Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/140

 128 Were Ahab not sceptered and crowned among us, neither a native nor an alien Elijah could arise to prophesy the judgment. Microbes of plagues will work their deadly havoc only where the conditions favor their culture. We have become urban when one hundred years ago we were rural. Concentration of population in industrial centers is not an unmixed good. Whether the problem be indigenous or imported, matters not; it is among us. Who is commissioned to speak the message of peace? None other but the university! From its halls shall go forth the law, and from it as the Zion of the age the redeeming words.

That our people need the steadying influence of clearer thoughts on the weighty problems awaiting its decisions than now it has, is clear. Conservative to the core as our written Constitution is, even so fickle have of late become the political sympathies of the voters. And no wonder! Party and principle are no longer exchangeable terms. Party and spoils are. The hustings have degenerated into sounding boards for vociferating politicians whose ambition is office, not the public weal. The race of the giants seems extinct; pigmies usurp their pedestal. And thus, from the Capitol no light proceeds to guide the citizen. He vacillates; "landslides" recur with alarming frequency! Protectionist yesterday, the voter deceives himself today with the belief that he is a freetrader, to jilt his new love again tomorrow with as little reason as he courted her the day before. Such flirtations are not healthy symptoms. The university must come to the rescue. What Liliput of a politician cannot accomplish, Gulliver of a professor must undertake. To his lot also falls the Herculean task of cleansing the Augean stables of civic corruption. Reform is more than a fad or a fetich. The science of public administration must be consulted if the desire of the hour shall event in a lasting change for the better. Without this it will spend its spasmodic enthusiasm and be in its failure a renewed pretext for continuing the old cankerous abuses. The university spirit must be the St. George to kill a dragon of the spoils system.

In dealing with these vital questions conservatism must not