Honolulu star-bulletin., 1916-02-14
EDITOR

studies such as that made here by Miss Bergen
for the Associated Charities.
1t was something over year ago that %
representative Springfield citizens started a
movement for social survey of their commun-
ity. The Russell Sage Foundation of New
York City, in an interesting report just sent
out, now tells of the valuable work launched by
these men, who believed that city problems
would go indefinitely unsolved unless experts
were to get at the exact facts and let the pub
lie know them in systematic, graphic manner.
Those citizens decided that as the manner of
life in most cities had radically changed in the
last dozen or twenty years and that so many
new problems had been coming to the front
that it was time to pause, to take a new look
at their city, to sit and view themselves and
their surroundings from the viewpoint of The
unbiased outsider. These twenty-odd citizens
included two state senator's, number of bust
nessmen and labor leaders, the superintendent
of public schools a former lieutenant governor
of Illinois, public officials, cergymen, DOCTORS
women IS club leaders, teachers, social workers.
and others 1t was a bipartisan group, Sc
lected so that every important interest in the
city would be represented.
Because of local "color blindness to local
faults, the survey committee went outside the
city for specialists who could look over the
city without ''fear or favor" These civic ex-
perts not only studied local conditions, analyz-
ed the city's problems of public schools, de-
linquency, public finance, and so on but also
outlined methods of solution based on the best
experience of other cities. But it did not stop
there. This group of citizens, as the survey
reports began to come in, organized themselves
into series of smaller groups whose duty it
was and is to follow up the survey recommen-
dations and see that something is DONE.
The report now being distributed, entitled
s.The Charities of Springfield, Illinois, deals
with the problem of poverty and the efforts
made to help those who are dependent or in
distress 1t is the work of Francis H Mclean,
the poverty doctor sor charity specialist Of
the American Association of Societies for Or
ganizing Charity. Mr.. Mclean found that
1864 families in 1913 in this city of less than
$4,000 people had received some kind of chari-
table aid from public or private organizations.
In his report he takes up the causes of need in
these families and indicates measures not only
for improving the service provided for needy
families, but measures for reducing the amount
Of future dependency eradication of condi-
tions that oppose normal living.
In fact, pains have been taken by the mana
gers to make the whole Springfield survey asl
useful as possible to large number of mid
die sized cities. The subjects taken up cover
practically every phase of living conditions, in
,luding health sanitation, housing, administra-
ton of the public offices, recreation, delin-
luency and the correctional system, care of
mental detectives, the insane and alcoholics,
working conditions and labor problems, and the
work of the public schools. Each section of
he published reports includes detailed recon-
nendations for working out local situations.
Already Springfield has been congratulated and
thanked by prominent people in other cities
because of the help given through their study
If Springfeld's survey
British blockade seems to be more effective
n keeping American goods out of Germany