An Art Commission is appointed when a city decides to become beautiful, and this draws up a far-reaching plan. Then all buildings put up must conform to this, and nothing can be done at haphazard. Slums must disappear, and model tenements take their place; streets must be cut through congested districts to relieve them; business blocks must not be over-high; inartistic public buildings and monuments must give way to others; parks must be opened, trees planted along the streets, and boulevards laid out. See what Chicago and Minneapolis have accomplished in making themselves over.
Discuss foreign cities which are symmetrical, notably Paris and Berlin; speak of our own capital, Washington, D. C.; show pictures of well-lighted streets, of a good skyline; of superior paving. Show pictures also of objectionable street advertising; electric signs; alternate high and low buildings, ornate court-houses; ugly statues.
From the different magazines get illustrations of the "Garden Cities of England," and other beautiful towns. Notice what can be done with different building materials, and with vines and flower boxes on a city residence street.
Discuss the sky scraper; is it necessary? What of apartment houses? of elevated railroads? of disfiguring gas works, chimneys, manufactories? What can women's clubs do toward making the home city beautiful?
See C. M. Robinson's The Improvement of Towns and Cities.
VIII—MODERN BENEVOLENCE
More money is given away to-day than ever before in the history of the world. It is called "the era of magnificent giving." Two hundred million dollars is spent in benevolence yearly in the United States alone, and it is estimated that in ten or fifteen years from two to four billions will be given annually. Old methods are passing away, and new ones taking their place. The subject of modern giving is one of immense importance.
Clubs should introduce the study with a résumé of benevolences in the past; gifts to hospitals, asylums, colleges, libraries, art galleries, museums, missions and other institutions; then take up more recent giving to such things as model tenements, homes for tubercular, settlements, institutional churches, homes for working women, the Mills hotels, trade and technical schools, homes for convalescents, seaside homes for children, pensions for professors; modern schools for the blind, the crippled, the orphan, teaching self support. Notice that the trend of giving to-day is toward prevention of suffering as well as its cure.
Great gifts to-day are largely in favor of science. Note the great medical research laboratories in New York, and what they already accomplished; also the endowment for individuals on special lines in which they show marked ability. Study what is being done by legislatures in establishing laws about bequests, their trusteeship, and time limitations, and the new theory that no gift should be bestowed without the possibility of change, since in twenty years conditions alter. What of making and breaking wills? of funds left for institutions which may not be always needed? of protection to society through state boards, etc.?
Read the article on Giving in The Survey, December 28, 1912, which discusses the various phases of modern giving.