y two or three hundred millions judiciously expended here by the
government would make a city which would ever remain the pride of the
whole people and command the admiration and respect of all the nations
around this great ocean.
Of what avail are art and architecture if they may not be employed in a
cause like this? Here is an opportunity which the world has never before
witnessed. With limitless wealth, with genius of as high an order as
any that has gone before, with the stored experiences of all ages and
nations--what better use can be made of it all than to establish at the
nation's western gate a city which shall be the initial point of a new
order of development? Away back in the days of Palmyra and Thebes
the rulers of those cities seemed to understand it, if the people did
not--that is to say, the value of embellishment. And had we now but one
American Nebuchadnezzar we might have a Babylon at our Pacific seaport.
For a six-months' world's fair any considerable city can get from the
government five or ten millions. And why not? There's politics in it.
Can we not have some of "those politics" for a respectable west-coast
city? Would it not be economy to spend some millions on an industrial
metropolis which should be a permanent world's fair for the
enlightenment of the Pacific? The nation has made its capital beautiful,
and so established the doctrine that art, architecture, and beautiful
environment have a value above ugly utility. May we not hope for
something a little out of the common for the nation's chief seaport on
the Pacific, a little fresh gilding for our Golden Gate?
THE END
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Cities and San Francisco and
Resurgam, by Hubert Howe Bancroft
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