594 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and a tyrannical prince, " have always and very naturally designed to 

 enrich themselves and impoverish the enemy. Neither is victory 

 sought nor conquest desirable except to strengthen themselves and 

 weaken the enemy." 



In the light of this truth the organization of powerful political 

 parties becomes natural and inevitable. It is just as natural and in- 

 evitable that the more numerous the duties intrusted to the State — 

 that is, the greater the spoil to be fought for in caucus and conven- 

 tion and on the floors of legislatures — the more powerful, dangerous, 

 and demoralizing they are certain to be. Were these duties confined 

 to the maintenance of order and the enforcement of justice, it would 

 be an easy matter for the busiest citizen to give them the attention 

 they required. So simple would they be that he could understand 

 them, and so important that he would insist upon their proper per- 

 formance. But when they become vast and complex, including such 

 special and difficult work as the education of children; the care of 

 idiots, lunatics, and epileptics; the supervision of the liquor traffic, 

 the insurance business, and railroad transportation, and the regula- 

 tion of the amount of currency needed in an industrial community, 

 it is beyond the powers of any man, however able, to understand 

 them all, and, no matter how much time he may have, to look after 

 them as he ought. When to these duties are added the management 

 of agricultural stations; the inspection of all kinds of food; the ex- 

 tirpation of injurious insects, noxious weeds, and contagious diseases; 

 the licensing of various trades and professions; the suppression of 

 quacks, fortune-tellers, and gamblers; the production and sale of 

 sterilized milk, and the multitude of other duties now intrusted to 

 the Government, it is no wonder that he finds himself obliged to 

 neglect public questions and to devote himself more closely to his 

 own affairs in order to meet the ever-increasing burdens of taxation. 

 Neither is it any wonder that there springs up a class of men to look 

 after the duties he neglects, and to make such work a means of 

 subsistence. The very law of evolution requires such a differentia- 

 tion of social functions and organs. The politician is not, therefore, 

 the product of his own love of spoliation solely, but of the neces- 

 sities of a vicious extension of the duties of the State. There is noth- 

 ing more abnormal or reprehensible about his existence under the 

 present regime than there is about the physician or lawyer where 

 disease and contention prevail. As long as the conditions are main- 

 tained that created him, so long will he ply his profession. When 

 they are abolished he will be abolished. ISTo number of citizens' 

 unions, or nonpartisan movements, or other devices of hopeful but 

 misguided reformers to abolish him, can modify or reverse this im- 

 mutable decree of social science. 



