Show TO MAKE washington WASHINGTO N IDEAL ca CITY T cannot happen in a day nor a month nor a year but one national administration should allow time enough to mako make of washington a standard of 0 efficiency among cities a giant laboratory for municipal r research e a product of the distilled municipal wisdom gathered here there and the other place by lesser cities working independently to find solutions to civic problems so says john purroy mitchel president of the board of aldermen of new york who with I 1 henry le nry bruere director of the bureau ot of municipal research has just submitted to president wilson a plan whereby the national capital can bo be used as guide philosopher and friend to all other american cities there are certain fundamental processes which all cities must adopt irrespective of their several forms of government he continues and it is the best of these each after its kind that we would 6 W A n T raw 1 Z u I 1 rs r s r j 1 1 atz TA ma V cult question at the present stage of our work but I 1 should say that it will we are deeply interested in the laying out of cities much more depends on it than beauty valuable as that Is yes I 1 think that if our plan matures there will be no need tor for ugliness in our cities at least not that ugliness which com comes es from ignorance we need ideals of public service in municipal muni cipal governments and we need ideals 0 plain business efficiency when we get them we shall begin to have some idea of how much a cites government controls its whole social and political destiny said mr bruere As a matter of fact I 1 suppose I 1 do not need to dwell at any length on the value of good municipal administration I 1 am not apt to find anybody who would dispute the fact with me but I 1 think I 1 can allow myself to insist upon one factor in its value which I 1 do not find to be very widely known it if you say to the average man that the affairs 0 of the city should be conducted with as much business sagacity and economy as the affairs of private industries he will 7 i kv X lk 7 4 LZ A A N V 9 lel X 4 za wk like to see discovered standardized and codified in washington there Is one and only one best beat way for cleaning streets one best beat way for arranging school curricula one best beat way for conserving the public health these best ways once they are arc discovered and firmly established are just as efficacious in one form of city govern innet as they are in another there Is not at the present time one city in this country which is systematically nemati call y finding and using the best ways for conducting its various municipal departments we believe that the only reason for this scattered and disorganized state of things lies in the inability of our many cities to find a common meeting ground on which to thrash out tho the good they have discovered from the bad they have not known how to avoid As things are at present we offer the distressing and unnecessary spectacle of a whole people struggling with a universal problem in sporadic patches incoherent and unrelated and of a nation which has tailed failed to make common cause among its separate parts of a question which Is more than almost any other a national one we need operation cooperation co we need concentration wo we have failed to establish a central reservoir for the kno knowledge independently come by of the many cities solving their difficulties in their own way we have tailed failed to provide a central source to which these cities beset by problems they are not able abla to solve can come for help the arrangement involves a foolish waste here are countless cities all over the country privately setting to work to mako make themselves a credit to their day and generation which follow art an uncharted way to excellence in some one or two to particular branches of government one city learns well say how to run a fire dr apartment alth the minimum of waste and the maximum of efficiency clency another turns up a good working solution of checking the spread of dis still another learns how to lay pavements and another how to conduct its schools each of these cities has discovered for itself a tact fact of primary importance to all cities yet they cannot give it even to their neighbors because they have no official place of ec exchange hange the situation la Is as absurd as ag that which obtained in the dawn of economic interrelations when every man inan caught and cooked his bis own food prepared the skins for his bis own clothing and was in every phase of his activities sufficient unto himself now what we ne wa want nt to do Is precisely analogous to the secondary economic period when two men divided their labors and one caught arid and cooked for nourishment for two and the other performed a like service in clothing the pair each halved his effort and doubled his result it Is in fact remarkable to me that this much needed operation cooperation co among cities all striving toward the same end has not been undertaken long ago perhaps it is because heretofore the rank and file have not realized how much power for good does lie in city government and how bow possible it Is by a sane and rational use 0 this power to rid the world of countless burdens we have evolved it seems to me a very practicable and sensible plan you will find in the report which we have sent to president wilson that we ask first for a survey of the city looking to a precise knowledge of just what it needs and second tor for the presidents influence to be put upon the three commissioners of the district of columbia to have put into practice there all the valuable things discovered in all the american cities by this means we hope to produce a scheme of government for washington which will not only meet its own needs but will by its adoption elsewhere work a similar benefit the importance of the preliminary survey must not be overlooked we do not want vant to go down to washington and construct an ideal city out of some mans head we want to find by the most scrupulous and exhaustive search what it is that washington stands most moat in need of and we propose to supply her lacks by means of the information we have collected in other cities that to Is to say we do not want to do it ourselves mr boucre and myself have no ambition to get the job nor even the supervision of it we want merely that president wilson will find us reasonable enough and promising enough to set out along the lines we have suggested and that when the need arises for expert service in the execution of the plan he will be able to get gel the best beat brains of the country to assist him will the project we have outlined affect the physical aspect of cities that Is rather a biffl naturally say yes 0 of course but if you go further and suggest to him that a sound municipal regime can save him more than money and time that it can lift the whole level of his social community and that it can help to conserve averyt everything hing about him from his business interests to his health and his hia peace of mind ho he is apt to think either that you are trifling with him or that you lean toward paternalism and should be subdued city government should and can be made to mean much more than c lean clean streets or a capable fire department part ment it means the establishment and preservation of healthy relationships in every phase of the cites existence it has in its hands the health the intelligence and economic capacity of every citizen it can be so organized that it will take leadership in filling every ascer bained community want some ot of these wants will best be supplied with the operation cooperation co of private enterprise satisfaction ot of others necessarily will be deferred until methods to meet them ran can be evolved or additional sources obtained but it should become tho the cites business to have them supplied either by public effort or private effort under terms and conditions that will adequately protect the public interest granting these things then and they havo have been pretty well established as fact by the work of the bureau it would seem that even it if city government along constructive lines were dian difficult cult to get it would be worth making a fight for but we in this country are in the position ot of standing starving in the midst of plenty tor for lack of the enterprise to reach out and take what wo we need countless cities all over the country even hampered as they are by want of codified and accessible traditions and precedents have contributed out of their dearly bought experience improved and tested methods of conducting a city these methods are in practice now in these several cities many more would come in their turn it sufficient interest were aroused but even without waiting wo we have an embarrassment of riches fit to our hand and yet in all the united states there is not one governmental bureau of information not one available source of finding out these things under either state or federal government when a man goes into office and is idealistic enough and enthusiastic thusia enough to want to fill his bis office well and with benefit to him and it he must write to the bureau of municipal research here a private agency and ask what he may do we are hero here for that purpose it is true and wo we are working with might and main to prepare ourselves tor for hla his questions but the fact remains that he should bo be instructed under the authority of the government of which kiich ho he Is a part and not by an independent and unofficial bureau now ou will begin to see aee why we are so anxious that Pies president ident wilson will agree to our suggestions gest ions about washington there in a city already under federal control where local politics do riot not exist and where national politics aro are not subject to yearly or biyearly upheavals thoro thero is the finest kind of an opportunity for putting theory to the test of practice there is the whole machinery of federal gov to conduct a research for which WO we would have to pay millions of dollars and for which they would not have to pay a cent and to conduct it under men tra trained I 1 tied to 0 observe and to ordinate coordinate co significant arid and important facts |