496 Report S.A.A. Advancement or Science. 



physical conditions for the better. That this change may be traced 

 directly tO' the growth of knowledge and consequent respect for the 

 laws of health cannot be disregarded. 



It has been laid down by a great thinker that it is the plain duty 

 of a Municipality to provide dwellings for the humbler classes where 

 private enterprise is insufficient. This obligation raises the City 

 Fathers tO' a noble position indeed, that of being the real protectors 

 of the poor, standing between them and private combinations, and 

 the position is being now accepted cheerfully, and the duties dis- 

 charged in a practical if necessarily experimental spirit in most of the 

 large European cities. 



In dealing with this problem there must be the usual fight 

 between science and sentiment, although of course with the in- 

 evitable result. The respective advocates of the rival systems of 

 " Model Dwellings " versus " Cottage Homes " continue to urge the 

 claims of their several methods. Whilst those for whose benefit 

 the efforts are made may still stick stubbornly tO' their dark courts 

 and resist the searchlight of cleanliness and self-restraint, new 

 generations are being bom with, we hope, some germ of that instinct 

 of self-preservation which it is the mission of modem science to 

 endeavour to rekindle from the expiring embers of worn-out ideals 

 which have lost their vitalising fire. 



(5) My fifth note of scientific contribution tO' the life of the 

 city is included in the hygienic regulation for the exterior and 

 Ulterior of buildings, including the forbidding of the erection of 

 buildings within the town which may be noxious to public health, 

 and the forbidding of unhealthy dwellings and over-crowding to 

 co'pe with which what are known as municipal bye-laws exist. That 

 they som^etimes made little headway against the evils they are designed 

 to prevent and suppress is not sO' often tO' be traced tO' their being 

 somewhat ill digested and defectively administered sO' much as to 

 the passive but stubborn resistance offered to those provisions which 

 touch private interests. 



In such forward cities as Birmingham and Glasgow, where the 

 science of mimicipal government is beginning to be understood and 

 its importance realised, great strides have been made in promoting 

 the health and comfort of the citizens. In these and many other 

 large cities good government is steadily rebuilding up what has since 

 the Middle Ages become an almost forgotten cult, the sense of 

 citizenship and pride in the welfare of ever}thing concerning the 

 city. This is, however, a plant of slow if sure growth, and patience 

 and hope must water the soil for its successful development. 



In the administering of the group of laws which I have just 

 enumerated many trying problems must of course arise involving the 

 question where the right of interference with private rights should 

 commence. Where such arise, however, we have stores of practical 

 wisdom within our reach in the records of what is being done both 

 in England and abroad, always guarding against the snare of en- 

 deavouring to transplant municipal laws which have proved admirable 



