ROCEEDINGS OF THE PITTSBURGH

PROCI

CONFERENCE FOR GOOD CITY
GOVERNMENT AND THE FOURTEENTH
ANNUAL MEETING OF THE NATIONAL
MUNICIPAL LEAGUE

Held November 16, 17, 18, 19, 1908

At Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

CLINTON ROGERS WOODRUFF, EDITOR

NATIONAL MUNICIPAL LEAGUE

1908

26

PREFACE

Each succeeding conference of the National Municipal League represents a step forward; but the Pittsburgh meeting represented a somewhat longer one than usual. As at Providence, cooperation and coördination were the dominating notes. There were two joint sessions with the American Civic Association, which held its annual meeting at the same time as and in close juxtaposition to the League. There was also a Civic Exhibit which represented the coördination of the work of the Pittsburgh Survey; the Bureau of Municipal Research of New York through its Budget Exhibit; the Committee on Congestion of Population in New York; the New York City Club; the Pittsburgh Bureau of Health; the Associated Charities and the Department of Public Works of Pittsburgh; the Federation of Churches and Christian Organizations of New York; the Kingsley House Association and the Tuberculosis League of Pittsburgh, and the Civic Club of Allegheny County.

This Exhibit, which was very happily termed "a program of visualization on civic problems," demonstrated in a most striking manner what was being done to concentrate before the public the facts of the congestion of population, the reckless expenditure of municipal funds, the need for better housing conditions and what is being done to improve these conditions. The results of the highly important and significant Pittsburgh Survey, conducted by the Publication Committee of Charities and The Commons, with the cooperation of the Sage Foundation and the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, were for the first time made public, and their significance described by experts in a series of papers, which likewise dealt with their relations to the whole municipal problem, as well as to those administrative and political phases to which the National Municipal League has from the first given chief place in its consideration.