728 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



into a voluminous flood utterly changing the face of things. Or to 

 leave figures for a more literal statement, he is unconscious of the truth 

 that he is helping to form a certain type of social organization, and 

 that kindred measures, effecting kindred changes of organization, tend 

 with ever-increasing force to make that type general, until, passing a 

 certain point, the proclivity toward it becomes irresistible. Just as 

 each society aims when possible to produce in other societies a struct- 

 ure akin to its own just as, among the Greeks, the Spartans and the 

 Athenians severally struggled to spread their respective political insti- 

 tutions, or as, at the time of the French Revolution, the European 

 monarchies aimed to re-establish monarchy in France, so, within every 

 society, each species of structure tends to propagate itself. Just as 

 the system of voluntary co-operation by companies, associations, unions, 

 to achieve business ends and other ends, spreads throughout a com- 

 munity, so does the antagonistic system of compulsory co-operation 

 under state-agencies spread, and the larger becomes its extension the 

 more power of spreading it gets. The question of questions for 

 the politician should ever be, " What type of social structure am 

 I tending to produce ? " But this is a question he scarcely ever en- 

 tertains. 



Here we will entertain it for him. Let us now observe the general 

 course of recent changes, with the accompanying current of ideas, and 

 see whither they are carrying us. 



The blank form of a question daily asked is, " We have already 

 done this ; why should we not do that ? " And the regard for prece- 

 dent suggested by it is ever pushing on regulative legislation. Hav- 

 ing had brought within their sphere of operation more and more 

 numerous businesses, the acts restricting hours of employment and 

 dictating the treatment of workers are now to be made applicable to 

 shops. From inspecting lodging-houses to limit the numbers of occu- 

 pants and enforce sanitary conditions, we have passed to inspecting all 

 houses below a certain rent in which there are members of more than 

 one family, and are now passing to a kindred inspection of all small 

 houses. * The buying and working of telegraphs by the state is made 

 a reason for urging that the state should buy and work the railways. 

 Supplying children with food for their iminds by public agency is 

 being followed in some cases by supplying food for their bodies ; and, 

 after the practice has been made gradually more general, we may 

 anticipate that the supply now proposed to be made gratis in the one 

 case will eventually be proposed to be made gratis in the other, the 

 argument that good bodies as well as good minds are needful to make 

 good citizens being logically urged as a reason for the extension. And 

 then, avowedly proceeding on the precedents furnished by the church, 

 the school, and the reading-room, all publicly provided, it is contended 



* See letter of Local Government Board, "Times," January 2, 1884. 



