Excerpt from The City: The Hope of Democracy The convictions of this volume are the result of several years of actual political experience in the administration of the city of Cleveland, Ohio, as well as of personal study of municipal conditions in the leading cities of America and Great Britain. They represent a drift away from what I have termed the personnel, which is the orthodox view of politics. Instead of the city being controlled by the charter, the suffrage, or by purely political institutions, I have become convinced that it is the economic environment which creates and con trols man's activities as well as his attitude of mind. This arouses his civic or his self interest; this underlies the poverty and the social problems with which the city is confronted. This explains contemporary politics. It alone explains condi tions in Philadelphia, New York, St. Louis, Cin cinnati. In all of our large cities it accounts for the Crokers, the Coxes, the Butlers. It is the economic motive that explains the activity and the apathy; the heavy burden on reform, and the dis trust of democracy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.