Do not mistake Baltimore conservatism for a lack of progress. You can hardly make greater mistake. For Baltimore today is constantly planning to better her harbor, to improve the beginning that she has already made in the establishment of municipal docks--her jealousy of a certain Virginia harbor far to the south is working much good to herself. She is constantly bettering her markets--today they are not only among the most wonderful but the most efficient in the whole land. And today she is planning a great common terminal for freight right within her heart--a sizable enterprise to be erected at a cost of some ten millions of dollars. For she is determined that her reputation for giving good living to her citizens and at a low cost shall be maintained. She realizes that much of that cost is the cost of food distribution, and while almost every other city in the land is floundering and experimenting she is going straight ahead--with definite progress in view. Such purpose and such plans make first-rate aids to conservatism. * * * * * "Baltimore can prove to any one who will give her half a chance, what a good, a dignified, a charming thing it is to be an American town," writes one man of her. He knows her well and he does not go by the mark. Baltimore is good, is dignified, is altogether charming. And she is an American town of the very first rank. 6 THE AMERICAN MECCA Just as all the roads of old Italy led to Rome so do all the roads of this broad republic lead to Washington--its seat of government. At every season of the year travelers are bound to it. It is in the spring-time, however, that this travel begins to assume the proportions of the hegira. It is a patriotic trek--essentially. And the slogan "Every true American should see Washington at least once" has been changed by shrewd railroad agents and hotel-keepers to "Every true American should see Washington once a year," although some of the true Americans after one experience with Washington hotel-keepers are apt to say that once in a life-time is quite enough. But the national capital is worth all the hardships, all the extortions large and small. It is a patriotic shrine and, quite incidentally, the most beautiful city in America, if not the world, and so it is that there is not a month in the year that Americans are not pouring through its gateway--the wonderful new Union station. That terminal still opens the eyes of those folk who come trooping down toward the Potomac--old fellows who still remember the last time they went to Washington and the entire country was a-bristle with military camps and bristling guns, little shavers entering for the first time the City of Perpetual Delights, lovelorn bridal couples, excursions from Ohio, round-trips from off back in the Blue Ridge mountains, parties from up in Pennsylvania--the broad concourse of the railroad station at Washington is a veritable parade-ground of latent and varied Americanism.