Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/520

502 it is corrupt, but it will well bear comparison with the activities of private life, with banking and mining enterprises, with railroads and telegraphs, with buying and selling. An impartial review of American history during the decade just passed will disclose a remarkable result, and one which deserves emphasis here and elsewhere:

The sum of American public infamy is neither absolutely nor relatively so great as the sum of American private infamy.

On all sides we hear the reverse. It is preached to us from pulpit and from press, for the human mind has ever shown a willingness for that light gymnastic which consists in setting up a man of straw and then knocking him down. It is better to face the truth. Our Government is corrupt only because our society is corrupt, and it is less corrupt than society because vice is a mortal coward and never does its worst in the open. The electric light has much increased the morality of large cities. The necessary publicity of national action does not insure honesty, but at least it prevents much dishonesty. In those departments in which the Government does attempt to serve us in a positive capacity, such as the Post-Office, the Coast Survey, the Smithsonian, the Geological Survey, the Weather Bureau, the Department of Agriculture, and the like, the service is certainly truer and more effective than parallels from private corporations. I know that Mr. Gould says that the mails would be better administered as private enterprise, but the history of the Western Union Telegraph Company hardly bears out the remark. In view of the experience of the nation, I do not think that university extension need fear corruption should it be included in the portfolio of the incoming Secretary of Education.

Nor is it by any means a proved case that there is a paralyzing lack of vitality in our public schools. It is often asserted, but, taking America as a whole, it seems to me that they are very much alive. It is true that they are commonplace, so commonplace indeed that a conscientious educator will often ask himself whether he should consent to such a system, and will hesitate as to whether he should not withdraw from the public service. But if he will look around him he will see that they are the schools of a commonplace community, and are as good as the community will tolerate. Even in Boston, Alcott's Temple School could not live. One must admit that the public schools are in many ways deplorable tread-mills, and that there are serious scandals in their administration; but they also will well bear comparison with private institutions. They have, moreover, this great advantage, that they permit a freedom and honesty of expression not always tolerated in those institutions which hang for support upon private pocket-books and prejudices. In judging of our public schools