PROBLEMS OF MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION 439 



nize, or at least does not make clear, all the human kindness upon 

 which it has grown. In his speeches he inevitably offends a popular 

 audience, who know that the political evil exists in all degrees and 

 forms of human weakness, but who also know that these evils are by 

 no means always hideous. They resent his overdrawn pictures of 

 vice and of the life of the vicious; their sense of fair play and their 

 deep-rooted desire for charity and justice are all outraged. 



If I may illustrate from a personal experience: Some years ago 

 a famous New York reformer came to Chicago to tell us of his phe- 

 nomenal success and his trenchant methods of dealing with the 

 city " gambling-hells," as he chose to call them. He proceeded to 

 describe the criminals of lower New York in terms and phrases which 

 struck at least one of his auditors as sheer blasphemy against our 

 common human nature. I thought of the criminals whom I knew, 

 of the gambler for whom each Saturday I regularly collected his 

 weekly wage of $24, keeping $18 for his wife and children, and giving 

 him $6 on Monday morning. His despairing statement, " The thing 

 is growing on me, and I can never give it up," was the cry of a man 

 who, through much tribulation, had at least kept the loyal intention. 

 I recalled three girls who had come to me with a paltry sum of money 

 collected from the pawn and sale of their tawdry finery, that one of 

 their number might be spared a death in the almshouse and have 

 that wretched comfort during the closing weeks of her outcast life. 

 I recalled the first murderer whom I had ever known, a young 

 man who was singing his baby to sleep, and stopped to lay it in its 

 cradle before he rushed downstairs into his father's saloon, to scatter 

 the gang of boys who were teasing the old man by giving him orders 

 in English which he could not understand, and refusing to pay for 

 the drinks which they had consumed, but technically had not ordered. 



For one short moment I saw the situation from the point of view 

 of humbler people, who sin often through weakness and passion, 

 but seldom through hardness of heart; and I felt that such sweeping 

 condemnations and conclusions as the speaker was pouring forth 

 could never be accounted for righteousness in a democratic com- 

 munity. 



The policeman who makes terms with vice, and almost inevitably 

 slides into making gain from vice, merely represents the type of 

 politician who is living off the weakness of his fellows, as the over- 

 zealous reformer, who exaggerates vice until the public is scared 

 and awestruck, represents the type of politician who is living off 

 the timidity of his fellows. With the lack of civic machinery for 

 simple democratic expression, for a direct dealing with human nature 

 as it is, we seem doomed to one type or the other corrupt ionists 

 or anti-crime committees. And one sort or the other we shall con- 

 tinue to have so long as we distrust the very energy of existence, the 



