Chapter XI: Part 11

But this is no way to shake off the effects of a nightmare. Let us conclude in an humbler, more supplicatory strain. Will not our gifted reformers, for a while at least, forbear to announce that they have converted ethics into a science, and education into a highway to Paradise? Will not our politicians admit between their speeches, that people who question or censure their latest panaceas are, on the whole, exemplary and fairly intelligent citizens, who in no other respect than their momentary recalcitrancy seem to be fit candidates for a jail or an asylum? Will not exponents of New History, New Philosophy, and New Literature give a slightly larger portion of their time to reading what a not altogether benighted past managed to accomplish in those departments of human knowledge, speculation, and imaginative creation? Will not suffragists and anti-suffragists call a short truce for the purpose of admitting that, if a sense of humor and a spirit of tolerance are totally banished from our devoted country, the lot of future generations--if there are to be any--will be somewhat parlous? Finally, will not the ladies and gentlemen who are tearfully or gleefully forecasting the doom of the monogamous family, occasionally condescend to glance at Homer's description of the parting of Hector from Andromache and Astyanax, or at one of Raphael's Madonnas with the Christ-Child, with the intent of asking themselves whether in human evolution there are not other forces at work than those dubbed economic? Let but these good men and women consider without impatience their petitioner's modest requests, and he will wish them Godspeed in their commendable if arduous and often thankless task of regenerating the human race.

SOCIAL UNTRUTH AND THE SOCIAL UNREST

"The Author's object," said Dickens in the original preface to _Nicholas Nickleby_, "in calling public attention to the system would be very imperfectly fulfilled, if he did not state now, in his own person, emphatically and earnestly, that Mr. Squeers and his school are faint and feeble pictures of an existing reality, purposely subdued and kept down, lest they should be deemed impossible." In his preface to the later editions, he speaks of the race of Yorkshire schoolmasters in the past tense. "Though it has not yet finally disappeared," he says, "it is dwindling daily. A long day's work remains to be done about us in the way of education, Heaven knows; but great improvements and facilities towards the attainment of a good one have been furnished, of late years, to those who can afford to pay for it."

But if, in his pursuit of this object, Dickens had drawn an exaggerated picture of Dotheboys Hall--even if he had depicted as representative of a type that which was, in point of fact, merely an individual and abnormal instance of an evil which in general was far less extreme--the only objection to such a course would have been the general objection to any form of untruth; unless, indeed, we were to add that manifest misrepresentation of this kind is less likely than a truthful presentation of the case to be effective for its object. Dickens was driving with all his might and main at a monstrous blot on English civilization, a hideous inhumanity and cruelty, to which hundreds of English children were subjected by heartless parents or guardians, and by brutal, sordid, and ignorant schoolmasters. And if in his zeal to wipe out that blot and to end that monstrous inhumanity he had over-stepped the bounds of legitimate portrayal, there are few who would not say that the offense was altogether pardonable. Yet he felt it necessary to assure the world that he had not done this; and in his preface he not only makes the general denial of such exaggeration quoted above, but points explicitly to the observations made by himself, and the records of courts of law, which form the basis of his exposure.

When we say that even if Dickens had grossly exaggerated the character of the Yorkshire schools there would have been no great harm in it, we have in mind two points of contrast between the task on which he was engaged and the spirit of his time, on the one hand, and the general objective of present-day reform movements and the spirit of our time, on the other. Upon the desirability of putting an end to Dotheboys Halls, if they were but one tenth as evil as they are represented to us in _Nicholas Nickleby_, there can be no difference of opinion among decent human beings. The question of degree may be of scientific or historical interest, it can have no practical bearing on the decision to be reached. An overstatement of the case may intensify our emotions, it can hardly mislead our judgment. To know that such a state of things exists is to desire its extinction; such a thing as the balancing of gain against loss, of immediate benefit against collateral or ulterior injury, does not enter into the question at all. Very different is the case with regard to most of the problems that are enlisting the interest of those who to-day are striving for the betterment of social conditions. There is hardly one of these problems which does not have wide ramifications connecting it with the whole economic and social system. In hardly one of them is it possible to say: Here is a flagrant wrong whose existence no rightminded person can tolerate, whose immediate removal is a clear duty, about whose extinction we need not hesitate for a moment on the score of any evil which may accompany the good. And this complexity of the problems places the question of exaggeration, or misrepresentation, or false perspective, upon an essentially different footing. As soon as the question of cost--the question of what sacrifices, or what dangers, or what ulterior evil effects, may be involved--enters into the situation, the question of degree becomes of vital moment. To represent a given evil as a vast affliction when in reality it is confined within narrow bounds, to represent it as hideous, morally or materially, without just basis, is in these cases much more than a mere violation of the abstract requirements of truth. These issues turn fundamentally on the weighing of the good to be gained against the sacrifices or dangers which the proposal involves. And the reformer who, however excellent his purposes, grossly magnifies the evil deceives and misleads the public just as a merchant does who weighs with false scales, or a gambler who plays with loaded dice.

So much for the nature of the specific questions at issue. But there is a contrast far more important still, which turns upon the spirit of the time. In our day no serious attack can be made upon any particular evil in any way connected with the existing economic order, without being regarded by great multitudes as part of a general indictment against that order. At the center of the socialist movement there is now, as there has been at any time in the past half-century, a body of convinced believers in the inherent unfitness of the existing order to serve man's material and moral needs, and in the feasibility of a new order which shall replace it to the infinite improvement and elevation of mankind. But the growth of socialistic and semi-socialistic sentiment which has been going on at so extraordinarily rapid a rate during the past decade, especially in this country, is due in only a relatively small measure to the making of doctrinal converts. The growth has been in the main, or at least primarily, not at the center, but on the fringe, of the socialist body. It has come about, above all, through that unprecedented stimulation of humanitarian interest and humanitarian endeavor in connection with the problems of the poor which is in itself a just cause both for pride and satisfaction in our generation. Between this humanitarian activity, directed toward various specific forms of social betterment, and that kind of discontent with the existing order which lies at the basis of socialism, there is at once a sharp contrast and an intimate connection. The socialist--at least the socialist as he has traditionally been--makes it the first tenet of his practical doctrine that social-betterment endeavors are not only vain, but mischievous. He holds that they tend to patch up a system which is hopelessly evil, and to reconcile to its continuance those who, if they were not thus deluded, would see that the only remedy lies in its extinction. In reality, however, the worker for social-betterment schemes, while helping to make the existing order sounder with one hand, is constantly giving powerful aid to the socialists with the other. For it is part of his task to concentrate public attention upon evils which would otherwise remain unnoticed in the background; and it is safe to say that in the impression made by these agitations upon multitudes of sensitive natures lies the chief source of that enormous recruiting of the forces making towards socialism which we have been witnessing. In so far as this result is the natural accompaniment of the unfolding of a truthful picture of society, it must be accepted as an inevitable fact. Even so, it might be deplored that a development so momentous should in so large a measure turn on the state of mind of persons unequipped with such mental qualities, and such intellectual training, as would fit them duly to weigh the defects against the virtues of the existing order, and duly to consider the objections to the proposed remedy as well as its allurements. But, as the matter stands, what is actually being furnished to these susceptible minds and hearts is in large measure a mass of distorted representations of the truth. The falsity of the picture is often a matter of direct exaggeration or misstatement, oftener it is a matter of false perspective, chiefly taking the form of making a part pass virtually for the whole. But however it is brought about, we have continually before us the spectacle of numbers of well-meaning persons, through careless exaggeration or distortion of the truth, misleading multitudes of young and ardent spirits into a readiness to throw overboard the fundamental institutions of society.

* * * * *

_Children of Strife. A Dramatic Story of Rich and Poor in New York._ Such is the title of a novel that is appearing in the _Delineator_, an old-established journal of large circulation, devoted primarily to fashions, housekeeping matters, and the like. It is very specially "featured." Its first chapter is ushered in with this notice, conspicuously printed in large type below the title: "Special Request: Great things may hinge upon this novel. Just how great will depend upon your reception of it. It is thrilling fiction but back of it is something else. Will you watch for that something, keeping each instalment by you for reference?" Those who dutifully follow this last injunction will begin by keeping by them for reference a picture of the ways of business that is extremely interesting. Chapter I is entitled "The Corporation." Its opening scene is in the private office of a flourishing capitalist. Many little touches are given to heighten the stage effect, but the real point of interest concerns the giving out of a contract relating to the construction of a twenty-one story building. Griffiths, the capitalist, holds an impromptu meeting of the construction company, the other directors being office dummies; the question to be decided is whether steel columns or cast-iron columns are to be used:

"What's the difference in cost?" asked Mr. Griffiths, shortly,
casting a cursory glance over the items.

"If we use the iron we'll save about eighteen thousand dollars,"
the secretary replied, "but the architect says we'll be taking a
risk."

"How _much_ of a risk?" Mr. Griffiths retorted quickly. "Doesn't
Littleton think the building will stand up?"

"He _thinks_ so," Williams rejoined deprecatingly. "There are
houses on both sides. He _thinks_ it'll stand up. It ought to."

"Well," said Mr. Griffiths, pushing back his chair. "Nothing
venture, nothing have. Eh, Williams?"

Williams smiled a perfunctory smile in response to his employer's
little jest.

"Let's get to work," went on Mr. Griffiths. "Call the roll. All
present--full board. (Note that.) We waive reading the minutes of
the last meeting, and there are no reports. Mr. Flynt offers the
following resolution: Resolved, That the secretary be and hereby
is empowered to accept and ratify the contract heretofore drawn
up with Peck & Simpson, for iron columns (By the way, Williams,
White is the chief inspector for that district. You can handle
him, eh?), and to execute the same on behalf of the Company. All
in favor say 'Aye;' contrary minded, 'No.'" The chair canvassed
the vote and reported that a majority of votes were in favor of
the resolution. It was so voted. "That's all. Meeting adjourned.
Good morning."

What happens in Chapter III will surprise nobody. Griffiths' little daughter is with her father in his luxurious library, absorbed in a story-book, both of them enveloped in a delicious silence. But the silence is suddenly broken by a curious and startling sound:

The sound had suggested a sliding, the collapse of something; it
was like the falling in of a gigantic house of cards. Fascinated,
Ruth's eyes sought her father's face. It was transformed, livid;
his hands clutched his chair--clutched it so convulsively that,
plump though they were, the veins stood out on them in purple
knots.

"The building," he whispered with bloodless lips. "It's gone."

The sliding stopped momentarily; the very air seemed to stay
still in an awful hush of expectation; then it caught up a new
sound--a sound that far exceeded the sliding in horror; a sound
to freeze the blood, even the warm, quick blood of a child; a
sound big with every emotion ever evoked by the voice of any
tenor who ever has sung--the inarticulate protest of men about to
be smothered--the wail of human beings caught in a trap, like
rats.

Now, it would of course be preposterous to regard a cheap melodramatic novel in a fashion magazine as a subject for serious criticism; and it would be equally absurd to make the policy of such a magazine, taken in itself, an occasion for solemn moralizing or rebuke. But in publishing this rubbish, the _Delineator_ is a magazine of fashion in more senses than one; it is but following, according to its lights, a fashion current in much higher circles of "uplift" literature. That this grotesque presentation of the ways of business appears, and is given all possible prominence and emphasis, not in a journal devoted to reform but in one which seeks its circulation among the women of the average "bourgeois" home, is precisely what gives significance to a piece of fiction otherwise too insignificant to mention. Evidently the editor of this magazine imagines, rightly or wrongly, that the state of mind prevailing among his readers is such as to make a thing of this kind go. They have become so accustomed to a diet of sensationalism and exaggeration, he may well reason, that they will never stop to inquire whether the building of collapsible skyscrapers is a common practice--whether indeed such a thing has ever happened at all--or in any other way to question the truth of a portrait evidently designed to represent a large part of the capitalist class. To ask whether either writer or editor really believes the picture to be true--to hark back to Dickens's solemn assurance of the truthfulness of his indictments against the evils he attacked--is the most that need be said on the subject, to anyone accustomed to sober or responsible thinking. But among the millions of defenceless people--young, half-educated, well-intentioned, untrained to serious thought--to whom such stuff is being fed every day, there is a vast number that are misled by it into a false view of the world, and into a state of mind that is most unwholesome and deplorable.

What is thus dealt out in popular fiction, what was for a time to be seen filling the pages of nearly every popular magazine professedly as plain fact, is met with in a hundred forms in the daily newspapers--even those of a good type--and in the outgivings of many excellent persons, and many worthy associations, engaged in social-betterment work. A very few instances must suffice for illustration.

"The outstanding infamy of certain of our modern industries is the linking to the belts of factories and mills of two million children." This statement, and variants of it which pile up the agony now in one direction now in another, we find continually cropping up in the high places of social reform. The quotation is from an address made a year ago by William B. Patterson, secretary of the commission on social service of the Philadelphia Federation of Churches. He was speaking before the first annual Progressive Conference of Pennsylvania, and presumably his object was to show the dire need of the Progressive movement for the remedy of a stupendous evil. But we turn to an article on child labor in the United States by Dr. Jacob S. Raisin, a Troy rabbi, printed very prominently in the _Knickerbocker Press_, for a more vivid realization of this gigantic horror. Here are some extracts from the article:

Two million children are virtually enslaved in our cotton mills,
coal mines and sweat-shops over the breadth and length of our
country--two million little ones!

At the same time that thousands of children in our city enjoyed
their Christmas vacation and rejoiced over their newly acquired
presents, two million children of the same tender age, of the
same Caucasian race and citizens of the same prosperous land,
were pining away in the dark subterranean caves of the coal mines
in the east, in the dangerous cotton mills and tobacco factories
of the south and the sweat-shops everywhere.

Two million souls are annually sacrificed to commerce and to
greed. Parents do not get sufficient to keep the souls and bodies
of their little ones together. Mothers must leave their suckling
babes to seek for their livelihood, and these infants, in turn,
if they survive until they are six, must begin the battle of life
on their own account.

The United States Census of 1910 gives the total number of mine-workers under sixteen years of age in 1909 as 8,151, of whom 3,117 were working below ground and 5,034 above ground. The number of wage-earners under sixteen years of age in manufacturing industries is stated as 161,493; and it is shown that the percentage of workers under sixteen to the whole number of workers in these industries fell from 3.4 per cent. in 1899 to 2.9 per cent. in 1904 and 2.4 per cent. in 1909. Figures concerning sweat-shops are not given.

What we have before us, therefore, is a gross overstatement, on the face of it; after making all possible allowance for false returns of age in the census, it is evident that, merely as a matter of the surface figures, the case is enormously exaggerated. But this is not all. The impression is always sought to be conveyed that these two millions are, in large part at least _little_ children; whereas even of the (say) two hundred thousand workers under sixteen who are actually "linked to the belts of factories and mills," and of the (say) four thousand who are laboring "in the dark subterranean caves of the coal mines," it is obvious that only a small fraction can be under fourteen. That there ought not to be a single one may be true enough; but unless we are to throw reason overboard altogether, we must make a distinction between a question concerning a few hundreds, or a few thousands, of little children, and one concerning two million. And these very agitators _do_ recognize the distinction; else why make all this noise about the figures? Driven into a corner, they would doubtless fall back on the iniquity of having even a single child in all the land deprived of its birthright of happiness; but in the meanwhile they work the two million for all it is worth. As for the violation of the Ninth Commandment, the true Progressive, whether Christian or Jew, presumably finds in the principles of the New Morality ample exemption from any acute pangs of conscience on that score.

* * * * *

In the early part of the year 1910, the Consumers' League of New York obtained permission from the _American Magazine_ to reprint as a leaflet a little article of two pages which had appeared in the January number of that periodical under the title _Some Dangers from High Prices_. The article which the excellent persons who conduct the work of that League considered so important a document was devoted in the first place to a very precise account of what had happened in a certain restaurant with which the writer was familiar, and which was frequented in part by shop-girls; and secondly to the issuing of a most solemn and tragic warning as to what this country was threatened with as a consequence of the situation which this happening indicated. This is the experience:

Five and six years ago I used to go to a restaurant which fed
about three hundred shop-girls a day.... I used to write down
what they could get for 15 cents. Here are three dishes each of
which then cost 15 cents. Two eggs on toast, with bread; a nice
little meat pie, hot and appetizing; chicken on toast with a rice
border. The chicken was all dark meat, to be sure, but it was
meat and the rice border was generous. In short, in that
restaurant six years ago there was for 15 cents honest
nourishment fitted to build up an honest constitution such as the
trunk class of America ought to have. And in the long run those
girls chose the nourishing food. Two years ago a change came. I
noticed a habit of lunching off a potato salad. I soon saw the
reason. The little meat pie had moved up to 25 cents, the chicken
on toast to 30 cents. Potato salad, one of the girls told me, was
the only "interesting" thing left for 15 cents. Going there last
September I said to one of the waitresses:

"What are these girls eating now?"

"Ah," she sighed, "it is dreadful! They ought not to pay more
than 15 cents; so many of them just have griddle cakes, or sweets
and coffee. They can have two cream cakes and coffee or an eclair
and coffee for 15 cents."

Please notice the sliding scale of nourishment therein displayed
in six short years. From chicken on toast with a wholesome rice
border to potato salad and from potato salad to an eclair and
coffee. One can fairly see the nourishment ooze out! It is only
fair to add, however, that the manager told me that they were
losing their shop-girls somewhat: they were going where there
were no waitresses, where they served themselves at counters.
There one could get real nourishment for 20 cents.

Upon the basis of this interesting little story, and of the loose talk of "a dealer in milk" with whom she had conversed, the writer finds that there is a "canker at the heart of our prosperity," that "our great, prosperous country is at the parting of the ways." "A little more," she warns us, "and you will have the trunk class of America an underfed class, being slowly but surely forced down in the social scale." And so forth.

Now it is nothing that such an article should have appeared in a popular magazine; nor is it perhaps a matter worth finding fault with that the managers of an important humanitarian organization, which is in many ways doing excellent work, should have had so little critical judgment as to regard as an exceptionally important contribution to public discussion what is so manifestly the mere expression of one person's superficial observations and impressions. What _does_ give significance to the Consumers' League's performance is that it demonstrates an indifference to facts--a lack of the sense of responsibility for the essential veracity of anything to which one gives one's name and which one actively disseminates among the public--that would be amazing were it not unfortunately so common. In half an hour, any officer of the Consumers' League could have discovered that in New York "honest nourishment" of precisely the kind referred to in the _American_ article was to be obtained for fifteen cents in any one of hundreds of clean, roomy, cheerful restaurants--not "where they served themselves at counters," but with good waiting by a fine type of waitresses. At the time the leaflet was issued, there had been no rise of prices at all in this class of restaurants in New York; since then there has been a rise in some of them, affecting certain dishes; but in no case, I believe, has the rise been more than that from fifteen to twenty cents. The _great_ rise in food prices has taken place in the four years _since_ January, 1910; and yet to this day one can get, in any one of the scores of handsome popular restaurants scattered all over the business section of New York, a nourishing meat or egg luncheon, well served, for fifteen or twenty cents, according to choice.

This may seem very homely matter, beneath the dignity of a quarterly REVIEW. But the homeliness, or insignificance, is only on the surface. The thing I am concerned with is not the bread and meat I am talking about, but the state of mind of a class of men and women considerable in point of mere numbers and tremendously important in their influence on the political and social currents of the time. With a responsibility resting on them a thousandfold greater than any that belonged to reformers like Dickens--a thousandfold greater both because the problems they touch are incomparably more complex and because the consequences of their agitation spread out immeasurably beyond the particular problems they touch--with this responsibility for truthful representation upon them, how far are they from that realization of it which is so solemnly avowed by the author of _Nicholas Nickleby_! And in this matter of the luncheon, small as it may seem in itself, the moral obtrudes itself with peculiar distinctness. For here everything turns absolutely on degree. If the shop-girl can get to-day for twenty cents the luncheon she could formerly get for fifteen, the whole terror disappears; for five cents a day is thirty cents a week, and surely it is not out of the question that there has been a rise of wages sufficient to cover this difference. Yet these good people evidently think it no harm to give out a solemn warning of national degeneration and ruin, based on figures which a few minutes' inquiry would have compelled them to reject, and on an allegation of fact as to the actual fare of working girls which a half-day's tour of the restaurants of New York would have shown to have no substantial basis. That the rise of prices has been hard on working people, that if it takes place without compensating rise of wages it must have serious consequences, is true enough; but between this and the sort of thing we have been discussing there is precisely the difference that there is between reason and unreason, between responsibility and recklessness.

* * * * *

To _prove_ that exaggeration and distortion and misleading presentation abound in the reform literature of our time is not the purpose of this paper; even if fifty examples were adduced, it would prove nothing. What I am endeavoring to do is to cite a very few illustrations, which I believe that intelligent readers will recognize as typical, and to bring out their significance as bearing on a widespread state of mind. In this regard, the next instance is peculiarly instructive. In the _Atlantic Monthly_ for March, 1910, there is an article by E. A. Ross, entitled _The Suppression of Important News_. The _Atlantic_ is not a "muckraking" magazine, and the writer is not a "muckraker;" he is a man of national note, and a professor in the Department of Economics in the University of Wisconsin. Much that he says about the shortcomings of newspapers is true; but the article gives a preposterously false impression of the conduct of the press of this country as a whole. However, I do not ask the readers of this REVIEW to take my word for this; neither can I enter upon what would be the very considerable task of proving my assertion. I wish only to call attention to a single short paragraph in Prof. Ross's article:

The party system is a "sacred cow." When a county district court
declared that the Initiative and Referendum amendment to the
Oregon Constitution was invalid, the item was spread broadcast.
But when later the Supreme Court of Oregon reversed that
decision, the fact was too trivial to be put on the wires.

Now, if this means anything, it means that it is the policy of the Associated Press, in regard to such a matter as the Initiative and Referendum system in Oregon, to endeavor to conceal from the American public the fact that the attempt to overthrow it in the courts of the State had failed. To characterize such a notion as silly would be to place it on far too high a plane. That a person of Prof. Ross's training, and position in the country, should find it possible to believe such a thing is melancholy to think of; and, what is more to the purpose, it betrays a state of mind that is fraught with all manner of evil possibilities. For it is a state of mind in which probability, that indispensable guide of sane thinking, is dismissed from its place; in which whatever seems to point toward a preconceived thesis is accepted without scrutiny and carefully treasured up, and whatever points the other way gets scant attention; in which the sense of the true proportions of things is hopelessly lost. What the actual facts were about the transmission of that news from Oregon makes no difference; the failure "to put it on the wires," which Professor Ross alleges, may possibly have taken place. But no intelligent human being waits to find out whether Beiliss actually did or did not murder a child in order to reject with scorn and contempt the idea that the blood of murdered Christian children forms part in the ritual of the Jewish Passover; we need no evidence on the subject--it is disposed of by its intrinsic absurdity. That Prof. Ross should have failed to see the intrinsic absurdity of such a notion of the newspaper press of the United States as is implied in the paragraph above quoted--that others who talk about the suppression of news should betray similar want of sane perception--is, to my mind, one of the most significant illustrations of the general phenomenon that I am discussing.

If these illustrations have served to bring out some of the chief aspects of the state of mind which underlies the exaggeration that disfigures the reform agitations of our time, the purpose for which they have been cited has been fulfilled. As evidence of the fact that such exaggeration is widely current they of course amount to nothing; nor, as I have already said, would the piling up of a large number of examples have any probative force. There is a great deal of sober and responsible writing in reform quarters, and there is a great deal of the opposite kind. It would be idle to attempt to form any estimate of the ratio between the one kind and the other. But every reader must recognize that the type of thing which I have been discussing is abundant, and that it plays an important part in influencing the opinions of large bodies of well-meaning people. It may not be amiss, however, to make brief mention of a few more examples illustrating various phases of the phenomenon.

In the report of the first of a series of lectures on sex hygiene recently given to fathers and mothers in the public school buildings of Chicago, we find the lecturer saying: "The American mothers are unable to nurse their children for the necessary nine months. This is the cause of all the infant mortality we hear so much about." And it is to the economic conditions of "the last fifty years" that this deplorable state of things is ascribed. Now persons who are conversant with mortality statistics, either at first hand or through the columns of the newspapers, know that while it is true that "we hear so much about" infant mortality, what we hear is not that it is increasing but that it is declining--declining in the City of New York especially, at a rate so steady and so rapid as would have been pronounced incredible a quarter of a century ago. But the mothers who were drinking in the lecturer's words were led to believe that our modern society is responsible for an ever-increasing slaughter of the innocents. Nor is this an isolated case, either in regard to the particular subject concerned, or to questions of social welfare generally. The mere fact that the evil of avoidable infant mortality is dwelt upon in our time as never before was taken by this lecturer--and has been taken by others--as meaning that that evil is growing ever worse; whereas the real reason of its prominence is precisely that it is now for the first time being hopefully and successfully attacked by comprehensive and systematic efforts. And this substitution of the assertion that an evil is growing worse for the mere fact that it exists, so far from being uncommon, is met with in connection with almost every branch of social-betterment agitation.

One of the most striking manifestations of this was furnished by Alfred Russel Wallace in his book, _Social Environment and Moral Progress_, which appeared shortly before his death. "It is not too much to say," he declares, "that our whole system of society is rotten from top to bottom, and the social environment as a whole, in relation to our possibilities and claims, is the worst that the world has ever seen." In support of this assertion the book as a whole does nothing but present in eloquent language various deplorable features of our existing civilization; apparently the idea that in order to justify his conclusion comparison with former states of the world is essential hardly crosses Mr. Wallace's mind. That it did obtrude itself in a measure appears, however, from the devotion of one little chapter to the subject of "Indications of Increasing Moral Degradation." These indications are three in number; and not only are they pitifully inadequate for the support of his statement, but his interpretation of the statistics cited, in regard to the matter to which he gives most prominence, can be easily shown to be utterly superficial and inconclusive. The three matters to which the statistics relate are deaths from alcoholism, suicide, and deaths of infants soon after birth. The increase of deaths from alcoholism in the past half-century is given the leading place. This increase has been, roughly, 25 per million inhabitants--from 40 per million annually to 65 per million annually; and it does not occur to Mr. Wallace that modern advances in medicine and sanitation may account for far more than 25 drunkards per million inhabitants who in former times would have been carried off by all sorts of diseases but who now survive long enough to die of "alcoholism." The temper of the man of science wholly fails to assert itself in the weighing of facts which his zeal as a reformer impels him to view in the light of a preconceived judgment.

Some recent phenomena in the field of public discussion in our country have shown on a large scale the kind of loose thinking in regard to facts which is at the bottom of the exaggerating spirit. When the McNamara dynamitings were revealed, a wave of excitement swept off their feet a large part of our whole humanitarian army. They had been so filled with the idea that we are living in a strange and awful time, that this series of crimes, committed in secret by members of a single trade union, was acclaimed as something new under the sun, a fearful sign and portent. The tremendous railroad riots and burnings of 1877; the anarchist troubles at Chicago, culminating in the Haymarket massacre; the widespread and ominous railroad labor struggle of 1894, which took on an aspect bordering upon civil war--all these things were forgotten, and it was solemnly asserted that we were confronted with a crisis quite without precedent or parallel, which demanded a new and radical examination of the very foundations of the social order. The swift spread over the country a year ago of the notion that starvation wages for women were, if not the sole, at least incomparably the chief, cause of female vice and degradation, was a somewhat similar phenomenon. One that at first sight presents no resemblance to it, but which strikes me as a peculiarly interesting manifestation of the same thing, is to be found in the domain of ordinary politics. A leading feature of the Progressive crusade was the identification of the "reactionaries"--the business world and the conservative newspaper press--with bossism and the corruption of politics generally. Mr. Roosevelt continually talked as though there were a cynical alliance between all the leading New York newspapers on the one hand, and Murphy and Barnes and the whole system of political corruption on the other; and doubtless there were millions of good people who completely forgot not only that a large proportion of these papers had persistently fought for civil service reform and tariff reform and election reform, but that they were waging an uncompromising war against the whole brood of bosses, whether Republican or Democratic, for many years during which Mr. Roosevelt was an excellent friend of Quay, got along very fairly with Platt, and did not find it in his heart even to lift a finger against the unspeakable Addicks.

* * * * *

Now all these various forms of exaggeration, distortion and misrepresentation converge in our time upon one object, contribute toward one common effect. Whatever be the purpose held in view by any particular reformer or exhorter, however far from his desire it may be to foment dangerous unrest or to promote a revolutionary propaganda, every extravagant picture that he draws of the depravity or the wretchedness of our time inevitably does produce these effects, and that upon a large scale. There are a great number of people of all ages, and especially of young people, who, without having thought deeply upon the problems of society, feel about them very deeply indeed. Many of them attest the sincerity of their interest by useful and noble work; the world has certainly never seen anything like so widespread a devotion of the energies of young men and women among the fortunate classes to the betterment of the lot of the unfortunate. A far greater number, without devoting themselves to such work, are stirred by the same emotions of sympathy and good-will. Upon these minds and hearts the depiction of evils associated with the existing economic order produces more than a mere transient pang of distress or regret. What is wrong in the world they do not merely deplore; they wish to set it right. And if the wrong is so pervasive, the evil so deep-seated, the depravity so general, as these manifold presentments make it out, what more natural than that they should sum up the whole case in the conviction that the existing order of society is a failure, and be ready to welcome almost any experiment that holds out the promise of something better?

It is for this reason, above all others, that he who recklessly or thoughtlessly distorts or exaggerates the facts of our time assumes a grievous responsibility. Even in regard to each particular question, the element of degree may be of vital consequence: what measures ought to be taken, what objections ought to be weighed, what collateral consequences ought to be ignored, in regard to such a matter as the minimum wage, or unemployment insurance, or child labor, may depend essentially both upon the present extent of the evil and upon the influences already acting upon it. But it is the larger question that is most deeply involved, the question whether the institutions and traditions which have been slowly built up by ages of human effort and trial and struggle are to be thrown aside as worthless. To the reformer bent upon his own specific purpose it may seem a venial offense to depict poverty as increasing, when it is really diminishing, so long as there _is_ poverty; to represent the press of the country in general as deliberately suppressing ordinary news of public affairs, so long as there are some newspapers which suppress some kinds of news; to talk of two millions of children linked to the belts of factories and mills or pining underground in mines, so long as there is child labor; to speak of avoidable infant mortality as an evil peculiar to our time though the reverse is the truth, so long as there is infant mortality which is avoidable. But between seeing these things as they are and seeing them as they are not, the difference is not trifling, but fundamental. For upon that difference turns the whole issue between conservative improvement and reckless innovation. The world is full of persons who are eager enough to prove all things, but who seem to forget the other half of the injunction. If we apply the probe carelessly, if we report what we find untruthfully, how can we hope to hold fast that which is good?

NATURAL ARISTOCRACY

One evening not long since, in a certain New York club of authors and scholars, the conversation turned, as it is so accustomed to turn, on the politics of the day; and we were astonished when one of the circle, a distinguished student of sociology well-known for his radical opinions, said with conviction and emphasis that we were talking of little things and that the one great question of the day was whether a democratic society could develop a natural aristocracy. By chance I had with me that night an excellent new book on _The Political Philosophy of Burke_, by Prof. John MacCunn, late of the University of Liverpool, and as we left the club I showed it to one of my fellow writers with a word of commendation. "Ah," he said, handing it back unopened, "Burke! he's dead, isn't he?" Well, Burke, I dare say, is dead for us, as so many other great memories have perished, and Lord Morley (plain John Morley then, a fairly practical statesman) was indulging in the usual illusion of the biographer when, just twenty-five years ago, he closed his luminous volume with the prophecy that "the historic method, fitting in with certain dominant conceptions in the region of natural science, is bringing men round to a way of looking at society for which Burke's maxims are exactly suited; and it seems probable that he will be more frequently and more seriously referred to within the next twenty years than he has been within the whole of the last eighty." The historic method has an odd way of discrediting the authority of history, and certainly in the lustrum since Lord Morley's predicted score of years the world of Lloyd George and Mr. Roosevelt has not been referring abundantly to Burke's maxims. Yet, with the words of my radical sociological friend in my ears, I could not help reflecting on the coincidence that Professor MacCunn, a writer thoroughly imbued with modern ideas, should have led the whole of Burke's political philosophy up to the same question of natural aristocracy. "For Burke's feet," he says, "were never on surer ground than when, as we have seen, he argued that a civil society, by the very conditions of social struggle and growth, must needs evolve 'a natural aristocracy, without which there is no nation.'" And then, being sufficiently trained in the historic method, he proceeds to show how Burke entirely missed the real problem that faces society to-day in its effort to create such a leadership--as if human nature had first sprung into existence with the Reform Bill.

Of the urgency of the problem a reflective man will scarcely doubt. The only thing, in fact, that might lead him to question its urgency is its hoary antiquity. Plato wrestled with it when he undertook to outline the ideal republic, and many of his pages on the range of government through its five forms--aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny--sound as if he had been reading yesterday's newspapers of London and New York. In the orgy of misrule that brought Athens to humiliation in the last years of the Peloponnesian war he had seen oligarchs and democrats tearing at each other's throats like mad dogs; he had seen the disastrous triumph of the democratic party, and, knowing its instability, he had composed the long dialogue of _The Republic_ to show how, if possible, it might be saved from impending tyranny. He wrote, so far as the public was concerned, in a spirit of despair, almost as if foreseeing the domination of an Alexander and the cold despotism of Rome; and in that saddened scepticism he was thinking more of holding up the aristocratic principle of balance and restraint before the happier individual soul, and establishing the idea of justice for any pious seeker of the future, than of creating an actual commonwealth. Yet, however his application of the law of the individual to the machinery of politics may appear at times fantastic, his argument never really gets far from the everlasting questions of government.

The oligarchy which he knew and described was what we should rather call a plutocracy. He had in mind a State in which, "instead of loving contention and honor [as under a timocracy], men become lovers of money and business, and they praise and admire the rich man and confer office upon him, but despise the poor man." "And such a State," he adds, "will necessarily be not one but two States, one of the poor, the other of the rich, who are living in the same place and always plotting against each other." And when in such a society the disposers of wealth proceed from privilege to insolence and folly, and on their side the many have lost the sense of reverence and at the same time have become aware of the sheer power of numbers, then the plutocratic State is converted to the true democracy, the unbridled sway of the majority. The change is like that which comes to a rich young man who, forgetting the discipline of necessity, passes into the libertinism of indulgence. He will hearken to no word of advice; and if anyone tells him there is a distinction among pleasures, that some are the satisfaction of gross and ignoble desires and others are the satisfaction of good and useful desires, he shakes his head in superiority, and swears that all pleasures are alike. So the oligarchical faction loses its power and position; and the democracy in its turn follows the same path, despising the constraint of authority and the guidance of experience, caught by the lure of indiscriminate pleasure. "The father comes down to the level of the son, being afraid of his children, and the son is on a level with his father, having no shame or fear of his parents.... So the schoolmaster fears and flatters his scholars, and the scholars despise their masters and tutors; and, in general, young and old are alike, the young competing with the old in speech and action, and the old men condescending to the young in their gay and easy manners, from dread of being thought morose and dictatorial."

Then arises the problem which confronted the State in Plato's day, as it did in Burke's, and which may not seem entirely irrelevant to the watcher of to-day: How shall the people be saved from themselves? How, indeed? To Plato, who beheld the future as in a vision, the actual historic answer was a gloomy picture of the change from license to tyranny. His account of the impending fall can never lose its fresh interest:--

When a democracy which is thirsting for freedom has evil
cup-bearers presiding over the feast, then, unless her rulers are
very amenable and give a plentiful draft, she calls them to
account and punishes them, and says that they are cursed
oligarchs. And loyal citizens are insultingly termed by her
slaves who hug their chains; she would have subjects who are like
rulers, and rulers who are like subjects: these are the men whom
she praises and honors both in private and public.

By degrees the anarchy finds a way into private houses, and ends
by getting among the animals and infecting them. Nor must I
forget to tell of the liberty and equality of the two sexes in
relation to each other. And I must add that no one who does not
know would believe, how much greater is the liberty which the
animals who are under the dominion of man have in a democracy
than in any other State: for truly, the she-dogs, as the proverb
says, are as good as their she-mistresses, and the horses and
asses have a way of marching along with all the rights and
dignities of freemen; and they will run at anybody who comes in
their way if he does not leave the road clear for them: and all
things are just ready to burst with liberty.

The ruin of oligarchy is the ruin of democracy; the same desire
magnified and intensified by liberty overmasters democracy--the
truth being that the excessive increase of anything often causes
a reaction in the opposite direction; and this is the case not
only in the seasons and in vegetable and animal life, but above
all in forms of government. The excess of liberty, whether in
States or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.
And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most
aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme
form of liberty.

Then come impeachments and judgments and trials of one another.
The people have always some champion whom they set over them and
nurse into greatness. This is he who begins to make a party
against the rich. After a while he is driven out, but comes back,
in spite of his enemies, a tyrant full grown. Then comes the
famous request for a body-guard--"Let not the people's friend,"
as they say, "be lost to them." (Jowett, condensed.)

One escape from this fatal declension Plato saw--that, by the working of the inner law of self-restraint or by some divine interposition, the people should, before it was too late, be turned to hearken to their natural leaders, and the State should thus develop from anarchy into a true aristocracy. The question, then or at any time, is not whether there shall be leaders, but of what character these leaders shall be. There was the brawling tribe of demagogues and sycophants in the Athenian democracy, as there have been at other times of licentious upheaval. And the character of these men is always the same: they lead by flattery and by clamorous justification of the passing wave of desire. The aristocratic leaders whom Plato had in mind, and whom, for the confusion of posterity, he called philosophers, were of the very opposite sort, being men who should guide by imposing their authority and experience on the impulsive emotions of the multitude. They should be politicians who might dare the displeasure of the people, as Burke dared his constituents at Bristol: "The very attempt towards pleasing everybody discovers a temper always flashy, and often false and insincere.... I am to look, indeed, to your opinions; but to such opinions as you and I _must_ have five years hence." They should be philosophers like John Stuart Mill, who, facing the electors of Westminster and being asked whether he had ever said the English workingmen were "generally liars," replied simply, "I did." Such were to be the aristocrats of Plato's State, men of simple and rational desires, lords of their own souls, and so masters of others. Nor should they govern for their own smaller profit. For, as Socrates says, "it is not to the injury of the servant that we think he ought to be governed, but because it behooves each of us to be governed by the divine wisdom, having that power within us if possible, or, if that be impossible, then by an external authority, so that we may all, following the same guidance, be brought into likeness one to another and into good will."