Town Improvement
I—OUR LOCAL CONDITIONS
1. The Value of Public Sentiment and Coöperation—Rise in values as a town improves; what an enthusiast can accomplish.
2. Our Water-Supply—Detailed description: water-system, wells, cisterns, etc.; quality of the supply; limitations, dangers, and possibility of improvement.
3. Our Sanitation—Detailed description: cesspools; garbage; disposal of sewage.
4. Our Yards, Our Streets, Our Parks, Our Public Buildings—Tree-planting; fences; city fountains.
Books to Consult—Patrick Geddes: City Development. C. M. Robinson: The Improvement of Towns and Cities. W. P. Mason: Water Supply (from the Sanitary Standpoint). Shade Trees: Their Care and Preservation (N. Y. State Cornell Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 256).
The town water-supply has immense interest; study its relation to the disposal of sewage; the ice-supply, the use of filters, bottled water, and the like. Cleaning up and beautifying the back yards of a town, planting vines, removing unsightly buildings, making gardens and having window-boxes may be expanded into more than one paper. The village common, the drinking-fountains, the band-stand, the use of refuse-boxes in public places, may be discussed.
II—THE WORKING-PEOPLE'S HOMES
1. Existing Conditions—The various subjects of air, light, water-supply, sanitation and adequate fire-escapes may be brought up for careful consideration.
2. The Model Tenement—Plans, profit to the owner of tenement property, management, rules for tenants (cleanliness, promptness of payment), beautification of tenements (window-boxes, roof-gardens), playgrounds.
3. Model Cottage Homes—Possibility of acquiring ownership (building-and-loan associations, thrift clubs). Improving laboring-men's homes in villages. Yards for children.
4. The Garden Cities of England—Compare the Sage Foundation proposals in America. Model towns (Pullman in this country, Essen in Germany, etc.).
Books to Consult—Gould: Housing of the Working People (U. S. Labor Dept.). Manning: Villages for Working Men and Working-Men's Homes. R. W. DeForest and others: The Tenement-House Problem. F. C. Moore: How To Build a Home.
Discuss the subject of the model towns. How satisfactory do the tenants find the system of leases and regulations? Show pictures of the Garden Cities of England and the model tenements of Berlin. Take up the merits of building-and-loan associations and buying homes on the instalment plan. Shall we employ an architect for the small home, or are published plans practical?
III—FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS
1. The Industrial Age—The introduction of labor-saving machinery in England in the eighteenth century. Enormous development in the present day. General effect on the laboring class.
2. The Factory System and Human Life—Overcrowding, and lack of air and light. Unprotected machinery. Danger of fire. Inadequate fire-escapes and exits. Bad sanitation. The sweat-shop. Monotony of tasks and overlong hours of work. The labor of women. Child labor.
3. Model Conditions in Factory Life—The building: air, light, sanitation, space, protection. The eight-hour day: a living wage. Insurance against accident, old age, and death. The lunch-room. The factory doctor.
4. Local Ideals—Conferences with employees. The cultivation of social sentiment in the employing class. Beautifying the factory grounds. Associations among employees: recreation, social, mutual benefit. Holidays and Sundays. The children in factory homes.
Books to Consult—Clarke: Effects of the Factory System. Spahr: America's Working People. Wright: The Factory System as an Element in Social Life.
At this meeting there should be a presentation of the fine conditions existing in certain great manufactories and publishing-plants where the employers and the employed are working for the same high ends; pictures may be shown of gardens, recreation-grounds, lunch-rooms and the like; abundant material may be found in various magazine articles. The question of old-age pensions should be discussed. A practical outcome of this meeting may be the appointing of a permanent committee to better local conditions.
IV—PUBLIC SCHOOLS
1. The Place of the Public School in American Life—Beginning of the public school in colonial days. Relation of the school to citizenship. National sentiment. The flag and the school. The public school and the foreign child.
2. The Modern Curriculum—Multiplication of subjects (manual training, cooking, sewing, music, etc.). A discussion of the merits of the system: thoroughness versus variety.
3. The Ideal Public School—The model director. Women on school boards. The perfect school-house; light, air, sanitation, room. Beautifying the school within and without; pictures, casts, flowers, etc. The school doctor; contagious diseases, oversight of eyes, ears, throat, and teeth. Social service of the school: night-schools, lectures, recreations.
4. Parent and Teacher—Mutual acquaintance. Conferences. Literary clubs. Is the public exhibition desirable?
5. School Sentiment—Interscholastic athletics and debates. The alumni association. The commencement exercises and annual banquet. The return of distinguished graduates.
Books to Consult—Dewey: The School and Society. Butler: The Meaning of Education. The International Educational Series. Reports of the United States Commissioner of Education.
A discussion may be planned on home work: How much shall be expected and arranged for by the parent? When is it best done? Emphasize the importance of having the parent closely in touch with the child's work, familiar with his reports, and constantly in conference with the teacher. Notice the importance of the work of the truant officer. If there is no gymnasium provided by the school, can the parents combine and make one? In a large city, can there be a roof-garden for recreation?
V—AMUSEMENTS OF THE TOWN
1. Necessity of Recreation—Change in our point of view: the old ideas contrasted with the new. Read from the chapter on Recreation in Adeney's A Century's Progress in Religious Life and Thought. Recreation and morals. Substitutes for the social life of the corner grocery and the saloon.
2. Planning Recreations—Organizing a local committee. The grange, the lyceum, the town band or orchestra, motion pictures.
Discuss the disadvantage of unregulated amusements, and their improvement through intelligent control.
3. The Regular Program—Illustrated lectures, concerts, village-improvement meetings, athletic meets for men, the women's club.
4. Occasional Amusements—Loan exhibitions of pictures, antiques, etc., organ recitals, flower fêtes, amateur theatricals, excursions, neighborhood dances.
5. Ideals in Recreation—The ideal of democratic sociability. The ideal of culture. The ideal of healthful interest for young people. The ideal of clean amusement.
Books to Consult—Luther H. Gulick: Popular Recreation and Public Morality (Sage Foundation). Hartt: The People at Play. W. S. Jevons: Amusements of the People.
This is one of the most important programs of the year, and deserves special preparation and study.
The modern tendency is to plan everywhere for clean, wholesome amusements for old and young, and the woman's club can coöperate with the mayor, school trustees, and intelligent men and women, to carry out their plans.
Discuss especially what has been done to provide a substitute for the attractions of the saloon; the dangers and the value of the moving-picture show, and how far there may be a public sentiment created for the regulation of these and other amusements.
VI—THE TOWN CHILDREN
1. Town versus Country for Children—Discussion of the advantages and the disadvantages of each. How to make the most of town life for children.
2. Outdoor Occupations—Gardens for children. Games. Athletics. Riding and walking parties, picnics, etc. Study of birds. Nature classes (butterflies, etc.).
3. Indoor Occupations—Classes in carpentry, weaving, and sewing. Musical classes, the children's chorus, the children's orchestra. Pantomimes, plays, and dances.
4. Public Provision for Children—Museums for children. Public playgrounds. The children's room in the public library. Exhibitions of pictures for children. Illustrated lectures in the public school.
Books to Consult—G. Stanley Hall: Educational Problems. L. H. Gulick: Children of the Century. Mangold: Child Problems. Jekyll: Children and Gardens.
Women's clubs should definitely interest themselves in the children of the city or country, and do for them what is not done by the public. The value of playgrounds and gardens in cities, and of children's classes in sloyd or manual training in the country, cannot be over-estimated. Musical training is also valuable, not merely for its esthetic results; and children's choruses, with cantatas and oratorios, may be most interesting. Motion dances and national dances are easily taught, the latter especially in towns and cities where different nationalities are represented in the population.
VII—PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS
1. Civic—The court-house: the proper architecture—simplicity and dignity. Improving an old structure. The grounds. Decorations. The jail: what are the present local conditions? Is improvement possible? Modern ideas of imprisonment and the housing of prisoners.
2. Useful—The station: coöperation between the railway company and the citizens. Cleanliness, paint, sanitation, lawns, and flower-gardens. The water-works: decorative possibilities in the plant. Fountains and flower-beds.
3. Literary—The public library: the value of a lecture-hall. The local lyceum. Loan exhibitions. Reading-rooms: importance in the absence of a library. Making the place attractive.
4. Monumental—Improvement in public taste. Necessity of a committee to pass judgment on proposed memorials. Superfluous monuments. Statuary and tablets. The soldier's monument. The local historical society. The cemetery: the ideal location, ownership, and control. Trust funds for perpetual care. Beauty and ugliness in stones. Trees, lakes, flowers.
Books to Consult—Mawson: Civic Art. Bentley and Taylor: Practical Guide in the Preparation of Town Planning Schemes. Ravenscroft: Town Gardening. Penstone: Town Study.
Much can be done by a club toward improving the condition of the local cemetery; perhaps even by moving it from a place too near the heart of town to a more attractive and proper site, planting trees and flowering shrubs, arranging to have grass and flowers cared for, straightening old monuments, and the like. A paper might deal with the question: How can women carry out their ideas without antagonizing the town council?
VIII—THE TOWN CHURCH
1. The Church Structure—A beautiful exterior: simplicity, good taste in material, outline and color. A beautiful interior: quiet decoration; window glass, good and bad; low-toned carpet and cushions.
2. Sunday Services—Dignity and reverence in their conduct. Importance of music. How shall good music be secured in a small neighborhood? The chorus choir. Vesper services.
3. The Sunday-School—Modern methods. The graded school. Prizes and exhibitions. Young people's work; relating this to the rest of the church-work.
4. Week-Day Appointments—Men's meetings: how to get the men to come. Civic value of men's church clubs. Women's meetings: the church aid society, the missionary society. Young women's guilds. Clubs for girls and for boys. The Boy Scouts, etc.
5. The Minister's Home—Should the social life of the church center in the minister's home? Relation of the minister's wife to her husband's work. Church ownership of the minister's house; its care and improvement.
Books to Consult—C. A. Wight: Some Old Time Meeting Houses of the Connecticut Valley. K. L. Butterfield: The Country Church and the Rural Problem. W. M. Ede: Attitude of the Church to Some of the Social Problems of Town Life. Ramsay and Beel: Thousand and One Churches. E. C. Foster: The Boy and the Church.
The question of the use of the stereopticon and moving pictures in connection with the church should be taken up. Shall the Sunday-evening services be varied occasionally by a talk on the Holy Land, or famous paintings of Christ, or the Pilgrim's Progress, or the Passion Play at Oberammergau? The distribution of the church flowers after services may be an outcome of this meeting, and a club committee may be appointed to see that they are taken to the sick.
IX—CHARITIES
1. Existing Local Charities—Their history, character, and condition. The poorhouse, free beds in hospitals, distributing agencies. Discussion: What can we do to improve local conditions?
2. Best Methods of Helping the Needy—Peril of indiscriminate giving. Self-respect in the poor. Place of the friendly visitor.
3. New Work—The day nursery, the kitchen garden, the flower-and-fruit committee, home for the aged, free employment bureau, work centers: the laundry and the wood-yard.
4. Organized Charity—Discuss the subject of waste through duplication. Gathering and distributing information. Coöperation between church and other societies.
Books to Consult—E. T. Devine: The Practice of Charity. E. T. Devine: Misery and Its Causes. W. H. Allen: Efficient Democracy.
In cities, one of the most valuable helps in charitable organizations is the constant meeting of the workers at informal gatherings, when the larger aspects of the subject are discussed and the various parts of the work are harmonized. The necessity that all should work sympathetically together should be emphasized in a brief talk after this program.
X—LOCAL AMBITIONS
1. The Town Beautiful—Description of what is being done in cities, and suggestions thus derived: Washington, Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis. L'Enfant's plans for Washington, and their history. What Baron Haussmann did for Paris.
2. The Plan of the Town—Is the location of the best? Can the situation be changed in any way for the better? Plan an ideal town on the local site. Value of an outlook for the future.
3. Landmarks—Give a brief history of the town; and mention the chief incidents in it, and the names of the principal persons who shared in them. Suggestions as to public memorials, tablets, and monuments.
4. Specific Improvements—Removal of unsightly objects and buildings. Regulation of saloons. Improvement of unsanitary houses. Drainage of swamps and pools in the neighborhood. The surroundings of the railway station.
5. Organization—What committees are needed to help improve the town? How can such committees coöperate with similar men's committees and with the public authorities? How can public sentiment be aroused? Value of an exhibition of plans for ideal towns.
Books to Consult—M. M. Penstone: Town Study. A. D. Webster: Town Planting. H. I. Triggs: Town Planting. Raymond Unwin: Town Planting in Practice.
This program should be of practical value to the local town, summing up the meetings that have preceded this, and presenting certain definite propositions for civic improvements. It might be well to invite some of the officials of the town to be present and offer suggestions. A committee should be appointed at the close to take up the specific plans adopted.