(3) The third proposed remedy is to colonize the poor of the cities in the country. This has been especially advocated by General Booth and other leaders of the Salvation Army. This plan, however, cannot do much toward helping solve the problem of the city. It is a difficult thing to get the poor in the city adjusted again to rural life, and the probability is that in many cases they would be worse off in the country than in the city. Moreover, the vacant places they left would soon be filled by others, and in general the whole plan seems to be against man's instincts as well as against the social forces of the time. (4) Administrative decentralization may be mentioned as a plan adopted by some state legislatures to prevent the growth of cities, that is, to scatter the state institutions through the rural sections of the state instead of locating them in the cities. On the whole, this is a foolish plan. The cities will not be checked in their growth by this, while on the other hand it is the cities which most need the presence of the state institutions. (5) The most important remedy for the cure of the evils of the cities, and one which meets these evils on their own ground, is what has been called "improved municipal housekeeping"; that is, the supervision and control by the city of all those things which are used in common by the people. The idea is that the city is not in its social conditions comparable to the rural community; rather it is more like one big household, and it is necessary, therefore, that there be collective housekeeping, so to speak, in order to keep those things which the people use in common at least in good order. This has also been called "municipal socialism." It is not socialism, however, in the strict sense, for it does not advocate the ownership in common of all capital, but rather municipal control of public utilities. We cannot enter into this large subject, upon which many books have been written; to a few of these the student will find references at the end of this chapter. Here it is only necessary to say that all of this civic improvement implies that the city must own or control adequately its sewer system, its water supply, its streets; that it must control the housing of the people, the disposal of garbage, the smoke nuisance, general sanitary and living conditions; that it must provide adequate protection against fire, an adequate park system, an adequate free school system, with public playgrounds for children, free libraries, free art galleries and museums, municipal theaters, public baths, and gymnasiums.