pride." Among the public improvements thought worthy of consideration by the league are:

"The suppression of the smoke nuisance as a necessity for making all other improvements appreciable.

"The improvement of the whole lake front; not only the Lake Front Park, but the boulevard system of the North Side and its connection with the Lake Front Park by an outer viaduct and bridge or subway.

"The improvement of the designs in use for gas and electric light posts, patrol boxes, and waste paper receptacles, and the introduction of electrically lighted street name signs.

"The proper regulation of bill boards.

"The harmonious grouping of business or private houses belonging to different owners, without detriment to the interests of each.

"Conversion of vacant lots into temporary lawns and playgrounds, by consent of owners and co-operation of neighbors.

"Improvement of the designs for signs on business buildings, and asking co-operation of the real estate board in adoption of standard designs for lots for sale and houses for rent."

Such are some of the objects of this most praiseworthy association. To a reasonable person there is nothing unreasonable in any of the suggestions made for civic betterment. Yet why is improvement so slow? There is no lack of support for other institutions. A Crerar founds a library, a Rockefeller endows a university, a Field builds a museum, a Hutchinson supports an art institute. But there is no Napoleon to rebuild Chicago, and, in the nature of things, there can not be. Chicago must be reconstructed by its citizens working in the spirit of co-operation and mutual concession. The other institutions mentioned are in a sense external to the life of the city. They exist and flourish because they depend for their main

tenance upon the accumulation and overplus of money and property in egoistic hands. It is to the interests of these cultural institutions that the individualistic method of business be retained. More than one library has been built out of what from another point of view is a public nuisance. For the sake of additional libraries we will put up with smoke-befouled air, we will sacrifice the general comfort and health, we will harden our hearts to the cries of the oppressed, we will hearken to the alderman who tells us if we do not like Chicago to go elsewhere: for prosperity, forsooth, is created out of smoke. The more smoke the more libraries; the more libraries the greater the smoke nuisance. But municipal art strikes at the heart of business itself. It insists that selfishness and personal greed shall be driven from the commercial process. It demands that business shall be socialized.

Is a social civilization too much to hope for? Must antagonisms always exist among the individuals of a community? Are we to be forever driven by economic fear? Might not a city of rational beings devise a method of living contentedly together?

It is just possible that in solving our problem of local improvement we are making a contribution to the history of civilization.

INDUSTRIAL FEUDALISM-AND AFTER.

I do not know when and by whom it was first discerned that the modern industrial development of the world is nearly identical as to its main features with the political evolution of an earlier time. It is now almost a commonplace to use the words "Industrial Feudalism" in describing the modern status of industry. Mr. Ghent seems to think that in his essay on "Benevolent Feudalism" he was the first to apply the principle of feudalism* in explaining modern "Capitalism." In truth the conception of a monarchic order in industrialism is a familiar one and is implied in the popular designation of the great owners and directors of properties as "Kings" and "Barons." It is now clear that these terms represent very real facts, and that the stage now reached in industrial progress

*In my volume entitled "Chapters in the History of the Arts and Crafts Movement," written early in 1900, I made the following statement: "In the present relationship [between exploiters and exploited] all the features of feudalism are found. And as the world is only at the beginning of its industrial evolution it is likely that the process will run parallel at all points with the development of government. The old domestic system of industry, which the factory system superseded, was simply undifferentiated and unorganized industry. Corresponding to the political era of petty warfare was the period of competition. Competition has been the agent for the selection of the strong and the elimination of the weak. It has created 'Captains of Industry' on one side, and an army of workmen reduced to order, and compelled to service on the other, etc."

is distinctly feudal and monarchic. The most successful and perfectly controlled businesses in recent years have been those organized and built up on feudal lines. Competition, corresponding to the private wars of the middle ages, has forced the issue from without. Within the competitive groups the wage and salary in regulated scale have furnished the nexus to bind their members together in the relation of master and man. The war-game is played with dollars and not with arms and men. From the combination of groups, principalities are being formed, presided over by petty Kings. These pay tribute to the few individuals who constitute the real government. The monarchic state is of course not yet perfected and will not be till the "universal trust" is formed whereby competition is wholly destroyed and supreme control is placed in the hands of one man. This one man will derive his authority not from the subjects, the workers, but from "God." In order that the magnate's action may have higher sanction a theory will be formed corresponding to the "divine right of Kings"-a theory implied by the devout attitude of many industrial potentates and which is already formulated by a certain "coal-baron" in words that have burned deep into the consciousness of the times.

The monarchic conclusion is inevitable. There will be no great change in the industrial system until the present centralizing tendency is ended-until all are absorbed in the industrial idea, and until all have come to industrial consciousness.

Industrial despotism will be tempered, of course, by occasional benevolence-there will be "good" mag

nates as there were "good" kings. This class will seek to solve the social problem from above, through various agencies looking toward "industrial betterment." Even now the up-to-date business has a "social secretary" whose function is to improve the conditions of work by providing libraries, lectures picnics, flower-beds and the like, and by bringing into the corporation that personal element which the corporation as a "legal fiction" cannot presume to contain. The rule of the benevolent will often be thwarted by rebels and protestors who think they want simple justice and not benevolence and flowerbeds. But, as the system will prove beneficial on the whole to the masses of the people during the time of its formation the rebellions will be of short life and ineffective.

There will be a growing difficulty also in maintaining feudal authority, because of the very perfection of the machinery of production, the enormous increase of products making it increasingly difficult for the owners to consume that which is produced. The industrial baron must work out and solve, at the risk of losing his position, the problem of employment. One unemployed person is a menace to the whole order. One unconsumed product is as dangerous to the industrial order as was the outlaw in the mountains of Europe to the political order. Yet I do not doubt that new ways may be devised of spending money and of setting the task for labor.

The advantage of industrial feudalism is two-fold. It brings order into the chaos occasioned by competition—an order greatly to be desired to satisfy our