municipal honesty almost impossible by our laws; by inviting civil war and by exiling the talent of the city from interest or participation in the life of the community. One has only to read the accounts of the struggles in San Francisco, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Chicago, where privilege has been challenged by the people, to find an explanation of the corruption of our cities.

The indifference and indolence of the voter are also explained by the economic relation of the city. In America there is no economic nexus between the voter and the city as there is in England and Germany. With us municipal taxes are levied on property. More than two-thirds of our city dwellers are tenants. They are not conscious of the taxes they pay. In the English city taxes are paid by the tenant directly. They are not levied on the owner. The English citizen votes as a rate payer. He thinks as a rate payer. When he goes to the polls he goes with strong economical interest. The same is true in Germany. One-half the municipal revenues in that country come from the income tax. They are felt directly by the voter. This arouses his interest. It keeps it alive. It promotes watchfulness and interest over the council.

A still more potent influence for interest in the European city is the extent of the city's activities. The city is the biggest corporation in the community. It serves the citizen in countless ways. Municipally owned street railways touch the voter daily. His interest is quickened by his common ownership of many things. In the British cities people talk tramways, gas, water, and electriclighting undertakings, they talk rates and taxes to the exclusion of everything else. It is a common bond of conversation. The same is true in the German city. The utility corporations, slaughter houses, markets, baths, savings-banks, pawnshops, restaurants, orchestras, operas, theaters, all owned by the city and operated by the city for the people, awaken an interest on the part of the people that is reflected in their attitude toward the city.

The American city has none of these stimuli to interest. Our cities only serve the people in routine, non-industrial ways. Our municipal services are negative rather than positive. There is little to awaken the enthusiasm, the affection of the voter. This, I

think, rather than any ethical, personal, or partisan reason, explains the failure of our people in things municipal. We lack a city sense because we have little to create a city sense. There is nothing to awaken love, affection, interest. The attitude of people to the state is a reciprocal state of mind born of the attitude of the state to the citizen. The city has neglected the people and the people in turn have neglected the city.

And we cannot have a real city until we reverse our point of view. That will only come when the city enjoys a kind of sovereignty, a sense of its dignity, a local pride and power like that of the free cities of the world. When we are endowed with that kind of freedom and when we exercise that power for the building of cities, for their conscious intelligent planning, for the promotion of beauty, of comfort, of convenience, when we begin to think in terms of the whole city, as we did a few years ago about the World's Fair at Chicago, then the personal, ethical, and political conditions that we treat as causes will disappear. For then the interest of the whole community will be on the side of the city. There will be none of that cleavage of classes that we have today. Then the economic viewpoint of community ownership and city service will create a new citizenship before which the personal derelictions will disappear. For then we will have corrected the cause of our disease rather than the results, causes we have vainly tried to cure by a treatment of symptoms.

THE URBAN HABIT OF MIND

HOWARD B. WOOLSTON

College of the City of New York

Man begins his career as a child of Nature: he completes it as a creature of Art. When Aristotle said, "Man is by nature a political animal," he meant that essential human qualities are developed in civil society. Izoulet makes the same point in stating that the mind is the child of the city. Modern psychologists agree that social environment is a basic factor in the development of personality. If this be so, then the complex life of our great cities must profoundly affect the mentality of their inhabitants and result in reactions different from those characteristic of a rural population. How such modification comes about, it is the purpose of this paper to consider.

Urban life is marked by its heightened stimulation. When many people are brought close together contacts are multiplied and reactions are greatly increased. Men are assailed at every sense by the presence of their neighbors. The sound of footsteps and hoof-beats, the rattle of wagons and rush of cars, the clang of bells and hoot of whistles, the stroke of hammers and whir of machinery, cries of children and peddlers, strains of music, shouts and laughter swell into a dull roar as the city wakes to its day's work. One who watches the torrent of people pouring through the boulevards of Paris, or who struggles for a foothold in the rush at Brooklyn Bridge, becomes aware of innumerable prods at his attention. The crowd sets a pace. The individual must hurry with it or be pushed aside.

Such excitement deeply stirs the nervous system. Architects tell us that tall buildings are set vibrating by the jar of street 'La cité moderne, 149.

1910.

'See W. H. Burnham, "The Group as a Stimulus to Mental Activity," Science, May 20,

traffic, and this continued oscillation ultimately affects the structure. If stone and steel are thus moved, we should expect that the delicate organism of human beings might soon show signs of urban stress and strain. Such is the case. The natural result of city life is increased nervousness. The restless current in which men are immersed produces individuals who are alert, active, quick to seek new satisfactions. The recreation of city dwellers is perhaps as true an index of their characteristic reactions as can be found. The most popular amusement of large towns today is furnished by saloons, dance halls, variety theaters, and moving picture shows. All these have a tendency to stimulate a jaded attention by a succession of brief, powerful shocks that arouse the tired organism to renewed activity. Coney Island, with its "chutes" and "bumps," "loops of death" and "circular swings," "ticklers," peep shows, bars, and assorted gastronomic marvels, is a favorite summer resort for thousands of young New Yorkers. There is "something doing every minute," and the hard-worked. clerk returns from half a day of such hilarity, exhausted, but exultant over a score of new sensations experienced.

The tendency of this spasmodic activity is either to consume the bodily energy or to blunt the sensibilities. Both results are abundantly exemplified among city people. On the one hand appears the high-strung society woman, who repairs to a sanitarium to nurse hysteria after an unusually gay season; the man who steadies his nerve with a cocktail before business and smokes furiously at night over his accounts; the broken wretch who flings himself into the river or gibbers in the psychopathic ward. For these the pace has been too hot. Their nerves are burning out. On the other hand we find business men who could not tell what manner of person sat beside them on the car this morning or across the lunch table yesterday; reporters absorbed in writing amid the uproar of a newspaper office; brokers cool and collected in the riot of the stock exchange. Habit has shunted the disturbing stimuli out of the field of their attention, leaving it free for items of special interest. This process of nervous selection is of fundamental importance in establishing an urban habit of mind.

In cities men are obliged to live in close touch with each other,

not only physically but also intellectually. Constant mingling on the crowded streets, in shops and factories, in parks and theaters; frequent public gatherings, religious and political; repeated meetings at unions, clubs, and social functions, all tend to heighten mental stimulation. The different quarters of the community are joined by lines of rapid transit; and when the street car proves too slow, the telephone announces instant summons. Five times a day express trains rush to important towns half-way across the continent, while every twenty minutes "locals" bring their throngs from fifty miles around. Boats sail up the river morning and evening, and every day coastwise steamers or ocean liners arrive. The telegraph pours in its flood of news collected from all over the world, the papers quickly issue special editions to spread important items. Magazines announcing attractive articles of current interest cover the corner news-stands, while the presses of the great metropolitan publishing houses are steadily turning out their grist of books on every conceivable topic of human thought. It seems as though in such places we could discern the brain of society at work.

The result of enlarged communication is to multiply ideas and break down provincial habits of thought. The city dweller is in a position to witness many interesting, novel, and important occurrences. He is accustomed to seeing skyscrapers, subways, foreigners, dignitaries, and street-fights. A typical man of the town knows about a vast number of things, if only superficially. He may not feel or think as deeply as the countryman, but his mind is probably more alert than that of one who contemplates the slow cycle of the seasons. Often like Tomlinson, he has guessed, he has heard, he has read in a book of matters beyond his ken, but his thought is awake and he eagerly seeks the latest information. The daily news becomes a necessity, even for workingmen.1 Suburban trains show the paper habit to be as inveterate as is gum chewing. It may be that both are symptoms of the same organic craving. Light magazines supply a secondary intellectual diet, while books are widely read. A hasty examination of the reports of public libraries in ten of our largest cities shows that from 5 to 20 per cent of the population avail themselves of the circulating privileges of 'Chapin, Standard of Living of Workingmen's Families in New York, 211-18.