Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/453

 PROBLEMS OF MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATION 437

that fulness of life which had been denied them in the lands of oppressive government.

It is a curious commentary on the fact that we have not yet attained self-government, when the real and legitimate objects of men's desires must still be incorporated in those voluntary groups, for which the government, when it does its best, can afford only protection from interference. As the religious revivalist looks with longing upon the fervor of a single-tax meeting, and as the orthodox Jew sees his son ignoring the Yom Kippur, and pouring all his religious fervor, his precious zeal for righteousness which has been gathered through the centuries, into the Socialist Labor Party, so a patriot finds himself exclaiming, like Browning's Andrea del Sarto : " Ah, but what do they, what do they, to please you more?"

So timid are American cities in dealing with this perfectly reasonable subject of wages in its relation to municipal employees that when they do prescribe a minimum wage for city contract work, they allow it to fall into the hands of the petty politician and to become part of a political game, making no effort to give it a dignified treatment in relation to cost of living and to margin of leisure. In this the English cities have anticipated us, both as to time and legitimate procedure. Have Americans formed a sort of " imperialism of virtue," holding on to the preconceived ideas of self-government, and insisting that they must fit all the people who come to our shores, even although we crush the most promising bits of self-government and self-expression in the process? Is the American's attitude toward self-government like that of his British cousin toward Anglo-Saxon civilization, save that he goes forth to rule all the nations of the earth by one pattern, whether it fits or not, while we sit at home and bid them to rule themselves by one set pattern? Both of us many times ruining the most precious experiments which embody ages of travail and experience.

In the midst of the city, which at moments seems to stand only for the triumph of the strongest, the successful exploitation of the weak, the ruthlessness and hidden crime which follow in the wake of the struggle for mere existence on its lowest terms, there