THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY. 5 



Instead of being made more humane and sympathetic with every 

 dollar he gives under compulsion to the poor and suffering, he be- 

 comes more hard-hearted and bitter toward his fellows. The no- 

 tion that society, as organized at present, is reducing him to pov- 

 erty and degradation takes possession of him. He becomes an 

 agitator for violent reforms that will only render his condition 

 Avorse. At the same time the people he aids come to regard him 

 simply as a person under obligations to care for them. They feel 

 no more gratitude toward him than the wolf toward the victim 

 of its hunger and ferocity. 



Akin to public charity are all those public enterprises under- 

 taken to ameliorate the condition of the poor — parks, model tene- 

 ment houses, art galleries, free concerts, free baths, and relief 

 works of all kinds. To these I must add all those Federal, State, 

 and municipal enterprises, such as the post office with the pro- 

 posed savings attachment, a State system of highways and water- 

 ways, municipal water, gas and electric works, etc., that are sup- 

 posed to be of inestimable advantage to the same worthy class. 

 These likewise fill the heart of the American Philistine with im- 

 mense satisfaction. Although he finds, by his study of pleasing 

 romances on municipal government in Europe, that we have yet 

 to take some further steps before we fall as completely as the in- 

 habitants of Paris and Berlin into the hands of municipal despo- 

 tism, he is convinced that we have made gratifying headway, and 

 that the outlook for complete subjection to that despotism is en- 

 couraging. But it should be remembered that splendid public 

 libraries and public baths, and extensive and expensive systems of 

 highways and municipal improvements, built under a modified form 

 of the old corvee, are no measure of the fellow-feeling and enlight- 

 enment of a community. On the contrary, they indicate a pitiful 

 incapacity to appreciate the rights of others, and are, therefore, a 

 measure rather of the low degree of civilization. It should be 

 remembered also, especially by the impoverished victims of the de- 

 lusions of the legislative philanthropist, that there is no expendi- 

 ture that yields a smaller return in the long run than public ex- 

 penditure; that however honest the belief that public ofiicials will 

 do their duty as conscientiously and efiSciently as private indi- 

 viduals, history has yet to record the fact of any bureaucracy; 

 that however profound the conviction that the cost of these " pub- 

 lic blessings " comes out of the pockets of the rich and is on that 

 account particularly justifiable, it comes largely out of the pockets 

 of the poor; and that by the amount abstracted from the income 

 of labor and capital by that amount is the sum divided between 

 labor and capital reduced. 



