YOUR HOME TOWN FIRST

Patea Mail, Volume XLIV, 23 July 1920, Page 2

YOUR HOME TOWN FIRST

BY DR. PRANK CRANE Work for your own town. Beautify it. Improve it. Make it attractive. The AVorld War and the Treaty of Peace and the Protective Tariff and all such things are important subjects ; but what’s the good of cleaning up the world unless you sweep your own doorstop : The city whoso main street is dirty, sordid-looking, cluttered, uninviting, suffers much. Such a city wants to bo cleaned, recreated, made a thing of beauty, so that people will come miles ; o see it. The best advertisement of your business is the town you live ini' Towns get reputations, as well as men. Make your town talked of all over the Stale. It will thus draw people. And whore the people come, there is prosperity. It does not take money. It takes something that is scarcer. It lakes cooperation. Get together. Organise for civic smnrovement. Develop the civic nerve. Rid your town of one eye-sore after another. Clean up the vacant lots and plant them in gardens. Make a cluttered yard a disgrace. Make public opinion too hot for those who will not help. It pays. It will promote law and order. It will hold in the education of vour children. It will draw factories and other business enterprises to your locality. Shiftlessness, untidiness, dirt and selfishness, as shown in your streets and buildings, react upon your people. Such things make your boys and girls grow up hating their home town. Make your home town a children’s paradise, something their memory will lovingly turn back to. Look after your Amusements, your Parks, your Playgrounds, your Theatres and all your other means of communal enjoyment. Alake your home town happy. It pays.