The Detroit Times

OUTBURSTS OF EVERETT TRUE
Our Blemished Streets
BY E. S. HITCHCOCK

Is it not somewhat sad as well as stupid that on the altar of money we, who are obliged to live in a crowded city, must offer up what wholesome natural pleasure we might enjoy in the few green spots left where lofty trees and irregular paths remind us of better things than factories, smoke and dust, and look with jaded eyes upon monstrous creations in vivid blues and reds, extolling the purity of beers and whiskies? The happy home made possible by insurance depicted through the sacrilegious use of a beautiful work of art; and so on, all down any line, which can put a few more dollars into the pockets of the producers and make of the scenery a blotting, eye-smarting industry which belongs to twentieth century civilization alone?

We spend much in taxes in the public schools these days for the aesthetic development of the child.

Only our reactionaries or stand-patters who, like the poor, are always with us, have anything to say against this finer and more subtle education. We recognize that a man or woman will only be a well-rounded, developed person with something more than a practical, technical education, and yet we are content to impress upon our children's minds, on the walk to school, these hideous pictures; at the same time depriving them of the few beauty spots where they might refresh their little souls with the grass of summer or the bright leaves of autumn, and see the blue sky, and a touch of the horizon untroubled by scantlings, electric lights and paint which the sordid commercialism of today thrusts upon us.

Though we old ones can endure it along with bad air and strap-hanging in street cars, is it fair to the tender and impressionable minds?