PROBLEMS OF MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION 437 



to the administration of restrictive measures. The people who come 

 most directly in contact with its executive officials, who are the legiti- 

 mate objects of its control, are the vicious, who need to be repressed; 

 the poor and semi-dependent, who appeal to it in their dire need; 

 or, from quite the reverse reason, those who are trying to avoid 

 an undue taxation, resenting the fact that they should be made to 

 support that which, from the nature of the case, is too barren to 

 excite their real enthusiasm. 



The instinctive protest against this mechanical method of civic 

 control, with the lack of adjustment between the natural democratic 

 impulse and the fixed external condition, inevitably produces the 

 indifferent citizen and the so-called " professional politician; ' the 

 first who, because he is not vicious, feels that the real processes of 

 government do not concern him, and wishes only to be let alone; 

 and the other who easily adapts himself to an illegal avoidance of 

 the external fixed conditions by assuming that those conditions have 

 been settled by doctrinaires who did not in the least understand 

 the people, while he, the politician, makes his appeal beyond those 

 to the real desires of the people themselves. He is thus not only 

 the " people's friend," but their interpreter. It is interesting to 

 note how often simple people refer to " them," meaning the good 

 and great who govern but do not understand, and to " him," mean- 

 ing the alderman who represents them in these incomprehensible 

 halls of state, as an ambassador to a foreign country to whose borders 

 they could not possibly penetrate and whose language they do not 

 speak. 



In addition to this difficulty, inherent in the difference between 

 the traditional and actual situation, is another, which constantly 

 arises on the purely administrative side. The traditional govern- 

 ments which the founders had copied, in proceeding to define the 

 vicious by fixed standards from the good, and then to legislate 

 against them, had enforced these restrictive measures by trained 

 officials, usually with a military background. In a democracy, how- 

 ever, the officers intrusted with the enforcement of this restrictive 

 legislation, if not actually elected by the people themselves, are 

 still the appointments of those thus elected, and are therefore good- 

 natured men who have made friends by their kindness and social 

 qualities. 



The carrying-out of repressive legislation, the remnant of a mili- 

 tary state of society, is, in a democracy, at last put into the hands 

 of men who have attained office because of political " pull," and 

 the repressive measures must be enforced by those sympathizing 

 with and belonging to the people against whom the measures operate. 

 This anomalous situation produces almost inevitably one result: 

 that the police authorities themselves are turned into allies of vice 



