Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 284, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 December 1918 — BEAUTY GREAT CIVIC ASSET [ARTICLE]

BEAUTY GREAT CIVIC ASSET

Ugly or 111-Kept Houses Do Much to Retard the Development Of Any Community. Morals, manners and taste are important as truly as health. Houses that are ugly, that tend to drive men and women away from them instead of attracting them are, to say the least, not making it easier to maintain good homes. Houses that are ill-kept or rundown are setting a constant pattern of shiftlessness and slovenliness before the child. Monotonous rows of pine boxes, or even of brick or concrete parallelepipeds are not adapted to cultivate taste for beautiful things nor to supply the basis for the expression of individuality. And individuality is somehow a very real element not merely in the attractiveness of life, but in the formation of character and of family standards. Fortunate is the small city or large town that has no great amount of housing of this kind. If communities set themselves the task of building schoolhouses that shall impress good standards upon children during five hours of the day, can they afford to take the risk of having patterns of hideousness before the eyes of children during the rest of the day?