Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/763

 A NEGLECTED PRLXCIPLE IN CIVIC REFORM 747

people. If a bridge is to span, even a narrow stream, there is no suggestion that art be joined to utility, that it be made to minis- ter to and quicken the sense of the beautiful, while it is serving the simple convenience of the public. Such a blending of art and utility as is found in the Schlossbriicke in Berlin is never dreamed of in America. We have developed but scant ideas of architecture in our public buildings; the lines of the severest utility are seldom passed. Where there is a fringe of ornament to relieve the severe plainness, it comes through the force of imitation.

Into the sphere of pure aesthetics the programs of municipal radicalism do not intrude. /Esthetic culture has acquired some local expression in museums of art. It must be said that some of our cities, as Boston, New York, Cincinnati, Chicago, Wash- ington, and Milwaukee, are in possession of the germs of art collections of some promise. But these have come in response to non-political forces. They have largely developed under the patronage of individuals or of art societies, as the names desig- nating the institutions or special collections within them attest. They do not stand so much for the culture of the community as they bear witness to the public spirit and taste of a few wealthy individuals. In the line of socio-culture institutions — institutions in which the delight-compelling faculty is more dominant and more sure of its mark — such as the municipal play-house and the municipal opera, we never read a word of advocacy from any quarter. A suggestion of a municipal opera-house, in which the art of music would have a setting fitted to its high character — which it never has found as a money-making institution — in a building whose four walls would bring the people to a higher sense of the beautiful, would sound strange to the practical ear of the American burgher.

Such a suggestion never finds its way into the platform or program of a municipal reform movement. It would be a very impractical dreamer who would hope to excite a popular demand for such an institution.

Private philanthropy may have made a beginning in this direction, in the endowment of academies of music and in the