Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 58.djvu/75

Rh springing up, and such societies and organizations as those to which I have referred foster and encourage this tendency.

We have only to examine the program of conventions such as that held under the auspices of these societies to be convinced of the earnestness and sincerity of purpose of their sponsors. Hard practical questions of municipal administration are to the front. The men come together to exchange views and ideas as to how to conduct certain lines of municipal business—not to listen to useless, though perhaps graceful, oratory and senseless bombast and adulation. Some may decry conventions; but certainly not such as serve so useful a purpose as those conducted under the associations already mentioned. They are a sign of the times—a most auspicious sign of the times. Do you read anywhere a century ago that the mayors or aldermen or constables of that time came together to confer about municipal affairs? We may not hear of them a century hence, because they may have performed their function and gone the way of other good and useful means to an end; but at this time they indicate the change taking place in our development; the change in emphasis.

I do not propose to indulge in prophecy. I am not so gifted with foresight as to be able to peer into the future and read its message. I can only express a personal opinion as to the possible result of present tendencies, based upon a study of present and past developments. I have already indicated what I believe will be the greatest change, that from extensive to intensive growth and development, and with this will come a great amelioration of many of the present-day evils.

The instinct for territorial expansion gratified, the various world powers and their possessions will tend more and more to assume a condition of permanent equilibrium. Great armaments and vast armies will become less and less necessary. Economic causes plus political necessity plus moral growth will gradually result in the substitution of mediation, arbitration and conciliation for warfare and bloodshed. Already the beginning of this substitution is at hand. We have the Argentine-Italian treaty providing for the submission of practically every difficulty to arbitration; similar treaties under consideration; and the Delagoa Bay arbitration has just been completed.

The accomplishment of these ends will result in a transfer of political energy and ability. Constructive statesmanship, liberated from considerations of expansion and colonization, will be free to devote itself to the great questions of internal improvement. Our municipalities will correspondingly benefit and will have at their command that genius and that ability which seem to be a chief characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race, but which hitherto have been absorbed by national and international activities.

Civil service reform, which lies at the very foundation of efficient