iiiiii iiiii iiiilni I il I : ■!;;1 I i !);!!;.;, !li;i, ' 'Il ! : if III ! i^ r ^ Il«^^ ""ii'i'iiii'lltl'iw.'j mmm I ! i ili:'. iiiiii pi) i 'l'-'i!ii iii!-.,,,-. iiiiiii ^iiiiiiii Iiiiii ! ' '^1 ■• •!, SOUTHERN BRANCH, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES, CALIF. MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS The National Municipal League Series Edited by CLINTON ROGERS WOODRUFF Secretary of the National Municipal Leagm* City Government by Commission Edited by Clinton Rogers Woodruff The Rei^ulation of Municipal Utilities Edited by Clyde Lyndon King The Initiative, Referendum and Recall Edited by William Bennett Munro The Social Center By Edward J. Ward Woman's Work in Munlclpalitlei By Mary Ritter Beard Lower Living Costs in Cities By Clyde Lyndon King The City Manager By Harry Aubrey Toulrain, Jr. Satellite Cities By Graham R. Taylor City Planning Edited by John Nolan Town Planning for Small Communities Edited by Charles S. Bird. Jr. Excess Condemnation By R. E. Cushman Municipal Functions By H. G. James A New Municipal Program Edited by Clinton Rogers Woodruff Experts in City Government Edited by E. A. Fitzpatrick D. APPLETON PUBLISHERS AND COMPANY NEW YORK 1730 NATIONAI, MUNICIPAI, I.KAGUE SERIES MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS BY HERMAN G. JAMES, J.D, Ph.D. ASSOCIATE PROFKSSOR OF GOVKRNMENT, DIRECTOR OF THE BUREAU OF MUNICIPAL RESEARCH ANT) REFERENCE, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS I .V \ K t I D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON 1922 Copyright, 1917, by D. APPLETON AND COMPANY : .• . • .-•',• • ' • ' • . t « « * *- Z'-' <^'»'^-'9 '•c"'( • t < Printed in the United States of America t2 J ::^ nrYU ^Z5 ^ PREFACE r\ Municipal advance in a democracy can be achieved in ^ only one way, namely, by the realization on the part of the citizenship of what should be the ideal of municipal government. For many years an increasing amount of attention has been directed to the problem of improving the form of municipal government in this country, with "^ a view to eliminating corruption and inefficiency and ^ making the government more representative. These are "^ very necessary preliminaries to securing satisfactory municipal government and their importance can hardly be overemphasized. But after all, they are only prelim- inaries, and a campaign of education which would seek merely to formulate a demand for honest and representa- tive government, and even for the use of trained, efficient men in administrative offices, would be incomplete. After all this has been accomplished, there has merely been laid a foundation for satisfactory municipal government. As long as public opinion and sentiment on what should be accomplished by this machinery remain uninformed, a really representative government, being representative of an electorate without clear notions of what a city should and can be expected to do, would prove aimless and unsatisfactory. No matter how progressive and en- lightened an administration might be, it could not ad- vance any farther along the path of municipal progress than the electorate was able or willing to follow and sanction. Therefore, a sine qua non of real municipal progress is the enlightenment of the electorate itself. In the direction of familiarizing the public with the V vi PREFACE standards of accomplishment by which a city governmeri should be measured, beyond the primal matters of hon- esty, ability, and strict attention to business, efforts, as a rule, have not been very successful. One of two errone- ous attitudes has usually been responsible for the ineffect- iveness of efforts in this direction. Either it has been assumed that the question of what a city should do and how it should do it is too technical and complicated a matter for the understanding of the layman, or attempts in the direction of enlightening the public on the fundamental principles underlying municipal activity have been too restricted and one-sided. There are scores of associations interested in some particular phase of municipal activity, such as playground associations, pub- lic library associations, housing associations, city plan- ning associations, tax associations and many others which devote most of their energy toward trying to show that their particular concerns are the most important of all the problems that confront the city. The educative value of such organizations is not to be minimized. But the chief trouble with them has been that their very multi- plicity and enthusiasm have confused the municipal citi- zen quite as much as they have enlightened him. What he requires above all things in order to have an intelligent opinion on the needs of his city is a simple but compre- hensive survey of the whole field of municipal endeavor. Then and only then may he be in a position to discrim- inate between many desirable objects, not all of which are capable of immediate attainment. To offer such a survey, which every intelligent member of the commun- ity can readily comprehend, is the fundamental purpose of this volume. Tt seems apparent that while the enlightenment of the entire citizenship is the ultimate object to be desired, for PREFACE vii many years to come the progress of municipal improve- ment and the active work in its behalf will depend on that portion of the community which has been favored with the best educational advantages, that is, the college bred men and women. There is much material available for textbook use on the organization side of municipal gov- ernment. There are also many books on particular phases of municipal activities, some of them popular, but many of them too technical. But there is very little in the way of books that try to cover the whole range of the major activities of cities. With a view to meeting this lack also in the textbook field, this book is intended for use as a textbook in college classes in municipal government. Neither footnotes nor bibliography have been em- phasized in this work. Footnotes destroy the interest of a book without materially adding to its value in other respects, especially where a book is intended for the gen- eral reader as well as for the college student. Bibli- ographies, though helpful, need not be repeated at this time when the excellent bibliography recently prepared by Professor Munro is still up to date. The reader or student who would go more minutely into any of the topics discussed or touched upon in this book is advised to turn to Professor Munro's "Bibliography of Municipal Government" for a very complete list of references. De- tailed and extensive statistics are likewise quite as likely to repel as to attract, and have been eliminated as far as possible for the purpose of making the work more readable. Excellent statistical information on American cities is readily available in the publications of the United States Census Bureau. University of Texas. H. G. J. February, iQiy. INTRODUCTION Few realize how closely the modern city afifects our lives and well-being. Until one analyzes it, and that quite closely, it is looked upon with a certain degree of indifference, largely because we have become so ac- customed to the services which it performs. City government, however, touches more people at more points more frequently than any other branch of government. All of this is brought out clearly and concisely by Professor James in the present volume. His discussion is at once academic and practical — aca- demic in that it relates the functions and the develop- ment of the city through history, and practical in its description and discussion of the functions now per- formed. Professor James has brought to the preparation of the book not only a sound American education, but study abroad. Moreover he approaches the question from the point of view of the smaller community. Too many books deal with municipal government from the stand- point of the larger cities, and thus give unconsciously, but none the less completely, a feeling of hopelessness because the smaller communities feel that their prob- lems are too few and too small in comparison with those of the larger communities, whereas municipal problems are really the same everywhere, differing in degree rather than in kind. Professor James also brings to the preparation of this volume a deep interest in the subject as manifested by ix X INTRODUCTION his active cooperation with the National Municipal League and the National Municipal Review, and he is also secretary of the League of Texas Municipali- ties as well as head of the Bureau of Municipal Re- search at the University of Texas. These various con- nections have given him a sympathetic touch with the problem of the practical application of municipal gov- ernment to various conditions. This volume, therefore, will prove of service to the student in the classroom, and to the general reader, and will be helpful and stimu- lating to the city official. Clinton Rogers Woodruff. CONTENTS CHAPTER PACE I. The Growth of Municipal Functions . . . i II. Public Safety 25 III. Public Health '-< 68 IV. Public Education 93 V. Public Morals 123 VI. Social Welfare 150 VII. City Planning 186 VIII. Public Works 217 IX. Public Utilities 246 X. Municipal Ownership 282 XI. Municipal Finances— Revenues . . . .296 XII. Municipal Finances— Debts, Budget and Ac- counting 323 XIII. Conclusion 344 Index 355 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS CHAPTER I THE GROWTH OF MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS No study of the manifold and complex activities of the modern city would be complete without a brief presentation of the stages through which the sphere of action of the city has passed. Phenomenal as has been the increase in the number and diversity of functions of the city in the last century, more extensive and significant than all of the developments which preceded this period, nevertheless a number of the fundamental activities of our modern city had their origin in times much more remote, as far back indeed as our knowledge of cities extends. Though intervening centuries saw a stagna- tion and even a marked retrogression in the matter of municipal activities, it is necessary to begin with the era of the Greek cities to discover the beginnings of many of the functions performed by cities today. The Greek cities were distinguished from modern cities in one fundamental particular that had a great influence on the kind and number of functions performed by them : they were not subordinate parts of a larger political whole, but were themselves both city and state. Many of the functions that were performed by them are today performed by the governments of the states of which cities are a part. That is simply because the idea 2 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS of the modern state has developed beyond that of the city-state, and where cities are parts of a state these functions must be intrusted to the larger unit. So the great branches of public administration that deal with foreign affairs, war, and justice were, perforce, func- tions of the Greek city-states, but are nowhere today, wath but a few interesting exceptions, performed by cities. In the other two principal branches of govern- mental administration, finances and internal affairs, which are today divided between state and city, the Greek city-states were also the sole agencies of govern- ment. The important problem of a proper division of these functions, of which more will be said later, did not, therefore, arise in those cities. For the same rea- son, however, it becomes impossible in discussing the activities of the Greek cities to make a clear distinction between municipal and state activities. Most important of the municipal functions of the Greek cities, taking Athens as one of the best known examples, was the construction and maintenance of pub- lic works. As early as the sixth century B. C, a public water supply was conducted into the city by underground conduits from the surrounding country. This was not usually distributed into the individual houses but to the public fountains and baths. Street paving was but poorly done, but good roads were constructed connecting the city with the surrounding country. Public buildings were constructed on an extravagant scale, including temples, theaters, gj^mnasia. and monuments. The Acropolis alone at Athens is said to have cost the equivalent of over thirty million dollars. Other public works of impor- tance were found at Piraeus, the harbor of Athens, which is one of the earliest cities known to have been laid out according to a city plan. GROWTH OF MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS 3 Education and charity were both functions of the gov- ernment to a certain extent, the former being primarily training for citizenship in the fine arts and for the army, the latter consisting principally in the distribution of grain to the poor. But police regulation, sanitation, and social welfare activities were practically unknown, though Athens was a city of several hundred thousand people, nine-tenths of whom, it is true, were slaves. Housing conditions for a large part of the population were miserable, streets were not kept clean and were not lighted, and municipal conditions generally would have been intolerable but for the large part played by outdoor activities in the life of the population. The moneys for the expenditures of the city were not ordinarily raised by direct taxation, but by customs duties and other indirect taxes, as well as by tributes and the income from public lands and properties which were commonly leased out to private operators. Most of the money was spent for satisfying the national love of the fine arts and for the recreation of the leisure classes, the protection and improvement of the other elements in the city being apparently a matter of little or no concern. The later Greek cities, under the dominion of Alex- ander the Great, showed no development in the matter of municipal functions over the earlier city-states, but their activities were restricted more largely to municipal as distinct from state functions, for they had lost their autonomy. Construction of cities according to a definite plan was not uncommon during this period, but public works on a large scale continued to be the chief and almost sole governmental activity. One of the chief characteristics of the Roman period was the concentration of population in urban communi- 4 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS ties. In the Roman Empire there were hundreds of cities, varying from small hamlets to the metropolis of a million inhabitants or more. At the beginning of the Christian era there were a number of important cities throughout the Empire, some of them having more than a hundred thousand population. Real urban conditions and urban problems were therefore presented in the cities of that time and it will be interesting to examine to what extent these cities attempted to meet those problems. With the exception of Rome herself, all these cities were real municipalities, that is, units of local govern- ment subordinate to a higher authority which performed the state or national functions. In local matters the cities under the control of Rome exercised a consider- able but varying amount of autonomy, though the capi- tal retained a power of supervision even in this regard. More important than governmental control, however, was the power of example which led the other cities of the realm to imitate and emulate the mistress city of the world in their activities. Just as Athens, therefore, showed the highest development of the city in Greek times, so Rome may be taken as exemplifying the highest point of development of that time in a governmental way. In Rome, too, we find that the building of public works constituted the chief activity of the city in its internal administration. At first they were constructed by con- tract, but after the Empire the work was done directly by the government. Most famous of the building opera- tions for public services were the aqueducts which, brought a plentiful supply of pure water from the hills as far as fifty miles away. Though not piped except to the houses of the wealthy, this water was available for drinking at public fountains and for bathing at the baths. GROWTH OF MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS 5 These baths, some of them of palatial proportions and equipment, were in a number of instances left by the Emperors to the citizens as public baths. They consti- tuted the center of the social life of the city. Rome was well provided, particularly in the later period, with open squares and parks for outdoor recreation, a favor- ite pastime with the Romans. But in other respects the aspect of the city on its physical side was far from attractive. Streets were narrow, crooked, dirty, and ill paved or not paved at all. Houses projected into and over the streets, and the shops and booths left little room for the pedestrians, who were in constant danger from carts and animals. After the great fire in Nero's time, it is true, the city was rebuilt according to plans pre- pared by architects, and building restrictions were im- posed, but the physical condition of the streets was never brought up to the standards demanded by a mod- ern city. Police protection was most inadequate. Until the time of the Empire there was virtually no police protection at all, robberies being common and house owners relying on their slaves to act as watchmen at night. The streets were most insecure at night, and to make matters worse there was no attempt at lighting the streets. A large force of over seven thousand men was organized by Augustus to keep order and extinguish fires, but even after that the police protection was very inferior. Of sanitary regulation there was almost none. Though the city built drains and sewers, the most famous of which, the cloaca ina.vi)iia, still stands and is used today, the filth of the city was not properly taken care of and the Tiber became a source of serious epidemics. Housing conditions, except for the wealthy, were miserable, the poorer people being crowded into congested filthy tene- 3 6 ■ MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS ments operated for profit by the landlords, without any regulation. Education was apparently not regarded as a govern- ment function in Rome, at least not in the way of provid- ing public schools, but there were good libraries, some of them furnished by the Emperors. Poor relief was man- aged as in earlier days in Athens by the distribution of grain to the poor. This seems to have become a regular undertaking which gradually resulted in practically feed- ing the poorer population altogether, relieving them of the necessity of working for their living. With the fall of the Roman Empire there came a decadence of city life in western Europe. The barbaric invasions destroyed the economic basis of city life and many cities disappeared altogether at this time, while others diminished greatly in size and importance. Mu- nicipal activities were almost nil and consisted chiefly in providing walls and fortifications for defense. In the eastern empire, however, city life continued to flourish and the principal cities along the trade routes were places of considerable size and importance. After an interval of some seven or eight hundred years cities again grew up and flourished in the West. This was due to a revival of trade and industry. In Italy, Spain, France, and Germany cities began to de- velop along the principal trade routes. During the next four hundred years cities flourished in all of these coun- tries, some of them attaining to a respectable size, be- tween one hundred and two hundred thousand popula- tion. But even at their zenith they were smaller and less important than the larger cities of the ancient empire and were far behind the latter in the development of municipal activities. They attained varying degrees of autonomy in the various countries mentioned and GROWTH OF MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS 7 their governmental machinery showed great variations. Most of the important cities of this period, however, were organized on tlie hasis of the trade and merchant guilds, which, starting as approximate democracies, gradually degenerated into oligarchies and autocracies, becoming more and more corrupt and inefficient. The chief undertakings of the medieval cities were the public works. At first the fortifications wee their chief concern, then the construction of ports, markets, and other agencies of trade and commerce occupied their attention. Town halls of an elaborate character, cathe- drals, storehouses, and public baths were among the buildings erected by the cities. But other public services were either wholly lacking or very inadequately cared for. Street paving and cleaning were rare and street lighting was unknown. Organized police forces were either wanting or entirely inadequate and the lack of fire protection facilities caused many of the cities to suffer devastating conflagrations. Education and chari- ties, at first wholly left to the clergy, were even in the later Middle Ages but little supported by the municipali- ties. Public health was not cared for and living con- ditions were most insanitary. Plagues and epidemics of various kinds were common and the death rate in the cities was enormous. Activities connected with industry and trade were well looked after, but in other respects the medieval cities, so far from showing any advances in municipal administration over the cities of the Roman period, were in many cases far behind the development of the earlier times. The period following the ^Middle Ages was one of marked transition in the municipal conditions of Europe. The cities that had gained importance and power in the preceding period now, for the most part, declined or 8 MUNICIPAi: FUNCTIONS disappeared and new cities in other places grew up. This was caused in large part by the destruction of the old trade lines along which the important cities had been located, and the opening up of new channels of trade with the discovery of America and other new navigation routes. Accordingly we see important cities developing in Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands, equaling in size and importance the largest cities of the Middle Ages, and being, like many of them, practically city-states. The basis of organization in these cities, also, was commonly that of the merchant guilds. In Germany a number of the older cities survived and new places, particularly seaports, came into prominence. Cities of more than a hundred thousand population were not uncommon. These cities, particularly in Germany and the Nether- lands, showed considerable improvements in municipal activities over the cities of the former period. Public works, street cleaning, police and fire protection, and education and charity showed marked advances ; though the period of the Thirty Years' War brought a serious interruption in these developments. In France, Paris was the most important city not only of that country, but of all Europe. Even at the close of the Aliddle Ages Paris led in the matter of popula- tion, and by the early part of the eighteenth century it had attained nearly a million and a half. Its pre- eminence lay not merely, however, in its size, but also in the state of governmental activity it had attained. It is true that this activity was for the most part not municipal, being developed by the royal government, but, nevertheless, the improvements brought about in that city were not without considerable effect on devel- opments in other cities, in France and elsewhere, whicli strove to approach the conditions there found. A men- GROWTH OF MUNICIPAL FUNXTIONS 9 tion of the improvements made during this period will therefore serve to show the most advanced state of de- velopment attained at this time. In the early part of this period conditions in Paris were no better than in other European cities, as regards police and fire protection, sanitation, and general living conditions. But after the middle of the seventeenth cen- tury marked improvements were made. Public works were undertaken on a large scale, the beauty of the city was enhanced by boulevards and monum.ental structures, a regular police force was provided, lighting and clean- ing of streets were required, and a regular fire brigade organized. Contrasted with this era of improvement in Paris were the miserable conditions in London at this time. London, though the only large city in England up to this time, had by the end of the seventeenth century attained a population of half a million, making it second in size to Paris. Professor Fairlie gives a vivid description of conditions in this, the second largest city of Europe, as late as the end of the seventeenth century. Speaking of the failure of the government to put into effect Sir Christopher Wren's plans for the rebuilding of London after the great fire of 1666, Professor Fairlie goes on to say : Not only did the narrow streets and crooked alleys re- main, but little effort was made to render them even passable. The pavement was detestable ; all foreigners cried shame upon it. The drainage was so bad that in rainy weather the gutters soon became torrents. Open spaces within the town were receptacles for offal and cinders, for dead cats and dead dogs. The houses were not numbered, and, until the end of Charles II's reign, most o'f the streets were in profound dark- ness. Falls, bruises, and broken bones were of frequent oc- currence. Pails were emptied from upper windows with lit- lo MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS tie regard for those passing below. Sewers for the disposal of waste were absolutely unknown. Thieves and robbers plied their trade with impunity ; while the dissolute youth of the better classes amused themselves at night by breaking windows, upsetting sedan chairs, beating quiet men, and offering rude caresses to pretty women. It is true, there was an act of common council which provided that more than one thousand watchmen should be constantly on the alert from sunset to sunrise, and that every inhabitant should take his turn of duty. But few of those who were summoned left their homes ; and those few generally found it more agreeable to tipple in ale-houses than to pace the streets. During the eighteenth century improvements were made in London in the lighting, water supply, and police protection, but in most respects London remained far behind Paris, while the other cities of England, though few of them were more than mere towns, were even worse off than London. It was a striking characteristic of this period that city governments throughout Europe became increasingly corrupt and undemocratic, and at the same time, in all the continental European countries, more and more sub- ject to central domination and control. The nineteenth century worked most profound changes in the municipal systems of the leading countries of Europe — England, France, and Prussia. These changes were of two kinds, improvements in the organization of the city governments and extension of their activities. The two developments were so closely related that it is impossible to discuss the one without mentioning the other, although our chief interest lies in tracing the increase in the field of municipal activity. France was the first country to break with the munici- pal traditions of the old regime. At the time of the Revolution French cities had inefficient, undemocratic GROWTH OF iMUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS ii forms of government, of varying types, but all of them more or less under central domination. There was then virtually no local autonomy, and the indifference as to proper municipal conditions on the part of the central government was equaled only by the lack of interest of the citizens themselves in a governiuent which they were powerless to improve. The Revolution, with character- istic iconoclasm, destroyed this system root and branch. For heterogeneity of municipal organization it substi- tuted uniformity; for oligarchy, democracy; for central domination, almost complete autonomy. This funda- mental innovation proved to be too radical and was later superseded by the Napoleonic system, as undemocratic and destructive of local authority as had been the sys- tem under the Bourbons prior to the Revolution. But the ideal of local democracy and autonomy envisaged by the legislation of the Constituent Assembly was never again completely lost sight of. Though the succeeding monarchies and empires modified the measures of the republics making for municipal autonomy and democracy, there was a gradual general development in that direc- tion, and the Municipal Corporations Act of the Third Republic bore the stamp of both of these principles. It is not possible here to give even a brief description of the form of city government under which the French cities operate, though it is worth emphasizing that de- mocracy in city government, as in all government, tends to stimulate interest in the functions of the government and so to encourage the meeting of municipal needs and the solution of municipal problems. Of even greater significance, however, for the development of municipal activities is the scope of powers granted to the cities. Local needs are obviously experienced locally first of all, and the possibility of satisfying such needs should 12 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS be lodged in the hands of the local government. That is the principle underlying the grant of powers to the French cities. The French municipal council is given powers to regulate the affairs of the city. This general grant of powers is greatly limited, it is true, by the provisions of the municipal code requiring the approval of the higher administrative authorities for many of the acts of the council, and by the entire sys- tem of strict administrative control over the city in general. But nevertheless, as a statement of the proper principle upon which powers should be granted to cities it is valuable, and there can be no question that a meas- ure of administrative control must be retained by the state if a grant of large local autonomy is to work well. The ultimate supremacy of the national law-making authority is, of course, retained and can be exercised at any time. The important point to be kept in mind, however, is that this authority need not be invoked by the cities every time they wish to satisfy a local need. Prussia was the next important state to undertake the reform of her cities in the matter of organization and powers. At the very beginning of the nineteenth century, the Prussian city, like the pre-Revolutionary French city, was a creature of the central government. There was no real local participation in the government. The offices were filled by appointees of the central au- thorities, the government was inefficient, and the local citizens, being without voice or influence in the manage- ment of local affairs, had little or no interest in their city. The troubled years of Napoleonic domination in Prussia, 1807 to 181 3, witnessed many governmental reforms of fundamental significance, not the least im- portant of which was the reform of municipal govern- ment. The Municipal Government Act of 1808 prepared GROWTH OF MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS 13 by Baron vom Stein marked an epoch for Prussian cities. This act, and the subsequent legislation based upon it, introduced a large measure of democracy into the local government — though, owing to the three class system of voting, the franchise is much less democratic than in France — provided for a large measure of lay participa- tion in municipal administration, and above all gave the cities a large grant of local powers. As in France, the cities are empowered to do what seems to be for their best interests, provided they do not act in conflict with higher laws. As in France also, there are requirements for the approval of the higher administrative authorities for certain kinds of municipal acts, though the German cities have fewer of their powers dependent upon such ap- proval. It is this large freedom of action, granted in general terms to the Prussian cities, which has been largely responsible for the fact that Prussian cities today, and other German cities governed largely on the Prus- sian model, lead the world in the extent to which they meet local needs through municipal action. England was the last of the three European countries considered to modernize her city government. As late as 1835 English cities were largely medieval in the com- position and activities of the municipal government. The government was, in the vast majority of cities, in the hands of a close corporation consisting of a very small portion of the inhabitants. The officers were in almost all cases inefficient and in many cases corrupt. The city as such had few powers of government and those few were either not exercised at all or performed in an inefficient or corrupt manner. These conditions, as discovered by an in- vestigation by a special commission, led to the passage in 1835 of the Municipal Corporations Act. This act re- formed the cities on the organization side by introducing 14 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS democracy in place of the oligarchy dominant before. The entire spirit of municipal government was thereby altered, and in place of suspicion and distrust there de- veloped in the minds of the citizens a feeling of interest and regard for the local government. As regards the grant of powers, however, this act did not go as far as the French and Prussian reform acts. No general grant of local powers was made and few specific powers were granted in the act. The old common-law doctrine that a city was a corporation of limited powers, with only such functions as were clearly conferred upon it, was not superseded by any general grant. There remained in England, therefore, the necessity for every city to go to the legislature for authority to undertake any project not expressly authorized before. It is true that Parlia- ment conferred many powers by subsequent general legislation and delegated to central administrative au- thorities the power to give cities additional powers in certain cases, but, in spite of that fact, English cities are still in many cases compelled to go to Parliament for a special act permitting them to engage upon a new mu- nicipal undertaking. In the matter of local powers, therefore, English cities are still at a disadvantage as compared with the cities of the continental European countries considered. On the functional side the developments of the last century in European cities were no less remarkable than those on the organization side. With democracv and local autonomy introduced the conditions were favorable for the development of a proper governmental activity. The increase of general education and the development particularly of the natural sciences were other impor- tant factors in municipal improvement during the latest period. GROWTH OF MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS 15 Adequate police protection, up to that time afforded in almost no city of Europe, was rapidly developed in Euro- pean cities following the establishment of the first mod- ern police force in London in 1829. Regular, organized, paid fire departments did not develop until the nineteenth century, which also witnessed the first serious attempts at fire prevention by means of building regulations. Prior to the nineteenth century public health activities were limited to emergency measures undertaken to pre- vent the introduction and spread of epidemics, particu- larly of the cholera and the plague. In the last hundred years the health department has been developed as an important and continuous branch of city administration in all important European cities, with special emphasis on the preventive side. Public education, though intro- duced in Prussia in the eighteenth century, did not begin to supplant private and ecclesiastical control in most countries of Europe until well into the nineteenth cen- tury. England established her first system of public schools in 1870. Public works, almost the sole field of activity as we have seen in which the ancient cities and European cities prior to the nineteenth century were engaged, showed a remarkable development in the latest period. Streets which had been but poorly paved, even in the capitals of Europe, were in the nineteenth century better paved in all the important cities. Street cleaning became for the first time a municipal function in most larger cities, and effective street lighting is also distinctly a nineteenth century development, largely because illu- minating gas and electricity were not available as lighting mediums before that time. Sewerage systems and the treatment of sewage are practically nineteenth century developments for almost all European cities, though London and Paris had some sewerage at a good deal i6 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS earlier date. Waterworks, though among the most stu- pendous undertakings of the ancient cities, were not equaled in size again until the latter part of the nine- teenth century. The rapid increase in the size of cities, the greater amount of water used by modern city dwell- ers, and the increasing pollution of natural watercourses all combined to make the question of an adequate water supply distinctly a nineteenth century municipal problem. More significant than all of these nineteenth century developments so far mentioned, most cf which present the development of the city on its material or physical side, is the progress made, within very recent times for the most part, along lines of social welfare. Briefly stated, this social progress has been in the direction of municipal action directed toward improving the condi- tion of the economically weak or dependent elements in the community. This includes not merely the work of charities, that is the ministering to those actually with- out sufficient food and clothing, though even that fun- damental work was left to private and church activity until recent times. It extends much further and envis- ages the improvement of all the living conditions of the wage earning class. Proper housing regulations, em- ployment bureaus, municipal markets, public medical assistance, municipal pawnshops, savings banks and in- surance offices, opportunities for cheap or even free recreation are only some of the activities of the modern European city which were almost unknown and un- thought of a hundred years ago. In these respects the German cities have advanced farther than any other cities of the world, and it is from them that other cities are learning in this as in other directions. City planning as a means not merely of city beautification and con- venience of traffic, but as a program for increasing the GROWTH OF MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS 17 safety and pleasure of city life for all classes, is another distinctly nineteenth century development of European cities, which promises in a way to combine and correlate all the other activities considered. Perhaps the most striking and, in some ways, the fundamental development of the nineteenth century affecting European cities was the phenomenal concen- tration of population in cities. Not only did cities in- crease in number but they increased enormously in size and contained an ever increasing proportion of the entire population. In England, the first of the three countries under consideration to show a marked urban concentra- tion, there were at the beginning of the nineteenth cen- tury only fifteen cities with a population greater than twenty thousand, and of these London was the only city with more than a hundred thousand population. The percentage of the entire population of England and Wales living in these cities was at that time less than seventeen per cent. By the end of the century there were in England and Wales thirty-seven cities with more than one hundred thousand population and the percent- age of the population living in cities of twenty thousand or more had increased to fifty per cent, the highest per- centage found in any of the countries under consideration. In Germany, that is, the territory now comprised in the German Empire, there were at the beginning of the century only two cities with more than a hundred thou- sand population and the percentage of population in cities of more than twenty thousand in the three principal states, Prussia, Saxony, and Bavaria, was six per cent. A very rapid urban concentration began after the middle of the century and was especially marked after the establishment of the Empire in 1871. By the end of the century there were in the German Empire thirty-three i8 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS cities with more than one hundred thousand population, and over twenty-five per cent of the people lived in cities of twenty thousand population or over. France is the least urban of the three European coun- tries under consideration, owing primarily to the slower industrial development, but even in France there were more than twenty-two per cent of the population living in cities of twenty thousand or over at the close of the century, as compared with less than seven per cent at the beginning of the century. At the close of the cen- tury there were a dozen cities in France with more than a hundred thousand population, whereas at the beginning of the century there were but three. The significance of this development — a development that is continuing unabated in the present century — lies in the fact that the tremendous and rapid increase in the size of cities complicated the problems of city gov- ernment manifoldly and almost made imperative the changes in the form of organization and the expansion of functions which were noted above. The history of American cities prior to the nineteenth century has almost no importance for our purposes here, for up to that time there were few cities of any size, those few were small, they performed very few func- tions, and even those in a very rudimentary manner. In 1800 there were no cities of more than a hundred thousand population, and only five with more than twenty thousand, the total population of which was less than four per cent of the entire population of the country. Even the most fundamental functions of police and fire protection were scarcely attempted by the cities, while public health was quite unprovided for and municipal improvements almost unknown. Even in 1810 New York City, having then a population of about one hun- GROWTH OF MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS 19 dred thousand persons, expended but a dollar per capita per year for all municipal purposes, while cities of that size today spend from ten to twenty times that much. Urban concentration was no less a nineteenth century phenomenon in the United States than in the European countries noted. In 1900 the percentage of population in the United States living in cities of more than twenty thousand inhabitants Lad increased to twenty-seven per cent and more than eighteen per cent of the total popu- lation lived in cities of over one hundred thousand. By 1 910 these two percentages had increased to over thirty- two per cent and twenty-two per cent respectively, show- ing that the development is continuing to an even more marked degree. The same cause, that is, the increase in urban concentration, should have the same effect, that is, a corresponding increase in municipal functions, in the United States as in Europe, and in large measure this has been true. But American cities have not kept pace in this regard with European cities, more especially those of Germany. Doubtless many factors contributed to this situation, but among the most potent must be con- sidered the difference in the measure of the local powers granted to cities in the United States as compared with those of Germany and Europe generally. From the very beginning of the history of the cities in the independent American states they have been mendicants for powers from the all-powerful legislatures. Few powers were granted in the charters and those few were considerably circumscribed. The courts, by adopting at the outset a policy of strict construction against municipal powers not clearly granted, crippled our cities still more and made them more than ever dependent on minute legislative ac- tion. Consequently, as new powers became imperative, owing to increasingly complex municipal conditions, each 20 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS separate undertaking had to be sanctioned by the legisla- ture, sometimes years after the need had developed. No matter how desirable a municipal project might seem, no matter how willing the citizens might be to undertake the financial burden, the city in question was powerless to satisfy its wants until an ignorant, indifferent, and sometimes corrupt legislature could be induced to act favorably on the grant of power desired. How different would have been the case had our American cities, like those of Germany, been able to meet each situation as it arose in the light of local con- ditions, provided only that no general state law was contravened, and subject to salutory administrative con- trol. The method we have adopted in this country of protecting the cities by constitutional provision against legislative interference in certain municipal matters, though perhaps the only remedy for the legislative abuses that had arisen, is at best a cumbersome and ineffective way of dealing with the problem and far less satisfactory than the policy of legislative grant of comprehensive local powers adopted by continental European countries. Until the movement for municipal home rule, as now typified in this country by so-called home rule constitu- tional provisions, bears fruit in a sound public opinion and a legislative practice that will insure a free sphere of action within proper limits, the best development will not have been attained, though some gratifying improve- ment over earlier conditions will have been recorded under the system of constitutional limitations on the legislative power. Surveying now briefly the development of municipal functions in the United States during the nineteenth century we find that the rudimentary police protection by constables and night watchmen found in the colonial GROWTH OF MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS 21 towns was not superseded by regular professional police forces until well into the second third of the century and then only in the larger cities. In the same way the means of fire protection did not change from the old- time inefficient volunteer system to the paid permanent fire departments until about the middle of the century. Special public health authorities made their appearance in the early years of the century in a few of the larger cities, but their activities were practically confined to dealing with epidemics of contagious diseases. Here again it was after the middle of the century before any American city had a permanent force of health inspec- tors, though most of the large cities had boards of health and health officers by that time. Public elementary education, from the first a function of the New England colonial towns, was one of the earliest municipal functions in the United States. There developed a tendency, however, to separate the school administration from the other municipal functions and to intrust it to special boards not under the control of the regular municipal authorities. While this is true today in most cases, the connection between the school administration and the city has always been so close that it must properly be considered a municipal function even where separate authorities are provided. Poor re- lief developed as a municipal function in the larger cities during the nineteenth century, though it has gen- erally been regarded as fundamentally a county function in the United States, save in New England. The most remarkable municipal development of the century was the increase in the number and importance of the public works. Street paving, which had been of the worst kind until after the Revolution, continued to be very largely the old cobblestone kind until well into 3 22 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS the nineteenth century. After the middle of the century granite blocks came into use and then wooden pave- ments. Brick and various kinds of asphalt sheet pave- ments marked further improvements in the latter part of the century and the amount of paving increased steadily. Street lighting developed with the introduction of illuminating gas, but was generally let by contract to a private concern, though Philadelphia had a municipal plant in 1845. Sewerage works did not develop generally until after the middle of the century, though Boston had a municipal sewer system in 1823. By the end of the century most of the larger cities had developed their sewer systems. Sewage disposal plants were a development of the closing years of the century. Most important and most extensive of municipal public works are the water supply systems. These did not develop on any large scale in the United States until well along toward the middle of the century, the first large modern system being the Croton reservoir and aqueduct in New York, completed in 1842. Thereafter municipal waterworks began to be constructed in the medium-sized cities as well as the larger ones, until the majority of the waterworks in all but the smallest cities were municipally owned and operated. In the field of municipal ownership and operation of other public utilities, such as street railways, markets, electric light plants, etc., the nineteenth century did not mark nearly as great a development in the cities of the United States as in those of England and Germany, partly because of the greater political individualism, partly because of distrust of city government in general, and partly, as has been stated, because of the necessity of going to the legislature for authority to enter upon any new undertaking. GROWTH OF MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS 23 The nineteenth century was not marked in the case of American cities by any such significant changes in the organization of the government as occurred in England in 1835. in France under the Third Repubhc, and in Prussia in 1808. The so-called federal type of city government, copied after the checks and balances prin- ciple of the federal government, with its mayor chosen by popular vote, displaced the old English colonial type of borough administration by a council just about at the turning of the nineteenth century. The federal or mayor and council form then remained the practically universal type of American city, with important modifications, it is true, throughout the entire century. A word may be said in conclusion concerning the tendency manifested in American city government in the new century. On the organization side the origin and spread of commission government and the commission manager plan are proving of the utmost significance. Though a discussion of these developments falls outside the scope of this work, it must be pointed out that if the claims of increased administrative efficiency made for these forms of city government as compared with the old type are well founded, their introduction cannot fail to have some effect on the functional side of American city government. A ]^art, no doubt, of the failure of American cities to undertake all the functions they might have undertaken must be traced back to a lack of con- fidence on the part of the taxpayer that money voted for such functions would be efficiently spent. The establishment of real administrative efficiency, therefore, would do much to remove that impediment to enlarged activity of our cities. On the functional side, these first few years of the twentieth century have been filled with significance. Not 24- MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS only are all the old municipal activities being developed and perfected, but new ones are being undertaken. These new activities are mostly in the field of social welfare work, a hitherto largely neglected field in Ameri- can cities. An awakening to a new social consciousness among city dwellers may well be said to be the most significant tendency of the new century, and though we are still far behind the most advanced European cities in this regard, there is every reason to hope that this development will continue without abatement in the next years. CHAPTER II PUBLIC SAFETY Fundamental among governmental functions is the preservation of public safety, meaning both safety for the life, liberty, and property of the individuals that constitute the public and also the security of the govern- ment itself. The former aspect of public safety has been a charge of cities from earliest times, though, as has been seen, it is a duty that was indifferently dis- charged in the ancient cities, almost entirely neglected in the Middle Ages, and not systematically undertaken until the nineteenth century. There are several phases of the preservation of public safety all of which fall under the general concept of the police power, as under- stood in American public law. But the three principal activities under that head comprise police adminis- tration in the narrower sense, fire protection, and public health activities. Public health administration, being a distinct and well defined branch of the work of preserving public safety, is treated in a sep- arate chapter, while police protection in the narrower sense, and fire protection are sufficiently related phases of public safety activities to be treated in one chapter. as 26 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS POLICE PROTECTION Used in the narrower sense, then, we may consider under the head of the police activities of cities those activities which are commonly intrusted to the regularly organized, professional, uniformed class of city officials that constitute the police force. It may be noted at the outset that there is a considerable difference in the scope of functions performed by this branch of the city's service in the United States and on the continent of Europe. But some of the most important functions performed by city police are fairly universal and may, therefore, be considered as characteristic. In the first place, the earliest and most important func- tion of the police force is to patrol the streets in order to preserve order, prevent crimes and misdemeanors, and apprehend evildoers. It is obvious that in order to ac- complish this purpose the force of patrolmen must be large enough, throughout the city, to establish a reason- able certainty of detection and apprehension, for cer- tainty of apprehension and punishment constitutes the greatest deterrent of crime. The number of patrolmen should, therefore, be sufficient to have every portion of the city covered at frequent intervals by a patrolman on his beat. Only by thus making it really unsafe for the criminal to prosecute his work can the amount of crime be appreciably decreased. Obviously a greater number of men will be required for this purpose at night than in the daytime. If we turn to the practice of cities as regards the size of the patrol force maintained we see that police statistics are usually presented in the form of figures showing so many policemen per ten thousand inhabitants.^ But it * For instance, the following table taken from Munro: "Principles and Methods of Municipal Administration," p. 288, note I, shows the PUBLIC SAFETY 27 would seem to be clear that from the point of view of effective patrolling the important consideration is not the number of patrolmen per thousand population, but rather the number per square mile. Of two cities hav- ing the same population and the same number of police- men, one might be well policed and the other poorly policed if the area of one were double that of the other. On the other hand, for other purposes and because of other considerations the ratio of policemen to population is important, for it is almost invariably true that that ratio increases with the population of the city, largely irre- spective of the increase in area. More important than mere numbers in this connection, however, is the char- acter of the city population, principally industrial or commercial centers requiring larger police forces than cities that are chiefly residential. The modus operandi of the police force in dealing with crimes and the more serious misdemeanors is the arrest of the offenders when caught. A fair measure of the effectiveness of the police force in preventing ratio of the number of police per ten thousand population in some of the larger European and American cities. City Berlin Paris London (Metropolitan) Glasgow New York Chicago Philadelphia Boston Pop. (1910) 2,070,695 2,846,986 7,231,701 784,496 4,766,833 2,185,283 1,549,008 670,585 Number of Police 7,914 7,890 20,540 2,020 10,383 4,251 3,565 1,561 Number of Police per 10,000 population 38 28 36 34 21 19 23 23 28 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS such crimes and misdemeanors would, therefore, seem to be found in the number of such offenses committed in which the offenders are not apprehended. But the mere number of arrests made by the poHce force is no certain test of its efficiency. In the first place, as the policeman has authority to compel obedience to his order of arrest, he may act on insufficient suspicion or justification and so swell the number of his arrests, though his prisoners may on examination all be discharged. In the second place, a vast number of the arrests made by city police forces are for drunkenness and vagrancy and many of these present cases that should not be treated by arrest at all, but by helpful measures, such as were inaugu- rated in Toledo and other cities under the so-called golden rule system. Instead of trying to increase the number of arrests for these offenses, policemen were instructed to avoid arrests and content themselves with warnings and even to assist intoxicated persons to their homes. One important aspect of this phase of police activity is the efficiency of the police courts of the city. When arrests are necessary they must, to be effective, be fol- lowed up by prosecution and punishment. In this, too, it is important that the policeman do his part effectively in the marshaling and presentation of his evidence and his non-susceptibility to improper influence. But more than that is required. The most effective and faithful police force is crippled in the performance of this part of its work if the magistrates of the courts do not do their duty and uphold the executive arm of the law. The futility of arresting offenders, who are almost cer- tain to be released by the magistrate if they prove to have influence, not only discourages the policeman in his work, but weakens his power of resisting the tempta- PUBLIC SAFETY 29 tion that is usually presented to him of letting the offender off without arrest. The apprehension of offenders who are not caught in the commission of the act is usually delegated to a spe- cial branch of the police force known as the detective service. This may be separately organized, as in the larger cities, or may simply employ members of the ordinary patrol force, as is usually the case in the smaller cities. This is, of course, a most important part of the work of the police force, but that it is far from satis- factorily performed in all cases is partly evidenced by the flourishing state of many private detective agencies in which the public generally has much more confidence than in the regular police detectives. A large number of other duties besides the mere patrolling of the streets and the arrest of offenders are assigned to the city's police force. The general preser- vation of order and decency by the dispelling of disor- derly mobs and assemblies, the abatement of all kinds of nuisances, the dispensation of information, first aid to the injured, the regulation of traffic are only a few of the duties that devolve upon the police force of the modern city. In the preservation of orderliness and decency, and particularly in the protection of women against annoyance, a new development has recently oc- curred in the United States, namely, the introduction of the policewoman. It has been found that for this pur- pose women are more valuable than men, and the num- ber of cities that are introducing police matrons and policewomen is rapidly increasing. One very important activity of the city police in the United States is that which brings them into contact with the supervision of what is called vice, particularly gambling, the liquor traffic, and the social evil. These 30 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS activities are, in the United States, not merely vices but also in large measure crimes, that is, they are forbidden and punishable by law. In the same category from this point of view may be put Sunday amusements, where they are forbidden. The proper treatment of these mu- nicipal problems and their importance will be taken up in another connection. The important point to be em- phasized in this place is that the enforcement of regula- tions dealing with these matters is, in the United States, intrusted to the regular police force of the city, whereas in continental Europe these matters are for the most part not subjected to such extensive regulation, and even such regulation as exists is not intrusted to the ordinary police force of the city. It is generally agreed by stu- dents of the municipal police problem in this country that a very large part of the police corruption and ineffi- ciency for which American cities have acquired an unenviable reputation is traceable to charging the regular police with this function of enforcing standards of morals with which in many cases a large portion of the popu- lation is not in sympathy. Certainly there can be no question that the enforce- ment of such regulations as these has no very intimate connection with the ordinary problem of protecting the safety of the person and property of the individual, which is the primary function of the police. For that reason the recent development of permanent morals commissions in a few American cities with a special corps of workers is to be welcomed not only as a prom- ising step in the direction of vice control, but also as an aid in diminishing the forces of corruption at work on the police force. Very important results in the direction of increasing public safety have been attained by the development of PUBLIC SAFETY 31 the traffic squad of the city poHce forces. The con- tinually increasing congestion of pedestrian traffic in the cities combined with the phenomenal multiplication of fast-moving vehicles, such as automobiles and motor- cycles of all kinds, have combined to demand an ever rising toll of lives from accidents. Almost all of these accidents are the result of carelessness on the part of the drivers of the vehicles or on the part of the pedes- trians, or both, and can be avoided if proper traffic regulations are efficiently administered by policemen with special training and aptitude for that work. Safety zones, isles of safety, and semaphores are among some of the modern devices used for increasing the safety of traffic at street intersections, while motorcycle policemen are proving equal to the difficult task of preventing dan- gerous speeding along the streets of the city. While an enumeration of the tasks that devolve upon the police force of a modern American city would seem to make them sufficiently comprehensive and varied, there are still other functions which are imposed upon the police in continental European cities that are not so intimately connected with the protection of person and property and which are not exercised by the American police. Chief among these is the system of police sur- veillance developed to its highest point in Prussia among western European countries, by which the police attempt to keep track of the movements of every individual in the state. This is done by keeping a careful registry of every individual that comes into and leaves a com- munity, ascertaining whence he came, what his business is, and when he leaves, and all facts requisite to identify him. Of course such a system of registry is a very im- portant factor in keeping track of criminals and sus- picious persons and so is a direct aid in that part of the 32 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS police work. But as the information obtained is used also for a variety of other administrative purposes, par- ticularly for making up the tax rolls and the voting lists, and keeping track of persons liable for military service, it cannot be regarded as wholly the subject matter of police administration in the narrower sense of protecting public safety. The collection of vital sta- tistics is another function commonly imposed upon the regular police force in continental Europe which, so far as it is done at all in the cities of the United States, is done through other officers. It can be seen, therefore, that the scope of action of the police force in European cities is considerably greater than that of the police in American cities, and it may be noted that a considerable portion of that additional activity is really more for state than for local purposes, a fact which must be kept in mind in considering the question of the relation of the city police force to the state. It is probably accurate to say that in no other branch of municipal activity is there a more intimate connection between the manner of organizing and administering the work of the department and the success of that work than exists in the case of the police department. While perfection of organization will not of itself, of course, insure satisfactory results in this or any other under- taking, public or private, experience has shown that unless certain principles are followed in the constitution of the police department of a city it is idle to hope for good results. Still other features are perhaps less essen- tial but, nevertheless, play an important part in the smooth working of the force. One of these fundamental principles of organization is that the police department of a city must be organized on a military basis. This means, above all else, a strict PUBLIC SAFETY 33 discipline, complete obedience on the part of subordi- nates, and a clear, undivided responsibility centralized in a single officer at the head. The earliest police forces that developed in cities in continental Europe were actually part of the regular military forces of the state and were intended to perform semi-political functions in guarding the safety of the government rather than to look after the safety of the individual. Even today the gendarmerie in those states, though no longer an integral part of the military forces, has every appearance of the regular military. The ordinary police in the cities, more- over, are organized strictly along military lines and are indeed officered largely by former military officers. The uniform has, therefore, been a characteristic of those police systems from the first. In England and the United States, where military traditions have never flourished, the establishment of uniformed police systems along military lines met with the severest opposition. Though every one complained loudly in London at the beginning of the nineteenth century of the lack of protection to person and property under the old lay watch and guard system, a veritable storm of indignation was let loose when, in 1829, a modern uniformed police force on a military model was first established in the metropolis. The same experience was repeated, in modified form, in New York City when, for the first time in this country, a uniformed police force on the English model was introduced in 1857. The obvious advantage of the new system has led to its adoption in all cities, even those of the smallest class. The imiforms, which were at first regarded by the policemen themselves as badges of inferiority and quasi serfdom, have come to add the dignity and prestige which come from exterior signs of organization and 34 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS authority. IVIore practical and serviceable uniforms have been developed than the old blue coat with large brass buttons and the heavy helmet and have added to the comfort of the policemen without destroying the advan- tages of a uniformed force. At the head of the police force, as has been said, there must be a single officer. That principle has not by any means always been recognized in the organization of police departments in this country, for police boards have been plentiful and are still to be found in many cities today. But authorities are pretty well agreed that the single commissioner plan is the only proper form of organization, and in the larger cities the board plan is rapidly becoming extinct. In continental European cities there is invariably a single head. But as to the best manner of choosing this officer and, even more, as to the kind of man that should be chosen, neither theory nor practice shows any unanimity. It is obvious that he should not be popularly elected, though in the past that has been not unknown as a method of filling the office in American cities. In the mayor and council form of government he should be appointed by the mayor and be absolutely responsible to him. In the commis- sion form the head of the police department is inevitably and unfortunately one of the elected commissioners. In the commission manager form of city government there is something of a difference of opinion as to whether the police department should be under the supervisory jurisdiction of the city manager with a department head appointed by him, or should be intrusted to an official selected by the commission and independent of the manager. The former would seem, from considerations of general administrative expediency rather than from the purely police administration standpoint, to be the PUBLIC SAFETY 35 better plan. In England the head of the city pohce force is selected by the watch committee of the council, which has general administrative control over the de- partment. On the continent of Europe the head of the police force is usually either the mayor, acting in that capacity as a state rather than local official, or an official appointed by the central authorities. This raises the whole big question of the relation between local police and the central government, which will be touched upon a little later. As to the kind of person to be chosen as head of the police force, there are three general possibilities, each of which has some advantages and some drawbacks and each of which can be found exemplified either in the United States or in some of the European countries considered. In the first place, the commissioner may be chosen from private life without any experience in the police department whatsoever. In the second place, he may be promoted from the ranks to the commissioner- ship. In the third place, he may be chosen because of general experience and ability in the public service of the city or the state, though without any first-hand knowledge of police administration. The first two methods of choice are the ones em- ployed in the cities of the United States with but a few notable exceptions. As to the merit of choosing the one kind of man over the other there is considerable dift'er- ence of opinion. The technical advantage and skill which comes to a man from going up through the ranks and getting a thorough acquaintance with the business in all its details is as great in the business of police administration as in any other business. Furthermore, the esprit dc corps and the loyalty of the force to a man who has risen from the ranks by real ability are likely to 36 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS be greater than toward a layman who will be quite likely to be considered a "green-horn." If the work of the police force consisted solely or even largely in the mere problem of managing the force of men and looking after the technical details of the department, the superiority of the man who had come up through the ranks would hardly be questioned. But the work of the police de- partment touches the general public at so many tender points and involves so many delicate considerations of tact and expediency that many personal characteristics are required for a successful police commissioner, at least in a democracy. These qualities of tact, broad- mindedness, and firmness withal are more likely to be blunted than sharpened by service in the ranks and promotion therefrom, and can only rarely be found combined in the same individual with an intimate ac- quaintance with the technical details. It becomes, there- fore, really a question as to which of the two kinds of qualities are the more important or the more difficult to supply. Since so large and inlportant a portion of the police commissioner's work involves quasi political aspects in the sense of considerations of policy, it would seem natural to follow the analogy of department heads in the national government and select a person with the requisite personal attributes to act in technical matters on the advice of a subordinate who does have a complete technical acquaintance with the work of the department. The lay commissioner, therefore, assisted by a superin- tendent or chief of police who has risen from the ranks would seem to be better than a technical head who lacked the personal attributes. Everything depends obviously in this arrangement on the selection of the proper person for the lay commis- sioner. It would be an evident advantage to secure a PUBLIC SAFETY 37 man who had had experience in the work of public administration and had sliown marked executive abiHty of a kind required particularly for the police department. In the United States, unfortunately, such men are rare and seldom available. A few instances might be men- tioned, however, such as Commissioner Bingham of New York, who was a former army officer. The com- missionership of New York City was recently offered to General Goethals on the basis of his administrative record with the Panama Canal. But these are excep- tional instances, the choice in American cities lying apparently between an inexperienced layman and a more or less narrow professional policeman. In European countries, however, the realm of choice is much wider and police commissioners are commonly chosen from other administrative fields. The military organization is continued down from the chief or head, and even the military terms for officers are used, such as captains, lieutenants and sergeants. The larger the city the more extensive is the hierarchy of officials and the more complicated the maciiinery. In large cities the territory is divided into precincts, each of which has its station under the direction of a captain or other higher officer. In such cases the captain is responsible to the superintendent, chief or commissioner for the efficiency of the station and force under his con- trol, and on -the caliber of the captains will depend in large part the efficiency of the service as a whole. In the smaller cities, the chief is directly in contact with the entire force, being aided only by a few subordinate offi- cers. Between the patrolmen and the head of the de- partment there are men who act largely as inspectors of the work of the patrolling force. Their rank and title vary according to the size of the city and, also, among "^ /f o f- ^ r 38 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS cities of the same size. They perform such duties as mustering the men before going on patrol duty, calhng the roll, and inspecting their appearance and general condition. The conduct of the police station, whether there be only one central station or a number of precinct stations, involves, in the first place, the keeping of a complete record, known as the police blotter, on which are entered all occurrences in the station. This duty is usually in- trusted to a clerk, as a desk sergeant, and constitutes a very important means of judging of the activities of the department and its force. Another duty of the force at the station is to take care of persons brought in under arrest, persons who have been injured, children who are lost, and all persons appealing to the police for aid or shelter. The police station must always be kept open with some one on duty, involving the use of a night force. This brings up the question of the distribution of the patrol force between day and night. As has been pointed out above, it is obvious that, so far as the work of patrolling the streets of the city is con- cerned, and that occupies the time of four-fifths of the police force in American cities, not only is it as nec- essary to have a patrolling force at night as well as in the daytime, but that force, in order to do its work as well, must needs be larger. Something, of course, will depend on the adequacy of the lighting system of the city, for the better the system of lighting the streets the greater the area of effectiveness of each patrolman. But even with the best system of lighting practicable, a larger force will be needed for this purpose than during the day, though other phases of police activity, like that of traf- fic policemen, obviously require fewer men at night. Three general schemes, based on the varying number of PUBLIC SAFETY 39 platoons or shifts, have been advocated and tried for meeting the necessity of having all day and all night police service. These are the two, three and five pla- toon systems, showing variations in the hours of active service, reserve service, leisure hours and size of the force on duty. The two-platoon system is the one most commonly found in American cities, almost altogether in the smaller cities. The two-platoon plan employs one-fourth of the patrol force during the day, and one-half at night for active duty, leaving one-fourth in reserve at all times. Under this plan each man gets off twelve hours on two days out of every four, two hours on one day, and no time on the fourth day, his time being divided between active and reserve duty. This system has the advantage of getting a great deal of patrol service out of the force, but gives the patrolmen virtually no leisure, and destroys the possibility of any real family life. Furthermore, in the police force, quite as much as in other activities re- quiring alertness and physical fitness, if not indeed more, the efficiency of the individual in his patrol duty is im- paired by the long hours of continuous service. Never- theless, because of its economy in salaries, it is the sys- tem generally adopted. The three-platoon system is based theoretically on the eight-hour day, one-third of the force being on duty day and night, one-ninth being in reserve, and no patrol- man being called on for more than eight hours' duty in twenty-four, though he does not always have the same hours off. The main difficulty with this system, from the point of view of police protection, is that it does not meet the necessity of having more men on duty during the night than during the day. Furthermore, it is not regarded as providing a sufficiently large reserve force. 40 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS On the other hand, it is a more humane method of treat- ing the poHce force, and is beHeved to increase the in- dividual efficiency of the patrohnan. It does not abso- lutely require an increase in the police force, but it does mean that for a given expenditure of money a smaller amount of police service, active and reserve, is secured. The demand for the introduction of the three-platoon system naturally arises chiefly from the police force it- self, and considering the irregularity of the leisure time that is left to policemen even under this system, the desire for an eight-hour working day in this as in other de- partments of municipal service, w^ould not seem to be unreasonable. The largest cities of the United States are now using the three-platoon system. The five-platoon system is urged as a means of reme- dying the objections to the three-platoon system. As tried in New York, this system doubled the number of patrolmen at night over the number active in the day, but no policeman has more than six hours' consecutive duty, and is given one day off in five. The leisure time of patrolmen always amounted to twelve consecutive hours, and though the reserve force under this system was large, the patrolmen were permitted to sleep on re- serve duty when not actually required. From the point of view of adequate police protection, this is a better system than the three-platoon system, and is more favor- able to the individual patrolman. Obviously, however, it requires a considerably larger force for the same pro- tection, and is open to objection, therefore, on the ground of expense. Though humane treatment of patrolmen and adequacy of the patrolling force are both expensive con- siderations that cannot for that reason be ignored, the cost of police protection must also be carefully con- sidered. PUBLIC SAFETY 41 This leads us to consider briefly the cost of police ad- ministration in modern cities. Here again, as in the case of statistics showing the number of policemen per ten thousand population, tlie figures commonly given show the cost per capita of population. It is just as true in this regard, however, as in the other case, that the per capita cost of the police force is a matter of little or no importance, as it serves to indicate neither the adequacy of the force, the relative returns from the expenditure, nor the financial burden on the individual citizen. A much better standard of comparison is the cost per unit of area, though even this will be considerably affected by the character of the population of the city. As a test of the financial burden of police protection on that basis should be chosen the ratio to the taxable property of the city. In European cities, the cost of the police force, per policeman, is very much less than in the United States, due primarily, however, to the larger salaries paid American policemen. The salary item, including pensions, where those are given, constitutes by far the largest amount of the police budget. A thousand dollars a year represents a fair average salary for patrolmen in all but the smaller cities in the United States. This amount is the double of the pay given to patrolmen even in the largest European cities, though there must be added the important items of uniform and equipment allowances, and, above all, pensions, which make the real remuneration a good deal larger than the mere salary. Some allowance must also be made for differences in the purchasing power of the money received. Uniforms are not commonly furnished to policemen in the United States, and though pension systems are quite commonly provided for retired police- men in this country, a considerable proportion of such 42 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS pension funds are drawn, not from the city treasury, as in Europe, but from subscriptions by the pubHc. The same reasons for pensions would seem to exist in the case of the poHce departments as in the case of soldiers, at least so far as incapacity resulting from accidents suf- fered in an extra-hazardous undertaking for the public, and widows' and orphans' allowances for death resulting in the same way are concerned. In other regards, the case for police pensions for old age would seem to rest on the same grounds as the case for civil pensions generally. A system of pensions properly administered, though commonly attacked in the United States as a raid upon the treasury, is in reality an economical way of solving the problem of the superannuated public servant. Expe- rience in our state and federal governments, as well as in our city governments, has shown that the pubfic is quite willing to tolerate the retention of worn-out, useless men in the public service who have grown old in that service. The result has been that not only are they actually paid a pension under the guise of a salary, but, what is much worse, they set a standard of efficiency in the service to which all the rest of the machinery almost inevitably slows down. The resulting loss in efficiency and money, though less patent, is a much more serious raid upon the public treasury than a well-ordered system of pensions which would displace it. An old-age pension system for the police force would, therefore, prove a wise adjunct, although not peculiarly demanded in that branch of the service more than in others. It has also the added advantage of tending to make the public service more attractive. Of absolutely fundamental importance to the efficiency of the police force of a city is the manner of filling the positions in the service. In a large measure this is, of PUBLIC SAFETY 43 course, the fundamental problem of efficient administra- tion in every branch of tlie city's activity. It is peculiarly important, however, that the police force of the city be composed of the right sort of men, not only because their function is fundamental to the very existence of the com- munity, but because they are subjected to a peculiar pres- sure by the forces that are antagonistic to law and order. It has already been pointed out how the American prac- tice of making the regular city police the guardians of moral standards, frequently imposed upon the city in vio- lation of its own convictions, inflicts a tremendous strain on the police administration not borne by the already otherwise more efficient continental European police forces. To resist this strain in itself requires a high order of individual on the force. But even where that element does not enter, the financial value of police protection in the conduct of any kind of illegal business or under- taking is so great as to make it very profitable for the men who control such interest to use money freely in trying to corrupt the police force from top to bottom. In the higher positions this evil influence takes the form of political activity of a pernicious kind for the purpose of controlling the responsible directors of the police force. If that fails, the cruder forms of direct corruption of the patrolmen and inspectors is resorted to. It is probably true that no single official in the city service, certainly none in the lower ranks and grades of service, is so likely to be subjected to the danger of corrupting influence as is the city policeman. Unfortunately for the problem of police administration this situation, calling for a manner of filling the police force that will insure the highest caliber of men avail- able and eliminate to the fullest extent detrimental politi- cal considerations, is complicated by the fact that the or- 44 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS dinary devices employed for eliminating these corrupting influences in city administration generally are more dif- ficult to apply in that department than in any other. Ref- erence is here had to the so-called civil service merit system of filling positions in the city's service. As the entire civil service merit system is of such general fundamental importance in the matter of effi- cient city administration, though peculiarly important for the police service, a brief consideration must here be given to its general principles. The theory of the merit system is simplicity itself. Men should be appointed to administrative positions only on the basis of proven fit- ness and superiority over other applicants. They should be held up to a high standard of efficiency in their work and should be promoted, rewarded, disciplined and dis- missed purely on the basis of their service as shown by carefully devised and faithfully kept records. On those general principles there is substantial agreement, though on the means of accomplishing those ends most eff'ectively there is considerable divergence of opinion. The method of securing appointment as nearly as pos- sible according to proven fitness has been, in the United States, the system of competitive examination, in part at least written, and the appointment of the highest per- son, or one of the few highest, on the list. This exam- ination is to be devised so as to show as far as pos- sible the candidate's fitness for tlie particular place for which he is applying. In order to give an opportunity of seeing whether the successful candidate should actu- ally, after appointment, prove to be lacking in important respects in a way to make him unfit for his position, a period of probation is prescribed, after which the appoint- ment becomes permanent. The record of the appointee in his service is calculated PUBLIC SAFETY 45 to show how he attends to his duties, whether he neg- lects them, or performs them in a satisfactory way, or shows superior ability and faithfulness. Increases in sal- ary, promotions in rank and other rewards arc to be awarded on the basis of such records, including the opinion of superiors in office and evidence of fitness for new duties by means of additional examinations. Dis- ciplinary measures of all kinds, from a mere reprimand up to dismissal from the service, are also to be enforced on the basis of these carefully kept records. Simple as this merit program seems in outline, it shows the most astonishing complications and difficulties in prac- tical application. What kind of examinations can give an adecjuate picture of the candidate's fitness ? Are writ- ten examinations adapted to discovering certain qualities that may be nuich more important than mere book knowl- edge? Mow can records be devised that will make an impartial record of a man's attitude toward his work, his superiors and the public, factors that might make an apparently efficient man a demoralizing element in the service? Who is to determine whether a man's offense merits dismissal or merely suspension or a lesser pun- ishment? How can personal spite and prejudice be elim- inated in the matter of punishment and arbitrary or un- fair action be prevented without destroying the neces- sary spirit of discipline? All these are difficult questions on which experts, theoretical and practical, are not agreed. In the application of these principles to the police force of the city, peculiar difficulties are encountered. There is, in the first place, the matter of examinations for ap- pointment. A sanitary inspector, a meter inspector, a surveyor, a bookkeeper, a stenographer, a host of the officers in the city have duties, fitness for which can be determined with considerable accuracy by competitive ex- 46 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS amination. For policemen, physical and mental tests, though important, touch only a few of the fundamental qualifications required. Mastery of the police manual, a knowledge of criminal law, accuracy with firearms, an intimate knowledge of the city, can all, it is true, be tested by proper examinations. But though these are the tools of the policeman's w^ork, his real fitness depends quite as much on other qualifications. Integrity, bravery, tact, con- trol of body and temper, these are the prerequisites that are essential. But these are just the sort of qualities that cannot be tested by any system of examinations, nor even by brief periods of probation. As a means of insur- ing the selection of the best candidate out of a list of applications for positions on the police force, examina- tions are obviously, therefore, no guarantee of infalli- bility. This has led some persons to denounce them as wholly useless and inapplicable to that branch of munici- pal administration. This is, however, an unjustifiable attitude, for, although the examination system is admit- tedly imperfect, no better scheme for choosing the men has been suggested, and the only other basis of choice that has been widely adopted in this country, that of political allegiance and service, is just what it is impera- tive to avoid. Appointment by examination, therefore, remains the best method now available, and improvements are continually being made in the character of the exam- inations used. When we consider the matter of efficiency records as a basis of promotion or discipline in the police force, pecu- liar difficulties are again encountered. The activities of the large number of officials and employees engaged in duties of a clerical nature can be pretty accurately rated according to rapidity and accuracy. But the record of activities of patrolmen is a much more difficult record to PUBLIC SAFETY 47 keep in such a way as to indicate relative efficiency. A large number of arrests, for instance, may mean simply that the patrolman is stationed where disturbances are frequent and arrests unavoidable. It may mean, on the other hand, tliat he is unusually diligent and successful in apprehending evildoers. It may even mean, how- ever, misdirected activity in making arrests when warn- ings should have been issued, or, worse still, an unjusti- fied activity for the purpose of increasing his arrest rec- ords. Conversely, a policeman's record practically clear of arrests may prove either neglect of duty, or proper discrimination in dealing with cases, or may be simply the result of the particular duty to which he has been assigned. Demerits entered against a policeman because of complaints entered by persons on his beat may be justi- fied because of neglect of duty, or the complaints may constitute a positive evidence of efficiency in bringing vio- laters of the law to time. With regard, therefore, to the larger aspects of efficient service, neither the record of arrests, nor the absence of complaints, two factors com- monly accorded considerable weight in judging of pa- trolmen's records, in and of themselves prove anything. Of course, positive misdemeanors, on the one hand, and acts of unusual heroism, on the other hand, can be noted and given due weight, but those are exceptional occur- rences, not frequent enough in the everyday activity of the police force to constitute a satisfactory basis for con- ferring rewards or administering punishments. In spite of these inherent difficulties, however, it is better that records should be kept and used with the greatest possi- ble discrimination than that promotion should be on the basis merely of seniority, or, worse still, of pure favor- itism. Perhaps the greatest difficulty of all those encountered 48 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS in applying the principles of the merit system to the police force is found in the matter of removals. No prin- ciple of administration is more self-evident or generally accepted than that there can be no real administrative control or responsibility without the removal power. Dis- cipline is an idle dream if the subordinate can defy the superior and the latter is powerless to remove him. It is true that the civil service system was first applied in our cities in the direction of preventing political removals, by requiring that removals should be for legal cause. But this same requirement proved subsequently, in New York City, where it was introduced, to be the means of demoralizing the police force by removing the question of the dismissal of a subordinate from the hands of the commissioner to the courts. In no branch of the city service is it more important that the removal power be left in the hands of the responsible head of the depart- ment than in the case of the police department. Quite recently the post of the head of the New York Police Department was declined by General Goethals for the express reason, it is said, that he was not accorded com- plete removal power. Of course, arbitrary and unjustified removals are un- desirable in the police force as well as elsewhere in the municipal administration. But limitations on the removal power of the head are much more to be deplored, and the device of allowing an appeal to some other body from the order of removal, though less objectionable in other branches of the administration, must be discarded in con- nection with the city police. Such safeguards as arise from a requirement of written charges and a public hear- ing, if desired by the individual affected, are as far as it is wise to go in putting any sort of checks on the removal power of the responsible head. It should not PUBLIC SAFETY 49 be overlooked that, with a properly administered system of appointment examinations, the temptation to make po- litical removals is practically overcome, as the vacancy thus created could not be filled in accordance with the desires of the removing officer anyway. Even under the best system of examinations that could be devised in order to determine the relative fitness of candidates for positions on the police force, it will still be true that even the successful candidates arc relatively ignorant of a large part of the duties they will have to perform. At present, with a comparatively small num- ber of cities actually employing careful examinations for appointment, this is normally true of all the new men. It is very important, therefore, that the rank and file of policemen learn at the earliest possible date after being taken onto the force, in as scientific a manner as can be, the best method of performing their functions. This can be done through police training schools such as are found in all countries of Europe, and have recently been estab- lished in a few of the larger cities of this country. The problem of training men for the public service in all its positions is one of fundamental importance to the effi- ciency of all public administration, national, state, and local, yet one that is still far from its solution in the United States. But the need of training the men already in the service better to perform their functions is even more immediate, and fortunately not so complicated. In the police department, particularly, is it true that pre- vious work and experience in other fields is less likely to be of direct benefit than is the case in most of the clerical and technical positions in the city service. The more need therefore of a school provided by the city wherein tiie members of the force can get the information they are almost certain to lack. 50 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS One final point of prime importance remains to be considered in discussing the problem of police adminis- tration in cities, and that is the relation of the local police force to the state government. This is, of course, but one phase of the larger question as to the proper relations between the cities in the exercise of what might be consid- ered local functions and the central government, a question which, as has been suggested before, is one of great im- portance and of equal complexity. As was the case with regard to the civil service merit system just considered, so also in regard to this matter of the relation of the city to the state, the application of general principles, even were they generally accepted, presents peculiar dif- ficulties in connection with the problem of police admin- istration. As there is, however, little agreement in the- ory and less uniformity in practice in the whole question of regulating the relations between state and municipal- ity, this question, instead of being considered in its general aspects here, can best be taken up individually in connection with the study of the different classes of functions to be dealt with. Indeed, about the only guiding principle on which there can be said to be pretty general agreement, so far as the relation of the state to municipal activities is concerned, must be stated in very general terms. In general, the city should have perfect freedom in pursuing its various activities, so long as they do not materially affect the welfare of the state in general as well as that of the inhabitants of the city. So far as the state, however, has larger interests involved in any municipal activities, the state must retain some measure of control. But what activities of cities do or may materially affect the welfare of the state, and to what extent, and how the desirable control of the state is to be exercised, those are the difficult and mooted questions. PUBLIC SAFETY 51 It has been suggested that in these regards the police activities of cities occupy a somewhat pecuHar position. So far as the intimacy of interests between the police forces in cities and the state as a whole is concerned, the situation is certainly striking. Since a large, and perhaps the largest, certainly the most fundamental, function of city police departments consists in the enforcement of laws passed by the state, it is obvious that, whatever the form of organization and whatever the method of control, the city police are really and directly state agents. It is here not merely a question of the general agency of munici- palities and municipal officers for carrying out the local government purposes of the state. It is a much more specific and immediate state function that is being directly intrusted to municipal agents. For that reason one would naturally expect the control exercised by the state to be more complete in this field than in any other. In European countries generally, at least on the conti- nent, we see this intimacy of functional relations between city police and state governments strikingly recognized in a corresponding closeness of governmental relations. In the larger continental European cities the police com- missioner is a state officer, appointed and removable by the central government and responsible to it alone. Even in the smaller cities, where the local executive is com- monly charged with the duty of administering the police service, he does so distinctly as state agent and is sub- jected to a very complete control and supervision in all his dealings in that capacity. So, for instance, in France and Prussia, even in the smaller cities where special state commissioners are not employed, the appointments to the police force made by the local executive are subject to central approval. Police ordinances, moreover, are gen- erally made not by the local council but by the local exe- 52 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS cutive, subject to approval by the higher administrative authorities. In England, the police force of London is under direct central control, the police commissioner being a royal ap- pointee. In the provincial cities, the borough council, through one of its standing committees, has complete con- trol over the police administration. But the arm of the central government makes itself felt even there in the interests of a certain minimum police efficiency at any rate. The National Treasury pays annual subventions, amounting to about one-third of the cost of police ad- ministration in the cities, to those municipalities whose force meets a standard of efficiency in men and equip- ment determined by the Home Office and investigated by its inspectors. This form of state intervention in local police administration is less rigid and complete than that found in continental cities ; nevertheless, the threat of withholding the annual subvention is in itself a powerful argument which needs no other compulsion. The fact that the authority which the state thus wields in local police matters has not been used to force the municipalities to a maximum of police efficiency does not make the power of interference and the possibilities of control less real. Even in the United States, recognition of the character of city police as direct state agents has not been lacking. Some of our courts have held, for instance, that police officers, though locally appointed and locally paid, are not local officers but state officers, at least for certain purposes. In some of our larger cities, as has been seen, local control has been entirely superseded by state con- trol, and police administration has been in the hands of a state board. This solution of the problem has not commended itself generally, however, and a number of PUBLIC SAFETY 53 the states repealed these measures of state control. To- day Baltimore, Boston and St. Louis are the only ones among the larger cities of the country that have state police commissions. Theoretically speaking, there seems to be no doubt that the desirability, if not indeed the necessity, of direct state administration is greater in the case of the police activity than of any other function commonly performed by cities. Yet there seems to be so strong a sentiment against such direct state activity that there is little hope of it ever being generally adopted. State administration in the United States has not, generally speaking, been on so high a plane that a transfer of functions from city to state necessarily promised an improvement. Furthermore, the duties of police include besides the enforcement of state laws the execution of local ordinances as well, and it is only reasonable, therefore, that local authorities should have a voice corresponding to the local interest, especially when the costs of police administration are borne by the inhabitants of the city. Some plan of administration, therefore, which would accord to the local authorities their legitimate share in police administration and yet assure to the state the means of looking after the proper enforcement of state laws would seem to be the most satisfactory solution of this problem. The local appointment and direction of the force, with a power of removal on the part of the state government in case a violation of the state interest is shown, would seem to offer a promising way out of the difficulty. It would seem to offer some advantages if the state paid a share of the cost of local police administra- tion, but made such contributions dependent, as in the English boroughs, upon their measuring up to a definite standard of efficiency. 5 54 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS FIRE PROTECTION There are two conceivable methods of dealing with the problem of protecting the community and the in- dividuals in the community from loss of life and prop- erty by fire. One is to concentrate energy on the pre- vention of fire, or at least on the reduction of its occur- rence to a minimum, and so obviate the need of installing elaborate and expensive apparatus for dealing with fires when they do occur. The other is to ignore methods of preventing the occurrence and likelihood of spread of fires and to develop correspondingly elaborate and effi- cient fire-fighting systems. Broadly speaking, the first method of dealing with this problem of public safety has been adopted by European cities ; the second is the char- acteristically American method. To illustrate, the annual fire loss in American cities is more than two dollars and fifty cents per capita, while the average cost of maintain- ing the fire-fighting departments is more than one dol- lar and fifty cents per capita per year. In Europe, the annual expenditure for fire-fighting forces is about twenty cents per capita, while the annual per capita fire loss is about thirty cents. In other words, American cities, though spending eight times as much for fire-fighting equipment, lose eight times as much property by fire. It is a false pride, therefore, which Americans are apt to show in pointing to the superiority of the fire depart- ments in this country. Rather is that superiority and expensiveness evidence of the most short-sighted policy. The figures with regard to annual fire losses in the United States are simply staggering. It is estimated that if all items are properly taken into account, that is, actual cash value of buildings destroyed, insurance due to great fire risk, additional water service required, cost of the PUBLIC SAFETY 55 fire departments, etc., but not including loss of business, employment and life, the annual loss will total nearly five hundred million dollars. When it is remembered, furthermore, that by far the greater part of this loss must be classed as preventable, it can readily be seen what tremendous significance the problem of fire preven- tion assumes. It will be worth while, therefore, to enu- merate very briefly some of the most important factors involved in this problem. Foremost among the causes of fires must be placed in- dividual negligence, negligence due in part to sheer ignor- ance, in large part also to mere heedlessness. The careless disposition of burning matches ; the indiscriminate dis- posal of cigar and cigarette butts ; leaving movable gas jets lighted near the wall or curtains ; leaving electric irons with current turned on ; investigating gas leaks with burning matches ; cleaning clothes with gasoline or ben- zine near open lights ; using electric lights wrapped in clothes as warming agents — are but a few of the almost countless ways in which this ignorance and this careless- ness manifest themselves. The mere accumulation of inflammable waste is an act of culpable negligence. The obvious remedy for this important source of fires is not legislation but education. The fire prevention authority of the city, therefore, whether a part of the police de- partment, or of the fire department, or a separate bureau, should devote a large amount of energy to a campaign of education calculated to dispel the ignorance that exists with regard. to possible fire origin, and to bring home by repeated emphasis the need of reasonable care in dealing with possible sources of fire. The best place to begin such a campaign of education and publicity is, of course, in the schools, where illustrated lectures and moving pictures can be used to advantage. But the present generation of adults 56 MUNICIPAL FUXCTIOXS is quite as much in need of enlightenment as is the com- ing generation, and these same methods should be em- ployed to reach the grown men and women of the city. Leaflets or cards containing a comprehensive list of fun- damental "don'ts" would have considerable value if widely distributed. This educational work may be efifectively supplemented and vitalized by prohibiting some of the most obvious and avoidable acts of carelessness and mak- ing their commission punishable. Furthermore, if a lia- bility in damages is imposed by law on the person whose carelessness causes money loss to his neighbors or to the city, the lessons in fire-prevention will be more likely to be remembered. There are other causes of the origin of fires which are not so directly traceable to negligence at the time of the fire and in the ordinary activities of life. Indeed, they may not even be avoidable by the occupant of the prem- ises. Such risk must be avoided by governmental action through ordinances and inspection. Among these causes may be enumerated defective electric wiring, either de- fectively installed or subsequently damaged in some un- known way ; defective chimneys and flues ; undiscovered leaks in gas pipes; instances of spontaneous combustion, etc. These dangers can be avoided as a rule only by hav- ing proper ordinances covering the wiring and piping of houses and the construction of flues, and by frequent inspection to see, not merely that the original construction was proper, but that the condition at all times is safe. A rather recent fire risk has been added in the danger of sewer explosions resulting from the gasoline and oil wastes from garages. It has been found necessary to forbid emptying of such waste into the sewers, because of the danger from explosion and fire. It must be pointed out that, though most fires originate PUBLIC SAFETY 5Jr in carelessness, a considerable number are the result of positive volition. A few of these latter can be attributed to incendiarism for purposes of revenge, but they are rela- tively so few as to be almost negligible. More important by far are the fires resulting from a desire to collect insur- ance. Such fires are not merely criminal in that they defraud the insurance companies and through them all insurers, but also in that they set agencies into motion which may get beyond control and cause the destruction of property beyond that owned by the insured as well as resulting in injury and loss of life to others. Two or three steps are necessary for meeting this evil. In the first place, a very careful system of investigating the origin of fires is prerequisite for placing responsibility. In the second place, very severe penalties must be pro- vided and strictly applied to all cases of willful incen- diarism. In the third place, if these measures are not sufficient, the evil must be combatted by removing the mo- tive for such fires. If the owner must by law bear a fourth or a fifth of any loss that occurs, the temptation to sell out a building or a stock of goods to the insur- ance company is largely removed. Such a legal limitation would, however, seem to be a heroic measure of last re- sort, for it would seem unfair and contrary to public pol- icy to prevent an honest property owner from covering his possessions to a full, fair value with insurance in order to keep dishonest owners from willfully setting fire to their property, unless that should prove the only feas- ible way of remedying the situation. Fire risk due to negligence or even maliciousness or greed will probably never be wholly eliminated, and, of course, unpreventable fires will always occur. The next important consideration after preventing as far as possible their occurrence is to prevent their spreading when they 58 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS do occur. In the matter of the number of fires that orig- inate, European cities will not show such a great differ- ence from American cities. In the proportion of fires, however, that become serious by spreading from the immediate vicinity of the place in which they originated, the record of American cities is far behind that of Euro- pean cities. This fact has all the more significance when it is recalled that in active fire-fighting apparatus, such as men, engines, high pressure streams, etc., American cities are in general much better equipped. This phase of fire prevention involves almost wholly the question of building construction, and demands, therefore, both careful and comprehensive ordinances, and continuous, painstaking inspection. The prevention of the spread of fires, though a funda- mental question, is by no means the only one involved in the problem of building regulation. It would be perfectly possible, physically speaking, to have every house in the city so built both within and without as to make the spread of fires a virtual impossibility. But, as a matter of policy, that would be an extremely unwise measure, for the cost of such construction would in many cases be absolutely prohibitive. It becomes, therefore, a ques- tion of relative protection against fire. Buildings should be made as fire-resisting as is reasonably possible, and on the question of reasonableness, of course, men will dis- agree. Other considerations, furthermore, besides the form and materials of construction, play an important part in this question. The proximity of the buildings, as well as the uses to which they are put, must be taken into consideration, and will affect the kind of construction that must be prescribed. In American cities there are commonly two classes of buildings from the point of view of fire risk, those within PUBLIC SAFETY 59 the fire limits and those without. The former class, com- prising usually all those within the more densely built- up areas, must conform to certain requirements as to con- struction, while the buildings in the rest of the city need not. Since, however, the conrlitions as to congestion and character of occupancy differ in different parts of the city, it is neither logical nor effective to divide the entire city into two zones simply. Different districts of the city should receive separate consideration for this purpose, as they should for other purposes of zoning. Regulations intended to prevent the spread of conflag- rations within buildings look generally to such matters as fireproof or fire-resisting floors and partitions, air-tight doors, etc. Safeguards against the spread of fires from other buildings look particularly to the construction of roofs. Wooden shingles on roofs are a continual source of danger in spreading fires, and are generally prohibited within the fire limits. Experience has shown, however, that even without the congested areas wood shingles are a very great risk. They are easily carried by the wind for great distances, and in their dry state on the roofs constitute an ideal lodging place for burning particles of all kinds. The experience of American cities with wooden shingles as a means of spreading fires would appear to justify the prohibition of such shingles within the city entirely, especially as artificial shingles of fire-resisting materials are being perfected at a relatively slight increase in cost. Another means of preventing the spread of fires, in- dependently of the activities of city fire-fighting forces, which will be considered directly, are the requirements that property owners provide on the premises various kinds of fire extinguishers. These devices include all sorts of instrumentalities, from ordinary hand-operated 6o MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS chemical extinguishers to standpipes with hose attach- ments. Such ready instruments can frequently extin- guish a conflagration in its inceptive stages, which if left untouched until even the most rapid fire-fighting force could arrive on the scene would become a serious fire. Certainly the cheaper forms of hand extinguishers could reasonably be required for all buildings, whether dwell- ings or business establishments. In large buildings and theaters automatic ceiling sprinklers are proving valu- able means of checking fires at the outset. So far, the question of fire protection has been regarded in its relation to the preservation of property only. There is, however, another side to the question, and that is the relation to human life and physical well being. It is estimated that about two thousand persons annu- ally lose their lives by fire in the United States, while three or four times that number are seriously injured each year. This destruction of human life and capacity is nothing short of criminal, especially as proper regulations can, if faithfully enforced, virtually reduce that loss to nil, even when the occurrence of fires cannot wholly be prevented. Crowded tenements, factories, theaters and more recently, especially, moving picture theaters, are among the places that take the largest toll in lives lost in fires. This can all be avoided by requiring safeguards that are intended primarily to insure safety of egress for persons in a burning building. Fire escapes on the out- side as well as concrete stairways on the inside, wide passages, doors swinging outward and kept free from obstructions, prohibitions on obstructing aisles, asbestos curtains kept in condition for instant lowering, location of the camera room outside the audience hall in moving picture theaters, are among the requirements that mod- em cities are enforcing and should all enforce in order to PUBLIC SAFETY 6i I reduce the danger to life and limb. Wherever large bodies of persons are crowded together there is espe- cial danger to life from fire which needs to be specially guarded against. Such regulations belong properly in the building code, which should deal also with the require- ments discussed above intended to prevent the destruc- tion of property. Fire prevention is making some progress in American cities, but unfortunately it is sporadic and develops usu- ally only after some terrible conflagration or holocaust has stirred up the public consciousness. As a regular part of a normal program of civic improvement, it is still comparatively rare. Yet from the merely materialistic point of view of money cost a real effective system of fire prevention should appeal to the taxpayer as a saving of dollars. A small amount of money spent in enforcing an adequate building code will save a large amount of money in the cost of the fire departments, as the expe- rience of European cities shows. Besides reducing the cost of insurance, it would also save the money loss al- ways involved, the loss of wages and business profits, while the destroyed buildings are unavailable. Fire prevention in the broad sense considered above, though the fundamental and most important phase of public safety against loss of life and property by fire, is not the only phase of fire protection. Even with great care on the part of individuals, and with adequate fire codes strictly enforced, some fires will always occur, and there must be some fire-fighting forces and apparatus. In the long interval that will unfortunately elapse until cities and individuals wake up fully to their duties in the matter of fire prevention, the need of efficient fire- fighting forces is imperative. In the organization of municipal fire departments there 62 MUNICIPAL FUNXTIONS are two considerations of equal importance that must be kept in mind. One is the equipment in men, the other is the technical equipment in mechanical appliances. In both respects efficient instruments are a development of the nineteenth century. The early fire brigades, like the citizen watchmen, were loose and inefficient instru- mentalities that had to be superseded by permanent paid forces. In practically all large cities of the world there are regularly paid and permanently manned fire-fighting forces. In the smaller cities, the tendency is to avoid the expense involved in a permanent paid department by relying on the services of volunteer companies. It is well to point out, however, that in this field, as in many other branches of municipal administration, there is great dan- ger of a false economy. The salary item is commonly regarded as an element of clear saving when volunteer organizations are relied upon. But in considering the real cost of a volunteer company as compared with a paid force, it is necessary to take into consideration the greater fire loss resulting from amateur methods em- ployed in a difficult undertaking requiring skill and ex- perience, as well as the higher insurance rates which are paid in cities where volunteer protection is relied upon. If a careful study is made of these two items of expense — and they are, of course, borne by the same persons who would bear the increase in taxes necessary to support a paid department— it is safe to say that in many cities now practicing the economy of doing without a paid de- partment, the apparent saving will prove to be an actual loss. The problem of organizing the fire-fighting forces of the city is in many respects similar to that presented by the police organization previously considered. There is a similar need of strict discipline and concentration of PUBLIC SAFETY 63 authority that require a single head and a quasi iniHtary organization. Many of the considerations that appHed to the appointment, disciplinary control and manner of removal of members of the police force are pertinent with regard to the fireman, and we find a general simi- larity in their treatment. A slightly different factor is involved in the question of hours of service, however. Like the police force, the fire-fighting force must be avail- able night as well as day, even to the necessity of a larger force at night, because it is then that fires are more likely to become serious before the alarm is turned in. Unlike the police force, however, the firemen are normally ac- tually engaged in service only a small proportion of the time. This is inevitably the case because, if the force is to be adequate for coping with several fires at once, a contingency that frequently arises, or to handle unusu- ally large conflagrations, it will obviously be considerably larger than is required for the ordinary number or size of fires. In view of this fact, cities have commonly em- ployed a relatively small force of men and have required them to be available for service at all times, providing living quarters in the stations. Even then there are many hours each day and even entire days in which the firemen may not be called out, followed by days or successions of days in which they receive almost no rest. This presents a problem of administrative efficiency which is very diffi- cult of solution, as this alternation of excessively busy days Avith days of comparative idleness tends to demoral- ize a working force of any kind. In some cities the two- platoon system, similar to the one described in connec- tion with the police force, has been installed. In connec- tion with the fire department, it has the drawback not merely of greatly increasing the cost of the department, but, also, the hours of idleness, during which, however, 64 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS the men can get no real recreation ; whereas, in the po- Hce force, a patrolman is active during his period of duty and is free during his hours off. It seems that a satisfactory solution of this difficulty would involve not merely a larger force organized on the two-platoon sys- tem, but also the employment of a part of the forces on duty in other work for the city which would not prevent them from being available at once in case of an alarm. This would relieve the demoralizing monotony during the hours or days on which no alarms are turned in, and would tend to return to the city some of the additional money spent for the larger department. The chief ob- stacle to be feared in any such arrangement would probably be the opposition of the firemen themselves, who would be likely to look upon any other services as irksome or even degrading. The fire-fighting forces are not, except in the very smallest cities, concentrated in one place, but are dis- tributed in different portions of the city, with reference to ready availability for all parts of the city. Each sta- tion serves a definite district for ordinary fires, and for larger conflagrations the help of other companies is en- listed, the fire chief having command of all the forces of the city. The mechanical aids used in fire fighting embrace in all cases an adequate water supply, pumping engines and hose and ladders. The necessity of a sufficient supply of water available at all points by means of hydrants conveniently placed and continuously ready for immediate use is, of course, fundamental. The waterworks them- selves should be absolutely protected against destruction by fire, for many disastrous conflagrations have been the result of the waterworks being put out of commission at the outset, when located in the fire area. As the or- PUBLIC SAFETY 65 dinary water pressure maintained in city mains is not sufficient tb throw a large stream of water with much force or to an appreciable height, it is necessary to em- ploy engines to supply the pressure at the hydrant to the hose. These engines, at first operated by hand, then by steam, were until recently horse-drawn vehicles. In re- cent years, however, the motor-drawn vehicle is rapidly supplanting the former type of locomotion, and is prov- ing in every respect superior. It is more rapid in reach- ing the fires, less dangerous to traffic, and presents a much simpler problem of upkeep. In a few years the horse- drawn engine will be a thing of the past, I-'or incipient and smaller fires the chemical engine, sending a small stream of lic|uid by chemical pressure, proves adequate and less destructive. In spite of the generally admirable equipment of American fire-fighting forces, defective hose has been an all-too-common and very serious result of graft in the city's contracting or purchasing depart- ment. Even where the best hose has been purchased, frequent tests are necessary to insure that the hose will not leak or burst under the great pressure to which it is subjected when in use. Long extension ladders are a necessary part of the equipment of every force, both for reaching the fire wnth the hose and for saving the lives of persons imprisoned in burning buildings. These facili- ties may be regarded as the irreducible minimum for every municipal fire department. To these must be added a fire alarm system in all cities covering a considerable area. Other aids are, however, in common use, especially in the larger cities. Among these may be mentioned special high-pressure water systems, enabling effective streams to be thrown directly from the mains without the aid of fire engine, fire boats in cities located on bodies of water, and water towers for fighting fires in high buildings. 66 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS These are all expensive elaborations of the fire-fighting apparatus necessitated, however, in our larger cities be- cause of the fire hazards that are allowed to remain. The constant occurrence of disastrous fires even in cities equipped with all of these newest developments is simply a further forceful reminder of the relative inadequacy of even the best extinguishing facilities as compared with proper preventive measures. One final consideration that deserves mention is the question of state control in connection with the municipal fire-fighting forces. In continental European cities there are a few instances of state control of fire departments. In England the fire brigades are universally under local control, and in the United States there are but a few rare instances of state-controlled fire forces. It is obvious that the same arguments that favor a measure of state control, or at least supervision of local police forces, do not apply to the matter of fire-fighting forces, though the latter are frequently in an intimate organic connection with the former. An inefficient city police force, as has been pointed out, may mean a non-enforcement of state laws. An inefficient fire department, however, is a mat- ter of almost purely local concern, as the citizens of the municipality are the sufferers, though in France and Germany the state makes it mandatory upon the cities to provide protection against fire. A state fire-preven- tion bureau would prove a valuable means of aiding cities in the development of fire prevention methods and would prove a wise measure of conservation for the state gov- ernment to adopt, as has already been done by some of the states through the office of state fire marshal. The two great factors in the insurance of pubhc safety which have been considered in this chapter, namely, police and fire protection, together with the public health ad- PUBLIC SAFETY 67 ministration, which will be taken up in the following chapter, constitute by far the largest part of the field of municipal activities connected with tiie whole subject of public safety. It must not be overlooked, however, that there are still other phases of public safety which can- not be ignored, but which are not properly treated under any one of the three main services discussed because not intrusted, in this country at least, to the care of either of the three departments. So, for instance, one very im- portant question of public safety in our cities is the mat- ter of grade crossings of railroads. Every year the grade crossing takes its large toll of lives, and the abolition of this danger is imperative for the proper execution of the duties connected with public safety. Overhead wires, both of street railways and of light companies, constitute another menace to public safety that modern cities must deal with. But these and other sources of danger that might be mentioned are not dealt with, in American cities at any rate, through the police department, nor intrusted to a special department of public safety. They can best be considered, therefore, in some other connection as, for instance, in the necessary elements of control over public service companies. It is only necessary, therefore, to point out here that they fall, functionally speaking, under the activities of the city calculated to protect the public safety. CHAPTER IH PUBLIC HEALTH Functionally considered the public health activities of the city belong to the activities that care for the public safety. Life and property are endangered by disease and must be protected against willful and negligent damage in this regard as well as in any other. Public health pro- tection has, however, become so highly specialized and technical and is so different in its methods from the other measures for protecting the public safety, that it is almost universally treated in American cities as a sep- arate branch of municipal administration, v/ith its own organization and problems. In one respect the protection of public health may be regarded as peculiarly a municipal duty. City life, inherently, is much more dangerous to the health of the individual than is the open country, for he is so much more exposed and helpless as regards dangers arising from the acts of others. Life on the farm, while perhaps not nearly as hygienic as it should be and could easily be made, is, nevertheless, quite different in this respect from city life. An isolated family in the country may indeed endanger its own existence by ignorance and carelessness in matters of hygiene, but, generally speaking, it is nei- ther a source of danger to other families, nor is it sub- 68 PUBLIC HEALTH 69 ject to dangers to its health from the acts of such other families. In fact, many acts and omissions which in the country have little or no element of danger to health become in the city very serious menaces, not only to those who are guilty of them, but to a very large number of innocent and unprotected persons as well. If city life, therefore, creates and increases many of the dangers to public health, it is only proper that the city should take special pains to meet and minimize those dangers. Unfortunately, this peculiar obligation of the city as regards the protection of the health of its inhabitants is one that received but tardy recognition, and is today per- haps one of the most neglected fields of public activity, at least in most American cities. Practically all effective public health work is a product of the latter part of the last century, and the most effective measures are the result of very recent years. This tardiness in attack- ing the problems of public health administration is due, of course, primarily to the fact that the development of sanitary science itself is such a comparatively recent mat- ter. Until medical science had discovered the causes of the diseases which made the urban death rate so aston- ishingly high, little progress could be made in preventing them. But progress in public health protection has not by any means kept pace with the progress made in medi- cine. Long after the causes and manner of transmission of our most serious diseases were well established, and it was no longer a matter of doubt as to how they might be reduced, health departments continued to ignore the problem of prevention and contented themselves with the abatement of nuisances and the heroic fighting of epi- demics that might Iiave been prevented. The keynote of the modern city health program, as contrasted with that of most cities up to the present, is prevention. Just as 6 70 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS in the case of the problem of fire protection, a dollar spent on prevention saving many dollars needed for fighting fires, so in the case of the public health, the old adage of an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure is but a conservative statement of a very evident and convincing truth. In all branches of health activity today, therefore, the element of prevention should receive the lion's share of attention. The problem of treating and curing individual cases of sickness is in reality only secondarily a problem of health administration, for that is left largely to private physicians. It is only if such treatment is not accorded that the case presents a public aspect, either because of the necessity of preventing the spread of contagious dis- eases or of preserving the health of an individual who is unable to provide for himself the necessary medical atten- tion. Most of the space devoted to the consideration of public health administration in this chapter will, there- fore, be taken up with a consideration of the preventive activity of health administration. Foremost among the preventive measures that must be undertaken by every city health authority is the insur- ance of the purity of the food supply of the city. So much sickness and death is directly traceable to impure water, milk, and other foods, that the purification of the food supply presents at once one of the most stupendous and promising fields of preventive endeavor. Most uni- versal and absolutely indispensable among human foods is water. Unfortunately, it is at the same time one of the most easily polluted, and when polluted one of the most dangerous of human necessities. The list of water-borne diseases is very large, but foremost among them must be placed that terrible scourge, typhoid fever. So gen- erally is typhoid fever caused by impurities in the drink- PUBLIC HEALTH 71 ing water that the condition of the water supply of a city can be fairly judged by the number of typhoid fever cases that exist. Water in its ordinary and most accessible state, that is, in watercourses or lakes, is almost never free from disease germs. The reason for this is that human wastes, the harborers of typhoid fever and intestinal disease germs, are almost always, except in cities having sewer systems, carried ofif by surface waters into streams and lakes. Even city sewer systems commonly empty into such bodies of water and add enormous pollution to the water which may be used by other cities situated below. Most cities are dependent for their water supply on sur- face water, as wells will rarely suffice to furnish the water needed for a city. It follows, therefore, that almost all cities are in danger of getting polluted water, a dan- ger which the city itself must guard against. Purifica- tion of the supply of drinking water is, consequently, in most cities a necessity, and becomes increasingly so with the increasing density of population. The various methods of purifying the city's water sup- ply will be touched upon briefly in another chapter. It is necessary to point out here merely that the first step in the protection of the public against impure water is the careful, frequent, and continuing examination of the water by the city health authorities. The presence of dis- ease germs in water can easily be discovered by proper scientific tests, which, however, demand a properly equipped laboratory and an expert bacteriologist. If the water supply is not pure, that fact can be discovered at once in this way, and the users, at least, be warned to purify their own drinking water by boiling, if the city neglects its obligation to see that the drinking water of its citizens is pure. This would seem to be so elemental 72 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS and necessary a means of protection that one wonders how any city can be without it. Yet, even of the larger cities, only comparatively few have adequate bacteriologi- cal examinations of the water supply. Disease germs, though the most serious menace to pub- lic health lurking in the water, are not the only objec- tionable features that may have to be overcome. Water bacteriologically pure may be chemically injurious and unfit to drink. In that case proper measures for treat- ing the water from that point of view must be employed. The water supply may also be objectionable from the point of view of use for domestic or industrial pur- poses, but so far as it does not contain a menace to the public health these features need not here be taken into consideration. It must be pointed out that the burden of purifying a water supply is sometimes greatly increased for a city by the action of individuals or of other cities over which it has no control. One of the commonest sources of pollution of a city's water supply, for instance, is the con ■ tamination resulting from the emptying of sewage by an- other city into the stream or body of water from which the city in question gets its supply ; or factories may be located in such a way as to pollute the water with their wastes, and so make it quite unfit for drinking. Obvi- ously, a city in such a position is subjected to an un- necessary and unfair hardship with which it is unable to deal. In such cases action by the state will be required to protect the purity of water supplies, or it may even be that federal interference will be necessary where the source of pollution and the source of supply are in dif- ferent states. The unfairness of the extra burden im- posed in this way is, of course, a good ground for de- manding remedial legislation by the state, but it does not PUBLIC HEALTH jz in any way absolve the locality adversely affected from the obligation of taking the necessary steps for making the water fit for drinking before it is distributed to the citizens. As will be seen later, water in almost any con- dition can be purified sufficiently to make it fit for con- sumption, though the financial burden may have been increased unnecessarily. The intimate connection between the water supply of the city and the health of its inhabitants, couj^led with the fact that negligence in management of the health aspects may result in incalculable disease and death, has led to a general agreement that the city itself should own and operate tlie public water supply. Private sources of water supply were formerly common both in this coun- try and in Europe, and today in very small cities water is not infrequently supplied by private corporations operating under a franchise. Usually, however, the first utility to be taken over by a city when it begins to grow is the waterworks, and properly so. The policy of mu- nicipal ownership and operation of the waterworks is, therefore, a sound one, quite distinct from the general policy of municipal ownership of public utilities, which will be touched upon in a later chapter. Next to water the article of most universal food con- sumption in cities is milk. In its capacities as a disease carrying medium, moreover, milk need not yield even to water. The ravages of milk-borne diseases, furthermore, are most terrible among infants, the most helpless, and yet for future generations, the most important portion of the population. Just as the purity of a city's water supply can be judged by the cases of typhoid and other water-borne diseases, so the purity of the milk supply can be measured by the infant mortality in the city. In the one case, as in the other, the efficiency of the health 74 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS department is on trial, for prevention is attainable in both cases. The milk problem in cities is complicated by the fact that the source of supply, that is the dairy herds, are generally outside of the city limits, and in the case of large cities are frequently many miles away, it may even be in another state. The control which the city exercises over the production of milk must generally, therefore, be indirect. That is, while the city has no jurisdiction to compel inspection of milking places outside its limits, it may accomplish the same results by forbidding the sale of milk in the city unless it comes from inspected places. No milk should be allowed to be sold in the city without a license, and the issuance and continuance of a Hcense should be dependent upon complying with all the condi- tions of inspection and sanitation. The journey of the milk from the cow to the consumer is fraught with more pitfalls and dangers to the public health than can easily be imagined. At the very outset, the condition of the cow herself may make the milk a serious menace to the consumer. Tubercular cows may transmit the terrible white plague to all the babies that feed on their milk. Fortunately, science has discovered a simple and effective tuberculin test for determining whether or not cattle are afflicted with the disease. Fre- quent and careful tests are, therefore, demanded even before the milk is drawn from the cow. These must, for absolute security, be made by city inspectors, no matter where the herd may be. Even in the process of being drawn from the cow the milk is in the greatest danger of being polluted. From that time on, however, until the milk is actually con- sumed, practically all dangers to public health can be avoided by the simple observance of cleanliness. The PUBLIC HEALTH 75 extreme susceptibility of milk to dirt and filth of all kinds, including a large number of disease germs, can be counterbalanced only by extreme cleanliness in the handling of the product. H milking machines are used, the greatest care must be taken to see that they are ster- ilized, li milking is done by hand the clothes and hands of the milkers must be scrupulously clean. The recep- tacles into which the milk is put must be thoroughly ster- ilized and protected against flies and dirt. The condition of the milkers themselves must be examined, for cases of scarlet fever and other like diseases have been caused by germs introduced into the milk by a milker who was either himself afilicted with the disease or was a carrier of germs from some member of his family. The rate at which germs multiply in warm milk makes it necessary to cool the milk at once after milking, and it should be kept at a temperature of not more than 50° F. until consumed, in order to retard the bacterial multipli- cation. One great danger arising from milk that has to be transported a considerable distance is due to the use of dangerous preservatives. Formaldehyde and other dangerous chemicals are commonly used as preservatives in milk that is shipped into cities. Inspection of the dairies is. therefore, not sufficient. Watering of milk, more serious as a dangerous means of unintentional pol- lution than as a species of intentional fraud, is com- monly practiced while the milk is cji route to the city or on the delivery wagon. In order to protect the con- sumer, therefore, tests must be made of the milk actually on the wagons and about to be delivered to the con- sumer. Such tests will disclose the presence of chemi- cals, of dirt, and of disease germs, and must be resorted to almost continually if they are to furnish anything even approaching an adequate safeguard to the consumer. The 7^ MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS strict enforcement of the sanitary requirements with regard to the production and sale of milk is absolutely essential, and the revocation of licenses with additional penalties for violating the ordinances are the only effec- tive measures for safeguarding the public health. The question may well be asked whether the milk sup- ply of a city is not quite as proper a public undertaking from the public health point of view as is the water sup- ply. The difficulties of inspection and enforcement are very great and the expense is enormous, while the results of laxity or carelessness on the part of the health de- partment are appalling. It would seem, therefore, that a municipal milk supply is quite as logical as a municipal water supply. Yet such an undertaking is almost un- known, though some cities have gone so far as to in- stitute public milk stations for the babies of the poor, insuring them a pure supply of milk. The technical dif- ficulties of managing a dairy farm are scarcely greater than are those of administering the waterworks, and the improvement of the public health would be quite as marked. That may be looked forward to as one of the promising developments in municipal health administra- tion in the near future. The ice supply assumes, during the summer especially, an important place in the city's food economy, and has an important bearing on the public health. In the first place, the ice itself is used in water and other beverages to a very large extent in the United States. Such ice is frequently natural ice cut from lakes and ponds in the winter and stored in ice houses until needed. The water in these lakes and ponds is in many cases unfit for drinking, and yet is introduced in the shape of ice into the beverages and there melts, polluting the drink, for the disease germs that lurk in water are not affected PUBLIC HEALTH Tj by freezing, but simply lie dormant ready to become active as soon as the ice again melts. Obviously, it is futile to guard the ordinary water supply of tiie city and permit it to be largely polluted in the summer by impure ice. Inspection of all sources of ice whether natural or arti- ficial is, therefore, a necessary part of safeguarding the drinking water of the city. But ice has still another im- portant though indirect bearing on the purity of the city's food supply. Food of all kinds, and especially milk, becomes unfit for consumption very rapidly in the hot months unless kept cool by means of ice. This is true of the food both before and after sale to the consumer. If milk is not kept cool between the time of delivery and the time of consumption, for instance, the consumer may suflfer as much as though it were not fit for drinking when delivered. In the case of the poorer classes the cost of ice may be prohibitive, and the condition of their milk and food, therefore, be a menace to health which they are unable to guard against. Regarded merely as a protection to public health, therefore, and not as a measure of social ajnelioration, the city should be con- cerned in seeing not only that ice is pure but also that it is cheap. Perhaps the best way of accomplishing that end, too, is for the city to undertake the manufacture and sale of ice. Such projects are already in operation in some American cities, and seem to be gaining in popu- larity. They seem to present no great financial difficul- ties, especially where they can be combined with munic- ipal electric light plants, as an economical use of the two plants can be effected. The meat supply of the city presents another serious pure food problem. The condition of the animals that are slaughtered, the handling of the meat from the slaughter house to the market, and the condition of the markets 78 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS themselves all present numerous possibilities for serving the public with meat that is not fit to eat. A number of very serious diseases may be communicated to human beings from diseased animals that have been slaughtered for consumption. Some of these diseases can best be detected by an examination of the animals before being slaughtered, others are best discovered by examining the viscera after slaughtering and some of them cannot be discovered at all by inspection of the meat only at the meat market. In addition to diseases of the animals themselves, the meat may be contaminated by dirt and disease germs or by decomposition. Cleanliness in the slaughter house, proper dressing and cooling, cold stor- age facilities, are all requisite for keeping the meat fit to eat until sold to the consumer. For this purpose, in- spection at all stages of the handling is necessary. As in the case of the milk supply, so in the case of the meat supply, the city can insist upon proper inspection of ani- mals slaughtered outside of its territorial jurisdiction by forbidding the sale of meat except under a license conditioned upon submission to adequate examination in the entire process of preparation. A large force of technical inspectors is required for this branch of the food inspection service as well as for the milk inspection. Adulteration by preservatives intended to retard the de- composition of meat is a serious source of danger, par- ticularly common in the case of sausage meat, which is frequently quite unfit for consumption. The condem- nation and destruction of unfit meat and the severe punishment of offenders against the food ordinances are necessary means of enforcing the requisite protection. The disgusting and insanitary conditions to be found existing in connection with most slaughtering establish- ments in our cities have already led a few progressive PUBLIC HEALTH 79 American municipalities to establish municipal slaughter houses, a utility that has for a long time been the object of municipal activity in many European cities. The sound reason of adec|uate public health protection is as applic- able here as in the case of the water and milk supply. With the public health consideration primarily in view, it becomes a matter of secondary importance whether or not the undertaking will prove commercially profitable. That a municipal slaughter house can be made to yield even a money profit has been demonstrated by cities not only in Europe, but in this country as well, but as com- pared with the protection to health and the cleanliness afforded, the commercial element becomes insignificant. As well might one stop to inquire how much revenue the city obtains from its police department before agreeing to establish such a department, if, as seems to be the case, the adequate control of the meat supply from a sani- tary point of view is feasible only through the establish- ment of municipal slaughter houses. All of the other articles of food that are sold in the city are to a greater or less degree possible sources of danger to the public health. Adulteration, lack of clean- liness in handling, and decomposition are contributing factors in making the food supply potentially dangerous to public health. Groceries, bakeries, public eating places, ice cream parlors, are all possible sources of sickness, which need to be regulated and inspected. Municipal mar- kets, a very old municipal activity in Europe and one by no means unknown in American cities, though to a much less extent, undoubtedly present an advantage from the pub- lic health point of view. It seems to be the case, however, that the sanitary aspects of ordinary market wares other than meats are not so complicated, and the danger is con- sequently less. The case for municipal markets would 8o MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS seem, therefore, to rest more largely on social and eco- nomic grounds, and to fall properly under another head of municipal activity. One very serious menace to pub- lic health through the food supply lurks in the canned foods that are so generally consumed. These foods are prepared outside of the city and their manner of prep- aration cannot therefore be supervised by the municipal health authorities. They can, however, be subjected to frequent inspection by samples and, by throwing the loss of the condemnation of unfit canned goods on the mer- chants handling them, their interests will be a strong factor in demanding proper canned articles. It is not safe either in this case or in the case of dressed meats for cities to endanger the health of their citizens by relying on inspection by United States officials. The Pure Food and Drugs Act furnished no guarantee against unfit canned goods, and government inspection of meat for interstate shipment has not prevented doctored meat from being shipped and sold. Every city has an individual obliga- tion to take all possible precautions on its own account. Next to the insurance of a safe and pure food supply for the city's inhabitants, perhaps the greatest task of the city's health department is the care for the general sanitary conditions of the community. Under the desig- nation of the abatement of nuisances, local authorities exercised a sort of sanitary power from early days. But so greatly has our knowledge of the intimate connection between dirt and disease increased in recent years, that conditions which were formerly not regarded as nuisances at all, and so were permitted to continue, or that were considered as nuisances chiefly because they were objec- tionable to the smell, are now attacked as being abso- lutely incompatible with public health protection. The fly, for instance, which was long popularly regarded as PUBLIC HEALTH 8i a nuisance, is now regarded as one of the most serious of menaces to public health. The list of serious diseases which flies are today known to carry to human beings is staggering, and every modern health authority makes one of its first undertakings a campaign against the fly. The manure pile or rubbish heap which formerly offended merely the eye or the nose is today regarded as infinitely more objectionable because it is the breeding place of flies. A campaign against filth and dirt in the city is, therefore, not to be regarded primarily as a beauty cam- paign, but rather as a health campaign. Tn the same way, our attitude toward the mosquito has un'lcrgone a change. While mosquitoes have always been regarded as nuisances and pests, cities never undertook their extermination until medical science showed that yellow fever, malaria and other diseases are carried by mosquitoes to human beings. We know today that malaria is communicated from one individual to another solely by means of the mosquito. \A'e know that mosquitoes breed only in water, and that if all marshy places are drained or oiled and all recep- tacles in which water collects are emptied, screened, or oiled, mosquitoes cannot breed. If there are no mos- quitoes there is no infection with malaria. Therefore, if a city is malaria ridden, we no longer blame the cli- mate but the health department. Tin cans in vacant lots are an eyesore, it is true, but much more serious is their character as mosquito incubators. Flies and mosquitoes are not the only animals that are known to endanger public health. \'ermin of all kinds are the products of filth, and filth means breeding places for germs and sickness for the community. Rat5 have long been known to transmit bubonic plague by the fleas they carry, and recently they are being charged with other serious counts of a like nature. - Even domestic 82 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS animals are being brought under the ban, as science dis- covers the part they play in disease transmission. Cats are now regarded sufficiently dangerous to justify health departments in issuing warnings with regard to the dan- gers to children from these household pets. Horses, cows and other domestic animals are coming to be con- sidered unsafe inhabitants of the city because of the dif- ficulty of dealing with their manure. The supplanting of the horse by the automobile may therefore be regarded as a fortunate development from the sanitary point of view, as well as from the point of view of street paving and cleaning possibilities. In general, therefore, it may be seen that the modern health department is concerned with preaching and prac- ticing the gospel of cleanliness. In all that belongs to the city itself, streets, public buildings, parks, etc., the utmost cleanliness should be observed both as a measure of pro- tection and as an example to private citizens. Public service corporations and individuals should be held up to an equally high standard of cleanliness. If that is done the public health problem has been enormously simplified at the most vital and effective point. A very fundamen- tal and indispensable part of this work of the health department is a campaign of education. The most ele- mentary facts concerning the relation of dirt to disease are still wholly unknown to the great mass of people, and until known cannot become elTective in improving condi- tions. Modern health departments are therefore devoting a great deal of attention to the problem of reaching the mass of the people with literature containing lessons in hygiene, both personal and social. A rather recent development in the public health field has been the effort to eliminate unnecessary noises in the city. Medical science has discovered the serious conse- PUBLIC HEALTH 83 quences that may result from uninterrupted noises, even for people who are well, to say nothing of those who are sick. Much of the noise of the city is, of course, inevi- table, but it is astonishing how much of it is easily avoid- able. By prohibiting unnecessary noises the city health authorities are contributing directly to the improved physical condition of the inhabitants. Factory whistles, railroad whistles and bells, hucksters of all kinds, organ grinders and other disturbers of the public quiet are be- ing put under strict regulation. Even roosters, a rural delight all too frequently injected into city life, must now have their vocal cords cut in a certain progressive city. The elimination of these and other wholly unneces- sary noises will do much to diminish the shattered con- dition of nerves which is commonly supposed to be the inevitable result of long years of living in the city. Pure air, one of the most fundamental conditions of physical well being, is much more largely attainable in our cities than is commonly the case or is even thought to be possible. The chief sources of air pollution are the dust from the streets and the smoke from chimneys. Street cleaning, therefore, becomes an important public health function. Tuberculosis and all sorts of throat and nose troubles are spread about in the dust flying in city streets. This danger could, it is true, be largely diminished if the general rules regarding expectoration were enforced. But as they are virtually never enforced, and general public opinion seems to countenance their non-observance, it becomes necessary to protect the pub- lic health by keeping the streets clean and free from dust, an expensive but simple undertaking. In most of our industrial cities, and all cities are more or less industrial, the smoke nuisance is a very serious source of pollution of the air. This has been attacked with considerable 84 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS success by some cities, but in the majority of cases it is still quite neglected. When it is remembered that tuber- culosis demands for its cure fresh air treatment in pure air and that the vast majority of persons afflicted with the disease are unable to leave the city for treatment, the significance of pure air in our cities from that point of view alone becomes apparent. One of the most difficult of sanitary problems raised by the concentration of persons in cities is that of the disposal of human wastes. In the country a dry closet at a distance from the house has always answered all pur- poses, though even there disease was spread by this means of waste disposal. In the city, however, this primitive method of sewage disposal is out of the ques- tion. It was practiced, indeed, for many centuries, but that was before the dangers to public health involved in that method of dealing with the problem were realized. Today it is generally recognized that the existence of dry closets in a city is an evidence of medieval health conceptions, though in this respect the cities of Europe are even more backward than those of the United States. Cesspools were an improvement over the old dry closet, but in crowded cities they were also objectionable from every point of view, and the city reahzed the necessity of collecting the sewage by means of sanitary sewer sys- tems and disposing of it in some way. The different methods of sewage disposal and some of the considera- tions to be kept in mind in the construction of a sewer system will be touched upon in a later chapter. Here it is desired merely to point out that a city which does not provide and compel sewer connection in every house is extremely backward in one important phase of public health activity. A somewhat similar problem is raised by the collec- PUBLIC HEALTH 85 tion of garbage, that is, unused food remains which are thrown out by householders. They not only become ex- tremely objectionable to the smell but offer ideal breed- ing places for flies and so constitute a serious source of danger. Their collection and disposal are therefore a necessary municipal activity, though in most cases one that is not properly attended to. The difficulties involved in the collection and disposal of garbage and other wastes are primarily of an engineering and financial character, but the consequences of a neglect to solve them properly make themselves felt chiefly in the domain of public health. Their importance may therefore properly be pointed out at this place even though a discussion of the best manner of their solution arises properly under the head of public works. A modern development of the greatest nnportance in the field of public h)giene is the medical inspection of school children. This is not merely or even primarily for the purpose of detecting contagious diseases among the children, though in that regard an important service is performed, but rather to examine their general physi- cal condition. By insisting on the treatment of many minor ills that result in undermined health later, the physical condition of the next generation can "be greatly improved at the outset, thus increasing the power of re- sistance to disease in general. Defective teeth, weak eyes, infected tonsils, adenoids, are a few of the com- mon ailments from which children suft'er and which, if not attended to, are the cause of increasingly impaired health and vitality in later life. To look after these ills is therefore the part of wisdom of the city that cares for the health of its citizens, present and future. The reme- dying of the ills mentioned has a great educational sig- nificance as well, for the retarding eft'ect of such defects 86 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS on the mental development of the child is now univer- sally recognized. Fundamentally, however, it is a prob- lem of public health, and should be envisaged as such, though cooperation by the school department and assist- ance out of the educational fund would be most desir- able. But the public health activities of the modern city begin even farther back than childhood. They reach back to the infancy, birth and even prenatal care of the future citizen. At this stage, especially, does ignorance throw a blighting curse on the unborn generations. If a city health department, through literature and visiting nurses and doctors, instructs the prospective mothers in the most fundamental facts of caring for themselves during preg- nancy, it is not merely the health of the mother which is safeguarded, but, what is even more important, the unborn child starts with enormously better chances of life and health. In the same way at childbirth, not only do many women and infants die unnecessarily at this time, but a very large percentage of the blindness that exists today is due simply to the failure to take such an ele- mentary precaution as washing the infant's eyes out with a proper solution at birth. Then after that period is past, the first year of the infant's life is attended with more danger of disease and death than is any subsequent year until old age, and much of this danger can be avoided through the simplest kinds of hygienic precautions. For the large portion of the community that cannot afford to pay for the services of a good private doctor or nurse, it is essential that at least the information be furnished them which will enable them to take the fundamental precautions, and when medical aid is necessary, that that aid be available. Anything less than that would place the city in the ridiculous position of spending a great PUBLIC HEALTH 87 deal of money each year in dealing with sickness which miglit have been prevented at much less expense if dealt with at the proper time. City lying-in hospitals and baby hospitals are therefore not to be regarded as primarily charitable or social welfare institutions, but as means of taking precautions against future sickness, at the time when such precautions count for the most. The treatment of contagious diseases was one of the earliest forms of public health activity to develop. In- deed, it was the decimating epidemics of the nineteenth century which were directly the cause of the establishment of health departments in our larger American cities. Now that the causes and means of transmission of so many epi- demic and contagious diseases are better known, the fight against epidemics can be much more effectively waged. Indeed, a good part of the preventive work which has been discussed above is directed against epidemic diseases. But, in addition to removing the fundamental causes of the occurrence of such diseases, the spread of individual cases must be prevented. This requires a careful system of notification of all cases or suspected cases of conta- gious diseases to the health authorities, isolation, fumi- gation, and other methods of disinfection. Where the duty of placarding houses with contagious disease signs is imposed upon the private physicians, experience shows that the selfish interests of the physician are not always the same as the larger interests of the community. Even in the matter of keeping cliildren home from school, the physicians too frequently take the parents' point of view instead of that of the other children. Strict penal- ties and careful inspection by the health officials are necessary to enforce this obligation of the attending physi- cian. Every city should have an isolation hospital for contagious diseases, because many cases cannot be treated 88 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS at home in such a way as to avoid the danger of spread- ing the disease. In the protection of the city against the introduction of contagious diseases from the outside, the city should be aided by state law and state officers. With the enor- mous amount of traffic coming into modern cities, effec- tive measures of quarantine are almost impossible with- out the aid of state action in the district from which the disease is likely to be introduced. At the same time the city should do whatever it can of its own initiative to guard against the introduction of contagious diseases from the outside. Some of the commonest means by which contagious or infectious diseases are spread about in the city are laundries, barber shops, public wash rooms and public drinking cups. Diseases may be trans- mitted from the clothing of one patron of the washer- woman or the laundry to another, or may be communi- cated by diseased employees themselves. Various skin and blood diseases are communicated by barbers' imple- ments, and the same is true both of the public towel and the public drinking cup. Inspection of the employees and individual treatment of the clothes can minimize the danger from laundries and washerwomen. Sterilization of towels, razors, strops, and brushes can be insisted upon in the barber shops, the issuance or continuation of the license being made dependent upon the observance of the sanitary requirements prescribed. Individual towels or paper rolls should be made to take the place of the former common towel, and the sanitary fountain or individual drinking cup are in all modern localities supplanting the former insanitary arrangements. All of these various activities of the modern health de- partment are but a partial enumeration of the matters that fall under the care of the guardians of the public PUBLIC HEALTH 89 healtli. They serve, however, to indicate the wide scope of action that calls for attention by that branch of the city's administration. Of course such a tremendous un- dertaking requires a great deal of money, and yet muni- cipal health departments are among the most poorly supported of the city's activities. The returns from a well-directed department of public health are, of course, not easily demonstrated in terms of dollars and cents. But even using a very conservative, albeit materialistic, estimate of the economic cost of preventable sickness and death, it has been shown that the annual saving effected by proper public health protection will in every city far exceed the cost of maintaining the best equipped and operated public health machinery. Quite apart, therefore, from the sentimental value of life and health, an efficient health department is a paying proposition from a large point of view. The failure to realize this fact is perhaps largely responsible for the difficulty health departments commonly experience in securing from the city's revenues enough money to carry on the work properly. There are a few problems of organization connected with the health department which deserve a passing men- tion because they are intimately connected with the effi- ciency of the health work. Quite generally health au- thorities in American cities have not been given adequate powers for carrying on their work. Health authorities which merely advise but cannot determine or act are vir- tually useless. The determination and enforcement of the measures necessary for safeguarding the public health are technical, not political, considerations, and that determination should therefore be left to a technical and not a political authority. For that reason the sanitary regulations of the city should be issued by the health 90 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS authority, not by the representative body. For the same reason the health authority should be intrusted to a single individual or small executive commission instead of to a large board. Lay opinions may be worth receiv- ing at times, and lay advisory members may profitably be employed, but the measures to be adopted for meeting such a situation as arose recently in New York City at the time of the infantile paralysis epidemic are not a proper subject for lay deliberation and determination. If the head of the health department is a properly trained sanitarian he is much more to be trusted, especially in emergencies, than is any large board intended to be in any sense representative. Defective organization is certainly in part responsible for the inefficiency of many of our city health departments. Discipline and ascending concentrated responsibility are most necessary for the effective working of the health authority. Appointment on the basis of merit alone is, of course, equally desirable, and we have here again the problem of insuring responsibility and power to the authority in charge and yet limiting his discretion so far as necessary to prevent improper use of his powers of administration. Positions in the city's health service are for the most part of a nature to be especially adapted for filling by competitive civil service examination, as they are of a technical nature. At the same time retention in the service must be made dependent upon prompt obedience, an absolute essential in the most important emergencies calling for action by the health authorities. Therefore, the power of discipline, meaning in the last analysis the power of dismissal, must be intrusted to the responsible head of the health department with large discretion. Another question arises in connection with the relation PUBLIC HEALTH 91 of local health authorities to the state health department. It is clear that under modern circumstances insanitary conditions in one city may be of the greatest menace to a neighboring city unable to protect itself except at great and unnecessary expense and inconvenience. For that reason, the city must look to the state for protection. Cer- tain minimum requirements may properly be prescribed by the state for all cities and an administrative supervision exercised by the state over the local authorities charged with carrying the provisions into effect. In European countries, even in England, the local health administra- tion is subjected to a more or less strict supervision by the central government. The same safeguards will have to be introduced in this country if cities are to be pro- tected against dangers to public health arising outside their limits and not under their control. It would not do to leave the subject of public health administration without dwelling for a moment on the importance of keeping careful vital statistics, particularly birth statistics and death statistics with careful statements of the causes of the deaths that occur. Without such statistics it is impossible to judge of the sanitary condi- tions of the city and to discover where the leakage occurs. As we have seen above, prevalence of typhoid is an indica- tion of impure water, a high infant mortality indicates an impure milk supply, malaria shows that there are un- drained places or other mosquito breeding spots not cared for, and so on down a long list of the commonest diseases. If, however, there are no careful records of such diseases, the symptoms are undiscovered and the treatment of the conditions cannot follow. As the vital statistics are im- portant from many other points of view as well, it seems proper that cities should be required by state law to keep vital statistics in a uniform way and send copies of the 92 MUNICIPi^L FUNCTIONS statements to the state health authority. In this regard the cities of Europe are in general far in advance of American cities, many of which lack even the begin- nings of adequate health records. Of course it makes lit- tle difference whether the collection of these statistics is made a part of the function of the health authority or of some other municipal department such as the police, for instance. From the point of view of public health pro- tection it is certainly important that in some manner or other they be collected. CHAPTER IV PUBLIC EDUCATION The field of public education presents one of the few branches of municipal activity of which American cities in general have some reason to be proud. Not only were American cities among the first in modern times to pro- vide free public school facilities, but from the point of view of citizen interest and support and the ever wider extension of the public school facilities, American cities have always been in advance of those of England, for instance, which in so many other respects can be studied with profit by our municipalities in this country. It is now recognized in all civilized countries that it is one of the most important duties of the state to sec that opportunities for education are extended to all the citizens of the state. From the beginning of the recog- nition of this duty, it has also been agreed that the city represented a logical unit for administering this func- tion, and from the first, therefore, we find the provision of public education among the municipal functions. The machinery employed for that purpose and the relation between the local authorities and the state present some interesting variations and problems which will be touched upon later in the chapter, in considering the question of organization. For the present it is intended to examine 93 94 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS into the character of the education which the city is supposed to furnish. The earHest concepts of the extent of free pubHc edu- cation included merely what we today designate as ele- mentary education. Generally speaking, this concept involved the provision of free schooling for children between the ages of six and fourteen years. This is also commonly known as the scholastic age, the time during which attendance at these free schools should be made compulsory. Today, however, the limits within which free educational opportunities are offered to children have been considerably extended, both above and below the earlier periods. Just as elementary education was formerly left to private or church endeavor, so after elementary education, in the sense defined above, was assumed by the cities a preliminary educational function was developed by private initiative. This was the so- called kindergarten. The development of the kinder- garten as an educational agency resulted from the recog- nition of the fact that the mental and physical powers of the child could with profit be trained some years before the age at which children were expected or permitted to enter the primary grades. Though at first little more than day nurseries, these kindergartens gradually devel- oped into very valuable educational agencies, until today it is recognized that the child who has had two or even three years in a scientifically conducted kindergarten is distinctly more advanced and mentally capable than is the same child entering the grades without any prelim- inary training. As a result such children are frequently able to shorten the period of elementary training without the slightest detriment to their health. With the recog- nition of this fact came the realization that if kinder- garten training was a valuable preliminary to the ele- PUBLIC EDUCATION 95 mentary grades, it was the business of the city to make its elementary education more effective by providing also for this preliminary training. Consequently we see the movement for municipal free kindergartens spreading from city to city until it may be hoped that every city will recognize its importance in the educational system of the community. At the other end, the concept of what public educa- tion should include has been extended in almost all American cities by from two to four years in what is commonly called the public high school. Thus secondary education, which, until comparatively recent times in this country, has been pretty largely in the hands of private or church academies, is now almost universally regarded as a part of the free public school system which every city should provide for its children. Furthermore, the standard four-year high school has already in some cities been extended by two years into what is known as the junior college, offering to the city children the educational opportunities of the first two years in col- lege. Indeed, cities have not stopped there in their systems of schools. In New York, Cincinnati, Akron, and Toledo we find cities providing full collegiate train- ing in standard colleges, free of charge, to the young men and women of the city, and still other projects for municipal institutions of higher learning are on foot. Thus we see that modern municipal education in pro- gressive American cities extends from babyhood to man- hood and womanhood. Not only are the benefits of general schooling so well recognized that the opportunties for at least the elemen- tary grades are both free and compulsory, with additional free schools of higher character, but even free textbooks and free lunches are being furnished in a number of 96 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS cities in order to diminish the financial burden imposed upon the poorer classes in sending their children to school. Thereby is increased the extent to which the educational opportunities of the city can be taken ad- vantage of, especially by those who are entirely dependent upon community action for supplying their children with such opportunities. The three most important factors in providing a satis- factory public school system for a city are a proper curriculum, an efficient teaching force, and an adequate physical plant. In the matter of adapting the school curriculum to meet changing needs and educational con- cepts, local educational authorities have unfortunately aot been as responsive as they have been in providing schools and teachers. It is, perhaps, especially true in educational matters that what has been is likely to be regarded as therefore correct and that the educational curriculum which the school authorities themselves knew and grew up under seems to them naturally the proper thing for the rising generation. The changed conditions of modern society, as well as the development of the science of education, have wrought such changes, how- ever, in the last generation, that it is safe to say that the school system which is teaching the city children the same things in the same way as it taught their parents is some twenty years behind the times. In the first place, as to the manner of instruction, the modern school no longer overemphasizes the development of the memory to the neglect of the other faculties. On the contrary, powers of observation and powers of reasoning are the main points of emphasis today. Memory is trained as an aid to the other capacities, not as an end in itself. In the second place, modern education is beginning to recognize the differences between children. Most adults PUBLIC EDUCATION 97 today went throujjh schools in which large numhcrs of children were treated as a unit supposed to represent the hypotiietical "average child." As a consequence of this the children who were not up to this standard, which, it may be pointed out, was almost always much nearei the lowest level of intelligence in the class than the highest, were dragged along in a disheartening struggle until forced to drop by the wayside and lose an entire year in going over the work again. Exceptionally capable children, on the other hand, found no interest or in- centive in the slow pace at which things were going, and not only wasted many precious hours of time, but fref|uently developed habits of indifference, carelessness, and indolence which handicapped them in all subsequent undertakings. Today, scientific education involves the recognition of those differences among children, their examination, and a treatment that takes them into ac- count. The subnormal child, for instance, which for- merly presented such a problem to the teacher of a large class, can today be discovered by scientific tests and be especially dealt with, to the great advantage of him- self, the teacher, and tlie other children. Small classes which permit individual attention to the children and a system of promotion or demotion based upon graduated standards of ability, instead of upon arbitrary divisions into years, are, therefore, earmarks of the modern school system. Along with the fundamental question of how to teach, arises the question of what to teach. School curricula are handed down from generation to generation without any critical examination as to their value or their adap- tation to human needs and are accepted just because they have been used for years. But, as was suggested above, the fact that certain subjects have always been 98 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS taught in schools should be a source of suspicion rather than a recommendation, for the origin of the school curricula in common use today dates back to a time when industrial and economic conditions generally were wholly different and when ideas as to what education is were quite different from what they are today. A modern school curriculum should be based on a critical exami- nation of every subject included and no subject should be admitted which cannot be shown to have real edu- cational value. The fundamental three "R's," reading, writing and arithmetic, are obviously the tools of all further education and need no further justification for their place in the curriculum. Beyond that, however, subjects should be admitted with care and only on ex- amination. If education means adaptability to surround- ings, and it should mean that whatever else it may mean, then a knowledge of the everyday phenomena of nature, physiographical, astronomical, physical, chemical, bio- logical and physiological, taught, not as abstract sciences, but as pragmatic experiences, must certainly be given a place in the curriculum. The mind is not, however, the only attribute which modern education seeks to develop. The body, the dwelling place of the mind, is equally important. Physi- cal education, therefore, is receiving a larger and larger part in the educational curriculum. Not only does the strengthening of the body react favorably on the health of the child, but the amount of mental development that can be accomplished is actually increased when periods of study are interspersed with periods of play. Carefully directed and supervised play, furthermore, develops the moral nature of the child by teaching him the principles of self-control, fair play, and sportsmanship. This moral nature should further be developed by instruction in the PUBLIC EDUCATION 99 principles of right and wrong, particularly social ethics. It is one of the indictments against democracy, particu- larly American democracy, that our citizens lack the social sense. It should be one of the most important functions of our educational system to teach children respect for law and order, the subjection of the indi- vidual to the welfare of society, and the larger social consciousness. To neglect instruction in such matters, commonly termed "civics" in the inadecjuate manner in which they are handled, is the most shortsighted of edu- cational policies. Instruction along these lines should begin at the very beginning and run through the entire curriculum if we are to turn out promising material for the making of good future citizens. Closely connected with the training of the moral and social nature of the child should be the development of his esthetic faculties. The beautiful in literature, art, and music should be brought to his attention and his understanding thereof developed in a vital and interest- ing way. So far as these subjects are today taught in our schools they are all too commonly handled in such a way as to kill the interest of the child rather than to stimulate it. Particularly is this the case in the teaching of literature, where pedantic analysis and dry dissection destroy so completely the beauty of the subject that most children develop a distaste rather than a liking for the masterpieces of writing. With the subjects outlined above accorded their proper attention it will be found that the broad general foun- dations of an education will have been laid. Little or no time will be left for the monstrosities of present-day elementary curricula, grammar, algebra, geometry, lan- guages, to name only a few. The mistake most commonly made in our public school loo MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS systems is to continue what is called a "liberal" educa- tion beyond the time when it has ceased to be the kind of education most needed. Our ordinary high school curricula continue this same kind of instruction for an- other four years after the elementary grades, in apparent ignorance of the fact that a very large percentage of school children do not go through the high school at all. largely because they realize that the high school train- ing will help but little in the struggle for a living upon which many of them must enter with their fifteenth or sixteenth year. In other words, there are two sides to education. One, which has aready been considered, is the general adaptability and fitness of the individual toward his surroundings, the other is the special training for doing the particular kind of work in the world upon which the individual must depend for a livelihood. Now the children that finish the elementary grades are com- monly without the slightest kind of training that will specifically aid them in earning a living at some par- ticular job. And yet many of them must, from economic necessity, go to work when, they graduate from the ele- mentary school. These are the children who most largely remain in the city in which they live and become perma- nent wage earners there. Their economic welfare is there- fore a matter of immediate concern to the city and this economic welfare is dependent largely on the training they have received for earning a living. Obviously, then, the entire period of elementary education must not be de- voted to purely "liberal" subjects or subjects developing a general adaptability ; it should include also to some extent subjects calculated to furnish a specific adapta- bility for a particular kind of economic activity. This is the much discussed problem of vocational education. Some recognition of this principle of education has PUBLIC EDUCATION loi been accorded in recent years in this country by the introduction of courses in manual training and domestic science in our elementary schools. But, for the most part, the work has partaken but little of the character of real vocational education and much needs to be done before this need will be met. The characteristic oppo- sition of educational authorities to these so-called "fads" has prevented even this modest beginning from being everywhere accomplished. Much the same problem, but in an accentuated degree, arises in connection with the secondary or high school curriculum. If it is true that only a portion of the gradu- ates of elementary schools go on to the high schools, it is even more true that but a small proportion of those who enter high school graduate and go on to college. The ordinary age of graduation from high school, about eighteen years, marks for the great majority of boys, at least, the time at which they must cease to be consumers merely and must become producers. In pathetic blind- ness of that fact, however, our high schools continue in large part to offer only training which is of greatest value to the few who can go on to college. This myopia which leads our school authorities to shape their high school curricula to meet the needs of the few instead of tlie many, is further confirmed by the pressure from our universities, which persist in regarding the high schools as primarily feeding institutions for the colleges instead of training schools for life itself, as they are in large part. Vocational training in the secondary schools should, therefore, be the chief concern instead of being a minor consideration, as it is now even in the most advanced city school systems of this country. In this matter of vocational education American school authori- ties have much to learn from German cities which have I02 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS attacked the problem of vocational education much more successfully than is the case in the United States. One traditional weakness in our American school curriculum is now being partially remedied in a number of cities, that weakness being the long summer vacatioa The almost universal practice of giving a three months' vacation during the summer is justifiable from no point of view. On the contrary, it is open to so many serious objections that one wonders how it could have been re- tained as a feature of American public schools during so many years. In the first place, so long a vacation is quite unnecessary. Neither teachers nor pupils are in need of so long a rest in order to be fit for a new year. As far as the pupils are concerned the results are most serious. Not only is all that time wasted, amounting every three years to the equivalent of an entire scholastic year, but it is even a more positive detriment in that the continuity of the educational program is so largely broken that the pupil has lost many of the threads onto which should be attached the teaching of the subjects in the new year. Furthermore, so long a period of absolute idleness engenders in many children a more or less pro- nounced disinclination to do school work, which inter- feres with their progress upon starting in again. Finally, from the point of view of economy in the use of public funds, the policy of long summer vacations is most ex- travagant. Every calendar year sees the expensive city school plant lie idle an entire fourth of the year in the summer, not counting Saturdays, Sundays, and other holidays during the school year. This is a point which will arise again in connection with the general problem of the wider use of the school plant, to be considered a little later. The evils of the long summer vacation have led a PUBLIC EDUCATION 103 number of cities to introduce what are commonly called vacation or summer scliools in which children may con- tinue their studies during a part of the summer and so shorten the time required for completing their course of study. This is, however, only a partial remedy, for in- struction is not ordinarily given in all subjects and attendance is not compulsory. If the long summer vaca- tion presents all the evils mentioned above it should be discontinued and the entire school year lengthened. One month in the summer is all that is required for purposes of rest and recreation and would lack the disadvantages enumerated above. This lengthening of the present school year by two months would mean an increase of about twenty-two per cent in the teaching period each year. In other words, the course of study which now normally requires twelve years in the elementary and secondary schools could be completed in less than ten years under the new plan, a great saving for the child and for the city. The additional cost per pupil involved in paying teachers a proportionately larger salary for doing two months' more work each year would be prac- tically offset by the shorter time required for each pupil to complete the elementary and secondary grades, and the overhead charges per hour of instruction for equip- ment would, as has been seen, be greatly reduced. The second essential factor in an efficient school sys- tem is a competent teaching staff. Generally speaking, the assertion may be made that our public school teach- ers are paid far too little to secure really efficient service. The training which even an elementary teacher should receive in order to be properly fitted for the work is so extended that it represents a considerable investment of time and money. If that fact is not taken into consid- eration in the salaries paid, energetic and capable per- I04 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS sons will not be encouraged to enter upon the- work. It is true that the character of teaching work offers some special attractions to those interested at all in that field which will serve to make up for some of the difference in the remuneration paid by that activity as compared with other possibilities open to the persons who would be adapted for that work. But where the difference is too marked, the result of paying small salaries to teach- ers is that most capable and energetic persons feel they cannot afford to enter that field of work, and hence in large measure it is only persons who are not able to earn even such small salaries at any other livelihood who are candidates for places in the public schools. One result of the low salary scale has been the all but complete displacement of men by women, especially in the elementary schools. On the one hand, women have fewer opportunities for earning a living in other professional fields than have men, and, on the other hand, it seems women can live equally respectably on less money than can men. Furthermore, when men enter the teaching field it is usually with the idea of permanency, for a change of occupation is not easy. Many women, how- ever, consciously enter into public school positions with the idea and hope of being there but temporarily, and the record of women teachers who marry each year shows that it is not altogether a vain hope. Whatever may be thought of the relative fitness of men and women for public school work, everyone is agreed that it is un- desirable to have none but women in the work, and everyone is agreed also that women who go into the work with no idea of spending their lives at it, but merely as a convenient place to wait for a satisfactory offer in marriage to turn up, are not satisfactory material to make school faculties out of. The women here referred PUBLIC EDUCATION 105 to are those who look forward to marriage as a welcome release from teaching school. A difficult and much con- troverted question is raised by the case of efficient women who wish to continue teaching after getting married. A higher scale of salaries, with stricter requirements as to training, would tend to encourage men to take up the work and would prove more attractive to women as a permanent rather than a temporary undertaking. The wonder is that with our present salary scale we have been able to attract so many good teachers as are now found in the schools. But relative good fortune in the past in this regard is no justification for the continuation of a policy of niggardliness in the human element in our education, the element which of all the others is the most influential. The third test of a good school system is the physical equipment. If, as is frequently the case, school build- ings are ugly, ill lighted, inadequately heated, and im- properly ventilated, with poor sanitary facilities and no playgrounds, the attendance of children at the schools may be a positive detriment instead of a benefit. The city must, therefore, be willing to spend the necessary money for a proper physical plant. This does not mean, however, that all money put into school buildings is well spent, a warning which many cities need to heed. Be- yond the requirements mentioned above, money spent in extravagant buildings may be all wasted. Changing educational methods require changes in construction and the model school of today is likely to be obsolete and largely useless in twenty years. The practice of build- ing monumental high schools calculated to stand as a thing of beauty for many generations is, therefore, a mistaken manifestation of civic pride. Handsome as well as serviceable all school buildings should be, but io6 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS marble columns and tile corridors are not proper fittings for buildings which it would otherwise be desirable to discard long before these features began to show any use. In the location of school buildings it is obvious that considerations of convenience only should govern. That political motives have often played a part in their loca- tion is merely evidence of the fact that not even in the educational system of the city have improper politics been wholly eliminated. One of the most encouraging developments of recent years in American cities has been the movement for the wider use of the school plant. It has taken a long time for the fact to be realized that it was poor economy to leave the large sums of money invested in school build- ings idle so large a portion of the time. ^Making allow- ances for summer vacations and other holidays, besides Saturdays and Sundays, the school buildings of a com- munity are normally in use but about half of the time during the year. Furthermore, the daily school period rarely covers one-third of the twenty-four hours, which means that the actual period of use of the school plant is but very small compared to the time during which it stands absolutely idle. The wider use of the school plant involves not only using the school buildings more ex- tensively for educational purposes, as by shortening the vacation period, discussed above, and night schools, branch libraries, museums, and other educational agencies to be considered later, but also for social and political purposes. The use of the school building as a neighbor- hood house for gatherings of all kinds is coming to be recognized as a great possible means of social improve- ment. Purely social meetings serve a valuable purpose in developing neighborhood sentiment, while more for- mal programs present the possibility of public discussion PUBLIC EDUCATION 107 of live local political questions. The only additional expense involved in thus employing the sciiool buildings for valuable social services is the cost of light and heat, janitor service, and some supervision, preferably by an expert full-time secretary for that purpose. The over- head charges for repair and depreciation of the buildings as well as interest and sinking fund on the money in- vested are not increased, but are relatively diminished by being distributed among a number of undertakings. So the use of school buildings as polling places, a com- mon practice in French cities, for instance, though not a strictly educational purpose, nevertheless by saving the cost of building or renting special polling booths reduces the burden upon the taxpayer who pays for school build- ings and polling booths alike. Of course the chief jus- tification of these various undertakings that center in the schoolhouse is not primarily that they make use of otherwise idle property, but because they serve a valu- able social end. But the fact that they can be carried on in the existing plant, and even make the schools themselves nearer and dearer to the mass of the people, is certainly a powerful argument in their favor. So far the only educational facilities of the city that have been considered are the regular public schools in- tended for the children. If we had a perfect system of public schools and a really compulsory attendance by all children in the community, and if our cities were not continually receiving additions to their population from the outside, the problem of public education would be virtually the problem of the public school for children. As a matter of fact, however, neither of these hypo- thetical conditions exists in any city. No city has such a perfect public school system that every child in the community receives even a thorough elementary educa- io8 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS tion. Nor does the city exist which does not receive each year into its midst immigrants from other places who have not had such an elementary education. There will be found in every city, therefore, a varying number of young people over scholastic age, as well as adults of both sexes, who are without even an approach to such a thorough elementary education. In a democracy espe- cially, the ignorant adult is a more immediate danger than the ignorant child, for the adult male, ordinarily at least, enjoys the right of a voice in the city govern- ment whether he has an elementary education or not ; indeed, in most cases in the United States whether or not he can even read and write. To believe, therefore, as many citizens seem to believe, that the problem of public education is met in a community when the chil- dren are well provided for, but no attention is paid to the uneducated adults, is a sad shortsightedness indeed. Obviously the problem of the uneducated adult is quite a different educational problem from that presented by the ordinary public school system. First of all, there is the fact that the adult in question is normally a wage earner whose days are occupied in earning a living. This means, of course, that the day school facilities are useless to him, even if the methods of instruction and the subjects taught would suit his case. To be of any help, therefore, such school facilities as are offered must be offered at night. Furthermore, the uneducated adult presents a different teaching problem. Instead of an alert child mind, his is a case of a mature, though largely untrained, intelligence which cannot be dealt with like that of a child. The teachers and the methods and in- struments of instruction must therefore be different. Furthermore, many things which have to be told a child in school to prevent his learning them by sad experience PUBLIC EDUCATION 109 have already been learned by the adult in the hard school of life. The subjects taught must, therefore, also be different. A considerable emphasis must be placed on teaching those things which will be of the most imme- diate and direct benefit to the man and woman concerned in the business of earning a living in which they are engaged. The night school, although an integral part of the school system, is consequently a distinct adminis- trative problem. Of course, there can be no talk of compulsory attendance, though in Germany, for instance, industrial employers are compelled to afiford their young employees opportunity to attend the regular trade and finishing schools, even though the employees are beyond the compulsory school age. But the eagerness of workers to take advantage of opportunities for education which they feel will benefit them has been demonstrated in so many places where night schools have been provided that there need ordinarily be no fear of a lack of inter- est in the undertaking. Schools of these various types are undoubtedly the most important educational agencies in the community. At the same time they are by no means the only ones that are of sufficient importance to be supported by the community in the interests of raising the educational standard therein. Even the children in attendance at the schools can profit by a number of these other agencies. But more valuable still is their influence on the young people and adults who are no longer in school or perhaps have never been to school. Chief among these educa- tional opportunities may be mentioned the public library. American cities, in general, pride themselves on their public libraries and certainly in this activity the record of American cities compares very favorably with that of European cities. The Carnegie library movement no MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS particularly has given a great impetus to the building of city libraries. The benefits derived from this interest in public library facilities has undoubtedly been great. At the same time the educational value of^such libraries has frequently, if not generally, failed to attain anything approaching its maximum. The reasons for this failure are manifold and cannot all be considered here. The main trouble seems to be in the failure to keep in mind what class of people are in greatest need of the library facilities and how they can best be served. Let us con- sider, for instance, the matter of location. In a very large number of cities, the public library, or the main library if there be more than one, is located near the business center of the city. Now the homes of the working people, who constitute the class in the com- munity for whom the library has most value, are rarely, if ever, near the business center of the city, though they may frequently be right in the industrial section. The consequence is that that class of people have frequently a considerable distance to go from their homes in order to enjoy the reading room facilities of the library. For the man or woman returning home from a hard day's work, the physical energy necessary to walk a consider- able distance is commonly lacking and the expenditure of street-car fare is also out of the question. That man or woman is therefore deprived of the opportunities for reading and study which may mean so much to him or her. The obvious solution of this difficulty lies in the location of branch reading rooms which are convenient to the homes of that class of people. The most con- venient places from that point of view are, or should be, the school buildings. They ofifer, therefore, at once a logical opportunity for the location of public reading rooms. This not only saves the expense of building or PUBLIC EDUCATION iii renting special branch libraries, but uses a plant which, as has been seen, lies idle much too great a part of the time during which it might be used. The use of a por- tion of the school building for public library purposes, being a distinctly educational use, is highly proper from every point of view. Another sad mistake that is frequently made in the administration of the public library is in the hours dur- ing which it is kept open. A ridiculous practice, which is unfortunately not uncommon, is to have the library open only during the hours of the working day, from eight or nine in the morning to five or six in the evening. No more effective blow could be struck against the use- fulness of the public library as an educational agency than to adopt such hours. Much better would it be from the educational point of view to have the library closed during those hours and to have them open from five to ten at night. Then, at least, the persons who work all day and cannot afford library facilities at home and feel the need of further education and information in their work can enjoy the reading room facilities. Not only are the location of the building and the hours of closing frequently unfavorable to the widest use of the library as an educational agency, but the character of the reading material is commonly far from meeting the educational needs of the community. Libraries, of course, have only limited funds for buying books. Libra- rians realize that their funds are dependent largely on evidence of interest on the part of the public in the literature to be found in the library. Popularity is. therefore, inevitably an important guide in the selection of books, because popular books swell the circulation and reading room figures, whether the books are of any educational value or not. Indeed they may even be posi- 112 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS tively detrimental to the class of readers who use them most. So it happens that the latest fiction, enthusias- tically devoured by high school girls with romantic tendencies, finds a place on the shelf in multiple copies, while reference books with real educational value are omitted because the funds do not suffice. Little wonder, then, that the serious-minded worker who is led to be- lieve that the community offers him opportunities for education in the public library so frequently finds that his case is not the one for which the librarian or the library board appear to show any interest. Finally, even when location, hours, and reading ma- terial are all satisfactory, it is necessary to adopt some positive measures for encouraging the poorer element in the community to make the widest possible use of the library. Many of them would never learn casually that these opportunities exist, others are backward about entering by marble stairways in their workingmen's clothes and must be welcomed and made to feel at home, and a great many need guidance and advice as to how best to use the facilities accorded them. Until these considerations are given far greater weight than they commonly are in our city libraries today, it is idle to point with pride to these institutions as agencies of popular education. Next to libraries, perhaps, one of the most potent of educational influences is the museum. Art museums, natural history museums, industrial museums can all be made to play a considerable part in popular education if properly equipped and administered. Much the same considerations come into play here, as in the case of libraries, if these institutions are to be of appreciable educational value. They must be free, open to the public at hours when the majority of the public are in a posi- PUBLIC EDUCATION 113 tion to visit them, and made as intelligible to the visitors as possible. For school children these museums consti- tute a valuable supplement to the classroom work ; for adults they are the means of opening new prospects and even visions. Zoological and botanical gardens afford other means of popular education, combining outdoor recreation with opportunities for learning. Although not intrusted to the educational authorities of the city, all of these undertakings may properly be regarded as fur- thering the same general objects as the schools and libraries. The invention and perfection of the moving picture machine has opened up new possibilities of popular edu- cation combined with recreation. Geography, science and invention, natural history, sanitation, are now all demonstrable in a fascinating way through the moving picture machine. Fire prevention, first aid to the injured, the care of infants, can be taught in a way that people are eager to watch through the cinematograph. I\Iuch has been said about the evil influence of the movies. The possibilities of the movies for good are just as great, and the city that neglects this means of entertaining, while instructing, its citizens is neglecting a social and moral opportunity as well as an educational one. Mu- nicipal movies may, therefore, be considered today as an important arm of the educational service of the city. The manifest appropriateness of exhibiting such movies in school auditoriums, when not in the open in school grounds or parks, need not be dwelt upon further, in view of what has already been said concerning the wider use of the school plant. Finally, mention may be made of public entertainments of other kinds, that find their value in the educational as well as the social features involved. Music, especially, 114 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS may be made a means of popular education as well as of popular amusement. Community singing is coming to be recognized as valuable both as a means of educat- ing people musically and of engendering democracy, sociability, and civic solidarity. Pageants are being used in many cities to enlist citizen cooperation in developing civic pride and traditions. Open air concerts in the summer and in school buildings or municipal auditoriums in the winter, by municipal bands and orchestras, have value as instruments of education as well as of enter- tainment So broad, then, are the educational activities of the modern city. Small wonder that their administration presents some difficulties, and, indeed, inefficiency in administration is quite as frequently the cause of failure in many of these undertakings as is the lack of adequate money for their support. Education is one of the hob- bies of American cities, and if an undertaking can be shown to have real value as an instrument of popular education, it is safe to say that usually the necessary moneys will be voted. It is necessary, therefore, to examine briefly what some of the administrative prob- lems connected with public education are and how they may best be handled. To begin with, it may be stated that all of the educa- tional activities of the city, as well as those which are primarily educational in character, should be adminis- tered by one authority. If public libraries, for instance, find the justification for their establishment and support in the fact that they are agencies of popular education, then their management should be intrusted to the edu- cational authority of the city. The determination of the relative amount of money that should be spent on schools and public libraries, for instance, is a question PUBLIC EDUCATION 115 of general educational policy and, therefore, one to be determined by the authorities charged 'with the duty of providing for pubhc education in the city rather than by conflicting interests and by the relative amount of political influence which tvi^o separate authorities may have with the appropriating power. Furthermore, as has been seen, there is the desirability of very close cooperation between school and library authorities in using the same buildings and other equipment. The maximum of effective cooperation is attainable only, however, when both undertakings are under the same direction. Much the same may be said of museums and other undertakings whose principal value is educational. In spite of these apparently obvious considerations, we find in most American cities the spectacle of separate library and museum boards besides the regular school authority, and, unfortunately, instead of a spirit of hearty cooperation, in some instances jealous rivalry. Librarians and library boards would, it is true, object to such a merger, but perhaps their objection is as good evidence as might be needed to show that the merger is desirable. The school authorities are, therefore, generally not intrusted with the management of these other educational agencies. Furthermore, the school authorities themselves are, in the United States, commonly distinct from the rest of the city government. Now, it is true that the territorial jurisdiction of the school authority is the same as that of the city government, that the same people are served by the activities of the two bodies, and that the same property bears the common burden of taxation. It is, therefore, not unnaturally a matter of surprise tiiat distinct governmental and administrative authorities are provided for this one branch of municipal administra- Ii6 MUNICIPAL FUNXTIONS tion. The explanation of this situation is partly his- torical and partly sentimental. Historically, the origin of separate school boards for educational matters was due to the same forces which created separate water boards, health boards, police and fire boards, or, when not boards, separate commissioners. Jacksonian democ- racy, which was based on the erroneous notion that popular participation in government increased directly in proportion to the number of public officers to be elected, was chiefly responsible for the separately elected administrative authorities in American citie«. That is the historical reason for independently elected school boards. We have fortunately evolved out of that state of political fallacy with regard to the general principle involved and have abolished most of the independently elected administrative boards and officers in our most advanced types of American cities. Why has the inde- pendent school board so generally remained? The ex- planation of this fact is largely sentimental. As has been pointed out, our public schools have been perhaps the only phase of our municipal administration in this coun- try of which every intelligent man did not need to be ashamed. While the term "city council" came to epito- mize everything that was rotten and shameful in politics, our school boards, serving without pay as a general rule, rendered good and patriotic service. Of course, graft and corruption were not unknown in school administra- tion, but they were distinctly not the general thing, and popular indigiiation could usually be relied upon to clean things up in that quarter. Furthermore, there is, per- haps, no other phase of municipal administration which is of such immediate and vital interest to so many members of the community and in which inefficiency and corruption are so likely to be popularly felt and de- PUBLIC EDUCATION 117 nounced as in the public schools. Inefficient police and fire departments injure at worst only a relatively small proportion of the community. Even public health ad- ministration, which is more universal in its immediate contact with the general public than are the public schools, is not understood by the general public and does not make nearly the same personal appeal. In view of these facts, the public has been adverse to intrusting the important matter of public schools to the regular organs of city government, which are still pretty generally viewed with distrust. So, while a concentration of almost all the other powers and functions of the city under the regular city authorities, especially in commis- sion government, for instance, is rapidly coming to be the rule, there seems to be little tendency to continue this development in the case of the schools. Now, if this process of concentration is a good thing, and all stu- dents of municipal government are agreed that it is, then this sentimental aversion to intrusting the sacred public schools to the city governing authorities should not be allowed to prevail. The fear, of course, is that the school administration will be dragged down to the level of municipal politics. May it not just as well be antici- pated that the public interest in schools may be the cause of raising the level of municipal politics if intrusted to the regular city authorities? Even were it true that better school administration can be attained by having a separate authority on which public attention can be cen- tered, the same argument would lead to the establishment of a separate health authority, a separate police and fire authority, a separate park authority, the very situation we are congratulating ourselves upon just escaping. Some cities have, it is true, carried the development of recent years to its logical conclusion and have made the ii8 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS school authority subordinate to the regular organs of city government. There seems to be no evidence that the prostitution of the public schools for political pur- poses, which was so generally predicted would follow from this development, has actually occurred. It is believed, therefore, that the administration of public education in cities should bear a relation to the city government as a whole which is the same as that found in the case of the health department, the police and fire departments, or any of the other city's adminis- trative departments, though this is not the common situation in the United States. In English cities, it may be said, the borough council is the educational authority, acting through an education committee, and in Prussian cities the regular city authorities also administer local educational matters through a school deputation or joint commission. In neither of these countries has the plan of independently elected authorities for different branches of local administration been in vogue, though special boards and commissions were found in English cities before the reform of municipal corporations. The next question that arises in connection with the constitution of the school authority, whether independ- ently elected or appointed by the organs of city govern- ment, is the constantly recurring question of municipal administration by the board form versus the single commissioner form. The board form, it may be said, is so general as to be clearly predominant. Where the school authority is an independent appropriating and spending authority and the city council or commission has nothing to say with regard to expenditures, much may be said in favor of the board organization. The amount of money which a community wishes to spend on public education and the apportionment of this money PUBLIC EDUCATION 119 among various educational agencies is a question of policy which the educational authority should determine in accordance with community sentiment. A board is less likely to be swayed by the individual opinions of members, which, because likely to be conflicting, tend to neutralize each other, than would a single individual be. Even here the administrative advantages of a single instead of multiple head are lost, but the political ad- vantages may be said to outweigh the disadvantages. Where such an independent board exists it should be small, not over seven or nine members at the most, and chosen by non-partisan ballot for the city at large with long, overlapping terms. Under these conditions there is the greatest likelihood of a satisfactory educational authority being* elected, if it is to be elected at all. If, however, instead of an independently elected school authority, the administration of public education is made/ a coordinate branch of tiie city government with the other municipal activities, then the desirability of the board form of organization is greatly diminished. If the voting of moneys and the large questions of educa- tional policy are matters left ultimately to the general representative body of the city, then the need for an- other deliberative body would seem no longer to exist. The expert information and knowledge for directing the educational work of the city is not supposed to be found in the board in either case, but in the city superintendent of public instruction, whose function will be considered in a moment. Therefore, the approval or disapproval of the proposals of this technical professional adminis- trator can just as well be considered by the general policy determining the board of the city, that is the council or the commission, as the case may be. Conse- quently, whether the appointment of the school authority I20 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS be in the hands of the mayor, of the council, of the commission, or of the city manager, the board form should be superseded by the single commissioner form, and that single commissioner should be the expert ad- ministrative head. Practically every city has a chief administrative officer for the public instruction, commonly called a city super- intendent. He is the technical expert who not only attends to the details of administration, but also outlines general policies for adoption by the board. It is his ability and training w^hich determine not only the smooth working of the machinery of the public school system, but also its responsiveness to developments in educational ideas. He chooses the teachers and supervises their work, act- ing through assistants and the principals of the various schools. Ordinarily, also, he is charged with the business end of school management, the care and repair of build- ings, the procuring of supplies and similar matters. The provision of new buildings is ordinarily attended to by the board, or in some cases by a special authority distinct from the regular school board. In the handling of the personnel of the teaching staff, with regard to appointments, promotions and removals, the general principles of the civil service merit system seem quite applicable. In all the larger cities teachers are appointed upon examination, but, generally speaking, the teaching force of our cities has not been subjected to the complete civil service merit regime. Unless it can be shown that there is less danger of favoritism in appointments, promotions and removals for personal or political reasons in the educational service of the city than in the other branches of activity, there would seem to be the same necessity for protecting the service against unfit incumbents and for protecting competent employees PUBLIC EDUCATION 121 from unfair treatment or discrimination, as exists in the other branches of the city service. Though the duty of providing pubHc school faciHties has been imposed upon cities both in the United States and in Europe, it is everywhere recognized that the city is performing what might be called a distinctly state func- tion in so doing. In other words, it could never be regarded as a matter of relatively little importance to the state whether or not the city did its duty in providing free public education, as, for instance, it is a matter of relatively little interest to the state w^hcther or not the streets are well paved in a given city. If the citizenship of a city is ignorant, there is just that much of the citi- zenship of the state that is ignorant and the state suffers proportionately. But though the state is also a sufferer, the city itself is more largely affected because so large a proportion of the children born in the city remain there throughout their lives and if not educated compli- cate the problem of government for the city itself in the greatest degree. For that reason it seems proper that the city should be charged with the duty of providing the educational facilities. On the other hand, the mani- fest interest of the state would make it desirable that the state retain some control over educational administration in the city, and that it contribute something toward the expense of public education in the cities. In Europe, generally, the state does exercise an ad- ministrative jurisdiction over city schools and does con- tribute a part of the expense. In England the central Board of Education has a very considerable control over the action of the local school authorities. In Prussia the central control is even more minute, and in France the municipalities have almost no autonomy in school matters at all. In the United Staies, on the other hand. 122 MUNICIPAL FUXCTIOXS neither state aid nor state control is the rule. Practically all states have a state department of education and a state superintendent, but their powers of direction and even of supervision, particularly over city schools, are in most cases insignificant. Financial aids to cities for educational purposes, either out of the income from per- manent school funds or by appropriations out of the state revenues, are found in a number of states, it is true, but they are not the general rule and rarely amount to a very substantial share of the expenses of the city for schools. In the interests of uniformity in the mat- ter of qualifications and salaries for teachers, of text- books and of curricula, it would seem highly desirable to extend the control of the central departments over city schools. Here, as in other branches of municipal ad- ministration, such a development would have to overcome the opposition of those persons who are always ready to cry "home rule and freedom from state interference," without considering that the city is in large measure properly an agency for carrying out state functions within its territory. CHAPTER V PUBLIC MORALS It was pointed out in the chapter on police adminis- tration, that the enforcement of regulations in the interest of safeguarding public morals, whether those regulations are passed by the state or by the city, is intrusted to the police. In a sense, therefore, this chapter contains a continuation of the subject of police administration. It was pointed out also, however, that the enforcement by the city police of standards of public morals enacted into criminal laws and ordinances led to police corrup- tion and was generally undesirable. In European cities it was shown that the function is commonly intrusted to a special branch of the police service. In this chapter, however, we shall be concerned not with the question of the instruments or means of enforcing regulations in the interests of public morals, but rather with an examination of what is meant by public morals, and to what extent they can be properly regulated by law. What, in the first place, is meant by public morals, and how do oflFenses against morality differ, if at all, from crimes or misdemeanors? It is obvious that acts may be illegal witiiout being in any sense immoral. For instance, expectorating upon the sidewalk has certainly nothing inherently immoral in it, not even to the strictest 123 124 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS Puritan conscience. Out in the open country expecto- rating on the ground would be regarded by no one as morally wrong, but medical science teaches that the sputum contains disease germs which may be transmitted to other human beings when ejected upon the sidewalk. The protection of public health demands that expecto- ration be forbidden, and in order to insure the observance of that prohibition, a penalty is attached for its violation. This provision makes expectorating on the sidewalk illegal. It does not, of course, make it immoral. On the other hand, acts may be immoral without being illegal. To lie is immoral, but mere lying is not made legally punishable except under certain conditions. Now there is a tendency in America to try to make all im- moral acts also illegal and punishable by law. The difficulty with this undertaking is twofold. In the first place, it is impossible to carry out such a program and to enforce such regulations with regard to many kinds of immoral acts. The shortcomings of the human ad- ministration of justice would result in more hardship than deserved punishment in many cases. In the second place, people are by no means agreed as to what is immoral. Public morality is largely a matter of bring- ing up and of inherited standards, not of an absolute and generally accepted conviction. In the last analysis, standards of morals are determined by the prevailing community opinion. We regard many practices as im- moral in the United States which are not so regarded in Europe, for instance. Sunday amusements are decried by many Americans, while in Europe they are regarded as quite proper. Gambling is widely denounced as a sin in the United States, while most continental Euro- pean countries maintain government lotteries. Monog- amy is believed to be the truly moral marriage relation PUBLIC MORALS 125 in Christian countries, while Mohammedan countries be- lieve in plural marriages. Almost as great differences of opinion exist within the boundaries of the United States, due largely to the fact that our population is made up in good part of people who were brought up under European standards of conduct. If the standard of morals differs, then, for different communities, it seems to follow that the determination of whether a given act shall be regarded as immoral and detrimental to the public welfare, and so be forbidden, should be determined by the community itself, within the limits of controversial matters at any rate. Murder, stealing, and all the offenses against person and property are made punishable, not because they are immoral, but because they are anti-social. Whether a given act shall be considered not only immoral from the point of view of the individual, but also anti-social from the point of view of society as a whole, is the problem of so-called morals legislation. In a democracy, where the enforce- ment of the law is intrusted to local judges and juries, it is obvious that such legislation cannot be enforced in a community where the prevailing opinion regards the act made punishable as neither immoral nor anti-social. For that reason, also, morals legislation is properly a local matter. Now, the controversial subjects that today come under the head of morals legislation are Sunday amusements, gambling, drinking and sometimes even smoking, and various manifestations of sexual immorality, culminat- ing in prostitution. Though all of these subjects fall under the one general head and do present certain aspects in common, the governmental phases are sufficiently dif- ferent to warrant their being briefly considered seriatim. The regulation of Sunday amusements is, perhaps, one 126 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS of the best illustrations of the objections inherently involved in trying to impose standards of conduct upon communities by general law which are not accepted by the majority of people in the community in which they are to be enforced. Sunday observance is in reality a question of religious belief, not of morals at all. The traditional American attitude toward Sunday amuse- ments is an inheritance from the puritanical Sabbath of England. As all worldly pleasures were considered wicked to a varying degree, it was natural that pleasures on Sunday should be regarded as especially of the devil. Our New England colonies, therefore, had very strict laws with regard to Sunday observance which were strictly enforced. As long as the prevailing community standards approved not only of this conception of Sun- day, but also of imposing it on all inhabitants by law, there was no objection to their enforcement, in spite of the obvious discrepancy involved in the early declara- tions in favor of personal and religious liberty and the enactment of such regulations upon the statute books. The influence of New England ideas in this regard ex- tended pretty generally over the entire country until comparatively recent times. But, partly due to changing conceptions of the relation of man to the Sabbath on the part of native Americans, partly due to the influx of many thousands of persons from other countries where Sunday was considered a day of recreation and pleasure rather than one on which all pleasure and enjoyment were sinful, the prevailing opinion in many communities with regard to Sunday observance came to be quite dif- ferent from the original puritanical American conception. Obviously this is essentially a matter which each com- munity should determine for itself, since it is a question of religious practices and standards. For the rural PUBLIC MORALS 127 element of the state, for instance, to lay down laws governing the action of city dwellers in such matters is clearly opposed to every concejition of local autonomy that can be imagined. Experience bears out this theo- retical contention. Attempts by state legislatures to impose upon cities, particularly upon cosmopolitan cities, standards of Sunday observance which do not appeal to the prevailing community opinion have too often proved abortive to leave any doubt on that score. If it is contrary to the fundamental ideas of personal and religious liberty to impose standards of Sunday observ- ance upon communities which do not subscribe to them, there is also a limit l)fyond which even the majority in a given community should not go in a matter of this kind, which, as has been pointed out, is a matter of religious conviction. Everyone should be permitted to observe the Sabbath in his own way, provided his man- ner of observance does not interfere with a like privilege on the part of others. It is just as indefensible to forbid enjoyments on Sunday which do not interfere with the religious worship and the possibility of quiet for others who desire to spend Sunday in that way, as it would be to compel attendance at religious services. The proper limits of Sunday regulation would therefore seem to be such measures as are necessary to insure to those desir- ing it the opportunity for undisturbed worship and for rest and quiet during the day. Those are, as a matter of fact, the principles which determine the regulations concerning Sunday observance in European countries, which make no such loud boasts of individual and re- ligious liberty as we do in the United States. The adoption of those principles in the United States would, it is believed, tend to make Sunday for many thousands of persons a day of mental and physical recreation as 128 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS well as a day of worship. The idea that prohibiting amusements on 'Sunday tends to increase attendance at divine worship would seem to rest on the supposition that people go to church only because they have nothing else to do, as a sort of break in the monotony of the day. It is extremely unlikely that the number of that kind of churchgoers is very large, or that the benefit they derive from attending divine worship in that spirit is sufficiently great to interfere with the liberty of the many who see nothing incompatible in attending worship and deriving pleasure from the rest of the day as well. This view of public policy with regard to the prohibition of amusements on Sunday is not, of course, intended to deny the importance of insuring one day of rest in every seven to the working population. Such a compulsory day of rest is a measure of economic and social necessity. In considering the subject of gambling and the rela- tion of the governmental authority to it, we begin to leave the field of religious opinion and enter that of public policy, though it must not be forgotten that the chief agitation against gambling comes from people who see something sinful in a personal way in indulging in that fairly universal instinct, the gaming instinct. Quite apart from any religious convictions, however, moralists generally are agreed that indulgence in the gambling instinct is degenerating and, in the long run, destructive, and that it is the business of the government to prohibit it in the interest of the individuals themselves, much as opium smoking is forbidden as a demoralizing practice certain to disqualify the individual from performing his proper function in society. So general is this agreement in the United States as to the undesirable consequences of gambling in all forms, that almost everywhere there are laws and ordinances against it. All kinds of gam- PUBLIC MORALS 129 bling devices are made illegal and subject to confiscation, betting at horse races is forbidden, lotteries are pro- hibited by state law and forbidden to use the mails by federal act, and the evil is attacked in all sorts of ways. Of course, not all gambling can be prevented, and though gambling bets were not enforceable at common law, showing the early conviction in England that gaml)ling was contra bonos mores, private betting, card playing for money stakes, and games of chance are not and cannot be wholly prevented. It is only when the prac- tice partakes of the nature of a public or semi-public undertaking that the law steps in. But the difficulty encountered in enforcing the law against gambling every- where is evidence of the prevalence of the gaming in- stinct. It may be well to point out that most continental European countries take official notice of this tendency and operate government lotteries. The theory of this practice is that no governmental regulation of even an autocratic kind can suppress entirely the gaming instinct and that it is better, therefore, for the government to provide the least objectionable way for this desire to manifest itself. Government lotteries are fair, while privately conducted gambling enterprises are almost sure to be tainted with fraud and are frequently but ill- disguised robbery. Government lotteries, moreover, pro- tect the individual by limiting the amount that can be placed at any one time, while private enterprises tend to encourage a man to risk and lose large amounts, perhaps his all. Finally, the profits from government lotteries go into the state treasury and are used for governmental purposes, while private gambling enterprises inure to the benefit of people who are fre(|uently of the lowest element in the community. These considerations have led European countries to attack the evil resuhs of I30 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS gambling by inoculation, so to speak, rather than by suppression. As to which of the policies comes nearer attaining the desired end, it is impossible to say. Certain it is that gambling, in practically unregulated condition and in the most vicious forms, flourishes in many of our cities in which both state laws and local ordinances ex- plicitly forbid it and threaten it with severest punishment. Individual and secret gambling can never be prevented, but it is probable that public sentiment will enable the cities to prohibit efit'ectively all public manifestations, especially those which are operated in such a way as to encourage and entice young persons and novices into gambling habits. But here again it seems that in com- munities where the general attitude toward gambling is not one of disapproval, it is neither proper nor wise to impose a moral standard upon them against their wishes by state law, but to leave it to local regulation. Without local sympathy no law of that kind will be enforceable, and the general attitude of lawlessness that comes from seeing laws habitually unenforced will certainly be more detrimental to the moral and governmental welfare of a community than would open, unforbidden gambling. When the subject of the liquor traffic is considered, there is raised one of the most highly controversial and difficult of all the questions coming under the head of morals legislation. To begin with, it may be premised that the consumption of intoxicating liquors is injurious. This does not mean that merely the excessive or im- moderate drinking of alcoholic beverages is injurious, but that drinking them in any amount, however little, is injurious. Drinking steadily and in great quantities is very injurious, drinking intermittently and in small amounts is a little injurious, but it is all injurious. About that fact there cannot be the slightest doubt, and only PUBLIC MORALS 131 those who are uninformed about the latest discoveries of medical science or who are willfully blind can hold any different opinion. It is true that individuals differ in this regard and that what hurts one a great deal injures another but a little, but injury to a greater or less extent there is in every case. To say that drinking is injurious is not, however, to say that the government should pro- hibit it. Overeating is injurious, lack of exercise is in- jurious, im.proper ventilation at night is injurious, yet no one contends tliat the government should determine what or how much individuals should eat, what exercise each individual should take, or how he should sleep at night. It is true that public health considerations insert in housing codes provisions with regard to the amount of air that must be provided in tenements and lodgings, but that is to protect the renter or lodger against danger to his health which is threatened by the self-interest of the landlord and which the renter himself is powerless to avoid. The code does not require the renter or lodger to keep the windows open. The reason why w^e do not legislate with regard to such matters as overeating is not because their detrimental consequences are not recog- nized. Every physician will bear witness to the fact that the dangerous consequences of overeating or im- proper eating may be much more serious than the results of a moderate consumption of alcoholic beverages. It is felt, however, that to interfere with the individual in such matters as his diet, his hours of sleep, his exercise, and the condition of the air in which he sleeps involves too great an infringement upon his personal liberty. So he is permitted to live as unhygienically as he pleases in those regards. It is worth noting, moreover, that the injurious consequences of overeating, for instance, are by no means suffered by the individual alone. If his 132 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS vitality and health are injured he becomes economically less fit and may be unable to care for those dependent on him. Furthermore, for the same reasons, his fitness to propagate the race may be impaired and his children will be less fit for life than if moderation had kept his body in perfect condition. Injury from overeating has therefore a social aspect beyond its immediate effect on the individual concerned. And yet we hear no proposal to supervise what and how a man eats. Why, then, such an agitation with regard to alcohol consumption, which, as has been stated, though injurious, may, if moderately practiced, be much less injurious than many other com- mon practices of everyday life? On this point the advo- cates of liquor legislation divide. There are those who believe that the detrimental social efifect of alcohol consumption in any amount is so serious that all such consumption should be forbidden. These are the thoroughgoing prohibitionists who would prevent the manufacture and sale, and so the consumption, of alcoholic beverages throughout the length and breadth of the land. On the other hand, there are those who, while recognizing alcoholic consumption to be detri- mental, feel that it is only the excessive consumption which is serious enough to justify governmental inter- ference with personal liberty to the extent of interfering with the sale of intoxicating drinks. These are the temperance advocates, properly termed, who believe that the saloon and the public consumption of alcohol are a source of danger to the city and the state, but believe that the individual should not be prevented from drink- ing alcoholic beverages in his own home if he sees fit to do so. Then, of course, there are the open opponents of liquor legislation who believe that every man should follow the dictates of his own reason in the matter of PUBLIC MORALS 133 drinking and that it is not the function of the govern- ment to interfere in tliis matter any more than in a multitude of other practices which, though injurious, are generally indulged in without hindrance by the gov- ernment. The thoroughgoing prohibitionists, basing their stand on the ground that alcohol as a beverage in any form is an enemy of society, contend that the consequences of the drink habit are so serious that no compromise is possible. They assume that drinking, even to a slight extent, tends to lead to excessive drinking, or, in any event, tends to induce others to partake who may not be able to do so in moderation. They consequently would prevent all drinking by prohibiting the manufac- ture or importation of all intoxicating drinks whatever. They are logical in considering prohibition as a national question, for if the danger is as serious as they believe, it threatens the country as a whole and should be attacked as a national enemy. When a majority of the people of the United States come to believe that the evils of alcohol consumption are so serious as to demand governmental interference, and that the only effective measure against the evil is the cessation of all manu- facture and importation of intoxicating liquors, the problem will have become greatly simplified. At the present time, however, such action has not been taken by the National Government. The matter, therefore, rests with the states. Prohibition, so-called, is in most states, however, really not primarily a ques- tion of drinking or not drinking, but of the saloon. Now, the saloon presents a governmental problem in itself, separable from the general question of prohibition. Of course, if no intoxicating liquors can be sold in a state, that disposes of the saloon, and many enemies of the 10 134 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS saloon have worked for state-wide prohibition as the best means of driving out the saloon and the liquor interests from politics. In other words, the saloon has in this country frequently become a center of political corrup- tion and misrule and has been attacked as such by many persons who were not willing to admit that the govern- ment had a right to forbid the individual from drinking in his own home. Just why the saloon developed into such an objectionable aspect of the liquor business in this country when it has not done so in many European countries is difficult to explain, but as a matter of com- mon knowledge it cannot be denied. Now, on the question of the saloon, as on the other phases of the liquor problem, people in this country are divided. There are those who wish to abolish the saloon, including both absolute prohibitionists and temperance advocates who believe the saloon leads to intemperance, as well as those who oppose the saloon on other grounds. There are those, on the other hand, wlio, not granting that the social consequences of alcohol consumption are serious enough to justify interference by the govern- ment, believe it is unjust to workingmen to close their opportunities for drinking while permitting the well-to- do to indulge because their means allow them to pur- chase intoxicating drinks in large quantities and keep them always in the house. Here is another respect in which native American traditions and European stand- ards differ. Although there is plenty of drinking, and drinking to excess, among native Americans, more actual drunkenness, perhaps, than is found in European coun- tries, yet it is none the less true that the total abstinence idea has made more progress in the United States than in Europe. This is largely because the consumption of alcohol has been made a quasi religious question in this PUBLIC MORALS 135 country. In many of our American churches it is not considered right for an individual to touch intoxicating drinks to any extent, and the churches are extremely active in securing abstinence pledges and in furthering liquor legislation. In Europe, on the other hand, it is in no sense considered incompatible with good standing in the church to indulge in tiie moderate use of intoxi- cating beverages. The continental European child is brought up to look upon the consumption of beers and wines in moderation as a perfectly harmless and proper practice, and himself begins the consumption with the knowledge and approval of his parents and friends. In the United States, drinking being so generally consid- ered a sort of moral crime, has all the fascination of the forbidden, and young boys and girls indulge secretly and to excess. The European point of view has, however, had a considerable influence in this country, and in many communities, in fact in all cities with a considerable foreign population, there is a large element which sees no objection to the consumption of intoxicating drinks, either in the saloon, in the garden or cafe, or in the home. In fact in a good many cities the majority sen- timent is distinctly that way. Now, where the local standards and sentiment favor the retention of the saloon, the same situation arises that has already been considered when the state attempts to abolish the sale of alcohol by general law. State-wide prohibition laws or constitutional provisions are enforced by local prose- cuting officers, and tried by local judges and local juries. Where local sentiment is of the opinion that prohibition laws constitute an unjustifiable violation of personal liberty, it is obvious tliat there will be no hesitancy about nullifying such laws by mere non-enforcement What- ever may be thought of the relative merits of prohibi- 136 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS tion and anti-prohibition, it must be obvious that it is much better to have intoxicating liquors sold in a com- munity with the sanction of law than to have them sold in that community in clear violation of the law with the approval of local opinion. That is actually the situation in many an American city today. That is the main reason why the determination of the question of pro- hibition or non-prohibition should be left to the indi- vidual cities. In fact, until comparatively recent times, when the prohibition wave has carried state after state by state-wnde prohibition, this matter was generally left to local option. There is another reason besides governmental ex- pediency for leaving this matter to local legislation. Whatever may be thought of the contention that alco- hol in all forms and all quantities is an enemy of society, which, therefore, undermines the entire fabric of the state and is a matter of state concern, it must be recognized that this is distinctly a controversial political question, in fact one of the most consuming of Ameri- can political issues today. Almost all other state issues are subordinated if not entirely displaced by this one issue, to the great detriment, as many enemies of alcohol themselves believe, of the other vital questions affecting state welfare. Now it is clear that the chief detriment, if detriment there be, resulting from the existence of saloons, is felt by the immediate locality in which the saloon or other liquor selling place is located. Even if all that extreme prohibitionists claim about the degen- erating and corrupting effect of alcohol consumption in any amount were true, the locality would be the one to suffer most and the one to realize most forcefully the need of prohibition, so that it could with safety be left to the individual city. But, as we have seen, people are PUBLIC MORALS 137 by no means agreed that all alcohol consumption should be prevented by governmental action or that the saloon must be abolished in order to safeguard society. In recognition of that fundamental difference of opinion, a difference, by the way, which is a sincere and per- sonal one, not by any means, as prohibitionists like to claim, one that is wholly manufactured and passed around by the liquor interests, it seems proper that such a limitation of individual liberty as is involved in pro- hibition should be imposed only by the locality which is, after all, the chief sufferer. So far we have been discussing the question of saloon or no saloon, a question which it is believed is for the present, at any rate, eminently a question for local de- cision by the city and other imits of local government. A part of the opposition to the saloon rests uncjuestion- ably on the supposition that the saloon is an institution that is incapable of proper regulation. That, however, is a supposition contrary to fact, and virtually all anti- prohibitionists, except those financially interested in the liquor traffic, are agreed that regulation of the saloon is not only possible but is highly desirable. It has already been pointed out that there are certain concomi- tants of the American saloon in its natural and unregu- lated state which are strongly and rightly objected to by every decent element in the community. One of these elements is the practice of selling liquor to per- sons who are clearly not in a position to judge for them- selves as to the amount of alcohol they can consume with a minimum of danger, such as minors and habitual drunkards. Another is the tendency to connect sexual immorality with the saloon through the presence of im- moral women and the opportunities for prostitution. A third is the disturbance of the peace that is likely to 138 MUNICIPAL FUXXTIONS result from having saloons or gardens open at all hours and on all days. In all of these regards saloons can, be regulated and have so been regulated in many places. The liquor manufacturers themselves, realizing that these concomitants of the unregulated saloon have caused many people to line up against them who would not otherwise favor their abolition, have in many cases been desirous of such regulation and have advised and warned the saloons which they supplied to see that the regula- tions were observed. It is, therefore, the duty of the city to regulate the saloons, where they exist, in the interest of public decency and quiet. On many of these regulations people are pretty well agreed, on others they differ considerably. The exclusion of minors and habitual drunkards, for instance, is a measure that has met with pretty general adoption. So also has the prohibition of immoral women and the abolition of the back rooms, upstairs quarters and other arrangements favoring sexual immorality. Early closing and the closing on Sundays have been pretty widely adopted, as has also the closing on elec- tion days in the interests of order and quiet. Another common regulation is the limitation of the number of saloons per thousand inhabitants, their prohibition near churches and schools, and other similar measures. A subject of dispute, however, in the matter of regulation is the question of interior fittings. The general feeling seems to be that the saloon should be made as unpre- possessing and unattractive as possible, so as not to en- courage its use. Accordingly, in many places chairs and tables are forbidden, and even the customary foot rail is tabooed. Music is prohibited and free lunches ruled out. On the other hand, some earnest advocates of regulation believe the opposite policy should be pursued. PUBLIC MORALS 139 The chief evil of the American saloon as compared with European cafes is, they contend, the rapid consumption of drinks at one sitting, or rather standing. To remedy that they beheve chairs and tables should be provided and opportunities for obtaining food be oflfered, with such other attractions as music, etc. This, they believe, would tend to make the saloon a real workingman's club, where he would spend more time but consume fewer drinks than he does at present. They point to the example of Gothenburg, in Sweden, in minimizing the evils of the saloon by making it attractive. Both theories have been put into practice in this country with varying success. So far, however, these measures seem not to have changed the essentially tough and disagreeable character of the typical American bar. The possibility of efiFective regulation of the saloon is insured by the method of license control. The sale of intoxicating liquors never was at common law a mat- ter of common right. It was necessary to obtain a license to engage in that activity and that license was at all times subject to revocation. Our American cities have commonly been accorded the licensing power and can therefore not only impose such conditions as they will on granting of licenses, but can exercise an effective and continuing control. If the conclusions about the local nature of the prohibition question are correct, it is obvious that all cities should have the right of issuing or refusing licenses in accordance with their own regu- lations. It is true that this potential control has not always been exerted and that the liquor interests and the licensing power have been used to corrupt the police force of some cities. Indeed, one of the arguments urged against the saloon is the corruption in our city police forces, for which it has been held responsible. 140 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS To grant that there is great danger of corrupt influence and great temptation for the poHce force charged with supervising the saloons is not to agree that for that rea- son the saloons must be abolished. City councils and municipal officials, generally, have been bribed and cor- rupted by public utility corporations, yet that is no argument for aboHshing public utilities, but rather for devising means of watching them more carefully. So in the case of saloons, watchfulness can prevent the corruption of the police force by this agency. In the foregoing discussion the nature of the liquor question and its local character and connection with city government have been considered. It is clear that the whole matter would be absolutely and satisfactorily set- tled if every one in every community, or at least a sub- stantial majority in every community, could be brought to realize that whether or not the evils of alcohol con- sumption, even in moderate measure, are great enough to justify governmental interference, they are great enough to induce every individual voluntarily to refrain from drinking intoxicating beverages. The measures adopted by European countries during the present world conflict prohibiting the manufacture, sale and consump- tion of some of the strongest of the intoxicating drinks, like vodka in Russia and absinthe in France, even though these measures resulted in a reduction of public revenues when public revenues were needed as never before, show the changing attitude in Europe toward such matters. As a practical matter, moreover, unless all signs fail, it will not be very long before prohibition in the United States will be not merely state- wide but nation-wide. To see that this development is coming is not, however, to agree that from a large point of view it is the best way of accomplishing the desired result. Much better would PUBLIC MORALS 141 it be if the non-governmental activities of the scientists and doctors, acting through the most powerful means of publicity, the newspapers, could lead the public to realize the fact that drinking never benefits, but fre- quently does serious harm. When such a campaign has resulted in a general conviction that alcoholic beverages should not be manufactured at all, then, and not until then, does it seem proper for the majority to impose its view of the question upon the minority. When such a conviction has become sufficiently widespread, then the question of local option disappears, and even state legislation should be superseded by national measures. The final class of measures that cities commonly adopt in the interests of public morals are those intended to prevent indecency and sexual immorality in all its forms. Indeed, to many people the term immorality connotes sexual immorality in some form, and this kind of im- morality is considered the most important of all the evils to be combated under this head. The commonest offenders against public decency are exhibitions and amusement places of various sorts, public dance halls, and printed works and pictures. The social evil presents special problems and difficulties and will be considered separately. With regard to the task of preserving the public morals or public decency, practically all people agree that it is the function of the government to pre- vent indecency from being exhibited in public and in such a way as to provide temptation for the young and innocent. But though there is general agreement as to the desirability of suppressing indecency, there is by no means general agreement as to what things are indecent and objectionable, from the point of view of morals, and what things are not. Here, again, we find great personal differences in the standards adopted. The only guide, 142 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS therefore, to the proper extent of governmental action is the general community opinion or view with regard to such matters. For instance, in the matter of picture exhibitions. There are many persons who beHeve that the exhibition of nudes in a pubHc gallery is an offense to public morals and dangerous for the young. On the other hand, there are others who believe that, inasmuch as many of the recognized masterpieces of painting rep- resent human figures in the nude, it would be wrong to deprive the public of the opportunity of cultivating the highest artistic taste. Now this difference in point of view becomes important, because in every city the au- thorities, usually the police authorities, are charged with the duty of safeguarding public decency and morals and they are frequently called upon to suppress certain kinds of exhibitions on the ground that they are indecent. What standard shall the chief of police adopt in taking action ? Shall he be guided by the opinions of the hyper- sensitive element in the community, or by the represen- tations of those at the other extreme, or shall he act upon his own convictions? Obviously there is no fair- ness or sense in choosing any one of these standards rather than the other. The same problem arises in con- nection with theatrical exhibitions, especially in the case of moving pictures. Of course, there are many coarse and lewd productions without the slightest pretence at artistic qualities which everyone would agree are inde- cent and should be suppressed in the interest of public morals. But there are also many other productions which are conceived in the highest artistic and moral sense and yet which offend many persons and are be- lieved by them to be indecent. Classic dancing, for instance, which is frequently performed by dancers almost without clothing, is one of the commonest sources PUBLIC MORALS 143 of dispute and disagreement. Problem plays, that dis- cuss matters of the most intimate nature, are decried by some as being dangerous, and praised by others as tend- ing to increase rather than decrease morality. Who shall judge? It would seem to go without saying that the wisest decision with regard to plays and exhibitions which are decent and should be allowed, and those which are indecent and should not, cannot be rendered by the kind of person who is ordinarily, as chief of police, charged with the duty of making that decision. In fact, in a matter so personal as this, it is almost certain that the opinion of one man is not a safe test. Since the determination of such a question is not possible of de- cision by any positive and universally accepted stand- ards, it seems that the only safe guide is the representa- tive community opinion of the better element in the community, the element whose moral standards in other regards are not questioned. Here, then, is one place where a board is more valuable than a single individual, even in the work of administration. A board of censors is, therefore, needed in every city to pass upon all pro- ductions about which there could be the least difference of opinion. All public productions, therefore, whether plays, pictures, movies, or what not, should be required to submit to such an examination, before production, as will insure a scrutiny of the performance from the point of view of decency. The decision of this question being a local one, it is obvious that the approval of other bodies, such, for instance, as the National Board of Censors in the case of moving picture productions, does not obviate the need of local examination, as the local standards and views may be quite different from those of the national body. It is safe to say that the best policy with regard to productions of that nature is to 144 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS give the benefit of the doubt to the performance, for it constitutes a pretty serious infringement of individual liberty to undertake to dictate to grown men and women what they may and may not see. In the case of minors, however, the situation is quite different, for their lack of maturity, experience and judgment would tend to make them see only the objectionable features of many productions which to the adult mind would drive home a moral lesson. The board of censors might, therefore, very properly exclude children from many productions which it would not be justifiable to suppress altogether. Indecent publications in the shape of printed matter or pictures are a source of danger, particularly to the young, and should be suppressed by the city in the in- terests of decency. Here, again, the line is extremely hard to draw between publications which discuss sex relations, for instance, in an indecent way and those which deal with the same questions in an unobjection- able way, but certainly much of the obscene literature which is for sale in public places could be suppressed without any great deal of difficulty. One very difficult problem, from this point of view, in almost every city is the public dance hall. Dancing seems to make an appeal as a form of diversion stronger than any other form of amusement to all classes of people. The well-to-do have their homes, their ball- rooms and thes dansants, which are very select and not subjected to public criticism as a rule. The poor, how- ever, in whom the dancing instinct is quite as strong, have no opportunity for satisfying that desire except in the public dance hall. There are still many people today who have religious and moral scruples against dancing and who, therefore, believe that it is wrong for the city to permit public dancing. Such persons are, however, PUBLIC MORALS 145 greatly in the minority and are continually decreasing in numbers. Nevertheless, there is a very general antip- athy, on the part of the community which has other opportunities for indulging in dancing, against the public dance hall. The reason for this is obviously not any objection to dancing per se, but to the particular mani- festations foimd in these halls. In other words, it is the ordinary concomitants of the public dance hall that are objectionable, not the dancing itself. Drunkenness and various forms of sexual immorality have frequently flourished in public dance halls, and many young men and women have begim a downward path at these places. For that reason there has been a considerable agitation for the abolition of the dance hall entirely. That, how- ever, seems to be an unwise way to deal with the prob- lem in view of the possibilities of the dance hall as a recreational opportunity for people who lack such oppor- tunities elsewhere. If regulation of privately owned public dance halls in the interests of decency and morality is too difficult and too expensive, owing to the financial benefits accruing to the owner from having a loose establishment, then a better plan, than doing away with dancing facilities altogether, is for the city itself to pro- vide such opportunities and see that the objectionable features do not creep in, a very simple matter where the city owns and manages the dance hall itself. This has been done in some American cities already and seems to have proved very satisfactory. It is certainly worth trying, not only as a meang of meeting a moral danger, but also as a positive measure of social welfare, along the lines to be considered in the next chapter. By far the most serious of the moral ills that afRict our cities is the social evil. By this is meant not the clandestine illicit relations between individual men and 146 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS women, associating for the time being with one another only, but the indiscriminate professional service by women for pay, either for themselves or more generally in the employ of others. Of the moral aspect of illicit sexual relations of the first kind it is not necessary to say anything here. Whatever might be desirable from the point of view of individual and social morality, it is generally conceded that the attempt of the government to interfere in such matters, so long as they were not publicly displayed, would result in more harm than good. But prostitution in the sense of commercialized vice has long been studied as an evil that might be eliminated by government action. It is an evil that is as old as cities themselves and is peculiarly a city problem. Officially it has long been recognized as an evil, and is forbidden in every civilized country by law. But actually there is no country in which the law is enforced and in which prostitution does not flourish in practically every city. In many cases, indeed, the law takes official notice of the existence of prostitution by requiring prostitutes to be registered and to submit to medical examination and supervision. In the United States the local police sim- ply ignore the state laws making prostitution a criminal offense and content themselves with enforcing local statutes governing the manifestations of the evil. Until comparatively recent times there has never been a serious attempt actually to prevent prostitution. In fact, it seemed to be pretty generally agreed that the social evil was not capable of eradication by govern- mental action and that the only hope of destroying it was to work upon the individuals, men and women, who were concerned. The reason for this attitude lay un- doubtedly in the fact that a large portion of the popula- tion, of the male population at least, was not concerned PUBLIC MORALS 147 with the question and saw no harm in it either to the individuals or to society. That attitude was perhaps more common in Europe than in this country, but it was and is fairly prevalent everywhere. There are in this country today many cities in which a majority of the men in the community look upon the social evil with indifference, if not indeed with favor. Many a mer- chant, for instance, believes that the abolition of pros- titutes, if that were possible, would injure the city by making it less attractive to visitors, and so would affect him financially to his detriment. Since the wiping out of prostitution in a community can come only as the result of a general and powerful conviction that it must go, it is obvious that no such eradication will occur in a community lacking in such a conviction, all the laws on the statute books to the contrary notwithstanding. It is obviously, therefore, distinctly a local administra- tive question, thougii the baneful results of prostitution are by no means localized in the community in which it exists. Now, although few cities have seriously attempted to abolish prostitution and fewer still have succeeded in doing so, if indeed any have as yet attained that measure of success, certain measures have been generally adopted to mitigate some of its more serious aspects and public opinion has demanded their enforcement. In the first place, safeguards have been thrown around girls who might be led into houses of assignation by temptations, fraud or force. Pandering and seduction are every- where criminally punishable, and recently the transport- ing of girls from one state to another has been made punishable by Federal Law, In spite of these precau- tions, it is still true that many girls are led into the busi- ness of prostitution, largely against their will, and, once 148 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS in, find it practically impossible to get out. On the other hand, efforts are generally made to diminish the publicity of the business. Streetwalking is commonly forbidden and all forms of public solicitation prohibited. In order to diminish still further the public aspects of prostitu- tion some cities have followed the plan of having a segregated district and effectually preventing prostitution in any other part of the city. This policy of segrega- tion, though presenting some advantages from the point of view of official supervision, presents several serious theoretical objections and has not proved acceptable in practice. It is now generally discredited, therefore, though it is still the plan followed in a number of cities. In some places an attempt has been made to attack the sanitary aspects of prostitution by instituting a medical inspection of prostitutes, by requiring them all to be registered and to submit to treatment and isolation if they contract venereal diseases. This is a common prac- tice in European cities. The prevailing opinion seems to be here, too, however, that such inspection as is pro- vided, even in the most active cities in this regard, is wholly inadequate to attain the desired ends and is even a source of greater trouble because of the false sense of security which it induces. Generally speaking, all these measures, which have been directed at the various manifestations of the evil instead of at the evil itself, have been ineffective. The conclusion would seem to be that the only way to improve the situation appreciably is to abolish the evil, root and branch. Within quite recent years there has been a consider- able awakening of interest in the question of abolishing the social evil entirely. In several cities and states there have been so-called vice commissions at work investi- gating the causes, principal and contributory, of pros- PUBLIC MORALS I49 titution and suggesting remedies. One significant result of these investigations and reports has been to open the eyes of many j)eople to the serious nature of an evil which they had been accustomed to regard with indif- ference. Though there may be some difference of opinion as to the relative part played in causing prosti- tution by such factors as low wages, seduction, natural desire, etc., there can be no question that a community has it within its power to eradicate the evil entirely, if the great body of citizens demand it. One of the chief obstacles in the way of eradicating commercialized vice is found in the enormous profits that accrue to the bene- ficiaries. Chief among these may be mentioned the owners of buildings in which prostitution is carried on. They are frequently among the most influential members of the community and their self-interest prompts them to discourage any serious attempts to do away with a practice which nets them so large an income. This particular element of opposition has been successfully attacked by means of the so-called Red Light Injunction and Abatement Laws in several states. Under these statutes individual citizens may bring action against a building used for immoral purposes as a public nuisance. The action, if successful, destroys the value of the prop- erty until again turned to a legitimate use. This is one very effective way of aiding in the campaign of eradi- cation. It is doubtful, however, if the evil will be entirely eliminated until the general attitude of most communities has been radically reformed. This can only be done through a campaign by the schools and churches, aided eft'ectively by the public health department, which can adduce evidence against the social evil that will receive attention from many persons who arc unable to appre- ciate the moral issues involved. 11 CHAPTER VI SOCIAL WELFARE ^ Social welfare as an object of governmental activity M'ould, in the broadest sense of the term, comprise every legitimate governmental undertaking. All of the func- tions that have already been discussed, as well as those which will be considered later, find their justification only in the fact that they contribute to the welfare of society and the individual in it. In fact, all government finds its raison d'etre in that fact alone. If we are to consider the social welfare activities of the city under a separate division, the term must, therefore, be used in a narrower sense. As to just what should be included under this more specific designation there is not entire agreement. For the purposes of this discussion, how- ever, the social welfare activities of the city will be, in general, those measures which the city adopts for the protection and improvement of the helpless and unfortu- nate members of society, as well as those who are at a disadvantage because of general economic conditions and those who are physically, mentally or morally totally incapacitated and so become an out and out charge upon 1 This subject is also treated at lencth in Ward: The Social Center, 1913; King: Lower Living Costs in Cities, 1915. D. Appleton and Company, Publishers, New York.— Editor. 150 SOCIAL WELFARE 151 the community. From this point of view the wage earning classes, particularly those belonging to the lowest class of unskilled and unorganized labor, are largely dependent upon governmental protection and positive action in order to secure that minimum of the necessi- ties and comforts of life without which no human being can enjoy a decent existence. This whole field of mu- nicipal activity is one of the latest of municipal functions to develop. Curiously enough, too, it has been developed to a much greater degree in the cities of undemocratic Germany than in the American cities. Following the lead of Germany, English cities have made progress con- siderably in advance of most American cities also, but in the twentieth century a widespread awakening has occurred in the United States as well, which promises much for the development of social welfare work in American municipalities also. We shall consider here only some of the more important aspects of social welfare work in modern cities. One of the most recent, and yet one of the most sig- nificant, of social welfare activities, is the attempt to improve the housing conditions in the city. Slums, that is, sections of the city in which people live in filthy, crowded, ugly holes, have generally been regarded as more or less inevitable accompaniments of city life. Certainly as far back as we have any definite informa- tion concerning city life, the slum has been an ever- present factor. In Rome the housing conditions of the poor were frightful and tlie greed of the tenement owners was one of the main causes of tliis condition. All through the Middle Ages and in the modern period down to the present, the condition of the poorer classes in the cities has been pitiable in the extreme. A hopeful sign of the latter part of the nineteenth century and of the 152 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS opening of the present period has been the beginning of an idea that perhaps slums are not absohitely inevitable and that by proper governmental action a slumless city might cease to be but a figment of the imagination. It is not possible here to enter upon a discussion of the causes and possible cure of that universal social evil, poverty. That is a problem, the solution of which is still a long way off and on which leading thinkers are by no means agreed. It is important to point out, however, that in the last analysis the housing problem, as it is called today, rests fundamentally upon the economic causes of poverty, namely, insufficient wages for the laboring classes. A complete cure for the housing ills of modern cities cannot, therefore, be found until the problem of adequate returns to every productive member of society has been worked out. This fundamental fact must be stated with great emphasis at the outset, because many of the most ardent housing reform enthusiasts overlook or ignore that fact and delude themselves and others into thinking that this or that measure of im- provement will provide a cure for the situation, whereas all it can do is to afford a palliative, a very valuable and desirable palliative it may be, but still not a fundamental cure. In fact, not infrequently housing reform defeats its own purpose by insisting on measures which, while improving conditions in the buildings constructed under the law, increase the cost of construction to the point that rents become too high for the class of people to be benefited, and their subsequent condition may be worse than the first. The discouraging point about the whole matter to the person interested in improving municipal conditions is that, whatever may be the solution of the problem of securing a living wage for every productive member of the community, it is not a solution that lies SOCIAL WELFARE 153 within the province or power of tiie city. The city, therefore, though the chief sufferer from the deplorable conditions that exist, is largely i)owerless even to attack the fundamental causes of those conditions. To say that the housing problem is largely a problem of decent wages and that the problem of wages is largely beyond the control of the city is not to absolve the city from the duty of talcing such steps as can be taken to mitigate the evil and avoid some of its most serious consequences. There are various aspects to the housing problem, some of which have been touched upon in another connection and some of which will be consid- ered somewhat later. First, there is the sanitary aspect. Lack of sufficient light and air and of proper sanitary facilities make the slums a serious menace to public health and the overcrowding found there makes the con- trol of contagious diseases extremely difficult. Tuber- culosis thrives most readily in the tenements where many persons sleep in a single room, often without any outside air at all and practically no daylight. Lack of proper washing and sanitary facilities makes cleanliness impossible. As a breeding center for the white plague, therefore, overcrowded, poorly lighted and ventilated living places constitute a menace to public health which must be remedied in the same way as other insanitary conditions in the city. Conditions in the city's slums constitute a moral as well as a physical danger. No family life is possible under the conditions in which most tenements are found. All the members of a large family crowded into a single room, with the necessities of existence driving them to take in a night lodger besides, are absolutely destructive of decency in environment. The testimony of investi- gators shows that conditions of this kind are directly 154 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS responsible for leading many young girls into lives of shame. Furthermore, the very congestion of the tene- ments as well as the price of lodgings elsewhere drives the thieves and criminals of the community to take refuge in these places. The association of the children in the tenements with men and women of this type is responsible for the formation of the gangs which later graduate professional criminals for the community. In other words, every element of the surroundings in the city slums is a factor making for degeneracy instead of desirable development. As a social hazard, therefore, the slums must be an object of attack. The method of procedure in dealing with the' housing problem of the city is usually through the passage of a housing code. Such a code commonly provides building regulations for tenements which are meant to insure a minimum of light and air and of sanitary appliances. It commonly contains other provisions as well. So, for instance, safeguards against fire, which has always been a great life hazard in the crowded tenement districts of our cities, are inserted in a comprehensive housing code. The fire-resisting character of the building construction, the provision of fire escapes and of fire extinguishers, when inserted in a building code and carefully enforced by an adequate corps of inspectors, do much to lessen at least that risk to which tenement dwellers are sub- jected. Light and air are guaranteed by regulating the height of the building, the amount of the lot which can be built upon, a protection against back-yard tenements, which are the worst of all, the provisions regarding out- side windows in rooms and the amount of window space that must be provided ; while the size of the rooms and the access of outside air are regulated for the purpose of insuring sufficient ventilation. The number of fami- SOCIAL WELFARE 155 lies that may be allowed to live in apartments of a given size is also the subject of regulation, though the over- crowding by a single family is a matter that is more difficult to reach. In general, these regulations are in- tended to restrain the landlord in his natural desire to get just as much return from his property as possible, w^ithout regard to the welfare of the inhabitants. The standards of cleanliness and mode of living of the tene- ment dwellers themselves are, of course, not regulated except indirectly. It happens, therefore, that insanitary and indecent conditions may exist even in model tene- ments, so-called, from the point of view of the building laws. The same is true with regard to the provision of sanitary facilities. The law may require the tene- ment owner to provide bath tubs, it cannot insure that they will be used. At the same time it must be remem- bered that the prevailing opinion that tenement dwellers are dirty from choice must rest either on an insignificant number of individual cases examined, or, more generally still, on prejudice pure and simple; the unfortunate in- dividuals under consideration never having had a chance to show whether or not they would use such facilities if provided. Such housing codes as these undoubtedly accomplish certain very desirable ends. They tend to put an end to the exploitation of the tenement dwellers by landlords whose financial interests are bound up with overcrowd- ing and lack of sanitary conditions. Some marked im- provements, it is true, can be made without greatly increasing the cost of construction and, therefore, with- out necessitating an increase in the rents. But the whole character of the modern housing code is such as to involve more expense in building tenements, for propor- tionately less ground can be used and expensive improve- 156 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS ments in the way of plumbing are required. To meet that additional amount invested the tenement owner will, of course, raise the rent correspondingly. As most tenement dwellers are, however, already spending the maximum amount available for rent, the result of such an increase will be to put the improved living quar- ters beyond their reach. What, then, is the solution of this difificulty? As has been stated before, the ulti- mate solution will involve the payment of sufficient wages to allow every worker to rent a dwelling that offers these minima of decency and sanitation. Lacking that development, however, the result of insisting on standards of tenement construction that put rents beyond the reach of the present tenement dwellers, will simply mean that they will be without shelter, if, under our supposition, all tenements are built under the provisions of the housing code. It is true that many tenement owners, if not the majority, are deriving unreasonable returns from their property and could rent for the same amount after making the required improvements in tene- ment conditions and still get a fair return from their money. It is also true that if the class in the community which is able to pay the higher rents resulting from compliance with the housing code is already sufficiently supplied with dwellings, the tendency will be to make the improved tenement owner rent at a lower figure, and one which it is possible for the proletariat to pay. But if model tenements do not prove a financially profit- able investment, no more will be constructed, and with the increase in the city's working population the problem of the unhoused will again arise. Now the person or family without shelter is destitute and not only becomes a charge upon the community as a pauper, but, realizing that the best wages he can earn under the present in- SOCIAL WELFARE 157 dustrial conditions arc not sufficient to furnish him any kind of shelter, he is certain to become a derelict as well. Wherein lies the advantage of the model housing code, if it has converted men with homes, though poor and undesirable ones, into men with no homes at all? That, of course, is only a theoretical development, for no city has so completely mastered the housing situation as to have gotten rid of all undesirable slum districts. The practical cfifcct, therefore, of housing legislation which results in raising the rents, is to compel the families driven out by the higher rent to go into even more crowded and undesirable districts, because the inevitable result of displacing a large number of families from tenements that have been converted into model tenements is to raise the price of remaining undesirable, but rela- tively cheap, tenements and so induce still further con- gestion. The tenement owner cannot be compelled to rent his property at a loss or even at definite rates. If he will not rent at sufficiently low rates, the only other alterna- tive is for the city itself to provide decent living quarters for the working population, at rents which under present economic conditions they are able to pay. Municipal housing is, in fact, not an unknown thing, for a number of cities in England and continental Europe have been experimenting with the matter. Their efforts have been very interesting and from some points of view encour- aging. They have not, however, been altogether satis- factory or convincing as to the wisdom of that kind of municipal housing policy. Where the cities have con- demned and destroyed slum districts and have built model tenements in their places, the result has frequently been the driving of people out of their homes who could not all be housed in the new quarters which did not 158 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS occupy the ground so economically. In other places this objection has been met by building single or two- family houses on the outskirts of the city on land bought by the city for that purpose. The trouble here has been, firstly, that the new houses could accommodate but a very small proportion of the tenement dwellers; and, secondly, that in most instances the city's houses were occupied by mechanics and skilled artisans, and not by the large class of unskilled labor whose economic condition did not enable them to pay even the low scale of rent demanded by the city. Municipal housing experiments, therefore, have so far not proven a panacea by any means. At the same time there seems no escape from the conclusion that really noteworthy improvement in the living conditions of the people on the lowest scale of the economic ladder can- not, in the long run, be brought about by the activity of the cities through the passage and enforcement of model housing codes, unless the city is willing to face the consequences which, we have seen above, are very likely to follow the strict and all-inclusive enforcement of housing laws. In other words, if the city is not will- ing to see the very people pauperized whom it wished to help, it must be ready to assume the duty itself of furnishing decent living quarters to the poorest element in the community at reasonable rates ; reasonable not from the point of view of fair financial returns, how- ever, but from the point of view of the amount which that class in the community is able to pay. That, it will immediately be objected, is socialism. Socialism or not, it is the possibility which faces every city as an inevitable ultimate development when it enters upon the housing problem. That it is illogical for the city to let its well meant efforts for the benefit of the persons at the bot- SOCIAL WELFARE 159 torn of the financial ladder result in degrading their position still more, by pauperizing them, is obvious. Equally true, though less obvious is it, merely as a ques- tion of finances, that it is cheaper for the city to furnish decent quarters to the working population at low rentals than to bear the cost of supporting these same working people made homeless by its alleged remedial legisla- tion. The above considerations are not in any sense meant to minimize the terrible effect upon the community from slums and improper housing conditions generally, nor to minimize the importance of housing reform, for much has been accomplished and much still remains to be accomplished. It is believed wise, however, to issue a distinct note of warning that, in the absence of a fundamental change in industrial and labor conditions throughout the country, housing regulation is only a partial remedy and may conceivably carry us on to meas- ures which should be clearly understood and provided for beforehand. One or two other considerations are worth noting before leaving the subject of housing. Congestion, the worst evil in the housing situation, is caused, it is true, by conditions of labor, for congestion is said to vary directly with the working hours and indirectly with the wages. That is, the longer the hours of labor the greater the congestion around the industrial section of the city, because the workers are unable to spare the time from their resting hours which is needed to make long trips to and from the place of work. Similarly, the lower the wages the greater the congestion, because the rent in the tenements, though perhaps exorbitant from the point of view of what is furnished and of the returns to the tenement owner, are nevertheless the only ones in the city that can be afiforded by the financial means i6o MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS of the laborer. Nevertheless, something can be done to relieve the evil of congestion by providing cheap and rapid transportation facilities to the places of labor from the other portions of the city. Special cars for working people, at very reduced rates, have been found helpful in some European cities and might be used with profit in our industrial centers in this country. Such a device, coupled with the prevention of real estate speculation in the portions of the city where small and inexpensive workmen's dwellings might be erected, would at least offer some improvement in the congested conditions of the city. In this respect American cities are greatly handicapped as compared with many European cities, for our cities are, as a rule, powerless to acquire land for such purposes ; whereas in German cities it has been found that the control exercisable by the city over land which the city itself owns and then leases or sells under restrictions can be made to count for the improve- ment of municipal conditions in a great variety of ways. Though this is a matter that will come up in the dis- cussion of modern city planning, it is well to point out here that this power could be used to improve housing conditions also. In this connection it must be mentioned, finally, that the matter of housing has also an esthetic side which will be considered in the next chapter, under the head of City Planning. As it involves but inci- dentally the improvement of living conditions, it will not be dwelt upon further here. It is not the housing question alone which results from the economic condition of the working classes. Almost all of the so-called social welfare work of the city is necessitated by the fact that the city must act in order to insure the minima of decent existence to that large portion of the community which is financially not SOCIAL WELFARE i6i able to secure those minima itself. Reasonable hours of work and adequate wages are the fundamental pre- requisites for improving the condition of the working classes to the point where they will be economically able to provide for themselves those things which must now be secured to them, if at all, by governmental action. But hours of work and amount of wages are matters that are almost wholly without the power of the city to influence. To a certain extent, however, the munici- pality can have an influence on working conditions in the city, and to that extent the obligation rests upon it even though the fundamental causes are beyond its con- trol. The city as an employer of labor, for instance, can set an example to other employers in the matter of rea- sonable hours of work and proper compensation. If the hours of labor and the scale of wages generally prevalent among private employers are obviously unfair to the working classes, the city need not be guided by those conditions, but can and should establish conditions in its own employ which are fair and just. The eight- hour working day and a scale of wages equal to the best paid in private employments for similar work are cer- tainly the minimum conditions, and in certain cases the city should clearly go beyond those minima. Directly, therefore, the city will be improving the condition of those who are in its employ, and indirectly it wall tend to raise the standards in private employments. To urge the advisability of having the city, as an employer of labor, lead the way in establishing reasonable hours and fair wages does not mean that the city should not, on its side, insist upon a high standard of industry on the part of its unskilled employees and upon a high order of training and ability on the part of its skilled laborers and employees. Though cities have not, as a rule, set i62 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS high standards of fairness in treating their employees, they have been even more remiss in insisting upon high standards of accomplishment on the part of the persons on their payroll. In other words, though the standard of wages may have been unreasonably low for a good day's work, it was actually too high for the quality of returns demanded and secured by the city. The prac- tice of rewarding political services with places on the city's payroll has, therefore, resulted in the city actually paying too much for the majority of its employees. If that species of graft were done away with entirely and the city secured a fair day's work from its employees it could actually save money and still pay a higher wage than under present conditions. Nor does this take into consideration the ultimate economy of securing a living wage and reasonable hours to every inhabitant of the community. There is also an indirect method by which cities can influence hours of labor and amount of wages in certain private employments. That is the power cities have over public utility corporations through the inser- tion of provisions covering these points in the franchises granted. This is a matter which will be touched upon in the chapter on public utility regulation. Aside from the hours of labor and the wages which can be thus indirectly affected to a certain extent by the city, there are other working conditions which can be directly improved by municipal action. So, for instance, the sanitary conditions under which work is carried on in the city clearly combes within the public health au- thority of the municipality. The proper heating, light- ing and ventilating of places of labor can be insisted upon by the city in the interests of public health, even if there is no state factory law covering those matters. The moral conditions surrounding places of labor are SOCIAL WELFARE 163 frequently in need of improvement, especially in the interest of working girls. This can be accomplished by the city under its general police power. Recreation facilities can be used to improve greatly the conditions of the workers. Private employers are beginning to realize that the working efficiency of the individual can be increased by affording reasonable opportunities for rest and recreation and by improving the general condi- tions under which work is done. That realization is coming very slowly, however, and if the state does not insist upon recreational facilities for factory workers the city must provide such opportunities. The whole subject of recreation is one that will be considered a little later, but is mentioned here as showing one of the ways in which the city can aid in improving working conditions. Among the most serious difficulties that threaten the wage earning classes is the matter of unemployment. In a very real sense this is, of course, a problem of in- come, for if a certain income is necessary each year to maintain a family in the minimum standard of decency which society should require, it is not the earnings of a day or a week that are important, but the earnings for the year. Like the matter of wages, furthermore, un- employment is caused, for the most part, by factors over which the city can have no control. Like insufficient wages also, unemployment causes conditions from which the city is the sufferer and which the city has to meet, namely, pauperism and dependence. To a certain ex- tent, fortunately, the city can adopt measures that will tend to improve the conditions with regard to unem- ployment. There are two kinds of unemployment arising in a city, one of which may be termed normal unemploy- ment, the other extraordinary unemployment. Normal i64 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS unemployment is due to two causes, one is the excess of workers over available opportunities for work, the other is the failure of those desiring work and those needing workers to get together. The former condition is one that, as has been seen, is not within the power of the city alone to prevent. Even should the city undertake to employ in public works of one kind or another all persons who were without employment — a measure which, though extreme, might be more economical than having to support as paupers the workers whom unem- ployment drives to seek public aid — it would be neces- sary, in order to protect a city against a deluge of un- employed from other communities, to authorize a city to exclude immigration into the city on the part of workers in occupations that were already overfilled. Such a power does not reside in cities, however, at the present, nor is it likely to be intrusted to them in the near future. But the unemployment which is due to the failure of employers and unemployed to get together can largely be eliminated. Where this matter is left to private agencies, as it commonly is in American cities, the interests of the persons operating the agencies are frequently absolutely opposed to the interests of the persons to be served and much fraud and hardship has resulted. It is eminently proper and desirable, there- fore, that the city undertake this work, since its interests are entirely identified with those of the persons to be aided. Municipal employment agencies are fortunately becoming more and more common in American cities, though a mere beginning has been made. Extraordinary unemployment is the unemployment due to waves of financial depression and crises which always result in a great many persons being thrown out of work who are normally engaged in earning wages. The causes SOCIAL WELFARE 165 of general financial crises or periods of depression are obviously quite removed from tlie possibility of any municipal control, but here, again, the consequences may be partially avoided by municipal action. There is always a great deal of work to be done in any city in the way of public improvements, which forms part of a general program of improvement, but which, because it is not a matter of immediate pressing necessity, is postponed from one time to another to permit of more immediate needs being filled. Now if that work could be undertaken in times of financial depression the city would profit by having the desired improvements as well as providing an extra amount of work to meet the extra amount of unemployment. The difficulty that would be experienced in carrying out such a plan would be that the voting of moneys for public improvements and the sale of the bonds, when voted, would both be much more difficult to accomplish in times of financial depression than in normal times. The suggestion has, therefore, been made that a sinking fund be created out of the current income of the city, perhaps by special tax, which would be set aside and used only in emergency cases of this nature. Aside from the beneficial results following from creating useful work for the temporarily unem- ployed, this plan commends itself as a practical means of securing those public improvements which may be an integral part of a city plan, but which, because less pressing or less popular than other needs, might other- wise never come into their own. There are other financial dangers that confront the man or woman who is living on the narrow margin of day wages. Unemployment or loss of wages may be caused by injury or sickness. If the state does not re- quire employees' insurance and private corporations 12 i66 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS cannot, or will not, provide it at reasonable rates, there is no reason why the city, which is, after all, the chief sufferer from all of these dangers to the working classes, should not take the necessary steps to afford those facilities. As has been stated again and again, if financial disaster overtakes the persons living on the lowest possible margin, they become paupers and hence charges of the community. Aside from all humanitarian considerations, therefore, and looked at purely from the point of view of financial outlays, these measures of social amelioration must be compared in cost with the expense of caring for the individuals concerned as paupers, or even worse, as criminals. Cities, in Europe at least, have found it desirable to provide other finan- cial facilities for the element in the community which is financially weakest. So some cities operate a building and loan department which enables the working class, which is without capital or collateral, to build their own homes at reasonable rates of interest and on easy terms of payment. Many European cities also provide loan facilities on personal effects at reasonable rates. This policy is in recognition of the fact that many times in the lives of the poorer families it is necessary to secure a small sum of money to meet emergency expenses. Private pawnshops prey upon this necessity by requir- ing usurious and ruinous rates of interest, and therefore frequently destroy where they pretend to help. The city, therefore, should take over this activity, and could do so without incurring an added financial burden even when charging reasonable interest rates. This plan has the further incidental but very important added advan- tage of doing away with a serious encouragement to theft by destroying the principal market for stolen goods. Municipal savings banks have been found to SOCIAL WELFARE 167 encourage the wage-earning class to increase their capi- tal by saving and would undoubtedly prove very valu- able in this country, where the disastrous experience of thousands of poor people with private savings banks has discouraged the practice of profitable saving. In- terest rates could be as high as in private institutions, the security could be virtually absolute and the money used in retiring city obligations that pay a higher rate of interest and in other profitable ways. These are some of the ways in which modern cities are showing their realization of the fact that the welfare of the city is most completely bound up with the welfare of that largest class in every city, the wage-earning class. It is worth noting again, moreover, that this program of social amelioration has been carried farthest, not in the demo- cratic countries where the poor are supposed to be the equal of the rich and opportunities are supposed to be equal for all, but in Germany, the classic country of class distinction, where the individual is popularly sup- posed to be of no significance and bureaucracy to be su- preme. One aspect of the significance of recreational facilities as a means of social betterment was touched upon in discussing the improvement of working conditions. Its scope, however, extends much farther than that and touches the life of the poorer classes at many points. Of greatest significance, perhaps, is the provision of recre- ational facilities for the children of the wage-earning classes, a need that is beginning to be met through the ex- tension of the playground movement. The modern city realizes that numerous, conveniently located and prop- erly equipped and supervised playgrounds are a most val- uable asset from many points of view. First of all must be put, perhaps, the public health considerations. Even i68 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS under the most satisfactory housing system that could be devised, the children of the poor in the crowded dis- tricts will lack opportunities for healthful recreation. At present the city streets are the playgrounds of most of the children in the tenement districts, and most danger- ous places of recreation they are. Aside from the con- tinual danger to life and Hmb resulting from vehicular traffic, there is the further danger from breathing the dust and germ-laden air of the crowded streets. As a public health measure, therefore, it is most important to pro- vide the children with playground facilities. From the moral point of view the matter is equally important. Cellars, alleys and crowded streets are not conducive to a healthy kind of play on the part of children. In fact, many a criminal is started on his mistaken path in the tough children's gangs that begin by imitating their elders in games of robbery and crime and end up by emulating them in the real activities. The open play- ground, with numerous and varied devices for amusement and exercise, afifords opportunities for a kind of play that develops rather than destroys the moral fibre of the chil- dren. Under sympathetic direction by a trained and per- sonally qualified supervisor, the playground may be made valuable from the point of view of character building without depriving it of that element of spontaneity which is the chief attraction of play to the children. School grounds can always be used advantageously for public playgrounds, but in the congested districts of the city, the playgrounds should be more numerous than schools commonly are, because more room is needed for this purpose. Although the provision of the recreational facilities for children is perhaps the most important aspect of public recreation, there is an almost equally necessary field for SOCIAL WELFARE 169 adult recreation. Generally speaking, the recreational needs of the adult portion of the working population are met by the provision of open spaces where fresh air may be enjoyed in comfort. But opportunities for games, such as baseball, football, cricket, and others that do not involve an expenditure of money beyond the possibilities of the poorer classes are also valuable. It is, however, a mistaken policy for cities to spend great sums of money in furnishing tennis courts and golf links, while the poor- est classes are inadequately taken care of. Both of these games require an expenditure for equipment, par- ticularly in the case of golf, which puts them quite out of the reach of the vast majority of the poorer classes who arc in need of recreational facilities. Of course, it is desirable also for the city to make provision for rec- reational facilities for other elements of the community besides the wage-earning class with the lowest incomes, but the former are much less in need of public aid in securing their recreation than are the latter. The dan- ger is that a city, in putting in an expensive system of public golf links, for instance, will either exhaust the money available for recreational purposes or will think it has done its duty in the expenditure of money in that way, when other more pressing needs have not been met. Public baths are a convenience that have both a sanitary and recreational aspect. In that respect, the ancient Ro- man cities were far in advance of the average American city today, to which municipal baths are more or less an innovation. The public bath movement is growing in this country, and in many European cities has been well handled, but its importance cannot be overestimated. When it is remembered that a large portion of the poorer population in the tenement districts are without bathing facilities, the sanitary importance of the public bath I70 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS becomes manifest. It may be well to point out again, at this place, that the common conception of the aversion of the poorer classes to cleanliness rests upon insufficient evidence and prejudice, and that investigation bears out clearly the contention that w^here opportunities for clean- liness are afforded, the poorer classes are willing and anxious to take advantage of them. This is the expe- rience of cities that have provided public bathing facili- ties. Public gymnasiums are another valuable recrea- tional opportunity. It is obvious that in the case of these recreational facilities, as well as of all others, their chief value will be destroyed if they are not made free. Even a very small fee will often make all the difference be- tween the possibility of their being used or not being used by a family that is living right on the lower margin. Some other recreational agencies were mentioned in the consideration of the city's educational work, such as museums, botanical and zoological gardens, public lec- tures and concerts, etc., because they had an educational value as well as a recreational one. Public dance halls as a means of recreation and exercise were considered un- der the head of public morals, because they have so com- monly been regarded as a source of moral danger. As has been seen, however, the public dance hall, if managed properly by the city, can be made to fill a very real want and a pretty universal desire on the part, at least, of the younger element in the city's poorer population. The same is true of skating rinks, both for roller skating and ice skating. The privately owned rinks afford op- portunities of recreation to a portion of the population, but not to the portion that is most in need of them. One further consideration must be mentioned before leaving the subject of public recreation, a subject which has been touched upon already in the chapter on public SOCIAL WELFARE 171 morals, that is, the question of Sunday amusements. Whatever may be thought of Sunday activities by people that have time and money to enjoy amusements during the week, it seems impossible to justify the attitude which would deny to the people who have only Sunday for recreation, the opportunity to make the most of that day. It would seem to be too clear for discussion that the unfortunate element in the community which slaves from morning to night the whole week through and is too worn out at the end of the day's work to do anything but go to bed, will be better off physically, mentally and morally if they are afforded the opportunity of getting some real pleasure and enjoyment out of Sunday in their own way, so long as they do not interfere with the observance of the Sabbath by the other elements in the community in their own way. For a city, therefore, to recognize the value of public baths, dance halls, skating rinks or other means of amusement and recreation and then to keep them closed on the only day on which they can be made use of at all by that part of the population which needs them most, is comparable to erecting a hospital and then refusing patients because they arc sick. The same con- siderations, of course, apply to amusements which are not managed by the city, but which are enjoyed by the working population of the city, like Sunday baseball and Sunday theaters. No one who has been brought up to believe that such amusements are wicked on the Sab- bath need participate in them. On the other hand, neither need he impose his own convictions upon others less for- tunate who. whatever their religious traditions may be, will be deprived of practically all opportunities for any amusement if the Sunday amusement is forbidden. Leaving now the matter of recreational opportunities, there are a few other social welfare activities which are 172 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS coming to be recognized as proper undertakings for the city in aiding that class in the community which is eco- nomically unable to help itself properly, beyond furnish- ing the most indispensable elements of existence: that is, the portion of the community which is not actually pauperized, but which is so near the lower limit that any misfortune or unusual expense may at any time sink them below the level of self-support. It has already been shown that in many cases, particularly of conta- gious diseases, it becomes the duty of the city to provide medical help where that cannot be provided by the in- dividuals, for the purpose of safeguarding others. But there are other cases, where the afflicted individual him- self is the only one concerned and where the provision of medical assistance is a social welfare measure rather than a public health measure. It is well to point out, at this place, that the free clinics frequently provided by medical schools in our cities do not commonly furnish the kind of medical aid required. The poorer classes in our cities have come to have a dread of free clinics and free hospital beds, and not without reason. Too often the charity patients, as they are called, are looked upon as legitimate laboratory material upon which the doctors can try experiments which they would not dare to prac- tice upon their paying patients. The use of such cases by medical students and nurses learning their work is not objectionable, provided proper supervision is assured, for the doctor and the nurse must get their practical expe- rience in some way in order to become efficient in their profession. But the deliberate experimenting with the non-paying patients, without their knowledge and con- sent, is certainly not social welfare work, whatever value it may have from the point of view of advancing medical science. The city should provide medical attendance and SOCIAL WELFARE 173 hospital facilities, when needed, at rates which the work- ing classes can pay, without any charge at all when neces- sary, and such care should be of the best kind. Another kind of professional aid which the poor man often needs but can seldom, if ever, pay for, is legal ad- vice. The poor are the victims of tricks and cheating from many quarters, and their very inability to employ private counsel makes them a fair target for extortion in a vari- ety of forms. A legal aid department in the city, where every citizen can receive efficient legal advice, is, there- fore, a measure of social justice which but relatively few cities have so far established. Whether or not law and medicine are professions which should be entirely social- ized, as some authorities claim, that is, taken over and administered by the government so that every man shall stand on an even footing with his fellowmen in the fun- damental matters affecting his health and his property, certainly those who are unable to protect themselves in these directions should be looked after by the com- munity. So far, there have been considered the social welfare activities of cities which are meant to make life more decent and bearable for those who are living on the low- est margin and are able to provide themselves, even un- der the most favorable conditions, only with the bare necessities of life. There is still another class in the community which is even more in need of governmental aid, and that is the pauper class, the persons who are without even those minima of existence, who have no food to eat, or no clothes to wear, or no shelter to cover them, perhaps none of these things. The poor, it is said, we have with us always, and as a phenomenon of city life, they are as old as cities themselves. In Greek and Roman cities there was some governmental activity with 174 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS regard to these unfortunates, but it consisted solely in fur- nishing them with food when starving, and was hap- hazard and unscientific in the extreme. In the Middle Ages and in the early part of the modern era practically nothing was done for the poor by the government. The succor of the poor was early an important function of the Catholic Church, later exercised also by the Protestant sects, and in some countries today it is still left largely to the church. In the United States, poor relief, though theoretically a governmental function and almost every- where imposed upon the county as the unit, is in our cities generally performed chiefly, if not wholly, by the churches and private charitable organizations, as well as by in- dividual aid. The objections to handling the situation by individual responses to individual appeals are manifold, so obvious, indeed, that the continuation of this method in most of our cities can hardly be understood. In the first place, street begging and house-to-house begging are incapable of adequate supervision and offer an invitation to fraud on the part of lazy individuals, who find it easier to earn a living by imposing upon the kindheartedness of the average human being than to turn to honest work. Not only does that demoralize the individual himself, if he is capable of earning a living at honest work, but it de- prives really deserving cases of that support, and tends to make the defrauded persons, whose sympathies have been enlisted in undeserving cases, deaf to further appeals. The quality of sympathy is certainly a most desirable one and fortunately it is very general. The person who is ap- proached, therefore, with a pitiable story and appeal for aid in his home or on the street, finds it difficult to refuse the appeal without a certain disagreeable feeling of a duty left undone. It is that fact which makes the eradication SOCIAL WELFARE 175 of begging so difficult. It is easy enougli to show that as compared with properly organized and directed re- lief work, individual giving to uninvestigated cases is not only ineffective but actually harmful, and yet such giv- ing continues and is practiced even by persons who are able to see the injurious results. Until indiscriminate almsgiving of that kind is discontinued there is no pos- sibility that any real progress will be made in the work of scientific poor relief. For that reason, and because of the almost irresistible appeal which individual cases make to the kindhearted, it is necessary that street begging and house-to-house begging be absolutely forbidden in the city. Of course such a measure assumes that some other means of caring for the poor is provided, for unless the charitable giver were convinced that the deserving cases of need would be properly cared for, he would continue to encourage begging by giving to beggars, in spite of all laws. In realization of the inadequacy and the actually harm- ful consequences of individual indiscriminate dispensing of charity, the work of poor relief has generally been looked after in our cities by organizations, either by the various churches or by special charitable associations. Much of this work has been carried on successfully, but much of it has been little better than the unintelligent indi- vidual action which it was meant to replace. Indeed, even fraud has been practiced to a very laige extent by or- ganizations established for the purpose of soliciting funds in the name of the poor and then diverting the money to individual, selfish uses. The number of such fake chari- table undertakings is very large, and they continue to flourish because of the very universality of the charitable impulse. Even when all organizations in a city are act- ing in perfect good faith and in the most approved man- 176 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS ner possible, the work is not properly done. When a number of independent bodies are engaged in that work, there is bound to be overlapping and consequent waste of energy. The value of close cooperation and co5rdina- tion has, therefore, led in many cities to the formation of a single association known as the United Charities of the city which comprises all the other legitimate charitable undertakings of the community. Curiously enough even in the altruistic work of poor relief, petty quarrels, par- ticularly interdenominational jealousies and the desire on the part of some of the churches to use the dispensing of charity as a means of proselytizing, have in some cases prevented the organization of the united charities and in other cases have interfered with the smooth working of the same. There is no question that the federated charity work marks a great improvement over the in- dividual efforts of persons or associations. At the same time, it is believed that the best interests of this im- portant work demand that it be assumed by the city as a regular municipal function. It may be asked why the work of poor relief should be considered a governmental function and not rather a private concern, as it has been and still is in many cities. The answer is perfectly clear. In the last analysis, the reason why the government should look after poor relief is a clear necessity. Leaving aside all considera- tions of humanitarianism and the obligation of the govern- ment to serve all its citizens according to their needs, the function of poor relief can be regarded properly as an activity in the interests of public safety. To demon- strate this, it is only necessary to consider what would be the result if neither the government nor private activity should make adequate provision for the destitute and needy in the community. The answer is obvious. Self- SOCIAL WELFARE 177 preservation is the highest law of nature, and necessity knows no human law. People who are starving or freez- ing to death, or, worse still, see their children in that con- dition, do not recognize the sanctity of the laws protect- ing property. Even our worst jails hold no horrors for them comparable to the horrors of such a situation. The uncared-for pauper, therefore, naturally and inevitably tends to become what society considers a criminal, that is, a person who does not admit the binding nature of society's restrictions. The result, therefore, of permitting the number of destitute persons to increase, without mak- ing provision for them, is to multiply the number of law- less persons and so to endanger the very existence of the state. Obviously, then, the government is chargeable with a duty, the neglect of which may entail such serious consequences for the safety of the state. Though the safety and welfare of the state in general are aflfected by the failure to care for the paupers, the duty to look after the destitute is, in this country and in Europe, commonly imposed upon the smallest units of government. In England, the poor law union is a small governmental division made up of parishes for the pur- poses of poor relief; in Prussia, a similar unit exists, and in the United States it is commonly the county. But the American county, generally speaking, has not dealt satisfactorily with the problem of poor relief within cities that are contained in the county. Indeed, the county government tends to consider the city as being chargeable with poor rehef within its limits, and restricts itself to poor relief in the rural portions of the county. It is not possible, at this place, to enter into a discussion of the way in which counties ordinarily perform their function of providing poor relief. It is sufficient to say, that even for the rural portions of the county the system is un- 178 MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS scientific, expensive, and in every way unsatisfactory, while, as far as the cities are concerned, the county aid for the poor scarcely ever even scratches the sur- face of the pauper problem. It may be mentioned in passing, that until we develop a much more efficient machinery for seeing that the charge for public relief is imposed upon the locality properly chargeable with it, that is, the district in which the pauper has his domicile, one unfortunate result of systematizing and improving the poor relief work in a given community will be to attract to it the poor and needy from all the surround- ing districts, where they know their wants will not be so well looked after. In Prussia, a community which con- stitutes a poor relief district can refuse to admit a new- comer for settlement, if it appears that he is not in a condition to support himself and family, much as our im- migration officials refuse admission to immigrants who are likely to become a public charge. In that case, the individual is sent back to the district in which he has his domicile for purposes of poor relief, and that district must bear the costs of transportation. Under such cir- cumstances, it is quite possible to insist that each dis- trict look properly after its poor, without penalizing it, for the efficiency displayed, by increasing its burden through the advent of the poor from less active districts. The entire machinery and system of public poor relief, therefore, needs overhauling and modernizing in the United States, but that does not diminish the advisability or the need of having cities take the matter of poor re- lief in hand for the best solution of the problems under present conditions. The work of directing the charitable activities of the city should be intrusted to a well-trained and personally qualified administrative official. Indiscriminate giving SOCIAL WELFARE 179 is just as detrimental to the best interests of all con- cerned, if it is practiced by the city, as if it is practiced by individuals. But scientific charity work requires train- ing and experience. The problem of poor relief is not merely a problem of preventing starvation, homelessness or nakedness. If that were the only factor involved, the provision of a public poorhouse large enough to accom- modate all who apply would solve the situation. The physically or mentally incapacitated must be looked after in that way in public institutions. Even there investiga- tion and care would be needed to prevent fraud and im- position and to make certain that there are no relatives capable of supporting the individual. But under present conditions of society there are many able-bodied men and women who, through sickness, unemployment or other misfortune, are without the means of providing them- selves with the necessities of life. These individuals may be termed the temporarily incapacitated, as distinguished from those who are absolutely and permanently helpless. It is obvious that these, also, must be prevented from starving and freezing; but the great danger in dealing with these persons is that the temporarily incapacitated will become permanently disinclined to work, having once enjoyed the possibilities of living without working. This pauperizing effect of merely ministering to the imme- diate wants of the unfortunate, without making every effort to make him self-supporting and no longer a pub- lic charge, is one of the curses of the system of private charities. To help a man over an emergency, therefore, without causing him to lose his self-respect, energ\' and initiative, and to put him in the way of recovering his economic independence is the great problem of poor re- lief, and one that the ordinary layman does not com- prehend. It is for that reason that poor relief must i8o MUNICIPAL FUNCTIONS be a professional undertaking, not an amateur's or dilet- tant's work. The objection is frequently raised that to make the work of poor relief an official function and to forbid it to the ordinary citizen is to substitute red tape and rule of thumb for kind impulses and generosity in an activity where above all else human sympathy is needed, and to stifle the generous sentiments experienced in voluntary giving. To this it may be answered that to make charity work a truly municipal function is not to take the human element out of the work nor to deprive the individual of the opportunity to obey generous and humanitarian impulses. The work of investigating the charity cases in a large city requires an army of workers, if it is to be successfully conducted. To employ paid employees for that work would impose a tremendous financial burden and would tend to interfere with the possibility of sym- pathetic human contact at this important stage of the proceedings. Here is a situation, par excellence, calling for voluntary citizen cooperation. Under the so-called Elberfelder system of poor relief, found in many German cities, every citizen is under obligation to engage, to a certain extent, in poor relief work in his district without pay, and in Berlin thousands of citizens are so employed. This insures individual examination of needy cases by persons who in no sense have the official's point of view, add iwhose individual services, though slight, total up to aiii:;asit(|)nishing figure. In the same way, the fact that poor; i>eLii^f is so fundamental an obligation of the commu- A'ifcy t'l?Qt)i every one should be expected to contribute a pr