AMERICA 



in the receivership, is much better off, having 130,000 people 

 to support a public debt of about $7,000,000, or $53 each. 



" But if a community which owes only $53 per capita finds 

 itself unable to avoid bankruptcy, as Nashville did, how long 

 will it be before our other heavy-laden cities with debts of 

 $100 and more, run their course of extravagance and find 

 themselves brought up sharply by their creditors? There is 

 a definite end to recklessness for communities as well as for 

 individuals. It is quite time that all our American dwellers 

 in cities were heeding the warning plainly written all about 

 them and were settling themselves to practice old-fashioned 

 frugality and thrift." 



(3) Handicaps to Normal Physical and Mental Develop- 

 ment. Rousseau once said people were never created to be 

 huddled together like ants in an ant-hill. In recent years city 

 populations have been made the subject of the most painstak- 

 ing study by sociologists and many others, and some startling 

 conclusions have been reached. It is found to be absolutely 

 true that the hurry, noise, confusion, strenuosity and the like 

 of the city are gradually impairing the physical vigor of the 

 American people. . Innumerable authorities might be quoted 

 and this one paragraph might be expanded into a book to 

 prove this point. It is also found to be absolutely true that 

 city life in its complexity is detrimental to intellectual develop- 

 ment. The mind, to develop normally, needs two things : 

 quiet and leisure. Both are rarae aves in Urban America. 

 Finally, the atmosphere that stimulates the development of 

 initiative is almost absent in the city life of today. The 

 trend of the times has effected a very great decrease of those 

 who lead and a very great increase of those who are led. 

 To illustrate : there is one city bank in the nation that has 

 nearly a thousand employees. One man directs the affairs 

 of this bank with possibly a half dozen official subordinates. 

 All the rest are cogs in a great machine; and cogs do not 

 develop initiative. The same amount of capital and deposits 

 divided among country banks would be sufficient to establish 

 a thousand institutions. The thousand institutions would 



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