With a truly remarkable grasp of a widely extended movement, Mrs. Beard has summarized and emphasized the work that the women of America have done in behalf of rescuing the city from the powers of evil and inefficiency, and placing it upon a higher standard of morality and effectiveness. The story she tells is a striking one and will serve to enhearten the increasing groups of women who are coming into the field of civic endeavor through the inspiration of organizations like those identified with the General Federation of Women’s Clubs and the lengthening list of associations for specialized effort. Mrs. Beard has very appropriately stressed the part women have played in the modern civic movement, and yet she would be the last to maintain that women were alone responsible for it. As a matter of fact, one of the chief manifestations of the civic movement has been the proper stressing of the duties and obligations of a citizenship which knows no sex lines and enforces no sex obligations. We are all men and women, boys and girls, alike, members of the community, with common duties and obligations, and as such should bear our part and do our share. In the march forward, however, it seems necessary to organize the mass of citizens along various lines in order that the most productive results may be obtained.

Mrs. Beard’s book illustrates again, if that were necessary, the very large contribution which the private citizen has made to municipal and political development and progress in this country. As Mr. Deming pointed out in his address at Harvard when the National Municipal League met in Boston in 1902, the chief improvements in our political machinery have come as a result of the initiative of private citizens and of organizations of private citizens. Mrs. Beard, quoting Franklin MacVeagh, one of Chicago’s most effective civic workers, says that it was the women of Chicago who started every one of the fifty-seven civic improvement centers in that city. Whether the impulse be feminine or masculine, but rarely have progressive measures been initiated by public officials. This is not intended as a criticism of public officials, because their duties as a rule are so exacting, and are every day becoming more so, that they have little time except for their discharge. The impulse for initiative must therefore come from without.

This book is sent forth with the hope that it will stimulate the women of America to still greater endeavors to make American cities better places in which to live. Women by natural instinct as well as by long training have become the housekeepers of the world, so it is only natural that they should in time become effective municipal housekeepers as well. This book demonstrates how successfully they may fulfill this rÔle. May the volume prove an inspiration and a guide to those whose interests it may have stimulated. Mrs. Beard has done her work well. May the response be a fitting one.