70 Fellow-feeling as 



countryman. He is a fine fellow, rugged, hard 

 working, shrewd, and keenly alive to the funda 

 mental virtues. He and his brethren of the smaller 

 towns and villages, in ordinary circumstances, take 

 very little account, indeed, of any caste difference; 

 they greet each man strictly on his merits as a man, 

 and therefore form a community in which there is 

 singularly little caste spirit, and in which men asso 

 ciate on a thoroughly healthy and American ground 

 of common ideals, common convictions, and com 

 mon sympathies. 



Unfortunately, this can not be said of the larger 

 cities, where the conditions of life are so compli 

 cated that there has been an extreme differentiation 

 and specialization in every species of occupation, 

 whether of business or pleasure. The people of a 

 certain degree of wealth and of a certain occupa 

 tion may never come into any real contact with the 

 people of another occupation, of another social stand 

 ing. The tendency is for the relations always to be 

 between class and class instead of between individual 

 and individual. This produces the thoroughly un 

 healthy belief that it is for the interest of one class 

 as against another to have its class representatives 

 dominant in public life. The ills of any such sys 

 tem are obvious. As a matter of fact, the enor 

 mous mass of our legislation .and administration 

 ought to be concerned with matters that are strictly 



