Page:John Nolen--New ideals in the planning of cities.djvu/29

CITIES, TOWNS AND VlLLAGES other hand, it costs $400 to take care of a bad boy in a Massachusetts reformatory for one year. Which is cheaper, to say nothing of better? Massachusetts spends on criminals 10 per cent of all her taxes. Is it not time that we had the same kind of sanity in public expenditures that we have in private expenditures? It ought to be plain to a thrifty citizen and taxpayer that city planning, as now understood, proposes not only a better method but also, in the end, a cheaper method.

In the third place, let it be frankly confessed how narrow and sordid this line of reasoning is. Cities pay heavily for a mean and unbusinesslike policy in many ways that cannot be exactly described or put into dollars and cents, but which business men and city officials understand very well. The essential question is not one of cost, the attempt to balance the expense of better planning against increased revenues resulting from it. At bottom the question is whether real values in public welfare are to be had from this sort of city planning, and whether the community can provide the ways and means necessary to purchase these values. The central and all-important problem of the cities is the budget: how to spend honestly, liberally, efficiently, and promptly for the( protection of life, health, and property, and for the advancement of civilization, and how to levy for these expenditures upon the advantage fund created by the community life in such a manner that taxation shall not breed fresh inequality, injustice, and civic disloyalty.

It may be added that whether we care about health, or wholesome and refreshing recreation, or beauty in civic life; or whether we care only for the increase of industrial wealth and commercial prosperity, we must, sooner or later, turn for aid to this subject of comprehensive coordinated city planning. While not a panacea, it offers one safe and sure way out of many of our municipal difficulties.