AMERICAN MUNICIPAL PROBLEMS sSi 



slightly instead of being the other way around. Public improvements also are 

 not aflfeeted by the war agitation. 



And the same is said in Hartford, where there is no evidence that the 

 foreign situation has diverted attention from public welfare. 



In the Middle Atlantic states the same general situation may be 

 said to prevail. Let me quote from just two letters : one from Harris- 

 burg, Pa., and one from Wilmington, Del. From the former we learn 

 that, so far as careful observation goes, while the war is undoubtedly 

 attracting considerable attention, 



it is not materially distracting the attention of our citizens from the business 

 they have in hand. Whether it will cause the holding up of public improve- 

 ments can hardly be determined before next spring, the time for starting new 

 work in this direction, and I should think would depend upon intervening war 

 developments and the conditions of the money market at that time. 



A Wilmington editor 



can not see any indications that the war in Europe is retarding the development 

 of interest in municipal conditions to any appreciable extent. Certainly it is 

 attracting interest in an extraordinary manner. At the primaries thus far held 

 there has been about the average expression of popular interest in the size of 

 the vote and the selection of candidates. I do not believe, therefore, it will 

 have any detrimental effect upon the election by blinding the attention of inter- 

 ested citizens to the need of careful voting. Indeed, there has been a notable 

 instance to this effect in the repudiation, bj a county caucus of the Republican 

 state convention, of a brawling ring politician who sought preferment by getting 

 a place on the state committee. 



There is not any probability of the war influence affecting public improve- 

 ments adversely. Work on our greatest improvement — the joint city and county 

 building — is progressing finely. Private building operations are going on as 

 usual. 



These views selected from a great mass of correspondence are typ- 

 ical, and unquestionably reflect the fact that the American municipal 

 citizen, while profoundly interested in every phase of the greatest of 

 modern wars, nevertheless is going about his municipal business just 

 about the same as usual, but with somewhat more care and thoughtful- 

 ness than formerly, and, perhaps, with a greater concern about begin- 

 ning improvements, and about their execution, when once determined 

 upon. 



Generally speaking, the influence by and large of the European war 

 on these phases of American municipal life has been much less than 

 had been reasonably anticipated. 



Nor has the war interfered with the orderly functioning of the 

 cities. While there has been a natural conservation in the undertaking 

 of new work and the assumption of new functions, so far as reported, 

 there has been no abandonment of those lines of activities previously 

 assumed, and regularly carried on. It must be pointed out, however, 

 that if it had not been for the war, the new year would have seen the 

 greatest development of municipal activity the country has ever wit- 



