262 SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES 



of subscribers and donors to the many good causes that 

 exist in Glasgow, do you not find very much the same 

 names? If you are engaged on committees or occupied 

 in benevolent social enterprises do you not very generally 

 meet with the same men and women? Are there sound 

 reasons for denying that there are many thousands of men 

 in this city whose interest in civic matters is at least not 

 palpable ? Or are we not forced to the conclusion that the 

 circle of those who are generous of their time and of their 

 means for public causes is comparatively narrow ? 



Again, if we turn from these private institutions to those 

 civic matters which concern the welfare of the city as a 

 whole, and which are gathered in the hands of our public 

 representatives on the Town Council, is it not all too clear 

 that purposeful, serious, persistent_interest in them is far 

 less general than it ought to be ? The pulse of social life 

 beats low in the breast of many a man who, in his private 

 dealings with his fellow-men, is upright, honourable, just, 

 and generous. Icannot account for the fact that social 

 evils which are so patent and so universally deplored con- 

 tinue to exist among us, and that the movement towards 

 a better life is so slow, except by saying that we have not 

 learnt to mass together the will for good which undoubtedly 

 exists amongst us, or to set free the latent moral forces and 

 direct them towards social ends. 



The ordinary citizen does not always seek to pay his 

 social debts. And the main reason, I believe, is that he 

 is not aware of the extent of his borrowing. He considers 

 that if he provides for his own and his family's needs, if 

 he pays his taxes, and if he contributes some modicum of 

 his means to his church or to some of the educational or 

 charitable institutions of his city, he can cry quits with his 



