296 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



crty of those who have more than a determined amount, and divide the 

 proceeds among those who have less than a certain amount, we should 

 strengthen the middle class, and do away with the two extremes. The 

 effect would he exactly the opposite. We should diminish the middle 

 classes and strengthen the extremes. The more we helped at the bot- 

 tom, the more we should have to help, not only on account of the in- 

 crease of the population and the influx of eager members of " the house 

 of want," hut also on account of the demoralization of the lowest sec- 

 tions of the middle class who were excluded. The more we confiscated 

 at the top, the more craft and fraud would be brought into play to es- 

 cape confiscation, and the wider must be the scope of taxation over the 

 upper middle classes to obtain the necessary means. 



The modern middle class has been developed with, and in, an in- 

 dustrial civilization. In turn they have taken control of this civiliza- 

 tion and developed social and civil institutions to accord with it. The 

 organization which they have made is now called, in the cant of a cer- 

 tain school, "capitalism" and a " capitalistic system." It is the first 

 organization of human society that ever has existed based on rights. 

 By virtue of its own institutions, it now puts itself on trial, and stands 

 open to revision and correction whenever, on sober and rational grounds, 

 revision can be shown to be necessary to guarantee the rights of any one. 

 It is the first organization of human society that has ever tolerated dis- 

 sent or criticism of itself. Nobles and peasants have never made any- 

 thing but Poland or Russia. The proletariat has never made anything 

 but revolution. The socialistic state holds out no promise that it will 

 ever tolerate dissent. It will never consider the question of reform. 

 It stands already on the same footing as all the old states. It knows 

 that it is right, and all right. Of course, therefore, there is no place 

 in it for reform. "With extreme reconstructions of society, however, 

 it may not be worth while to trouble ourselves. What we need to 

 perceive is, that all socialistic measures, whatever their degree, have 

 the same tendency and effect. It is they which may be always de- 

 scribed as tending to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, and to 

 extinguish the intervening: classes. 



MISGOVERNMENT OF GREAT CITIES. 



By FRANK P. CRANDON. 



GREAT cities arc essential to the development of any important 

 or influential national life. They gather into themselves the 

 resources of the nation, and so organize its stores of wealth, its enter- 

 prise, and the results of its genius and culture, as to render each effi- 

 cient in promoting the common good. They are the centers of power. 

 Without the facilities which through them are afforded for commerce 



