RELATIONS OF MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION 421 



The general statistics showing the growth of urban population in 

 Europe and America are accessible and familiar, and it would be 

 needless to cite them at this point in evidence of a tendency that 

 could not have been different under existing conditions and that 

 cannot be changed for a considerable time yet to come. In the older 

 parts of the United States, as in Great Britain and the more highly 

 developed industrial parts of the Continent of Europe, the urban 

 population already far outnumbers the strictly rural population. 



Modern municipal government, which forms the topic of our con- 

 ference this afternoon, has to deal with a variety of political and social 

 problems that arise from this modern growth and radical re-grouping 

 of population. These problems relate, on the one hand, to forms of 

 organization, that is, to the framework and method of the machin- 

 ery of municipal government; and, on the other hand, to the objects 

 and scope of the government of urban communities, that is to say, 

 to the functions, political and social, that pertain to the municipal 

 authority. 



During the first half or even three quarters of this century of urban 

 development now under consideration, the typical new industrial 

 community was enormously hampered through the existence of 

 evils that for a long time were not clearly understood to be curable. 

 With the creation of factories and the concentration of industry 

 in towns, rural hamlets were depopulated by the decay of old handi- 

 crafts, and a rustic population crowded into towns that were in no 

 manner prepared to receive such accessions. 



The results were painful and seemingly disastrous. There was 

 overcrowding to an extent now almost incredible. So unwholesome 

 were the surroundings that epidemics were the rule rather than 

 the exception. Invalidism reduced the economic effectiveness of 

 the workers; the average expectancy of life was very low; infant 

 mortality was so sweeping that only a small percentage escaped; 

 and thus, as a net result, the death-rate of every considerable urban 

 community was to a marked extent higher than the birth-rate, and 

 town life and industrial progress could only be maintained by the 

 influx of surplus population from the country districts for fresh 

 sacrifice on the altar of modern industrialism. 



It is true enough that there had been an earlier phase of urban 

 life which had also to some extent produced overcrowding and dis- 

 tress, and intramural life in walled cities in the Middle Ages had been 

 frequently characterized by unwholesome conditions and decimating 

 infections. But in those days the overcrowding in its worst aspects 

 was usually a temporary condition due to war or to disorders which 

 obliged the country folk to seek shelter within fortified walls. Gen- 

 erally speaking, no European countries were very densely populated. 

 The town dwellers were in a very small minority. Epidemics were 



