In the matter of public charities, also, we are not timid as to extending the function of the government. We build enormous city hospitals and almhouses;we care with tenderness for the defective and the dependent; but for that great mass of people just beyond the line, from whom they are constantly recruited, we do practically nothing. It has been said that if a workingman in New York falls a victim to pneumonia, he is taken to a hospital and given skilled treatment; if it leaves him tubercular the city will have a care over him, and valiantly will stand by, putting him into a public sanatorium, providing him with nutritious food and fresh air until his recovery. But if he is turned away from the hospital without tuberculosis, merely too depleted; and wretched to go back to his regular employment, then the city can do nothing for him unless he be ready to call himself an out-and-out pauper. We are afraid of the notion of governmental function which would minister to the primitive needs of the mass of the people, although we are ( 85) 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 the government, while he works out his real problems through other agencies, although he is scolded for staying at home on election day, and for refusing to be interested in issues which really do not concern him.
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 survivals of the first two, excellent and necessary as they are, we have but the few public parks and baths, the few band concerts and recreation piers -- always excepting, of course, the public schools and the social activities slowly centering around them; for public education has long been a passion in America, and we seem to have been willing to make that an exception to our general theory of government.
While governmental functions have shown this remarkable adaptation and growth in relation to the youth, whether he be in the public schools, in the Juvenile Court or in the reformatory, we hesitate to assume toward the adult this temper of ( 86) the educator who humbly follows and at the same confidently leads the little child. While the State spends millions of dollars and employs thousands of servants to nurture and heal the sick and defective, it steadfastly refuses to extend its kindliness to the normal working man. The Socialists alone constantly appeal for this extension.
They refuse, however, to deal with the present State and constantly take refuge in the formulae of a new scholasticism. Their orators are busily engaged in establishing two substitutes for human nature which they call "proletarian" and "capitalist." They ignore the fact that varying, imperfect human nature is incalculable, and that to eliminate its varied and constantly changing elements is to face all the mistakes and miscalculations which gathered around the "fallen man," or the "economic man," or any other of the fixed norms which have from time to time been substituted for expanding and developing human life. In time "the proletarian" and "the capitalist"will become the impedimenta which it will be necessary to clear away in order to make room for the mass of living and breathing citizens with whom self- government must eventually deal.
There is no doubt that the existence of the mass, , the mere size of the modern city, increases the difficulty of the situation. Charles Booth's maps ( 87) portraying the standard of living for the people of London afford almost the only attempt at a general social survey of a modern city, at least so far as it may be predetermined from the standard of income. From his accompanying twelve volumes may be deduced the occupations of the people, with their real wages, their family budget and their culture level, and, to a certain extent, their recreations and spiritual life.
If one gives one's self 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 districts, must largely come from forces outside the life of the people. An enlarged mental life must come from the educationalist, increased wages from the business interests, alleviation of suffering from the philanthropists. What vehicle of correction is provided for the people themselves, what device has been invented for loosing that kindliness and mutual aid which is the marvel of all charity visitors ?
