Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/445

 PROBLEMS OF MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION 429

The instinctive protest against this mechanical method of civic control, with the lack of adjustment between the natural democratic impulse and the fixed external condition, inevitably produces the indifferent citizen and the so-called "professional politician ; " the first who, because he is not vicious, feels that the real processes of government do not concern him, and wishes only to be let alone; and the other who easily adapts himself to an illegal avoidance of the external fixed conditions by assuming that those conditions have been settled by doctrinaires who did not in the least understand the people, while he, the politician, makes his appeal beyond those to the real desires of the people themselves. He is thus not only the " people's friend," but their interpreter. It is interesting to note how often simple people refer to " them," meaning the good and great who govern, but do not understand, and to " him," meaning the alderman who represents them in these incomprehensible halls of state, as an ambassador to a foreign country to whose borders they could not possibly penetrate and whose language they do not speak.

In addition to this difficulty, inherent in the difference between the traditional and actual situation, is another, which constantly arises on the purely administrative side. The traditional govern- ments which the founders had copied, in proceeding to define the vicious by fixed standards from the good, and then to legislate against them, had enforced these restrictive measures by trained officials, usually with a military background. In a democracy, however, the officers intrusted with the enforcement of this restrictive legislation, if not actually elected by the people them- selves, are still the appointees of those thus elected, and are therefore good-natured men who have made friends by their kind- ness and social qualities.

The carrying out of repressive legislation, the remnant of a military state of society, is, in a democracy, at last put into the hands of men who have attained office because of political " pull," and the repressive measures must be enforced by those sympa- thizing with and belonging to the people against whom the measures operate. This anomalous situation produces almost inevitably one result: that the police authorities themselves are