Civics: as Applied Sociology/Part 2/R—A Practical Proposal—A Civic Exhibition

How shall we more fully correlate our theoretic civics, i.e., our observations of cities interpreted as above, with our moral ideas and our practical policy—i.e., our Applied Civics. Our ideals have to be selected, our ideas defined, our plans matured; and the whole of these applied; that is realised, in polity, in culture, and in art. But if this be indeed the due correlation of civic survey and civic service, how may we now best promote the diffusion and the advancement of both? At this stage therefore, I venture to submit to the Society a practical proposal for its consideration and discussion; and if approved, I would fain hope for its recommendation to towns and cities, to organisations and to the public likely to be interested.

Here then is my proposal. Is not the time ripe for bringing together the movements of Civics and Eugenics, now here and indeed everywhere plainly nascent, and of setting these before the public of this country in some such large and concrete ways, as indeed, in the latter subject at least, have been so strongly desiderated by Mr. Galton? As regards Civics, such have been afforded to America during the summer of 1904 by the Municipal Section of the St. Louis Exhibition; in Dresden also, at the recent Towns Exhibition; and by kindred Exhibitions and Congresses in Paris and elsewhere.

All these have taken form since the Paris Exposition of 1900, with its important section of social economy and its many relevant special congresses. Among these may be specially mentioned here as of popular interest, and civic stimulus, the Congres de L'Art Public; the more since this also held an important Exhibition, to which many Continental cities sent instructive exhibits.

Other exhibitions might be mentioned; so that the fact appears that in well-nigh every important and progressive country, save our own, the great questions of civics have already been fully opened, and vividly brought before their public, by these great contemporary museums with their associated congresses.

With our present Chairman, the Rt. Hon. Charles Booth, with Canon Barnett, Mr. Horsfall, and so many other eminent civic workers among us; with our committee and its most organising of secretaries, might not a real impulse be given in this way by this Society towards civic education and action?

Let me furthermore recall the two facts; first, that in every important exhibition which has been held in this country or abroad, no exhibits have been more instructive and more popular than have been (1) the picturesque reconstructions of ancient cities, and the presentment of their city life, and (2) the corresponding surveys of the present conditions of town life, and of the resources and means of bettering them.

Even as a show then, I venture to submit that such a "Towneries" might readily be arranged to excel in interest, and surpass in usefulness, the excellent "Fisheries," "Healtheries", and other successful exhibitions in the record and recent memory of London. The advantages of such an exhibition are indeed too numerous for even an outline here; but they may be easily thought out more and more fully. Indeed, I purposely abstain for the present from more concrete suggestion; for the discussion of its elements, methods, plans, and scale will be found to raise the whole range of civic questions, and to set these in freshening lights.

At this time of social transition, when we all more or less feel the melting away of old divisions and parties, of old barriers of sects and schools, and the emergence of new possibilities, the continual appearance of new groupings of thought and action, such a Civic Exhibition would surely be specially valuable. In the interest, then, of the incipient renascence of civic progress, I plead for a Civic Exhibition.[14]

Of such an exhibition, the very catalogue would be in principle that Encyclopædia Civica, into which, in the previous instalment of this paper (vol. I, p. 118) I have sought to group the literature of civics. We should thus pass before us, in artistic expression, and therefore in universal appeal, the historic drama of the great civic past, the mingled present, the phantasmagoria and the tragi comedy of both of these. We should then know more of the ideals potential for the future, and, it may be, help onward some of the Eutopias which are already struggling towards birth.