Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/447

 PROBLEMS OF MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION 43 1

performance of his civic duty. But because he and the others who are concerned in semi-illicit business do attend the primaries, the corrupt politician is nominated over and over again.

As this type of politician is successful from his alliance with crime, there also inevitably arises from time to time a so-called reformer, who is shocked to discover this state of affairs, this easy partnership between vice and administrative government. He dramatically uncovers the situation, and arouses great indig- nation against it on the part of the good citizen. If this indigna- tion is enough, he creates a political fervor which constitutes a claim upon public gratitude. In portraying the evil he is fighting, he does not recognize, or at least does not make clear, all the human kindness upon which it has grown. In his speeches he inevitably offends a popular audience, who know that the political evil exists in all degrees and forms of human weakness, but who also know that these evils are by no means always hideous. They resent his overdrawn pictures of vice and of the life of the vicious; their sense of fair play, and their deep-rooted desire for charity and justice, are outraged.

If I may illustrate from a personal experience : Some years ago a famous New York reformer came to Chicago to tell us of his phenomenal success and his trenchant methods of dealing with the city " gambling hells," as he chose to call them. He proceeded to describe the criminals of lower New York in terms and phrases which struck at least one of his auditors as sheer blasphemy against our common human nature. I thought of the criminals whom I knew, of the gambler for whom each Saturday I regularly collected his weekly wage of $24, keeping $18 for his wife and children, and giving him $6 on Monday morning. His despairing statement, " The thing is growing on me, and I can never give it up," was the cry of a man who, through much tribulation, had at least kept the loyal intention. I recalled three girls who had come to me with a paltry sum of money collected from the pawn and sale of their tawdry finery, that one of their number might be spared a death in the almshouse and have that wretched comfort during the closing weeks of her outcast life. I recalled the first murderer whom I had ever known a young man who was