Page:Report of the Park Board 1903.djvu/73

 sufficient to pay the whole of the municipal expenses, and the forest reservations in all cases provide steady employment to a desirable class of citizens. In addition to this, these forest reservations afford very enjoyable recreation places, and there is very little doubt that if the city should secure a large reservation of this sort now, or soon, the citizens a generation or two hence, when the city has greatly increased in population and wealth, would consider it a most wise and profitable investment. It may be objected that besides the burden of the interest and contributions to the sinking fund in connection with the debt which would be incurred for the acquisition of these lands, there would be the loss of taxes which would have been collected had the land remained in private ownership. This is only a short-sighted view of the matter. The purchase money for such lands is not thrown away, and, except in rare cases is not consumed in living expenses. Mainly it is reinvested and presumably, therefore, continues to be taxed and to be a source of wealth to the community. Frequently such money is reinvested in such a way as to be decidedly more profitable than when it was invested in these wild woodlands. If the city could eventually net 1 per cent, or 2 per cent, from the scientific management of the forest on these lands, it would be a satisfactory investment considering the other benefits the citizens would derive from them in the way of health and pleasure. Where money is raised by taxation for interest and sinking fund on a debt incurred for the wise purchase of land, it is a kind of forced saving by the people, not an expense, as is necessarily most of the money spent by a municipality. It would be perfectly reasonable and much more scientific to have a law permitting the purchase of land by a municipality for park and other suitable purposes on long-time bonds. This has been recognized by law in some states, and the park bonds of several cities run for sixty years. It would also be reasonable that debt incurred for the purchase of land should be left out of consideration in determining the debt limit of municipalities very properly established by law to prevent thoughtless extravagance in municipal government.

CO-OPERATION OF LAND OWNERS.
Owing to the location of the topographical features which it is designed to take advantage of and owing to the large amount of territory already subdivided, or made valuable by the rapid growth of population, the system of parks suggested is necessarily unusually spread out, and therefore involves unusually long parkways and boulevards. The various outlying parks and reservations suggested are in extent adequate for a population several times larger than the existing population of your city, and if the land needed for these parks could