Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/456

 440 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

there, they not only vindicate their manliness and readiness "to take their medicine," but they beat the sheriff, who belongs to the penal machinery, out of his five-dollar fee, over which fact they openly triumph. A simple example, perhaps, but significant of the attitude of the well-intentioned toward repressive government.

As the juvenile courts are beginning to take an interest in the social life of the child, in order to prevent arrest, on the same principle the reform schools are inaugurating the most advanced education in agriculture and manual arts. A bewildered foreign parent comes from time to time to Hull House, asking that his boy be sent to a school to learn farming, basing his request upon the fact that his neighbor's boy has been sent to "a nice green country place." It is carefully explained that the neighbor's boy was bad, and was arrested and sent away because of his badness, and it is quite possible sometimes to make clear to the man that the city assumes that he is looking out for himself and taking care of his own boy; but it ought to be further possible to make him see that, if he feels that his son needs the education of a farm school, it lies with him to agitate the subject and to vote for the candidate who will secure such schools. He might well look amazed, were this advice tendered him, for these questions have never been pre- sented to him to vote upon. Because he does not easily discuss the tariff, or other remote subjects, which the political parties present to him from time to time, we assume that he is not to be trusted to vote on the education of his child ; and in Chicago, at least, the school board is not elective. The ancestors of this same immigrant, from the days of bows and arrows, doubtless taught their children those activities which seemed valuable to them.

Again, we build enormous city hospitals and almshouses for the defective and dependent, but for that great mass of people just beyond the line from which they are constantly recruited we do practically nothing. We are afraid of the notion of governmental function which would minister to the primitive needs of the mass of people, although we are quite ready to care for him whom mis- fortune or disease has made the exception. It is really the rank and file, the average citizen, who is ignored by government, wjhile he works out his real problems through other agencies, and is scolded for staying at home on election day.