PROBLEMS OF MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION 445 



stupidly ignore, and also to the fact that they are preaching indus- 

 trial government to an industrial age which recognizes it as vital 

 and adapted to its needs. All of that devotion, all of that specu- 

 lative philosophy concerning the real issues of life could, of course, 

 easily be turned into a passion for self-government and the develop- 

 ment of the national life, if we were really democratic from the 

 modern evolutionary standpoint, and did we but hold our town 

 meetings upon topics that most concern us. 



In point of fact, government ignores industrial questions as the 

 traditional ostrich hides his head in the sand, for no great strike is 

 without its political significance, nor without the attempt of political 

 interference, quite as none of the mammoth business combinations 

 of manufacturers or distributors are without their lobbyists in the 

 city council, unless they are fortunate enough to own aldermen 

 outright. It is merely a question as to whether industry in relation 

 to government is to be discussed as a matter of popular interest and 

 concern at the moment when that relation might be modified and 

 controlled, or whether we prefer to wait a decade and to read about 

 it later in the magazines, horrified that such interference of business 

 with government should have taken place. 



Again we see the doctrinaire of the eighteenth century preferring 

 to hold to his theory of government and ignoring the facts, as over 

 against the open-minded scientist of the present day who would 

 scorn to ignore facts because they might disturb his theory. 



The two points at which government is developing most rapidly 

 at the present moment are naturally the two in which it 

 genuinely exercises its function, - - in relation to the vicious and in 

 relation to the poor and dependent. 



The juvenile courts which the large cities are inaugurating are 

 supplied with probation officers, whose duty it is to encourage the 

 wavering virtues of the wayward boy, and to keep him out of the 

 police courts with their consequent penal institutions, -- a real 

 recognition of social obligation. In one of the most successful of 

 these courts, that of Denver, the judge, who can point to a remark- 

 able record with the bad boys of the city, plays a veritable game 

 with them against the police force, he and the boys undertaking to 

 be " good " without the help of repression, and in spite of the mach- 

 inations of the police. For instance, if the boys who have been 

 sentenced to the State Reform School at Golden deliver themselves 

 without the aid of the sheriff, whose duty it is to take them there, 

 they not only vindicate their manliness and readiness " to take their 

 medicine," but they beat the sheriff, who belongs to the penal 

 machinery, out of his five-dollar fee, over which fact they openly 

 triumph. A simple example, perhaps, but significant of the atti- 

 tude of the well-intentioned toward repression government. 



