Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/571

Rh exists. I think it is explained by four states of the public mind.

First, there is the feeling that one is under no obligation to take part in city politics and government. Nothing is more abnormal than this, and yet nothing is more common. One would think if a man wished to live without the duties of citizenship he would find a country where government is not done by the people; and that if he preferred a country governed by the people he could not live in it without a sense of his share in the power and responsibility of government. But most of us both refuse to live in any other country and refuse to really live in this; for a man who in a self-governed country does not help to govern does not live, but merely hangs on. The saving clause is that at the bottom of our minds most of us do admit the responsibility of citizenship even when on the surface we deny it; and certainly those of us who rise to political consciousness in occasional spurts show that we might live useful civic lives if somebody would wake us really up.

Secondly, there is the customary sentiment toward the city government that it is something apart from ourselves—something we have a right to swear at as outsiders, feeling that its horribly neglected duties are enough to provoke that saint, "the good citizen." It is supposed to be for us, to be sure, but not of us nor by us. It does not occur to us to blame ourselves or to think we do it.

Thus we neither govern nor give up self-government; and as a consequence we get a government never contemplated in any system conceived by mortal man, whether monarchic, absolute or limited, aristocratic, oligarchic, democratic or republican. We get a government for which a new name will have to be invented signifying a government by the greatest unfit.

The third abnormal state of mind which, according to my analysis, leads to the present attitude of the good citizen is chiefly due to the money-getting spirit of the age. This extreme money-getting craze is sure to be modified in time. In its present abnormal degree the money-getting spirit is new, and there