Dr. Scott E. Bedford

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DR. SCOTT E. BEDFORD Authoritative Lectures on the Improvement and Beautification of Cities
REDPATH



DR. SCOTT E. BEDFORD
(By Ford Hicks)

I ASKED Dr. Scott E. Bedford why he is devoting himself to Lyceum platform work.  Here is his answer: I had been teaching young folks in the University and had secured what were considered exceptional results; but, after all, the young folks are not yet in a position of leadership in their communities, so I turned to the older people who can help to do things now.

I quote this conversation with Doctor Bedford because it brings to attention something that the Redpath Bureau has greatly in mind, and something that it is making a tremendous effort to put into effect, and that is the presentation to community audiences of authoritative lectures with a definite educational content.

Doctor Bedford, for instance, is a man who for twenty years has been studying cities all over the world.  In the last few years he has visited and studied every city in the United States above 100,000 in population, and hundreds of smaller communities.  He has also an intimate knowledge of European cities.  He taught sociology at the University of Chicago from 1911 until about a year ago when he became research secretary for the United Charities of Chicago.  He has a Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago, and an L.H.D., honoris causa, from the University of Vermont.  He has written Labor Legislation of Kansas, Modern Cities, and Urban Sociology.  All this means that he is a genuine authority in his subject of urban sociology.  In placing Doctor Bedford on the Redpath Lyceum talent list to talk on city building and city beautification the Redpath management is acting in pursuance of a definite policy of presenting qualified authorities on educational subjects of interest and value to thinking people everywhere.

I heard Doctor Bedford recently in Chicago.  He held his big audience every single minute.  As a speaker he is as interesting as he is informative.  In his college days he was a prize debater and today he is a speaker of rare power.

Dr. Bedford has a wonderful contribution for cities of every size.  It will be a privilege for any group interested in city beautification or city improvement and development to hear a Bedford lecture.



FROM WHO'S WHO IN AMERICA
BEDFORD, Scott Elias William, sociologist; b. Winterset, Ia., Mar. 7, 1876; s. Winfield Scott and Jennie (Wilmore) B.; A. B., Baker U., Baldwin, Kan., 1902, A. M., 1903; fellow in sociology, U. of Chicago, 1908-11; (L.H.D., U. of Vt., 1911); Prof. history, Baker U., 1902-05, also prin. acad. same univ.; prof. sociology, Miami (O.) U., 1908-11; asst. prof. sociology, 1911-16, asso. prof. since 1916, U. of Chicago.  Asso. editor Am. Jour. Sociology since 1911; mng. editor publs. of Am. Sociol. Soc., 1912-20.  Specialist in gen. edn., War Plans Div., War Dept., 1919-20; asst. consultant, 2d Corps Area, War Dept., 1920-21.  Mem. Am. Sociol. Soc. (sec.-treas., 1912-20).  Am. Civic Assn., Am. Econ. Assn., Am. Statis. Assn., Nat. Conf. Social Work, Nat. Housing Assn., Nat. Municipal League.  Clubs: City (Chicago); Delta Tau Delta, Tau Kappa Alpha. Wrote (brochures) Labor Legislation of Kansas; American Cities; etc.

Doctor Bedford is a member of Institut International de Sociologie.




Authoritative Lecturer on the Improvement and Beautification of Cities


NOTABLE LECTURES

ILLUSTRATED LECTURES
Lectures designed to form Ideals in Adults on City Building: How not to do and also how to do well.  (Illustrated with remarkable colored slides,—some taken from airplanes.)



LECTURES I-LL.—City Planning
To explain city planning and show its need in cities of today, in order to add to the comfort, health, happiness of people and to save time.



LECTURE III.—Beautification of Cities
To explain how normal people crave the beautiful and show how the useful may be beautiful; to prove that utility is no excuse for ugliness in city building; to emphasize the importance of material (physical) things on human happiness and well being.



LECTURE IV.—Civic Nuisances
To illustrate the opposite of city planning and beauty.  To show what has happened in unplanned and ugly cities.  To show that discontent, unhappiness, disease and loss of money result from the absence of ideals in planning and beauty, to show American cities what will happen if ideals are not formed at once.



LECTURE V.—Housing
To emphasize the importance of the house in family life and the value of home ownership.  To form an ideal on housing and review the efforts at the solution of the housing problem in this and other countries.  To show the social service and importance of the realtor and developer.



LECTURE VI.—Community Organization
To show that in the neighborhood the individual is made into the person.  That we come to be social beings in the neighborhood, hence the need of the best neighborhood.  To show community centers.



LECTURES NOT ILLUSTRATED

LECTURE I.—The Meaning of the City in Human Society
To show the social importance of cities.  To explain the current interest in city growth and rural decline.  To indicate the contribution of city institutions and show how the forces of good and evil are engaged in mortal combat in cities.



LECTURE II.—Characteristics of Cities
To explain cities, interpreting and describing urban existence and attitudes.



LECTURE III.—Causes of the Growth of Cities
To explain why cities have grown and point out the lure of the city.



LECTURE IV.—Results of City Growth
To understand and explain the biological, economic, social, psychic and physical results of urban growth and what they mean to society.



LECTURE V.—Social Reform in Cities
To point out the mistakes and reasons for failure of reform in cities.  To show the way to social progress in cities.



LECTURE VI.—The City with a Soul or the All-American City
A recital of the latest and best accomplishments of all cities of our present time, thrown into one imaginary city, painted as a composite of all the good points of modern cities.  It deals with the successes of cities.



LECTURE VII.—Adult Education.  (Based on experience in the United States War Department.)
To show that the most neglected field in education today is that of the adult.  Increased adult leisure gives time for education; but no one knows how to educate the adult.  The success of Democracy depends upon adult education.





{The late Professor A. W. Small, head of the Department of Sociology of the University of Chicago, and editor of the American Journal of Sociology, said to Doctor Bedford, I think you know more about the social aspects of modern cities than any other American Sociologist.





Beauty Interest in American Cities
By DR. SCOTT E. BEDFORD
THE interest most neglected in American cities is the beauty interest.  People are restless, dissatisfied, irritable, because they are starving this craving for beauty.  The ugliness of the material things in the city gets on their nerves.  One function of beauty is to arrest motion—extract haste and impart poise.  Utility is no excuse for ugliness—anything in the city, a building, lamp-post, news stand, can be beautiful as well as useful.  Beauty in the city refines, enobles, elevates; counteracts passion, discontent and envy.  The object of all ornamentation is to make people happy, and cities are under obligation to make themselves attractive.  Some cities have already discovered that civic beauty is a financial asset—it attracts visitors and they spend their money.  Paris is a world-example of this great principle.

This craving for beauty in the physical surroundings is manifesting itself, for example, in the increasing use of color in men's clothes and in automobile bodies.

In America we desire cities where grace, refinement, art, beauty and harmony in color, form and sound may lift their heads under the patronage and appreciation of the entire community.  Art is not for the few.  In a democracy it is for the many.

Cities are usually imitated by the surrounding communities, and the obligations of leadership demand that cities make themselves clean, attractive, smokeless, noiseless, well-planned and restful.  Civic beauty can not be purchased at a corner drug store, it must come out of an enlightened civic mind and a healthy body politic.