CHAPTER XII.
SOCIAL CITIES.
"Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and re-planted for too long a series of generations in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth."—"The Scarlet Letter," Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The problem with which we have now to deal, shortly stated, is this: How to make our Garden City experiment the stepping-stone to a higher and better form of industrial life generally throughout the country. Granted the success of the initial experiment, and there must inevitably arise a widespread demand for an extension of methods so healthy and so advantageous; and it will be well, therefore, to consider some of the chief problems which will have to be faced in the progress of such extension.
It will, I think, be well, in approaching this question, to consider the analogy presented by the early progress of railway enterprise. This will help us to see more clearly some of the broader features of the new development which is now so closely upon us if only we show ourselves energetic and imaginative. Railways were first made without any statutory powers. They were con-
