PARK AND CEMETERY 
406 
, A Decade of Civic Improvement. 
Address of President Charles Zueblin at the St. Paul Convention of the American Leag-ue for Civic Improvement. 
The last decade has witnessed not only a greater develop- 
ment of civic improvement than any previous decade, but a 
more marked advance than all the previous history of the 
United States can show. At the beginning of this period, 
the most significant expression of civic interest in cities was 
to be found in the first social settlements of New York and 
Chicago, in the beginning of the expansion of the public 
school system, in the first struggles to transplant the merit 
system from federal to municipal offices, in the preparation 
for the World’s Fair, in the isolated examples of village and 
town improvement, and in the development of municipal 
functions, such as street paving and lighting, as well as in 
the first attempts at administrative reform, which found ex- 
pression subsequently in the metropolitan system of Boston. 
Evidences of the education of public opinion are to be 
found in such facts as these: The first American Improve- 
ment Association was that founded at Stockbridge, Mass., 
in 1853, while the chief developments of village improvement 
have taken place in the last half dozen years. The first 
public baths were established at Boston in 1866; but outside 
of Milwaukee, which established a natatorium in 1889, the 
general movement for public baths in this country dates from 
1893. The initial proposal for a vacation school was made 
in Cambridge in 1872 ; but the first vacation school was es- 
tablished in 1896. The first municipal playground was inau- 
gurated by town vote in Brookline, Mass., in 1872, but the 
playground movement dates from the equipment of the 
Charlesbank in Boston, in 1892. In 1851 the first steps 
were taken in New York to establish Central Park, but the 
chief park extensions of most American cities have been 
made in the last decade. The chief municipal gas and electric 
light plants in American cities were inaugurated since 1893, 
although the Philadelphia gas works was established in 1837. 
The movement for civic improvement may be said to have 
found a three-fold expression in, first, the new civic spirit, 
second, the training of the citizen, and third, the making 
of the city. At the close of the ninth decade of the last 
century, the new civic spirit was finding its chief expression 
in the adoption of certain important English social movements 
which had flourished for a number of years across the water, 
chief among which were social settlements and university 
extension. The accumulation of wealth during the eighties, 
the development of popular education and the increase of 
leisure gave an opportunity for the performance of public 
duties such as had not seemed to exist to the young Ameri- 
can of the former generation, unfamiliar with the duties of 
citizenship and social service. The altruistic individual of the 
nineties naturally drifted into movements which had re- 
ceived the stamp of approval in the older country. These 
movements have grown stronger as the years have gone by, 
in spite of or because of the multiplication of other move- 
ments ; but for a time they absorbed the energy of the lovers 
of their kind who were not attracted by the familiar chari- 
table organizations or by politics. They gave an opportunity 
also for the expression of the American interest in private 
and voluntary organizations as distinguished from public 
work, which was supposed to involve the odium attached 
to the politician. It was not long, however, before the con- 
tact with working people and the real facts of the life of 
the masses impressed upon the social servants the signifi- 
cance of public activities. There consequently followed im- 
portant movements for democratic education and municipal 
reform, which now constitute the chief factors in the training 
of the citizens. The expansion of the school curriculum. 
the multiplication of facilities in the school house, the ex- 
tension of education to adults and to people engaged in wage 
earning occupations, are all comprehended within the decade 
just closing. Nature study, manual training, art in the pub- 
lic schools in decoration and instruction, gymnasiums, baths 
and play grounds, vacation schools, free lectures, these are 
familiar terms; but they were virtually unknown to the 
citizen of 1892. Along with the development of democratic 
education there has taken place a most marvelous transforma- 
tion in the conduct of municipal affairs. Corrupt as are the 
American cities of today in ccntrast with those of Great 
Britain, they would be scarcely recognized by the spoilsmen 
of the early nineties. The first conference for good govern- 
ment was held in 1893, followed two years later by the 
organization of the National Municipal League. Subsequently 
there sprang into existence two organizations representing 
municipal officials. The legislature of New York granted to 
the metropolis the first elements of the merit system in 1894. 
Chicago introduced civil service reform in the spring of 1895. 
Many of the American cities now have police and fire de- 
partments strictly controlled by civil service regulations, and 
scores of them perform their work of street cleaning and 
scavenging, some of them even of street and sewer construc- 
tion, by employes of the city. The new civic spirit which first 
found expression, and happily continues to find expression, 
in the training of the citizen, finally promises to crown its 
activities by setting the citizens to work in the making of 
the city. Here, again, the contributions of the last ten years 
are as notable as all those which have preceded. During that 
time the chief streets of most American cities have received 
their first good paving; street cleaning has been made pos- 
sible as a result of the pioneer efiforts of Colonel Waring in 
New York; telegraph and telephone wires no longer disfigure 
the main streets of New York, Chicago, San Francisco and a 
few other cities. The overhead trolley has been abolished in 
Manhattan and Washington. Parks and boulevards have 
multiplied, as have beautiful public buildings, including public 
schools and libraries. During the past decade, according to 
Mr. Herbert Putnam, “There have been erected or begun 
five library buildings costing over a million dollars each, whose 
aggregate cost will have exceeded fifteen million dollars; 
(library of congress $6,400,000, Boston $2,500,000, Chicago, 
$2,000,000, New York $2,500,000, Columbia $1,250,000, Pitts- 
burg $1,200,000) and various others each of which will repre- 
sent an expenditure of from a hundred thousand to seven 
hundred thousand dollars each, while buildings costing from 
five thousand to one hundred thousand dollars now dot the 
country.” The decoration of public buildings on a scale com- 
parable to European accomplishment has been successfully 
undertaken in the Boston Public Library, the Library of Con- 
gress, the Appellate Court building in New York, the Balti- 
more Court House, the Cincinnati City Hall and elsewhere. 
Many other individual attempts at improving and beautify- 
ing towns and cities contribute to the greatest of recent civic 
achievements, the co-ordination of various efforts in a com- 
prehensive plan for the improvement of modern communi- 
ties. Once more we go back to the date, 1893, for the first 
of these great accomplishments, the Chicago World’s Fair. 
For the first time in the history of universal expositions, a 
comprehensive plan for buildings and grounds on a single 
scale was projected and happily accomplished by the co- 
operative effort of the chief architects, landscape architects 
and sculptors of America. The contrast between the White 
City of Chicago and the black city of Chicago was no greater 
