" Lastly, much wastefulness results from want
of foresight. It is not easy to predict how a city will grow, or the
nature of its needs a few years hence. Moreover, even when it is easy
enough to predict a result, it is not easy to secure practical foresight
on the part of a city council elected for the current year. Its members
are afraid of making taxes too heavy this year, and considerations of
ten years hence are apt to be dismissed as "visionary." It is always
hard for us to realize how terribly soon ten years hence will be here.
The habit of doing things by halves has been often commented on (and,
perhaps, even more by our own writers than by foreigners) as especially
noticeable in America. It has doubtless been fostered by the conditions
which in so many cases have made it absolutely necessary to adopt
temporary makeshifts. These conditions have produced a certain habit of
mind.
[Footnote 10: This and some of the following considerations have been
ably set forth and illustrated by Hon. Seth Low, president of Columbia
College, and lately mayor of Brooklyn, in an address at Johns Hopkins
University, published in _J. H. U. Studies, Supplementary Notes_,
no.
Pages:
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215