 A century or two ago, we built our church and markedly raised the town hall next so we could have our say about the taxes or whether we need another teacher for the school. When town meeting comes around, we know our rights and duties and no harm if we disagree. In all that matters, we neighbors hold together. We work from sun to dark. If you can call just work a job that helps make a body feel at peace while doing it or hum a bit with pleasure when it's done. Art isn't something foreign we look at in a showcase. It's in the blankets that we've spun and woven right at home. It's in the patchwork quilts sewn by our daughters at a quilting bee for someone's bridal chest. It's in the locks and hinges that the blacksmith shapes. It's in the baskets that are woven in the neighborhood to fit our household needs from marketing to mending. When water wheels are better fitted to do the work than human hands, we rig up the machines to saw the wood or grind the corn for hominy grits in Johnny cake. A while ago, that corn was on the stalk, above the pumpkins ripe and yellow. One night, the neighbors met to shell the ears together. They did the job in no time so they could clear the old barn floor and choose their favorite partners for the dances. There was lasting harmony between the soil and what we built or planted there. We used our hands and mastered what we laid our hands on. Working and living, we found a balance. The town was us and we were part of it. We never let our cities grow too big for us to manage. We never pushed the open land too far away. We youngsters took it in. The haying field, the mill, the daily chores were teachers. We old ones had good years of family life, our own, our children's, mellow years before the ripe fruit fell as fruit will drop on windless autumn days. And that was peace. The seed was ready for the earth again, ready to die, ready once more to grow. All aboard the promised land, pillars of smoke by day, pillars of fire by night, pillars of progress, machines to make machines, production to expand production. There's wood and wheat and kitchen sinks and calico, already made in tons and carload lots, enough for tens, thousands, millions, millions, faster and faster, better and better. It don't make us any happier to know there's millions like us living here on top of it. Prisons where a guy sent up for crime can get a better place to live in than we can give our children. Smoke makes prosperity, they tell you here. Smoke makes prosperity, no matter if you choke on it. We got to face life in these shacks and alleys. We got to let our children take their chances here with rickets, typhoid, TB or worse. They draw up blank, the kids. They have no business here, this no man's land, this slag heap wasn't meant for them. There's poison in the air we breathe, there's poison in the river. The fog and smoke below rise up and choke us. Don't tell us that this is the best that you can do in building cities. Who built this place? What put us here? And how do we get out again? We're asking, just asking. We might as well stay in the mills and call that home, if just as fit to live in. We mine the coal, load the furnace, roll the steel, drive the rivets. We lock the boat on the assembly line. Lucky if we have the chance to keep the job from day to day, from month to month. If the dirty work alone don't get us down, we're not ashamed to handle coal and iron all the way from mine shafts to skyscrapers. We turn out cars or tractors we're mighty proud of, same as you. But how does that make sense with this? We never get the gritty feel out of our nose, our eyes, our lungs, our guts. We never get a chance to see how blue the sky can be, unless the mills are all shut down. Smoke makes prosperity, they say. Does this mean that there's no way out for us? There must be something better. Why can't we have it? A decent home. Now that makes another pile for you. Follow the crowd. We've reached a million, two million, five million. Watch us grow, going up. It's new. It's automatic. It dictates, records, seals, sterilizes, stamps and delivers in one operation without human hand. What am I bid? What am I offered? Sold. Who's next? The people, yes. Hold the crowd to the empire city, the wonder city, the windy city, the fashion city, the people, yes. The people, perhaps. Of course, most respectful. Dear sir. For human goals, this new age builds a better kind of city, close to the soil once more, as molded to our human wants as planes are shaped for speed. New cities take form, green cities. They're built into the countryside. They're ringed with trees and fields and gardens. New cities are not allowed to grow and overcrowd beyond the size that makes them fit for living in. The new city is organized to make cooperation possible between machines and men and nature. Each has its place. The sun and air and open green are part of the design. Safe streets and quiet neighborhoods are not just matters of good luck. They're built into the pattern and built to stay there. Power flashes from pit heads or rapid streams across the region. It flows from powerhouses to the sunlit factories and laboratories. Here science serves the worker and the work together, making machines more automatic, and the men who govern them more human. Factories are set apart from living quarters, but close to rail and motor roads, with space to spread about in. Light industries are near at hand. The heavy ones are set apart. People can even walk to work and have their lunch at home sometimes, just like the kids. This is no suburb where the lucky people play at living in the country. This kind of city spells cooperation. Wherever doing things together means cheapness or efficiency or better living. Each house is grouped with other houses close to the school, the public meeting hall, the movies and the markets. Around these green communities, a belt of public land preserves their shape forever. The children need the earth for playing and growing, bringing the city into the country, bringing the parks and gardens back into the city, never letting cities grow too big to manage, never pushing the meadows, fields and woods too far away. This works as well for modern living as once it did in old New England towns. We live a decent kind of life. We fathers have a little time to watch our kids and play with them. They see us in the daytime. The people who laid out this place didn't forget that air and sun are what we need for growing, whether it's flowers or babies. Just watch us grow. The scales won't hold us soon. You can't tell where the playing ends and where the work begins. We mix them here. We learn by living. Playgrounds, schools, libraries are meant for everyone. Even the washing needn't break a woman's back. Machines can take it. And the wife needn't feel cooped up and lonely on washing day. A little gossip or a friendly hand is good for the complexion. The daily marketing's part of the fun. In fact, the market's just an annex to the kitchen. Another chance to chat about the children's measles or the weather or some new wrinkle in the diet that grandma never knew. One thing is sure. Most of the greens brought in by truck from nearby farms each morning are fresh and crisp and haven't lost their flavor or their youth. In this new scheme of things, the school becomes the center and the focus of activities. Here boys and girls live and relive the life around them, getting the measure of our bigger world and shaping it anew. City and school and land in active partnership provide the raw materials for life and growth. Here boys and girls achieve a balanced personality, ready to build and meet a many-sided world, facing the good and bad, choosing the best. Make your choice. Each one is real, each one is possible. Shall we sink deeper, sink deeper in old grooves, paying for blight with human misery? Or have we vision, have we courage? Shall we build and rebuild our cities, clean again, close to the earth, open to the sky? Can we afford a house, a neighborhood, a city as good as this for everyone? Maybe the question is, can we afford all this disorder? The hospitals, the jails, reformatories, the wasted years of childhood. These are future citizens, voters, lawmakers, mothers, fathers. You take your choice. Each one is real, each one is possible. Order has come, order and life together. We've got the skill, we've found the way. We've built the cities. All that we know about machines and soils and raw materials and human ways of living is waiting. We can reproduce the pattern and better it a thousand times. It's here, the new city, ready to serve a better age. You and your children, the choice is yours.