REMEDIAL THEORIES AND EXPERIMENTS 221 



indefensible, and detrimental to the development of a 

 spirit of civic righteousness. Investigation and ex- 

 periment are very proper spheres for voluntary action 

 such as that which led to the establishment of hos- 

 pitals, crbches, maternities, milk depots, and so on 

 through a formidable list of social services which have 

 been assumed by voluntary agencies. It was emi- 

 nently right and proper for Mr. Straus — to use a 

 concrete illustration — to establish milk depots for 

 infants in order to find out whether the excessive in- 

 fantile mortality could be reciuced by such means. 

 On the other hand, it is decidedly wrong and im- 

 proper, in my judgment, that the city of New York 

 should allow the work to remain in the hands of Mr. 

 Straus, or any other individual or society. Not only 

 is the work inadequately done and its continuance 

 dependent upon too slender a thread, but, far more 

 important, a great city is demoralized to the extent 

 of shifting its collective responsibility on to other 

 shoulders than its own. In the case of an individual 

 we readily enough recognize the demoralization of 

 this kind of thing, but, for some reason not obvious, 

 we do not recognize it in the case of a community. 



Then, also, there are the more immediately prac- 

 tical objections, that nobody ever has a means of 

 knowing readily whether the work is adequately or 

 efficiently done, and that voluntary agencies, as Sir 

 John Gorst points out '" as the result of a long and 



