Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/574

562 But even for these faults of the newspapers the people must blame themselves, because newspapers are what people expect them to be, nothing in the world being more dependent upon public taste and public approval than the press.

The most underlying of all the causes of the people's neglect of city politics is this want of sensitiveness to the evils of bad city government; for you cannot get people to exert themselves to cure evils they do not mind.

The remedy is education. That sounds remote and disappointing; but it is not so bad as it sounds. I wish it were not so bad as it is; but that cannot be helped. You cannot have good city government without energetic good citizens to counteract energetic bad citizens; and you cannot get citizens to be energetic against corrupt public life if they do not heartily hate corruption, nor against shocking incompetence and neglect if they are not shocked by them, nor against bribery if they do not heartily hate bribing and despise bribers, nor against filthy streets and disgraceful sanitation if their lives are not made unhappy by them, nor against prodigal, selfish and partisan waste of the public funds if their indignation is not stirred by it. Therefore we must first stir the people to see all these things with an abiding consciousness that burns into the brain, and hate them with an abiding hatred that perpetually stirs resentment. Education is the only remedy. This education has begun. It has begun prosperously and hopefully. New citizens are constantly enlisting in the fight which is growing warm against the audacious travesty of free government in our cities. There is no conversion needed, for no sane man defends American city government. What is needed is to educate and stimulate the sensitiveness of the citizens; and to stir their blood. Agitation and publicity are the chosen methods of this education.

The most essential preliminary is to understand the problem—to understand the limits and the particulars of what is needed to be done. After that we have nothing to fear; we have only to "learn to labor and to wait;" for whatever is needed will surely be accomplished by the growing spirit of reform, no