plan was carried out. The interest on these bonds, amounting to about $17,000 annually, is included in the budget. The first payment on the bonds themselves comes due in 1919, and will be a part of that year's budget.

From the proceeds of the bond issue the town spent about $475,000 on the improvement of the property, twenty-seven acres being upland and about ten acres below tide line. Many of the old buildings were destroyed, while others found new locations in adjacent properties. The water front and beach were secured for the use of the public. Old stone walls were removed and a new one laid along the boundary line; a sea wall was erected; the grounds graded, seeded and planted; a low spot was converted into a lake; paths were built; and a very attractive bathing pavilion and casino was erected immediately adjoining Oakland Beach.

The bath houses and restaurant concessions are sold, being at present under a three-year contract netting the town $9,000 annually. This covers all maintenance costs of the entire park. No bar privilege is allowed. The town provides a superintendent

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to care for the grounds, laborers to help him, and special policemen. The holder of the bathing concessions is under agreement to provide life-savers on the beach.

As a result of these improvements, Rye Town Park has become the most popular public resort in Westchester County. It can be reached from every section by trolley, and steamboat lines connect with Mamaroneck and New Rochelle, as well as Sea Cliff, Long Island. It is very popular with autoists, several hundred cars often being collected on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, finding ample accommodation in the The parking space provided for them. creation of this park has brought about, also, a great change for the better in the character of the immediate surroundings. Facing and overlooking it, many high class homes have been built. The park itself, even after so short a time, is remarkably beautiful, and it attracts a quiet crowd, happy to enjoy the fields, the beach and the fine view over a wide expanse of Long Island Sound, the scene of many yacht races and regattas.

VERY once in a while a court hands down a decision invalidating some municipal ordinance or statute designed to protect residential districts against the invasion of factories and industrial establishments. These decisions show that the battle for city planning will have to be largely fought out in the courts. This battle is simply a contemporary phase of the constant conflict between the demands, on the one hand, for the free and untrammeled use of private property, and, on the other hand, the desire of the community to restrict such use for community benefit. The opportunity to protect private property against unreasonable restrictions and interference was found by the courts

in the two provisions of the federal and state constitutions which prohibit the deprivation of property without due process of law and the taking of property for public use without due compensation. At first all the emphasis was laid upon the protection of property. As, however, the modern developments of industry and urban life disclosed the need of protecting the community against the evils arising from the unrestrained use of private property, the courts developed the doctrine known as the "police power," by virtue of which new forms and methods of restraint of the use of property come from time to time to be justified in the interest of community welfare.

The police power is generally defined in

very comprehensive language as the power to provide for, guard or regulate public health, public safety, public comfort and public welfare. "Public welfare" is itself so comprehensive a phrase that it would seem at first glance to give an almost unlimited freedom to legislative bodies. "The care of the public welfare," says Professor Freund in his authoritative book on "Police Power," "has for its object the improvement of social and economic conditions affecting the community at large and collectively." As new needs are disclosed and new conditions in which public welfare or health or comfort demand new forms of restraint upon the free use of private property, the tendency of the courts will inevitably be to justify these new restraints as an exercise of the police power. As stated by Professor Freund, "Police power is not a fixed quantity, but the expression of social and political conditions." Therefore, while the police power may not expand as speedily as the impatient social workers and city planners may desire, it will be found to be capable of development so as to permit such restriction of the use of private property as enlightened public opinion deems necessary for the promotion of the safety, the health, the comfort and the welfare of the community.

Looking at the ordinances and court proceedings on the subject of the protection of residential districts, the impression one gets is that the legislators, attorneys and courts have generally discussed the issues from too narrow a point of view. Certain kinds of industries, such as rendering plants or foundries, have, when located in residence districts and by reason of the offensiveness of the smells or noises produced, come to be technically known as "nuisances," and the courts have recognized the right to protect residential districts against nuisances. Court proceedings upon residential district legislation are generally conducted

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though the only question involved were whether the particular industrial establishments which the ordinance or statute proposes to keep out are or are not in fact nuisances. The police power is, however, not merely the power to abate nuisances, but the power to promote public health, safety, comfort and welfare. Attorneys engaged in defending such legislation. should bring to the attention of the courts the various ways in which the protection

of a residence district against the invasion of commercial and industrial plants, some of which may individually be of an inoffensive character, will tend to increase the health and comfort of the community.

At the present stage of the court decisions there is one limitation of the police power which is somewhat rigidly enforced, namely, that "general welfare" may not be defined so as to include the enjoyment of purely esthetic satisfactions. Many an ordinance has been set aside because the court concluded that its sole design was to produce the city beautiful. In promoting residential district and other city-planning legislation, it would be well to have the ordinance follow and be based upon some systematic city planning study, including a study of the relation of the city plan to the city's health, comfort and safety. Suppose, for instance, that a study is made by competent neurologists of the extent to which the noises, smells and turmoil in and about factories and large mercantile establishments in residence districts tend to increase the spread of nervous diseases in communities, and of the extent to which the zoning of the city would tend to reduce the growth of nervous diseases. If a city council should establish residential zones on the basis of such a report, the legislation could be supported on the ground of its promotion of public health, and the courts could certainly not ascribe its passage to esthetic motives. Suppose, again, that a study is made of a city's congestion problem, as it bears upon pedestrian and vehicle and street railroad traffic on the streets, and particularly as it bears upon the growth of transportation facilities to care for the growth of the city. If such a study should demonstrate that a particular distribution of residential and industrial districts, by directing the flow of travel, will tend to lessen congestion and make better transportation possible, the establishment of the proposed residential districts would be shown to have a direct relation to public comfort. Legislation logically based upon such a study and report could not be accused of being born solely of esthetic motives. In short, if that form of study and report of a city's social and sanitary conditions, which we know as city planning, is made antecedent to the passage of legislation regarding residential zones and the like, legislation based on the

report will have a strong chance of success before the courts, for the history of the legislation would demonstrate that its design is to promote safety, or comfort, or health or welfare, or all of these. courts are particularly prone to set aside ordinances which look upon their face as though they were arbitrary, unscientific,

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haphazard. Legislation to carry out an intelligently formed city plan is simply a new form of exercise of the police power, and will surely, sooner or later, come to be so recognized by the courts; especially as a scientific zoning of the city can be shown to preserve, rather than impair, property values.

Ownership of Trees in Street

An owner of trees in a street abutting upon his property is entitled to recover for injury to the trees caused by a public service corporation cutting them back to make way for electric wires; the property owner's interest in the trees is a property right of which he can be deprived only when public necessity demands it, and then he is entitled to compensation, unless the city deprives him of the right in good faith in exercising its control over the street. (Oklahoma Supreme Court, Norman Milling & Grain Co. vs. Bethurem, 139 Pacific Reporter, 830.)

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Validity of Fire Limits Ordinance

"Fire protection in towns is so clearly within the province of the police power that it would require a very strong showing of pure arbitrariness to induce a court to interfere with an ordinance" establishing "fire limits." (Louisiana Supreme Court, Town of Mansfield vs. Herndon, 63 Southern Reporter 606.)

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Right to Control Traffic on Pleasure Driveways

A city may validly exclude heavy traffic from pleasure driveways, according to a recent decision of the Illinois Supreme Court in the case of Illinois Malleable Iron Company vs. Commissioners of Lincoln Park, 105 Northeastern Reporter 336. * *

Property Owner's Right in Parkway A property owner is entitled to recover against a telephone company for destruction of shade trees located in a parkway between the sidewalk and the street abutting

his property, in the placing of the company's wires and poles, although the company has been granted permission by the municipal authorities to locate its poles and wires along the parkway. (Springfield, Mo., Court of Appeals, Rienhoff vs. Springfield Gas & Electric Company, 162 Southwestern Reporter 761.)

Discrimination Against Non-Residents

An ordinance prohibiting unlicensed persons from taking orders for goods, or from delivering goods on orders previously taken, is invalid so far as it purports to prevent a non-resident of the state from soliciting orders, since that amounts to an interference with interstate commerce. (Schenectady County Court, People vs. Ericson, 147 New York Supplement 226.) *

Contracts for Local Improvements

A city which has entered into a valid contract with a contractor for the construction of a street improvement is without power to release the contractor from any of his obligations to the prejudice of property owners. (California District Court of Appeal, McIntyre vs. City of Los Angeles, 139 Pacific Reporter 240.)