Perhaps some one will
say that our anticipations of Pittsburgh's future take on too much of
the color of our own desires. That is to say, the wish may be regarded
as the father of the thought. It is well to note, under the circumstances,
that predictions of gigantic growth here have been made by people who
cannot for a moment be suspected of prophesying from self interest.
The world is moving
so fast that the manufacture and sale of airplanes at lower prices than
automobiles may come in five or ten years hence. At the same time, our
inventive genius may produce a control which will enable the planes
to land more advantageously than at present. It will then be possible
for people of even the most moderate means to live without inconvenience
thirty, forty, sixty, even one hundred miles from the place of their
employment. The barriers which now limit the geographical extent of
cities will then have disappeared. There is accordingly nothing unreasonable
in the expectation that cities covering an area equal to that of a half
dozen of our present counties will be evolved. They will, of course,
be free from the acute congestion which now afflicts our large cities
in their central business areas.
The cities of the
airplane era, when practically all able-bodied men will be fliers, will
extend over vast areas and will have many shopping and marketing centers
instead of merely one or two such centers as now. They may even be so
large that city governments will more and more take on what may be described
as the federal form, with the subsidiary or local centers (call them
boroughs or what you will) retaining and exercising a large measure
of self government in purely local affairs. Even with this qualification
we can hardly be accused of rashness if we forecast cities with populations
of 25,000,000 and we are warranted in supposing that Pittsburgh will
be among the largest of these huge aggregations of human beings, for
reasons to which we have already referred.
Whatever the future
may hold for this America of ours it seems inevitable that Pittsburgh
will gain rather than lose eminence.
The fact that the
territory for 200 or 300 miles on every side is the most highly industrialized
territory in this or any other country gives us another ground. This
wonderful industrialization is not the product of whim but of inherent
and inalienable natural advantages, which are the assurance that it
will continue.
A third ground for
our faith is found in the traditional character of our population. It
is a blessing, not a curse, that Pittsburgh has become a synonym for
industry. It is a fashion here for even the richest to work. That fashion
and that example have had their effect upon our people as a whole. Nowhere
in the United States is there more industry or thrift.
The spirit of 1877
has fortunately passed. Our labor is given, to a greater degree than
in almost any other of our great industrial centers, to cheerful production
rather than discontented agitation. The result is what one might have
foreseen -- namely, we have the best paid and most prosperous labor
in America and per capita wealth of the people of the Pittsburgh district
is higher than that of the people of any other section of the country.
Metropolitan Pittsburgh, as may be proved by reference to the reports
of the federal census, is the fourth metropolitan area of the United
States in point of population while it leads all in individual buying
power.
If Pittsburgh fifty
years hence were ten times as large as it is today, and I believe it
will be; if it were several times as rich and powerful as it is today,
and I believe it will be; if its commerce found a dozen outlets, and
great fleets of vessels come from both the Gulf and the Great Lakes
were entering our harbor, as I believe they will be; if the vast factory
power which has enabled us to hold our present ratio enables us to do
likewise in the America of 200,000,000 people which in another generation
is to be -- if all this came to pass, but nothing more, we might yet
be disappointed in the Pittsburgh of 1977.
We desire all this
magnifying of our population, our trade, and our financial power, but
we desire just as much that this shall be a better as well as a greater
Pittsburgh. There are happy omens that this higher heritage also shall
be ours. We are thinking seriously of our human obligations. We are
cultivating good-will and mutual understanding between employer and
employee. We are building great temples and cathedrals of learning to
which our young men and women are pressing in a multitude that brings
within sight the day when Pittsburgh will be looked to by hundreds of
thousands of youth in all part sof the land for the gifts of mind and
spirit as eagerly as Israel in the desert looked to the Promised Land.
Our industry and our wealth must be transformed in constantly increasing
measure into spiritual enlargement and social light and beauty, after
the manner of the parable of industry which that great Pittsburgh artist,
John W. Alexander, has left so beautifully painted in the Carnegie Institute
upon the spacious walls of Alexander Hall. Our wealth and our industry
are in vain unless they gain a richer life and a deeper joy in even
the lowliest work for us all. In those masterly murals Mr. Alexander
not only fondly indulged a lofty dream for his city of Pittsburgh, but
dared to make a glowing prophecy, and I take his prophecy for my prophecy,
for I believe the Pittsburgh of fifty years hence will have made it
come true.
On
to the questions! |
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