Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 147, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 June 1915 — HOEM TOWN HELPS [ARTICLE]

HOEM TOWN HELPS

TREES A TANGIBLE ASSET Municipality That Desires Growth Cannot Afford to Do Without Its Btreot Ornaments. Even If a town or city cannot realize readily on the money value in its shade trees, cannot even issue bonds against them, as it might upon its water supply, they are nevertheless a tangible asset to the municipality. The testimony of the real estate men proves that without the necessity of further argument. In a less definite way the value of highway trees has been appreciated in this state for at least one hundred years, in proof of which are the superb old trees still standing along many a village street, and still further evidence of an everincreasing appreciation of their importance is found in a study of the statutes enacted from time to time to encourage roadside planting and to protect the trees from willful injury. But every now and again it becomes necessary to call public attention to the trees, lest they be forgotten in the hurly-burly of modern life. Our forefathers were able to stick a tree in the ground and let nature do the rest. Those times have passed. A. hard lot has fallen to the trees, what with imported “bugs" of assorted shapes and sizes to prey their life blood, and with man pushing his ingenious improved pavings and drainings around their feet, and his chafing and burning wires through their tops. Happily those trees that our forbeai? planted were mostly possessed of good oldfashioned New England constitutions, and able to withstand a lot of abuse, but we may not neglect them with impunity today. They need friends now as never before. —Allen Chamberlain in the Boston Transcript.