Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/766

 750 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

purifying municipal government. It is a question if municipal corruption is not on the increase. Municipal reformers have not begun to save us from the scandal of American municipal stu- pidity and municipal corruption. In spite of some most whole- some direct expedients, such as the extension of civil-service examinations, the elimination of the spoils system, and the divorcement of municipal from national politics, it may be a question if the too utilitarian programs of our reformers are adapted to the purpose of infusing purity into our municipal life. Without this element other reforms may only plunge our municipalities into deeper and more difficult complexities. It may be that a wholesome sentiment for recreative and culture utilities will need to be joined to the more material considera- tions to give the reform movements the impulse requisite to their complete success.

The fundamental errors of the municipal radicals seem to consist in a too material conception of the municipality and a failure to appreciate the capacity of the people to respond to aesthetic appeals. The municipality is not the mechanism which they conceive it, and individuals are not the sordid creatures which they think them. A successful radical propaganda would seem to call, first, for a more careful inquiry into the essential nature of the municipality, and, second, for a deeper study of human nature.

As to the municipality, our radicalism ignores its organic nature and treats it as a mechanism. Theoretically a city might be a pure mechanism, viz., it might consist of a body of people living in the same vicinage, incorporated under the laws of the state into the form of a body politic with the spirit wholly absent. Such a body is purely mechanical. It is mechanically planned, mechanically constructed, and it is kept in motion according to the principles of mechanics. Its bolts and cogs may be taken apart and oiled or replaced, old parts may be eliminated and new ones added in so far as mechanical laws are not violated. People may be induced to operate the machine — to sit in the municipal council, patrol its streets and alleys, and to lubricate the machinery through taxes where a quid pro quo is offered