There are elemental changes coming in the life of Pittsburgh. The new
immigrants will within a short generation be rising into social and
political power, and their standards will in large part fix the moral
and even the economic prospects of the city. The special resources
of western Pennsylvania in raw material will necessarily grow less,
and its need of a more developed labor force become insistent. In
any case immigration cannot indefinitely recruit the labor ranks;
Pittsburgh must learn to pay as it goes in terms of men as of money.
The ninety per cent pure iron which Mr. Carnegie found in the waste
of his competitor and secured by a long contract, is the analogue of
what Pittsburgh must begin to discover in the native capacity of the
children of its crude toilers. The protective tariff which for the past
two decades has been like an evil divinity to intensify the haste to
be rich, and to confuse and baffle all local public issues, is on an
uncertain footing as never before. Already there are new American steel
centers which will dispute for the market supremacy. Every one of these
things will compel a moral reckoning, will constrain the city to the
saving and enhancing of individual and collective human power.
The historic sense newly awakened by the recent sesquicentennial
celebration of the origin of the town; the downright, ingenuous pride
of the people in its unexampled achievements; the inquiring attitude
of an ever increasing number of citizens; their inner assurance that
the city will match its prosperity with civic well-being; a beginning
on the part of the moral reserve force of the city, on the one hand,
and its practical organizing power, on the other, to seek a new common
outlet; these provide momentum, amid many counter-currents, for an
ample hope.
It is of special significance that, for the first time in this country,
Pittsburgh secures the advantage of several carefully devised and
closely related undertakings in the new science and art of social
upbuilding. The welcome extended to the staff of the Survey by
leading citizens at the beginning, and their willingness from first
to last to listen to its hard sayings, have given the Survey much
of its essential driving power. The joint meeting in Pittsburgh of
the National Municipal League and the American Civic Association,
resulting in a happy co-ordination of higher methods and higher aims
of city administration, especially in the session devoted to the
Survey,--distinctly helped strengthen and confirm the beginnings of
that new public consciousness which includes the greatness both of the
city's needs and of its opportunity. The civic exhibit which went with
this national gathering, displayed under perfect conditions in the
Carnegie Gallery, and setting forth as its chief feature the results
of the Survey in the graphic, instantaneous, inescapable language of
the workshop, established its lessons in the minds and imaginations of
many thousands of those who in every rank go to make up Pittsburgh's
industrial forces. And now the appointment by Mayor Guthrie of a
strong, representative civic commission, with Mr. English as chairman,
and such exceptionably capable and responsible men as are summoned in a
great public emergency, to lead committees on public hygiene, housing
problems, rapid transit, municipal efficiency, industrial casualties
and overstrain, education, police courts, charitable institutions,
neighborhood and district improvement agencies, and city planning,--can
hardly be construed otherwise than as the final precipitant of a new
epoch of masterful humanism in the evolution of America's distinctive
industrial metropolis.
[Illustration: A. J. KELLEY, JR.
President Commonwealth Real Estate Trust Company, Member Civic
Improvement Commission.]
[Illustration: _Drawn by Joseph Stella._