November 24, 1920.
Dear Miss Addams:
"We shall soon," wrote Justice Brandeis, "have had a year of freedom from what have been regarded as the main causes of misery -- unemployment, low wages and drink." He asked us to tally up what the gains had been -- what further gains might be expected from the elimination of these causes. To that end we made soundings in Grand Rapids -- as a representative, middle western American industrial community and brought them out in a special number which has provoked no end of interest and discussion of a spontaneous sort.
But he asked a further question:
"What else must be done to make this a livable world?"
Now that was altogether too big a pot of gold to find at the foot of even a three-colored rainbow. Its nuggets must be searched for in the aspirations of men -- their high hopes and hard thinking -- men of kindling imagination and various experience.
By way of a bit of prospecting, we of the Survey are planning a symposium to be published on the eve of the new year and are asking a score or so of people to contribute to it -- people of kindling imagination and of various experience. The Survey [page 2] reaches some 25,000 American men and women who are up to their elbows in works of good will and constructive undertakings in our American communities. We want the symposium to serve them as a look-ahead; we are asking contributors to think in terms of the new year -- of practical steps to be taken and worked for lest the symposium be merely a cross-fire of clashing social theories and philosophies. But we are no less conscious that to limit the symposium to specific, practical things which may be achieved in twelve months, would be to cripple it -- to confine it to merely symptomatic changes rather than to deal with underlying causes and nascent social courses. We are asking contributors, therefore, to make their message one to the new generation which is getting into harness for the work of life -- to whom the new year is but the first of a succession of years and to whom the long goal ahead may mean more than the first milestones.
The editors of the Survey unite in asking you to contribute to this symposium -- five hundred words or less, to be specific, in hand by Monday, December 13th. We are sending you an extra copy of our Grand Rapids number on Prohibition and Prosperity, but should be glad if you would quite forget that and write to the spirit of youth -- and the new year.
Sincerely,
Editor
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