we were really democratic from the modern evolutionary standpoint, and did we but hold our town-meetings upon topics that most concern us.

In point of fact, government ignores industrial questions as the traditional ostrich hides his head in the sand, for no great strike is without its political significance, nor without the attempt of political interference, quite as none of the mammoth business combinations of manufacturers or distributors are without their lobbyists in the city council, unless they are fortunate enough to own aldermen outright. It is merely a question as to whether industry in relation to government is to be discussed as a matter of popular interest and concern at the moment when that relation might be modified and controlled, or whether we prefer to wait a decade and to read about it later in the magazines, horrified that such interference of business with government should have taken place.

Again we see the doctrinaire of the eighteenth century preferring to hold to his theory of government and ignoring the facts, as over against the open-minded scientist of the present day who would scorn to ignore facts because they might disturb his theory.

The two points at which government is developing most rapidly at the present moment are naturally the two in which it genuinely exercises its function-in relation to the vicious, and in relation to the poor and dependent.

The juvenile courts which the large cities are inaugurating are supplied with probation officers, whose duty it is to encourage the wavering virtues of the wayward boy, and to keep him out of the police courts with their consequent penal institutions—a real recognition of social obligation. In one of the most successful of these courts, that of Denver, the judge, who can point to a remarkable record with the bad boys of the city, plays a veritable game with them against the police force, he and the boys undertaking to be "good" without the help of repression, and in spite of the machinations of the police. For instance, if the boys who have been sentenced to the state reform school at Golden deliver themselves without the aid of the sheriff, whose duty it is to take them

there, they not only vindicate their manliness and readiness "to take their medicine," but they beat the sheriff, who belongs to the penal machinery, out of his five-dollar fee, over which fact they openly triumph. A simple example, perhaps, but significant of the attitude of the well-intentioned toward repressive government.

As the juvenile courts are beginning to take an interest in the social life of the child, in order to prevent arrest, on the same principle the reform schools are inaugurating the most advanced education in agriculture and manual arts. A bewildered foreign parent comes from time to time to Hull House, asking that his boy be sent to a school to learn farming, basing his request upon the fact that his neighbor's boy has been sent to "a nice green country place." It is carefully explained that the neighbor's boy was bad, and was arrested and sent away because of his badness, and it is quite possible sometimes to make clear to the man that the city assumes that he is looking out for himself and taking care of his own boy; but it ought to be further possible to make him see that, if he feels that his son needs the education of a farm school, it lies with him to agitate the subject and to vote for the candidate who will secure such schools. He might well look amazed, were this advice tendered him, for these questions have never been presented to him to vote upon. Because he does not easily discuss the tariff, or other remote subjects, which the political parties present to him from time to time, we assume that he is not to be trusted to vote on the education of his child; and in Chicago, at least, the school board is not elective. The ancestors of this same immigrant, from the days of bows and arrows, doubtless taught their children those activities which seemed valuable to them.

Again, we build enormous city hospitals and almshouses for the defective and dependent, but for that great mass of people just beyond the line from which they are constantly recruited we do practically nothing. We are afraid of the notion of governmental function which would minister to the primitive needs of the mass of people, although we are quite ready to care for him whom misfortune or disease has made the exception. It is really the rank and file, the average citizen, who is ignored by government, while he works out his real problems through other agencies, and is scolded for staying at home on election day.

It is comparatively easy to understand the punitive point of view, which seeks to suppress, or the philanthropic, which seeks to palliate; but it is much more difficult to formulate that city government which is adapted to our present normal living. As over against the survival of the first two, excellent and necessary as they are, we have the many municipal activities of which Mr. Shaw has told us, but we have attained them surreptitiously, as it were, by means of appointed commissions, through boards of health endowed with exceptional powers, or through the energy of a mayor who has pushed his executive function beyond the charter limit. The people themselves have not voted on these measures, and they have lost both the education and the nourishing of the democratic ideal, which their free discussion would have secured and to which they were more entitled than to the benefits themselves.

In the department of social economy in this exposition is an enormous copy of Charles Booth's monumental survey of the standard of living for the people of London. From his accompanying twelve volumes may be deduced the occupations of the people, with their real wages, their family budget, their culturelevel, and to a certain extent their recreations and spiritual life. If one gives oneself over to a moment of musing on this mass of information, so huge and so accurate, one is almost instinctively aware that any radical changes, so much needed in the blackest and the bluest districts, must largely come from forces outside the life of the people: enlarged mental life from the educationalists, increased wages from the business interests, alleviation of suffering from the philanthropists. What vehicle of correction is provided for the people themselves? What broad basis has been laid for modification of their most genuine and pressing needs through their own initiative? What device has been invented for conserving, in the interests of the nation, that kindliness and mutual aid which is the marvel of all charity workers who know the poor? So conservative an economist as Marshall has pointed out that, in the fear of crushing "individual initiative," we every year allow to go to waste untold capacity, talent, and even genius, among the children of the poor, whose parents are unable to shelter them

from premature labor; or among the adults, whose vital force is exhausted long before the allotted span of life. We distrust the instinct to shelter and care for them, although it is as old and as much at the foundation of human progress as is individual initiative itself.

The traditional government of East London expresses its activity in keeping the streets clean, and the district lighted and policed. It is only during the last quarter of the century that the London County Council has erected decent houses, public baths, and many other devices for the purer social life of the people; while American cities have gone no farther, although they presumably started at workingmen's representation a hundred years ago, so completely were the founders misled by the name of government, and the temptation to substitute the form of political democracy for real self-government dealing with advancing social ideals. Even now London has twenty-eight borough councils in addition to the London County Council itself, and fifteen hundred direct representatives of the people, as over against seventy in Chicago, with a population one-half as large. Paris has twenty mayors with corresponding machinery for local government, as over against New York's concentration in one huge city hall, too often corrupt.

In Germany, as the municipal and social-economic exhibits of this exposition so magnificently show, the government has come to concern itself with the primitive essential needs of its workingpeople. In their behalf the government has forced industry, in the person of the large manufacturers, to make an alliance with it, and they are taxed for accident insurance of workingmen, for oldage pensions, and for sick benefits; indeed, a project is being formed in which they shall bear the large share of insurance against nonemployment, when it has been made clear that nonemployment is the result of financial crisis brought about through the maladministration of finance. And yet industry in Germany has flourished, and this control on behalf of the normal workingman, as he faces life in the pursuit of his daily vocation, has apparently not checked its systematic growth nor limited its place in the world's market.

Almost every Sunday, in the Italian quarter in which I live, various mutual-benefit societies march with fife and drum and with a brave showing of banners, celebrating their achievement in having surrounded themselves by at least a thin wall of protection against disaster, setting up their mutual good-will against the day of misfortune. These parades have all the emblems of patriotism; indeed, the associations represent the core of patriotism brothers standing by each other against hostile forces from without. I assure you that no Fourth of July celebration, no rejoicing over the birth of an heir to the Italian throne, equals in heartiness and sincerity these simple celebrations. Again, one longs to pour into the government of their adopted country all this affection and zeal, this real patriotism.

Germany affords, perhaps, the best example of this concern of government for the affairs of the daily living of its wage-earners, although Belgium and France, with their combination of state savings banks, with life-insurance and building associations backed by the state, afford a close second in ingenuity and success. All this would be impossible in America, because it would be hotly resented by the American business man, who will not brook any governmental interference in industrial affairs. Is this due to the inherited instinct that government is naturally oppressive, and that its inroads must be checked? Are we in America retaining this tradition, while Europe is gradually evolving governments logically fitted to cope with the industrial situation?

Did the founders cling too hard to that which they had won through persecution, hardship, and finally through a war of revolution? Did these doctrines seem so precious to them that they were determined to tie men up to them as long as possible, and allow them no chance to go on to new devices of government, lest they slight these that had been so hardly won? Did they estimate, not too highly, but by too exclusive a valuation, that which they had secured through the shedding of blood?

Man has ever overestimated the spoils of war, and tended to lose his sense of proportion in regard to their value. He has ever surrounded them with a glamour beyond their deserts. This is quite harmless when the booty is an enemy's sword hung over a household fire, or a battered flag decorating a city hall; but when