the drunkenness, vice, and crime
that constitute so large a problem of city life and block the path of
society's development. They are a part of the imperfection that is
characteristic of this stage of human progress, and especially of the
twentieth-century city. They are not incurable evils, they demand a
remedy, and they furnish an inspiring object of study for the
practitioner of social disease.

He who escapes business and moral failure has open wide before him in
the city the door of opportunity. He may, if he will, meet all the
world and his wife in places where the people gather, touching elbows
with individuals from every quarter of the country, with persons of
every class and variety of attainment, with believers of every
political, aesthetic, and religious creed. In such an atmosphere his
mind expands like the exotic plant in a conservatory. His individual
prejudices fall from him like worn-out leaves from the trees. He
begins to realize that other people have good grounds for their
opinions and practices that differ from his own, and that in most
cases they are better than his, and he quickly adjusts himself to
them. The city stimulates life by its greater social resources, and
forms within its borders more highly developed human groups. Beyond
the material comforts and luxuries that the city supplies are the
social values that it creates in the associations and organizations of
men and women allied for the philanthropic, remedial, and
constructive purposes that are looking forward to the slow progress of
mankind toward its highest ideals.

183. =The City as a Social Centre.=--The city is an epitome of
national and even world life, as the farm is community life in
miniature. Its social life is infinitely complex, as compared with the
rural village. Distances that stretch out for miles in the country,
over fields and woods and hills, are measured in the city by blocks of
dwellings and public buildings, with intersecting streets, stretching
away over a level area as far as the eye can see. Social institutions
correspond to the needs of the inhabitants, and while there are a few
like those in the country, because certain human needs are the same,
there is a much larger variety in the city because of the great number
of people of different sorts and the complexity of their demands.
Every city has its business centres for finance, for wholesale trade,
and for retail exchange, its centres for government, and for