Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/272

 and failures never did excite in me that moral indignation which exists in the breasts of some; perhaps the old distinction between bad people and good people had been blurred in my consciousness. I could see that the bad people did many good things in their lives, and that the good people thought many dark and evil thoughts. I had seen indeed so much more kindness and consideration, so much more pity and mercy shown by the bad that I felt strengthened in my philosophy and in my belief that if their environment could be improved, if they could have a better chance in life, they would be as good as any-*body. It seemed to me that most of the crime in the world was the result of involuntary poverty, and the tremendous, perhaps insuperable task, was to make involuntary poverty impossible. But in the meantime there was other work to be done. Aside from the problem of transportation which was but one phase of the great struggle between privilege and the people, of plutocracy with democracy, there were civic centers, city halls, markets, swimming pools, bridges to be built, parks to be improved, boulevards and parkways to be laid out, a filtration plant to be installed, improvements in all of the other departments, a great mass of wonderful work for the promotion of the public amenities, the public health, and the adornment of the city, in a word, there was a city to be built, and strangely enough this group of objectors of whom I have been speaking, were so intensely preoccupied with moral considerations that they never had even the slightest interest in these improvements. I think it is this