinance was attacked
as unreasonable and arbitrary and a
decree prohibiting its enforcement
was obtained which was affirmed on
appeal. The court held that the

definition of a Class B residential
district was arbitrary and bore no
relation to the public welfare. The
use of the premises for a funeral
home was considered no more detri-
mental to the public health, safety
and general welfare than some of
the uses which were authorized by
the ordinance, as for example: main-
taining a morgue and dissecting
room in connection with a medical
college, or farming, with its neces-
sary domestic animals and their at-
tendant pollutions or the operation
of tractors and other farm machin-
ery. None of these things, in the
opinion of the court, were proper
residential uses.

In a case involving similar facts

Planning and Civic Comment

the Utah court came to a contrary
decision and enjoined the operation
of a funeral home in a residential
district. The residential district in
the ordinance under consideration
permitted hospitals and educational
institutions but excluded farming
and truck gardening. Provo City v.
Claudin 91 Utah 60 (March, 1937).
Funeral homes have been almost
uniformly considered by the courts
as commercial undertakings and
their exclusion from properly defined
residential districts has been gener-
ally upheld. (See Bassett "Zoning,"
page 213.)

Extension oj Non-Conforming Uses
Discretionary Powers of Board oj
Adjustment. Kentucky. Boswortb
v. City oj Lexington 125 S. W.
(2nd) 995. February 21, 1939.

The zoning ordinance of the city
provided that the board of adjust-
ment might grant permits for the
improvement and enlargement of
nonconforming uses if applied for
within five years from the passage
of the ordinance. The zoning law of
the State gave this power to boards
of adjustment without the five-year
limitation where the applicant could
show unnecessary hardship. The
board of adjustment had refused a
permit to the applicant because
more than five years had elapsed
since the passage of the zoning
ordinance but this refusal was re-
versed and an order approving a
building permit was granted by the
lower court. On appeal, this judg-
ment was affirmed, the court hold-

ing that the limitation on the dis-
cretionary power of the board of
adjustment in the ordinance was
improper in view of the provision in
the state law.

Permit Refused on Improper Ground.
New Jersey. Duncan Avenue Cor-
poration v. Board of Adjustment
oj Jersey City et al. Supreme
Court of New Jersey, March 20,
1939.

The board of adjustment revoked
a permit issued by the Superinten-
dent of Buildings for alterations of
a building in a business district.
The premises had been used for
various businesses and were now to
be rented for a meat and grocery
market. The only objection dis-
closed by the evidence was from
other markets dealing in meat and
groceries. The court properly held
that the revocation of the permit
bore no substantial relation to the
purposes of zoning.

Retroactive Effect of Zoning Regula-
tions Prohibited. Michigan City
of Cold Water v. Williams Oil
Company. Supreme Court, March
9, 1939.

The defendant had bought a piece
of land and commenced the con-
struction of a filling station but was
stopped by injunction under an
invalid zoning ordinance. Later,
and before the injunction was dis-
solved, a valid zoning ordinance was
passed. The court held that this
ordinance was retroactive as to the
defendant.

The American Institute of Park Executives will bold its 4Otb Annual
Convention in Philadelphia, September 18-21, 1939.

Watch Service Report

Reorganization

Reorganization Plan No. I transmitted by President Roosevelt to Congress on
April 25, 1939, pursuant to the provisions of the Reorganization Act of 1939 approved
April 3, 1939, contains in Part i, Sections 4 and 5, the following provision for the National
Resources Planning Board:

Sec. 4. (a) The functions of the National Resources Committee, established by
Executive Order No. 7065 of June 7, 1935, and its personnel (except the members of
the Committee) and all of the functions of the Federal employment stabilization office
in the Department of Commerce and its personnel are hereby transferred to the Execu-
tive office of the President. The functions transferred by this section are hereby con-
solidated and they shall be administered under the direction and supervision of the
President by the National Resources Planning Board (hereafter referred to as the
Board), which shall be composed of five members to be appointed by the President.
The President shall designate one of the members of the Board as Chairman and another
as Vice-Chairman. The Vice-Chairman shall act as Chairman in the absence of the
Chairman or in the event of a vacancy in that office. The members of the Board shall
be compensated at the rate of $50 per day for time spent in attending and traveling to
and from meetings or in otherwise exercising the functions and duties of the Board,
plus the actual cost of transportation: Provided, That in no case shall a member be
entitled to receive compensation for more than 30 days' service in 2 consecutive months.

(b) The Board shall determine the rules of its own proceedings and a majority of
its members in office shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of business, but
the Board may function notwithstanding vacancies.

(c) The Board may appoint necessary officers and employees and may delegate to
such officers authority to perform such duties and make such expenditures as may
be necessary.

Sec. 5. National Resources Committee abolished: The National Resources Com-
mittee is hereby abolished, and its outstanding affairs shall be wound up by the National
Resources Planning Board.

Reorganization Plan No. II was sent by the President to Congress on May 9, 1939,
and he points out in his letter of transmittal that the plan provides for the transfer to
the Department of the Interior of the Bureau of Fisheries from the Department of
Commerce and of the Biological Survey from the Department of Agriculture. "These
two bureaus have to do with conservation and utilization of the wildlife resources of
the country, terrestrial and aquatic. Therefore, they should be grouped under the
same departmental administration, and in that Department which, more than any
other, is directly responsible for the administration and conservation of the public
domain. However, I intend to direct that the facilities of the Department of Agriculture
shall continue to be used for research studies which have to do with the protection of
domestic diseases of wildlife, and also where most economical for the protection of
farmers and stockmen against predatory animals. . . .

"I have also considered the problem of certain public lands insofar as they present
overlapping jurisdiction between the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture.
Insofar as crops, including tree crops, are involved, there is something to be said for
their retention in the Department of Agriculture. But where lands are to be kept for
the primary purpose of recreation and permanent public use anji conservation they
fall more logically into the Department of the Interior. I hope to offer a reorganization
plan on this early in the next session."

The above provisions would have gone into effect 60 days after date of transmittal,
as provided for in the Reorganization Act, or on June 25. However, according to Senate
Joint Resolution 138, introduced by Mr. Byrnes, which passed the Senate on May 19,
1939, both Reorganization Plans Nos. I and II shall take effect on July i, 1939.: For
accounting purposes and for simplifying the bookkeeping, it was deemed desirable to
have the plans take effect on this date, coincident with the fiscal year.

Planning and Civic Comment
National Parks

H. R. 3794 (Gearhart) Feb. 7. To establish the John Muir- Kings Canyon National
Park, California. Hearings on this bill were held before the Committee of the Public
Lapds of the House of Representatives, March 15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 28, 29, 30, 31, April I,
4, and 6. The Hearings have been published and are now available. Harlean James,
Executive Secretary, American Planning and Civic Association, testified before the
Committee on Saturday, April i, and read a statement signed by Horace M. Albright,
President. The Committee reported the bill with amendments on May 25.

H. R. 3759 introduced on Feb. 6, by Mr. DeRouen to authorize a National Mississippi
River Parkway and matters relating thereto was reported with amendment on May 4.

H. R. 4635 (Englebright) introduced March I. To transfer certain lands from the
Sierra National Forest to the Yosemite National Park in the State of California. Re-
ported without amendment, May 27.

H. R. 4928 (Smith of Washington) introduced March 10. To authorize the acquisi-
tion, rehabilitation and operation of the facilities for the public in the Olympic National
Park. Also introduced as H. R. 5446 by Mr. Smith on March 30. No action.

S. 2 H. R. 2195 (Prttman-Scrugham) introduced Jan. 4 and Jan. 10. Authorizing
the Secretary of the Interior to convey certain land to the State of Nevada to be used
for the purposes of a public park and recreational site. Affects Boulder Dam National
Recreational Area adversely. No action.

S. 1399 (King) introduced Feb. 16. To amend the Act entitled "An Act for the
preservation of American antiquities" approved June 8, 1906. This legislation was
not sponsored by the Department of the Interior.

H. R. 190 (Ramspeck) introduced Jan. 3. To authorize the Secretary of Agriculture
to cooperate with the States or political subdivisions thereof in the development, oper-
ation and maintenance of recreational areas within the national forests and on lands
owned by the said States or the political subdivisions thereof.

H. R. 286 (Taylor) introduced Jan. 3. To authorize the appropriation of $100,000,000
or so much thereof as may be necessary to locate and construct through the States of
Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia, and the District of
Columbia, a highway to be known as the Eastern National Park-to-Park Highway.

H. R. 916 (Allen) introduced Jan. 3. To provide for an appropriation of $100,000
with which to continue the survey of the old Indian trail known as Natchez Trace
through Louisiana and Texas, with a view to constructing a national road on this route
to be known as the Natchez Trace Parkway.

H. R. 1792 (Lea) introduced Jan. 5; S. 307 (Bailey) introduced Jan. 5; H. R. 5412
(Lea) introduced March 28. To encourage travel in the United States and for other
purposes.

H. R. 2960 (DeRouen) introduced Jan. 20. To authorize the Secretary of the In-
terior to sell or otherwise dispose of surplus animals inhabiting the national parks and
national monuments.

H. R. 2962 (DeRouen) introduced Jan. 20. To authorize the Secretary of the Interior
to accept donations of land, interests in land, buildings or other property for the exten-
sion of national parks, national monuments, battlefield sites, national military parks,
and other areas administered by the National Park Service.

H. R. 366o-^-S. 1511 (Wallgren-Bone) introduced Feb. 2 and Feb. 20. To provide
for the acquisition by the United States of lands not in Federal ownership within the
Olympic National Park.

H. R. 3705 (Coffee) introduced Feb. 3. To authorize the acquisition, rehabilitation
and operation of the facilities for the public in Mount Rainier National Park in the
State of Washington.

H. R. 3841 (White) introduced Feb. 7. To provide for the construction of a highway
within the Yellowstone National Park to provide an entrance to such park from the
State of Idaho. This highway would traverse the wilderness southwest corner of the Park.

H. R. 3959 (Robinson) introduced Feb. 8. To authorize the Secretary of the Interior
to dispose of recreational demonstration projects. Passed House June 5, 1939.

H. R. 4506 and H. R. 4308 (Case, Caldwell) introduced Feb. 24 and Feb. 20. To
provide for payments to counties to reimburse them for loss of tax receipts on account
of the use of certain land by the United States.

H. R. 4752 (Weaver) March 3. For the relief of the counties of Haywood and Swain
in the State of North Carolina by reason of their loss in taxable valuation by the estab-
lishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Planning and Civic Comment

H. R. 5502 (Voorhis of Calif.) introduced April 3. A bill to authorize the Secretary
of the Interior to provide public facilities and accommodations by the purchase, con-
struction, maintenance and operation of hotels, lodges, and other buildings and struc-
tures, inclusive of necessary fixtures and incidental equipment in (certain) national parks,
national monuments, national parkways and other areas under the jurisdiction of the
Department of the Interior. No action.

H. R. 6559 (Wallgren) May 29. A bill to accept the cession by the State of Wash-
ington of exclusive jurisdiction over the lands embraced within the Olympic National
Park and for other purposes. Referred to Committee on Public Lands.

Water Pollution

S. 685 (Barkley) introduced Jan. 16. To create a Division of Water Pollution Control
in the U. S. Public Health Service. Amended and passed Senate on May i. On May 10,
the House Committee on Rivers and Harbors reported the bill with amendments, one
of which provides that the Chief of the U. S. Army Engineers or a member of the Corps
shall be a member of a Board of 5 of which 4 shall be from the U. S. Public Health Service.

National Resources Committee Notes

STATE PLANNING: With more than
40 State Legislatures in session this
year, all but five boards have had to
seek appropriations for the next
fiscal year or biennium. A number
of boards have been affected by
changes of administration which
have been characterized by new
policies, incoming officials' unfam-
iliarity with planning, and economy
drives. Some boards have emerged
strengthened, others weakened, some
were consolidated with other agen-
cies, and a few were abolished.

Legislation for New Boards In
Kansas, a bill to establish a new
board passed the Lower House but
failed to secure last-minute action
in the Senate. A bill to establish an
Industrial Development Commis-
sion was, however, adopted. The
effort to secure a statutory board in
Ohio continues. The Governor has
indicated that he does not approve
the creation of any new statutory
agencies at this session, but it is

hoped by many that a Governor's
Board will be re-established. In
Minnesota, where the existing Gov-
ernor's Board has done outstanding
work, and the effort to create a
permanent statutory board has the
strong support of the new Governor,
a bill failed of enactment, but the
Governor's Board will continue to
function. In Connecticut, where the
planning law expired in 1937 and
some planning functions have been
carried on by the Legislative Coun-
cil, a bill creating a development
commission with planning powers
is now pending.

Boards abolished Four statu-
tory boards, North Dakota, South
Dakota, Oregon and Iowa, have
been abolished by legislative action
effective (in three States) in June.
The Texas law automatically ex-
pired on March 16 and no legisla-
tion has been enacted to extend its
authority or create a new board.
In North Dakota the Governor asked

Planning and Civic Comment

for a new bill, after the law of 1935
had been repealed, but the bill died
in committee. With continued strong
support from the Governor, it is
anticipated that a Governor's Board
will be established. In South Dakota
the Governor vetoed a bill for an
Economic and Legislative Council
which had been passed by a large
majority of both houses as a sub-
stitute for the 1935 law, which had
been repealed. Various planning
groups in the State are now seeking
to establish an official planning
agency and already have over $1,000
pledged to its support. The Oregon
State Planning Board law was
repealed in the closing days of the
Legislature, and against the Gover-
nor's wishes. The Governor has
available for the biennium a $10,000
fund for research which may include
some work normally performed by
an official planning organization.
Efforts to repeal state planning acts
have been unsuccessful in a corre-
sponding number of States. Con-
siderable opposition to the repeal
bills in Michigan, Illinois and Wis-
consin is reported.

Reorganization of Boards Sev-
eral state planning boards have
been abolished and their functions
continued under another organiza-
tion. The Planning Board of Wyom-
ing was abolished and its functions
placed in a new State Planning and
Water Conservation Board with a
special allotment for planning ac-
tivities. Similarly, the membership
of the New Mexico and Alabama
Boards was modified by legislation,
a strengthened planning law being
obtained in New Mexico. Legisla-
tion was adopted in Oklahoma to
change the composition of the

Board. An Act was passed in Rhode
Island placing the Board in the
Executive Department. In Massa-
chusetts the Governor has recom-
mended consolidation of the State
Planning Board with various other
planning agencies. Bills to make
the Pennsylvania Planning Board a
departmental board in the proposed
Department of Commerce were ap-
proved May 10. A state reorganiza-
tion report for Colorado (prepared
by Griffenhagen and associates)
recommended abolition of the Colo-
rado Board and the vesting of its
functions in a proposed Executive
Council composed of the heads of
the major state departments. This
portion of the report, however, failed
of adoption before adjournment.

Appropriations The economy
wave has threatened to cut off or
seriously reduce appropriations of
many state planning boards. To
date, however, only three States
with statutory boards, Indiana,
North Carolina and Oklahoma, have
suffered drastic cuts in appropriated
funds. The Indiana Legislature in
the rush of the closing session re-
duced the annual appropriation for
the state planning board from
$20,070 to $1,750 over the protests
of the friends of the Board. In
North Carolina the appropriation
for the Board was not acted upon,
although a substantial emergency
fund was placed at the Governor's
disposal from which it is hoped an
allotment will be made for carrying
on the work of the Board. Faced
with a large anticipated deficit, the
Oklahoma Legislature reduced the
State Planning Board's annual ap-
propriation from $35,000 to $5,000.
The Colorado Board's annual ap-

Planning and Civic Comment

propriation was cut from $23,750 to
$16,010 in 1940 and $19,060 in 1941.
Appropriation cuts are also threat-
ened in Michigan, New York, Penn-
sylvania and Illinois. In New Jersey ,
the request for an increased appro-
priation was first denied, after which
the entire appropriation was elim-
inated from the budget. There is
now pending a supplemental bill pro-
viding an appropriation for the
Board.

While economy has been the rule
in many of the States, so far all
other planning boards have secured
increased appropriations or retained
their previous amounts. The ap-
propriation for the Maryland Board
for the next fiscal year was increased
from $3,000 to $10,000, while the
New Mexico Board received $14,000
for the next biennium, after having
had no appropriations for the pre-
ceding biennium. Substantial in-
creases have been obtained by
Tennessee, Utah, and Washington.
Other increases are likely in Rhode
Island, Florida and California.

It appears that nearly as much
money in the aggregate will be
appropriated for all state planning
boards this year as last. This, in an
economy era, is definitely progress.
That many boards have weathered
political changes so well, testifies to
the basic strength of the state plan-
ning movement. Establishment of a
permanent national planning agency
should give added vigor to this
movement.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS: "Low
Dams," the most recent publication
of the Water Resources Committee,
is a manual containing instructions,
standards and procedures intended
to serve as a guide to safe practices

in the design of small water storage
projects and of appurtenant struc-
tures. The manual is not intended
to encourage in any way the assump-
tion of undue responsibility on the
part of unqualified personnel, but
rather to serve technically trained
and experienced consultants with
information and data necessary to
the proper accomplishment and
checking of such work, and to assist
the subordinate or partially trained
engineer to improve his work and
thus decrease the amount of review
and checking by his superior.

It contains 431 pages, 207 illus-
trations, is bound in flexible fabrik-
oid, and may be purchased from
the Superintendent of Documents,
Washington, D. C, for $1.25. The
Committee has no copies of this
publication for free distribution.

The Industrial Section has cir-
culated for technical criticism by
experts and others a preliminary
limited edition of its report entitled
"Patterns of Resource Use." This
report represents a step in the de-
velopment of a method for giving
concrete expression to relationships
between such factors in our economy
as employment, production and
consumer income and expenditures,
hitherto indefinitely expressed. It
seeks more exact answers to familiar
questions such as: What level of
economic activity is necessary to
absorb the unemployed, or, at such
level, what would be the market for
commodities and services, industry
by industry?

Comments are expected to be for-
warded to the Committee before
October i, after which time a final
draft of the report will be begun.
The preliminary report contains 149

Planning and Civic Comment

pages, including numerous charts
and graphs and can be purchased from
the Superintendent of Documents,
Washington, D. C., for 35 cents.

The Industrial Committee has
also recently released a report en-
titled "Residential Building," which
is the first of a series of monographs
on the subject of housing prepared
by a number of collaborators from
various agencies. This monograph
was prepared under the direction of
Lowell J. Chawner, of the Depart-
ment of Commerce, and deals with
some of the broader background
factors which influence the demand
for housing and the methods of
supplying the demand. It is pointed
out that the statistical method used
for presenting the future demand is
subject to the major weakness of
attempting to project past trends.
The report does not deal with pos-
sible changes in the character of
future housing demands; its pur-
pose, rather, is to bring about a
better quantitative understanding
of the problem.

It consists of 19 pages, including
various charts, graphs and tables and
may be purchased from the Super-
intendent of Documents, Washing-
ton, D. C., for 10 cents.

LEGISLATIVE STATUS OF NATIONAL
RESOURCES COMMITTEE: Reorgan-
ization Plan No. i provides for
transfer of the functions of the
National Resources Committee and
the Federal Employment Stabiliza-
tion Office to a National Resources
Planning Board in the Executive
Offices of the President. On May 1 2
representatives of the Committee
appeared before a Subcommittee of
the House Committee on Appro-
priations to discuss its appropria-

tion for the fiscal year beginning
July i, 1939. At present the Com-
mittee operates under an Executive
Order with funds appropriated by
Congress in the Relief Appropria-
tion Act of 1938. Inasmuch as the
appropriation expires June 30, funds
for the next fiscal year will be
necessary for continuation of its
functions. On Feb. 17, 1939, Senator
Hayden introduced an amendment
as Title III to the Byrnes bill
(5.1265) which would create a per-
manent National Resources Plan-
ning Board. Although hearings are
being held on the first two titles of
the Byrnes bill, Title III (The
Hayden Amendment) is still pend-
ing in the Committee.

A meeting of members oj technical
committees, Regional Officers and the
Washington staff was held in the
Committee's offices, April 17, 1939,
for the purpose of providing an
opportunity to discuss common
problems affecting different parts of
the organization. As a basis for
discussion each committee chairman
presented a statement of the work
of his committee involving not only
technical matters but also problems
of closer integration of their activ-
ities with other committees increas-
ing the participation of States and
local governments.

The National Conference on Plan-
ning, which took place in Boston,
Massachusetts, May 15, 16 and 17
was attended by 454 delegates. The
highlights of the papers and reports
of this most successful meeting will
be issued shortly by the Association
as a PLANNING BROADCAST.

For Better Roadsides

By FLAVEL SHURTLEFF

SO FAR the "noes" have it nine
to four. The bills for better
roadsides have been defeated in
Indiana, Maryland, North Caro-
lina, Ohio, Washington, Arkansas,
New York, Oregon and Texas and
have passed in Maine, New Hamp-
shire, Vermont and Tennessee. In
Connecticut a new bill has been sub-
stituted because of opposition to
certain provisions in the first pro-
posal, and final action is pending
there as well as in Pennsylvania and
New Jersey. A bill is also being pre-
pared for introduction in the Florida
legislature which convened the first
of April.

There should be no discourage-
ment of the legislative record. Five
of the nine bills defeated were radical
departures from the usual outdoor
advertising legislation. They created
highway protective areas in which
the State was to exercise the zoning
power or something much like it.
They were an honest attempt to
treat all wayside business alike and
to overcome the contention of the
advertising industry that the usual
type of regulatory legislation dis-
criminated against the outdoor ad-
vertising business. This strategy
was somewhat successful in Indiana
where the State Petroleum Associa-
tion endorsed the bill, but there was
enough opposition from single indus-
tries and from the farmers to send
the bill to defeat in the lower house
of the legislature.

In Ohio the president of the state
outdoor advertising company led a
most vigorous opposition and thou-

sands of circulars were distributed to
the farmers of the State who were
asked to return a post card to the
Central Outdoor Advertising Com-
pany, Inc., as follows:

I am familiar with certain provisions of
House Bill No. 361 providing for the
zoning of rural highways and vigorously
oppose its passage for the reason that it
is too drastic in its applications and in-
fringes unwarrantably upon the rights of
owners of property adjacent to highways.

The farmer opposition was over-
whelming and the bill died in legis-
lative committee.

In view of these crushing defeats,
the victories in Maine, Vermont,
New Hampshire and Tennessee are
all the more heartening. The Ten-
nessee law was described in the
January-March number of PLAN-
NING AND Civic COMMENT. It is a
mild regulatory law limited to areas
along the highways outside of in-
corporated places' but the uniform
permit fee will clear many small
signs from the highways. Tennessee
heretofore has imposed a license fee
on those in the business of outdoor
advertising but for the first time a
fee is now imposed on all signs.

Maine and Vermont both have
had laws regulating outdoor adver-
tising for some years. The Vermont
law dates from 1929 and the Maine
law from 1935. The most important
of the amendments to the Maine law
passed this year was an increase in
the license fee from $25 to $100 on
all those in the advertising business.

The Vermont amendments were a
thorough overhauling of the existing
law. The permit fee on all advertis-

Planning and Civic Comment

ing structures is now fixed at two
and a half cents a square foot and a
set-back line is established. All
structures must be at least thirty-
five feet from the center line of the
highway. If the structure is over
three hundred square feet in area it
must be three hundred feet from the
center line. If it is less than three
hundred square feet it must be as
many linear feet from the center line
of the highway as its area. Although
this provision shows the influence of
the Massachusetts regulations, it is
the only instance in billboard regula-
tions of graduating the set-back line
exactly in accordance with the area
of the structure.

Under the New Hampshire resolu-
tion, the State Planning and Devel-
opment Commission must, during
the next two years, survey the high-
ways of the State and recommend to
the legislature of 1941 a program for
the protection and improvement of
the roadsides, including a classifica-
tion and suggested use of the land
bordering thereon.

Farmer opposition was not the
only cause of failure of roadside im-
provement measures. The testimony
from other States runs something as
follows: "Apparently no public in-
terest"; "Not public pressure enough
on the legislative committee that
heard the bill."

In view of this testimony, the
question may be asked, "Is the
public opposed to outdoor advertis-
ing?" and the answer in almost
every State is honestly a guess.
Public opinion in Massachusetts is
clearly on record against unregulated
outdoor advertising, for the people
in 1918 passed a constitutional
amendment as follows:

Article 59. Advertising on public ways,
in public places and on private property
within public view may be regulated and
restricted by law.

The only other evidence on the point
is fragmentary. Questionnaires have
been circulated to get the opinion of
summer visitors and a recent one
included the question, "Do you ap-
prove or disapprove of outdoor
advertising signs?" The remarkable
thing is that ninety percent of the
answers to this questionnaire were
from men. Of the 668 replies, 16 per-
cent said they liked billboards, 23
percent said they didn't care one
way or another and 61 percent said
that they were opposed.

It is probably conservative to say
that a healthy majority of the public
is indifferent to billboards or is op-
posed to them but almost nowhere
is the public militant enough even to
express itself. It must be aroused
and must be organized. During the
1939 legislative session, the New
York Roadside Improvement and
Safety Committee, through an in-
tensive campaign of education, en-
listed the support of about 250,000
organized voters in behalf of regula-
tory legislation. This is believed to
be the greatest number of voters
ever to appeal to a state legislature
on this subject and as a result an
impressive number of legislators in
both houses privately indicated
their willingness to vote for billboard
regulation. If the bill had been re-
ported out of the Rules Committee
it would probably have passed the
Assembly and might have passed the
Senate. But the bill did not come
out and members of the Rules Com-
mittee are reported to have said that
they received more letters against

Planning and Civic Comment

the bill than for it. Farmers who
were persuaded that they might lose
revenue from billboard locations and
employees of outdoor advertising
companies who were led to believe
that they might lose their jobs, were
the writers of these letters.

That is the way self-interest oper-
ates and it is no wonder that the
leaders of the fight against billboards
on the rural scene are considering
ways and means which promise
speedier results than regulation by
law.

Report on National Planning
for England and Wales

A SPECIAL Committee of the
Town Planning Institute,
under the Chairmanship of
the Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Scott, has
recently completed its Report en-
titled "National Survey and Na-
tional Planning."

The Report begins with a brief
account of the history of the plan-
ning system in England and Wales.
It deals directly with England and
Wales only, not with Scotland, but
its conclusions would generally be
applicable to Scottish planning
which presents similar character-
istics and problems. It shows how
planning, which as a specific branch
of public administration began with
the Housing and Town Planning
Act of 1909, has been developed in
successive Acts (more especially
the Local Government Act of 1929,
the Town and Country Planning
Act of 1932 and the Restriction of
Ribbon Development Act of 1935)
so that it is now being applied to
about two-thirds of the land area of
the country by about three-quarters
of the local authorities. It also
shows, however, (a) that the process
of planning is proving very slow
and complicated, (b) that planning
has throughout been regarded as

essentially a local activity performed
by local authorities, (c) that plan-
ning areas vary very widely in size
and scope and have been distributed
rather by accident than by fore-
thought, and (d) that, while regional
aspects have to some extent been
met by the use of joint committees
and the, cooperation of county
council, the national aspects of
planning have no place in planning
law and have had little or no atten-
tion in planning practice.

The main contention of the Re-
port that national planning is .ur-
gently required to supplement and
reinforce local and regional planning
is supported by an examination
of the principal forms and agents of
land utilization possessing national
significance, which shows that the
existing planning system is adequate
to deal with the national require-
ments and problems which they
involve.

It is concluded in Part III Pro-
posed National Planning Commis-
sion that neither the Ministry of
Health nor any other existing Gov-
ernment Department could soundly
be made responsible for the central
reinforcement of planning and its
application in the national field. A

Planning and Civic Comment

new organ of central government is
recommended in the form of an
advisory National Planning Com-
mission, whose functions would be:

(a) to compile and collate all
necessary information (National
Survey);

(b) to advise and coordinate
Government Departments, statu-
tory undertakers and highway au-
thorities;

(d) to watch the general progress
of the planning system, investigate
its problems (such as Compensation
and Betterment), and make recom-
mendations for its legislative and
administrative development;

(e) to formulate as a basis for
all its advisory activities a national
plan or policy on broad and flexible
lines for the allocation and distribu-
tion of major land uses and develop-
ments (National Planning).

As to membership and organiza-
tion, it is recommended that the
Commission should consist of a full-
time Chairman and not more than
six other Commissioners, and that
the principal members of its staff
should be a Deputy Commissioner
and from six to nine Divisional
Officers who would be responsible for
maintaining contact with the local
planning authorities in their several
divisional areas.

O.K. P. Johnson 1878-1939 Harold Allen 1877-1939

It is with deep regret that we
announce the death of Mr. O. H. P.
Johnson, who has served as Trea-
surer of the American Planning and
Civic Association since November,
1938. He died suddenly on May
25 after a two days' illness.

Following the death last October
of George W. White, Treasurer of
the Association for more than a
decade, Mr. Johnson kindly con-
sented to serve as Treasurer. Long
prominent in banking circles in
Washington, he became Chairman
of the Board of the National Metro-
politan Bank following Mr. White's
death. Mr. White had been presi-
dent of this well-known banking
institution.

For many years Mr. Johnson has
been a member and supporter of the
work of the Association. His death
is a great loss both to the Association
and the community.

Harold Allen, long an active mem-
ber of the American Planning and
Civic Association, died suddenly on
April 5, 1939, after a brief illness.

A special attorney in the Bureau
of Internal Revenue, he practised
law in Pittsburgh before coming to
Washington.

Mr. Allen had been instrumental
in arousing interest in the Shenan-
doah area as a site for a national
park.

His suggestion followed shortly
after former Secretary of Interior
Work appointed a commission to
select a site for a national park in
the East. His enthusiasm and knowl-
edge of this area in the Blue Ridge
Mountains soon developed a wide-
spread interest and it is doubtful if
the movement to create a national
park of this area would have de-
veloped without his particular
genius.

New York City Planning Commission
Issues First Report

The New York City Planning
Commission, established early last
year when a new charter went into
effect for the city, has made its first
annual report. The document indi-
cates the lines along which the Com-
mission is working in drawing up a
master plan for the city. The Report
may seem to be a routine municipal
report. Such is not the case.

The entire report is characterized
by a thoughtful analysis of the forces
which have made the City of New
York what it is today; the ills from
which this metropolis is suffering;
and the types of remedies which may
promise recovery and sound future
development.

The new commission, which took
office January i, 1938, was directed
to prepare and, from time to time,
modify a master plan of the city.
This is indeed a formidable task, but
the framers of the new charter
realized that without a master plan,
day-to-day decisions must be based
on inadequate knowledge of existing
conditions and without a sense of
direction for future growth. Natu-
rally it has not been possible to de-
vise a master plan of New York
within the year; neither has the
Commission tried to make sudden
and drastic changes.

The Commission sagely remarks:
"It is not enough to provide New
York with good government. That
has already been achieved . . . We
need to remove, as far as possible,
the obstacles which retard our enter-
prises; to devise methods which will
lessen the costs of living and of doing

business in the city; to emphasize
and make the most of the oppor-
tunities the city affords

A master plan should indicate the
long range development of property
uses, such as transportation lines,
waterfront developments, arterial
highways, industrial and commercial
areas, residential sections, and the
like. The city will attempt to main-
tain the desirable features of this
plan through proper zoning and
through the budgetary provision for
related facilities."

The Commission reported unusual
activity in the development of plans
and the actual construction of park-
ways and main arterial highways,
together with the addition of many
new parks and playgrounds.

Under the charter, the Commis-
sion is required to prepare an annual
proposed capital budget and capital
program for the succeeding five
years. When the estimates for capi-
tal projects came in from the city
departments, it was apparent that
the total of 250 million dollars would
have to be cut drastically. And here
it was that the Commission clearly
felt "the need for a master plan,
against which individual projects
might be considered and a better and
more logical presentation by each
department of its own projects."

The Commission has recognized
the need for neighborhoods of single
family homes, and new districts re-
stricting use of land to single-family
houses have been created.

Copies of the Report are priced at
50 cents each.

Association's Publications Widely Distributed

PLANNING AND Civic COMMENT
and the AMERICAN PLANNING AND
Civic ANNUAL go all over the United
States and its possessions and to
nearly every portion of the globe,
the foreign countries numbering 27.

In the United States there are
members in every State in the Union
including every large, important
university. Other American mem-
bers are located in Alaska, the
Philippines, Hawaii and Puerto
Rico.

In Canada, the publications go
to Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Sas-
katchewan, Vancouver, Winnepeg
and St. John's in New Brunswick,
in Australia, to Melbourne, Bris-
bane and Sydney, also to Sydney,
New South Wales, to Wellington,
New Zealand, Capetown, South
Africa, Pahang, in the Federated
Malay States and Assam in India.

Subscribers on the European con-
tinent are libraries and individuals

in Paris, France; Copenhagen, Den-
mark; Berlin, Dresden, Essen-Ruhr,
Frankfort, and Karlsruhe in Ger-
many; Amsterdam and Utrecht,
Holland; Lucca and Rome, Italy;
Madired, Spain; Trondheim, Nor-
way; Stockholm, Sweden; Riga, Lat-
via; Warsaw, Poland; Turku, Fin-
land; and in the United States of
Soviet Russia Charkow, Kiev, Lenin-
grad, Moscow, Tashkent and Tiflis.

In South America our publica-
tions reach Rio de Janeiro and Sao
Paulo, Brazil; Buenos Aires, Argen-
tina; Santiago, Chile, Mexico City,
Mexico.

In the Orient, the Association
may claim a very large group of
subscribing members both in China
and Japan, and the publications go
to Nanking, Shanghai, Tientsin
and Canton in China, and Tokio,
Yokahoma, Osaka, Chosen and
several other cities in Japan.

May the Tribe increase!

Recent Publications

Conipiled by Katharine McNamara, Librarian of the Departments of
Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, Harvard University

AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION.
Suggested uniform act for roadside
development and control. Washington,
The Association, [1938]. [8 pages].
Includes a resume of the act.

BRUNER, H. B. Transportation in the
United States: its relation to housing
and regional and city planning, prepared
for the Curriculum Construction Lab-
oratory, Teachers College, Columbia
University, with the assistance of the
Works Progress Administration . . .
N. Y., [The University], 1937. 28 pages.
Mimeographed.

BUSH, A. L. Suggestions for use in making
a city survey (industrial and commer-
cial) . . . Washington, Govt. Printing
Office, 1938. 56 pages. Tables. (U. S.
Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Com-

merce. Domestic Commerce Ser. No.
105.) Price 10 cents.

COMMITTEE FOR INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZA-
TION. COMMITTEE ON HOUSING. Labor's
program for better housing. Washing-
ton, The Author, Dec. 1938. 27 pages.
(Publication No. 22.) Price 3 cents.

GREAT BRITAIN. MINISTRY OF HEALTH.
TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING AD-
VISORY COMMITTEE. Report on the
preservation of the countryside, 1938.
London, H. M. Stationery Office, 1938.
36 pages. Price 6d.

GREENE, FREDERICK STUART, and OTHERS.
The billboard: a blot on nature and a
parasite on public improvements, by
Frederick Stuart Greene . . . [and
others] and with the cooperation of New
York Roadside Improvement and Safety

Planning and Civic Comment

Committee. [Albany], The Committee,
Jan. 2, 1939. [43 pages]. Photos, maps,
plan.

HALSEY, MAXWELL. Training traffic
engineers; origins and functions of the
Bureau for Street Traffic Research, Yale
University. Reprint from Yale scientific
magazine, winter issue, 1939. 8 pages.
Maps, tables.

IHLDER, JOHN. A public housing program.
The purpose of the Alley Dwelling
Authority for the District of Columbia
is to reclaim slums and to assure an
adequate supply of good low-rent
dwellings. [Washington, Alley Dwelling
Authority for the District of Columbia,
Dec. 5, 1938.] 14 pages. Mimeographed.

KING, WILLIAM A., and ELMER D.
FULLENWIDER. The Pacific Northwest,
its resources and industries. Cincinnati,
South- Western Publishing Co., 1938.
390 pages. IIIus., maps, diagrs., cross
sections, tables. Price $1.25.

LAWTON, MRS. WALTER L. Progress in
roadside control and the next step;
address before the National Conference
on Roadsides in New York City, No-
vember 1 6, 1938. New York, National
Roadside Council, 1938. 7 pages.

LEWIS, HAROLD MACLEAN. City plan-
ning, why and how. New York, Long-
mans, Green and Co., 1939. 257 pages.
Maps, plans, diagrs. Price $2.50.

McCuLLOuGH, C. B., and JOHN BEAKEY.
The economics of highway planning
. . . ; rev. ed. September, 1938. Salem,
Oregon State Highway Planning Com-
mission, Sept., 1938. 471 pages. IIIus.,
maps, diagrs., tables, charts. (Oregon
State Highway Dept. Technical Bulletin
No. 7.)

MUMFORD, LEWIS. Regional planning in
the Pacific Northwest; a memorandum.
Portland, Ore., Northwest Regional
Council, [1939]. 20 pages.

NATIONAL RECREATION ASSOCIATION. Play
space in new neighborhoods; a commit-
tee report on standards of outdoor
recreation areas in housing develop-
ments. New York, The Association,
!939- 23 pages. Plan. Price 25 cents.

NATIONAL ROADSIDE COUNCIL. What you
can do to hasten billboard control as an
individual, as a community, as a state
. . . New York, The Council, Dec.,
1938. 7 pages.

NATIONAL SAFETY COUNCIL. COMMITTEE
ON SPEED AND ACCIDENTS. Report of
special study on speed zoning; 1038
report to Street and Highway Traffic
Section. Chicago, The Council, 1938.
47 pages. IIIus., diagrs., tables.

NEW ENGLAND REGIONAL PLANNING
COMMISSION. A synopsis of legislation
relating to airway and airport develop-
ment in New England. Boston, The
Commission, Feb., 1939. 18 pages.
Mimeographed. (Publication No. 55.)

NEW YORK, N. Y. CITY PLANNING COM-
MISSION, and NEW YORK, N. Y. DEPT.
OF CITY PLANNING. Annual report.
New York, The Commission and the
Dept., 1938. 94 pages. Table.

NEW YORK. STATE BOARD OF HOUSING.
Report of the State Board of Housing
to the Governor of the state of New
York. Albany, J. B. Lyon Co., 1939.
91 pages. IIIus., tables (part folded).
(Legislative document [1939], No. 60.)

NEW YORK TIMES. New York World's
Fair commemorating the i5Oth anniver-
sary of Washington's inauguration.
New York, The Times, Mar. 5, 1939.
72 pages. IIIus., plan.

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC PLANNING.
Planning, No. 121. Regionalism. Lon-
don, Political and Economic Planning,
Apr. 19, 1938. 15 pages.

QUEEN, STUART ALFRED, and LEWIS
FRANCIS THOMAS. The city: a study of
urbanism in the United States. New
York, McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc.,
1939. 500 pages. Maps, diagrs., tables.
(McGraw-Hill Publications in Sociol-
ogy.) Price $4.00.

STRAUS, NATHAN. Housing, a national
achievement. Reprint from the Atlantic
Feb., 1939. [8 pages]. Tables.

U. S. HOUSING AUTHORITY. What the
Housing Act can do for your city.
[Washington], The Authority, [1938].
88 pages. IIIus., maps, tables, charts.

U. S. NATIONAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE.
ADVISORY COMMITTEE. Progress report,
1938. Statement of the Advisory Com-
mittee. Washington, Govt. Printing
Office, 1939. 51 pages. Maps, charts.

. URBANISM COMMITTEE. Ur-
ban government. Volume I of the
Supplementary report of the Urbanism
Committee to the National Resources
Committee. Washington, Govt. Print-
ing Office, 1939. 303 pages. Maps,
diagrs., tables. Price 50 cents.

U. S. WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION.
Inventory: an appraisal of the results of
the Works Progress Administration.
Washington, The Administration, [1938].
100 pages. IIIus., plans, diagrs., cross
sections, tables. Price 30 cents.

ZIMMERMAN, CARLE C. The changing
community. New York, Harper and
Brothers, 1938. 66 1 pages. Maps,
diagrs., tables. Price $3.50.

K-

Planning and
Civic Comment

Successor to: City Planning, Civic Comment, State Recreation

THE FOURTH POWER

REXFORD G. TUGWELL

Chairman, New York City Planning Commission

A Paper Delivered in Washington, D. C.

on January 27, 7959
At a Dinner Sponsored Jointly by the

AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF PLANNERS

AND THE

AMERICAN PLANNING AND Civic ASSOCIATION

APRIL-JUNE 1939

PART II

PLANNING AND
CIVIC COMMENT

Published Quarterly
Successor to: City Planning, Civic Comment, State Recreation

Official Organ of: American Planning and Civic Association,
National Conference on State Parks

SCOPE: National, State, Regional and City Planning; Land and Water Uses;

Conservation oj National Resources; National, State and Local Parks,

Highways and Roadsides.
AIM: To create a better physical environment which will conserve and develop

the health, happiness and culture oj the American people.

EDITORIAL BOARD

HARLEAN JAMES FLAVEL SHURTLEFF CHARLES G. SAUERS

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

FREDERICK J. ADAMS ELISABETH M. HERLIHY

HORACE M. ALBRIGHT P. J. HOFFMASTER

HARLAND BARTHOLOMEW HENRY V. HUBBARD

EDWARD M. BASSETT JOHN IHLDER

RUSSELL V. BLACK RAYMOND F. LEONARD

PAUL V. BROWN RICHARD LIEBER

STRUTHERS BURT THOMAS H. MACDONALD

HAROLD S. BUTTENHEIM J. HORACE MCFARLAND

ARNO B. CAMMERER HENRY T. MC!NTOSH

DAVID C. CHAPMAN KATHERINE MCNAMARA

MARSHALL N. DANA MARVIN C. NICHOLS

S. R. DEBOER JOHN NOLEN, JR.

EARLE S. DRAPER F. A. PITKIN

CHARLES W. ELIOT 2o ISABELLE F. STORY

L. C. GRAY L. DEMING TILTON

S. HERBERT HARE TOM WALLACE
CONRAD L. WIRTH

MANAGING EDITOR

DORA A. PADGETT

$3.00 a Year

Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office at Washington, D. C., under
the Act of March 3, 1879. Additional entry at Harrisburg, Pa.

EDITORIAL AND PUBLICATION OFFICE: 901 Union Trust Building, Washington, D. C.

Printed by the Mount Pleasant Press, J. Horace McFarland Company, Harris-
burg, Pa.

THE FOURTH POWER

By REXFORD G. TUGWELL

WHEN historians look back, after several decades, they may be able
to see how a directive power offered to range itself alongside the
executive, the legislative and the judicial 1 . If, by then, it has developed
into a fourth division within our governmental system, there need not
have been at any time the theatrical recognition which came to the
executive out of the administrative futility inherent in parliamentary
government during the eighteenth century. The process can be evolu-
tionary and adaptive; it can be, that is, unless it is deliberately so delayed
that opposing physical and social forces reduce the American state to

1 It seemed impossible for the purposes of this article to avoid changing a familiar
loosely used word into a more precise and technical term. There is some reason for
believing that other writers have been approaching this definition in attempting to
introduce agreed meaning where before there had been confusion. Perhaps the word
"direction" with its two rather subtly different connotations comes as near transferring
concepts along with familiar sound as it would ever be possible to do. Others may have
burdened the word with less weight than it is made to carry here, and have been less
precise, but they have felt the same need. For instance, in this sentence from Mr.
Joseph Hudnut's introduction to Werner Hegemann's City Planning: Housing, there
is one use: "Neither a collection of buildings nor an aggregation of people makes a
city, but rather the form and content of society and the direction of its march." But
this, obviously, is limited. It is one thing to point out a direction which is being taken.
It is another thing to give direction. Mr. Charles W. Eliot 2nd, has used it in a closer
sense "the development of order and direction out of a chaos of rugged individualism";
Mr. George H. Gray (The Planners' Journal, Nov.-Dec., 1938, p. 144) has a sentence
which illustrates an equivocal meaning: "While our economic direction has always been
planned in a fashion (gold standard, tariff schedules, etc.), this planning has for the
most part been done in isolation from a general national plan." But Mr. Arthur G.
Coons understands the double entendre: "Whatever planning is, it is to be seen as a
conscious directive aspect of the political, social, or economic life of some definite geograph-
ical region . . ." ("The Nature of Economic Planning in Democracy," Plan Age,
Feb., 1939, p. 43). Even Sir Henry Bunbury, cautious Britisher that he is, uses the
word: "Social direction and control, by organs representing the community, of the
economic life of a nation of the conservation, development and utilisation of its varied
resources have become necessary by reason of the immense advances which have
taken place in technology, communications, corporate organization, and financial
techniques." ("Government Planning Machinery," Public Administration Service
publications No. 63, p. 5). Mr. Soule, perhaps, comes nearer than anyone else to using
the word in the full sense intended here: "But how, it is asked, could we retain democ-
racy if authority to direct all these economic processes were given to the State?" And in
another passage: "It must be remembered, too, that in a free collectivist system govern-
ment would not own or direct every activity." The Future of Liberty, 173, 177. Many
others have used the word, sometimes as a kind of synonym for planning, sometimes
with a closer approach to the double meaning intended here. Its appropriation may
be forgiven, being thus excused as not altogether original.

2 PLANNING AND CIVIC COMMENT

relative ineffectiveness. If this last should happen it would be sufficiently
dramatic and obvious; but it would not result in the development of a
fourth power. For the whole system would either be subjected to a foreign
executive or submerged in a chaos out of which anything might emerge
anything, that is, except institutions with fundamental provision for the
participation of every citizen after his sort, which is, after all, the demo-
cratic sine qua non.

Even if the present trend continues, the process will be one of those
which are difficult to see going on; and the constitutional changes which
recognize it may lag well behind the fact of its existence. Sensitivity to
the incidents of its development has not been acute up to now perhaps
because of ideological obstructions : preconception has often clothed dying
institutions with illusive appurtenances of vigor: the same preconception
has also prevented the prejudiced from seeing unwanted sequences of
events. Americans have been well enough aware of a new precision-created
industry in their midst and of a world changed in material and tempo;
they have even been aware that planning offered new possibilities of fore-
sight and control. But they have not wanted to learn that all these, from
beginning to end, were part of a process which was forcing concomitant
changes in government looking toward the modification of conflict and the
emphasizing of cooperation 2 . The present picture is one of a democratic
republic torn by internal struggles yet hoping to find a competence which
can survive the coming challenge.

2 It is difficult to contemplate seriously the planning idea without arriving at
some such conclusion. Mr. Charles W. Eliot 2nd, for instance, in 1933 (Planning and
National Recovery, National Conference on City Planning, Richmond, p. 32) distin-
guished several types "charting" or "economic planning," "budgeting," which de-
scribes itself, "purposing" or "projecting," which comprehends physical planning, and
so on. "They mean," he said, "quite different things, although they all have a common
interest in forethought and organization * *." These last words show that at that
time Mr. Eliot was expecting more than resulted from the New Deal. By 1935 he was
fearing, along with others, that planners might be called "regimenters," a term which
was satisfactorily opprobrious until attention was recalled to the fact that most of the
herding and pushing in our economy is after all done by business for its own purposes,
rather than by government in the public interest. (Cf. R. G. Tugwell, The Battle for
Democracy, p. 193). "Regimenting" had lost its value as an epithet by 1936. There is
a comment, in a recent study by Mr. Rene De Visme Williamson, which places accu-
rately the source of this fear: "Much is heard, from the opponents of planning, about
the dictatorial power that must regiment every detail if our economy is to be planned.
They loudly attack the centralized authority that would jam arbitrary production
schedules down the throats of a liberty-loving people, and even interfere with their
freedom of consumption. It is contentions such as these which have given planning a
bad name in many quarters originally friendly to it. They rest on a very unsound basis
and have their source in ignorance. There can be no doubt, of course, that power is
necessary for every kind of cooperative action, and planning is no exception. But there
lie in the minds of the people who fear planning a number of misconceptions. One of
these is that all power must be dictatorial and oppressive. They forget that the ability
to convince people by reasonable argument, and to appeal successfully to their emotions,
are just as good methods if not actually much better of obtaining intelligent and
enthusiastic support, as to threaten them with the concentration camp and the firing
squad. There are forms of power which a free people would not do away with were it
possible to do so, because they need that kind of power." Plan Age, Feb. 1939, p. 36.
This point is of compelling interest at the contemporary stage of discussion. It is
recurred to later in this paper.

THE FOURTH POWER 3

In other nations no great distinction is made between what is govern-
mental and what is, for instance, industrial. Some American difficulties
doubtless arise from separation: it ensures a struggle for power between
business (which controls most of industry) and government (which must
at least regulate it) a struggle which is in addition to the various competi-
tions within the subsidiary groups of business and government. The
dictatorships, at their extreme, doubtless have their own internal con-
flicts; but not this one. They have recognized that only one sovereignty
can function at any one time and place. Not so in the United States. Inten-
sification of the struggle here to possess this authority has created a
situation which remains wholly unresolved. Modern techniques have
exacerbated the difficulty. Planning, for instance, is available to both sides,
just as it is available to national competitors. Only a planning which,
being transformed, becomes direction, can resolve such a conflict, and
cause it to disappear. But such an instrument is of the nature of govern-
ment whether or not it is known by that name 3 ; and whether or not
it is managed in the public interest. By definition it stretches over the
important conflicts to be quieted among them those existing between
government and industry. But all this is as yet beyond the awareness of
policy makers here.

Idealists will be likely to oppose the dignifying of compromise involved
in this. There are those who will not join in any program which contem-
plates less than immediate and complete communism. There are also those
others who regard government interference of any sort as sinful. This is
a taking of sides which planners of the newer school are required to dismiss
as obsolete, unrealistic and narrowly moralistic. Extremists of both sorts,
they say, proceed from the same basic principles; either, if allowed to
determine policy, is equally destructive. Neither relates policy to actual
working conditions. What almost amounts to civil war has resulted from
these differing opinions, they say; and a little more intensification is likely
to make any kind of mediation impossible. Such objections have at least
the justification that a Marxian type of crisis may well follow further
deepening of this cleavage, a result which seems especially tragic in the
presence of an entirely feasible resolution.

The materials and forces of the nation can be arranged to make a pat-
tern; they can produce incredible benefits; but only if they are managed

3 It may be said that the distinction between free and controlled enterprise is of
the essence of "capitalistic democracy." It may still be that this is an indefensible
distinction. Perhaps it is another of the sort that Mr. Nicholas Murray Butler is fond
of making between "the sphere of government and the sphere of liberty." To accept
such distinctions may be to deny more than appears on the surface. No one, perhaps,
or, at any rate, very few by now, would deny that there is a public interest in business.
The New Deal must have wiped out the last indefilable area. It becomes then a matter
of degree rather than of kind: public enough to be regulated negatively but not enough
to be directed positively, perhaps. But what a far remove even this is from 1928! The
"essence" has been considerably diluted. There is even a tendency now to be a little
shocked ac the joining of capitalism and democracy in a phrase describing present
arrangements.

4 PLANNING AND CIVIC COMMENT

with that objective. It will not happen accidentally. There exists an
insistent demand for higher standards which, as things are, makes an almost
intolerable drain on upper and middleclass incomes. Between these pres-
sures public officials are made desperate. Politicians divide nicely on issues
which involve a little more or less, some favoring more benefits, some
striving to reduce expenditures. What pressure is yielded to at the moment
is of less importance than the fact of increasing pressure and increasing
resistance. The only relief in the long run (aside from explosion) must
come from such an increase in benefits and such a diffusion of them as will
satisfy those who are presently below standard without reducing everyone
to misery. It can only be done by greatly increasing production. And this
in turn can only be done by outlawing conflict and enforcing cooperation
just the reverse of the traditional scheme of rewards and punishments.
The gradual apprehension of the possibilities in modern technique together
with the recurrent sinking spells which disgust people with present forms,
customs, morals and leadership, may result in some forcible resolution of
the paradox. But assuming that it does not, evolution must necessarily
be toward cooperative forms, collective customs, pragmatic morality and
technically buttressed leadership; because this is what will give us the
greatest product; and also because this is the only door to the future which
is available to those who regard the avoidance of force as a necessity.

The duties to be undertaken and the problems to be solved, even with
the restricted American view of what is properly governmental, are more
weighty and difficult than ever before. The necessities imposed by this
circumstance, it must be insisted, make simple planning, at least, inevitable.
Regard, for instance, the growth of the federal budget or of municipal
budgets in recent years. This is some sort of index to responsibility. And
if the percentage of those budgets which is devoted to duties thrust on
government (directly or indirectly) by technical change is measured, it is
apparent that the whole growth and perhaps more is of this sort. And
government has hardly begun its extension into industry. It is not that
government has "gone into business," as we say, extensively. On the
contrary, one reason for the recurrent fiscal troubles of government is the
prevalent unwillingness to have anything done publicly for which an
adequate charge can thinkably be made. There are wanted, even by most
tax payers, only such extensions of public service as are unprofitable 4 .

4 Mr. W. J. Vinton makes a biting comment on this. Speaking of the field of price
and of the activities which have been abstracted from it, he says: 'The sphere of public
initiative where social control is predominant is the only field in which planned activities
can go forward ... to tangible results. This is a continually expanding area. Roads,
bridges, harbors, parks, sewers, and water systems are publicly operated. National
defense has been socialized for some centuries and education for a century; while govern-
ment has more recently moved into the fields of public health and social insurance.
All these functions have been abstracted from the price system of private initiative

THE FOURTH POWER 5

Revenue has, therefore, to be got by taxation, a kind of price which is
universally disliked; it is so unpopular, indeed, and the demand for ex-
pansion of non-paying activities is often so great, that administrators are
forever tempted to unbalance their budgets far beyond the amounts put
aside for capital-investment 5 .

The tormented public executive nowadays has a new outfit of tools at
his command. But that seldom makes his situation easier. The same
forces which furnish the new tools furnish tasks which seem beyond the
possibility of successful handling. The same technology which is respon-
sible for teletypes, mechanical snowplows, electric calculators and the like
is also responsible for an increased accident rate, for concentrated dangers
in irresponsible stoppages of work and for the growing burden of home
relief attributable, among other causes, to unemployment. The adminis-
trative head of any government is apt to feel, therefore, after the first few
crises he has to face, that he is required to perform an impossible task
one which expands inevitably at a rate faster than the growth of his power
to cope with it.

It is perhaps illogical to suppose, as has often been pointed out, that a
world created by men cannot be managed by men with tolerable effi-
ciency 6 . But it is necessary that the logic of creation and of management

because their provision by the community as a whole is more efficient and better meets
our social needs.

"Other activities now within the sphere of public initiative have been relinquished
by private initiative because their operation no longer yields a profit. It is surprising
to note how quickly unprofitable enterprises are discovered to be an appropriate field
for government ownership. . . ."

Sweden has had more success with half-way measures than most other countries.
It is interesting to see that many public enterprises there are made to "pay." And
sufficient profit is taken to relieve the national budget in a substantial way. This may
be only another form of sales tax. It is, however, better than private sales taxes which
is what controlled "prices" here amount to, even though these seem, for some reason,
to be more acceptable.

5 Public investment begins to seem the favorite way {to transfer ownership. A
crusade of some sort is required to justify expropriation; and even condemnation is re-
sorted to with reluctance. The difficulty with the investment method is, of course, that
it usually results in the acquisition of deficit-producing properties; this makes financing
harder and induces popular scepticism. Public investment in the "intangibles" of health,
old-age insurance and the like, create even greater difficulties. Trouble in these cases
arises only when budgets are unbalanced for these purposes and the debt expanded. The
expansion of public debt for investment is exactly what is done in private corporation
finance. And it is to be justified by similar results in a transition period. If all industry
were owned by the state a different series of tests would be appropriate.

6 "Planning, like any other idea, involves an assumption; and in this case the
assumption is that the American public or publics, national and local, will by and
large and in the course of time be capable of intelligence in the development of their
territories and be capable of the moral willingness to use that intelligence. Planlessness
is either or both a lack of intelligence or lack of the moral willingness to be intelligent.
The use of planning approach, planning techniques, the development of planning
principles and planning knowledge are consequently a test of the capacity of our people
to be a social organism capable of converting its strength and activities into works of
social utility and social welfare." Mr. Alfred Bettman, Planning and National Recovery,
1933, p. 18.

6 PLANNING AND CIVIC COMMENT

should run within the same limits. If one set of men is always making
problems and another set always having to face their consequences, and
if they are responsible to antagonistic principals, the situation may well
get out of hand. Indeed it has. The harassed executive is right who finds
that his problems increase more rapidly than the instruments for their
solution. His solutions are really only to be found in a diminution of his
problems particularly those deliberately created for him as an incident
to irrelevant private conflicts or in the evangelical disciplining of dis-
senters from either one-hundred-percent socialism or perfected individualism.

Democracy is more than the empty word which is used by thoughtless
extollers of our present system. Democracy, as the ordinary citizen feels
it, is less a system, indeed, than a commitment to understood liberties and
duties. It corresponds with any government as religion does with the
various churches which have sought to institutionalize a theology. At its
elemental level it lies deep in men's natures, a latent, ever-ready revolt
against oppression. A formidable attempt has been made to furnish new
content for it to identify it, indeed, with competitive capitalism by
those who have thought this an easy way to secure their capitalistic privi-
leges. This could be successful in a nation where nearly everyone owned
property; or, perhaps, even in one where workers were secure in their jobs;
it has no chance in one where neither property nor jobs can be held with
any certainty of permanence. But there would be no one to foster such a
campaign in the first instance; only in the second. It is bound, therefore,
to fail. And revolt in various guises is certain to rise from latency to
actuality wherever there is oppression.

Planning is quite susceptible of use by autarchies, but it ought not to be
identified with them 7 . For, provided it is subject to the right direction,
it may be capable of rescuing democratic government from many of its
present difficulties. What must be realized, first, of course, is that in the
midst of confused shouting for democracy, much of its substance has
departed 8 . This was the result of identifying it with certain more or
less successful instruments intended for its preservation. Unless there

7 "As for the compatibility of central planning and democracy, planning like any
technique is politically neutral. It may be used by any form of politico-economic
organization. When employed by totalitarian states, it is dictatorial, militarist, author-
itarian. Under a democratically planned collectivism toward which we in America are
moving, scientific planning * * * W HI se ek social objectives set by bodies representa-
tive of the majority and will pursue democratic procedures." Mr. George B. Galloway,
Plan Age, Jan. 1939, p. 29.

8 It ought not to be implied, of course, that we have more democracy than we
actually possess. Authentic American history dictates considerable caution as to the
founders' intentions and as to various shapers' purposes. It is doubtless true that we
have much more political democracy than was ever intended. It has increased with
the years; technology at least had this effect. Yet vast areas of social life have been
withdrawn from the democratic process on the plea of efficiency (which our forefathers
did not stress). These areas are more largely economic than governmental. Perhaps

THE FOURTH POWER 7

develops some willingness to sacrifice the symbols for the substance penalty
must follow. Many peoples have worshipped the brazen calf in mistaken
identification of it with divinity; there is less excuse for Americans than
there has been for some others; but, whatever the excuse, outrage will be
the result and destruction the penalty. Planning can preserve a useful
kind of democracy; it cannot save all the symbols we like to confuse it with.
In certain respects it has to be recognized that the constitution-makers
failed in foresight. They could not foresee the abject dependence of men
on unified social organization and the consequent dangers of conflict.
When they theorized about government, their interest was in protecting
men from it, not, as later generations' was, in protecting men with it.
What was an excellent instrument for the one purpose was not so good
for the other. And now that the need is to function through it rather than
merely being protected by it, it is found to be even less suited to the
purpose. It needs reorganization in many ways but no other can compare
with the necessity for repairing the lack of an agency whose duty is to the
whole and whose interest is in the creation of the future.

Planning is not direction when it is at the service of special interests in
society; it becomes direction only w r hen it can affect economic divisiveness;
becoming a unifying, cohesive, constructive, and truly general force 9 .

the future will show a need for less democracy in government and for more in industry.
That would appear to be a reasonable objective if we are to gain efficiency and keep
liberty. Number ten of The Federalist represented a point of view which is less charac-
teristic of influential theorists than it once was; but those same fears and cautions
concerning popular decision now infect the leaders of industry. There is a whole field
of delegation and selection which still remains to be explored in both industry and
government; but the dangers in the one are not those which prevail in the other. The
dictatorial danger at the moment is industrial and is unlikely to become governmental
unless industry succeeds in appropriating its machinery. The danger in government is
that of ineffectiveness.

9 C/. "A Proposal for National Planning" by Ernest S. Griffith, Plan Age, April
1939.^ Mr. Griffith recognizes clearly the difference insisted on here between "planning"
and "direction." The latter (to which he gives no name) "operates in the area of over-
all economic adjustment and coordination." He is also aware of difficulties both tech-
nical and fortuitous. "So difficult is it and so rare is agreement among authorities as
to the proper procedure in certain major adjustments, that many persons would shun
it altogether. ... On the other hand, one cannot but feel that a sifting or planning
agency, whose purpose it is to represent the over-all view, would be as likely to be sound
in its recommendations as would a hundred pluralistic government bureaus, each with
a partial view, and each pulling in its own direction." And later: "The various special
groups, whose wings would inevitably but to them unjustly be clipped, are the very
groups whose influence is at the center of our present political behavior. They would
Fight as they have never fought before. Such is the prevalence of ... pluralistic
utilitarianism that they might even make common cause and wreck the . . . agency
and its plan. . . ."

Nevertheless he believes that "Leadership (that is, the President under our system)
should have at its disposal a staff agency whose sole function would be to represent the
type of over-all planning, adjustment and coordination under discussion." He appears
to regard direction as a part of the executive function. He gives it certain advisory
responsibilities which could perhaps not be ignored but which could be disregarded.

8 PLANNING AND CIVIC COMMENT

Its importance in our affairs was certainly gained through sheer effective-
ness. The fact that this pervasive smoothness and efficiency accentuates
conflicts by making both sides more effective, implies, however, that a
point in its growth and extension is reached at which it must be sub-
ordinated to general rather than special purposes on penalty of its results
becoming destructive to society and incidentally to itself.

Production, assisted by special planning, has increased until it has caused
successively unemployment, mal-apportionment of income, and stoppage
of production a cycle which has been amazingly shortened in the last
four decades. Planning of this sort helped to create surpluses without
doing anything to add proportionate income-receivers (or increasing the
incomes of existing workers) who might use the product. Presumably
direction would avoid this, assuming that its power reached so far, by a
calculated distribution of energy and of benefits as well as by vastly increas-
ing both in the very process of eliminating conflicts. Special interests
such as the steel industry or all farmers taken together or all workers as a
class can "plan" for themselves. Unless their plans evolve into "direc-
tion" they will benefit only that one interest and will benefit it by sacrific-
ing other interests, and, eventually, though they may not realize it, at a
sacrifice to themselves. Planning can be made fruitful only by being allowed
to evolve into a system of foresights, placements, allocations and agreed
uses. It can destroy or it can make whole 10 . Until the discovery is
made that, although it is possible, through planning, for any interest to
gain proportionately over other interests, it can gain more if joined in a
general directive movement, the industrial advance, which promised so
much a short time ago, cannot be resumed. It may already have been
succeeded by decline. For as special interests grow more coherent and
better furnished with planning tools, competition among them becomes
more effective and therefore more ruinous. It seems not unlikely that the
time may already have been reached when social groups must advance
together or regress separately.

Failure of traditional industrial and agricultural policies was made
inevitable because it seemed in keeping with laissez Jaire (which was the
moral imperative) that both industry and agriculture should be allowed

10 Apprehension of this seems to be spreading slowly. A passage from the report
of Mr. J. L. Lewis to the Congress of Industrial Organizations in Convention at Pitts-
burgh in 1938 is an interesting evidence that this may be so. (Note the use here, again,
of the word "direction" in the double sense) :

"Intelligent economic direction: It is becoming obvious that full production in a stable
economy can be created only by intelligent direction which has the power and the will
to coordinate all economic controls toward that single end. Such central direction must
necessarily come from the government. Intelligent direction also of necessity means
planning toward the future. One of the serious defects of the present Administration
has been the failure to coordinate and plan its economic program over an adequate
period. The goal of full production and full employment is one to which it would be
difficult to find open opposition. It is clear, however, that there are many who oppose
that goal through seeking special interests. Only labor, representing the majority of the
people, can guarantee a continuous movement toward full production. Labor must have a
strong voice in the government and in the agencies of the government ..." Some
doubt of this last can be expressed without questioning the wisdom which went before.

THE FOURTH POWER 9

to plan for themselves, if they liked. This was done in the service of a faith
that by so doing a general interest was served 11 . Of course the reverse
is true and in the nature of things. The planning of agriculture, of
industry, of labor, and so on must be done within a directive system or it
will be worse than none at all. The frictions will be greater than the force
generated. And the movement will be backward rather than forward 12 .
Laissez Jaire, no matter where it seems to lead, has true relationships only
with the past. There is no general institution except government. There
is no present power within government capable of thus generalizing
certainly none with which recalcitrant industrialists will consent to co-
operate. Each has tried and failed.

Planning, in the scientific management sense, put at the disposal of
laissez faire institutions, will be destructive if the evolution of those
institutions into a system with conjunctural controls is halted. The flaw
in the relationship between industry and government has been the official
effort to maintain laissez Jaire in industry. The effort was to do it simply
too, without troubling to discover or to control the sources of integra-
tion 13 . The result was similar to the enforcement of prohibition; laws were
passed but they never came to anything in execution. Even the court
assisted in the evasion. Industry has consequently evolved to the point
of readiness for direction. It has even passed that point and started on the
downward curve. Its evolution was halted only at a late moment in its
progress by its inevitable relations with a government which had retained
its devotion to laissez faire and had itself ceased evolving at a more primi-
tive stage. There came a time when something more was required than
official negligence. But except for those executive departments which
represented special interests agriculture, commerce, labor and therefore

11 The inconsistency of the anti-trust acts is merely noted. There will again be
occasion to refer to the problem posed by the fixed belief so prevalent in the social
sciences that whatever advances any interest advances society because society is merely
the sum of many interests.

12 When Veblen was writing his Theory of Business Enterprise at the beginning of
the century (It was published in 1904) he felt that the wastefulness of conflict might
be compensated for by the enormous margin provided for "waste and parasitic income."
Yet "A disproportionate growth," he said, "of parasitic industries, such as most ad-
vertising and much of the other efforts that go into competitive selling, as well as war-
like expenditure and other industries directed to turning out goods for conspicuously
wasteful consumption, would lower the effective vitality of the community to such a
degree as to jeopardize its chances of advance or even its life. . . . While it is in the
nature of things unavoidable that the management of industry by modern business
methods should involve a large misdirection of effort and a very large waste of goods
and services it is also true that . . . pecuniary aims and ideals have a very great
effect, for instance, in making men work hard and unremittingly, so that on this ground
alone the business system . . . makes up for its wastefulness by the added strain it
throws upon those engaged in the productive work." (pp. 64-5).

This was, of course, before business conflict had developed such formidable frictions
and before the application of scientific management had intensified the effect of so
many machine processes. What was merely waste in 1900 had by 1939 become an
exhausting disease.

13 Here again the inconsistency of a Department of Commerce "to foster industry"
on industry's own terms which are "business" terms, of course, is merely noted.

10 PLANNING AND CIVIC COMMENT

had exactly the same effect as so many industries, government had stopped
short about fifty years ago. NRA and AAA, as originally conceived, were
attempts to bring government evolution to the final stage before direction.
There might have evolved out of those institutions the first clumsy efforts
at genuine directional progress. It is still all to do.

There was and still is a chance that the directive power might grow
up in another place than government 14 . Representative democracy
always runs the risk that its legislatures will be filled with those who
represent local and private intentions rather than general ones. This
risk has grown greater as special interests have consolidated and grown
stronger. The formation of blocs is one frank admission of this the least
harmful because open. But there are many hidden blocs of which the
public is never made aware. A farm and a labor group are fairly well
distinguished. Its members are not ashamed to acknowledge it. But
there are evident, also, defenses for each of the unified industries which
center there. This does not stop with the legislature, of course. The
lobbyists who are maintained at the seats of government by every special
interest have an influence in the administration of law second only to their
influence in the making of it. Industry, having appropriated to itself the
gains of the new industrial revolution, what could be more natural than
that these should be used in perpetuating the arrangements which had
proved so favorable. Venality among law-makers and timidity among
administrators were not unnatural phenomena. They were results to be
expected from the existing situation.

Regulation, in a representative system, could not wholly succeed. It
was at best a negative harassment, always dependent upon the discovery
of archangels to recruit its personnel, and upon laws which special interests
persistently and successfully sought to weaken. During the time it has
been practiced as the governmental concomitant of laissez Jaire, industry
has almost been able to appropriate the directional power. Success in this
was prevented only by the conflicting nature of business aims. Just when
the stage had been reached at which the remaining controls over all so-
ciety were being reached for, business itself began to tremble and finally
ground to a frictional stop. This gave government what seemed to be its
last peaceful opportunity to recapture its natural powers from progeny
grown stronger than itself.

It was in this extremity that the governmental executive made the most
formidable of recent attempts to modernize itself and to withdraw from

14 CJ. Discussion of identity of business interests with the general good in Veblen:
Theory of Business Enterprise, 293 et seq.

As a general commentary on business and its relations with government, attention
is called to^the functions of that power in business which is in charge of officials called
"directors." This suggests that business has been at least more logical than government;
and even though directors may sometimes not direct, it is generally thought that they
ought to.

THE FOURTH POWER 11

the legislature wholly inappropriate duties. But here the judicial power
entered as the last champion of business, and the determined enemy of
effectual government. Thus it was made plain that the judicial, too, would
need to give up something if the directive were to succeed in being
established. It is clear indeed that none of the traditional powers
would be exempt. To the extent to which each subjects the general
good to the exploitation of private interests its powers would require to be
transferred.

The competitive system, as a system an automatic regulator has
failed. The years since the Great War have seen the intensification of
strain, the perfection of instruments for communication, for transport, for
measurement, the final victory of scientific management, the making
available of marvellous new materials in profusion. And the national in-
come is less at the end than at the beginning. It may be that it cannot be
sustained even at that level except by a system of deficit financing which
will contribute continually to class antagonism 15 . The truth is that
the system of individualistic and uncoordinated businesses is one which
cannot operate successfully in an advanced technical system. It is suited
only to an age of horse locomotion, of communication by post, of heavy
materials, clumsy design and an ignorant personnel 16 .

Business men who are not only educated but in instant touch with the
most remote places, and who, moreover, regiment themselves through a
well-circulated press, will raise their percentage of like actions to the point
of unbalancing everything. And there is no power to stop them, nor any
way to redress the balance. Laissez Jaire has an inherent dependence
upon average deviation. Such a system, undirected, must destroy itself.
But there is a reinforcing danger to which indirect reference has already
been made. As the forces of the system are ranged against one another,
each feels compelled to arm itself with the latest devices. This involves a
heavier and heavier burden of costs. Forests are destroyed daily to provide
the paper for this warfare. Universities are subsidized to provide experts
of various sorts to officer it. And the more efficient it becomes the more
destructive it is. The quicker such a society's progress, the more highly
trained its individuals, the more effectively it subdues natural forces, the
more materials it makes use of the faster it advances toward suicide.
Scientific management, interchangeable parts and series operations were,

15 Here, again, it must be insisted that the only objection is to the incurring of
deficits for other than capital improvements.

16 Sir Henry Bunbury says, in this connection, that 'The negative principles and
methods of laissez Jaire or 'liberal' economy are simply not compatible with the con-
centrations of productive and distributive power which physicists, chemists, biologists,
engineers, financiers, lawyers and accountants have shown us how to create. That is
why most of us are now, in some sense or other and in some degree or other, planners.
We may differ in circumstances, in method, in immediate purpose, in ultimate objective:
but we are all being compelled, some willingly, some with extreme reluctance, to bring
these forces under conscious community control if only to save them from them-
selves." op. cit.

12 PLANNING AND CIVIC COMMENT

in other words, exactly such inventions in other fields as the airplane
which now drops bombs on its inventors. Without direction such a
system will run wild and destroy its authors, or else will creak slowly to a
grinding halt.

The articulation of the whole is the emergent need of society. Further
progress cannot be had without it; and regress will set in at once if it has
not already begun unless objections to it are overcome. There is, how-
ever it cannot be denied the alternative of autarchy. This might come
about here by some industrial tour-de-Jorce. It even at times seems more
likely to come about that way, so great is the moral objection to the
enlargement or the revision of governmental powers. Many expedients
already adopted seem to have a sinister concurrence. For example the
successive crises, appearing in different parts of our system, are met by
subsidy, instead of by the extension of government investment. Farmers'
prices are augmented; workers* housing, medical care and old age are paid
for, the merchant marine is built by grant, railroads and airways are
assisted the catalogue of outright grants-in-aid is lengthy even if hidden
subsidies are altogether ignored. What this amounts to is a narrowing of
the base on which the load is carried. The unsubsidized who grow fewer
and fewer are expected to support all the rest by paying taxes. The ruth-
less law of survival has been superseded. A railroad which does not produce
a profit cannot always quit; those who do not use it may be asked to keep
it running for those who do. Industries which will not pay a living wage
are not inevitably killed off. Their workers are supported for them. As
more and more industries run into difficulties, and are admitted to the
business-relief roll, and as, moreover, workers demand higher standards,
the burden falls more and more heavily on what is sometimes loosely
called the middleclass meaning people who contribute to, rather than
subtract from public income. There may come a time when it will revolt.
Society is too squeamishly modern to accept the survival of only the fittest
yet it clings to the competitive system which cannot work without the
free operation of the survival principle. Out of just such economic and
moral difficulties Italy was forced into Fascism and Germany into Naziism.
Will our creditor classes also revolt at some point short of losing all their
privileges to others whom they regard as inferior to themselves?

All this is of the nature of capitalism developing with the nominal notions
of undirected individualism but having really advanced into the beginning
of a new system, as yet unnamed but vigorously rejected by moral leaders
of all sorts. It suggests that reality will need to be accepted; and that
when that is done the other powers of government will need to give up
that exhaustive struggle for advantage among themselves which has been
going on since the adoption of the Constitution. The transition period has
been too long delayed in its early stages. Such events as began in 1929
and still continue are only the precursors of worse ones to come unless
some way out is discovered and vigorously pursued.

THE FOURTH POWER 13

It is by no means novel to suggest that the machine process particularly,
and modern technique generally, determine the nature of any institutions
which may exist successfully in the same world with them. Veblen, for
instance, approached the matter from an anthropological point of view in
the trilogy which began with The Theory of the Leisure Class and ended
with The Theory of Business Enterprise 17 . The traits which characterize
industrial society are, according to him, subversive ones. They have
developed in response to pecuniary rewards imposed on an earlier pro-
duction-for-use. Money profits with their accompanying thrift, savings
and credit-capital survived grotesquely into the era of the machine process
which requires for its efficient operation workmanlike attitudes the
reverse of pecuniary. Conspicuous waste, emulation in consuming, the
dignification of leisure, the perfection of an elaborate ceremonial of sports-
manship and exemption from labor such traits oppose themselves in our
present economy to what he called "the instinct of workmanship." The
pecuniary employments are worse than useless; they threaten our progress.
Their relation to technique is a stifling one; and it is only through technique,
as exemplified by the machine process that we can even survive. The
Theory of Business Enterprise thus sought to show the folly of trying to
dominate the machine process with pecuniary direction.

Veblen completed the structure of his devastating theory before the
beginning of the century. Since then the inner conflicts of our system
have been enormously intensified by scientific management. What was
visible then only to a few, seems plain now to millions. The economics
which dignified the competitive system of enterprise, and which regarded
the speculative business employments as a sufficient directional system
now have a burden of proof to bear which then was borne by dissenters.
It is not far from orthodox today, among serious students, to regard the
planning arts as the only available resource in the crisis which was first
depicted in the Veblenian theory 18 .

It is possible to use planning for public purposes, just as it is possible to
use it for private ones, without involving its arts in the paradox which
lies at the heart of our system. But, especially in public planning, the
difficulty of stopping short of that paradox is like that of stopping a river
as it seeks the sea. This particular river flows down the valleys of depres-
sion. Only a Canute would attempt to hold back the gathering of these
waters on the slopes of history.

17 CJ. Joseph Dorfman: Tborstein Veblen and His America (Ch. XIII); also R. G.
Tugwell: Veblen and "Business Enterprise," The New Republic, Vol. LXXXXVIII,
p. 215, March 29, 1939.

18 It has often been noted that planning exists on several levels. Mr. Charles W.
Eliot 2nd, has, like others, been afraid, evidently, that someone would say what must be
said regarding its movement to the higher ones. He, of course, was fearful that the insti-
tution he felt called on to protect might be involved in the implications suggested here.
That cannot be avoided, even though Mr. Warren Jay Vinton, too, is willing to join the
conspiracy. Mr. Eliot's address was called "The Growing Scope of Planning" and was
made at the May 1936 meeting of the City Planning Institute. Mr. Vinton's remarks may
be found in the Proceedings of the American Society of Planning Officials, 1937, p. 95.

14 PLANNING AND CIVIC COMMENT

The contemporary adherents of that reformist strain in American life
which came out so clearly in the Progressive political program are normally
opposed to planning and especially to direction. The reformers do not
want a more efficient industry with all its implications nearly so much as
they want free scope for individualism. Having this aim they fear govern-
mental repression even more much more, it sometimes seems than
compulsions from private sources. This is doubtless more a matter of
emphasis than of outright preference of one system for another; and it is
easily accounted for on historical grounds; but the conflict involved in the
contrasting attitudes has prevented the New Deal, for instance, from
formulating and carrying out a program. It is fundamentally a fear of
regimentation which alienates progressives from a program of planning.
There is another, an inner, conflict which is destroying the old progressiv-
ism. This is the increasing incredibility with which its program is viewed
by realists among the rising generation. Retreat to an atomized industry
in order to gain a theoretical freedom seems to them more and more
unlikely as technical changes cumulate.

Scientific management, of course, had been the rock on which Veblen
had founded his theory. It had seemed to him as early as the beginning of
the century that the advance of technique would determine the character
of society, and that it involved a dilemma which was inescapable. This
was so, not so much because of a mechanistic law in the material universe,
as because human nature made it inevitable. Men were a product of
evolutionary forces. Their responses to the stimuli of the world were what
they were because these responses had enabled them to survive in the bitter
struggles of primitive society. They would narrowly follow their immediate
interests. But this slavishness would lead them to contradictory, indeed
suicidal, actions in a changed, a more complex, world. They would, for
instance (following a deep instinct) invent machines to escape from work,
to give them greater power over nature, to provide a richer store of goods;
but their jealous exclusiveness with these machines, and with the resulting
goods, together with their adherence to standards of ostentation, waste,
sportsmanship and idleness (which had become firmly fixed in primitive
life) would determine that the increasing effectiveness of a machine industry
would only hasten the approach to such a percentage of exclusion from work
and the income which had become attached to it that society would
be submerged.

Others, for instance Patten, who had a brilliance of thought which
equalled Veblen's and who had at least as wide an intellectual following
during the Wilsonian era, took a fundamentally different view of human
nature and consequently of the future of society. When Patten wrote the
famous essay about the beginning of the century in which he divided
history into what he called "pleasure" and "pain" economies that is
deficit and surplus ages he illustrated a more typically American approach.

THE FOURTH POWER 15

The problem once was, he said, that of finding enough to eat and wear;
it had now become that of discovering how to dispose of overflowing
bounties. In contrast with Veblen, however, he took an optimistic view of
the likely end of man. The distinguishing characteristic of human nature,
he felt, was its richness and flexibility. True it was capable of beastly
manifestations, of jealousy, selfishness, hatred, fear and sadism. It was also
capable of generosity, kindness, sympathy, loyalty, cooperation, and
most significant of all of creativeness. All these traits good and bad
existed in men. One environment would call out one set; another environ-
ment would require the other. Nor was it usually a clear-cut matter.
They became mixed. Nevertheless he believed that reformed institutions,
that is institutions which asked of people that they should be kind, intelli-
gent and cooperative, would result in a kind, intelligent and cooperative
race. At present, he said, the difficulty was that modern technique required
men to love and help one another, and to work peacefully together, at the
same time that morals exhibited a lag. Preachers and teachers insisted on
exclusive and jealous ownership, rigorous saving, and tricky dealing. Late
in life Patten even went a step further. Society, he said, was emerging
or could emerge from the surplus or pleasure economy into a character-
istically "creative" one. In the coming years the emphasis would gradually
shift from having to doing, from gaining to sharing, from being to giving.
Standards would be revised. Man had created the technique which made
this possible; he would discover the utility of advancing into the promised
land he had labored to make fruitful.

Because of his optimistic conclusions concerning human nature Patten
did not share Veblen's pessimistic view of the future; nor did he regard
planning, for instance, as merely another technical device which would
hasten the inevitable collision between the immovable object (man's
nature) and the irresistible force (the machine process). He looked on it
as a necessary implement of advance. He did much to further it. He
encouraged many of Taylor's associates and students; indeed the Wharton
School at the University of Pennsylvania, in which he was the moving spirit
during its early years, was almost a school of scientific management 19 .

Contemporary with Patten and Veblen there was another philosopher
whose influence in the matters under discussion was very great. Mr. John
Dewey is as much American as was Patten; but he presents the planners
of the future with a methodological problem which they will be unable to
escape. His view of human nature has been expressed in terms of adapta-

19 It later joined in educating for the competitive business game, but that was
when h had escaped from Patten's leadership. Patten himself not only sought to have
taught more efficient management methods, he also exemplified in his life the belief that
men would become better as their material conditions improved. He fostered social
work, lectured in the School of Philanthropy, and rewrote a whole book of Baptist
hymns to illustrate the new appeals and motives. Peace, freedom from old restraints,
joyous creativeness, the discipline of cooperative work, the satisfaction of helping others
these were the ways by which he sought to usher in a new age. One of his better
known books was called The New Basis of Civilization. It never repaid reading better
than it does today.

16 PLANNING AND CIVIC COMMENT

tion. Men learn by doing; they think when they are presented with prob-
lems. They experiment, in other words, and habits and institutions are
shaped by the results of practice. Social arrangements, like machines,
materials or processes in industry, are good if they work; the only way of
judging an instrument is by its utility.

It will be seen that the relation of these attitudes to a system of indi-
vidualism and free enterprise is immediate and easy. Businesses are begun;
they prosper or fail because they are useful or not useful. So it is also with
the changes and reforms appropriate to such a system; they can be tried
without great damage even if they should prove unacceptable. And
something else can be substituted. Success and failure, enterpriser and
reformer, sinner and moralist, move within agreed limits. They do not
disagree fundamentally. The sinner knows his wickedness; the busi-
ness failure accepts the inevitable, reformer and reformed agree on what
is desirable.

But the technical system has brought us to a scale of affairs in which
all these operations, convictions and motives break down and become
confused. A plan for an industry, a city, a nation, is not something which
can be experimented with in the old sense. Much more is involved more
people, more property in a wider space and over a longer time. Damage
is done by mistakes which may be irreparable. But there is another
consideration. The plan or policy cannot be built up from constituent
units. It has to grow out of a concept of a functioning whole. An industry
cannot place its plants, warehouses, outlets, sources of materials without
relation to each other, and it cannot place them without relation to all
other related activities: finance, insurance, communication, substitute
goods, tariffs and the like. A city cannot provide for schools, fire protection,
police, sewers, water and light, and ail its other services except through
what has come to be called a "Master Plan" implemented by control of
the capital budget.

The planner faced with problems of this sort in industry or in govern-
ment is forced to think from the center out, to use a concept of the whole
which will comprehend the parts, to have in mind a vast complex of
meshing arrangements each of which has relation to all others. None, of
course, can undergo experimentation without affecting all. Change
becomes a serious matter, one for reference to a Board of Directors or
to a Planning Commission, and safeguards are thrown about the pro-
cess to insure deliberation and the exercise of a judgment which includes
the whole.

All this reverses many accepted ideas. It is a process unfamiliar, even
uncongenial to the American habit. And Mr. Dewey's canons of thought
become difficult to understand in relation to this new reality. The in-
dividual can no longer exercise his initiative in a matter which affects a
large industry or a planned city. The processes of change are reduced to
an order in which the individual, except as a member of the cooperating
whole, cannot be allowed to function freely, if at all. Others think out

THE FOURTH POWER 17

problems which affect the individual. Since it is contrary to our habit
and since it involves restraints and limitations not envisaged in a view
of life shaped in the old individualism, there are many who dissent from
it, others who are not clear in their own minds about its processes, and
still others who, while using the new devices, appeal to the old ideas,
thus seeking to restrain others in matters where they do not themselves
accept restraint.

It is the planner's task to find ways to plan which shall bring the experi-
mental method, with all its safeguards against long-run error and its dedi-
cation to reality, into the processes of wholeness. At present he is apt to
fall short of complete thinking, being terrorized by the rampant individual-
ists who make as much stir in the contemporary orderly world as would
a pre-historic monster at a Chicago cattle show; he forgets often that
these belong to the past and not to the future; and that they are likely
to die out, moreover, through lack of adaptation. Or he is apt to
respect his plan too much, to admire its physical symmetries, its
concordances and correlations, forgetting that it too, however majestic
and elaborated, is only an instrument by which man hopes to get on
in the world, that it is man-made and should be regarded as mutable,
even if important.

It is perhaps unnecessary to point out the contrasting stages in the
evolution of thoughtful planning at which various social organizations may
be found. It is, however, interesting to speculate on the reasons for the
differences. Everyone knows that efficiency in industry has progressed
infinitely further than it has in government in spite of strenuous attempts
to prevent or to break up integration. And everyone knows that city
government has progressed much further, in spite of frequent corruption,
than has the federal government. Indeed our central government, faced
with the most gigantic of planning tasks and with the immediate necessity
of preventing the disintegration of society, possesses only the most rudi-
mentary mechanisms for the purpose. Is it because of a written Constitu-
tion which has often been too literally interpreted; is it because the natural
divisiveness of a legislature allowed wholly inappropriate powers has
prevented change; or because industrial interests, intent on their own
profitable evolution, have deliberately kept government weak in their own
interest; or, again, because the Federal Government has been kept more
closely under the scrutiny of moralists, educators, and others who were
insulated from the evolution of institutions and who lingered in a half-
imaginary past from which they sought to prevent departure? Whatever
the reason, it is the supreme political tragedy of our time that the central
government should have suffered an arrested development. The instru-
ments of wholeness are not ones which can be invented and perfected over
night. They require long preparation and maturation in a period when
time is the one thing lacking.

18 PLANNING AND CIVIC COMMENT

During the years just after the Great War it seemed impossible to
develop a new internal policy. This was true alike of cities, of rural regions
and of the nation as a whole. There was a time when such an agreed policy
existed concerning a wide range of objectives. This was before scientific
management became central to civilization. The old Progressives, the
most powerful of the minority groups, differed very mildly from the
extreme conservatives. They intended to reform existing institutions so
that they might be perpetuated. And this same wish for perpetuation
permeated both city reform and agricultural revolt. There was no desire
for change. On the contrary resentment was concentrated on unwanted
changes, such as those involved in the new big-business, the growing power
of financiers, the concentration of control and the loss of individual inde-
pendence; or, in politics, such practices as expanding business found
necessary in getting politicians out of its way.

Big business often became big by the corruption of government. Never
before the Great War was there any desire to meet the challenge by making
government big. The whole purpose was to make business little again so
that the feeblest controls could handle it, a purpose made abortive by
forces too strong to be combated by the puny powers of an emasculated
government. But the persistent fear of government itself, which led them
to keep it weak, haunted Americans of many sorts. They tended to regard
it as alien to the common life, a threat to liberty and the enemy of the
common man. The tidal rise of concentrated economic power thrust
forward by the surge of basic technical advance formed a terrifying contrast
which the old philosophy did not explain; but moral revulsion against
bigness, courage, expansiveness, spending, even while these characteristics
were developing, induced a national split between wish and fact which
was extremely dangerous for no one could forecast on what or on whom
the resulting bitterness might be poured.

This schisophrenia and the dangers of violence associated with it were
well enough understood by many statesmen. None of them, however, had
the courage to explain that the world had been revolutionized and that
living in it could not continue on the old terms. No one said to the people
"You cannot have a collectivized society if you expect to preserve in-
dividualism in economics and politics." The result was that instead of
preparing for and averting the crisis which the arts of exactitude and the
techniques of management were precipitating, emotions were wasted on
exhortations and repressions. The policy was still the old agreed "no-
policy" of the nineteenth century 20 .

The loudest shouters for this "American way of life" were the very
corrupters of it. Even after the bankruptcy of 1929, they formed the
fantastic "liberty league" which appealed again to the false sentiments of

20 C/. R. G. Tugwell "Notes on the Uses of Exactitude in Politics," Political Science
Quarterly, Vol. LIV, March 1939.

THE FOURTH POWER 19

a miseducated middleclass. But the liberty leaguers were deliberately
fostering traditionalism in government so that its opposite could develop
outside government. Others, the old Progressives, had a more serious and
single-minded purpose. They were eager to attack once more their old
enemies "the interests," though little would come of it. The New Deal of
the reformers, if it did little else, at least succeeded in exposing the short-
comings of mere honesty. Many of the reforms, as they progressed,
precipitated new crises. A bad system honestly run, the reformers learned,
might be worse than one which was corrupt. The slow rise out of the
slough of 1929 and the relapse of ^937, brought into being a terrifying
sense of inadequacy. Diminution of stress on this dangerous moral regula-
tion can make visible the alternative; nothing less than that will be
effective 21 .

Those who are familiar, in a general way, with the forces which were
focused at Philadelphia in 1787, will recognize that the struggle there was
to create an executive which should yet not be able to become a despot.
Even those who, like Hamilton, felt that Congressional committee man-
agement had brought ruin on the country, and that an executive as strong
as Britain's was perhaps more needed here than there, contemplated no
alliance with infallible Deity. The believers in states' rights, like Henry,
and those who feared the loss of personal liberty more than governmental
inefficiency, like Luther Wilson, allied themselves with an even more
powerful group led by Roger Sherman. They had little difficulty, really,
in preventing the executive from becoming what even Washington believed
would soon be needed. Hamilton had so little hope of prevailing that he
stayed away during most of the meeting and let the deliberations conclude
themselves without much help from him. It was a curious alliance of
literary folk and speculative merchants who prevented British ideas from
prevailing. Madison had read too many French books and Roger Sherman
had read too few of any kind. The balance of powers within government
which was finally worked out was deliberately intended. By one group it
was thought of as an excellent device for ensuring deliberation, dignity and

21 In speaking here of "a directive" and in other places of the three traditional
powers, the author seems to be consenting to a kind of conceptualism in political theory
which, in fact, he believes to be responsible for many of our institutional maladjustments.
This hard and fast division may be useful for purposes of analysis but when, by the
literal-minded, it is applied to government structure it may have devastating con-
sequences. Judges, administrators and other policy-makers sometimes come to have
such fixed ideas that nothing new is possible unless it fits the old classification. Sug-
gested arrangements are not condemned because they are undesirable as mechanisms
but because they are undesirable as ideas. Some of the older city planners suffered
from this compulsion. It is probably dangerous for a modernist to use such devices at
all even in the interest of easier approach to problems. The writer expects that the
divisions he has set up here will return to haunt him. He gives warning that they
may not be used legitimately to defend the prerogatives of planners beyond the useful
limits of contemporary necessity.

20 PLANNING AND CIVIC COMMENT

a circumscribed sphere of action; by the other it was known to insure a
minimum of interference with business. (Roger Sherman was a Supreme
Court Judge in Connecticut; but he was also a merchant with headquarters
in three different cities).

Deliberation of the regulator seems to the regulated a valuable virtue.
American speculative classes have never regretted the weakness of the
executive or the invention of an upper legislature whose feud with the
executive is endless. The compromise which resulted in the Senate is re-
sponsible for the curious discrepancy between what is expected of the
Presidency and what any incumbent of that office is able to deliver; for
weakness of government is identical in most minds with weakness of the
executive. It is almost true to say that our system is lacking an executive.
The President has had, by reason of his party leadership, by his more
direct relationship with the people, and because only he represents all the
people, far more responsibility than power. Everything is expected of
him; he can accomplish only as much as he can persuade a normally
recalcitrant Senate to approve.

If as the result of some national crisis war, say, or frightening depres-
sion the United States should undertake, in another constitutional
convention, to admit to our system the directive which has been spoken
of here, it would be merely an extension of the requirements our fore-
fathers knew of but failed to meet in 1787. The necessity for compromise
seemed to them, as it often has to others, controlling. What was needed
then was some remedy for the divisiveness of a legislature which was a
welter of unresolved conflicts, and which tried to govern through a system
of committees themselves composed of representatives with essentially
local interests. This condition made national administration impossible
and was bringing the nation into serious foreign disrepute. The growth of
conflict in those areas which are outside formal government, but which
affect government in its most vital relationships, together with that un-
resolved conflict within government between the President and the Senate,
are again emasculating the national administration at a time when tech-
nique has made industrial functions irrecoverably national; and they
threaten, for all our present prestige, to bring us again into disrepute
abroad. So do unsolved questions return for answers until workable solu-
tions are found.

THE FOURTH POWER 21

During the years in which the profession of planning has had its growth,
members of the profession have no doubt had difficulty in confining it
within areas which could be exploited profitably, resisting suggestions of
its conjunctural usefulness, for instance, and seeking to keep it closely
under the domination of executive or legislative. That, at least, is often
said of them. It has become clearer as time has gone on that public plan-
ning must be limited to physical layputs, and to a mild kind of zoning, if
only the profitable areas are to be occupied. And even these, when sub-
jected to the immediate interests of real estate or financial speculators
have often ended their existence on paper or have been perverted to anti-
social uses. On the whole the tendency toward the subjection of these
private interests to social necessity has perhaps been resisted by the
planners as much as by others who cannot be said to have been pro-
fessionally informed. Much has been said and written to show how
modest the profession is, how no more than "advice" is intended, and
how the "democratic process" is respected; some of this may have
been for practical purposes, but there must have been a residue of
genuine misunderstanding.

This withdrawing attitude has tended not only to placate rapacious
speculators but, as well, to reinforce ebullience, whimsicality, and favoritism
among elected officials at a time when those could ill be afforded. The
habit of providing public works with generous gestures regardless of the
per capita service they may give has accompanied the speculator-induced
migration of populations to those places where cheap undeveloped land
could be had. There has followed the inevitable demand for services
already provided in older sections and impossible to diminish. One result
of this has been large increases in city expense budgets at a time when
population was growing at a reduced rate, a situation greatly dreaded by
city officials. In the Federal Government it has resulted in enormous
contributions to state-aid systems (roads, welfare, social security, housing,
etc., etc.) with only minimum control over the standards to be maintained
or the pattern being created. In great measure this same unguided specula-
tive impulse accounts for the unforgivable exploitation of the public
domain and latterly for the development of the "Dust Bowl" and other
similar problem regions.

For the state of public budgets everywhere as well as wasted resources
the planners have to share responsibility. It is of course true and this
was the motivation of many that if they had claimed more authority
they might have been deprived of any. Still, even in this event, the
situation could hardly have been worse.

A change seems to be impending. The capital budget in the City of
New York has been confided to the Planning Commissions and the indica-
tions are that a Federal capital budget will soon evolve. There has been
no suggestion as yet that it may be entrusted to the planners, but it seems

22 PLANNING AND CIVIC COMMENT

not impossible that it may be at some future time. This last would be a
significant change in our governmental structure, especially if the Congress,
as is true of the legislative in the City of New York, should retain only
the power to reject by a three-quarters vote. A city has very restricted
power to affect economic life it is much more limited, for instance, than
is the federal government in creating credit, though it can do so, with
state permission, for certain purposes. The federal government could
hardly effect a transition to a successful public management, for instance,
if that should seem necessary in some cases, so long as legislative com-
mittees continue to interfere after their peculiar habit. It will be even
more difficult to effect the transition to conjunctural control unless some
long term body under the discipline of fact rather than local electorates
with divided interests can be entrusted with the task.

These are matters which have to do with institutional change. The
question whether such a change may be brought about within the time
still allowable is one which is as yet unsettled. It illustrates what is perhaps
the worst defect of democracy. For the democratic process depends on
what we call education, meaning persuasion, and this in turn depends, to
an extent which is appalling, on the engaging of an interest which has
been able to accumulate wealth and so can carry on an expensive propa-
ganda. The fact to be faced here is that no interest which has been so
favored will desire to institutionalize directive activities. A directive would
be bound to suppress the favoritism. It is utterly unrealistic to assume
that any individual, group, foundation, university, association, or party
will seek to further a limitation of its activities or prerogatives. It is likely,
therefore, that many private interests will be engaged from now on in
efforts to prevent the establishment of social management rather than to
further it, and that not many will be found to be even neutral.

The only interest which can be expected to be engaged in its favor will
be government, and, of government, only the executive; and even the
executive can be looked to for only a limited approval. The interest of
the lower income groups, comprising some eighty-five percent of the
population can, in the nature of our existing arrangements, similarly find
response to a rising demand for security and well-being only in the execu-
tive. As things are, Congress tends on the whole to represent the well-to-
do among its constituents, or, if not the more prosperous, at least the
more vociferous, who have come to be called pressure-groups. Nor is a
Congressman usually selected for his national, but rather for his local
views. Under the circumstances the hope of greater national income, and
of well-being for the masses, centers in the executive; he may possibly
learn that these objectives can best be gained by the fostering of long-run
and general as opposed to immediate and private interests. And so may
be led to foster an agency which undoubtedly will come to limit the
executive himself if it is allowed to grow.

THE FOURTH POWER 23

Why, it may be asked, would not simple strengthening, now, of the
executive furnish the required solution? The answer is that this is precisely
what may be expected to happen at first, but that certain elements of
unsuitability will become more significant as time passes. The executive
had difficulty in finding a constitutional place. Reaction from divine right
had carried all the way over to government by legislative committee; even
this was a reluctant modification of "tovn meeting" rule; it was less devised,
indeed, than reached inch by inch as necessity demanded; its sponsors
hoped that it might turn out to be a sufficient step toward executive man-
agement and yet not too far from pure direct representation. This ineffec-
tual committee administration in the Continental Congress opened the
way to the tri-partite government which was adopted in the convention.
And it is out of just such another failure that a fourth power may arise.
The long duel between the executive and the upper legislative, which
resulted from one of the worst defects of the Constitution, has refused to
resolve itself. The executive cannot give way and the Senate will not.
Markets, as transport and communication have improved, have become
nationwide; industry, as new management devices have been invented, has
adopted central control over decentralized operations; the workers' goods
and the farmers', as well as the funds to buy them with, emerge from a sys-
tem of which their knowledge is limited and in which they have little influence
the arts of self-sufficiency for which Americans once were noted vanished
when direct contacts between producer and consumer were broken.

The common man has had to find a friend in his new helplessness. Self-
reliance was once a useful virtue; it leads straight to the park bench and
the flop-house in an advanced industrial system unless, that is, some
powerful intervention occurs. And even if self-reliance ceases to be indi-
vidualistic and becomes collective, it results, as costs rise, in the elimination
of every task possible and in unemployment as a consequence 22 . Such
emergencies as sudden widespread increases in unemployment cannot be
met after they have arisen; and the adequacy of institutions ought not to
be judged by the way crises are met, but rather by the number there are.
This is only another way of phrasing the old aphorism that nations with-
out a history are happiest 23 . The idea of a directive power is growing,

22 The separation of income from its traditional source in private work which is
thus precipitated is proving difficult; as the machine process has mastered industry it
has become more and more necessary that the separation should take place in our think-
ing as well as in fact. But it seems to require a tour-de-Jorce for which the way is opened
only by near-disaster. The Federal Executive, operating with incredible handicaps,
has lately succeeded in creating some institutions for this adjustment. Some municipal
executives have had even more success. But in the very process the executive has
invariably demonstrated the lack which the directive needs to supply. This is not a
matter of inefficient administration. It is a matter of whimsical (or political) distribu-
tion, of mistaken timing, of over-and-under adequacy, of mistaken objectives or of
deliberate misinterpretation on the part of others.

23 A passage from a recent address of Mr. Lindsay Rogers has a double apposite-
ness: "Ten years before the Thirteen American Colonies declared their independence,

24 PLANNING AND CIVIC COMMENT

really, because Americans have had too much history. They are sick of
dangers and of insecurities perhaps a little tired, too, of that showy third
power with which our forefathers supplemented their everlasting ineffec-
tive committees. They realize that the executive has befriended them against
an industrial tyranny which the legislative and the judicial condoned
even sometimes aided. But they have a racial memory which runs back
to times when the fatherly friend grew tired in his struggle with the nobles,
or when he lacked ability at any rate when he too became the instru-
ment of their masters. And if memory fails they have contemporary
demonstrations abroad of the losses as well as the gains from executive
domination.

The directive is beyond doubt related most closely to the executive.
Necessarily, however, to assume its effective place it would need something
from the legislative and the judicial. The extent of this taking is not yet
clear. Direction is by nature pragmatic and its growth may well be mea-
sured by necessity, though it has to be understood that so long as it stops
short of conjunctural management it is not truly directive and is wholly
incapable of gaining the results hoped for from it. Some indication of
the executive loss can be had by contemplating the uses of the capital
budget 24 in an increasingly collective state. For that inevitably would
be under directive control; it must, if enlarged services are to flow from
government to its citizens. They cannot be produced without managed
investment. And this is the less insistent, perhaps, of the two great reasons
for this change, the other being the need for distributing the benefits of
productivity in such a way as to ensure continuity. The recurrence of
paralytic strokes in our productive mechanism cannot indefinitely be sur-
vived. What is required to avoid them is such an apportionment of claims
as will allow people to use all the product. A basic task of a full directive
would be to ensure continuous maximum output of goods 25 . Currently
there is being used the crude device of throwing government payments

Beccaria published his famous treatise on Crimes and Punishments. I do not cite the
book because of its title because municipalities have committed economic or adminis-
trative crimes in respect of their rapid transit policies, and have inflicted punishments
on riders who must descend into the bowels of the earth in order to travel rapidly. I
refer to Beccaria because he used a phrase which has since been repeated in various
forms. 'Happy,' he said, 'is the nation without a history.' Montesquieu, Jefferson,
and Carlyle all expressed similar opinions which derived from or paralleled Beccaria's
epigram. In one of her novels, George Eliot suggested that, like nations, women are
happiest if they have no history. Who will deny that the happiest cities are those which
have no subways those which have been so planned that rapid transit is not a con-
tinuous insoluble problem? By this standard few cities are happy." (Havana, October
1938.) Mr. Rogers thus not only confirms a historical reference but also agrees that one
good way to solve problems is by planning not to have them.

24 Sometimes called an "improvement" or "investment" budget.

26 The production of claims and the production of goods must be made to run
concurrently and to achieve a rough balance; what "freedom of enterprise" there can
be in the future (as we now understand the phrase) must survive within this formula.

THE FOURTH POWER 25

into the balance whenever purchasing power declines 26 . The difficulty
with this is that although some declines resemble sinking spells, the secular
trend itself may be downward. The power to unbalance the expense
budget is not a resource which can be used to correct permanent un-
balance 27 . That it should be suggested betrays continued adherence,
against all reason, to the notion of a meliorative principle guiding affairs
a principle which is assumed to operate, apparently, no matter what follies
are committed.

It had been expected, no doubt, that the executive would command this
field. There was reason to think so. Its representative was the people's
champion against an irresponsible upper house and reactionary courts.
As such, more and more power was flowing to him. The whole develop-
ment of administrative law was not only a delegation of legislative func-
tions but an important exclusion of the judiciary. Yet institutions were
little changed. In all save a few municipalities the fatal flaws of log-rolling,
geographic compromise, demagogic clinging to empty moralisms, and
sheer ignorance of complex arrangements still persisted. These defects
plainly destined the legislative to a place in our system where its good
qualities might come uppermost and its defects be minimized. The judi-
ciary also, it seemed clear, was to find itself confined to law and excluded
from social management. And in all this the executive seemed exalted.
Yet the federal government, at least, fell into the bad habit of regarding
most executive departments as representatives of special interests. This
was perhaps inevitable but certainly wrong. In itself, it would disqualify
the American executive for the function of direction. That power, in such
case, merely represents, in microcosm, the conflicts of all society. It can
assert no leadership because it cannot finally resolve the central paradox.

Yet, so far as the federal government is concerned, this is more seeming
than real. The American President is called the "Chief Executive." That
is more a courtesy title than anything else, for the paralysis of double
responsibility among the President's helpers has seriously undermined even
the modest intention of the 1787 compromise. It began with the Treasury
whose Secretary was made to report direct to Congress and yet was part
of the executive establishment. In adding new departments in late years
the aggressions of the Congress have become bolder. The prescriptive
enabling acts have placed congressional committees in a position with
respect to interference in executive functions, and especially as concerns
minute budgetary items, which practically abstracts the cabinet officers
from the President (he cannot even choose them without ratification) and
makes them responsible to committees. This limitation on the President
is a more severe one than is generally recognized. He is forced to gain his

26 These issue as grants or as loans with equal effect on a current situation. Of
course the maturities of loans in a given period enter into a calculation of net purchasing
power.

27 It becomes, in such case, a capital tax, but one which destroys resources rather
than transfers their ownership to the public.

26 PLANNING AND CIVIC COMMENT

power, not as a free executive officer but as a party and legislative leader.
He must pay with jobs for his legislative support if his program is even
to be begun ; and he almost inevitably loses this faithless adherence before
the third year of his administration. He can hold things together from
then on only through a popular support which recalcitrant Senators dare
not flout openly.

A reform of the Federal Government which restored to the executive the
powers without which he cannot execute anything would be a tremendous
gain. A revitalizing impulse would flow through bureaucracies filled with
Congressional appointees who often feel little or no responsibility to their
superiors. No serious function can be carried on with a raddled and
disloyal personnel; in our system it is a perpetuation (unlocked for in the
constitutional make-up) of the committee management of the Continental
Congress; it failed then and it would always fail through lack of loyalty
and discipline. For this reason it seems likely to be corrected.

Perhaps, with these considerations in mind, the suggestion that a
strengthened executive would be sufficient can be looked at more clearly.
If he had the full powers which belong to his office and are necessary to its
satisfactory operation, other defects would appear. They can be seen now
in some cities and states. There is no denying the fact that democracy
frequently turns up irresponsible demagogues with regularity as elected
executives; and even that corrupt and venal candidates sometimes have a
temporary success. Not all American Presidents would have seemed as
adequate as they did seem if their duties had been more exacting. A
power is needed which is longer-run, wider-minded, differently allied, than
a reformed executive would be. This new agency would need to be severely
hedged about with limitations on qualification, the persons chosen would
need to be given longer-term appointments than any other except judicial
officials, but with the canons of selection carefully worked out, a body use-
ful to democracy and not farther removed from its rewards and penalties
than would serve to resolve its worst paradoxes and to protect it from itself,
ought to be feasible. But it would have to be beyond and independent of
the executive almost as certainly as the legislative.

THE FOURTH POWER 27

It was intimated earlier here that the establishing of the directive might
take place in evolutionary fashion and that the incidents of its history
might very well be undramatic. This is perhaps more to be hoped for
than expected. It should be understood that the enmity of the presently
existing powers is likely to be lively and vigilant. The executive, especially,
will be in a position to prevent planning from rising toward direction.
For the executive, planning will be useful, but only so long as it can be
carefully subordinated. The planning functions will, for this reason, be
divided: they will be fostered only sporadically, and frequently, perhaps,
abandoned.

For these reasons it may be over-optimistic to anticipate an evolutionary
development. There is also another reason. Looking back at the Con-
stitutional Convention of 1787 and the relation to the events there of the
rise of the executive, it can be seen that before the convention there existed
only demoralization of government together with widespread demand for
a new national effectiveness. The executive itself had no existence and
could not begin its evolution toward the present status until it had been
brought into being. The present situation seems disturbingly similar.
This is sometimes not understood, because it is felt that the arts of planning
have more significance than really belongs to them. It is no more accurate
to confuse planning with direction than it would be to confuse measure-
ment, for instance, with experiment, or steam with power. Direction
depends on the planning arts; it grows directly out of them; but it is rather
a social than an engineering or a statistical device. It can have no existence
apart from government nor any uses which are not general.

Whether direction, as distinct from planning, can find any sort of place
at all in our system without such previous chaos as brought about the
Constitutional Convention, and whether its evolution can actually begin
until its governmental institution has come into being, it is difficult to
say 28 . The analogy is something less than perfect because partly within
and partly without the old divisions, institutions for partial direction have
already come into being. A beginning might be made by recognition of
these agencies wherever they are and drawing them together in such a
concordance as would recognizably be that thing which now exists only in
men's minds, perhaps in amorphous and undetermined form, just as the
executive did in the trying years before 1787.

Government was made necessary by the previous growth of society.

28 "It is a faith . . . even though perhaps blind, that experiment within a dem-
ocracy, if as intelligently guided as our institutions and processes can allow, will
help to resolve the confusion of our times, will clear the fog that envelopes our habits
of thought, and will reduce conflict, that causes many to maintain an interest in plan-
ning . . . our task is to clarify the methods, reveal the choices, foster the attitudes,
and implement the procedures of planning as an approach to economic life in a group-
conscience sense, seeking at the same time the development of a philosophy and ration-
ale of economic effort which is cooperative in its central drive." Mr. Arthur G. Coons,
"Economic Planning in Democracy," Plan Age, Feb. 1939, p. 57.

28 PLANNING AND CIVIC COMMENT

The kinds of government, the changes in its composition and operation,
were determined by the kinds of society in which it was expected to serve.
Ours by now is a society of an intricate sort, dependent upon the smooth
functioning of complex arrangements which by default have been left
largely to the control of those who use them not for the purposes they
serve but for extraneous private ones. It is the failure of private aims to
coincide with the provisions of goods and services on acceptable terms
which has caused the serious deviation of the system from the expectations
held out to us by the economists who identified the pursuit of private
advantage with the public good. The illogic of this has been pointed out
repeatedly; its consequences have been suffered repeatedly, too, and with
increasing intensity. But neither illogic nor suffering has resolved the
conflict in men's minds 29 Simple reasoning betrays the false basis of
present arrangements. But it has become encysted in a moral and aesthetic
system which seems precious, even to those who may have no stake in its
favors, because of its familiarity. It contains aphorisms learned in youth;
it has guided conduct for generations. Can it be thrown away for a doubtful
new philosophy which offends many allegiances ? 30 . The penalties of
keeping the old system are, like the erosion of our soil, too slow to be fully
experienced in any one generation. Even in crises when there is terrible
suffering, the worst is never undergone by those who might become the
prophets of a new philosophy, or who might be expected to become re-
sponsible for new arrangements. Those who prosper as things are become
more and more powerful: questionings are smothered, when they are not
suppressed; the avenues to the public mind are choked with praises of the
present arrangements and of the apologists it breeds so profusely. It often
seems hopeless to expect that the needed change will be allowed to occur.
There is only the hard fact of regression, and the unwillingness, in spite of
soothing argument, among the disadvantaged, to accept any lowering in
their standard of life. The present system probably cannot be reasoned
out of existence. If it disappears it will be because its favorites will have
conceded so much to rising revolt that its advantages will be emptied of
privileged content. The new system may substitute itself for the old
without clear recognition.

Assuming that the executive first, perhaps, and then the directive, may
be allowed in time to occupy fully its logical ground, it must, in order to
carry out its generalizing purpose, assume preferential control of improve-

29 This is again the Veblenian conflict between "workmanship" and "pecuniary
advantage."

30 VebIen once said in a review of Oscar Loyell Triggs' Chapters in the History of
the Arts and Crafts Movement (Journal oj Political Economy, referred to in Dorfman,
op. cit . p. 204) : ' The machine process has come, not so much to stay merely, but to go
forward and root out of the workmen's scheme of thought whatever elements are alien
to its own technological requirements and discipline. It ubiquitously and unremittingly
disciplines the workman into its way of doing and therefore in its way of apprehending
and appreciating." But a different discipline entirely habituates the business class, of
course, to the discipline of wasteful consumption. The worker is torn between the desire
to emulate his superiors in status and the requirements of his trade.

THE FOURTH POWER 29

ment projects additions to the capital structure of governments; it must
also be able to ensure the subordination of private interests to social ones.
This is true both of city and nation. Where necessary to effectuate this,
it must, if it is to become really social, be able to suggest the substitution
of public for private ownership or operation; and it should do this freely
wherever regulation fails to subordinate private to public interest. It
could be trusted, in all this, with less than complete authority. But the
legislative should have to refer projects to it, as should also whatever
regulatory agencies may exist; and then be unable to override its recom-
mendations by less than say a two-thirds, or, at any rate a preponderant
vote 31 . The executive should be confined to preparation of the expense
budget and to strictly defined execution; the judiciary should have no
power of definition or of review of its findings 32 .

One of the features of the laissez-faire system is that it seems to permit
escape from penalties nature imposes for violation of her laws. Or, if this
seems like an old-fashioned way of putting it in a generation which has
escaped the rule of what once were regarded as natural laws, the thought
can be put in another way: Laissez Jaire is so disconnected, and
causes and effects throughout the system are so apparently unrelated, that
management of affairs without reference to "the state of the industrial

31 This was the suggestion in the so-called Hoover Model City Planning Bill, of
1928, which has been adopted in several cities. Nothing is to be gained, of course, from
being unrealistic about the present situation. In the Federal Government the National
Resources Planning Board, as it now is, has gradually evolved out of the old Equaliza-
tion Board which was set up during Mr. Hoover's administration to do forward plan-
ning for public works. It is obviously becoming the central planning agency for the
whole government. Much planning is separately done in Agriculture, Commerce, and
other agencies. Often this is of high quality; but it needs the coordination which the
Planning Board will doubtless supply.

The states, many of them, have Planning Boards subsidized through the Resources
Board but none amounts to anything from the directive point of view.

It is in the cities that most progress has been made. Indeed the profession of planning
is largely understood to mean city planning. But, although there are several hundred
cities which pretend to maintain an agency for this purpose, they are (i) unpaid citizen
boards which have been captured by realtors or lawyers; or (2) ex-officio boards which
are treated with contempt by the department heads which comprise them; or (3) they
have only "advisory" powers, after the pattern recommended by Mr. E. M. Bassett,
et al. (In Model Laws for Planning Cities, Counties, and States, Harvard University
Press, 1935).

In the new charter of the City of New York there has been provided a full-time
commission which has been given, in addition to zoning powers, the duty of creating
a master plan and the task of preparing a capital budget with which to implement it.
This latter is subject to a three-quarters modification vote in the Board of Estimate
but otherwise is difficult to influence or modify. This is the longest step yet taken.
Such a federal agency still seems far off. There is even a difference in theory. The
President's Committee on Administrative Management (which reported in 1937) seems
to regard planning as a staff function of the executive, along with a budget bureau and
a personnel agency. A President's Committee might be expected to take this view.
It has so far prevailed: under Reorganization Plan No. i, submitted on April 25, 1939,
the National Resources Planning Board was established within the Executive Office.

32 Any such specification as this is to be regarded as suggestion for beginning
arrangement to be tried in practice and to be changed freely as experience accumulates.
It might be pointed out, however, that there is considerable experience already in the
city field.

30 PLANNING AND CIVIC COMMENT

arts" is possible 83 . Of course it is not. And the penalties are always
paid, although they may not be paid by the people who are responsible
for incurring them, nor within any short period of time. To all this a
putative directional system stands in complete contrast. It makes of
industrial society a continuum in which causes and effects are clearly
related 34 and in which penalties are traced directly to violations. In
this sense the directive system can be said to be a regimented one 35 .
The regimentation is, however, imposed by nature and by the state of the
industrial arts, not by any individual or any group. The part of the
planner in it is merely one of recognizing and submitting to nature and
existing technology 36 .

The directive indeed is subject to much more rigorous limitations than
might be gathered from what is said about planning by representatives of
the other powers of government who recognize so few limitations that they
find difficulty in appreciating the situation of a power which by its nature
is subject to the control of existent fact and circumstance. If the directive
is examined in a detached way, it is seen at once that it cannot become an
arbitrary regimenting power, but must always be ruled by the necessity
for deliberately gathering up wisdom from wherever it may come, and for
applying it under the most strictly given conditions. This gathering-up
process can only be accomplished by a rigorously fixed procedure of expert
preparation, public hearings, agreed findings, and careful translation into
law which are in turn subject to legislative ratification. The directive

33 This is like the escape of every first generation of farmers on new land from the
penalties of soil mining.

34 To use a phrase from Veblen the planner is "required to administer the laws
of causal sequence. . . ." Theory oj Business Enterprise, p. 313.

36 "... the opponents of planning wrongly assume that planning must in-
evitably increase the total power now in use throughout our social order, whereas it
might very well lead to a mere redistribution of that power without any enlargement of
it at all." Mr. Rene DeVisme Williamson, "A Theory of Planning," Plan Age, Feb.
1939, P. 36.

36 His methods too, though they may seem erudite to the uninitiated are a simple
growth from common thinking. Mr. C. E. Ayers in a recent discussion of Mr. John
Dewey (New Republic, LXXXXVII, 1259, p. 306, 18 January 1939) makes this point
concerning all the instrumental arts, quoting the following well-known passage from the
Essays in Experimental Logic:

"This point of view knows no fixed distinction between the empirical values of
unreflective life and the most abstract process of rational thought. It knows no fixed
gulf between the highest flight of theory and control of the details of practical con-
struction and behavior. It passes, according to the occasion and opportunity of the
moment, from the attitude of loving and struggling and doing to that of thinking and
the reverse. Its contents or material shift their values back and forth from technological
or utilitarian to esthetic, ethic or affectional. ... In all this there is no difference of
kind between the methods of science and those of the plain man. . . . The funda-
mental assumption is continuity in and of experience."

Veblen certainly did not regard himself as a pragmatist. In fact he felt that the com-
mon sense of this attitude was pre-Darwinian and that it supported the classical attitudes
he was striving to break down. Dewey's position that the thinking of common men
blossomed out into science was, however, very similar to Veblen's position. Labels
aside, the approach of theae two was very similar.

THE FOURTH POWER 31

has an advantage over the executive from not having to operate any or-
ganization, over the legislative from not representing any faction or
region, and over the judicial from dealing with a volume of fact rather
than a volume of precedent 37 .

The margin of safety which the community possesses in entrusting power
to the directive is widened by its persistent orientation to the future, a
future discovered by charting the trends of the past through the present.
And this projection is not subject to opinion or to change as a result of
pressure from special interests. In thic forecasting of the shape of things
to come, it can succeed, aside from maintaining the most honorable relation
with facts, only by possessing and using the most modern techniques for
discovering them. It thus has an interest in progress and in modernization
which is quite different from the traditional interests of the other powers.
The discipline of fact is a more impressive one than the discipline of legal
ethics or even of a watchful constituency 38 .

All this is of the nature of theory at present, since there are few instances
in which governments of any sort have admitted the directive to effective
status. It seems clear, however, that if the directive is permitted to evolve,
these will be features of its operation. It may thus establish a genuinely
social policy, as contrasted with private policies, dictated by contemporary
resources, techniques and circumstances rather than by political expediency;
tuned to the universe, the continent, the region, and the times, rather than
to an imaginary environment in some past Utopia for speculators in private
advantage. It will not be pursued because it suits a whim, a prejudice, an
economic interest or a political gain. It will be distilled with modern
devices from the then controlling conditions for the success of society.
It will take account of all there is to work with and allow itself to be
guided only by the interests of all there are to work for. It appears to be
the best way, in a modern society, of carrying out the brave commitment
made in the preamble to the American Constitution.

37 It is perhaps significant in this connection, also, that the choice of members
for any likely planning body would be made necessarily from a group at least as highly
qualified and restricted as is true of the iudiciary. An understanding of the contrast
in point of view between the politician, the jurist or the business man as over against
the planner can be got by reading the passages in The Theory of Business Enterprise
which begin on p. 318. The planner is simply under a different discipline.

38 VebIen described the discipline of the machine industry in similar terms: 'The
discipline of the machine process enforces a standardization of conduct and of knowledge
in terms of quantitative precision, and inculcates a habit of apprehending and explain-
ing facts in terms of material cause and effect. It involves a valuation of facts, things,
relations and even personal capacity, in terms of force. Its metaphysics is materialism
and its point of view is that of casual sequence." (Theory of Business Enterprise, pp.
66-7). If this seems strikingly like the discipline under which the planner works tnat
is because the discipline actually is identical. Planning grows out of measurement,
exactitude, repetivity, and so on, all principles on which the machine process also rests.
They are related parts of the modern culture. To speak of planning as cold, arbitrary,
a regimenting force and so on, as its detractors like to do, is merely to object to precision
as a substitute for whimsy, to measurement as a substitute for rule-pf-thumb, to rep-
etivity and exchangeable part manufacture for craft work on the medieval pattern.

Planning and
Civic Comment

Successor to: City Planning, Civic Comment, State Recreation

CONTENTS

Page
New National Resources Planning Board 1

Editorial Comment: Hope Deferred on the Kings Canyon Na-
tional Park; What Express Parkways Are Doing to Bill-
boards; A Patriotic Duty 2

Regional Planning in Harrisburg Area 5

Zoning Round Table: How Generous? 8

Strictly Personal 10

For Better Roadsides 11

The Summer Program in Planning at M. I. T 13

Notes on National Resources Planning Board 14

Progress in U. S. Housing 16

State Park Notes 17

President and Director of NCSP to Prepare Study of National
Capital Parks 21

New Land Acquisition Program for Cook County Forest Pre-
serve District 22

Eastern Regional Conference of NCSP 24

Recent Court Decisions 25

Watch Service Report 27

The International Congress at Stockholm 28

National Park Conference An Unusual Opportunity 29

Conservation Education in the Northwest 30

Recent Publications . .31

JULY- SEPTEMBER 1939

PLANNING AND
CIVIC COMMENT

Published Quarterly

Successor to: City Planning, Civic Comment, State Recreation

Official Organ of: American Planning and Civic Association,
National Conference on State Parks

SCOPE: National, State, Regional and City Planning; Land and Water Uses;

Conservation of National Resources; National, State and Local Parks,

Highways and Roadsides.
AIM: To create a better physical environment which will conserve and develop

the health, happiness and culture oj the American people.

EDITORIAL BOARD

HARLEAN JAMES FLAVEL SHURTLEFF CHARLES G. SAUERS

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

FREDERICK J. ADAMS ELISABETH M. HERLIHY

HORACE M. ALBRIGHT P. J. HOFFMASTER

HARLAND BARTHOLOMEW HENRY V. HUBBARD

EDWARD M. BASSETT JOHN IHLDER

RUSSELL V. BLACK RAYMOND F. LEONARD

PAUL V. BROWN RICHARD LIEBER

STRUTHERS BURT THOMAS H. MACDONALD

HAROLD S. BUTTENHEIM J. HORACE MCFARLAND

ARNO B. CAMMERER HENRY T. MC!NTOSH

DAVID C. CHAPMAN KATHERINE MCNAMARA

MARSHALL N. DANA MARVIN C. NICHOLS

S. R. DEBOER JOHN NOLEN, JR.

EARLE S. DRAPER F. A. PITKIN

CHARLES W. ELIOT 2o ISABELLE F. STORY

L. C. GRAY L. DEMING TILTON

S. HERBERT HARE TOM WALLACE
CONRAD L. WIRTH

MANAGING EDITOR

DORA A. PADGETT

$3.00 a Year

Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office at Washington, D. C., under
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Planning and Civic Comment

Vol. 5

July-September, 1939

No. 3

New National Resources Planning Board

By FREDERIC A. DELANO, Chairman

The former National Resources
Committee, an independent agency,
is now the National Resources
Planning Board and is a part of the
Executive Office of the President.
This change was brought about
under the President's Reorganiza-
tion Plan No. i, effective July I,

1939-

All the functions of the National
Resources Committee and of the
Federal Employment Stabilization
Office in the Department of Com-
merce were transferred to the new
board and these two agencies were
abolished.

The functions of the National
Resources Committee, as set forth
in Executive Order No. 7065 of
June 7, 1935, establishing the Com-
mittee, were as follows:

2) To collect, prepare and make
ble to the President, with recom-
mendations, such plans, data and in-
formation as may be helpful to a planned
development and use of land, water, and
other national resources, and such related
subjects as may be referred to it by the
President.

"(b) To consult and cooperate with
agencies of the Federal Government, with
the States and municipalities or agencies
thereof, and with any public or private
planning or research agencies or institu-
tions, in carrying out any of its duties and
functions.

"(c) To receive and record all proposed
Federal projects involving the acquisition
of land (including transfer of land juris-
diction) and land research projects, and in
an advisory capacity to provide the

agencies concerned with such information
or data as may be pertinent to the proj-
ects. All executive agencies shall notify
the National Resources Committee of
such projects as they develop, before
major field activities are undertaken."

The Federal Employment Stabil-
ization Office was authorized by
law "to advise the President from
time to time of the trend of employ-
ment and business activity and of
the existence or approach of periods
of business depression and un-
employment in the United States
or in any substantial portion thereof;
to cooperate with the construction
agencies in formulating methods of
advance planning; to make progress
reports; and to perform the other
functions assigned to it. . . ."

Reorganization Plan No. i was
approved without modification by
Congress, but the Relief Bill of 1940,
providing funds for the operation of
the new Board during the current
fiscal year, changed the composition
of the Board from five to three mem-
bers and stipulated that they should
be chosen from widely separated
sections of the country and their ap-
pointment approved by the Senate.

With the exception of the mem-
bers of the Committee the per-
sonnel of the National Resources
Committee, including the Advisory
Committee, was transferred to the
National Resources Planning Board,

EDITORIAL COMMENT

Hope Deferred on the Kings Canyon
National Park

After fifty years of effort, and
with only a few of the original
advocates still alive, Congress ad-
journed without final action on the
Kings Canyon National Park. The
bill passed the House on July 18, in
very good form, but, on objection
in the Senate when it came up on
Unanimous Consent Calendar, the
bill was passed over. When Con-
gress convenes in January, the bill
may be taken up by the Senate on
any one of its various calendars.

Except for the detached redwood
grove, which would have to be
purchased, the land for the proposed
Kings Canyon National Park lies
in the National Forests, and, ac-
cording to Chief Forester Silcox,
is now being used almost exclusively
for recreation. Because of its adapt-
ability for recreation, the U. S.
Forest Service has consistently been

reducing grazing and other com-
mercial and private uses in the area.
At the hearings before the House
Public Lands Committee, Mr. Sil-
cox advocated the transfer of the
area to the National Park Service.
There is no conflict, therefore, be-
tween the Federal agencies involved.
This localizes the objections to the
park to those who have misunder-
stood the issues or who hope in some
way to profit by preserving its
present status. Some of these hopes
have been shown by the U. S.
Reclamation Service to be unlikely
of realization in any case and others
would most certainly not be in the
interests of the public good. It
should be remembered, however,
that selfish objectors are apt to be
much more vociferous than advo-
cates of action for the general
welfare. This bill is still pending.

What Express Parkways Are Doing
to Billboards

In the last decade Westchester
County, New York, has been setting
an example for the rest of the United
States in its extensive system of
parkways and freeways. It is now
possible to travel out of New York
City and around Westchester
County on a network of protected

parkways free from billboards and
furnished with attractive-looking
filling stations and similar structures
at intervals spaced for service.
These parkways generally do not
provide right of access from abut-
ting property. Motorists may enjoy
the naturally beautiful rolling coun-

Planning and Civic Comment

try, unspoiled by short-sighted ex-
ploiters, who have ravaged most
of the so-called standard highways
of the country.

We have often said that Highway
No. i is a lost soul! Many of the
miles of this highway from Maine
to Florida are lined with billboards
and blatant signs. The right of way,
inherited from the past, is all too
narrow. The public is dependent
on the good taste and good will of
the private property owners along
the line. This has proved an
inadequate dependence.

Ever since Westchester County
has provided its system of parkways,
it has been possible for a motorist
with adequate maps and a sixth
sense for direction, to substitute for
a few miles of Highway No. I,
the pleasant county parkways. But
now Connecticut has provided a
connecting link in the Merritt
Parkway which may be reached
from Westport, Connecticut, and
which flows naturally into the Saw
Mill Parkway of Westchester
County and connects with the
Hendrick Hudson Parkway which
borders the Hudson River and
enables motorists to drive along the
entire length of New York City to
the Holland Tunnel, offering the
quickest, most interesting and eas-
iest route from New England to
South Atlantic cities, a real sur-
prise and relief to the harassed
motorist.

This provision of pleasant park-
way passage through one of the
most congested regions in the world

is a promise of better highway con-
ditions to come; for who can doubt
that those who travel for pleasure
will use such modern, well-designed
and well-built parkways and free-
ways in preference to such un-
sightly and inconvenient routes as
No. i and other principal trans-
continental highways?

Not quite as closely paralleling
the Atlantic seaboard routes is the
Blue Ridge Parkway, now being
built under the supervision of the
National Park Service, to join
Shenandoah and Great Smoky
Mountains National Parks. Con-
siderable stretches of this 5OO-miIe
parkway, maintaining an average ele-
vation of more than 2500 feet above
sea level, are now open to the public,
and when completed the Blue Ridge
Parkway should attract a great
part of the through pleasure motor
travel from the north to the south.

One begins to envision parkways,
built originally for local or regional
use, connected up in a national
system which will provide the
traveling public of the United
States with a new allure. The bill-
boards and other unsightly struc-
tures which now despoil the through
highways will be left to the drivers
of trucks and other commercial
vehicles. Will large business enter-
prises continue to pay for this sort
of advertising on billboards and
selling signs? At any rate the
traveling public will have an effec-
tive alternative. They will be using
the protected parkways of the
country wherever they are provided.

A Patriotic Duty

Our American way of living and
our form of government are de-
pendent upon a responsible, well-
informed citizenry. The American
Planning and Civic Association for
more than a third of a century
(nearly one fourth of the entire life
of the United States of America) has
been making available to its mem-
bers, and to many citizens and stu-
dents who consult its literature in
college and other public libraries,
reliable information concerning ways
and means of improving living and
working conditions.

During that time a new technique
of planning has developed. Zoning
has been devised and applied. A
comprehensive program for sensible
conservation and use of land and
water resources has been undertaken.
National, State and local parks have
increased in number, size and facili-
ties. Parkways have been born and
multiplied.

Who can suppose that today there
would be a National Resources
Planning Board, state planning
boards and city and county planning
commissions if the American people
had not been educated to the need
for planning? Who can suppose
that these planning agencies will
continue to exist and be supported
from taxation if the American people
do not know of their activities and
believe in them?

Imagine, if you can, the abandon-
ment of the safeguards which cities
have set up through their compre-
hensive and detailed plans. What
would it mean if suddenly neighbor-
hoods were left unprotected and
home owners might find filling sta-
tions, grocery stores, factories and
billboards as next-door neighbors?
Would the citizens of Westchester
County be willing to forfeit their
protected parkways for obsolete high-
ways, bordered by billboards and un-
controlled commercial structures?

And yet, not only shall we fail to
realize new gains, we shall lose some
of the gains we have already made,
if the process of education in these
planning fields is interrupted. No
matter how disorganized the Euro-
pean world may become, it is im-
portant to preserve in the United
States, agencies for the distribution
of educational material which citi-
zens may use to contribute to the
comfort, convenience and safety of
the community.

The members of the American
Planning and Civic Association de-
serve recognition for the valuable
service which they are rendering to
the advance of planning and civic
improvement and, indirectly, to the
democratic processes of government.

In that light, membership in the
Association appears to be a patriotic
duty!

1920
1930
1939

Growth of the National Park System

Year Natl. Natl. Other Total Size Visitors

Parks M'n'ts Areas No. Sq. Mi.

19 24 43 12,674 1,026,025

2 3 32 55 16,185 2,774,561

27 49 154 5 2 5 2 6 9,777,572 (10 mo.)

Regional Planning in Harrisburg Area

By MALCOLM H. DILL, Regional Planner

HARRISBURG is sixty-
seventh in population among
metropolitan districts in the
United States, according to the 1930
census, but is tied for eighteenth
place as regards the number of
incorporated suburbs surrounding
the central city. In this multi-
plicity of local governments lies the
major clue to planning problems of
Metropolitan Harrisburg. Other
factors, however, of nearly equal
importance account for urgent need
of planning in this area. The central
city is cut off from its western sub-
urbs by the three-quarters-of-a-
mile-wide Susquehanna River, the
shores of which are connected by
only two bridges, and these merely
a block apart. Topography, like
the river, is a mixed blessing.
Extensive bluffs combine with
fairly high-level but narrow river
flood-plains and nearby rolling hills
to create a site, the natural beauty
of which well justified its selection
for the Capital City of Pennsyl-
vania. If the city could have been
designed in advance, this site would
have challenged the ingenuity of a
planner in making it accommodate a
city of about 160,000 population.
Unfortunately forethought was not
given to planning; the city grew as a
large nucleus surrounded by many
separate, unrelated communities.
Harrisburg itself in 1930 had slightly
over 80,000 inhabitants; fifteen
satellite boroughs and various un-
incorporated communities which
double that population figure, join

with the central city to comprise a
constellation defined by the 1930
census as the Harrisburg Met-
ropolitan District.

It is only within the last few
years that inhabitants of the city
and of its various suburbs have
begun to realize that they have
many matters of mutual concern,
including planning. Local jealousies
and prejudices have been taken
seriously, but within the past year,
the West Shore boroughs, at least,
have breathed new life into an
erstwhile planning federation that
now represents all five of the
Cumberland County boroughs and
one large unincorporated commu-
nity all of which have official plan-
ning or zoning commissions.

Metropolitan Harrisburg spreads
over the border of two river coun-
ties Cumberland and Dauphin.
Parts of four other counties lie near
enough to be within the scope of
planning for the Harrisburg Area.
Because of the borderline relation-
ship between Harrisburg and the
two primary counties, a planning
commission pertaining to a single
political subdivision would not an-
swer. In 1937, the Pennsylvania
Legislature passed an enabling act
for regional planning commissions
so as to cover just such complicated
planning situations as that which
confronts the Capital City. The
difficulties, however, of securing
cooperative action from the various
political entities in subscribing to a
regional, or what is in effect, a

Planning and Civic Comment

metropolitan planning Commission,
are obvious.

Recognizing this fact, in June,
1938, the Municipal League of
Harrisburg, identified since 1901
with the continuous activity in
civic improvement, formed the
Harrisburg Area Regional Planning
Committee. Mr. Vance C. Mc-
Cormick was made Chairman; Dr.
J. Horace McFarland, Secretary;
Mr. Earle S. Draper, Consultant on
the planning program; and the
writer, Resident Regional Planner.
The Committee has acted un-
officially but with considerable ef-
fectiveness in helping to correlate
many of the planning activities of
the seventy-five or more local, state,
Federal and unofficial agencies that
have some concern with planning
in the Harrisburg Area. The most
important function of the Com-
mittee, however, has been the
formulation of a Land-Use Plan-
ning Report for the Harrisburg Area.
This report consists of two parts:
the first concerned with the larger
Metropolitan Area the background
or outer ring of forest lands, farms,
game lands, towns, etc., which
form a zone with a somewhat
elastic boundary around the urban
center; the second part concerns
the planning problems of the Cen-
tral City and its immediately ad-
jacent suburbs, which include nine
boroughs and numerous unincor-
porated communities. To define
this aggregation, the term Met-
ropolitan City is used in the report.

In Part I of the report are in-
cluded two main sections: (1) A
background of information con-
cerning all phases of the present
geography of the Area: topography,

forest lands, agricultural lands, pop-
ulation distribution, cities and
towns, non-urban parks, resorts,
game lands, miscellaneous public
and semi-public reservations, water
resources (including uses and prob-
lems), motorways, railways, and
airways. This section of the report
has recently appeared serially in
the Harrisburg morning paper and
in one of the evening papers, in
the form of seventeen articles, in-
cluding text, maps and photographs.
The other evening paper used the
series as a basis for almost daily
editorials or special columns. The
second section of the first part of
the report includes planning sug-
gestions for those geographical as-
pects which appear to present
problems. This section also ap-
peared in serial form early in
September.

Part II of the report begins with
a definition of the term "Met-
ropolitan City"; discusses topog-
raphy and population growth
trends. There follows the problem
of the Inner City versus the Subur-
ban Fringe, each of which is then
discussed in turn.

The ailments of the Inner City
are diagnosed, and prescriptions are
made in connection with the pro-
tection of good areas, renovation of
improvable areas, and replanning
of blighted districts. Parks and
playgrounds are discussed in re-
lation to the Inner City; traffic and
parking problems, and public tran-
sit in relation to the preceding
item; taxation policies, and dis-
position of tax-reverted properties.

Discussion of the Suburban
Fringe has a three-fold aspect:
methods of deterring premature

Planning and Civic Comment

and excessive platting; reconsidera-
tion of undeveloped subdivisions;
and assurance of well-planned de-
velopment where platting is called
for.

There follows a section on special
planning problems of the whole
Metropolitan City. This includes
discussion of a possible Metropolitan
Park System; industrial and com-
mercial development; housing; the
pros and cons of annexation; an-
ticipating the needs for new schools,
and sites for public buildings; pres-
ervation of historical buildings and
sites.

The final section concerns the
proposed technique for the organ-
ization of an official Regional
Planning Commission; provision
for zoning, which Harrisburg now
lacks; creation of a Master Plan,
and Official Maps for all the
municipalities; and the working

out of a long-term public works
program for the Harrisburg Area.
Specific recommendations follow
each of the two main parts of the
report. The exact form of final pub-
lication has not yet been determined,
but it is hoped that copies will be
available for general distribution.

Activities of the Regional Plan-
ning Committee have been sup-
ported entirely by privately con-
tributed funds. Efforts will be made
to continue the work of the Com-
mittee on at least a part-time basis
until the way may have been paved
for the creation of an official Re-
gional Planning Commission. In-
valuable assistance has been given
to the Committee by the State
Planning Board, the City En-
gineer's Office and various other
agencies and individuals in pro-
vision of plans, office space, and
in many other respects.

EDITOR'S NOTE. Malcolm H. Dill's account in this issue of planning in Harris-
burg, reminds us of the pioneer work of Dr. J. Horace McFarland and his associates,
who rescued the Harrisburg waterfront from the usual industrial hodge-podge and
gave to the city an inviting shore park which all train and automobile travelers, who
enter by way of the Susquehanna River, may see as a worthy gateway to Pennsylvania's
State capital.

Park Personnel Changes

Changes in National Park Super-
intendents were announced in July.
C. Marshall Finnan, formerly super-
intendent, National Capital Parks,
has taken over the superintendency
of Zion and Bryce Canyon National
Parks. Paul R. Francke, formerly
superintendent of those parks, has
gone to Mesa Verde National Park.
Jesse L. Nusbaum will supervise
archeological activities in Regions
II, III, and IV.

Acknowledgment

We gratefully acknowledge our
indebtedness to the Duke University
Press, Durham, North Carolina,
the publisher of the Hispanic
American Historical Review, for
permission to republish in the April-
June 1939 issue of our quarterly,
PLANNING AND Civic COMMENT, the
article entitled: "Royal Ordinances
Concerning the Laying out of New
Towns," which set forth the King
of Spain's advice to planners in 1573.

Zoning Round Table

Conducted by EDWARD M. BASSETT

HOW GENEROUS?

HOW generous can a council
afford to be in establishing
the zoning regulations of the
highest class residence district?
The provisions of the New York
City building zone resolution for
residence districts were generous.
Perhaps one reason for this was that
zoning under the police power was
novel and there was danger that
courts would overturn regulations
enforced without compensation.
But it is also true that the framers
of the regulations were thinking of
the preservation of useful localities,
the maintenance of assessed valua-
tions and the all-round protection
of legitimate property owners.
When zoning spread to munici-
palities, large and small, throughout
the country a strong tendency on
the part of councils arose to make
refinements. In many cases these
resembled the most drastic private
restrictions.

In New York City the following
buildings and uses were allowed in
every residence district: dwellings,
boarding houses, hotels, clubs,
churches, schools, libraries, public
museums, court houses, fire houses,
police stations, philanthropic or
eleemosynary institutions other
than correctional institutions, hos-
pitals and sanitariums, railroad
passenger stations, farming, truck
gardening, nurseries and green-
houses.

Many recently zoned cities would
laugh at these regulations. Their

officials would say, "How can a
residence district be exclusive if all
those unwanted uses are allowed?"
The fact is that not everything that
is allowed is built. In a one-family
detached house neighborhood a
rooming house, a boarding house or
a family hotel is just about as good
a neighbor as a one-family de-
tached house. Of course every one
knows that once in a while a lawful
building may turn out to be hurtful,
but this is the exception rather than
the rule. In a high rental neighbor-
hood low rental uses are not likely
to abound. The zoning plan of New
York has now been in existence
twenty-three years and no notice-
able injury has come to its residence
districts because of its generosity in
allowing practically all uses that
are not either business or industry.
Moreover there has never been an
outcry to exclude these uses that
elsewhere are sometimes thought to
lower the character of a neighbor-
hood.

A disturbing zoning problem
throughout the country is that of
the large well-built private house
in ample grounds in the best resi-
dence district, which comes on the
market and stands vacant. The
ordinary family does not want so
large a house. Officials debate
whether a variance can be granted
to change it into a four- or five-
family house. The neighborhood
objects. On its face it is discrimina-
tory to require new houses to be

Planning and Civic Comment

built for one family only but to
allow an old house to be divided
into four or five family units. It can
be said that in New York City this
difficulty does not often arise. One
reason is that the large house can
be used for so many different
purposes.

In the highly restricted munici-
pality, however, these fine old
houses in the best residence dis-
tricts are an almost impossible
problem. The new owner often a
widow or heir of the former wealthy
occupant cannot maintain such an
expensive house. Taxes, however,
must be paid whether it is occu-
pied or not. The owner looks for
a purchaser and cannot find any,
partly because its use is tightly
restricted to that of a one-family
dwelling.

The writer has in mind a subur-
ban Long Island town of high
character which has established
five classes of residence districts
under the zoning plan. The owner
of a mansion in the highest class
district with extensive grounds died
a few years ago and the widow did
not care to operate so large a house.
Town and county taxes are about
$25,000 a year. For several years
it has been impossible to sell this
property. The upkeep was expen-
sive. We can imagine the con-
versations between the selling agent
and the prospective customers.
Some one says, "We will buy the
property and run it as a high-class
family hotel," but looking further
he finds that hotels are prohibited.
Some one else suggests a high-class
boarding house, but on consulting
the town clerk learns that this is
prohibited. A new hospital asso-

ciation thinks this would be just
the place for a hospital in the
country (it has 100 rooms) but
learns that hospitals are not allowed.
The same with a sanitarium, college,
orphan asylum, library, museum 01
community building.

The unfortunate owners appear
to be destined to hold the property
forever and pay taxes on it without
putting it to any allowable use.
When cases like this happen the
owners become more and more
desperate while the first two or
three years are passing, and then
sometimes make a break that hurts
themselves and the neighborhood.
In this particular case the mansion
and grounds were sold at less than
one-tenth of their original value to a
new non-profit organization for fur-
nishing vacations to the families
of the street cleaners of New York
City. The families are now taking
possession. One can imagine the
consternation in the community.
It is likely that the whole will be
exempted from taxation.

It is fairly possible that the
former owner was in favor of the
superlatively tight zoning regula-
tions. Perhaps the officials were
pushed into a sort of zoning that
did not look forward to the present
deplorable condition. It is difficult
for a commentator to say that the
officials and the owners of large
estates were all wrong. When the
zoning regulations were made it
undoubtedly looked better to make
them tight than to make them gener-
ous. The question naturally arises,
however, whether this community
would be substantially worse off
if its regulations were as generous
as those in New York City.

Planning and Civic Comment

Strictly

Frederic A. Delano, on an aero-
plane trip in August to the West
Coast, which was a flying trip
in more ways than one, visited in
about ten days state planning
board members of Minnesota, North
Dakota and Montana; Grand Cou-
lee and Mount Rainier National
Park; Seattle where he attended a
meeting of the Washington State
Planning Council; Olympic Na-
tional Park; Bonneville and Mount
Hood; Portland and Salem, Oregon;
Shasta Dam in California; San
Francisco and the John Muir park
area; Los Angeles where regional
planning problems of the area were
discussed at a dinner given by the
John Randolph Haynes and Dora
Haynes Foundation and interested
citizens; and Boulder Dam.

* # * #

Members of the Dallas News
WFAA family numbering more than
600 officers and employees, gathered
together last summer in Dallas to
honor President George B. Dealey
of the Dallas News, the occasion
being the unveiling and dedication
of an oil portrait of the beloved
publisher who has been so prom-
inently identified with the planning
movement in Dallas. The painting,
by the renowned British portrait
painter Douglas Chandor, has been
hung in the News Building. It is a
three-quarter length portrait of Mr.
Dealey, seated, looking up from a
copy of the News which he holds
in his left hand.

Personal

President Roosevelt as a member
of the present three-man National
Resources Planning Board.

A lawyer by profession, Mr.
Yantis has been Chairman of
the Pacific Northwest Regional
Planning Commission and Presi-
dent of the Northwest Regional
Council, and served as Speaker
of the House of Representatives
of the Washington State Legisla-
ture for a period covering five
sessions.

A. P. Greensfelder, member of
the Advisory Council of the AP&
CA, attended the International
Housing and Town Planning Con-
ference at Stockholm in July. He
sent back a collection of programs
and pictures which form the basis
of the brief report of the Con-
ference on page 28.

Horace M. Albright, President
of the AP&CA, first civilian
Superintendent of Yellowstone Park
and later Director of the National
Park Service, visited Yellowstone in
August for four days. Several days,
also, were spent in Grand Teton
National Park and the adjoining
area which Mr. John D. Rocke-
feller, Jr., has purchased to add to
the Park. So far, however, the U. S.
Government has not been author-
ized to accept the 40,000 acres.

$*$*$$ Arno B. Cammerer, Director of

the National Park Service, is back

George F. Yantis of Olympia, at his office, having recovered from
Washington, has been appointed by a long and serious illness.

For Better Roadsides

By FLAVEL SHURTLEFF

New Jersey and Connecticut
were still wrestling with billboard
legislation when the last number of
PLANNING AND Civic COMMENT
went to press. The Connecticut
result was the same as it was in the
legislatures of 1935 and 1937. An
amended bill was passed by the
House of Representatives but the
close of the session prevented action
by the Senate.

Legislation which potentially will
affect the roadsides of trunk line
highways in Connecticut far more
than billboard legislation was passed
in the closing days of the session and
became Chapter 307 of the Acts of
1939. Entitled "An Act Concerning
Parkways, Freeways and Service
Highways/' this statute gives the
Highway Commissioner authority
to lay out and construct upon
direction of the General Assembly,
any trunk line highway as a park-
way or freeway. A parkway is
defined as "any trunk line highway
receiving special treatment in land-
scaping and marginal planting,
which shall be especially designed
for, and devoted exclusively to, the
use and accommodation of non-
commercial motor vehicle traffic,
and to which access may be allowed
only at highway intersections desig-
nated by the highway commissioner
and designed by him so as to elim-
inate cross traffic of vehicles." A
freeway is "any trunk line highway
which shall be designed to separate
through, high-speed, noncommer-
cial motor vehicle traffic from all
other types of traffic by the use of

independent traffic lanes. Connec-
tion between local traffic and
through traffic lanes shall be pro-
vided at intervals in the discretion
of the highway commissioner." By
the same Act the legislature directs
the laying out of the new Wilbur
Cross Highway, extending across
the State from the terminus of the
Merritt Parkway to the Mas-
sachusetts State line, as a freeway.
Connecticut becomes the third
state to adopt freeway legisla-
tion Rhode Island and New York
having passed such legislation in

I937-

No action on billboard legisla-
tion was taken in New Jersey. Be-
fore the close of the session a second
bill which had the approval of the
State Tax Commissioner was in-
troduced and referred to the Com-
mittee on Corporations. The most
interesting provision of this bill and
the one that distinguished it par-
ticularly from the bill sponsored by
the New Jersey Roadside Council
was the exclusion of billboards from
"natural scenic areas." These areas
were to be designated by the State
Tax Department after an inspec-
tion of the highways, but no area
could be so designated which had
already been defined by a municipal
ordinance as commercial manu-
facturing or business or was made
up of "unsightly, desolate, barren
or swamp land or wbicb is not
suitable for any other use than a
business use.' 1 The New Jersey
Roadside Council contended that
this provision offered no real pro-

Planning and Civic Comment

tection to the highways. It might
even be open to the objection that
the definition of "natural scenic
areas" was altogether too vague
and left too much to the discretion
of the Tax Department.

It has been held in many cases
that the legislature cannot delegate
policy-making to administrative
departments. The legislature must
declare the policy and establish a
rule for the administrative de-
partment to follow. A recent de-
cision of the Supreme Court of
South Carolina is in point. The
court was called upon to determine
the validity of a city ordinance
which provided that "hereafter it
it shall be unlawful to erect or main-
tain any billboard facing on any
street or other public place without
having first obtained a permit from
the city council." The court held
that the ordinance was void be-
cause it restricted the right of the
individual property owner not in
accordance with an announced rule
but in accordance with the pleasure
of the city council. (Schloss Poster
Advertising Company, Inc. v. City
of Rock Hill, 2 S.E. 2nd 392.)

Another long-awaited billboard
decision was announced in July by
the Appellate Division of the New
York Supreme Court. The New
York Conservation law, Paragraph
62, forbids the erection or main-
tenance of advertising signs or de-
vices of any kind within the bound-
ary of the Adirondack State Park
except with written permit from
the Park Department. The action

in this case was to recover penalties
for a violation of this provision.
The defendant claimed among other
things that the provision was un-
constitutional but the Court ruled
that the statute was not void since
it sought to "preserve and regulate
only a certain zone within the State
and was regulatory and not pro-
hibitory. The statute on its face
purports to accomplish objectives
which are legitimately within the
police power and to bear a reason-
able relationship to such accom-
plishment. The requiring of a per-
mit before the erection of such signs
is not improper restriction." (People
of the State of New York v. Joseph
F. Sterling, Appellate Division of
the Supreme Court of New York,
decided July, 1939).

These two decisions are most
useful precedents for the drafters of
laws which will insure better road-
sides. In spite of the defeats in the
last legislature there is enough at
stake in the saving of lives and the
preservation of scenic values to
carry on the campaign which is
hardly more than begun. Whatever
law is proposed for the improvement
of the highway either by regulating
outdoor advertising or more com-
prehensively by establishing pro-
tective areas, the administering
agency must be given enough direc-
tion in the statute so that arbi-
trariness may be avoided and the
protective provisions must show a
purpose within the police power and
a reasonable relationship to the ac-
complishment of that purpose.

A PLANNING BROADCAST will be issued shortly by the Association to carry comment
on recent billboard, parkway and freeway legislation.

The Summer Program in Planning
at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Architects predominated at the
1939 Summer Session on Planning
sponsored jointly by the Mas-
sachusetts Institute of Technology
and the American Planning and
Civic Association. Of the twelve
participants, two were practicing
architects and five were faculty
members of the architectural de-
partments of the Universities of
Missouri, New Hampshire, and
Oklahoma, Texas Technical College
and Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. The New Hampshire
State Planning and Development
Commission was again represented,
this time by two members of its
technical staff.

The following resume of the
courses in the Summer Program of
1939 is presented in response to
inquiries chiefly by laymen and
members of planning commissions.

PRINCIPLES OF PLANNING

Object and Scope of City and Regional

Planning.

Major factors responsible for changes in
type of urban development; relation of
physical planning to social and economic
planning; planning as a means of con-
trolling or improving physical environ-
ment.

Modern Concept of Plans and Plan

Making.

The process of plan making; the re-
lationship of the various professions
engaged in the work; the plan itself as
a means to an end and the machinery
for putting it into action; types of
plans; city, district, regional, state and
national planning.

The Circulation System.

Classification of streets and roads in
city and country areas; type and design
of streets and roads; the use of building

lines; parkways and limited access roads;
roadside protective areas; mass trans-
portation of freight and passengers on
streets and roads; mass transportation
by rail; air transportation.

Recreation and Other Open Areas.

Classification; relation to street plan-
ning; local parks and playgrounds;
regional, state and national parks.

Public Buildings Public Utilities and
Other Services.

Control of Private Development Zoning
and Subdivision Control.

Housing.

The economic, governmental and tech-
nical problem involved in providing
decent living quarters for families of low
income; the location of large-scale
housing projects in relation to the city
plan; the function of local and state
housing authorities; the place of private
enterprise in the housing program.

New Towns and Garden Cities.

PLANNING LEGISLATION

Planning Law, the Expression of the
Planners' Opportunities, Objectives
and Limitations.
The need of planning law and its

evolution.
Content of City, County and Regional

Planning Laws.

The administrative agency and its
functions; the master plan; the official
map.
Zoning Law.

The function of the zoning commission
and the board of appeals; zoning or-
dinances for cities and counties.
Other Police Power Legislation.

Subdivision control; building lines.
Highway Law.
Park Law.
Housing Law.

PLANNING ADMINISTRATION

The Relation of the Structure of Govern-
ment to the Administration of the
Planning Program.

Administration and Legislation dis-
tinguished; the composition of the
planning agency.

Planning and Civic Comment

Continuing Administrative Functions of
the Planning Agency.

Special Functions of the Planning Agency.

A Check-list of City and County Planning
Commissions and Accomplishments.

Preserving the Integrity of the Plan from
Official Violation and Violation by
Property Owners.
Zoning Administration.

The board of appeals; variances; non-
conforming uses; special problems.

Subdivision Control.

PLANNING TECHNIQUES

The Preliminary Survey.

The type of data needed, collection and
presentation.

Preparation of the Master Plan.

Preparation of the Zoning Map and
Ordinance.

The Drafting of Subdivision Regulations.

Notes on National Resources Planning

Board

The President nominated and
Congress confirmed Frederic A.
Delano, Dr. Charles E. Merriam,
and George F. Yantis, as members
of the new National Resources
Planning Board. Mr. Delano is
Chairman, and Dr. Merriam, Vice
Chairman. Henry S. Dennison and
Beardsley RumI, former members of
the Advisory Committee of the
National Resources Committee,
have been appointed advisors to the
Board. Charles W. Eliot 2d,
is now Director, Harold Merrill
Executive Officer, and Thomas C.
Blaisdell Chief of the Division of
Research.

New Publications. During the
last quarter, the following new
publications have been released and
can be obtained from the Superin-
tendent of Documents:

1. Legal Problems in the Housing Field,

(Housing Monograph Series No. 2)
76 pp., illustrated, 250.

2. Land, Materials, and Labor Costs,

(Housing Monograph Series, No. 3)
loi pp., illustrated, 300.

3. Regional Planning Part VIII North-

ern Lakes States, 63 pp, illustrated
250.

4. Energy Resources and National Policy,

435 PP-> illustrated, $1.00.

The publication, * 'Legal Problems
in the Housing Field," by Horace
Russell and Leon H. Keyserling,
discusses in the first part, some of
the underlying legal difficulties
which private builders must face.
The second part is an analysis of
the U. S. Housing Act and the
complementary State legislation,
together with a discussion of the
legal problems raised by this public
housing program.

The publication, "Land, Material
and Labor Costs," by six contri-
butors, treats the subjects of loca-
tion factors in housing programs;
site planning; the significance of
small house design; building ma-
terials and the cost of housing;
labor and the cost of housing; and
building regulations and the housing
program.

"Northern Lakes States," Part
VIII of the series of regional reports,
contains a rehabilitation program
designed to improve social and
economic conditions in the Cut-
Over Area in Northern Michigan,
Wisconsin and Minnesota.

The report on Energy Resources
which was submitted a few months

Planning and Civic Comment

ago to the President, was ordered
printed by Congress and is also now
available to the public. Its con-
tents were reviewed in the January-
March, 1939, issue of PLANNING AND
Civic COMMENT.

State planning laws and Junds.
With virtually all of the State
legislatures adjourned, the list of
appropriations to state planning
boards is nearly complete. At this
writing, only New Jersey and Ala-
bama have not yet acted. Although
Indiana received only $1,750 for
the biennium, Purdue University is
providing sufficient funds and per-
sonnel to continue the program.
Oklahoma must also operate under
a reduced appropriation.

In Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota,
North Carolina, South Carolina,
North and South Dakota, and
West Virginia, where the Boards
received no appropriations, either
the Governors have promised to
allocate funds, or the state uni-
versities or state departments are
furnishing technical personnel,
office space, and other assistance.

In Connecticut, the new Develop-
ment Commission takes over the
planning functions formerly dele-
gated to the Legislative Council.

Governor's boards have been
named in both North Dakota and
South Dakota, following abolition
of the statutory boards. A new
Arizona board comes into being
under authority of the Resources
Board Act of 1919. The new Board

has already met and a planning
program is being formulated.

The Oregon board went out of
existence in June, and thus far
Governor Sprague has not appointed
the committees which he has an-
nounced he intends to use for plan-
ning under an appropriation of
$10,000 (for the biennium) for
research.

A bill to consolidate the Mas-
sachusetts board with several other
state agencies failed to pass.

STATE PLANNING PERSONNEL

Arizona. Entirely new Board appointed
Mr. William H. Johnson is Chairman.

Connecticut. Legislative Council abolished
by law, and transferred to the new
Development Commission consisting
of all new members.

Florida. Chairman O. K. Holmes resigned,
and no successor has been named.

Indiana. Prof. George E. Lommel has
succeeded Mr. Virgil Simmons as
Chairman.

Kentucky. Dr. J. W. Martin, Chairman
of the Committee on State Planning
has resigned.

New Jersey. Dr. Jacob G. Lipman, mem-
ber of the Board, died recently.

New York. Mr. Wayne D. Heydecker
resigned as Director of State Planning
and is now Regional Representative of
the Council of State Governments.

Oklahoma. Entirely new Board appointed.
Mr. T. G. Gammie has resigned as
Secretary. Governor Leon C. Phillips
is ex officio Chairman.

Pennsylvania. Mr. Richard P. Brown has
been appointed Chairman.

South Dakota. Entirely new Board ap-
pointed. Mr. A. B. Cahalan is Chair-
man.

Washington. Mr. Ross K Tiffany, Ex-
ecutive Officer, died recently.

Wyoming. Entirely new Board appointed.
Governor Nels H. Smith is President
of the Board.

Federal Government Reorganization

The war time set-up under way for U. S. administrative agencies will prob-
ably accomplish about what would be desirable in peace time.

Progress in U. S. Housing

Since the inauguration of the low-
rent housing program administered
by the U. S. Housing Authority, an
initial group of five projects has been
occupied. A total of 92 projects
were under construction as of Sep-
tember 1, embracing 39,377 dwelling
units. At the beginning of 1938
there were very few municipal hous-
ing authorities. Now there are 259,
and additional authorities are rap-
idly being created. Only ten States
still lack the necessary enabling
legislation to permit their cities to
participate in the program.

Before the decentralized low-rent
housing program could get under
way and construction begin, essen-
tial local administrative machinery
had to be created. This task is now
largely accomplished. On the con-
struction front over 12,000 men are
now employed, and this figure is
rising rapidly as more projects come
under contract. Of the 267 projects
set up by September 1, loan con-
tracts have been signed for 176 with
129 local authorities in 30 States.
Many supporters of the housing
movement, who formerly considered
the housing problem uniquely that
of a few large eastern cities, have
been surprised by the wide geo-
graphical distribution of housing
projects and the participation by
smaller cities and towns in the
program.

In addition to the 20,000 families
living in PWA Housing Division
projects now administered by the
USHA, 1130 families had moved

into homes built under the USHA
program by September 1. Under the
present authorization some 160,000
families will ultimately be housed.
These families are all drawn from
"the lowest income group" in their
communities, which means that in
most cities average annual tenant
incomes will be less than $1,000.
For every house built under the
USHA program one slum dwelling
is demolished or reconditioned.

Technical research and accumu-
lated experience are steadily driving
construction costs down. The aver-
age over-all cost of houses under the
USHA program thus far is $4,633.
The net construction cost of USHA
houses was $2,905 on September 1,
which is less than the average cost of
comparable private construction as
shown by building permit data
collected by the U. S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics. The constant re-
duction of costs and rents is the
major goal of the USHA program.

The present congressional loan
authorization for USHA purposes is
$800,000,000, of which $670,000,000
is available and has been fully com-
mitted since the spring of 1939. An
additional authorization of the same
sum is now pending in Congress. All
of the money loaned to local housing
authorities is repaid to the Federal
government over a 60-year period of
amortization, and the only cost to
the government is the amount of
annual subsidy which, to cover the
initial program, amounted to
$28,000,000.

State Park

ALABAMA

With the recent acquisition of
80 acres of land by the State, the
boundaries of Monte Sano State
Park, Alabama, have been extended
to include Natural Well, a cavern
considered one of the outstanding
natural wonders of the South.

Plans of the Department of
Conservation for the development
of Natural Well call for the instal-
lation of an elevator or other device
to make the cavern easily accessible,
and provision of such lighting as
may be necessary to display the
Well and its corridors to the best
advantage.

Development of five of the State's
parks DeSoto, Cheaha, Chewacla,
Gulf, and Monte Sano (with the
exception of the Natural Well
project) has been completed. Of
the remaining nine, Little River
and Oak Mountain State Parks,
although still under development,
now have cabins available to the
public. In addition, the Mound
State Monument, with its unusual
archeological museum housing two
in-situ burial pits and many arti-
facts, is open to visitors.

All of these areas are described
in an attractive, illustrated folder
entitled, "State Parks in Ala-
bama."

CALIFORNIA

Three new members were ap-
pointed to the California State Park
Commission by Governor Olson
in July, 1939. Matthew M. Gleason,
who was elected Chairman of the
Commission, formerly served as a
member of the San Diego City
Planning Commission for six years.
He is vice-president of a title and
trust company of that city. The
two other new members of the
Commission are Milton T. Vander-
slice, of Walnut Creek, Contra
Costa County, and the Reverend
Francis J. Caffrey, M.M., pastor of
Old Mission San Juan Bautista,
San Benito County. Albert L.
Nelson continues as the fourth mem-
ber of the Commission. Darwin W.
Tate of Los Angeles was named
Chief of the Division of Parks, De-
partment of Natural Resources,
succeeding A. E. Henning. George
D. Nordenholt is Director of Na-
tural Resources of the State of
California.

The Division of Parks recently
purchased the "Avenue of Giants"
in Humboldt County, thus adding
to the state park system a new tract
of about 400 acres along the Red-
wood Highway containing some of
California's most magnificent red-
woods.

Planning and Civic Comment

Destined to be one of the great
state parks of its type, the Anza
State Park has become a reality by
action of the California State Park
Commission. Through patent of
the Federal government and pur-
chases from private interests, the
State has already taken title to
181,510 acres in this desert holding.
Applications for patent to 188,000
additional acres are in process, and
lands available to the State under
Acts of Congress will bring the
total to slightly more than 500,000
acres. The name "Anza*' was ap-
plied to this desert region because
of the fact that diagonally through
it runs the famous trail followed in
1774, 1775 and 1776 by the expedi-
tions of the Spanish explorer, Capt.
Juan Bautista de Anza. Anza is
located in the southwest corner of
the Colorado desert in San Diego
and Imperial counties and includes
four units: Borrego Desert, Valle-
citos Desert, Salton Sea Desert and
Carrizo Desert.

INDIANA

At the dedication of the new
hotel in Spring Mill State Park,
Indiana, on July 7, both Governor
Townsend and Conservation Di-
rector Virgil Simmons lauded Col-
onel Lieber for the excellent founda-
tion he laid for the State's park
system during his tenure in office as
director of the Department of
Conservation.

In his introductory remarks, Mr.
Simmons said, "It is very important
that every generation produce some
outstanding man, or civilization
would make slow progress. Colonel
Lieber did such a swell job that I
didn't have to add one thing, merely

to carry on a system which had been
perfectly worked out. The people
of Indiana and I want to take off
our hats to a man who did a job
when very few thought it was
necessary. This is the first time I
have had an opportunity to thank
Colonel Lieber and acknowledge
the fine thing he did, not only for
us but for generations yet to come.
He could have no better monument
than the Indiana State ParkSystem."

Construction of this newest In-
diana state park hotel was made
possible through the sale of sand
taken from Lake Michigan and
used by Chicago to fill in the area
which was used for the World's
Fair in 1934.

Colonel Lieber took part in the
dedication ceremonies.

NEW YORK

Beautiful fieldstone museums
have been erected in the organized
camping regions of Palisades Inter-
state Park to serve as nature centers.

Each building is under the super-
vision of a regional director whose
task it is to help people realize the
importance of nature study as a
cultural activity; to train leaders
in nature recreation; and to organize
for the future development of the
nature study program in the park.

There are regional museums in
connection with the organized camps
at Cohasset, Kanawauke, Stahahe,
Tiorati and Twin Lakes. When
funds are available it is planned to
provide similar facilities for Lakes
Sebago and Skenonto. In the mean-
time, directors of the other regional
museums are extending their ser-
vices to the campers in the Lake
Sebago district.

Planning and Civic Comment

Palisades has long been distin-
guished for its provision of nature-
trail facilities.

NORTH CAROLINA

The latest addition to North
Carolina's growing state park sys-
tem is Pettigrew State Park, an
area of 200 acres located on Lake
Phelps in Washington and Tyrrell
Counties.

It includes the old Pettigrew
plantation house, Magnolia, built
in 1830 by Ebenezer Pettigrew, and
the old Collins mansion, Somerset,
erected in 1805 by Josiah Collins.
There are also the remains of many
miles of canals for drainage and
transportation, dug by slave labor
for Collins and other plantation
owners, to reclaim the rich land
from what had been a dense swamp.

Collins and his descendants raised
fine horses and had a private race
track just across a canal from their
mansion, and this site is now one of
the most interesting features of the
new park.

The 200-acre tract was trans-
ferred to the North Carolina De-
partment of Conservation and De-
velopment by the Farm Security
Administration under a ninety-nine-
year lease.

Old Fort Macon, center of the
state part of that name, is enter-
taining thousands of visitors an-
nually. The Fort, construction of
which was begun in 1826 and com-
pleted in 1834, was in a very sad
state of disrepair when the State
acquired it. With the assistance of
the Civilian Conservation Corps,
it has now been restored.

Surrounded by a great moat, with
entrance by way of a drawbridge,

Fort Macon's curving arches of
masonry, massive brick walls, dun-
geon-like magazines and garrison
rooms take the visitor back a cen-
tury or more.

OHIO

The State Legislature has re-
cently reorganized the Conservation
Division into an Ohio Division of
Conservation and Natural Re-
sources to operate under a nine-
member, bi-partisan commission
empowered to select the Conserva-
tion Commissioner and personnel
of the Division. Members of the
commission will serve for eight
years.

Don Waters has been appointed
Conservation Commissioner, and
W. R. Wheelock is the new chief
of the Bureau of Inland Lakes and
Parks.

Two illustrated, descriptive
folders "State Owned Lakes and
Parks" and "Happy Days in Ohio
Play Places" have recently been
issued by the Division, which also
publishes The Ohio Conservation
Bulletin.

The folders are available without
charge, as is a map of Ohio showing
the State's principal streams and
tributaries, and the recreation areas
under supervision of the Division.
The Bulletin sells for 10 cents a
copy or for 50 cents a year.

SOUTH CAROLINA

At the Kings Mountain State
Summer Camp was held during
July the 1939 Session of the South
Carolina Conservation of Natural
Resources School, sponsored by the
S. C. Garden Clubs, the Federation
of Women's Clubs with the S. C

Planning and Civic Comment

Forest Service Cooperating. A ses-
sion devoted to state parks included
papers as follows: "The State Park
Movement in the U. S." by Herbert
Evison, National Park Service;
'The State Park System of South
Carolina," by R. A. Walker; "State
Park Needs in South Carolina/'
by H. A. Smith; "National His-
torical Parks," by Oswald E. Camp,
Supt., Kings Mountain National
Historical Park; "How Club Wo-
men Can Use and Help Others Use
State Parks," by Covington Mac-
Millan, Recreation Director S. C.
State Parks; "Need for More and
Better City Parks" by Miss Adelle
J. Minahan.

VIRGINIA

A report of attendance in Vir-
ginia's state parks discloses the
fact that their popularity is defi-
nitely increasing. For the period
May 16 to August 13, 1939, there
were 176,870 visitors in the parks,
as compared with 150,996 visitors
during the same period of 1938.

WEST VIRGINIA

The school shildren of West
Virginia are learning that the "C"
in their ABC's represents
Conservation!

The State Conservation Com-
mission and the State Department
of Education have collaborated in
the preparation of an extensive
course of study for use in every
grade and have published for the
use and guidance of the teachers
in the public schools a two-volume
compilation entitled, "West Vir-
ginia Units in Conservation."

The course of study as outlined

in these volumes does not attempt
to introduce conservation as a
separate subject but rather contains
suggestions for its integration with
subjects generally taught in each
grade of the public schools. The
outline for each grade is followed by
a bibliography; appendices contain
check lists of the flora and fauna of
West Virginia, and the volumes are
are well illustrated.

In the foreword, H. W. Shawhan,
Director of Conservation, says:
"The best investment we can make
in perpetuating our great renewable
natural resources is to inspire the
young people to conserve and
restore the soil, forests, waters and
wildlife. The Conservation Com-
mission sincerely hopes that the
outlines here presented may help
public school teachers in guiding
the growing generations into under-
standing participation in an intel-
ligent conservation program. I com-
mend heartily such efforts to meet
the responsibility we face in learn-
ing how to get along with nature."

IRMINE B. KENNEDY, Washington, D. C.

Two NOTABLE BOOKS

CITY PLANNING, WHY AND How, by
Harold MacLean Lewis, presents the
subject of city planning in terms of its
relation to the everyday life of the indi-
vidual. It shows that planning is not
limited to a professional planner or city
official, but is something in which the
average citizen can and should play an
active part.

HOUSING FOR THE MACHINE AGE, by
Clarence Arthur Perry, published by the
Russell Sage Foundation, outlines the
procedure for developing single-family
sections and apartment-house units and
presents a study of the legal procedure
which will make possible large-scale
building by neighborhoods. A valuable
contribution to the planning and housing
literature.

President and Director of NCSP to Prepare Study of
National Capital Parks

Harold G. Wagner, President,
and Capt. Charles G. Sauers, mem-
ber of the Board of Directors,
National Conference on State Parks
two outstanding men in the
metropolitan park field were se-
lected by Secretary of the Interior
Harold L. Ickes to make a joint
study of the National Capital
Parks of the District of Columbia.

In announcing the Secretary's
action, it was stated that Capt.
Sauers, General Superintendent of
the Cook County Forest Preserve
District of Illinois, and Mr. Wagner,
Director-Secretary of the Akron
Metropolitan Park District, would
be lent to the National Park Service
through the cooperation of their
respective boards.

The preliminary study has been
made and will be followed by a
more detailed survey later in the
year. After the reconnaissance in
August, Mr. Wagner and Capt.
Sauers returned to their respective
park districts. They will begin the
more detailed study after September
15. It is anticipated that from
three to four months will be re-
quired to complete the work. The
study will include an analysis of
the parks organization, its general
administrative procedure, and re-
lated functions, with recommenda-
tions for future operations of the
system.

Based upon the findings and
recommendations resulting from
this joint study by two of the

Nation's leading park experts, Sec-
retary Ickes plans to request the
Civil Service Commission to set up
a competitive examination for Na-
tional Capital Parks superinten-
dency which would permit selection
of one of the country's ranking men
in metropolitan or municipal park
work.

The problems of the National
Capital Parks system differ greatly
from those of other park systems
throughout the country, both na-
tional and municipal. Because of
the importance of the Nation's
Capital as a focal point for travel
from all over the country, park use
is exceptionally heavy. In addition,
the approximately 600 units of the
National Capital Parks system are
operated in close relation to numer-
ous other agencies of the local and
Federal Government in the District,
as well as with civic organizations.
Because of these peculiar condi-
tions, Secretary Ickes felt the en-
tire field should be surveyed im-
partially by members of an outside
disinterested organization before a
successor is appointed to Superin-
tendent C. Marshall Finnan, who
recently left Washington to take
up his new duties as superintendent
of Zion National Park, Utah.

Assistant Superintendent Frank
T. Gartside will continue as Acting
Superintendent pending the ap-
pointment of the Superintendent
to be selected as the result of the
Civil Service examination.

New Land Acquisition Program for Cook
County Forest Preserve District

By CAPT. CHARLES G. SAUERS, General Superintendent

The Forest Preserve District of
Cook County, Illinois, is authorized
by an Act passed during the 1939
session of the State Legislature to
acquire by purchase 5,000 addi-
tional acres. The 1914 Act of the
Legislature which created the Forest
Preserve District set its limit at
35,000 acres. Present holdings em-
brace 33,690 acres.

Clayton F. Smith, President of
the Board of Forest Preserve Com-
missioners, and the members of the
Board have under consideration a
proposal made to them by Edward
E. Brown, Chairman of the Ad-
visory Committee to the Board, to
add 2,900 acres by transfer from
the Sanitary District of Chicago.

"The time is ripe for additional
acreage to be incorporated in the
plan of Forest Preserve District
Land Acquisition," stated Chair-
man Brown.

The proposed additions will bring
the total holdings of the Forest
Preserve District to more than
42,000 acres. Reasons advanced for
the expansion are: Increase of
population, anticipation of pur-
chase of land by commercial enter-
prises for factory sites in areas
adjacent to present holdings thus
impairing the landscape, and the
need for knitting more closely
present separated holdings.

Facts furnished to the Committee
as compiled by Robert Kingery,
General Manager of the Chicago
Regional Planning Association and

Secretary of the Advisory Com-
mittee, give the background for
the recommendation.

The population of Cook County,
Illinois, will be 5,500,000 in 1960.
This is not a haphazard guess nor
an optimistic hope, but a conclusion
of Mr. Kingery, who as Cook
County's "clinician" for 15 years,
has made exhaustive studies of
eras of expansion, periods of
retardation, tendencies of home
builders in establishing neighbor-
hoods, action of commercial in-
stitutions seeking sites for factories,
and general trend of the permanent
resident as well as the nomad.

He has watched Cook County
grow. He has as aides in his "clinic"
the telephone, gas and electric light
companies, the Building Permits
Departments of Chicago and
suburbs, the elevated and surface
transporation lines, the railroads,
real estate agents and many others
who are first to know the preferred
areas and recognize those destined
to be thriving communities.

In 1916, when the first plan of
35,000 acres was prepared, the
population of Cook County was
2,700,000. In 1930, it was estimated
that the County's population today
would be 4,400,000.

The proximity of the city makes
it easy for citizens to visit the
forest preserves frequently. They
come to hike the 150 miles of trails
or to ride horses or bicycles over
them. They come to swim in three

Planning and Civic Comment

perfect pools, to play on the five
superb golf courses, to picnic in
hundreds of groves, to rest, study
and observe Nature in her myriad
manifestations, to visit Trailside
Museum where there are exhibited,
living or mounted, species of every
creature in the Cook County Forest
Preserves, to watch water fowl in
their refuges, to see birds in migra-
tion and to watch and enjoy resident
birds, to fish in the Skokie lagoons
and inland lakes, to observe the
elk and deer, to skate, ski and
toboggan in numerous winter sports
areas and 15,000,000 of them come
each year!

The lands owned by the Sanitary
District of Chicago are strategically
located to form connections between
the preserves which now are sepa-
rated from one another, thus break-
ing the continuity of trails and dis-
connecting public recreation use.
In several locations these lands are
especially well suited for the ex-
pansion of the public holdings for
the definite purpose of preventing
the encroachment of some inap-
propriate use. This is especially
true in the Sag Valley where the
Sag Canal severs two great tracts
of the Palos Forest Preserve.

The property adjacent to this
canal and owned by the Sanitary
District is some 600 to 1,000 feet in
width. Were this and some adjacent
privately owned land to be sub-
divided or utilized for an oil refinery
or cement plant, real injury would
be done the present preserves. Mr.
Kingery sees this possibility, hence
advises the acquisition of this
property.

The 5,000 acres for addition to
the plan is made up of a connecting

belt of land along streams and lakes
such as Thorn Creek in southern
Cook County, around Wolf Lake in
southeastern Chicago, along the
upper Des Plaines River where the
continuity of the Forest Preserves
is still broken, and similarly along
the North Branch of the Chicago
River.

With the addition of new acres,
the paradox of permitting 15,000-
ooo visitors annually to roam over
an area set aside for the protection
and preservation of the natural
flora and fauna, without injury to
landscape, will be met more
efficiently. These new acres will
permit to a greater extent relief of
the population load in densely
forested areas by utilizing the open
land for playfields, parking spaces
and entrances.

Recreation authorities and park
administrators throughout the
country have agreed that the de-
sirable objective in respect to mu-
nicipal parks and playgrounds is 10
acres for each 1,000 persons. For
state and county parks the larger
reservation type of holdings a
similar ratio is 10 acres per 1,000
persons for the entire metropolitan
population including both rural
and urban, is recommended by
authorities.

With an anticipated population
of 7,300,000 in the fifteen-county
Chicago metropolitan area by 1960,
there should be 73,000 acres of the
large public-recreation type of hold-
ing. At present about 46,000 acres
are publicly owned in this fifteen-
county region. It is anticipated
that of the 27,000 acres needed to
attain this objective, Cook County
should acquire about 8,000 acres;

Planning and Civic Comment

the State of Illinois, 9,000 acres;
Wisconsin, 2,000; Indiana, 2,000,
all in the metropolitan region; and
the other counties the balance
of approximately 6,000 acres.

Hence, with the addition of 5,000
acres through purchase, and the

acquisition of an additional 3,000
acres by transfer from the Sanitary
District of Chicago, the Cook
County Forest Preserve District
will have set a precedent and will
fulfill the suggested ratio of acreage
to population.

Eastern Regional Conference of NCSP

The Eastern Regional Conference
of the National Conference on State
Parks was held at the Hotel Jeffer-
son, Atlantic City, N. J., on Sep-
tember 25, 26 and 27. The meeting
was held in connection with the
Annual Meeting of the N. J. Parks
and Recreation Association. Joint
sessions of the two organizations be-
gan with a dinner on Monday,
September 25. Mrs. Mina M.
Edison Hughes, Chairman of the
Conference Committee of the N. J.
Parks and Recreation Association,
presided. On the program were:
Major George W. Farny, "New
Jersey's Needs for Parks and Recre-
ation;" H. S. Wagner, 'The Na-
tional Conference on State Parks;"
Ellwood B. Chapman, "Value of
State Associations in Furthering the
Park Movement."

On Tuesday, at the morning ses-
sion, Major William A. Welch pre-
sided. The program was devoted to
a symposium on State Park De-
velopment in the East. Perry H.

Merrill, Montpelier, Vt., reported
for the Vermont State Forest Parks;
Edward L. Bike, Melrose, Mass, for
New England; James F. Evans,
Albany, N. Y., for New York;
Charles P. Wilber, Trenton, N. J.,
for New Jersey; John R. Williams,
Harrisburg, Pa., for Pennsylvania.
Herbert Evison, Richmond, Va.,
spoke on "Federal Aid for the
Eastern States."

At the afternoon session, William
E. Carson presided. The following
subjects were discussed: "Recrea-
tional Use of Forested Areas" by
William H. Howard, Director of
Lands and Forests, Conservation
Department, Albany, N. Y.; "Need
for Seashore Parks" by Conrad L.
Wirth, National Park Service;
"Group Camps" by Dr. Lloyd B.
Sharp, Executive Director, Life
Camps, Inc., N. Y.; "A Continuous
State Park System" by Ernest J.
Dean, Commissioner of Conserva-
tion, Boston, Mass.

ALEXANDER THOMSON 1879-1939

Alexander Thomson, a member an excellent business man.

of the Board of Directors of the
NCSP, died on June 27, 1939, at
his home in Cincinnati, Ohio. As
President of the Champion Coated
Paper Company, Mr. Thomson was

He was a civic leader in Ohio and
has been a generous supporter of
the work of the Conference for
several years.

Recent Court Decisions

Compiled by FLAVEL SHURTLEFF with the cooperation of Edward M. Bassett

The courts will not uphold ar-
bitrary exclusion of uses from res-
idential districts. The zoning or-
dinance of the City of Winnetka,
Illinois, allowed public schools in
residence zones but, at least by
inference, excluded private schools.
A permit was requested by the
Catholic Bishop of Chicago for the
erection of a parochial school. The
permit was refused by the Building
Inspector and the refusal was sus-
tained by the Board of Appeals but
the court held that a parochial
school in a residential zone was no
more detrimental to the welfare of
the public than a public school and
that the provision of the ordinance
had no substantial relation to health,
safety, morals or welfare. (Catho-
lic Bishop of Chicago v. Kingery,
20 N.E. 2nd 583, April 14, 1939).

The Nevada court came to the
same conclusion with regard to the
exclusion of a church from a resi-
dential district. A provision in the
zoning ordinance of the City of Reno
allowed permits only for the erection
of residences in a residential zone
but if the application for a permit
for a non-residential use were ac-
companied by the written consent
of the owners of three-fourths of the
land in the same block where the
proposed building was to be erected,
the council might grant the appli-
cation by a majority vote. The
Catholic Biship of Reno applied for
a permit to erect a church in a
residential zone and the application
was not supported by the required

consents. In holding that the sec-
tion of the ordinance requiring con-
sents for a church in a residence
district was void, the court dis-
tinguished between such uses as
churches, schools, art galleries, li-
braries, etc. and uses clearly in-
consistent with single family resi-
dence districts, such as stables,
garages, funeral parlors, billboards,
two family residences, laundries,
etc. (State exrel Roman Catholic
Bishop of Reno v. Hill, 90 Pac.
2nd 217, May, 1939).

A land owner may recover special
damages suffered as the result of a
violation of the zoning ordinance.
The Supreme Court of Kings
County, New York, granted an
injunction and awarded damages
of $2,400. This was at the rate of
$40 a month for the period in which
an adjoining property owner had
conducted an undertaking estab-
lishment in a residential district.
(Bailer v. Ringe. Reported in New
York Law Journal, May 10, 1939,
page 2 1 58).

The so-called Maryland airport
zoning statute (Chapter 383 of the
Acts of 1937) was declared uncon-
stitutional by the Maryland Circuit
Court. This statute restricted the
erection of buildings and other
structures on land adjoining public
airports. Its enforcement would
prevent an adjoining land owner
from erecting a building or structure
six and two-thirds feet high at a
distance of one hundred feet from
the boundary of the airport, thir-

Planning and Civic Comment

teen and one-third feet high at a
distance of two hundred feet, twenty
feet high at a distance of three
hundred feet; and thirty-three and
one-third feet at a distance of five
hundred feet. The Court said, "The
statute cannot be sustained as an
exercise of the police power. A
zoning law, to be valid as such, must
be for the benefit of the public
generally." The Court quotes, ap-
parently without giving the source
of the quotation, the following:
"The zoning of an area surrounding
an airport is rather for the benefit of
those who desire to use aerial trans-
portation and for those who use
airplanes than for the general
public." (Mutual Chemical Com-
pany v. Mayor and City Council of
Baltimore. Maryland Circuit Court,
Baltimore City, January 25, 1939).
Variances. Where the petitioner's
land was situated partly in a resi-
dence zone A and partly in a resi-
dence zone B, in both of which gas
stations were forbidden and where
on the other side of the street the
land was zoned for industry in
which gas stations were allowed,
the Board of Adjustment denied a
petition for a variance allowing the
construction of a gas station, and
the court, in sustaining the refusal
to grant the variance, said, "If a
municipality is to be zoned for or
against various uses, it is inevitable
that zones with differing restrictions
should abut and it is likely that a
degree of apparent hardship will
thus be visited upon the more
restricted owner along the line of

junction. It is not shown to us how
this Court may for that, and that
only, reason command the allow-
ance of an exception by a Board of
Ad j ustment without ultimately
sounding the death knell of the
whole zoning movement." (Coriell
v. Borough of Dunellen, (N. J.)
4 Atl. 2nd, 396, February 21, 1939).
Variances may be granted to
avoid unnecessary hardship in ap-
plying the restrictions of a zoning
ordinance but not to increase those
restrictions. The petitioner owned
a lot in a business zone and the
surrounding land was residential.
The Building Inspector had properly
granted a permit for a self-service
food market. Adjoining residential
owners appealed to the Board of
Adjustment which voted that the
zoning ordinance established only
minimum requirements and that
although the service food market
was not specifically prohibited in
the business zone by the ordinance,
it came within the class of trades
which the ordinance would exclude
from residential zones, i.e., those
permitting congestion. The Court
over-ruled the action of the Board
of Adjustment on the ground that
the market was clearly a use per-
mitted in a business zone and could
not be excluded by the Board of
Adjustment. The fact that the
surrounding country was residen-
tial was beside the point. (Leonard
Inc. Co. v. Board of Adjustment of
City of Trenton, (N. J.) 4 Atl.
2nd, 768. Supreme Court, March
I5 1939).

Two Beautiful Gift Books for National Park Enthusiasts

Romance of the National Parks, by Harlean James. $3.00.
Portfolio on the National Park and Monument System. $1.00.

Watch Service Report

National Parks

Final status of legislation affecting the National Parks, y6th Congress, ist Session:
H. R. 3794 (Gearhart) introduced on Feb. 7. To establish the John Muir-Kings
Canyon National Park, California. Reported from House Committee with amendments
on May 25. On July 18, the bill passed the House in amended form, with the name
changed to Kings Canyon National Park. On Aug. 3, the Committee on Public Lands
and Surveys of the Senate reported the bill without amendment. The same day, the
bill was called up on the unanimous consent calendar but was passed over. This means
that final action by the Senate is deferred until the next session of the 76th Congress.

Legislation enacted

H. R. 3409 S. 1107 (Norton-Caraway) introduced Jan. 30 and Feb. i. To amend
the Act of June 15, 1936 authorizing the extension of the boundaries of the Hot Springs
National Park. This bill authorizes an appropriation of $8,000 for the purchase of
additional lands. It passed the House July 6; Senate, Aug. i ; approved by the President
Aug. 10, 1939.

H. R. 4742 (Fernandez) introduced March 3. To provide for the establishment of
the Chalmette National Historical Park in the State of Louisiana. Passed the House
June 5; Senate, Aug. i; approved by the President Aug. 10. This new park contains
the site of the most important land battle of the War of 1812.

S. 509 (Sheppard) introduced Jan. 10. To add certain lands of the Front Royal
Quartermaster Depot Military Reservation, Virginia, to the Shenandoah National
Park. Passed Senate, Mar. 8; House, June 5; approved by the President June 13.

S. 2046 H. R. 5573 (Radcliffe-Creal) introduced April 3 and April 5. To change
the designations of Abraham Lincoln National Park in the State of Kentucky and the
Fort McHenry National Park in the State of Maryland. Passed House, Aug. 5 ; Senate,
Aug. i, approved by the President Aug. n. In future the new names will be Abraham
Lincoln National Historical Park, and the Fort McHenry National Monument and
Historic Shrine.

H. R. 2990 (Norton) introduced Jan. 20. To extend the Civilian Conservation
Corps to July i, 1943 and to provide an official seal for the Corps. Passed House, Aug. i ;
Senate, Aug. i ; approved by the President, Aug. 7.

S. 770 (Wheeler) to authorize an addition to Glacier National Park in Montana for
the establishment and operation of a fish hatchery. Passed Senate July 6; House,
July 17; approved by the President July 31.

H. Res. 284 (De Rouen) introduced July 31. A Resolution authorizing a survey and
study of the national parks, national monuments, and national shrines. Passed House
Aug. 4.

Executive Order

Tuzigopt National Monument was established by Executive Order, signed July 25,
1939. This prehistoric ruin of great archeological, scenic and educational interest,
comprises 42,663 acres of land in north central Arizona.

Bills Vetoed

S. 6 (Hayden) introduced Jan. 4. To return a portion of the Grand Canyon National
Monument to the public domain. Passed Senate July 18; House, July 31 ; vetoed Aug. 7.

S. J. Res. 1 60 (Byrd) introduced June 23. To provide for the maintenance for
public use of certain highways in the Shenandoah National Park. Passed Senate, Aug. i ;
House, Aug. 4; vetoed Aug. 9.

H. R. 3959 (Robinson) introduced Feb. 8. To authorize the Secretary of the Interior
to dispose of recreation demonstration projects and for other purposes. Passed Senate
with amendments Aug. 3; House, Aug. 4; vetoed Aug. n.

Bills awaiting action at next session

S. Res. 147 (Ashurst) introduced June 20. Authorizing the Committee on Public
Lands and Surveys to make a thorough investigation of all questions relating to the
proposed enlargement of Rocky Mountain National Park. Reported to Senate without
amendment, Aug. 3.

Planning and Civic Comment

H. R. 7272 (Monroney) introduced July 19. To add certain land to the Platt Na-
tional Park in Oklahoma. Referred to Committee on Public Lands.

H. R. 2315 (McGehee) introduced Jan. n. To provide for the addition of certain
lands to the Vicksburg National Military Park, in the State of Mississippi. Passed
House, July 31.

H. R. 7532 (Harden) introduced Aug. 5. To authorize the Secretary of the Interior
to acquire property for Moores Creek National Military Park. Referred to Committee
on Public Lands.

S. 2493 (Byrd) introduced May 25. To provide for the operation of the recreational
facilities within the Chopawamsic recreational demonstration project near Dumfries,
Virginia, by the Secretary of the Interior. Passed Senate, Aug. i.

H. R. 6959 (Horton) introduced June 22. A bill to abolish the Grand Teton National
Park in the State of Wyoming and to transfer the lands, improvements, and facilities
of the U. S. within the boundaries of said park to the Teton National Forest. Referred
to Committee on Public lands.

Housing

S. 2240 (Wagner) introduced April 25. To provide for a National Census of Housing.
Approved by the President, Aug. n. Public Law No. 385.

National Resources Planning Board

H. J. Res. 326 (Taylor, Colorado) introduced June 13. Making appropriations for
work relief and relief for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1940. Contains in Section 9
the following provision: "There is hereby appropriated to the National Resources
Planning Board out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated for the
fiscal year ending June 30, 1940, $750,000. Such sum shall be available for administra-
tive expenses in carrying out the functions heretofore vested in the National Resources
Committee, and such functions as are authorized to be carried out until June 30, 1940.
On and After July I, 1939 and until June 30, 1940, said Board shall be composed of three
members to be appointed by the President from widely separated sections of the United
States, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate." Passed House, June 16;
Senate, June 28; approved by the President, June 30. Public Resolution No. 40.

The International Congress at Stockholm

A registration of 940 delegates presentation and discussion were:

and visitors to the International House Building for Special Groups;

Housing and Town Planning Con- Town Planning and Local Traffic;

gress at Stockholm in July, 1939, and the Administrative Basis of

was reported by Mr. A. P. Greens- National and Regional Planning,

felder of St. Louis, who attended Two days were assigned for con-

the Congress with Mrs. Greens- sideration of each topic, the dis-

felder. About 40 were present from cussion sessions being interspersed

America. with tours, film showings, exhibi-

In addition to Mr. and Mrs. tions, a concert and the banquet in

Greensfelder, other members of the impressive city hall of the city

the AP&CA who attended were: of Stockholm.

Mr. and Mrs. Walter H. Blucher, Among the printed reports re-
Mr, and Mrs. Herbert U. Nelson, ceived from Mr. Greensfelder were:
S. R. DeBoer; Mr. and Mrs. L. F. 'Town Planning and Local Traffic,"
Eppich. general report by Landesrat R.

According to the official program, Niemeyer, and several booklets

the three topics announced for dealing with housing in Stockholm.

National Park Conference An Unusual
Opportunity

Santa Fe is one of the most en-
trancing towns in the United States.
It still fosters much of its old-world
atmosphere. Before the Mayflower
landed on the rock-bound coast of
New England, Santa Fe was founded
on the sunny slopes of the Sangre de
Cristo Mountains, in New Mexico.
It has lived on under changes of
government and shifting popula-
tions. Visitors may see the Palace
of the Governors, first erected early
in the 17th century; San Miguel
Church, known traditionally as the
oldest church in the United States;
the Cathedral, built in 1869 on the
site of a chapel erected in the early
days of Santa Fe; and the old Plaza
which is today, as it was three hun-
dred years ago, the center of the
town's activities.

There are interesting new build-
ings in Santa Fe, the Art Museum,
built in the "Santa Fe style" of
architecture and containing the
Saint Francis auditorium with its
colorful murals designed by the late
Donald Beauregard and painted by
the late Carlos Vierra and Kenneth
M. Chapman. There is the new
Municipal Building in the so-called
Territorial style of architecture.
There is the Laboratory of Anthro-
pology, endowed by the Rockefeller
Foundation, and, in the same
grounds, there is the new Region
III Headquarters Building of the
National Park Service. La Fonda
Hotel, built in the Santa Fe style
and operated by Fred Harvey, is
picturesque and colorful.

It is in this town, 20 miles from
the transcontinental Santa Fe rail-

road, that the third National Park
Conference of the American Plan-
ning and Civic Association will be
held. The New Mexico Chapter of
the Association, under the able
chairmanship of Col. T. B. Catron,
has made arrangements for many
entertaining functions, beginning on
Sunday, October 8.

The regular sessions of the Con-
ference on Monday and Tuesday,
October 9 and 10, will cover sub-
jects of interest and importance,
presented by leaders in their fields.
Among those who will address the
Conference are: Hon. Oscar L.
Chapman, Assistant Secretary of the
Interior, Hon. Robert Fechner, Di-
rector, Civilian Conservation Corps,
Arthur E. Demaray, Associate Di-
rector of the National Park Service,
Major O. A. Tomlinson, Chairman,
National Park Superintendents,
Colonel T. B. Catron, Chairman
New Mexico Chapter of the Ameri-
can Planning and Civic Association.
Horace M. Albright, President of
the American Planning and Civic
Association, will preside at the open-
ing session and the Association will
be welcomed by Hon. John E. Miles,
Governor of New Mexico, Hon.
Alfredo Ortiz, Mayor of Santa Fe,
and Hillory A. Tolson, Director of
Region III, National Park Service.
It is expected that Dr. J. Horace
McFarland, Hon. F. A. Silcox, Chief
Forester of the U. S. Forest Service;
Irvin J. McCrary, of Denver, Colo.,
Francis P. Farquhar, Editor Sierra
Club Bulletin, of San Francisco;
Conrad L. Wirth, Thomas C. Vint,
George L. Collins, Frank Pinkley,

Planning and Civic Comment

Supt. of Southwestern National
Monuments, and Jesse Nusbaum,
all of the National Park Service;
Hon. Clifford H. Stone, Director of
the Colorado Water Conservation
Board, Earle S. Draper of the
T. V. A.; Dr. Hermon C. Bumpus,
Chairman, and Dr. Henry E. Bolton
and Col. Richard Lieber, members of
the Advisory Board of National
Parks, Historic Sites, Buildings and
Monuments; Miss Pearl Chase of
Santa Barbara, and Dr. H. Scudder
Mekeel, Director of the Laboratory

of Anthropology will participate in
the program.

The 1200-mile tour (October 11-
18), which is in charge of Region III
of the National Park Service, will
include stops at San Ildefonso Indian
Village, Bandelier, Chaco Canyon
and Aztec Ruins National Monu-
ments, Mesa Verde National Park,
the proposed Escalante National
Monument, Canyon de Chelly Na-
tional Monument, Navajo and Hopi
Indian Reservations and Grand
Canyon National Park.

Conservation Education in the Northwest

The Northwest Conservation
League is to be congratulated on its
First Annual Conference in the
form of an Institute at the Central
Washington College of Education
at Ellensburg, Washington, on July
10 to 12 this past summer. The
summer courses for teachers were
in session. Many of the regular
classes were dismissed in order to
permit the students to attend the
general and round-table sessions of
the Conference.

Members of the faculties of the
various Washington colleges, rep-
resentatives of the Washington
State Planning Council, and other
State of Washington officials,
speakers from the regional Federal
Park, Forest and Biological Ser-
vices, joined with members of the

Northwest Conservation League to
provide a program which was ac-
knowledged by those present to be
of high educational value. The
interest shown by present and
prospective teachers in current con-
servation problems was most stim-
ulating. Two students from the
Yakima High School who attended
the Institute, plan to form a Con-
servation group in the school and
have written the American Planning
and Civic Association for printed
material to use.

Mrs. Margaret Thompson, Presi-
dent of the League, and Professor
Ernest Muzzall, of the faculty
of the Washington College of Edu-
cation, cooperated in the arrange-
ments for this excellent educational
program.

CLARENCE PHELPS DODGE 1877-1939

Clarence Phelps Dodge, former
member of the Board of Directors
of the American Planning and Civic
Association, died at his home in
Denver, Colorado, on July 29, 1939.
Graduated from Yale in 1899, he

became connected with the various
philanthropic foundations estab-
lished by his grandfather. He served
as a director of the George Wash-
ington Parkway Fund during his
residence in Washington, D. C.

Recent Publications

Compiled by Katharine McNamara, Librarian of the Departments of
Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, Harvard University

ARONOVICI, CAROL. Housing the Masses.
New York, John Wiley and Sons, Inc.,
1939. 291 pages. IIIus., diagrs., tables.
Price $3.50.

CHAWNER, LOWELL J. Residential build-
ing. . . Washington, Goyt. Printing
Office, 1939. 19 pages. Diagrs., tables.
(U. S. National Resources Committee.
Industrial Committee. Housing Mono-
graph Series, no. i.) Price 10 cents.

CITY PLAN AND ZONING COMMISSION.
Twelfth Annual Report, 1938-1939.
Des Moines, Iowa. Comp. by Edyth
Howard, Secretary.

CITIZENS' HOUSING COUNCIL OF NEW
YORK. A public housing program for
New York City. New York, The Coun-
cil, Dec. 29, 1938. 1 6 pages. Mimeo-
graphed. Table.

CONOVER, REEVE. If you want to be a
planner. Chicago, American Society
of Planning Officials, [1939]. 8 pages.

GIBBON, SIR GWILYM, and REGINALD W.
BELL. History of the London County
Council, 1889-1939. London, Mac-
millan and Co., Ltd., 1939. 696 pages.
IIIus. (one folded), maps (part folded),
diagr., tables. Price 2 1 s.

GUSTAFSON, A. F., and OTHERS. Conser-
vation in the United States, by mem-
bers of the faculty of Cornell University:
A. F. Gustafson, H. Ries, C. H. Guise,
W. J. Hamilton, Jr. Ithaca, N. Y.,
Comstock Publishing Co., Inc., 1939.
445 pages. IIIus., maps, diagrs., table
Price $3.00.

HANDBOOK OF THE CITY PLANNING DI-
VISION, AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CIVIL
ENGINEERS. Sept. 1938. Prepared by
the Executive Committee of the Divi-
sion. The Society, New York City.
Price 5oc. to non-members.

INTERNATIONAL LABOUR OFFICE. Public
works a factor in economic stabilisation.
Geneva, The Office, 1938. 33 pages.

Reprinted from the International
Labour Review, Dec. 1938; vol. 38,
no. 6.

JAMES, HARLEAN. Romance of the
National Parks. New York, The Mac-
millan Co., 1939. 240 pages. IIIus.
Price $3.00.

MARYLAND STATE PLANNING COMMISSION.
Some Planning Accomplishments of the
J 939 General Assembly of Maryland.
June 1939. Pub. No. 23. The Com-
mission.

cs.

MASSACHUSETTS. SPECIAL COMMISSION
ON CONSERVATION. Report. . . Feb-
ruary 1939. Boston, Wright and Potter
Printing Co., 1939. 85 pages. (Senate
No. 465.)

MUNICIPAL YEAR BOOK, 1939. The
authoritative resume of activities and
statistical data of American cities.
Editors: Clarence E. Ridley, Orin F.
Nolting. Chicago, The International
City Managers' Association, 1939. 587
pages. Tables, diagrs. (vol. 6.) Price
$5.00.

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HOUSING
OFFICIALS. Housing yearbook, 1939;
Coleman Woodbury, ed. Chicago, The
Association, 1939. 240 pages. Price
$3.00.

NEW ENGLAND REGIONAL PLANNING
COMMISSION. From the ground up.
[Boston], The Commission, [Mar. 1939].
54 pages. IIIus.

NEW ENGLAND REGIONAL PLANNING
COMMISSION. The problem of the road-
side. Boston, The Commission, Apr.
1939. 32 pages. Mimeographed. IIIus.,
diagrs., table. (Publication no. 56.)

NEW YORK, N. Y. ART COMMISSION.
Condensed report of the Art Commis-
sion of the city of New York for the
years, 1930-1937. New York, The
Commission, 1938. 112 pages. IIIus.,
plans.

. PARKWAY AUTHORITY, and

NEW YORK, N. Y. BOARD OF ESTIMATE.
Rockaway improvement. New York,
The Authority and the Board, June 3,
1939- [32] pages. IIIus.

PERRY, CLARENCE ARTHUR. Housing for
the machine age. New York, Russell
Sage Foundation, 1939. 261 pages.
IIIus., map, plans, diagrs. Price $2.50.

Pi RATH, CARL, ed. Aerodromes: their
location, operation and design; trans-
lated from the German. A research
monograph of the Scientific Institute
for Air Transport, Technical College,
Stuttgart. London, Sir Isaac Pitman
and Sons, Ltd., 1938. 120 pages. IIIus.,
maps, plans, diagrs., cross section,
tables. (Air Transport Series.) Price
i os. 6d.

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC PLANNING.
Report on the location of industry; a
survey of present trends in Great
Britain affecting industrial location and
regional economic development, with

Planning and Civic Comment

proposals for future policy. London,
Political and Economic Planning, March
1939. 314 pages. Maps, diagrs., tables.
Price i os. 6d.

RATCLIFF, RICHARD U. The problem of
retail site selection. Ann Arbor, Uni-
versity of Michigan, Bureau of Business
Research, 1939. 93 pages. Diagrs.,
tables. (Michigan Business Studies,
vol. 9, no. i.) Price $1.00.

SCHNEIDER, J. THOMAS. Report to the
Secretary of the Interior on the preser-
vation of historic sites and buildings.
Washington, U. S. Dept. of the Interior,
1935. 185 pages. Diagrs. (folded).
Preface dated July 14, 1938.

TECTON, architects. Planned a[ir] r[aid]
precautions], based on the investigation
of structural protection against air
attack in the metropolitan borough of
Finsbury. London, The Architectural
Press, 1939. 138 pages. IIIus., maps
(one folded), plans, diagrs., cross sec-
tions, tables. Price $s.

TODD, ARTHUR J., and OTHERS. The
Chicago recreation survey, 1937, a
project sponsored jointly by the Chicago
Recreation Commission and North-
western University. By Arthur J.
Todd, in collaboration with William
F. Byron, Howard L. Vierow. Con-
ducted under auspices of the Works
Progress Administration, National
Youth Administration, Illinois Emer-
gency Relief Commission. Chicago,
[Chicago Recreation Commission], 1939.
2 volumes. IIIus., (maps, plans, diagrs.,
tables.)

Contents: vol. 3, Private recreation;
vol. 4, Recreation by community areas
in Chicago.

Volumes i and 2 listed in the July-
Sept. 1938 issue.

TOMFOHRDE, KARL M. Special report of
trailers and trailer camps, prepared by
Karl M. Tomfohrde, with the aid of
W.P.A. project no. 15245. Boston,
Massachusetts State Planning Board,
June 1939. 64 pages. Mimeographed.
IIIus., maps, plans, cross sections.

U. S. COMMITTEE APPOINTED SEPTEMBER
20, 1938, BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE
UNITED STATES TO SUBMIT RECOMMEN-
DATIONS UPON THE GENERAL TRANS-
PORTATION SITUATION. Report. [Wash-
ington, The Committee], Dec. 23, 1938.
88 pages. Diagrs., tables.

U. S. HOUSING AUTHORITY. Annual report
of the United States Housing Authority

for the fiscal year 1938. . . Washington,
Govt. Printing Office, 1939. 63 pages.
Diagr., tables.

U. S. NATIONAL PARK SERVICE. 1938
yearbook: park and recreation progress.
Washington, Govt. Printing Office,
1939. 92 pages. IIIus., maps, tables.
Price 35 cents.

U. S. NATIONAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE.
Current status of state planning board
legislation and appropriations. Wash-
ington, The Committee, Apr. 12, 1939.
10 pages. Mimeographed.

. National resources planning

facts. Washington, Govt. Printing
Office, 1939. ii pages.

ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON

WATER POLLUTION. Water pollution
in the United States; third report of the
Special Advisory Committee on Water
Pollution. . . Message from the Presi-
dent of the United States transmitting
a report on water pollution in the
United States. . . Washington, Govt.
Printing Office, 1939. 165 pages. IIIus.,
maps (part folded), diagrs. (part
folded), tables. (U. S. Congress. y6th.
ist Session. House Document No. 155.)
-. INDUSTRIAL SECTION. Pat-

terns of resource use; a technical report
prepared by the Industrial Section
under the direction of Gardiner C.
Means. . .; preliminary ed. for technical
criticism. Washington, Govt. Printing
Office, [1938]. 149 pages. Diagrs.
(part folded), tables. Price 35 cents.

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SMALL

WATER STORAGE PROJECTS. Low dams;
a manual of design for small water
storage projects. Washington, The
Committee, 1938. 431 pages. IIIus.,
map (folded), plans (part folded),
diagrs., cross sections (part folded),
tables. Price $1.25.

U. S. SOIL CONSERVATION SERVICE.
REGION FIVE. Topsoil: its preservation.
Washington, Govt. Printing Office,
1937. 22 pages. IIIus. Price 10 cents.

UNITED STATES JUNIOR CHAMBER OF
COMMERCE. CITY PLANNING AND BEAU-
TIFICATION COMMITTEE. Manual for
City Planning Committee. New York,
The Chamber, [1939]. 7 pages. Mimeo-
graphed.

WOODS, RALPH L. America reborn: a
plan for decentralization of industry.
London, Longmans, Green and Co.,
IQ39- 376 pages. Tables. Price $3.00.

Plaiiitind and
Givic Comment

Successor to: City Planning, Civic Comment, State Recreation

CONTENTS

Planning Progress in the United Slates in 1939 ...

Editorial Comment: The- National Capital Parks; Past,
Present and Future; Why the Taxpayer Should Take
Active Interest in City and Town Planning; Self-Liquidat-
ing and Subsidized Government Housing; D, C. Re-
organization .

National Park Comment: The Olympic Centre v-;r The
Cascades; Kings Canyon National P<.r .1 Awaits
Senate Action , , .

Zoning Round Table: The Health, Safety and Comfort i
the Community; Strong Arm Variances . . , , , , ,

Resume of 1939 Progress on the Washington PI ?

Historic American Building Survey Continues ,

Strictly Person;;';

Massachusetts Planning Conference

Congratulations and Best Wishes

For Better Roadsides ,

State Park Notes

Fees and Charges for Public Recreation

Public Housing in the District of Columbia

The Southeastern Planning Conference

Do Billboards Depreciate Real Estate Values?

Notes on National Resources Planning Board

Recent Court Decisions

Truth in a Facetious Vein

Book Reviews

Recent Publications

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 1939

PLANNING AND I
CIVIC COMMENT

Published Quarterly

jsor to: City Planning, Civic Comment, State Recreation

il Organ of: American Planning and Civic Association,
National Conference on State Parks

City Planning; Land and Water Uses;
f ces; National, State and Local Parks,

onrnent which will conserve and develop
of toe American people.

EDITORIAL BOARD

; : '.';> i SHI RTLEFF CHARLES G SAUERS

NTRIBUTING EDITORS

^^H ELISABETH M. HERLIHY

^HB P. J. HOFFM ASTER

HH^IH Ml ; V. HuBBARD

H^fl JOHN IHLDER

^H RAYMOND F. LEONARD

RICHARD LIEBER

THOMAS H. MACDONALD
HlH^I J. HORACE MCFARLAND

iR HENRY T. MC!NTOSH

II KATHERINE MCNAMARA

^^1 MARVIN C, NICHOLS

JOHN NOLEN, JR,

F, A. PITKIN

r 2D ISABELLE F. STORY

L. DEMING TILTON
TOM WALLACE
CONRAD L. WIRTH

MANAGING EDITOR
DORA A. PADGETT

$3.00 a Year

second-class matter at the Post Office at Washington, D. C., under

3, 1879. Additional entry at Harrisburg, Pa.

4D PUBLICATION OFFICE: 901 Union Trust Building, Washington, D. C.
the Mount Pleasant Press, J, Horace McFarland Company, Harris-

Planning and Civic Comment

Vol. 5

October-December, 1939

No. 4

Planning Progress in the United States

in 1939

By KARL B. LOHMANN, Professor of Landscape Architecture,
University of Illinois

federal appropriation for purposes
of state planning during the current
fiscal year ending June, 1940.

Of considerable interest in the
realm of planning organization was
the establishment for the first time
by official ordinance, of the Chicago
Planning Commission to be com-
posed of 22 members and an ad-
visory board of 200 members.

The New York City Planning
Commission which was established
under the new charter early in 1938
has made its first annual report
through Chairman Rexford Tugwell.

Suggestive of broadening horizons
was the change of name for the most
outstanding of our professional plan-
ning organizations. The former
American Oty Planning Institute
is now known by the new name of
American Institute of Planners.

Planning organization in general
assumes many forms in all parts of
the nation and is responsible for
numerous well attended planning
conferences East, West, North, and
South. The National Conference on
Planning held in Boston, in May,
was attended by 450 persons.

PLANNING progress suggests
forward motion in that which
is being attained and in that
which has been attained. As we
look back upon the past year, there
come to view many evidences of
such forward motion in the form of
administrative, protective, educa-
tional and material accomplishment.
These will be seen in large measure
to focus upon planning organiza-
tion; accommodations for traffic,
parking; road beautification efforts;
housing progress; development of
recreational, water and other re-
sources; land use and zoning prob-
lems; educational efforts and plan-
ning literature.

Planning Organization

In the field of planning or-
ganization nothing has deserved
more attention perhaps, than the
creation of the National Resources
Planning Board as proposed by
President Roosevelt to Congress in
April under the Reorganization
Plan No. i. Such achievement
gave to planning a genuine place as
one of the principal staff concepts
of modern administration.

Indicative of continued interest
in state planning activity on the
part of state legislatures and gover-
nors is the availability of $750,000

Accommodations for traffic, parking;
road beautification efforts

Planning for circulation is as-
sociated with the great network of

Planning and Civic Comment

our streets and highways, and with
the comfort, safety, and spetd of
the people who use them. Some of
the statewide programs in this
connection are important as are
also the specific undertakings within
them. Witness the work on the
i6i-mile highway between Harris-
burg and Pittsburgh in Pennsyl-
vania, in which distance is being
materially shortened by the use of a
railroad project started 50 years ago
and abandoned.

Ingenious also is the vehicular
tunnel 7,000 feet long completed
in the town of Bingham, Utah, and
introduced as a substitute for a road
passing over an ore bed.

In the New York vicinity in
particular have been completed an
approach to the Lincoln Tunnel,
also improved means of access on the
West through the Bronx to Tri-
borough Bridge. Exciting are the
prospects of such new proposals as
the Perth Amboy New York mul-
tiple-lane super highway which is to
accommodate 250,000 cars a day.

Along with the betterment of
roads and highways, has marched
the problem of better roadsides.
In some of the States, bills have
favored improvement in this con-
nection, while in others opposition
has developed. In retaliation for
opposition in the State of Maine,
thousands of stickers were used in
connection with letters posted con-
taining the invitation to "Come to
Maine and admire our billboards."

Not only must automobiles be
thought of in motion, but also at
rest, and if possible in a safe harbor
of parking. Numerous special
studies of this subject have been
made. A new bill in Michigan

permits cities to operate and main-
tain parking facilities and issue
bonds for their construction and
purchase. Additional cities have
taken to parking meters Salt Lake
for example has installed some 2000
of them, Cleveland 3000. There are
now at least 100 cities that are
equipped with these parking
facilities.

Planning Progress in Connection
with Housing

In some phases of housing there
has been perhaps more interest than
ever. The U. S. H. A. in particular
has begun to make its influence felt
among many of the 229 cities now
equipped with housing authorities.
Profiting by experience here and
elsewhere in housing the officials of
U. S. H. A. have expressed the
belief that they will be able to keep
costs down on several of the proj-
ects to as low as $2,830 per dwelling.
This is said to be $1,000 below what
private buildings would cost in the
localities of those same projects.

Of interest in connection with
this phase of housing is the new
short sound film on "Housing in
Our Time" just announced by the
Informational Service of U. S. H. A.

New state housing possibilities
begin to loom as purely municipal
projects are made possible in New
York. Through its legislature the
State of Connecticut has authorized
local authorities to issue revenue
bonds to finance their housing
projects.

In the private field, poi table
rentable houses that command high
rents and a tidy financial return,
have made their first appearance in
Reno. The Fort Wayne housing

Planning and Civic Comment

has been attracting a lot of notice.
Objections are leveled against it,
however, on such matteis as
amortization, increased cost in the
long run as compared with the most
recent Federal housing, and in-
ability to withstand and prevail
against surrounding dilapidation.

F. H. A. has continued to be of
help in promoting better sub-
division planning in its position of
passing upon many real estate
activities within the range of their
operation.

The auto trailer which is some-
times mistakenly thought of as
housing, has continued to be a
difficult civic problem, leading to
the enactment in a number of our
cities of regulating sanitary housing
and health legislation and the
construction of properly controlled
and equipped trailer camps.

The Planning oj Recreational
Resources

During 1939 the National Park
Service has had the assistance of
some 90 CCC Camps on its park
system areas and some 230 Camps
were detailed on county and met-
ropolitan parks. One -third of the
480 miles of the Blue Ridge parkway
is now completed and work is
progressing on the Natchez Trace
Parkway, which will eventually
have a length of 500 miles. A Park,
Parkway and Recreational Area
Study is now in process of publica-
tion and is expected to result in the
preparation and adoption of in-
tegrated and coordinated state park
proposals and in the formulation of a
national plan for recreation.

To cope with the needs for parks,
a number of our communities also

as well as federal and state au-
thorities, have been busily occupied.
There has been the construction of
beaches as, for example, along 2
miles of ocean front within limits of
New York City; as in connection
with the extensive Pittsburgh water-
front proposal, or in the shore drive
and lake improvement of Cleveland.
West Baltimore has opened a wide
parkway over the long time barrier
of Gwynns Falls Valley.

The foresters also have been
active. The increase over the past
year in the numbers of community
forests is especially startling. Al-
though there are now more than
1,500 such in the United States, new
forests were established this year
in Florida, North Dakota, Virginia,
Illinois, Michigan, Georgia, North
Carolina, and in a number of other
States.

Water Resources

Progress also is to be noted in the
field of planning for water resources.
The continuing contribution of the
National Resources Planning Board
in this connection deserves es-
pecially to be recognized. Progress
also may be observed in almost
every direction over the country in
flood control, the building of sea
walls, dams and reclamation works.
When, during a flood this spring,
Glasgow, Montana was saved from
almost complete inundation by a
five-mile levee recently completed,
there was reason for gratification.
A new sea wall is being completed
at Tampa with a 6-lane divided
highway paralleling it. Construction
of a dam on the Grand River in
Pensacola, Oklahoma, is progressing.
The Sardis dam on a tributary of
the Yazoo River in Mississippi adds

Planning and Civic Comment

the first headwaters detention
reservoir to the modern flood con-
trol works on the Lower Mississippi.
A combination reservoir and local
protection flood control program
has been begun in the Ohio River
Valley to prevent repetition of
previous high water disasters. The
longest T.V.A. dam at Gilbertsville
on the Tennessee River has entered
the construction stage. Early in
the year Congress allotted $36,000-
ooo, said to be more than ever, for
reclamation projects.

Prevention and correction of pol-
lution of streams have been under-
taken by many groups and from
many points of view. Among the
interesting attempts should be listed
the reciprocal agreement entered
into within the Delaware River
Drainage Basin by four States
New York, New Jersey, Pennsyl-
vania, and Delaware.

Land Uses and Zoning

The planning of our land uses has
gone ahead in many places. The
importance of this subject is recog-
nized especially in the Department
of Agriculture where reorganization
has resulted in making the Bureau
of Agricultural Economics the cen-
tral planning agency for the entire
department. There was to be set
up in this bureau a division of State
and Local Planning. County land
use will engage increasing attention,
and the preparation of agricultural
plans will probably be encouraged
for all of the counties in the United
States.

Special interest in zoning among
our towns and cities grows out of an
increasing realization of improperly

balanced zoning and of the conse-
quent need for correction and re-
zoning.

Education Efforts

There are activities and events
of an educational and promotional
sort that stand out through the
year. Both of the World's Fairs had
tremendous educational value es-
pecially from a planning point of
view. They were not only planning
displays in themselves but they
contained numberless planning
demonstrations within their gates.
Among others at the New York
Fair were the perisphere exhibit,
the breath-taking General Motors
Spectacle and the much-talked-
about moving picture of "The City."

The General Motors presentation
included scenes of 1960 in a 35,748-
square-foot "Futurama" by Norman
Bel Geddes. Appropriate words
were synchronized with the scenes.

The moving picture of "The
City" was financed by the Carnegie
Corporation and presented by the
American Institute of Planners.
It was based on the dramatic theme
that year by year our cities are
growing more complex and that
now is the age of rebuilding.

In the educational institutions
especially noteworthy were the ex-
pansion of planning courses at
Cornell, and the offerings of 19
graduate fellowships in Traffic En-
gineering at Yale.

A high light of the year was the
interest exhibited In the subject of
planning by a number of groups
such as the Real Estate Boards,
Chambers of Commerce, Junior
Chambers of Commerce, and
Leagues of Women Voters.

Planning and Civic Comment

Planning Literature oj the Year
There was a tremendous out-
pouring of literature on all phases
of planning during the year. The
already famous collection of
Regional Works by the National
Resources Committee has been en-
riched by such new volumes as
"Urban Government," "Northern
Lakes," "Water Pollution," "Energy
Resources," "Structure of the Ameri-
can Economy." An important plan-
ning record was "America Builds"
by the P.W.A. There were also
books on "The City," by Queen and
Thomas; "City Planning," by Lewis;
"Your Community," by Colcord;
"Recreation Survey," by Kratt;
"Housing the Masses," by Arono-
vici; "American Planning and
Civic Annual;" "Conservation in
the United States," by A. F.
Gustafson and other members of

the faculty of Cornell University;
"Housing Yearbook;" "Housing for
the Machine Age," by Clarence
Perry; "Revolution in Land," by
Charles Abrams; "Airport Di-
lemma," by the A.S.P.O. and the
A.M.A.; "Transition Curves for
Highways," Joseph Barnett; "Na-
tional Conference on Planning Pro-
ceedings;" and "Romance of Na-
tional Parks," by Harlean James.

To catalogue the planning prog-
ress in the United States for 1939
is to reach into every corner of our
national, state, county, and com-
munity life. Things planned and
things accomplished are manifold.
Only a small fraction of them have
been referred to here. Most of them
whether mentioned or not are a
happy promise for the days to come.
We have good reason to be proud of
these various evidences of progress.

Appropriations for City Planning Commissions

An examination of the city
budgets for the years 1938 and 1939
shows that cities of the metropolitan
class (at least 500,000 in population)
have almost uniformly accepted
the planning commission and made
specific appropriation for its work.
Of the 17 cities in this class, only
one has never made provision in the
budget for the planning commission
and fifteen were in the list of ap-
propriating cities for the years
examined. New York City was in a
class by itself, and the range in the
other fourteen cities was from
$10,000 to $50,000 yearly, with
seven cities over $20,000. In no
case do these amounts include
extra contributions for W.P.A. proj-
ects.

In the next population group,

cities between 200,000 and 500,000,
there is a great shrinkage both in
percentage of appropriating cities
and in the amount of their ap-
propriations. Of the twenty-five
cities in this class, twelve made
appropriations ranging from $5,000
to $13,000, of which seven were
over $7,500. In the 100,000 to
200,000 class there are fifty-three
cities. Thirteen report appropria-
tions from $2,000 to $7,500 of which
eight were over $4,000.

In all the cities from 100,000 down
to 25,000, there are only four re-
porting appropriations of at least
$4,000 and it has been assumed that
less than this amount would not be
enough for the salaries of a planning
engineer and an office secretary
even in a city of 25,000 population.

EDITORIAL COMMENT

The National Capital Parks

A THE invitation of the
Secretary of the Interior,
H. S. Wagner, President, and
Charles G. Sauers, members of the
Board of Directors of the National
Conference on State Parks, served
as CoIIaborators-at-Large to pre-
pare a Study of the Organization of
the National Capital Parks, which
was issued November 26, 1939. The
Report is a credit to these ex-
perienced park men who know, not
only the theory but the practice of
park administration. Their recom-
mendations would salvage most of
the past accomplishments in the
National Capital Parks and would
give new life and direction to their
administration. Summarized, the
recommendations are:

Engage an experienced municipal park
administrator as Superintendent.

Clothe the Superintendent with full
responsibility; make all his staff respon-
sible to him and give him leeway and time
to get the situation in hand.

Set up an organization under the
Superintendent with three Divisions of
equal weight Construction, Horticulture
and Maintenance, and two auxiliary
Divisions Office and Special Activities.

Establish policies: with the public,
with public officials.

Boost up the Horticultural Division to
its merited importance.

Restore to the National Capital Park
Police the sole function of park police,
discontinuing all traffic duty within the
District of Columbia.

Place operation and control of all
concessions, refectories, and facilities for
which fees are collected, in the National
Capital Parks itself.

Transfer to the proposed unified
recreation commission all playground

construction, maintenance and operation.

Provide in-service training for the staff,
particularly laborers, gardeners, foremen
and police.

Make National Capital Parks a field
office.

Secure maximum results from current
appropriations first; then proceed with
sound and justified financial program.

Discontinue mutilation, by road con-
struction, of natural landscapes such as
Rock Creek and GIover-ArchboId.

Synchronize development and main-
tenance with the acquisition program.

Make originators of new developments
aware of consequent maintenance costs.
All the while keep one eye on Maintenance
and Maintenance Costs.

These recommendations are the
bare bones which the body of the
report covers with flesh and which
the theme supplies with the breath
of life. No one, we think, will take
exception to the gist of these 15
specific recommendations. Many of
the comments in the Report will
arouse the enthusiasm of those who
have watched with growing alarm
the tendency to supply synthetic
scenery in parks already provided
with natural landscape and the
tendency to formalize the design of
parks planted long ago on an in-
formal plan. No one can deny that
in the Federal City we have suffered
from the prevailing epidemic of
roaditis which inflicts destructive
highways on areas never meant for
rapid transportation.

With the recommendation for
more generous appropriations for
maintenance, as needed, all must
agree; but it is unfortunate that
these recommendations should have

Planning and Civic Comment

been coupled with the suggestion
that appropriations for acquisition
might be curtailed. The National
Capital Park and Planning Com-
mission, first established as the
National Capital Park Commission
in 1924, faced a stupendous task.
The consistent neglect of park and
playground acquisition for more
than a hundred years could not be
remedied in a day. The McMillan
Commission in 1901 recommended
the acquisition of 54 park areas. In
1923, but six of these had been
acquired and many of the areas were
no longer available, as trees had been
cut down and sometimes the land
had been graded or filled beyond
recognition or repair. The National
Capital Park and Planning Com-
mission was met with an almost
insoluble situation. If it had not
been for the Capper-Cramton Act
which made money available from
the Federal Treasury, to be repaid
in annual instalments in the District
of Columbia budget, both acquisition
and maintenance would have suffered
immeasurably. As a matter of fact
there is little doubt that the very
size of the acquisition program has
stimulated maintenance expenses,
for anyone who searches for adequate
park items of any sort in the Dis-
trict budget prior to 1920 is bound
to be disappointed.

The National Capital Park and
Planning Commission had to make a
decision, and establish an order of
precedence. If its principal funds had
been expended for the acquisition
of in-town parks and playgrounds at
prevailing high prices, the acreage

and use showing would have been
exceedingly poor. In the meantime,
the growing population would have
covered new areas unprovided with
parks and playgrounds, so that the
Commission would constantly have
been paying exorbitant prices for
areas which should have been pur-
chased years before, and in many
cases the opportunities to buy would
have been removed altogether.

There is no catching up on such
a program. The Commission, there-
fore, adopted a policy of securing,
under favorable conditions, the
parks and open spaces needed in
advance of settlement, buying, as
they could, such in-city property
as could be secured in the right
locations. In this way actual prog-
ress has been made. It would be
unfortunate, indeed, if the ac-
quisition program, which has never
caught up the arrears of the hundred
years' neglect, should be slowed
down in any degree, until the entire
city and surrounding metropolitan
region are supplied with an adequate
park, playground and parkway sys-
tem. To this end, the recom-
mendation that the new Superin-
tendent of the National Capital
Parks, when he is chosen, shall
become a member of the National
Capital Park and Planning Com-
mission, as was his predecessor, the
Director of Public Buildings and
Public Parks, seems logical and
desirable.

Taking the Report all in all the
Federal City will be fortunate if the
main features of the recommenda-
tions are adopted.

Past, Present and Future

In 1923, nearly 17 years ago, Mr.
Frederic A. Delano accepted the
invitation of Dr. J. Horace Mc-
Farland, then President of the
American Civic Association, to be-
come Chairman of a Committee of
100 on the Federal City. The
Committee, composed of leading
citizens of Washington, in January
of 1924 issued a Report on the
Federal City. The officers of the
Committee, in addition to Mr.
Delano, were: Fred G. Coldren,
Vice-Chairman; John DeLaMater,
Secretary; Joshua Evans, Jr., Trea-
surer. The Chairmen of Committees
were: ARCHITECTURE, Horace W.
Peaslee; FOREST AND PARK RESER-
VATIONS, Charles F. Consaul;
SCHOOL SITES AND PLAYGROUNDS,
Evan H. Tucker; HOUSING AND
RESERVATIONS FOR FUTURE HOUS-
ING, John Ihlder; ZONING, Harry
Blake; STREET, HIGHWAY AND
TRANSIT PROBLEMS, Alvin B.
Barber; EXTENSION OF MET-
ROPOLITAN WASHINGTON, William
T. Curtis; WATERFRONT DEVELOP-
MENT, Frank P. Leetch; INDUSTRIAL
DEVELOPMENT AND LIMITATIONS,
Edwin C. Graham; CONTACT WITH
EXISTING ORGANIZATIONS, Claude
Owen.

At that time, it was stated in the
Report:

Washington is expanding rapidly. The
area covered by the L' Enfant Plan has
been exceeded long ago. Nearly a quarter
of a century has elapsed since the re-
study and extension of that plan by those
eminent Americans who served the Mc-
Millan Commission. Many recommenda-
tions contained in the McMillan Report
have not been put into effect. Some can
never be realized because virgin woods
have been swept away and acres of hill

and valley have been leveled. Moreover,
even in 1901 automobiles were hardly a
factor in the planning of highway and
park systems.

There has developed a very compelling
demand for a careful retaking of stock in
order to bring from their obscurity old
recommendations as yet unrealized and to
set forth new needs grown out of new
conditions to the end that a revised and
progressively constructive program may
be adopted and put into effect over a
period of years.

In 1923 there was no permanent
comprehensive planning agency in
Washington. In addition to the
many detailed recommendations of
the sub-committees, the Committee
of 100 joined in two principal
recommendations :

1. Just as the founders looked forward
one hundred years in their planning, so we
must look forward. Correcting past errors
is expensive. Intelligent planning for the
future is economy. Some machinery
adequate for such planning should be setup.

2. The Federal City was set amidst
hills and valleys that were notable for
their trees and shrubbery of a remarkable
variety. If that condition is to continue
in the future, ample reservations for
forests and parks should be made. Other
cities in our country are far in advance of
Washington in these respects.

Those who today accept the
National Capital Park and Planning
Commission as an established in-
stitution may forget its recent
origin and the huge task it had
before it, when it was finally set up
in 1926. Attention is called to the
"Resume of 1939 Progress on the
Washington Plan," by John Nolen,
in this issue, from which it may be
seen that the plan, like a continuing
inventory, is constantly being re-
studied and revamped to meet new
needs. They may also see how the
Commission, at first isolated from
the established Federal and District

Planning and Civic Comment

of Columbia governmental pro-
cedures, has consolidated its position
to one of positive participation. The
record is one to command respect.

But in the rapid course of achieve-
ment, it is desirable to pause at
intervals in order to look backward,
take inventory, and look forward.

On December 27, the Executive
Committee of the Committee of 100
on the Federal City is being called
together to check over the realiza-
tions of its 1924 recommendations
and to set in motion machinery for a
new "look ahead" and new goals to
work for.

Why the Taxpayer Should Take Active
Interest in City and Town Planning

FROM the point of view of the
planner and planning prog-
ress, the answer is obvious.
If the taxpayer is not interested, the
whole structure of planning is
resting on a shaky base. There may
be technical skill enough and there
may be law enough but without the
will to employ the skill and use the
law, planning will not get ahead.

In local planning at least that is
just about the situation all over the
country. Since the first planning
enabling act was passed in Con-
necticut in 1907 for the City of
Hartford, a most remarkable body
of law has been developed. No
policy of government has been given
such universal approval in such a
short time. This is significant be-
cause frills and fancies do not get
adopted by legislatures, at least
not with such unanimity. But the
American public is still cool to
planning and is very hazy about its
meaning and its value. This public
indifference is often laid at the door
of the planning advocate. He has
made it a technical mystery a
grim statistical thing without human
interest. The charge may be true
but I am not sure that it is the

reason for the lack of public support.

So many things are claiming the
attention of the average American
citizen. He is beset on all sides with
moving appeals to take heed for his
health, his wealth and his hap-
piness. He may give passive assent
to them all but he doesn't act. He
is offered hospitalization at three
cents a day, yet too often he waits
for a sudden pain to send him post
haste to the hospital at $5 to $10 a
day. The banks preach thrift but
savings are rarely an item in the
average budget savings are just
what is left. With the advance in
invention and in the arts there is
little leisure time for serious reading.
We have radios in two or three
rooms in the house. We have an
automobile or two in the garage.
We look at the movies, listen to the
radio and ride around the country
and that is our pleasure.

The claim which planning has
on the taxpayer and the voter
is a valid one. We need no longer
theorize about the value of plan-
ning. We used to say that planning
was essential in the building of a
house or a factory and all the more,
therefore, for the building of a town

Planning and Civic Comment

which is a much more complex
process. We used to point out the
wasteful public expenditures over
the past years and the considerable
portion of the annual budget which
represented the debt charges on
these expenditures. Now we have
added the proof of experience in the
many cities which have tried plan-
ning, proof in the satisfactions of
life so difficult to measure, as well
as by figures of savings which can
be expressed in reduced tax rates.

We know that zoning has brought
a good deal of order out of confusion,
has kept the tax values steady and
has checked depreciation in Amer-
ican homes. We know that many
cities can point to great savings
because public improvements are
constructed at the right time and in
the right place. The cost of street
paving has been cut down because
the function of the street is more
clearly known and the paving fits it.
The cost of building sites is cut
down because the land is bought
when the price is low. Cities have
been made more healthful, more
convenient and more attractive at
less cost because they have followed
a careful program, but we are still
waiting to have the public rise up
and call the planners blessed.

Quite recently planning and
zoning have slipped into mag-
azine fiction, notably the Saturday
Evening Post. "Before" and "after"
pictures have been used by Life.
We have dramatized the planning
appeal in the movies. The evolution
of the modern highway would be an
excellent subject for the "March of
Time." All these things will help

but possibly we aren't concentrating
our fire on the target.

I suggest that what we need in
planning is not more planners or
more laws or more orators but more
salesmen, and I take my text from
the successful practices of our great
life insurance companies. We all
believe in insurance but how many
of us would buy it if we were not
harried by the agents' sales talk?
It is almost a repetition of the
appeal that brings the result. Why
not, then, recruit in all our com-
munities a body of planning sales-
men so that no home can escape
their importunity?

Zoning is so w r ell thought of today
that there are ordinances in effect
in 1,500 cities and towns in the
United States but there are still
many communities that resist. For
years the town of Stamford, Con-
necticut, was one of them. Zoning
had been before the town meeting
several times and had always been
defeated. A leader of the people
was always ready to say that
zoning was stepping on the toes of
the property owners. Somebody
had the idea to take the cue from
the insurance companies and create
salesmen. A committee of one
hundred educated itself, learned all
the answers, then carried the torch
to the people of the community in
neighborhood meetings and when
zoning came up for adoption two
years ago, one of the most radical
ordinances adopted in the country
was passed by the town meeting
without a dissenting vote. Creating
planning salesmen is the job for
every live planning commission.

Planning and Civic Comment

Self-Liquidating and Subsidized Government Housing

In his article on The Alley Dwell-
ing Authority, John Ihlder has
shown that in the District of
Columbia, self-liquidating housing
will supply the needs of families who
can pay an economic rent, i. e. a
rent that covers all costs, but who
are not being served by private
enterprise, which must make a
profit above cost. This lessens the
load on the Federal Treasury and
gives sanitary housing to those who
otherwise would not have it.

The Alley Dwelling Authority
has rendered another service in its
plan to use the Federal subsidy in
projects financed by the United
States Housing Authority only for
those families who need it when they
need it and to the extent they need
it. In this way decent housing may

reach to the lowest-income group,
but subsidies in rental reductions
would not be given laterally to
include all in a given project whether
they need it or not. In many of
the projects elsewhere families are
forced out at the top, when income
is increased even though there are
not decent houses available, or
they are kept out at the bottom
because they have not incomes
sufficient to meet even the reduced
rates.

The Alley Dwelling Authority,
through its specific authorization to
reclaim slums, whether the area is
used for housing or not, is in a
position to make a signal contribu-
tion to city rebuilding on sound
planning principles.

Watch Washington!

D. C. Reorganization

The various proposals for Re-
organization of the District of
Columbia Government appear, so
far, to leave untouched the indepen-
dent status of the National Capital
Park and Planning Commission and
the Alley Dwelling Authority. These
are agencies that need protection

from administrative routine. There
are indications that all of the experts
have found trouble in deciding just
where the line should fall between
direct Federal and District respon-
sibilities. In some of the plans there
are still twilight zones where the re-
sponsibility is not yet defined.

As we go to press, word bos come of the death of
Mr. F. A. Silcox, Chief of the Forest Service. Con-
servationists will mourn the passing of one of their
number who has left an enviable record of achievement
in forestry and labor relations. All who knew Mr.
Silcox can bear witness to bis essential Jairness
and to bis wide sympathies.

NATIONAL PARK COMMENT

The Olympic Controversy

Among conservationists there was
real rejoicing when the Olympic
National Park Bill finally passed
Congress and was approved by the
President on June 29, 1938, after 35
years of skirmishing between public
and private interests.

In 1909, despairing of the passage
by Congress of the bill to create a
national park on the Olympic Pen-
insula, President Theodore Roose-
velt, by executive order, created the
Mount Olympus National Monu-
ment, comprising 608,640 acres of
superlatively scenic mountains and
magnificently forested valleys, sur-
rounding stately Mount Olympus,
crowned with its ineffably beautiful
Blue Glacier. The Monument, lying
as it did in the Olympic National
Forest, carved some years before
from the public domain, was given
into the custody of the U. S. Forest
Service.

During the World War, in the
emotional flurry to mobilize all
possible economic resources (real
and fancied), the Monument was
reduced to 298,730 acres, that is,
more than cut in half. The 30O-odd
thousand acres excluded from the
Monument reverted to the Olympic
National Forest, though, so far as
winning the war was concerned, the
sacrifice of protected monument
status proved futile.

Then, in 1917, the National Park
Service, authorized the year before,
entered upon the scene, and became

the guardian of all national parks
and some national monuments. In
1933, President Franklin D. Roose-
velt, as a part of a program to
bring all national monuments under
one administration, transferred by
executive order the Olympic Na-
tional Monument from the custody
of the U. S. Forest Service to that of
the National Park Service. In 1936,
the U. S. Forest Service, of its own
volition, as a part of a nation-wide
program, by administrative action
declared 238,930 acres of the Olym-
pic National Forest surrounding the
National Monument a primitive
area, which was an indication that
in the opinion of the Forest Service
these lands should be removed from
the commercial program of forest
utilization.

Then came the passage of the
Wallgren Bill by .Congress, which
enlarged the National Monument to
a National Park, with designated
boundaries of 648,000 acres and
gave to President Roosevelt specifi-
cally the authority, after consulta-
tion with the interested state and
Federal agencies, to add to the
National Park by executive order an
area which would bring the park to
a maximum of 898,292 acres.

According to the reports of the
U. S. Forest Service in 1938, the
Olympic National Forest covered
800,544 acres actually in Federal
ownership, and an area within the
outer boundaries of 911,919 acres.

Planning und Civic Comment

On the Olympic Peninsula there are
extensive areas of privately owned
forests, where clear-cutting is going
forward as rapidly as a market