Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/771

 A NEGLECTED PRINCIPLE IN CIVIC REFORM 755

greater extent in community channels. The heart must be profoundly reached in order to quicken demand and awaken jealousy ; and when these conditions are realized, we have the necessary ingredients for a pure, vigorous, and efficient municipal life.

To find institutions precisely adapted to this purpose may be a difficult matter. It is suggested that the municipality provide a public club — a place where the citizens may come and go at any time, where they may meet friends, have their lunch, or read the papers and magazines. Such an institution is not adapted to present conditions in America. Owing to our estab- lished exclusiveness, to our comfortable private homes and private clubs, the public club would not be patronized by all classes.

Again one thinks of systems of public parks and gardens — places where the people will revel amid fragrance and beauty provided by the municipality. We recall, however, that our park facilities are considerable now ; but they are little resorted to. Our home lives are not cramped and our private gardens suffice for breathing space and outdoor recreation, so we do not use the public gardens.

The public schools, as they are now constituted, would not be thought of in this connection, and they do not reach even the children in an attractive way, involving, as they do, an amount of painful discipline and restraint. In no sense do they get fast hold upon the hearts. Certain modifications of the school system, however, may reach deeper into the feelings of the people. The extension of the principle now introduced into the public schools of New York city, of offering free popular lectures to the public, would serve at once to make education more pervasive and to bring some people to a higher consciousness of civicism. The capacity of the project to develop the sense of civicism would, however, be very limited. No scientific or literary sub- ject can be made so attractive as to appeal to the masses. They must require an amount of mental effort, if they are to prove helpful, which the workingman after a day of hard toil is not willing to make.