PROBLEMS OF MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION 447 



ideal, which their free discussion would have secured and to which 

 they were more entitled than to the benefits themselves. 



In the department of social economy in this Exposition is an 

 enormous copy of Charles Booth's monumental survey of the stand- 

 ard of living for the people of London. From his accompanying 

 twelve volumes may be deduced the occupations of the 'people, 

 with their real wages, their family budget, their culture-level, and 

 to a certain extent their recreations and spiritual life. If one gives 

 one's self over to a moment of musing on this mass of information, 

 so huge and so accurate, one is almost instinctively aware that any 

 radical changes, so much needed in the blackest and the bluest 

 districts, must largely come from forces outside the life of the people: 

 enlarged mental life from the educationalist, increased wages from 

 the business interests, alleviation of suffering from the philanthro- 

 pists. What vehicle of correction is provided for the people them- 

 selves? What broad basis has been laid for modification of their 

 most genuine and pressing needs through their own initiative ? What 

 device has been invented for conserving, in the interests of the nation, 

 that kindliness and mutual aid which is the marvel of all charity 

 workers who know the poor? So conservative an economist as 

 Marshall has pointed out that, in the fear of crushing " individual 

 initiative," we every year allow to go to waste untold capacity, 

 talent, and even genius, among the children of the poor, whose 

 parents are unable to shelter them from premature labor; or among 

 the adults, whose vital force is exhausted long before the allotted 

 span of life. We distrust the instinct to shelter and care for them, 

 although it is as old and as much at the foundation of human pro- 

 gress as is individual initiative itself. 



The traditional government of East London expresses its activity 

 in keeping the streets clean, and the district lighted and policed. 

 It is only during the last quarter of the century that the London 

 County Council has erected decent houses, public baths, and many 

 other devices for the purer social life of the people; while American 

 cities have gone no farther, although they presumably started at 

 workingmen's representation a hundred years ago, so completely 

 were the founders misled by the name of government, and the tempta- 

 tion to substitute the form of political democracy for real self- 

 government, dealing with advancing social ideals. Even now 

 London has twenty-eight borough councils in addition to the London 

 County Council itself, and fifteen hundred direct representatives 

 of the people, as over against seventy in Chicago, with a population 

 one half as large. Paris has twenty mayors with corresponding 

 machinery for local government, as over against New York's con- 

 centration in one huge city hall, too often corrupt. 



In Germany, as the municipal and social-economic exhibits of 



