"TO WOMEN UNBORN, 1896 sends greeting to 1996.

We of today reach forth our hands across the gulf of a hundred years to clasp your hands.
We make you heirs to all we have and enjoin you to improve your heritage.
We bequeath to you a city of a century, prosperous and beautiful, and yet far from our ideal.

Some of our streets are not well lighted; some are unpaved; many are unclean.
Many of the people are poor, and some are vainly seeking work at living wages.
Often they who have employment are forced to filch hours for work from hours that should have been given to rest, recreation, and study.
Some of our children are robbed of their childhood.
Vice parades our streets and disease lurks in many places that men and women call their homes.
It sometimes happens that wealth usurps the throne that worth alone should occupy.
Sometimes some of the reins of government slip from the hands of the people and public honors ill-fit some who wear them.
We are obliged to confess that even now 'Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.

HOW ARE THESE THINGS WITH YOU?

 

Yet the world-family is better and happier than it was a hundred years ago; this is especially true in this American Republic, and has come by wisdom working through law. We love our country and seek it's prosperity and perpetuity; we love our country's flag and pray for it's greater glory; in this century our men have marched to victory under its folds in three great wars. We are ready to defend it against all the world.

ARE YOU?

 

This hundred years has given to the world the locomotive and the steamboat, the telegraph, telephone, photograph, electric light, electric motor, and many other wise and beneficent discoveries.
Have you invented a flying machine or found the North Pole?

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

 

In this first centennial year of our city we have planned many important works for the "Greater Cleveland" of tomorrow, and have appropriated millions of moneys for the execution of the plans. Among these are the improvement of the harbor; the widening, straightening, and cleaning of our narrow, crooked, and befouled river; the sanitary disposal of garbage; a fitting home for the public library; the extension and completion of an adequate park and boulevard system; the addition of kindergartens to our public schools.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR CLEVELAND?

 

Standing by this casket soon to be sealed, we of today try to fix our vision on you who, a century hence, shall stand by it as we do now. The vision can last but a moment, but before it ends and we fade into the past, we would send up our earnest prayer for our country, our state, our city, and for you. AMEN."

On behalf of the Women's Department of Cleveland's first Centennial Commission,
Mrs. Elroy M. Avery