4. Where was the material for your house produced? The nails? The plaster? How many different kinds of workmen helped to build it?

5. Draw a map of the railroads that come into your town. Where do they come from? What freight do they bring?

6. What industries are to be found in your town? Are their products used in the town or shipped away to other places? 7. What forms of communication help to carry on this business?

8. How many nationalities are represented in your town? Why did these people come there?

9. How much of the goods that you use do you or your family produce?

10. Do you exchange the things you produce for the things other people make, or do you use money to help the trading by making it convenient?

11. Could you have more or less goods if you tried to produce all that you use, or can you have more by coöperating with other people?

12. Suppose the railroads stopped running for a month what effect would it have on your comfort and happiness?

13. How do the newspapers in your town get the news they print?

14. Among the things you use which come from foreign countries? What countries do they come from, and by what routes? 15. How much of this business could be done if there were no government to make travel safe and to require people to trade honestly?

CHAPTER VI

THE CITY

51. What Is a City? A city is a place where a large number of people live so close together that they must depend upon each other for their health and happiness; a place where people can coöperate in having many things which they could not have without coöperation. This is a definition of a large village or a borough as well as of a city. Therefore when we discuss the government of cities we are also discussing that of villages and boroughs. In some States a community is not called a city unless it has five or ten thousand people. In others it must have a particular kind of government to be called a city. But for our purposes we may speak of any crowded place where people live permanently as a city. Our task is to find out something about the government in such a place, which brings health, comforts, and peace to those who live there.

52. Where Do Cities Grow? Examine a map of the United States and see where the great cities are located. New York is at the mouth of the Hudson River; Philadelphia on the Delaware; San Francisco at a great harbor of the Pacific Coast; New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi; Chicago is a great lake port; St. Louis is a great Mississippi port. Examine the location of other cities and you will find that many of them are situated at places where trading is easy. Pittsburgh is in the midst of the great coal and iron district. Washington is the National Capital, and

people are drawn there because of this fact. Let us examine the causes which make cities grow.

53. Cities and Farming. We have seen that scientific farming has made it possible for many people to leave the farm and go into other business. Suppose that a man who lives in the country has five sons. A hundred years ago all of these sons would have found work on the farm. To plant crops many men were needed. Now one plants with a machine. Formerly, to harvest the crop many men were also needed; now one machine does the work of ten men. Therefore one of the farmer's sons may become a lawyer and go to the city; another may become a professor and also go to the city; still another may become a railroad man and make his home in the city near the end of his line. All of his sons but one or two are likely to leave the farm; and his daughters may marry men who also go to the city as their brothers did.

54. Cities and Manufacturing. The man who runs a factory has three problems: first, workmen; second, raw materials to use in his factory; and, third, a way of bringing the raw material in and sending his product out. Near a city he finds the people whom he wishes to employ. They come because the factories are there to give them employment and because they can find many other attractive things such as schools, theaters, and the like. The people attract more factories, and the factories more people, to these centers. Cities grow where steamers and railroads bring freight and carry it away. Or they grow where fuel is plentiful, or in more recent times where electric power is cheap.

55. Cities and Commerce. Such cities as Indianapolis grow up where railroad lines cross, and therefore where

shipping is convenient. To all cities come men engaged in the advertising business; in the wholesale business, that is in buying from the manufacturer and distributing to the retail stores; in financial occupations such as banking and lending money. To supply the needs of these people come laundrymen, cobblers, retail shops, tailors, barbers, carpenters, plumbers, plasterers, and all the trades and professions which supply the luxuries we can now have since so many people are released from the need of producing mere food, clothes, and fuel.

56. Cities and Culture. When all of these people live together in a small space, it is possible for them to provide many things besides the necessities of life. Some may make a living by running a good theater, for there are many people to visit it every day. Libraries can be kept up with small expense to each person; so can museums, parks, tennis courts, bathing beaches, and all the dozens of good things which people living in sparsely settled communities cannot afford to have. Schools are easily reached by a large number of children; even colleges can be supported at the public expense. The city can supply almost every comfort to its people if each gives to the community a fair day's work as his part. The well-run city is a fine place in which to live. Every resident can have luxuries which rich and powerful men a hundred years ago could not obtain. But all of this is the result of industry on the part of every man and woman, and of wise coöperation in managing the resources of the community. If we have neighbors in a city who refuse to do their part, all of us share the loss that results from their failure.

57. City Government. When we studied the government of our athletic association we saw that organization

was necessary. We saw that good management requires three things: first, that our representatives make rules; second, that we appoint officers to take charge of certain parts of the work; and, third, that we help these officers to do the work assigned to them. The same thing is true of the city; but the work of the city is far more complicated and difficult than that of the association. If the people of a city do as they please, then we have anarchy, confusion, and distress, just as we should have failure in an association if it were not organized. Therefore every city has a government with rules or laws, and rulers who require that these laws be obeyed. It is difficult, sometimes, for young people to see the need of obeying law; but if they practise self-government while they are in school, they will be the better able in later years to help to save their city from disorder and distress.

58. City Charters. We have seen that a charter and a constitution are almost the same thing. The charter of a city describes the officers the city needs, their powers, and their duties. It tells how these officers shall be elected, the term of office for each, and the method of removing them. It also tells how ordinances shall be made, how money shall be raised to pay the expenses of the government, and all other things necessary to create a well-organized and efficient government for a large number of people. The charter is sometimes made by the State legislature, and sometimes by the people of the city in a charter convention such as you held for the constitution of your association. Those who believe in what is called home rule think the people of the city should make their own charter in a convention; but there are many States in which the legislatures have not yet given the cities the right to do this.