philanthropy, education and morals, has insured the plans adopted against the admixture of Utopianism which has so often proved fatal in similar enterprises. The organization is not only professionally, but geographically and socially municipal in the widest sense; and it seems thus as far as possible protected against the development of any sort of class spirit or provincialism.
The third cardinal fact about the civic revival in Chicago was referred to in the introduction, viz., that the Civic Federation succeeded in coordinating and concentrating municipal patriotism because it distinctly appreciated the impossibility of cornering civic virtue in a single organization. The people who formed the Federation were never visibly affected by any form of the hallucination that they had a monopoly of the good citizenship of the town. They took it for granted from the beginning that their body could at most be a sort of switch board, or clearing house, of civic patriotism. They understood perfectly that if the Federation should attempt to set itself up as the only exponent of good citizenship in Chicago it would speedily be without occupation. Attempts have been made by select companies of men in various cities to purify municipal politics by a personally conducted crusade. The result has been aggravation that hardly rose to the dignity of agitation, and no large fraction of municipal energy has been roused and enlisted. The Civic Federation, on the other hand, started with the perception that Chicago is a net work of organizations varying greatly in their specific purposes, but in scores of cases distinctly committed to some portions of the work which evidently makes up the total of successful municipal action. Some of these organizations plainly enjoyed advantages over the Federation for various kinds of influence; particularly the churches, the Woman's Club, and the other organizations already named. It would have been stupid generalship to attempt to usurp the influence in the town which these organizations exerted, and about the patriotic use of which they needed no instructions from the members of the Federation. It would have been difficult, if not impossible, for the Federation
