820,000 People in Detroit

1916

DETROIT, Michigan — Detroit has a population of 820,778, according to the city directory estimate. The directory makes Detroit as the fifth largest American city. New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and St. Louis are given higher ranking. Detroit was ninth in the population list of 1910.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 5.

Puzzles in Chinese Names

1900

"When I went to school I was always at the head of the class in geography," said the Studious Citizen. "I could 'bound' anything and name the nearest route to almost any place. I've always kept up my interest in geography, but latterly the pursuit is almost too much for me. The world is growing, I suppose, and I'm getting old.

"The Spanish-American War put a heavy strain on me; had to learn a lot of new places, you know. Well, that soon ended. I was getting pretty well acquainted with the Philippines, when the South African War came along.

"I wouldn't like to say, on the spur of the moment, which are the harder to spell, pronounce and remember, Philippine names or South African names. But neither can compare with the Chinese names that we have to keep track of now."

The Studious Citizen spread out his reference books and invited the guest to look on. "Why, sir," he added, testily, "if you'll believe me, the geographers and statisticians don't know how to spell 'em themselves!

"Take the 'royal province' of China, the province that contains the capital city of Pekin. (Call it 'Peking,' if you want to; you'll find books to back you up.) The 'Statesman's Year-Book' names that province 'Chili' and `Chihli.' 'Rand & McNally's Atlas' calls it 'Chihli.' 'Cram's Atlas' adds some decorative frills and brings forth 'Pe-Chi-Li.' And 'Lippincott's Gazetteer' gives you three guesses, 'Pe-Chee-Lee,' 'Chee-Lee' and 'Chi-Li.'

"Suppose we look up that city from which the allies started for Pekin. 'Tient-sin' the 'Statesman's Year-Book' calls it on one page; on another page it prints the name as one word, without any hyphen. 'Cram' declares it is 'Tien-sin,' the 'Rand Atlas' prefers 'Tientsin,' and 'Lippincott' drops in an extra capital and gives us 'Tien-Tsin.'

"But the time the map-makers really get into the worst tangle is when they come to name the northern terminus of the Imperial Railway, a city at the head of the Gulf of Liao-Tung — or Leao Tong, or Liautung. The 'Year-Book' calls it 'ChenChou'; 'Cram' says 'Kinchow'; the 'Rand Atlas' pronounces for 'Kinchau,' and 'Lippincott's Gazetteer,' which is nothing if not generous, suggests 'Kin-Choo,' 'Kin-Tchoo' and 'Kin-Tchou.'

"'Who shall decide when doctors disagree?' Well, these are all authorities, and probably it would be as safe to follow one as another. But he will be a clever man who, when writing about Chinese matters, doesn't sometimes spell a name in two or three different ways. I shall have a great deal of sympathy for editors while this trouble lasts.

"I wonder they don't all print in their papers some such notice as that which was hung over the dance-hall piano in the Western mining-camp. You remember it? 'Please don't shoot at the piano-player,' it said. 'He is doing the best he can.'" — Youth's Companion.

Rider Haggard's Norfolk Home

1901

Author of "She" Studying Farm Life

With Many Other Englishmen He Thinks that England's Decline is Imminent if Rural Life is Neglected by the People.

LONDON, July 20. — Among the latest to join the ranks of those who think that a bucolic existence is conducive to the best results of civilization is Rider Haggard.

He is now busily employed, not in the creation of a new novel, but in trying to master agricultural problems. He even goes so far as to strike a keynote of warning by expressing his belief that the yellow race will supplant the white if the latter continue to develop themselves through urban life.

Mr. Haggard is now living on his farm at Ditchingham, in Norfolk, and will shortly start out to make a tour of Ireland and Scotland for the purpose of studying agricultural methods and conditions in those two countries.

He had not long since returned from a trip to Palestine when I had the pleasure of meeting him at his home, an ancient, red brick, ivy-covered structure in the Queen Anne style sitting in the center of a large, well-kept lawn, close to the banks of the river Waveney which divides the countries of Norfolk and Suffolk.

A tall, handsome fellow is Rider Haggard, in his 41st year, bearded and powerfully built, with the appearance of a man capable of doing many years of good work yet.

Mr. Haggard may be considered as anything but a lazy man. Besides looking after his 200 acre farm he is chairman of the local bench of magistrates and at the same time is probably doing more literary work than at any previous part of his career.

"While I strongly object to the suggestion that we are a decadent nation," said Mr. Haggard, "we will, I fear, become so unless we cultivate that love for rural life which has always been at the basis of English physique and character. City life is at the best only an artificial existence and does not conduce to the development of those virtues which create the happiness and benefit of the human race.

"Look at the stamina of the Boers, which is due to the life they lead as agriculturists. They are comparable in that respect to the Americans at the time of the revolution.

"I am the last one to become pessimistic, but I fear that at least some of our optimism is unjustified. While individually I prefer country life to city life I have another motive for my conduct. I desire to be of some use during my day and generation — to lend my hand to try and check the crowding the cities at the expense of the country.

"I say, and, I believe, say it advisedly, that unless something is done to check the migration toward the cities and the constant stripping of the land, not England alone but Europe as well will become a prey to the yellow race. You are cutting at the vitals of the nation when you take a man from the farm to overstock the city. We are daily becoming a more nervous and excitable race, showing, to my mind, a positive deterioration.

"The old yeoman class who carried their crossbows at Crecy and Poictiers were the stamp of men who have left their impress on the history of the race. They were the small farmers and backbone of the community.

"Not alone does the draining of the country of its men tend to deteriorate the race, but it leaves us too dependent upon other nations.

"In England today there is not more than two months' supply of food. Suppose some clever American speculator were to corner wheat and we could not get our necessary supply from any other country what might not happen?

"You cannot legislate a man onto a farm, but you can lend the force of your example to the desire for leading a country life. Some one must begin to try to turn the tide anyhow." — CHARLES PEEL.

—Special to the Davenport Daily Republican, Davenport, Iowa, July 21, 1901, p. 9. H. Rider Haggard, also author of "King Solomon's Mines" and "Ayesha."

Home Town Helps — "The City Beautiful"

1913

Does Not Mean Prettiness

Term "City Beautiful" Has Been Much Misunderstood — Real Ends to Be Attained.

That term "the City Beautiful" sounds like tying pink ribbons around lamp posts. Even as applied to civic art, as distinct from city planning, the name is sufficiently misleading. It is the idea indicated by that unfortunate, falsifying phrase that Raymond Unwin, in his admirable "Town Planning in Practice," lampoons.

"Civic art is too often understood to consist of filling our streets with marble fountains, dotting our squares with groups of statuary, twining our lampposts with wriggling acanthus leaves or dolphins' tails, and our buildings with meaningless bunches of fruit and flowers tied up with impossible stone ribbons."

It is not the prettifying of cities that is the object of city planners. The building of intraurban, intercity and interstate transit facilities, the construction of sewers, of gutters, of garbage disposal plants, the destruction of unsanitary areas to be replaced by decent housing, the development of port facilities, the upbuilding of the health of the city through the creation of playgrounds and parks — parks primarily as health agents, not prettification measures — all of these and others are the chief aims of city planning. There will, of course, be a necessary improvement in the appearance of the city as the natural result of skill in city building, and that improvement is an entirely proper object, but it ought not to be permitted to paralyze the whole movement through the creation of an entirely incorrect understanding of the ends to be attained.

Other phrases have been suggested, which are useful as antitoxins to that "City Beautiful" phrase, but they generally accent some one phase of city planning at the expense of the others. "The City Practical," "The City Useful," "The City Scientific" are examples. One of the best is negative. It was coined by Robert W. De Forest and represents the movement as aiming to exterminate the "Unregulated City Hideous."

But no phrase yet suggested epitomizes the wide range of city planning, and least of all can it be said that the "City Beautiful" is the central thought of its exponents.