Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/663

 SANITATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 643

we cannot disabuse that mind of the traditional belief that taxa- tion means burden and sacrifice. Finally, if we cannot prove that monopolies, whether within or without so-called trusts, offer a practical means of taking social earnings for social good without depriving any man of his deserts we must abandon hope of protecting society adequately from present and future insanitary conditions.

To conclude, let us reinforce the statement that sanita-y administration offers a very direct and most efficacious means of reducing the inequalities that even the most conservative capital- ist will concede to be incident to our present system of distribu- tion. The meanest wage-earner has already come to associate his health with his capital; his lodge, his creditors, and his insur- ance company are emphasizing that relation. None is so mean as not to wish a higher standard of life nothing is easier to demonstrate than that wide and clean streets, playgrounds, hos- pitals, public baths, food, tenement, and factory inspection, help to raise his minimum standard with no sacrifice by himself. In no other field have conservative thinkers and communities taken such advanced ground ; conversely, no other field offers so little theoretical opposition or so little prejudice. No other field of administration can demonstrate so quickly and so readily on the platform or by actual tests that there is taxation which benefits (without burdening) the majority. Finally, we here shift the emphasis in our discussions of principles of law from abstractions which only confuse without interesting the majority, or from dollars that serve to divide thinkers along artificial lines, to mankind and its truest betterment to the real problems of social progress.

WILLIAM H. ALLEN,

General Secretary New Jersey State Charities Association. JERSEY CITY, N. J.