The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-12-27
Corruption in Great Cities
BY PHINEAs FLETCHER.

One of the most eminent of our states men, in discussing a century ago the fu- ture of the republic predicted that when we are piled upon one another in great cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as they do there. At the time he wrote, there was not in the Union a city with a population of over fifty thou sand. Philadelphia stood first in rank. New York came second. Chicago was military fort. St. Louis had not appeared on the map. New Orleans belonged to the once gigantic power, which has been ex- peled from the continent and from her last stronghold in the young Cuban re- public. Washington was a plantation, and Baltimore only little larger than a good-sized village of our own day. Now we have three cities above the mil- lion mark in population, one of them with almost as many residents as there were in the entire thirteen colonies when they proclaimed their independence and threw down the guage of battle to a govern ment which was one of the greatest in the world then, and has undergone no di- minution since Behind these three state ly municipalities is another splendid clus- ter of communities standing around the half-mllion mark In the column of pop ular enumeration, and after them a long chain of cities and towns which form one of the great glories of the republic.
 The ilustrious statesman whom l have quoted-the author of the immortal De- claration-was right The great cities are in large measure what he foresaw they would be when we arrived at that stage of our development. This is espe- cially true of three or four of them. Poli
 tics has nothing to do with it. Parties rise and fall in nearly all of them They come and they go. but the conditions on which a large part of what is evil in these communities live and thieves sur vive. It is not necessary to be specific with respect to names and location The facts are of world wide notoriety.
 The most fruitful source of vice and crime in the great cities is the packing of thousands of men. women and children into areas insufficient to accommodate them, and which should be vigorously prohibited. In the largest city that we have there are regions in it which con- tain the densest population perhaps in the whole world. More than half a cen- tury ago, the dangers arising from the congestion which then existed in that community and which were almost insig- nifcant compared with what they are to- day, became so manifest that an agita- ton was set on foot for the purpose of reformation. These efforts have been con- tinued ever since, but 1t was not until a very recent period that the governing au- thorities were moved to take action suf- fcienty radical and energetic to make the slightest change for .he better. The explanation of that neglect is simple. The land owners and house owners were fi- nsneialy interested in maintaining the horrible conditions which fostered vice and wickedness, and were powerful enough to defeat year after year all rem edal legislation. The greater of the num- Der unfortunate persons they would crowd into their rookeries, the more val uable were they to them. Considerations of humanity, the public good, Of decency. and morality, were as nothing in the scale against sordid gain and rapacious accumulation The first practical step in the direction of better order of affairs was really the result of panic of apprs-