THE CIVIC FEDERATION OF CHICAGO.
A STUDY IN SOCIAL DYNAMICS.
If descriptions by old residents may be trusted, the most prominent element in the population of Chicago, previous to the period of the World's Fair, had been a constellation of groups, made up of intense individualists. The members of each group had calculated and coöperated with a chief view to each man's main chance, yet under restrictions which instinct and experience of business necessity had declared to be expedient. Floating in and out among these charmed circles of cooperators was a great multitude, whom no man could number, of unattached outsiders, all bent on the same purpose of personal profit. To both classes corporate municipal action was an affair of so small proportionate moment that it fell into comparative indifference and neglect. The only efficient municipal consciousness was among the people who saw in administrative machinery a means of getting gain which they could not win in competition with merchants and manufacturers and operators in real estate. How far the concentration of effort to get the World's Fair for Chicago resulted in changes which require modification of this description, it would be impossible to say and futile to inquire. Undoubtedly there was enlargement of view and increase of sympathy from that cooperation, which prepared the way for a kind of patriotic action that had been unknown before.
Since the autumn of 1893 a civic revival has occurred in Chicago, the evidences of which are familiar to all her citizens. These acts of civic patriotism are by no means, as will appear later, the work of a single organization. The Civic Federation
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