Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/721

Rh for the former, and only indirectly, and in a manner they can not control, for the latter. In the former case they want to get value for the money they pay out; in the latter case if they don't get value they can not do anything about it; the whole thing has passed beyond their control, and is largely in the hands of ward politicians. So the children go to school and come home; and the average parent hardly asks what they have learned or whether they have learned anything. It was long ago remarked by Adam Smith that "the proper performance of every service seems to require that its pay or recompense should be as exactly as possible proportioned to the nature of the service." That is the case with the washing of clothes, but it is not the case with the education of children. The parents who pay the money have nothing to say as to the quality of the article they get in return; and superintendents and trustees are only able to a very imperfect degree to proportion compensation to the amount of useful work done. Upon the whole the "washerwoman" system has its good points; and, disagreeing with Prof. Davidson, we should be very glad if it could be made applicable to the whole business of education.

A regards as inadequate the recent explanation given in these columns of the origin of the department store. Instead of attributing it to the economies it effects as a piece of labor-saving machinery, which has come into existence under the operation of the law of evolution, he ascribes it to the influence of the heavy municipal taxation that prevails in the United States. In proof, he cites the failure of the department store, or rather the country store, in new communities to prevent the growth of the specialist. He cites also the city of Chicago, saying that "here we find the highest rate of taxation of all the principal cities of America," and the highest development of the department store.

That heavy taxation, as was shown in the case of the match and whisky industries during the civil war, tends to concentrate business in a few hands with large capital we would not deny. Nor would we deny that such concentration is abnormal and injurious. But while we are willing to admit that further municipal taxation in this country has become very heavy and ought to be materially reduced instead of increased, as the tendency is, owing to the extension of the sphere of government, we are not convinced that it has become great enough to produce the department store. Were that the case, the department store would not be the only form that the concentration of capital would assume. Other industries, subjected to the same influence, would also become consolidated. But, as yet, we have heard of no complaint of this kind. What convinces us that this view is correct is the fact that the rate of taxation in Chicago, where the movement against the department store has assumed the greatest proportions, is not higher than in many other cities where there is no serious complaint against this form of industrial development. A reference to the Abstract of the Eleventh Census and to the World Almanac will show that the rate of taxation in Boston, New York, Cincinnati, Baltimore, San Francisco, and elsewhere is higher than in Chicago.

The failure of the so-called department store in new and growing communities to prevent differentiation and segregation is not difficult to explain. In such communities