THE COMMUNITY CENTER MOVEMENT
The most conspicuous social growth of our modern civilization is that thing we call a city, and so complex have become its problems that some of the master minds of the day have concentrated on them. Many serious, thinking people are asking, "Has the city broken down? Has it failed to meet the demands that have been put upon it? Are new problems piling up faster than we can solve the existing ones?" Mr. John E. Lathrop, who made an intensive study of the problems of two hundred cities while he was engaged with the American City Bureau, and who was director of the city planning exhibit shown in thirty cities of the United States, Canada and South America, gives some startling figures and cities some amazing facts. From 1900 to 1910 population of the cities increased much more rapidly than that of the country. With increasing population in the city there must be increased facilities, and the problem of transportation looms larger and larger, while the cost of operation increases per capita with increased population. In 1905 New York spent
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