WHAT ONE SMALL TOWN IS DOING
Zona Gale in a pamphlet, Civic Improvement in the Little Towns, tells how first the women and then the men and women of one small community inaugurated an unusually successful campaign in the field of public social service. This town is described as one of 6,000 inhabitants, probably Portage, Wis., where Miss Gale lives.
In her opinion the civic problem of the small town is threefold: first to get into touch with the current of new understanding that the conservation of physical and moral life is largely economic; second, to find practical ways of applying this understanding to the present and future of the town; and third, to do all this with exceedingly little money.
The Women’s Club called a meeting at the City Hall of all women interested in town development. At this meeting the constitution of the Wichita, Kan., Improvement Association was adopted and work mapped out for five committees: sanitary, educational, art, children’s auxiliary, and streets and alleys.
Among the concrete results obtained through the work of these committees were the inauguration of a system of garbage disposal; the grading and planting of a small park at the end of a bridge at the turn in a river; the establishment of a rest room in the town for farmers’ wives from the surrounding country, although owing to a misunderstanding permission to use a small committee room in the City Hall was revoked by the Town Council; the establishment of a charity co-ordination committee; a town lecture course; public bath houses; a sane Fourth, and medical and dental inspection of school children.
PERSONALS
The recent action of Congress and President Wilson, under the specific encouragement of both railroad managers and employes, in placing industrial mediation and arbitration on a wider and stronger basis, is a long step toward the realization of a definite ideal which has been cradled in the mind of Charles P. Neill, the former commissioner of labor.
