Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/346



It had been an issue, as I have more than once said in Jones's time and in his campaigns, though the issues his tremendous personality raised were so vast and so general and so fundamental that they included all issues, as Emerson said his reform included all reforms. It ran like a scarlet thread through the warp and woof of our communal life; it was somehow associated with the ambitions of the meanest politician, it affected the fortunes of every man in business, and it was the means whereby the community came to have an ideal. The long story of it, like the story of the same interest in any town, would include triumphs and tragedies—and the way of politics through the town was strewn with the pitiable wrecks of character and of life itself that had been ruthlessly sacrificed to the insatiable greed of privilege. Only the other day one such wreck, once in a position of honor and trust in the municipality, was waiting in the outer office; he wanted half a dollar and a place to sleep. And another like him, most desperate of all, asked to be committed to a city hospital or even to the asylum for the insane; he had no other refuge, and as for the poorhouse, he said, not yet, not yet! And these were the sacrifices privilege demanded of its parasites; though their case morally, at least, could be no worse than that of privilege's principal beneficiaries; not half so bad indeed, since they had lost the power of appreciation of spiritual values.