Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/102

 90  that is possible towards energizing and giving effect to the public conscience of Chicago. It is not expected to accomplish all this in one day, but all great movements must have a beginning, and consultation with leading citizens of all classes who desire to see Chicago the best governed, the healthiest, and the cleanest city in this country, leads us to believe that now is the time to begin; and especially do we believe it pertinent that such a movement should begin while our people are yet filled with the new ideas, new ambitions and inspirations drawn from the great Exposition and its valuable adjunct, the World's Congress.

If the committee thus summoned had been called together in an ordinary time, it would speedily have turned into a Pickwick club, after the precedent of many similar gatherings. In this instance, however, the demand for an organ of civic consciousness was not manufactured artificially. It was not created by Mr. Stead, nor by his meeting. It had been gathering force unnoticed while Mr. Stead and others were theorizing. For some time previous to the call of the committee accounts had been appearing in the daily papers of the unusual number of lodgers at the station houses; and finally it became known that even the corridors and stairways of our city hall had become headquarters at night for upwards of 1500 vagrants. This fact proved to be the circumstance which gave to the citizens' committee a vocation, and resulted in permanent organization. When the committee met, a few days later, it proved to be a company which was heterogenous, as a committee would necessarily be if it fairly represented all the interests of so large a town. Yet the diversities of the company were less prominent than the generous and patriotic motives which they evidently held in common, without a clearly defined body of common knowledge about civic conditions, and consequently without definite common purposes. At another time such an aggregation would probably have dissolved in a few weeks, from absence of a principle of coherence. But a piece of work was .at hand, importunate, imperative, the responsibility for which could not be fixed upon any one in particular, which however appealed to the conscience of all humane citizens alike. The sociologists' theory of the organic structure