WHAT: Ten years of data collection at Spring Grove tells us that, hands down, the top complaints are:

•    flower vase issues;
•    the condition of markers or memorials; and
•    the condition of graves.

Depending on the time of the year and weather conditions, the ranking of those three may change, but they are always the top three customer concerns.

Vases: Maybe some part of the vase is missing, or the vase has been damaged or it's stuck—"I can't get it out of the ground." You may get someone 78 years old coming into the office and saying, "I remember my great-grandmother bringing me here when I was a 3 year old, and we'd leave beautiful little poseys on my great-grandfather's grave, and now I can't find the vase. Can you help me figure out where it is?" The last time he saw the vase was 75 years ago, but it's like yesterday to him.

Markers: Maybe the marker has sunk on one comer so it's not lawn level. There could be a little bit of soil on the marker. The marker could have a little bit of grass growing around the edge or beginning to encompass it, or if it's fall, there could be dead leaves covering it.

Markers get damaged. A flat marker can get chipped if it's not perfectly horizontal or if the ground around it wasn't level. The front pan of a mower where the blades are can cause a little chip. A mower might bump the corner of all upright marker when the operator is trying to maneuver around it.

In some cases, rubberized equipment leaves a mark on a memorial. This may not sound bad on the face of it, but psychologically, there's not much worse than seeing a tire mark—which is easily identifiable—on a loved one's memorial. What that conjures up in the mind is just awful. So even though this may not seem like a big deal—you see those rubber marks all the time on roads, in parking lots—in a cemetery, the situation is totally different, and we need to be sensitive to that.

Graves: One of the bigger issues is a grave that has sunk, even a little bit. Whether it's an inch or three inches, a sunken grave conjures up the same anxiety, concern and frustration. From the cemeterian's viewpoint, it might seem having graves sink "only" an inch is progress compared to the days when graves would sink several inches. But from the customers' point of view, it's just as bad. Seeing a sunken grave rekindles the whole grieving process.
WHY: While you do need to attend to things like tree maintenance, you'll never get a complaint from a family about a tree with a dead branch. You need to make it a priority to know which issues are most important to your families and to constantly stay on top of those issues.

When people find out you're in the cemetery business, sometimes they say, "You've got the best customers in the world—they don't talk back." We chuckle, of course, but they don't think about all the family members who are left behind and are upset because someone they love died.

"Gosh, I didn't get to say goodbye. I didn't know it was going to happen so soon. Why did that happen to someone I love?" They're frustrated, so any little thing wrong in the cemetery is going to set them off.

A lot of people just want to find something that someone did—or didn't do—and get mad at someone as an outlet for their emotions. "The grass on the grave is getting too dry. That's unacceptable—that's my mother's grave! Don't they understand—that's where my mother is buried! I'm going down there to give someone in that office a piece of my mind!"

The person taking the request/complaint must not take it personally. These family members may still be grieving, and that's why they're set off by something as simple as not being able to find a vase. The death may have taken place five years ago, and then something happened to stir up their memories and that grief.

HOW: Step one is to acknowledge the frustration felt by the person complaining. Train the people taking these complaints to say, "I understand exactly what you're saying,
Mrs. Jones. My gosh, I'd feel the same way, if not more upset. You’re being very patient."

The longer you're in the business, the more sensitive you become to these issues and the easier it is to not take these things personally and to respond the correct way. It can be hard to train new people to understand how our families feel. When you bring in a student to do some part-time grounds work, or hire a full-time worker who's 21, it would be almost bizarre for them to have the same sensitivity as people who have been in the industry a long time.

It's not their fault—it's just that someone that young usually hasn't been exposed to death enough to understand what's going through a person's mind. We do some role playing to try to show our newer employees what our customers are thinking and feeling.

We make all our managers rotate through the customer service position—a lot of them for more than a year rotating people helps prevent burnout. Even when you know how to handle the families, it can be fatiguing. If you get three or four traumatic cases in a day, when you go home you are absolutely beaten down.

Spending some time dealing with these issues is also good training, because it lets everyone understand the significance of the business we're in. And by having a lot of people go through the experience, we can bounce ideas off each other: "Here's what I've used in situation X that really calmed the situation."
Step two: Brainstorm some preventive steps that make sense at your cemetery to try to cut down on your most common complaints. At Spring Grove, we've examined our "big three" and taken the steps outlined below.

Vases For Everyone
Historically at Spring Grove, which is a very large cemetery, anyone who wanted to could have a permanent vase installed at lawn level. Our experience is that over time, it's going to become a problem for the cemetery. The vase will become silted in; grass is going to grow over it. The chain is finally going to deteriorate. It may take a while, but we've been around since 1845, and eventually the weather is going to take a toll and create a situation that is going to frustrate a customer someday.

Through talking to our families when they visit and in focus groups, we learned that all people want is to be able to bring in some fresh flowers on Mom's birthday, or their wife's anniversary, or for Christmas or some other holiday.

Everyone may not agree with this approach, but we decided that the only people who will be allowed to install permanent vases will be those who bought their property when it was allowed. In new sections, we don't allow permanent vases.

Instead, we provide complimentary inexpensive (they cost us about $1 a piece) temporary vases. They are available in 25 racks we've placed throughout the park. We call them "temporary" not because they are throw-aways but because they're left out for about a week or 10 days, while the flowers last. Then we collect them and put them back in the rack.

People find this to be incredibly acceptable—they love the concept. All they really want is a container—they don't really care what kind of container it is. In this day and age, they're on their way home from work, they stop at Kroger's to pick up bread and milk, see some flowers and think, "Oh, gee, it's Mom's birthday tomorrow, I think I'll get this little bouquet and run by the cemetery." They know they'll be able to grab a vase from the rack—they won't have to search for the vase or dig it up.

There is a metal sign at the bottom of every rack that says, "If by any chance this vase rack doesn't have any vases in it, please stop by our office, which is open seven days a week, to pick up a free vase."

The families are happy and it cuts down on our maintenance problems. During a cold winter, when freezing water might make even a bronze vase crack down the side, we've got customers in the office saying, "Hey, my vase is cracked; what happened?" We can explain what happened,
but do you think that's what the customer wants to hear? No way! All they're really saying is, "Fix it." If there is a problem with an existing permanent vase, we quickly repair it at no charge.

Newer cemeteries may not have this problem, but for an older cemetery, you do have those 78-year-olds coming in to put flowers in great-grandmother's vase and expecting it to be in the same pristine condition it was in 75 years ago. They think it should be a "forever vase," just like the cemetery's going to be there forever.
Any vase outside for 100 years isn't going to be in perfect condition, and if we are doing our job as cemeterians, we're thinking in that kind of time frame. We shouldn't think, "Well, I'm not going to worry about it—I'll be dead and somebody else can worry about the customer then." We've got to be proactive and think long-term.

TLC for Markers
We've done a number of things to try to cut down on complaints about markers:
•    We try to inspect each marker after it has been installed.
•    We've tried to improve our setting process, doing more compaction before the marker is placed.
•    When it's particularly wet, we try to use boards to displace the weight of the equipment over a larger area and protect the ground.
•    We have increased the number of times per season that we do vertical string trimming in each section. One of the concerns customers have today is that grass starts growing in from the edges over horizontal markers. To prevent this, don't just scalp out the grass around the marker, turn the string trimmer 90 degrees to the marker and edge it just like you would a sidewalk.
•    We reward employees for reporting sunken areas where a mower pan might chip a marker.
•    We immediately take care of chips, stains or any other problems the family reports. If a chip is significant enough or the customer is adamant, by golly, we'll replace the marker.

Settling Grave Problems
Graves are a challenge for cemeterians all over the country, especially for those who are in freeze/thaw areas or who have the type of clay, very compacted soils we have. We've tried doing a better job initially of tamping down the soil to prevent settling. We know when we do it under perfect conditions in August or September, we're not ever going to get a complaint from the family.

In the winter, when we're dealing with gooey, wet, super-saturated soils, we know it's going to be very difficult to compact the soil without any settling. We use a special aggregate or a gravel to minimize the compaction or settling. The pourable aggregate goes around the vault and no settling takes place there. We've improved the process, but we're not 100 percent satisfied.

The word "unique" is often misused to describe the unusual but not truly one of a kind. Forest Lawn Cemetery's Blue-Sky Mausoleum is unique. It is the only Frank Lloyd Wright-designed memorial the public can buy.

In the lexicon of cemeteries, Blue-Sky is a garden mausoleum—an outdoor mausoleum—but no one seeing what appears to be a wide, double granite staircase leading up a hillside to a memorial would recognize it as such.

A sales booklet for Blue-Sky says Frank Lloyd Wright's design "broke the box of memorial architecture tradition." In fact, he did away with the box-there is no box, no walls, no roof.

If you didn't know what it was, you would assume Blue-Sky to be a fabulous memorial to an incredibly wealthy individual. But Blue-Sky, though originally designed for Darwin Martin, Wright's wealthy patron (before the 1929 stock market crash) who wanted to gather his family together for all time, was finally built by the cemetery, not by a family. Its 24 crypt spaces are being marketed as a community mausoleum or even a cenotaph.

People who do not plan to be interred there but would like their name connected with Wright's memorial for all time may purchase a crypt simply in order to have their name or family name carved on the crypt front, said Fred R. Whaley Jr., recently retired Forest Lawn president.
 
 
Cemeteries as outdoor museums
Historic rural cemeteries are no strangers to works by renowned sculptors and architects, and often remind the community that they are outdoor museums as well as the nation's first parks. During Forest Lawn's celebration of its 150th anniversary in 1999, the cemetery hosted an exhibit, "Sculpture of the Spirit," featuring works from contemporary artists, for several months (see the September 1999 ICFM).

Blue-Sky Mausoleum, however, is a permanent addition to the cemetery's landscape, and it was designed by the one architect most Americans could name. The mausoleum project is also part of a larger effort by Buffalo to use its wealth of Wright-designed buildings to draw tourists.

Forest Lawn commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation architect Anthony Puttnam, who had apprenticed with Wright and who has developed other Wright designs, to oversee the construction of Blue-Sky.

Buffalo has the largest collection of Wright structures in the Northeast. The Darwin Martin home complex, also designed by Wright, has undergone a $25 million restoration, and designs for The Transportation Museum's Filling Station and the Rowing Boathouse are scheduled to be turned into buildings this year.

"Oak Park, Illinois, may be the only other community in the world that has as many Wright-designed sites," Whaley said. Wright afficionados will come to Buffalo "from all over the world," Whaley predicted. Blue-Sky, he said, is "unlike any other Wright project either here or elsewhere, and that in itself will be a draw."

A unique market
Who will choose not just to look—which anyone can do for free—but to buy at prices no doubt more typical for art than mausoleums, particularly community mausoleums?

"We have only to look at auctions at Christie's and Sotheby's to understand the desire people have for pieces of architecture," Whaley said. "A collector will be very interested in the Blue-Sky—perhaps not for burial and memorialization, but more because it is something of Frank Lloyd Wright's." (Those interested in buying are directed to request a Purchase Information Package via info@blueskymausoleum.com or 716.885.1600.)

Wright's other designs for cemetery structures include the Pettit Memorial Chapel at Belvidere Cemetery, Belvidere, Illinois, which includes a chapel and memorial but not burial chambers.

Also, he designed the Unity Temple in Wisconsin's Taliesin Valley as a memorial and burial structure for himself, his wife and daughter and members of the Taliesin Fellowship. However, when Wright died in 1959, work had begun on the foundation, but the project was never completed.

Now that Blue-Sky has been realized, the plans have been retired; there will not be another one. It is, and will forever be unique.

Communities evolve. Their economies experience boom and bust.
Immigration alters their demographics. Cemeteries must find ways to adapt while staying true to their mission to honor those who have gone before.

Evergreen Cemetery Association was founded in 1848, when New Haven, Connecticut, was on an upward spiral. Governors, industry magnates and Yale graduates were buried within its walls.

Evergreen Cemetery, like New Haven, was new and growing and pulsing with the vibrancy of business and industry and the escalating fortunes of the city's moguls. New Haven, like similar cities around the country, rose and fell with the tides of historic events.

Fallen soldiers of the Civil War—black and white, Northern and Southern—were brought to Evergreen to rest in peace. Over the years, the cemetery welcomed soldiers and sailors from 20th century wars and erected memorials to fallen firemen and policemen.

New Haven was changing, reflecting the new Middle America. Men and women who were important within the spheres of their own families, neighborhoods, churches and communities were remembered.

Evergreen continued to grow, filled with memorials placed in loving memory of fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, mothers, wives, daughters and sisters. Memorials to loved ones were smaller than in New Haven's heyday but no less important. Edward Bouché, the first black man to graduate from Yale, is buried in Evergreen Cemetery.

In 1956, a crematory was built, adding a new dimension to the "cemetery" business. Evergreen now offered two services, both marketed to funeral directors. They were similar in some ways but different in others. Cremation was not the preservation of the body as we had known it.

Cremation meant human remains could be scattered in the wind or over the sea, or preserved in an urn kept on a mantle. But eventually, cremation families returned to memorialization at Evergreen in one form or another. It is easier to bring a grandchild to a place where they can look upon a stone or a memorial tree to discuss the people who have gone before them. Evergreen offers families scattering gardens, urns, niches and vases to decorate niches.

New Haven is more diverse than it used to be and therefore so is Evergreen Cemetery. We advertise in Spanish as well as English. We have memorials written in the languages of China and Japan.

Singing in many languages and flowers of many colors fill the cemetery. Our memorial stones have jazz saxophones, pictures of young men cut down in their prime and letters written in Spanish to a beloved family member.

Evergreen Cemetery is still as beautiful as when it was created in 1848, with flowers and trees that grace its park-like grounds. We have Canada geese and ducks; we have seagulls on some days and blackbirds on others. People walk, run and ride bikes in the cemetery.

We conduct our business with pride and purpose and, above all, dignity and respect for the dead that lie within these walls. We are the keepers of history. We are the voices of time.

Everything has changed and nothing has changed. We are marketing a cemetery and we are preserving the memory of loved ones and a community.

It always makes a pleasant introduction to see so many visitors and friends having an opportunity to enjoy what Kansas City is decidedly proud of a chance to get out in the woods while still in the city, a chance to get out and see the really great work that Kansas City has authorized.

In what I shall say this afternoon, I wish to emphasize the cemetery, while a place of rest, as being at the same time an essential portion of the park system of every city in the country. You can hardly go anywhere now in the United States where the cemetery itself is not as fine in appearance, as well kept, as any park and fully as attractive; not particularly as a pleasure resort, of course, but certainly as an attractive spot out of doors, where people can feel free to enjoy everything that nature presents to us in all the different forms in different parts of the world. And in that direction I think it worth while to call particular attention to the great contrasts we find in so many different cities. Of course the dominant note of the cemetery today as distinguished from a graveyard, if you please, is the park effect. In contrast with that I have in mind particularly one city in the country where for nearly two miles in length and perhaps a quarter to a half mile in width there is a rich private cemetery that is one succession of stone yards, that in outline gives contrast and perhaps, if you please, the horrible example. Truly, therefore, it is a pleasure to see now in the development of the work a consistent effort towards maintaining the cemetery more as a park than as a burying ground. Undoubtedly, of course, the superintendents have all the trouble in the world in keeping the gentlemen who have charge of the financial end of it from saying that a stone shall go here or there against the rules and regulations and the canons of good taste; but, after all, that becomes a minor thing. This property itself illustrates the park idea, as do so many of the larger cemeteries in the downtown regions, where they do become essential portions of the pleasure drives. Throughout the whole country, where you gentlemen can work out your cemeteries in that way, you are but doing the same work exactly that the designers of great public work are doing; and every effort that you can make to avoid the conditions that I have mentioned will be immensely appreciated by those interested in particular properties, but especially by the whole city. In contrast with the great stone yards that you find throughout the country you can each of you think of your own properties where you have left open grounds, where you have planted bits of green, trees or shrubs, where you have avoided the garishness of too much of floral schemes. I am sure the appreciation comes to you immediately in values as well as in good appearance.

It may be interesting to recall what some of the European countries have been doing for centuries, which you will find in sharp contrast with the truly American idea of the cemetery as a park. If was my good .fortune some years ago to be in Vienna on All-Souls Day, Vienna with its two or three millions of people, having really only one cemetery, a great municipal property, every portion of it enclosed partly by iron fence and partly by walls, every grave raised from one to two feet high and on that particular day and especially in the evening, a light burning on every grave. Of course the whole was an exceedingly interesting thing; but it illustrates the very great progress made in that direction and initiated in the United States. They are all going in that direction now and they all imagine that they are the pioneers in the work; but if you will look back to the early work in this country you will find that it antedates everything in every other country and perhaps the first and largest work of that kind is in "Spring Grove." From that everyone has developed in his own particular way a park that is well worthy everywhere of being incorporated into the park system. In St. Louis I have endeavored to incorporate the two great cemeteries on the north into the final park system by bringing King's Highway into touch with it. In Indianapolis today we are working out a boulevard system that will take in "Crown Hill" on one side. In Syracuse, NY, I noticed not long ago the very beautiful showing made by "Oakwood" and "Morningside" and a boulevard projected along the side of them shows these two properties to be perfect parks in themselves.

In the case of this property where we are today, although quite a distance east of the city, the Blue Ridge road lying on the hills just west of us will undoubtedly become a part of the great system of pleasure drives, and this property will be fitted into the Kansas City system.

The whole idea, however, that has impressed me regarding the incorporation of these properties into the public systems is that, in the absence of the "stone yard," the great open places of our cemeteries become as important as any, of our parks or the open places of every city. And looking in that direction, I wish very much you might encourage your sales agents to sell land rather than to sell stone.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Convention
Held at Kansas City, MO
August 11, 12 and 13, 1908

The chief object in writing this paper is to show as near as possible the true value and character of this association, to the new members and the young men.

I think they should know something of what the old members have gone through with, in order to accomplish our present high standard of proficiency.

Satan is our strongest adversary in every walk of life and the cemetery is no exception to the rule.

Prior to 1887 or the inception of the AACS, the graveyard, as they were usually called at that time; but the most appropriate name would have been the wilderness of Satan.

Satan behind the monument,
Satan behind the shrub and tree,
Satan in every pathway,
Satan looking for you and for me.

The monuments in those days had little or no character at all. They were mutilated by all sorts of lettering, emblems and epitaphs such as,

Beneath this mound lies all we found
Of little Johnny Green,
Who went one night by candlelight
To get some gasoline.

In the twenty years past, the influence and better judgment of the superintendent alone has been very marked indeed, so that we now have monuments with character, grace, dignity and true art, and with no lettering on them but the family name. So you can readily see we have succeeded in driving Satan away from the monument.

The shrubs and trees, I say, have had Satan behind them too, for it keeps the superintendent continually alert for the almost endless variety of insects and each year brings some new imp of Satan for us to battle with, but with the aid of so many good sprays now on the market and such thorough hand books on entomology it is not much trouble for the active superintendent to keep his trees entirely free from Satan.

Perhaps it would be proper here to mention some of his imps that infest the tree. Gypsy moth, Umber moth, Leopard moth, Tiger moth, Ermine moth, Goat moth, Lackey moth, Thrips moth, Gold-tail moth, Brown-tail moth, March moth, Brindled Beauty moth, pine bark beetles and pine Weevils, musk beetles, sawflies, San Jose scale and the tree borer.
The avenues where Satan was always in evidence and especially after every heavy rain, both in wash-outs and with many varieties of weeds. Those that are fortunate enough to have cement curb and gutters on all grades and with the aid of the weed killer (several good formulas) and the practical and scientific methods employed by the up-to-date superintendent, we have succeeded in driving Satan from the avenues.

The lawns are not without their troubles with this same Satan.  There is the cutworm, the Tipulide or grubs, black and red ants, wireworms, and ground moles, all here to test our faith and patience.

Since the inception of this organization the active or progressive superintendent has driven Satan farther and farther until now he has him very close to the boundary line, if not out altogether. So that now, the name could well be, "God's Acre Beautiful or "Silent Park of Repose."

For the benefit of the young man, and the new members, I should like here to enumerate some of Satan's vexations that the older members had to encounter, before and since the inception of this organization. But I am delighted to report at this time that most all of these annoyances of the devil are now things of the past.

There was the hedge fence, the iron fence and the post and chain fence, the small wooden fence around single graves, the stone coping, shells, toys, toy houses, glass globes, tin wreathes, tripods, wire arches, gravel walks, terrace lots and all the other old tin and glass ware they did not want at home they took out to the cemetery.

The inception of this organization placed before us in the far distance an object to be attained. What was that object? Men in life and especially men of the American people are usually actuated by that indomitable spirit of gain, of honors, or wealth for themselves. What was the aim of these few men twenty years ago? What was that high ideal that they placed a way up in the sky shining like diamonds in the stars? That was to benefit mankind.

It was not to attain any present gain of great honors or high position. No, it was on the contrary, taxing them to their greatest abilities to achieve for the benefit of the common masses of humanity safety, and for your profession, for your calling, the title, position, elevation and advancement that should be in keeping with the progress of the age.

The present age is preeminently the age of progress.

The present age is preeminently the age of the young man and I am very much pleased to see so many young faces grace this assembly here today, as these very old members that have worked so faithfully for you, are one by one passing to their reward into that higher life of the soul unseen by mortal vision.

And now, gentlemen, with this heritage handed down to the young man, and the new members, these men of perhaps higher education that have been breathing in the spirit of progress of the age, what can we not expect? Will you not appreciate the efforts of these men so unselfishly accorded? Will you not endeavor to discharge the duties as not to bring reproach or anything like reproach or disgrace upon these efforts?

It should, I think, emulate in you higher ideals and nobler actions, to higher aims and greater achievements. Therefore, in all your considerations, in all your deliberations, please be careful to maintain the purity of this ideal.

Please give these older members credit for what they have accomplished in the face of so much discouragement. You have far better laws. Don't prostitute these laws. Don't misuse them. Don't aim to make them ends for personal gain. But hold them in the highest possible respect to the end that the whole nation may honor and respect you for it.

I am pleased to see so many ladies here. Manifestly there are fewer branches that exclude them in the higher walks of life. I am pleased to see them, for their gentle influences carry refinement, higher aims and nobler thoughts into our hearts and minds.

What we want to plead for, is not primarily new resolutions, it is a new life. I hope that we may see the difference. We need a new conception of what we are living for, a new picture of the sort of life which it is worthy of a man to live. You must have this or your good resolutions surely come to naught.

No haunt of nature is more sympathetic or attractive than the small, well-kept and well embellished lake or stream in the cemetery.

It is ever singing a song to the understanding heart. The friendliness of its babble touches the chord that vibrates when a kindred spirit reveals itself in the light of a human eye.

To my neighbor and friend, "drive away Satan" and join the AACS. You will find it the most intelligent movement ever conceived and carried out by the cemetery superintendents for their own moral betterment, higher ideals, intellectual and social advancement.

This association is made up almost exclusively of members of one profession. There are now very close to 600 members in the national and auxiliary associations combined.

We are looking for new members of course all the time, but they should be men of the right kind of material, not selfish and impartial, but always ready to impart what little you do know. "No Satan in that." But the man that does not want to impart same of his knowledge to others has Satan about him at all times.

Every cemetery should receive all, strangers and especially the commercial travelers, with a hearty and most cordial welcome. Do not be like some churches to the Sunday visitor, receive them with a coldness and indifference that make them wish they had never gone to that place and declare that they will never go back. Satan has first lease on that place.

It is one of the singular things about this business that the devil never takes a vacation, whilst most business men do, one or two times every year.
Satan is continually sowing the seeds of sin. What will you do with them, destroy them or cultivate them?

Satan with some of your employees,
Satan with same of your lot owners,
Satan in some of your drain tiles,
Satan looking for you and for me.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 20th Annual Convention
Held at Detroit, MI
August 21, 22 and 23, 1906

I think it will be conceded by everyone, who takes the trouble to think about the matter, that water effects greatly enhance the beauty of landscapes. Whether the body of water be large like the ocean, great lakes and broad rivers, or small like our ponds and rivulets, the charm of the mobile element reflecting the fleecy clouds and the masses of trees and shrubs helps to form a picture appreciated by all and to say that it often adds one-hundred-fold to the beauty of the scene would not be an exaggeration.
 
After having settled affirmatively the desirability of a waterscape, the next question arising will be as to whether there is a place suitable, or water available for such an improvement. If it is impossible or impracticable of achievement nothing more need be said. If it is; however, within bounds, physically or financially, I will endeavor to give a few hints as to procedure. It should be understood, at first, that a sufficient supply of water at all times to prevent stagnation and consequent ill smells, must be obtained. We will suppose that we are among the fortunate ones and have in our cemetery some low place, some small valley or depression through which already a small stream trickles, or to which water can be diverted. Then such a problem is comparatively simple and all we have to do is to take advantage of our good luck.

Of course no two cases are alike, but generally by damning the outlet, or deepening, a sufficient expanse can be secured. First we must decide on the head or elevation it is possible or desirable to obtain. After determining that point, we can by leveling from the height of the proposed dam or outlet, find where the shore line will be. That, if not already irregular enough by the undulations of the surrounding grounds, must be made so by grading; for our little lake must be full of coves and projections large and small, as nature is full of irregularities and naturalness is what we must strive for. The best effects will be secured if our lakelet is a trifle less in breadth than length. Soil from the excavation can be used for building elevations of various shapes and sizes. The hanks should be concave next to the water, a convex surface being unsuited as a margin for either a shore line or a drive. The concavity should gradually change into a convex shape at the highest part of the grade. These curves should leave the shore in graceful sweeps from the edge, now receding gently, then rising more abruptly to higher points, always bearing in mind that the action of the elements has a softening effect on the angles of elevations and that we, to be natural, must grade accordingly.

In this arrangement thought should be given to the various points of view which are to be finally established, as the whole lake should not be in sight from anyone point. If convenient, rocks and stones of various colors and sizes can be added for picturesqueness; and if tastefully distributed will contribute to the artistic effect.

Islands are some times desirable. If properly placed they add variety and accentuate the character of the scenery. Generally speaking they should be situated near the shore and at the points, where they seem like prolongations; not in the bays, where they only serve to clog, nor in the center where the depth is supposed to be greatest. Two places where islands may be used to good advantage are at the inlet and outlet. If the stream which supplies the body of water is not attractive it can be concealed by an island placed in front of it, or a like condition existing at the outlet could be treated in the same way.
 
Broadly speaking the character of the landscape around a lake such as we have described should conform to, or harmonize with, its surroundings. If the land is broken and stony a picturesque, wilder treatment would be preferable. If the surrounding scenery is milder and gentler the ground should take on and emphasize those characteristics. The shores should have sweeping curving outlines, the banks rise in easier swelling contours and the foliage is around full habit. The last condition is more in keeping with the quality of beauty of a placid, mirror-like lake and will be oftener exemplified in the work of the improver than the other. Of course the artist can attempt modifications of the two types to good advantage, if done judiciously.

Having arranged the outline we can now proceed to clothe with foliage the margins of the lake. This, done at the proper season and gaining full beauty at maturity, must depend for artistic success upon the ability and good taste of the designer. A few broad rules are all that can be given in a paper of this size and scope. As previously stated the borders of the newly erected sheet of water should harmonize with and develop the quality of the surrounding scenery. If of the beautiful type, the trees should be of a majestic, full habit, and the masses of planting not so abrupt and with softer outlines; back on the higher land could be oaks, maples, ashes or lindens; nearer the margin the water loving plants, like willows, the smaller red-branched dogwoods and button bushes out of which may grow an occasional elm. There may be vines and shrubs covering the naked trunks, furnishing the shadings for the picture and confining the eye to the desired views. All the native trees and shrubs from the country around are acceptable. Alders, elders, spiraeas, hazels, thorns, sumachs, dogwoods with their red winter stems, and red-berried shrubs like the barberry, highbush cranberry and Indian currant may be used and are very effective.

The planting, as said before, should not be in spots, as it were, but in irregular masses with the proper graceful connection between the groups, all varying in height and extent, in the most natural manner.

The picturesque treatment differs from the last in that it is wilder. The plants are in places, crowding each other; climbing vines wind about the stems and interlace the boughs of the trees, which are themselves of a more violent, rugged nature. Larch and fir trees would be at home in this environment. Moss-covered rocks, with ferns and shade-loving plants, could be used here and both can be blended by the artist in the most delightful manner.

By studying the outlook from every point of view before commencing to plant, a mental picture should be made, afterwards transferred to a drawing. This should provide openings to command the best glimpses of the water, generally across the widest portions.

Having finished our creation, more or less to our satisfaction, all that can be done afterward is to admire and wait for time to mature and mellow. We may be sure, at any rate, that no matter how indifferent our effort may have been, it will be an improvement and with the lapse of the seasons, grow in beauty, if not meddled with too much; while if we have studied nature and the best art closely, we will have a picture restful, entrancing, always changing and satisfying, from every point of view, either spiritual or material. Swans and other water fowl on a placid sheet of water, as described, give a bit of life to the scene and undoubtedly add much to its attractiveness.

Water effects in the shape of rivulets or brooks; are other forms it maybe convenient to develop, either as inlets or outlets to the broader expanse, or taken by themselves. The landscape, in this case, as in the other, should conform to its environment. If the ground is very uneven the stream will partake of the same character and the channel be steep and tortuous, with pools in places, then rapids and finally little falls or cascades. It would be manifestly improper to have the banks of such a brook smooth and even, with the green grass sloping gently to its edge and the whole surrounding tame and conventional. That would do for the level-winding, calm streamlet, but not for the strenuous one. That kind means action; the other repose and harmony must govern.

Work can some times be done to improve such a stream as described. By removing rocks or stones a better appearance can be given and when practicable small pools can be established by little dams or obstructions and falls made where none existed. The whole should be covered by a rather thick tangle of trees, shrubs, vines, ferns and all plants that would naturally choose such a habitation, with now and then an opening to let in the sunlight and provide variety.

In conclusion I wish to reiterate that the dominant quality, the keynote, of any successful achievement in the line we have been discussing must be naturalness. Study some fine piece of scenery, either natural or artificial, in your neighborhood. Note the simplicity of the whole arrangement, no formality, no straight lines, no staring contrasts, no eveness, but perfect harmony, the trees of different sizes, massed together, one group now running into another, now separate, of different heights, the whole shaded and softened by undergrowth, with the green sward for ground work, remembering that “natural groups are full of openings and hollows, of trees advancing before, or retiring behind each other, all productive of intricacy, of variety of deep shadows and brilliant light."

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 20th Annual Convention
Held at Detroit, MI
August 21, 22 and 23, 1906

Twenty years ago the Association of American Cemetery Superintendents came into existence. Twenty years is a long time to look forward to. But twenty years is still longer to look back upon. Betterment of cemeteries was the idea of Charles Nicholls, the father of the movement; Betterment by example; Betterment through interchange of ideas; Betterment through visiting and seeing well-managed cemeteries. For the latter reason, Spring Grove, Cincinnati, was selected for the first object lesson. There and then a spirit of emulation sprang up: a right worthy spirit. The assembling together of cemetery superintendents brought out many new ideas that have greatly improved the burial grounds all over this vast country. Year by year these ideas have broadened. Cemeteries with high reputations for their beauty have been benefited and old fashioned places improved and in many instances modernized. The people of the present time will not stand for a neglected state of affairs. They see good examples of cemetery management, and naturally demand a betterment in the management of their home burial grounds. Innumerable cases can be cited where neglect has given place to beauty. Nature is very bountiful and it only requires a little ingenuity on the part of man to transform a neglected place into one of beauty.

During the past twenty years many parts of the United States have been visited by the association. Seventeen years ago Detroit was selected as the most suitable city in which to hold the third convention. Marvelous have been the changes in cemetery development since that convention.

While the membership of the Association of American Cemetery Superintendents is not numerically strong, yet a goodly number have passed through the ranks. Each and every one of them must have been benefited. This is evidenced by a visit to the cemeteries under their charge.

For all of this improvement little credit is given to the organization by the general public. The good work has gone on quietly and without ostentation and will go on. The association will soon be of age, twenty-one years. It has several offspring, all having in view the same object--betterment.

The future care of cemeteries is one of the brightest achievements of the Association of American Cemetery Superintendents. Year after year perpetual care was discussed, until now all managers of cemeteries recognize the importance of the subject and are giving endowment special attention. It will be safe to predict that within a few years the perpetual care of all cemeteries will be insured. Twenty years ago chaos and neglect were too observant. This has in a great measure given way to cleanliness and order. The endowment of one burial lot generally leads to the endowment of others. There is, indeed, a great satisfaction in the knowledge that our graveyard will be kept green. Another fact is that lot holders usually take the lesson to heart and make their home surroundings pleasanter. A beautiful cemetery is a splendid sermon.

But while the Association of American Superintendents has greatly benefited cemeteries in populous localities, there is still one class that so far we have been unable to reach and benefit in a desirable manner: namely, the country church yards. As a rule, these places are without superintendents, or indeed any person in charge. How to improve these burial grounds is a difficult problem. Many have been the suggestions, but how to apply them is the difficulty. One worthy idea promulgated by John Thorp at the Chicago meeting was the press. Not the press of the large cities, but the weekly sheets that are to be found in nearly every country home. The paper that tells of Mrs. Jones visiting Mrs. Smith. Unfortunately these papers do not consider graveyard items of any interest to the readers. Probably if "Park and Cemetery" was to have a few short items beneficial to country burial grounds, the editor of the weekly press might clip and make use of them. Another idea would be for the country churches to appoint cemetery committees composed of women only. There would then be less cause for complaint of the neglected rural burial grounds. "Keep Clean" should be their motto. As an illustration of what can be accomplished, at the suggestion of the writer, the ladies connected with probably the oldest church in America undertook the improvement of their ancient burial ground. It was in a terribly neglected condition. The committee first had the briars and weeds cut down. Next year all the sunken spots were filled. Then a little grading was done, tombstones straightened and paths abolished or seeded. As the improvement became more marked those engaged in the work became encouraged, until now there is a clean and tidy burial ground. At a social function money was raised for a neat iron gateway to replace the old wooden gate. Lack of interest is the main cause of the generally neglected state of the rural cemetery; Get some person interested will be the remedy.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 20th Annual Convention
Held at Detroit, MI
August 21, 22 and 23, 1906

I regard it as an honor and a privilege, to stand here. At the same time I realize the fact that my place ought to be out there and some of you should be up here and I ought to be listening to you. I am only distantly related to you. My work is landscape gardening and park work. Your work is very important and is coming close to us and I think it is a very good thing it is. I remember when I was a boy in Scotland. In my early life I can remember the old church yards and having a feeling of sadness and melancholy. A melancholy feeling would come over me. It was inevitable. Those were really cities, of the dead and apparently only for the dead. We are more progressive, and we are making a cemetery now a place for the living. We are adding to the cemeteries landscape ornamentation and making them now very attractive indeed. I learn many lessons when I go to some of your cemeteries. Some of your superintendents have excellent ideas and much skill and knowledge in landscape work. You have undoubtedly difficulties that I do not understand and cannot comprehend. Those difficulties are not insurmountable, however, because you have already overcome many of them. One difficulty I suppose you have which I am not familiar with and that is the ownership of your lots and sites. They must want, I suppose, some direction of the improvement of their several parcels and bodies of land in the cemeteries. It is difficult really under circumstances of that kind to have much landscape effect. I think that our finest cemeteries of the future will be those that have been well planned before any lots are sold and certain portions of the boundary, certain small pieces intersecting the sections and roads, etc., had better be set aside for ornamental planting. To the landscape gardener there are few, if any, cemeteries where things are not incongruous and where things do not seem to him to be very much out of place. I think that must arise from the individual taste of the lot owners, which compels the superintendent to follow their plan.

I think there are in most cemeteries too many trees. There are not enough flowering shrubs. There are not enough herbaceous plants. Mr. Falconer, a most excellent authority in our profession, wanted me to say something about having a cemetery attractive every day in the year. I think you should commence with early flowering plants. We all know visitors to cemeteries in the early spring are delighted with flowers. We find in our Washington parks that our spring flowers bring out more notice than later flowers in the summer or autumn. The early flowers are harbingers of spring.

I will tell you what we do in our public grounds. Our first planting for spring begins in October. We dig up our geraniums and many of those plants we want to propagate and plant those places with pansies. You can not all do that. We put out every year about thirty thousand pansies. We cover those beds with a slight coating of horse manure and leave that until they have done flowering in the spring. After our pansy planting we plant, our bulbs, hyacinths, tulips, narcissuses, crocuses, etc. We plant about thirty thousand of those. After that we take up our cannas, which make a very nice effect and we plant evergreens in some of the most important places. If it can be done, it would be well to plant evergreens just as we plant flowers--have dwarf varieties if you can. If not, plant our native evergreens, planting them flat in little groups, so as to remove the bareness of our parks and the same in cemeteries.

Now, my idea in planting parks or cemeteries would be to plant boundaries. Not plant a row of trees--I do not believe in that. I do not believe we ought to have fences. You will observe that we have removed the fences from our parks. We think it a good plan. We find no necessity for them, and it improves the appearance of the grounds very much. Plant around the boundaries groups of trees which would be suitable and which would grow well and which would produce satisfactory effects. I would not plant foreign trees largely--would plant native trees. Throughout the cemetery at the intersections have little plots of ground reserved where you can have flowering shrubs and plants. Then if I could have my way, I would have a parkway on each side of the roadways. I would not sell within perhaps fifteen feet. I would have a parking which would belong to the cemetery and which could be used for decoration with herbaceous plants and flowering shrubs, which would make it attractive.

Now, of course, I know that there is not an abundance of money in all cases to perform the finest landscape work and to carry out the landscape effects that are perhaps most beautiful, but there are certain things that are very essential. The most attractive thing in parks and cemeteries are roads and lawns. The roads should be hard surfaces that would be pleasant to walk on. I believe macadam roads are the best. Gravel roads are good, but they want constant attention. The lawns should be kept up.

In some cemeteries you have rules or regulations that are peculiar. That is, you care for certain special parts of the grounds. There are such things as special care. I think you ought to charge enough for your lots to enable you to keep your roads and lots always in perfect condition. If your roads and lots are in perfect condition, it will add very much to the beauty of the cemetery.

I really cannot say very much to you. I do not know just what to talk about. We have here in Washington many advantages. I came here half a century ago, lacking one year. When I came here I was perhaps one of the most disgusted men you could meet. It was a very unsightly, straggling village at that time. It was called in those days a city of magnificent distances. There was then La Fayette Park, the Capitol Grounds and Franklin Park, I believe that was about all. The major portion of the parks you see now were simply dumping grounds. They have all been created since that time. We have one thing here which is greatly in our favor. We have a very desirable climate. We can grow many things here that many of you gentlemen cannot grow. We are on the border line between the North and the South. We are rich in oaks and maples and many flowering trees and flowering shrubs. There is .another thing that we are not rich in, but I hope to be some time and that is the berry-bearing shrubs. They add very much to the decoration of the grounds in the winter months. What I would advise is very much fewer trees and very many more shrubs. That is what impresses me in cemeteries.
 
In regard to the parks, if you are so kind as to compliment them, I want to say I do not think they are at all what we hope to have them. We expect to have much higher improvement in many ways in the future. We are constantly improving and laying out grounds. We are taking in now about 150 acres of land reclaimed from the river front and we have now over 400 acres of reservation. One difficulty is they are so widely scattered. I cannot start out in the morning with my horse and buggy and visit each reservation. But it is a good thing. They are good and they are a good plan and I hope other cities will adopt this plan of leaving little spaces in the city. They are restful and in sanitary ways they are a very great advantage indeed.
 
From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 19th Annual Convention
Held at Washington, DC
September 19, 20, 21 and 22, 1905

This being the eighteenth annual convention of the Association of American Cemetery Superintendents, I feel prompted by your kind indulgence to take up a few minutes of your time though I am not a cemetery superintendent, nor a member of the Association.

You have seen proper to extend invitations to cemetery officials to be with you and become members, so be not surprised should you hear a knock at your door from "eaves-droppers" wanting to come in. I may be considered somewhat of an old pioneer in cemetery affairs and relate what I have seen of burial places in the past, comparing the same with today. You know that "Big oaks from little acorns grow."

Less than twenty years ago a few men banded together for a noble purpose, men of instinctive ideas, inducive and in keeping with the progress of civilization, who felt the need and great want of the betterment and improvement of graveyards--as they used to be called throughout our country. These men met in consultation, a good number of them are here with you today, whilst others have gone to their reward in the world beyond. Since this organization was formed, it has increased in membership and with results the most flattering--the little "acorn" then planted has grown up to be a mighty and majestic “oak”, its branches reaching out and overshadowing in many and far off directions, giving shelter where the nightingale warbles sweet requiem and the soft lullabies of the night, where the cardinal and other birds of the choir flit and sing praises with the rising of the sun in the far off eastern horizon to God on high. The mighty oak that adorns so many of the cities of our bereaved dead is a wonder to behold when we visit the cemeteries where lie buried our loved ones.

The difference is most striking--where we used to see neglect, disorder, gloom and awe, tombstones covered with moss, blackened and broken, graves sunken, lots surrounded with wooden fences, iron chains, hedges and every imaginable thing, overgrown with weeds and brush, nothing inviting—nothing soul inspiring and consequently soon forgotten. What do we see now?  What a contrast! How different and all brought about in the last half century. When I made my first visit to Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati, Ohio and there met and formed the acquaintance of Adolph Strauch, who was the superintendent, a man of culture, of broad ideas, a philanthropic man, I found him with high boots, in his working clothes, toiling with laborers employed to change the appearance of things--removing chains and hedges, remodeling everything--a professional landscape gardener. During his lifetime, I made frequent visits to Cincinnati. I never failed to see him; he was one whom none could help but love and respect and his memory is held in high esteem. His worthy successor, Mr. Salway, will bear me out in my statement. I consider Mr. Strauch the father and promulgator of rural cemeteries--as such--most of them are conducted in America today.

It has been my good fortune in my travels throughout a good portion of this country--from the far East to the distant West, from the frigid North to the sunny South and it has always afforded me great pleasure to visit the cemeteries wherever I have been and I can assure you it is pleasing and most gratifying to see the wonderful improvement, the well regulated and beautiful burial places throughout this broad land, wherever civilization has gone, man can judge its people by the place of burial provided for their dead. On mountain range, in the valley among the forest trees, on the plains of the far off West and distant shores of the sea, inviting spots are found for the final resting place of mortal man. Some of the most noted cemeteries I have visited, with every pleasant recollection, I may mention Spring Grove, to which I have already alluded.

Greenwood, Brooklyn, New York, is well worth seeing, for it is the most important in our country. To attempt a description of its grandeur in every particular would be too much of an undertaking; suffice to say it is truly a sacred resting place for the dead. Buffalo, NY, boasts of a very fine cemetery. Utica, NY, New Bedford, NY and other places of that State all imposing and harmonious with cemeteries of today. Laurel Hill, near Philadelphia, the improvements of late years, since I first saw it, are truly wonderful, resurrected as it has been from its former antiquated garb of hedges, wooden fences, bars and iron chains, running wild with all sorts of brush and under-wood. All of this has been done away with at the suggestion of Adolph Strauch in the year 1855 and other superintendents of landscape gardening since that time. Consequently, today it will equal and most favorably compare with any other. So, too, does this apply to other cemeteries of that city and state.

I must also make mention of the cemeteries near the city of Boston.

I was most favorably impressed with all their loveliness, the beautiful adornments adding to their solemnity and sacred keeping with the guardianship of their dead.

Cave Hill, Louisville, KY, is well known for its beauty and grandeur, the display of wealth in monumental and statue work. Lake View, Cleveland, Ohio, with its many acres of improvements and mementos erected to its dead, is praiseworthy. Crown Hill, Indianapolis, IN, a very beautiful and attractive spot well cared for in every particular. Cemeteries at Milwaukee and Detroit are very commendable for their many grand improvements. Great Lakewood, Minneapolis, MN; the grounds selected are wooded surrounded by beautiful lakes combining cheerfulness with that of solitude and repose. Its praiseworthy management in capable hands it may well be called a "model cemetery." At Spokane, WA, I found a cemetery yet young in years, situated in a valley of hills and towering pines, rural by nature, very appropriate for burial purposes, well kept; a large number of beautiful monuments and memorials adorn the grounds. At Portland, OR exists a like improvement of rural cemeteries throughout the land. Among the hills and the valleys in the forest where the towering oaks and pines stand out as sentinels over the dead, the management is in keeping with other cemeteries of the present day. I left it with best impressions not soon to be forgotten. Traveling through California, I visited The Ever Green and Rose Lawn at Los Angeles, magnificent grounds naturally well adapted for the silent city of the dead; whilst art and skill have done much, the growth of stately palms, pine trees, shrubs, plants and flowers of varied shades and color, rich in monumental decorations of costly designs. Its administration is admirable, in line with every other well regulated cemetery throughout the country. The same is true and it was with much satisfaction that I visited Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, CA located in a plateau of mountainous hills, with superb palms and flowers that bloom the year round, massive trees proudly standing within its silent keeping until the day of awakening shall come.

I must not fail to mention the cemeteries in the South. One most noted, owing to its difference in mode of burial, in New Orleans, Metairie, is certainly worthy of a visit. It may well be called a "City of the Dead" with its beauteous white and well kept driveways and avenues built up like a city with rows of tombs, vaults, mausoleums and burial structures, many elegant monuments and reminders of costly designs erected in memory of its dead, giving every evidence of care and attention and all of its trust well guarded. There are a number of other burial places and cemeteries, mostly above the soil, catacombs and crypts maintained for that purpose on account of the ground lying near or about on a level with the sea. Memphis, TN, boasts of a pretty little cemetery--Elmwood--with many modern improvements, all first class. And so I found cemeteries in Savannah and Atlanta, Georgia, Jacksonville, St. Augustine and other places in Florida, Charleston, South Carolina, Richmond, Virginia. The National Cemetery at Chattanooga, TN, with its 13,000 Federal soldiers that fell in battle during our country's memorable war. So we do homage visiting the National Cemetery in Washington, DC and wind our way to Antietam National Cemetery where lay buried 12,000 or more of our country's heroes. I visited a beautiful and well kept cemetery at Hagerstown, Maryland; a large number of Confederate soldiers are buried here. Memorable Gettysburg where, in close proximity; two hundred thousand men met in battle and decided the words spoken by the lamented Lincoln; "That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that the government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth."

All I have said of other cemeteries is equally true of the beautiful and admirable cemeteries of Chicago. The most noted I must not fail to make mention of Graceland, Rose Hill and Oakwoods which are modern in every respect, inviting admiration for their many beauties and symbolic adornments, not only commendable to the eye but also far-reaching in every respect in the way of management.

I might go on and make mention of quite a number of cemeteries I have had the pleasure of visiting long years ago, in their old antiquated garment and with the comparison of today, I can but exclaim: How wonderful a change and then ask the question: What has brought all of this about? You will hear the echo resound again and again--your superintendents and officials of cemeteries--and I would fall short of doing justice did I not say much credit is due to the able manner in which Mr. R. J. Haight publishes the Monumental News and Park and Cemetery journals. It has been a help meet for the much valuable information obtained and in bringing about a concerted action and spreading a knowledge among the people who most appreciate.

In conclusion allow me to call your attention to the city where I live and which I have made my place of residence for fifty-eight years past. We have a cemetery called Oak Ridge, covering 116 acres, with which I have been connected for two score years. As president of the board of managers during most of that time, I have seen and helped grow out of the woods about as pretty and beautiful a cemetery as there is in existence. Our work having been gratuitous, we extend to you gentlemen and ladies of the National Cemetery Association an invitation to come and see for yourselves should your inclination and time permit. Many pilgrims come from all lands, it being the mecca to look upon the National monument and tomb that holds the remains of our most illustrious and lamented Abraham Lincoln. We would like to have your names recorded and placed for keeping amongst others that have come hither. You will find on the register inscribed during the month of July, 1904, people hailing from all but seven states of the United States of America and many others from foreign lands.

On motion, duly carried, the Question Box was left over until the next session and the meeting adjourned.
 
From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 18th Annual Convention
Held at Chicago, IL
August 23, 24 and 25, 1904

The average person regards cemeteries in a community as a matter to be seldom if ever mentioned. To overcome this tendency on the part of the public and enlist them in the good work of having their views and ideas broadened and coincide with the work and aims of the Association of American Cemetery Superintendents is a great object.

We can meet year after year and while we are gaining knowledge and experience in methods of conducting our cemeteries to the best interests of our several communities we do not feel that we have accomplished all that there is to do unless we can interest the public. How best to do this, then, is one of the ideals we have set forth to realize.

For one, I maintain that we each have to set a high standard, in fact one in advance of the community that we are respectively in and plan our work to that end.

Some writers on cemetery topics consider that a cemetery is like a professional man that it cannot with good taste advertise. Practical men realize that the newspaper of today is a great molder of public opinion.  Now, as to localities situated like ours, where we have only a population of 4,000 to draw business from the conducting of the cemetery cannot be carried on in lines parallel to those where a population of one hundred times more furnishes business. There are some matters on which the work would be similar but in details only; the whole general plan is different. Now, as we are situated, the local papers are a great help to us; the newspaper man is glad for us to give him an item when we have in contemplation any improvements, he is glad to note the progress of the work, as well as to give us a write up when the work is completed. This on a scale more or less helps to bring us in touch with our people. Could we interest them to visit the cemetery semi-occasionally without waiting until they come out to bury one of their dear ones, and look around, ask questions, make suggestions and kindly criticism; also a word or two, if merited, to the Superintendent in praise would help alleviate his labors. There is no one as appreciative as he.

After an experience of more than twelve years the Superintendent begins to think he is a judge of human nature, but as in all other arts and sciences he finds that the longer he is in the business the less he gives himself credit for knowing, and were it not for the heart he has he would to some extent becomes a cynic; as time goes on he becomes, so to speak, of the place where the community has its sleeping dead, he feels a responsibility and almost personal interest in each family and to him it has become a sacred trust.

This is truer in a large sense in the smaller communities where the persons committed to his care are known by him. Now, can we judiciously advertise and if so, what is the best method? With some people price counts some, but we notice that the public are willing to pay good prices, provided they feel that they are receiving adequate service. We are of the opinion that our association can and is, doing more for the smaller cemeteries in proportion, of educational work in the right direction, than for the larger and older cemeteries, but we are all of us benefited.

One of our members once said that we ought to make our cemeteries look like parks, plant trees that would give a cheerful look and eliminate as much as possible all the old cypresses• and funereal looking trees once so prevalent in many of our cemeteries; this we know to a large extent has been done, but we cannot make the cemetery a place of gayety either.

We must do something to arouse the public, for it is their best interests, in these matters, that we are conserving; and our efforts should be reciprocated and aided by them.

Frequent reports of our meetings, both by the daily and local papers and a judicious distribution of the reports of our proceedings are doing much in the direction desired, but still for all that we fall short of the standard we set.

One member gloomily predicts that fifty years hence the public will want cremation and that earth burial will be a thing of the past. Now, this, to practical men, would be no argument; cremation has been already in vogue hundreds of years and has not as yet become the favorite mode, for the thought of lying to sleep under grassy mounds and following old Customs in this direction need not deter any of us from the belief that our mission is soon to end. While it is true that the public are seemingly more apathetic in this regard than in anything else, still we have hope that they will in due time realize our efforts are for the best of all concerned and that an orderly, well regulated and properly cared for cemetery reflects creditably on their judgment and community for so maintaining.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 17th Annual Convention
Held at Rochester, NY
September 8, 9 and 10, 1903

When I was asked by one of your committee to contribute a paper to be read at this, the seventeenth annual convention, I thought perhaps I would find it an easy task to say a few words in regard to "Our Cemeteries and Our Dead," but I feel somewhat embarrassed to even make an effort, in fact the short five years experience I have had in cemetery work makes me feel like I am too young in the cause to fully express myself before you gentlemen, that have had more experience, and a better opportunity to study the advantages and disadvantages of cemetery work. I desire, however, to say in the outset if my ideas are averse to yours, you must remember while they are my honest convictions, they are only the views and expressions of one of your number.

"Our Cemeteries" are the last resting place of "Our Dead"; in other words they are places sacredly devoted to the interment and repose of "Our Dead." They should under any and all circumstances be free from entangling public alliance or political embarrassment.

In fact, politics should not figure in "Our Cemeteries" under any conditions; wherever it does it works to a disadvantage. I know of one that changed superintendents three times in one year, traceable to politics alone. The officers should be men especially fitted for the place, and especially the superintendent should be a man well qualified to fill the place and in love with the work. Too often we find men officially connected with Our Cemeteries that do not or seldom visit them more than once or twice a year.

The past history of the growth of all of our large cities demonstrates the absolute necessity for a permanent site for "Our Dead," which grows up side by side with the city of the living. They should be ample in size beautiful in surroundings and at the proper distance to serve the ends of convenience and requirements of all interested. We too often see all over our land evidences of misspent labor in building and maintaining the last resting place of "Our Dead"; too often we see hastily and ill chosen sites dot our country sides, where mold and decay hold their melancholy reign. We find many old cemeteries fallen into disuse; neglect, decay and desecration present their sad and somber scenes and too frequently the tale of obliteration can he heard from the lips of the living. A visit to most of our cemeteries today will present the same sad spectacle.

Now the question naturally comes up, why are so many of our cemeteries neglected. There are many reasons, one is "Our Dead" are too soon forgotten, we see almost daily loved ones laid to rest in "Our Cemeteries" and for a short time that sacred spot is visited almost daily by the bereaved relatives and we see them sometimes go to extremes in trying to maintain and beautify the last resting place of their dear ones, but as time rolls on we notice their visits become less frequent, until finally they lose all interest in that once well kept, sacred spot; then comes the sad part of this scene. Left neglected and to grow up in weeds and briars, a sad spectacle indeed.

The most plausible reason for our neglected cemeteries of today is that they have no fund set aside for their perpetual care. Looking to the prevention of the evils of the past, some of "Our Cemeteries" (but very few, comparatively speaking) have been provided with the only remedy, a fund for their perpetual care. We all know without this fund no cemetery can be uniformly kept, or even decently kept. I believe this association in all probability has and can do more toward educating the people to show more respect for "Our Dead" than any other source. If that be true, it behooves us to push forward in cemetery improvement, and not sanction anything that will throw a stumbling block in our way.

From time immemorial, burial grounds have existed. We learn by reading from Genesis that Abraham purchased a field containing the cave of Machpelah for a family burial plot and afterwards buried his wife Sarah and later on his own remains were laid to rest by the side of his wife and still later on other members of his family were buried there also. We find from Genesis to Revelation earth burial is the proper method of disposing of "Our Dead" and as I see it, when we advocate any other we are going backward in civilization and cemetery improvement.

I contend there is no necessity for and no doctrine in the Bible justifying cremation of "Our Dead." Some say we must advocate cremation from a health standpoint, others contend that earth burial is a waste of land and that there is danger of our going too far with our pet schemes. I doubt very much after a body is placed five or six feet under the sad that the health of the living is affected in the least. Take the health of the superintendents that have spent thirty and even forty years in cemetery work, do you suppose if it was so dangerous to the living, as some try to make it appear, that the founder of this association, that spent thirty years of his life in cemetery work would have reached the ripe old age of eighty-five before his death and there are other cemetery superintendents living today that have spent over forty years in this same vocation. It is needless to say that I believe as long as time lasts there will be land enough to bury all "Our Dead." This cremation idea is the work of man and not in accordance with the method laid down in the Bible.

We should be opposed to the cremation of "Our Dead" from a humane and Scriptural standpoint.

We are told after the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, the graves of the sleeping saints were opened and many of them arose and made their appearance before the living in the streets of the Holy City; and again Christ said, Marvel not at this, for the day and the hour is coming in which all that are in their graves shall come forth. Mark you, not a word was said about cremation and coming forth from an urn placed in a crematory building. We are also told our bodies are to be sown natural bodies of flesh and blood, but on the morning of the resurrection that they will come forth from their tombs spiritual and immortal bodies, then shall be brought to pass the saying, Death is swallowed up in victory, O death where is thy sting, O grave where is thy victory? I would like to know how are we going to get around this grave theory that is so often spoken of in the Bible, and again what will become of "Our Cemeteries" that we are trying so hard to beautify and devise plans by which they can be perpetually kept, if cremation should become universal and our ashes placed in an urn and deposited in a building?

Again, we should be opposed to cremation because it is going to have a tendency to lead to less respect being shown "Our Dead." I believe the danger that confronts us today in cemetery improvement is the growth of the cremation idea. Taking the Bible as the foundation stone, as our guide, if we expect our work to survive us any length of time, we should put ourselves on record as being opposed to the cremation of "Our Dead."

Now, in conclusion, will say, I am confident that some of you differ with me in what I have said in regard to cremation, but I trust, however, that a majority of you are in sympathy with the views and expressions I have tried to present from a Scriptural standpoint and that you will not under any circumstances advocate or sanction anything in connection with "Our Cemeteries" and "Our Dead" that are directly contrary to the teachings of the Bible. If we will do that, it will not be many years before we will have representation from every nook and corner of these United States.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 17th Annual Convention
Held at Rochester, NY
September 8, 9 and 10, 1903

Of all the characteristics of a cemetery, which is the most desirable? A cemetery should first of all be comforting. This means that it must be beautiful, restful, secluded. To attain these characteristics it must include within its boundary much of nature.

What is nature? In its broadest significance it includes almost the universe. Some persons use this term as if it were synonymous with the Deity, saying, Nature does this, nature does that, nature's laws are the laws of God. Although we sometimes speak of inanimate nature, it is often personified. Often we hear the expression "Mother Earth", perhaps less frequently nature is referred to as "mother". Mother most endearing of all words. The poet says:

“Nature forever consoling and kind; pours her wine and her oil on the smarts of the mind."

She is represented as soothing and comforting and especially as healing the mind, the part that is in greatest need of healing when a dear friend is left to the permanent care of a cemetery.

Nature, therefore, is the most important feature to have in mind in designing a cemetery. For the purpose of this paper, nature will be considered as that manifestation of the out of doors that is independent of man. We find it in its most attractive and familiar shape in the woods, the borders of lakes and rivers, the hills and valleys, ravines and sky and in the clouds. Nature has infinite variety. When we detect the work of man, as in an orchard, a field of corn; or a row of trees along an avenue, we cease to think of what we see as the work of nature, out rather look at it as man's creation. We see nature when we look at the wooded margin of an open field with its skyline of oaks, its thicket of wild crab apples blooming in the full sun, its viburnums and elderberries. We see her along the rights of way of railroads as we journey from one place to another. In spring or early summer, when we look from a car window, we are greeted with large beds of iris, lupines, shooting stars, spiderworts, butterfly weeds, black-eyed susans, ferns, or a little later, with the flowers or Joe Pye Wood, wild roses, lilies, cardinal flowers, goldenrod, asters and hundreds of others of nature's planting. If the train passes through woods, we may see here and there, as we look from the car window, masses of sassafras, filled with yellow flowers in spring, rich with foliage throughout the summer and gloriously colored with yellows and reds in autumn. We may also see oaks, maples, hawthorns, dogwoods, elderberries, prairie roses, wild grapes clematis, bittersweet and a host of other woody plants all beautiful and all helping to give what we call "the charm of nature." What is this charm which we feel when we go to the woods, when we go to pine forests, when we so to uncultivated prairies which glow with wild sunflowers, asters and goldenrod and when we wander along the wooded banks of lakes and rivers and through wooded ravines? It is difficult to analyze and define, hut it is due to nature's perfect freedom, to beauty of outline and color, to deep shadows and bright lights, to many things being hidden by foliage or inequalities of ground, to the air of mystery that pervades things in which man has no hand.

It is this charm of nature which we should try to introduce into cemeteries. It is this that makes her "consoling and kind". Many cemeteries do not have this charm. Often one sees from the train cemeteries fully exposed to view on all sides and containing only monuments, headstones and a few forlorn trees. Even some pretentious cemeteries with very costly monuments and perfectly kept lawns lack this charm which soothes and comforts.

Are there any cemeteries in which this comforting characteristic can be found? Mr. Strauch introduced it into Spring Grove Cemetery in the naturalistic /borders of the lakes and in the preservation of the wooded ravines. Recently a cemetery has been established on Long Island which bids fair to contain the charm of which I speak. This cemetery, designed by the Olmsteds, is to have no stonework above the ground. A family name may appear on a stone tablet set even with the turf. There is a plentiful supply of shrubbery to separate one lot from another. When nature has had time to correct the inevitable imperfections and rawness of new plantings, this may become one of her most charming retreats. Many cemeteries contain touches of the charm of nature, but I know of none really perfect.

It is true that people's tastes differ and we have different points of view. One telephone man said that to his eye a line of straight telephone poles on each side of a road with arms carrying a plentiful supply of wires was the most beautiful decoration a thoroughfare could have, but I think even he would have hesitated about putting such a decoration in a cemetery. These opinions, however, are evidently somewhat biased. A lover of nature has nothing to sell, no ax to grind. He is merely anxious to have people enjoy with him the beauty that he sees. The appreciation of this beauty is something that must be cultivated in order to be fully enjoyed. Some do not even see a sunset until their attention is called to it. Some see no beauty in winter, while others experience great enjoyment at that season in the branching of trees, the twiggery of shrubs, the snow and the glistening ice-covered branches. There are two or three things which seem desirable in order to secure that beauty of nature which is so comforting. The first is to reduce the amount of stonework either by planting out most of the monuments and headstones, or by reducing them to inconspicuous dimensions. Some of the money that is spent for monuments should be spent in securing more land so that there will be room for shrubs and flowers. We should appreciate the fact that while a perfect lawn is most desirable in some places, there are other places where the ground cover should include other things. Where height is not objectionable, lilacs will often spread out and make a beautiful ground cover when left undisturbed. The same is true of many other shrubs. Where land is poor and sandy perhaps nothing in the shrub line is better for a ground cover than the aromatic sumach, which is beautiful at all seasons, and especially attractive in the fall with its rich coloring. For a still low covering, there are many vines that are suitable. In the deep Shade of woods the Virginia creeper often makes a beautiful cover, hiding the entire ground with a layer of leaves of a delightful green in summer and often richly colored in autumn. Wild violets, myrtle, Japanese spurge, moneywort, ground ivy and carpet bugle are a few of the many beautiful ground covering plants.

In a neglected country cemetery a large area became covered with cypress spurge. This is a beautiful little Euphorbia and while it is often called a weed, it was the most attractive thing in the cemetery being green arid fresh-looking while the grass everywhere else was brown. The neighboring farmer called it cemetery grass and the first question he asked was how to get rid of it. Often, too many so-called bedding plants are used in a cemetery. These bring in revenue and are showy in summer, but they leave the ground bare from October until May. To bring in the charm of nature we should use more hardy perennials. These often beautify waste places in a most satisfactory way. They are on hand from early in the spring until snow comes and even their dead stems and seed vessels are often graceful and beautiful throughout the winter.

Many city dwellers are in the habit of going to northern Wisconsin or northern Michigan for rest and recreation during the summer. Some of these have asked "Why can't I have my cemetery lot like the northern woods which I love 80 much?" These persons certainly feel the charm of nature and would like to have this charm about their final resting place.

The longer we live and the more we observe, the more shall we be convinced of the truth of that oft-repeated saying, "Nature is the best teacher". The superintendent who can introduce foliage and flowers as nature uses them everywhere in covering waste places, creating forests, developing secluded beauty spots and doing all this while concealing his own part in the work will be the most successful in the development of a really worthy cemetery.

In a cemetery well endowed with the charms of nature, one cannot see from end to end and from side to side and on beyond to surrounding buildings or farms. From every point there will be views, some wide, some narrow, and these will be bounded at the sides and terminated by foliage. The side boundaries will not be straight but will recede here and there into bays, tempting one on to see into their depths. Against the foliage will be seen, from time to time, quantities of flowers, wild crab apple blossoms, lilacs, flowers of hawthorn, forsythia and a hundred others. Here and there at the base of the foliage there may at times be the blossoms of iris, peonies, goldenrod, coreopsis and other flowers too numerous to mention or if it is in the fall, there will be attractive fruits, foliage and the blossoms of witch hazel. If there is a hill or ridge, it will be masked at the top with the foliage of trees reaching from the ground to the skyline so that one can easily imagine in looking at the upward slope that it extends on indefinitely to a great height. If there is a valley, the views into its depths will be preserved. There will be extended openings showing at the bottom a green turf or the foliage of low growing plants like moneywort, myrtle or partridge berry, or perhaps, there will be a stream or lake or little pools reflecting the sky and forming jewels in the landscape. If there is a good view outside of the cemetery to a distant hill, lake or river, or to a sunset, this view will, of course, be preserved.

In such a cemetery the stone monuments will be inconspicuous, but the cemetery as a whole will be a memorial park, a fitting monument for all buried within its enclosure where

"Nature forever consoling and kind; pours her wine and her oil on the smarts of the mind."

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 39th Annual Convention
Chicago, Illinois
August 24, 25, 26 and 27, 1925

I chose the subject, "The Influence of Landscape Gardening on International Relationship" because landscape gardening is a work in which you are vitally interested and because no phase of human endeavor yields more attractive results nor appeals more to the finer susceptibilities of the human heart. The apparent result of the practice is the transformation of unsightly places in all communities of note, into spots upon which the eye delights to rest. Cemeteries today—these sacred spots, the laying out of which it is your duty to superintend—are no longer called places of the dead, places shunned by the public, but have become through your zeal gardens of living beauty—a tribute to the intelligence of man and a sign that civilization is advancing.

It should not be assumed that a beautifully laid out and planted cemetery or a beautiful park, are assets only to the community in which located. The influence of beautifully landscaped areas extends far beyond their own environs. The passing tourist notes them; he speaks about them. They thus become an example to be emulated. Many towns and cities are known throughout the length and breadth of North America by reason of their beautiful parks and cemeteries. In the hearts of all civilized people is a love for the Beautiful things of the Creation—flowers and trees and shrubs—and so, in life, as if drawn by an invisible magnet, we find ourselves attracted to these places of beauty and in the end we have so ordained that when the soul hath left its tenement our bodies shall repose unforgotten in areas where each succeeding year the opening buds and leaves and flowers proclaim "There is no Death". Such, Mr. President and members of the American Association of Cemetery Superintendents, is your work and mission. You build a rampart of living beauty around the places where our dust shall lie and which, as a result, are no longer referred to as "places of the dead."

You hold this convention in Canada because you are attracted; you are interested in our cemeteries and parks and by the beauty of our home surroundings and landscapes. Millions of your people visit Canada for the same reason, and I may add, because you like us, and Canada is rapidly becoming the summer playground of North America. Thus the work of man in his efforts to supplement nature in planting to hide the unsightly and to enhance the already beautiful is having a great effect in bringing together our peoples and in strengthening and cementing the bonds of good-will and friendship which for more than a century have been the talk and wonder of the world.

You may be surprised to know that in Ontario, of which Toronto is the capital city, there is an organization known as the Ontario Horticultural Association which has a membership of 80,000 and comprises 285 societies. (It is purely amateur and is the largest of its kind. As you drive along the roads and through the municipalities you observe the gardens, the plantings of shrubs, the flowers of all kinds. To this organization should largely, go the credit for this desirable condition. Our people are influenced by a desire to have beautiful homes and also that the sight of them should give pleasure to visitors from the states. They are interested in them. They desire their friendship rather than their money, and they find that the influence of the beauty they have created coupled with the beauty of park and cemetery and street within our municipalities is doing more to bring about a closer feeling of friendship than any other single factor. Through this attraction the people of the United States and Canada are getting together in a way previously undreamed of and as a result a full and proper understanding will inevitably accrue.

It has been claimed that good roads are the attraction. No, not solely. Were these roads to run hundreds of miles through a wilderness, through a desert, they would be deserted except by the adventurer. Good roads are but one factor. There are two others—beauty and friendship—and of the latter, the most important, we offer you good measure, pressed down and running over.

By reason of this understanding, this closer friendship, your country and mine, two great English speaking nations, have found a common ground upon which can be expressed this great love and regard for each other in a way that will be the admiration and envy of the world. We are going to establish the world's most beautiful peace memorial at a point upon our border—an International Peace Garden. In this great garden, one half in the United States, the other in Canada, the landscape architects craft will find its greatest expression, and the influence of the resultant beauty coupled with its great sentiment, will be such as to draw all peoples—and it will become the world's greatest shrine.

What will the influence of this garden be on international relationships? Within its vast area will be trees and shrubs and flowers from all parts of the earth, Gardens beautifully landscaped to represent the national style of various countries, The governments of both countries will be asked to neutralize the area and to it will come the people of the hundred nations which compose the population of the United States and Canada and people from overseas and from the Latin countries to the south and all will be citizens of this great and beautiful area.

Nothing can be so beautiful as a garden, nothing more attractive, and it will belong to the people themselves, and the names of all subscribers will be kept for the eyes of future generations to scan; the adults in one set of volumes, the children in another, for all are to be given an opportunity to subscribe to raise the endowment of five million dollars.

Nothing appeals to the human heart more than beauty. This garden will be not merely a beautiful expression of the love of each nation for the other, but a living and enduring one. It will not crumble nor decay like a shaft of granite. The dust of centuries shall not bury it. Each circling spring will see it renewed as a mountain stream is renewed in power and beauty, and a thousand years hence it will, in its majestic grandeur, still be the greatest symbol of international friendship and goodwill.

The first International Peace Garden will be the world's strongest fortress, stronger than loop holed battlement or dugout of concrete and steel, for these cannot, stand the brunt of modern warfare. It will be the fortress of friendship built upon the rock of Christianity as expressed through the love of each nation; and in its shadow we may each forever crest secure. In friendship alone is there security, is there real happiness. Your act in coming to Canada is an act of friendship. Last year to this city came the National Association of Gardeners. That was an act of friendship. They have the same ideals and aims and are engaged in the same great work. They sponsor the International Peace Garden project.
I wonder if you realize how much your lives and work influence the thoughts of the masses toward life's better things. Your work is not a job; it is an influence. The burial of the dead is a job. The beautification of God's acre is an influence. The poet says:

"Tis all a checkerboard of nights and days
Where destiny with men for pieces plays,
Hither and thither moves and mates and slays
And one by one back in the closet lays".

But that is not true. The influence of a life is not lost for it pertains to the soul.

Your great national organization exerts an influence. It is devoted to the beautification not only of your cemeteries but of your country. You convene today to discuss your problems, to tell each other of the things you have accomplished and of the things projected and so your influence extends more rapidly than otherwise and will continue until it reaches from coast to coast and to result in a blessing to every community.

This influence is not only a national influence but an international one. The standards you set in the laying out and maintaining of your cemeteries are emulated by Canada. Your cemetery practices are very advanced. You have made a special study of the problems pertaining thereto. So in this respect we learn something from you. In certain other fields you learn from us which goes to prove that friendly international intercourse is a great medium of education as well as being the greatest factor in the maintenance of goodwill and understanding between nations. Men, and women who think only of their own immediate interests, and there are millions, lack vision. Their souls never find expression and are stifled. Men and women who think nationally have a broader, yet not the broadest, outlook. They who think internationally think of all men. To think internationally is to think like God.

You and I in our own way and through the instrumentality of our chosen and common profession are today together. Americans and Canadians bound by the ties of relationship, in, that we speak a common language and in that our traditions, honorable in the extreme can be traced back to a common ancestry, and you are not ashamed of the old mother that gave you birth. I am speaking now of your nation. We call you cousins but let me say that when the International Peace Garden is established, as it surely will, and when the international line is removed from its centre and when our governments neutralize it, we will be able to call you brothers and sisters, for all who visit this great neutral area, peoples of all nations of the world, will be citizens of that land.

Today, according to our laws, you are aliens and foreigners. Recently I visited the United States and I belonged to the foreign class, but I see the day approaching when by reason of our getting together through the building of our great Fortress of Friendship, the Peace Garden, the word "alien" will be removed from the statute books of both countries and as long as Americans and Canadians are law-abiding it will not matter under which flag they sojourn.

In conclusion will you permit me to say, and in this may there be inspiration. Your work is immortal, if anything on earth is immortal. If the painted canvas shall be treasured and so endure so shall those beauty spots you create be preserved and treasured. The results of your work are like the friendships you make today. Time shall not efface them; a century hence their verdure shall be as green, the trees as beautiful, and the ties of friendship the stronger, for such things are handed down from generation to generation. Beauty, friendship and love are all akin and in and through and round about them is God—and so they shall endure.

In that great spirit of everlasting friendship Canada welcomes you. A spirit that will not tolerate any cloud to darken the international horizon; a spirit that long ago leveled the mountains of prejudice and has done so much to bring about such meetings as these where international friendships find their greatest expression and are cemented in indissoluble bonds. In the Spirit of God—inspired friendship—which is the spirit of Canada and of the Peace Garden, you are welcomed. One day your people and ours and all peoples will throng the portals of a magnificent garden. Eyes will feast upon its beauty and be illumined with a new light. Hearts will be uplifted with a new hope and songs will rise to tongues which never sang.  Children will join the chorus and the whole world will become akin. On that day will come the realization that the two great English speaking nations have set up an unparalleled and unprecedented example of love to the world. With it will also comes the realization that the hope of peace on earth and goodwill between nations as exemplified by ours, may forever endure. Hope that hellish war may forever be banished.

So will the men and women who love beauty and the boys and girls born of these with the wisdom of years and the towering faith and vision of youth remove the mountains of hatred, of prejudice, and of envy and build an insurmountable barrier in the way of those who foment war—a barrier of love and create and leave to the world its most beautiful and significant memorial. Can the members of any organization have a greater influence than that?  Is any work more conducive to friendly international relationship than yours?

"There is no death—what seems so is transition". May this address be vibrant with life. May it convey the thought that good work well done, the beautiful thing created, will never be laid aside, but will continue through the years an example to those who follow and as a memorial to the integrity of those of your profession who went before.

Now may I welcome you from the depth of my own in the words of an original poem!

A LAND WITHOUT A LINE

You came to the land of the Maple Leaf
And we met you with a smile,
We took your hands in a friendly grasp
And hoped you'd stay a while.
Though you live 'neath the Stars and Stripes
And we 'neath the Union Jack,
We speak the same old mother tongue—
Uncle Sam and Jack Canuck.

Between us runs three thousand miles,
A line from coast to coast,
Where never a fort and never a gun
Is seen, we proudly boast.
No bayonet with its murderous steel,
No sentry anywhere,
And we live in peace on either side
As though no line were there.

Side by side for a hundred years,
May it be a thousand more!
With never a word to cause us grief
Nor any to make us sore.
We have lived, and still the Union Jack
And stars and Stripes unfurled
Have flown together on the line
The wonder of the world.

Please God, till earth's last sun shall set
And earth's last tear be shed,
May we two nations still be friends
When to heaven Thou call’st Thy dead.
Until on that eternal morn
As its glorious sun shall shine,
Thy nations meet around Thy throne
In a land without a line.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 44th Annual Convention
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
September 8, 9, 10 and 11, 1930

When we grow old and decrepit, honors are thrust upon us many times unsought, honors that in our younger days we coveted and for which we would have given a right arm or something else as desirable. Twenty years ago to address this honorable body was my greatest wish. I was then trying to put over an idea that I thought all cemeteries should be interested in.

But time has tempered my enthusiasm. I find that no organization, institution or collection of men altogether, ever at any time, wish or are interested in the same things. Generally you are lucky if you can command a majority on any subject.

However, sometime in 1912 I conceived the idea of establishing a magazine exclusively for cemeteries; a periodical whose sole interest would be the cemetery; to teach cemeteries better business methods, help them to keep better records, and to eliminate, as far as possible, what I thought was a mistake—the mutually owned cemetery with its generally slip shod methods.

I have always believed that a cemetery was a business enterprise, not a philanthropic institution. Mutually owned companies paying no profit were either a great many times the source of graft if successful, or an expense to some public spirited citizens if unsuccessful. Of course, this was not always true.

I know a great many very wonderful cemeteries maintained on the mutual plan and believe two or three of the very finest cemeteries in the United States are mutual companies, conducted on a strictly honest basis with the best of business judgment.

It was my ambition, however, to see the private corporation established for profit—legitimate profit—take over the cemeteries of the country and conduct them on a business basis, which would have meant beautiful cemeteries properly endowed, efficient and courteous in their services. Profit sharing corporations long ago learned that prosperity and profits accrued only to those who practice such virtues.

Had that been accomplished, I believe that today the majority of our cemeteries would have Community Mausoleums. It is a part of the service that, in my mind, should be furnished by cemeteries.

I am not going back over a lot of ancient history or Mausoleums; all of you know that the name was derived from the tomb erected for King Mausolus, which has long since disappeared. The great pyramids of Egypt were undoubtedly Mausoleums. The early Christians of note were buried in tombs or Mausoleums, many of which, two thousand years later, are still standing. The Chinese and the East Indians built Mausoleums for their noted men and women and some of them built of teakwood ten centuries ago are still standing.

My history, I think records that more than five hundred years after the birth of Christ, the Christians had not practiced ground burial. Some Roman Emperor, I am not sure which—Constantine, I believe—started the practice by ordering that his own body when life had passed should be buried in the ground. Then for several centuries, ground burial was quite generally practiced throughout Europe, though the princes, potentates and great men generally were interred in tombs. For many centuries the noted of England have hoped and wished for the great honor of being entombed in the famous Abbye of Westminster.

The Catacombs being under ground were still tomb and I believed it was estimated more than seven million bodies were placed there. These Catacombs are one of the wonders of the Old World, and are mute reminders that the Christians of the early Romans preferred tombs.

In this country our pioneers had about all they could do to provide for the living, therefore the dead should be cared for in the simplest and most inexpensive way, which was the ground. Three hundred years of practice have hallowed and indorsed this method to many people.

While we grow older, richer, more cultured, refined and sensitive, we wonder if the ground isn't crude, barbaric and cruel; we wonder if some plan cannot be devised that will relieve to a certain extent the anguish and sorrow we feel at parting with our loved ones on that day they cross the Great Divide. Some think cremation, and I am admitting now that cremation sounds better to me than it did twenty years ago, and I believe every cemetery should have a crematory and columbarium. I believe, though, the Mausoleum is the best answer found up to the present time.

The Community Mausoleum as we know it today, dates from a structure of about one hundred crypts erected by a man named Hood, in Ganges, Ohio, in 1907, just twenty-two years ago. It was crude, cheaply constructed and in outward appearance strongly resembled some of these Ohio and Indiana hog barns, but the idea was born. He took out patents which were un-patentable and being somewhat of an ingenious character, he fell in with some moneyed men, among them F. L. Maytag of Newton, Iowa, who financed his scheme for selling patent rights. Undoubtedly these high powered salesmen sent out to unload these patent rights on the public had much to do with the black eye given the Mausoleum in its early days. On the other hand, purchasers of these patents had to build and establish Mausoleums in order to get their money back and it is justly possible one offset the other. Without the patents few may have conceived the idea and furthermore, it would have taken much longer to develop without this artificial urge.

My own connection dates back to 1911 so that I am probably one of the oldest men in the Mausoleum business today. I have constructed seventy-five or more buildings personally, have supervised still others. The present value of these buildings is probably ten to fifteen million dollars. It is not likely that record will ever be achieved by any one man again.

In recent years I have tried to get out of the construction of Mausoleums and confine my efforts more to the two buildings I have in Pasadena and Long Beach, but for some reason I do not seem to be able to do so, as some one is constantly inveigling me into another contract to build just one more.

There have been a great many patents taken out on Mausoleums. I took out several myself, but generally they were of little actual value. The first, as I have told you, were taken out by Hood. These were thrown out on their first test in the Federal Court in Toledo, but the decision of the trial court was reversed by the appellate court, which while not establishing the patents restored them to their original status before the ruling of the Federal District Court. Mr. Maytag I think on my advice decided to let them go at that and the suit he had filed was dismissed.

After the Hood patents came the American Mausoleum patents exploited by the Hughes Granite Co. at Clyde, Ohio; then the United States Mausoleum patents, the first building I believe being constructed at Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There were several other patents, among them my own, but generally all of them fell within the systems of one of these I have mentioned; that is, the various patents all are more or less covered by these three different schemes or plans, each of which has its advocates and advantages.

The Hood patents were built around the idea of preserving the body. The American Mausoleum ventilating the crypt with the idea of drying the body up as quickly as possible. The United States was a modification of the Hood plans, but I have seen that used on the coast here in connection with the American or ventilating plan.

I have generally recommended those systems that sealed their crypts as tightly as possible and worked toward preservation, although I have erected buildings of practically every type and some, notably in Indiana, where all systems were barred by law. Frankly, I can't say there is a great deal of difference though, as I stated, I prefer the non-ventilating type.

I do not believe there is a business of any kind that has been exploited by as many peculiar types of individuals as the Mausoleum. Whenever a man has proven himself a failure in everything else, he turns to the Mausoleum. He doesn't take his modesty with him, however. He immediately preens his feathers and begins to tell the world that the Mausoleum business is going to take a turn for the better with his entrance in the business.

He is going to show us old stagers how smart he is. He is going to build the most magnificent structure ever erected to the memory of man. When he gets his building built, purchasers will flock from the four corners of the earth to buy space in his superb building. He figures the rest of us are only putting about $38.98 in our construction and by adding another couple of dollars, he can have a granite building with a dome that will make our National Capitol look like the proverbial thirty cents; then, as it will cost only a little to sell, say, maybe 10 percent, and he is sure he can easily sell his crypts for from $500.00 to $1000.00 per crypt, giving him about 1000 percent profit. Well, he will show the world. He starts on a shoestring, talk a sucker into financing, buys a lot from the cemetery on faith and glib tongue and starts out.

A lot happens, het finds it costs a little more to build than he thought, there is something called overhead, the time element cuts quite a figure, money must be borrowed, interest paid, salesmen must have 15 percent instead of 10 percent and that is only one-third of the selling expense—advertising, sales manager, business managers, janitors and a thousand and one other expenses naturally attached to any business, but this bright promoter never thought of that; in fact, he didn't think it was a business. He thought it was a discovery and he the bright discoverer. Result—another black eye for the Mausoleum.

The worst of them all is the wholesaler. You cemetery men better take warning for the wholesaler is going to be among you strong. The plums that he can pick are so luscious that it is only a matter of time when he will be working throughout the land. His cheerful and wonderful message is one long sweet song to the sucker. I know what I am talking about because I have watched their operations and have built a number of their buildings.

As a matter of fact, their plan if carried out honestly and  fairly is plausible and should redound to the benefit of all and make it possible to build anywhere and finance a building without loss to anyone, but to be fair and honest is too simple and the money doesn't roll in fast enough for these gentlemen. I built one such building for about $70.00 per crypt. It was wholesaled at twice that amount and then marked up on resale to as high as $600.00 per crypt and many of them sold for that. Honest management would have brought success to the original investors. This was too much for the wholesaler; he couldn't stand to see such profits go to the men that put up the money, so he revised his plans and they are grand and glorious for him. From now on the world is his oyster and you better watch out.

The Mausoleum has one thing about it that sets it apart from all other methods of caring for the dead. It is in truth a memorial and its possibilities as such are unlimited. A magnificent structure it can be made—one that no man will be so sacrilegious as to destroy.  Ten centuries from now it may tell the story of our civilization and progress. In fact, it may be the only link between that age and this. Cemeteries, columbarium, stone monuments, all will be removed as they fall in the way of development and progress. Not so the Mausoleum. It will stand properly built throughout the ages as to a great memorial to those who have lived and died during this age. No other one thing has contributed so much to the romance of the past as the tombs of our forefathers.

What a triumph to the French who, sixty years ago, broke through the jungles of Cambodia and discovered that immense structure—Angkor Ghat!

One more point and I will conclude. The Community Mausoleum is an attempt to popularize the private tomb to make it possible for men and women of moderate means to have above ground entombment or mausoleum burial. Such people can pay from $200.00 and up, and you must recognize this fact and build accordingly. When you put unnecessary expense in your construction and run the cost up, you simply cut out the sale of the crypts that are most in demand. I do not mean to build poorly, but eliminate waste. The greatest waste I have found is in the design of the building. My friend, Frank Hogan, never forgave me for showing him where he had thrown away $30,000.00 in the layout of his building on construction, and lost $50,000.00 in space or a waste of $80,000.00. All he would have had to have done was simply shift his plan around retaining the same size corridors and chapel and practically the same exterior design.

To my mind, reinforced concrete offers the ideal construction throughout. If you have a large building you might face it with some of the harder marbles or granite. Skylights should be eliminated as far as possible, no more doors than you must have. Ventilation of the corridors is all right in Southern California but almost everywhere else ventilation should only be possible when the building is in use for services.

The foundation should be built upon a solid slab covering the entire area of your building of property reinforced concrete. I think further the building should be well or beautifully designed for it will stand a long, long time and if you have extra money, spend it on the design, though money spent on the chapel and service will pay big dividends.

Build simply but substantially. Do not paint your building as I have seen done; that will wash off and you cannot very well establish a perpetual care fund large enough to keep up such a structure. All expensive upkeep items wherever possible should be eliminated. Ornamental iron work is satisfactory in some cases, but solid bronze is better wherever it is required for doors or gates. Do not use tubing for gates or doors. Imported antique glass is better for your windows, opalescent is somewhat more popular and only about half as expensive but cuts down the light 60 to 70 percent while antique reduces it only from 10 to 25 percent. Tile roof is good, though if your design calls for flat roof, copper or lead should be used. Use high grade marble—Colorado Yule, Alabama, Vermont and some grade of Tennessee. On the coast, Italian can be used; in the middle states it is too expensive.

Larger buildings should have a musical instrument. We have in our Long Beach and Pasadena buildings very fine pipe organs, and in Long Beach a set of Deagan electrical tower chimes. The organ and chimes in Long Beach, including space for installation, represent an expenditure of $100,000.00.

The larger buildings in metropolitan districts may be furnished with draperies and comfortable furniture, but of course the smaller building should not be. Furniture and draperies in any case should be of the very best and of such construction and material that will withstand the ravages of time as much as possible.

One more thing. Unquestionably the various legislatures should be requested to pass appropriate laws for the governing of Mausoleums before the business falls into the hands of the wrong people. Only six states have legislated on the Mausoleum so far as I know—five of those were attempts of the monument dealer to stifle the Mausoleum business and the sixth one passed a law written by a lawyer who knew nothing of construction and so far as I can see, all it does is impair the permanency of Mausoleum construction and make it cost more.

One thing I noticed particularly in Mr. Eaton's address. All the great memorials he named—every one were built. It is unquestionably the works of man that appeal most to the coming ages. And all the memorials of note that attract unusual attention are buildings, buildings erected by man. There are memorials dedicated for memorial purposes that are natural and of course no human being can build any thing that will equal a natural structure. Just the same, the thrill comes to you when you come and visit these enormous buildings built as memorials.

As Mr. Eaton told you about Forest Lawn, I want to invite all of you to visit Sunnyside. It is only a short distance from the interurban station at Long Beach. We advertise Sunnyside as America's finest Mausoleum. We truly believe it is. There you can, even if in moderate circumstances, find a place in the most beautiful surroundings for above—ground entombment. There you can see the most beautiful and costliest chapel ever built for interment purposes. There you can find the only pipe organ in the world for your final interment service.

There you can find the only electrical Deagan tower chimes to remind you that even though the service is beautiful, that time is fleeting and our stay is short—the only mausoleum in the world with these chimes.

There you can look down beautiful vistas or corridors, three hundred or more feet long, but so constructed and designed that you do not feel they are anything but beautiful vistas.

There you will see the most expensive interior decorations ever put in a mausoleum. There you will find the most beautiful waiting and rest rooms for men and women. You will have elevator service.

There is a complete apartment built right in the building. The reception room and private office have been commented upon by thousands of visitors.

Sunnyside has for its slogan—"Dignified and Sacred Service" and means it.

Its furnishings throughout are of the finest materials that money could purchase. Not many of you could think it possible to spend $25,000 on interior furnishings and curtains, but that is what we have done.

Sunnyside is laid out around a proposed court or patio and when completed will hold more than 17,000 crypts and the whole will show a consistent and evident throughout plan. You can see immediately upon entering that the builders had in mind just what they wanted from the start and never deviated from their plans.

In fact, we have tried to build in a way that you would know when you entered this great structure that it was erected by a mausoleum man, as a memorial to the men and women of today who loved beauty refinement and dignity; who despised sham but loved color, harmony and the serene contentment of a beautiful home. For, after all, it is the final home—one that can be visited by sorrowing relatives and get help instead of further unhappiness.

We give, to our people a very fine vesper service every Sunday afternoon, mostly musical, though we do have a short talk by one of the Long Beach pastors during the service.

We have a very fine crematory, and the most expensively constructed Columbarium ever built.
 
In fact, we have a complete institution with 4,500 crypts, ranging in price from $200 to $5,000. The cheaper ones are so located as not to interfere with the expensive ones, and yet all so located as to bring up no unfavorable contrasts.
 

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Convention
Los Angeles, CA
September 3, 4, 5 and 6, 1929

About twelve or thirteen years ago a young man stood on a hilltop overlooking a small country cemetery of some fifty-five acres. This property had just been placed in his charge. He saw no buildings on the property. There was only a patch of lawn, with a few straggling headstones. Beyond the scant dozen acres of developed ground the hillside rose sere and brown. It was not exactly a scene of surpassing loveliness. The problem of making a notable property out of it was a serious one. It was apparent that its future commercially would not rise above its artistic and esthetic plane.

The young man who surveyed the scene, however, possessed one of those minds to which visions come. He was, as a matter of fact, a rare combination: In the highest sense an idealist, a dreamer of dreams; and at the same time, a practical, trained engineer, who could plan definitely how to make a worthy dream come true. On this historic occasion a dream did come—a vision. He saw, in one swift instant of revelation, what this tiny "God's Acre" might be made into. So real was this vision, so definitely did the philosophy by which it might be realized present itself to this practical man that that very day he put down in writing for his own private guidance, what you might call a Creed. It was a statement of his own beliefs and principles and theories.
And I think no better basis could be laid for the brief discussion which I shall attempt, than to read you this Builder's Creed—the self-instituted guide which was set up twelve years ago for Forest Lawn Memorial Park by Mr. Hubert Eaton: (which has been quoted in Mr. Eaton's address)

"This is the Builder's Dream; this is the Builder's Creed."

This was the vision. Now for the realization. It has only been achieved in part. Naturally, like the horizon, such a sweeping esthetic and spiritual concept must inevitably lift and carry the pilgrim on to bigger and better things beyond. But Forest Lawn Memorial-Park is today a property of about 200 acres. It is bounded on three sides by the everlasting hills, and protected equally from encroachment on the other by the natural situation and location.

Its employees number about 500. Its interments exceed in number those of any similar institution in the West. Its "Little Church of the Flowers," inspired by the historic church at Stoke Poges, England, to which immortality was given by the poet Gray, is the scene of hundreds of weddings each year. The Administration Building houses the executive offices, the well-patronized Flower Shop, a Museum of Antiquities. Its exterior architecture and interior decoration and arrangement are all authentically inspired by the mansion house of an English nobleman of the Sixteenth Century. Just being completed is a second church, "The Wee kirk o' the Heather," patterned after that famous little chapel in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, where Annie Laurie worshipped. The Mausoleum-Columbarium is a stately building of steel and concrete, built against the rock of the hillside in terraces, and upon the roof is now being placed a magnificent Court of Honor at one end of which will be placed a stained glass reproduction of Leonardo's "Last Supper." Surmounting Mount Forest Lawn a rugged Tower disguises its utilitarian purpose (the storage of water) by its allegorical conception and design and forms a landmark famous for miles around the property.

This is a quick sketch of Forest Lawn Memorial-Park as it has evolved since the Builder had his vision, a complete sketch except that I neglected to mention the scores of notable pieces of sculpture placed with great effectiveness about the grounds, or housed in the various buildings.
Now you might properly ask the question: Did advertising build all this? To answer it accurately would be as difficult as to answer the age old question: In the original creation, did the Egg or the Chicken come first? The fact is, the support of the public in the way of sales made possible the advertising, and the advertising helped to build the sales.
 
To most people there is something incongruous at first in the idea of a cemetery advertising far business. It is a common thing for us to be favored with "wise-cracks" and rather labored attempts at humor, when the subject comes up in ordinary conversation with the lay man. But we think we have discovered that Mr. Average Man’s heavy efforts at humor in connection with such a subject are what the psychologists call a "defense mechanism." Most people instinctively shrink from the thought or discussion of death. It seems like opening the door to morbid reflections. But it is also a fact that if death is faced courageously, accepted as a natural part of life, it begins to lose its power to terrify. Forest Lawn Memorial-Park holds boldly to the theory that a rational discussion of death and the problems which death creates for those left behind, rather than hastening one's end, operates in quite the opposite manner. We ask people to accept the unalterable fact of death, and to make wise, rational preparation for it, as they would for any other event of which they had certain foreknowledge.
 
Approaching the problem of selling a cemetery from this standpoint, the sales resistance is much more theoretical than real. It shrinks to a practical minimum indeed, when coupled with the utilitarian features of a cemetery property, you are fortunate enough to have esthetic, civic and artistic considerations on such a prodigal scale as happens to be the case with Forest Lawn.
 
Now of course what Forest Lawn is really doing is to create what is virtually a great composite memorial perpetuating not simply the memory of one individual but of all the brave souls who have gone on before us, from this community. Every owner of Forest Lawn property thus becomes a partner in this great enterprise. The fact that it has a commercial aspect in no way lessens its civic, esthetic and spiritual value to the community.
 
In fact, its commercial foundation is one of its outstanding virtues, because out of its sales is set up a perpetual fund for care and maintenance, which is a guarantee for all time to come that this area dedicated to a great purpose, shall forever remain dedicated to it, shall forever grow in grandeur and beauty, shall forever continue to evolve into a monument more and more fitting and adequate.

So this brings us to the practical problem of continuously making sales. These sales automatically group themselves, as you know, into the two classes: those made by natural exigency or "at need" and those made in advance or "before need".
 
Both classes of purchases are influenced tremendously by the good will or prestige of the institution. The sales force which is maintained devotes its efforts to the making of "before need" sales. Selections of this character naturally represent a greater volume in money than an equal number of "at need" sales.

I think I have sketched sufficiently the background of Forest Lawn to show you where advertising comes into the picture, to accomplish that which no other force could accomplish within the same time. May I remind you of an axiom very familiar to advertising men—that no business can succeed with advertising unless it would and could also succeed without it. I think that is generally true enough to set it down axiomatically. But what is implied in that axiom is this that advertising can be compared to the glassed houses of the florists, or the fertilizer and watering or the farmer, which renders success more certain and also encompasses it within reasonable time limits, as human lives and activities are measured. The "mouse trap" theory of Elbert Hubbard's, while it contains a considerable portion of truth, is yet dangerous in this modern day. Life is too short to wait for the world to beat a path to your door. If you have something worthy for the people, you must tell them if you want to sell them.

So it comes down to the question of telling. Who is going to do it? The Forest Lawn story—as I think I have sufficiently indicated—is no ordinary story. The average salesman will be able to do it but scant justice, even if the ordinary prospective buyer has the patience to listen or the intelligence to grasp quickly. Furthermore, if you have an important property, conducted on an ambitious a scale as Forest Lawn, you will not want to entrust its telling to the average sales force. If you have 50 people, you are bound to be creating at least fifty different versions of your story.

Forest Lawn boldly tells the public its story, in its own way. It uses for the purpose, practically every legitimate medium of advertising—radio, newspapers, billboards, theatre programs, direct advertising through the mail printed literature, and publicity.

Every character of Forest Lawn advertising goes through the same process of meticulous care in preparation: that is to say, no amount of time or pains is spared in the writing of copy, the preparation of art work, the arrangement of printing, so that precisely the right shade of meaning is conveyed, and so that the advertising shall always and everywhere be upon a very high literary, artistic and spiritual plane.

Radio has been found astonishingly effective in directing public attention upon the institution, and creating for it a most favorable association of ideas. A thirty-piece symphony orchestra and an ensemble of approximately sixteen singers of very high professional caliber are used one hour each week, together with a carefully written continuity. The programs are selected about two weeks in advance. Each program centers about one outstanding theme. The titles of some recent programs will give you an idea of this: Songs of the Sea—The Old Corner Book Shop—A Night in Havana—Russian Nights—A Night in the Theatres—"Chimes of Normandy"—Love Songs of the World—Evolution of the Dance—Wheels of the World—and Music of Devotion, which is the title of the Forest Lawn radio presentation to be given this Friday evening.

Practically all the music is rehearsed, and the entire program is approved by us before it is presented. The same hour and the same night each week are used, and since the advertising has now been running over the air for practically forty weeks, I think it is not too much to say that the Forest Lawn programs have become a recognized institution on the Pacific Coast. Emphasis is placed in the announcements on the cultural and esthetic features of Forest Lawn, the important works of art and notable buildings are repeatedly mentioned, and there is always an invitation to visit the Park as one of the best known places of interest in Southern California. Radio is one of the great new factors in advertising, but its technique is difficult and subtle, and offers the grandest opportunity of any medium open to the advertiser, for him to demonstrate how little he knows what the public wants. A certain well known national concern decided a few years ago to go on the air, and among their directors was a fine old gentleman who in his early youth had had it musical education. He volunteered—in fact, insisted—that he would take charge of the radio advertising. He searched the musical libraries of the new and old worlds for fine music which had never before been played. He announced that he was going to raise the standard of musical taste in America. After the company had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars it was unanimously agreed to abandon the idea of education. The fact is, that radio is a new and curious combination of art and showmanship and advertising. It is not absolutely necessary to be crazy to handle radio advertising, but you will get along better if you are!

Before we used the radio we used the newspapers, and in them presented the Forest Lawn story week after week. Copy and art were pitched upon a high plane. This newspaper advertising was widely read and commented upon. But when we began using radio we changed the character of the newspaper ads somewhat: that is, we now use the newspapers to advertise the radio programs. However, with each advertisement, there is also a straight Forest Lawn advertising message.

I think perhaps this would be as good as place as any for me to remark that the newspapers are much more effective since we have used the radio and the radio undoubtedly has a larger and more impressible audience because we use the newspapers. And this holds true of all our advertising, just as it holds true of advertising in any other field. When you use two mediums instead of one, you more than double your returns, because you increase the effectiveness of each one.

We use painted billboards, illuminated. Here we have only the briefest telegraphic message. Just now we are beginning the first of a series of symbolic messages. The one on the boards now is just a beautiful painting of the sea, no land or other objects in sight except clouds. Our copy reads "Eternal—as the sea." Then at the bottom of the board, FOREST LAWN MEMORIAL PARK IN GLENDALE. The next board no doubt will be just a painting of infinity, that is, a point far out in space, with the stars and planets suggested and again the phrase "Eternal—as the heavens." These boards are symbolical, suggestive, and carry the thought so necessary to get over, that Forest Lawn is an institution which shall endure for all time to come. Of course, there is a psychological association also, for it directs the mind, very subtly and without even appearing to do so, to the unalterable fact of earthly change but Eternal persistence of the human soul.

Though this discussion is not intended to be metaphysical or theological, we are not ashamed to say that Forest Lawn believes in eternal life, and we don't hesitate to say so in our advertising. We try to take the morbidity out of death, and the institution we advertise does not parade grief and woe and disconsolation, but typify and symbolizes in every way that ingenuity can suggest, abundant, endless and joyous life.

Right along this line, may I say that my company is at present  preparing a beautiful book which will probably be called "This Continuing Life" and in it will be quoted the best thought in prose and poetry of the whole world, bearing on immortality. The purpose of this book will be to serve as a courtesy or good will present, to patrons, without charge whatsoever, but as a subtle and delicately expressed gesture of understanding and sympathy with the bereaved. Surely it is not preaching to say that the surest and in fact, the only solace, which we can give to those left behind, is some concrete expression of our own conviction that their separation from their loved ones is out temporary.

So fast are precious objects of art from the old world being added to the already large collection in Forest Lawn, that we find it necessary quite frequently to reissue the official souvenir of the Park, called "The Chimes." This is a beautifully illustrated and printed booklet, in size 9" x 12", showing the latest and most attractive views of the grounds, buildings and statuary. As time goes on, The Chimes is growing further and further away from a commercial booklet, and tends to become more artistic and more truly a souvenir. This book is sold for a nominal price at the grounds, or is sent by mail in response to newspaper and other advertising.

Regular mailings of letter campaigns are maintained. We have tried to cover the "before need" sales story by letter but just now we are using a very short letter, with which is enclosed a simply written booklet with the sales story.

We have another booklet, called prosaically, "The Truth. About Burial Customs and Costs," and our advertising is keyed for this booklet also, which is distributed gratis. It is a plain story of the': subject, as its title indicates.

Still another booklet, which is growing more and more important as time goes on, is the Official Guide Book. This is practically a cyclopedia of all the interesting features of Forest Lawn, describing in detail the grounds, buildings, statuary and other objects of special significance, interest, or historical association. This booklet, on thin Bible stock, is in great demand by visitors.

The use of theatre programs for cemetery advertising may seem incongruous, but our experience and observation is that this is a most valuable medium. It reaches a good class of people, it profits by the very fact that it is different from any other advertising in the program, and we know from actual tests made in the theatres, that it is read perhaps more thoroughly than even our newspaper insertions.

We are fairly generous patrons of some of the higher types of class publications, such as women's clubs magazines, musical publications, etc., going to special groups. When we do use these mediums, we exercise exactly the same care in preparation that we would if we were going into the Ladies Home Journal or Vanity Fair.

Then of course, we attempt to secure all the publicity to which we are entitled by virtue of the news value of the events which occur in which Forest Lawn figures. The acquisition of new statuary or buildings makes legitimate news. At Easter Time a sunrise service is held on Mount Forest Lawn attended last year by 40,000 to 50,000 people. The Little Church of the Flowers attracts many notable weddings, which are the basis of legitimate publicity.

I should not be surprised if some of you are mentally asking the question: which advertising, medium is most profitable. I have always tried to live up to the legend that an advertising man is omniscient, but in this case I will imperil my reputation, if any, by saying that I do not know. I think I am safe in saying that, taken all together, they are profitable. My recommendation to any cemetery is that if they are using practically all media, and the sum total of results is pretty satisfactory, leave well enough alone. It is entirely probable that some of those media are pulling only 50 percent, some 90 percent, some 100 percent, and maybe others 200 percent. If it was my money I wouldn't care. I have seen too many instances where it was attempted to get exactly 100 percent out of each and every cog in the wheel. Don't look for perfection in every piece of advertising, any more than you do in every individual in a given group. We ought to be happy if the general level of the group is pretty high, in a world which is still able only to approximate perfection in any line of effort.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Convention
Los Angeles, CA
September 3, 4, 5 and 6, 1929

We, who are students of art and design and the application of their beauty to life and living, believe that the day of the cemetery as a place for the glorification of sorrow is gone forever.

Is not death, in fact, but an incident of living?

America—particularly on her Western Coast so full of new opportunities, is showing to the world that a place of burial can be, even has a mission to be—a field of beauty, of restfulness, and of comfort, both physical and spiritual.

On a recent study tour of Europe, the speaker was shocked by the gloom, the lugubriousness, of every famous cemetery. Outstanding features are arches draped in black, slimy pools, statues of weeping women, figures of tragedy, trees all deciduous, generally weeping, or dark evergreens of the saddest type.

No less gloomy are many burying grounds of older America. Why, there are still sections of this country where it would be considered sacrilege to send any flowers but dead white to a funeral. Many a man has stayed away from a burial for lack of dead black suit.

On the other hand there was buried the other day, in the old Episcopal cemetery under the Pepper Trees at San Gabriel, a dear little old lady who had spent her life in deeds of love for others. She had smilingly announced that when she was planted she wanted bright red roses on her grave; and bright red roses there were from her friends, piled up by the thousand, to celebrate her joy in going to an easier life.

Consider the famous and beautiful forested cemetery at Marshalltown, Iowa, where the young people go for their outings, in the one great beauty spot of the region.

Consider "Graceland" at Chicago, where one wanders far along tranquil lakes and strolls through masses of flowering shrubs before catching even a glimpse of a tombstone.

Consider "Forest Lawn Memorial Park" on the edge of Los Angeles, where whole hillsides are being planted to the gayest semi-tropic flowering trees of every color, and where the American Legion section is landscaped in trees and shrubs to bloom in patriotic masses of red, white and blue flowers.

Go back a hundred years, and consider the exquisite walled garden of the Old Mission of Santa Barbara, with its riot of color and its music of mocking birds; and see how for ahead of us those brave old Padres learned the lesson of beauty, when you find that that old garden was then, and still is, but a cemetery for the burial of priests and friars.

It is life that a cemetery should show, life and the joy of life, and the sweetness of passing to a new life. Sorrow is only for those who are left behind; so let the resting place of their dear ones, I say, be a bright scene to ease that sorrow and to hasten its passing.

Let there, then, be happy trees in the cemeteries, trees of glossy foliage and brilliant inflorescence; gay shrubbery, evergreen as far as the region and climate will allow, flowers in abundance, of every color; sparkling waters, running, if possible; statues that depict life and hope and love, not sorrow; live pigeons, white and colored, in the air; bright water fowls upon the pools; peacocks (with vocal organs painlessly removed) strutting upon the lawns.

Thus will the joy of life be increased, thus will the sting of the loss of loved ones be softened and comforted.

Only then will the Cemetery fill its brightest mission.
 

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Convention
Los Angeles, CA
September 3, 4, 5 and 6, 1929

The subject "Creation of a Modern Park Cemetery" would necessitate a theoretical discourse—the "Creation of Forest Lawn" is an actual experience from which you may acquire some practical benefit.

My first glimpse of Forest Lawn Cemetery showed it to be a little country cemetery, of ten acres developed, forty-five undeveloped; with no buildings, no improvements, with the exception of a grove of olive trees and a few scattering headstones. Such a picture most of you have seen many times. Forest Lawn's other assets were a total of 1400 interments, and yearly gross sales of $28,000.

Today, twelve years after we took charge, Forest Lawn Cemetery is Forest Lawn Memorial Park—Park it is, because the visitor rarely recognizes that he is entering into a so-called "cemetery". Forest Lawn now comprises over 200 acres, with a total of 28,464 interments, sales amounting to more than one million dollars per year, and total assets aggregating ten million dollars. It averages 300 interments per month, and 81 weddings per month. Our payroll of yesterday showed an organization of 406 employees, including an Architectural Department of 12 Architects and an Engineering force of like number.

Today it possesses many buildings of historical and architectural charm that house some of the world's greatest art treasures, and last year more than 525,000 visitors passed through her gates. Forest Lawn is not only a safe depository for our beloved dead, but also a place for the living to visit and sacredly enjoy. The manner in which these results have been arrived at are briefly as follows:

My first move twelve years ago when I awoke to find myself in charge of Forest Lawn Cemetery, was to personally visit the great interment places of the world. I talked to Superintendents, Grave Diggers, Presidents, and Undertakers. I wanted to find out why a African-American whistled when he went through a cemetery; I wanted to find out why most of the interment spots in the United States were places to be shunned—looked upon as civic liabilities where they should have been civic assets. I wanted to find out why even the most beautiful cemeteries were visited by people mainly from a sense of duty; why most of them were so ugly, and why they didn't have architects and landscape engineers connected with them. I wanted to find out if the cemeteries were wrong or if it was the people. And then when I had finished with the cemeteries, I visited public parks, glimpsed their lovely vistas, watched their fountains at play, admired their beautiful statuary and studied their architectural buildings. I strolled through museums and galleries of art; I questioned people who had traveled in the art centers of the Old World—and then I came home. I had found my answer.

BUILDER’S CREED

I have always found if I put my thoughts into writing the very act seems to clarify my mind and enables me to approach a problem in a logical manner. And so, on New Year's Day, 1917 I sat down and wrote what I termed "The Builder's Creed", and if I were called upon today to give you my recipe for the "Creation of a Modern Park Cemetery", the best I could do would be to hand you this Creed:

"I believe in a happy Eternal Life. I believe that those of us left behind should be glad in the certain belief that those gone before have entered into that happier life. I believe, most of all, in a Christ that smiles and loves you and me. I therefore know the cemeteries of today are wrong because they depict an end, not a beginning. They have consequently become unsightly stone yards, full of inartistic symbols and depressing customs, places that do nothing for humanity save a practical act and that not well.

"I therefore prayerfully resolve on this New Year's Day, 1917, that, I shall endeavor to build Forest Lawn as different as unlike other cemeteries as sunshine is unlike darkness, as Eternal Life is unlike Death. I shall try to build at Forest Lawn a great Park, devoid of misshapen monuments and other customary signs of earthly death, but filled with towering trees, sweeping lawns, splashing fountains, singing birds, beautiful statuary, cheerful flowers, noble memorial architecture, with interiors full of light and color, and redolent of the world's best history and romances. I believe these things educate and uplift a community.

"Forest Lawn shall become a place where lovers new and old shall love to stroll and watch the sunset's glow, planning for the future or reminiscing of the past; a place where artists study and sketch; where school teachers bring happy children to see the things they read of in books; where little churches invite, triumphant in the knowledge that from their pulpits only words of love can be spoken, where memorialization of loved ones in sculptured marble and pictorial glass shall be encouraged but controlled by acknowledged artists; a place where the sorrowing will be soothed and strengthened because it will be God's Garden. A place that shall be protected by an immense Perpetual Care Fund, the principal of which can never be expended—only the income there from used to care for and perpetuate this Garden of Memory. This is the Builder's Dream; this is the Builder's Creed."

That Creed has never been changed from that day to this and at Forest Lawn it has been not only our aesthetic guide but it has been the practical, every day rule upon which all our development and operation has been based.

Let me tell you of a few of the milestones that we passed in our endeavor to carry out this Creed.

Our financial set-up included two corporations—one, a corporation which owned the land and was the usual form of Business Corporation with stockholders who invested their money with the hopes of making profit. The other corporation, called Forest Lawn Cemetery Association, was a mutual association with no stockholders, comprised of lot owners and so constituted that any profits it might make must be expended back upon the cemetery and could not be distributed for the benefit of any individual. The Land Company made a contract with the Association to sell the Association its land and the purchase price was determined by a fifty-fifty division of whatever amount the Association should receive from the public for its lots. The Association thus purchased from the Land Company real estate as it would have purchased it from any other corporation or landowner. The Association then took these lands and manufactured them into a cemetery product.

Financing, efficiency and organization have always been the subjects that we at Forest Lawn give the most Attention. We know if the finances and sales are not forthcoming, the plans that we hold so dear to our hearts cannot be carried out. Forest Lawn had no money; therefore we next turned our attention to a Sales Force.

The Sales Force was divided into two groups: A salaried force for selling our products for immediate use to the purchaser who had a death in his family; the other group sold our product before need and their remuneration was based entirely on commission.

This "Before Need” was the first organization west of the Mississippi to sell cemetery lands in this manner—a method that had been tried in but two other places in the world before. Sales forces are needed, but they can be either a great blessing or a great abomination. I could talk to you for hours on our experience with sales forces, but time does not permit. In passing, let me urge this one word of caution out of our experience. That Sales Force is wrong whose whole theory of salesmanship is based upon price, money, buy cheap today and make a profit tomorrow. The best and highest type of salesmen in this business never mention these subjects—he deals only with the moral factors involved, such as insurance, duty, protection to the family, approaching the matter in the same light as one draws his will.
 
We next laid plans for development. We immediately saw the wisdom of merging together all forms of burial—namely, cremation, mausoleum, and cemetery under one management and one ownership. This, I believe, was the first time this had been done in the United States. The amalgamation of three overheads meant not only financial efficiency but again gave to the purchaser a great service. A family could disagree upon the various forms of burial each one desired and yet in Forest Lawn we offered to them the prospect of finally being gathered together in one spot.

"Beauty" was the yardstick by which we measured equally the physical development of our grounds and buildings the requests of the purchaser that something special be done on his lot or his crypt, or the Engineer's and Architect's plans and specifications. We realized that Forest Lawn must be developed as a whole. No longer must the individual be allowed to do anything in regard to his interment space.

I adopted three slogans:
1.    We shall depict LIFE, not Death.
2.    A safe depository for our beloved dead and also a place for the living to sacredly enjoy.
3.    Spend one dollar in construction today to save one cent in future care tomorrow.

We also changed the method of computing Perpetual Care in terms of a percentage of the purchase price, to that method of setting so much aside per square foot of land area to be taken care of regardless of purchase price received.

Our next step was to revise the rules, regulations and restrictions. Here we encountered the greatest obstacle of all. Precedent is one of the hardest things there is to combat in the human mind. The older we grow the less do we like changes; the more we like to do as was done before. The public looks with suspicion upon radical changes in interment places.

We had early determined that it was monuments that had turned cemeteries into stone yards. I could find nothing beautiful in ninety nine percent of the so-called "monuments" placed in the cemeteries of America. They rendered a Park plan impossible. We first offered the purchaser a ten percent discount if he would accept a deed without a monumental privilege extending above the surface of the lawn. I then called together the prominent monument dealers and reasoned with them. I suggested that in the main they were creating objects of ugliness. I requested that they cooperate with me in endeavoring to create only memorials of beauty. I left that meeting discouraged because it seemed to me there was not one of them on speaking terms with "beauty." A year later, Forest Lawn took the bull by the horns and forever eradicated the so-called "monument." Then they took me to the Grand Jury. "Restraint of trade" was the charge. Have you ever walked into the Grand Jury room as a possible defendant? I explained and the Jury laughed away my fears.

Then we underwent that experience, awful to any cemetery man, viz., of seeing would be purchaser turn and leave Forest Lawn without purchasing, because they could not have a monument. It took nerve to "Stand by the guns" in those days—particularly when we were sailing an unchartered sea. I held firm, however, in the belief that the Five Dollar gold piece was obscured by the Silver Dollar close to our eye and too, one must be true to one's Creed. Soon the tide turned. The public began to see the picture we were striving to create and today, the only requests we have for monuments are when the purchaser desires to spend sufficient money to create a real work of art.

Through the years we gradually affected other reforms. I list a few of them:

We banned artificial flowers.

Nothing in front of or on mausoleum crypts except those bronze vases and crypt memorials designed by and furnished by the Association.

(I wonder why it is that people always go to their attic when they desire to take something to a cemetery or a mausoleum I have seen mausoleum shelves that look like a bottle factory on a spree.)

No memorial decoration whatsoever placed without the approval of the Association.

The Association does all planting.

Markers at graves restricted to bronze only—more lasting and more artistic; lawnmowers do not chip.

No coping or any form of enclosure allowed to mark the lines of any lot or grave.

Memorials in mausoleum either bronze or Carrara marble—other metals and Alabaster prohibited.

No cut-in letters permitted on crypts except in first unit of mausoleum.

All burials in Forest Lawn must be made in concrete boxes, the reason being that wood boxes cave in, leaving an unsightly greensward and add appreciably to care.

We pictured LIFE, not Death. We carefully eradicated the old familiar signs of death. We substituted the winged-doves, swimming ducks, singing birds, splashing fountains—everything symbolical of LIFE. We eradicated even the trees that lose their leaves in the winter time suggesting death. And thus restriction upon restriction we piled up but always that restriction was based upon the good of all, even though it hurt the individual, and always based upon the best professional artistic judgment we could get.

Our first building was inspired by the Architect's visit to that little church at Stoke Poges where the poet Gray wrote his immortal "Elegy, written in a Country Churchyard." In keeping with our resolution to depict LIFE and not Death, we added, adjacent to the pews, conservatories filled with flowers and singing birds. Over the chancel we wrote this inscription: "A New Commandment I give unto you, that ye' love one another." This church was properly dedicated with all due solemnity and ceremony and then, like any other church it was thrown open for sermons, funerals, weddings, christenings, etc. We called this church "The Little Church of the Flowers" and it has become so popular that today we are just finishing another, to be dedicated as the "Wee Kirk o' the Heather." It is an exact reconstruction of Annie Laurie's church at Glencairn, Scotland, which lies in ruins.

Our Mausoleum has been built in units, conforming to a general plan. We estimate the general building will take about fifteen years more to complete, at a total cost of approximately Twenty-five Millions of Dollars. Four units have been completed and sold. The fifth is now under construction and will contain the great Memorial Court of Honor wherein "The Last Supper" window will be placed. These units have been built as sales progressed. Gross sales in the Mausoleum, to date, have amounted to approximately three millions of dollars. Here again we planned to eradicate gloom and depression substituting cheer, bright colors, depicting galleries of art rather than halls of death, always bearing in mind our slogan of "A safe depository for our beloved dead, but also a place for the living to sacredly enjoy." I touch the physical description only briefly because I understand you are later to visit Forest Lawn.

I shall never forget my first purchase of statuary. It was Edith Parson's "Duck Baby," made famous by Robinson's poem at the San Francisco Fair. I suggested to the Board that they authorize me to make this purchase. I immediately saw that the appropriation would not pass the Boards, so I adjourned the meeting without putting the matter to a vote. A week later I purchased the statue on my own authority as General Manager. A short time ago we placed in Forest Lawn the great "Mystery of Life" statue, comprising some twenty two life size figures, the site of which occupies 3,576 square feet, at a cost of approximately sixty-seven thousand dollars. That appropriation passed the Board without a dissenting vote and many expressions of enthusiastic approval. Such was the difference between the old attitude and the new. The same men, the same Board but with a different view point.

In 1923 I started by biennial trips to Europe, with the intention of studying at close range the art and architecture of those places acknowledged by the world, without debate, to be "beautiful." Every other year I have gone abroad, bringing back to Forest Lawn bigger and better things as my experience became qualified and Forest Lawn's progress became more assured. I could talk to you for hours telling you of antique furniture, old tapestries, the sword of Charles the First, Michelangelo's "Moses", "The Last Supper", in art glass, Fanfani's "Mother Love," Canova's "Three Graces" adinfinitum.

If you desire, go see these things for yourself. Be sure to tell my boys to give you a Guide Book, (we finally had to issue one, explaining approximately 165 works of art—educational, inspiring, and replete with the world's best historical romances. Who ever heard of a cemetery having a Guide Book? Who ever heard of a cemetery that, during the month of June, had to close its book of wedding reservations at 165 because there were no more hours left? I hear someone say—"Weddings are good advertising". If you stop there you miss the very point I am trying to illustrate. It means that the attitude of people is changing towards our interment places. Instinctive in every human heart is a desire and a reaching out for the beautiful things of life. Give the public "beauty" and it will respond a hundred fold.

We already have museum rooms at Forest Lawn. I hope the day will come when we shall have a Forest Lawn Academy of Fine Arts, free to the worthy youth of the Pacific Coast. I hope to persuade sufficient people in this Southland to provide in their wills endowments, whereby the Honor man in the graduating class in this institution or arts may be given three years abroad, with expenses paid. An ambitious program, yes, but I believe basically correct and no more difficult of accomplishment than the ones we laid in 1917, a great many of which have come to pass.

Ladies and gentlemen—this brings me to my last topic—the Memorial Idea. All the figures and facts that I have heretofore quoted have been made with the hope of convincing you that the statements I shall now make are not merely theoretical assumptions but facts born of hard experiences in the interment field. I fancy I see u smile come over the faces of the Californians in this audience, because they have heard me speak on the Memorial Idea before. I am sorry, because I fear they will be bored, for I shall say nothing new—I shall not even attempt a newness because the more familiar I can make this subject to them and to you the more surely can I drive home the intense conviction that I have.

The memorial instinct is one of the oldest and greatest in man. It is this instinct that, moving in practical ways, has created the great art and architectural triumphs of the ages. Few people realize that it was the memorial idea that gave to the world the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, which is acknowledged to be the most beautiful building in the world. Westminster Abbey, the Partheon, the Castel Saint Angelo and practically all of the enduring works of architecture and art that succeeding generations have journeyed around the world to see and admire.

Mr. Will Durant, author of that book "The Mansions of Philosophy" which is being so generally read just now, pays a remarkable tribute to the influence which the memorialization idea has played in art and architecture. He says:

"Architecture began with tombs that housed the dead; the most ancient architectural monuments in the world—the Pyramids—are tombs. Churches began as shrines to the dead and places for worshipping them. Gradually the burial place was taken out into the neighboring ground, but still, in Westminster Abbey, the graves of great ancestors are within the church. From these beginnings came the proud temples raised by the Greeks to Pallas, Athene, and the other gods; and from similar beginnings came those fairest works ever reared by man, the Gothic cathedrals, whose altars, like those early tombs, harbor the relics of the holy dead."

All of our history books, our literature and much of our daily living, is derived from the efforts of the past ages to leave a record of themselves in memorials. Everything passes except that generated by this Memorial Idea. Its spiritual significance defends it against encroachments of a material age, and the cemetery, mausoleum, or crematory that plans such development upon this foundation can rest assured that coming generations will approve. If you hold strongly to the spiritual thought which inspires it, if you but carry the message by the dignity of form and proportion, the refinement of color and detail, by the beauty of the whole, present generations will reward you and future generations admire and preserve.

Do not fall into the error of believing that the average cemetery official can create beauty. I seriously doubt if there is a man in this room capable of truly evidencing the Memorial Idea in form and color. If any of you have that capacity then you have combined in you the qualities of a great architect, a great artist, a great landscape engineer and a great sculptor, because these attainments are needed. You will find that in the long run it will be cheaper to hire those men acknowledged to be "Great" in these lines and to whom God, at birth, gave the power to create beautiful things.

If you plan artistically correct in the beginning you will find that in the end you save money. Look at Paris with its Champs Elysees and intersecting streets, planned by a great architect long before the automobile came into existence. Correct planning meant broad avenues which automatically took care of automobile congestion, whereas today we, in our cities, are spending millions to change these narrow streets.

The financial welfare of every man in this room is dependent upon the elevation of the Memorial Idea, to encourage it is obvious—to degrade it is suicide, and yet that very thing we do every day.

THE CEMETERY MAN, who allows an ugly thing placed or developed within the confines of his grounds, or by word of mouth divests if of its spiritual significance, is helping to destroy the Memorial Idea.

THE MAUSOLEUM BUILDER, who allows any material or form of design to go into his building except that acknowledged by the technical world to be the most lasting and the most beautiful, writes his own epitaph.

THE CREMATION MAN who stops with the ashes (incinerated remains) in his hands, and fails to insist that his client create a memorial for those remains, evidenced by an urn and a niche, or solemn committal to a grave or mausoleum, will, in time, like Samson, pull the house down upon us and himself. God hasten the day when the crematories will take their stand and say "No more incineration without the creation of a memorial—we define the word 'cremation' as including incineration, inurnment and permanent deposition—the three actions are inseparable and indivisible."

THE UNDERTAKER who impresses his clients with the feeling that his portion of attending to the death is the most important, that he is, to all practical purposes the end of the transaction (where the Memorial Idea demands that he be but the entrance door to the Memorial Temple), that Undertaker is the greatest fool of all. His is the greatest opportunity because his clients are in a plastic state, ready to be tuned to the highest call of the Memorial Idea, or molded with a commercial, materialistic, get-it-over form of thought, which results in nothing of lasting benefit to society of his family.

How long—how long will the Interment Association endure the degradation of the Memorial Idea by certain low caliber Funeral Directors? I know of many Funeral Directors who are high class, intelligent, sympathetic and in tune with the Memorial Idea, but I am informed that there are many others whose efforts tend to lower the ethical standards so strived at by the Association of Funeral Directors.

God forbid that I shall be compelled to enter the undertaking business, but I solemnly prophecy this: That the Memorial Park of tomorrow will demand sweeping reforms on the part of the undertaking craft or Memorial Parks will build and develop undertaking establishments of their own. I prophecy, because the end is obvious—it is economically correct. In any other business these consolidations would .have been effected long ago. Service to the public of the future will demand an undertaking establishment in every cemetery—in every mausoleum—in every crematory, where the sorrowing purchaser may go and transact all of his interment preparations at one time with one concern and one individual, in a place where he, his family and friends at the time of the funeral may park their automobiles in grounds where roads provide ample parking area and amidst surroundings of beauty and quiet which soothe and comfort their sorrow. The public of the future will demand that this consolidation be effected to save them the high cost of burying. Then, and not till then, will the Memorial Idea be in position to be brought to its highest fruition.

Let you and me resolve to go back to our various institutions and "play the game", resolved to stand staunch and true to the Memorial Idea; resolved that when we are distracted by the barrage of requests from unthinking owners to allow this or that improvement to their interment space, to stand fast and "play the game."

I have known a few business men who consistently have fought a victorious fight, but I think most of us, with all our good intentions fall back boot by boot until at last, for some reason, we stiffen and hold our own. Hold fast to this Memorial Idea—it will make you free spiritually and financially.

Cemeteries can never be separated from religion. Yesterday, religion was puritanical—it spoke in the terms of the Ten Commandments—in terms of sacrifice—in terms of Calvary.  Today, religion is gladsome, radiant—it speaks in the terms of the Beatitudes—of joyousness and the Smiling Christ. And so, as the cemeteries of yesterday evidenced the religion of yesterday, so must the successful Memorial Park of tomorrow, evidence the religion of today. Cemeteries are the physical expression of the religious spirit of their time.

My belief is that the Interment organization that demonstrates its right to exist, must prepare to serve the living by not only giving them a safe depository for their beloved dead, but a place that will be spiritually uplifting, physically beautiful, its personnel filled with a sincere desire to serve its fellowman. Such a place will truly express the Memorial Idea. Such is the true conception for the "Creation of a Modern Park Cemetery".

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Convention
Los Angeles, CA
September 3, 4, 5 and 6, 1929

We are living in an age of extraordinary progress and development. As a country we have been and are in the line of progress. Taking a retrospective view of history, comparing it with the present, we find that the graveyard is occupying a. more prominent place in the minds of the whole community. Burying places must of a necessity exist. As a great truth it needs no introduction other than its own.  In the earliest history of this country the Pilgrims at old Plymouth, Mass., started a burying ground on a strictly lawn plan. In all probability the lawn plan was for the protection of the living. The grave was not mounded, but on a level with the surrounding surface, so that their enemies might not know how fast their numbers were being diminished by death. As time passed on and burying grounds increased we find mounds, and the primitive lawn mowers over the mounds were, often cows and sheep. The grounds were rented for pastures, and in some instances horses and hogs were turned loose to satisfy their hunger with the grass that grew on and between the mounds. The thoughts of it are enough to make the superintendent of a modern cemetery of today shudder, and yet we are informed that in some of the parishes in England at the present day the rector's sheep are pastured in the burying ground; a privilege granted to the rector, but we need not go to other countries than our own to find the dumb beasts feeding on the grass that covers the graves of the departed ones. Often as we look across the valley into a neighboring cemetery we see the horse of the superintendent eating the grass from the mounds of a city cemetery. Modes and customs do not spring up and die like Jonah's gourd. It takes some persons a long time to accept and conform to modern improvement.

As an association we are bonded together for the purpose of improvement, and our assembling together is for the purpose of getting new ideas that will help to do away with the primitive modes of laying out and caring for the burying grounds. Our desire should be to bring before the good Christian people of our communities facts relating to our cemeteries and let them see the improvement that has been made within the past few years.

A well cared for cemetery not only shows respect for those who have passed away, but it is an educator by way of example for the rising generation. From what we have mentioned of the past we can see that great progress has been made and we are glad to know that the people throughout the land speak in high praise of the modern cemetery of today. It is not necessary to delineate the improvements that have been made in our cemeteries; anyone can see the advancement for the better by contrasting some of the country burying grounds with those of cities and villages.

The progress has been great, and we think it worthy of note that almost all of the thinking, planning and executing of the many improvements may be attributed to the superintendent. His position is a peculiar one. The superintendent of a cemetery as well as those of other respectable positions needs a good supply of common sense and he will find plenty of opportunities to bring it into use. He must be gentle and yet firm; he needs to be possessed of more than ordinary executive ability in order to carry forward the desired improvements to complete success and have the modern cemetery a place of order and beauty. We trust that the improvements in the future will be such that soon the pasturing of the burying ground will be a scene of the past. The star of progress has risen, and may it not set until every cemetery throughout the civilized world be classed as modern and the superintendent shall be acknowledged as the pivotal power.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 9th Annual Convention
Richmond, VA
September 18, 19 and 20, 1895

Our constitution says "The object of this association shall be the advancement of the interests and the elevation of the character of cemeteries in America."

The interests of a cemetery are advanced by anything that adds to its material welfare, such as the introduction of simpler methods, the keeping of better accounts and records, greater economy in the expense for labor and material, dispensing with unnecessary drives and walks, and by preserving the natural beauty of the grounds and doing whatever will add to their attractiveness. We come together once a year to get new ideas from each other in regard to various methods of doing work, to impart our best thoughts and to listen to such criticisms as may be made. We come to test our own work by what we hear and see. A number of cemetery associations have sent their superintendents to visit the leading cemeteries of this country. These associations are satisfied that the information thus gained is worth more than the time and money expended to obtain it. These meetings serve a similar purpose. We do not, perhaps, visit as many cemeteries as we would during a trip made for that purpose, but we can in a few minutes get the opinion of more than fifty members in regard to any subject of general interest. We secure a more extended criticism than we could in any other way.

The interests of cemeteries are also advanced by everything that tends to give them stability, freedom from encroachments and by provisions for their perpetual care and maintenance. The experience of one cemetery may be of great assistance to another in regard to any of these matters.

But our highest mission will not be fulfilled unless we do something to elevate the character of cemeteries. A cemetery serves its purpose when it does two things: First, when it takes care of the dead organic material of human bodies; second, when it serves by its neatness, its beauty, its quietness, its seclusion and its assurance of a permanent resting place to assuage the sorrow of those who have lost their friends. It fills its highest purpose when it accomplishes these two results in a rational manner. What constitutes such a manner is, therefore, a fit subject for our discussion. It is generally acknowledged that the final destiny of a body is to be resolved into the elements of which it was composed. Shall we seek to postpone this process as did the ancient Egyptians? Shall we stow away the bodies of our friends in mausoleums to remain ghastly objects for untold years and perhaps finally be disposed of as mummies are now? Or shall they be placed in the sweet fresh earth to be absorbed and transformed into trees and grass and flowers? Or, again, shall they be dissipated in an hour to the clouds in a colorless vapor? These are questions that concern everybody. Perhaps they should be answered first by physicians and then should be answered in our meetings. Our answer may not have much influence but it will undoubtedly have some, directly through the people we meet, and indirectly through the paper which we were influential in starting. We should discuss these matters so that our personal influence and the influence of our published report will be in the right direction.

If inhumation is recommended, what can be done to bring the body in closer contact with the earth? This is a question that ought to be solved by undertakers, but they are interested in selling as many boxes as possible. We can advocate the use of paper coffins and the omission of the outside box with the calmness of philosophers. But cremation maybe endorsed. What effect would the adoption of this method have on the sale of lots in cemeteries? What should be done with the ashes that are left?

With any disposition that may be made of the dead, what should be done with regard to funerals? If, as some aver, they are relics of barbarism, how can they be abolished? The funeral procession comes to the cemetery and friends, neighbors and perhaps strangers and idle curiosity seekers gather around to see how bad the mourners feel, to gaze on some celebrated character that has attended the funeral, or to ask questions about the private affairs of the deceased. If this had not been the custom for ages, could we imagine a more trying ordeal for grief stricken people to pass through? With all our advancement in material things and even in religion, why have we not adopted some simpler manner of burying our dead, some custom that would accord with our instinctive desire for seclusion and quietness? Perhaps it is because people shrink from thinking of such matters, and they would no doubt like suggestions from those who have to give attention to these things.

In seeking to elevate the character of cemeteries, a very pleasant field of study presents itself which helps to counterbalance the disagreeable part of our work. It is always a pleasure to try to make things beautiful and this pleasure increases with increased efforts so that we learn to appreciate more and more the wonderful beauty of leaf and stem and flower with their infinite variety of texture, shape and color with their waving vistas and changing outlines giving a most interesting boundary to clouds and sky. I cannot help thinking that our cemeteries should be made for the living rather than the dead, that they should be viewed with joy and gladness for their artistic perfection rather than sadness for the dead they hold; that with their beauty of foliage and songs of birds they should exert as refining an influence as good painting or fine music. Such a character, certainly, would not detract from their memorial value. The work of our association may be called complete when not only the cemeteries about all our cities shall become equal to our ideals, but when every little country burying ground; instead of being an eyesore, as at present, shall be as beautiful as a charming bit of nature.

In conclusion let me say that the object of our association should be work, not play. We must not regard our meetings as a time for our own pleasure and gratification. Incidentally, we come in contact with some kindred spirits at our meetings, and we have an agreeable change from the ordinary routine of our duties, but I like to think of this as a pleasant change in work rather than a vacation. A vacation suggests a change of thoughts and a throwing off of responsibility. By looking out of the car windows, by going to the cemeteries and parks of the towns we visit, and by listening to what is said at our meetings, we can get ideas from the time we leave home till we return, and nothing will be of more value to the institutions we work for than ideas coupled with good judgment. Our report should embody these ideas in as brief and interesting a manner as possible. Of course there are many things said at our meetings that are not of general or lasting interest. These should be eliminated from our report, not simply to save the expense but to save as well the time of whoever may read it. So long as we live up to our constitution and make these annual meetings add to our knowledge and efficiency and so indirectly improve our cemeteries and the tastes of those who use them, our society will prosper and its influence will continue to grow. But when the idea of our individual enjoyment takes precedence, the best days of the society will have passed.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 7th Annual Convention
Minneapolis, MN
August 22, 23 and 24, 1893

The necessity and importance of making some provision for the perpetual care of cemeteries is now so fully recognized and appreciated throughout the country that it is gratifying to know that the increasing interest and admirable results already obtained owe very much to the influence and intelligent efforts of this association. Such progress is surely sufficient excuse for our existence and some compensation for the labor and expense in attending these annual conventions.

A burial ground (says a writer) unprotected and neglected, presents a cheerless and sad spectacle. It would seem that the dead who lie in such a place had been strangely forgotten by the living, and that philosophy is cold and repulsive which teaches us that the body being an insensible mass of matter may be buried from our sight and never thought of any more, and so inseparably do we connect the feelings and character of the living with the appearance and condition of the place of their dead that Franklin's saying is applicable, "I only need to visit the burial ground of a community to know the character of the people."  Hence no cemetery or burial ground today is complete or satisfactory which does not show not only evidences of care and respect paid by individuals and families to the memory of their own dead, but evidences also of that respect which the community of the living should ever bear toward the community of the dead.

Now, while I cannot hope to enhance the importance of this subject, it may be well to call attention to the diversity of opinions and of practice that prevails as to the best method of securing perpetual care, and as the charges and application of this vary in different cemeteries, I have no desire to recommend a fixed scale of prices for all cemeteries, or any "best plan." In my opinion each cemetery must be governed by the local conditions and advantages of its section of the country, such as the rate of interest, the cost of labor and materials, condition of the soil, severity of the climate, etc., or the exacting taste of your respective communities. All these and many other considerations will govern somewhat the cost of perpetual care. I might say here that the words "perpetual care" (although as smooth and consoling as a life insurance policy) are too broad and often misleading, and seemingly promise more care than the interest of the fund or money left will admit.

The original intention and meaning of perpetual care in my vicinity included the care of the grass only, and I hear of many disappointments because myrtle graves, watering vases, cleaning headstones, etc., are not included. Of course all these can be provided for by increasing the fund and it would be well to have all such things definitely stated in the bond or contract made between the proprietor and the corporation and thus avoids many misunderstandings in the future.

In my opinion, there are only two or three things connected with a burial lot, the care of which should be included and provided for, viz. the good appearance of the grass and all hardy shrubs and trees, and the cleaning and permanent position of head-stones and monuments. Many other items, some of a perishable existence and doubtful taste, could be readily dispensed with, and we continually discourage perpetuating flower beds (excepting hardy subjects) myrtle graves, vases and the care of hedges, fences, etc.

New cemeteries have no great difficulty in adopting perpetual care, at least for the grass and good appearance of the grounds, but these remarks are intended more for the older cemeteries which it is desirable to rescue from dilapidation and neglect, many lots and ground sold years ago, or before perpetual care was thought of.

To accomplish this, and before appealing to proprietors to leave money for the care of their respective grounds, the cemetery or corporation should do its part and give some assurance of greater neatness and higher keeping of the grounds, and thus secure the confidence and respect of the public.

When perpetual care was adopted in the cemetery under my charge, and when it was understood that dilapidation and neglect would no longer be tolerated, our sales perceptibly increased, and that too to citizens already owning lots in the numerous cemeteries in our vicinity, so that it is very evident that the greater the assurance a cemetery offers against such neglect, not only for our day, but for the future as far as human foresight can suggest, the more surely will it provide what the public demand, the greater will be its success and the higher will what it has to offer for sale be valued.

In all the catalogues and reports kindly sent me by brother superintendents, only one has a printed scale of prices for Perpetual Care. Spring Grove, Cincinnati, although all make an urgent appeal to their lot owners to leave money, the interest of which will be faithfully applied to the care of their respective lots. So for lack of knowledge of its workings and application in other cemeteries, and without any egotism, or comparison with older or wealthier institutions, a brief allusion to its adoption and progress at least, financially, in the cemetery under my charge, may be acceptable.

Swan Point was consecrated in 1847, and perpetual care was not adopted till 1877. During those 30 years many proprietors left money, by will or otherwise, and many more who were able and could have done so, but by their delay and the reverses of fortune they have been prevented from making this provision for themselves and their families. Suffice it to say that since the adoption of perpetual care the amount received in anyone year exceeded the voluntary contributions of the first 30 years.

The increase for each year is as follows:

AMOUNT OF ALL MONIES RECEIVED FROM
        1847 to 1875 inclusive was …………………     $10,219.05
            1876 …………………………………        1,788.00
            1877 …………………………………        3,524.95
            1878 …………………………………      11,037.00
            1879 …………………………………      12,181.94
            1880 …………………………………      13,625.96
            1881 …………………………………      17,522.75
            1882 …………………………………      11,037.00
            1883 …………………………………      15,999.50
            1884 …………………………………      11,790.00
            1885 …………………………………      11,296.00
            1886 …………………………………        9,946.00
            1887 …………………………………      15,461.00
            1888 …………………………………      10,127.00
            1889 …………………………………      12,961.00
            1890 …………………………………      18.004.00
            1891 …………………………………      12,841.00
            1892 …………………………………      10,575.00
                                    --------------
                                                      $209,937.15

The above may encourage many cemeteries contemplating Perpetual Care, although I know from experience how difficult and remote the accumulation of funds of one or two hundred thousand dollars seems on such small beginnings, and without even "a silver lining to every cloud," but don't be discouraged. In the language of statesmen, "the only way to resume is to resume."

About this time a scale of prices was adopted having reference to the care of the grass only. This was headed "Perpetual Care of Lots," and was mailed to the older proprietors as a guide and reminder to place their lots under care, and thus look like the newer sections.

The printing and distribution of this scale of prices was, I think, a mistake, as it deceived many who intended to provide for everything, when by will or otherwise they left only sufficient to care for the grass. The better way would be for the lot owner or his representative making this provision to visit the cemetery, see the condition of his lot; state what he desires to provide for and obtain the proper information from the superintendent, and with all due respect for cemetery officials, he is the proper one to consult.

Scale of prices for perpetual care of grass only:
    100 square feet ……………………..    $ 50
    200 square feet ……………………..    90
    300 square feet ……………………..  120
    400 square feet ……………………..  144
    500 square feet ……………………..  165
    600 square feet ……………………..  186
    700 square feet ……………………..  206
    800 square feet ……………………..  226
    900 square feet ……………………..  245
    1,000 square feet …………………… 264
    1,100 square feet …………………… 282
    1,200 square feet …………………… 300

For lots containing over 1,200 feet, 25¢ per square foot

When the above scale was adopted, some 16 years ago, the basis of our reckoning was 6%. Last year these funds earned only 5% and they are likely to realize still less in the future. So with the rates of interest decreasing and wages, etc., increasing, it may be a question if our scale of prices is not too low, but I will leave this to the convention, and as I said before, each cemetery will be governed by the conditions and advantages of its own section and people.

While the moneys or funds of cemeteries may be under various headings and not always intelligible, I would suggest at least two funds: A perpetual care fund, which has reference to private lots only, and a permanent fund, the interest of which would be sufficient to care for all the property of the cemetery and meet expenses when there is no further income from the sale of land.   This fund should be absolutely fixed and as carefully guarded as the perpetual care fund. The method of its accumulation may vary, but the principal with the yearly additions and interest should be allowed to accumulate for a long number of years or till the land which created them is all sold. I think this fund is of vital importance, but I am anxious to make improvements in my day and so would like to leave its creation to my successor.

In conclusion, gentlemen, our Association must be true to this Gospel of Perpetual Care. We know how pleasant and easy it is to receive people's money, and how uncertain and difficult it is to carry out the obligations assumed, especially in our severe and eccentric climate, but we must keep faith with the people, and secure to our citizens at least a burial place, indicating not only respect for the dead, but which will also be a source of pride and consolation to the living.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 7th Annual Convention
Minneapolis, MN
August 22, 23 and 24, 1893

The desirability of planting flowers in cemeteries is a very debatable question, and full of interest to superintendents, so much depending upon the surroundings.

By flowers is meant annuals, perennials and other flowers used in florists work.

Let us take a burial ground conducted strictly upon the lawn system, say for instance, Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati, where every surrounding indicates quietness and repose; the beautifully kept lawns, or open spaces surrounded by, or dotted with trees and shrubs bearing foliage of different hues, and shades of green. Each of these lawns or spaces are beautiful pictures in themselves, the trees being planted to throw light and shade on the sward heightens the beauty of the picture, and the effect upon the spectator is soothing and commands silent admiration. The very somberness of the surroundings indicates repose, and the mind immediately associates itself with the idea of the suitability of the cemetery as a final resting place. Beds planted with brightly colored flowers upon such lawns would be extremely out of harmony with the surroundings, and would not be desirable.

Flower planting, no matter how artistically the work is done, is palpably artificial, and in the majority of cemeteries, out of place. A modern cemetery should appear as natural as possible. Imagine a nicely graded section adorned with trees and shrubs; the landscape artist has expended his energies in making it appear as perfectly natural as possible. A lot owner, whose portion is probably in the most prominent part, conceives the idea of having bed upon, or a border around his lot; the graves are also adorned with plants until the lot has the appearance of what a brother superintendent justly describes as a crazy patch-work quilt. No doubt the work is artistic, it does not harmonize with the surroundings, and to the trained eye of a landscape gardener the effect is harsh in the extreme. Lot owners, as a rule, care nothing for the harmonious appearance of the whole. To the individual lot is what they desire to call attention.

One great aim of a cemetery superintendent should be to educate the people to the fact that "in simplicity there is beauty;" that a cemetery should look natural and park-like, and that the general appearance of the whole should be studied, rather than any particular spot. A stupendous task, more especially, in localities where the residents migrated from parts where the modern cemetery system is unknown. To their minds the old country churchyard, with its heterogeneous mass of flowers and vegetation is beautiful, and exactly what a burial ground should be. A few days ago the writer counted no less than 34 plants of different varieties, including mint upon a four-foot grave. Nothing can persuade the owner that it is not the most beautiful grave in the cemetery.

To prevent this class of ornamentation will require stringent rules, the enforcement of which means unpopularity, and few officials care to have their cemeteries unpopular. Several who have tried arbitrary rules in this direction have had to modify them in obedience to public feeling.

There are many first class cemeteries where flower planting is extensively practiced, these are now being styled “flower garden cemeteries”. The question of the desirability of flower planting is settled as far as they are concerned.

There are also burial grounds where flower planting would prove an improvement, but these places can scarcely be classed among the lawn cemeteries. They are simply grave yards, no great amount of landscape work having been lavished on their construction, and the management “a sort of     go-as-you-please”.

Then again, there is the dollars and cents side of the question. In the majority of cemeteries, both large and small, the desire to make money is paramount, and what should be has to give way to the mighty dollar. So few can afford to sacrifice cash to sentiment, and as most cemeteries are conducted for the money there is in them, flower planting will be encouraged. It is business, simply business.

Where flower planting is considered desirable, study should be given to the use, as much as possible, of dwarf growing plants and such as bear flowers, quiet in color, for in few instances do the brighter colors harmonize with the surroundings of a burial ground. For cemetery work nothing looks worse than a bed containing a mixture of tall growing plants, such as dahlias, lilies, salvia, chrysanthemums, hollyhocks and others too numerous to enumerate. Pretty effects can be obtained with dwarf growing plants, especially when massed, and they are not so visible from a distance, therefore their appearance is not so striking, nor is the appearance of the lawn so broken as by their taller brethren.

In cemeteries where flower growing is encouraged a spirit of emulation soon creeps in, and lot owners try to out-vie each other in their efforts to have their lots look nice. To the great joy of the florist who acquiesces in the good work and soon the lawns are covered with all manner of designs, regardless of the surroundings, till oft times, the whole resembles a wild garden in its profusion of bright colored blooms. These beds soon become dried and withered blotches in the landscape, especially during the heat of summer, unless kept well watered each day, meaning more joy for the florist, who, of course, has to be paid additional for watering.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 7th Annual Convention
Minneapolis, MN
August 22, 23 and 24, 1893
 

The first thing that attracts the attention of visitors to a cemetery is the genial outline appearance and its prominent points. Then the most imposing monuments are selected for examination. After these come the head stones and markers. Here the visitor, whether he be from abroad or living in the same city or neighborhood, begins to investigate and comment on the various stones, their construction and inscriptions, particularly the latter. A large number of people who bury their dead, are unable to build a monument, hence, it seems as if they were desirous to erect a headstone that would resemble one, they try to put up something that will present as large a surface as possible, regardless of its appearance or good taste. We all understand how difficult it is to educate the masses, as to what is the most appropriate for headstones, for this reason alone, such rules should be adopted by cemetery organizations as will regulate and end all controversy.

I have examined the rules of many cemeteries and was surprised at the great diversity and latitude of the rules, and still more surprised at the omission of any well defined rules in many cemeteries on this matter. Go into a majority, and I might almost say all of the first class cemeteries, and you see headstones that are a disgrace to the place, and when you inquire why they are permitted, you are informed by the superintendent that he does not approve of them, and has done all he could to prevent their being put up, but the rules of the cemetery do not positively prohibit them and he cannot help it I recently visited a beautiful cemetery in the capital of a New England state. This cemetery was a comparatively new one, and is being conducted on modern ideas. Here I found numerous headstones (or slabs) that had been moved from the first cemetery located in the place, one marble slab 2½ feet high by 15 inches wide and 1¾ inches thick, set in a granite base, with brimstone. The stone was badly discolored several inches from the base, the date on it was 1833; another on the same lot in the same condition, two feet high 10 inches wide 1½ inches thick. Another of marble moved there dated 1851, set in marble base, five feet high, two feet wide and 2 inches thick. These three stones are sufficient to illustrate the point I wish to make. None of these were in good condition, they certainly did not look well, and they marred the beauty of the cemetery. Then why were they there? Simply because the rules of the cemetery did not prohibit it. I suppose that I might safely add that the owner of the lot claimed that there was a sacredness about those ancient stones that he must respect, while the real fact probably was, that he venerated the few dollars required for new stones more than the old deformities that he moved from the ancient graveyard.

Why should every modern cemetery not make a rule that no such rubbish could be moved into the grounds, and why not make a rule that no new stones should be erected that will in time appear almost as bad as those referred to? I believe there is a general opinion among owners and superintendents of the best cemeteries that headstones should not be over one foot high, and not less than six inches thick. This association can do very much toward bringing about some desirable uniformity as to height and dimensions, thereby preventing that "old graveyard" appearance which we so heartily detest.

The members present understand what inappropriate things, words and designs people will put on stones if allowed space to do it. "The Weeping Willow" of old, the hand pointing upward, and "Mary's little lamb”, which has served her time in all positions from the young creature up to quite a large sheep, according to the ability to pay for her carving.

The object of this paper is to simply remind the association of the defects and necessity of rules on this subject, knowing that a discussion by the experienced members will be of more value than any elaborate argument I can make.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 6th Annual Convention
Baltimore, MD
September 27, 28 and 29, 1892

Once more we are assembled; once more we meet to discuss questions of vital importance to us.

We, who have charge of grounds wherein rest the remains of so many loved ones, have an honored and sacred duty, and it behooves us to perform that duty as near perfect as possible. We are public servants and should have the fullest confidence of those we serve. Without that confidence we are useless.

We are to comfort the afflicted by caring for the dead with tender hands, and complying with their requests in a gentlemanly and courteous manner. We are to meet the rich and the poor. Their family ties are the same. Death brings the mortal remains to the same level. As man stands in the presence of his Maker there is no distinction in regard to his worldly possessions. We brought nothing into the world; neither can we carry anything away. In the course of human events it is impossible for everyone to own a burial place, and consequently in cemeteries owned and controlled by the city or town in which they are located, a portion of ground is set aside for public or free lots. Such is the case in the cemetery of which I have charge. The name of Potter's Field, Pauper Lot and other discourteous names attached to that part of a cemetery I do not like. A man may be poor and yet support his family comfortably and not be able to purchase a lot. True, we may bury some who are called paupers in a worldly sense, but when life departs they cease to be paupers, and are no doubt wealthy in a spiritual sense. A short time ago I was accosted by a stranger who wanted to know where our Potter's Field was. I answered him that we had no such place, but if he was looking for the Public Lots I would direct him. Another asks where is your Pauper Lots? and received the same answer. In regard to these lots I simply wish to state my experience in the way of improvement. I have visited cemeteries where the Public Lots were very unsightly and in obscure places and concealed by hedges, with but very little care. I do not mean that they should be in the most prominent places, but wherever they are they should not wear that neglected look. Properly cared for by the superintendent will do much towards removing the stigma attached to them.

For many years, and in fact since the commencement of the cemetery, people have been allowed to exercise their individual taste in decorating these graves, and the result was several hundred of these graves were enclosed by fences of all designs imaginable. One grave was a flower bed, the next the sod taken off and the soil exposed; one mounded and another flat, a shrub here and a shrub there; nothing in harmony and on the whole anything but agreeable to the eye. Our public lots are located in different parts of the cemetery, and are designated by numbers. Each lot is divided by sections and designated by figures or alphabetically. Each grave is marked by a marble slab 6 inches in width and numbered, which is furnished by the city, and when any particular grave is wanted it is only necessary to turn to the records and find the number of the lot, section and grave. Three years ago I graded a new Public Lot called the 5th, with the intention of carrying out my ideas of what a public lot should be. Rules were posted and were cheerfully complied with. No structures of any kind allowed around the graves. The grass not to be disturbed, no shrub or bush allowed. Parties were allowed to set stones of their liking, if they so desired, not to measure over 2 feet in height or 16 inches in width. Two or three plants were allowed to be set near the headstone. Bouquets were, of course, allowed. Three purple-leaf beeches were set in the center of each section at equal distances. A gravel walk 4 feet in width divides the sections with 2 feet of grass in front of the stones, making 8 feet from stone to stone across the walk. I can now point with pride to my new Public Lot, a level carpet of green enshrouding those who sleep. Lawn mowers can now be used, where it was impossible on the old lots, and of course making the cost for care much less and with better results.

I have since removed the various structures from the old lots, and more or less of the shrubs, and am busily putting them in a presentable condition. In many cases an explanation was necessary, some thinking it a hardship not to allow them the privilege of enclosing the grave of some dear one. But when they were invited to look at the new lot they readily saw that a change had been made for the better. Many are so anxious to decorate a grave that they know not where to stop, and carry it far beyond good taste. As large a percentage of the public graves are watched over and furnished with bouquets as those on private lots They are visited more by children than the private graves, and are adorned by childish hands with many a flower. Bodies are constantly being removed from these lots, as many purchase lots as soon as their financial condition will admit. A body must remain in the ground at least one year before removal. Last year 330 were interred in these lots, the regular interment fee being charged. The care and appearance of the public lots should go as far towards establishing the reputation of a cemetery for neatness as the appearance of private lots.

The dead must be cared for by the living and as far as the cemetery is concerned, the care of the public lots should be watched over as carefully as the private lots. Feeling an interest in the public lots from the day I took charge of the grounds, and feeling that they should be looked on with the same degree of respect as other parts; of the grounds, prompted me to prepare this paper.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 6th Annual Convention
Baltimore, MD
September 27, 28 and 29, 1892

When a person assumes control of a cemetery as a Superintendent a new business opens out before him, being very different from all others. Then and there his influence begins and I think we can and should shape it for good. And then, if we study to please, to help and to sympathize, our counsel and advice will always be in demand. We are also expected to be well learned in our work and it is our duty to prepare ourselves, as best we can, by reading and studying everything devoted to our calling. If we, ourselves, do not strive to learn from others, who have been successful, we must and undoubtedly will fail.

One of our members, in a former subject, used this sentence, and I think a very good one: "There is no business that calls out more and better qualities than a cemetery Superintendent." The many persons of varied dispositions and minds, very often of the same family, the same kinds of work, the many ways of doing it, making a complication of thoughts and ideas, that a man must keep himself well educated, well read on every subject pertaining to his profession, and have complete control of all his faculties, and keep pace with all the subjects that may come up before him.

There is no place where the peculiarities of people are shown more than here, and a Superintendent is expected to please all who come to visit, and especially the owners of lots. Sympathy is a grand word, and it should be with us always. Without it you cannot be successful in your calling. Kindness should be to all, and under all circumstances, no thought of self, but all for others. Many may think that we would get used to our work and our feelings become hardened, but with me it is always sad, always someone's friend.

To be prepared for all this we must store our minds with all the knowledge on these subjects that we can, and I find that our own monthly, THE MODERN CEMETERY, is a great help, and I hope none will be without it.

And if we expect to make ourselves useful to the managers and all the lot owners, and have the good will and confidence of all who visit the grounds, we should have our burials in a quiet manner, with no hurry or noise, having everything as nice as possible. This is the time when people need all the sympathy we can extend to them, in these the saddest bereavements of their lives.

In making up the mounds and all work of that kind I think we can all have our own way, and if we explain which way we think best, we all like the low mound all sodded and green. This we know is the best. They do not dry out like the high ones, and even if plants are wanted you can have a place in the sad for them. As to shade trees, you cannot have a nice green sod under a tree. It is only a loafing place for those you do not want. Chairs and settees are as much out of place as they are but a resting place for idlers and others who have no business there.

Then comes the question of monuments and headstones. You are expected to know all about the best kinds of granite and marble, what kind of lettering you like best and who are the most reliable persons to deal with. And I think we should be well posted on this subject, as well as many others which touch our work, for it is one of the many ways of beautifying our cemeteries. We should not have too much sameness and always have good work. All the work in the grounds should be well done and a good, faithful and industrious Superintendent will always have the confidence and best wishes of all his people the same as is enjoyed by a good minister.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 6th Annual Convention
Baltimore, MD
September 27, 28 and 29, 1892

It would be impossible to treat the whole subject of Cemetery Memorials in an article such as this, because of the many angles from which the subject might be viewed.

A very large number of articles might be written on this subject and each differs widely from the other, the particular theme depending upon the special influence which directed the thought of the author.

To some, certain types of monuments and their setting might have a peculiar interest, and we are sure that much, might be said which would lead to improved conditions in both these particulars.

The sculptor or designer would treat this subject from the viewpoint of the artist as he sees special types of art worked out in each Memorial. His thoughts would dwell upon design and the exactness of line and proportion. His opinion of the Cemetery Beautiful would be governed not so much by the proper distribution of well designed monuments as by the number of such and his opinion might be but little effected by the hundreds of stones which are sandwiched in between and in which, if art were to be found, a flexible imagination would needs be called into play.

This subject might also be considered from the standpoint of the person who purchases the Memorial to be placed upon his lot and it would often times be interesting to know something of the inf1uences which governed his selection and how much or how little of his own thought and character or that of his deceased loved ones are embodied in his Monument.

The Historian has written volumes describing the great outstanding monuments of the world and throughout all time the civilizations of Nations has been recorded through the character of these structures.

The great battle fields of the world are dotted with monuments which mark the spot where brave men fell and this Nation and all other Nations have erected magnificent tombs in honor of their fallen leaders.

The erection of Monuments has not been confined to any period of time, or to any race of people, for the enduring qualities of stones seem always to have been a symbol of eternity.

Reference to Memorials might therefore, bring to the mind's of people generally, widely different lines of thought, but to the Cemetery Superintendent his first thought is of the Cemetery Memorial, its uses and abuses.

It will be the purpose of the writer, then, to consider this subject from the viewpoint of the Cemetery Superintendent, whose vocation brings him in daily contact with Memorials of every description and because of the prominent place which the Memorial has in the Cemetery, he has given much of his time to a study’s of this feature of embellishment in all of its various phases.

Be it said, however, the superintendent does not pose as an Art critic. He has not devoted largely of his time to a study of the Classics. He may be little interested in the particular type of Art displayed in the numerous Monuments which are brought into the Cemetery. His has been a study of harmony in combinations, his eye has been trained in perspectives and he foresees the effect of scenic groupings. He sees the stone work in the cemetery as a conglomerate whole. It is the finished picture of monument and landscape combined which interests him as he plans to preserve some stretches of beautiful lawn from being disfigured by an undue and non-picturesque congestion of monuments and markers.

The question which we must solve is: How can he prevent this undue congestion and thus preserve distinct traces of his original plan?

His mind reverts to attempts made to this end and which resulted in only partial success.

He compares the older sections of his Cemetery with those of more modern development. His mind turns to Cemeteries in which management has been lacking and in which every lot owner has been a free agent. He likens conditions which are here found with those of his idea and an ideal lawn plan Cemetery, the product of trained minds and guiding hands and in which restrictions have been wisely and carefully enforced.

In his mental picture are wooded hillsides with here and there, amid low plantings of shrubbery, or partially hidden by branches of trees, a few well designed Memorials which tell some story of achievement and which have in them a something which will cause the passerby to pause and study and admire.

Rows and groups of monuments on every side are passed by daily, the character of which is so lacking as not to attract even the slightest attention.

Many exceptions, however, are to be found in all our Cemeteries.  The writer pauses often before a roughly hewn boulder, under the shadow of massive oaks, isolated from other monuments, and there reads from a bronze tablet the names of twenty-three men, buried with the County, who fought far America's Independence in the War of the Revolution.

In the Cemetery at Marion, where reposes the body of our beloved Mr. Harding, and where to whose memory a splendid memorial is soon to be erected, stands a Memorial chapel and upon its interior walls are inscribed the names of all the volunteers from Marian County who were engaged in the struggle of 1861 to 1865.

On the banks of a mirrored lake in Woodland Cemetery, Dayton and under the branches of a great tree, stands a boulder paced there by admiring friends, and dedicated to the memory of one who rose above others of his race and color, and on the bronze tablet which bears testimony to the achievements of Paul Lawrence Dunbar in a fitting stanza from one of his poems; "Let me sleep beneath the Willows."

On the brow of a hill in Woodlawn Cemetery, Toledo and overlooking a winding stream, as was the wish of the man who lies buried there, stands a three sided pyramid each dimension of which is thirty feet. This pyramid is constructed or thousands of boulders of various sizes, each stone contributed by a News bay or a News boy's sister, out of love for John Gunckel, the Father of the News boy movement of America.  A man who resigned a good business position, that he might devote his life to the uplift of the boys of the street, not only in his own city, but in all big cities, having found in the "urchin" possibilities or splendid manhood.

Each Cemetery has its Memorials which tell a story of special interest also many others which tell or achievement and which fill a well defined mission, and still others which are well designed and fit well in to the general plan, serving every purpose of a true Memorial.

But, in contrast with these are thousands which have no special mark of interest and which bear only a family name, whatever it may be; Smith or Jones, or, Brown, or White, or Green, and the Superintendent must needs be a well of information to the inquisitive, identify the particular branch of one or another of these numerous families to which the stone has been intended as a Memorial.

The answer to the question of better monuments, and a better distribution or monuments seems to depend upon three important factors; closer cooperation between dealer and Cemetery Superintendent; more general education along the lines of better Memorials and their effective settings; and certain justifiable restrictions an the part of Cemetery officials.

It is not boastful to say that many or the reforms which have been accomplished in monumental work are due to the activities of Cemetery boards, and we need to go back but a few years to find evidences in proof of this statement.

The old time slab, often several feet in height, considered necessary as the marking for each grave, might still have been the marker in common use had not the Cemetery decreed that it was not the marker best suited for the purpose, and adopted a new limit of height of eighteen inches or two feet.

This change to a marker of less height failed in accomplishing desired results, for while it corrected one, evil it gave birth to another.

Many novelties were introduced such as the polished roll, often of highly colored granite and frailly supported in brackets, the scroll, the polished sphere, section of a log, gates ajar, the harp and lyre, and other numerous designs, often two or more, vastly different, placed upon the same lot, and in single grave and small lot sections all of these designs were to be seen in promiscuous array.

Copings, fences, or chains formed the boundaries of lots, and corner stones extended several inches above the sod line, one or the other of these forms being deemed essential to the proper marking of the lot.

Many protests may have been made when these old forms were eliminated. Lot owner and dealer may have considered the order drastic, but who of them now would return to old form of markings?

As these reforms have been accomplished, so are other reforms being brought about through the efforts of men who devote their time to the study of those things which are essential to the beauty and quiet repose of our Cemeteries, and who are convinced that they owe more to posterity than they do to any whims of the present.

Lot owners would profit if the management were consulted, or advice sought of persons known to possess correct taste, before the Memorial is purchased. A design which may be attractive in itself may not harmonize with the surroundings of the lot upon which it is to be placed, or a monotonous similarity of design may result unless conditions surrounding the lot are first carefully studied.

Too often are monuments placed on lots where, because of an already crowded condition, markers would be in much better taste. And in the selection of a Memorial the purchaser may be influenced by some sentiment which the design portrays, and no thought given to the fact that the monument remains indefinitely even though the sentiments change. He may have the Memorial cheapened in material or workmanship in order that the cost may be kept within the amount which he has decided to appropriate. Perhaps another dealer will furnish a larger stone at no additional cost or he may be attracted by a stone of some unusual color and no thought given to general effect.

To prevent the introduction of this condition, and thus maintain that harmony which is so important, it is necessary that designs of all monuments and a description or sample of material to be used should first be submitted to the Superintendent or Trustees for approval, and the location of the monument on the lot should be determined by them, for in these matters, if harmony is to prevail, the ideas and wishes of the individual must be subservient to the best interests of the Cemetery as a whole, and the Memorial which he selects should be in keeping with this thought.

It is also important that we who have so much to do in determining the ultimate appearance of the Cemetery should give constant study to this theme of harmony in design and pleasing arrangement so that in the end the stone work will not be the dominant feature of the Cemetery but a well balanced part of the entire scheme.

In laying out the lots much may be done toward avoiding the congestion of monuments by varying the size and shape, or platting in among monument lots a number upon which marker’s only shall be used. There are families in every vicinity who have no desire for a Memorial other than markers on their lot, but who desire that lot in the very best location.

Monuments should also be restricted in size to a comparative size of the lot, and this restriction should be borne in mind when determining the sizes in which the lots shall be platted. The area of the monument base, in some instances is restricted to a percent of the area of the lot, and its nearest approach to any adjoining lot is determined.

Long straight lines of monuments or markers will be avoided if lots are not laid out in straight lines or of equal size. The importance of this is seen in lots which are in close proximity with the drive ways. And on such lots it is well to have sufficient depth so that the monument may be placed near the rear leaving space for graves and planting area in front.

In some instances no-monument lots might border the driveways, the plan varying with locality and a consequent difference in the size of lots required, but in any event it is well to have the monuments a sufficient distance from the driveway that they may be partially screened with plantings.

Planting areas, which may some time be used for Memorial plantings, should be left on all, sections, and this can be done at no great sacrifice of salable ground.

Whenever a new section is platted the total area could be calculated and the area which is set aside for planting could be calculated in the price of lots, thus each purchaser of a lot is contributing his just proportion in payment for these ornamental spaces from which he receives his share of benefit.

In this cause of prevention of congested conditions why should we not use our splendid opportunity in setting a worthy example?

The consideration of the marker, though left until now, is as worthy our attention as is that of the monument.

One of the prime requisites of any Memorial is its durability. It is placed for a distinct and peculiar purpose, and is expected to endure, unchanged, throughout the life of the Cemetery.

It is essential then, that the material used, also the construction stand for the greatest tests of endurance, and the possibility of deterioration or injury through accident be at a minimum.

The marker answering nearest this standard, and which has been adopted in many localities is the solid block, or one piece marker, set firmly upon a concrete foundation.

For the same reasons which govern the size and location of monuments, that a crowded condition might be avoided, there is a growing tendency to lessen the size of markers and to limit the height to a few inches at most.

Local conditions might determine the most suitable maximum height, ranging from the sad level marker to those which do not exceed three or four inches at the highest point.

This low marker, with edges slightly rounded or beveled, thus eliminating all sharp corners, and with incised inscription cleanly cut commends itself for many reasons; it is neat in appearance, does not stand out boldly in the landscape, has all the elements of durability, and in these times of increasing scarcity of labor less expense is incurred because it is less in the way.

In this study of Cemetery Memorials from the view point of the Cemetery Superintendent we would not be so biased in opinion as to exclude from the exercise of their proper rights any owner of a lot, or any dealer in Memorials whose chief interest is in the character of his work and its rightful place in the Cemetery.

We do now know that too many meaningless monuments have been crowded into our Cemeteries, many of which show carelessness in design and lack of skill in the workmanship.

We welcome the deeper interest which is being shown in the study of Memorial Art with corresponding results which are not obtained through making a profession out of what was once very largely a purely commercial industry.

The Cemetery is, very especially, an institution of the community which it serves. It is the spot where mind and memory lingers. To many it is more sacred than any other spot on earth, and few are the families in any community who have not sought balm for saddened hearts in the beauty and grace and quiet which the Modern Cemetery offers.

What more fitting place to render a service to ones community, or in what more fitting way could honor be paid the memory of the dead than by placing a Memorial in whose benefits others who may be passing through a like ordeal may also share.

A Memorial entrance, Memorial Chapel, Memorial Fountain or Memorial plantings; unselfish in every aspect, the gift of such a Memorial must bring more of delight and satisfaction to the donor because of the splendid service which such a gift would render, not for today only, but which would renew its usefulness day after day and year after year, rendering a service to all who shall, in the years to come pass this way.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 38th Annual Convention
Portland, Maine
August 18, 19, 20 and 21, 1924

When I was asked by your President to write a paper for this meeting, it seemed to me that so many subjects have been covered in the past that there is comparatively little new to be said, unless one considered the cemeteries from a new angle.

In thinking over Cemetery problems for the last few years the great changes which have come about in cemetery methods and ideals have been subjects to which I have given a great deal of thought and the paper which I am presenting to you to day is along these lines. Sometimes I think I am dreaming and if I am I want you to dream along with me and look into the future of Cemetery development.

As we compare the earlier Cemeteries with those of today we find many changes have come about. These have been due partly to economic conditions, but also very largely to the taste and ideas of the lot owners and while many Cemetery men have been leaders in these ideas it is also true that the public are demanding even greater changes, and that there are many forces at work which I believe will result in more beautiful cemeteries. As Cemetery men we cannot shut our eyes to these changes in public sentiment or we will be carried off our feet by forces which we cannot control anymore than the winds and the tides.

Economic conditions are making for simpler tastes in Cemetery Memorials and our public is demanding, not merely submitting, to regulations in regard to memorial stones. This will gradually result in fewer stones and in far better stones, each a work of art in a beautiful location.  Here is a problem of cooperation with designers of memorials which must be worked out carefully.

When all is said and done I believe their business will improve rather than otherwise and they will have less competition and greater opportunity to study their work and make finer memorials.

Cremation means easy burial and should be looked upon as merely a preparation of the body for interment. When looked upon that way the sentiment remains, only the body is in a different form while neither earth burial or ashes are pleasant the public seem to be tending toward cremation which will I believe, especially in the East, simplify the Cemetery problem. Trenching will not be necessary and the natural landscape can be preserved.

So much then for a glimpse of some of the things I have been thinking about and which I hope you will take home with you for serious consideration.

What are some of the practical cemetery problems of today and how do they compare with those ten or twenty years ago? Working conditions have changed materially in the last ten years, probably more so than at any previous period in the life of the ordinary cemetery unless possibly during and after the Civil War period.

What of labor costs? Ten years ago for the week ending August 1, there were on our payroll 118 men working 54 hours per week. In 1924 there were 96 men working 47½ hours per week, or a loss of 1822 working hours. Is this because the men work harder and it requires fewer working hours to keep up a constantly increasing area? I hardly think so! Our Cemeteries are growing larger and we all know men do not work any harder than they used to.

Now let us look further into the problem. Since August 1, 1914 we have sold nearly 1,000 new lots besides hundreds of single graves and there have been erected in the cemetery several thousand additional monuments and headstones, everyone of which has added to the labor of maintaining our grounds. With the great reduction in working hours our payroll is over nine hundred dollars more for the week and yet our income for perpetual care on the old lots has not increased. We have accomplished more in fewer working hours.

I have pictured a condition no worse than that in which the average cemetery find's itself and what future labor charges will be few would care to predict. Now what have we done to balance these increased costs? Do we keep our Cemeteries looking as well as ten years ago? And what of the future?

The average Cemetery probably is as well kept as ever and many improvements have been forced upon us which have made work easier and made it possible to keep a pace with the new working conditions.

We have substituted modern equipment in the way of trucks, automobiles and motor lawnmowers and the following table shows the effect upon the cost of perpetual care of the grass.

Cost Per Square Foot
1914……….……. .0126
1915…..……..…. .0121
1916…....………. .0121
1917…..…..……. .0157
1918…..……..…. .0177
1919…....………. .01765
1920…..…..……. .02493
1921…..……..…. .0248
1922…....………. .02315
1923…....………. .02016
1924…..…..……. .022549

The result of these improvements with us has meant that while it averaged .0126 per square foot to give a lot perpetual care in 1913, in 1923 with labor 150% it should have cost .0315 while it actually cost only .0225 or a saving of nearly one cent per square foot and I can definitely say that the Cemetery is kept as well or better today than ever.

We have also eliminated many unnecessary Cemetery groups of summer bedding plants substituting for them hardy shrubs, trees and grass. We are eliminating bothersome terraces or planting them with hardy plants which are easy to care for and we have done away with useless grave walks, substituting grass which greatly improves the appearance of the grounds. We have improved our roads so they require less care and are adapted to automobile traffic and altogether made many improvements which have resulted in the double satisfaction to us, saving work and beautifying the grounds. What is there left to do to these older parts of the grounds? I am afraid not much. Our hope then is that conditions shall not become worse, but better.

What of the future. This opens up many avenues of thought and leads us to think of the past, the present and the future. A class of students in Landscape Gardening recently visited our Cemetery and was told that it was a fine example of a Cemetery, but in a few years would be out-of-date, or words to that effect, because the Cemetery of the future would have only ground markers.

Our old Cemeteries had terraced lots, gravel paths, poor avenues, granite curbs, iron fences, monuments and headstones galore until you get the incongruous mass stone work seen in some of the old Cemeteries in the large cities. Then came the lawn plan, with a reduction in many things, but still too much grading, too many monuments and too much show, not enough of quiet, peace and harmony.

Is it going too far to say the Park Plan is appearing in the horizon and that such a Cemetery will really 'be the most perfect of all? Not a park in the ordinary sense of the word, or a play ground, but a memorial plot of sacred ground where all who enter may be quiet, mediate and think of the lost ones. The memorials here shall be simple, natural boulders, covered with vines and bushes, with plates recording the names of those buried there, grade markers wherever desired and beautiful memorials, erected by contributions from lot holders and in suitable locations to commemorate the dead in that portion of the Cemetery. Such memorials would be carefully designed by the most famous artists and sculptors of the day-each one a gem in itself in a beautiful setting and erected of the finest suitable material, regardless of cost. What an opportunity to design special sections; the whole a harmonious pot with a definite theme beautifully carried out.

Would not such a Cemetery be far more beautiful than the battlefield at Gettysburg, which we saw last year, where the monumental work is often too thick and ugly even though the area is large and the landscape beautiful. Natural landscape will be retained and possibly the day will come when the earth burial is as uncommon as the cremation is today and the necessity of digging graves in difficult ground will be eliminated.

Are we dreamers when we talk of such things? I don't think so. I think we must get this idea into our heads or a new group of Cemetery men, under the direction of the best landscape architects, will come along and build these Cemeteries while we are worrying about it. This is the Cemetery beautiful and we must study the idea and show our public how such a Cemetery may be made possible. How much more satisfactory such a Cemetery will be, nothing depressing but only sacred ground, quiet, peaceful and altogether lovely.

We have all of us studied the difficult problems of laying out Cemeteries to make them beautiful with rolling lawns, trees, shrubs and graceful avenues only to have them ruined with the laying out of lots and erection of memorial work and all our efforts seem to be in vain.

In the old days Cemetery Superintendents always laid out the Cemetery in squares, now we try to do better, but our problem is difficult and the results often discouraging. The park Cemetery will solve many of these problems and we all know the fewer lots in a section the better it looks. We have discarded curbing and fences soon we will discard other useless decorations and gradually approach the ideal.

We must study these problems seriously, intently and practically and develop our various cemeteries along the ideal which we have in mind, ever remembering that we are but servants of the public and that our duty is to crystallize and develop the highest ideals in our Cemeteries.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 38th Annual Convention
Portland, Maine
August 18, 19, 20 and 21, 1924

Less than a century ago, the first rural cemetery in America was established at Cambridge, Massachusetts. This is not a very long time, but sufficient to justify looking about to see if we are going in the right direction and if we are accomplishing results that are satisfactory. Since the establishment of Mount Auburn, nearly every city has acquired one or more rural cemeteries. These, as the name implies, have usually been located in the country at a little distance from the city, and have been distinguished from the old churchyards formerly used as burial places by having more space, more trees, shrubs and flowers and more of the charm of nature. Gradually, our cities have extended their boundaries until many of the cemeteries referred to have become surrounded with buildings and are often bordered with streets carrying a heavy traffic. Various questions might be asked regarding these cemeteries. (1st) Do they allow the disposal of the dead in a satisfactory manner? (2nd) Do they occupy land that should be used for industrial purposes? (3rd) Is the municipality justified in relieving these areas from taxation? (4th) Will they continue to serve their present purpose indefinitely? That is, will they continue as long as the cities to which they are tributary continue?

Cemeteries vary greatly in character. In some an effort is made to emphasize the charm of nature by planting and by developing attractive landscapes and introducing many naturalistic features such as lakes, wooded hillsides and running streams. In other cemeteries, although at first located in the outskirts of cities, the charms of nature have been neglected. The trees have been removed or have gradually died and the ground is occupied with some grass and a multitude of monuments and headstones so that the general appearance is not very different from a stonecutter's yard. In accordance with the ideas of most persons, a cemetery lot should have a measure of seclusion, should be attractive in appearance and have quiet surroundings. It should be a place frequented by birds. The beauty of foliage and flowers is usually considered essential. Some cemeteries supply lots having the' features named, and thus furnish a quiet, peaceful, beautiful place for the burial of the dead or for the ashes of those that are cremated. When we are thinking only of such resting places, the first question would be answered in the affirmative for they furnish attractive burial grounds. If however, the charm of Nature has been lost, a negative answer would have to be given to this question concerning the first requisite of a cemetery.

The answer to the second question regarding the need of cemetery land for industrial purposes will in time depend largely upon the success with which the character originally sought, that of natural beauty, hag been preserved. A cemetery to be permanently successful as a work of art and as a final resting place for the departed must also do something for the living. After the passing of a few generations, the burial place which is merely a stone yard will have no interest for those that are living, and if it could be replaced with beautiful and useful buildings that would serve future generations there would be a great gain. On the other hand, if a cemetery is really park-like and beautiful, it would be a real asset for the city in which it is located. This leads naturally to the consideration of the third question regarding taxes.  Cities pay large amounts for acquiring and maintaining parks. Taxation for this purpose is justifiable since the public parks probably give a return in health and pleasure greater, area for area, than is given by other parts of the city. A cemetery which is well endowed and park-like in character and which has become so filled with burials that no more are to be made may continue to serve the living in many of the ways which a park is of service. It, therefore, relieves the community of many of the taxes that they would otherwise be called upon to pay. Ideally, therefore, the history of the cemetery would be somewhat as follows:

First the land, preferably an area that is naturally attractive from its topography, will be secured. Then it will be made accessible by the construction of roads and paths, and its attractiveness will be increased by the planting of trees, shrubs and flowers and the introduction of other pleasing landscape features. After this it will serve as a burial place until all the land is appropriated. Its use in this manner may last from a few years to perhaps one or more centuries. After that it should continue to serve the living by giving them the pleasure that comes from looking at a group of wild crap apples, or thorp apples, from looking at a giant oak one or two hundred years old, from looking at ground covered with hepaticas and other wild flowers, from looking at maples all red and golden m the autumn, from looking at the fruits of barberries, viburnums, honeysuckles, mountain ash and roses, from listening to the songs of birds and watching their sprightly motions; in short, the pleasure that comes from the charm of nature.

The answer to the fourth question regarding the perpetuity of cemeteries may now be given as follows: If a cemetery is beautiful, if it serves as a safe place for trees, shrubs, flowers, ferns, mosses, turf and all the smaller plants that make an attractive ground covering, the whole arranged in a way to provide beautiful landscapes its perpetuity will be assured, will, in fact, be demanded by future generations. It will serve as a safe retreat not only for plants and birds but for people as well. Here will come those who get pleasure from the beauty of buds and blossoms, from open spaces surrounded by foliage, from trees made venerable by the growth of one or more centuries. Here will come those who seek quiet and seclusion, who seek relief from the noise and excitement of city streets. The fact that a cemetery is closed at night, that it is free from noisy games and picnics, and that its early purpose and use inspire a feeling of respect and solemnity, will add to its charm for certain persons. It becomes not only a secure resting place for the departed committed to its care, but a memorial park as well, a memorial of the most beautiful kind.

In this connection some quotations from our greatest authority in landscape matters will be of interest. In 1891, at the time of his greatest ability and most mature judgment. Frederick Law Olmstead, Sr., was asked by the trustees of Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit to advise them in a general way regarding its treatment. Some of his observations are well worth quoting here. Speaking of what may happen to a cemetery in the course of time, he said, "there is a liability that its turf will gradually 'run out' and not be restored, its trees fall to decay and their places left unoccupied, its roads and paths become grass-grown and gullied, and such a general character at length established for the place that public opinion will welcome any project that promises to put it to another use than that of an undisturbed resting place of the dead. This has been the history of many burial places in older towns, places containing the graves, tombs and monuments of many worthies of those towns, places which were at one time apparently much more secure from such a rate than Elmwood can be made by any laws or police provisions, or by any funds established for the purpose, except as these funds shall be used in some way for the lasting well being of the living. There are many such burial grounds that are most unattractive. Even if enclosed by strong walls, they have the character of waste places. Some have dilapidated fences, and, year after year, are resorted to only by vagabonds and dogs. If, as its trees and fences decay, Elmwood is not to have a similar fate it will be because of a regard that shall have been established for the place not in the minds of those now interested in it, nor in the minds of their children but in the minds of the people who have personally known nothing of its dead, and who will be no more interested in this particular collection of the dead than they are in many other such collections. It will be because, to many people of Detroit in the future, the place is found a grateful retreat from the town only because of such natural rural scenery as the Trustees have, long before, made provision to secure.

Regard for this soothing, natural scenery will be the deeper, with future visitors, because of the pathos and solemnity of the purpose which will be known to have led to its preservation, and because of the contrast between the sentiment which will thus be matured, and that which pertains to the purposes of rural grounds or parks originally intended to be used for the gay recreations of thoughtless multitudes.

*     *     *     *
Elmwood was probably chosen for a site for a cemetery because of the beauty of its natural scenery, and because of the feeling that it is decorous to deposit the remains of our beloved under the shadows, and within the seclusion of umbrageous trees and screening thickets; that is to say, in places that we call peaceful, and that invite to rest and contemplation. The more nearly Elmwood can now be restored to its original character in these respects, without causing the use which has been made of it to be lost sight of the more surely will the original sentiment associated with it be preserved and perpetuated and the more surely will it be allowed to remain a place of unbroken repose."

Then after giving general advice regarding roads, walks, grading and planting, he continued: "We should seek also to retain the natural low thickets as far as this would be practicable.

*     *     *     *
We would, for instance, nearly always retain such thickets where they occur near the borders of roads. * * * We should seek to prevent, by a partial screening, such a display of a multitude of monuments in all directions from the observer as would cause the destruction of that sylvan rurality which had in the first place suggested the suitability of the place for the repose of the dead and the rites of mourning. The term rural cemetery does not mean a place, the permanent interest of which lies in the exhibitions of monuments. When monuments occupy the eye more than all else in a burial ground, it has ceased to be of a rural character.”
 
Later, after speaking of his preference for indigenous trees and shrubs and of the aim of the management having been to keep a close shaven turf with "trees and shrubs, appearing upon it as decorative objects" he continues: "We were asked by some of the Trustees whether it would not be better to remodel certain parts of the surface of the ground in order to simplify the mowing process, and to avoid such niggling work necessary to the pursuit of the present policy of keeping. We shall advise such remodeling especially near the borders of the roads, for another reason but as to the purpose of keeping as much of the ground as practicable in shaven turf, we recommend that it be abandoned, and that the policy be now adopted of a general reduction of the turf area, substituting for turf, in many places, thickets or bushes; mainly, but not entirely, low bushes of sorts natural to the region, and mats of woody creepers and ground plants. Once established the expense of keeping these will be much less than that of keeping turf. There should be hardly any pruning, and the very little that may be required to check the excessive straggling of an occasional redundant shoot may be done in winter by any unskilled laborer that can be trusted to limit the use of his knife to that single purpose. All trees that are tailing, or not promising of continued growth, should be removed and where crowding is not to be apprehended, others planted with reference to future general sylvan effect.

*     *     *     *
The removal of all trees which are destroying others of greater value and of all trees that are growing decrepit, like many now on the ground, and the introduction of young trees that will gradually supply the place or those removed, should henceforth be a constant process in all the history of the Cemetery. If the Superintendent is qualified for his responsibility, it will be one of the most important duties of the Trustees to sustain and encourage him in such a course, under the attacks which the ignorance and superstition of the general public will, from time to time, bring upon him. The Superintendent should in every way be assured of his freedom to use the axe and should always have a few well-grown nursery trees of different native sorts ready for planting when he sees occasion, having constantly in view the reproduction and perpetuation, as similar to that originally found in the locality."
   
*     *     *     *
Again he writes, "What we would advise is that the Superintendent be required to make what progress he finds practicable every year in the direction we have been pointing out. First, perhaps in removing the absolutely bad trees that are destroying the value of others not yet absolutely bad; second, in grading down to an agreeable natural character the roadside banks, and restoring as much as possible the agreeable, undulating character of the original surface of the ground; third, in obliterating the useless walks. Not one of these walks, in our opinion, has a degree of use justifying its destructive effect on the rural aspect of the place and the addition which its expense makes to the cost of a suitable keeping of it. Fourth, in the introduction of thickets of native bushes that will soon take care of themselves; fifth, in the removal, as fast as private owners can be persuaded to consent, of all artificial objects not absolutely essential to the main purpose of the Cemetery, more especially useless stone steps and copings and iron fences."

*     *     *     *
"In our judgment, after the general line of policy which we suggested had been pursued a few years, the lot owners would find the results increasingly pleasing and would become gradually inclined to proceed farther in restoring a simpler and less fugitive and meretricious character of scenery than the Cemetery has at present. The further the Trustees shall be thus enabled to proceed in this direction, the greater will be the security acquired against the gradual lapse of the ground, after burials shall cease to be made in it into the sad condition in which most of the older burial grounds of the world are found. There is no reason why Elmwood should not thus come gradually to be a place of permanent value to the people of Detroit as a retreat from the streets and buildings and bustle of the town. It is necessary to this end that people should be able to pursue within it more or less sequestered walks, to sit under the shade of ancient trees, and to find such a degree of seclusion as would be provided by considerable patches of under-wood and by a covering of the ground that will not be as notably artificial as that which it is the present aim of the management to maintain.”

In following out a course of treatment in harmony with Mr. Olmstead's suggestions, it would be well in any cemetery to secure a woody growth or thicket along the boundaries and to have certain waste spaces revert to woods, at once the most interesting treatment and the one having the least expensive maintenance. It is often taken for granted that the only suitable ground cover is a well-kept lawn, but there are other covers more interesting and less expensive since after they are established, they will largely take care of themselves. The spreading juniper, the American yew and the low form of the Japanese yew myrtle (vinca minor), Pachysandra, or the Japanese Spurge, some of our wild roses, various vines and brambles, native herbaceous plants and in certain localities heather, are examples that come to mind but the list might be multiplied extensively.

In Graceland several owners nave requested the superintendent to have their lots covered with thickets and the ground underneath planted with wild flowers. With this treatment there will, at times, be a profusion of flowers, and at other times fruits interesting for their bright colors or peculiar shapes such a thicket would attract birds by furnishing food and ideal nesting places. It would moreover be an admirable protection for one's ashes. What greater honor could be shown a grave than to cover it with wild violets surmounted by a low spreading wild crab apple beautiful in appearance, fragrant with blossoms, and to which a wood-thrush might come each evening and perform a musical service by giving the sweetest of bird songs?

Think then of a cemetery as being first the solution of a problem-namely, to transform a portion of the earth's surface into an artistic composition suitable for a burial place for those we wish to honor. In this solution use would be made of all suitable existing growth, boulders, water and other topographical features. Artificial objects, roads, stonework, fences, etc., would be subordinated as far as possible.  Next, the cemetery would serve its purpose through a long series of years, the burials gradually increasing in number and then as gradually decreasing until they ceased altogether. Finally, it becomes a memorial park sacred to the forefathers and their families, in some cases for several generations, a retreat for plants and birds and for persons who delight in beauty and quiet retreat, and as such it should continue to serve future generations for many years, becoming continually more venerable and more cherished.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 37th Annual Convention
Harrisburg, PA
August 20, 21, 22 and 23, 1923

At the time I was invited to speak before this gathering I was at somewhat of a loss to see just why one interested in trees and forests should be asked to appear on the program of a meeting of Cemetery Superintendents, but a moments reflection on the three things that stand out most prominently in cemeteries convinced me of the wisdom of the wisdom of the officials of the Program Committee.  As one looks at a cemetery the three things that occupy conspicuous places are the markers, the trees, and the grasses.

Next to the grasses, trees are the commonest form of vegetable growth on the face of the earth. In many localities are so common that we do not give much attention to them.  But what if we had no trees!  I wonder how we would feel if tomorrow morning upon looking out on the streets and the rural landscape we would find that some demon during the night had destroyed all our trees.  Then we would appreciate their value and be willing to list them as our true friends.  Sometimes it is necessary to lose friends in order to appreciate their real value.

No doubt it is because trees are so common that we sometimes forget to think about them and give them a place in our program of work.  They are found everywhere from the shores of the ocean up to the timber line upon the high mountains. They beautify the banks of streams, clothe our steep mountain slopes and make our rural landscape, city streets and parks objects of beauty.  I truly believe that trees were made to bring happiness and comfort to the people. They are the earth’s fairest cloak.  They adorn the earth more fittingly than any other object of nature.  A park without trees is purposeless.  A road without trees is shade-less.  A cemetery without trees is cheerless as a creedless land is hopeless.

Both the living and the dead seem to love to rest beneath the quiet shade of old trees.  In New England I found many cemeteries surrounded by beautiful white pine trees.   There the dead rest serenely with patches of sunlight playing on the white moss-touched tombs and a thin carpet of pine needles makes soft the tread of reverent feet.

Beautiful cemeteries are a credit to the community and unborn faces will bless those who help take care of them.  Neglected cemeteries are an eyesore and bring discredit to those who tolerate them.  They are obvious evidences of disregard and disrespect on the part of the living to those who repose there.  I would rather rest in an abandoned cemetery than a neglected one.  In time nature will make an abandoned cemetery a fitting resting place.  Not so long ago I happened upon a small abandoned cemetery on a hillside overlooking the abandoned town of Greenwood Furnace in central Pennsylvania. It overlooked the site of an old charcoal furnace that at one time supported a prosperous small mountain community. When the forests were all cut off from which the supply of charcoal was derived, the furnace was dismantled, and shortly thereafter the town abandoned. While walking along a forest road on a hillside over looking this town, I noticed an American flag playing gently with the wind amidst a thrifty growth of young forest trees. My curiosity was aroused and I wandered over beside the flag, and found that it marked the burial place of a veteran who once lived in the abandoned town. Standing over the forest cemetery was a beautiful Yellow Poplar about 20 years old, and beside it a princely White Pine. Over the little mound of raised ground was a cover of myrtle and ivy. This was truly a quiet and beautiful resting place. Please permit me to repeat that I would rather have my body repose in an abandoned cemetery where nature will clothe my resting place with forest ornaments that no man-made object can ever equal, than to have it lie in a neglected cemetery filled with weeds and marred with dilapidated markers.

There are about 1,000 different kinds of trees in North America. Some of them are famed for their wood and others for the food they produce. Still others seem to be created to give shade and shelter.  It seems as if the Creator fashioned some in a way that their main function will be to adorn, to make beautiful and to give cheer and comfort. It is this class of trees that is especially adapted for planting in cemeteries. I will not pretend to talk about the arrangement of trees in this cemetery or their grouping, but wish to point out a number of their striking features and peculiarities.

The evergreen trees are well adapted for cemetery planting because of their bright green color throughout the year. There are a number of trees that are widely planted in cemeteries.  One of these is the Norway Spruce. It is not a native of North America but it has been imported from Europe and on account or its attractive form and ease with which it can be grown it has found a wide use in cemetery planting. Another tree that is well adapted to cemetery planting particularly about the border and where height is desirable is the White Pine. It is the greatest of American forest trees, and one of the most fitting for cemetery planting, for it can be successfully transplanted, grows rapidly and has an attractive term, and produces beautiful foliage. The needles upon falling to the ground form a soft carpet that makes soft the tread or reverent feet. Many of the prominent citizens of Colonial days are buried in the shade of White Pine trees.

The European Larch is another tree well adapted for cemetery planting. It belongs to the same tree group with the White Pine and Norway Spruce, but differs from them in that it does not hold its leaves during the winter, but sheds them each fall. In spring when the young leaves of the European Larch come out they are, to my mind, the most beautiful colored leaves of all our trees.

The Arbor Vitae is also worthy of a place in cemeteries. It does not become so large as some other evergreen trees, but it is a tree of rare beauty and its shape can be fashioned to suit almost any artist. It can be cut back heavily to be used for hedge purposes, and will stand trimming so as to conform to any landscape effect that may be desired. It is truly an obedient tree, and will respond to almost any kind of treatment.
 
I must not forget to mention the Irish Juniper, a tree that is rather common in cemeteries and made beautiful by its foliage and attractive form. It stands so erect and gives a feeling of cheer and happiness. In a class with the Irish Juniper is Kosters’ Blue Spruce. This rare ornamental tree was brought out of the remote mountains of Colorado and developed until now it is one of the most attractive ornamental trees. We should ever be grateful to those who have developed trees of rare ornamental beauty, for they have brought to us much of our happiness and pleasure.

Among the small pygmy trees that deserve a place in cemetery planting is the European Mountain Pine. This tree occurs near the timber line on the snow-capped mountains of Europe, where it remains quite small, having battled for centuries with the sliding snows and mighty winds or the Alps. It rarely grows over five feet in height and with judicious trimming may be fashioned so as no t to exceed two or three feet. This unique tree is particularly well adapted for border planting and in other places where a small round-headed pygmy tree is needed.

The evergreen trees are not the only ones that should be planted in cemeteries, for, among the trees that we commonly call “broad-leaved trees" are many that are worthy to be planted in cemeteries, for it seems to me that one of the principal objects of planting trees in cemeteries is to give cheer and comfort and to offset the sorrow that naturally hangs heavy on those who stand over the burial place of those that are near and dear. Among the broad-leaved trees are a number whose main message seems to be one of cheer and happiness. In early spring, long before the leaves come out on many of our trees the Red Bud bursts forth in a garment of rich red. Its leafless branches are completely covered with clusters of' brilliant red flowers. We cannot help but like them, for they are truly beautiful, and this small tree with a broad round crown is deserving of a place where beauty is an asset.  In a group with Red Bud should be placed the Dogwood.  Its flowers ranging from pure white to pink are equally beautiful and carry a message or cheer.

It is most unfortunate that the flowers of these two trees do not last very long and after they are gone we must look elsewhere for cemetery ornaments. Among the appropriate trees for the cemetery that carry a rich coloration throughout the growing season are the Japanese Maples. For generations the people of the Orient have been developing the Maples. They are among the most gorgeously colored trees in the world. For centuries the Japanese have been giving their Maples training not unlike that which American horsemen and the American rose expert give their subjects. There are now in existence Maples having pedigrees that go back for a full century or more. Some of these pygmy trees are only six inches high, while others may reach a height of several feet, but rarely do any of them become very large. I understand that the members or this Association expect to go to Gettysburg tomorrow. If you do and will visit the National Cemetery, you will see two distinct varieties of Japanese Maple at the height of their seasonal glory.

Among the medium-sized trees that have an attractive form and beautiful foliage is the Pin Oak. The Tulip Tree is also deserving of a prominent place in cemetery planting. It is a tree which seems to have been overlooked. I also feel that the White Ash has an ornamental mission that has not yet been fully developed, and the Sweet Gum of the South, a tree with a beautiful star-shaped leaf turning to a gorgeous red in fall, is well adapted for planting as far north as Massachusetts. The Beech with its attractive attire or summer and beautiful grooming in winter is among the beautiful trees that I have seen in some of the best kept cemeteries of the country.

While a cemetery superintendent should know what to plant, I think it is equally well for them to know what not to plant. One good rule to follow is not to plant rapid-growing trees in cemeteries. There are two good reasons for this. Rapid-growing trees have a tendency to throw out shoots and suckers very freely and they deteriorate very rapidly. As a rule, they are short-lived trees, and before they become old they are rather unattractive. Among the trees that cemetery superintendents should avoid planting are the Horse Chestnut, the Ailanthus, the Catalpa, and the Cottonwoods. These four trees are all rapid growers, but their undesirable habit of shedding something all the time of sending up root suckers, interfering with the growth of other trees, and unattractive form, suggests that they should be kept out or cemeteries.

Stephen Girard, one of the greatest men of the Keystone State, said:  If I knew that I was to die tomorrow I would plant a tree today."  Our great poet Henry VanDyke said: "He that planteth a tree is a servant of God. He provideth a kindness for many generations and faces that he hath not seen shall bless him." To plant trees is unquestionably a good slogan, but I think all of us who plant trees should also assume the responsibility or caring for them. To plant trees and then neglect them is unkind. The mere planting of trees will not insure success, for trees like all other living things need attention and a few or the things which should be done in order to insure the establishment and growth of the trees are the following:

1. Be sure to dig the hole large enough to take the roots without crowding them.
2. Cut off broken and injured roots with a sharp knife, and be sure to make a clean cut.
3. Trim back the tops of the trees so that they will balance the roots.
4. See that the earth is placed firmly around the roots so that the tree will be held in place.

I have every reason to believe that all cemetery superintendents know these simple rules, but it may be well to have repeated them again because they are so very important.

It is significant that this meeting is held in the month of August the hardest month in the year on trees. The two things from which trees suffer heavily during the month of August are lack of water and food.  I am sorry to tell you that my observations have convinced me that trees suffer from hunger and lack of water in cemeteries more than in almost any other place. It is customary to establish a dense sod and to cut the grass regularly and rake up every little particle of vegetable growth. As soon as the leaves begin to fall they are raked up and taken away so as to make the cemetery attractive. Now when we begin to analyze this practice we will find that these operations are removing the food that the trees should have. If we continue to remove this source of tree food it is but natural that we should provide it in some other form, that is, by feeding the trees with commercial fertilizer. In the forest where the trees are well watered and well fed they flourish but in our streets and cemeteries where they are poorly fed and inadequately watered, the best they can do is to eke out an existence. It is imperative that during the month of August trees should be well fed and given plenty of water.

There is another thing that should be watched in August that is the second brood of caterpillars. This brood usually consists of a large number, and will do great damage to the trees by completely defoliating them, at a time when they should be storing up food for winter. It will be quite helpful in the development of attractive and thrifty trees to see to it that this second brood of caterpillars is killed off before they can do much damage.

There is only one other thing that I wish to call to your attention, and that pertains to pruning trees. Not so long ago I overheard a conversation in which one man asked another where he could get someone to prune his trees. He was informed that "Over there on a store box sits a man who has nothing to do. I think you can get him." I am sorry to say, that it is too often true, that the poorest workman, the most shiftless character in a town, the fellow that has nothing to do and does not know how to do anything well, is the fellow who is asked to prune trees. One can readily see why so many trees are poorly pruned and the ill effect of such unsatisfactory work will hand us a penalty upon the trees for the rest of our lives.

In conclusion permit me to say that I feel sure that the tree condition of our cemeteries will be improved if on Thanksgiving Day everyone connected with the development of cemeteries will give thanks for the countless gifts that trees give to us, and on New Year's day resolve that "I will open my eyes to the beauty of trees and my heart to the love of them. I will study their habits and learn to know their many uses. I will ever treasure a fair estimate of their great value and the comfort that they bring to us."

Now, if you will bear with me I will show you a few slides which will picture some added features and also picture some of the features which will be shown to you on your automobile trip tomorrow.

(At this point lantern slide pictures were thrown on the screen and explained by Professor Illick)
 

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 37th Annual Convention
Harrisburg, PA
August 20, 21, 22 and 23, 1923

Through the courtesy of the Omaha Convention Committee I have been asked to read a paper discussing this Association from the view point of an outsider. The man who is accountable for the suggestion is present and his identity will be disclosed so that he may pay the penalty in case anything in the remarks which are to follow should arouse your spirit of pugnacity.

That cemeteries do not always receive that which is supposed to be coming to them was demonstrated in the following incident. A hurry-up order was received at a Wisconsin cheese factory for a shipment of "limburger" conditioned on immediate delivery. Shipping limburger by express in winter had been prohibited, and the order was about to be turned down when a salesman took the matter in hand and proceeded to deliver the goods. He obtained an undertaker's rough box, packed in it the required amount of cheese, and engaged an undertaker to deliver it at the railroad station a few minutes before the time for the train to depart. The salesman, attired in his most somber clothes, arrived just in time to purchase two tickets. Shortly before the train reached its destination he went to the express car and found the express-man in a somewhat excited frame of mind. The heat from the stove had caused the cheese to emit the most unbearable odor imaginable and the air was thick enough to cut with a knife. "What can I do for you?" shouted the express-man, going about with his nose in the air. "I just came to be sure that the body will be put off at the next station" was the reply. "Well, I'm, mighty glad of it, and let me say right here if that man in the box is a friend of yours you surely have one consolation-you may be damned sure he's not in a trance."  It is needless to add that case never reached a cemetery.

The futility of attempting to do more than lightly touch the high points in a survey of the activities of an association whose existence ex tends over one-third of a century in the time that can be allotted me is sufficiently obvious to require no apology. I am "an outsider" as far as ever having had any actual experience in the management of a cemetery, but for many years my interests kept me closely in touch with cemeteries, and I am proud of having been a booster for the AACS before it was organized and of having had the honor of being present at its beginning, when "Father" Nichols officiated on that memorable occasion in 1887. I recall receiving a letter from Mr. Nichols in which he rejoiced at the prospect of having an attendance at twenty-five at that first meeting.

This organization came into existence at the time when what were called "rural" cemeteries were taking the place of the time-honored church-yard burying grounds and city graveyards, which had about reached their lowest ebb. Lot owners did things according to their own sweet wills, enclosures of any and every description were permitted, and established grades were an unknown quantity, the only known quantity being what some plain speaking superintendents of today would, in every day parlance, designate as "junk." Men were seeking light on the subject of cemetery betterment when Mr. Nichols, who, inspired by the suggestion of your own honored life-member, Mr. William Salway, sent forth his appeal in behalf of an organization which should undertake that very work. Mr. Salway had recently been appointed as successor to Mr. Adolph Strauch, superintendent or the Cemetery of Spring Grove, where the first really modern lawn plan cemetery had been established the brain child of that gifted landscape gardener, and the most appropriate birthplace possible for the AACS. The men who gathered on that auspicious occasion were imbued with enthusiastic zeal and a most commendable desire to reform the cemetery practices of their day, but they were by no means unanimous as to how it was to be accomplished. It is interesting to note that the first vice president, for example, was a staunch advocate of high grave mounds, and another member favored having a "gravel path on at least one side of every lot and corner posts several inches above the surface."

These men however, "builded better than they knew". The results of their early deliberations have made American cemeteries the admiration of travelers from all parts of the world; for nowhere on the globe are there to be seen cemeteries that can compare in park-like beauty and scrupulous care with those under the management of the men whom I have the honor to address.

At the second meeting of the Association, held in Brooklyn in 1888, Mr. Eurich, in his prophetic paper, on "An Ideal Cemetery", said "In all artificial and architectural structures there must be no evident desire to show what art and mechanics can produce, but they must all be in harmony with and in subordination to nature." In the remarkable development apparent in American cemeteries we do not yet note an entire absence of "evident desire"-ostentation still obtrudes itself as it always has in the sacred precincts of the dead, but fortunately, those who still believe in gratifying their pride in this manner are obliged to conform to rules and regulations which either prevent the erection of inartistic memorials or minimize their most objectionable features, and none can gainsay that very much has been accomplished in bringing "architectural structures" in closer "harmony with and subordination to nature." In Mr. Eurich's paper above quoted, he expressed the most radical views concerning monuments, and at the Cleveland convention in 1900, Mr. Hatch, a prominent citizen and member of the Board of Trustees of Lake View Cemetery, advanced the idea of abolishing monuments entirely. It was such discussions as these that gave impetus to the most advanced ideas in cemetery practice.

The education of the public as to what constitutes harmony in a cemetery has not been an easy task. Rules that seemed harsh and arbitrary to the lot holder were not easily enforced because these rules were misunderstood, and much bitterness resulted, when only the most harmonious relations should have existed. The pioneer work in this most beneficent reform was done by the founders of this Association, and those who now follow in their steps know as little of the trials with which they had to contend as does this present generation of the hardships of the pioneers of our own fair land.

"Graceland", Chicago, "Spring Grove", Cincinnati, and "Lake View"', Cleveland, and possibly others, set apart entire sections or portions of sections in which monuments were prohibited, or, if allowed, were permitted to extend only a few inches above the ground. Other cemeteries soon followed this example, and it has been the experience of many of the members of this Association to hear lot owners express their approval of the, restrictive rules pertaining to monuments. Old and revered though the custom may be, its observance had been carried to an excess, and rules that would correct this abuse were a natural result. Progressive monument builders who have caught the spirit of the ideas advanced by advocates of the modern lawn plan realize that the restrictive rules which may seem somewhat arbitrary were in reality adopted not so much with the intention of eliminating monuments, as of elevating their standard. Monument builders who are not cooperating with their local cemetery managers lack vision, and retard their own progress. But it is gratifying to note that the Memorial Craftsmen of America are now urging closer cooperation between that Association and this.

This Association has disseminated information of immeasurable value to cemeteries pertaining to the subject of acquiring funds for the future care of cemeteries. Perpetual care has been and doubtless will continue to be a perennial subject for consideration. Long-term financing as applied to cemetery lots and the structures erected thereon is a complex problem. Perpetual care involves many considerations, not the least uncertain of which is the earning power of the unstable dollar. Think of what must be taking place in Germany today, if they have perpetual care funds based on the pre-war value of the mark. The ablest minds in this Association have deliberated on it, and only future generations can tell whether our present systems have made good. My sole purpose in alluding to the subject at this time is to direct attention to an angle from which it is seldom discussed, namely, the proper safeguarding of funds of this nature. Lot owners, who by bequest or otherwise, place sums of money in the keeping or cemetery companies for a certain specified purpose, do so with implicit confidence that the conditions of the trust will be faithfully complied with. The question arises, "are cemeteries availing themselves of the safest means of keeping their trust funds from falling into the hands of dishonest or incompetent persons or of those who, through indifference will fail to have a proper regard for their trust?" Trust companies of recognized responsibility are, by virtue of their experience, conceded to be the safest depositories for cemetery funds. Granting that the funds are placed in such hands, can they be said to be properly safeguarded unless both the trust company and the cemetery trustees are obligated to conform to conditions that will render violations or the trust impossible?  A distinguished Chicago attorney, who has made a very thorough investigation of the subject, is authority for the statement that in his opinion, the perpetual care funds of some of the best known cemeteries are not as properly safeguarded as they should be. While there may be no question whatever as to the integrity of the men who are handling these funds today, these officers and their immediate successors will be responsible for them but a comparatively short space of time, a few generations will see them under the control of those far removed from present day conditions: it is, therefore, obvious that cemetery associations cannot be too careful in safeguarding such trusts, and that there should be more rigid laws in every state in the Union concerning them. Without the least desire to cast any shadow of doubt upon the integrity of those who will come after us, it is surely not only the part of wisdom, but an imperative duty as well, to so protect these sacred trusts that they will riot tempt man's cupidity, or, having tempted it, will make impossible any, attempt to divert them to any other purpose than that for which they were originally intended.

Progress in the development of American cemeteries has more than kept pace with other branches of Art and Industry. To continue this record of achievement and pass on to posterity cemeteries that will be a blessing and not a burden, it behooves cemetery managers to give more serious consideration to the subject of endowing mausoleums and other cemetery structures, to provide for their future upkeep. While the importance of this matter has been recognized at many cemeteries, and the necessary action taken, this practice is by no means as general as it should be. The boards of trustees of many cemeteries that stand high in the estimation of the public, are either ignoring or purposely side-stepping the issue, for fear of offending lot owners. In so doing, they have allowed many costly structures to be erected without making the slightest provision for repairs that will be inevitable in years to come. The ultimate result of this unwise course will reflect upon the cemetery, builders of today. In this connection it is interesting to note that the City Commission of Grand Rapids, Mich., has adopted very rigid rules concerning the endowment of mausoleums in "Woodlawn", the new municipal cemetery: these rules also prohibit vertical joints in all monumental work: The question that naturally arises in this connection is, "what is the most practical method by which to determine the amount of endowment necessary?" Some cemeteries solve this complex problem by requiring a minimum deposit of ten percent or fifteen percent of the cost of the proposed structure. The consensus of opinion is that it is not practical to arrive at even an average percentage to use as a basis for estimating such deposit. This subject has not been stressed by the AACS to an extent commensurate with its importance.  Mr. Eurich discussed it in a very informing paper several years ago, but the matter is one so far-reaching it should be reiterated again and again.
 
Landscape engineers and gardeners who have gradually transformed our cemeteries from places of gloom to spots of sylvan restfulness and beauty have had their visions of the cemetery beautiful just as truly as any sculptor, artist, or artisan has had his ideal. Discouragements have come to them just as they have to all who have labored earnestly to express their highest ideals in their work. In this respect the experience of the cemetery idealist is unique: he has been obliged to contend with not only the prejudices of the public, but in many instances with unsympathetic boards of trustees whose vision was dimmed by the figures on the balance sheet.

There is (and quite naturally too) a division of sentiment among the members of this Association as to what will constitute the ideal cemetery. That it will be far more park-like than many of our cemeteries of the present day is very evident from the trend of present cemetery planning. No landscape gardener of any reputation would think of recommending a plan for a new cemetery or for remodeling an old one that did not conform to present-day practice in planning and planting, and in regulating the extent to which stone work shall be permitted. Rapid progress has been made in approaching what is believed to be the ideal most to be desired, and in many cemeteries as beautiful effects have been created with trees and shrubbery as are possible under similar conditions. There will be still greater improvement when lot holders give their sincere cooperation, and are willing to consider the cemetery as a whole more than they do their individual lots, when selecting their memorials.

There are few professions or callings in whose daily labors the apathy of the public is so constantly in evidence, as in that of the cemetery man, be he sexton, superintendent, or manager, and the apathy is not always confined to the public; it frequently is seen in the indifference of members of boards of trustees or directors whose failure to provide for the needs of the cemetery is reflected in the inability of a handicapped, disheartened superintendent to obtain the results he knows are expected of him. This spirit of indifference is illustrated by the experience of the man who was soliciting funds for a fence to enclose the village cemetery. "What's the use", said the villager; “of putting a fence around a graveyard?  Then what’s in can't get out, and then what’s out don’t want get in."

The public has always been apathetic on the subject of cemeteries and will continue to remain so until it has been educated out of this undesirable state of mind.  Educators are loud in their praises of moving pictures as a means of making lasting impressions on the minds of the young – the minds of older persons are equally impressionable when the subject under discussion is one that has sentimental reasons as its basis of appeal. The educational value of illustrated lectures on this subject has not received the consideration which could profitably be given it in any community.

The necessary qualifications of a successful cemetery superintendent are many and varied. The outstanding factor of his success is found in his ability to render just the kind of service that the emergency calls for. This implies tactfulness such as shown when Mrs. Newlyrich consulted the superintendent in regard to the most appropriate flowers for the grave of her late husband, who she said was very fond of smoking.  She thought that sweet-smelling tobacco plant and some salivas would make a real nice bed: "yes" replied the tactful superintendent, "and we'll border it with some beautiful spittoonias." Needless to remark he made a hit with that lot owner.
 
The service rendered by your late Mr. W. C. Rapp, of Fort Plain Cemetery, Fort Plain, NY, endeared him to his lot holders and enabled him to establish a record unique and worthy or emulation.  Years ago Mr. Rapp became imbued with the idea that cemetery memorials could be made to fill a two-fold purpose by serving the public in a useful way and also perpetuating the memory of the departed. Through Mr. Rapp's efforts several noteworthy memorials of this character have been erected in Fort Plain Cemetery. (They, with other cemetery memorials of this kind, will be illustrated at the close of this paper.) Herein lies a very pertinent suggestion for cemeteries to profit by: bring to the attention of your lot owners the thought of erecting memorial chapels, entrances, conservatories, fountains, etc., that more real significance may attach to their memorials, always remembering that no such memorials should be erected without adequate endowment. Memorials of this character have been referred to as utilitarian, and therefore unfit. That the public is not in sympathy with that idea is seen in the constantly increasing number of memorials of this nature.

In connection with the subject of useful memorials is not this centenary of the birth of Adolph Strauch a most opportune time for this Association to establish a memorial scholarship in his name that would assist and encourage young men and young women who may desire to follow the profession of landscape gardening as applied to cemeteries? Mr. Strauch originated and put into practice the landscape lawn plan in cemeteries. He was superintendent of the Cemetery of Spring Grove from 1854 until the time of his death in 1883, during which period he corrected and cultivated public taste concerning cemeteries in the face of the bitterest and almost insurmountable opposition, and laid the foundation for the high standard of cemetery development we enjoy today.

Statistics ordinarily make dry reading: a few, however, pertaining to the membership of the AACS may not be without interest. In 1897, at the close of the first ten years of the Association's existence, the membership was 192; in 1907 two hundred nineteen; in 1917, two hundred eighty and four years later, the Detroit report showed an enrollment of 360. Analyzing this membership, we find that approximately sixty percent of it comes from six states, numerically in the following order-Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Illinois, Massachusetts and Michigan. Of the forty-odd members west of the Mississippi River, two thirds are from Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri. In the states south of the Ohio and including the great state of Texas, the membership is about 30. It is also interesting to note that of the 68 cities in the U. S. with a population exceeding 100,000, twenty-five percent are not represented in your membership. These figures are given simply to show that there still remains a vast territory into which the inspiring message of this Association has not been carried.

Every cemetery manager is interested in knowing how other cemetery managers get the best results, and this Association has been the means of gratifying that desire. There are, however, thousands of cemeteries whose managers seldom, if ever, have the opportunity of participating in the deliberations of this national organization, who could be benefitted through state organizations. Organizations of this kind will not be formed without leaders, and who are better qualified for such service than the men who have made this Association what it is today? Ohio and New England have demonstrated what can be done in this direction and what cemetery men in those states have accomplished, others can.  The Ohio Association has a membership of seventy-eight, twenty-two of whom are members of the AACS. The New England association also has a goodly membership including many who are active members of the AACS.

Mr. Oscar F. Burbank president of the New England association in a recent letter says: "The New England Association has been responsible for a great deal of work which has been very helpful to cemetery men as well as to the general public. Not the least of the services rendered have been with relation to needed legislation. One of the best features of the Association, to my mind, is the fact that members are ready at all times to assist other members to obtain facts necessary to the efficient operation of their various cemeteries.  Therein the very essence of the association idea is expressed.

Mr. Painter and Mr. Jones with the assistance of other AACS members in Pennsylvania, or organized an association in that state. Its principal work has been to direct attention to and aid in defeating pernicious legislation, in which it has been successful. Far-reaching, through the influence of this Association has been, it must continue to widen, until, through its efforts, every state in the Union has seen the wisdom of having laws that will insure adequate provision for the permanent care of cemeteries and that will also protect the credulous and gullible public against the why schemes of promoters and speculators who promise fabulous returns from investments in cemetery projects.

Here lies a most potent reason for establishing local clubs and state associations. There is no surer way of spreading the gospel of better cemeteries and of arousing public sentiment when the necessity arises, against get-rich-quick propositions of this kind. The fact that state organizations have failed in some cases should not be allowed to discourage further action. The more the AACS does in this way, the more will its own strength increase and its ability to do good be multiplied. Every convention of this Association should give impetus to the organization of associations of this character until they become nation wide.

There are persons who prefer earth burial, others who regard it as abhorrent, and consider sepulture in vaults or mausoleums the only way to inter the dead, and still others who will have neither of these methods when cremation is possible. Cemeteries, therefore, which are prepared to give the public what it wants and to do it in the most acceptable manner usually, find favor. Personal prejudices should not deter a cemetery from fulfilling its rightful mission. When the AACS was organized there were but six crematoriums in this country; today there are eighty or more and nearly half of them are located in cemeteries. Each year marks additions to the number of crematoriums at cemeteries; several are now under process of construction, and others are in contemplation. The Association has never gone on record in favor of this method of disposing of the dead. It is a fact, nevertheless, that many of its members approve of it and are members of the Cremation Society of America, an organization which deserves the cooperation of all who believe in cremation. The subject of cremation has been discussed at conventions of this Association-it is one that might profitably be considered from time to time, for the benefit of those who should be thoroughly informed, as well as to remove some of the mistaken ideas that have retarded its progress. Cremation is more popular on the Pacific Coast than elsewhere in the US. Los Angeles and its environs has seven crematoriums, and there are five in San Francisco and nearby towns.

It seems almost incredible that eleven years ago automobiles were excluded from a number of cemeteries whose superintendents are on record to that effect. The transition that has come in the meantime, in conducting funerals, and the constant development of air travel, also the broadcasting of all manner of services, give one visions of funeral parties being transported by airplane, and funeral services disseminated by radio. When that time comes, metropolitan cemeteries will have sections set apart for landing stations for the accommodation of their lot owners who arrive by airplanes and chapels will be equipped with radio broadcasting apparatus. A funeral by airplane has already taken place in Chicago. Three planes were in the cortege that recently paid tribute to a captain whose ashes were dropped into the waters of Lake Michigan.

While this Association has had no special axe to grind, and has, therefore, given but little attention to the matter of newspaper publicity it cannot be said to have received the degree of publicity to which an organization of its importance in public affairs is rightfully entitled. Possibly this is due to the fact of its having no duly authorized press agent. The Association manages to get into the spot light about once a year during the annual conventions when newspaper reporters who are assigned to the hotels give the public a glimpse of its activities in a story often times as pain fully abbreviated as the most modern bathing costume. Most persons seem loath to think or speak of cemeteries until the subject is forced upon them. Members of this Association can greatly assist in changing the attitude of the public mind regarding cemeteries by supplying their local newspapers with items of public interest. Excerpts from some of the excellent papers that have been read at your conventions would be published by the editors of your home papers if they were given the opportunity.

The subjects discussed in papers and question box have run the entire gamut of things pertaining to cemeteries, from bugs, birds and beetles, to reptiles, roads and the most radical rules and yet, like that famous biblical story, "the half has not been told," nor will it until every cemetery in this country has felt the refining Influence of this Association.

Between sessions, congenial spirits have hob-nobbed and swapped experiences, and of these occasions every one of the older members has pleasant memories. The dream of a certain superintendent which points a moral is timely. "I dreamed that I had died", said this certain man "and to my dismay, I found the elevator going down instead of up. On arriving at my destination, which was decidedly tropical as far as temperature was concerned I was registered and questioned as to my vocation on earth. When his Satanic Majesty heard I had been a cemetery Superintendent he remarked, “I have a very interesting department to show you”. He proceeded to escort me to a compartment above the doors of which I read the words Cemetery Superintendents and Officials and informed me this was where the kun-drying was done. “Why do you need such a place?” I asked. “Why” remarked “His Majesty, this is where we have to put the cemetery men who did not join the Association of American Cemetery Superintendents, they are so green they won't burn.” I saw my finish and wakened in a cold sweat. The next morning my application for membership in the AACS was on its way to Mr. Jones.

This Association has numbered among its honorary and active members men distinguished in various walks of life, at least two of whom deserve mention. The Rt. Rev. Bishop McQuaid, of Rochester, NY, whose presence at Rochester in 1903 was an inspiration, was unquestionably among the first Catholic clergymen to take the initiative in bettering the condition of Catholic cemeteries. Mr. Charles M. Loring, president of Lakewood Cemetery Association, Minneapolis, who died recently at an advanced aged, was one of that city's most distinguished citizens. He was president of the first Board of Park Commissioners of that city, and did much to promote the planting of trees there and elsewhere.

With the passing of the weeping willow, the impossible lamb, the attenuated slab, and the variegated forms of lot enclosures, we cannot fail, to note the infrequency of the tombstone that "could stand up and at the same time lie on its face" with such ineffable complacence. The days of the quaint epitaph truly have passed. Do you realize, gentlemen, that in bringing about a changed condition you have deprived some visitors of one of their chief joys? At the Richmond, VA, convention of this Association in 1893, one of the memorable places visited was St. John's church and churchyard. There we were permitted to stand where Patrick Henry delivered his famous address. In the graveyard one epitaph fixed itself indelibly in my mind. It ran: "Remember friends as you pass by, as you are now, so once was I, as I am now, so must you be, prepare for death and follow me." It was that which followed, however, that made the lasting impression. A wag had written under the epitaph these words:  "To follow you I would not be content, unless I knew which way you went."

Professor Bailey paid a very high compliment to the AACS when he classed it as "one of three national societies conserving the landscape gardening and rural art of the country." Yet cannot something still greater be said in its favor when we consider the absolutely unselfish motive that brought together its founders to organize an association whose object "shall be the advancement of the interests and the elevation of the character of cemeteries in America"? For thirty-five years these men and their successors have met in annual convention to carry out their high purpose with never a thought of personal financial gain; without the slightest suspicion of graft and without any emolument or salary whatever, to any officer excepting the utterly inadequate remuneration paid the Secretary-Treasurer. The men who have brought this Association to its present high standard are amply qualified to speak with authority on all practical and ethical matters pertaining to cemetery management. With many of them it has been the study of a lifetime, and out of their actual experience they are giving freely to all who choose to attend their annual conventions.
The bane of many associations is the tendency to form cliques: its absence in this Association is cause for genuine congratulation. This real spirit of democracy of which have been born ties of warmest friendship, should never be allowed to wane.

Theodore Roosevelt said: "Every man owes some of his time to up-building of the profession to which he belongs." It was that very principle which actuated the founders of this Association, and has been preeminent in all of its deliberations.

The talented men who organized and carried forward to success the Association of American Cemetery Superintendents have immortalized themselves in their profession by raising the cemeteries of America to their present high standard and earning for themselves an everlasting debt of gratitude from the public.

This cursory glance at the activities of the Association would surely be incomplete without allusion to the part women are taking in the improvement of cemeteries as well as to the inspiration of their presence at the conventions. They have played a most important part in the always delightful social functions, and have on several occasions made valuable contributions to the program. Landscape gardening as a profession, has a natural appeal to women as a vocation, and is so closely allied to cemeteries that women are finding here, as they are elsewhere, new and not inappropriate fields of activity.

All hail to the men and women who have helped the Association of American Cemetery Superintendents reach its high peak! May their tribe increase!

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 36th Annual Convention
Omaha, Nebraska
September 18, 19, 20 and 21, 1922

It would seem to approach the realm of presumption on my part if I were to come before an association like this with the purpose of presenting anything new in the matter of research or invention in cemetery work.  To an association of thirty-five years standing holding an annual convention for study and discussion there must surely be for you, nothing new under the sun in the matter of cemetery development.

When I found the task of this subject assigned me and went apart to spend a few vacation hours in meditation, I discovered that literally interpreted, it called for an attempt to do what had been done many times over in the previous sessions of your conventions. It was so hard to find a starting point that I felt very much in the position that Pat found his friend Mike, after a few years sojourn in this country. They came out from the "auld sod" together. Both of them had been thoroughly trained in the religious faith of the church. Soon after their arrival in this land, circumstances parted them and each started to work his way in the new world. Pat remained true to the faith of his fathers but Mike fell on evil ways and drifted into infidelity and unbelief. In the course of time, the Death Angel reaped and Mike was cut off. His last request was that word be sent to his friend Pat, who hastened to him but only in time to find his old companion laid out in his best suit of clothes in his coffin ready for burial. As he gazed upon the face of his friend his emotion burst into exclamation. "Poor Mike! He didn't believe in God and he didn't believe in the devil. Poor Mike! He didn't believe in heaven and he didn't believe in hell. Poor Mike! He is all dressed up and has no where to go".

I found the subject as outlined on the program, so large and with so many ramifications anyone of which would be worthy the time of a special paper that I am taking the liberty of making the terminal facilities of this paper easier by confining myself to the subject of Modern Cemetery Making Some Reflex Influences and Observations."

What I say will be from the standpoint of one outside the office of Superintendent yet of one who is sympathetically interested in the work of your Association. This interest has been intensified by an extended experience associated as a stockholder and director in the development and management of at least two City cemeteries and also in the work of reorganizing several neglected rural cemeteries. I am also encouraged in addressing you by the thought that the chief function of a paper at a convention like this is not so much the presentation of new and unheard of material as it is to provide a fulcrum around which fruitful discussion may revolve.

A few observations of the reflex influence of your work may serve to hearten any of you who are met by serious discouragement in your work and perhaps are debating in your own mind as to whether what you are doing in the world is really worth while.  I would like to assure you with more than ordinary emphasis that the work that you are doing through the auspices of this Association of American Superintendents is worthy a place among the fine-arts in the realm of education. The work which this association is accomplishing and has already accomplished in conserving and improving the landscape and in the encouragement of rural art is of the highest value in promoting aesthetic culture throughout the land.

And I want also to assure you that yours would still be a worthy work if you accomplished nothing more than what you have already accomplished by developing your park system of cemeteries, in providing places of refuge for the preservation of bird life. At the annual rate of destruction of our natural groves and woods for the purpose merely of material gain, the cemetery parks dotted over the countryside are timely substitutes for these in supplying important places of refuge for the encouragement of bird migration and reproduction; those indispensable friends of mankind which not only add joy to life by their presence but are such a large economic asset in the destruction of insect pests. Yours is a twofold opportunity in this respect. You are not only developing cemetery parks that are sanctuaries for the repose of the honored dead, but incidentally these parks are also sanctuaries of the living plumage so necessary to our well being.

Another reflex of the work your association is doing is seen in the matter of rural community betterment and is associated with the work of reorganizing neglected burial grounds, and it appears to me that there is a splendid opportunity in your association to conduct a special work along this line with a special department giving expert direction and supervision to this particular work.

That the character of a community and its cemetery often bear a close relation to each other might at first thought seem a strained statement; but in a life's work spent toward the end of community uplift and rural betterment, the speaker has found that the spiritual, moral and social status of a community frequently reflects itself in the local cemetery. A personal reminiscence will serve as an illustration. Some years ago while serving in one of our home mission fields. I was assigned a territory about fifty miles square. I was proceeding for the first time toward a small village settlement at the extreme of the field to conduct Sunday Evening Worship and take a preliminary survey. Speeding along on horse-back through wooded trails, I suddenly emerged into the open with the village close in sight. I turned onto a by-path which made a short cut from the main trail into the town when suddenly my horse stumbled and I was thrown from the saddle. I recovered myself and my horse and looking for an explanation I saw where the path had broken away into some loose soil. A sweep of the eye disclosed in the gloaming sunset a half-fenced enclosure, a few irregular mounds and fewer still, reclining headstones. The loose soil into which my horse stumbled was a freshly filled grave. The whole area was a commons overrun by the cattle and the swine of the village. This was the village cemetery, the sanctuary for the burial of their dead. As these facts dawned upon me, forebodings of the work to be done took possession of my being and what I afterwards discovered of leadership in that place justified my forebodings.

I will present to you four types of character which were the most influential in shaping the life of that community and whose character was reflected in their cemetery. The first type represented its professional leadership. At my first service in the little neglected chapel of this village, a grimy individual with germy hands and dope-set eyes acted as chief official and passed his hat for the offering. At the conclusion of the service, he introduced himself as the village doctor. His mentality may be judged from this conversation. He was voluntarily discussing the recent death of a patient in technical terms that I feared neither he nor I understood. I said to him, "Doctor, I do not quite understand. Could you tell me in plain English the exact cause of her death?" "Well," he said, "to sum it all up, she died from the complete loss of the power of life." I told him that I quite understood him now.

The second type represented the educational leadership in the person of the village teacher. She was a tall, angular, stoical, maiden who had already been responsible for educating two generations and who was still doing the same things always in the same way and whose habit of reading never extended beyond the text books she daily handled before the class.

A firm of two brothers represented the industrial type of leadership. They owned the only industry in the form of a planing mill. It was equipped with a worn out engine and a planer. It took two hours to get up steam enough to operate and after running for two hours, they were compelled to shut down again in order to get a fresh head of steam for another start.

The last represents the moral type of that community. When I was about to leave the chapel after my first Sunday evening visit a young man who was lingering about the church door approached me and hesitatingly said, "Say, Parson, can you baptize and bury people?" I answered that I was ordained for that mission. "Well", he replied, "I want to get married." I performed that service for him the following week. It was just a month later when the same young man was waiting for me again at the chapel door. "Well Jack," I said, "What is on your mind this time? And quite unabashed, he inquired, "Say, Parson when can you plan to baptize our baby?" Thus a decadent community reflected itself in its neglected cemetery.

In organizing a work of rural uplift in a community of this type, the social worker can usually find a starting point for a universal appeal toward cooperative effort in the matter of the improvement of the local cemetery and I know of communities which have been awakened to many lines of helpful activity through the forming of a cemetery association.

That there is a need for work in many places along the line of cemetery reorganization can plainly be seen by a casual survey of the whole field of cemetery operation. For the purpose of this survey, cemeteries might be classed under four heads:
 
1. Business corporations having an eye to dividend production.
2. Association controlled and non-dividend.
3. Municipally controlled.
4. Church controlled.

Someone has observed that these might further be classified under organized, reorganized and disorganized. Some are examples of good management while others are samples of quiescent non-management. Many municipally controlled cemeteries especially in larger centers are well managed while in some of the townships, they are the victims in management of the worst roustabout the town shelters. The tendency to lift these from the realm of political management by transferring them to non-political associations seems to lead to a better and more economic administration.

Many church owned cemeteries, likewise, are under good management while the neglect of many others is coincident with the decline of the rural church. These might best be improved through the forming of a community association. Many of these cemeteries decline because of the presence of a well organized city cemetery within easy reach. The advantage of perpetual care is causing many removals that will eventually deplete them and their usefulness will cease.

To reorganize or make modern any existing cemetery is a matter of varied approach. In attempting this process, one immediately meets a variety of obstacles including indifference to higher ideals, prejudice against any change, political antagonism, legal difficulties, lack of finances, or experienced management or proper records, etc. All these must be overcome with patience according to the local circumstances. To aid this end, an educational propaganda must be instituted to arouse a public consciousness favorable to the change.

Next, a study of the laws of the particular state must be in order that a properly organized association may be formed and the lands of old cemeteries legally transferred.

The problem of finance usually looms up very large. The success of this must depend on the initiative of the leaders. The permanent revenue usually comes from the sale of lots supplemented by municipal grants and other means. It is necessary also to establish a permanent up-keep fund if permanency is to be assured. This may not be such a difficult problem as appears on the surface. In dealing with this problem recently, the writer knows of a community where a number of citizens came voluntarily and pledged in bequests from $100 to $1000 each, toward such a fund. A complete canvass will provide for this fund a start toward a fair endowment. Another possibility for aid toward this fund would be to educate lot holders to invest in this fund a goodly percent of the amount they would otherwise spend for monuments. An important point to make clear and insist upon is that bequests for this fund are not to be used solely for individual graves but should go into a common fund for upkeep of the whole cemetery.

The problem of management for a superintendent is of final importance. If no one with previous experience is available for this office, then someone with foresight and hindsight and the ability and desire to learn must be chosen and given every needed encouragement and help for the task. By such an effort, a strong organization through patience and devotion may eventually come to pass.

Before concluding, I would like to have said some things on "The Making of a Modern Cemetery" as a scientific process of modern art but, as I stated at the beginning of this paper there are so many departments that the work of these is best presented by the specialists who are working in these departments. I venture the observation, however, that the type of cemetery which best works out this ideal is a business corporation based on strict business administration. Successful business competition demands the highest type of efficient management and careful development from every standpoint.

I conclude by again assuring you as an observer from the outside, that the work you are doing through your association fills a large place in the nation's welfare.
 

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 35th Annual Convention
Detroit, Michigan
September 13, 14 and 15, 1921

A pioneer in the development of the present day cemetery, Mr. A. W. Hobert, former superintendent of Lakewood, Minneapolis, at the time of his death a year ago last March left innumerable of those signs which mark the genius. For 31 years Mr. Hobert devoted his best energies to Lakewood and the esteem in which that cemetery is held today is due almost entirely to his efforts, his imagination and far-sighted methods of management.

Following in the footsteps of one who has been so unanimously successful is a task indeed. The indelible marks of Mr. Hobert's keen individuality are apparent to one who has watched the progress which Lakewood has made and I confess that I imagined myself a second Atlas, bearing the weight of the world on my shoulders when I took over the management of the cemetery last year. This feeling so strong during the first few weeks gradually changed into one of gratitude that I was given the opportunity to carry on the work of a man who, in my mind at least, bore the stamp of master.

To those who are unacquainted with the accomplishments of Mr. Hobert at Lakewood, it might be helpful to have outlined the cardinal features of his labors. Geniuses, I have noticed, always leave one feat or example that elevates them above the mass of ordinary struggling mortals. And so it was with Mr. Hobert and I believe the work which I am about to describe will prove the assertion.

When Mr. Hobert made his first appearance at Lakewood, the cemetery was little more than a woods, poorly landscaped and even more poorly managed. The tract comprised something more than 170 acres, but some portions of this were unsuitable for use. Mr. Hobert's first move was to put the institution on a paying basis, which was indeed no small task and thereafter he devoted himself to rebuilding that part of the cemetery which already had been laid out. His efforts even today are visible, for his skill in landscape gardening changed the appearance of the older portion of the tract from one of mediocrity to one of perfection.

Mr. Hobert, I believe, was one of the first superintendents to recognize the beauty of the lawn-plan and also one of the first to strenuously advocate this system of gardening. His first mission in the early days was one of education rather than achievement, and Lakewood now prides itself on having the greater portion of its land under the lawn plan. Mr. Hobert also insisted that good roads played no unimportant part in the proper development of a present-day's cemetery. As a result, Lakewood now has the highest form of Tarvia roads throughout-roads which I am certain cannot be surpassed any place in the country.

Probably the greatest single monument to Mr. Hobert's farsightedness in the matter of permanent improvements is the mortuary chapel which was completed in November, 1910. Lakewood, as you may know is as near a public institution as possible; that is, money-making is not its primary object. With this in mind, it is possible that Mr. Hobert had a freer rein than numerous superintendents in the country, but the chapel erected at an initial cost of $150,000 and which could not be duplicated for twice that amount today certainly justified that expense. Permanency, sanitation and beauty, the three architectural requisites, are embodied in the chapel. Permanency is found in the granite foundations and walls; sanitation in that each part of the interior can easily be kept clean and beauty in the exquisite mosaic mural decorations which cannot be surpassed on this side of the Atlantic.

The materials entering into the construction of the chapel were of the most imperishable nature. The walls are of reddish gray granite, the dome and roof of Gustavino tile with an outer covering of Spanish wall tile embedded in elastic cement. The interior is a most interesting and valuable example of the mosaic artists' work, the walls, ceiling and dome being designed and executed in Venetian mosaic, imported for the purpose and set by Italians of great ability. These decorations are set off by a harmonious combination of marbles in floor, wainscoting and stairs. A retiring room for ladies and a robing space for the minister are provided and a private chamber on the main floor allows the family of the deceased to remain as secluded as in a home and yet have within full view, the body and the officiating clergyman. The chapel proper is connected with the crematory by a hydraulic lift.

Another important achievement of Mr. Hobert was reclaiming 40 acres of swamp land in the Southwest corner of the tract, which until a few years before his death had remained practically useless. In reclaiming the land Mr. Hobert dug one portion lower than the surrounding land, threw the earth thus accumulated on the nearest adjoining portion of the cemetery and thus in one stroke added a lake to the other landscape charms of Lakewood and availed for practical usage a considerable portion of land.

I spent five years under the tutorship, if it might be called tutorship of Mr. Hobert, and my one ambition is to carry out the plans of development which he many times, previous to his death, outlined to me. At the same time, I hope to put into actuality some of my own ideas. In the past year I have constructed a thoroughly modern garage and stable, entirely removed from the cemetery, and I am now at work in wrecking the old greenhouses and replacing them in thoroughly modern fashion. I will have 75,000 square feet of glass in the new greenhouses.

Lakewood has natural advantages which I do not believe have been worked to their fullest extent, and in addition to following the policy of Mr. Hobert in a general way, I am making an honest endeavor to put the cemetery on a par with any now existing in the United States. The facilities for such an accomplishment are within my grasp, the directors of the institution are farsighted business men and with reasonably intelligent management, I am confident that the task which I have laid out for myself is not an impossible one.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 35th Annual Convention
Detroit, Michigan
September 13, 14 and 15, 1921

My friends: I am exceedingly glad to be with you tonight. I had planned on an elaborate program which would take three quarters of an hour. (Laughter) I am not going to impose on your good nature, but ask how many will stick with me for fifteen minutes.

About a year or two years ago I spoke to you about the scientific construction of bird houses. Last year I told you about the economic value of birds in the cemetery; this year, with the addition of a few slides, I am going to try to entertain you for a few moments with the human side of the birds. When I say the human side of birds, I mean by that, that birds have peculiarities and characteristics, parental anxieties and their likes and dislikes very much like human beings; and the more you come in contact with birds, the more you realize how many peculiarities and characteristics they have.

Birds bathe in your garden or in the cemetery, and you soon become intimately acquainted with them; when they come from day to day to take their daily bath or drink, you can single them out and say, "Why, this is friend so-and-so, and this is friend so-and-so," because they bathe different from all the rest of the species.

It has been my good fortune to start in photographing some of these birds while they were doing various acts of feeding, drinking and bathing; and in so doing, I have found they did many things that I never knew of before.

In photographing birds we meet with many difficulties; if you have a photograph gallery and you solicit photographs of individuals you naturally expect that they are going to come and pose for you in your gallery; but when you photograph birds, the invitation to your gallery does not count very much so you have to go out where they are. I don't know whether birds size up the proposition that they do not wish to be photographed. I think some of them do, because they get in such very far-off locations that it makes it quite difficult to get desirable photographs.

I am now going to show you some slides and I hope that I shall be able to keep within the fifteen minutes.

(Pictures)

Now, this particular slide is one that I want to show you for one reason: This particular bird, the wood peewee, was one which I have been trying to photograph for a long while; and it concluded that it would get as far out of reach as possible, so it built its nest right up there (indicating).

This picture shows the peewee's nest located in that old dead oak shown you in the previous picture.

In photographing birds many times where they are in shaded locations it is absolutely necessary to cut away some of the branches in order to let in enough light to make an impression on the photographic plate. In doing so I discovered this peculiarity among the parent birds when they have young in their nests. This bird, after the branches were cut away and the sun beating down into the, nest, came and rested on the sunny side of the nest and spread its wings to shade its young. That is a very unusual photograph and it was a thing which I had never seen before. I had heard of its being done, but I questioned it because I had not seen it with my own eyes.

You will remember that in the spring of the year we had a severe snowstorm one Sunday. I guess most of you eastern folks remember it. This jay built its nest and was brooding four eggs with a foot of snow on the ground. These photos were taken before that snow had been brushed off of the bird so it could fly from the nest; but it remained on its nest, guarded its eggs, and brought out the little young just the same, under those trying conditions.

This picture shows one of the nesting material stations erected in one of the cemeteries. I won't call off the names of the cemeteries because these pictures have been taken in many, and it won't be possible in my short time to enumerate all of them; but the material is put into these nesting material stations so, that the birds can select the kind of, material which they really need for building their nests.

In the shrubbery surrounding this station are nests of the warblers, peewees and phoebes, all of whom have used the material from this bird station.

Indeed, there is a nest with the young and the parent bird the chestnut sided warbler, having used the nesting material from one of the stations and nested close by.

Now, in some of these slides showing where, the parent bird is feeding the young, I would like to have you note this one thing; that they are all feeding the young with insects. In a good many cases you can see the kind of insect that the bird has selected to feed its young.

This picture is one of the field sparrow and I am sorry that the light is so poor that you cannot see it distinctly. Anyway, the field sparrow is feeding the young on caterpillars.

The next picture is another picture of the field sparrow cleaning its nest.

You know, the better birds have very cleanly habits and as they feed the young, after they feed the young they generally clean out the nest. Most of the birds of the house-nesting variety are very particular, and they keep their houses very clean.

Again, all these pictures showing nests that you have seen since the picture of the nesting material station have been made from the material found in these stations. This is a little red Iberia which has selected some of the horsehair out of the station to line its nest.

In this particular case, you will find one of the flicker houses away up in the upper portion of that tall tree.

Now, we will have just another view of torn trousers (Laughter) and a few close-up views of that same house. The female flicker feeding its young at the house; there is the male flicker bringing food to the young ones. There is the female bird feeding the young. I am sorry there is not strong enough light there to find those young birds in the nest. There are the young looking out of the entrance. There again are the parent birds cleaning out the nest. There are some of the young birds after they have crept out of the entrance and cling to the outside of the house on that uppermost branch of the tree. Notice how it clings on the tail quills.

One of the young birds on the outside of the tree.

Characteristic of all woodpeckers they cling to the side of the bark and prop themselves on their tail quills.

Some of you will remember my telling you last year about the nesting boxes, and how birds peck out a cavity. In the flicker houses, a reproduction of this cavity, we have also the owls that nest in it. I was quite fortunate in getting a picture of the owls that nest in one of the houses; but as they do not see or fly in the day time it was quite a task to get a photograph of them. They had, therefore, to be taken out of the houses and put on the branch of a tree in order to get a photograph of the birds.

Now, this little screech owl after, it was taken out of one of the houses was set on this branch, and it looked up into the heavens in meditation until the click of the shutter attracted its attention and it looked directly into the "cannon."

The next picture shows one of the bluebird houses among the foliage of one of our cemeteries in the east. It blends softly into the foliage and it is not conspicuous by any means, and is very attractive to the birds; one of the bird houses just protruding up above the cluster of shrubs in which a pair of bluebirds raised their family.

Another house of bluebirds which blends into the landscape as though it belonged there; one of the bluebirds bringing food to its young in the house, there he is on the perch, but as the light is so poor, you do not see the young birds in the entrance. I don't know whether any of you can see it but there is one of the birds in the entrance.

After the broods are raised, they gather but on the trees, and this is one of the little bluebirds right after it left the nest.

There are three of the little bluebirds, before they started to look out for themselves. One of the wren houses in one of the cemeteries.

During the hot summer months when the pools and wayside streams have dried up birds generally puncture fruit for the purpose of obtaining drink. This would not happen if water were provided. Water is as essential to bird life as food itself. The birds seem to take great comfort, and are easily attracted to one's garden or about one's dwelling, or in cemeteries where there is provision made for water.

These just simply show slides of the various baths in various cemeteries; one of the baths in a flower bed. That is in Mount Hope cemetery in Rochester. It is visited daily by many birds.

This is one of the bird baths in front of my own home where constantly this spring I had a camera set that could be operated from the inside of the house taking photographs of the birds as they came there to bathe.

This is one of the robins splashing the water out of the bath.

Many cemeteries throughout the country are making this very provision, supplying the birds with water, and I have had the pleasure of making up a slide from the Fort Plain cemetery of which Mr. Rapp is superintendent. He was kind enough to send me the film and I made up one slide simply to show what some cemetery people are doing for the welfare of the birds.

This is very beautiful in its effect, it is frequented by the birds, and it simply goes to show how much more it beautifies the cemetery by providing water in so simply a constructed bath; and yet how softly it seems to fit into its very surroundings.

This is one of the martin houses for the purple martins. I am sorry I haven't enough time this evening to tell you about the purple martins, but I will show you some of the other slides just the same. This house was photographed with a step ladder on which the birds had congregated;

This particular photograph turned out to be a total failure for the reason that I expected a whole lot more than I really got on a sensitive plate. While I was photographing this bird house there were many martins flying about it, but it seems that they were flying so rapidly that afterwards, when I developed the plate, I did not find them there, with the exception of the two that remained on the perches on the top. That is one of the largest birdhouses or martin houses made by us, and it has 48 nesting compartments, each compartment a separate individual nesting chamber, surrounded by an air cooled space to keep it moist and cool throughout the summer months.

That is the brown thrasher feeding its young, and if you look you will notice that the thrasher has brought a large spider to feed its little ones.

That is the process of feeding. You will notice indigo bunting bringing food for its little ones has a large grasshopper. Some time in between the male bird came along and pulled this grasshopper to pieces so that the whole family could get their portion. There is one of the little song sparrows feeding one of the baby birds a larger caterpillar. There again is the little sparrow feeding a large grasshopper, to its young ones.

Wherever there are flowers in the cemetery they are always attractive to humming birds. This little red throated humming bird built close to a cluster of flowers in which I showed you the bird's bath a short time ago. This is the nest with two eggs. Not in the same nest and eggs, but in another location. I will show you a photograph that I was fortunate enough to get of the parent bird feeding the young. That is the red throated humming bird feeding its little one.

Again, the chestnut sided warbler feeding its young with insects.

These are the red squirrels. I believe a good many of you have some of these pests about your cemetery. Perhaps you consider them real good friends, but we have really concluded that they were the worst enemies of our birds; today we are carrying on the work of trapping these squirrels in on of our cemeteries in the East. There are 100 traps being used daily and they have been set ever since spring. They are filled every day and there is a man that does nothing but trap squirrels and a great quantity of both red and gray squirrels have been taken. This is the red squirrel feeding on pine cones.

There is the same squirrel, or another one of its species coming from the nest of one of the bluebirds with the egg in its mouth. There is the red squirrel with one of the bob white's eggs.

This picture illustrates just one of the tragedies you find in the cemetery. I think you will notice the squirrel sitting in the robin's nest and the robin quite angry, above; but it is really too late. The squirrel has already destroyed the eggs.

This picture does not show up very well on account of the poor light, but I think you can see it. That is the characteristic work of the red squirrel. Whenever you find eggs in your cemetery and they have been destroyed in that way, by the top having been gnawed off, and the contents removed, that is the work of the red squirrel.

There is a nest of eggs destroyed by other rodents, but the red squirrel will always gnaw off the top of the egg to drink the contents.

This last picture takes you away from the summer birds to our winter birds, and these birds learned to come close to a dwelling where cranberries had been stuck on toothpicks to feed them. That is the last one of the slides which I have to show you. I am glad that you saw the pictures. I am sorry I could not put in the three hours, but I thank you for the fifteen minutes.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 35th Annual Convention held at Detroit, Michigan
September 13, 14 and 15, 1921

It gives me great pleasure to tell you of the work that the Ontario Government is doing in the way of beautifying its highways, a work in which you, as an organization will heartily concur.

Length of Highway: The total mileage of Provincial Highways in Ontario is at present approximately 2000. This does not include other roads of which there are thousands of miles. It is the aim of the Department of Public Highways to make the fore mentioned 2000 miles eighty-six feet in width, as it has been found that the ordinary sixty-six feet road is too narrow for modern demands, as not only should the right of way be wide enough to accommodate the roadway and gutters but also the main trunk lines of the telephone and electric power and light and last but not least to provide a planting space for trees and shrubs and one which in course of time may be neatly boulevarded and made pleasing from an ornamental standpoint. About 500 miles have been so widened or are in process of widening and the cross section shows 28 feet for roadway and 8 feet for ditches on each side and 21 feet for poles (when necessary) and trees on each side. On such highways there is little danger of the trees interfering with the telephone and power service and so harmony from the useful as well as from the aesthetic standpoint must exist.

Method of Planting: About every one hundred miles of highway constitutes a Residency and is under the charge of a Resident Engineer: such engineers have under their control a number of foremen with their gangs of men. During Fall and Spring when the road work is not in progress these foremen and gangs carry out the planting as advised by the Forester who instructs them in the selection and planting of trees and shrubs. The trees are largely selected from the bush lands adjacent to the highways and being native are thus desirable for the purpose. Twenty-five cents per tree is paid to the farmers and the work of lifting and hauling is paid for by the Department. The total cost of lifting, planting, staking and mulching is less than one dollar per tree. In cases where especially fine well shaped and rare specimens such as oaks are required the cost is a little more. Recourse is also made to the nurseries.

In purely country localities native trees are alone planted as it is the desire of the Department to keep the highways typically Canadian, such trees as the Red and White Oaks Hard or Sugar Maple, Elms, White Ash, Black Walnut, Butternut, Native Chestnut, Brasswood and so on are utilized. At the approach to the various municipalities exotic trees are also included and comprise Norway Maples, Oriental Planes, and other shade trees of recognized value.

The minimum spacing of trees is seventy-five feet in the rows which are located two feet from the boundary lines. With such spacing every tree has a chance of perfect development and as light and air have free access to the roadway, moisture does not remain thereon for any length of time to cause disintegration of the surface.

Special Beautification: Wherever at intersections of the highways near towns small waste areas exist; these are beautified by trees and shrubs. Two such parks have already been laid out, one at Port Hope, the other at Cobourg, and where at the approaches to large municipalities, special treatment is desired, this is affected with the cooperation of the municipal authorities, special grading of the areas, and the planting of shrubs is effected by the Department of Public Highways and such are maintained at the, expense of the municipality. The Easterly approach to the city of St. Catharines, which passes the beautiful and well kept Forest Lawn Cemetery, managed by a member of your organization is shortly to be beautified in this way.

Legal Protection: No injury to permanent plantations, or to existing trees is permitted, a penalty provided by law is inflicted in the case of willful damage or of Vandalism. No company or person may without permission cut or remove a single branch. Needless to say that in the case of existing wires or cables any necessary and reasonable cutting is allowed but only under the direction of an expert on the Provincial Highways of Ontario. The straying of cattle along the highway is also by law prohibited. However, generally, the law has so well been observed that no prosecutions have up to the present, been necessary.

Reforestation of Waste Areas: Not the least important of the work carried out by the Ontario Department of Highways is the reforestation of the abandoned gravel pits and quarry areas. These wherever possible are reforested with seedling pines, or with other commercial trees, steep banks where considerable cutting or filling has been done by the Engineers to reduce the grades are also landscaped or reforested as the case may be As many of these areas are contiguous with the highway the educational value of the project will be readily understood. Motorists may readily see the planted areas without even leaving their cars. The Ontario Department of Forestry very kindly supplies the seedling pines from its nurseries.

Help to Residents and Institutions: Ontario desires not only to beautify her highways but also to assist residents living along them to beautify their property so that not only will the planting strip be beautified but the frontages of farm and suburban homes school grounds and cemeteries. For this reason a plan will be supplied to all persons whom having a real desire to improve their property will undertake the work. Many such plans have already been prepared; where such improvement is effected; the increased value of the property, more than justifies the expense. One good turn deserves another and it has been extremely gratifying to find that in turn, people have actually offered to undertake the maintenance of the Highway planting strip outside of their fence line.

Free Advice: Not the least important of the activities of the Ontario Department of Public Highways is the giving of advice to County Road Engineers and Superintendents and also to Municipal Councils in the matter of selection of trees, pruning, planting and other matters pertaining to tree culture. Upon request lectures are given during the winter evenings in nearly all parts of the Province on Highway Beautification, Landscape art and allied subjects. In these the Highways Department and the Department of Agriculture cooperate, as far as compatible without the duties of one over lapping the other. It will readily be seen that any work which pertains to the beautification of Highways and Farm Frontages must necessarily be of interest to the Department of Agriculture and so, through the Horticultural Branch of the latter, splendid cooperation is effected. During late winter and early spring of this year (1921) six thousand two hundred and fifty people attended the lectures, an average for the fifty lectures given of one hundred and twenty-five people each. The largest audience was five hundred and the smallest thirty-two. The interest of so many people shows that the Beautification of Roads and of home surroundings is a work which is gripping human hearts. Where the treasure is there will the heart be also. And the treasure may be a home with beautiful surroundings and happy children, tor Children are always happy under such circumstances, even along an old stone road.

Beautiful Bridges: Some of the new bridges constructed or under construction span ravines which are nine hundred to one thousand feet wide, these bridges are largely of steel and concrete and of ornamental design, light and graceful, but sufficiently strong and rigid to carryall loads that the Department allows upon the highways. One has but to compare them with the bridges lower in the ravines which previously gave service, to realize the tremendous advance that has been made in the construction of highway bridges. Bridges are permanent features and as such, should be beautiful in design. When so, they serve a great educational purpose and are objects to admire. Ontario is building such bridges.

Reasons for Beautification: Beauty is essential to civilized life. The Creator knew this when he created the Garden of Eden. But why did he create it? To inspire. Canada is a big country, larger than the United States and Alaska combined. Ontario is a big and wonderful province and the people of Canada with those of the United States represent a far advance in intelligence. Beauty is essential to us all. Ontario is building and has already built some of the finest highways of the world and is now beautifying them. You are destined to learn of them and to enjoy as you journey over their smooth well finished surfaces and drink in the inspiration of the beauty along the way.

The roads over which your people and our people journey day by day are the things we should live they are part of our lives. Nothing to live along a hot and dusty road, is there? Without God's green canopy overspreading, giving of its generous shade and shielding the eye from the glaring sun. Governments and Institutions and men are measured by what they do. The Ontario Government is making its roads good and beautiful. These roads will stand as a milestone in the advance of civilization and as a heritage and an example to her people who will follow.

Beautiful roads inspire the people who live along them. They are encouraged to improve their homes and by so doing they afford better living conditions to their children; beautiful roads and beautiful homes surroundings put the undesirable to shame and he either adapts himself to changed conditions paints his barn and home, plants a few flowers or retreats to the back woods. Property adjacent to such highways is always very valuable, and highly to he desired. Good and beautiful highways encourage tourists and usually a good class of settlers. They mean money to the State or Province which builds them. Beauty along the way is undoubtedly a valuable asset.

One Province cannot live without another; one of the Provincial Highways will but form a link in a great Trans-Canada road, wide, beautiful and inspiring and worthy of a place in a great country. One country cannot live without another. Other highways will join those which you build from the south and as along them our interests mingle, we will be as one people. Your prosperity, our prosperity, all prosperity depends largely upon good roads, and the good and beautiful roads of Ontario are open to you as your good' roads are forever open to us. And may it be that through the intercourse which these good and beautiful roads afford, we will continue to learn to love each other until a friendship is consummated which no power on earth can sever.

Permit me to thank you for the opportunity of speaking to this excellent gathering, Catholic and Protestant alike men and women descendants of many nations, but all speaking the English tongue and using that speech in the interests of a greater and more beautiful world. No Sinn Feiners here! When we meet upon such an occasion, we are stepping upon an elevated platform where we can understand the virtues of each other's creeds. In Ireland many people are in the muck and mire of prejudice. Beauty and sunshine and art and everything that should fill their lives with gladness are obscured by the clouds of ignorant hatred. Why don't they step up?

During the war, the Spring came and went and the wild flowers scattered over the plain, and we lived but saw not the flowers or the dawn nor the sunset's glow, and now the war is finished and our minds are turning to the thing worth while. Tonight we have met to discuss things that pertain to beauty; things without which the soul cannot endure; things that mark the progress of Christianity and of civilization. You have turned your cemeteries-places of the dead-into gardens, places of life and beauty. You live and love that of which you have charge. It is your life's highway. Beauty keeps us perennially young because it inspires and cheers as we go through life. Would that all men could see the beauty of flowers and trees, and of God's great rolling landscape and live these things. Then the flowers of love would grow in the human heart as in the woodland glade.

In return for the happy hour spent with you, would you allow the speaker to invite you to spend an hour with him, an hour as he lives it, along a highway of life in a world of wondrous beauty, and with him in this little poem, drink again at the fount of youth in a glade where no heart is ever old.

THE GLADE OF YOUTH

Come out to the woods in the silvery morn
When the dew pearls deck the grassy sod
Let youth again in your heart be born
Come out and spend a day with God;

Come out with me where the flowers bloom
And the breezes rustle through shrub and trees
Let youth again in your heart find room
Come out and be young once more with me;

Come out old friend where you and I
As children romped in the blossoming glade
Come out from streets that hide the sky
And see the things that God hath made;

Come out old friend while your aged eyes
This wondrous flower clad glade may see,
Come out again 'neath the sunny skies,
And pick the bloom of youth with me;

Come out though the hair of your head is grey
And your brow is furrowed by lines of care
Come out with me to the woods today
And find the joy that is everywhere.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 35th Annual Convention held at Detroit, Michigan
September 13, 14 and 15, 1921

At first sight it may seem presumptuous to talk to an audience of this character on the subject set for me, "Why the Cemetery Should Be a Garden”. The life business of so many of you is more or less a practical demonstration of the widely accepted principle indicated and looking at the matter from the viewpoint of a plain gardener, the best I can hope to do is to emphasize some of the apparent reasons and with special good fortune; stimulating afresh some thought along these lines.

What is a garden? The word has probably outgrown in this country its original etymological meaning, “an enclosed space" and might now be better described as a cultivated space especially cared for. When we recall all the thought, care and attention on devoted today to the gardens of this and other countries it is not difficult to accept this meaning. Adding to this the idea of rest, beauty, memory, faith and hope, it is not far to the great idea that is a place at once so near the human and the divine, that to very many it becomes the most hallowed spot on earth. This is not by any means a fancy picture, and I feel quite safe in the statement:

"Rest, comrades, rest and sleep
The thoughts of men shall be
As sentinels to keep
Your rest from danger free.

"Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers
Yours has the suffering been
The memory shall be ours."

Linking up the garden idea with the cemetery, may I suggest first, that there is at least some traditional warrant for the assumption that the "sleeping place" should have the garden characteristic? Definite statement and perfectly permissible inference shows that again and again in the dim past the thought of garden "enclosure" was associated with burial. The cave in a field bought and set aside for a patriarchal burying place being used for more than one generation, at least suggests care. Again “there was a garden and in the garden a new sepulcher, there they laid him” are words covering another familiar instance of the garden tomb. Church history still further confirms the fact that for centuries the garden idea and garden care has been associated with the grounds used as last resting places. If in these early years the results were crude, they were probably not more crude than much of the other life of the age.

Horticulture in its fine development deserves to rank among any of the arts of sciences, with the result that in present day conditions we can easily find another strong reason for the statement that the cemetery should be a garden. Never in the history of the world has there been such an appreciation of and love for the beautiful in nature as there is today. Statistics on such a subject as this seem out of place, but the assertion can be easily proved by those who delight in the analytical. In this land, as well as in many others, the value of the artistic as a psychological asset is becoming a real factor in commercial life. Home life, town and city life, as well as business life demand this as a positive essential to the progress of civilization. Given these conditions it is not far to carry the idea to the last sleeping place, thereby claiming that to keep pace with the times the cemetery should constantly prove the presence of a real horticultural guardian. It should be artistic without being exotic, full of landscape beauty, without being a horticultural exhibition. It might well be a place where spreading lawns, shade-giving trees, blooming shrubs and the song of birds combine to make it a hallowed place for the dead, and a lovely spot for the living. Irrespective of the size of the community served a modern cemetery is almost of necessity rural. Is there not here another strong reason for the hand of the gardener where the influence on the immediate neighborhood is bound to be felt? Just as one good garden on a street is sometimes the inspiration to change the whole character of the street, the impression gathered from a real garden burial ground must be helpful in the district where it is placed. As an asset to the town or city there is some value due to the fact that being so often at one of its entrances the visitor gets right here his first and often most lasting impression. This point is worth mentioning, but I do not labor it; passing on to say a word or two on the more definite aspects of the subject.

The cemetery should be a garden because it is a place of rest. Any student of horticulture will confirm the statement that the idea of restfulness is directly associated with gardens. The best garden planners constantly have this in mind. The glaring and the gaudy both in color and form are omitted from worth while designing, and in their place there is a striving after the harmony which means variety in unity, that peacefulness of effect, which is but another name for restfulness. Landscaping has yet to be treated in this convention and I do not intrude, but I may be allowed the statement that the tendency of the best landscape gardeners is to avoid shocks and to emphasize quietness, to put an embargo on the merely artificial, that the natural may be accentuated. A true garden brings rest to practically all the senses in the very highest degree, and because of this fact I am unhesitating in the statement that man's last earthly sleeping place in its. environment may well be the most restful of all. Sentiment if you like but one of life's sentiments that we can ill afford to miss.

The association of beauty with the garden is yet another reason for the hand of the gardener in the cemetery. Beautification, merely amounting to beautification of home surroundings, is now so general that the idea has almost become an accepted principle. Next to the growing for food, the first thought about a garden is beauty. We have looked at this from a general point of view but is especially true of the individual. Both the garden and the grave have about them much of the personal touch and even granting that the sense of beauty does not invariably appear in the garden the call to beauty is nearly always felt in connection with the cemetery lot. Beauty of design, beauty of construction and beauty down to the smallest detail is increasingly demanded, and in these days when by common consent we pay every respect to our honored dead, beauty of surroundings surely has a place.

The idea of memory in this connection is so obvious that it needs hardly more than mere mention. The tree planters of one generation call for thankful remembrance by the next from an economic point of view. The garden that counts its timely decades rather than years naturally has clustered around it the most sacred memories. Whilst the almost imperishable record in granite and marble is strikingly imposing, the memory of past generations will assuredly be sweeter if it is in part associated with trees. And if in the march of time the cemeteries of the cities reach the point where they are past serving their original purpose and to some extent become city breathing places for crowded districts, the practiced hand of the gardener will be revealed where tree and shrub, grass and flower, are blending in nature's finest harmony, the place in very truth becoming a memorial to those who have passed into the unknown.

Is it too much to claim for both the garden and the cemetery that they are the homes of faith and hope? A fine text for a sermon, but I refrain from preaching. I am talking to men who can appreciate the idea, being so closely associated with both the aspects suggested, and I venture to submit that there is no profession on earth calling for more constant exercise of these two virtues than that of the man who plants. His hope in the eternal round of the seasons, his trust in the seed he sows, his confidence in the coming of seed-time and harvest bring him constantly close up to the miracles of growth. There is no labor in the universe bringing such reward, no work providing such thrills of joy, no occupation giving such a sense of completeness, content and blessing. And if this be so, I am bold to ask: Do I claim too much in the statement that the garden conception should be closely associated with the burial ground? If there is any real connection between nature and nature's God, surely it can be found where every bud and bloom, every leaf and twig, every branch and every tree, bears silent witness to the faith and hope of man in immortality. And if at times the great phrase "I am the resurrection and the Life" fall on the ears of those too stricken to hear, the humble flower at our feet stands out in glorious confirmation. The "sure and certain hope" finds its eternal witness in the very blades of grass on which we stand. So I venture to submit to you this morning these simple reasons among many others for the assumption that the cemetery should be a garden.

It is at once a pleasure and an honor to speak along these lines to a body of men who by intuition and training are so alive to these great facts, men whose life business it is to make easy some of the darkest hours of their fellows, men who spend their time trying to make the cemetery a fitting place for the living, as well as for the dead, men who have the touch of fine taste and are full of the finer feelings, and I am sure my appeal does not fall on deaf ears. The flowers of France hallowed because they grow in soil fertilized by the blood of our noblest and best-were silent witnesses to deeds of valor for the great cause of liberty and truth. Are not the same flowers a perpetual reminder as they grow in quietness round our homes and round our tombs, that man lives in deeds, not years, that high ideals and courage dignify and ennoble life, that the way of life leads through the gates of death, and that life alone is worth while which has in it the elements of chivalry, bravery, beauty and truth.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 34th Annual Convention held at Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
September 7, 8, 9 and 10, 1920

There are situations and questions which can be summed up by an epigram-fortunately, even if I had the wit to make one, this question of the control of stonework in cemeteries, is still an open and unsolved one and can only be stated by a more or less elaborate set of rules.

With a garden cemetery, to which lot owners have given approval of the plan by the act of buying there, why is it not possible by a few simple rules to bound the activities of monumental builders so that they will not be in conflict with the spirit of the scheme? The lot owner's answer usually is that the lot was selected under the stress of affliction when rules were not then uppermost in the mind. Any law or regulation which requires the generality to act uniformly in a specific case must have the full sanction of public opinion behind it or it will be evaded, and the evasion have so much sympathy as to make enforcement difficult. Paradoxical as it may seem, this disinclination to be ruled by others, tends not only to conserve our liberties, but is a fundamental element of all human progress. Independence of thought and action are at once the cause and effect of progress. Are we altogether guiltless of fostering the idea of independent treatment m cemetery work? Have not certain sections of rules, usual to most cemeteries, a suggestion that differences of treatment are desirable?

The sanest and fairest set of regulations that has come into my hands says "the copying of a monument is to be avoided. No matter how pleasing a design may be, to duplicate it destroys the effect and injuries the appearance of a cemetery." I agree with every word of this but if the idea is not modified by common sense it would furnish an excuse for evading any rule, and does it not instill into the minds of lot owners that say grave markers uniformly level with the sod, may become monotonous. The great majority will of course follow the bellwether as we found to our sorrow in the east, when the curbing craze afflicted us. We all desire to be original, but so little are we so that from cemetery monuments to pin-heel shoes, we follow the crowd. It is the thinking few that will exact intelligent variety of treatment, and it seems to me that the thinking few are worth listening to and answering with something better than the east wind of authority.

Some of my friends knowing the distaste I have for popular memorials, may wonder at these expressions, but stating the things thus baldly may bring out discussion, and I seriously wish to put you in the frame of mind in any such discussion; not as that of the architect who sees his efforts to build an artistically finished structure, spoiled by perverse stupidity-not as the gardener who has laid out God's Acre pleasing in color with contour restful to the eye and soothing to the broken heart ruined by hideous stone structures and garish colors-but as such men and yet possessed by sweet reasonableness and ready to sympathize with any honest difference.

I have said, any law or any cemetery regulation which is ahead of public opinion, will be difficult to enforce, and a law enforced in a lax manner not only spells difficulty for the management in other directions but opens the door to the suspicion of favoritism. A novel of the Victorian period, the name of whose writer I have forgotten, if I ever know had the title "Grasp Your Nettle," so my moral is, if you are confident of the necessity of a restricting rule, make it and adhere to it. General statements that your cemetery is on the park or garden plan, without definite rules, invite trouble.

A century ago, the burial places of this country were at least somewhat better than those of any corresponding community, but at that they, were bad enough. The leading spirits of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society thought the time was ripe for a change, and the result was the establishing on a considerable scale of a garden cemetery. Dr. Jacob Bigelow, whose efforts mainly brought this about, is today quoted in the Medical School and his "Florula Bostoniensis" is still a prize.

Associated with Dr. Bigelow were able men in other walks of life who have left their imprint on the nation. One would think that inaugurated under such auspices, the scheme would go uninterruptedly to success, yet in fifteen years we find the good doctor lamenting that the granite curbing and iron fence were destroying the whole character of the place. Some years later, the wonderful success of Straus' work at Spring Grove, induced the authorities to set off a portion to be treated as a lawn, one-half of which was sold as burial lots and the other half reserved as ornamental ground. Nearly every one of these lots is enclosed by the usual granite curbing.

There is an old saying that after death we are each entitled to our six feet of ground, and is it not a natural extension of the idea, that each family is entitled to its own burial place, with its meets and bounds the most conspicuous thing, and the individual grave marked not with something which will be lost in the general plan, but even at the expense of taste with something which will shout aloud to the passerby. Let us, therefore, formulate rules that are fair and reasonable, that will take into consideration not only the needs, but the customs of the public and having made the rules adhere to them. We are learning fast that the happiness of the individual is important and necessary to the general welfare, yet it is not unfair to ask that in the royal fellowship of death, individual tastes be merged in a general scheme. Public convenience is conserved and individual liberty not much circumscribed by the establishment of one-way streets.

You will have noticed that I have been very general in my statements, and not at all helpful with suggestions as to particular rules. The truth is I have never seen a set of rules I could fully endorse. Some are as impracticable as trying to make water run up hill and others are so vague as to be a mere pious expression of opinion.

I always have a feeling that the unfortunate results of this state of indecision will be remedied by what our successors a hundred years hence will do to our cemeteries, and that in reality the worse the individual lot looks, the sooner the remedy will be applied. I have seen a cemetery transplanted bodily to make room for a reservoir. I see children playing and a baseball diamond over the place where were buried men who took no small share in the making of the nation. Our pious forefathers placed the bodies of their kin in the vaults under churches, with the full expectation that they would there rest until the General Resurrection. Today they are scattered to wherever the frugal-minded church authorities could find the most economical resting place. If the good souls who are loud in their wail as to the arbitrary rules of cemetery corporations, could look into the future, they might pause before setting up memorials, the individuality of which is the chief characteristic.

I have no doubt that nine-tenths of the cemetery corporations represented here are protected by proper rules, but I doubt if any such proportion of them carry them to their logical conclusion. If your experience has been along the lines of mine, designers of monuments, and to a lesser degree, landscape architects, resent any suggestion of control. Men with originality and broadmindedness will consider the surroundings when producing a design, but with many the idea seems to be confined to making the lot stick out, and if it is an excrescence, their end is secured as much as if it was a gem of art. Keeping in mind, therefore, that the garden cemetery is an effort to produce a complete and harmonious whole, the authorities should have absolute veto over anything and everything added after the completion of the rot layout and preparation of the lots avenues, ornamental grounds, etc.

I take it that it is agreed that in any modern cemetery, curbing, fences, or anything approaching that character should not be permitted. I have noticed in some garden cemeteries, entrance steps which are just about as objectionable as the curbing, the excuse for placing these may be met by a proper grade. You may have noticed how some architects building in residential sections are obsessed with the idea of carrying the grade of the lawn so that it will meet the sidewalk with an abrupt bank at an impossible angle-impossible so far as maintaining a proper turf is concerned. A lawn or cemetery lot should start with a reverse curve tangent to the avenue, and should be graded up to the desired elevation without an abrupt break. Should this idea be followed the necessity for steps would be taken away. If one is unfortunate enough to be in one of the older cemeteries, where such things are by the deed permitted, it is important that steps be set back at least 18 inches from the avenue, so that if a change of line or elevation is thought desirable, it may be possible. In changing our avenues to meet the present conditions of transportation and modern ideas of road building, we found that steps added greatly to the expense, and in many cases altogether prevented the improvement. I may say here, parenthetically, that the cost of cutting the grass in a section where fences, curbs, steps, etc. are permitted is nearly three times that in a corresponding area laid out on the usual lawn plan. It follows, therefore, that in estimating the amount needed for the perpetual care of a lot having these encumbrances, not only must the actual cost of their care and repair be considered, but the additional expense of the care of the grass which their presence entails must be charged.

When it comes to the question of rules governing monuments and memorials in general. I confess I am a beggar for your opinion rather than a giver of any useful information. I have said that the size and position of the monument should be determined by the cemetery authorities. I don't think they should attempt any supervision of the artistic qualities of the work. Even so versatile a man as the cemetery superintendent, does not function well as an art commission. The works of architects, even those of the landscape variety, repeat themselves so often, that I doubt the effect of a one-man set of ideas. Truth compels me to say that the improvement in monumental design in the last twenty-five years has been more marked than in any other line of cemetery endeavors. It is unwise to place duplicate monuments, however artistic, near each other and the wise designer today is considering the question from the point of view of permanent position rather than showroom effect.

Monuments should be limited to 7 percent of the area of the lot and mausoleums should have a clear space on either side equal to the height. When it comes to considering grave markers or headstones, I confess I have not seen a rule which is not open to objections. In the cemetery in which I have the honor to serve, there has been for about forty years a rule limiting headstones in the lawn section to 30 inches in height. With a molded base that is too low for full inscription; that is as full as is desirable if the lot is without a monument, and if a cross should be used, it might be four feet high and still be less conspicuous. If there is a monument, headstones of 30 inches are altogether too high.

Under our deed the trustees by special veto may make concessions, but largely because my stonecutter friends have not played fair, this condition has not been a success, so that I believe in establishing a general rule and administering it without variation. Where cemeteries have placed limitations on headstones, the rule for height vary from three feet to markers level with the sod. Experiments are now being made in various cemeteries of selling lots on which the erection of a monument is forbidden, but I presume low headstones are permitted, and of selling lots on which only a monument may be erected. So natural and so universal is the desire to mark the individual grave that I feel such lots so sold will be very limited in number.

I also think the plan of having markers level with the sod is objectionable. A stone large enough to have a name or even initials inscribed, if level with the turf, is a bid for disfigurement. The man behind the lawn mower is not of such intellectual caliber that he can follow instructions and avoid running over such stones. A marker not over six inches high will not mar the lawn effect, and will be safe from the grass cutter and other workmen. The flat ledger monument used so much by our English cousins is now frequently used, and is capable of artistic treatment. We protect them by planting a border of ivy or euonymus around them, but such a border wide enough to grow a vine, would spoil the proportions of the small grave marker. A rounded edge is protection to such stones, indeed the bottom bases of all monuments and headstones, liable to come in contact with the lawn mower should have the edges rounded.

I am afraid that when you read this paper in the cold type of the official report you will find some apparent contradictions and inconsistencies. Because the question to my mind is still an open one with many sides, each having a part of the truth with it, there is some excuse for these inconsistencies.

Men are said to become pessimistic as they grow older and doubtless I tend in that direction, but if so, the situation as to stonework, as I see it, must have wonderfully improved. Forty year's ago it looked like an endless conflict between the forces of selfishness, ignorance and prejudice, and those of culture and regulation. Today I can see not only a vast improvement, but a public opinion behind that improvement that insures for permanence.

The conflict between the gardener and the stonecutter is now hardly in evidence. The gardener has ceased to reproduce Joseph's Coat as a front gate ornament, and the stonecutter does not now offer you the biggest thing you can get for the money. While the gardener of today has a freer hand in the cemetery, he has also a higher conception of the work he has to do. He is using less of the exotic and ephemeral and depending for effect on that which nature has set to his hand, fitting and congruous to the climate and environment in which it is to be used. The monumental builder has become not only more sympathetic with the aims of the gardner, but as I have said before, is improving his work in form and mustering to his aid all of art and science that is worth preserving.

Of all agencies which have made for better feeling, saner methods and finer taste, the right of the line beyond question belongs to this Association. When the twenty-one men of forward vision met in 1887, they had high aims, ability and purpose, but even then, "they builded better than they knew." To our sorrow and loss, but few of these men remain with us. The great majority of them have passed to their reward, and the banner is now in younger hands. May a due portion of the wisdom fidelity and faith of the founders be upon them and so we may rest in the assurance that work of their hands will be established in the place to which all flesh shall come.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 34th Annual Convention held at Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
September 7, 8, 9 and 10, 1920

In the words of the poet William Cullen Bryant – “All that tread the globe are but a handful to the tribes that slumber in its bosom".

Our Dominion Astronomer, Dr. Otto Klotz, some years ago favored us with a short, but very original mathematical contribution, to show that if the world goes on increasing its population at the rate obtaining during the past century, it will within measureable time be overcrowded to extinction!

THE DELUGE: The deluge is of course the legendary funeral of note. Many painters have tried to depict it. The painting by Wouters shown you on the screen was being exhibited through Belgium in 1907, an unsuspected premonition of the national fate in 1914.

PREHISTORIC: The skulls and the bones, the burial caves and barrows, the Megaliths and Kurgans of prehistory are our data on the evolution of man.
The burial customs of the tribes give the key to the trend of human ascension, the skulls furnishing the anthropologists with the cephalic index, the proportion of width to length, that they wrangle so much about and what a mixing of races on the foughten fields of Europe.
Our time does not allow for a complete and detailed display of this one of the most interesting studies into which there has been so much painstaking and learned research. Henry Fairfield Osborn, Beddoe, Dennis, Madison Grant, Frazer, Grant Allen and many others are beacons that lead far afield in diverse directions to gather the threads of this very tangled skein. The few typical examples discussed and shown upon the screen may help us in analysis of our present problem and aid toward a synthetic solution.

SYMBOLISM: Longfellow tells us that- "Dust thou art, to dust returneth; Was not written of the soul."
We commemorate the soul, the living soul, not the clay that has crumbled; there is imposed upon us to express its idealism with understanding and with art.
Flinders Petrie writing on the character of Egyptian Art, holds that "The truest analysis of art, that of Tolstoy, results in defining it as a means of communicating emotion."
The question still seems an open one as to whether inhumation or cremation be the more ancient method of disposing of the dead; i.e., relatively among historic races. There is the theory of Rhode that the custom of burying the dead is of Indo-Aryan origin with the view of separating the body from the soul more rapidly, to give the latter its liberty the sooner.

BURIAL CUSTOMS: It appears at the time of Christ nearly all important races burned their dead except the Jews, which would account for their opposite custom of burial coming down through Christianity and western civilization to us.
Religious controversies which have raged around this subject are apart from our theme, it is largely a matter of sentiment. There is nothing as conservative as the dead-unless it be the near dead!
As our laws stand, one cannot be cremated unless expressly so stated in one's will-the living are given no discretion in a matter to which the departed have rarely given any thought.
Cremation seems to be slowly gaining recognition by its inherent attributes-the war has emphasized its physical advantages-and art can better express emotions in allegorical symbols.
What should be symbolized are the ideals that men have lived for-that the individual may have practiced-that the time proclaims.

ARCHITECTURE: Let us now turn to architecture described by Staham as "a great world wide art in which the human race has endeavored to realize in material form its aspirations after abstract sublimity.
What conclusions may be drawn as to reason and type; what best fitted to express our modern ideal of death?
And before reviewing this historic pageant may I urge upon you to seek and to favor the guidance of artists-architects and sculptors in the designing of monuments and to resist the trend of commercialism, art that is today well nigh overwhelming the living and the dead.
In one of my reports on the development of Hamilton (1917) there is reiterated my strong conviction that Commercialized Art is to Aesthetics, as Commercialized Vice is to Ethics--a defilement.

GENIE GUARDING SECRETS OF THE TOMB IN LUXEMBOURG GALLERIES
Rene de Saint-Marceaux, Sc.

HISTORIC TOMBS: Egypt from her prehistory, 8000 to 5500 BC has left us burials of figures crouched in square boxlike receptacles which evolved into the Mastabas and the Pyramid tombs of the ancient Empire and that prevailed for about two thousand years.
The Middle Empire which ran for about another thirteen centuries was the age of the Rock Cut Tombs which in turn brings us to the beginning of the New Empire about 1700 BC, the age of Temples which lasted to 340 BC.

The Egyptians believed that the conservation of the body after death was essential for its ultimate reunion with the soul-therefore, mummies.

The stepped pyramids of Sakkars with its five steps about two hundred feet of height is the oldest dating about 4000 BC.

The great pyramid built about 3700 BC by King Cheops (Khufu) in the Gizeh group was an astronomical observatory during his life and his tomb after death-it is the largest of some 70 pyramids in Egypt and covers 13½ acres, and is 451 feet or more high.

Computations run that from 100,000 to 350,000 men were employed for twenty years in building it-a government job, but magnificently done!

From its summit there is a view of the Lybian desert where the ancient tombs have been shrouded by the ever shifting sands.

The Mastabas or built tombs at Gizeh date from about 3900 BC. The Rock Cut Tombs begin about 3000 BC, the most important subsequently being those of Beni-Hassan.

With the beginning of the New Empire we get the Mausoleum of Queen Hatshepsu (about 1517 BC) known as the temple of Deir-el-Bahri on the opposite shore of the Nile from Karnac. It is some 900 years later than the Beni-Hasson caves.

The Egyptians continued building tombs without further evolution of ideas; they had their "Book of the Dead". A very interesting romance, "Uarda" by George Ebers, the great Egyptologist, describes the burial customs and the Necropolis of Thebes about fourteen centuries BC.

The Babylonian laws of Hammurabi, over twenty-two centuries BC, the oldest code known, contain minute instructions regarding the care of the irrigation canals-the penalty for their neglect being greater than that for beating one's wife. But Babylon has left us no tombs; all their structures being of clay, have crumbled and only a few titles reward the searchers in the palace mounds. Similarly with the annals of the Kings of Assyria.

China, likewise, whose accepted history, if a bit mythical, goes back according to W. G. Old and others, to 2943 BC-the approximate date of the Deluge-has few tombs to tells its early standing.

There, apparently almost everyone with a few dynastic exceptions has been buried in the back garden and China is one vast cemetery the sacredness of which in the worship of its ancestors has made it very difficult to introduce civilization by the desecrating railway!

Their temples were halls for ancestors worship. To God they erected their altars in the open.

Greek art has left us the record of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (350 BC) in Asia Minor, the excavated remains of which are now in the British Museum. It is from these that comes the famous slab representing the extermination of the Amazons by the Greeks.

The Greeks being a highly cultured people usually raised memorials to abstract ideals-not to house the mortal remains like the monument of Lysicrates at Athens.

Italy is a land of many tombs. Each city of ancient Etruria had its Necropolis, a thousand years and more BC, the finds from which fill museums and help to trace the genesis of Roman art and customs.

The distinguishing Etruscan feature was the podium and tumulus and also the more usual subterranean vaults.

An interesting feature of the later are the funerary urns which at a certain period were often in the form of miniature huts indicative of the architecture of the day. It is from this source that we gather that the Etruscans began to change from round to square dwellings about the seventh century BC.

The Romans, on the other hand, built their tombs above ground the greatest of which was the Mole of Hadrian; now since the Middle Ages, the fortress Castle of St. Angelo.

The Street of the Tombs at Athens was copied on a colossal scale in the Appian Way outside the St. Sebastian Gate and where the great round bastion-like tomb of Cecelia Matella still stands sentinel over so many others in complete ruins. Both the Hadrian and Matella tombs show Etruscan influence in form.

The Christian Catacombs are a subject by themselves, the outcome of necessitous circumstances and not of display.

The Temple Tomb of Diocletian at Spalato on the Dalmatian coast, early fourth century, shows the incoming influence of Eastern thought on Western architecture and which with the rise of Christianity to power, evolved to custom of burial crypts and monuments in Mediaeval Cathedrals; enduring to our day.

The tomb of the Popes in Saint Peters; from the Renaissance are the most magnificent examples of their kind.

Westminster Abbey, the shrine of England's Great, and the Pantheon for those of France and Napoleon's tomb are also outstanding examples of this custom.

Nor must one forget a Campo Santo at Genoa.

In passing it may be noted that the Parsee towers and the Burning Ghats of India are not classed as tombs.

India claims, however, the culmination, in the seventeenth century, of woman in India.

HAMILTON

Now I am encouraged to submit the theories I hold in their application to the city of Hamilton, where my reports on railway reorganization, on highways and on general development, have already been so kindly and so sympathetically received-and where they are beginning to be carried out.

The magnificent high level entrance to Hamilton with its beautiful cemetery aligning the route to the west appeals to me greatly as a possible revival of the street of the Tombs in Athens and of the atmosphere that hallowed the majesty of the Appian Way-where there was no shrinking from death by the myriads who passed cheerfully into its shadow.

It should, however, manifest the highest symbolism and the purest art in the tombs and shafts that hedge the way-and it were better they stood for the collective ideals of social units.

Such splendid tombs should not vie with each other in size nor in ostentation, but solely in dignity and simple beauty. Those who have been privileged to know Stoughton Holborn's "Need for Art in Life" will realize the vision.

There appears today in our cemeteries too great an assumption, an obsession of invidious personality, as Veblen might say.

As an example of Symbolism: in the suggested Mountain Stadium as shown, my thought was that as a War Memorial it would express the sacrifice of the dead for the living-for the continuity of the race.

Further, the suggestion includes a composition symbolic of the struggle of man in the quest of freedom in evolution on the Altar of Human Sacrifice.

Thus in the center of the great traffic circle facing the Terminal, a tall Obelisk would be centered on a pyramidal series of massive concentric and circular altar stones, the whole resting in the center of a large fountain pool.

At the foot of the Obelisk figures symbolizing the fecundity of the Earth would be backed against the base of the shaft. Around these on the upper degree of the altar, groups of men of the stone Age struggling by instinct; descending, a degree of men of the Metal Age struggling for
survival and again a degree lower the sword and the javelin battling for conquest; and again down a degree further ahorse and afoot champions of the Cross and the Crescent down finally to the broader ledge on the Altar of Time, where, amidst all the panoply and horrors of modern war, the Conflagration of our own flesh and blood is incense supreme in retribution for all ignorance and in merit of ultimate freedom.

The blood of conflict mingling with the springs that fertilize the earth overflows from age to age into the oblivion in the sea of Time, into the ether of Eternity, through which this planet wanders beyond our realms of consciousness.

Reverting to a comprehensive Necropolis for Hamilton.

Let it be something splendid, real, like the Castel d'Asso Valley of Tombs-and sufficient for ages-such is the mountain top, rim and the southerly sloping talus on the northerly side of this valley, where the Guelph road climbs over its heights.

My professional usefulness as an engineer and a town planner lies perhaps mainly in regional and city planning for the living, yet is not without grave concern in the disposition of the Necropolis where we all of the League of Nations will eventually find passive transition.

May I trust that these views of an outside observer have proved of sympathetic interest and stimulation.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 34th Annual Convention held at Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
September 7, 8, 9 and 10, 1920

No phase of human activity has stronger traditions than the burial of the dead. In all ages man has attempted to give expression to his belief in the immortality of the soul. Almost the only records we possess of many races are the tombs which they erected. It is to be hoped that our own present age will never come to be judged by the records it will leave of burial in its great cities.

Idealism in Cemetery Design.-The first principle in cemetery design is the creation of that unmistakable atmosphere which we associate with the burial of the dead. There is a modern tendency to avoid a funereal aspect in cemeteries as though a cemetery was after all something to be ashamed of which ought to be disgusted as something else. Cemetery design as a fine art seeks to give expression to the purpose for which the design is created. In other words, the cemetery must look like a cemetery, not like a public pleasure park or recreation ground. This can only be accomplished by a study of the traditions which, throughout innumerable centuries, have produced certain well marked associations which we recognize as the atmosphere surrounding burial. An obvious example to prove this point may be drawn from architecture. No architect or designer who is unacquainted with the traditions of ecclesiastical architecture can build a church which is going to look like a church. He may succeed in meeting all the schedule of requirements laid down for his guidance as to seating capacity, choir space and altar, but the result is likely to prove much more like a moving picture theatre or physics lecture hall than a church. The reason for this is that, as a result of thousands of years of religious faith definite associations in architecture have grown up which we instinctively connect with public worship. When we go to church we are disappointed if the outside of the building looks like a barn and the inside like the Strand theatre.

What are the associations which have grown up around the burial place for the dead? They are seclusion, repose, solemnity and mystery.

Seclusion.-The modern cemetery is seldom secluded. Too often the roar of traffic on the great thoroughfare, where it is usually located, is only too audible.

Repose. - Having finally succumbed in the whirlpool of modern business life, the soul is everlastingly denied that repose for which it has been craving and is left in contemplation of the traffic problem of our great cities.

Solemnity.-Solemnity is accomplished by means of masses of granite balancing upon one corner.

Mystery.-There is nothing mysterious about our cemeteries. They constitute a permanent monument to the vanity, cynicism and materialism of our age.

In the United States reaction against the indecencies of the modern civic cemetery with its harvest of dragons’ teeth and its glorification of atrocities has led to extremes in which the whole purpose of the cemetery must be disguised as though death itself were the crime and complete obliteration of its evidence of the object.

Some years ago I received a call to visit a small cemetery and make suggestions for re-planning on more modern lines. What I found was a cemetery which approached more nearly to my ideal in cemetery planning than any modern burial ground which I have ever seen in any country. I felt instinctively upon entering that I was in the presence of the work of a student of great intellect and vivid imagination. My clients informed me that the cemetery was originally designed by a much traveled Jesuit father, since deceased. The rectangular site, of perhaps 30 acres, occupied the whole of a high tableland from which all views of the surrounding town were completely shut off by a double belt of Scotch and Austrian Pine, forty feet high. The plan simplicity itself took the form of a great cross which cut the property into four quarters. The lines of the cross were marked by straight wide alleys of level grass with a well designed monument at the crossing. Bounding the alleys on either side was a tall cedar hedge, in front of which were spaced out pyramidal cedars 25 feet high. The four blocks were subdivided into lots with simple head stones and served by a road way passing through each. Those fortunate enough to be buried here enjoy an atmosphere of seclusion repose, solemnity and mystery.

Requirements of the Modern Civic Cemetery.-The site: While twenty-five years is an extremely long period in the life of cities, it is an extremely short period in the life of a cemetery, if one may use the word life in connection with a burial ground. During the past twenty-five years the principles of transportation in our cities have undergone a complete revolution resulting in the spread of population over vast areas which would have been impossible under previous methods. A site chosen twenty-five years ago on account of its seclusion may now be the centre of the utmost congestion. The time has not yet arrived when definite limits will be set to the growth of cities although signs are evident that such action will eventually have to be taken.

The search for a site for a cemetery, therefore, will be guided by geographical and topographical conditions more than by judgment as to future civic development. A site partially or even entirely surrounded by water, for instance, will promise seclusion for an unlimited period. In mountainous and hilly districts sites can often be found which will insure seclusion for the cemetery on every side but one.

Accessibility.-In order to be accessible the cemetery need not necessarily be located on a great thoroughfare or any road which seems likely to develop, as such. A good road open to traffic at all times of the year is a necessity, but the possibility of an entrance some few hundred yards away from the thoroughfare rather than immediately upon it, is no disadvantage. Street car service within short walking distance of the cemetery should be provided or the probability of the provision at a later date considered. From two to four miles from the district which the cemetery is expected to serve is not too great a distance.

Seclusion.-Seclusion is by far the most important feature in my opinion when choosing a site. Natural topographical features, such as the crest of a hill or an expanse of water, are more to be relied upon than belts of trees either existing or proposed. Few of our native trees thrive well in the densely populated districts of our cities and it is doubtful if any trees can be counted upon to provide seclusion of such permanence as is demanded by a cemetery.

Aspect.-A site sloping toward the southeast and heavily protected toward the west, northwest and north is the ideal which should be sought. There are days in spring and fall when attendance at a funeral is sufficient to strain the affection of the most trusted friend. As our cold weather comes almost invariably from the north to the .west, protection from that quarter is essential. I have seen properties only a few hundred yards apart where the transformation from bleak winter into glorious summer is accomplished solely by means of a plantation of evergreens on the northwest. The convenience and comfort of the public, the associations surrounding a resting place for the dead and the operations connected with a cemetery in winter time demand adequate shelter from strong cold winds.

Natural and Topographical Features.-A hilly or undulating site is usually more attractive than a level site. Level sites are inclined to become extremely monotonous unless great skill is used in the layout and planning. It is most important that the whole of the Property should not be seen at one time as quite apart from the unsightliness of a forest of monuments, a piece of property invariably gives the impression. of much smaller size when the whole of it is seen at once than when broken up into a number of spaces varying in interest with well screened boundary lines. A property may be broken up in two ways, either by topographical irregularities or by masses of planting existing or proposed. While a site should not necessarily be condemned on account of being level a sharply undulating property will us usually possess greater possibilities for interest and beauty than one devoid of natural features. Existing trees on a property are of course a priceless asset, but much would depend on their character and disposition. If the property is likely to be fairly well preserved from city smoke for a long period a growth of cedars would be invaluable. Cedars, owing to their character and shape, will help more than any other native tree to produce the atmosphere of mystery which should be the keynote of a cemetery. Being evergreen they will also maintain the character at all times of the year. White pine and Norway spruce, although evergreens, are not to be counted upon to any great extent. The former invariably dies out upon the approach of the city while the latter is a short lived tree at the best of times and becomes extremely ragged and unsightly when old. A heavy growth of deciduous timber over the whole of the property may be rather a disadvantage than otherwise. While theoretically, the exact amount of clearing desired ought to be possible it is usually found in practice that great difficulty is experienced in having trees removed and the result may be less satisfactory than building up plantations where needed upon a bare site. In city cemeteries natural streams of water are an asset if obtainable, but can seldom be counted upon for very long, as the development of the city will usually eventually cut off the supply.

Soil and Drainage.-Every cemetery superintendent will agree upon the importance of soil and drainage when choosing a site for the cemetery. Owing to the depth at which graves have to be dug the water table must be kept down below six feet from the surface at all times of the year. The depth at which drainage operations have to be executed. may be an item of very great expense if large areas have to be dealt with. A deep, well drained sandy loam is the ideal soil for cemetery sites. Heavy clay should be avoided. Rock close to the surface would of course condemn any site.

The Layout.-Having chosen the site the next problem is its development. The scheme of development will be based upon certain information which must be on hand before a start can be made. An accurate topographical survey must be prepared of the whole with contours varying from one to five foot intervals according to the extent of the property and the differences in elevation to be encountered. Full information should be provided as to boundaries, location and character as well as the nature of the property beyond them. All trees and shrubs should be located their caliper spread and variety being marked clearly upon the plan. Armed with this information the designer may sit down and think out his problem.

When designing for any utilitarian purpose certain arbitrary limits and requirements are always laid down for the guidance of the designer. The designer of a dinner fork, for instance, knows that he is required to invent some type of instrument to be used for transferring pieces of roast beef from the plate to the mouth by means of the hand as a carrying medium. His first business is not to conceive something beautiful, but to sit down and discover the limits and requirements within which his design must take form. His summing up of the situation will probably be somewhat as follows: In the first place, he finds that his instrument must be suitable for picking up off the plate easily and gracefully a piece of meat. In the second place, he sets limits to the size of the piece of meat with which he has to deal. Thirdly, his instrument must be easily grasped in the fingers. Then again the meat must not be so firmly grasped by the instrument that it cannot be easily removed in the mouth. He knows that the fork must be easy to clean. It must be strong enough for the purpose but not so unnecessarily strong as to be clumsy. In solving all these problems he has already made long strides toward introducing an object of beauty, an object which expresses the purpose for which it is intended.

In exactly the same way the cemetery designer will sit down and think out the utilitarian purposes which his design is intended to serve and the limits within which this problem is to be solved. The requirements in this case are as follows:
1. The provision of suitable sites for graves, keeping in mind economy of land.
2. The provision of access to those graves.
3. The creation of a setting, or atmosphere, for the graves in keeping with the traditions of burial.

Instead of commencing by locating individual graves, he will turn his attention first of all to the question of access to the property as a whole. This involves the question of an entrance or entrances. In this connection the general direction of traffic to and from the centre of population which the cemetery is expected to serve will be considered. In a general way, the most convenient spot on the boundary of the property will be chosen but the right choice of an entrance is most important. In addition to being convenient for people approaching the cemetery, the entrance should also provide possibilities of concentration from and distribution to the various parts of the cemetery. Assuming that the cemetery does not front upon the main thoroughfare the entrance should be so placed, if possible, as to be visible from the thoroughfare, so possibly at the end of a connecting street. In order to make it more imposing the entrance should be at a slight elevation.

Having located the entrance, the distribution of roadways and the location of definite areas to be set aside for graves will be considered in conjunction with the cemetery office and chapel. For two reasons the bottoms of alleys are unsuited for graves. In the first place, they are apt to be wet, no matter how well drained artificially, and in the second place, the bottom of a valley filled with monuments is much more likely to destroy the restfulness of the cemetery than high ground similarly treated where the monument can be partially screened. In a general way, it may be said that the roadways should be kept to the graves on the high land. Distances between roadways are determined largely by the distance the pall bearers may be expected to carry. As this distance should not exceed two hundred feet it follows that the property should be intersected by roadways not more than 400 feet apart in cases where the intervening space is given over to graves. Traffic distribution must be carefully studied. It is quite obvious that circulation of traffic is preferable to blind alleys provided with turning spaces, although some of these latter will be inevitable on certain properties where the grades do not permit of circulation.

In a general way, three widths of roadways will be used in cemeteries. The one-way road of nine feet; the two-way road of eighteen feet and the three-way road of twenty-four feet. The one-way road, circulating and returning, may be expected to serve an area of from 15 to 20 acres. The two-way road will serve one or more of such areas. Three-way road will be used near the entrance and central parts of large cemeteries where much concentration of traffic is to be expected. Time will not permit us to deal further with the details of roadway layout and construction.

Focal Points and Controlling Features.-Something more is required of the cemetery designer than an engineering solution of a roadway scheme at the best grades and curves. The plan must represent something more than an aimless maze of curving roads. Focal points and controlling features are absolutely essential to the well thought-out plan, even in the smallest cemetery. The symbolism of burial demands a certain degree of formality, dignity and stateliness and although it is only seldom desirable to have formality embrace the whole of the design some areas must always be given a formal setting. Architectural features of merit; such as chapel, office and larger private monuments, which ought to enrich all cemeteries, form an admirable opportunity for the designer to provide controlling sites in his plan for just such features. In larger cemeteries one central distributing point, formal in treatment, comprising the chapel and some monuments, will form a controlling feature of the plan. A number of secondary focal points should also be provided at various points in the plan. A roadway may, for instance, be diverted to the right or left at the approach to a steep grade forming an admirable site for one of the larger monuments.

Graves and Monuments.-Until complete control is obtained by the designer over the monuments permitted, the ideal cemetery will never take form. Fifty years ago some simplicity and restfulness in the village church yard and cemetery were possible. This was, partly due to the fact that in most cases the funds available did not permit of anything more than simple headstones and partly to the fact that the traditions of burial were held in greater respect.

Some cemeteries in the United States have succeeded in the control of monuments almost to the point of abolition. Abolition, although infinitely better than individual license, is not the ideal. Monuments can and should be beautiful. They should be an aid to the designer instead of a hindrance and a priceless asset to the dignity and beauty of the cemetery. What is needed is control, both of lots and of monuments, by the cemetery designer. He it is who ought to decide the character of the memorial which is to be permitted on each grave. They will vary from flat stones level with the turf to the simple head stones or sarcophagus, while special lots will be set aside for larger monuments.

From the publication:
AACS - Proceedings of the 34th Annual Convention held at Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
September 7, 8, 9 and 10, 1920