And in this part of the U. Sy'
rich in many of the bounties of Nature, those small places have almost the knack of astonishing they are not content to "draw in their horns."
T remember when I first went out East—I mean in Asia, the.real Eas¢ =I was told that there was a standard of life to which one would na turally aspire and which he was expected to live up to, so that as a griffin T could not expect to. save! much money the first term T was! in China. This proved to be only! too true, T am afraid, and this is exactly the rule in community life in this country. No matter where 8 man lives, he wants, and he generally sees to it that he gets, the very. highest standard of living possible for the community. The newspapers may be filled, as they are, of the opinions of - President' Coolidge and Secretary Mellon, on the need for thrift, but the average ratepayer pays no haul. He votes for local improvements. He never hesitates to vote for the raising of bonds for his own town, 50 that, all over the country," the focal tax burden constitutes the A careful estimate, says a writer in a recent "Saturday Evening Post," is that nine-tenths of all the increase in Public school expenditures, for example, has been financed " through measures requiring approval by pop-city auditorium—an idea which is being run to uncommon extravakance—and everything else municipal.
The American, however, would tell a different tale if he were ing in Great Britain, where taxa tion is far higher than here, and where general cost of living is probably quite as high. Ife is eonstantly raising hue and ery on the one hand, but on the other, ax intimate above, he will vote "for many. millions of dollars be raised by his city, merely to' gratify local pride. There is big. talk and little action. Taxpayers want low taxes, yet they want a stadium or a municipal auditorium, for instance, just because the neigh: they.
the money by increased taxa-and do the grumbling after-Is Any-lone taxpayer, moreover, who has the pluck to- raise his Voice against such extravagance ix regarded as a traitor to. the community, and to the future greatness of the potential metro polis in which he lives. rapid development. Ten years in the life of a small city here is a Tong time, and if they do not get serious' move on before then, trebling or quadrupling their population in that time there is kon-erally something wrong. I think it was in my last letter that I referred to the way in' which Long Beach has gone ahead, and this a place which may' be used as an example (though perhaps an exceptional one) of the way in which people do things here. Fifteen years ago it was just a village,—now in 1926 its population is' probably more than half that of Bristol.
Standing in the contre of the richest el! fields in this state, it has collect~ ed more than four million dollars as il royalties. The consequence is, with a revenue of something over a hundred thousand dollars pouring monthly into the Treasurer's department, the is able to build the finest schools, the finest hospitals, the finest roads, the finest public utilities of all kinds, and Took confidently forward to the time when it will become a great and prosperous city as well as a world port. "Watch us grow," they tell you.
Not every place, naturally, is as favoured as Long Beach.' But practically all the small towns adjacent to it (and it is the same with all small towns near to the large and prosperous cities here in this State) are jealous lest they fail to enjoy all that the city dweller enjoys. The community, indeed, generally goes ahead on this hypothesis. This naturally means high taxation, the most frequently voiced complaint all over America. While the people "grouse," however,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.