"completely planned, without a dominant rectangle, including underground wiring, trees planted in grass strips, a village green, a delightful railroad station, tree-embowered schools, and a vine-clad post office." But cities and towns which have grown up haphazard often find great difficulties in the way of beautification. Much, however, can always be accomplished by the zealous activity of public-spirited citizens under expert direction. Durham, in the same State, is a great sufferer from the fact that it has grown piecemeal and without planning. But a recently formed Civic Association has made a promising beginning in work for a cleaner town, for the improvement of homes and their surroundings, and for the beautification of open spaces. The city is much in need of a systematic and comprehensive plan for its general betterment. Charlotte has systematic work under way with a commission in charge. The city has had the benefit of expert advice. Goldsboro has a public park, a generous gift to the city. Interest in its maintenance and beautification takes the form of an annual Park Day. Raleigh with its State buildings and park has unusual opportunities for betterment and is taking advantage of them. The extent to which interest in civic improvement is felt in many other places in the State was shown by the number of women's clubs interested in civic improvement represented in the recent convention of the North Carolina State Federation of Women's Clubs at Raleigh. It is impossible to mention all the places in which progress is being made, but enough examples have been given to show the real strength of the movement for city betterment in North Carolina and the South. Akin to this work is the renewed attention given to the cause of better city government in the South. President Eliot of Harvard, in his recent speeches throughout the South and in his QUARTERLY article of April, 1909, told of the signal success of the Texas cities of Galveston, Houston, and Dallas in the application to their municipal problems of the commission form of government. His report will doubtless stimulate other communities to consider the adoption of that plan, or a modification of it, as a means of securing better and more economical local government. Recent changes in the plans of city government for Durham and Charlotte indicate that the trend of opinion is in the direction of entrusting large powers to commissions of capable citizens, and that it is distinctly against the treatment of appointments in the municipal service as political spoils. Much might be added to the evidence which has been presented of increasing activity in the cause of rural and city improvement. The establishing of better schools with longer terms in city and country would require a separate article. Free libraries are being opened and enlarged in the towns; rural libraries are circulating in increasing numbers in the country. In many factory communities, manufacturers are showing a sense of personal responsibility for the welfare of their operatives, and are instituting better working and living conditions. Whatever temporary reasons for discouragement may at times be met, the various progressive movements which have been here indicated must furnish abundant ground for hope and confidence to all those who have especially at heart the advancement of the common welfare in the Southern States. Maryland and the West BY BERNARD C. STEINER Librarian of the Enoch Pratt Library, Baltimore The Virginia charter of 1609 gave the Pacific ocean as the western boundary of that colony, and, although the Virginia Company's charter was revoked in 1624, the people of the colony always claimed that the limits of the royal colony remained the same, except in so far as they had been narrowed by subsequent charters, which might have lopped off a portion of the lands. Some of these later charters, as those of Maryland and Pennsylvania, gave the new colonies definite western boundaries; other charters, like those of Connecticut and Massachusetts, made the territories run from sea to sea. It was no great matter for a century or so, and Virginia, the first settlement, was the first to think of reducing her western claims into possession. In the early part of the eighteenth century, Spotswood and his men crossed the Blue Ridge into the beautiful Shenandoah Valley and, with the growth of settlement in the next generation, Virginia established Frederick County and organized the Ohio Company in 1748. Her ambition might have been a northern one had the fates been kind, but Charles I., in granting Lord Baltimore a charter in 1632, had cut off the Indian trade by the way of the Susquehanna, which trade Claiborne had keen fostering, and had forced Virginia back upon the Potomac and the James. In Baltimore's province the first century had passed without the establishment of any town of importance, but in 1729 a town which bore the Proprietary's name was laid out on the Patapsco, near the head of the Chesapeake. William Penn had early laid out Philadelphia, his capital, which was the largest town in the British-American possessions in the eighteenth century; and New York City, at the mouth of the Hudson, was also growing into prominence at an early date. Four of the colonies were thus in a position to use the western trade and longed for a convenient route into the great valley of the Mississippi. Virginia took the lead and sent Washington to demand that the French evacuate Fort DuQuesne, on the site of the present city of Pittsburg, in territory claimed by both Virginia and Pennsylvania. When war between England and France broke out, largely as a result of the dispute between Virginians and Frenchmen over the ownership of the Ohio Valley, the Virginians, under their Governor Dinwiddie, were urgent that an attack be made on Fort DuQuesne and that the expedition against it go by way of Alexandria and the backwoods of Maryland. Successful in this insistency, Braddock's expedition set forth and carved a way through the wilderness, as Dr. J. W. Palmer so well expressed it: "Said the Sword to the Ax, twixt the whacks and the hacks: Hewing a highway thro' greenwood and glen, In his own doom building large for the Lord After Braddock's disastrous defeat, another expedition was sent forth against Fort DuQuesne under General Forbes and was successful; but the road it cut through the forests was made west from Philadelphia, and the struggle for the West thus began. By the treaty of Paris in 1763, the Mississippi Valley east of that river passed to Great Britain, and efforts were speedily made to reduce this possessory right to an actuality, such as that made to found a new colony by the Vandalia Company in 1766, in which attempt Franklin and Walpole were interested. Virginia did not forget her claims. Lord Dunmore, in 1773, issued patents for western lands to Washington and other enterprising men, and, after the outbreak of the revolutionary struggle, it was the Virginian, George Rogers Clark, who conquered the Illinois country from the English in 1778. About that same time scores of Virginians were crossing the Alleghanies through the gaps and were settling in Kentucky. There seemed to be a danger to those States with definite limits, that those which had western claims should monopolize that territory and gain an undue predominance in the new republic. On October 15, 1777, a month before the Articles of Confederation were sent to the States by the Continental Congress, the delegates from Maryland moved and alone voted for a resolution, "that the United States in Congress assembled shall have the sole and exclusive right and power to ascertain and fix the western boundary of such States as claim to the Mississippi, or South Sea, and lay out the land beyond the boundary so ascertained into separate and independent States, from time to time, as the numbers and circumstances of the people may require." A year and a half later, when all the States but Maryland had adopted the Articles of Confederation, on May 21, 1779, her delegates had their instructions read to Congress, that they might justify their policy of stubborn refusal to accede to the "perpetual Union." These instructions said: "We are convinced policy and justice require that a country, unsettled at the commencement of this war, claimed by the British crown and ceded to it by the treaty of Paris, if wrested from the common enemy by the blood and treasure of the thirteen States, should be considered as a common property, subject to be parcelled out by Congress into free, convenient, and independent governments, in such manner and at such times as the wishes of that assembly shall hereafter direct." This position was no new one for Maryland. As early as October 30, 1776, the Maryland Convention had resolved that the "very extensive claims of the State of Virginia to the back lands hath no foundation in justice and, if the same, or any like claim, is admitted, the freedom of the smaller States and the liberties of America may be greatly endangered; this convention being firmly persuaded that, if the dominion over these lands should be established by the blood and treasure of the United States, such lands ought to be considered common stock, to be parcelled out at any time into convenient, free, and independent governments." Having taken her position, Maryland steadfastly held to it, and, sitting still, awaited the time when the other States should yield. Flushed by Clark's success, Virginia resolved to open a land office, and Maryland scored her first success, when, on October 30, 1779, William Paca's motion in Congress was carried, requesting that Virginia reconsider the order opening this office. New York, whose western claims were the weakest, led in ceding them to the Federal Government, taking this step on February 19, 1780, and, on September 6 of that year, a congressional committee reported upon the Maryland instructions, upon a Virginia |