Compare the American city of today with its prototype of seventy-five years ago. In 1845, for example, Boston was a city of more than 40,000 people. It had no paved streets, not one. There was no public water supply; the people brought enough for their daily needs from neighborhood wells. A few sewers had been built, wooden drains they were, and only in the more thickly-settled portions of the city. Provision for the care of the public health was altogether lacking; there was no regular police force and only a volunteer bucket-brigade to put out fires. Public playgrounds were unknown; so were public baths, neighborhood centers, band concerts, branch libraries, electric street lights, trolley cars, subways, and the long list of things which come within the range of municipal enterprise today. Those were days of intense individualism when welfare work was left almost wholly to private auspices. Now the city has become a leader in almost every form of social and economic activity. This socializing of urban life has gone on, and still goes on, without attracting much attention, but it is one of the most far-reaching developments of the past century. [Sidenote: The problem of making both ends meet.] =Where will the Cities Get the Money?=—This expansion in municipal activities has brought with it an incessant need for more money—more money for streets, parks, playgrounds, schools, poor-relief, recreation, pensions, and for a dozen other things. Cities have many hard problems, but the hardest of all is that of making both ends meet. New enterprises mean new expenditures, and even the older activities keep steadily costing more. [Sidenote: The effect of high taxes.]