8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



salacious stories, and ignorant comment on current questions and 

 events that appeal to a population as unlettered and base as them- 

 selves. Let them study, finally, the appalling indictment of Ameri- 

 can political life, in a State where the native blood still runs pure 

 in the veins of the majority of the inhabitants, that Mr. John 

 Wanamaker framed in a great speech at the opening of his memo- 

 rable campaign in Lancaster against the most powerful and most 

 corrupt despotism that can be found outside of Russia or Turkey. 

 " In the fourth century of Rome, in the time of Emperor Theo- 

 dosius, Hellebichus was master of the forces," he said, endeavoring 

 to describe a condition of affairs that exists in a similar degree in 

 every State in the Union, " and Csesarius was count of the offices. 

 In the nineteenth century, M. S. Quay is count of the offices, and 

 AV. A. Andrews, Prince of Lexow, is master of forces in Pennsyl- 

 vania, and we have to come through the iron age and the silver age 

 to the worst of all ages — the degraded, evil age of conscienceless, 

 debauched politics. . . . Profligacy and extravagance and boss rule 

 everywhere oppress the people. By the multiplication of indict- 

 ments your district attorney has multiplied his fees far beyond the 

 joint salaries of both your judges. The administration of justice 

 before the magistrates has degenerated into organized raids on the 

 county treasury. . . '. Voters are corruptly influenced or forcibly 

 coerced to do the bidding of the bosses, and thus force the fetters 

 of political vassalage on the freemen of the old guard. School 

 directors, supervisors, and magistrates, and the whole machinery 

 of local government, are involved and dominated by this accursed 

 system." 



But Mr. Wanamaker might have added that the whole social 

 and industrial life of the country is involved and dominated by the 

 same system. It is a well-established law of social science that 

 the evil effects of a dominant activity are not confined to the per- 

 sons engaged in it. Like a contagion, they spread to every part 

 of the social organization, and poison the life farthest removed 

 from their origin. Yet the public-school system, so impotent to 

 save us from social and political degradation and still such an 

 object of unbounded pride and adulation, is, as Mr. Wanamaker, 

 all unconscious of the implication of his scathing criticism, points 

 out in so many words, an integral part of the vast and complex 

 machinery that political despotism has seized upon to plunder and 

 enslave the American people. As in the case of every other exten- 

 sion of the duties of government beyond the limits of the preserva- 

 tion of order and the enforcement of justice, it is an aggression upon 

 the rights of the individual, and, as in the case of every other ag- 

 gression, contributes powerfully to the decay of national character 



