SECOND  BOSTON  OBJECT  LESSON  69

Meantime,  where  is  the  builder’s  occupation  gone?
Is  this  health  for  a  body  politic?  If  not,  will  some
wise  physician  furnish  a  prescription?
Do  the  I231,600  worth  of  nearly  worthless  buildings
shown  in  Fig.  IX  represent  those  business  interests
of  Boston  for  which  a  Washington  Street  subway
is  being  completed;  fof  which  aTremont  Street  parallel
subway  was  completed  only  a  few  years  since,  and
but  one  square  away?  These  subways  add  nothing
to  the  value  either  of  these  old  buildings  or  of  the  new
ones  which  might  replace  them.  Yet  they  soon  will
have  doubled  the  value  of  the  land.
It  is  submitted  in  all  honesty  and  seriousness  that
this  Washington  Street,  from  Adams  Square  to  Eliot
Street,  is  a  veritable  economic  monstrosity.  Whenever ­
  any  section  of  a  city  is  in  a  state  of  transition,
like  the  West  Street  and  Tdmple  Place  of  a  generation
ago,  or  like  the  Summer  Street  of  to-day,  altered  fronts
and  other  makeshift  devices  are  for  a  time  natural
and  inevitable.  But  here  in  Washington  Street,  for  a
couple  of  centuries  the  main  business  artery  of  a  great
city,  there  are  not  on  its  whole  length  more  than  three
°r  four  buildings  which  you  could  point  out  with
special  pride  to  the  visitor  from  Chicago,  or  Kansas
Qty,  or  Marblehead,  or  Cape  Cod.  For  this  condition
there  must  be  a  cause,  and  this  cause  is  the  private
appropriation  of  a  public  value;  a  value  publicly
created,  and  publicly  maintained.  If  this  is  not  the
cause,  we  ask  you  to  help  us  find  what  is.
Query.  Is  it  the  Old  Corner  Bookstore  (Fig.  VIII),
n °w  almost  two  hundred  years  old,  valued  at  $2.62
Per  square  foot,  that  needs  a  new  Washington  Street
subway?  Is  Washington  Street  land  at  $50  to  $300