Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/323

 Rh bill admit that the raising of such a fund by voluntary subscription would be impracticable, and only through legislative action, authorizing the construction of such paths along our common highways by a small annual tax, can this much-needed public improvement be consummated."

A curious feature of the discussion, one common to the arguments of the most enlightened as well as the most ignorant that took part in it, was the amazing exhibition of selfishness, and of indifference to the rights of others. "The millennium is too far ahead," wrote another defender of the bill, impatient with the delay involved in voluntary enterprise, and convinced of the perfect propriety of coercing the bicyclists that did not care to contribute. "Only a few of the present generation of riders will be able to enjoy the full benefits of that network of good roads promised when that time comes. Our largest interest is in the present. We are selfish enough to want a few of the good things now that are sure to come in abundance hereafter." Then, to show how just the tax was, since it was levied on bicyclists only, and how glad they would be to pay it, since all were taxed alike, he added: "We only ask those interested to contribute their mite. Every wheelman will be willing to pay his tax if he knows that his neighbor, who is a wheelman, will do the same. When a rider tells me he is against the bill because he is paying for something he does not use, I know that it is the one dollar, not the man, that is kicking. Every rider will use the best path, whether it be a side path or a road. This is human nature." Alluding, finally, to the people willing to avail themselves of what he was pleased to call, with infinite scorn, "the free-lunch way of going through life," he said: "Could we get the free-lunchers to pay a dollar if they were not forced to? No; but they will use the paths just the same, and kick if they are not kept in good repair."

How often have these arguments been made to do duty for all sorts of schemes to promote "the general welfare"! How forceful and admirable they appear to the excellent persons that frame them! In the first place, the tax was such a little one; no one could be too poor to pay it. In the second place, people would be so delighted to pay compulsorily what they would not pay voluntarily! In the third place, "could anything be more commendable than the suppression of "the free-lunch way of going through life," and the forcing of these odious "kickers" to pay for the paths they would be glad to have at other people's expense? Only one thing could be more commendable, and that is for those good people that want something done for their own benefit to pay for it themselves; only one thing could be more odious, and that is for these same people to get a law enacted to compel others to help