USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Metropolitan Boston; a modern history; Volume II > Part 47
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47
Streets-No city in the country has had a more difficult task than Boston to adjust the narrow and winding streets of the old city to the needs of modern traffic. The problem of laying out and improving the highways has been one with which political parties have juggled almost
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from the time the city charter became operative. The street department and its branches, with the large volume of labor that for the past half century has been employed, has been the city department offering the most productive field for work by politicians and political factions. Street commissioners have been blamed for the tremendous expense in- volved in nearly every scheme for street construction. They have been accused of carrying on the payrolls hundreds who never rendered an hour's work to the city; but though there has been a basis of truth for the animadversions, the blame should not rest with the commissioners but with the policy that the city pursued for many years. Old streets were improved as those interested were able to bring pressure to bear upon the city government rather than as the needs of the city demanded. In hardly an instance has new construction of streets failed to be fol- lowed by litigation, accusations of payment of exorbitant prices for land taken and intimations that the cost of property had been raised far above its assessed value by those who were possessed of advance infor- mation as to the city's plans.
The establishment of a board of survey in 1891 created a decided improvement, though it did not eliminate all causes for complaint. For the first time a comprehensive plan of street construction was devised. Streets had previously been laid out-particularly in the suburbs-by private owners on the chance of acceptance by the city. Naturally de- velopments of an unsatisfactory character were engineered by those pos- sessing influence enough to have them approved by the administration in power while more worthy and useful plans were obliged to wait. The relief afforded by the board of survey was short, for it continued in existence only until 1897. At present the planning of new streets is under the juris- diction of the street laying-out department, in charge of a commission of three. The street department was, under the charter of 1909, absorbed in the newly created department of public works, comprising the former engineering, water and street departments. The street laying-out de- partment has extensive powers to construct new highways or discon- tinue or alter those in existence. It has, on the whole, functioned ad- mirably. Boston has suffered in connection with its street construction by reason of undue interference on the part of the Legislature, some legislation having been apparently directed toward keeping down the cost of street construction and street maintenance in Boston. The result has been exactly the contrary, if this was the expectation. On more than one occasion the city has been obliged to permit street sur- faces to become almost unfit for travel in order to place the repair work in the category of "extraordinary expenditures," that money could be borrowed instead of being taken from the taxes.
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Like most of the city departments coming in closest contact with the people, the street and subsequently the public works department has, in spite of methods that were wasteful and careless, been mindful of the people's needs. The practice, long in vogue, of appropriating equal sums of money for street maintenance work in the different wards, re- sulted in much unnecessary work being done while much that was needed was neglected.
This brief reference to the foregoing city departments has been made because, from the time of their organization to the present, they have been the administrative branches of the city government most intimately affected by the vicissitudes of politics, as well as closest to the daily life of the people. To trace the influence of politics on their progress, to analyze the factors that have at times caused them to go backward, only to make up later for the ground lost by long strides toward betterment, is beyond the scope of any but an exhaustive study. The outstanding fact is that, notwithstanding many discouraging years, many obstacles that sometimes seemed insurmountable and much that was sordid, un- clean and detrimental to honest transaction of municipal business and the promotion of the public welfare, Boston has attained a preëminence in most of those attributes which contribute to the well-being of the public.
Those who, by their votes and their influence, controlled the city in its early years, were imbued with the traditions of the Puritan and the Pilgrim, softened by the years. Those who are their successors, largely of a different race and religion, have absorbed something of the atmos- phere that surrounded the city in the days of the forefathers. Boston, in spite of its changes, retains its peculiar aloofness, its conservatism and its decency. "The rulers of the town were decent people of English blood," said a speaker recently. "The rulers of the city are decent people of Irish blood." This accounts for much that seems contradictory in both the past and the present life of the city, as it pertains to the control of public affairs.
Only well within the last quarter of a century have the political rulers of Boston fully realized the importance of Boston commercially and industrially with relation to New England. It is not without reason that the city was termed "provincial." Mayor John F. Fitzgerald coined the phrase a "Better, bigger and busier Boston," but interpreted it to include the improvement and expansion of the varied manufacturing and agricultural interests of the New England States. During his ad- ministration there was a notable growth and development of both local industries and the relations between the industries of New England and Boston. Aided by a reorganized Chamber of Commerce, a policy of greater publicity, setting forth the advantages of Boston, its importance
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to the area it serves and the identity of its interests with those of the group of States of which it is the leading city and port, was initiated and, with some lapses, has been pursued since. Previous to this time it can- not be said that Boston had ever been commercially aggressive. It has not yet been able to utilize to their full capacity the magnificent dock system which was completed about this time, but the inability is due to causes beyond the control of local government or local initiative.
"The port of Boston," said Mayor James M. Curley at the close of his second administration in 1925, "which for more than a century occupied the first place commercially, and for half a century second place in the matter of exports and imports, is today relegated to seventh place, and a harbor once alive with the shipping of the nations of the world is today merely a port of call. This negligible condition of commercial Boston is reflected in the rivers and harbors appropriation bill adopted annually by Congress, which this year, out of a total expenditure in excess of $16,000,000, allots the scanty sum of $200,000 to the port of Boston. It is further reflected in the failure of national and international industries either to locate within the city limits or to establish branch distributing agencies here for overseas trade, notwithstanding the commercial advan- tage represented by a saving of nearly three days in round trip ship- ments to Europe, or a saving of time and risk in shipments to the Pacific coast via the Panama Canal, or to the Atlantic ports of South America. The same hostile attitude displayed by the Federal government in the case of Boston in the matter of development of commercial agencies is; constantly manifested by our State Legislature, almost wholly as a mat- ter of politics."
That Boston has been seriously retarded in its commercial develop- ment by the refusal of the surrounding communities to amalgamate with the larger city, is indubitable. New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles-to mention only a few of the cities which are, in a sense, rivals of Boston-have reached out for miles beyond the point to which the most enthusiastic Boston expansionist ever contemplated going. The reason why annexation to Boston or even a closer connection than is afforded by the loose bonds of the metropolitan district is opposed is in part political. It is not wholly politics that causes hesitation to make the change which would raise Boston from the eighth to the fourth rank in population among American cities. The reasons go much deeper. All, or nearly all of the towns and cities embraced in Greater Boston possess a history and an individuality of their own. They are as provin- cial as Boston has been accused of being, but it is a provincialism of which they are proud and which involves a reverence for tradition, for the men and the works which have stood out conspicuously in the history of their progress-and a firm faith in ability to work out their own des-
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tiny independent of any political connection with Boston other than that involved in the common interest as subdivisions of the State. The view- point of Boston is wholly different and, it must be confessed, is more logical. The position of Boston is clearly stated by its last Democratic mayor, James M. Curley.
"I am firmly convinced that the time has arrived for concerted action by all organizations and individuals interested either in the city or the Commonwealth to work wholeheartedly for a Greater Boston. I have a profound realization of the obstacles that must be overcome to achieve an object so desirable and necessary; but I firmly believe that the bene- ficial results that will accrue from the establishment of a Greater Boston will justify the energy and effort expended on its accomplishment. . . The commercial and industrial benefits that would result from this fav- ored position (that of fourth city in population) should be apparent to every thoughtful citizen, yet politics prevents favorable action, to the detriment of both city and State."
It is probable that, while politics is not the only factor in the opposi- tion to Boston's expansion, too much weight has been given to the ques- tion of political control. In the fear on the one hand that the party in the ascendant in the State would acquire ascendancy in the city, and on the other that the dominant party in the city would extend its control through- out Greater Boston, the benefits that would accrue to both city and sub- urbs from an expanded municipality with a community of interest, have been lost sight of. Though the strongest opposition to political absorp- tion or even to political coordination has come from the Republican party in the State Legislature, both Republicans and Democrats in the city are agreed that the future development of Boston will be seriously handi- capped unless, in some form or other, a real Greater Boston is brought about. The peculiar situation tends to make a slower annual growth than in other American cities. With the expansion of industries, the increased demands for the utilization of space for commercial purposes and the constant extension of parks, playgrounds and religious and educational institutions involving the use of land once suitable for dwellings, the people are driven to make their habitations in the suburbs. The improve- ment in transportation facilities has enabled many to go beyond the city limits. Already some wards of Boston show a decreasing population with each census. The inviting character of the towns and smaller cities within a comparatively short distance of the city tends to the disadvan- tage of Boston from the standpoint of numerical position based on pop- ulation. Without expansion in territory this will grow with the years. Eventually the time will come when what is now suburban or residential Boston will not be able to contain any material proportion of those whose work is in the city, whose business interests are in the city, but who have
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no voice in its government, no hand in the selection of those whose duty it is to carry it on. This condition has already made itself manifest to a considerable degree. It is one that in time, when the effects of the drift in population become swifter and greater in volume, will unquestionably be a powerful factor in bringing about the political change now so strongly advocated and so bitterly opposed.
Fifty years hence, and probably sooner, Boston will in all human prob- ability, include within the sphere of its political control, much that is now a separate entity. Within the next decade the question of a Greater Bos- ton, commercially one, politically one even though the bond that unites them be loosely tied, is one that is bound to assume a leading position in the deliberations of the Legislature, for it is yearly becoming more evi- dent that only by territorial expansion can Boston attain that place in the sun to which it is entitled.
"Believing that sanity might sometime assert itself in our legislative assembly," said the last mayor of the city to leave office, "I have, during the past four years, instructed the City Planning Board and Municipal Department heads to base their estimates upon the possible requirements of the next quarter of a century. In consequence of this planning for the future, many of the municipal departments are in a position today to as- sume the increased obligations that would result from the adoption of a Greater Boston program."
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