Bigger and Better

The march of progress--who in America dares stand in its way? What city in the U. S. dares turn savagely upon its boosters crying to them: "O foolish Philistines!" There is such a city, an ancient city founded when the Indians still hunted over Murray Hill, and Boston Common was indistinguishable from the wilderness around. The breath of the golden century of Spain clings to Santa Fe's narrow streets, walled gardens, soft cathedral chimes. Soft Santa Fe has not, as they would say in Miami or Los Angeles, "kept pace with the march of progress." It is still an old Spanish town. Its population is only 7,500 including some progressive citizens. Recently its Chamber of Commerce issued an invitation to women leaders to establish a sort of Chautauqua to which clubwomen from surrounding states might come for three months each summer. Permanent buildings were to be erected, and it was expected some 3,000 would annually visit there. Merchants were pleased. Then the storm broke. Artists of many kinds who had gone to Santa Fe to make the old city their home, residents who had been attracted by its ancient beauty, rose in protest. "What will happen to our fine old town," they asked, "if you bring here a transient population half as large as that we now have?" This was not an isolated cry such as now and then rises in other towns. It was a tempest which echoed through the town's newspapers and received not little press support. Only to those who live in Santa Fe does the Outcome of the struggle between the old and new directly matter. But it matters to the country that there is at least one town where such a protest finds support, where even today a bard rises with a protest of the old-fashioned kind--in verse, as so many of mankind's greatest protests have been written:

How can they understand the beauty of our city Who are not connoisseurs of loveliness? For it is not the beauty of gay lights; Nor of swift moving crowds; nor quick young laughter ; Nor of shop-thronged streets; nor the sharp hard clink of money Passing from fist to fist. Rather it is the beauty Of an old, old woman in a black mantilla; Of an old, old woman with unutterable wisdom Behind her wordless reticence; who lights a candle In token of prayer before a faded picture of the Madonna. Or it is humble beauty-- A flock of goats tumbling down a slope At twilight; or a silent beauty Of wine-dark shadows shed on purple hills. . . .

Last week Mary Austin, famed artistic Santa Fe resident, protested in the New Republic against the despoilers of her background, said that such cultural colonies belonged to the era of William Jennings Bryan. Many readers agreed that Chautauquas like tweeds are excellent in an appropriate setting, but fail to harmonize with old Spanish lace.