THE subject of this lecture is intended to suggest not
a contrast, but a union. The future to which it
refers is not a distant Utopia, but that immediate future
which is of direct personal concern to this generation.
I have tried to paint as I see them the actual conditions
which here in our own communities are producing misery.
I have sought to describe them clearly, concretely, un-
conventionally, without distortion or exaggeration, with-
out apology or defence. I have used illustrations drawn
from experiences in New York freely, although not
exclusively, but if my analysis is correct, it applies with
scarcely any modification to almost any American com-
munity, to any community in which the essential
economic conditions of prosperity are present, in
which there is a free surplus to be applied to com-
munity problems, in which free political institutions are
at work, that is to say, the courts independent and im-
partial, the legislature representative and responsive to
public opinion, the municipal and state administration
efficient and honest. These terms are relative and we
apply them with due reservations. Yet after all they

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