Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/326

 310 too, two other associations were organized and began work in the same way.

The supreme merit of voluntary effort, as every careful student of Mr. Spencer's social philosophy knows, is the powerful stimulus it exerts both upon the generous emotions and upon the intellectual powers. People brought together by their interest in a common cause not only feel friendly toward one another, but by their desire to interest others in the same cause they are moved to be friendly with them. Most marked was the growth of this feeling among the bicyclists of the city and country after the defeat of the tax bill. It was often mentioned and commented upon. As a result of the desire to promote a common cause, contributions came in freely. They were not limited to the dollar fixed by the tax bill. There were several sums ranging from twenty-five to one hundred dollars. Nor did they come from bicyclists alone. People that never rode a wheel gave. Nor were contributions confined to money; they included cinders, ashes, and gravel for the paths and team work from farmers.

The invention of ways and means was quite as marked as the moral effect. Had the tax bill been passed, the bicyclists would have been just as indifferent to this subject as they would have been to one another. But the necessity of raising money by voluntary effort stimulated them to the discovery of the most effective ways. The women riders held a lawn festival, and raised some money; they gave an entertainment in a public hall and raised more. A newspaper was induced to undertake the collection of a fund. It was so successful that it obtained more than a thousand dollars. At the suggestion of a physician much interested in bicycle riding as a healthful exercise, a callithumpian parade was held in the driving park. Although the admission was only twenty-five cents, nearly twenty-five hundred dollars more were obtained. The result of the various methods for raising money was over five thousand dollars.

The best part of the defeat of the tax bill was the deliverance from politics and politicians. Here, too, was another application of the social philosophy of Mr. Spencer. How often has he shown that a more cumbersome, ineffective, and wasteful way of doing business could not be devised! Had the wit of man set about to invent something to dissipate energy, to stir up contention, and to produce the least satisfactory results, it could have hit upon nothing better adapted to this end than the tax bill. There would have been the intriguing for the appointment of the side-path commissioners; the scheming to get contracts for the construction of the paths; the pulling and hauling to have them constructed in some particular locality first; and, finally, the certainty that they would not have been built in the best and most economical way.