Joseph Chamberlain’s heart soared as he listened to the oratory of the Reverend George Dawson at the dedication of the Free Reference Library in Birmingham, England. An industrialist and the grandfather of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Joseph was inspired by Dawson’s pronouncement that “a town is a solemn organism through which should flow, and in which should be shaped all the highest, loftiest and truest ends of man’s intellectual and moral nature.”1 This was the heart of what would come to be called “the municipal gospel,” a belief that the government can enoble humanity simply by changing the environment. […]
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