YOU AND YOUR STREETS
To-day it is a common sight to see the street cleaners. Many men are at work from sunrise to sunset, cleaning away the dirt and helping to make our city healthful and pleasant to live in.
From whom does the money come to pay these men? It is not from the mayor or those who are in charge of the work. The money really is paidby the people who own property in the city. The men working for the city are public servants. They are working for every man and woman, for every boy and girl in the city.
There is a word much in use nowadays. It is “coöperation.” It means working together. Have you ever seen a group of men help push a heavily loaded wagon? They all push together in the same direction, and the horses pull at the same time, and so they get the wagon started on its way. This is coöperation, or working together.
Everybody should want clean streets and well-kept sidewalks. They mean a more beautiful city, and what is better, a more healthful city.
We know there must be a successful coöperation if we ever are to have a clean city. Now, coöperation means that every one must do his or her share.
Hundreds of boys and girls used the streets this morning on their way to school. Many of them will play on these same streets this afternoon.
Children are entitled to clean streets, but they must be willing to coöperate with the Bureau of Street Cleaning in order to get them. Do you know how they can do this?
Two kinds of dirt soil our city streets—that which is the result of daily traffic and that which comes from carelessness.
Who Will Sweep this Pile AwayWho Will Sweep this Pile Away?
If there were only the dirt which comes from the use of the streets, the paid cleaners could easily remove it.Most of the dirt, however, comes because people do not think or care. One little piece of paper, a banana peel, an apple core—how trifling they seem! Yet, suppose each boy and girl of thousands of boys and girls should forget, and should throw something into the street, how littered the streets would be!
The most important of all the things we can do is to remember. “But if I remember and some one else forgets, what then?” you ask. Why, simply remind that person.
The streets of the city belong more to the boys and girls than to the grown folks, because they will use them longer.
If this city is our home, we should keep the streets clean; for the streets are like the hallways of the home, and everyone likes to have a clean home.
Every time we go to school, to the store, to church or Sunday-school, or out to play, we go on the street. The streets are as important as the houses. We could not have our city consist entirely of streets, nor could we have it consist entirely of houses.
Many things have to be built and used together, or in coöperation, to make a city.
The Place for Candy Bags is the Waste CanThe Place for Candy Bagsis the Waste Can
All over the country, boys and girls are coöperating with grown people and with city governments in the fight for good, clean streets. Boys and girls are remembering and reminding—they are street inspectors keeping watch over what is their own.
They are learning about these things and thinking about them; when they grow up, they will know how such work should be done.
They are getting their parents interested in the fight for clean streets.
They are seeing that the paper from their own homes is tied up so that it will not blow over the streets, that ashes are not piled up in boxes, and that covers are kept on garbage pails.
There are many ways in which they can help. They can see that papers are thrown in the waste cans, or in cans in the school-yard. When they buy candy they can remember not to throw the wrappers in the street.
Can you tell why clean, well-paved streets make it easier to have cleaner houses and cleaner clothes and better health?
A Parade of Street CleanersA Parade of Street Cleaners
Street Cleaners at Work in WinterStreet Cleaners at Work in Winter
As you go home notice something that you think will bring about an improvement in the condition of your streets.