1. Two excellent examples of studies of reform efforts in individual cities are Miller, Zane L., Boss Co's Cincinnati: Urban Politics in the Progressive Era (Oxford, 1968),Google Scholar and Holli, Melvin G., Reform in Detroit: Hazen S. Pingree and Urban Politics (Oxford, 1969).Google ScholarQuandt's, JeanFrom the Small Town to the Great Community: The Social Thought of Progressive Intellectuals (New Brunswick, N.J., 1970)Google Scholar is a model of judicious interpretation of progressive intellectuals' ambivalence about the meaning of urbanization for American life.

2. The principal source for Re-Thinking Chicago is the Arthur E. Holt Papers, Chicago Theological Seminary. The Charles E. Merriam Papers at the University of Chicago Library (Regenstein Library), though less complete, contain additional documents. Greene, Shirley E., “Re-Thinking Chicago: An Experiment in Christian Community Building” (M.A. thesis, University of Chicago, 1935),Google Scholar covers less than two years and, as the work of a participant, lacks detachment.

3. Karl, Barry D., Charles E. Merriam and the Study of Politics (Chicago, 1974),Google Scholar chap. 4, “The Scholar in Politics.” Merriam's role in municipal affairs is also recounted in his Chicago: A More Intimate View of Urban Politics (New York, 1929),Google Scholar chap. 7, “Actual Government,” and, more briefly, in Wendt, Lloyd and Kogan, Herman, Big Bill of Chicago (Indianapolis, 1953), pp. 132–137, 152, 163–165, 236, 253.Google Scholar

4. Greene, , “Re-Thinking Chicago,” p. 4.Google Scholar

5. Charles W. Gilkey, et al., to Dear—, 1 November 1933, and Arthur E. Holt to—9 November 1933, Holt Papers; Greene, , “Re-Thinking Chicago,” pp. 5–6.Google Scholar The records contain no indication of how the name was chosen, but, as Robert T. Handy of Union Theological Seminary has pointed Out to the author, there are striking resemblances to the Laymen's Foreign Missions Inquiry, which published its report, Re-Thinking Missions (New York, 1932),Google Scholar the year before. Both Re-Thinking Chicago and Re-Thinking Missions benefited from Rockefeller money and both incorporated contemporary social-scientific research techniques. Except for possible copying of the name, however, the parallels seem accidental.

6. Greene, , “Re-Thinking Chicago,” pp. 6–8, 11, 13–14, 16–17;Google Scholar “Citizens Look at Chicago,” Chicago Daily News, 8 03 1934, p. 18.Google Scholar The author has found no other newspaper coverage of any Re-Thinking Chicago activities. Programs for all of these conferences are in the Holt Papers.

7. Program, “Fourth General Conference of Re-Thinking Chicago,” 2 Dec. 1935; flier, “An Open Meeting on Youth Facing Civic Evil in Connection with the Fourth General Conference on Rethinking Chicago”; Shirley E.Greene, “Report on Inter-Racial Dinner”; “Final Report of the Executive Secretary—Shirley E.Greene,” 3 March 1937, Holt Papers. Gilkey, Charles W. to “Dear Fellow Citizen,” 16 11. 1935,Google Scholar and 13 February. 1937; Program, “Re-Thinking Relations Between Chicago and Illinois,” 22 Feb. 1937, Merriam Papers.

8. Program, “Rethinking Chicago and Chicago's South Side,” 5 May 1935; Greene, Shirley E. to “friends and representatives … in Local Communities,” [01. 1936,]Google Scholar Merriam Papers. “Re-Thinking Chicago—Report of the Secretary for the Period January 7 to June 10, 1935”; Greene, , “Report on Re-Thinking Southwest Chicago Conference,” 8 02. 1937;Google Scholar “Final Report of the Executive Secretary,” Holt Papers.

9. After serving as a pastor from 1904 to 1919 and as secretary of his denomination's Social Service Commission from 1919 to 1924, Holt had come to Chicago in 1924 as successor to Graham Taylor. For accounts of his substantial contributions at CTS, see McGiffert, Arthur C. Jr, No Ivory Tower. The Story of the Chicago Theological Seminary (Chicago, 1965), pp. 186–196,Google Scholar and Dorn, Jacob H., “The Rural Ideal and Agrarian Realities: Arthur E. Holt and the Vision of a Decentralized America in the Interwar Years,” Church History 52 (1983): 53–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Holt to Gilkey, 21 Dec. 1933; “Re-Thinking Chicago. (Summaries of Sixteen Books on Chicago),” n.d., Holt Papers. Additional titles were included in later lists of recommended books distributed through Re-Thinking Chicago.

11. Greene, , “Re-Thinking Chicago,” pp. 9–11.Google Scholar “Readings on the City of God” originated earlier and seems to have gone through changes of content as it was used for different groups in the 1930s. One version, prepared by Holt and Kincheloe for the Congregationalists' Tower Hill Convocation in Michigan, is dated for use in 1931. The version used at the first Re-Thinking Chicago conference is forty-two mimeographed pages and contains sections on: “The City of God As Seen By the Hebrews,”“The New Jerusalem of Early Christian Thought,”“St. Augustine's City of God,”“The City of God After the Reformation,”“Humanistic Utopias,”“The City of Democratic Fellowship,” and “The Meaning of the Search for the City of God.” Other materials from Re-Thinking Chicago were later used at the Tower Hill Convocation. See Holt, and Kincheloe, , “The Action of the Idealistic Forces on the Government and Citizenship of Local Communities,” 4–7 09 1934,Google Scholar Holt Papers.

12. Greene, , “Re-Thinking Chicago,” pp. 14–15.Google Scholar “Report on Twenty-Two Non-Partisan Civic Agencies in Chicago,” n.d., Holt Papers. “Summary of Material Presented in Re-Thinking Chicago Meetings,” n.d., Merriam Papers.

13. Greene, , “Re-Thinking Chicago,” p. 45.Google Scholar

14. Social research was used, for example, by the rural-church movement, the Inter-Church World Movement in the steel strike of 1919, and H. Paul Douglass in his studies of urban churches.

15. Greene, , “Re-Thinking Chicago,” pp. 78–79.Google Scholar

16. Smith, T. V. and White, Leonard D., eds., Chicago: An Experiment in Social Science Research (Chicago, 1929),Google Scholar esp. chap. I, “The City as a Social Laboratory,” by Robert E. Park, and chap. 2, “The Local Research Committee and Social Science Building,” by White. See also Karl, , Merriam and the Study of Politics, pp. 143–155.Google Scholar

17. Gordon, Milton M., Social Class in American Sociology (Durham, N.C., 1958), pp. 21–52,Google Scholar provides an excellent summary. See also Smith and White, Chicago, chap. 9, “Studies of Institutions,” by Ernest W. Burgess.

18. Dorn, , “The Rural Ideal and Agrarian Realities,” pp. 54–57.Google ScholarHolt, Arthur E., “The Contribution of Sociology to the Making of the Minister,” Crozer Quarterly 3 (1926): 423–439,Google Scholar and “The Ecological Approach to the Church,” American Journal of Sociology 33 (1927): 72–79.Google Scholar For testimony to Holt's significance from the university scholars, see Smith, and White, , Chicago, pp. 148–152.Google Scholar

19. For statements by Park and Burgess that their research would benefit social and civic agencies, see Smith, and White, , Chicago, pp. 14–15 and 138.Google Scholar

20. Karl, , Merriam and the Study of Politics, pp. 16–17, 143–144.Google Scholar

21. Holt, Arthur E., “Our Common Perversion,” Christian Century 52 (1935): 850–852,Google Scholar and “The City of God in Chicago,” Chicago Theological Seminary Register 26 (1936): 11–12.Google Scholar

22. Greene, , “Re-Thinking Chicago,” pp. 28–29, 71, 74–75.Google Scholar

23. Merriam, , Chicago, pp. 171–172.Google Scholar

24. Smith and White, Chicago, chap. 12, “Social Science Research and the Community,” esp. pp. 244–246.

25. Greene, , “Re-Thinking Chicago,” pp. 12–13.Google Scholar

26. Merriam, who had helped locate the International City Manager Committee at the University of Chicago, may have introduced Bentley to Holt and other Chicagoans. Karl, , Merriam and the Study of Politics, pp. 144–145.Google Scholar Holt had Bentley speak to a small group at CTS before addressing Re-Thinking Chicago. Holt to Henry Bentley, 4, 11 April 1934; Bentley to Holt, 6, 16 April 1934; Typed notes for CTS speech, April 1934, Box 12, Henry Bentley Papers, Cincinnati Historical Society.

27. Henry Bentley, “The Story of Cincinnati,” in “Summary of Material Presented in Re-Thinking Chicago Meetings,” pp. 97–103, Merriam Papers; “How Cincinnati Did It,” Men and Events: The Bulletin of the Union League Club 11 (03 1934): 16–17.Google Scholar

28. Men and Events 11:4,15; Bulletin of the Chicago City Manager Committee 1 (06 1935): 1–4.Google Scholar The five other members known were: Duncan Brown; the Rev. Hugh Elmer Brown, First Congregational Church, Evanston; the Rev.Ernest G. Guthrie, Director, Chicago Congregational Union; and professors James G. Kerwin and Paul Douglas of the University of Chicago. See also H. Barry McCormick, chairman, Chicago City Manager Committee, to “Dear Fellow Member,” 13 January 1937, Holt Papers; and Greene's glowing remarks about Bentley and nonpartisanship in“Re-Thinking Chicago,” pp. 13–14, 61–64.

29. Bentley to Holt, 26 April 1934, Box 12, Bentley Papers. After the untimely death of Arthur M. Barnhart, a Chicago philanthropist, Bentley explored the possibility that Barnhart's family might underwrite Re-Thinking Chicago. Bentley to Stuart Haydon, 29 May 1936; Haydon to Bentley, 17 May and 2 July 1936; Walter J. Millard to Bentley, 28 May 1936, Box 13, Bentley Papers.

30. Wendt and Kogan, Big Bill of Chicago, written by two Chicago newspapermen, is a sprightly but generally reliable account.

31. Karl, , Merriam and the Study of Politics, pp. 79–97;Google ScholarAllswang, John M., A House for all Peoples: Ethnic Politics in Chicago, 1890–1936 (Lexington Ky., 1971), pp. 173–175.Google Scholar Dever was from the ward of Graham Taylor's Chicago Commons settlement, and Taylor's political organization supported his aldermanic career as well as his mayoral administration; Wade, Louise C., Graham Taylor: Pioneer for Social Justice, 1851–1938 (Chicago, 1964), p. 192;Google ScholarPhilpott, Thomas L., The Slum and the Ghetto: Neighborhood Deterioration and MiddleClass Reform, Chicago, 1880–1930 (Oxford, 1978), pp. 85–86.Google Scholar

32. Allswang, , House for all Peoples, pp. 105, 160.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., pp. 180–181. Two hundred members of the University of Chicago faculty endorsed Homer. For a judicious recent assessment of Kelly, see Bites, Roger, Big City Boss in Depression and War: Mayor Edward J. Kelly of Chicago (DeKalb Ill., 1984).Google Scholar

34. Chicago Tribune, 7 and 8 Nov. 1934.

35. Summaries of these speeches are in “Proceedings of Three Re-Thinking Chicago Conferences,” pp. 90–92, 95–96, Merriam Papers.

36. Greene, , “Re-Thinking Chicago,” p. 17.Google Scholar

37. Chicago Tribune, 3 April 1935.

38. Greene, , “Re-Thinking Chicago,” p. 28;Google Scholar Program, “Honest Elections Convention,” 27 March 1936, Box 13 Bentley Papers.

39. RE-THINKING CHICAGO. Statement of Policy, nd., and “RE-THINKING CHICAGO: ‘A New Philosophy and Statesmanship for Chicago,’” n. d., Holt Papers; “AFTER RE-THINKING CHICAGO WHAT? (Suggestions for follow-up of a local Re-Thinking Chicago Conference),” n. d., Merriam Papers.

40. Handy, Robert T., A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities (Oxford, 1971), pp. 195–196.Google Scholar

41. Dorn, , “The Rural Ideal and Agrarian Realities,” pp. 64–65.Google Scholar

42. Still, Edwin W., A Base for Building: Handbook for the Chicago Pilgrim Fellowship Rethinking Chicago Project (Chicago, 1939).Google Scholar

43. Though there was no recurrence of the race riot of 1919, race relations remained troubled. Philpott, Thomas L. shows in The Slum and the Ghetto, pp. 141–142,Google Scholar that of all ethnic and racial groups, blacks alone were restricted to a “ghetto.”

44. “RE-THINKING CHICAGO … March 5–6, 1934. MEMBERS OF THE CONFERENCE,” Holt Papers. For information on Rabbis Mann, Freehof, and G. George Fox of South Shore Temple, see Simons, John, ed., Who's Who in American Jewry: A Biographical Dictionary of Living Jews in the United States and Canada, 3 vols. (New York, 1938), 3: 288, 296, 703.Google Scholar

45. “Final Report of the Executive Secretary,” Holt Papers; Greene to “friends and representatives … in Local Communities,” Merriam Papers; Allswang, , A House for all Peoples, p. 20.Google Scholar

46. Susman, Warren I., Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1973), pp. 249–251.Google Scholar

47. McGiffert, , No Ivory Tower, p. 190.Google Scholar