RELATIONS OF MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION 423 



character and private virtue. Thus, looking into the future, one 

 seemed to face the paradox that the very methods which were mul- 

 tiplying wealth, diffusing comfort, gradually shortening hours of 

 brutalizing toil, and promising, theoretically at least, to emancipate 

 and elevate the masses, were so working themselves out in practice 

 as to devitalize and degenerate whole nations through the many- 

 sided and incurable evils under conditions of life prevailing in the 

 densely inhabited centers of new industry. This seeming paradox 

 confused and alarmed many minds until a very recent period. 



The paradox disappeared with the great discovery that, after all, 

 the evils of city life cannot only be abated, but so fully removed as 

 to make conditions in populous towns both endurable and advan- 

 tageous. The remedial measures have been worked out along many 

 lines at the same time, all having to do with the growth of intelligence, 

 the application of science, the improvement of the mechanism of 

 public administration, and last, but not least, the achievements of 

 modern commerce and industry in creating masses of wealth that 

 can be drawn upon in a large way for the common welfare. 



The recognition of the possibility of making city life positively 

 desirable has in some places been tardy, and even now the political 

 reformer and the social worker sometimes doubt and sometimes 

 despair; but hope and confidence have everywhere triumphed, 

 the best evidence of which is found in the dazzling array of public 

 improvements and ameliorations of the general welfare that every 

 important urban center of Europe and of America has accomplished 

 within the past fifteen or twenty years. For every serious malady 

 that continues to afflict any given community, the remedy has been 

 discovered and successfully applied in one or another great town 

 elsewhere under analogous conditions. 



As respects the application of the different forms of remedy, we 

 must, in a general way, assign the first place to British municipal life. 

 The various phenomena of modern industrialism had an earlier and 

 a more pronounced development in Great Britain than anywhere 

 else. The rapid upbuilding and over-population of factory towns 

 compelled the attention of English and Scotch reformers to the new 

 conditions as requiring public treatment. It might be more logical 

 to take up first the progress that has been made in the application 

 of these remedies, in other words to discuss the growth of munici- 

 pal functions. But since I must also speak somewhat of reforms in 

 municipal structure, it may be well to allude first to these questions 

 having to do with the forms of town government. 



The reconstruction of English municipal government belongs to 

 the reform period of seventy years ago. It was that same re-group- 

 ing of population which had by that time created the factory towns 

 that had compelled the reform of representation in Parliament. The 



