RELATIONS OF MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION 431 



unsanitary conditions, of great infant mortality, of epidemic tendency, 

 of criminal resort, and of degeneracy and decadence. Most people 

 believed that such slum areas were inevitable and could not be wiped 

 out. It was observed that the drastic clearing-out of one slum spot 

 was followed by the rapid creation of another. There has come 

 about, however, a complete change of opinion on this subject. The 

 rapid tide of the better class of families to new and sanitary dis- 

 tricts, opened up by trolley lines, is so relieving the pressure upon 

 old residence properties in central districts that demolition can 

 proceed with advantage, and rules against overcrowding can be 

 enforced with good results. 



Along with this tendency to annex the suburbs and expand the 

 municipal area are to be observed many hopeful- accompanying tend- 

 encies. One finds immense progress in the art of street-making. 

 Municipal landscape art, as shown in open squares and in smaller 

 and greater parks, has advanced with magnificent progress since 

 Mr. Olmsted and his associates laid out Central Park in New York. 

 Water-supply, sewers, and all that belongs to the functions of good 

 municipal housekeeping are no longer in doubt. With some mis- 

 takes, with some extravagance, and with some reaction, the main 

 victory has, nevertheless, been won all along this line. 



The people have grasped the conception of orderliness, beauty, 

 and sanitary safety in town life, and they will work these ideals out 

 without fail in all modern industrial countries where there is pro- 

 sperity enough to keep the forces of civilization alive and energetic. 

 Thus the opportunities and conditions of the average working-man 

 or mechanic dwelling in our cities have been completely revolution- 

 ized within ten or twenty years. The plain man may educate his 

 children in admirable free schools under municipal control. The 

 schools have learned to adapt themselves to the needs of the work- 

 ing-man's family, so that they no longer wnfit for practical life, but 

 on the contrary contribute to the ability of the boy or the girl to earn 

 a living in his own town, as well as to be a good citizen and an intelli- 

 gent member of society. The working-man has the best of water, 

 the assurance of good health conditions, admirable opportunities 

 for recreation and instructive amusement, great public libraries 

 and reading-rooms made accessible to him, and a hundred advan- 

 tages scarcely dreamed of fifty years ago. Thus evil has been turned 

 into good, and where once it was seemingly disastrous for men to be 

 living together under urban conditions in modern industrial com- 

 munities, it is now, for the great majority, a source of positive and 

 unquestioned advantage. 



I am not unduly optimistic. I do not for a moment ignore the 

 many and grave difficulties that beset the work of municipal gov- 

 ernment and the task of social reform in the industrial centers. 



