288 



SCIENCE. 



LVoL. VIII., No. 190 



under this duplex administration of charity and 

 correction. There is much pitiable, unfortunate, 

 blameless poverty finding shelter in the hospitals 

 and at the almshouse. Why should it be thrust 

 into intolerable contrast with shameful, dissolute 

 pauperdom ? Keep the abused term ' pauper,' if 

 it must be, to mark the latter herd ; but leave 

 ' poverty ' and ' the poor ' to the patient, long-en- 

 during, suffering, and often heroic victims of fail- 

 ures, that fall under the wheels of success or 

 monopoly. To such, a true life pays involuntary 

 courtesy as to the maimed, unshapely, helpless 

 victims of the battle-field. Because of this grace- 

 less confusion and breach of duty, much that even 

 municipal charities might undertake and accom- 

 plish is now hopelessly out of reach. 



The conclusion is irresistible that a fatality lurks 

 in the very organization of the board of manage- 

 ment. Here is the sphere where there is a demand 

 for the soundest philanthropist, the matured stu- 

 dent in sociology, together with the bravest and 

 wisest medical service. Such alone are competent 

 to look after and administer this settlement of 

 social waste. There is natural congruity in this 

 postulate. Financiers, we say, for banking, trust 

 funds, and the public treasury ; metallurgists and 

 cheijiists and engineers, for mining ; learning, 

 logic, and eloquence, for the forum : that is, the 

 specialist full ripe for his specialty. But how is it 

 with this board who have so long been in place ? 

 Here and there the tonic presence of a strong per- 

 sonality has been felt ; but who is so weak or 

 stupid as to identify the board, under its present 

 constitution, with these necessary interests in the 

 life of the community? 



And here we are forcibly confronted with a 

 monstrous anomaly, and it is the constant peril of 

 this whole field of municipal administration. The 

 Board of commissioners of charities and correc- 

 tions, together with its entire system from greatest 

 to least, from centre to outpost, is in abject slavery 

 to municipal politics, is a recognized, hopeless 

 appendage of the ' machine.' It does not spring 

 frankly and wisely from the popular suffrage. It 

 has no freedom, no will, no autonomy. On the 

 contrary, it is honeycombed with bureaucracy and 

 officialism ; and the powers that move and manipu- 

 late every member of this great constituency are 

 as far removed above their heads as the chess- 

 player above the pieces he manipulates. This is 

 the inherent sice of a system which relegates the 

 administration of the under-world of social waste 

 to the machine and its politicians : for at the out- 

 set a vicious circle is established. The dram-shops 

 are the spawning-grounds of municipal politics 

 and politicians. Yet these same dram-shops are 

 chiefly responsible for the existence and growth of 



the very institutions over whose fortunes the poli- 

 ticians, their other progeny, have come to preside. 

 What else could happen than has steadily happened, 

 — perpetual jostlings, abuse of discipline, tamper- 

 ing with the courts, muddling of justice, and an im- 

 passable chasm which separates between a time- 

 serving officialism and the scientific and profes- 

 sional superintendencies, — a deadlock which dis- 

 courages, if it does not paralyze, the esprit de corps 

 of medical administration ; which withholds the in- 

 centive for legitimate emulation, and reduces the 

 men who devote, and not unfrequently surrender, 

 their lives to the standing of tide-waiters under the 

 bidding of an irresponsible board, which is itself no- 

 thing better than an accident in political evolution? 

 The machine is supreme ; and the commissioners 

 rattle their own handcuffs of partisan servitude 

 while reducing this array of employees and subor- 

 dinates to the lock-step of partisan bondage. The 

 same process is going on in the kindred depart- 

 ments of municipal administration, as the Depart- 

 ment of public works, the Fire department, and 

 the Board of education. Pickings and stealings, 

 the building-up of snug fortunes, the judicious 

 nursing of thrifty opportunities, ai'e insignificant 

 elements, if they really lie in the subject. The 

 crowning injustice, the superlative cruelty, lies in 

 the fact that this gravest trust from the people is 

 become at once the toy and makeshift of profes- 

 sional politicians. 



When the Board of commissioners of charities 

 and corrections shall come to be made up of phi- 

 lanthropists, men versed in sociology, who accept 

 a duty toward the people as the highest and most 

 inviolable of trusts, instead of men who regard 

 public office as personal property ; men who live 

 above all entanglements of political chicanery, — 

 then there will be found ways for checking and 

 lessening this current of social waste, even if it 

 may never be absolutely arrested, and moral dis- 

 infectants, deturgent and tonic energies, be brought 

 to bear directly and hopefully upon these imper- 

 illed thousands. 



L. L, Seaman, M.D., LL.B,, 



Late chief of staff of the 



BlackwelTs Island hospitals. 



FROM THE THIRD TO THE SEVENTH 

 YEAR OF CHILDHOOD. 



M. Perez, in the present volume, continues his 

 study of ' The first three years of childhood,' which 

 has been made familiar to English readers by the 

 translation under the direction of Mr. Sully. Our 

 author thinks that these four years form a distinct 

 period in child-development, — more so, at any 



U enfant de trots a sept ans. Par Bernard Perez. Paris, 

 BailUere, 1886. 8° , 



