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It was at the end of the second year that we received a visit from
the warden of Toynbee Hall and his wife, as they were returning to
England from a journey around the world. They had lived in East
London for many years, and had been identified with the public
movements for its betterment. They were much shocked that, in a
new country with conditions still plastic and hopeful, so little
attention had been paid to experiments and methods of amelioration
which had already been tried; and they looked in vain through our
library for blue books and governmental reports which recorded
painstaking study into the conditions of English cities.
They were the first of a long line of English visitors to express
the conviction that many things in Chicago were untoward not
through paucity of public spirit but through a lack of political
machinery adapted to modern city life. This was not all of the
situation but perhaps no casual visitor could be expected to see
that these matters of detail seemed unimportant to a city in the
first flush of youth, impatient of correction and convinced that
all would be well with its future. The most obvious faults were
those connected with the congested housing of the immigrant
population, nine tenths of them from the country, who carried on
all sorts of traditional activities in the crowded tenements.
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