VOL. XXI FEBRUARY 6, 1909 NO. 19
CHARITIES
AND THE COMMONS
THE PITTSBURGH SURVEY

II. THE PLACE AND ITS SOCIAL FORCES

A JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTIVE PHILANTHROPY

PUBLISHED BY

THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK

Robert W. deForest, President; Otto T. Bannard, Vice-President; J. P. Morgan, Treasurer; Edward T. Devine, General Secretary

105 EAST TWENTY-SECOND STREET, NEW YORK 174 ADAMS STREET, CHICAGO

THIS ISSUE TWENTY-FIVE CENTS TWO DOLLARS A YEAR

ENTERED AT THE POST OFFICE, NEW YORK, AS SECOND CLASS MATTER

[Contents Added by Transcriber]

[THE COMMON WELFARE]
[PITTSBURGH SURVEY]
[PITTSBURGH]
[A CITY COMING TO ITSELF]
[EFFECT OF FORESTS ON ECONOMIC CONDITIONS IN THE PITTSBURGH DISTRICT]
[THE TRANSIT SITUATION IN PITTSBURGH]
[THE ALDERMEN AND THEIR COURTS]
[THE CHARITIES OF PITTSBURGH]
[PITTSBURGH'S HOUSING LAWS]
[PAINTER'S ROW]
[PAINTER'S ROW]
[THE MILL TOWN COURTS AND THEIR LODGERS]
[THIRTY-FIVE YEARS OF TYPHOID]
[PITTSBURGH'S FOREGONE ASSET, THE PUBLIC HEALTH]

Please mention Charities and The Commons when writing to advertisers.

Drawn by Joseph Stella.

AS MEN SEE AMERICA. II.

THE SECOND OF THREE FRONTISPIECES.

Charities

AND The Commons

[THE COMMON WELFARE]

THE BILL FOR A CHILDREN'S BUREAU

An unusually well managed and effective hearing before the House of Representatives committee on expenditures in the Interior Department was held in Washington on January 27, following the White House Conference on Dependent Children. No happier practical expression of the unanimous conclusions of the conference could have been conceived than this gathering of nearly all the conference leaders, representing every section of the country and all shades of opinion in dealing with childhood's problems.

Many persons listened to the unanimous plea that the federal government should heed the cry of the child and espouse its cause at least to the extent of providing a children's bureau manned by experts in such questions as the causes and treatment of orphanage, illegitimacy, juvenile delinquency, infant mortality, child labor, physical degeneracy, accidents, and diseases of children, to whom those engaged in dealing with these problems could direct inquiries for information based on adequate and authoritative research. The gathering of such information and its dissemination in bulletins easily understood by the common people, the making available for all parts of the country the results of the experience and suggestions of the most favored parts and of any foreign experience in dealing with problems similar to our own,—in short just such service as the government now renders so cheerfully to the farmer though the scientific work of the bureaus of its well equipped Department of Agriculture is all that the bill for the children's bureau asks. Upon the question of the propriety, constitutionality and expediency of the federal government doing this work there was not and cannot well be a single objection made. For the first year an appropriation of $51,820 is asked. As was carefully pointed out by several speakers, much of the work to be done is partially undertaken and could be done more adequately by existing governmental agencies such as the Census Bureau whose work would not be duplicated if we make it the sole business of some one bureau to bring together in one place and focus on the problems of childhood the information desired by child helping agencies and to find out what is needed to stimulate greater efficiency in work for children. No administrative powers or duties of inspection with respect to children's institutions or work are proposed or intended to be given to the federal children's bureau. Therefore only those whose deeds will not stand the light of publicity need fear the operations of the bureau or expect anything but help and stimulus in the better performance of their service to the public.

All these points were made with singular unanimity and earnestness by many speakers who were heard by the committee and were seconded by the still larger number who recorded their names and the societies they represented as favoring the bureau. The judges of the leading juvenile courts were present in person, including Judge Lindsey of Denver, Judge Mack of Chicago, Judge DeLacy of Washington and Judge Feagin of Montgomery, Ala. Herbert Parsons, who introduced the bill in the House, and Secretary Lovejoy of the National Child Labor Committee, which stands sponsor for the bill, conducted the hearing jointly. Miss Lillian D. Wald, who originally suggested to the National Child Labor Committee the advisability of such a bureau, made the opening address, giving in substance the very clear and able argument for its creation which she had presented the previous evening at the banquet of the children's conference. She pointed out the universal demand for it in the following language:

And not only have the twenty-five thousand clergymen and their congregations shown their desire to participate in furthering this bill, but organizations of many diverse kinds have assumed a degree of sponsorship that indicates indisputably how universal has been its call to enlightened mind and heart. The national organizations of women's clubs, the consumers' leagues throughout the country, college and school alumnæ associations, societies for the promotion of special interests of children, the various state child labor committees, representing in their membership and executive committee education, labor, law, medicine and business, have officially given endorsement. The press, in literally every section of the country, has given the measure serious editorial discussion and approval. Not one dissenting voice has it been possible to discover.

THE NEED AND THE OPPORTUNITY

In speaking of the work which the bureau would do, we quote again from Miss Wald:

The children's bureau would not merely collect and classify information but it would be prepared to furnish to every community in the land information that was needed, diffuse knowledge that had come through expert study of facts valuable to the child and to the community. Many extraordinarily valuable methods have originated in America and have been seized by communities other than our own as valuable social discoveries. Other communities have had more or less haphazard legislation and there is abundant evidence of the desire to have judicial construction to harmonize and comprehend them. As matters now are within the United States, many communities are retarded or hampered by the lack of just such information and knowledge, which, if the bureau existed, could be readily available. Some communities within the United States have been placed in most advantageous positions as regards their children, because of the accident of the presence of public spirited individuals in their midst who have grasped the meaning of the nation's true relation to the children, and have been responsible for the creation of a public sentiment which makes high demands. But nowhere in the country does the government as such, provide information concerning vitally necessary measures for the children. Evils that are unknown or that are underestimated have the best chance for undisturbed existence and extension, and where light is most needed there is still darkness. Ours is, for instance, the only great nation which does not know how many children are born and how many die in each year within its borders; still less do we know how many die in infancy of preventable diseases; how many blind children might have seen the light, for one-fourth of the totally blind need not have been so had the science that has proved this been made known in even the remotest sections of the country.

At least fifteen states and the District of Columbia were represented at the hearing. Among the speakers were Edward T. Devine, editor of Charities and The Commons, who pointed out the scope and importance of the inquiries the bureau would undertake; Dr. Samuel McCune Lindsay, who drew the bill for the national committee and explained its fiscal features and the plan for the organization of the work of the bureau; Jane Addams, who showed the real service the bureau would render the practical worker; Florence Kelley, who pointed out the extent of our present ignorance on the questions with which the bureau would deal; Homer Folks, who emphasized the unanimous demand for the bureau by the widely representative Conference on Dependent Children; Congressman Bennett of New York, who showed the service it would render in dealing with the peculiar problems of the children of immigrants; Bernard Flexner of Louisville, Hugh F. Fox of the State Charities Aid Association of New Jersey, Judge Mack, Judge Lindsey, and Judge Feagin, who all pointed out the service it would render the courts in dealing with children; Mrs. Ellen Spencer Mussey, who represented the General Federation of Women's Clubs; Thomas F. Walsh of Denver, Dr. L. B. Bernstein of New York, William H. Baldwin of Washington, D. C.; Secretary A. J. McKelway, and General Secretary Owen R. Lovejoy of the National Child Labor Committee. The House committee was deeply impressed and it is believed will report the bill favorably.

LOCAL PLAN FOR A CHILDREN'S BUREAU

Realizing that its 20,000 children between the ages of four and fourteen are its chief asset,—that children are, in fact, as important as its playgrounds or its streets or any of its other community problems,—the city of Hartford, Conn., has taken steps towards the appointment of a juvenile commission which shall relate the work of schools and playgrounds and manual training and homes and give them a balance and unity which come only from the consideration of such a question as a whole. Each of these agencies has an influence on the child for a part of its life, but each falls short of its possibilities for lack of such a comprehensive oversight and continuity of purpose as is promised by the commission.

The measure presented to the Legislature for the creation of a juvenile commission is based upon the following arguments:

1. Industrial cities are producing a class of children whose parents cannot, from the very nature of things, do much more than supply them with food, clothing and a home.

2. The environment of these children, is such, both in the home and in the neighborhood, that one-sixth die before they are a year old and one-fourth before they are seven.

3. The parents cannot as individuals provide playgrounds or adequate discipline.

4. Every child has a right to a reasonable opportunity for life, health and advantages needed for development.

5. To protect the child's right to a reasonable chance for healthy development is a special work which should be done by a commission created for the purpose to supplement the work of parent and school.

The suggestion for the commission came from George A. Parker, commissioner of parks, Hartford, and grew out of a meeting of the Consumers' League, followed by a talk by Dr. Hastings H. Hart. Mr. Parker's idea met with immediate endorsement from many sources and as a result the bill now before the Connecticut Legislature has influential and widespread support.

It is proposed that the Court of Common Council shall refer to the commission all questions relating to minors and await its report before taking final action. The commission is to have power to investigate all questions relating to the welfare of children, to collect and compile statistics and to recommend legislation. None of its actions is to be taken in a way to lessen the parents' responsibility and no child is to be taken from its parent except in extreme cases of danger to life or limb. The commission as proposed will consist in part of city officials and in part of citizens who do not hold public office, the members to serve three years each without salary, but the expenses to be borne by the city.

EDUCATION AND THE PREVENTION OF DISEASE

The past few years have witnessed an advance in the evolution of medicine which has been radical and comprehensive.

It was only a decade ago that the efforts of centuries devoted to empirical treatment of the individual found room for research into the causes of disease; and it has only been within recent years that such knowledge has been sufficiently comprehensive to justify its extensive application in the practical field of disease suppression.

The attempt which Columbia University is making to establish a School of Sanitary Science and Public Health is prompted by the realization of the fact that most diseases are preventable with our present knowledge of their causes; that the knowledge which we now possess in regard to their causes is not properly and extensively enough applied for their prevention; and that this knowledge is best transmitted to the people by means of educational methods.

Probably the most recent advance in the doctrine of preventive medicine is due to the fact that many diseases are recognized to have not only medical, but social and moral causes as well; and that their prevention is best accomplished by the enlistment of judicious co-operation of effort in these various fields. For example, a large part of the disease of the human race is directly traceable to the damaging effects of alcohol and syphilis, yet these diseases cannot be eradicated until the underlying social and moral factors are recognized and remedied.

It is not difficult to appreciate the wonderful results which are capable of accomplishment, with our present scientific knowledge, by the conjoined application of scientific and social with educational methods, when we realize that smallpox could be wiped out by education of the masses on the efficacy of vaccination. The fields of preventable accidents, dangerous trades, child labor and improvement of working conditions offer opportunities for the reduction of suffering which are great almost beyond conception. Blindness could be diminished one-half by the spread of a simple, well known doctrine; typhoid, cholera, malaria and yellow fever depart as enlightenment on principles of sanitary administration creep in, and tuberculosis has resolved itself largely into a "social" disease.

The problem resolves itself distinctly and emphatically into one of education; and it is to instruct the teachers of the people in methods of health preservation,—be they officers of health, with the care of thousands, or mothers with the care of one, in their keeping,—that Columbia University is striving to put its school into operation.

Pending such a beginning, a series of university lectures on Sanitary Science and Public Health by the most eminent authorities of the country is being given to prepare the way for the next much desired move,—a permanent, fully-endowed institution of instruction in the principles of public health preservation and the prevention of disease. Courses of a similar nature have been organized at Cornell, Wisconsin and Illinois universities.

The subjects, to be discussed by experts, include water supply and sewage disposal, health and death rates in cities, public health problems of municipalities, state and nation, milk supply and infant mortality, school hygiene, street cleaning, tenement house sanitation, personal and industrial hygiene and diseases of animals transmissible to man. The course, which was started on February 1 with a lecture by Professor Sedgwick of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on The Rise and Significance of the Public Health Movement, will be continued until April 28. The lectures will be open to the public up to the capacity of the hall.

CLEANING UP THE KANSAS PENITENTIARY

The newspapers of January 31 contained a dispatch describing an unusual special train that left Lansing, Kansas, bound for McAlester, Vinita and Atoka, Oklahoma. The 344 passengers, sixteen of them women, were handcuffed together in pairs and groups and as the train pulled out of the station, the dispatch states that "a great cheer arose from the convicts as they saw the last of the state penitentiary."

This special train was carrying away the "boarded out" convicts whom Oklahoma has been shipping to Kansas since the establishment of its territorial government. Criminals were aplenty in the old frontier days and the contract with Kansas was highly agreeable to the settlers who were glad to free Oklahoma of its "bad men." The territory paid the state forty cents a day for the maintenance of each convict kept in the Lansing penitentiary and adding to this the amount that the prisoners earned, Kansas received about forty-eight cents a day for each Oklahoma prisoner. The cost of food was about ten cents a day each.

From time to time stories drifted across the border about the treatment of prisoners, but not until last year when the territory became a state and when Kate Barnard became its first commissioner of charities, was anything done toward cleaning things up in Kansas. In August the new commissioner went to Lansing as a private citizen of Guthrie, Oklahoma, and inspected the prison with other visitors. Then she presented her official card and after considerable protest was allowed to inspect the jail as commissioner of charities of Oklahoma and the newest state in the Union proceeded to show her forty-eight-year-old sister what was going on in the Kansas penitentiary.

Miss Barnard found 562 men and thirteen women prisoners from Oklahoma. She spent a day crawling through the coal mines where the "props and supports of the roof were bent low under the weight of the dirt ceiling." She found that every prisoner who is put to work in the mines must dig three cars of coal a day or be punished for idleness. Three cars of coal a day is a good day's work for a strong man. Miss Barnard found seventeen-year-old boys who were unable to do their "stunt," as they called it, chained to the walls of their dark cells. She found "one Oklahoma boy shackled up to the iron wall of the dungeon. The lad was pale-faced, slender, boyish, and frail in appearance. I said: 'What are you doing here? Why don't you mind the authorities?' He answered: 'I don't know much about digging coal. I work as hard as I can; but sometimes the coal is so hard, or there is a cave-in, and it takes time to build up the walls, and then I just can't get the three cars of coal. I got over two cars the day they threw me in here.'"

The coal that is taken from the prison mines is used to supply the Kansas institutions, it is said. About 1,500 tons are mined a day. As there are some dozen institutions to be supplied, this makes over 100 tons a day for each of the state institutions.

In the prison twine factories the contractors are allowed to say just how much shall constitute a day's work, and as all men are not equally skillful, the inferior prisoner is pushed to the limit by fear of punishment, while the more capable ones fare much better.

Miss Barnard found that the "water cure" is in regular use; that the "water hole," "where they throw us in and pump water on us" is in operation; that the "crib" where refractory prisoners are kept with hands and feet shackled and drawn together at the back, was doing active service. She found unprintable immoralities existing in some parts of the mines and she found that since August, 1905, sixty boys from Oklahoma have been imprisoned with the men in the Lansing prison.

Miss Barnard's report seemed incredible to Governor Haskell. He sent another investigator who came back to Guthrie with new stories of the Lansing prison to add to Miss Barnard's.

And then the governor appointed a commission to make a thorough investigation of the institution and ex-Governor Hoch named a Kansas commission to co-operate. The latter body made its investigation before the Oklahoma delegation arrived. It made eighteen recommendations changing the whole prison management, but declared Miss Barnard's report true "only in minor details." The Oklahoma commission found that her report was true to fact and that the Lansing prison was not fit for a murderer, much less for a sixteen-year-old boy.

There is no state penitentiary in Oklahoma and the prisoners must be kept in the county jails for the present. This is another strong argument for the passage of the bill now before the Oklahoma Legislature for the establishment of a reformatory. It may be possible to arrange with the Department of Justice to transfer the prisoners to the United States Penitentiary at Leavenworth.

KOWALIGA SCHOOL DESTROYED BY FIRE

On the afternoon of January 30, the Kowaliga School for Negroes, located in the high pine lands of Elmore county, Alabama, was destroyed by fire. Only two buildings remain of that unique industrial settlement which has been successfully working among the Negroes of the surrounding community for thirteen years. The school was started by William E. Benson, a son of a former slave who had returned to the Alabama plantation after the war and become one of the South's most successful Negro farmers. Young Benson was graduated from Howard University and returning to his father's plantation saw the real need for a good school for the Negro children of the community. From Patron's Hall, built by the combined efforts of "the neighbors," Kowaliga School was started.

When the five buildings were burned there were 280 pupils and twelve teachers in attendance. The loss will be about $20,000 with practically no insurance owing to the extreme difficulty that Negroes always experience in the South in getting their property covered against loss.

The Kowaliga School is distinct in the service it is rendering to the community. Its aim is not to train skilled workmen or highly educated leaders, but rather to properly fit the Negro boys and girls of the community to live better in that community. The "book work" is carried as far as the eighth grade. The boys are taught agriculture and manual training and the girls are trained in the home life which they will probably take up on leaving school. As the school grew, Mr. Benson felt that it was not enough to train these boys and girls without giving them some opportunity to put their training to practical use. Consequently in 1900 the Dixie Industrial Company was founded "to improve the economic condition and social environment of the farm tenants of the South by establishing seasonal industries and furnishing them with steady employment the year round; to build better homes and help them to avoid the oppressions of the old system of mortgaging crops." The company now owns about 10,000 acres of farm and timber lands, operates a saw-mill, a turpentine still, cotton ginnery, cotton-seed and fertilizer mill, a store and forty farms, affording homes and employment for 300 people. It has a paid-up capital of $66,000, a surplus of $12,000, is earning eight per cent annually, and paying four per cent annual dividends.

The industrial company provides work the year round for the rural population and thus fills in the time of the seasonal workers who before were busy only about half the year.

The fire will not directly affect the Dixie Industrial Company. It will temporarily cripple the school and until funds are forthcoming that work must be discontinued. "It means beginning all over again after thirteen years' work," said Mr. Benson, who was in New York at the time of the fire; "but I am going back this week and make another start."

REVISING CHICAGO'S CIVIL SERVICE SYSTEM

A complete revision of the civil service system for Chicago is promised by Elton Lower, president of the City Civil Service Commission. After eight years' connection with the city departments the commissioner devoted himself for over a year mainly to studying the working of the civil service in Boston, New York, Washington and Chicago and to the examination of the promotional methods used by railway, manufacturing and other corporations. Securing requisite support from the city administration, he now announces a complete reversal of the form and revision of the rules under which the merit system has been operated in the city.

The distinctive features of the new plan are grading by duties, descriptive titles, defining the duties of the grades, uniformity of compensation within each grade, advancement from grade to grade only by competitive examination, and a greater degree of unity and independence in the departmental administration of efficiency tests and promotional procedure within its own bounds. Examinations in all departments and grades are to subordinate scholastic to practical tests, and to give greater importance to physical conditions and the investigation of character in order to meet the requirements of service, rather than require knowledge of facts. It is hoped to raise the standard of efficiency and promotion by taking the tests in each department from its own system of keeping records and accounts. As the departments will be held individually responsible for the way they keep these, the inevitable comparison and contrasts between them will tend to level their standards up to the highest.

Salaries may be raised only for an entire rank and not for individuals within the rank. Provision for grouping employes within the grades is made on the basis of efficiency, seniority or time required by service. The passing mark will be the only test of physical fitness. A similar flat-grading is proposed for work requiring skill and experience. Testing the applicant's qualifications in these respects, as is done for New York and Boston by the trade schools, is preferred for Chicago. A free transfer permits employes to pass from one department to another for promotional examinations, the original entrance examination thus giving a city employe a slight advantage over outsiders in competing for grades. Identification tests include finger prints.

The civil service commission began to institute these features among the employes of its own office some time ago. It first secured proper quarters and modern sanitary facilities, and then began training employes for its own work for which experienced applicants were lacking. Mr. Lower maintains that if such a system is firmly established and built up it will be likely to withstand lax administration because "it will take as much study and thought to tear it down as to construct it." Whatever wrong things may be introduced into it, he thinks, "will make conditions no worse than they have been under the system that has hitherto prevailed."

The Chicago Public Library will profit as much by the re-classification of its force and by this scheme of promotion as any other city administration, since its work has suffered more for the lack of finer tests of efficiency within more specialized grades, and also from being under the same regulations as other departments with whose requirements its service has little or nothing in common. To have a civil, self-regulating service system virtually its own, will free its directors, the librarian and his staff for that initiative which will give to this fourth largest library in the United States the leadership which may be rightly demanded for it.

ANOTHER ATTEMPT FOR A NEW CHICAGO CHARTER

The Chicago Charter Convention reassembled last week at its own initiative to renew its attempt to prepare a city charter that the Legislature will adopt and the people will accept at the polls. Its first laborious effort was so ruthlessly made over by the contending party factions in the Legislature two years ago that the measure suited no one. Many members of the convention repudiated it and the people overwhelmingly rejected it at the polls. To conserve their hard and fundamental work, the convention ventured to reassemble last autumn and appointed a committee to revise its own bill in the light of its fate at the capitol and the polls. In so doing the amendments made by the Legislature have been carefully considered and most of them eliminated. The measure thus nearly restored to its original form has been changed to conform to suggestions prompted by the criticisms and discussions through which the bill and act passed. This revision is now to come before the convention which faces many interesting and strenuously contested issues. Among them are the limiting of the city's bonded indebtedness to four per cent, the assumption by the city of ten per cent more of the cost of public improvements, municipal suffrage for women, stringent provisions against corrupt practices, the retention of the party circle on the ballot, the local regulation of the liquor traffic and the Sunday closing of saloons, the centralizing of school management, and the consolidation of four park boards.

Preliminary to all these issues the question is to be decided whether the convention will supersede itself by proposing to the Legislature either to authorize the election of a new charter commission by the people, or to call a constitutional convention. These proposals are not likely to interfere with the procedure of the present convention to complete its own charter bill. Notwithstanding the fierce factional fight that now absorbs the energies of the Legislature so that it has not yet attempted to attend to public business, one of the prominent members of the House of Representatives assured the convention that if it agreed upon a measure and rallied to its support the public sentiment of Chicago, it would be enacted and referred to the referendum vote of the people.

THE SCIENCE OF BETTER BIRTH

The scientific foundations for the slowly rising science of "eugenics" grow apace in the research laboratories of our universities. Some of their most authoritative representatives demonstrated this fact at the recent joint meeting of the Physicians' Club of Chicago and the Chicago Medical Society. In strictly scientific spirit and phrase, with interesting stereopticon illustrations of their biological experiments, four professors brought their facts to bear upon the doctors for their inferences as to the analogy between the heredity in animal and plant life, and the development of human kind. Two professors of zoology, Dr. Castle of Harvard and Dr. Tower of the University of Chicago gave respectively "an experimental study of heredity," and "experiments and observations on the modification and the control of inheritance." A beautiful parallel was presented by Dr. Gates, professor of botany at the University of Chicago, in studies of inheritance in the evening primrose. Dean Davenport of the College of Agriculture at the University of Illinois ventured the most direct application of the suggestions from scientific experimentations to the propagation of the human race. Drawing the lessons to be learned from the breeding of animals, he said that the question preliminary to any consideration of the subject is "whether the end of our breeding is to be the production of a few superior individuals, or the general elevation of the race. If it is the first, we must proceed as in the breeding of thoroughbred race horses; if it is the second, as in the production of good fat stock for the farm." Preferential mating, he thinks, produces in the long run, persons of exceptional talent. "Like mates with like, and people with exceptional ability in any line are naturally thrown together by their common tastes and thus uniting bring forth phenomenal individuals in all lines." The solution of the problem of the deterioration of the stock lies, he thinks, not so much in stricter marriage laws, as in the absolute prevention of reproduction among "the culls, human as well as animal." To colonize other classes of the unfit as strictly as we do the insane is the only way he sees of doing this. "Let a man be taken into court and his ancestor record investigated. If we find his parents were dominantly bad, it means that he is fifty per cent bad. If his grand parents were also bad, he is twenty-five per cent more bad. When he gets to ninety per cent bad, it is certain that he must be colonized. There is a strict mathematical law that runs through it all."

Whatever may be thought of such definite suggestions, it is too true as the secretary of the Physicians' Club affirms, that "man is at a distinct disadvantage when compared with domestic animals in being denied 'good' breeding. He is the child of chance and so to speak is born, not bred." Surely, however slowly, the science of improving the propagation of the human race will receive its recognition as having place among the hierarchy of the sciences and will be practically applied by those who respect themselves and have any regard for their posterity.

CONFERENCE ON DENTAL HYGIENE

The Conference on Oral and Dental Hygiene held in Boston recently brought out, perhaps more than anything else, the relation between, the physical condition of the teeth and the general health of the body, and the great necessity for lay intelligence in the matter. Prof. Irving Fisher of Yale, the opening speaker, dwelt on these points, and declared that civilized man tries to avoid mastication by the use of pulverized, liquified and pappified foods; that civilization has brought about a pressure of time with the result that we eat by the quick lunch counter and the clock, whereas the animal eats his meal in peace; that we eat too fast, to the injury of our teeth, as shown by the fact that those who do masticate food thoroughly have better teeth; and that experience shows thorough mastication results in better health and greater efficiency. Prof. Timothy Leary of Tufts College said that proper mastication does away with an important source of supply of putrefactive bacteria, and eliminates conditions favoring gastric cancer.

Dr. Samuel A. Hopkins believes that the solution of many of the difficulties lies in seeking out the educators and in working through them and through the various settlements and the workers in public and charitable institutions. Of particular importance are all those who work with children. William H. Allen of New York lays to the ignorance and the indifference and the carelessness of the public a great many of the difficulties. He believes that

if hospitals ever refuse to give bed treatment for twelve weeks to a man suffering from jaw trouble when the dentist could give "ambulant" treatment while the man supports himself and his family; if physicians ever stop spending time, money, medicine and hospital space on tubercular patients who reinfect themselves whenever food, medicine or saliva pass over their diseased teeth and gums; if dentists are ever generally added to the attending, visiting and consulting staffs of hospitals; if education of dentists for profit ever gives way to education for health and training; if the dental profession is ever given the rank with other specialties and society given the corresponding protection, it will be because laymen intervene.

Dr. Horace Fletcher declared that it is definitely known that the flow of gastric juices is started in the stomach by psychic stimuli. If the food is taken without enjoyment the juices are not secreted and the food remains undigested. "Any dispute at the table, an angry word, a discussion over a bill, or a sharp retort, are sufficient to stop this digestive process," he said.

Dr. David D. Scannell of the Boston School Committee made the startling statement that fully seventy-five per cent of Boston school children have dental disease, which means that there are about 75,000 school children in Boston needing attention. Dr. Scannell bases his statement upon investigations made in Brookline, New York, and through the district nursing associations. Dr. Scannell said that the present dental work in schools is done with good intention but it is sporadic. Money should be set aside for examination and treatment of all school children, conducted through an out-patient dental department on the same basis as the eye and ear departments of free treatment.

Dr. Walter B. Cannon of the Harvard Medical School showed the dangers lurking in school drinking cups. His statements were supplemented in the exhibit provided by the Dental Hygiene Council of Massachusetts by pictures showing a filthy vagrant using a public drinking cup, immediately followed by a mother who gave her little girl a drink from the same cup.

The exhibit is the only one in existence in this country. It was taken in part from the tuberculosis exhibit, but has been greatly increased and supplemented by an exhibit from Strasbourg.

In the closing session, President Eliot of Harvard pointed out the relation between defective physical conditions and defective government. "The bad physical condition of our people is due largely to the unhealthy conditions under which the men do their ordinary work and the women pursue their domestic employments. To improve the public health we must have better regulations and laws. We cannot create and improve the public playgrounds which are open air parlors without honest and efficient city and town government," he said. Dr. Eliot thinks that the medical profession is the most altruistic of all occupations, with the possible exception of the ministry.

INSURANCE AND BUILDING LOANS

One of the defects of the building and loan societies, long recognized in some quarters, has been the probable loss of the home to the family of the member who dies before payment has been completed. At the time when the widow most needs the home for her children, the payments cannot be met and the association is reluctantly obliged to foreclose the mortgage.

A plan to meet this situation, frequent in the aggregate, has been devised and practised in New England, by requiring the borrower to take out an insurance policy on the least expensive straight-life plan, to an amount equal to the mortgage. The insurance premium is payable monthly with the payment on the loan, the association turning it over to the insurance company, and undertaking to adjust the payments if the latter's premium periods do not coincide. The face of the policy is made payable to the loan association which, in case of death, takes from the insurance money the amount remaining unpaid on the mortgage, and gives the widow the balance with a deed for an unencumbered home. In the great majority of cases where the borrower lives to complete his payments, the policy is surrendered to him when his mortgage is cancelled, to be continued or dropped as he pleases.

The plan was described at the annual banquet of the Metropolitan League of Co-operative Savings and Loan Associations, New York, by J. Q. A. Brackett, former governor of Massachusetts, who is urging it on a national scale as a necessary adjunct to what, in his native state, is termed the co-operative bank.

More than two hundred men attended the banquet, representing ninety-five constituent companies with 35,129 depositors, and controlling assets of sixteen million dollars. One who attended could not fail to be impressed with the evident feeling of these men that their paramount duty is not to make money for their particular organizations, but to help the average member buy a home. Ninety per cent of them are unsalaried. One association, it was reported, has reduced its interest rate without request of its borrowers. In the words of the president, the main desire of building loan associations should be "the encouragement of the habit of saving without irritating penalties and restrictions and with equitable provision for the mishaps possible to those undertaking a contract for specific saving extending over a long period of years."

THE SIGHTLESS AND THEIR WORK

The wonderful gains made by the blind in overcoming their heavy handicap was brought strikingly to public attention at the second annual sale and exhibition of the New York Association for the Blind. Women were at work on small hand looms, on linen looms, and on carpet-weaving looms. A blind girl operated a power machine. Stenographers sat at their work, fingering ordinary typewriters, and transcribing notes from phonographic dictation. There were all the usual, simpler displays of chair caning, basket weaving and broom making and there was music, both vocal and instrumental. The guests were told interesting stories of many of the workers. One was of a man who applied to the association for help when first stricken blind and most despondent, thinking that all avenues of usefulness had been closed to him. As a result of the instruction given to him, he is now able to earn a good salary and to support his family.

The work of the association has so increased during the past year, that besides the building on Fifty-ninth street and the workshop on Forty-second street, the special committee for the prevention of blindness has an office in the Kennedy Building at 289 Fourth avenue. In co-operation with the State Department of Health the committee is working particularly toward the prevention of ophthalmia neonatorum. Following are the members of the committee: P. Tecumseh Sherman, chairman, Dr. Eugene H. Porter, Dr. Thomas Darlington, Dr. F. Park Lewis, Dr. J. Clifton Edgar, Thomas M. Mulry, Dr. John I. Middleton, Miss Louisa L. Schuyler, Mrs. William B. Rice, Mrs. Edward R. Hewitt, Miss Winifred Holt, Miss Lillian D. Wald and George A. Hubbell, executive secretary.

BERLIN'S SCHOOL OF PHILANTHROPY

Europe, and especially Germany, follow very closely every new experiment along social lines, undertaken by American cities or individuals. One imitation of American methods was the establishment of separate courts for children, though neither detention homes nor the splendidly equipped schools for delinquent boys and girls, which the most progressive states of the Union have, are found in Germany. The state governments in most cases do not take the initiative; private citizens study the question and urge the necessity for a change, until public opinion, thoroughly aroused comes out so strongly in favor of a new measure, that the authorities are forced to yield. In October, 1908, a social school for women opened its doors in Berlin with the help of different societies and in co-operation with private citizens, of whom Dr. Munsterberg is the best known to the readers of this magazine. A close study of the methods of the New York and Chicago Schools of Philanthropy had been made and some of their features successfully copied. The aim of the school is to give German women new chances for service whether they wish to devote some of their time as volunteers or desire to become paid officers of philanthropic agencies. Field practice will show how the same problems, which confront social workers, repeat themselves only in a smaller way in the families and individual. To the training in both theory and practice two years are devoted. The theoretical work in pedagogy, social questions, economics and domestic science, is supplemented in the first year by kindergarten and day nursery work, and in the second year by a special training gained through working at different social agencies, like the Bureau of Charity, juvenile court committees, relief and aid societies. All these agencies hope to get a staff of experienced helpers and workers through their co-operation with the school. The state's schools, through which the girls have to pass prior to their admission, have very little of the modern spirit. In contrast too with the great variety of courses in the state lyzeums, the courses are restricted in number and carefully selected. They are however most appropriate for women, since they present not only a picture of the development of modern society, but emphasize particularly woman's position.

The director, Dr. Alice Salomon, is one of the most able and conservative leaders of German women. There is a good attendance at the new school.

THE RUDOWITZ CASE

GRAHAM TAYLOR

The decision of Secretary Root to deny the demand of the Russian government for the extradition of Christian Rudowitz is a great relief to all true Americans, and thousands of their foreign born fellow citizens all over the land. The right of asylum for political refugees was at stake in the case of this Lutheran Protestant peasant. The extradition was demanded on the ground that he had been identified as one of a band of twelve or fifteen marauders who were guilty of three homicides, arson and robbery in the village of Beren, Courland, in January, 1906. The defendant denied the charges of personal participation in the alleged crimes and submitted proof that Courland was then in a state of temporarily successful insurrection, and that the killing was ordered by the revolutionary party then in control, as an execution of spies who had betrayed many of their own people into the hands of the military authorities by whom they were summarily shot.

The evidence upon which the whole case hinged was in the form of depositions taken in Russia and submitted by the government to the United States commissioner at Chicago. So well grounded were the suspicions with which it was regarded, that the whole record of the testimony was submitted to John H. Wigmore, dean of the Northwestern University Law School, one of the highest legal authorities in America, and author of one of the principal American text books on evidence. His careful analysis of the voluminous record in the case led him to conclude that while Rudowitz was a member of the revolutionary committee and voted for the execution of the spies, the evidence identifying him as one of the party charged with the killing "is too slight to be of any value"; that "there is no evidence of marauding or neighborhood feuds or common depredation on the part of this or any other band in any part of the evidence for the prosecution"; that there is conclusive evidence of a temporarily successful revolution "giving the military forces of the national government under their system certain rights of summary execution, and correspondingly giving such rights to the revolutionists, so as to fix upon their acts of summary force, if duly authorized by their officers, as revolutionary acts of force." These facts justified Dean Wigmore in concluding that "the killing was a purely political act, the arson was also ordered politically, being a customary incident similar to the existing government's own punitive practice in such cases."

The suspicions based upon such facts in this and other cases, aroused the American spirit against the apparent attempt of the Russian government to secure the extradition of many political refugees on poorly substantiated charges of being common criminals. Hundreds of men and women faced the possibility of being forced to change their names and hide themselves. Great mass meetings were held in the principal cities to protest not only against the extradition of Rudowitz, but against the continuation of the present treaty with Russia under which it was asked. Conservative citizens, to the American manor born, such as President Cyrus Northrup of the University of Minnesota, W. H. Huestis of Minneapolis, Charles Cheney Hyde, professor of International Law at Northwestern University, Councillor W. J. Calhoun of Chicago, joined their protests with those of recently arrived refugees and such friends of theirs as Jane Addams, Jenkin Lloyd Jones and Dr. Emil G. Hirsch. But beneath the value set upon this popular agitation for the defense of the right of asylum in America, was the confidence that there was good law under the case for Rudowitz, which would surely determine the decision of so good a lawyer as the secretary of state.

Now that this confidence has been confirmed, the question is being validly raised by the press whether the qualifications exacted of those appointed to United States commissionerships are as high as was originally demanded for the delicate and difficult duties of that office. It is pointed out that when in 1793 Congress first authorized such appointments by the circuit courts, it defined the qualifications of those eligible as "discreet persons, learned in the law." Later acts, however, dropped the requirement that they should be "learned in the law" and continued the reference to "discreet persons." In substituting "United States commissioners" appointed by the district courts for the commissioners of the circuit courts in 1896, Congress provided only that no United States marshal, bailiff or janitor of a building, or certain other federal employes should hold the office. Some of the most eminent lawyers, who publicly joined in protesting against the extradition of Rudowitz, took occasion to criticise the appointment to this office of men not trained in the law, and inexperienced in the sifting of evidence, whose decisions, involving the liberty and life of men, must be based entirely upon the knowledge of the laws of evidence. Certainly this case should lead either to stricter definition of the qualifications for United States commissionerships or to far greater care in the appointments to that important office. Moreover, the injustice of putting upon a political refugee the burden of proof that he is such has been made manifest in this case. For to do so Rudowitz would have been compelled not only to bring his evidence from Russia, but also to expose to certain death those whom he would have been compelled to name as his compatriots in the struggle for liberty.

SAVINGS BANK LEGISLATION: WHAT IS NEEDED?

JAMES H. HAMILTON[1]
Headworker of the University Settlement

"Everything speaks for and nothing against the post office savings bank," writes Professor J. Conrad of the University of Halle. This is strong testimony from a German economist who is a careful student in the field of social economics, and who lives in a country which has a splendid system of municipal savings banks. But if one looks beyond Prussia and Saxony into the province of Posen he sees great stretches of neglected territory. And in this country if one looks beyond Massachusetts, with its much praised trustee savings system, into New York and Pennsylvania he sees much to be desired,—and if he looks still further west he finds a sadder neglect than the neglect of free popular education in darkest Russia.

[1] Author of Savings and Savings Institutions; Macmillan, 1902. Pp. 436. Price $2.25. This book can be obtained at publisher's price through the offices of Charities and The Commons.

If we fully comprehend the fact that the savings bank is an educational, and not a commercial institution we will see at once that the law of supply and demand cannot properly regulate its growth. We will see on the contrary that if left to local initiative by either municipalities or trustees, the banks will likely appear where they are least needed and fail to appear where they are most needed, and the need of a general federal system, or a postal system, which will leave no neglected spots becomes perfectly clear. "Everything speaks for the post office savings bank."

Postmaster General Meyer, in his article in the August number of the North American Review, presents this country's need of a postal savings system in a very attractive and convincing way. I think, however, that the educational aspects merit more emphasis and more extended treatment. The public, I think, needs to recognize this institution not alone as the often successful rival of the saloon, the enemy of dissipating and destructive spending, but it needs also to recognize its relationship to the strong type of citizen, with resisting power against the petty immediate wants in the interest of greater economic security, the type that can save against the rainy day, the week of sickness, and the declining powers of the later years of life.

In my own judgment the highest function of the savings bank is to lead the workman back to the ownership of his tools, or since that is not literally possible, to a share in the ownership of the productive forces of society. The workman may not recognize in the share of stock, the bond, the equity in a title to real estate, the successor to the tools his forefather kept stored in his cottage. When he has been brought to see it and to make such ownership the goal of his ambition, his tribute of devotion to his wife and children, he will be a stronger and a better man in every respect, and the multiplication of this kind of citizen is as worthy an object of education as the spread of a rudimentary knowledge of letters. Universal proprietorship is no less desirable, from the social point of view, than universal education. The purpose of the savings bank is therefore not so much to instill the idea of hoarding for future spending, but of investing to increase the permanent income.

Having this in mind the provision of the English postal savings system for investing in government stocks for the depositor on his request is fully warranted, and even more so the French provision for investment of the excess of deposits over the legal maximum in government stocks without request. The deposit account itself represents investment,—by trustees on behalf of the depositors. But the depositor should eventually become a conscious owner on his own account. It would seem most proper that he be supplied with information which would enable him to form an independent judgment as to different securities, and the savings bank might very well act for him in making his first investment.

The one departure from precedent in Mr. Meyer's bill is in the investment of funds. It contemplates a system of loans to the local banks with a view to "keeping the money at home." The departure from the practice of investing in government securities may be good for the object intended, which relates to the incidents rather than the primary object of savings bank administration. It seems to me most unfortunate that Mr. Meyer should have selected a form of investment that would tend to defeat the primary object of savings banks in the necessarily low rate of interest. I think he must fail to fully realize that the savings bank is to educate the propertyless to become proprietors, to appreciate the need of supplementing the earnings of labor by income from accumulated capital, and not to serve as a mere place for hoarding. It is the interest rate that tickles this dormant sense into life. It seems to me a pity that he did not see in the example of the municipal savings banks in Germany and of our own trustee banks, which invest chiefly in real estate mortgages, a way of reaching the one object without injury to the other. This would be a departure from the general practice of postal savings systems which would at once "keep the money at home," and insure a higher rate of interest than the yield of government securities. Money thus invested would get back into the channels of trade as readily as if it were loaned to the local banks, and with much less objection, and the rate of interest would probably be about double. The yield should be four per cent against the two per cent proposed by the postmaster general's measure.

It is certainly most refreshing and encouraging to listen to the promise of legislation that extends its benefits immediately to the common people, which contains the hope of more social solidarity. A comparison of our policies with those of old world countries in this respect is not comforting to our patriotic pride. It seems time that we were less laggard and that we should have more courage to experiment. The promise made by all political parties of a postal savings bank is probably the most encouraging sign we have had. It would be much more encouraging if the measure that is promised contained more of the results of bold experiment in other countries and contained more of an original and experimental nature that promises a more pronounced application of the true principle of savings banks, and that fosters a clearer popular understanding of that principle. It is equally important that the principle be brought out in clear relief from the point of view of the administration and of the patrons. The administration needs clearly to understand that it is not conducting a banking business but giving education in thrift, and the youthful and other patrons need to understand that they are being led in the direction of economic independence.

SOCIAL EDUCATION[2]

Reviewed by HELEN F. GREENE

It is a long look forward and a wide one that Dr. Colin A. Scott takes in Social Education and one that social workers other than the teachers for whom the book was primarily written, will find themselves enriched by sharing.

[2] Social Education by Colin A. Scott, Boston, 1908. Pp. 300. Price $1.50. This book may be obtained at publisher's price through the offices of Charities and The Commons.

The school as a special organ of a constantly changing social order, must itself be easily capable of change. Instead of the uniformity on which the clan and early religions insisted must come the great variety of characters and capacities which the modern highly differentiated state demands.

How shall the school, called into existence by society for its own service and protection, most effectively educate the formers of the "New Society"?

Turning to real life for an answer we find that "society at its best organizes itself in groups in which each individual in the various groups to which he may belong finds himself in contact with others whose weakness he supplements or whose greater powers he depends upon." "If the school is to prepare for society as it is, it would be natural to expect that some such form of social activity, however embryonic, should be found as a necessary feature of its life." "The group must be capable of going to pieces, a thing it cannot do if it is to depend on the authoritative backing or constraint of the teacher. Indeed it is only when it can go to pieces that there is any reality in the effort to hold it together." "True responsibility and even obedience of the highest type is felt only when the group is free."

The positive view of liberty and independence is urged, not the negative one which teachers,—and he might have added club leaders,—are too prone to take. "If children are to be trained socially, they must feel the full effects of social causes,—not merely of society at large, but especially those of the embryonic society of child life to which they belong. They must study these effects practically, and must see to what extent, as social beings, they are real causes themselves. It is on a basis of experience of this kind that they can best interpret the larger and more complex life of adult society and the state."

Declaring social serviceableness and the highest development of personality "to be the aims of the school, he urges that there shall be some test of its success in securing these." "This test can be found only in the extent to which pupils, when freed from the oversight and benevolent coercion of the teacher, can use the knowledge and carry out the habits and ideals which it is the aim of the school to foster and protect."

In the three succeeding chapters, three types of school in which the social spirit has been specially manifest are criticized according to this test. The schools are: (1) Abbotsholme, the "monarchy," under the principalship of Dr. Cecil Reddie; (2) The George Junior Republic; (3) The Dewey School.

In each he finds "elements of a high degree of social value, and an approximate solution of the problem of educative social organization."

But it is in the two following chapters on Organized Group Work, fragments of which appeared in the Social Education Quarterly of March, 1907, that Dr. Scott makes his own most valuable contribution to the problem. It is an attempt to show how it is possible, "even with crowded classes and without special equipment, to obtain in the people's schools, those co-operative and self-sustaining motives which are worthy of democracy and best able to measure the teachers' work."

The experiences which he describes he calls "experiments simply in the sense that all life is experimental, and they were devised with the view that the development of intention and resourcefulness on the part of the pupil is the greatest and most undeniable duty of any form of education."

The method was as follows: Each teacher said to her class: "If you had time given to you for something that you enjoy doing, and that you think worth while, what should you choose to do?

"When you have decided how you would spend the time, come and tell me about your plan. You may come all together, or in groups, or each by himself; but whatever you say you want to do, you must tell the length of time you will need to finish it, and how you expect to do it."

A most varied and interesting set of plans resulted. A printing group; cooking groups; groups for bookbinding; many for the writing and giving of plays, suggestive of the festival work of the Ethical Culture School, which has already been so helpful to club leaders.

The history of these groups, their human and humorous experiences:—of the child who was "bossy" and the way in which the group handled her,—are given in delightful detail and carry conviction with them as to the worth of the method.

To one judging socially and not pedagogically the closing chapter on The Education of the Conscience is disappointing. It seems to keep too much to the idea of personal morality as an end rather than as a means to the more vital and individually inspiring and healthful social morality; and to admit of the implication that the moral side of school life is a thing at least a little apart, rather than finding, when given a teacher with the right spirit, that, to quote Dr. Dewey, "every incident of school life is pregnant with ethical life."

[PITTSBURGH SURVEY]
INTRODUCTORY TO THIS ISSUE

This second Pittsburgh issue deals with certain physical necessities of a wage earning population. It shows a city struggling for the things which primitive men have ready to hand,—clear air, clean water, pure foods, shelter and a foothold of earth. Thus we have in Pittsburgh a smoke campaign, a typhoid movement and the administrative problems of the Bureau of Health in milk and meat inspection; thus we have the necessity for sanitary regulation of dwellings wherever people live dense or deep, whether squatters' shanties such as those of Skunk Hollow or company houses such as those of Painter's Row, whether city tenements or mill-town lodgings; and the necessity further for increased numbers of low-cost dwellings. Similarly, flood prevention, traction development, bridge building and the like are so many efforts to expand, or conquer the difficulties of, the town's corrugated floor.

The first issue of this series, that of January 2, pointed out that with the moving into Pittsburgh of new and immigrant peoples, the spirit of the frontier and of the mining camp possessed the wage-earning population. This spirit has characterized civic development. Wherever there has been profit in public service, private enterprises have staked their claims to perform it. While the biggest men of the community have made steel, other men have built water companies, thrown bridges across the rivers, erected inclines and laid sectional car lines. To bring system and larger public utility out of these heterogeneous units, has become the present governmental problem of the city.

In a sense, this situation is repeated with respect to the institutions transplanted into Pittsburgh, or initiated there, to meet the cultural and social needs of the community. Thus we have local alderman's courts, unco-ordinated charitable enterprises, and a ward system of schools. The trend of the decade here, too, is obviously toward system,—toward a municipalization of lower courts, an expansion of the health service, an association of charities, a city system as against a vestry system of schools, a civic improvement commission that will focalize public sentiment in all movements for municipal improvement.

In the third and final issue of the series, that of March 2, the emphasis will be transferred from the civic to the industrial well-being of the wage-earning population,—the vital and irrepressible issues of hours, wages, factory inspection, accidents and the cost of living.

A supplementary group of studies,—of the libraries, schools, playgrounds and children's institutions of Pittsburgh,—will also be published in the issue of March 2.

[PITTSBURGH]
THE PLACE AND ITS SOCIAL FORCES.

FORT PITT IN 1759.

The first town plan of the Point of Pittsburgh.

The second of three special issues of Charities and The Commons, presenting the gist of the findings of the Pittsburgh Survey, as to conditions of life and labor among the wage-earning population of the Pennsylvania Steel District.

I. JANUARY 2-THE PEOPLE. II. FEBRUARY 6-THE PLACE. III. MARCH 2-THE WORK.

PITTSBURGH SOCIAL FORCES 1908

For profiles, lines A.-B.; C.-D.; and E.-F.—see pages 834 and 835.

[A CITY COMING TO ITSELF]

ROBERT A. WOODS HEAD OF SOUTH END HOUSE, BOSTON

The capacity for being seen with the eye in the large, which New York in her sky scrapers has purchased at so great a price, is the birthright of Pittsburgh. Where from so many different points one sees the involved panorama of the rivers, the various long ascents and steep bluffs, the visible signs everywhere of movement, of immense forces at work,—the pillars of smoke by day, and at night the pillars of fire against the background of hillsides strewn with jets of light,—one comes to have the convincing sense of a city which in its ensemble is quite as real a thing as are the separate forces which go to make it up.

The Allegheny River, providing a broad, open space up and down and across which much of this drama of modern world industry may be viewed, has at last come to mean not separation but identity of the population on either side of it. If the banks of the river were improved, it might easily be sentimentally as well as economically one of the most important common possessions of the old and the new sections of Greater Pittsburgh.

This tendency of cities to reach out and include their present suburbs, and even the territory where their future suburbs are to be,—a tendency which a few years ago was mocked at,—is in these days seen to be normal and wise. The proper planning of the city's layout, the proper adjustment of civic stress upon the different types of people in a great urban community, demand the inclusion of the suburbs. Greater Pittsburgh is less satisfactory than Greater New York and Greater Chicago, only because it is less inclusive than they. Some important suburbs of old Pittsburgh are not included, and the suburbs of Allegheny are nearly all outside. The latter omission is particularly unfortunate as it is doubtful whether Allegheny by itself will raise the average civic and moral standard of the greater city. It is regrettable too that Allegheny continues to show reluctance in making common cause with her larger neighbor. The toll bridges and the many obstacles against making them free, seem to typify the difficulty of intercommunication. The two towns, however, so clearly belong together that this feeling of clan cannot long survive. From nearly every commercial point of view that is worth considering Allegheny is dependent upon Pittsburgh. In the few exceptional instances, as in the case of two or three large stores, Pittsburgh recognizes a measure of dependence upon Allegheny. It is interesting that those of the old families connected with Pittsburgh industries who still insist on having town houses, reside on the Allegheny parks or commons.

A strong sense of corporate individuality comes to any community that is arrested by the challenge of great tasks. One of the influences leading to the creation of the greater city was the widening of the territory administered industrially from Pittsburgh. The best oil wells are now south rather than north of Pittsburgh, and the center of the coal regions is fast passing from the southeast to southwest and on into West Virginia. The necessity of easy transfer of iron ore from the Superior region is bringing up insistently the proposal of a canal to Lake Erie, so as to match some of Cleveland's special advantages. The nine-foot channel for the whole length of the Ohio will enable Pittsburgh's long arm to reach out and touch that of Cincinnati.

That the expansion of Pittsburgh was preceded and to some extent directed by a reform administration, has tended greatly to re-enforce the belief that Pittsburgh is moving organically toward the better day in her public affairs. This is the first successful movement for municipal reform in a generation. As I pointed out in my first article, it got its immediate stimulus out of the impudent interference of the state machine in unseating a mayor who had been elected by an opposing local faction, and setting up a "recorder" in his place. Carried out under the forms of legislation, this act stung Pittsburgh people into a new feeling of municipal self-respect and led to their electing on a Democratic ticket George W. Guthrie, who had been for many years actively interested in the cause of municipal reform. Mr. Guthrie's family, like the Quincys of Boston, has been represented for three generations in the office of mayor.

Mayor Guthrie has made thorough application of the principles of civil service reform. He has introduced business methods in the awarding of all contracts, including the banking of the city's funds. In a city where only a few years ago perpetual franchises were given to a street railway covering every section, Mayor Guthrie has, so far as the situation allowed, put in force the strictest new conception of the public interest in relation to public service corporations. He compelled the Pennsylvania Railroad to cease moving its trains through the middle of what is potentially the best downtown street in the city. The street railway company was required for the first time to clean and repair the streets, to meet the cost of changes required by the work of city departments, and to pay bridge tolls. Loose and costly business methods in the city departments were radically checked, and accounts with long arrearages involving heavy interest losses to the city, were brought up to date. The cost of electric lighting to the city has been reduced from ninety-six to seventy-two dollars a lamp. Economies have been effected through having the city do some of its own asphalt paving and water-pipe laying.

Along with economical departmental service have gone the intelligent and effective efforts, which will be explained in other survey reports, for improving the water supply, abating the smoke nuisance, combating typhoid fever and tuberculosis by wholesale inroads upon almost unbelievable sanitary evils, and for restraining and punishing the exploiters of prostitution.

Not all American reform administrations can report a decline of two mills in the rate of taxation. Had Pittsburgh not been compelled to shoulder a special burden in including Allegheny's large municipal costs accompanied with low property valuation, Mayor Guthrie would have held the rate at this low point.

Under the new charter the mayor cannot succeed himself; so that the question whether Mayor Guthrie could be successful with the enlarged electorate is a theoretical one. Even if the machine should be successful, a standard has been set which the citizens will remember and return to.

Under the determined leadership of A. Leo Weihl, a Voters' League has employed such methods for keeping proper standards before the voters as have been successful in Chicago, Boston and other cities. Within a few weeks, after a year or more of clever and determined pursuit, seven members of councils and two bank officials have been arrested on a charge of bribery. The officers of the league state that this step is but the beginning. It is not claimed that this means anything more than the highly public-spirited activity of a few citizens, and it may be, as is currently reported, that such activity became possible in that certain great financial interests decided to change their policy as to dealing with city officials. However it became possible it meant exposure and disgrace to a system which was rooted in traditions in Pittsburgh. Just as this tradition was broken once in the election of Mayor Guthrie as a result of a bitter sting to the self-respect of the city; so now there is a cheering prospect that this poisoned goad will rouse and mobilize an instinct for carrying moral reforms to the limit which is very powerful in Pittsburgh when a situation forces the issue.

The present phase of political chicanery touches the banks, and the reaction against it will be re-enforced by the growing concern of the community in the face of bank defalcations amounting altogether to not less than five million dollars within the past four years, some if not all of which involved mysterious political complications.

GEORGE W. GUTHRIE.

Mayor of Pittsburgh.

Such an extreme outbreak of crime is related to the transition stage through which the city is passing. Along with the intoxicating accumulation and expenditure of wealth, the old type of dominating, watchful, industrial and financial leader has disappeared,—that which is typified by Mr. Carnegie, B. F. Jones,—whose firm continues the largest independent steel concern in Pittsburgh,—the Parks, the Moorheads, the Olivers, the Laughlins. The large industrial interests are in the main turned into bureaucracies whose plans in detail are decided in New York, and whose officials must guide their public actions so as to serve the corporations' interests. The merchants and professional men of the city who have always deferred to the manufacturers, have only recently begun to assert themselves. It is perhaps natural that civic co-operation should make a more effective appeal to the merchants than the manufacturers, the merchants' constituency and scene of action being very largely local. Mayor Guthrie's election was a result of this new organized element in the life of the city. His work has in the nature of the case been largely the lopping off of old evils and the piecing together of a system of administration which shall embody standards of honesty and business efficiency.

Will the people of Pittsburgh be ready for the further stage of sound reconstruction, for the unified, organic development of the city as a thing in itself; for the application to the common welfare of those coherent, adventurous principles which have made possible the magnificent prosperity of the few? The proper answer to this inquiry must regard the time perspective. A strong momentum of public spirit and social service from out of the past, Pittsburgh, in becoming a great population center, did not possess. But in the last ten years the progress of this community, to one who can test it in varied and intimate ways, has proved in such matters highly significant and promising.

There are significant results, for instance, of the collective action of business men for the enhancement of the general interests of the city. Such effort leads first indirectly and then directly to the improvement of the city as a place in which to live.

Two considerable changes in the layout of the downtown part of the city have been brought about by special branches of trade. The wholesale grocers and the wholesale provision men have been for generations located on Liberty and Penn avenues west of the Union Station. Recently the latter have taken possession of a territory beginning a few blocks farther east and reaching for a quarter of a mile along Penn avenue, and through to the Allegheny River. A large number of the meanest tenement houses have been swept away by this process, and facilities provided for receiving and distributing fruits and vegetables, a distinct gain toward a hygienic urban commissariat. The wholesale grocers have cleaned up an equally large and equally unsanitary tenement area on the South Side, and have built vast subdivided warehouses under a single general management. Perhaps the most important aspect of these great co-operative improvement plans is the suggestion they give of the capacity of Pittsburgh citizens for making other broad modifications in the structure of the city, such as the improvement of its river fronts, the proper planning of its thoroughfares and public centers, and above all the sanitary and adequate housing of its industrial population.

It is indeed by its bold pioneering in such directions as these that the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, chiefly under the leadership of H. D. W. English, has come to have an ever-growing authority in Pittsburgh, and a rather unique reputation and influence in other parts of the country. Greater Pittsburgh, as it is, with the provision for further expansion from time to time, is largely the result of the chamber's persistent effort. The improvement of the Ohio River which is to be undertaken at once by the national government, and the organization of a company to build the canal to Lake Erie, are also results of its initiative. The reduction of the smoke nuisance, the provision of a proper system of sewage disposal, the study of plans for protection against floods, and, most noteworthy of all, the inclusion of the hygienic housing of the people in the list of the city's chief economic problems, are among the statesmanlike undertakings which the chamber has been effectively promoting. The Chamber of Commerce is reinforced by local boards of trade covering the chief outlying sections of the city and including in their membership not only representatives of business carried on locally, but downtown business men who reside in the district. The boards of trade have been infected by the broad spirit of the Chamber of Commerce, and are in essence district improvement societies whose activities are focussed and forwarded by their business-like motive and methods.

It can hardly be that any city has ever had so great re-enforcement of its finer life from the beneficence of a private citizen as has Pittsburgh. Under the general title of Carnegie Institute are included a public library, a museum, an art gallery, and a music hall. These, under one roof, cover an area of five acres. At a little distance are the Carnegie Technical Schools with grounds covering thirty-six acres. The total sum which Mr. Carnegie has given these different objects is upwards of $11,000,000.

H. D. W. ENGLISH.

Chairman, Civic Improvement Commission, Pittsburgh.

The library contains 300,000 volumes. The annual circulation is nearly three times this number. The service rendered by the library is greatly increased by aggressive and ingenious missionary work. There are six well-equipped branch libraries with 170 distributing stations throughout the city. Half of these are in the shape of little reading clubs and home libraries for children, conducted by the library management itself. This branch of the library's work has grown so much as to justify the establishment of a school for children's librarians. The fact that the library exists to discover and elicit new demands is made clear in the establishment of a "telephone reference," through which any person may have a subject looked up for him and a report quickly made. There are indeed more than sentimental reasons for the cherished feeling in Pittsburgh that this is the bright particular exemplar of all the Carnegie libraries.

LEE S. SMITH.

President, Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, Member Civic Improvement Commission.

The art gallery, some parts of which are of exceeding beauty, includes permanent exhibits of painting, sculpture and architecture. Its chief service to art thus far has consisted in a regular annual international exhibition of paintings. A very suggestive plan is followed for interesting school children in the galleries and in pictures generally. A set of photographs of the entire permanent collection is placed in one school after another for periods of two weeks each. It is expected that a continuous circuit will be kept up in this way requiring two years on each round.

The museum stands among the four chief institutions of its kind in this country. It is under expert and enterprising management. A considerable part of its collections have been gathered by its own expeditions. Like the art gallery, it appeals directly to the public schools by sending out circulating collections, conducting prize essay contests, and by carrying on a young naturalists' club.

O. H. ALLERTON, JR.

President, Pittsburgh Board of Trade, Member Civic Improvement Commission.

The music hall represents among this noble group of cultural agencies the one which simply continues the results of a significant phase of the city's inherent growth; for since 1879 Pittsburgh has had some sort of worthy musical festival every year. The weekly free organ recitals are a commendable transfer to America of a well recognized form of municipal service in English cities. It is unfortunate for this purpose that the hall should not be more accessible to great numbers of people. The symphony concerts of the Pittsburgh Orchestra, whose seasons have continued during the past twelve years, are given partly in this hall and partly (in certain years) in the Exposition Building near the Point.

T. E. BILLQUIST.

Architect, Member Civic Improvement Commission.

The Carnegie Technical Schools represent the farthest steps yet taken in this country in providing vocational training for those entering non-professional callings. Considering that the greatest weakness of the whole American scheme of education is precisely at this point, the progress of the Carnegie Schools is being watched with keen attention, on both the educational and the economic side, from all parts of the country. Thus far schools of applied design and of applied science, a special vocational school for women, and a school for apprentices and journeymen, have made a strikingly successful beginning. All the schools are open day and evening. The present enrollment includes 2,000 students representing every state in the Union and many foreign countries. It can be said of the administration of the schools that it is worthy of its opportunity. The staff of instructors shows a rare spirit of fresh initiative, of quick and varied flexibility of mind, and of thoroughgoing achievement.

JOHN W. BEATTY.

Director of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute, Member Civic Improvement Commission.

The University of Pittsburgh, is new in name but has in reality existed for more than a century. The institution has, however, not found Pittsburgh conditions conducive to academical development. Its engineering department has, somewhat to the regret of the university authorities, been by far its most important feature. A strong effort is now being made to build it up into a university worthy of a great city. A new site has been purchased and an exceptionally interesting plan for the various buildings has been accepted. When completed these structures will describe a circle up and down a hillside looking out over Schenley Park, with an administration building modelled after the Parthenon as a crowning effect.

The presence of all these educational institutions at the entrance of Schenley Park, with its 420 acres, situated within twenty minutes' ride by electric cars from the heart of the city and on the way to the chief residential sections of Greater Pittsburgh, creates a civic center with a condensed attractiveness and resourcefulness that is already definitely re-enforcing the public imagination.

All this cluster of enlightened agencies, however, to the discerning eye points by contrast to the ultimate, close analysis of economic as well as moral conditions among the people in all the less-favored sections of the city and in all the satellite industrial towns. The conception of a direct community of interest between employer and workman, particularly if the workman is a leader in his craft, begins to be visible as in a few streaks of dawn. But the mass of the unintelligible Hungarians and Slavs must be reached by the more generous and democratic sense of responsibility on the part of employers and the more prosperous classes generally. The work of the next decade is to bring them on a really large scale into the circle of American citizenship and up to the essential standards of American home life.

The touchstone of progress and success in this great enterprise lies first of all with the public schools. The public school system of Pittsburgh is in very many respects behind accepted standards. Its chief defects come out of the faulty system of administration. Every ward has its local school board with the power of levying taxes, erecting buildings, and appointing teachers. This means that in some wards there is a good quality of instruction and properly developed curriculum, while other wards fall far short. It happens from this condition of things that in the working-class wards there is little or no provision for manual training; and in general the points of greatest need are the most poorly supplied. Objectionable political methods on the part of the local boards are pretty clearly in evidence; and such tendencies are by no means absent from the central board. Signs of progress are, however, becoming apparent here and there throughout the school system. The Carnegie Technical Schools are having a powerful influence in this direction. In the South Side, under direct encouragement from this source, and with the co-operation of local manufacturers, an evening trade school has been opened. There have been experiments in the direction of medical inspection and school nursing. There is an active agitation among the teachers for a parental school. In general the whole problem of public school administration has been thrown open for debate by the appointment of a capable state commission to report upon the subject. It is thought that for one thing it will recommend the practical abolition of the power of the local boards, so that they become simply visiting committees.

The high school in Pittsburgh is and always has been an important educational influence. In popular sentiment, it occupies a place somewhat analogous to that of the College of the City of New York. In order to make its service as general as possible the present director sends to the parents of all children graduating from the grammar school an interesting printed statement of the concrete objects and value of the high school. The pressure of the demands of industry as against the attraction of general studies is of course keenly felt. An evening high school with a definitely vocational trend has recently made an encouraging beginning.

The Pennsylvania method of combining public subsidy with private initiative is followed in connection with the kindergartens. A private association has supervision of all the kindergartens in the public schools as well as of some carried on in private institutions. There are altogether eighty-one kindergartens in this system. It is felt that, at least in the early stages, this method of control brings better standards of teaching and assures such collateral work as visiting in the children's homes and conducting mothers' meetings. It is needless to say, however, that in the long run such a division of responsibility will be injurious in point of effective service and of a proper sense of responsibility in the public administrative officers.

This sort of apprehension is all that qualifies in the least one's impression of the admirable work of the Pittsburgh Playground Association. Its activity began twelve years ago, and now,—with an off-shoot in Allegheny,—includes the administration of six well-equipped recreation parks, twenty-four vacation schools held in school buildings, and a number of small playgrounds. The center of the system is the site of an old arsenal, thirty acres in extent, in the midst of a great working class district. At every point in all this work, discriminating effort is made to achieve positive educational results as well as to bring healthful enjoyment to the largest possible number of persons. In this respect, as well as in the definite prospect of appropriations sufficient to provide every now neglected section of the city with an ample playground, Pittsburgh stands at the forefront in this most vital phase of educational and civic advance.

JOSEPH BUFFINGTON.

Judge United States Circuit Court and one of the first citizens of Pittsburgh.

Like Chicago and other typical American cities where men are deeply absorbed in business, women have contributed a particularly important share to public betterment work. The Civic Club of Allegheny County, in which women have for the most part been the active spirits, and various women's organizations, particularly the Twentieth Century Club and the Council of Jewish Women, have accomplished many telling results in this direction. The Civic Club has the direct management of two people's bath houses; but its main service consists not in work of administration but rather in initiating enterprises to meet new problems as they arise, and then setting them loose to develop permanent organizations on their own account. In this way the club started the playground association, a municipal hospital for contagious diseases, manual training in the public schools, a legal aid society, an open-air tuberculosis camp, and a child labor association, beside having an active share in the creation of the juvenile court and the securing of progressive tenement-house legislation.

WILLIAM M. KENNEDY.

President, Civic Club of Allegheny County.

In the field of charity and philanthropy Pittsburgh shows a very substantial degree of activity and earnest motive. Very much is needed, however, both in the way of more enlightened specific and local execution and of broader co-operation for economy and completeness in each type of social service. The staff of the Pittsburgh Survey has had the privilege of submitting to many institutions and agencies the accredited results of recent experience in other cities and countries. Such suggestions have been cordially received and in some instances at once acted upon. The Pittsburgh Associated Charities, which has been organized within the year, has secured the support of nearly every phase of charitable endeavor in the city. It represents the immediate advantage which Pittsburgh, under the spur of organizations like the Civic Club, has taken of the Survey's presentation of the practical conclusions of scientific charity. The Associated Charities is so new that nothing can be said about results in the ordinary sense; but in contrast to the confusion which existed until a year ago, its clear cogent platform covering both remedies and reforms, its straight appeal to the practical men, its strong representative board, and its fit and well convinced executive officer, are achievements of the first order.

D. P. BLACK.

President Real Estate Trust Company, Member Civic Improvement Commission.

HENRY L. KREUSLER.

(Building Construction), Member Civic Improvement Commission.

The development of the great filtration project has naturally stimulated other movements for the improvement of the public health. In this direction the municipal health department is a broadly and consistently helpful influence. The fight against tuberculosis is carried on effectively by both public and private agencies. The special commission of experts appointed by the mayor and aided financially by the Sage Foundation for tracing causes of typhoid fever aside from the water supply, will render a most important service to Pittsburgh as well as to the whole country. The successful record of the filtration plant in greatly reducing the amount of typhoid in the city, gives added point to this scientific effort to rid out the last lurking places of infection. In general, however, it must be said that the self-forgetful abandon with which many medical men in other American cities are bringing their priceless knowledge to bear upon public unsanitary conditions and unhygienic ways of life,—a type of effort which both in motive and result may almost be taken as the test of a city's progressive civilization,—has hardly as yet reached Pittsburgh. The exceptions,—notable ones,—are of the sort that prove the rule.

CHARLES F. WELLER.

Secretary of the new Associated Charities, Pittsburgh; member Pittsburgh Civic Improvement Commission; former secretary Washington Associated Charities and President's Homes Commission.

The co-ordination of charitable effort, both in its different kinds and in its different localities, is a step which needs now to be followed by the federation of agencies for social upbuilding. The playgrounds which are fast becoming the headquarters of a kind of neighborhood guild, will furnish a substantial part of the material for this comprehensive social formation. In such enterprise, organized local citizenship, especially as seen in the boards of trade, will undoubtedly afford valuable re-enforcement to the distinctively philanthropic motive. The settlement houses of which there are several, might naturally take the lead. Such a federation would ensure to each local agency information about the results of experience at every other; it would bring the momentum of concrete local knowledge to bear upon the public school system and other parts of the public administration; it would draw into the work of constructive local betterment many resourceful new individuals and new agencies, thus spreading throughout the city the new point of view in citizenship; it would bring forward from the congested sections of the city those rear detachments of citizenship without which municipal reform must continue to be shallow and casual. In the development and extension of local social organization lies much of the promise of widespread growth of public spirit in Pittsburgh. The people have a distinct capacity for the invaluable village type of loyalty. This can in due time with expanding experience be made into the most enduring type of city loyalty,—that based on neighborly co-operation gradually extended and writ large but carrying with it always that sense of reality, that nearness to the soil, in which it began.

FRANCIS J. TORRANCE.

President Pennsylvania Board of Public Charities.

Kingsley House was founded in 1894 by Rev. George Hodges, now dean of the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Mass., but for twelve years a strong influence for realistic Christianity in Pittsburgh. It has grown to be an important center for progressive social service, and from its commanding position on a hill looking over the business section of the city it exercises an influence for social morality far beyond its immediate constituency. Its regularly organized work is gathered up into two large composite clubs, one having a membership of 600 boys and young men, the other about as many girls and young women. An average of half the total membership appears at the house daily for gymnastic training, games, industrial classes, discussions, music, etc. The tenement problem and the whole hygienic aspect of life among working people receive penetrating and persistent attention, and the importance of the service of the house in this direction is recognized throughout the city. Closely involved with such a campaign is the large country holiday work of this settlement, whereby some 4,000 persons are each summer provided for at a specially built and finely equipped vacation house.

REV. GEORGE HODGES.

Dean of the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Mass.; founder of Kingsley House, Pittsburgh.

The Columbian School and Settlement which is farther up in the "Hill District," is supported by public-spirited Jewish citizens. The usual variety of clubs and classes is provided, and their opportunities are received with even more than the usual eagerness by the children of recent Russian immigrants. Much attention is given to education in hygiene by means of a gymnasium, baths, and instructive district nursing, as well as through securing the enforcement of sanitary laws. This settlement has given special attention to the very useful function of serving as pacemaker to the public schools, in the matter of evening industrial schools, recreative centers and vacation schools.

WILLIAM H. MATTHEWS.

Head worker, Kingsley House, Pittsburgh; a forceful leader in the housing campaign, Member Civic Improvement Commission.

The Soho Baths Settlement adjoins a new bath house just erected by the Civic Club, and designs to supplement its service through personal influence in the homes of the neighborhood. The Woods Run House in Allegheny has taken a new start since separating its relief work from its work of neighborhood organization. Covode House, also in Allegheny, is substantially the "industrial betterment" phase of the Heinz pickle factory.

The churches of Pittsburgh, which, now with a few exceptions seem to regard as a secular intrusion the introduction of broad civic interests into their counsels, and thereby often appear shamefully indifferent in matters of public morality, could be led to take part in a campaign for a better home and neighborhood life, and would soon learn practically the close bearing of all human facts upon character and spirit. Those ministers who preside over the costly and surprisingly numerous stone edifices throughout the East End, would thus be able to meet their most serious problem, that of bringing up young people with some practical sense of their responsibilities to the less favored. The downtown ministers, who are deep in gloom as to the future of their own parishes if not of the church in general, would begin to see how to touch and to serve the indifferent newcomers, and would make an effective claim on the suburban churches for assistance.

The churches of Pittsburgh constitute an exceptionally important possibility in the direction of social reconstruction. Our canvass of the Protestant churches showed that a large proportion of them at least recognize the need of new forms of helpfulness and are making some effort to meet it. A large number of pastors are already organizing their congregations for a somewhat broader social service. The Catholic churches are under the care of a noble-minded bishop who is doing his utmost to make the existing system of the church provide for its vast inarticulate constituency. Many of the immigrant priests are sincere and sagacious men. The more progressive Jewish congregations do their full share in sustaining and advancing the public moral standards of the city and in promoting sound philanthropy.

Yet among all the costly ecclesiastical structures,—the city is said to have $17,000,000 invested in church buildings,—there are only three or four which have any adequate equipment for the promotion of human service or friendly association. The responsibility of the rich congregations for re-enforcing the poorer ones in their struggle against adverse conditions is scarcely recognized.

The problem is as in other cities. In the most crowded sections, the normal constituency of the Protestant churches has been swept away by the immigrant tide. In somewhat better conditioned neighborhoods, families have moved away and the homeless, neighborless lodger has taken their place. That is, the fundamental conditions which have created and directed the churches have disappeared; and only a broadly organized, well financed campaign can provide the fresh force, equipment, intelligence, which are indispensable to the revolutionized situation.

ADDIE S. WEIHL.

Head worker, Columbian Settlement, Pittsburgh.

The suburban churches side-step the present crisis. They are sincere but other-worldly. One minister who is genuinely interested in foreign missions feels it much on his conscience to make his people care less about the Orient and more about the East End. A few preachers deal with a present-day, near-home kingdom of God. Some presented the results of the Survey to their people; more entered into solemn account of stock at the time of the bribery arrests. The following of the churches is large, devout, loyal; but, on the whole, the church is a hospitable garrison to defend the faith, not a conquering army of righteousness.

JULIAN KENNEDY.

Consulting engineer, Member Civic Improvement Commission.

Religion as being one-half the ingenuity and adventure of diversified personal service in every kind of neighborly and civic fellowship; the truth which Dr. Parkhurst long ago voiced, that the congregation is not the minister's field but his force,—this is what has produced Pittsburgh's small but heroic group of present civic leaders. A widespread contagion of it is what Pittsburgh needs more than anything else. In this the city must find its chief resource for bringing about and continuing a better order. The response of the churches to the sickening series of breaches of trust, to bribe giving and bribe-taking, to the overwork that means debauchery, to the mill-owners' Sabbath-breaking that breaks the mill-worker's body and soul,—must be a bold relaxing from tradition and letting their dynamic go free. The outcome would be a new synthesis which would overcome the weakness and shame of sectarianism, and give a broad, strong front to the city's renascent moral life.

JOSEPH W. MARSH.

Vice-president and general manager, Standard Underground Cable Company, Member Civic Improvement Commission.

Along with the detailed, patient, comprehensive work that is needed to build up a moralized democracy, the industrial and commercial leaders of the community, including those who are the responsible representatives of absentee capitalists and landlords, must rise to a far more generous, not to say discerning, conception of their opportunity. Big men of a generation ago said, "After us the deluge,"—they cut the forests off the Alleghenies, and Pittsburgh literally suffers the curse in destructive floods once or twice every year. The way of life in the local communities about many of the great steel plants is infallibly preparing for the near future a worse form of deluge in a mass of unfit, under-vitalized, unproductive citizenship. It is but fair to say that the really big men of to-day in Pittsburgh are passing beyond the attitude of indifference to the human problem that confronts the captain of the industrial army. Indeed, the past few years have brought about a distinctly receptive point of view. The lesson to be learned and aggressively applied during the coming decade is that a great city's industrial supremacy, no less than its moral well-being, depends largely upon the proper provisioning and sheltering of the industrial rank and file, along with training in capacity for citizenship and for associated self-help.

H. J. HEINZ.

President H. J. Heinz Company, Member Civic Improvement Commission.

There have been stirring instances in the development of city life in this and other countries where a city deeply engaged in laying its material foundations, and suddenly finding itself not up to its own standard in other vital respects, has, by throwing a due share of its accumulated energy and resource into the new channels, been able to overleap intermediate stages which had been toilsomely worked out elsewhere. Such a magical achievement for the refinements of life has been made once in Pittsburgh through the surpassing initiative of a single citizen. It now needs to be repeated and outdone by the main action of the body of responsible citizens, carrying with them representatives of every grade and type of the people, in the united, elated march of a great civic and human welfare movement. Strange as it may sound, this is the sort of social phenomenon that American city life is next going to present; and it may be that Pittsburgh will lead the way.

J. W. KINNEAR.

Attorney-at-Law, Member Pittsburgh Civic Improvement Commission.

There are elemental changes coming in the life of Pittsburgh. The new immigrants will within a short generation be rising into social and political power, and their standards will in large part fix the moral and even the economic prospects of the city. The special resources of western Pennsylvania in raw material will necessarily grow less, and its need of a more developed labor force become insistent. In any case immigration cannot indefinitely recruit the labor ranks; Pittsburgh must learn to pay as it goes in terms of men as of money. The ninety per cent pure iron which Mr. Carnegie found in the waste of his competitor and secured by a long contract, is the analogue of what Pittsburgh must begin to discover in the native capacity of the children of its crude toilers. The protective tariff which for the past two decades has been like an evil divinity to intensify the haste to be rich, and to confuse and baffle all local public issues, is on an uncertain footing as never before. Already there are new American steel centers which will dispute for the market supremacy. Every one of these things will compel a moral reckoning, will constrain the city to the saving and enhancing of individual and collective human power.

The historic sense newly awakened by the recent sesquicentennial celebration of the origin of the town; the downright, ingenuous pride of the people in its unexampled achievements; the inquiring attitude of an ever increasing number of citizens; their inner assurance that the city will match its prosperity with civic well-being; a beginning on the part of the moral reserve force of the city, on the one hand, and its practical organizing power, on the other, to seek a new common outlet; these provide momentum, amid many counter-currents, for an ample hope.

It is of special significance that, for the first time in this country, Pittsburgh secures the advantage of several carefully devised and closely related undertakings in the new science and art of social upbuilding. The welcome extended to the staff of the Survey by leading citizens at the beginning, and their willingness from first to last to listen to its hard sayings, have given the Survey much of its essential driving power. The joint meeting in Pittsburgh of the National Municipal League and the American Civic Association, resulting in a happy co-ordination of higher methods and higher aims of city administration, especially in the session devoted to the Survey,—distinctly helped strengthen and confirm the beginnings of that new public consciousness which includes the greatness both of the city's needs and of its opportunity. The civic exhibit which went with this national gathering, displayed under perfect conditions in the Carnegie Gallery, and setting forth as its chief feature the results of the Survey in the graphic, instantaneous, inescapable language of the workshop, established its lessons in the minds and imaginations of many thousands of those who in every rank go to make up Pittsburgh's industrial forces. And now the appointment by Mayor Guthrie of a strong, representative civic commission, with Mr. English as chairman, and such exceptionably capable and responsible men as are summoned in a great public emergency, to lead committees on public hygiene, housing problems, rapid transit, municipal efficiency, industrial casualties and overstrain, education, police courts, charitable institutions, neighborhood and district improvement agencies, and city planning,—can hardly be construed otherwise than as the final precipitant of a new epoch of masterful humanism in the evolution of America's distinctive industrial metropolis.

A. J. KELLEY, JR.

President Commonwealth Real Estate Trust Company, Member Civic Improvement Commission.

Drawn by Joseph Stella.

PITTSBURGH TYPES. ITALIAN LEADER.

THE ALLEGHENY RIVER VALLEY.

CIVIC IMPROVEMENT POSSIBILITIES OF PITTSBURGH

CHARLES MULFORD ROBINSON
AUTHOR OF MODERN CIVIC ART, ETC.

In studying the civic improvement possibilities of Pittsburgh, one is impressed by a curious mingling of antagonistic conditions. A wonderful natural picturesqueness is contrasted with the utmost industrial defilement, smoke and grime and refuse pervading one of the finest city sites in the world. Similarly great wealth and great squalor are side by side. Nation-wide business is done on very narrow streets. A royal munificence in public benefaction goes with a niggardliness that as yet denies to many children a decent playspace. Immense private houses, with the amplest grounds to be found perhaps in any great city, abut on meanly proportioned streets. One is impressed first by the hugeness of the city and then by its lack of coherence. It has been built up as an aggregation of integers, mighty, resourceful, pushing; but lacking as yet in unity. That power, which is the keynote of the city, is not civic. It is not communal power but a dynamic individualism.

But still steep hillsides close with magnificent self-assertion the vistas of business streets, still the mighty rivers, polluted with refuse though they be, flow in great streams to meet at the "Point"; still from heights there are views of surpassing interest; and in the rolling country that encompasses the city with ravine and wooded slope, there still remain gentle loveliness and restfulness in impressive contrast with the throbbing industry of the town. Thus, in spite of itself, picturesqueness such as even Edinburgh, the "queen city of Europe," might envy is thrust upon Pittsburgh, and there is a surrounding beauty that Florence might covet.

NATURAL BEAUTY vs. INDUSTRIAL ODDS.

In the midst of this strange mingling of opposites, of great opportunities and fearful handicaps, of vast needs and vast resources there appears the gradual stirring of a new ideal. A civic consciousness is awaking and that social conscience which has heretofore operated in individuals merely is becoming popularly active. At this wonderfully interesting juncture, the serious study of civic improvement in Pittsburgh is to be made. What Pittsburgh wants, what she has done and dreamed, what she must do, as a community, for her improvement,—these are the questions for the citizens of Greater Pittsburgh if "greater" is to have all its true significance.

In discussing them let us follow these most obvious divisions of the subject:

First, the congested business district of Pittsburgh proper, that is, the peninsula: its needs and its possibilities. Second, the slum district,—a band of varying width that, regardless of intervening rivers, surrounds the business section. Third, the manufacturing area, very widely extended and therefore affecting the whole city. Fourth, the homes of wealth, typified by the East End, and the educational and cultural center that is building there. Fifth, the suburban district. Sixth, the park requirements of the Greater City. Seventh, the community as a whole.

WHERE THE CARS LOOP.

I.

The business district of Pittsburgh is as restricted as that of an old world city bound in by compressing fortifications. But its boundaries are not to be readily moved like the works of men. They are the broad rivers and the obstructing hill. The district extending from the "Point," where the rivers join, to the "Hump," is approximately an equilateral triangle, of which the sides are less than half a mile in length. Into this small area is crowded the business of an enormous manufacturing center. Here the railroads and boats bring their passengers; here the trolley roads of the whole district converge; here reach the bridges with their continual traffic. The condition is similar to that of Manhattan, except that in Pittsburgh the space in proportion to the business is even smaller.

SMITHFIELD STREET FROM FOURTH AVENUE.

The pressure in such a restricted area is of a double character. There is a pressure for traffic room, and an equally insistent pressure for building sites. One demand is as legitimate as the other. Therefore, although the streets are too narrow, relief must be sought rather by increasing their carrying efficiency than by changing their dimensions or adding to their number. To accomplish this three plans have been under consideration.

One, and an obvious one, is to increase the area of the business district by leveling the low hill (the "Hump") that bounds it on the east. This plan seems now to have been abandoned. It would involve great cost, and it would not certainly better conditions in the most crowded area. Furthermore, business has about climbed to the top of the hill already.

SESQUI-CENTENNIAL PARADE.

The other plans have to do with the trolley cars that come here from all sections of the city. As most of the cars do not pass through the district, but go out as they came in, there are numberless "loops", each of the various lines making a turn around two or three blocks, with the result that loop overlaps loop, and the cars interfere with one another as well as with general traffic. One plan would put many of the cars underground, in a subway, in the business district; the other, while permitting them to traverse the district, would carry them on into Allegheny to make their loops.

It were better, however, that there should be no loops at all; that the cars should not "go out as they came in." By the substitution of long through lines for the loops which are only a survival of other times and conditions, all the advantages would be gained with none of the drawbacks of transferring the loops across the river.

In the plans for a downtown subway loop, it is proposed that all the stations be located on private property, so putting no additional burden on the streets, and furthermore that the loop be open to the cars of all companies. This would give much relief; and as subways have proved too successful in other cities to be regarded any longer as experimental, it seems that one here, properly constructed and authorized with equal regard for financial and municipal interests, is a civic improvement necessary for Pittsburgh's business district.

ONE OF THE INCLINES WHICH SCALE THE PITTSBURGH HILLS.