6oz POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



question, the more prone are the demagogues to mouth it. To such 

 questions as bankruptcy, railroad pooling, and currency reform will 

 they give their time and wisdom only when business interests have 

 almost risen in insurrection and compelled attention to them. 



The same policy of hypocrisy, deception, favoritism, and proscrip- 

 tion is a dominant trait of the administration of the Government. 

 The object almost invariably in mind is the welfare or injury of some 

 party, or faction, or politician. The interests of the public are the last 

 thing thought of, if thought of at all. Take dismissals and appoint- 

 ments. They may, as has been known to occur even in the United 

 States, be made to better the public service. Even then a careful 

 study of motive will disclose the characteristic purpose of the politi- 

 cian. In a choice between two men of equal ability, or rather of equal 

 inability, which is more commonly the case, preference is given to the 

 one with the stronger " pull." Often, as has been shown within the 

 past year or two, convicted rascals are appointed at the behest of Con- 

 gressmen and in defiance of the wishes of the business community, 

 and, in spite of the civil-service laws, officials are dismissed because of 

 their politics alone. In the letting of contracts it is not difficult to 

 detect the observance of the same judicious rule. The virtuous for- 

 mality of letting to the lowest bidder may be gone through with, and 

 the public may be greatly pleased with this exhibition of official 

 deference to its interests. Yet an examination of the work done 

 under the supervision of complaisant inspectors, who may be blinded 

 in various ways to the defects of that of a political friend, or made 

 supernaturally alert to the defects of that of a political enemy, will 

 reveal a trail that does not belong to scrupulous integrity. That is 

 why dry docks, like that in Brooklyn, why harbor works, like those 

 in Charleston, turn out defective; why the Government has to pay 

 more for the transportation of the mails than a private corporation; 

 why the cost of the improvement of the Erie Canal was concealed 

 until nearly all the money voted for the folly had been expended; 

 why of the money expended one million dollars was wasted, if not 

 stolen; why so much of the State Capitol at Albany has been built 

 over again; why the City Hall in Philadelphia has been an inter- 

 minable job; why the supplies of prisons, asylums, and other public 

 institutions are constantly proving to be inferior to those paid for — 

 why, in a word, everything done by political methods is vitiated by 

 the ethics of war. In the enforcement of laws very little justice or 

 honesty can be found. As a rule, they bear much more harshly on 

 the poor and weak, that is, those with small political influence, than 

 on the rich and strong, that is, those with much political influ- 

 ence. Take the enforcement of liquor laws, health laws, factory laws, 

 and compulsory school laws. If a man with political influence wishes 



