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PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS

WM. C. BARBER, MAYOR OF JOLIET

Gentlemen of the Third Annual Convention of the Illinois

Municipal League:

It is fair, I believe, to presume that all of the members of this audience are interested in a more or less direct way with the government of our municipalities.

Presupposing this to be a fact, may I here offer a personal observation, and that is that the question of government is not vital to the people. The local government of any group of people is only so good as the people themselves wish and demand. Almost every community has its periodic spasms which result in the repudiation of existing governmental practices and methods which are and should be condemned, and changed practices and methods are demanded and inaugurated. Temporary results may be forthcoming but the history of our cities shows that almost universally the movement is but temporary. This is partially explained by the fact that the virus of bad government has been so long in our system that the spasmodic upheavals only eliminate a very small portion of the poison from the body politic. You all know how bloodpoisoning works in the natural body and how hard it is, once the system is infected, to remove entirely from the human body all traces thereof.

Good government is simply a selling proposition. Those holding office must interest the stockholders in the concernthe citizens in their community-in the personal advantages to be derived from a good government. It means a consistent plan of publicity-of not only calling repeatedly to the attention of the people the details of good lines of administrative action, but the creation of a public sentiment so strong that it will find expression in a clear-cut demand of representative groups of the citizens for the line of action suggested. When the people are ready to surrender the customary life of ease

and inactivity in directing and following the work of their public servants, and get the vision of the possibilities of good government, and insist that their officials shall use all power entrusted to them to link up with the life and needs of the people they serve, then we may hope for permanent good government in our cities.

A very substantial portion of the time and attention of this convention may well be given to needed legislation for Illinois municipalities.

A strong movement is now on foot looking for a new constitution for our state to take the place of the one adopted in and in use since 1870. It is to be hoped that this movement will be successful and that this league will aid the same to the limit of its power. With the tax amendment to the constitution adopted at our late election, an insistent state-wide demand for adequate legislation for the regulation of the private banks located in our state, a crying need not only throughout Illinois but nation-wide for a standardization of the rules for the regulation of the traffic on our streets and highways, a constantly increasing percentage of the people in the different cities of our state demanding a place in our state constitution for an adequate municipal home rule amendment, an ever-widening realization that Illinois legislation should provide for the zone system-giving a plan for the segregation of industrial, commercial and residential districts in our cities, to which plan the cities of the old world have long been committed and to which American cities are now turning as the solution of the chaotic conditions of the past and present, a notation of the fact that our city planners should be given due legal recognition, that city planning boards may be created and empowered, that the system of preferential balloting may be legally provided for so that any of our municipalities may have the privilege of electing to use this system, and the ever-present financial problem of our cities with its demand for information on how we may increase our municipal revenues; these and many more phases of needed legislation suggest themselves readily to our minds.

The question is frequently asked: Is our state constitution sufficiently elastic to permit of such special authority as may be required to divide our cities into districts of various types and prescribe suitable regulations and provisions for building therein? A new constitution offers the opportunity to make affirmative answer. New York City has practicalized the plan and I am advised that for the city of Chicago one of the speakers on the program of this convention, Alderman Charles E. Merriam, has prepared the draft of a bill to be passed by Chicago's city council and then submitted to the next session of our legislature, which, if enacted, will give to Illinois cities such an amendment of the Cities and Villages Act as will authorize the cities of this state to create industrial, residential and other zones and make regulations to govern them.

I am of the opinion that this league can profitably give consideration to such a bill and if the bill is as comprehensive as that in force in New York we will do well to aid in its passage.

What we may accomplish, gentlemen, rests solely with ourselves. Conditions in Illinois are very favorable to obtaining very substantial results from well-directed effort and I am strongly of the opinion that our league members, individually and collectively, have the ability, the energy and the desire to go out and get the laws needed to make Illinois cities the best to be found anywhere in America.

AGENCIES

J. G. STEVENS, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

In a country where the function of government is so tempered and modified by our concept of individual rights there is always present the problem of cooperation between public and private agencies or organizations which are trying to promote community interests. To secure any effective progressive results there must be a harmonious and definite relationship between these two forms of organized activity. There is a peculiar need of an analysis of this relationship at the present time because of the enlarging scope of governmental activity and the taking over of certain social activities which were at one time rather narrowly limited to the field of private enterprise. In the social and educational field, the introduction of new courses into the school curriculum, the building of public playgrounds and gymnasiums, the comparatively new work of public school nurses, and the extending use of the school building as a community center indicate a comparatively new line of activity for public agencies. Some of these new lines of activity were once the field for organized private effort. We need to know more definitely the relationship between public and private agencies when conditions are changing and new ideas of social responsibility are developing. It is the purpose of this paper to discuss briefly some of the elementary guiding relationships between public and private agencies of various kinds, particularly in the field of social betterment, where many new adjustments are taking place. Two main lines of discussion will be followed: first, the co-ordination growing out of the use of the material equipment of public agencies by private organizations; and second, the co-ordination resulting from the development of leadership in new enterprises by private organizations, and the by-products of this leadership in the form of new ideas which can be used as the basis of social policies and utilized

by public agencies after these ideas have passed beyond the stage of experimentation or have become established and generally recognized scientific facts.

In the first place, there can be an effective co-ordination of public and private agencies through the use of the material equipment which the city already owns by private organizations. Every city has considerable permanent material equipment in the way of school-houses, parks, playgrounds, gymnasiums, and libraries. This material equipment of a somewhat permanent character could be utilized by private organizations of a responsible nature, whose purposes were along the lines of educational and social betterment. Perhaps the most important single factor in this permanent city equipment available for social use by private organizations is the public school building. The utilization of the public school buildings would necessitate the sympathetic and efficient co-ordination of the board of education with the private agencies which desired the use of the school building. In the State of Illinois there is a statute which grants the use of the school buildings to private organizations for such meetings as the school directors may deem proper. This gives the school directors a wide range of flexibility in the matter of granting this use, and makes possible a very much more extended use of the public school building.

There are almost limitless possibilities of development in this direction. The school building could be used as a center of discussion of public problems by civic clubs which are trying to develop and direct wholesome public opinion in behalf of good citizenship. The growing use of the school buildings by literary and debating societies leads logically to the use of the school building as a distinctly community center, where all the people can meet to discuss vital public problems, a function resembling the old New England town meeting whose vitalizing influence reached all the community. The school extension committee of the National Municipal League says, "In the public school 'plant' there is a whole hemisphere of value unrealized, undiscovered by those who think of it simply as a

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