TOWN IMPROVEMENT
I--OUR LOCAL CONDITIONS
1. _The Value of Public Sentiment and Cooeperation_--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 fetes, 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 cooeperate 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: cooeperation 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. Cooeperation 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 cooeperate 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.