The Chairman (MR. CHARLES BOOTH) in opening the discussion said:
The paper we have just heard read is one of the most complete and charming papers on a great and interesting subject I have ever heard. I think you will all agree in this, and I hope the discussion which follows will emphasise and, if that is possible, add to the wealth of ideas that this paper contains.
MR EBENEZER HOWARD (Founder of the Garden City Association) said:
I have read and re-read—in the proof forwarded to me—Professor Geddes' wonderfully luminous and picturesque paper with much interest. He has given us a graphic description of the geographic process which leads to the development of the city. We see vividly the gradual stages by which the city grows and swells, with the descent of the population from the hillsides into the valleys, even as the river which flows through the city is fed continually by the streams which flow down to it. But is there not this essential difference between the gathering waters of heaven, as they pour into the great city, and the gathering tide of population, which follows the path of the waters? The waters flow through the city on, on toward the mighty ocean, and are then gradually gathered upward into the soft embraces of the clouds and wafted back again to the hills, whence they flow down once more to the valleys. But the living stream of men, women, and children flows from the country-side and leaves it more and more bare of active, vigorous, healthy life: it does not, like the waters, "return again to cover the earth," but moves ever on to the great city, and from thence, at least for the great majority, there is no chance of more than, at best, a very short stay in the country. No: the tide flows resistlessly onward to make more crowded our overcrowded tenements, to enlarge our overgrown cities, to cause suburb to spread beyond suburb, to submerge more and more the beautiful fields and hilly slopes which used to lie near the busy life of the people, to make the atmosphere more foul, and the task of the social reformer more and yet more difficult.
But surely there must be a way, could we but discover it, of imitating the skill and bountifulness of Nature, by creating channels through which some of our population shall be attracted back to the fields; so that there shall be a stream of population pouring from the city into the country, till a healthy balance is restored, and we have solved the twin problems of rural depopulation and of the overcrowded, overgrown city.
This brings me to the second branch of Prof. Geddes' paper, the historical. The Professor reminds us how vestiges of one civilisation lie super-imposed upon another, like geological strata, and asks. "Understanding the present as the development of the past, are we not preparing also to understand the future as the development of the present?" Following this line of thought, I venture to suggest that while the age in which we live is the age of the great, closely-compacted, overcrowded city, there are already signs, for those who can read them, of a coming change so great and so momentous that the twentieth century will be known as the period of the great exodus, the return to the land, the period when by a great and conscious effort a new fabric of civilisation shall be reared by those who knew how to apply the knowledge gained by "Social Survey to Social Service." What are the signs? What words can we place under the head of "Incipient" in Prof. Geddes' diagram? I would suggest, for one of Prof. Geddes' interrogation marks might be substituted "Decentralisation of Industry"—as a great, but yet incipient movement, represented by Port Sunlight, Bournville, Garden City. For there are now many agencies at work making for industrial decentralisation. Industries are being driven out of the great towns by the excessive rents and rates which have to be paid there—by the difficulty of obtaining adequate space for the modern factory, a one-storey building; and for the homes of our workers, which must be vastly different to what they now are if England is to maintain her place among the nations. And while factories are being driven from the city, they are also being attracted to the country by its newly-discovered potentialities. Thus Messrs. Lever Brothers, crowded out of Warrington, established an entirely new town on a new site at Port Sunlight; and, because the site was new and raw, it was therefore possible for Mr. Lever to plan his little town with a single eye to the best and most desirable conditions, alike from an industrial and a health and housing point of view. And the same is true of Bournville. Bournville is one of the most beautiful villages in the world, largely again because of the potentialities of a new site acquired for the definite purpose of building thereon a village in which overcrowding shall be deliberately and permanently prevented, and in which work inside the factory may be varied by work in the garden. Now that these successful experiments have been carried out in this country, is it not time that the idea of establishing new industries on new sites, and of surrounding those industries with healthy homes, should be carried forward on a larger scale, with wider and more concerted aims—carried forward, too, in such a manner as to make it possible for the small manufacturer to take part in a movement which has proved to be so beneficial alike to employer and employed? It is out of this thought that the Garden City idea has grown, an idea now in course of being fulfilled. Three thousand eight hundred acres of land, or nearly ten times the area of Bournville or Port Sunlight, have been acquired in Hertfordshire, two miles west of the town of Hitchin, and on the branch line of railway between that town and Cambridge. State aid has not been sought; that would indeed be weary work. But a company has been formed, through the untiring efforts of the Garden City Association; plans for the town have been carefully prepared, plans which, of course, have regard to the contours of the land (which were first taken, showing every change of level of five feet), to the preservation of its natural beauties—its trees and the picturesque villages of Norton and Willian; to the necessity for railway sidings and railway station, now, thanks to the Great Northern Railway, already provided; to the making of roads of easy gradient and of suitable width, affording access to different parts of the estate, actual work on which is progressing; the careful guarding from contamination of our water supply, already proved to be abundant; the provision of a reservoir of suitable elevation, now in course of construction; a system of drainage, about to be started with; the provision of parks and playgrounds within the town, as well as a wide belt of agricultural land around it; sites for homes for 30,000 persons, with good sized gardens. About six cottages have already been built, not by the Company but by private enterprise, while many others are just about to be started upon; the setting apart of sites for schools, churches, and other public buildings, while plans are in preparation for lighting the town, as well as for providing it with motive power.
The programme which I have sketched out is certainly not too bold or comprehensive for the British race. If a hundredth part of the organising skill which the Japanese and the Russians are showing in the great war now in progress were shown by ourselves as citizens in our great civil war against disease and dirt, poverty and overcrowding, we could not only build many new cities on the best models, but could also bring our old towns into line with the new and better order. Prof. Geddes wishes well, I know, to the Garden City Association, a propagandist body, and to its first child, the Garden City Company; and I am sure you will all unite with me in the hope that the best and most lasting success may crown the generous gift of Mr. Carnegie of £500,000 to the City of Dunfermline, and reward the efforts of the Trustees and of Prof. Geddes to make, by the application of modern skill, science and art, the ancient city of Dunfermline a centre of sweetness and light, stimulating us all to higher and yet higher efforts to secure civic, national and imperial well-being.
MR. C.H. GRINLING said:
Like most of the audience, doubtless, he came not to speak but to draw ever fresh inspiration from Prof. Geddes. But there was one aspect of the subject he would like to bring out and emphasise. He referred to the sociological institute, which, under the name of the Outlook Tower, had grown up in connection with the School of Sociology which Prof. Geddes had founded and developed in Edinburgh. That institute was at once an organisation for teaching and for research, for social education, and for civic action. It was, in fact, a concrete and working application of the principle indicated in the paper as the very foundation of Civics—"social survey for social service." And, seeing that the Outlook Tower was an institution designed in every respect for application to any given locality, he urged the Sociological Society to advocate its general extension, so that no region should be without its own sociological institute or Outlook Tower.
If one individual could accomplish so much, what could not be accomplished by the sociologists of our day who would concentrate themselves, each on his own locality, not necessarily to do the work, but to give the inspiration which would call out the work of collecting just that material which Prof. Geddes suggested all through his paper was one of the great needs of our time? And so one hoped that papers of this kind would not merely lead to discussion, but to workers accumulating results of this kind, giving the inspiration to others, and thus laying up treasures for the sociologists of the future for their interpretation. Thus, the Sociological Society should be not only the one scientific society in constant touch with all the leading brains over the country, but it should be an inspiration, as Prof. Geddes has himself been, to groups of workers everywhere for just the kind of work which the Sociological Society has been founded to develop.
MR. J.M. ROBERTSON said:
I would first add my tribute to this extremely interesting and stimulating paper. It recalled confabulations I had with Prof. Geddes, many years ago, when he was first formulating in Edinburgh those ideas which have since become so widely known. I would like, however, to suggest a few criticisms. The paper is, broadly speaking, an application of the view of a biologist to Sociology. It is not so much an application of Darwin's view as that of Von Baer. Prof. Geddes has characterised his paper as one of elementary preliminaries, but he has really contributed a paper that would form part of a preliminary study in a series of studies in Sociology. The paper does not quite bear out its title: "Civics: as Applied Sociology." The application has not begun. The somewhat disparaging remarks on encyclopædias of general knowledge, further, might well be applied to the scheme of an encyclopædia of the natural history of every city and every village as an original centre. This atomism will not help Sociology. Had he to master all that, the sociologist's life would be a burden not to be borne, and we would never get to applied sociology at all. There is a danger, too, in following this line, of fastening attention on one stage of evolution and leaving it there. The true principle is that evolution is eternal and continuous; and I think harm may be done, possibly, when you take, say, the phenomenon of the communication of general knowledge in schools and call it a derivation from the French Encyclopedie. Why leave it there? Where did that come from? If you are going to trace the simple evolution of civic forms, if you are to trace how they have come about, it will not do to stick at a given point. This is a survival of that. That is a survival of something else. The French Encyclopedie will have to be traced back to the encyclopædia of the mediaeval period; and even to the still earlier period of Isidore of Seville. Then again, there is a danger, I think, analogous to the danger met with in early botany—the danger of confusing a resemblance with a relationship. It is extremely interesting to speculate that the Place de l'Etoile is an evolution from the plan of the game-forest, with its shooting avenues radiating from a centre, but it would be difficult to show that there is any historical connection. The thing is not proved.
Of course, the vital question is not this tracing of evolution. The question is: Is "Civics" to be only the study of forms? If so, Sociology is a dead science, and will effect little practical good until it is vivified by such suggestions as Mr. Crane has put in his paper. Mr. Walter Crane brought in a vital question when he said: "How are you going to modify the values of your civic life unless you grapple with political problems?" I am not forgetting that Prof. Geddes promises to deal in another paper with the civics of the future; but I insist that it will have to grapple with political questions. As he says, a city is not a place, but "a drama in time." The question for the sociological student of history is: How has this inequality of wealth and of service arisen, and how is it to be prevented in the future? That is the problem we have to study if we wish to make sociology a vital interest. A definition of progress is really the first step in sociology. Prof. Geddes' next paper should give us a definition of progress, and it is better that we begin to fight over a definition of progress, in order to get a dynamic agreement, than that we should multiply the archaeological study of many towns. I admit that it is very interesting. In travelling in South Africa, I often tried to gather how communities began; what, for example, was the nucleus of this or that village. It was surprising how very few had an idea of any nucleus at all. I deprecate the idea, however, that we are all to amass an enormous accumulation of such researches. Mr. Booth's single compilation for London is a study for years; but Mr. Booth's admirable investigation of the difficulties of life among the poor of London does not of itself give any new impulse to the solution of the problem of London. It merely gives exact knowledge in place of general knowledge. The problem of sociology arose on the general knowledge. I fear lest the work of sociology should run to an extension of this admirable study instead of to the stimulation of action taken on that particular knowledge, or on more general knowledge. We all knew there was plenty of poverty, and how it was caused. We all had Ideals as to how it was to be got rid of in the future; but the question is: Is the collection of detail or the prescription of social method the kind of activity that the Sociological Society is to take up?
SIR THOMAS BARCLAY said:
I am not sure that I agree with Mr. Robertson that it is desirable to define either "progress" or "civilisation." On the whole, their chances lie rather in the great variety of ideas of what constitutes them than in any hard-and-fast notion of their meaning. They are generalisations of what is, rather than an object towards which effort should tend. But neither do I agree with Prof. Geddes' restriction of "civics" to the mere outward part of municipal effort. In America the word "civics" is applied to the rights and duties of citizens, and I should like to see Prof. Geddes include in Civics the connection between citizen life and the outward improvement of cities. I am sure, however, Professor Geddes, as a practical man, will deal rather with realities than theoretical views on the subject for which he has done so much himself. Edinburgh owes more than many are willing to admit to Prof. Geddes. I think Ramsay Lodge one of the greatest embellishments of the Castle Hill in Edinburgh. I hope he will now be successful in doing something still more admirable for my native town of Dunfermline. My friend Mr. Carnegie, whose native town it also is, I believe intends to show by an object lesson what can be done for all cities. Prof. Geddes is helping him in this work with his suggestions. I hope they will be carried out. In America there are several very beautiful cities. No one can ever forget Washington, which is truly a garden city. No money is spared in America to beautify and healthify (excuse the barbarism) the habitations of the thousands. A beautiful city is an investment for health, intellect, imagination. Genius all the world over is associated, wherever it has been connected with cities, with beautiful cities. To grow up among things of beauty ennobles the population. But I should like to see Prof. Geddes extend his projects for Dunfermline to the population itself. Most of you know what Mr. Henderson did to utilise the Edinburgh police in the care of children. The future of the country depends upon them. The subject is too serious to continue to be left to the haphazard mercies of indifferent parents. Every child born is an agent for good or for evil among the community, and the community cannot afford to neglect how it is brought up, the circumstances in which it has its being, the environment from which it derives its character and tendencies. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but need of food and insufficient clothing develop in the child an inventiveness that is not for the good of the community. It seems a matter of too great an importance to be left even to private initiative, as was done under Mr. Henderson's regime in Edinburgh; but everywhere else, or nearly so, very little is done by even private initiative for the protection of the children against their vicious environment. In short, I do not think that civics, in the sense in which my friend Prof. Geddes treats it, is a complete subject at all. Civics, to my mind, includes everything that relates to the citizen. Everywhere something is being done in one direction or another to make them capable, prosperous, and happy. In America happiness is taught in the schools. Every schoolmaster's and schoolmistress's first duty is to set an example of a happy frame of mind; smiling and laughing are encouraged, and it is not thought that the glum face is at all necessary for the serious business of life. In fact, the glum face is a disqualification; is associated with failure, and bad luck and ill-nature. In Germany the schoolmaster is in the first place a trainer of the body. One of his chief duties is to watch and prevent the deterioration of the eyesight, to promote the development of the lungs, to prevent spinal deviation. The second part of his business is to watch over the character of the child, and only the third part is to ram knowledge into the poor little mind. And wherever you go over the world you will find something in the course of being done in civics, as I understand the subject. I thank Prof. Geddes for what he is doing for Dunfermline, and hope he will understand "progress" without requiring to define it.
DR. J. LIONEL TAYLER (Author of "Aspects of Social Evolution") said:
While agreeing with Prof. Geddes in his belief in the importance of institutional and geographical studies as a basis for the investigation of the development of cities, it yet seems to me that these studies cannot prove of supreme value to society unless they are accompanied by a detailed examination of the natural characteristics of all individuals who have been born into and existed in, or merely dwelt in, these surroundings. It is not enough to trace out, however accurately, the various stages of a town's growth from its commencement to the present time, because the cause of the evolution of any city aggregate lies deeper, is in large part animate, and not inanimate, in character. The value of the surroundings depends at least as much upon the capacity of the individual citizen, singly and collectively, to utilise what he or she is brought in contact with as upon the peculiarities of these surroundings themselves. Place, tradition, social organisation, individual development, education, are factors in town evolution that cannot safely be overlooked, and they all vary from age to age and in place and place.
If it were possible to completely exchange the inhabitants of a large town in England with those of an equally large town in France two groups of changes would become more or less rapidly observable: (1) the French and English citizens would adapt themselves, as far as they desired and were able, to their altered conditions; (2) the characteristics of both towns would gradually change, in spite of geographical position, in response to the altered human needs. Similarly, a town composed of individuals who are naturally uncultured and unprogressive will tend to preserve its uncultured and unprogressive characters more than another that has alert citizens to carry on its activities. Every profession and every trade tends to foster its own social atmosphere; and towns will vary with their industrial life, and individuals favourably disposed to this atmosphere will come to the town, and those unfavourably inclined to it will leave. These changing citizens, as they act upon and react to their surroundings and vary in their powers age by age, are the real evolvers of the conditions in which they dwell; hence the citizen must not be omitted from our study if we are to understand city growth.
In other words, I think that every investigation of civic, and for that matter country life should be studied from two aspects: (1) to note the peculiarities, growth and development of the material, non-living and non-thinking elements in the problem—the buildings, their geographical position, their age, their fitness for past and present life, and the distinctive local features that are evolving or retrogressing with the multiplication of some trades and industries and the decline of others in each area that is studied; (2) the change in the quality of the citizens themselves through racial, educational, and other factors, noting how far ideals are altering, not only in the mass of individuals taken as a whole, but also by examining the changing outlook in every trade and profession. With these two parallel lines of investigation to study, we could then determine how far environment—social and climatic—how far racial and individual characteristics have been powerful in the moulding of the fabric around us.
With these two lines of study to our hands, we could predict the vitality, the growing power, and the future possibilities of the social life of which we are a tiny though not an insignificant part; we could, knowing something of the response that we make to that which surrounds us, form some estimate of how the future ages will develop, and, knowing the intensity of the different national desires for progress and the causes which are likely to arouse such desires, we could realise what will stimulate and what will retard all that is best in our civic life.
PROFESSOR EARL BARNES (in moving a vote of thanks) said:
For years I have been accumulating a debt of obligation to Prof. Geddes for ideas, suggestions, and large synthesis of life, and it gives me special pleasure to voice the feeling of this meeting concerning the paper read to us this afternoon. To me, as an American, it is especially interesting to hear this presentation of life as an organic whole. Life is but a period of education, and if there is nothing behind this present moment of life it is all extremely insignificant. To an American, who has lived at No. 1067 in 63rd Street, Philadelphia, and at No. 1718 in G Street, in Washington, it is profoundly interesting to think of the possibility of a man's so living that his whole existence shall be significant, so that the realities of his world, geographical, geological, and material, and all that long development of humanity through the historic past—that all these things will be really and truly significant to him. Prof. Geddes has himself shown us that is possible. Any man who has gone to Edinburgh and seen the restoration of the old life that has been carried out there under his hand knows it can be done. I suppose we all came here to hear Professor Geddes speak on practical affairs because his name is now connected with the plans for making a city that shall be really expressive of all its potentialities to all of its people. I am personally profoundly grateful to him for his paper; and I move you that he be given a very hearty vote of thanks.
The Chairman. (MR. CHARLES BOOTH), in closing the discussion, said: I myself entirely agree with what Mr Robertson has said as to the extreme difficulty of bringing investigations of the kind referred to, to practical conclusions—practical points. Practical work at present needs the most attention. I perhaps am too old to do it, but I feel the attraction of that kind of work, and that was one reason I was sorry Mr Loch had to leave before we could hear what he might have to say. The description I have given of London does seem to be a foggy labyrinth I agree, but nevertheless I cannot but think that we do require a complete conception if we are to do the definite work of putting different people in their proper places in an organic whole, such as a city is. I do not think we can do without it, and I regard the paper of this evening as an important contribution to that complete conception which I feel we need. I should like each worker and thinker to have and to know his place in the scheme of civic improvement; and I think it perfectly possible for every man to know what it is that he is trying to do, what contribution it is that he ought to give to that joint life which is called here civics, which is the life of a city and the life in the city. One man cannot possibly concentrate it all in himself. Within a society such as the Sociological Society a general scheme is possible in which each individual and each society shall play its acknowledged and recognised part. It does not follow that the work done in one city can apply as an example to another. Individuality has too strong a hold; but each town may work out something for itself. I have been very much interested in the work which Mr. Rowntree has done in York, on which he was kind enough to consult me. He entered upon it on quite other grounds from mine, but so far as the ground was common between him and me we tried to have a common basis. Those of you who have not read Mr. Horsfall's volumes on Manchester would do well to do so. Prof. Geddes gave us a vivid picture of a larger regional unit which culminates geographically in the city as industrial climax. In his particular instance he referred, I take, to Dundee. In Dundee there is at this moment an inquiry being started, and I am in communication with those who are doing it, and I hope it will add something to the completeness of the picture we have of that city. In Dundee they have excessive difficulties in respect to crowding and female labour. What I suggested was, that they should make a special study of such circumstances as are special to Dundee. Labour there is very largely sack-making and jute manufacture, and there is a great deal of girl labour; and that is one of the special subjects that will be considered in that inquiry.
Then, with regard to the preservation of such of the natural beauties that do remain even quite near to busy town centres, surely it is of the greatest importance that they should be watched and protected and preserved. Prof. Geddes has contributed a portion of his practical work to that practical question at Dunfermline. His charming volume on Dunfermline ("A Study in City Development") shows what beautiful features there are near Dunfermline, and how much may be done to preserve and improve them in ways that are most interesting to study. His use of photography in this matter is extraordinarily successful. Prof. Geddes has photographed a scene as it now is, with its background and distance and its squalid foreground, already ruined by the debris of the city—old tin pots and every kind of rubbish—thrown down by the side of the stream, which is naturally beautiful. By manipulating the photographic plates he wipes out that which he does not want and introduces other features, including a little waterfall; and you have, instead of a miserable suburb, a dignified park. Well now, that is practical work. It has in it that element which he has described by a question-mark in his diagram, the element of forecast. You have the same idea in Manchester, in Mr. Horsfall's work. They have laid out their map of Manchester and shown in what way it may develop, so as not to spoil the beauty that remains on two sides of Manchester. There is really exquisitely beautiful natural scenery close to Manchester, which may be entirely spoiled or preserved, according as a forecast is made and forethought taken. This is not a question on which there is reason to think that people will disagree. The difficulties are always supposed to be financial. It is a sad thing that we should be so hampered by our methods of finance that we throw away opportunities to retain these actual beauties which undoubtedly add to the actual money value of a district. I cannot suppose that the way in which cities are laid out with narrow streets really results in an increase of value. The surroundings of our cities are undeveloped estates, which we have only to agree amongst ourselves how to lay out, and everybody would benefit by such joint action. There is an excellent illustration in regard to that in Mr. Horsfall's work in connection with Germany. It must be said that from Germany there is a great deal to learn in civic matters. In one of its towns the properties lie in extraordinarily long strips. It is the final result of properties having been measured by the length of the plough's run. When that method is applied to town sites, it is not convenient for streets; and there are some quarters in this German town ruined in this way, and the people have agreed together to improve matters. Every owner is to be given credit for his share in the total value of the improvement that is found to accrue from the re-arrangement of these undesirable divisions, and any difference of opinion as to the just share and proportion is to be referred to an impartial arbitrator. All the owners will gain, though some a little more than others. That is an example that we may do well to try and follow, and in some way or other improve the money value, and social value, and hygienic value of towns, and if necessary compel the carrying out of improvements when some few might be disposed to hold out against them.