Exemplar Cities

Babble on the Twentieth Century, the Broadway Limited and other trains where city boosters habitually chant the monotonous boasts of their micropolities, had a new vigor, vim, elan last week. A Manhattan sociologist, George J. Hecht,* had, in flaying New York City for its sociological bumptiousness, mentioned many a modest U. S. city by very name and indicated the excellencies whereby it surpassed New York. Health, social service, education supplanted rich men, big buildings, great corporations in the train talk. It became possible to exuberate concerning:

Los Angeles (school and park site planning, highways ahead of needs); Milwaukee (city employment offices); Chicago (parked waterfront); Auburn, N. Y. (wiping out diphtheria by general toxin-antitoxin immunization); Detroit (best type school buildings); Gary. Ind. (work-study-play method of education); Dallas (adult education); Cleveland (adult education; education against venereal disease; teaching parents how to raise children); Washington (education against venereal disease); Boston (district health centres); St. Louis (plenty of hospital beds); San Francisco (prevention, treatment & instruction of hard of hearing); Winnetka, Ill. (progressive education).

*Secretary of the Welfare Council of New York City, editor of Better Times (voice of New York social agencies), publisher of Children, the Magazine for Parents.