Page:Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam.djvu/73

Rh as any that has gone before, with the stored experiences of all ages and nations—what better use can be made of it all than to establish at the nation's western gate a city which shall be the initial point of a new order of development? Away back in the days of Palmyra and Thebes the rulers of those cities seemed to understand it, if the people did not—that is to say, the value of embellishment. And had we now but one American Nebuchadnezzar we might have a Babylon at our Pacific seaport. For a six-months' world's fair any considerable city can get from the government five or ten millions. And why not? There's politics in it. Can we not have some of "those politics" for a respectable west-coast city? Would it not be economy to spend some millions on an industrial metropolis which should be a permanent world's fair for the enlightenment of the Pacific? The nation has made its capital beautiful, and so established the doctrine