A new article has been added at Newspaper Abstracts > United States > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia http://www.newspaperabstracts.com/index.php?action=displaycat&catid=1710 Direct link to article: http://www.newspaperabstracts.com/link.php?id=53528 Submitted by: barbara-dave Article Title: Evening Times Article Date: January 7 1901 Article Description: Town Plans Page-5 Article Text: The Evening Times January 7, 1901 Town Plans Page-5 THE MODEL TOWN PLANS Progress of the Philanthropic Quaker City Enterprise. Philadelphia Manufacturers Pledge Their Support - Dr. Krauskopf Declares it is the Only Remedy for the Crowded Ghettos - A Movement for the Regeneration of the Poor. Philadelphia, Jan. 7 - Projects for a model town, the suggestion for which assumed tangible form at a dinner given by Joseph BYERS to Spencer TRASK at the Aldine Hotel, this city, last November, were given a big impetus at a meeting held in Keneseth Israel yesterday and addressed by Dr. Joseph KRAUSKOPF. Dr. KRAUSKOPF, who has given a good part of ten years to the study of the amelioration of the condition of the occupants of the overcrowded sections of the large cities, has succeeded in interesting his large congregation in the projected model town. The latter, according to the plans of Spencer TRASK, Theodore C. SEARCH, Chairman of the Model Town Committee, appointed at the Aldine dinner; Robert C. OGDEN and others, is to be located near enough to Philadelphia to be easily accessible, and yet far enough away to remove its inhabitants entirely from the evils attendant upon life in the poorer sections of a big metropolis. Yesterday's meeting at Keneseth Israel was attended by many of the wealthiest and most prominent members of Philadelphia's Hebrew circles, among them being several big manufacturers. Dr. KRAUSKOPF devoted his talk wholly to the model town. "My examination has demonstrated the following pathological conditions," he declared in beginning: "First, that the Ghettos are the densest settled and foulest spots in our large cities; second, that the congestion is due to over-population, caused by enforced wholesale immigration, by the gregariousness of people of the same country, language, and religion, by the necessities of manufacturing interests located in the hearts of cities; third, that the over-population, constantly augmented by new consignments of starved immigrants, gives rise to a desperate race for the limited work to be had, at any price rather than starve. This overwork and overcrowding, under-feeding, want of air and light and sunshine; this stripping away of every safeguard to personal cleanliness and privacy, to ordinary decency and self-respect, undermines physical and moral health, blurs and blots the laws of morality, predisposes and tempts to vice and crime, multiplies hospitals and homes and orp! hanages, and fills them to overflowing; sends hundreds of boys and youths to reformatories and prisons, and hundreds of women into the streets, or into the brothels. Dr. KRAUSKOPF then described the mistakes that have heretofore been made in attempting to induce the poor of big cities to remove to far away country localities without the proper leadership or instruction, miles from railroads or markets, where they roasted in summer and froze in winter. "It is with these past errors and past failures clear in mind that the new remedy, the model town, presents itself to our thoughtful consideration and commands almost instantly our unbounded admiration," he continued. "It recognizes certain conditions as for the time being unalterable, and it suits itself to these conditions, instead of trying to make irredeemable conditions suit themselves to a remedy. It recognizes that these people are almost exclusively engaged in manufacturing labor, whose headquarters are located in the large cities. It recognizes that long and crowded Ghetto life, has unfitted most of them, for the time being, for a too distant removal from the city. It recognizes that the physical strength of these people is inadequate and their knowledge of agriculture to deficient to enable them for some time to come to earn their living entirely out of the soil. "It proposes, therefore, the moving of whole settlements of these people to the suburbs of villages close by, where speedy trains and trolleys at cheap fares may give them a sense of nearness to the city and its attractions, and where the presence of considerable numbers of their own kin and kind may give them opportunity for maintaining close at hand whatever religious or educational or social institutions they may choose. It proposes the building of factories for the specific labor of such village settlements and for the people themselves, little six and eight room cottages at rentals no higher than are now being paid in dark, damp, pestiferous, crowded Ghetto tenements, and which shall also include fire and life insurance and, by easy, extra payments in time become the property of the tenant. "And in all this regeneration proposed there is not one cent of charity. Yes, there is charity in it, the highest charity, regeneration, philanthropy. Philanthropy at 5 per cent. Investment philanthropy. Philanthropy free from the spasmodic fits of charity workers and charity contributors. And the plan is to be inaugurated here. An organization of capitalists with ample means at their command is to give us such village settlements in the immediate vicinity of our city. It asks your co-operation, not your money, to start it, but your moral aid to make it operative when started. You, who have factories, can assist by locating them there, and you, who have not or cannot, can assist in spreading the gospel of the village settlement. You can influence some of those to settle there for whose benefit such settlements are primarily intended." An informal conference was held after the meeting at which a number of Philadelphia manufacturers, among them one employing 1,000 hands and another employing 700, assured Dr. KRAUSKOPF of their hearty sympathy with the model town idea and promised to locate manufacturing establishments there. It was stated yesterday afternoon that the committee which has in charge the selection of a site for the model city has been offered a large number of locations and that one of them will be definitely decided upon within a comparatively short time. "When that has been done," declared Dr. KRAUSKOPF, "work on the town will be commenced immediately. It is not unlikely that the model city will start off with a population of nearly 20,000." ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ PA-Old-News ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ NewspaperAbstracts.com - Finding our ancestors in the news! TM http://www.NewspaperAbstracts.com Also visit our other sites: http://www.AncestorsOnTheWeb.com http://www.Genealogy101.com http://www.AutumnWindz.com