Civic improvement

“ The establishment of an economical, simple, and efficient government, the maintenance of an independent civil service; the implantation of an adequate system of public instruction to develop moral character, personal discipline, civic conscience, and vocational efficiency; the safeguarding of the health and vigor of the race ”

“ How shall we more fully correlate our theoretic civics, i.e., our observations of cities interpreted as above, with our moral ideas and our practical policy—i.e., our Applied Civics. Our ideals have to be selected, our ideas defined, our plans matured; and the whole of these applied; that is realised, in polity, in culture, and in art. But if this be indeed the due correlation of civic survey and civic service, how may we now best promote the diffusion and the advancement of both? ”

“ To evoke the personal human qualities of this medley of city workers so as to reach within the individual the citizen, to educate the civic feeling until it take shape in civic activities and institutions, which shall not only safeguard the public welfare against the encroachments of private industrial greed, but shall find an ever ampler and nobler expression in the æsthetic beauty and spiritual dignity of a complex, common life—all this work of transformation lies in front of the democracy, grouped in its ever-increasing number of town-units. ”

“ It is a challenge to fathers and mothers and all social workers to lift the burdens of labor from childhood and to make education universal.
It is a challenge to all citizens to rally to the leaders of social reforms, so as to secure for the nation civic righteousness, temperance, and health. ”

“ Civic development is thus no mere external matter, either of "Haussmannising" its streets, or of machine-educating its people; the true progress of the city and its citizenship must alike grow and flower from within albeit alive and open to every truly fertilising impulse from without. ”

“ The live questions to-day concern not the material so much as the moral development of the nation. For it is seen that the future welfare of the people depends on the creation of a finer type of civic life. ”

“ Civic improvers will find their ideals more realisable as they recognise the complex unity of the city as a social development of which all the departments of action and thought are in organic relation, be it of health or disease. ”

“ We will increase publicity of and education in the law, intensify education about citizenship, and promote the values of socialist democracy, the rule of law, freedom, equality, equity and justice. We will coordinate development of urban and rural communities and promote the healthy growth of civic organizations. ”

“ In course of this discussion, it has been taken for granted that the American people under competent and responsible leadership could deliberately plan a policy of individual and social improvement, and that with the means at their collective disposal they could make headway towards its realization. These means consisted, of course, precisely in their whole outfit of political, economic, and social institutions; and the implication has been, consequently, that human nature can be raised to a higher level by an improvement in institutions and laws. ”

“ It has already become a more efficient force in legislation than it ever was before. We may well hope that it will draw more and more of those who love and seek to help their fellow-men into that legislative and administrative work whose opportunities for grappling with economic and social problems become every day greater.
Here in America I am told in nearly every city I visit that the young men are more and more caring for and bestirring themselves to discharge their civic duties. ”

“ We believe that this work must grow and that there will come also a more realizing sense of the responsibility of 120the community for the welfare of its people. In the wise control of new building, and of the apartment houses which may be tenements in the future, by planning for wide streets and many open spaces, by the awakening of higher civic standards we shall come also to a higher social order. “Victory over evil at its source and not in its consequences; reforms which shall regard the welfare of future generations, who are the greatest number.” ”

“ In our day the attempt is made to reform society by civilisation, by education, by material progress, by change of policies and organisations. No! the change needed is vital. It is the change from moral death to moral life. ”

“ We are at the beginning of a prolonged effort to incorporate a progressive developing life founded upon a response to the needs of all the people, into the requisite legal enactments and civic institutions. To be in any measure successful, this effort will require all the intelligent powers of observation, all the sympathy, all the common sense which may be gained from the whole adult population. ”

“ The release of the individual from the cares and anxieties of a state of imperfect protection sets his faculties free to be employed in any new effort for improving his own state and that of others, while the same cause, by attaching him to social existence, and making him no longer see present or prospective enemies in his fellow creatures, fosters all those feelings of kindness and fellowship towards others, and interest in the general well-being of the community, which are such important parts of social improvement. ”

“ I am not aware of any reform, amongst the many which I have promoted during the past forty years, that has had, and will have, better results towards the improvement of the country socially, morally, and politically. ”

“ The nation gives individuality an increased scope and meaning by offering individuals a chance for effective service, such as they could never attain under a system of collective irresponsibility. Thus under a system of collective responsibility the process of social improvement is absolutely identified with that of individual improvement. ”

“ It is by this and other wise and practicable arrangements, that a confidence is to be established, "that the resources of the State will not only last our time," but extend to many generations; while the improvement of Public morals will contribute, in an eminent degree, to the happiness and prosperity of the country. ”

“ We may consider these paternal functions of government under three heads: the improvement of human environment, to make it more beautiful and convenient; the development, through educational agencies, of the mental and moral life of the people; and the improvement, by various means, of the human stock itself. ”

“ And as laws which breathe a high spirit help to educate the whole community, so does the presence of opportunities for reform stimulate and invigorate the best citizens in their efforts after better things. ”

“ Finally, we propose special attention to the quality and scope of social services to the eleven basic needs of man to ensure that our development will meet the test of social justice and democratization. ”

“ We shall have, of course, to enlarge our family and social life, not in the petty spirit of present day Social Reform, hammering at small details and belittling our immediate past, but with a larger idea and more generous impulses. ”

“ If improvement is possible, if it is in our power to render ourselves valuable to a community or neighborhood, it should be the work of the earnest and able men and women among us, the moral physicians and reformers, to devise and apply a remedy. ”

“ The true movement of the last fifteen years has been the progress of one idea,—Social Reform. There it advances with steady and noiseless march behind every louder question of constitutional change. Let us do justice to our time. There have been periods of more brilliant action on the destinies of States, but there is no time visible in History in which there was so earnest and general a desire to improve the condition of the great body of the people. In every circle of the community that healthful desire is astir. ”

“ Even the most earnest and capable workers towards civic betterment in these many fields may gain at once in hope and in efficiency as they see their special interests and tasks converging into the conception of the city as an organic unity, and this not fixed and settled, nor even in process of progress or degeneration from causes beyond our ken, but as an orderly development which we may aid towards higher perfection, geographic and cultural alike. ”

“ To define the really democratic organization as one which makes expressly and intentionally for individual distinction and social improvement is nothing more than a translation of the statement that such an organization should make expressly and intentionally for the welfare of the whole people. The whole people will always consist of individuals, constituting small classes, who demand special opportunities, and the mass of the population who demand for their improvement more generalized opportunities. ”

“ The changes brought about in the human life pattern in the course of the great revolution have created a new world—in structure, in function, in outlook, in stepped-up capacity for even more spectacular changes in the future.
Instead of regarding human beings and human society as unchangeable and sacred we must regard both as a part of our social problem: taking the steps necessary to reach and occupy the highest possible levels of social and individual health and effectiveness. We can and should make every effort to improve human society. ”

“ The progress of a great reform is a nation's school. It creates as it advances, the moral principle, the individual independence, the habit of private judgment, the enlightened public opinion, which are necessary for its own success, and thus, by new moulding the national character, and elevating its tone of morals, it confers far other and greater benefits than its originators at first proposed. ”

“ This is the social lesson: for people to understand that their every act, their work, their home-life, the kind of recreation they demand, the kind of newspapers they read, the bearing of their children, the bringing up of their children—that all these so-called private acts create the city in which they live. It is not just when we vote, or meet together in political groups, or when we take part in some charitable or philanthropic or social scheme, that we are performing our duty to society. ”

“ In a word, it is the efficient functioning of every social group. The family, the community, the nation, and every minor group, will serve effectually the economic, cultural, social, and spiritual needs of the individuals of whom it is composed. Perfect functioning can follow only after a long period of progress. Such progress is the ideal that society sets for itself. In that process there must be full recognition of all the factors that enter into social life. There is the individual with his rights and obligations, who must be protected and encouraged to grow. ”

“ So it is with things which more indirectly further welfare, as good tools or good roads. When we speak of a good workman, a good teacher, a good doctor, it is the same: efficiency in aiding others’ well-being is what we indirectly mean. Yet again, good government, good institutions, good laws, connote benefits yielded to the society in which they exist: benefits being equivalent to certain kinds of happiness, positive or negative. ”

“ We have now, therefore, obtained a foundation for a twofold division of the merit which any set of political institutions can possess. It consists partly of the degree in which they promote the general mental advancement of the community, including under that phrase advancement in intellect, in virtue, and in practical activity and efficiency, and partly of the degree of perfection with which they organize the moral, intellectual, and active worth already existing, so as to operate with the greatest effect on public affairs. ”

“ Faced with the onerous and complex tasks of reform and development, we in governments at all levels should follow the new vision on development in our work, bear the weight of finishing building a moderately prosperous society in all respects on our shoulders, keep the people's wellbeing at the forefront of our minds, and build a law-based, innovative, clean, and service-oriented government that the people are satisfied with. ”

“ In fine, the substantial improvement, and even the embellishment of towns, is a work which both the central and local governing bodies in a country should keep a steady hand upon. It especially concerns them. What are they there for but to do that which individuals cannot do? It concerns them, too, as it tells upon the health, morals, education, and refined pleasures of the people they govern. In doing it, they should avoid pedantry, parsimony, and favouritism; and their mode of action should be large, considerate, and foreseeing. ”

“ The running thread through my career has been the notion that when ordinary people get involved, get engaged, and come together in collective effort, things change for the better.
That’s the belief at the heart of this precious American experiment in self-government. It’s what gives work and purpose to each new generation. ”

“ He held that individual effort needed to be restrained and guided by the conscience of the community acting through the organisation of the state; and that economic well-being could be secured by moralising the existing order of society without greatly altering the basis of political power. ”