Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/746

 730 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

churches, public schools, and a daily paper receiving a full telegraphic report of the world's news.

It is clear that what the American railway reformer under- stands by a city is not a city at all, but a town : i.e., in the admir- ably direct and concrete phraseology cited, it is a "jobbing center." To the list of the urban "conveniences" the chamber of commerce standard adds churches, schools, newspapers, and saloons. And the progress in civic ideals is signal ; for churches, schools, news- papers, and saloons are institutes of culture, which are seen to be the lower institutes of culture only when contrasted with cathe- dral, university, scientific society, and art museum as the higher ones.

VII. A visitor to any of the goods stations of the railways running into London from the North will see any day of the year, but more particularly in the autumn, vast numbers of coal-laden trucks awaiting delivery. It may be said of at least two of the northern railway systems that they exist for the purpose of carry- ing coal to London. The traveler who is carried, in about two hours, from St. Pancras to Nottingham in a luxurious restaurant car may imagine that the Midland Railway is designed and ad- ministered for his benefit and comfort. But that is an illusion of the unreflecting citizen. The truth is that the luxurious restaur- ant car is itself a by-product of the coal traffic. In the eyes of the representative railway engineer the cities of England are pri- marily just the terminal yards of the collieries, and the citizens themselves, according to his ethical scheme, rank in status and civic worth in proportion to the capacity of their respective factory furnaces. With literal and historical accuracy, the typical rail- way engineer sees the modern locomotive as just an elaborated pit-pump engine placed on wheels, and engaged all day in hauling coal-laden trollies from the pit mouth to the cities, and all night in hauling them back empty. To the railway engineer science is a means of transmuting the energy of coal into cities and citizens. It follows that his policy of city development or, as one should rather say, urban expansion leans to the erection and multipli- cation of lofty chimney stacks. The ideal citizens, pictured in