As it Seems to a Man Up a Tree

The new manual of the City of Buffalo is out. Buffalo manuals have achieved considerable fame in years past and the present one is well abreast of any that have gone before, which is saying considerable.

Prepared under the supervision of City Clerk Gethoefer and Deputy Clerk Corcoran, it is complete, interesting and entertaining.

It is a good piece of advertising for Buffalo. The copies are widely distributed and each copy that goes out of Buffalo gives that city a certain amount of excellent advertising.

Niagara Falls might follow out the idea to her great benefit.

Throughout the manual, in a score of places, Buffalo sings her own glory, the glory of being within the radius for the distribution of Niagara power.

At the bottom of every other page in red letters is “the cheapest power in the world is at Buffalo.” At the bottom of other pages is “Buffalo has a proven population of 400,000.”

(Why “proven?” Proved is just as good and the authorities like it better.)

But anyway the manual is a good thing and it reflects credit upon Buffalo and the men who got it up.

But the fact remains that Buffalo shines principally in the reflected glory of Niagara Falls, a fact which cannot be over emphasized. “Buffalo,” one can hear a person in England saying, “Oh, yes, the city which is near Niagara Falls and gets her power from there.”

Of course Buffalo has other honors than being near Niagara Falls, many of which the manual in question points out. But the chiefest claim to municipal greatness that the burg possesses is that of its proximity to this city. That is what makes it known in other countries and other lands. In that lies her future.

Buffalonians have a civic pride that is often humiliated while traveling abroad. The Man Up a Tree knew one ardent Buffalonian who was crossing on a steamer of the Cunard line and got to conversing with a bright Englishman who had made a six months tour of the States.

“Buffalo,” he said, “I remember the place. I’ve got it jotted down in my notes. It is the city with the fine barber shop.”

The native, who happened to be a woman, and had no need of barber shops, was disgusted and put the Englishman down as a stupid thing in her diary.

Which doesn’t necessarily prove it.

But all the advertising that Buffalo does in this line is advertising for this city. Buffalo is a co-partner in the great enterprise, but Niagara Falls is and always will be the place which will benefit most.

Tesla made a speech at a banquet once which has been used as a text by Buffalo ever since. He said Niagara Falls power would make Buffalo the greatest manufacturing city in the world.

It will make it a great one, but Niagara Falls power is going to make Niagara Falls greater. Edison says that and he said it several years later than Tesla made his utterance.

But that has nothing to do with the manual. It is a good one. Niagara Falls cannot have much of a city manual until it has something of a city building. But when that matter is in this city could profitably spend the money in getting out a manual modeled after the publication of the one got out by Messrs. Gethoefer and Corcoran.