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 plants, street car lines, would prove more costly than in private hands under government regulation; that extension of higher education to make it "free" and "easy" injured the recipients of its so-called benefits, absolved parents from their due obligations and youth from helpful striving; that "free" libraries, hospitals and many other "free" luxuries fostered official extravagance bred officials and taxed the most energetic citizens for benefit of those of lesser merit; that worst of all it taught the habit of "lying down on the government" and "making the state pay." "Government cannot compel the energetic few to do very much for the improvident many" (June 7, 1909). "If pushed very far, the result will be continual and rapid diminution of the energetic few and increase of the improvident many." Again on June 20, 1904: "The dream of 'social justice' never will do anything for him who depends on it. He should quit that dream, take the first job he can get and stick to it till he can make it the stepping stone to another and better. Then he will find no theory of 'social justice' of any interest to him." An earlier article, November 18, 1889, remarked: "No man has ever yet risen to prosperity by croaking and grumbling and spending his time in trying to discover reasons for the supposition that society is organized to keep him down." As for spread of governmental function (February 1, 1901): "Nobody can look out for himself any more. He is no longer able to cut his beard without superintendence by the state or to buy butter for his table or to protect his fruit from winged or creeping pests or his flocks from wild beasts. No one now thinks of doing anything for his own education; and the citizen puts up an incessant demand for enlargement of the functions of the state in all conceivable ways, so he may 'get a job,' in which the duty is but nominal and the salary secure." The great source of trouble was too much ignorant and irresponsible voting of taxes and governmental extravagance by citizens who did not feel the burdens thereby imposed on property. For this reason—and this reason chiefly—Mr. Scott stood opposed to woman suffrage—which would double, or more than double, he said, this sort of voters. Government and property, he asserted, were too much harassed by such voters already.