648 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are adverse. Throughout all past time vitiation of evidence by influences 

 of this nature has been going on to a degree varying with each people 

 and each age ; and hence arises an additional obstacle to the obtain- 

 ment of fit data. 



Yet another, and perhaps stronger, distorting influence existing in 

 the medium through which facts reach us, results from the self-seeking, 

 pecuniary or other, of those who testify. We require constantly to bear 

 in mind that personal interests affect most of the statements on which 

 sociological conclusions are based, and on which legislation proceeds. 



Every one knows this to be so where the evidence concerns mer- 

 cantile affairs. That railway enterprise, at first prompted by pressing 

 needs for communication, presently came to be prompted by specula- 

 tors, professional and financial ; and that the estimates of cost, of 

 traffic, of profits, etc., set forth in prospectuses, were grossly mislead- 

 ing ; many readers have been taught by bitter experience. That the 

 gains secured by schemers who float companies have fostered an or- 

 ganized system which has made the falsification of evidence a business, 

 and which, in the case of bubble insurance companies, has been worked 

 so methodically that it has become the function of a journal to expose 

 the frauds continually repeated, are also familiar facts ; reminding us 

 how in these directions it is needful to look very skeptically on the 

 allegations put before us. But there is not so distinct a consciousness 

 that in other than business enterprises, self-seeking is an active cause 

 of misrepresentation. 



Like the getting up of companies, the getting up of agitations and 

 of societies has become, to a considerable extent, a means of advance- 

 ment. As in the United States politics has become a profession, into 

 which a man enters to get an income, so here there has grown up, 

 though happily to a smaller extent, a professional philanthropy, pur- 

 sued with a view either to position, or to profit, or to both. Much as 

 the young clergyman in want of a benefice, feeling deeply the spiritual 

 destitution of a suburb that has grown beyond churches, busies him- 

 self in raising funds to build a church, and probably does not, during 

 his canvass, understate the evils to be remedied ; so every here and 

 there an educated man with plenty of leisure and small income, greatly 

 impressed with some social evil to be remedied or benefit to be 

 achieved, becomes the nucleus to an institution, or the spur to a move- 

 ment. And since his success depends mainly on the strength of the 

 case he makes out, it is not to be expected that the evils to be dealt 

 with will be faintly pictured, or that he will insist very strongly upon 

 facts adverse to his plan. As I can personally testify, there are those 

 who, having been active in getting up schemes for alleged beneficial 

 public ends, consider themselves aggrieved when not afterward ap- 

 pointed salaried officials. The recent exposure of the "Free Dormi- 

 tory Association," which, as stated at a meeting of the Charity-Organi* 



