A GREAT CITY.

IN progress of the

N the gradual progress of the race, by which, through the education gained by the experience of generations, humanity has come to such partial comprehension of its destiny upon this earth as it holds to-day, great cities have played a most important part.

ing or disagreeing among themselves, instead of agreeing or associating for its performance.

In the history of cities not only do we find the germs of the industrial association of society, but in them also began the process, as yet far from being completed, by which the peaceful production of industry shall become the chief reliance of society, in the place of the military organization of feudalism, depending upon the destructive spoliation of war.

The abandoned fortifications of many of the cities of Europe, though now turn

and made gay with flowers, are still evidences of how recently the race has passed through the animal phase of the struggle for existence, when, as wild beasts allow no other of their kind to intrude upon their hunting range of territory, cities felt their own safety depended upon the prompt destruction of every rival, and the first necessary condition of their own security was to surround themselves with fortifications.

Unconsciously, when first some roving tribe, dependent upon their flocks and herds for the support of their own lives, and obliged to keep constantly wandering in search of new natural pastures for the sustenance of their animals, came to learned into public promenades for pleasure, that by agriculture they could provide a more abundant and constant supply, the necessity for constantly wandering was done away with, and a settled habitation made a city, with its permanent buildings, possible; and men began their long and practical study of the future possibilities of association, with all the unexpected marvels of industrial, moral, social, and spiritual progress which this term implies. Our very language, in the terms civilization and rusticity, shows the results that heretofore the differing conditions of city and country life have made for those who have led them. Nor could the result have been any different, as the study of the mental, moral, and psychological nature of man himself shows. Nineteentwentieths of our faculties are inherently dependent upon association with our fellow-men for their stimulation and exercise. How can the isolated human being exercise his love, his sympathy, his pride, his ambition, his passion for the organization of his surroundings, alone? The miserable condition of the sparsely scattered tribes of savages to-day in the world, the physical and mental poverty in which they live, shows us what association in cities has done for the race.

The long and desperate duel between Rome and Carthage, ending only with the utter destruction of the latter, is a historical instance of the life of cities which has passed away so utterly, let us hope, as never again to return.

Though in this commercial age the rivalry for commerce and the war of trade have taken the place of the fierce and savage hatred that regulated the relations of Rome with any community that appeared likely to intrude upon her supremacy of power-though the fleets and armies of the cities of the Middle Ages have been generally abandoned as offensive weapons against a growing rival whose prosperity is irksome, and legislative acts of various kinds are chiefly depended upon as weapons of offense and defense by a Here architecture became possible, and mercantile centre that looks with jealous the association of industry began. A eyes upon some threatening competition singular evidence, however, of the mis--yet we can measure proximately the taken point of view from which the economists have studied this process of industrial association lies in the very name of division or differentiation given to it by them, as though the union of various men in the performance of any task too large or intricate for any single person to perform, and in the execution of which each man takes for himself such portion of it as he is best adapted or most competent to perform, was an evidence of their differ

change which has come over the modern world from that which characterized the ancient by a simple comparison.

It is impossible to imagine to-day that in the British Parliament some distinguished leader, noted for his stern patriotism and his invincible faith in the benefits to mankind of the maintenance of England's commercial supremacy, should be applauded, even by the merchants whose interests he might be promoting,

should he make it a point to end every speech or remark he rose to make with a sentence similar to that used by Cato the elder in the Roman Senate on such occasions, "And I am also of the opinion that Carthage should be destroyed."

The decency of all civilization would be shocked by it; and yet it must be reserved for our children to be equally shocked by the propositions made in any legislative assembly of Christendom to assist the progress of one's own country by measures which retard the progress of others.

The observing traveller, while he is impressed with the lavish display of wealth in great European cities, is more surprised, if he penetrates to the homes of the rural population, at the make-shifts of poverty he meets on every hand. In much of the northern part of Germany the cattle are still housed in the same buildings with the farmers; while in rural France there are three hundred thousand huts in which the door is the only opening; and eighteen hundred thousand with only two openings, the door and a single window; and fifteen hundred thousand with three openings, a door and two windows.

These figures are taken from the Trea

Is it not inevitable that when the generation enters upon the active business of life to which such propositions shall ap-sury count, made for purposes of taxation. pear as ignorant as Rome's treatment of Carthage appears to us, the world will have learned the lesson of the fraternity of all mankind, engaged in the common task upon this earth of replenishing it and subduing it?

These samples of the condition in which the dwellers in the country still are, after centuries of labor, afford an indication of the results that follow inevitably from the building up of great and splendid cities by centralizing methods of government.

Even before the historic era the im- As, however, the results of this system portance of commerce for building up have been to draw from the country to great cities was practically demonstrated. the city not only the wealth produced, but The caravan and the flat-boat, bringing the art, the culture, and the learning of the materials for trade across the land and the country-those interested in these subdown the streams, for ages satisfied the jects being obliged to seek the city, where needs of the ancient world, as the wagon the materials for their study are gathered and the barge were used in the early his--it has naturally been the general imtory of this country for the same purpose.pression that cities are the seat of wealth, The comparison of the length of time and the first idea that occurs to the mind these were found sufficient in antiquity, on their mention is that great cities are an and the rapidity with which they became evidence of a nation's progress, and their inadequate here, may be used as a suggest-growth a matter of self-congratulation for ive measure of the activity and momen- the nation that contains them. tum that the life of the race has acquired through the gradual accretions of experience gathered through the labors of generations.

This collective possession is the common heritage of all, and is enjoyed freely by each without restraint, and frequently without any recognition of its source.

But with the new spirit of investigation which characterizes these modern times, testing old beliefs by the questioning of new knowledge, great cities are found to be rather abodes of a terrible poverty than of a desirable wealth; they are rather the breeding-places of the barbarians of civilization, who, without hope, threaten to Very early in the history of the race play the part in the modern world which the power of concentrating the resources the hordes of Vandals, issuing from the of a wide extent of country by means of unknown recesses of the primeval forests, the machinery of government, and thus played in Europe at the commencement making a great city of the centre in which of our modern era. What to them does a the operations of government were carried city offer but a chance for plunder? They on, was discovered and acted upon. The are drawn to it and kept in it, hungry superior discipline and culture of associa- and degraded, because commerce, instead tion enabled the population of a city to of being a method for the distribution of drain by taxation the wealth produced by the results of labor, seems to have lost a much larger agricultural population sight of its function, and makes of cities scattered and isolated over the fields, un- vast store-houses, for the supply of which organized for mutual defense, and easily the fertile fields of the country have been conquered in detail. stripped bare.

The East End of London, to a thought- this phase of city life. The facts are so ful observer, offers sights and problems patent to every one who has ever seen a for the future infinitely more startling city, of even moderate size, that they need and serious than anything to be found in not be insisted upon here. A more encourthe West End. Enter one of the wine- aging phase of city life for those to whom vaults there. They are under-ground the amelioration of the race is a matter of cities, covering acres and acres. There in interest lies in the increasing evidences. the long line of arches-for they are vault- that thoughtful men are giving everyed like the crypts of some grand cathedral, where of their earnest endeavor to study used as a store-house for the bones of the causes for this condition of things, departed generations, while above, with and, by removing these, prevent their efmusic and ceremonial pomp, the service of fects. thankfulness for the blessing of life goes on in the grand old pile, rich with the art of centuries-extending in long lines, running in every direction, are stored pipes and hogsheads of wines of all kinds, for which the vineyards of the world have been stripped. Above these acres filled with the rich vintage, ripened in the sunlight, the gift of kind Nature to man, for making glad his heart, there is no church with music and service of thanksgiving, but miles and miles of the squalid dens of poverty-a poverty seeming so hopeless, so degraded, so brutal, and so ignorant that nowhere else in the world, except in other great cities, can anything equal to it be found.

Man, left to his own resources anywhere in the world, creates for himself a certain correspondence between his surroundings and his needs. He lives a life that by force of living must be progressive, though its progress may be infinitely slow. Here, as an integral part of one of the leading centres of wealth, culture, and refinement of which our civilization boasts, is an army of human beings more brutalized than the lowest savage left to primitive conditions can be. They seem crushed down and dehumanized by the weight and the influence of all that makes the culture of civilization.

Nor is London peculiar in this respect. With her, poverty is the same in kind as that found in all cities. It is only greater in degree than that in other centres, in a ratio commensurate with her superior greatness in everything else that makes great cities.

Here stands the problem of the modern world-Are poverty and progress inseparable?—so fearfully exemplified that the world stands aghast at it; for London is growing in every respect, its poverty not excepted, with a rapidity surpassing that of almost all other great cities.

But it is needless to dwell longer upon

The city of Glasgow a few years ago entered upon a crusade against the noisome dens that furnished the only habitations for such large numbers of its citizens that this city was as famous for the swarms of bare-legged women, ragged children, and drunken men as Naples is for its lazzaroni. The city took possession of many of the worst of these, and tore them down, replacing them with buildings better fitted for human habitations, in which some little regard was paid to the necessity of space for the free circulation of light and air. It is still continuing this needed work.

In New York the Board of Health has also taken down houses, and forcibly removed the inhabitants of cellars and other pestilence-breeding localities, as dangerous to the public health. Unfortunately neither their authority nor their function enabled the Board to go further, and provide better constructions, more carefully adapted for the physical and moral health of their inmates, than the rookeries they destroyed. This function has been left to private enterprise, and as yet the greed of gain is allowed almost unrestricted sway in urging it to action.

In London, besides the Peabody bequest, several associations are actively engaged in providing improved accommodations for those whose means prevent them from providing them for themselves.

In Paris, Mr. A. Raynaud, the founder of a society devoted to economic studies for the purpose of bringing about fiscal reforms (Société d'Études économiques pour les Réformes fiscales), instituted recently two prizes, the first of 2000 francs, and the other of 500 francs, for the best two essays proposing some original invention in the matter of taxation. The conditions for the competition were that the essays should, to gain the prizes, indicate some system which should as equitably as pos| sible distribute the burden of taxation in

the ratio of ability to meet it; that the tax | competition was invited from the whole should be as simple, as easy of collection, world. and as inexpensive in the collecting as possible; and also that it necessitate as little as could be the intervention of the tax-gatherer in the private business of the tax-payer.

When the prizes were first instituted the opinion was freely expressed by competent economists that the conditions rendered the solution as impossible as would be the quadrature of the circle. However, sixty essays were handed in, and after their consideration by the above-mentioned society, to whom Mr. Raynaud had confided the decision, the majority of the council of the society awarded the first prize to an essay sent in by Mr. Jacques Lorrain, of Geneva. The essay will be soon published by Mr. Raynaud himself, who has become an enthusiastic supporter of the system it proposes, though, in company with many of the majority of the council who voted it the prize, at its first hearing he was violently opposed to it. Its consideration by the society occupied many weeks of careful examination and argument.

In London, within the past few years, an amount of practical work has been done toward improving the condition of the poor, by providing for them better appliances for amusement, recreation, and refreshment, which, though yet it is far from complete, is astonishing when compared with the condition of public opinion quite recently, concerning the duty of society in these regards, toward the less fortunate of its members. The effort to eliminate the gin palace by providing a more attractive place of resort, where the influences surrounding their frequenters, and the entertainment furnished them, shall be such as to cheer and elevate rather than to degrade them, has been more successful than even its promoters expected.

Besides this, throughout the periodical literature of London, within the past few years, articles upon social subjects evincing the most heart-felt and intelligent interest in the welfare of the great majority, and rich in the spirit of sympathy, which alone can deal with such subjects, have appeared in constantly increasing numbers.

In America, most naturally, from the peculiarities of its political institutions, the same spirit has manifested itself differently. From this point of view the recent movement, which has been so general in the chief cities, to organize charity so that its funds shall be more economically applied in the promotion of self-help instead of almsgiving, is most significant. Association rather than charity is instinctively felt to be the natural outcome of political equality.

Shortly after the institution of this prize, Mr. Isaac Pereire, a well-known banker of Paris, instituted prizes amounting together to 100,000 francs, or $20,000, divided into four first prizes of 10,000 francs each, eight second prizes of 5000 francs each, and eight honorable mentions of 2500 francs each, for essays upon the extinction of pauperism, with the special consideration of these four methods of aiding in this result: first, the development and general diffusion of public instruction of all kinds; second, the development of labor by organization of credit extended to all classes of society; third, the organization of provision for old age, and the general institution of asylums of retreat for the working classes by means of contributions imposed upon the undertakers of various enterprises, and upon all employers, as a neces-ders possible. sary complement to wages, and forming the foundation for a system resembling life-insurance or annuities; and fourth, the reform of taxation with a view to its simplification, the economy of means for its collection, and the gradual successive reduction of tariffs, and similar methods of indirect taxation.

The competing essays were not to be examined until the beginning of 1881, and

The great city of the future should be, as the result of these indications, a perfect association based on the equal rights of all citizens, combining together voluntarily for their mutual benefit, where each has his function to perform, each contributes according to his ability, and each enjoys the advantages that association alone ren

Unconsciously the progress of modern invention is tending in this direction, and already there are numerous striking evidences of it. It requires a certain density of population to make the use of gas, or water brought from a distance, from a purer and better supply than the immediate vicinity affords, an economic undertaking. Already we have towns which do the same for their heat, steam being