The City in Modern Life

THE great fact in the social development of the white race at the close of the nineteenth century is the tendency all over the world to concentrate in great cities. This tendency is seen everywhere, and it is noticeably strong in highly civilized races. It is seen alike in the northern and the southern hemisphere, the eastern and the western continent. It is very marked in such an old civilized country of dense population as Great Britain, and it is quite as strongly marked in a recently settled country of sparse population like Australia. In Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, even in parts of Russia, the blind forces which tell in favor of this concentration of population in towns are steadily at work. The effect upon new countries has been especially marked. When the United States became a nation, they possessed just about the number of persons that is now found in the Australian commonwealths ; but at the end of the eighteenth century the population of the United States was rural, while in Australia, at the end of the nineteenth, it is urban. The typical American citizen of 1795 was a farmer who owned his own land ; the typical Australian citizen of 1895 is a workingman dwelling in a big city. Of course there were towns in the United States a century ago, and there are farmers and stock riders in Australia to-day ; but the distinctive feature in the one case was the country life, and in the other it is the city life. The upbuilding of huge cities in the midst of vast, scantily peopled territories is the characteristic note in the colonization of Australia, and makes this colonization quite unique in character. To a less extent, the same thing is seen in British South Africa, where the Dutch Boers, who still live much the kind of life that was generally lived two hundred years ago, are a pastoral and agricultural people ; while the English immigrants, though they will throng to the gold fields and penetrate the great hunting - grounds, tend more and more to congregate in towns.

In the United States itself this tendency has become more and more marked with every decade. In the Southern States, which are slower than any other part of the country to yield to the influences of the time, the rate of urban growth is not very rapid. The people are still predominantly agricultural, and in consequence the problems which they face are very different from those faced in the North. Here, not only do the cities grow faster in population than the country districts, but in all the older settled States they grow at the expense of the country. At the last census all the Northern States east of the Mississippi showed a positive decrease in the population of the exclusively agricultural counties, and this decrease took place in Illinois and Ohio no less than in New York and Massachusetts. It is true that between the Mississippi and the Pacific the agricultural counties grew in population, as was inevitable ; but evcn m the new States the growth of the cities has been phenomenal. Denver contains a third of the population of Colorado; Washington, a new State, with a population of less than four hundred thousand inhabitants, has three cities — Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane — which are already as populous as, and much richer than, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were at the outbreak of the Revolution. There are still waste places in the United States to fill up, and there are still rich agricultural regions where the population will grow denser. Nevertheless, and in spite of the fact that the urban growth is as yet small in the South, the time seems not very far distant when the average American, instead of living in the country, will live in a city or town, and when a very large number of Americans will live in cities of such size as to show all the effects, for good and for evil, which accompany the crowding together of masses of people in limited areas.

Under such circumstances, it behooves every American interested in public life and public affairs to study as carefully as he can the phenomena of the life in these cities, and the administration of them. In this study of our own cities, nothing will help us more than an intelligent comparison with foreign cities. We desire to know whether certain phenomena appearing with us are constant and inevitable accompaniments of urban growth, or whether they are merely special to our peculiar conditions. An unintelligent comparison is of little use, and there is still less use in reasoning upon conclusions drawn from conditions wholly different from those which exist with us, and recklessly applied to our own circumstances ; but if the conclusions are drawn carefully, and with ample allowance for different conditions, and if the comparison is really accurate, the American civic student is put in possession of invaluable data. Of course the experiences of people similar to our own are of more use to us than the experiences of alien races. In consequence, the study of the city governments of Great Britain has more practical bearing upon our life than the study of any of the municipal systems of Continental Europe. This study has been undertaken by Mr. Albert Shaw ¹ in the excellent book now before us.

The individualist and collectivist find a new field of warfare when they come to what Mr. Shaw calls the theory and art of modern city-making. Mr. Shaw deserves credit for the clear-headed, common-sense view he takes of this warfare, and for his refusal to be misled into advocating either view from the doctrinaire standpoint. Very good people continually speak as if it were possible to have unrestricted individualism or untempered collectivism in any community. Of course, as a matter of fact, the former can be found only in communities as low as those of the Terra del Fuegan savages, and the latter in a body of absolute slaves such as existed under the Incas. Every civilized government which contains the least possibility of progress, or in which life would be supportable, is administered on a system of mixed individualism and collectivism ; and whether we increase or decrease the power of the state, and limit or enlarge the scope of individual activity, is a matter not for theory at all, but for decision upon grounds of mere practical expediency. A paid police department or paid fire department is in itself a manifestation of state socialism. The fact that such departments are absolutely necessary is sufficient to show that we need not be frightened from further experiments by any fear of the dangers of collectivism in the abstract; and on the other hand, their success does not afford the least justification for impairing the power of the individual where that power can be properly exercised. No hard-and-fast rule in the matter can be laid down. All that can be said is that, where possible, the individual must be left free ; that he must always be left so free as to have a right to enjoy himself in his own way where he can do it without infringing on the rights of others; and that the reward for his efforts should be made, so far as may be, proportional to his efforts and abilities, so as to encourage enterprise, thrift, industry, and sobriety, and to discourage their opposites. But wherever it is found by actual practice and experiment, or by the failure of all other methods, that collectivism and state interference are wise and necessary, we should not be deterred from advocating them by any considerations of pure theory. We cannot afford merely to sit down and deplore the evils of city life as inevitable, when cities are constantly growing, both absolutely and relatively. We must set ourselves vigorously about the task of improving them ; and this task is now well begun. The great towns are making themselves over, and providing themselves with all the appointments of a new civilization, because their permanent existence is now accepted as a fact. Energetic and intelligent action has already been taken here and there to render city life more tolerable for the bulk of city people, and such action must be copied everywhere.

Mr. Shaw points out briefly, but very effectively, the growth of urban population in England and Scotland alike. In Scotland, a century back, there were three country dwellers to one citizen of a town, but now there are three townsmen for every countryman, and town and country life are in particularly violent contrast. In England, the towns have grown quite as rapidly, and London has become a city of a size so prodigious as to surpass anything of the kind ever seen before. Mr. Shaw devotes an interesting preliminary chapter to the rise of the British towns. He sketches very vividly the apparent hopelessness of the municipal problem as it was during the early decades of the present century, when town life in the growing counties of England was as evil and unwholesome a thing as can well be imagined. The filth, disease, overcrowding, and brutality in the towns of that period beggar description, and the meanness of the domestic architecture symbolized well a social life of sordid and unlovely monotony. He then describes the British system as it is now in operation. One very interesting point to Americans is the comparative uniformity of the system, not only in England, but throughout Europe generally. In the whole range of municipal institutions from Great Britain to southeastern Europe there are not nearly so many important variations, whether of principle or of method, as there are in the United States alone. It is true, the character of the people in Milan or Marseilles differs radically from the character of the people in Glasgow or Copenhagen, but the governmental methods and principles are more alike than is the case with the cities on this continent. As yet, on this side of the water, it is difficult to undertake a general study of American municipal government, because there is no logical system which our municipalities illustrate by their workings. The business is not carried on in accordance with any guiding principles, each State constantly trying experiments, which may be in the right direction, and may be in the wrong, but are undertaken wholly without regard to the previous experience not merely of other countries, but even of other States. Hence Mr. Shaw’s book has a peculiar value to those citizens who wish sincerely to aid in the regeneration of town life, but who have not formed any definite municipal ideals ; and while his present volume, dealing with municipal government in Great Britain, has a special bearing on our own problems, his next volume, which will treat of municipal government of the chief countries of Continental Europe, should be only a little less valuable to us.

It would certainly appear from Mr. Shaw’s work that there is truth in the general impression that English municipal politics are far cleaner than ours. Apparently, it is exceedingly difficult, in England, for demagogues or party agents to exploit the votes of the ignorant and vicious poor in the way that is normal in American municipal polities. The laws against bribery, direct and indirect, are very severe, and are, we believe, well administered. In Scotch towns, only those who pay the rates can register, and as the very poor, and especially the vicious poor, devote much time and activity to evading the rate-collector, they never get registered. It would seem as if the workingmen in England, when they act as organized bodies, do so with more intelligence and a keener public morality than the workingmen of our own big cities. Readers of The Atlantic may perhaps remember that the English labor leader, John Burns, who recently visited America, expressed much horror both at the corruption of municipal life and at the venality and impropriety of conduct among many of the labor leaders, as something new in his experience. It is true that Mr. Burns impressed the general public of America even more unfavorably than the general public impressed him; but while he certainly seemed, as judged by our standards, to be noisy and underbred, with the rank, aggressive underbreeding of the satisfied provincial, much of his criticism about corruption was undoubtedly true. It is to be remembered that, in America, the problem of municipal government is infinitely complicated by the ethnic character of the population in our large cities. In the average American big city at least three fourths of the people are of foreign birth or of foreign parentage, and until these have become thoroughly Americanized the difficulty of securing good government is enormously increased. Thus, while it is true, apparently, that the workingmen in the British cities work more intelligently and effectively in political life than ours do, and are less easily misled by mere corruptionists, we must not forget that this is largely because the real American workingman usually refuses to act as a workingman at all. He acts as he ought to, simply as an American citizen, in company with other American citizens, whether they work with their hands or their heads. The professional workingmen who lead workingmen’s parties in our great cities are commonly foreigners.

There are some very striking divergences between the tendencies at work in English municipal politics and in ours. In New York State, it has been shown by practical experience that better government is secured, or at least that there is a far better chance of securing better government, when the mayor is given concentrated power than when he shares his power with an elective board of aldermen ; but in many of the English cities, which are admirably governed, the council in reality merely includes the mayor as a member, the government of the city being managed by a board or committee. It is a little odd that this plan, which seems to have worked so well in the English cities, should have broken down so absolutely with us. The temper of the constituency, not the form of the government, is the essential matter.

Mr. Shaw makes special studies of Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham, and finally of London. What he says of the question of metropolitan tasks and problems is of especial interest. He points out where we can learn by example, and where we can learn by taking warning. Our people as a whole are short-sighted, and prone to refuse to look into the future ; so it may be doubted whether American municipalities will ever learn, without bitter personal experience, how to avoid mistakes. It would be well if they would profit from what has happened in London. For instance, take the question of parks. The new government of London has been particularly successful in securing a sufficiency of these great playgrounds for the people, and the effect upon the health and moral tone of the community is very marked; but it has cost just about four times what it ought to have cost, because the municipality set about buying the ground altogether too late. New York urgently needs to have the same lesson taught. Many people in New York complain of the cost of establishing an adequate park system. But the park system must certainly be established. We must have an ample supply of breathing-holes and playgrounds for our people. We must have it in the interests of their health, and we must have it in the interests of giving them a chance for healthy sport which shall not be criminal. To defer the purchase of parks is simply to increase by so much the price that we shall ultimately have to pay. In the same way, if we provide suitable building regulations now, if we forbid faulty and unsanitary work, and if we furnish a proper water supply and proper rapid transit, we shall be saved very great trouble in the future. Finally, there is urgent necessity to investigate the matter of groundrents. It is not required that we accept the curiously wild and illogical doctrines of Henry George, in order to believe that the question of the ownership of real estate in great cities stands in need of state action, action which must be cool and wise, but which must also be radical.

In closing this review, no better testimony can be given as to the practical character of Mr. Shaw’s work than the following paragraph from his preface: —

“ I have no intention to prescribe European remedies for American maladies, nor to suggest any degree whatsoever of imitation. We must deal with our own problems in our own way, but we must be willing to gain all possible enlightenment from the experience of others who have been dealing with kindred problems, and have found solutions that are satisfactory under their own circumstances.”