CYRIL GEORGE HOPKINS 



racy toward its servants. In a democracy jealousy of the 

 growth and exercise of power by individual citizens not infre- 

 quently prevents the community from securing the services of 

 people best fitted to render them, and always finds expression 

 in distrust, suspicion, and depreciation of those who serve 

 them. The statement, if not the belief, that every public officer 

 should be distrusted, that he is out for his own advantage, 

 that he will utilize his office for his personal gain, and that he 

 will not render honest service, is too common to need proof. 

 Indeed, so common are the statement and belief that some- 

 times decent men hesitate to put themselves in the service of 

 the public. 



This same fear of the people of a democracy that some 

 individuals will become too prominent, or too powerful, has 

 led the people to be content too often with the services of 

 inferior men. We are not willing to pay enough in most pub- 

 lic offices to get first-class men. The view is too commonly 

 held that the public officer in receiving his salary is a benefi- 

 ciary of the taxpayers. The view is wrong to the officer and 

 to the people, and insulting to the intelligence of both. A pub- 

 lic officer is no more the charitable beneficiary of the taxpayers 

 than is the manager of a cotton mill the charitable beneficiary 

 of its owner. He draws his pay because he gives an equivalent 

 for it ; in many cases he gives far more than an equivalent, 

 especially if the service he renders is a service that he loves. 



What I have said regarding the public servant applies in 

 the double sense in which the phrase may be used. We com- 

 monly think of a public servant as one who is in the official 

 employ of the government — that is to say, of the people in the 

 government. With reference to Professor Hopkins, however, 

 I am using the term in a somewhat double sense. He was a 

 public servant in that he was an employe of a state institution ; 

 he was a public servant in the unofficial sense that he was in 

 a real way a servant of the people. One does not need to be 

 an officer of the government in order to be a servant of the 



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