This has been especially advocated by General Booth and
other leaders of the Salvation Army. This plan, however, cannot do much
toward helping solve the problem of the city. It is a difficult thing to
get the poor in the city adjusted again to rural life, and the
probability is that in many cases they would be worse off in the country
than in the city. Moreover, the vacant places they left would soon be
filled by others, and in general the whole plan seems to be against
man's instincts as well as against the social forces of the time.
(4) Administrative decentralization may be mentioned as a plan adopted
by some state legislatures to prevent the growth of cities, that is, to
scatter the state institutions through the rural sections of the state
instead of locating them in the cities. On the whole, this is a foolish
plan. The cities will not be checked in their growth by this, while on
the other hand it is the cities which most need the presence of the
state institutions.
(5) The most important remedy for the cure of the evils of the cities,
and one which meets these evils on their own ground, is what has been
called "improved municipal housekeeping"; that is, the supervision and
control by the city of all those things which are used in common by the
people.
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