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CITY VALUES
AN ANALYSIS OF THE
SOCIAL STATUS AND POSSIBILITIES OF
AMERICAN CITY LIFE
BY
C. LINN SEILER.
/ - \
AN ABSTRACT OF A THESIS PRESENTED TO
THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA,
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE RE-
QUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR
OF PHILOSOPHY
<u
I. THE VIEWPOINT
RAPID transition is the spirit of the present age. All about
are evidences of the certain decay of dogma and con-
- vention — in science, religion, politics, and business. No
longer does the old order please: no longer can the ancient super-
stitions hold the mind and heart. In contrast, we find a more
thorough and intelligent inventory-taking of the social stock,
a more rigorous and satisfactory disposal of an obsolete and worn-
out civilization. The narrow emphasis on creed is giving way to a
broader and more pragmatic concept of ethical life. In the busi-
ness world there is an unrest that denotes a keener insight into
industrial values and a better appreciation of large national issues.
We feel stirrings of new life in those parts of the body social that we
thought dead or sleeping. Fresh incentives revitalize old insti-
tutions. New associations form for new needs and works. The
younger generation is playing an increasing part in this movement,
not only in the furnishing of raw material for a more electric race,
but also in the active impetus imparted to the older generation by
its insistent demands for a more efficient and satisfying life. To
an increasing degree are we becoming more intensely alive —
physically, intellectually, and socially. And the tendency is in
the direction of a collective appreciation of the sacrifices and
pleasures of life — of those things that spell comfort, culture, and
citizenship for the community as a whole.
The most interesting phase of this epoch is the undeniable and
insatiable desire to "know things as they really exist/' Sex
psychology and sex hygiene are rapidly becoming common property
as topics of serious conversation and thought. We are finding
out why our cities are corrupt, and why vice, crime, and adulterated
foods exist. The magazines and newspapers, quick to give the
public what it wants, open their columns as forums of discussion
on live contemporary topics. The keynote of this phase is facts —
real facts — facts that have a meaning to each man, woman, and
3
310419
. • .• ■ .. - CITY VALUES
child. Also, discussion and wide-spread knowledge are acting a*
wholesome checks to the mob-like public opinion so easily swayec
by the quack politician or moralist. We are, for the first time
trying properly to appraise social and political values because
we are beginning to see them in their true relations.
Another intensely interesting feature of the present state of th(
social mind is the emphasis placed on the concept of a program
We want a plan — an efficient, convenient, and quick method foi
obtaining results. There is a high premium put on the individua
with a practical plan. Of course, one may find both the pessi
mist and the optimist in all the different grades of "programmists/
and it depends largely on the object for which the program or plar
is designed, as to where the protagonists and antagonists wil
turn for adherence. Though a program is unquestionably neces
sary (since it represents, as it were, the architect's drawings of th<
edifice to be built), a knowledge of the actual conditions for whicl
the program is constructed is, however, more vitally important
To see values clearly, their relationship to each other and to th<
conditions that make them must be primarily and carefully por
trayed. Unrelated collections of facts are chiefly ridiculous be
cause no vital viewpoint can possibly be obtained nor any concep
of justice or expediency visualized. Knowledge of condition:
may be gleaned from different angles, depending on the point o
view, but the truest angle of vision is that throwing the diflferen
parts of the problem into proportional relief, where each can b<
seen in contrast with the others. Thus, a program must, in the
same way, fit every part of the problem it is designed to solve
It most possess unity and interrelation. Its potency depends or
the harmony as well as the permanence of its structure.
Properly to visualize mass-evolution one must have an economi<
viewpoint — that is, a keen appreciation of the economic relation:
between human beings and the results of such relationships. T(
laud property rights is one thing; properly to value human right:
is quite another. The former is a political attitude: the latter, <
matter of economic morality. One tends to mold us into a narrow
constitutional form: the other gives us the capacity for socia
enlargement that breaks down constitutional fetters. Physically
speaking, the theory of property rights is static, as compared witr
4
THE VIEWPOINT
the dynamic one of human rights. Ethically considered, the ,
former is monistic and exclusive; the latter, pluralistic and mutual.
We have been accustomed to the property right theory for so
long a time that we consider it impregnable, and, for practically
all purposes, entirely satisfactory. The great trouble with the
theory is its lack of permanence as a social program, since it pre-
supposes an eternal faith in the sanctions of man-made law.
Accepting this doctrine, political issues rather than human prob-
lems become the war cries. On the other hand, the economic
viewpoint is a vital motive force, acting in a contagious way,
permeating all classes and ages, breeding by discussion and knowl-
edge, acquiring momentum as it lives. With it not only can mass-
evolution be clearly seen, but the most intimate and important
economic relations between us and our neighbors stand out in
bold relief, showing new phases of the problem, exhibiting new
needs and desires, giving us fresh material for our energies. We
discover we have been quarreling over methods when we really
lacked a definite goal. With our vision on a goal, new possibilities
arise — of health, happiness, and efficiency. The cost of ways and
methods becomes a less gloomy and troublesome feature of our
discussions, while values interest us in increasing ratio. Human
life then becomes vivid and valuable. Play becomes mutual,
desires universal, efficiency collective. We gain because we
mutualize ourselves and our interests. With this attitude we can
exchange viewpoints — between capital and labor, between mistress
and servant, between man and woman — because we have dis-
carded political rights for human interests.
Of the many economic problems that engage our attention in
the United States to-day, none has more possibilities of interest
or is more vital and absorbing than the problem of city life. To
some, the city is a political area administered by a particular
governmental machine especially designed for regulating its
affairs. To others, it represents an aggregation of individuals
who are increasingly efficient, industrially speaking, because of
certain advantages in location and co-operation. Still others
look upon it as a huge, evil melting-pot into which everything social
is thrown and from which are continually pouring the most intense
poverty, the greatest vice, and the deepest degradation. Each
5
CITY VALUES
of these groups strives to amass data and evolve plans for re-
habilitation, being actuated, in each case, by impulses and preju-
dices that result from their particular points of view. And though
influential in their respective fields, though expert and enthusiastic,
yet none are permanently effective because their actions are
separated, their goals indefinite. The problem of city life is more
than a local one. It is national in its effects on the morality of
the country, and in its influence in determining the flux of human
beings over the national area. The problem must, therefore,
be approached in the same broad spirit. Our knowledge of cur-
rent conditions must be catholic and exhaustive. Our program
must stand the test of every phase of the subject at hand. Every
city can glean from the experiences of every other in the way of
novel methods or better standards. And though each may have
particular local characteristics, yet all have common relationships
that go to make up the problem of urban life.
Generally speaking, there are two sets of urban problems: those
partially solved, and those as yet practically untouched. The
former center themselves about our political viewpoint of citizen-
ship: the latter are concerned with human rather than property
values. In other words, those city activities showing the greatest
relative efficiency are those illustrating the guarantee to property
rights. Those enjoying the least popularity, and therefore having
the smallest actual force, are the social and economic activities
that are intended to improve the opportunities for sane human life,
for health, and for pleasure. We thus have two sets of reformers:
one, anxious to bolster up the political framework in order fur-
ther to guarantee the political liberty of the voter; the other,
with a viewpoint that stresses human life and rights, aiming at
greater efficiency in some one department of government that will
most quickly become a medium for its particular propaganda.
It is not that either set is inherently wrong. We need increased
efficiency in every city department. We also need purity in
political activity. The real obstacle to the attainment of satis-
factory results is the lack of proportion in our viewpoint, the over-
emphasizing of one particular phase, the enthusiasm anent a
particular panacea, that detracts from the importance of the
whole problem of urban life and that wastes our energies over a
6
THE VIEWPOINT
fractional part of the entire adjustment. Obviously, complete
readjustment is a matter of time. But this fact does not lessen
the value of proportion and completeness in our plans. The
vital question is: Shall we look upon city life, its activities, its
opportunities, its benefits, and its defects, in a large and compre-
hensive way, or shall we try to make our adjustments singly, and
at a time apparently best suited for a temporary repair? The logical
answer is: No efficient readjustment of city life can be made ef-
fective and permanent until we consider the problem of city life
as one of complex and yet integral evolution. Our apparently
separate little problems are really interlaced and related. The
study of one inevitably leads to the discussion of all. We must
have a new attitude toward physical and social cause and effect.
The rapid growth in the natural sciences has already proved the
complexity of causes and results. In other words, the monistic
viewpoint of life must change to a pluralistic one. The old method
of isolating an individual from his environment in order to study
him under our social microscope is ridiculous, because misleading
and ineffectual. As we lose sight of the motivating forces that
make him worthy of study, we fail properly to visualize him as he
really is. And, just as all the activities of city life have some
tangible connection with one another, and just as the obvious
maladjustments in city life are consequences of a combination of
causes, just so must any efficient plan of reform or readjustment
be based on a comprehensive and human survey of the whole
field in order scientifically to connect conditions with social results.
We have to get a fresh line of vision in order to evolve a new line of
action. Definite changes come easily and quickly when the need
is keenly and universally felt. And needs are most keenly and
permanently felt when they are not only universal, but human.
II. NATURE AND SCOPE OF CITY PROBLEMS
UP TO within a few years ago American city problems were
considered to be the results of defective political ma-
chinery. For the first eighty years of our national life
the average city was the plaything of the local politician. Na-
tional problems were vital and engrossing, and little attention was
given to the social consequences of dense aggregations of popula-
tion or the frictions that result from fire hazards, tenement life,
and the various changes in domestic regimes to which the urban
dweller has to become accustomed. Migration from country to
city had been relatively small, and the immigrant colonies in the
latter had caused little uneasiness or inconvenience. Outside
of one or two activities, such as police and fire protection, — and
these directly connected with property rights, — governmental
energy was expended along political and negative lines, the
average middle- and upper-class citizen asking nothing better
than to be able to carry on his business with adequate protection,
and to enjoy his exclusive pleasures in his own social set. But
we are now waking up to the realization of other needs and lines
of action. The organized charity movement has given an impetus
to a new viewpoint that has popularized many of the agencies
hitherto deemed entirely within the province of the individual
philanthropist and the church. Our reflective library philosopher
is no longer the only " prophet crying in the wilderness." Isolated
philanthropy is being replaced by co-operative social conservation.
City problems are not increasing in numbers so fast as they are
being newly discovered and better recognized. We are over-
hauling, for the first time, our stock of economic and social re-
lationships. We are beginning to see that the important thing is
not so much to make our business our life, but to make a business
of our life.
City living becomes increasingly complex and difficult as popula-
tion grows and congests. Home life has suffered severe modifica-
8
NATURE AND SCOPE OF CITY PROBLEMS
tion through the various economic and industrial changes that,
in turn, make necessary new feelings and adaptations. New social
pressures exist, not from lack of material resources, but because
we have not as yet properly related our work and its results.
Famine, plague, and other natural catastrophes, as obstacles to
economic and social progress, have been eliminated. But their
place has been taken by overwork, underpay, and malnutrition.
These new pressures now bear most hardly on the margin of life,
so to speak — on that part of the day that should be the recreative
or social end. And increasing complexity of social relationships
inevitably produces new frictions, which, though often temporary,
are none the less real and potent at the time. For example, a
rise or fall in the standard of living will necessarily test the differ-
ence in adaptability among the various social sets or groups.
And these differences, to a great extent, measure the discomfort
and misery of the new social frictions involved. Since we change
our habits of life and viewpoints in matters of detail every year,
we must expect the process of adaptation to follow, even though
the process often brings unhappiness, if not actual discomfort
and pain. Every new social need in the community creates a new
part in our social mosaic that must be fitted in with nicety into
the old framework.
If the new viewpoint be contrasted with the old, we are tending
increasingly to emphasize that part of life that does not represent
the working period. The city problems of to-day are not so much
the problems of the workshop as those of the street and home; not
the problems of cure, but of prevention; not of the regulation of
existing conditions so much as the elimination of those conditions
that definitely create city maladjustments. Their nature is social
and ethical, rather than political or legal. To premise this con-
cept, one must look upon his city as a definite area with distinctive
and unique social pressures and outlets of energy, not merely as a
given political boundary including a highly aggregated mass of
impersonal human beings. A safe method of assay, in this con-
nection, is to contrast urban with rural life in order to find those
relationships and activities that are present in the former and
absent in the latter. For instance, slum life, adulteration of food,
water, and air, vice, and periodic unemployment are specifically
9
CITY VALUES
concerned with dense and dynamic social relationships, and present
phases of adaptability to changes in city growth and habits. A
sudden expansion in urban area or the introduction of a new
industry will effect in a very short time a definite change in mode
of life, hours of work, and methods of transportation. When new
adaptations are forced upon even a fraction of a community, new
problems arise. Crime and dirt do not arbitrarily gravitate to
any particular district, except in the case of degree. Thus it
must be recognized that what seem like separate problems overlap
every other one. Each may have its separate province, since
each results from some well-defined phase of our social environ-
ment. But all are measured in extent by the city limits itself.
And in the end all need the same general kind of treatment, the
same careful analysis, the same catholic and humane consideration.
10
III. CITY PROBLEMS— AN ANALYSIS
THE making of a satisfactory list of city problems for pur-
poses of analysis is less difficult if a start is made from the
basis of those unique urban frictions and reactions that
are social in their nature. It is assumed that criticism will be
directed toward some one point of the classification, since each of
us has some particular viewpoint that naturally emphasizes one
factor more than the others. But a starting-point must be fixed
and a classification made, even though these are susceptible to
detailed changes as the discussion proceeds.
In general, the vital city problems are as follows:
i. Aggregation of population.
2. Health.
3. Protection.
4. Transportation.
5. Living conditions.
6. Vice.
7. Crime.
8. Recreation.
9. Relief.
10. Industrial congestion.
1 1 . Limit of social utility in size.
Each of these presents interesting aspects of densely packed
human existence, and each assumes some unique urban pressures
or frictions that act as obstacles to complete social happiness. All
are related, and all affect the city as a whole.
(a) Aggregation of Population
Migration from country to city began with the Industrial Revo-
lution. The rise of urban life in the United States is coincident
with the introduction of factory methods and the obvious ad-
vantages of close proximity to markets. Especially noteworthy is
the growth in city population from 1890 to 19 12. Urban popula-
CITY VALUES
tion increased from about 36 per cent of the total population to
over 46 per cent in this period. At the same time the rural dis-
tricts suffered a decrease of from approximately 64 per cent to
54 per cent of the total population of the country. 1 While the
total population has increased about 2 1 per cent in the decade from
1900 to 1 9 10, the growth of cities was roughly 39 per cent. And
while the New England section shows a rate of increase of only
slightly over 21 per cent for city growth, there is a rise of 101 per
cent in the Pacific division for city expansion. And this urban
increase has not taken place only in the larger metropolis. In
every State and territory there was a marked city expansion, and
in seven States the rural population actually showed a decrease.
Every State but two exhibited a more rapid urban growth than
rural. Practically every city in this country feels the effect in
varying degree.
Considering aggregation as a city problem, it is not to be assumed
that all its effects are necessarily injurious. Larger opportunities
for pleasure and education are among the most obvious advantages
of city living. But that certain effects are wholesome to the ma-
jority does not vitiate the argument that dense aggregation is a
cause of well-defined unfortunate social results. A strict stand-
ardization in mode of life and thought is forced upon the individual
and family by the group. Individualism gives place to a weak
and conventionally imitative morality. Neighborliness is prac-
tically absent from the city — a trait so characteristic of the rural
community. In its place we find a hedonistic attitude of mind
and a tendency to social demarcation that is best illustrated by
club life and the various social "sets." Political issues are mixed
and vague, because the spirit of strict, well-informed partizanship
is lost. Thus an advantage is gained by the politician in the veiling
of actual candidates for city offices as well as the real questions
of vital moment to the voter, with the result that the latter is
placed in the class of the uninformed and indifferent. The greater
the mass of voters, the more possible it becomes to mix issues,
to keep the single voter uninformed, to exploit one group at the
expense of another. And this political exploitation has flourished
1 See special preliminary Report of Bureau of Census on Urban and Rural
Population in the United States, August 12, 191 1.
12
CITY PROBLEMS — AN ANALYSIS
best in our American cities, since here exist the unusual oppor-
tunities for the politician who seeks to take advantage of the
difference in relationships due to large and dense aggregations.
Our home life, too, is modified by a score of counteracting agencies.
Dirt, noise, disease, and crime all tend to undermine the homo-
geneity of the home. Domestic arrangements must be radically
changed to fit the difference in working hours and conditions, and
marketing is done at long distance. Again, dense aggregation
inevitably complicates the processes of communication. Con-
gestion of traffic, limits of usable area, etc., are all factors. To
sum up, all these point to a new series of social pressures that force
the individual into a conventional mold, that bring an attitude
of mind essentially different from that of the country dweller,
and that create a very distinctive city morality that results in new
needs, new reactions, new standards, and new actions. The
greater the aggregation, the more crystallized does this city
morality become. The personal human touch dies before the
impersonality of the ever-changing crowd. Social control dis-
places individual control. Intensity of life, rather than harmony,
becomes the order of the day. Artificial, man-made forces are
emphasized in contrast to natural ones. Aggregation is not only
a mere cause of this city morality: it is the basic reason for its
very existence.
(b) Health
Complexity in social relations inevitably results in new pressures
along the lines of physical health. No other separate city problem
is of more importance, nor is there one that needs more careful
treatment. On the other hand, none has received less keen and
comprehensive attention in ratio to its importance. Municipal
guardianship of health is still an idea in swaddling clothes — in the
United States. The individual has to work out his own sanitary
salvation in all but a few ways. Now the health problem never
has been and never can be a problem for the individual. Its
very nature gives a clue to the treatment that has been so grudg-
ingly and inefficiently given in the past. It is assumed, in com-
mon and statute law, that the individual has the inalienable right
and privilege of protecting himself. There has been no well-
13
CITY VALUES
developed public opinion on this matter until very recently; no
concerted action on the part of those working along separate lines,
for a really healthy community; no conception of the necessity
for municipal guardianship of our physical, mental, and moral
well-being. 1 Investigations and records attract but passing in-
terest. There is no uniformity in city statistics, no co-opera-
tion between State and city, no universal and vital desire to
eliminate the causes of ill health. Our viewpoint is static and
narrow, primarily because we are uninformed. We instinctively
shrink from small-pox contagion, but we do not see the many and
terrible dangers of infection from smoky air, impure food, or
dirt-laden ice and water. We individually demand quiet homes,
but collectively we allow street noises that produce the neurasthenic
man and woman. We condemn poor housing conditions, and at
the same time permit the commercial landlord to erect and main-
tain open vaults and privies. Campaigns against the house-fly
are now popular, but as yet we have taken practically no steps
toward the permanent elimination of fly-breeding material. As
a rule, when a definite movement for healthy conditions has been
started, and when it has crystallized into some concrete under-
taking on the part of the city, — such as the construction of a water-
filter or an incineration plant for garbage, — public opinion allows
the lobbying contractor and disreputable politician to make a
mess of it. The city has not as yet adequately protected us
against decayed food or the dirty handling of good food. It would
be difficult to figure up the cost in life, ill-health, injury, and general
debility from such causes. But the cost is there, and we are paying
needlessly for it, every day and every year. In other words, we
spend millions upon our hospitals and sanatoria — the pound of
cure; we refuse to appropriate the same sum for the elimination
of the causes of mortality and morbidity — the ounce of prevention.
Records of births and deaths are carelessly kept. The lack of
proper regulation of physicians and midwives, etc., is responsible
for a large number of unrecorded deaths and births. Most in-
vestigations into housing conditions have been of a private nature.
1 The January, 1912, issue of "The National Municipal Review" has an ex-
tremely illuminating article on this subject, entitled " Private Houses and Public
Health," by John Ihlder.
14
CITY PROBLEMS — AN ANALYSIS
And while no doubt thorough and accurate enough in their way,
they have been undertaken only as one branch of a most compre-
hensive social work. As a result, the average reader of such re-
ports considers it merely as a more or less interesting description
of certain rather unpleasant conditions that do not affect him or
her as a citizen. The usual municipal report on health is generally
worthless, because influenced by certain political conditions —
there is always a large element of "whitewash" about the informa-
tion. Nor has the average city health bureau obtained either our
confidence or support. Its great failure is its lack of system in
telling facts, coupled with the arrant cowardice of the pay-roll
official who does not want to do anything that demands a sacri-
fice of time, energy, or political advancement. Thus, in summing
up the problem of city health it must be emphasized, first: we
are dealing with a problem that has all the earmarks of a purely
social set of frictions. Individual carelessness, wilfulness, and
ignorance are seen to be comparatively negligible. The risks
to the citizen in the matter of health are almost all offered by the
city itself. The average human being is helpless against accident,
infection, contagion, and neurasthenia. As long as we consider
that the city health problem includes only general sanitation, we
are only partially solving it. After all, there is no good reason why
city life should not be healthy. The only apparent reason is that
we have not yet demanded a permanently healthy city.
(c) Transportation
The problem of transportation is one that perhaps most aptly
illustrates the interrelation of all city problems, while at the same
time exhibiting aspects that indicate the contrast between the old
and new viewpoint. We are only just beginning to see the rela-
tion between our transit system and the area of the city, the style
and arrangement of houses, the distribution of population, and
the establishment and prosperity of our suburbs. It is apparent
that we are here concerned with a vast business enterprise: one
of large and rapid profits; one needing but a low standard of
managerial ability; and one that has been left for the past decades
to be the "football" of the local politician and old-line business
*5
CITY VALUES
man. 1 Our viewpoint has come about through the lack of social
appreciation of a municipal business that has become an economic
and social necessity. Distribution of population, — in order to
eliminate living congestion, — a better type of city-dwelling archi-
tecture, efficient food distribution at lower cost, and the building
up of suburbs are all practical results of adequate and constantly
expanding transportation facilities. Rents then become possible
of a desirable equalization, and recreation and education can
be quickly universalized. The questions of franchise terms or
methods of equipment are those of detailed ways of doing desirable
things, not a matter of initial policy. City transportation will
never be adequate when the relation between it and other social
problems is not keenly and universally appreciated, and when the
city has no consistent, as well as insistent, community concern
in the management or regulation of this important function in
municipal life. The transit system of any city is " the circulatory
system" of the community. It corresponds to the veins and
arteries of the human body. If adequate in capacity and elastic
in its accommodations to the varying demands of the day, season,
or generation, the community enjoys a comfortable and natural
contact with its desires and opportunities. When transportation
is slow, uncertain, clumsy, and exclusive, the citizen is deprived
of the ability to carry on his business and life to the limit of their
valuable and pleasurable possibilities. Tenements would cease
to exist if transportation was provided that fitted both the needs
and pocketbooks of tenement dwellers. Congestion dissolves
naturally when transit systems are designed to give every city
dweller the chance to live where he pleases. Vice, crime, ill
health, and poverty diminish rapidly under conditions that allow
freer movement of individuals, greater choice in the matter of
home-building, and larger opportunities of enjoying recreation
and comfortable surroundings. At present our city circulation
is stagnant. And thus we suffer from social ailments that directly
result from imperfect and dangerous transfusion of community
blood.
1 The discussion of Public Ownership and Operation of transportation facilities
is out of place here, since not only is the idea still in the experimental stage in the
United States, but also since, even under such a plan, our analysis of the real
problem would be the same.
16
CITY PROBLEMS — AN ANALYSIS
(d) Limit of Social Utility in Si%e
The average citizen — certainly the average business man —
assumes that there is a virtue in mere size. The larger the city,
the greater the industrial and social opportunities. This is ap-
parently so axiomatic that to suggest a limit to the size of our
urban communities is to invite instant credulity, if not actual
antagonism. But let us glance for a moment at a few pertinent
facts that may suggest a new line of reasoning upon city valuation.
A review of the last census figures shows that the larger American
cities have not increased in the same proportion with the smaller
urban area. 1 It is the small city in the United States to-day that
attracts our country brothers and sisters. The rapid advance of
interurban electric service, the increase of rural free delivery, the
popularity of the mail-order house, and the diffusion of popular
literature — all are creating a feeling of independence in the smaller
centers that did not exist thirty years ago. The city of 10,000
inhabitants has rapidly become self-sufficing, as well as socially
valuable. The Associated Press has made possible the simul-
taneous publication of news that destroys in large measure the
influence of the large metropolis. Popular advanced education,
through the media of University Extension lectures, Chautauqua
circuits, and state universities, has universalized knowledge of all
kinds, and makes it unnecessary for one to leave one's own state,
or even district, in order to acquire culture or to make use of
business opportunities. The theatrical stock company and "one-
night-stand routes" give even the smallest city the enjoyment of
contemporary drama. 2 In a hundred ways the small city is
gaining opportunities for prosperity and social happiness that were
formerly monopolized by New York, Chicago, Boston, and Phila-
delphia. The metropolis is no longer the mecca, either industrially
or socially. On the other hand, we can plainly find indications of
"top-heaviness" in some of our larger centers: top-heaviness of
both an industrial and population nature. It is a serious question,
in many places, as to the best outlet for too densely packed a
1 See Report of Bureau of Census on Urban and Rural Population in the United
States, August 12, 191 1.
2 It is noteworthy that the recent rise of the municipal theater and the pageant
has come about almost exclusively in the city of moderate size.
■7
CITY VALUES
population. Apparently, the limit of physical resources in actual
area has been reached. We have, therefore, taken to building up
in the air, both in the way of office buildings and houses. In other
cases industrial conditions evidence a decline in productivity due
to congestion of plants and limits in engineering construction. We
are reaching the limit of building height and weight. 1 A decreasing
amount of necessary light and air is the natural result of sky-
scrapers and closely packed industrial districts. Our best transit
systems are taxed to the utmost to supply the normal demand for
urban communication. Financial problems and political compli-
cations are increasingly common, due to the growth in complexity
of governmental machinery that is made necessary for the carrying
on of multifarious municipal duties. Domestic problems become
more acute, and family maladjustments affect larger groups.
Intense specialization of city functioning results in carrying the
official farther from popular control. In short, there is a definite
limit to city size — a limit set by economic and social convenience.
When urban assimilation becomes a labored function, when we
become obstacles to our own normal desires and needs, we reach
the limit of social utility in size.
The other problems in our classification may all be analyzed
in the same way. A study of one ineviflably leads to a discussion
of the rest. Ordinarily, we think of "protection" as having to do
primarily with the obvious duties of the policeman — a question
largely of the guarantee of property rights. But city protection
should cover every phase of life where the citizen is individually
helpless. Protection against accident in the home and on the
street is only one side: the guarantee of honest measures and good
food is another. The city presents risks in grade-crossings, in-
ferior transit equipment, and fire hazards against which the indi-
vidual is helpless. City protection is primarily a human problem.
In like manner the problems of vice, crime, recreation, and relief,
etc., all offer aspects unique to city environment. The roots of
all go down far below the soil of our usual analysis and treatment.
1 Several of the larger cities have already passed ordinances limiting the height
of buildings.
18
CITY PROBLEMS — AN ANALYSIS
We have hitherto only scratched the surface. Vice has ordinarily
been considered a "woman" problem, and one that is assumed to
be inherent to civilized life. On the contrary, it is a "man"
problem — a problem of misuse of energy and leisure; a problem
of lack of social opportunity for a clean life; and a problem that is
remedial — if only we will get down to the real causes and make up
our minds to eliminate them. Crime and recreation are two sides
of the same shield. Relief represents the great waste of human
energy, emotion, and money. It is the shining example of our
lack of human conservation. We spend millions for the hetero-
geneous support of those derelicts that we create through our
indifference, carelessness, or false morality. The study of each
problem proves the same point — a point incident to all : we have
not yet gone below the surface deep enough to discover the primary
causes of our problems. We fail to visualize the human element
and the importance of happy and efficient environment. Our
heads are still in the vague and half-learned clouds of " heredity."
We imagine that we will always have the poor with us, because they
are, by some divine right, born to that estate. Our time has been
taken up with business matters, such as franchises, profits, and
scientific management, and we have convinced ourselves that it
is practically waste of time for the actual solving of mere human
problems. Palliatives, yes; but a permanent solution — it is too
much trouble. We have lacked a community concern in the great
ailments of urban existence. Our pound of cure has always been
necessary, because we are too busy to apply seriously the ounce of
prevention.
*9
IV. CITY MALADJUSTMENTS
THE urban problems just discussed naturally give us ma-
terial for thought regarding the maladjustments in city
life. And it is in the keen and serious analysis of these
maladjustments that we crystallize the new viewpoint toward city
efficiency. Maladjustment is a very definite status of social and
economic life that results in community costs, and that is due to
remedial causes. The remedy for any maladjustment is, in all cases,
co-operative, community action, or, in other words, social action.
Maladjustment is merely a temporary status, the term£>f its ex-
istence dependent on the complexion of public opinion at any given
time. Heredity, while not falling by the wayside, is receiving less
attention — as a hypothesis of cause and effect — in proportion to
environment. In environment we see conditions that we ourselves
make to a large extent. It is a remediable and changeable status,
so to speak, of social and economic life, the results of which we can
measure with greater accuracy every year. To eliminate a mal-
adjustment, therefore, means a new viewpoint toward environ-
ment, a more forceful public opinion as to its importance, and a
new valuation of economic and social processes carefully tabulated.
A glance at the most obvious of the various city maladjustments
will reveal certain specific and interesting aspects. First, a
relation between them all in regard to the fundamental causes;
second, social costs resulting from any one can be traced in any
other. Each very definitely results in the waste of social energy,
not only in the case of the individual, but as well of the family and
the community at large. In order to visualize social costs, however,
it is necessary to specify certain maladjustments that are emphatic.
They are as follows :
1. Congestion.
2. Disease.
3. Vice.
4. Break-up in home life.
5. Exclusion in recreation.
6. High rents.
20
CITY MALADJUSTMENTS
It is to be emphasized, in the analysis of the above, that three
tests shall always be applied. First: that maladjustments are
the result of very definite economic and social causes; second:
that social costs are inevitable; and third: that maladjustments
are remediable by community co-operation. No economic analy-
sis is effective with the old moral or political viewpoint. Human
rights and values must at all times be stressed. Our maladjust-
ments will never be eradicated until society turns from its pres-
ent faith in machinery to the practical efficiency of keen, inde-
fatigable, and universal social co-operation.
Taking up briefly the maladjustments referred to, let us apply
the tests in order to prove their validity. First, as to causes being
social and economic, rather than hereditary and natural. The
causes of congestion and disease are now known intimately. He
who runs may read, in volumes upon volumes of investigations and
reports, the truthfulness of which is not discredited. In all cases
it is seen that both maladjustments are direct results of certain
conditions that we allow or create — conditions that exist because
of the way we live or do business. Of late years the vice question
has received greater attention from the hands of experts, and
through the information gleaned by several conscientious com-
missions, we know the reasons for this particular phase of our
social life. 1 Again, the first test is valid: the causes are either
industrial or social. As to the break-up in home life, the average
citizen is not on such sure ground. But a review of the usual
conditions in our cities with regard to living accommodations and
those agencies that counteract home influences gives a real clue
to the fundamental causes. Night work, saloons, club life, noise,
dirt, and continual sickness and poverty — all play their part.
Exclusion in recreation can be traced directly to differences in
social sets, lack of neighborliness, and lack of community interest
in normal city functioning. High rents are the result of improper
regulation of land holding and transfer, as well as of inadequate
communication and distribution of food-products and goods.
In all these maladjustments there can be seen the outcome of
careless municipal guardianship and community indifference to
social and economic waste. Too much time spent on reforming
1 See Reports of Chicago and Minneapolis Vice Commissions.
21
CITY VALUES
the political machine and too little spent on renovating the physical
and economic bases of city environment is responsible, at least
for their continued existence.
The costs are also patent if our eyes are but open in the right
directions. Exploitation is a term covering a multitude of social
sins, among which we find a high mortality rate, decreased vi-
tality, and a decided lowering of moral tone. Class distinctions
are intensified, and unequal economic opportunity accentuated.
The very rich and the very poor live side by side in the same physi-
cal environment, though in reality separated by a great social gulf.
Stunted minds and bodies result from poor living conditions and
disease. Our human derelicts are products of both disease and
vice. While our juvenile delinquency and wasteful methods of
relief hark back to the break-up in home life. The costs in our
maladjustments are more than mere industrial costs; more than
the lowering of manual and mental efficiency for work. They
represent real obstacles to racial progress and urban development.
City maladjustments of to-day are the conditions that represent
the real sources of danger to American democracy.
We have for many years been striving to eliminate "political
diseases." Some think we have utterly failed to effect any kind of
a cure. Others aver that we are making rapid progress. Be
that as it may, we have dismally failed to see the cancerous growth
of a disease-breeding and inexcusable social environment that re-
sults in a ridiculous waste of human life and energy. The Ameri-
can business man refuses to allow industrial waste in his own plant,
and eradicates the tendency toward it by adopting scientific
methods of management and by utilizing the by-products of the
industry. But society, especially in our cities, allows waste in
unguarded machinery, maimed and diseased workers, and a poor
quality of product. City maladjustments represent the adultera-
tion of the human product that society is forced to accept. With
maladjustments in existence, there can be no such thing as equal
opportunity for all. "The City Beautiful" is a paradox, with
congestion and disease still at hand. "The City Efficient" is
only a dream, with high rents and vice. In short, city maladjust-
ments are the diseases that must be diagnosed by the economist,
in the same way that tuberculosis is diagnosed by the physician.
22
CITY MALADJUSTMENTS
And the removal of causes making for social costs must follow the
same line as in the elimination of yellow fever — by the destruction
of the material that allows for breeding. "The City Efficient"
has no maladjustments, economic and political. With a keen and
wholesome [community concern that guarantees efficient action
when the facts are known, political maladjustments disappear
into thin air: those of an economic and social nature gradually
lose their force, and in a short time cease to exist as unwholesome
features of city life.
23
V. CITY BUILDING
THE history of urban civilization has seen several epochs
in which city values were computed in different terms.
City environment has always been the direct result of
the reactions springing from a particular epoch. The particular
significance of the present one may be termed " the awakening of
the city consciousness to the social and economic conditions that
make city life one of social efficiency." Though we are still
engaged in shortening the ballot and trying to tinker with our
municipal machinery so that it will work more smoothly, yet a
keener emphasis is beginning to be manifested in our attitude to-
ward social environment, and a larger interest is being taken in the
citizen as a "city dweller." We need, therefore, a brand new out-
look upon city life for the creation of a comprehensive program for
the permanent solution of city problems. In other words, we
must "re-valuate" our city existence; we must decide what is
necessary to our pleasure and welfare; and we must be ready to
discard without qualms any and all conditions that produce pain
and misery. And not only is it essential thoroughly to prick
the public consciousness, but to goad it along normal, racial, and
dynamic lines. A dynamic city heredity is a necessary asset.
Progress must be built on the idea of future social insurance as
well as temporary relief. Many of our constitutional traditions
will have to undergo modification, if not absolute dissolution.
A score of our habitual points of view and conventions will neces-
sarily give way before a more social attitude.
"City building" means more than "the city beautiful" or "the
clean city." It is a concept that allows for the widest latitude in
opinions and methods. In the past methods have largely been
tested from the standpoint of monetary costs. And monetary
costs are naturally the most important when the political attitude
toward the city is paramount. Discard the political element,
and monetary costs become less emphatic. Social and economic
24
CITY BUILDING
costs are matters of more vital interest, and the question of method
gives way, as a slogan, to that of efficient and quick results.
"City building" may thus be compared to a business-like com-
putation of city possibilities for the most efficient type of city
dweller, and for the ultimate standardization of a dynamic racial
type.
Since our comprehensive program for city building is of interest
to all of the different groups within urban limits, it would be well
to divide the plan into several parts for purposes of social con-
venience in discussion. The following list, though not given in
order of importance, will suffice to show the various aspects of
city life that demand our immediate attention,
i . City dwelling.
2. City health.
3. City communication.
4. City recreation.
5. City industries.
6. City architecture.
To those who find this nomenclature novel, a word of explanation
may be given here. City communication is definitely concerned
with the physical basis of city life: its avenues of transfer and
means of distribution — or, in other words, its streets, waterways,
etc. City dwelling and city industries are concerned with "the
city superstructure": the economic and social basis of shelter,
home life, and labor. City health and city recreation have to do
with the physical and mental uplift of racial standards: they pro-
duce a distinct city morality. City architecture is related to all
the others, directly and vitally. The city architect is more than a
designer of houses and factories. His work covers landscape gar-
dening, improvement of waste places, the renovation of the worn-
out, and the conserving of all sorts and kinds of city material.
He is as much interested in streets and river banks as in gardens
and libraries. And so we find our various parts are not disjointed
fragments, but rather contiguous and overlapping pieces of a
finely conceived mosaic of social and economic progress.
What, then, shall be our policy for the new city — "the city
efficient"? Primarily, we want and must have adequate and
comfortable living accommodations for every family and every
25
CITY VALUES
human being within the limits of the city. And to this end we
should have, first: A very definite and permanent supervision
and regulation of municipal housing conditions. There must be a
community guarantee of a single and wholesome standard of home
life, along the normal lines of health, security, quiet, and con-
venience. Secondly: There must be a systematized segregation
from industrial life and its attacks upon the home. Thirdly:
Permanence, durability, and adaptation in the city dwelling must
be essential factors in its construction. Fourth: The city dwelling
must guarantee the privacy, the sanctity, and the permanence of
family life. It must be standardized to meet family conditions —
not individual conditions. Thus city dwelling is not only a matter
of concern to the city architect, but also to the city administrator
and city business man. Socially guaranteed dwelling arrange-
ments mean greater convenience, better health, a higher type of
home life, and equal opportunity for all groups along the lines of
racial progress. City building is impossible until our city super-
structure is well planned, adequately constructed with a view to
permanent social investment, and socially regulated in the interest
of all.
To build a healthy city should be considered as practical an aim
of any municipal administration as to build "a city beautiful."
No city that is full of diseased bodies and minds, of men and wo-
men ugly through infection, suffering, or overwork, is really "a
city beautiful/' Nor is a city with a high mortality rate resulting
from preventable, contagious, and infectious diseases, and from
accidents, etc., good material for "a city efficient/' The present
type of city plan is merely "whitewashing" the old city when it
does not call for the elimination of preventable disease. Our
program must be revitalized by an increased value placed on
human life in the mass. There must be an equal valuation of the
life of the child in the slums and the child in the avenue mansion.
We must recognize that contagion is as dangerous to the rich
man's family as to the family of the low-income wage worker.
The only difference is that the former has the benefit of high-
priced care and diagnosis, and thus escapes the mortality column.
City health should not be a matter of groupal opportunity. It is
a matter of universal concern. And so our program for the build-
26
CITY BUILDING
ing of a city along the lines of community health would be some-
thing as follows:
First : Health must be a recognized and capitalized asset in the
life of every human being, the absence of which lowers the in-
dustrial and social efficiency of the community. The death of
industrial workers, either through preventable diseases or acci-
dents, must be considered a public disaster for which the public
is directly responsible. There is as much reason, sentimentally
speaking, for lowering the flag at half-mast because a broken filter
means the death of a thousand people in one's city in one week, as
when an ocean liner goes down with an equal number of souls.
Second : City health should be guaranteed in order to insure the
old-age worker. We spend millions every year on pensions to old
soldiers, on the assumption that the pensioner is incapable of
doing the work of the average able-bodied industrial citizen.
Transfer the same money to the creating and maintaining of con-
ditions that prevent premature old age, and a large part of our
problem is solved. With the old-age worker as a part of the social
mosaic, we make a definite advance in industrial processes, we have
gotten a new ideal in work as well as a new quality of ambition.
We not only lengthen the life of the worker, and, therefore, in-
crease the aggregate of industrial energy, but we also add to the
social fund of efficiency and happiness, and gain in racial facilities,
In short, we gain in labor efficiency and lose in relief waste.
Third : City health should be looked upon as a greater guarantee
to the health of the luxurious (or high-income) class than our
present haphazard system. Disease is the most intangible, in-
sidious aspect of city life we have to deal with. It is only by
forcing each and every one in the community to realize that one
single case of scarlet fever commonly means a hundred cases before
it can be stamped out, and that the rich and poor alike are sus-
ceptible to such a disease, that we can prepare the ground for a
normal point of view. To get at this phase of the question most
expeditiously it is necessary to insist on an immediate and relentless
campaign against every form of disease-breeding material within
city limits.
And, lastly, our program for city health must be related to the
problem of race eugenics. It is impossible to create a perfect
27
CITY VALUES
moral and physical type of human being from a race that is disease-
racked. We cannot change human nature, but we can do away
with the conditions that make for imbeciles, premature indigents,
and criminals. We try to enforce laws against expectorating on the
pavements because we fear the danger of tuberculosis. Yet we
allow that which breeds hundreds of tubercular individuals in a
day in all our American cities. In the same way we create and
allow conditions that make for vice, and then shudder at the
enormous prevalence of venereal disease. And yet enough has
been shown, in the discussion of vice, to prove the existence of a
weak and useless coming generation that springs from a present
generation with such a high percentage of those venereally in-
fected. City building, therefore, must guarantee city health.
Dirty streets, poor dwellings, vicious resorts, and over-worked
citizens must go. With these miserable appendages Progress
limps on her way, and Democracy becomes merely a political
shiboleth. Civilization demands steady progress in order to be
noteworthy, and progress is always slow when vitality is low.
City health means perfect vitality, community progress, and the
existence of a virile democratic standard of life.
City Communication
City communication includes more than mechanical transporta-
tion. Avenues of communication within the city should comprise
all streets, all forms of transportation, and all waterways that have
to do with the possible and convenient circulation of the inhabi-
tants throughout its separate districts. To plan a transportation
system without reference to the progressive plotting of new dis-
tricts is to lose sight of the new concept of city communication in
the light of true city building. Therefore, in crystallizing a pro-
gram that shall be specifically devoted to convenient human and
commodity circulation within urban limits, a very much larger
scope and a more dynamic reach must be premised than is at
present done. Adequate city communication, for instance, is not
possible when individual property rights can act as an effective
bar to a real solution, nor can dynamic progress in any direction
be made on the old political basis, where the sacredness of property
28
CITY BUILDING
rights and the violation of human rights are sanctified to the extent
that they are at present. Our generalizations for a new program
must contain the germs of the new economic and social viewpoint.
They must be built on a social concept of city values — not on
commercial, legal, or political ones.
First: In connoting a wider sphere of usefulness and activity for
city communication, city administrators and experts must lay
out a program along lines of social and moral evolution. Every
possible avenue of human circulation and material distribution is
to be used dynamically and thoroughly, and in the light of socially
scientific methods.
Second: City communication should be the most adaptable
feature of city life. By this is meant adaptation to the constant
changes in the growth of population and the distribution of in-
habitants in the various localities corresponding to the expansion
of the city area. One of the most notable aspects of urban
transportation in the United States is its reluctance to adapt
itself easily and quickly to the social demands of the community.
Profits have always been considered first. Possible improvements
come only when the stockholder is satisfied. Both extension and
improvement of service, to meet the constantly growing social
demands of the community for efficient communication, is not
only possible, but socially imperative. No city dweller should be
forced to depend upon the motor car, the taxicab, or other private
and incidental means of conveyance. There should be the same
increase in the standards of efficiency in transportation that there
is in business. Dynamic progress through the agency of public
utilities is not possible when financial profits and social interests
are mixed. The stockholder and the citizen have never yet been
able to agree. It, therefore, would seem, assuming that the trans-
portation system has the largest element of public interest of any
of our municipal monopolies, that urban society must demand a
variety of city communication that is controlled in the interest
of the community — and not for profits.
Third: City communication, as a program, is only haphazard
and, therefore, ineffective, unless considered in relation to the
entire program for city building. Transportation in the typical
American city has been largely instrumental in determining not
29
CITY VALUES
only the location of our dwellings, but also their size and con-
struction. There is also a distinct connection between efficiently
planned transportation and clean streets, congestion of traffic,
disease, and crime. The price of land, as well as rents, — and in-
ventions looking to changes in living conditions, — are also modified
by certain phases of the transportation problem. These factors
must be considered in any practical discussion. Communication
is a complex problem where costs and effects are of a pluralistic
rather than of a monistic nature. Improvement and extension
of service must be standardized along -human lines. The matter
of revenue is incidental. In other words, convenient, safe, and
adequate communication is to be as much assumed as pure milk,
good water, or fresh air.
City Recreation
A deficit in recreation is to the community what the lack of
proper food is to the individual. The well-to-do city dweller has
no end of opportunities for normal recreation — all of which is
gotten by the waving of the dollar bill. In contrast, the low-
income family is socially incapable of providing itself with means
of recreation; or, what it does get is, in most cases, adulterated
and in small quantities. To plan a new city, to build a beautiful,
efficient community, we must provide the necessary quantity of
social foods in the proper dietary proportions for perfect social
assimilation. Too much education and too little recreation are as
socially bad as too large a quantity of meat in proportion to other
food-stuffs. City building lacks one of its most essential bases
when it fails to take into account the physical, mental, and moral
importance of "re-creation" — for that is what recreation means.
The so-called evil — or anti-social — recreations, such as hard drink-
ing, disorderly street conduct, vice, gambling, etc., are all definite
examples of energies deflected into wrong anti-social directions,
because proper channels for the outlet of these same energies were
not provided by us as a community. It is comparatively easy to
supply recreation for the child, since the child is, to a greater
extent, convenient clay for social molding, and with greater
potentiality in the matter of healthy reaction. Moreover, child
recreation is not supposed to be based on the furnishing of a social
30
CITY BUILDING
contrast to work. The adult needs recreation in proportion to the
fatigue of the individual, due to long hours, unhealthy dwelling
environment, and the amount of education received. Not only
the reactions of health, but also the psychological reactions, must
be taken into account. Social solidarity, the vitalizing of a
healthy public opinion, the breaking-down of class distinctions
and the various racial feuds so common in this country are all very
definite and inevitable results to be gained through universal
adult recreation. To be planned for in its highest and best form,
it must regard the reactions of the adult as of equal importance
to that of the child. It is a poor civilization that saves the child
at the expense of the parent; that wrecks the adult community
to acquire a more normal juvenile population. Racial progress
is premised on the health of the present generation, not the possible
improvement of the future.
And so our program for practical recreational facilities may be
summarized thus:
First: The problem of recreation must be studied primarily
from the physiological standpoint of the necessity of the outlet
of human energy, in order to maintain an effective social metabo-
lism. Opportunity for play is not to be based on an esthetic value
of mere psychological momentary enjoyment. Recuperation of
energy — physical, mental, and moral — must take place along
recreative and conservative lines. Working energy must be built
up through the expenditure of certain different kinds of human
energy, or the conserving of other kinds. The blood must be
sent away from the brain; new muscles are to be used; deadened
nerves revitalized.
Second: No distinctions must be made on account of income.
It must be as certain, as it is possible, that recreation shall be en-
joyed by every city dweller, irrespective of his salary (or wage),
and his position in industry. This does not mean that we are to
provide motor cars for all, nor that compulsory attendance at
concerts and the theater be premised. It is not necessary to make
recreation compulsory : the mere existence of equal and unlimited
opportunities for it will result in an universal acceptance of its
advantages. The point to be emphasized is — the poor man shall
have as much right to use his leisure in ways that are healthy,
3*
CITY VALUES
pleasurable, and educative as the rich man; and to this end we
must have lower-priced drama, opera, and other forms of artistic
amusement. Parks, playgrounds, gymnasia, and other facilities
for manual reactions must be at the command of all — for the same
reason that pure water is insisted upon. We must make it as easy
for the Italian family in the tenement colony to hear Caruso sing,
to play tennis or golf, to study and enjoy sculpture and painting,
etc., as for the millionaire on Fifth Avenue.
Third: It is impossible to expect that recreation will be a means
of mass enjoyment and participation unless its forms are adapted
to the social and economic needs of the particular community.
It is only in the realization of the fact that enjoyment must be
universally appreciated that certain forms can be made practically
and immediately effective. Recreation is to be looked upon, not
only as a means for the improving of the health of the individual,
and for providing outlays of energy along lines of pure and social
enjoyment, but also as a means for very definitely creating and
making permanent the social solidarity of the community. The
exclusive clubs and limited playgrounds are alike anti-social.
Even our public school of to-day feels the devil's touch of discrim-
ination on account of some racial or income prejudice. Recrea-
tion, to be permanently effective, must be democratic. Par-
ticipation in it should be convenient, optional, and socially desired.
And, lastly, the methods — the particular forms which the
opportunities may take — should never be rigid. We have seen
what rigidity in policy and methods mean in political and business
life. To-day the school system in this country is under strong
indictment as a failure. The reason for public sentiment is the
assumption that rigidity in methods is unwise, undemocratic,
and impractical — because it does not give the required results.
Recreation should be adapted, not only to the changing mode of
life through various generations, but also to the difference in
social and economic conditions for any given period or year. No
citizen ought to be forced to employ his leisure in any way set
by either a few, or even the minority, in the community. The
right way is to provide facilities, mechanical or otherwise, for the
enjoyment of new forms of recreation whenever the latter manifest
themselves.
32
CITY BUILDING
City recreation must, therefore, base its program on a greater
importance of leisure. Leisure should be as definite a human asset
as health. In fact, health and leisure are two parts of the same
subject — from the standpoint of racial evolution. Civilization
is tested, from one standpoint, according to the length of period
allowed the child for play and physical growth before we set him
to work. A civilization that eliminates leisure from any portion
of its adult opportunities is on a par with that putting its children
to work before the period of childhood has been passed. Well-
employed leisure is as industrially and socially important as well-
employed labor. To-day we are beginning to realize the benefits
of organized labor. Organised leisure is nothing more or less than
socialized recreation. Individual or class recreation is as much
anti-social as gambling or vice. Recreation, to be human, to be
effective, to be a real part of the building of our new city, must be
organized and socialized along dynamic lines of community and
racial evolution.
City Industries
An equally definite and human stand must be taken in regard
to our attitude toward city industries. There is hardly a business
within the municipality to-day that does not vitally affect the lives
and happiness of the citizens within the community. We have
argued that the transportation service shall be socially controlled.
In the same way, water, gas, electric light, milk, and food distribu-
tion, ice manufacture, and slaughtering are activities that are
social in their nature. The very existence of necessary inspection
in order to guarantee health or promote greater convenience is in
itself an admission of the social nature of the enterprise. The
point is : how far shall we go in the listing of industries that shall
be socially controlled, and what ought to be the policy with regard
to the co-ordinating of private and public interests?
First: Going on the assumption that all city industries influence
city building along social and economic lines, our program for our
new city must not only recognize the existence of these industries
as factors in community life, but must refuse to allow private and
social interests to conflict at any point. As soon as these two inter-
ests conflict, the new city builder has obtained prima facie evidence
33
CITY VALUES
of the existence of a social defect, for which the remedy is socializa-
tion of the particular enterprise. As long as there is no public
protest, even from a minority, against the status or management of
any enterprise within city limits, we may safely conclude that it
falls into the category of private concerns that are not ready for
community control. If the city is concerned in the inspection of a
particular industry, it is equally concerned with the location of
plants, the management of the business, and the distribution of its
products.
Second: It is necessary to consider the community value, not
only of the products of an industry, but also of its management,
prior to the matter of financial dividends. Location of factories,
of business houses, and in fact of all industrial plants, should be as
definitely a part of our dynamic city plan as in the case of dwell-
ings. There is no logical reason why the business man should be
given prior right to the opportunities of city environment over the
average city dweller. If our cities are to be considered as merely
industrial centers in the narrow sense, we had better remold our
whole civilization. City life is primarily a life of human beings,
not the life of machinery and stock dividends. The city dweller
should have, collectively, the first and last word in the re-creation
of his own environment — not the stockholder and corporation
president.
Third: City industries should be placed under the burden of
proof of their own social efficiency. Poor business management,
resulting in inferior product and inadequate distribution, should
be socially penalize^ by forfeiture of existence or municipaliza-
tion. There should be no such thing as the exploitation of the
city dweller by any city industry, either in the matters of quality
of product, convenience of purchase and carriage, or price.
Fourth: The accepted fact that a commodity has become a
social necessity should automatically result in immediate mu-
nicipalization. A social necessity is not naturally, and never
should be, a source of private exploitation. It ought to be an
unheard-of thing to declare a dividend on the stock of an enter-
prise that has become so large and important a part of the life
of that particular community that its absence would be a serious
obstacle to the maintaining of the normal standard of living. We
34
CITY BUILDING
might as well recognize our present lack of humanitarianism in our
concept of the regulation of city industries. Our political view-
point, resulting in the sanctity of private property rights, results
in the haphazard location of industries and acts as a menace to a
normal city environment. To build our city properly, the business
man must exist for the community, not the community for the busi-
ness man.
City Architecture
The control of the physical environment of the city in advance
of actual building is a policy that the American cities, almost
without exception, never had. 1 As a result, city growth has been
inharmonious and uncomfortable. Our communities have been
exploited for the advantage of the onrushing herd of business
interests who demanded every inch of room that was possible for
quick dividends, at the expense of beauty, health, and conveni-
ence. In Germany the city is a very permanent institution. In
the United States we are apparently so afraid that it will disappear
before our very eyes at any moment that there is hardly any use
in taking pains over its beautification or growth. The German
ideal is to have his city an artistic creation from every standpoint
— industrially, from the standpoint of form and color, as a place to
live in, and in the matter of normal growth. The American, at his
best, is just as artistic as any other race; the chief obstacle to his
being his best at all times is his reluctance to submerge his private
and business self in his artistic and social self, even when his own
city is concerned.
First: A city should be planned for centuries — not for years.
The measure of social value in city architecture should always be
the social utility of the particular thing desired. Social utility
is a constant test, a measure of social value that fits any epoch
and any environment. There is every reason why we should plan
for the distant future, looking at the city as a permanent place of
abode, as a place subject to unlimited change and growth, as a
physical entity that will live through many evolutions in political
structure and moral standards. The best reason that can be
1 Washington, D. C, is the only exception among the large cities. It was laid
out very definitely more than a hundred years ago to accommodate a million people.
35
CITY VALUES
found for building merely on the needs of the present decade is
that it involves only a small expenditure of money. This, to
the average business mind, is a decided virtue. But, on the con-
trary, the permanent planning for the unlimited future not only
does not require any more initial outlay, but it also means the
saving of an immense amount of money which is now wasted in
temporary structure or repairs. The argument becomes more
impressive if the analogy of the householder, planning a residence
for a growing family, is used.
Second : City architecture must concern itself, not only with the
physical environment of the city, but also the artificial conditions
of life. The residence district must be protected from industrial
friction. The home should be guaranteed privacy, quiet, and
permanence. It is perfectly possible to so locate and distribute
our industries within city limits that congestion of plants can be
eliminated. It is also possible for business to work under " one-
story " conditions, thus insuring more light, better air, and safer
and more comfortable labor conditions. The answer usually
made to this suggestion, " It can't be done," is merely the old,
old one of, " It is being done, and done successfully. "
Third: The social regulation of city communication is part of
the work of the new city architect. It is useless to provide good
homes and well-located plants, without at the same time affording
efficient communication. Every avenue of transit and transfer
should be quickly and permanently utilized. Communication should
act as the great influencing factor in the location of population
and the distribution of products. It should be the servant of
the community, not the business of a few people.
Fourth: Our new type of city architecture will emphasize the
importance of leisure as an asset. The American city, except in a
few cases, does not allow for normal street life. There is little
inducement to making use of our parks, since the avenues of ap-
proach are dirty, narrow, or ugly, or because they are so situated
that our inadequate transit facilities make them inaccessible except
to a very limited minority. As a natural result, we live in our
homes, where our leisure takes exclusive and class lines. Our
amusements and pleasures become questions of limited group
interests. American home life makes it possible to "shut out
36
CITY BUILDING
the rabble/' to be aristocratic in our leisure, to make easy the
establishment of a "Blue Book" and a "Four Hundred." Until
we take the stand that our city streets and parks shall create defin-
ite and equal opportunities for leisure, our plan for a new city of
comfort, pleasure, and happiness is by so much ineffective. Poor
city architecture and temporary planning give us only the type of
citizen that we have at present: a citizen that feels keenly the
many needless frictions of city life, and who reacts under them in
ways that are detrimental to the community as well as to himself.
Our social defects are to a large extent of an institutional nature,
and one of the greatest in American life of to-day is the lack of
proper relation between the human community and its physical
environment. Efficient city architecture will thus have to be
based on the readjustment of relationships, and the elimination of
social frictions that come from architectural defects.
37
VI. THE NEW CITY IDEAL AND VIEWPOINT
IT IS now possible, perhaps, to visualize clearly the new view-
point toward urban activity and city environment. To
transfer the emphasis from one place to another shifts the
center of gravity, so to speak, and modifies direction and velocity.
The present American city of to-day is unequally ballasted.
The center of gravity is misplaced, and progress is uneven and
slow. The crew are engaged in endless discussion and strife
over the size of the anchor or the particular number of strands in
the new main-sheet; and the passengers run about helplessly in
the confusion, endeavoring to help the crew, getting in each other's
way, and often being knocked down in the factional scuffles.
Orders come from everywhere, and every one disclaims responsi-
bility for obedience. Meanwhile the boat plows sluggishly through
the calm sea, rocking from side to side and leaving a tremendous
wake behind that looks like the proverbial "cow-path." No one
stops to think of scientifically looking for the difficulty, of going
below the water-line to find the trouble. The rigging is supposed
to be the key to good or bad results: if only the proper arrange-
ment of ropes can be effected, the ship will leap ahead on a straight
and even keel.
The American citizen is definitely a product of his own environ-
ment as well as his own racial heredity. He is descended from
pioneer ancestors, some of Puritan or Friendly stock, some of
Dutch or Huguenot — but all of whom had to work and fight for
the comforts and means of life. Their business was to make
existence possible for themselves and their families. Their
standard of living was a God-fearing, Indian-killing, brute stand-
ard. But three centuries of material progress, of discovery, of
invention and improvement, have changed the forces that used to
act as pressures. Labor-saving machinery and greater efficiency,
on the one hand, and the security of national isolation, on the
other, have ameliorated the intensity of the bread-winning struggle.
38
THE NEW CITY IDEAL AND VIEWPOINT
We no longer have to fight in order to live. But traditions and
habits are strong. Actions still take place automatically — the
result of a mold of mind that is generations old. We no longer
have to work the way we did — but we think we have. We look at
our material work through a microscope, and it looms up, tre-
mendous and all-important. It is the old Genie of the Bottle —
all-pervading and tyrannical. In contrast, we gaze at our few
pleasures through the telescope. The effect is to throw the objects
looked at out of all proportion to their normal relations with the
surroundings. We try to get a bird's-eye view of recreative life,
for we are reluctant to spare too much time from our work. The
American prides himself on long office hours, no idle class or
aristocracy, and his ability to see a foreign country in a week.
On the other hand, we exhibit an extreme reluctance to the
acceptance of anything that savors of paternalism or bureaucracy.
We orate and write about "strong republican government/' and
then make it as difficult as possible for any kind of governmental
machinery to work to the limit of its social efficiency by refusing
to supply the necessary social co-operation. A philosopher once
remarked : " The anarchist is the man who does not want govern-
ment for any one; the socialist is the man who wants government
for every one; the individualist is the man who wants government
for every one — but himself." The American business man is still
intensely individualistic. Our laws on private property illustrate
this trait to a nicety. Business is an individual matter, not to be
touched by "sovereign" government, though business is loud in its
appeals for help from this same government when it is " up against"
any problem that it cannot solve itself. Recognition of the labor
union and the recall of judges are equally damned, because the
business man sees in these two "theories" the subversion of his
time-honored right to special privilege — or, in other words, the
right to run his own concern in his own individual way, regardless
of social costs. Is it any wonder that the "masses" are beginning
to stir — to feel the pain of constant, long-endured pressures that
are the result of man-made, environmental frictions? Is it sur-
prising, that with the two viewpoints, there is a political and social
schism that causes discontent, crime, rebellion, and the break-
down in religious and ethical standards ?
39
CITY VALUES
The individual viewpoint is essentially political. Moreover,
it is selfish and therefore anti-social. It thus becomes ineffec-
tive for large aggregations — in short, for city life. The results
show a warped and stunted social and economic development, as
well as a progress that is absurdly slow. We try to excuse our-
selves with the argument, "We can't change conditions too
quickly, it might be bad for business/' Or, " It must be a gradual
process of evolution"; or, again, "Yes, I know they are doing it
successfully in Europe, but it won't work here. The American
public will not stand for such a radical change." These are the
familiar salves to our political and individualistic consciences.
In the mean time we are suffering losses — social, moral, and
monetary — that retard progress and make life inconvenient and
incomplete. We are top-heavy with business. We have loaded
the decks with structural iron, stocks, and sweatshops. It is not
evenly distributed, nor securely battened down. Victor Hugo,
in one of his most impressive novels, describes with horrible
vividness the experience of a loose cannon, rolling about the deck
of a storm-tossed vessel, strewing the dead in its richotting path,
and all but completely wrecking the ship. To-day, our American
cities allow the irresponsible and unregulated conduct of their
business concerns to result in losses that all in the community must
pay. When the losses are too keenly felt, a shift is attempted to a
new kind of government, or a new method of keeping books is
tried, or a new set of officials is promptly elected to prevent future
calamities. But we do not look below the water-line. The
primary causes remain undiscovered, and the reform is entirely
superficial.
What we need is a brand-new way of looking at city life before
we attempt to renovate what we have now. To build an elevated
line when the subway has been invented is a static and superficial
attempt at progress. To spend years in the construction of a
bridge that is inadequate for the increased traffic when completed
is a waste of good engineering skill and economic foresight — to
say nothing of money. To consider only the present generation's
needs is to invite corruption and lack of responsibility. "Quick
investment" is always at a premium under such conditions.
There is no longer any fear of the sudden end of the world. This
40
THE NEW CITY IDEAL AND VIEWPOINT '-'"**'* J *: ;/
point was settled about eighteen hundred years ago. Why not
provide, then, for the next century as well as this? The basic
reason for our political corruption — especially in the cities — is this
"grab-quick" attitude of mind that we all possess. Until we
make our standards of work, life, and progress dynamic ones, until
we value human existence in terms of racial progress instead of
industrial units, until our concept of life is pluralistic — city de-
velopment will be slow, costly, unhappy, and inefficient. A new
balance sheet must be struck off with some new economic items
substituted for the old monetary ones. New values must be
created by new demands. Leisure, health, convenience, security,
and a higher type of morality must be predicated as definite and
necessary city assets. City advertising in the future will tell of
the then obviously accepted advantages of education, amusement,
health, and convenience — instead of proclaiming the now highly
thought of superiority in location for sweatshops, banks, textile
mills, and slaughter-houses. It should be a universally accepted
axiom of city life that public and private interests shall never come
into conflict. And they never will when community concern is as
common and broad as citizenship. In fact, real citizenship must
mean a direct part in the social control of public activities in city
life. Expansion, change, or innovation ought never to be guided
by individuals, or for individual interests. Efficient urban life
will come to mean the daily enjoyment of every privilege and
guarantee to human comfort and security that is possible in any
given epoch. This will mean literally a dynamic existence, where
there is constant change in ideals and reactions, and therefore a
corresponding change in ways of supplying the demands set up
by the ideals. Individualism will still be a part of life. But it
will be socially controlled, and as such will represent the great
motive force in the single man or small group that leads the way
through the centuries as the inevitable pioneer in the arts or
sciences.
And so our new city will be built along brand-new lines: lines
of beauty, comfort, and convenience. It will then seem ridiculous
to us, this present city plan of ours. We will wonder how we got
along at all. But the rebuilding is possible only where community
interest is potential, vivid, and constant; where social rights are
4i
CITY VALUES
emphasized; where private privilege extends only to the point
where others may suffer; and where primary, pluralistic causes
are discovered for our maladjustments, and where our programs
are based on racial rather than particular needs and desires.
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.
May 25, 1912
42
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