Dom Pedro with well-filled pockets for home, these Portuguese brought
out their money and spent hundreds of millions in improving their city,
with hundreds of millions left which they have yet to spend. Thus did
these of the Latin race, whom we regard as less Bostonian than
ourselves.

With this brief glance at other cities of present and other times, and
having in view the part played by environment in the trend of refining
influences, and remembering further, following the spirit of the times,
that nothing within the scope of human power to accomplish is too vast,
or too valuable, or too advanced for the purpose, it remains with the
people of San Francisco to determine what they will do.

It is not necessary to speak of the city's present or future
requirements, as sea water on the bills, and fresh water with electric
power from the Sierra; sea wall, docks, and water-way drives; widened
streets and winding boulevards; embellished hillsides and hilltops; bay
tunnels and union railway station; bay and ocean boating and bathing;
arches and arcades; park strips or boulevards cutting through slums, and
the nests of filthy foreigners, bordered on either side by structures
characteristic of their country-all this and more will come to those who
shall have the matter in charge. The pressing need now is a general plan
for all to work to; this, and taking the reconstruction of the city out
of politics and placing it in the hands of responsible business men.

If the people and government of the United States will consider for a
moment the importance to the nation of a well-fortified and imposing
city and seaport at San Francisco bay; the importance to the army and
navy, to art and science, to commerce and manufactures; of the effect of
a city with its broad surroundings, at once elegant and impressive, upon