The modern city and its problems

Front matter

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Preface

In so far as this volume carries a message it is that the American city lags behind the work it should properly perform. It is negative in its functions, rather than positive in its services. It has been stripped of power and responsibility. It is politically weak and lacks ideals of its possibilities. It has so little concern for its people that they in turn have little concern for it. We have failed to differentiate between those activities which are private and those which are public. We have failed, too, to provide protection to the individual from inequalities of power and position, and have left him a prey to forces as dangerous to his life and comfort as those against which the police are employed to protect. Further than this, we have failed to shift to society the burdens of industry which the coming of the city has created. We have permitted the sacrifice of low wages, irregular employment, and disease to be borne by the individual rather than by the community. Those who suffer from these conditions are in reality a vicarious sacrifice; a sacrifice which society has no right to accept.

These conditions can only be corrected by a programme of city building, of city service, through

Vv vi PREFACE compulsory co-operation, or socialization. To this co-operation there are no set limits. But for many years to come the city will continue to increase its activities and enlarge its services. This is the lesson of the past; it is the promise of the future.

Further than this, I have dissented from the opinion that the trouble with the American city is with the American people, with the idea that we are neglectful of politics, are too partisan, too tolerant of evil. It is assumed that we have willingly | abdicated our responsibilities and turned the city over to the professional politician as an easy escape from the burdens involved. This is the personal interpretation of politics. It is somewhat on a par with the assumption that the slave is responsible for his chains, the serf for his servitude, the sweatshop worker for his poverty.

The conditions described are results, not causes. Neglect, partisanship, tolerance of evil are traceable back to legal institutions, to constitutional and political limitations, under which we have been compelled to work.

Finally, this book is written from the inside of the city. It is a study of the city at work; of the problem as seen by the official animated by a desire to promote the city’s achievements and realize on its possibilities. This study is the result of many years of service, in the city council of Cleveland, on the city finance commission, as a member of the tax commission, and in the State senate. It is the result, too, of intimate knowledge of many American

PREFACE vii cities, of contact with reformers and politicians, of studies of municipal conditions in Germany, England, Austria-Hungary, and Switzerland, and of personal acquaintance with the officials of these countries. It reflects the view-point of the men who are doing things, and striving for things, rather than of those who analyze the city from the outside. It accepts the new note in city politics, which is democratic, constructive, and social.

Freperic C. Howe.

New York, December, 1914.

Contents

Il. Tem Ancient City. . . 9. « 6 a cw

Ill. Tse Mepravat Town.

IV. Tse Mopern City.

Chapter I The City And Civilization

THE city has always been the centre of civilization. Civilization does not exist among a nomad people. In sparsely settled regions it is only rudimentary. Even to-day in the rural districts it does not progress beyond the simplest forms.

The great epochs of civilization have always coincided with a highly developed city life. This was true of Athens in the time of Pericles, of Rome during the early empire, of Italy during the Renaissance. It was true of the Netherlands and of Germany in the Middle Ages, when liberty came to life after centuries of disorder, just as it is true of the last fifty years, which coincide with the development of the modern city.

With the city came education, culture, and a love of the fine arts. They only exist under an urban environment. For education and the fine arts come with leisure and accumulated wealth, which in turn are city-born.

Science, invention, industry, are also urban. They, too, depend upon the division of labor and the wealth which such division makes possible. They involve 1 the harnessing of power, the conversion of coal and water into steam and electricity, as well as the specialization of activities and talents, which are only possible under urban conditions. And the larger the city and the more minute the specialization, the greater the co-operation and the more easy the production of wealth.

The City and Co-operation.

The city had its beginnings with co-operation, with mutual help. This, with the division of labor, made civilization possible. Co-operation began when one man tended the fields and another went to war. Others produced the tools with which the farmer tilled the soil and the soldier protected the state. Exchanges followed. The products of the field and the shop found their way to the agora, or market-place. Community began to trade with community. This was the beginning of commerce. Surplus wealth made its appearance, which enabled society to support teachers and artists.

Taxation was introduced, which enabled the division of labor to be carried still further. This’ marked the beginning of compulsory co-operation. Then many services became accessible to all that had previously been confined to the few. Streets and highways facilitated the transportation of goods, and this widened the life of the community still further. A standing army was provided, which relieved many men from the necessity of carrying arms. This widened freedom and increased the productiveness of labor and the time devoted to peaceful pursuits.

THE CITY AND CIVILIZATION 3

Taxation is one of the greatest agencies of civilized life.

Co-operation Only Possible in City.

It was not possible to develop co-operation to any appreciable extent under rural conditions. It is not possible to this day. There is almost as wide a gulf between the routine life of the ranchman of Dakota and the clerk of New York as there is between that of the farmer of to-day and the husbandman in the times of the Pharaohs. City life for even the poorest is socialized to a wonderful extent. And as society changes from the country to the town, and from the town to the great city, the element of co-operation becomes more and more important. It involves a change from the doing of all sorts of things by each individual to the doing of many things by the community and the consequent freeing of the individual, so that he may pursue his own calling and enjoy his own leisure. Co-operation, according to Prince Kropotkin, is a law of progress even in the animal world. In his Mutual Aid he says:1

“Life in societies is the most powerful weapon in the struggle for life—enabling the feeblest insects, the feeblest birds and the feeblest animals to protect themselves from the most terrible birds and beasts of prey. It permits longevity; it enables the species to rear its progeny with the least waste of energy; it enables gregarious animals to migrate in search of new abodes.

“Therefore combine—practice mutual aid—that is the surest means for giving the greatest safety, the

1 Pages 57 and 75.

best guarantee of existence and progress, bodily and intellectual and moral.

“The species in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits and the practice of mutual aid has attained its greatest development are invariably the most numerous, prosperous and open to progression. Mutual aid allows the attainment of old age, the cumulation of experience, higher intellectual development, etc. The unsocial species on the contrary are doomed to decay.”

The city can only live by co-operation; by co-operation in a million unseen ways. Without co-operation for a single day a great city would stand still. Without co-operation for a week it would be brought to the verge of starvation and be decimated by disease.

The city has destroyed individualism. It is constantly narrowing its field. And in all probability co-operation, either voluntary or compulsory, will continue to appropriate an increasing share of the activities of society.

The Machine of Machines.

The city is a machine of machines. The changes wrought by steam, electricity, and transportation, the mastery of nature and the multiplication of human hands through the harnessing of power, are the fruits of urban life. So are the college and the press. All these are city-born, just as they were two thousand years ago. The city is to civilization what the steam-engine was to domestic industry. It is the greatest machine of all. No discovery of man, no

THE CITY AND CIVILIZATION 5 conquest of power can be compared with the achievements and potentiality of the city.

The city is the counter on which the wealth of the world is displayed; it is the clearing-house to which the most inaccessible quarters of the earth contribute. Here the destinies of people are determined, not by a powerful potentate, but by the subconscious needs and demands of the people themselves. The desires of the city direct the life of the shepherds on the mountain-side, the fishermen in Alaska, the pearl-divers of India, the plantations of the tropics, the wheat-fields of America and Russia, and the sheep and cattle ranges of Australia and Argentina. They direct the wine-growers of France as well as the mill operatives of Pittsburgh. To its needs the ears of monarchs, statesmen, financiers, and captains of industry are attuned. To its wants the hands of hundreds of millions of workers respond. The twentieth-century city is the brain of a cosmic machine; it is the heart and sensory system of the world as well.

The Changing City.

To many people the city is an evil that exacts so terrible a tribute of misery that they would have us “return to the land.” They dream of an age of rural simplicity in which wealth and want no longer stare each other in the face. They would stem the tide to the city and turn back the movements of a century and re-establish the conditions of our fathers. To them the city is not the hope, it is the despair of civilization.

But the tide will never turn. Back to the land is an idle dream. We can no more restore the pastoral age than we can go back to the spindle and the loom. Undoubtedly there will be changes in farm life. Denmark and Wisconsin are making agriculture both profitable and alluring. And the farm itself will change, for it, even more than the city, is in a state of arrested development. Agriculture, with all its advances, has not been specialized; it has not responded, as has industry, to the division of labor and the co-operative movement.

The city, too, will change, for the city is what it is because political thought has not kept pace with changing conditions. The city has grown more rapidly than has social science; more rapidly than has industrial democracy. In the first place, our political machinery has not been adjusted to the performance of the city’s task. It is clumsy, indirect, complicated. Almost always, too, the city has been under the control of a class that has used its power to enrich itself by laws at the expense of others. And these laws can be altered, just as they were created, as rapidly as the city becomes conscious of its possibilities and acquires the power to correct these evils through political democracy.

For half a century constitutions and laws, city charters, methods of nomination and election, have been so complicated that they prevented the free expression of the popular will. But this is rapidly changing. The city is being placed on a democratic basis. Home rule is being granted. Charters are

THE CITY AND CIVILIZATION a being simplified. The caucus and convention are being abolished and the ballot is being shortened. The initiative, referendum, and recall are being added. With these changes it is no longer necessary for the city to be a behemoth, a thing to be feared. For the first time in history the great gains of science and industry, the economic and industrial possibilities of the city, are open to conscious social direction and control by the people. And under this new democracy the city will be able to develop a life that has had no prototype in history.

Summary.

The city is the greatest agency of civilization as it is its most portentous problem. For the city enabled men to specialize through the division of labor; it made education, culture, and the fine arts possible.

It was the co-operation of many men dividing up the work to be done according to the fitness of each that enabled surplus wealth to be accumulated. This division of labor in turn led to co-operation both voluntary and involuntary; the co-operation on the part of the community itself through the use of taxation and the co-operation of countless private agencies in the production, distribution, and exchange of wealth. Civilization advanced through these means. And as the city increases in size the possibilities of co-operation increase as does the production of wealth, which in turn makes possible greater and greater leisure and expenditures for the refinements of life.

Even the evils of the city are not necessarily inherent in urban life. They are due to the backwardness of political thought and social science and the failure of co-operation to keep pace with the needs of the community. This in turn is partly due to the fact that the political machinery of the city has been inadequate to the expression of the popular will and the execution of that will when it seeks to realize itself.

Chapter II The Ancient City

THE transition from rural to urban life is much the same in all ages. A family, clan, or industrial group forms the beginning. The members are united by racial, religious, or industrial ties. The Pilgrims of Massachusetts were not greatly different from the Greeks and Phcenicians who colonized the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

In very early days the community was united by family or religious ties. The members worshipped a common ancestor; their institutions were religious and patriarchal rather than legal, industrial, and political. Cicero describes the members of a clan as those who could trace their lineage back to a common ancestor, who could claim that their ancestors had all been freemen, and who were still in possession of their full rights. In early days even the right to use the land was enjoyed by the individual only as a member of a clan, for the land belonged to the group as a whole.

The Site.

The site of early settlements was chosen for protection. It was usually elevated, a place of refuge in case of attack. Into the stockade or walls the cattle were driven in time of danger. From these defences the settlers issued forth to the fields or to 9 make forays on their neighbors. Such were the hill towns of New England. Such settlements as these were not towns. They were merely agricultural groups who lived about a common centre and worked in the surruunding fields. ‘There was no co-operation, no division of labor, no urban life. Institutions like the church and the market-place later made their appearance. In the ancient city there was a temple, a theatre, and a place for the administration of government. About these institutions the primitive life of the community centred.

Athens was located some distance from the sea for easy defence. The original settlement of Rome was on the Tiber, about fifteen miles from its mouth. Different clans occupied the seven hills, each of which had a citadel as a place of refuge for the settlers on the plains. In the Middle Ages people grouped themselves about the castle or the cathedral. They were retainers, vassals, peasants, serfs. The remains of such castles may still be seen towering high above the river Rhine. This was the origin of most European towns.

During the Middle Ages trade followed well-recognized routes along the Danube and the Rhine from Constantinople to the Atlantic Ocean, along which routes Budapest, Vienna, Munich, Nuremberg, Frankfort, Cologne, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Bruges, Ghent, Hamburg, and Bremen were established. They were trading centres. In time these towns became rich and powerful. Florence, Genoa, Pisa, and Venice became cities of importance because they aa CF we commanded the trade of the Orient. The towns of Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands ultimately became free cities. In many instances, especially in Italy, they expanded into states with tributary provinces under their dominion. They even governed distant territories. Hamburg, Bremen, and Liibeck still survive as qualified city states within the German Empire, and Hamburg still has possessions which are separated from the city proper by a considerable distance; These cities are the only survivals of what was-at one time the prevailing city type. They are still city states owing allegiance to the empire alone.

The Modern Town.

In modern times towns follow the railroads just as they followed the caravan routes during the Middle Ages. Kansas City, Denver, Omaha, a hundred Western cities, owe their origin to the Pacific railroad systems. Towns, too, have sprung up about a particular industry. Lyons, in France, is the centre of the silk industry, Rouen and Lille, of the cotton industry, while the woollen factories are located at Rheims and the fashions at Paris. The great midland cities of England, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Coventry, and Lancaster are wool, cotton, iron, and steel centres. In America proximity to raw materials and good transportation facilities has determined the growth of Pittsburgh, Gary, Cleveland, and Birmingham, while in Germany Essen and the industrial towns of the west have grown in importance for the same reasons.

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Other cities owe their origin to waterways and seaport harbors, and as nationalism widens into internationalism the seaport will become the commanding city of the country. London is to-day the capital of the commercial world because England is its clearing-house. In time this ascendancy will pass to New York, where it will in all probability permanently remain. The growth of seaport cities will increase with freer trade and the expansion of the world market. And they rather than industrial or capital cities will be the metropolises of the world.

The Greek City—Athens.

Greece produced the first great cities of Western civilization. They reached their eminence in the fifth century B. C., when they became the centres of the civilization of the world. The population of Athens was never more than 200,000, of whom 180,000 were slaves.

The city lay about a high plateau on which was erected the Acropolis. Here was the original settlement and the stronghold. Below the hill, on all sides, lay the lower city. To the north of the entrance to the Acropolis was the agora, or market-place. It was filled with booths for traders and was the place for gatherings, parades, and reviews. The market was in full swing by nine o’clock in the morning and continued until noon, when the stalls were removed and the business of the day was over.

“For anyone coming from Asia it seems as if in entering Athens he was coming into an ants’ nest. . . .

It was around the Acropolis that the houses were crowded together and the population always in activity. There wagons were passing to and fro filled with merchandise from the ports or conveying it thither. The streets and public places in which people passed their lives presented a busy and noisy scene. Women as well as men were to be seen in the streets going to the markets, the public games and meetings of corporate bodies. From the earliest hours of the day large numbers of persons might be seen bringing in vegetables, fruit and poultry and crying their wares in the streets.’’

The Greek Idea of the State.

Athens, Corinth, Sparta, were more than cities. They were city states; at times powerful empires. Each city was an independent commonwealth, declaring war and making peace. It knew no outside sovereign, no state or nation of which it was a part. It made its own laws and the laws for the surrounding territory. The city was sovereign. In this it differed from the cities of to-day, which are dependent upon the state or the nation, for with us the city is a political agency of a larger community, while the ancient city imposed its will on dependent territory which it held in subjection. Athens extended its sway over the entire Aigean Sea. It became an empire. But it still remained a city state.

In area the city was about the size of an English county. ‘Ten men,” says Aristotle, “are too few for a city; 100,000 are too many.” According to

1The Habitations of Man in All Ages, chapter XVII, p. 196; E. Viollet-Le Duc.

Aristotle the state was ‘‘an association of similar persons for the attainment of the best life possible.” It was a sort of partnership for mutual benefit, the benefits being the safety and comfort of the community. To be a citizen was to have an equal voice in the assembly. If the state was in danger all of the partners must defend it by military services; if it was enriched by conquest all the partners were entitled to the advantages. The promotion of the beautiful was a common concern as was the protection of the common life from violence and injustice. It was not enough for a citizen to vote and pay his taxes. He must be personally active in every civic and military function. He was soldier, judge, and member of the governing assembly, and he must perform these duties in person; he must vote his opinions and express them in the council. He could not act by proxy in either capacity. For this reason, according to the ancients, the ideal city must be limited in population. The citizen, too, must be able to attend on the duties of government frequently, for which reason the city must be limited in area, while the citizen must be endowed with leisure.

The citizen scarcely knew the meaning of personal as opposed to public rights. He was a part of his city as he was a part of his family. And the city was a growth from the family to the clan, and from the clan to the city. But in this transition the relation of the citizen remained much the same. He was still a part of the family with an added reverence for the city. Of individualism, of the sanctity of private as opposed to public property, there was little conception. The city and the family encompassed the life of the average citizen. This is why ostracism was such a severe penalty.

Caste and Citizenship.

Residents were divided into three classes. First, there were the citizens for whom the state existed. Then there were the slaves attached to their master or to the state but without voice in the government. Finally, there were the resident aliens, who were their own masters, who might be rich and respected, but who enjoyed no voice in the government. They were not eligible to public office, but they paid an annual poll-tax for the privilege of living in the city.

Citizens differed in the amount of their property. Some of them were rich and performed no labor of any kind. Others were of the trading or artisan class. But among the Greeks the ideal citizen was the man of leisure who devoted the greater part of his time to public affairs. He required slaves and laborers to free him from material concerns. Otherwise he would have no time for public duties or to train himself in physical perfection, which the Greeks considered essential to the perfect man.

Citizenship was a matter of birth. The child of a citizen was entitled to be registered in the clan during infancy. At the age of eighteen he presented himself for admission to the roll of adult citizens in one of the local divisions. Here his claims were carefully examined, and if found to be satisfactory he was admitted to full citizenship. He could then marry, bring an action at law, and enter upon his inheritance.

His life was carefully regulated for him in order © that he might become a perfect citizen. From eighteen to twenty he served in the army, after which he could adopt his own career. At the age of twenty he could attend the meetings of the assembly and have an equal vote with all the other members. Until the age of thirty it was considered bad form to speak from the platform, at least until all the seniors had spoken upon the subject. When he reached the age of thirty he was eligible to be a juryman in the law courts, and from this time on his abilities alone determined his eminence as a citizen.

Admission to citizenship was a formal affair. It had to be first proposed at a meeting of the public assembly and later ratified at another assembly. After that an inquiry might be made into the claims and character of the person before the sanction was beyond recall. For the Greeks held citizenship in high honor and they guarded it very jealously. Political Equality.

The underlying motive of Greek citizenship was equality. The equality was not of wealth but of rights and opportunities, and the state endeavored to preserve this equality by guarding against any undue power by any man or group of men. All citizens were equal before the law; they were equal to enjoy as far as possible every opportunity of legislation, of holding office, and of administering justice. There was great diversity in financial and social standing, however, some citizens being great estate owners and others small farmers. Some were factory owners, merchants, ship owners, and shopkeepers, while others were artisans, seamen, peasants, and hucksters. The Athenian had a contempt for labor only because it interfered with his leisure time. It left no opportunity for mental and physical culture. There was no titled aristocracy and little social ostentation. The standing of the citizen depended on his social qualifications and refinement. In politics the practice has been described as “one man, one vote, and a perpetual referendum.”

Public Architecture a Symbol of the Greek Idea of the

City.

The Greeks took pride in their public structures, in their temples and amphitheatres. From $30,000,000 to $35,000,000 was spent on the Acropolis alone, while the men who erected it were content, for the most part, to live in humble homes. The cost of the Propylea, measured by the purchasing power of money, was about $7,500,000.

Water was drawn from distant rivers and springs by underground conduits. It was not brought into the individual homes but was carried by slaves from the public springs and fountains. The theatres belonged to the city but were leased out to private managers. On public occasions and religious festivals the theatres belonged to the people and all citizens who applied were allowed admission.

Gymnasia for physical training were scattered about. Round about them were gardens and open spaces for athletic games. The fields were surrounded with terraces, dressing-rooms, and colonnades, where the older men gathered for discussion while the younger ones participated in the sports. Throughout the city there were colonnades under which the Athenians walked or lounged, protected from the rain and the wind. For the life of Athens was largely a leisure life devoted to politics, the arts, the drama, and philosophy.

Apart from the public buildings and gardens, there was little splendor in Athens. The streets were crowded and narrow. They were dusty and inadequately supplied with water. They were badly paved and were not kept clean or lighted at night. There was no adequate sewage system and garbage was thrown into the streets. Of municipal administration in the modern sense of the term there was no conception.

The Economic Organization of the City.

Not more than 10 per cent. of the people were free. Approximately 20,000 citizens enjoyed their leisure at the expense of 180,000 slaves, who cultivated the fields, carried on trade, and performed all the clerical and manual work. To be well and strong, to be an athlete, to know philosophy and the drama, to live upon the streets and public places, to discuss the latest oration or engage in public debate on the welfare of the city—this was the normal life of the Athenian in the most brilliant days of Hellas. No other interests were worthy of emulation. Culture, art, and physical well-being were the animating motives of life. The making of money was as inconsequential among the free Athenians as are the fine arts among us. In this respect our point of view is almost completely reversed, for the ancient Greeks lived for life. The city was the citizen’s temple, the abode of his gods, the inspiration of his ambitions.

Rome.

Rome, like Athens, was a city state. It, too, owed allegiance to no higher authority. Colonists went forth and organized other communities on the Roman model, but they always remained dependent upon the mother city.

The total circumference of Rome in the time of Nero was about twelve English miles. The population was about 750,000 and never exceeded 1,250,000.

Even as late as the end of the republic Rome was a disorderly, congested, unsanitary city. The streets were crooked, hilly, and badly paved. The Rome of Augustus ‘was a city grown up anyhow.” ‘The fashionable street, the Vicus Tuscus, had a pavement of only thirteen and one-half feet wide. There were some long, paved streets in the Campus Martius, but the many hills and valleys made the laying out of splendid roadways difficult. Apparently there was no attempt at an orderly plan until after the great fire in Nero’s time.