If an individual should venture to distribute his attention over such a wide territory, he would be likely to make an utter failure, unless he were in a position of authority like that of a mayor with ample powers and rare executive ability. More than that, an association constructed on the usual lines would doubtless have made a more complete failure than an individual. A club of the ordinary character, which should undertake to reform everything, would probably reform nothing, and would presently itself most of all need reform. The new civic movement in Chicago had as its rallying center not an omnibus committee, but a genuine federation; a committee of committees; an association of associations. From the representative citizens in the central council and the branch ward councils committees were formed of persons who undertook to promote particular improvements. These committees cooperated, as occasion suggested, with similar committees representing other bodies. Each member of the Federation, and of the coöperating associations, was presumed to be interested in a general way in the work of the rest, but in a particular way in the duty assigned to his committee. The central council of the Federation became sponsor for the work of a'l the committees, and through this bond of union all the citizens represented in the general association became in a sense responsible for the work of all the rest. In this way a collection of committees, each particularly interested in a special kind of municipal work, became a confederation, with purposes covering the whole range of municipal action. Each group composing the confederation had a moral guarantee of the support of the whole in carrying out measures which had once received the endorsement of the central body. Each person became a more effective supporter than he would otherwise have been of efforts parallel and allied with those to which he had given his direct assistance.
The fifth distinguishing feature of the Federation's work was its investigation of facts. In each division of its operations it abandoned theory and went out after pertinent informa-
