Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/387

Rh Those men and women who are engaged in municipal and social reform have the keenest realization of the terrible price to be paid by this war. And when it is all over and the awful price has been paid, they are going to demand that social reform instead of militarism shall have the right of way.

The significance of the present situation is that social and civic workers have redoubled their efforts, in the face of the natural depression incident to the war, and have shown no slightest evidence of intention to abandon any advantage secured, or position occupied. In addition they are looking further ahead than usual. There is an increasing conviction that social and civic problems of great magnitude will follow in the footsteps of the war. The commissioner general of immigration holds the opinion that the natural thing to expect after peace is declared again is a quickened flow of immigrants to the United States. If the war is serious and causes general business depression in the countries which it affects, increased numbers of the working classes will have to seek opportunities in this country.

The normal flow of immigrants to this country, according to The Survey, has been about 90,000 a month. Those who have already planned to come, but have been held back by the war, the commissioner general expects to sail as soon as they can get accommodations after peace is declared. Moreover, many of the foreign men who may leave this country to take part in the war, if they can obtain passage, he expects to return later to resume their work here. Adding together those whose trips have been postponed, those who have left the United States temporarily, and the normal yearly number would send immigration records up to a new high mark. This is but one of many situations our cities will have to face—for all our civic and social difficulties find their greatest manifestation in the cities; and the students and workers foreseeing this are preparing for it.

One effect of the war will be to compel Americans more largely than heretofore to solve their own problems. We have so freely availed ourselves of European experience that we have in some directions lost our initiative. European precedent has been dominating. Now we are thrown back on our own resources, and this in the long run will be a great gain, for we can not hope invariably to solve American problems solely by European methods. In fact, progress has sometimes been held back because of our underlying antipathy to the foreign label. We have studied other situations sufficiently long and carefully, to know the best they have to offer in the way of suggestion. Now we shall have an opportunity of showing what we can do when compelled to depend upon our own resources.

To sum up: The European war seems to have had far less influence upon our municipal life than was at first anticipated. It has not diverted, except temporarily, public interest in local affairs. Although the war has occupied an undue amount of space in the newspapers and