: 34,072 in 1900,
32,452 in 1910; St. Joseph, Mo.: 102,979 in 1900, 77,403 in 1910.] and a
large gain for nearly every city of the middle west. It is prophesied that
before long one-half of the people of the United States will be living in
cities, and there is the more distant prospect that the urban population
will be two-thirds of the whole. [Footnote: In 1910 46.3 per cent resided
in communities classed by the census as urban, and 55.1 per cent in cities
and incorporated or unincorporated villages.]
It is hopeless to try to turn that tide away from the cities except to
suburban fields. So the great problem of that valley is to improve the
cities, since from them are to be the issues of the new life, since they
are, indeed, the hope of democracy.
I have thought it of significance that the envisioned place of ultimate
celestial felicity-seen though it was by a man in the solitude of a cave
in an island of the Mediterranean (the place which the civilized world has
dimly hanging over it, whenever it looks away from its tasks and into the
beyond)--is not a lotus-land, not an oasis of spring and palm, not a
stretch of forest and mountain, not even a quiet place by a sea of jasper,
but a place of many tenements--a city, a perfect city to be sure, let down
ultimately from the skies, with walls of precious stones--and no zone for
Kipling's "Tomlinsons" about it--with gates whose octroi officials keep
out whatever makes an abomination or a lie, but which are open to the east
and west, the north and south, that the kings of earth may bring their
glory and honor into it--a city whose streets are clean and smooth--a city
that has flowing through it a river of pure water, on whose banks grow
trees whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.
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