Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/futurecitizenOOmyerrich THE FUTURE CITIZEN BY F. A. MYERS It is the mind that makes the man, and our vigor is in our immortal souls. Ovid BOSTON SHERMAN, FRENCH ^ COMPANY 1911 V, Copyright, I9II Sherman, French & Company CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Introduction I. Mental Inheritance - - - 1 11. Marriage - - - - - 16 III. Race Suicide . - . . 22 IV. Cost of the Child - - - 29 V. Boy 34 VI. Education - - - - - 41 VII. Parental Mistakes - - - 58 VIII. Home ------ 67 IX. Why Boys Go Wrong - - 73 X. Biology of Crime - - - 87 XL Juvenile Crimes - - - - 101 XII. External Remedial Efforts - 113 XIII. Child Labor - - - - 126 XIV. The American Spirit - - - 134 XV. Socialism - - - - - 146 XVI. Labor 156 XVII. Cities a Problem . - - 169 XVIII. The Church ... - 178 327403 INTRODUCTORY Through all ages the great effort has been, after the arrival of the boy on the stage of existence, to train him into a good citizen and prepare him to be a better angel in the future life. The very first child on earth, according to Genesis, went violently wrong, and the weakness of the flesh he displayed is still the inheritance of all men. The problem of the soul, that has been the concern of the church and the state and the home since Adam, whom God thrust out into poor environ- ments as a curse for disobedience, and forced on him thereby the necessity of sweating for a living, is still an unsolved problem. However, it is self- evident that frail, feeble, insufficient man, need- ing help and guidance himself, cannot solve it. The problem is less difficult of solution, it seems in a general survey, if the destiny of the child is prearranged before its birth, — that is to say, a better, higher, happier, holy destiny; — a matter that is quite possible for man to do. NECESSITY OF EEPEATING INFORMATION It seems in this our day that with all sorts of literature put before everybody, they know all about this question, and that they who do not know it do not want to know it, to be sure, and so any more said upon the question is the work of superfluous zeal and therefore unnecessary. But in this "developed," overstrained, eager. INTRODUCTORY strenuous time, when the whole earth is in a hurry to get money, casting away simplicity and joy, exhausting nerve force and hastening on to pain and decay, and creating as a consequence the false conditions of emulation, inadequacy, fickle cus- toms, unhappy and unphilosophical and needless ambitions, — all due to the underfed divinity of rush that is supreme in this strenuous commercial age, — some insistence on the subject is needful. Some of the causes of poor citizenship are a de- cline in old faiths, both political, religious, and social ; and the strenuosity of the age — unnatural, hysterical speed. Herein will be found some of the present conditions needing remedying, with some suggestions as to how best correct the headlong, headstrong age. NATIONAL PERPETUITY Another great problem of chief concern now is the perpetuity of our institutions, civil and relig- ious, and that problem is possible of solution only by the character of the citizens. As the opinions of men alter, institutions naturally alter in har- mony with the spirit of the life supplying and needing them. Often men entertain mistaken ideas and ideals, and these false faiths bring on their very certain results — no escape. Indeed it is not an easy thing to be absolutely fair in belief at all times and under all conditions. It is easier to per- suade oneself into thinking that the things he wants to believe, or the things he wants INTRODUCTORY to do are the right things, and the right things to believe or to do. Many things in public and in the individual conscience are to be deplored, for all things are not good, even if it is possible for them to be. Some of these things are the changes occurring in old fundamental elements of religious belief and in well-tried principles of state and school and home. There is both a definite fear and a hope in relation to the advance of modern thought in such swift fashion, and men are debating how to reconstruct upon the obsolescent old elementary ideas the "larger advanced thoughts" (if they be even up to the label put upon them) of the present time and make men better for the alterations. CAUSES OF POOR CITIZENSHIP Perhaps the causes of poor citizenship may be limited to three: state, home, self; and these will be considered in the following pages. There will be the child first to consider, next his environ- ments, thirdly his training, fourthly the evils of the times, and lastly possible remedies. These discussions are rather hints than careful analyses and treatment, and they have been put together in very great haste, so that errors in arrangement and matter and facts must necessarily exist, as well as in the form and style of the thought. But it is felt that with all these defects, this little -volume still may not be in vain. INTRODUCTORY FUTURE DESTINY OF OUB, COUNTRY It may be said that the future destiny of our country depends upon the children of to-day and the unborn who will succeed them. And their character will determine the character and history of the government. Of course government is meant, in the end, for the happiness of the people, or should be, and such protection should be ac- corded to all as will beget better men and women, happier men and women, better citizens. The causes for poor citizenship are presented herein, and remedies more or less effective indicated for removing these causes. There is no exception to the law of decadence in the world, and a govern- ment is no more stable than the opinions that create and sustain it. The United States is des- tined to go the way all other past nations have gone — youth, manhood, old age, — and it will sur- vive only so long as the opinions that sustain it have vitality. In a word, this is the destiny of all human institutions, for the reason that they are human, imperfect, ephemeral, and no feeble finite effort can stay decay. No observant person has failed to see that already citizens are not as they used to be. Why.^ This little volume is an attempt to answer this query, though in no full and exhaustive way. CHANGING CONDITIONS We have no longer, it is clear, the primitive method of thought, conditions, needs, or relation- INTRODUCTORY ships — showing changes going on in our political and social organization already. Simply chang- ing need not mean utter destruction without com- pensation, a death of the old without the growth of the new, like coral, but it does mean a displace- ment of the old, effete, which never returns again, despite the theory of metempsychosis. There is too, great disregard by too many persons of the basic Old Testament duties, which are two : — duties first to God, and second to man. Any de- parture from elemental truths must bring as a cause the concomitant results. DESCENDING TO FAULT FINDING Pleasantness is being eliminated to-day from our beautiful old world. We are growing into grumbling, criticising, condemning, unsatisfied, "calamity howling muckrakers," nosing into gar- bage trucks and fingering in sewers, and as a re- sult, becoming like the pictures set before us. Feeding on such mental pabulum and encouraging such a mental habit, we cannot grow better. Our books and press are revelations of sins, while the good is taken for granted, and even the pulpit sometimes hurls criticisms and cynicisms at the audience. This sort of scowling and schooling is bad. The sentiment is inoculating, leavening, con- tagious. We have false theories of education, bad home government, bad school government, bad laws, untutored press, and in addition a multi- plicity of immature ideas and quack panaceas for INTRODUCTORY government ills. We seem to be partly assimilated with imported ideas instead of assimilating them — ^national metabolism. None of these things oc- cur in gross, but with insensible insinuation year after year, as the growth of a tree. "Ill fares the land^ to hastening ills a prey. Where wealth accumulates, and men decay. Princes and lords may flourish or may fade, — A breath can make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride. When once destroyed, can never be supplied.'* THE FUTURE CITIZEN CHAPTER I MENTAL INHERITANCE ^'Poeta nascituTy non fit** has long been an ac- cepted axiom. No education, or training, or wishing, or striv- ing, or environment can eradicate the mixture of negro blood, let us say by way of illustration, from a person with a strain of nine-tenths white blood in him. In broken terms, heredity — destiny — ^born that way — die with it in the mixed blood still. So of family blood, family traits, physi- cal characteristics, brain qualities. No training or environment can alter them, can add one hair's breadth to one's height, or change the color of one's hair or eyes, or deepen the convolutions of the brain. These things are the unalterable gifts of parents. And just so they gave us our mental aptitudes, and our mental deficiencies, and no training or environment can alter their constitu- tional character. However, such gifts or endow- ments as the child has can and should be made the most of. And that is all that laws and schools and homes and churches can do for it. BACIAL LIMITATIONS Negroes beget negroes, Chinamen beget China- men, Indians beget Indians. The physical dis- tinctions of these races are so pronounced that one is not mistaken for another, — distinctions seen in the shape of the eye, mouth, nose, cheeks, 1 ■^if<: « THE FUTURE CITIZEN straight or curly hair, color, height, and the like. And so, too, parental endowments of shape of body, walk, and mental characteristics are ob- servable, as well as the type of mental activity, temper, vitality, and the like. But in intimate relationship to this destiny of heredity is also the destiny of environment. The "birth cry" is for better birth, better blood, better health, better conditions, or the right to choose one's own parents, if one may so speak. For without good childhood, there is poor citizen- ship and poorer churchmanship. NO ONE CREATES HIMSELF In speaking of himself St. Augustine said of his mother: "I will not omit whatsoever my soul would bring forth concerning thy handmaid, who brought me forth, both in the flesh that I might be born to this temporal light, and in heart that I might be born to light eternal. Nor her gifts, but thine in her, will I speak of; for neither did she make nor educate herself. Thou didst create her: nor did her father and mother know what a one should come from them." It appears that Huxley said, in speaking of the peculiarities of the father cropping out in the children: "That illustrates the immutability of law. Children inherit certain traits and capabili- ties. They must go on and develop them. There is nothing more. They are bound by the elements which are born in them." MENTAL INHERITANCE 3 BIBLE ON HEREDITY "By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Therefore by their fruits ye shall know them." Matthew 7 : 16 f . "For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. " Luke 6 'A4i, "In those days they shall say no more. The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge. But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge." Jeremiah 31:29f. Ezekiell8:2. "Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jeal- ous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments." Exodus 20 : 5 f . Exo- dus 34 : 7. Numbers 14 : 18. The well-known story of the man, going into another country, delivering certain moneys to his servants, illustrates this matter very clearly. "Unto one he gave ^ve talents, to another two, to another one; to each according to his several abil- 4 THE FUTURE CITIZEN ity." When the servants reckoned later with their master, it was found that the one with the five talents had "made other five talents," and he that received two "gained other two. But he that re- ceived the one went away and digged in the earth, and hid his lord's money." The reward of the one with the Bxe talents was commendation and promotion; because he had been faithful over a few things he was set over many things. He had demonstrated his hereditary gifts. The same commendation and promotion was given to the man with the two talents. It was the nature of the man with one talent to be afraid to venture, and he therefore hid his talent in the earth. He was roundly censured because he was a "wicked and slothful servant." "Take ye away therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him that hath the ten talents. For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away. And cast ye out the unprofit- able servant into the outer darkness: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth." This Scriptural lesson approves money-getting and condemns slothfulness and thriftlessness. Mat- thew 25:15f. In the apocryphal books, III Hermes Similitude, chapter eighth, the same lesson is brought forth by the figure of the branches of a willow instead of talents. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots.'' then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil." Jeremiah 13:23. MENTAL INHERITANCE 5 HEREDITY DETERMINES EVERY ONE The education of a child should begin with his grandmother. Holmes said it should begin "a hundred years before he is born." Aside from the educational idea in this observation, it imparts a sense of destiny determined by the parents. The child is what the cell in which he originates pre- determines. By fate's law he can be no other. The birth cell is, of course, that which is peculiar to his parents. He comes into life so much, no less and no more, and whatever that is it is capable of so much training, no more and no less. These assertions, so familiar in this day of investiga- tion, of course need no confirmation by illustra- tions or arguments. The students of the day refer all life to its cell origin. Holmes' "Elsie Venner" is based on the idea of the predestinating influence of the cell. Be- neath phrenology is the theory of birth-destiny. No stream can rise above its source, is a very com- mon saying, and means inability to rise above the impossible. The common people speak very fa- miliarly and perhaps not very respectfully of cer- tain ones whom they know well, and say they were "hatched from a poor nest." An eagle cannot be hatched from a dove's egg, though brought into life under an eagle's breast. A fool is a fool still, in spite of good environments and school training. "Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his fool- ishness depart from him." Proverbs 27 : 22. 6 THE FUTURE CITIZEN PREDESTINATION Indeed the whole of chapter forty-nine in Gen- esis is destiny foretold. "And Jacob called unto his sons, and said. Gather yourselves together that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days." One cannot read this chapter with- out receiving the idea of predestination, as plainly written as anything in Mahomet's Koran. And the idea also obtains that here is the first example of a father phrenologically reading the character or destiny of his sons, perhaps in a manner some- what like the modern phrenologists read character by the contour of the head and the destiny of the face. As already suggested above, a good environ- ment alone will not make a good man out of one that is born ill conditioned. So the importance of good birth cannot be overestimated. But all this fate — ^predestined to life without his volition, or- dained to eternal physical extinction, predeter- mined to an eternity, fated to an organization of a specific kind according to the cell in which he originated — all this does not relieve him of exer- cising his voluntary powers and making the most out of himself. That he is capable of improve- ment of the talent shows God's law of free will, or else there is no free will and no improvement by self -effort. The law of opposites, good and evil, striving and submission, demonstrates that man is capable of a choice, or else there is no good and evil, — all destiny, God! The idea is degrading, MENTAL INHERITANCE 7 preposterous! Environment, as investigation has demonstrated, has a great influence in the devel- opment of human character. Heredity gives the human impulse and its trend, and environment de- velops it, not creates it. The kind of seed of the sower that fell in stony places was not altered by the place it fell, only its opportunities for large development were limited; while the seed that fell upon good ground simply had opportunity to make the most of itself. Hence the necessity of putting good environments before all undeveloped human souls. Matthew 13 : 5 f. NATURE MAKES HUMAN DISTINCTIONS "The chief difference in human beings comes from the way they live, not from heredity." — Dr.* Carl Kelsey. "Three-fourths of the differences in persons are due to nature, and could never have been pre- vented by education or anything anybody could have done." — Prof. Edward L. Thorndike. Every teacher knows that some children, with seemingly equally good mental abilities in other respects, cannot spell as well as some other chil- dren, though continually in the same educational environment. The same differences have been observed in musicians, mathematicians, and others with apt qualities for certain things. Gifted per- sons are bom, not made. Variety is the pro- nounced design in all things. No two leaves, no two raindrops, no two grains of sand, no two per- 8 THE FUTURE CITIZEN sons are just alike, nor do they even look alike. No human entity is remade after birth. In educa- tional and sociological work it is essential that the quantity of the difference between persons be known. Now, if nine-tenths of crime come from nature, the right step is to prevent criminal prop- agation. If nine-tenths come from environment, then social reform is the method of elimination. LAW OF LUCK DOESN't RULE AT BIRTH Galton found on investigation that the proba- bilities of an eminent man having an eminent son were eleven hundred times greater than those of an ordinary man. Some biographies show that preachers come through a long descent of preach- ers. The idea of tracing ancestry at all is illusory, if chance alone rules the destiny of a child at birth. God's rules are invariable and without shadow of turning. Grades of intellect vary as a result of certain causes, invariable laws, certain combination of parents or of parental cells. It is a fact that brothers at ten resemble each other more than they do at twenty. But the fact is, that with ten years more influence of the same home environment they should look more alike at twenty than at ten, if environment shapes the be- ing more than birth destiny. Again, with the same equal environments at home, brothers should have the same ambitions and desires and tenden- cies and choice of pursuits ; but they have not. And with the same training to read the printed MENTAL INHERITANCE 9 page, children in the same school ought to read with equal facility; but they do not. So it seems that environment cannot, after all, prevent these predestined differences. Therefore, it is true, as Milton says: "Childhood shows the man as morn- ing shows the day." THEN WHY EDUCATE The question is asked naturally — "What's the use, then, of trying to educate, when it can't be done?" In large it may be said that children in the same schools manifest great difference in abil- ity to spell, but they all can spell, — a thing they could not do before the drilling in spelling. And they can all spell better than all the children in Patagonia or Central Africa. Owing to the initi- ative impulse in the child, two started at the same time in training will remain equally apart, accord- ing to their original differences, in the end. But each will be higher than before, but the original differences will not be eliminated, rather intensi- fied by the training. According to the law of im- provement, the dullest child is benefited by train- ing. All children are not equally subject to the influence of environment, but environment cannot account for this. Education is not aided by the belief that all men are alike at birth, bv^t that dif- ferences arise through environment and training. Nor is it the tendency of like environments to make any two or more persons alike. The true purpose of education is not to train the lower one 10 THE FUTURE CITIZEN up relatively so he is equal or nearer to the one above him, but to move him up actually so that he is above what he was before. And school mark- ings should be, not on a child's relative standing to others, but on his advance over his own last effort, — his relative standing to himself. SELECTIVE ENVIRONMENT That wonderful plant wizard, Luther Burbank of California, believes that environment (the oppo- site of heredity) plays at least as important a part in the development of life — all life — as heredity. In his view heredity is but the sum of past environ- ments, — thus saying that acquirements may be transmitted through the blood, — and that the most unpromising material may be highly devel- oped through selective environment. This modify- ing force, continued through generations, he thinks will bring about established results. He says a child born of criminal parents, with a setting of morality and decency, will most likely grow into an upright man. Now, this result may follow, to be sure, for every one is born both a saint and a sinner, — or the capability of being either ; and no one is born utterly vicious or supremely good. Hence environment but gives the opportunity to develop what is in the child, and does not create anything anew in him. Environment is but the teacher, training such material as comes in its pur- view. Where environment fails to "make good," heredity has predominated. It is certain that MENTAL INHERITANCE 11 even the best "developed" things, when permitted to exercise their hereditary instinct,-^— run wild again, — return to their original estate. Hence the acquirements through environment are acci- dental, acquired, and not permanent. The experi- mental observations of the Italian, Mendel, a few years ago, proved very conclusively the heredity in plant and animal life. The law he developed is in brief, that when pure stock or strains are crossed, certain kinds of qualities remain as if in- destructible and appear uncontaminated in a defi- nite proportion of the offspring of all generations after the first. The qualities may be latent, or unexercised, but their existence cannot be put aside. FOLK LORE Alcott said that "like feeds like — the unclean spirit licks carnage and blood from his trenches." The idea is that "like begets like." It is said again, "like father, like son." "A chip off the old block" has loitered on the end of many a tongue. "He's his father over," and "his father will never die as long as he lives," are often heard in the homely analyses of others. And folk wisdom classifies families as good or bad, as F. F. Vs. or D. B's.,* as being of blue blood or of poor stock, as of noble ancestry or of obscure descent, as people with family pride or with no genealogy, as having a good mixture of blood or a tainted blood. It can- * F. F, v., first family of Virginia. D. B., dead beat. 1« THE FUTURE CITIZEN not be said that good blood has not the possibility of degeneracy in it, as well as of supremacy in it; or that bad blood has no redeeming elements in it, for bad' blood cannot exist without its correlative of saving blood in it, — no one is absolutely good, nor is any one absolutely bad. Bad and good (opposites) always and everywhere and in every moral thing, exist together in relative proportions and relationships, irrespective of human judg- ments about them. Hence guards are ever needed to protect the weak, who has less gifts of the good qualities, and is strong in his overmastering evil tendencies. Good surroundings, you have no dif- ficulty in seeing, aid to better life, while poor con- ditions permit the stronger elements to take the bit in the mouth and carry the victim to ruin. HUMAN CAPABILITY FOR BETTERMENT Hence the raison d'etre for social settlement work, — to make the surrounding conditions better. There is a moral as well as an intellectual and physical heredity, and in every man is a latent capability for betterment or degeneracy. This capability is a proof of the divinity of religion as well as of its need for human culture. If man can not be bettered by religion, the theory of his ca- pability is a foolishness. This is the same as say- ing that a third force, in addition to heredity and environment, can and should operate in shaping the final destiny of man. By the law of opposites, all confess that a third force, evil, can and does MENTAL INHERITANCE 13 militate against the best interests of man. As Paul said: "I find then the law, that, to me who would do good, evil is present." For by the law of oppo- sites evil cannot be absolutely divorced from good; and indeed prayer would be foolishness if it could be. So man is ever in danger of the blandishments of the serpent. Absolute good and evil are not birth gifts, — only the tendency to do good or evil. There may, too, be good and bad environments, — tending to character-making. Free will, in very truth, has its opposite, destiny. In mature life man can and does make his environments, through the forces within him. EVOLUTION In point of fact, evolution is a theory of hered- ity. If chance prevailed, there could be no defi- nite, regular progress. If elemental nature was not positively transmissible, then there is no certainty in God's reputably immutable laws. However, the theory that different species blend in their progeny and produce a new, permanent compound seems to be in contravention of immutable law and is not confirmed. That permanent hybrids are secured by cultivation is doubtful. For among all the infinitude of grasses, in hopeless confusion, in the field, each class selects and fjuc- tifies its own pollen and perpetuates its own kind, according to the decree announced in Genesis. The law of selection applies chiefly and regularly each to its kind. The survival of the fittest ap- 14 THE FUTURE CITIZEN plies with greater force to the stronger in the same species, than it does to the supposed, as- sumed superiority of the crosses and hybrids, else why do they tend back to the original when let alone, when not subject to the influences of domes- tication? "circumstances make the man!" Robert Owen, the Scotch socialist and philan- thropist, you remember, spent eighty thousand pounds to demonstrate the saying that "circum- stances make the man," and when he had squan- dered his fortune to demonstrate this idea and had become poor and old, he found to his dismay no charity among those his charity had benefited. They had not "developed" their faculty of charity in the schooling he gave them. He had not im- proved nature. It is difficult to improve upon God's handiwork. With all his culture man is still a man. PHYSICAL HEALTH Physicians tell us that man's physical destiny is undoubtedly, in some degree, determined before he is born. Some families show a predisposition to gouty indigestion, some to small lung capacity, some to stomach troubles, and so on. Hence the importance of better mothers and fathers, and the proper care of the mother during gestation. The demand is for "a race of healthy, robust mothers — ^the baby's rights." Dr. L. Merzbacher, in his MENTAL INHERITANCE 16 studies of the problem of inherited diseases, finds it true that there is a possible inheritance of ten- dencies toward certain diseases. And he finds this latent tendency is greater through the daughters than through the sons of the diseased. This trans- mittal of diseases to children through the mother is proof of the mother's great influence on the child. This tendency is of great and persistent stability. Sterne says, "My Tristram's misfor- tunes began nine months before ever he came into the world." One of the characters in Collins' "Armadale" asks: "Is my father's crime looking at you out of my eyes.?" God decreed all things, in a sense, but he also let it remain as a decree that man should work out his own soul's salvation, not by himself alone, but by accepting Christ's teachings of love and his philosophy of human conduct. Man can as easily create the air he breathes as he can construct the philosophies of life. By investigation he simply finds them out, not makes them. APOLOGY It is easy to enlarge this question of heredity into an extensive volume. Indeed, much of what has been said here may seem unnecessary, but our experience has been that many who should know well these simple, plain facts are entirely preju- diced against them, and so reject them as being utterly wrong. While this discussion, therefore, is platitudinous, elementary, pathetic, yet it is ab- solutely needed in any discussion of child-saving and building larger manhood. CHAPTER II MARRIAGE In the "Salaman and Absal" of Omar Khay- yam the Sage said to the Shah: '' And as none Who long for children may their children choose. Beware of teasing Allah for a son, Whom having, you may have to pray to lose." A Spanish proverb says: "An ounce of mother is worth a pound of preacher." "She who rocks the cradle rules the world." The cry is going up, "Save the child from a poor parent." Effective- ness in child formation is less in the training than in the propagation of a child physically and men- tally sound. Training is commendable, beget- ting habits that shape life history, but heredity is supremely important. Two people of opposite sex become a cause, and children of a certain type are the certain result. Other combinations of the sexes beget other as certain results, health and other conditions of the moment entering into the complex problem. Different mothers beget differ- ent children by the same father, and different fathers beget different children by the same mother, — the difference lying primarily in the dif- ferent cell combination. The proper procedure is, then, to determine the certain results that fol- low certain cell combinations. 16 MARRIAGE 17 INQUIRY INTO BLOOD Not till lovers inquire, not into environments, or into conditions, or into acquired or accidental so- cial status, but into blood, or what one is in esse, will marriage and courtship assume a scientific phase instead of a mere haphazard, unhappy, un- fortunate association. Something is to be ac- corded to emotion in the selection of a life part- ner, but emotion is not the whole of the law of choice. No wonder the race of men are not pro- gressing more rapidly; no wonder the race of "giants" and of "long livers," like Adam, have disappeared. Misfit unions produce abnormali- ties in nervous and mental gifts. They were mar- ried but not mated. From the standpoint of re- sults such marriages are failures. It is perhaps true that all loveless unions are brutal, if not morally criminal. MARRIAGE QUALIFICATIONS The association of two people for the purpose of engaging in the business of mutual family rais- ing is the most important thing in life. In the first place matrimony is no remedy for personal ills, physical or mental, and no one should deceive another into marrying a moral, mental, or physi- cal deficiency or a "hold of every unclean bird." It is lamentably true that lovers conceal their de- fects, and they do not know each other until they have summered and wintered together, dwelt a year under the same roof, as Fanny Fern said. 18 THE FUTURE CITIZEN Then they "find each other out too late !" Maybe. They may be well qualified for commercial indus- try, or for agricultural pursuits, or for stock-rais- ing, but not for children raising, — qualified for business, but not to make a bright, sweet home. The wife selected should be of good blood, healthful, bright-minded, sincere, truthful, honest, sympathetic, good. These are not ideal, impossi- ble qualities, nor would they deprive most persons of marriage. The advice is proffered a young man not to marry the first girl that "strikes" his young, immature, impulsive heart; nor "think it over," for it is said that thought is fatal to action. And gray hairs, as a rule, have less fire in them than the impulsive time of youth. Nature makes no mistakes, men do. The object of courtship should be to ascertain the adaptability of one to the other in every way. Matchmakers, to be sure, do not live with the man or woman in the case. A giddy, chattering fool is not a pride and joy in a home, and still less is a doll-baby. To marry money, or a rosy lip, or a row of pretty teeth, or beautiful eyes, or a fine form, or fine dress, or un- impeachable manners, or in haste, is to be incon- siderate of future happiness. When the roses you married fade, love fails. You can not tell much of the other by looks, anyhow. With the make-up of the young lady put off ; with the skill of the dress- maker and the cosmetics and the false hair re- moved, you know not the remains. In courtship, ordinarily, each one puts his best foot foremost and carefully conceals the rest. MARRIAGE 19 DIVORCE Pat went back to the minister who married him and requested him to untie from him the wife he had hitched to him. The rueing benedict was sur- prised that it could not be done. When Pat turned away he said: "Well, be gorra, some man will be sorry when I'm dead." "Who.'*" asked the minis- ter. "The fellow that gets my widdy." The married and mated never seek divorce ; it is only the married and mismated that do. Perhaps if the girl popped the question, instead of parading in order to be picked, there would be fewer di- vorces. But it is not certain that the coming woman will have a surer divinity in this, than the man, for a change of conditions does not alter the inevitable, does not remove human nature, does not change the tempers, does not perpetuate the sexual attractions for each other. Doubtless the standard of sex relationships would be higher, and the man who was not chosen would take it as a reproach. In the bird world the female selects her partner in nest- hiding. The fact is there should be no divorces, no repudiation. "Everyone that putteth away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, maketh her an adulteress; and whosoever shall marry her when she is put away, committeth adultery." NEWLY MADE HOME The problem of philanthropy lies chiefly, to be rather vague and diplomatic in phraseology, in the transition of the individual from the family to new conditions, where he becomes a unit of society 20 THE FUTURE CITIZEN without a corresponding adjustment to his sur- roundings. The beginning of a new family unit imposes new obligations and respects for personal as well as mutual rights, and sometimes because these things are not understood, shipwreck is made of the home, the leaven for future divergencies in- troduced, and complaint and fault-finding enter into the new Eden. The family unit brings new and altered social obligations in the larger social unit or circle, and different tastes and desires in the discharge of these social obligations sometimes develop antagonisms. If one finds the largest en- joyment in "company" and the other in retire- ment, these differences of taste become irreconcil- able and engender unhappiness. To define the male individual as the unit of so- ciety, he is best understood as the father, who is the stay, support, defender, provider, comforter, and the individuals of the family organism are to be educated for social relationships. This train- ing should not be at the expense of any of the other members of the family, so that there will be no family disintegration ; on the other hand, so that there will be harmony and a building up. FREEDOM OF CHOICE The methods of courtship and the marriage customs in all lands are interesting and curious. In our country to-day men and women, and too often, boys and girls, marry whom and when they please, regardless of the perils of matrimony, bringing as many children into existence as they MARRIAGE 21 can, and, in too many instances, managing to slip out of the resulting obligations. Even boys take upon themselves the responsibilities of fatherhood, ignorant of what they are doing, and sooner or later, abandon the young mother to her hard fate. They do not comprehend the crime of bringing children into the world and permitting them to grow without direction or proper home environ- ment, to "run wild and go to the dogs," to be subject to but their own immature wish and will, unconscious of results. The older social system imposed larger views of the marriage relation, and the external conscience, the general ideal, de- manded a higher course of conduct. The social en- vironment of a village or neighborhood then kept many in the right track, and there was a truer resignation to sexual association than at present. The enlargement of sexual liberty in modern soci- ety has not been attended by a proportionate in- crease in wisdom and experience and moral force. And this fact will account for wife desertion, abandoned children, and the care of aged and in- firm parents by the state. Such things would be impossible under a patriarchal constitution of soci- ety. But neither altruism, in its best sense, nor the millennium, are possible as long as man re- mains unredeemed and believes in hedonics. Trial marriages and the "affinity" theory are a mockery, and have their prototypes in the brute creation. "For it is better to marry than to burn." I Corinthians 7 : 9. CHAPTER III RACE SUICIDE The discussion of this grave matter has been more upon the ground of convenience than of morality. The creation was on the sound plan that everything should produce "after its own kind," according to natural laws then put in force, since which time there has been no deflection therefrom. The Lord slew Onan for refusing to bring forth children by his dead brother's wife. It was displeasing to the Lord. And this is the moral stigma resting upon race suicide, as the accommodated language of the hour has it. No arguing around this God-side of it will undo the lesson he meant to teach the children of men in the fearful example of Onan. NUMBERS AND AUTHORITY Laboring people have organized and are de- manding of the authorities a recognition of their claim to "rights in the great administration of public affairs." This is to say, numbers, not quali- ties shall weigh in governmental matters. If the theory that numbers bequeath power and invest them with a right to authority, then the right to bring poor children and poor men into the world is to be considered first and back of all. In this idea of majority rights lies involved the security of the government and of present institutions. If "all power is inherent in the people" and govern- RACE SUICIDE ftS ment is established through the consent of all, then in self-defense government may protect and pre- serve itself for the good of all. This governmental duty denies the moral right of ignorant numbers to rule. On no account can it be conceded that scrub human stock is as good as blooded. "human culls" If, as is said, ninety per cent, of American chil- dren are "human culls," the anti-race-suicide theory can not be justified. The purists may fat- uously call eugenics obscenity, but the matter of quality rather than quantity demands attention, and it is criminal to ignore it. For it is the men- tal and not the physical qualities that are at the bottom of present-day progressive action. "The greatest crime of the ages is too many children," declares one enthusiastic woman. That God made the sexes is sufficient evidence that the subject is not impure, for "God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good." It is not more children that is wanted, but better. Already the social restraints advocated by Rev. Thomas R. Malthus have become a serious matter. In a general estimate, perhaps not more than ten per cent, of the children born are children of love, and ninety per cent, are not wanted, and enter into the general mass of men as "undesirables." The wonder is that they make life as large a success as they do. The need is a better and stronger race of men, who will be proud of their genealogical pedigree. Why not? 24 THE FUTURE CITIZEN COLLEGES PROMOTE RACE SUICIDE The charge is made in all seriousness that American colleges are promoters of race suicide, and that men are intimidated and remain bachelors because of the increased duties of married life. Dean Marion Talbot has written : "In spite of the pronunciamentos of chief executives and the higher clergy, the evidence of physicians and of social investigators is that men are more respon- sible than women for the decline in the birth rate." Many women shrink from maternity, and society women cannot tolerate the care of child rearing. The statement made by some, that a child in a home is not only a bond of union, but also as well a moral uplift, is sound. Therefore every home needs a child, the best child possible, but not a "houseful of kids." Even to adopt a child is an act of humanitarianism. LARGE FAMILIES The poor and the physically disqualified for rearing and educating children, for one thing, have large families. Degeneracy is in the air of such a home, and there environment, in a material sense, becomes destiny. "The worst form of race suicide consists in bringing children into the world who cannot be properly matured, trained or educated, and whose neglected bodies simply serve to increase enor- mously the sum total of human suffering, and run up the death rate. It seems as if 'race homicide' RACE SUICIDE 25 would be a better term to apply to this condition than 'race suicide.' " The poor are in the majority. The better able to rear good, educated citizens are not doing it; and the childless women are guilty of great eco- nomic evil, to say the very least. "Under their cloak of respectability, they are more wicked than the Magdalens in the dives." Every child is a candidate for heaven, destined to become an angel, and its better training and conditions in life will make it a better citizen in life and a better citizen in the royal kingdom of heaven. Children should not be denied the home, but numbers should be regulated. The vigorous, child-bearing immigrants will eventually, it seems now, dispossess the race that first settled this country, — the Huns and Gauls and Ostragoths and Vandals will take us and pos- sess our land. DUTIES OF THE CITIZEN It is not irony to say that women would have a better reason for suffrage, if they demonstrated better success in their home work and in the fam- ily. There are those who think portionless, child- less women "should keep silent." I Corinthians 14:13. But this is not said to discourage the suffragette movement, which we believe in, but to reprobate the social reasons advanced for race sui- cide. After the lecture of Colonel Roosevelt at the Paris Sorbonne, or French Academy, on «6 THE FUTURE CITIZEN "Citizenship in a Republic," or "Duties of the Citizen,"* a French official began a series of lec- tures on the "Duties of the Women in a Repub- Kc," and amplified the "race suicide" idea. The national economic sense is against race extermina- tion, but the social question and the fitness of the new child for life's duties and the ability to train it up properly has its phase. STRONG SONS AND FAIR DAUGHTERS With little knowledge of how to rear children, fathers and mothers go on in the good, old-fash- ioned way, guessing at what should be done to make better men and women, but in the matter of producing better wheat and corn and raising meatier steers and fatter pigs the best energies are devoted. All the teachings relating to crop production, stock raising and breeding are sought for and applied, while child-rearing remains a guess, combined with hearsay and superstition and concealment. No study is given to the subject of producing a splendid crop of strong sons and fair daughters. The laws of nature make this easily possible. It is a magnificent, divine, loving duty to safe- guard the boys and girls in a morally beautiful home, educate them, discipline them, fill them with patriotism, inoculate them with the glory of a holy, religious sense, develop them into well- rounded, splendid manhood and womanhood. It * " Independent," April 28, 1910, p. 801. RACE SUICIDE 27 is much to be regretted that we do not give its just measure of honor and praise to this exalted home life. While precision is more and more developed in the material affairs of life, and colleges are teach- ing the best ways of gaining prosperity and suc- cess, fathers and mothers, regretful as it may be, go right on blindly making experiments in rearing children. Children may even be well bom, but their successful career is often defeated through the ignorance of the parents. This matter of child- rearing should be taught in school courses, so that parents can know how to develop to the utmost their little innocents. Too often the child's moral and physical fiber is hurt by the inexperienced, guessing efforts of the parents. Indeed, the mat- ter of numbers in the family need not militate against the best interests of child and parent, if a full knowledge of God's laws of reproduction are understood. EUGENICS Late marriages are not the best, for many rea- sons. A man may marry at twenty-two, and a woman earlier. It is a shame that so many men are physically unfit for matrimonial union, and a national law prescribing physical, mental, moral and social examinations of marital candidates would be a good inestimable. Disgraceful as it may sound, yet divorces and unhappy marriages are great causes in sending recruits to the underworld. 28 THE FUTURE CITIZEN The plan of George Bernard Shaw, outlining eugenics politics, is visionary. He advocated the abolishment of the marriage ceremony and prop- erty and the removal of undesirables by the state. He thought it was the general experience of people to know only two or three marriageable persons, and often not to like any of these. In order to give natural inpulse a chance, he would make the whole community eligible to marriage, and widen the sphere of sexual selection. The state he would have provide incomes for everybody, and see that everybody earned his income. This socialistic matrimonial scheme cannot be approved of on the ground of human experience, and certainly on no other. The blending of bloods and races, in order to improve the stock, is so trite a physiological fact that the mere mention of the subject is sufficient here. Stockmen fully understand this elemental principle, and they will not "breed in," as they call it, because the stock "runs out," and it costs as much or more to develop a scrub animal, as a good one. Few persons are willing to concede they are descendants of scrub human stock. The reformation of the world depends upon the im- provement of the race of men. CHAPTER IV COST OF THE CHILD The expense of birth, living, and dying varies in proportion to the conditions of the child. The average well-to-do American citizen expends an- nually for himself, from birth to death, $1,000. If he should live sixty-five years he expends $65,- 000 — to live, eat, and die! Even the worthless pauper, it has been estimated, who begins in the workhouse and ends there at eighty years of age, costs $12,000 to house, clothe, and feed. And the prison dweller costs even more than this, for he has to be more securely housed. The cost of his catching, conviction and after-maintenance is the largest part of the cost of the convicted criminal. Even the nomadic hobo costs about $100 a year for every year of his idle, non-productive, wasted life. He acquires his livelihood by begging, bully- ing, blackmailing, thieving, and to this is to be added the expense of hedging him about in order to restrain him from getting more than a miserable pittance and in shifting him from place to place. The government cannot act as fairy godmother to all and insure a living, work or no work. MILLIONAIRE EXTRAVAGANCE The millionaire class expends say $1,000 a week, or over $3,000,000 in sixty years. The American girl, moving in the same rank, with no 29 30 THE FUTURE CITIZEN figures available, it is safe to think she will expend a sum equal to the man. There is not a little of the human and envious in the ostentatious display of pelf. In a civilized community each one is es- sentially and mutually dependent upon the other for the means of existence and for enjoyment. Even business is the gaining of money from one class of men and the exchange of it to another. The doctor and the nurse who attend a new-born child must live, and civilization imposes pay to eat. From infancy to old age one is surrounded with other people's hands outheld for money, and even in death the corpse's purse is opened by other's hands to pay for his interment. All through life a man is putting in and taking out of his purse. COST OF AVEEAGE BOY The average boy, so said, costs about $50 a year for the first five years of his existence, or $250. The next ten years, at $100 a year, the sum is $1,000, a total of $1,250 for the first fifteen years of his life. J. Fernald, sociologist, says the boy costs the next six years $200 a year, or $1,200; making a total at twenty-one of $2,450. A college course may cost $2,500 more, so that at twenty-one the cost may be $5,000. He does not return $100 of this cash invested in him be- fore he is twenty-seven. The exposure of this investment to the dangers of saloons and social slums is not prudent. The mother's life blood and heart and affections are COST OF THE CHILD 31 also in him, thus exposed to ruin. Policy would dictate that as good care should be taken of him as of swine, cattle, and horses. CHANCES FOR A POOR CHILD Investigation shows that the chances of life for a poor child are less than for one well-bom. In a fashionable section of New York thirty-seven babes were born in one year; in the middle class one hundred and sixty; and in a tenement quarter four hundred and thirty-four. In two weeks cho- sen to note the death rate of these infants the weather was extremely hot. But none of the babes of the first class and none of the middle class died. In both these cases the mothers knew how to care for and love their own flesh and blood. In the ten- ement quarter sixteen of the infants died, or nearly four per cent, of the births for the entire year. At this rate the year round more than a hundred per cent, of the children would die, — if that could be, — more deaths than births. But every poor child would be swept out of existence, largely through the carelessness and criminal ignorance of the mother. The fundamentals of life, — ^light, air, cleanliness, and proper food, — are not as available for the extremely poor as for the other two classes. It is lamentable, this waste of boy material — man material. The problem is to conserve it, and make the most of it, rather than let it become an ex- pense and an affliction to those who pay the bills, the honest, industrious tax-payer. 82 THE FUTURE CITIZEN BIETH-GIFT OF INTELLECT Every child born possesses a degree of intel- lectual force varying from the imbecile and idiot to the talent of a genius. And every child pos- sesses two elements of being, that of emotion and that of perception or reason, and it may be defi- cient in one without being defective in the other. Nature invariably reproduces after its type, yet in endless degrees and variations of the elemental endowments. These two essences of soul are the things out of which the future citizen is to be built, and they can only be directed and trained, according to the law of exercise or use, and^ not altered or made over. Those lacking the full en- dowment of physical and moral energy possess in a corresponding degree the power of improvement of what he has, and is entitled to the best condi- tions and fullest training possible, but men differ as to whom this obligation rests upon. With bad birth, bad surroundings, poverty, poor opportu- nities, criminal training, false sentiment, beggarly ideals, the child will necessarily become a bad citi- zen; and a good citizen if the converse of these things are given him. Every parent is under di- vine obligation to bequeath to his child the best possible. Habits of mind grow as imperceptibly as growth of body, and eventually become as firmly established as limbs of a tree are to the trunk. Hence conversions or new friendships are scarcely possible in old age. Something not recalled, may- COST OF THE CHILD 83 be, leads one to logic, one to science, one to humor, one to business, one to some profession, one to the sacred desk, one to the school room, one to the newspaper, one to law, one to politics, one to the farm, one to writing novels, one to oratory, one to some trade, and so on — so subtile are the potent influences upon life and destiny. Then with proper direction at the supreme moment that predestinates lives, human capabilities can be turned into almost any direction ; provided always nature's gifts are sufficient and competent in the initiation of the embryonic citizen. The wisest man settled this question of child environment: "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Prov- erbs, 22 : 6. "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom : Yea, with all thou hast gotten get under- standing." Proverbs, 4:7. In other words this may read: "The beginning of wisdom is, get wis- dom." Hence the imperative need of good exam- ple in the school and in the home. Worth is se- cured only by industry. CHAPTER V BOY Man is an adaptable animal, capable of domes- ticity and training. The Spartans exposed their children on Mount Taygetus, the Hindus cast theirs in the Ganges, we expose ours in the hell of the streets. Some profess to say that the boy preserved from this evil — the "good" boy — always exhibits the chaf- ings of his leading-strings, lacks fibre, is defective in initiative, and has no "go" in him, — ignorant alike of his own powers and limitations, preco- ciously acute but narrow in judgment and defec- tive in comprehension and reasoning. These same students of paidology inform us that the "average" boy is flabby, lacking grit and push, clogging the way. G. Stanley Hall advises snap and fight in the streets to defend himself, if necessary. On the other hand, what does the street gamin gain from touch with smut that improves his human flavor. Pitch cannot be touched without some of it stick- ing. Man partakes of the color of his surround- ings. BOY IMPULSES The tragedy of a boy mismanaged is not closed with the boy's end of life, for it is said influences are eternal — ^both good and bad. And a boy who doesn't know how to play rarely attempts any- thing. The fundamental impulse of boy life is BOY 35 daring, risking, and this explains why valiant men are his heroes. The sea, the army, daring occu- pations become his ideals. Restraint is culture and direction, but none the less repugnant to him. In view of what boys are, of nature's provisions for growth, of the necessary interference of city life with those provisions, the first obligation is to give means for true development, in the interest of safety and equal rights and obligations (not equal distribution of the natural things of the world). A London scientist has said that life in a big city makes children quick but not intelligent, hastening the development of the brain, unnatu- rally. They become superficial, alert, but not ob- servant, constructive, reasoning; excitable but de- void of enthusiasm, chances destroyed for being clever, blase, fickle, discontented, bird-witted, and properly speaking see nothing, for time is not per- mitted to delve, bewildered at the multitude of things. In fact, life in a city is essentially danger- ous to the child-boy — corrupting, so prone is a boy to be led off. The city attractions interfere with his best intellectual development as it does with his physical progress, leading off his atten- tion from his best efforts. The tendency is to put temptations in his way that lead him down rather than help him up. Books are not the only agency of intellectual development ; there is the experience of some form of productive industry. "He that hath a trade hath an estate."* •** Century, 1910." 86 THE FUTURE CITIZEN The comradeship of nature on a farm, the sense of strict faithfulness and loyalty, are gained in the country, and the work there is a training of hands and heart and brain — to plan, to will, to work, to execute. It is easy to see that these are valuable acquisitions in the training for citizenship — gained in what has been called "the age of homespun." The same qualities were gotten in the medieval guilds, and demonstrate why the guilds were able to gain control of civic affairs and to dictate terms to kings. A healthy process of social development conduces to happiness. CIVIC OBLIGATIONS The complex and vast industrial organizations of the modern city exceed the ability of the boy to manage or to be entrusted with. And this can- not be said to be a fault of the city, or of the boy, or of the industry. It is the unavoidable result of modern social conditions. Therefore it is the city's duty to make up to the boy in educational facilities, or productive manual training, what he has been deprived of. This consists less in elegant schoolhouses and artistic and beautiful conditions than in practical drill of the embryonic citizen in what will make him a useful and efficient citizen. The aesthetic sense is less important than the culti- vation of the sense of the dignity of manual indus- try. A marble palace is a poor substitute for a shop or a piece of land. BOY 87 THEEE CHILD-LIFE PERIODS An ordinary classification of the unfolding of a child's life is into three periods. The first is the period of innocencyy from birth to about seven years of age. The second is the period of cJUld- hood, from seven to fourteen. The third is the period of conscious life, from fourteen to twenty- one. In the first period the child is passive, ab- sorptive, little affected by its surroundings so far as to offer resistance or approval ; though it is be- coming thoroughly saturated with its conditions and receiving the training of the impulses that con- trol in after life — fructifying influences that are stored in the unfolding soul as germ causes for fu- ture results, forces for good or for evil. In the second period habits are established, im- pulses subdued and directed or licensed like a rav- ening beast ; those influences formed that direct or suggest without thought; the period when swell- ing, throbbing, bursting life begins to enlarge with- out ideal or goal or fixed opinions — pure exist- ence — full of burgeoning life and energy, asking not about results, active without inquiry why, let- ting off wild energy. Thoughtless, impulsive, obeying its being, tentative, experimenting, ex- ploiting, learning, broadening. "What possessed the kid to do such a thing?" No answer possible. This period is like the opening seeds peeping through the earth in the sunny spring, not knowing or caring what they are till further developed. Everything then crystalizing into habit that es- tablishes character. 88 THE FUTURE CITIZEN The third period leads up to mature develop- ment, when life and its ways seem to be established, a period with some fixed elements in it, some forces that control through life. Subsequent successful alterations are few. CHAEACTEE DEVELOPMENT Judaical history testifies to the fact that the old Judaic law and custom dedicated the child very early by outward form and ceremony to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the parents thereby obligating themselves to bring it up in the Jewish faith. They then laid out for it a distinct course of education and training for the head, the hand, and the heart, — ^the whole person, industrial, phy- sical, intellectual, social, religious. At twelve this same child was again brought into the temple for other forms and ceremonies, in which it gave con- scious acceptance of God and approval of all that had been done for it. And all through the Old Testament there is evidence of the importance the Hebrews attached to the proper care and training of the child and the safeguards and restraints put around it. Deuteronomy 6:7 and 11:18. In the natural, moral, and civic worlds one suffers in proportion as he departs from law. Without due obedience to just law, disaster enters the home, the school, the city, the nation, the church. Christ's philosophy embraced the noble idea of purity, in- nocence, humbleness, and he who would live excel- lently cannot escape from this superior philoso- phy- BOY S9 THE SUCCEEDING GENERATIONS How quickly the boys and girls of to-day become the boys and girls of yesterday, and are the men and women of the next day "in the busy haunts of men," the responsible ones in new homes made for themselves. The child of to-day is the chief factor and actor in to-morrow. Himself a re- sult of yesterday he becomes a cause to-day. Now, what is he as a cause.'' As the child is trained, so is the future, the church, the nation, its own des- tiny. What kind of planting and watering has been made for the morrow.? "I planted, AppoUos watered; but God gave the increase." I Corin- thians S : 6. The surroundings of the boy demand more at- tention than is accorded him under the regime that professes "he has come into his own." Already this generic fact is creeping into philanthropic souls, and through charity congresses, mother clubs, diflFerent child-saving organizations, and juvenile courts throughout the length and breadth of the land an effort is putting forth for the gen- eral good of the wayward boy who "has come into his own." For the want of saving attention, many children misdirect themselves, following the lead- ings of strong, licensed, immature, inconsiderate, excessively blind impulse. Environment is part of the mature man. Mem- ory is particularly a record of environment. The man in old age goes back in memory to the scenes of his youth and the environments that constitute 40 THE FUTURE CITIZEN his biography. Necessarily environment is an ex- ternal matter, while the elements that make the man, or the forces within that produce action, are essentially an internal or subjective matter. While circumstances alone do not make the man, they constitute the accidental side of his destiny. The boy is father of the man cannot be true, if a man is what he is because of his surroundings. For the general sense is that life is as we make it. Among Catholics a boy becomes a Catholic because no alternative is offered him. So he becomes a Mor- mon for the same reason, or a Mohammedan, or a Democrat or a Republican. CHAPTER VI EDUCATION It is commonly understood that education quali- fies a boy to become a successful bread winner, and also enables him to live above the poorer classes of society. This large question has been widely and fully discussed by men in the educational har- ness as well as by men out of it. No right-minded person disputes the worth and need of education, though he may lament that the methods of instruc- tion do not come up to the full measure of wisdom expected of those in the pedagogical and learned profession. WHAT IS EDUCATION That is real education which prepares a boy for higher life physically, intellectually, spirit- ually. Compayre regarded the educated man as the heir of all the ages past. Locke said: "That which a gentleman should desire for his son, be- sides the fortune he leaves him, is first, virtue; second, prudence; third, good manners; fourth, instruction." President Taylor of Vassar said: "This is the debt of experience to inexperience, of knowledge to ignorance." In brief, education should embrace the training of every faculty of the conscious being to its fullest extent and high- est endeavor. In this day when character building is the leading thought in training the young, it is enforced on instructors to present such precepts 41 42 THE FUTURE CITIZEN and facts as will build good, sound, admirable character, and give the power to exercise the best effort in the boy and girl. EACH GENERATION FOR ITSELF The education, or reformation, of the present generation is effective only for this generation, and must be repeated in the next, and the next, and so on to the end of time. For education is not inheritable; only the ability to receive it is trans- missible. The long, ceaseless effort of educated life is to find out what has been conceded by com- mon consent, or concensus of experience, to be proper ideals, ideas, and conduct — the whole of life. And never wholly found. No yesterdays ever return ; commonplace as it may seem it is still necessary to repeat school elementary facts to every new child that arrives on earth. This neces- sity for repetition is not a problem that the "state artificer" can correct, nor can law or state give education to any one without his personal effort to obtain it. As far as the child is involved, after birth, the whole matter lies in its education, — for environ- ment is but a means of training the soul, the es- sence of the creature. Hence, the necessity of re- forming the poor conditions and of making the most of what it is, — after birth, after heredity has fashioned it. Whatever helps to shape the life of the boy, helps to determine his destiny, and what- ever he is in thought and act and environment he is in fact for all time. EDUCATION 43 IMPORTANCE OF TRAINING The most important problem of the times is the training of the future citizen. Training is the destiny of the man, as well as of the nation and present institutions. Training relates to educa- tion, blood, and environment. It is to establish causes that will produce their invariable results in the future. This is accomplished in the school, the home, the church, the state. In any scheme , of civilization, or state of society, as we have said, \ is the question of the training of the child. As \ is the boy, so is the man; as is the man, so is the ; government he makes and lives in. The whole , matter of life, of government, of church, of home, depends on the character of the training of the boys and girls. In all ages heresy (what the other fellow believes) is wrong eternally, destroys one's friends, and must be extirpated! Tolerance is a great virtue, not always in all things at all times practiced. A Roman boy became a Roman; a Greek, a Greek; an Arab, an Arab; and it was difficult to conceive that anything good could come out of Nazareth. RULING FORCE The world, to be sure, can't be regulated alone by logic, for there is more in a man than mere mind ; there is feeling that knows no logic. Feeling, not logic, rules mobs, battles, quarrels. The pub- lic is a mighty power, the united force of men. It moulds the press, but the educational, cultural, 44 THE FUTURE CITIZEN social, and economic conditions of the day mould the public. However, it is not our purpose to deal with the art, idealisms, impressionisms of life, but to touch briefly the practicalities and usefulness — not neces- sarily the utilitarian views — of life. The utili- tarian view of education, as it seems to us, looks at nothing that does not make for greed. The fact is that there is something higher and better than the mere earthly sense of commercial material- ism; there is love, happiness, peace, satisfaction, good, devotion, mind, soul — not all animal and physical. It is regrettable that the schools of the hour are too prone to place first utilitarian ideas, commercialism, industrial success, and what will bring material wealth, as if that were the highest good and the chief end of man. Money is a ma- terial gift, and tends to harden, as gold is hard, the finer sensibilities of men and a nation. MAN IS OF THE EARTH, EARTHY Education shapes a nation, people, classes, fam- ilies, individuals, churches, cities, states, laws, views, and institutions, as already signified, and makes men distinguished and distinct from others unlearned. And it is scarcely needful to say that ignorance is a crime in the sense that poverty is a crime. In a discussion of any phase of the problem of human sagacity and criminality (error-straying), it is not necessary to recall the fact that man is EDUCATION 45 close to the green grass (of it and soon covered by it), as well as beneath the blue arch of heaven. For this idea is the basic one in every reader's mind, — that man is a human animal and is gifted with powers to be tempted and led wrong. In all the catalogue of human emotions that of self-interest is first and chief. There are blind, uneducated, undirected impulses that sway him, tending to excess and injury to self and to the objective, — civic conditions and all external fac- tors of life and its institutions. Self-interest un- trained leads to barbaric conditions, and all the best of civilization deteriorates. That is the seri- ous error in the utilitarian views of life and the immoral greed running through our social veins. SCHOOLS DEAL WITH PSYCHIC FORCES Schools deal more with the forces and condi- tions of human economy than with the physical elements of nature, — deal with soul problems, the psychic elements of the coming race. Schools should be a corrective of street vices that fascinate, of evening comradeships that are often vicious and low, of home indulgences that are freaky and fault- ful. It is their duty to train to habits of reading, and inoculate with the sense of justice, worth, utility, and to give full credit to what the boy is and does in his own sphere as his part in the game of life. The day has passed when the public school investment can be justified alone on the ground that it reduces, if it does not eliminate, illiteracy. 46 THE FUTURE CITIZEN It should have a moral reaching effect also. The want of taste for a book is an evil in our day. The books of the schools are largely to be credited with making a generation that demands and secures public libraries. The boy that loves books and buys and reads them, that is his salvation and after success. CAREERS FOR THE BOYS The mission of education at this time is more than to teach a boy he may be President some day, if he studies hard and does as he is told. Please note, once for all, that we wish not to be thought one of the destructive reformers of most things modern, simply because it is old and dwells among us; for we have too much respect for the wisdom of others and too little confidence in our own judgment and ability to comprehend the limit of human attainment. We are no Diogenes hunt- ing with a lantern for an honest man. But to pro- ceed. The leisure class theory of society is that the professions confer social distinctions. Now, not one boy in several millions can be President, and so to train children toward an end that means failure for all but one in very many is not the true mission of education. The conditions of modern times demand something else than Presi- dent, and for most boys something else than a pro- fessional career. A Democratic education — that is, taught in all things and trained in none — is a EDUCATION 47 dramatic waste of possible manhood and useful- ness, and spells failure for most boys. Industrial schools grow out of the modern demand for skilled physical labor. While the dreamer has his place and use in life, yet there must be hewers of wood and drawers of water, burden-bearers and toilers. They are a utilitarian necessity, — for without physical comforts, what is the rest of life! The call to-day is for more and better practical en- gineers, carvers in wood, workers in the mines, dig- gers in the streets, farmers ; and yet most parents want their children to be professors, lawyers, doc- tors, and dwell in town, and not necessary, com- mon laborers. \ The schools must be adjusted to the industrial life of the community, for the problem of bread, clothes, shelter, tools, fuel, light, and social needs is a vital one. The actual daily life of a people is one of the chief centers of human interest, and success therein demands training for it. Compe- tent provision for training schools for the work of life has not yet been secured, except perhaps in the cultured professions; not in agriculture, business trades, mechanical pursuits, productive industries, or mercantile affairs. Agricultural schools would cultivate farm pride and keep the boys on the farm. And, too, the farm must be made attractive to induce the boy to stay there. The entire community needs to be in closer rela- tion with the rural schools. And the emphasis should be on good cooking and the ability to make good fences. 48 THE FUTURE CITIZEN CHIEF WORK OF SCHOOLS Character-building is the chief business of the schools, and this means that there should be les- sons in manners, morals, human rights, property \ rights, commercialship, ownership, industry, hon- I esty. Schools are founded for the purpose of ! teaching what will bring success in life, happiness, well-being; for without success there can be little happiness to an active, ambitious mind. Manners are a test of character; and the word "manners" is here synonymous with the word "kindness," the outward sign of the soul. Courtesy is not entirely something fastidious and superficial, though it may conceal elements of a gross nature. Overestimation of pupils is justifiable on no grounds, — is an evil not even justified as a tem- porary expedient. Overtaxation subverts its end, injures health, wearies the unaccustomed mind un- til it fails to grasp and retain, and defeats the pur- pose of study, — hurts physically, mentally, and morally. On the other hand, some slow-minded pupils need a spur and a help; must be directed and led until a habit of attention and effort is ob- tained, until it can distinguish between liking a thing and doing it. So often, too, by directing a child's attention to a fault until it is able to recognize similar errors by its own volition, and by winning it away from the fault instead of forc- ing it into a spirit of opposition and in spite adopt- ing it, the teacher can do great good and exercise the greatest genius. EDUCATION 49 THE TEACHER The school-room horizon is not very large nor very enlarging to the teacher. But her opinion of it is such as any one would have in the same limited environment. This, however, doesn't alter her limited horizon. She is in grooves ; in stays. It must be said that she is not always scathless. By her repulsion, her antagonistic and nagging manner she drives some boys into the streets and alleys ; thence they drift into hock and become the victims of law. To make noble, loyal, dutiful, proud citizens she must herself be saturated with our political ideals and possess the inestimable quality of self-control. For democracy is the last hope of our race, and our schools must possess it deeply, broadly. The boy should be first and last, and more holy to the teacher than material things or the passing insti- tutions of the hour. The new man must be fitted for the new and better future, and she fails to grasp the full force of her work — God's work, not hers — if she fails to see this. A republic without efficient common schools is impossible. And every school should be an inviting home and a haven, under due restraints, to the boy. She must see the future as well as the now, and qualify the future men and women for it, having a keen ap- preciation of the real wants of the social fabric, possessing unflinching integrity and an absorbing love of her work, comprehending a broad human- ity, owning the spirit of the learner, giving her 50 THE FUTURE CITIZEN charges a deep sense of scholarship, a love of study and honest independence, the reading habit, the character and manners of a gentleman, and a warm sense of fealty to his native land. A boy should be taught to understand that the more he makes of his opportunities the more good will come to him and to others. And the teacher who does not see that a ragamuffin child needs the same training that a rich man's does has missed her vocation; for not to see this is to misapprehend the object of education and its true meaning and mission in the progress of the world and its re- demption of the boy and the salvation of Ameri- canism. It is, we all see, a humiliating confession to make, that few teachers know the deep meaning of democracy, or have felt its obligation and uplift in the procession of the centuries. The misfit teacher is the cause of much inefficiency in life, for with the destiny of blood and cell and the slavery of environment the training enters next in shaping life. SCHOOL SYSTEM SUPPLANTING PROPER MOTIVES Since the teacher's success has come to be rated, for one thing, upon the attendance of her pupils, she is forced to base her interests upon the good per cent, of attendance. The boy to whom her personality is objectionable is at length brought to hate her for her incessant nagging, and he flees from his hateful environment. Then she appeals to the authorities to deal with him as an incor- EDUCATION 61 rigible, in order that she may erase his name from her roll and keep up the per cent, of her attend- ance. The crowded school room, in which the per- sonal, close, individual, human touch is submerged in what may be termed mass drill, almost makes teaching a mockery. Little chance is given to individuality of effort, and the child becomes but a unit in the crushing, machine-like system, — a Procrustean method of shaping all alike. Popular education again comes short by its arbitrariness and lack of diplomacy in handling the child, — an unstudied life essence to the teacher. The power to compel obedience in the school- room is sometimes extended out to the parents in the home. School principals, it is meet to say, should be examined to find out what native dip- lomatic skill they possess, as well as for their quick wit and experience. SCHOOL CUEaiCULUM There are and have been too many "new- fangled" notions imposed on the schools by egotis- tical wiseacres. The experiments and ideas of some one who hopes to profit by them have too often been tried and failed, as they should, but to the injury of the marvellous school system. The schools are too sacred for experimentation. The child's memory is the only faculty that re- tains facts, which subsequently become premises for conclusions and action. The only possible 62 THE FUTURE CITIZEN way to reach the memory is through the eye, the ear, the nose, the mouth, the touch, — the only pos- sible channels to the brain. The pendulum must swing back to this from the fad of "absorption." There are essentials, non-essentials, and fads in the stuffed curriculum today. Too much at- tention is devoted to living foreign languages, ut- terly useless to the ordinary American. And there is also too much "physical culture" so called. And an excessive devotion by "special- ists" to nature study, science, drawing, stenog- raphy, "fads, fancies and follies" outside of the three R's at too tender a period of life. There is necessarily neglect of the fundamentals, when fads engross the time and distract the attention. The curriculum has become topheavy and imprac- tical, looking more to the training of professional men than for the daily walks of life. THE CURSE OF EDUCATION This is not the place to discuss the subject of higher education; of a literary training in a col- lege. But it seems fitting to say a word here. Horace Greeley wrote to a young Oxford grad- uate who had applied to him for employment: "I utterly loathe and detest the kind of education you have received, because it has unfitted you for life, and has given you no means of taking care of yourself, or of making yourself useful in your generation. ... I thank God that I was graduated from a New England very common school." EDUCATION 58 The college course being undertaken without definite aim, many matriculating for a "good time," a young man is graduated an idler. It is not the purpose of colleges to educate a privileged class, but to prepare men to fight their way under modern conditions of affairs. If this is not done, the higher education is a failure. The great bur- den of the American republic is to-day the number of educated, untrained floaters who are incapable of efficient effort. Some thoughtful men attribute this incompetent fitting for life work to the pre- paratory schools, whence the boys come from the elementary kindergarten methods "flabbier and flabbier in mind." Self-reliant, capable men and women cannot be made of boys and girls who are merely entertained in schools. Said Mr. Harold E. Gorst of London : "The dearth of genius to-day is due to the system of education, which arrests the process of development of imagination by pounding facts into the brain." It is not intended to say here that higher education is a mistake in all cases, but it is true that the tendency of all schools to-day is wrong, and too frequently re- presses what nature meant a man to be, nipping in the head certain abilities, and crushing individ- ual development, and holding out ambitions be- yond capacity, and bringing forth a quantity of trained superficiality. The fact is, in a word, that the better thinker is the better liver. ^One's dominant thought writes his biography. It has even been declared by some men, looking at school 64 THE FUTURE CITIZEN results, that ignorance is a stimulus of the imag- ination, while cramming the mind with theoretical and mere book knowledge is destructive of the normal functions of observation and reflection and the production of original creations — a race of imitators. Mere information doesn't educate nor train in the power of orientation. In this view books are dangerous things. The charge is made, not without basis, that the tendency of schools is to make the boys effeminate, due to the want of masculine force at certain stages of the boy life. It was the opinion of Andrew Carnegie, the Skibo laird, that a man who has to make his way in life has little use for education; and he allowed that a man born to wealth rarely "amounts to any- thing." Professor Hugo Muensterburg thought that if two-thirds of the university professors were killed off there would be fewer weak and mollycoddle men come out of "our academic sys- tem in our highest institutions of learning" — "with a few notable exceptions so many second- class men." COLLEGE ATHLETICS The good of college athletics, physically and mentally, is largely overshadowed by the evils attending the games. All mass games of violent struggle are physiologically a mistake. And the term of reproach, "gentlemen sports," has come to be applied to the type of student graduating from eastern universities. They have absorbed EDUCATION 56 enough evil in college in four years to spoil their usefulness for life. Scholarship is deteriorating because it is becoming less an aim of college life, — worm-eaten by college athletics. Western insti- tutions of learning are not yet so dominated by the spirit of the animal stadium, the show ground of physical prowess. It has been found on inves- tigation that college athletics does not produce strong, sound, long-lived men. Under the divine law of reaction the squandering of the vital force so recklessly brings about its sure evil results. The after lives of graduate athletes show that "nearly all football players, baseball men, and lawn tennis experts have weak hearts, and are more liable to other forms of disease than men who take a more rational interest in the affairs of life." Few great college athletes achieve more than a moderate success in life, priding more in their physical attainments than their mental ac- quirements. They were not leaders in studies, as a rule, as it was not possible for them to be, the athletic field demanding too much time, attention, energy, interest, enthusiasm, and dividing the mind. CoUege sports also tend to make bravados, liars, gamblers, and dissipated habits. The young athlete starts into his greater life with the repu- tation of the gridiron smirching him and with money-prostituted ideas as an asset. COLLEGE FRATERNITIES There is not wanting evidence to show, too, 56 THE FUTURE CITIZEN that college fraternities dissipate attention and detract from the student's success. The public decision is that the good in college societies and other such organizations (which can be omitted without being missed) is overcome largely, if not wholly, by the harm they bring to the mental and moral status of the young man. This is the day when the spirit of organization prevails every- where, and the young sprigs at school have caught it. Somehow it is supposed to confer something of distinction, that after all, is valueless. There have been efforts made by school authorities to do away with them, on the ground that they are positively harmful. It has been said by men at the head of the city schools, Washington, D. C, that "the presence of secret societies is the evidence of a decaying, or of a very young, civilization," and that they decrease "loyalty to the schools as a whole." They distinguish between the rich and the poor students. It has been said that the high school "frat" is nothing more nor less than one who has obtained a liberal education in snobbish- ness, in loafing, in "lying down on his job," and in the manipulation of school politics, — not very creditable attainments. Public school societies have been called "preposterous excrescences, breeding in young minds class prejudice, petty bigotries, and the most undemocratic attitude toward their fellows," and leading to outlandish and heathenish deeds. They have been long re- garded as prejudicial to the schools, and courts EDUCATION 57 have declared them something apart from the edu- cational scope of the schools. It is known that as a general thing the scholarship of the mem- bers of fraternities and sororities falls below par. Presidents of colleges have said that they brought about a system of social and intellectual life that is the gravest peril to institutions of learning. The danger of club life is that it standardizes the undergraduate, makes him a man without opin- ions, conforms him to a type, and submerges and cheapens his mind. They are a social menace and an expression of the mass or gang spirit. Every unwashed outbreak of disorder originates among the "intellectual hobos" of the fraternities, who are proud of their eccentric achievements and their groundhog burroughings in the byways of naughtiness. These societies are not needed. "give the boy a chance" Clear the home of pipes, tobacco, big brother's beer, sister's soothing syrup, mamma's headache powders and opium, oaths, quarrels, rowdyism, and give the lad a cleaner inheritance, a better hold on health and morality, and encouraging opportunity to use the best in him. The boy needs guidance, not license. CHAPTER VII PARENTAL MISTAKES Much that may be said upon this subject re- lates to environment. In the days of the English Queen Elizabeth, the harshness of the parents toward their children would be condemned now as brutality. The story is told that Elizabeth told her tutor, Roger Ash- cam, that she read Plato as a means of refuge from the severity of her parents, who would "sharply taunt her and give her pinches, nips, and bobs" ( — "hickied" her — ), if she displeased them in any degree. Erasmus said that English parents were like schoolmasters to their children, and that the schoolmasters were like overseers of houses of correction. Children feared and trembled at the sight of their parents, and sons, forty years old, stood bareheaded before their fathers and did not dare to speak without permission, — sterner than Dr. Gilbert in Holland's "Miss Gil- bert's Career." And grown-up daughters never sat down in their mother's presence, but stood in abject silence at the farther end of the room, and when weary of standing were perhaps allowed to kneel on a cushion. Indeed, it was a privilege to be admitted to their presence at all, and it was only granted at regulated periods of the day. Mothers carried fans with handles a yard long with which they beat their daughters. And to-day 58 PARENTAL MISTAKES 59 still some parents, swayed by the blind impulse of unreasoning anger, brutally beat the children till they have glutted their vengeance. HOME GOVERNMENT No sort of government requires greater wisdom and stricter judicial system of punishments than the home government; and yet few of them have any proper notion at all of correct family man- agement. Home incompetency is the manifest destiny of most homes. In one home may be ex- cessive strictures and severity; in another too great laxity, leniency, indulgence — no regular government or discipline. Now children can't raise themselves well. It has long been said that the rod at times is a kindness to the wayward boy. While parents should not provoke their children to wrath, neither should children give cause of anger to parents. Ephesians 6:1,4. Family government has swayed from the Puri- tanical strictness to the system of "anything to please the kid." Indecisive, nerveless, careless, weary mothers yield too readily in order to "get rid of the kid." The abdication of the parent for the child who "has come into his own" is more than a joke. Child-sway is the power in the home, up to a period far beyond the little kicking auto- crat. Some parents exercise what teamsters call a "flash whip" ; that is, one that pops over the horse all the time and never strikes. The child soon 60 THE FUTURE CITIZEN sees that the "flash threat" is harmless and mean- ingless, and so goes on its own way utterly disre- garding it. The boy's will is the wind's will, fickle, transient, leading nowhere except to ruin. Ever- lasting obedience is the price of liberty. And spasmodic severity is no less a crime than home anarchy. Parental abuse exists as much in sever- ity as in indulgence, or in permitting a thing be- cause the child wants it. It has been said in laugh- ing sincerity that the very best curfew ordinance is that one adopted in the family authorizing "the old man to act as mayor, city council, night watch and calaboose keeper, and to impose fine and pun- ishment and the hickory gad without the bother of passing a lot of ordinances to secure the en- forcement of those already on record." TOLERATED WILFULNESS A MISTAKE The child that dictates the domestic policy in its angry moods is not being taught the proper sense of obedience and order. He not only learns to deceive his parents, but to control them as well. He respects no will but his own, and defies parent, teacher, rules, laws, authority, and comes indig- nantly to refuse to be obedient to any restraints. Being "good" to such a boy, and persuading yourself that "no one understands him" and that you "can control him with soft talk instead of scolding him," is a certain license to wrong doing. Ninety per cent, of bad boys come from yielding after no has been repeatedly said. PARENTAL MISTAKES 61 It must not be understood that children, nat- urally animals, need not be dealt kindly with or taught the law of kindness, for without it they will be but subdued heathens. They should be taught the larger sense of humanity, self-sacrifice, and the rights of others, as well as their duties toward them. HUMAN KINDNESS Human ethics, in the practical sense, is not prominently nor persistently taught as a branch in the public schools, nor in the home. And it has been in no public school curriculum until recently in the United States, and then but tentatively. "Put yourself in his place" is not taught by daily application. "How would you like for the other fellow to treat you that way" is not pressed home as a lesson controlling in life for good. "Do to the other as you would have him do to you" has been distorted into, "Do others or they will do you." Nothing made clear. The selfish / pre- cedes being kind to the other, considerate at home, "helping mother," sharing with the rest, loaning his things, dealing kindly with pets, and manifest- ing such thoughtful tenderness as will make him a better, braver, nobler citizen. They know not how to endure, but submit to wilfulness and passion. The emotional side of the boy needs to be directed and trained as well as his intellectual, for without a round, full training of the unit instead of a fraction of it, the boy will always feel the want 62 THE FUTURE CITIZEN of it. In a word, they must be taught self-gov- ernment. It doesn't hurt the boy to yield instead of the parent. When he hears his mother say, "I can't do anything with him," he smiles sweetly. The older head should logically control, not the inexperienced childish head that God gave for the parent to rear. What does the child know about right ways? It obeys the instinct of emotion — "I want" — ^with no experimental knowledge of the right or wrong. TRUSTING THEM TO LUCK The spoiled child is a grave affair, and not in- frequently becomes a curse to his home and his city. Despite prayers for his good and "leaving him in the care of God," who has entrusted the boy's training to the parent who in no way can neglect his duty and throw back the responsibility of his rearing upon God, thus shirking a serious duty, the boy goes wrong because of the neglect. It is not love that humors a child's every whim, "because he wants it." Dreading the temper- tears of a healthy child is no sufficient reason for "giving way to him." Agonized weeping of a sor- rowful heart, broken and trampled upon in later years by the boy because of foolish parental indul- gence, will not reclaim him. The peace-blasting young man tramples ruthlessly on a despised, weak parent's heart, and becomes lawless through indulgence. His wilfulness is to be guided, not eliminated or crushed out or squelched. Irregu- PARENTAL MISTAKES 63 lar, impulsive control comes in time to be despised by the lad, and he ceases to regard such fluctuat- ing authority. He soon learns that his persistence secures his way, and he smiles at vacillating de- cisions. The little Caesar knows the weakness of the government under which he dwells, and it quails in the presence of the howling pinafore scape- grace. Sometimes the rebellious violence of the nursery tot makes home a pandemonium. The weakness of Froebel's system is his magna charta of childhood, so to name it. It deals with the sub- jective without a competent sense of external du- ties, and cultivates a social liberty that in the end destroys the usefulness of the child. CHIVALROUS RESPECT Especially at home the little one should learn to speak the truth, hate a lie and the vile, play fair, and be chivalrous, polite and respectful. These qualities come not naturally, are not drummed in by any formula of don't s and do's and incessant nagging. The home should be the most inviting, welcome place in the world, where the spirit of the mother, not with too many words, charms and guides. It should be cheerful, even a ragtime quality of it, rather than be a place of storm and shadow and gloom. Children are naturally cheerful, have a right to claim love and sweetness, and hence they should be immersed in it. The habit of happiness is not an impos- sibility. Gluttony and fretting have no good in 64 THE FUTURE CITIZEN them. In point of fact parents owe a cheerful home to their children. He is also entitled to respect. The Japanese are sensitive about chil- dren, and everybody conspires to make the life of a child a happy one. There, so much respect is shown for the little ones that, up to a certain age, grown people get up from their seats in the street cars and give them to the children. A CAUSE OF DELINQUENCY Juvenile delinquency, in all cases, however as- sertive this may seem, is chargeable to the parents. They are responsible for the boy's misconduct. Courts dealing with juvenile offenders have come to the same conclusion. Somehow, in subtile ways the parents know not of, in ill-ordered homes the parents lose control of the boy. The parents pos- sess traits of character sadly in need of reform. Laws should recognize this fact, and affix discre- tionary penalties upon the lawless boy. The par- ents do not intend to injure their boy, and think they do not, but the boy is ruined by them not- withstanding their better intentions. Probably they, in a fit of anger, punish the boy out of just proportion to the offense; or excuse his misdeed at other times; or deal out punishment without any sense of right and justice; or enforce disci- pline in accordance with their emotions ; or impose unmerited suffering; or "lecture" at improper times ; or merely squeeze out a tear to show how he has hurt them; or in a thousand other ways PARENTAL MISTAKES 65 mismanage him. In the mind of the child, paren- tal authority should be final, the last court of appeal, and just and complete. HOME AUTHORITY Unfulfilled promises are lies and teach the child to lie. And it is a mistake to think your boy can do no wrong, and a greater mistake to accept his colored, distorted, pieced-out, ex parte evidence in his own case as embracing the whole of the story. It is the proper thing to do to let the boy understand you are going to hear the other side of the case, and then make the full investigation. The complement of the rule of obedience is that of truthfulness. Exaggeration and extravagant language in repeating experiences or events or personal observations are warpings from the truth and train the youthful narrator to a feeble esti- mate of what truth is, — making a Pontius Pilate of him. The true parent will demand truthful- ness at all times with true parental love, will ever counsel wisely and set a decent example, will ever forgive wrong-doing with justice properly admin- istered, will ever scorn to be a scold, will ever be good and win the lad to truthfulness and justice, will never be bossy and stern, and will never allow the boy to cavil, complain, whine over defeat, or "tell tales out of school," souring his own disposi- tion and arousing a storm of temper in the home. In manhood this boy is a failure, blaming every- thing and everybody but himself for the disap- 66 THE FUTURE CITIZEN pointments that have hedged him in. Easily ruffled, he knows not how to get along smoothly with people who do not agree with him. He knows not how to pass level judgments upon others or the conduct of others, and he becomes a misfit in life. He never had been trained to subject his will to those who had been entrusted with his keeping, nor to regard the wisdom of their riper experi- ence and mature knowledge. So it is plain that wrong manhood and false views of life and men are due largely to his rearing at home. The un- reasoning energies of the child are to be directed by older heads and not by the license of the child's whim. As a rule "spoiled" boys grow up to be undesirable citizens. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." CHAPTER VIII HOME Much that has been said might as well have been included in this chapter, having an equal applica- tion here. In the utter demoralization of the home, how can anything good come out of it? The loss to the state, to society, to business, in the awful waste and ruin of children in bad homes, is more than figures can deal with. For the very essence of good citizenship is a good home, in which the training is competent for every excellence. As already said, when a man goes wrong, in material matters or in opinions, the leaven for it can be traced back to the early home. Therefore, too much value cannot be set on a home that is a model institution, nor can a poor, immoral home be reproached sufficiently. A bad home, so made by the parents, is not only a curse, but a viola- tion of God's decree. MATERIAI. QUALIFICATIONS Women in industries are necessarily disqualified for domesticity, and their homes are failures. Pub- lic life, a life without the joys of seclusiveness, unfits her for training up children properly. She neither knows how to keep or make a home ; neither knows how to cook or to train up children for their best good. She comes to be appalled at the idea of domestic duties, knows not what they are, 67 68 THE FUTURE CITIZEN and if she did, would not know how to take hold of them. Home life would interfere with her open life, which she has cultivated a taste for, and she prefers the mill, the store, the office, to "being cooped up at home." It is no doubt sure that the present outside amusements for girls will develop a healthier mother, but it is equally sure that they will develop a mother who will not see clearly the evils resulting from a neglect of home nor feel scruples from such neglect. She will gain selfish, divine health and produce better children physi- cally by her outdoor life, but it will be at the ex- pense of her sense of masculine chivalry. INCOMPETENT SENSE OF HOME Not to be humorously flatulent on a serious subject, we ask indulgence for a moment for speak- ing of a letter that was recently received by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, written by a woman, asking him to find husbands for a certain circle of girls. Such a letter may, or may not, have been written; it may have been a bit of newspaper pleasantry; but at all events it illus- trates, in no indirect or unfair manner, the loose sense that most young people have these days of matrimony, — a lack of the depth and breadth and height and divine seriousness of sex union and what it means to men, to state, to the future citizen, to prosperity, to peace. The marriage vow becomes a mockery, and home a place in which to "stay." So many girls marry without the HOME 69 slightest understanding of what a home means with them in it as the center and dependence and comforter. They are failures in making homes, and hence bring up poor citizens. On "Mothers' Day" it is no uncommon thing to hear the pulpit utter the mighty sentiment that "mothers more than any other worldly power mould the char- acter of a nation." DOMESTIC SCIENCE Talk of unsexing criminals and degenerates, women who fail to qualify for making the home beautiful and attractive should not be permitted to marry. Unclean homes are criminal dens, and dirt is a denial of good character. The National Purity Association should extend its efforts be- yond mere assembling in general congresses and passing torrid resolutions demanding the teaching of nature's laws to young people so as to prevent immorality, favoring laws to punish vicious hotel employes and prevent false registering of couples at hotels, asking press censorship of newspapers, novels, and immoral literature, and the restraining of the publication of scandals. Such resolutions do not go deep enough — the prevention of the as- sociation of improper characters who bring forth improper future citizens. Here is where rescue work should begin, — with the grandparent. Mothers fail to protest to the child when it im- properly wants — ^wants candies, harmful foods, slop soft drinks, and other such things as affect 70 THE FUTURE CITIZEN health and its future as a grown citizen. Want of discipline is unkindness. She prides in its clothes more than in its future success. The simple life is no longer possible, and it is thought to belong properly to the poor who can live no other. Not more than twenty per cent, of the children are healthy, normal, and possess the inherent ele- ments of success. The children suffer for the in- discretions of the parents. If only the parents, it would be less deplorable. Is it necessary to say that parental training is vastly more necessary than child training? The latter would follow naturally with proper parents. REMEDY FOR PUBMC EVILS Sanctity in the family ties is a remedy for pub- lic evils and a cure for moral unhealthiness. In short, everything depends upon the family, the birth, the training, the surroundings. Civil and corporate honesty, and how to prevent graft should be taught a boy, as well as temperance, bodily purity, and mental cleanliness. Official infidelity should be made to appear a woeful dis- grace, instead of an honor and an evidence of men- tal acumen, and its moral bluntness should be viewed as the mark of a degenerate and a villain. To be sure, corporate conscience is negative, mini- mizes responsibility, and magnifies apologies for excessive greed. It gets on with a rudimentary moral sense. The public conscience, deplorable as it may be, is low, and moral cowardice has its HOME 71 apologists. No one can give an external remedy for the evils of the day; but the family is the great cause of moral imperfections, civic and in- dividual. WEDDED MISERY Some think that feminine novels, presenting false relationships of the sexes, produce wedded misery, — causing many to plunge hastily and in- considerately into the vortex of matrimony (proves to be such to them.) The susceptible and overintense are led into making unwise alliances by such erotic stories, and discover their error when it is too late. Women fiction writers present too often artificial ideas of love and an ideal home, and thus in fact encourage marriage and poverty. Sensational, romantic, unnatural love-making is not correct, nor the be-all and end-all of life. Marry on five dollars a week salary, — and pov- erty, hardships, misery. Such stories induce some by example to marry and leave comfortable homes for the lottery of future happiness. A girl who cannot be kept as well after marriage as before has allied herself to disappointment and a "come down." She comes to regard marriage as a failure. Neurasthenic passion is engendered by warm, full-blooded novels, and it is a mistake for such nervous persons to engage in the joint business of maintaining a home. A peaceful do- mestic establishment under such conditions is im- possible, and children developed in such an abom- 72 THE FUTURE CITIZEN inable atmosphere cannot attain to their best. A bad parent is worse than none. EEMOVE THE CAUSES You fine women and people of fancy ideas may assemble, and pass resolutions, and advise, and make fine sentiment, but as long as the same con- ditions continue the same results will follow. Re- move the cause, — ^poor, scrub human stock, — and replace it with good blood, splendid energy, and fine quality of brain, and the better conditions will as certainly yield better results as the present bad conditions yield poor results. CHAPTER IX WHY BOYS GO WRONG Indeed it is not only the poor boy who needs sympathy and help; the rich boy also. The fact has been lamented that many poor boys are im- prisoned for offenses that the children of the rich commit with impunity. The reason for this is attributed to parental influence for the rich boy. To state a trueism boldly, all mankind have the vicious instinct, as well as the converse, but in varying degrees. Children reared where their en- vironments tend to degrade rather than elevate have not the same opportunity to become good citi- zens as those reared in an atmosphere of refine- ment and culture. Children of the slums are fitted for a criminal career from infancy. However, bad blood is not entirely confined to unpromising environments, and real worth often comes up from the ranks. But as a general thing the poor un- fortunates have a constant battle to keep out of the clutches of the "red-eyed law." Possessing the instinct of goodness as well as its converse they are susceptible to good influences, and only need the opportunity to make good men of them- selves. THERE IS HOPE No boy need to give up and lie down to be trampled on by his conditions. "Waiting for something to turn up" is a policy that will not 73 74 THE FUTURE CITIZEN tunnel mountains, or succeed in business, or achieve anything worth while. The world loves a doer of things, a striver who will attempt, even if he fails. Failure is but a stepping stone to suc- cess, provided energy is not defective. The boy must be able to stand up before the world and defy its critics and sneers and false prophets of dismal- ism. With hope and courage, and the will to make the most of himself, and to try with might and main and thought, he cannot fail of advancement, however untoward the circumstances may seem at the time. Opportunity in any one thing, in gen- eral, comes but once, and there is a place for a boy with mind and heart and energy and devotion in his work. ELEMENTS OF FAILURE Many things enter into failure, and few are hopelessly doomed to it. The first and chief cause of failure is a boy's birth-mark, so to speak; that is, the elements that constitute his being. The second cause is poor, misguided parents, who know not how to develop the best in their son. The third cause is a demoralized home, where the evil propensities are given free rein. The fourth cause is a lack of education, and a dislike of books and the restraints of school life. A teacher with a bad temper may contribute to the boy's overthrow. The fifth cause can be traced to his associates and his haunts. The sixth cause lies in the influences and attractions of the streets and alleys. Once WHY BOYS GO WRONG 75 a street waif, and the little, neglected gamin has his feet already in the path to the jail. The seventh cause is a psychological one. When he discovers that no one has confidence in him and that he is a Pariah, his progress downward is sure and rapid. HOW A BOY IS RUINED A boy with a stepmother is as likely to be per- mitted to go to ruin as the one with a stepfather. A boy adopted, or "placed in a home," often en- counters hardships that gradually steel him against all hopes of making anything of himself. A boy with parents away at work all day, leav- ing him to take care of himself, for the want of the knowledge how best to take care of himself, drifts into illegitimate channels and learns the ways of a criminal. A boy in a brother's, or in a sister's home, is in great danger of making his life a sad mistake. A boy adrift, without the rudder or compass of anyone to counsel him, is sure to miss the haven of superior manhood. A boy with drunken, quarreling parents is in a school for criminals. A boy that grandma raises is petted to death. A boy with a brutal father or a degenerate mother is not born to success in life. A boy in a filthy, unregenerate home, where the civilizing grace of soap is not comprehended, is in the downward path of degeneracy. A boy with stupid, lazy parents, who, little un- 76 THE FUTURE CITIZEN derstanding the worth of life, permit the boy to be- come like them, without ideals, without encourage- ment, without a desire to achieve. A boy with sickly parents is denied opportuni- ties that might make him a worthy citizen and give him the conscious sense of pride in his at- tainments. A boy who has learned how to deceive his par- ents usually develops into a man with a disgrace- ful court record. A boy out of home after nine o'clock at night, God only knows where, is in the highway of de- struction. A boy who trains in by-places with bigger boys for the evil he hears and sees, has no love for the good and is sure to develop into a by-product of citizenship and come in time to be enrolled by a number in a penal institution. A boy with long fingers, who chums with van- dal, over-smart chums, has already stepped over the threshold of the jail. A boy who loses respect for his parents and for authority will soon develop what criminal ten- dencies he has. A boy who indulges his vicious and low instincts is sowing the seeds of degeneracy. A boy whose temper is his master is laying up for himself contempt and a disorderly and abnor- mal life. His life will be a prolonged battle. What he gives, he gets in return. A boy who boasts of his truant ways and his WHY BOYS GO WRONG 77 disregard of established customs will eventually achieve the heroic part of "breaking into jail." A boy who prides in being wise in wicked ways and smart in sin has laid out for himself the des- tiny of a painful, sinful life. A boy who is permitted to "talk back" to his parents, and is sustained in his stories of his diffi- culties with others, is laying up "treasures for himself in hades." And a thousand and one other ways in which a boy may go to the bad. SUPERVISION IS THE BOY's SALVATION Most of these cases require correction in a spe- cial manner, each differing from the other, yet there are some general principles applicable alike to all. As Henry Ward Beecher once said, no one knows what he is himself till temptation comes in his way. So no boy is too good to be supervised and guided, and no boy is too bad not to be trusted in some measure. There is no dis- loyalty in watching the welfare of a boy and ex- tending proper sympathy to him. The contrary idea is wrong, and treatment resulting from it is wrong to the boy. It is the parent's God-ordained duty to watch upon and supervise the conduct of his boy, alike ignorant of moral conduct and of results of his actions. For boys have not the judgment of men. A good home and respectable parentage should be every lad's birthright, and the parent who ab- dicates his duty to his boy to God, with a self- 78 THE FUTURE CITIZEN righteous prayer on the abandonment of his son to himself and to evil influences, is a moral crimi- nal, shirking and sneaking out of responsibility because it is irksome and interferes with a selfish manner of life. It is simply giving the boy his freedom — ^free-doom. The boy perhaps knows no better than to go to ruin, because its paths are alluring; no one tells him better or helps him over the rough, dangerous places. RUINED BY NEGLECT Ignorant of his haunts and of his alley educat- ing influences the parent cannot understand the downfall of his son. By slight and easy progress the boy is graduated from the kindergarten school of evil and enters the high school of the dark and filthy side of life, whence he at length emerges with a diploma signed by His Sooty Majesty & Co. Ruined through parental neglect, by want of parental oversight, by the absence of parental direction — ruined ! Large sinners are made through small gradations, not per saltus. Every boy must understand that he must render an ac- counting for every moment of his time spent away from home. Any neglect of this requirement is an injury to the boy. He need not be made to feel that the accounting for his time is required be- cause of distrust in him, or because it affords opportunity for a mean parental purpose of fault- finding and criticism, but for his special help. And also it is very essential to know the truthful- WHY BOYS GO WRONG 79 ness of his account, as well as who his associates are. A boy out of school is going wrong, and he knows it. DEFECTIVE ACCOUNTING It is a well settled principle in the practice of criminal law that there is always a weak point, a defect, in every story of testimony presented, no matter how cunningly contrived and skillfully presented ; and hence parents, to be honest to their boy and mean his best good, will deftly question him and others until the whole truth is secured. Honor the boy for the truth he tells; unjustly discredit him and he feels that to be truthful is injurious to him. The boy who is controlled by vagrant impulse, lacking judgment and balance, but swayed by imagination that leads his reason a-woolgathering, is an easy subject for ruin by a human flint. He must not be accused of wrong until he is actually guilty. On the other hand, when the boy discovers that the judge in the home court is but human putty, he readily accom- modates his story of himself to the nature of the court. A LIFE WORK Like the "Man Without a Country" a man with- out a business or trade or profession, a definite pursuit of some kind, is a failure, — doomed to failure from the first. Dr. C. W. Eliot believed in boys and girls being "started out" by proper agents of authority and then forced by law to 80 THE FUTURE CITIZEN study the trades assigned them which seemed they were best adapted to. This plan may seem un- democratic, but under the law of self-preservation a nation, like an individual, may take steps to con- tinue its life. The motto, "Be educated for life, not for school," is too little regarded. What in- dustrial conditions at this time require is more skilled workmen, not more able foremen and super- intendents. It is confessed, however, that to be engaged in work of whatever kind that is uncongenial, dis- tasteful, and which one has no natural aptitude or congeniality for, spells failure. To change work and localities too often seeking for one's natural pursuit or "sphere" means non-success. In every walk in life around us there are those who are dissatisfied, discouraged, and in the wrong place, — ^too many poor preachers, too many half- trained lawyers, too many quacks posing as phy- sicians not in the undertaking business, too many hungry artists who would adorn some trade much better, too many half-paid teachers whose voca- tion is the home and the kitchen, too many poor, failing toilers everywhere, engaged in work for which they have no capacity or skill. To win in the great game of life, the work should not lie out- side the common activities, but in congenial places within them. Impossible ideals precipitate dis- couragement rather than bring stimulation. One's ability to win doesn't lie in a comparison with others, even if Macbeth did say, "What man dare, I dare." WHY BOYS GO WRONG 81 KEEP BUSY The busy one is the only happy one, and our drudgeries are our blessings in disguise. The boy must be engaged in some work of a useful char- acter, as well as entertained by play. He never should feel that he has time in which he doesn't know what to do with himself or what to do. Every day's close should find him soundly and whole- somely tired. The man in a workday rut, with no incentive to gain higher work, always in the routine as a part of the machine, fails to climb. He gains.* no preferment because he does not strive to win it. Such a toiler watches the clock too closely and the business too little. Failure is his fate, written in the stars, because he is not in the right place. No mind or heart in the work, his sin finds him out. He is a failure as a fine specimen of enter- prising citizenship. HABITS A CAUSE An intemperate tongue is an evidence of pos- sible trouble as well as a mark of the want of wis- dom. And one whose tongue is a disturbance of others as himself, and whose life is a continuous warfare, is no less desirable as a citizen as he is a neighbor. In the weakness of his make-up by nature his habits of whatever kind become deep-seated and dominating. If he has the idling habit, he is a failure. If he has the habit of violent language 82 THE FUTURE CITIZEN and over-exaggeration, he is a disturbing element and an "undesirable." If he is a saloon habitat, he might as well cut his throat and be done with it, so far as profit to his family grows out of such a way of living. If he has the habit of selfishness, and looks only as far as his own good goes, his social qualities are minus, less than zero. If he has the habit of boastfulness and egoism, he dis- gusts others and classifies and excludes himself from them. In so far, then, he becomes an ex- traneous object, and there can be no service to others where there is but one person. POOR HEALTH It is an overt fact that children admitted to re- forffl^schools show very greatly the lack of proper food, for the want of which the tendency to degen- eration is accelerated. They need as well better homes, less exposure, better clothes. Sickly par- ents engender sickly tendencies, if not sickness itself, and decay of mental and physical welfare. If one's size and color and complexion and physi- cal constitution are predetermined by heredity, his mental status is also determined by his blood, and that means his defects as well as his gifts. "For of the soul the body form doth take; For soul is form and doth the body make." The boy's shuffling, shiftless gait is not without a cause, — ^perhaps his blood, or maybe the hook- worm. Then bad eyes or defective ears play an important part in human frailties and failures. WHY BOYS GO WRONG 83 Children who buy candy on the way to and from school, and munch candy throughout the day, physicians say are notable for their dullness in their lessons. Inside the mouths of these habitual candy-eating pupils they found by examination a peculiar color, different from the natural, and similar in all instances. The policy that it is a duty to prolong human life as much as possible at whatever cost, however maimed or defective, has long been accepted as a true principle of human philosophy, on the ground that the sacredness of human life demands it, the soul having a right to earthly existence regard- less of results to the decrepit or to others. How- ever, some are bold enough to assert that "every reasonable consideration urges that an end should be put to their lives," just as some savage races were accustomed to do. Laudanum is advised for the child whose life would be a burden and a con- tinuous suffering, — one whose life would be pain- ful because of some physician's unskillful hand- ling, recovery being utterly impossible, no matter if it should afford surgery an example to parade its resources and mastery subsequently on the tor- tured little sufferer. These advocates have gone further and said that painful and incurable can- cerous subjects, where they want to die, should be Oslerized. And an old person whose mind has become chaotic and who is a charge, they say the plain duty is to shorten, not prolong life. Some stunning sociologic reformers declare that 84 THE FUTURE CITIZEN all slum babies should be chloroformed, — all poor, starving offspring of worthless criminal classes that infest the slums, — rather than let them grow up criminals to be dealt with by the state at the ex- pense of the people. They do not include the poor willing workers, worthy but unfortunate, — only those to whom living would be but a prolonged agony of a limited number of days at most. It is becoming apparent that it is the province of the schools to examine children as to their health and sanity, advise steps to be taken to prevent the transmission of disastrous defects, and look after the physical welfare as well as the mental, moral, and social good of the rising generation. It is well to train the young idea how to shoot, but it is better to train the unborn to a better idea be- fore the stage of shooting begins. BAD LITERATURE One with the habit of reading good things is in safe conditions. He has no time to waste on the streets, has no book-made false ideals, and becomes in mature life a useful citizen. If parents would even read a newspaper aloud at home, and all join properly in a discussion of its contents, fewer boys would break mothers' hearts and weary fathers on sleepless beds. With the home as a haven of refuge and a solidarity of good feeling, lawyers and courts would have less business. Good home influences deny opportunities to go wrong. It is the opportunities that destroy. Boys and WHY BOYS GO WRONG 85 girls with the example of reading in the home suc- ceed better in school, and all through life never put aside the reading habit, and as a consequence have a well-stored mind in the active part of life. "They know nothing because they read nothing," said Roger Sherman. Peptonized and predi- gested literature is thin mental diet, and is not good for even the mental invalid. Reading should be first disciplinary, next purely joyous or entertaining. Disciplinary litera- ture should be the classical, imaginative master- pieces, such as Shakespere, the leading poets, and certain essayists. The joyous may be of the lighter kind, such as the evanescent, light stuff of the day. The verdict of the ages is that the classical writers, from Homer down to the present, are immortal, not primarily because they are deep, correct, re- strained and shapely, but principally because they give joy to the largest number of readers. And at present children's libraries are in all the public schools, and in them are found the best books. They are taken home, and parents also find an elevating influence in them. They incul- cate the love of reading, draw the young into their favorite lines of thought, and thus enter into their life pursuits. The boy stories and the girl stories of the hour are better liked as a rule than other classes of books. If good literature has this desirable effect, what must the flash literature do for a susceptible young heart? The force of bad literature is seen 86 THE FUTURE CITIZEN in instances related in the press almost every day. The child's taste for reading is acquired from the age of nine to fourteen, and not much taste for it is gained later in life. It is too late to form this luxurious taste, when the mind has once ac- quired tastes and habits for other things, which it rarely lets go of all through life. Therefore the duty of a parent is to put good papers, maga- zines and books in the reach of the boy early in life. Readers are thinkers, and they influence and direct the world. No one but can find some time for good books and papers. The busiest and most successful men find time to read and keep up with the times. CHAPTER X BIOLOGY OF CRIME Criminology is a psychological study, and all criminal laws not in accord with the best knowl- edge of human nature fall short of their purpose and are practically dead letters. In an investi- gation of the history of criminals some tangible basis for conclusions as to the motives of the crimi- nal and the impulses prompting criminal deeds in spite of the moral sense that lies in varying degree in every God-man's nature, is secured, thus affording more accurate data for regulating the law breaker. Something tangible is secured from the study of the morally wobbling through his antecedents, his early influences and environments, his associates and habits and opportunities, the subtile influences that led him to his first wayward steps, his physical, mental and moral states. In brief, the study of the biology of crime is a study of the unfit. WILL TRAINING A father once wrote in his daughter's album, "Your obedient father, John Smith Brown." This is true in no good sense. The will of the daugh- ter was the authority. In most homes there is no intelligent will training of the child. If there were, it would very greatly diminish moral ills and remove those self-inflicted evils that come through disobedience and self-gratification. The public 87 88 THE FUTURE CITIZEN school course in moral hygiene as well as the do- mestic moral course is imperfect and, therefore, a failure. The system of will training should point out the errors resulting from pandering to the child's undirected, immature, unwise craving for the mysterious, and to the mistakes due to cor- recting him by appeals to his fears, or his pride, and to the results from keeping him "in line" by bribes and lies and promises never meant to be ful- filled, and to intimidation. His fickle will is the chief thing to curb, since it sways his emotional nature. The object of the training is to prevent crime rather than to punish it. With a will that leads to crime, punishment is no preventative. If the tendency to do wrong is corrected, there will be no misdemeanors to punish. Most inadverten- cies are the outcroppings of the emotional side of man, his impulsive, unthinking force, and these afflictions might be greatly controlled by a trained will. For a defective will is the curse of the emo- tional criminal. CRIME PREDILECTIONS Predictions based on past facts say that not less than five thousand persons will be murdered in the succeeding twelve months. The results of "crime waves," as the general press phrases it, do not enter into this estimate. "Crime waves" are the gravest psychologic, social, and legal problem that society has to deal with. They do not come because of atmospheric conditions, ma- BIOLOGY OF CRIME 89 terial states, or moral deficiencies, but rather through imitation of reported crimes. The mat- ter of criminal justice in the United States is frightfully neglected or defiantly scorned. Dr. Andrew D. White says our courts are entirely too lenient in the punishment of criminals. The maudlin feminine sentiment and sympathy poured over the criminal by women imbued with the idea that their "mission" is to do good, not only heroizes the dangerous character, but holds out a hope to him that he will not be rigorously dealt with. This lionizing of the human reptile, in whom there is not a shadow of the true hero, is a cause not without an effect. Flowers sent to his cell do not wipe away his stain or alter a fiber of his will. The information is given out by statis- tics that homicides in this country are far more numerous than in any other civilized coimtry in the world. They are forty-three times the num- ber in Canada, and eight times that of Belgium, which has the highest homicidal rate in Europe. And Belgium has no death penalty, while in Canada where the rate of homicides is lowest, seven-eights of the men tried for murder are exe- cuted by law. In our country but one murderer in seventy-four gets the death penalty, and the average life sentence is reduced to seven years. Courts are guilty. Law is emasculated and made of none effect. ERADICATING CRIMINAL TENDENCIES The eradication of criminal tendencies in the 90 THE FUTURE CITIZEN young through the application of external agen- cies is but treating symptoms, not causes. The reduction of the output of defective children is the only real remedy. Cures attempted through surgery cannot reach the cell in the blood out of which posterity is brought forth. One disciple of Aesculapius astonished an admiring clientele by proposing to correct by surgery upon defective teeth criminal instincts, nervous disorders, and insanity. Nothing has been heard of his alienist work since his proposal. Medicines and healthy surroundings are believed by some to improve the race. They are but crutches to the cripple. Now, the "hindrances to good citizenship," — and the consequent "salvation of popular government," — can't be removed by half-hearted, half-radical measures. To know the public good and bring about the "good of each" is not a matter for ex- perimentation. To hiss and lampoon and "mis- brand" honest intentions to eradicate crime and improve the general good are the negative out- croppings of the defectives pointed out by Nor- deau and Lombroso. Our legislation is incom- petent to eifect the greatest possible good, and there is a reason for it, as there is for all things. "Our whole political system is over-lawyerized," declared Dr. Felix Adler lately, and he meant that our laws are lawyers' statutes, and not the people's. LET NO GUILTY ONE ESCAPE Society would be better protected with a bet- BIOLOGY OF CRIME 91 ter execution of the laws that are written. So many disorderly ruffians are not arrested and punished as they deserve, and the injured citizens suffer the misdeeds and public nuisances of the law-breakers rather than enforce the law and incur their hatred and probable future revenge. If the public would organize for mutual protection and see that no guilty man escapes, the criminal would have a more wholesome fear of the public, would feel less security in immunity, would have less reason for bluffing out and eluding a minion of the law. There is too little dread of punish- ment before the criminal, and in this sense of se- curity he obeys his instincts and leadings, quite certain that justice will miscarry in his case. A full enforcement of the law, without evasions, would largely correct the abuse of the public by the criminally disposed. It is a public duty to take a personal interest in the maintenance of law and the preservation of order and the suppres- sion of irresponsible personalities. The youthful candidate for the jail would in equal measure be restrained from his wayward tendencies, and a general good would result. WHO COMMITS CRIMES The imperative duty of every parent is to edu- cate his child. The undisputed evidence is that ignorance is a crime, — not legal as yet, but social and ethical and financial. The compulsory edu- cational law answers the question — "Am I my 92 THE FUTURE CITIZEN brother's keeper?" Intelligence alone can ac- quire and perpetuate liberty, civic and religious. As long as heredity is the law of descent, the world can never be educated so that men will do to others as they would be done by. Could educa- tion do this, it would eliminate criminals and prisons. Statistics relating to illiteracy show that the uneducated are the greatest sinners in legal violations. While intelligence reduces crime, it cannot reform the blood. Ignorant parents, hav- ing no interest in the welfare of the nation nor foresight for the good of the state, cannot com- prehend the import of a boy's tendencies to mis- conduct, nor understand how to correct them, nor the real need of such correction. When he is asked, under the compulsory educational law, why he doesn't send his boy to school, in indigna- tion he cries out tragically, "Liberty!" What, liberty to do wrong! This is but the plea of ig- norance to do as it pleases, and is a sort of rebel- lion against the necessity of protecting the inno- cent and obedient. It also confesses that he is ignorant of what is best for his child. For one to desire the "liberty to do as he feels" is to stand in the way of his son's and his own general good. The same argument would license violation of law, crime, rebellion and demand the abrogation of punishment for it. The primary object of pun- ishment is to secure obedience to law, and in the application of it the state looks more to the body politic than to the recipient of the legal discipline. BIOLOGY OF CRIME 98 The purpose of penology is to diminish crime and afford protection to the innocent from the vicious. Any system that shields the inveterate enemies of society increases the ratio of crime. One who has attained the notoriety of a court record, at least on his third or fourth appearance in court should receive the extreme penalty of the law. Clemency then is a dangerous error. Pardon granted through sympathy is no less an injury to society. THE FLATTERY OF DISTINCTION It is pleasing to be chief. It is selfish. Na- tions pride in greatness and supremacy. They fear entangling international alliances, lest ad- vantage be gained by the ally. As long as na- tions make child's bargains for power, instead of the good of all, so long will nations perish. Jeal- ous of each other's good, they exercise the mean part of spy, and will meet the general fate of na- tions of the past. The desire for the supreme good is the vital and long-lived element and the only true principle of greatness and endurance. The element of Grecian civilization was symmetry and a foolish exposition of culture, misnamed philosophy. Persia exhibited display and power. Judea cherished hatred and non-concession. Egypt went down under the destiny of the fate of slavery and mastery. Rome had a worship without a god of sublime excellence, was the slave of money, and decayed in the feminine weakness 94 THE FUTURE CITIZEN following high living. Therefore nations must do to others as they would have them do in return, and they will perish unless they practice the prin- ciple of "put yourself in his place." BOY REFORMATION Under the law of recovery or recuperation, which in a measure is the counterpart of heredity, and a proof of human will and human responsi- bility, the erring boys may be reclaimed. While it may be said in a sense that man is born with the fate of a will and the necessity for choosing, he is nevertheless free to choose, to make his life a good or an evil, or else the idea and the sense of a will is a delusion and a snare. So therefore a moral wound is possible of restoration. Every child at heart is good; so is he evil, the comple- ment of good, for the one cannot exist without the other. Most of the boy's acts that injure a community are thoughtless, impulsive mistakes. GIVING THE BOY A CHANCE Painting a boy blacker than he is is neither logical nor beneficial. For once having the name he also desires the game. Under the law of sug- gestion, through a bad name he seeks that which harmonizes with his reputation. The education of the backward child is best obtained through praise than unencouraging censure. Exposure of his mental defects is humiliating and retarding. His education should be positive, not negative; taught what he should do, not what he should BIOLOGY OF CRIME 96 not do; how good he can become, not how bad he is, and how much worse he will be. A boy has no standard of right and wrong, until he is so taught. It is altogether needless to tell him he is hopelessly bad, because it is not true. BOY WITH A BACKBONE A boy, when he finds he has a backbone, breaks precedents and conventionalisms, chafes at bonds, and under the spell of disobedience that afflicts him, otherwise manifests his high spirit. This disease of disobedience, like the measles, runs its course, and the lad becomes normal again. It is the extravagance of his emotions that obsesses him. It is then he is ruined, or in spite of the mistakes of "courses of medicine and instruction" he recovers. The critical period of his life is when he discovers he has a backbone. Unless the boy is critically understood in this crisis of his life, the turning point for failure or success, the cross-roads to good name or to dishonor, the method of treatment is likely to be brushwood to the flame. And for the want of names for crimes not defined by law, impatient people set up the "calamity howl" and easily charge neglect some- where. WHAT LIFE MEANS Not a mere moving bit of thought and feeling; not a mere personal entity with only a selfish purpose; not a thing of "liberty" that lies down to death after a brief day; not a machine merely 96 THE FUTURE CITIZEN to make money that goes no further than physical things that can't buy a day to the length of life, nor grant immunity from pain, nor purchase a hope or an aim; not a dreamless existence that finds the earth a mere dwelling-place; not a soul to dwell idly, aimlessly, worthlessly as we read m Turgeniff's '"Diary of a Superfluous Man;" not merely to live the life of a good, law-abiding citi- zen, and be a kind father, and achieve a bit of printed-page learning; not merely always to work and save and acquire and "progress" — drudgery and hoarding, not that alone; not in mere "suc- cess" and "achievement," and "going to the front" and ascending to the icy top; not in the strange malady of "commercialism;" but in the pursuit of the ideal, the dreams within, the faith and hope of existence. What is aside from this is not life, but crude animal existence. It is not in a dream of Utopia, not in any theory of Nir- vana, not in magnificent externalities, but in doing a heart work and looking upward higher than the head with all one's powers of concentration and skill and talent. This is freedom, and without it life is meaningless, doomed to the furies of Re- gret and the perils of the Great Misgiving and the pains of Failure. The one difference between the true and false life is that which exists between the care of the body only and of the soul — the higher life, the real purple of existence. Business and intellectual and social and spiritual needs should blend every day — none omitted. Real liberty is BIOLOGY OF CRIME 97 real life, and consists in the ability to think and feel and act for self. It is to think clean, high thoughts, to do right thinking and right living, minus the shams, to seek ideal truths and central facts, to work against evil tendencies in and out of self, to escape the burdens of extreme poverty on the one hand and of great, oppressive wealth on the other. It is to live the "simple life," for which Rev. Wagner appeals so eloquently, the life without the mere pretense of leisure and study and action, with no undue privileges, asking no "special privileges," with every faculty well trained, able to do one's heart-work without fear or favor or hindrance, and without rapacity or stubbornness. It is to be not easily perturbed by the irremediable, and ready for every civic duty; to win and retain friends, and be a charming per- sonage rather than one of power and strenuosity; to feel humanity's great heart-throb; to be sin- cere, honest, cheerful, content, charitable, real; to get in the sunlight on the heights, and be nearer to God and God's world, and, in a word, to be in tune with the Infinite. No best efforts, boys, can be put forth without the sure resulting uplift. BOYHOOD Neither quality of blood nor criminal tenden- cies are gifts of position, or of any one; though position may be an evidence of what is in a boy, an opportunity for its manifestation. What a boy is, he is without words, place, or opportunity. 98 THE FUTURE CITIZEN No life lived is the whole of what one is; it is fragmentary, incomplete, unsatisfactory. There are eight hundred thousand boys in their teens in North America, and twice that many be- tween six and nineteen. About seven hundred and iRhy thousand boys are in attendance at high school in sixty-five hundred such institutions throughout the country. There are more boys in penal institutions than in the entire member- ship of the Y. M. C. A. And eighty-seven per cent, of all inmates of reform schools and penal institutions are in their teens. The boy in his teens stands at the great divide in life, that deter- mines his future as an asset for good or evil to the community. It is a fact that Puritanism is dying out and a conglomerate cosmopolitanism is taking its place. The mechanical times, with its infinite contrivances and noisy wheels, is materializing the men of to-day, and the peace of the "fine old Eng- lish gentleman, all in the olden times" is as great a ruin as the acropolis at Athens or the temple at Thebes. UTILITY IDEA PREVALENT The parade in the press of the ways that rich men obtained their excessive millions inculcates the idea that the "greatest thing in life" is the accumulation of wealth, — as if riches were all of life. There is more than materialism in life. The sense of utility begets a lack of reverence. The boy with a disrespect for parents and home has taken a long step downward. The desire to BIOLOGY OF CRIME 99 get away from home — no love for parents — gives the streets a fascination for the boy, and he revels in the explorations he makes in this wild, wicked, vagrant street world. The home is almost en- tirely responsible for the next succeeding genera- tion, for the kind of men and women who will direct the social and political destinies of the next immediate descendants, for the destiny of the state, the church, the schools, the home, and the history of the human race. In a critical spirit a child-saver exclaimed: "Men see issues, women see men!" The world is to be regenerated through the children. It is the right of every child to be well-born, well-groomed, well-educated. EXTRAVAGANCE A wasteful wife can throw out more at the back-door with a spoon than a man can put in in front with a scoop. There are so many ways of wastefulness: — preparing foods, casting the re- mains in the slop-barrel, cooking twice too much, neglecting clothing, overlooking the vandalisms of the child, and so on. And the husband may waste it, saying he earned it and he may do as he pleases with his own. The financial problem in the home thus becomes a serious matter, and in many ways reflects upon the children. The earn- ing capacity of the bread-winner is one thing, and the lack of economy and carefulness and wisdom in expending the income is another. The real needs are not understood, nor the possible re- 100 THE FUTURE CITIZEN verses of the morrow calculated upon. Buying the best with the last penny is a manifestation of a lack of financial judgment. Winning an in- come requires the best attention and effort, but a keen sense of how best to expend it and for what is a greater study. A woman that is not born a home-maker is chargeable with home failure. A well-trained sense of economy will not spend all the income, but will save a part of it. Indeed, worldly success and happiness, in no small de- gree, depend on economy. Without the saving sense, there is extremity that is a social and moral turpitude. Work and economy is the maxim of the good wife, who aids her husband to achieve success. One always "hard up" has not gotten into methods of prosperity, and it is idle for him to hope for liberty from his slavery of necessity. CHAPTER XI JUVENILE CRIMES A German writer says: "The greatest advance which has been made in the care of juvenile offenders has grown out of the recognition of the fact that dependent, neglected, defective, and criminal juveniles rep- resent a single social phenomenon in different phases of development. As there is a necessary connection between neglect of children and juve- nile criminality, the evils of neglect and of de- linquency should be attacked by the same meth- ods. The moral, physical, and economic educa- tion of the children of to-day will decide the fate of the generation of to-morrow." Society is concerning itself more about the future conduct of the individual than about the overt act he may have committed, becoming more interested in what he will do than in what he has done. The mere negative effort at reform, with no new interests and activities offered, is not suf- ficient to achieve much and permanent good. The juvenile offender, scarcely a "criminal," has be- come recognized as a "problem," and laws are en- acted to correct and save him, if possible. RESPECT FOR LAW In general it may be said that too little respect is shown for law, and certain classes sneer at it, declaring it to be all pretense and sham. It is a 101 102 THE FUTURE CITIZEN license to criminals when laws become a nullity for policy's sake. Good citizens need no laws; they are only for the violator. This sentiment of disrespect is caught by boys, and they come to disregard and defy legal incumbrances, and break down this wall of defense for the innocent. After his first appearance in court and he is told that sentence is suspended, he goes out to his "gang" and with a leer tells his pals that the court is "easy." His regard for law is weakened, and he feels that escape from it is no difficult thing. The advice given by the court the boy readily prom- ises to obey, and he proceeds at once to forget the "advice" and repeat his guilt. The guardianship affected by the state over children in lax homes is not as effective in fact as in theory. Yet juve- nile courts, where the boy is differentiated from the adult, have accomplished good and are a step in the right direction, correcting in part evil en- vironments. It is said that since the first court was established in Chicago in 1889 about eighty per cent, of the boys put on probation there have not appeared again in court. Some of the more serious offenders are sent to "detention homes," and some to reform schools, under state supervision, for longer periods of time. Some courts have in connection with their work a clinic or child study department, where medical exami- nation is given. Examination shows that juve- nile delinquency and physical defect are closely related. The lad's history, heredity, environ- JUVENILE CRIME 103 ment, associations, how he came to be a truant, are looked into, in order that the court may be able to reform him rather than punish him, uplift him rather than degrade him, develop and make him a worthy citizen rather than a criminal. Said a member of the House of Commons, when the English children's bill was under debate: "We want to say to the child, that if the world or the world's law has not been his friend in the past, it shall be now. We say that it is the duty of this parliament, and that this parliament is determ- ined to lift, if possible, and rescue him, to shut the prison door, and to open the door of hope." The work of the juvenile court at best is pal- liative. As in all modern work for social better- ment, prevention is here the vital thing. It has in mind the betterment of the morals of incor- rigibles. Great care and intelligent dealing is required in this difficult work. The attitude of the state in the care and correction of the delinquent must be as nearly parental as possible, forming the child, and not reforming it, correcting the delinquent parent, improving the youngsters' en- vironment, and adding good opportunities as far as possible to his life. Helpless parents are to be encouraged, and the boy, with natural instincts for fun and play and adventure, hampered by city ordinances and the sure consequences of a violation thereof, with no intentional disregard of the rights of others, must be dealt with in a common-sense way. Such boys must not be thrust into jails with hardened criminals. 104 THE FUTURE CITIZEN PUNISHMENTS FOR JUVENILE INDISCRETIONS It is a punishment to bring the over-energetic boy even to court, a place of dread and frown. They come from homes that are failures, from teachers who misapply "justice" to a boy they do not study or understand, and from the hell of the streets. Contributory acts by others lending en- couragement to freakish boyish misdeeds should be made accessory and the contributor punish- able. The object of the court is to enforce obedi- ence, by "advice" if possible, then next by a place where discipline is competent. The immature cul- prit is given to see that the work is for, not against him. The court does an administrative work rather than compulsory. The idle boy past the compulsory school age is made to understand that idleness is not tolerable, and he must find work or they will find it for him in some penal indus- trial school. He is put upon his honor to be just as good as he can be in his home, his neighbor- hood, and the school, and by a system of espion- age he is reported frequently to the court as to his conduct. They are made to comprehend that they are little citizens. Wrong doing is made ap- pear odious to them because of its back-acting consequences. The liar is easily detected, and by natural methods he is urged to tell the truth, even in his own slangy way, for slang is less offensive than a deliberate lie, and much less harmful. The idea that underlies the juvenile court is less a sub- ject for punishment than for help, because of in- JUVENILE CRIME 106 competent homes and negligent parents and un- toward surroundings and excessive exuberances, — a sort of prevention work, giving the stitch in time instead of waiting for the criminal deed to bring the offender into court under duress. Where amusement and recreation occupy the young energy's time, the opportunity for his idle, restless brain to develop and accomplish mis- deeds is removed. Vile talk, the precursor of vile actions, is a fearful thing. Moral instruction and social welfare work fail in the face of this appal- ling, vicious evil. No boy's mind and heart are clean and right that are sumps for the infamous talk and salacious stories of the abandoned dipped out of the gutters and dregs of the hopelessly depraved. The schools and the church could do much for these decaying youths by giving good interests and engagements for wasting activities. MISTAKES OF COURTS The idea of a juvenile court for the trial of childish delinquencies separate from the criminal courts where mature offenders are tried, is cor- rect. With larger powers of a chancery court granted them, they can accomplish marvelous good and save many a future citizen whose feet are just started in the ways of the criminal. However, the mind and personality of the judge himself may not be suited to the great purpose of the court. For instance, one judge in Ohio was so possessed with the idea of "giving the boy 106 THE FUTURE CITIZEN one more chance," that he let him burn three barns, "just to see the hose wagons run," as he confessed in court, before this judge compre- hended that the lad was an incorrigible, mentally a mistake, and sent him to the reform school for the good of society, if not for the boy. The judge was not capable of reading the child-criminal and distinguishing him from others who offended through excessive energy. The "boy problem" embraces more than a "chance," and more than ^'confidential advice," and more than to make the boy feel he has a "friend." Too often poor, in- competent officials give license to do wrong rather than help to prevent it. Corrupt human nature is not all good, nor error misapplied energy waiting for a "chance" to do right. The "chance" exists before as well as after the wrong deed. This is not saying that no good influences should be offered to susceptibilities for good. How to make these good susceptibilities superior, domi- nating, ruling, submerging the wayward impulses is no easy matter, and cannot be done by "another chance" alone. The boy must be altered into en- vironments that will not possess temptations to call out his evil tendencies and crystalize them into fixed promptings. The opposite tendencies must be exercised and developed, or the court is a failure, and the new candidate for citizenship a degenerate. METHODS OF TREATMENT Boston first adopted the system of separate JUVENILE CRIME 107 trial for the child offender, and the idea seemed good. Chicago was the first city to organize a juvenile court in full form, — in 1899. The move- ment opened at once from end to end of the coun- try, and brought good results. Because of the character of the juvenile judge and his methods, Denver gained national distinction. And the judges of juvenile courts have tried various expe- dients for rescue work and put in operation many reclamation plans, with various degrees of suc- cess. It is the general idea to give confidence, trust, advice, and "another chance." When the home, or the teacher, is taking the proper steps to curse the soul of the child, the court interposes and tries to undo the mistake. The slow pon- derosity of the movement to commit an incor- rigible or a confirmed truant sometimes permits him to run to seed, before the "red-tape business" has exhausted itself. The children's court should more properly be a parents' court, in which par- ents should be informed how to train up children. A good many boys are ordered to be spanked openly in court by their parents, and this method has its taming effects. Brown, Commissioner of Education for the United States, has just said: "It strikes me that it is better to have a boy whipped, than to let him go straight to the devil." He added: "There are cases undoubtedly where a loving sort of whipping has shunted a boy off the downward track, but it is pretty hard to tell in any given case whether it will have that effect 108 THE FUTURE CITIZEN or not, and there are so many evils attending this form of punishment that it seems to be slowly dy- ing out in this country." There are children whose sensitive hearts and minds and nervous states could not endure such flogging, — to whom it would be a cruelty. Truants and unfortunate child excesses are the results of homes with no regularity or order or healthy tone. That is as much as to say, that the extirpation of criminals should begin with the parents or even the grand- parents. The legal machinery is not effective for doing this, for like all other men, courts are prone to believe they are good judges of human nature, if not of good whiskey. But psychologic experts and alienists are profound experts at groping in the dark. The solution of the boy problem is measurably the solution of the future. The ma- terial out of which criminals are made must be destroyed. "Carthage must be destroyed." It is easier to prevent the making of an individual than it is to correct the developed unsound man. BOY ORGANIZATIONS The "Parole of Honor Court" of Chicago was found to be inefficient, and abandoned in 1909. This system was paternal in character, and first offenders were "paroled" indefinitely on promises of leading better lives, and required to return once a month with witnesses, and report. The "Knights of Chivalry'' is a boy organiza- tion, to which boys from ten to fifteen are eligible. JUVENILE CRIME 109 It is a little community or civic state, self-organ- ized and self-controlled, for the purpose of amusement and profit. They have a salaried young man as major-general; divide themselves into quarter-hundred companies with a captain; require no pledges at first but obedience, which in time itself exacts a pledge to abstain from bad language and bad habits and tobacco ; have a reg- ular meeting place; outline work for themselves of a humane character; instil kindness by appeals to the boy's higher nature and his honor; give prizes for good work and good deportment; try misdemeans by the company to which the boy be- longs; have competitive drills and monthly ban- quets given by mothers and friends. Children's methods of self-government are great practical self-helps. The self-government principle applied to schools shows that the pupils made better grades and stood higher in deport- ment than before. It was viewed almost as a crime to fall behind in work, and recitations were rarely a failure. The motto was made promi- nent, "He can conquer who thinks he can." "What man dare, I dare." WORK A POWERFUL SA^aNG AGENT \ It is the idle boy who goes wrong, the street waif who drills himself in misdemeanors.,' Every boy, rich or poor, should be trained in habits of useful, creative industry and the proper sense of economy. He must know the worth of a dollar by 110 THE FUTURE CITIZEN earning it. Loiterers and drones are passive mis- takes, and to-day work is emphasized more than simple faith. Both brain and hands must be taught how to make a living. For riches have wings, and are at best but an earthly insecurity, and he is happier who "gets out and hustles" than the non-essential idler. Work develops in the all- around sense which the demands of life impose. Non-success — nonentity! Work develops the seamy side of life into the bright side, and hon- est toil brings health, sleep, rest, appetite, — the complements demanded by man's active nature. The idle rich are often dyspeptics, discontented, total wrecks, — a life gone wrong. Indeed, like Bismarck, one should make a place for himself, instead of waiting for one to come to him on a sil- ver platter. Lean on no one but yourself, to you the most important person in the universe. Make all the friends you can, for before you close your existence you will have enemies enough and to spare. Take the part of a noble, "real" boy in trying to make your home better, and life will be sweeter for the effort. Make your parents love you for your unselfishness, obedience, good tem- per, good habits, and upward effort. Give a "square deal" to every boy, for in mature life your dull classmate may outstrip you and be a big man. You are known of men by your walk and character. Be a busy boy. don'ts for boys Perhaps it may be useful to boys to read this JUVENILE CRIME 111 list of don'ts, given by a New York Justice, who believed that most youthful law-breaking comes through thoughtlessness and ignorance. Read his don'ts: "Don't play 'cat' in the street. You may blind some one. Don't throw stones in inter school fights. Don't solicit transfers at street-car division points. Don't stick burrs in the hair of street or *L' car passengers. Don't play with fire or build bonfires in the street. Don't 'flip' street-cars. Don't shoot air guns or slingshots. Don't write on the sidewalk or draw pictures there. Don't throw marble 'skimmers' from the win- dows of 'L' cars. It is the height of wanton- ness, for you can't see what you hit if you do hit anything. Don't try to play baseball in the streets. Don't throw decayed fruit or vegetables at street-car passengers. Don't lounge on saloon corners. Don't fire off guns or fireworks before or after July 4. Don't swear. Don't go swimming nude. Don't hang around pool parlors and cheap mu- seums. 112 THE FUTURE CITIZEN Don't carve or scratch names or initials on buildings. Don't stay out late at night. Don't shoot craps. Don't smoke cigarettes. Don't "rush the can" — not even your own. Don't climb lampposts to blow out the light. Don't turn on the fire hydrants. Don't pull flowers in the parks. Don't sleep out at night. Don't climb the park trees or cut them. Don't throw stones." UNSOUND CONDITIONS In his "Our Country" Rev. Strong might have added to his list of perils the street peril. There the night-prowling boy touches the born criminal, — ^just as are born idiots, insane, physical de- fectives. There he meets the intemperate and others of unclassified and unclassifiable ideas, who riot in saturnalian debauchery, disregard marriage ties (as did Zola's "Nana"), and propa- gate a criminal population of degenerate beings. Seen from the standpoint of these undesirables, crime is merely an expression in some manner of their unsound tendencies and defective organiza- tions. CHAPTER XII EXTERNAL REMEDIAL EFFORTS The effort to make sentiment to stem the tide of young, fresh, country blood to the cities, and induce others who came in ignorance of city hard- ships and temptations to return to the farm, is not to be discouraged. This back-to-the-farm movement is not a panacea for modern city irreg- ularities, for it does not go to the root of the matter. Birth lies at the bottom of all true reforms and millenniums and the perpetuity of the govern- ment. The effeminating effects of riches beget ef- feminate men, and want of virility means eventual death to state, home, church. After birth — can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? The sun upon the broad fields will doubt- less assist the consumptive, help the defectives, re- move opportunities from the degraded, and assist the individual in many ways, but would not affect the succeeding generation in the city. "Back to the farm" is a warning; yet men and women will swarm to the cities, endure poverty, though not needed there, while the farms lie idle or are unskilfully cultivated. People less love solitude than the enjoyments of masses, notwith- standing Adam and Eve were solitary farmers and primarily vegetarians, though Adam made his wife's clothing of the skins of animals, which doubtless he slew for food. Human yearning for 113 114 THE FUTURE CITIZEN human companionship is natural, for man's grex nature will be satisfied with nothing less. ITS COMMERCIAL MEANING Doubtless this back-to-the-farm idea is an effort that will result in an increased supply of food products and reduce the high cost of living, one of the most vital commercial problems that has ever exercised economic pens. The flux to the cities increases the number of consumers and de- creases the number of producers. The influx of about a million immigrants annually abnormally increases the number of consumers without in- creasing the number of producers. This grave problem cannot be analyzed in a word here. It is insistent, demanding. The materialism of life demands more foodstuffs so that prices may be reasonable, and have less the appearance of graft at man's extremity. To-day there are hungry people in our cities, and conditions need to be re- lieved so that this cannot be. Farmers' unions are increasing in numbers and might, in order to gain still greater financial returns, — an inhuman move- ment. Co-operation is good, but distraining the consumer is — what! The farmers inform them- selves as to the best markets in which to sell and buy. They are storing their products in elevators and cold-storage receptacles, and thus "boosting" prices abnormally. The principles and gains by this method of "co-operation" are expounded in their agricultural papers, and the movement can REMEDIAL EFFORTS 116 only be fairly met by counter organization of con- sumers. AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS The farm, in its natural seclusiveness and touch with nature, is less susceptible to the corrupting influences of commercialism and cosmopolitanism than the dweller in the city. It is an easily under- stood fact that rural children do not have equal advantages of education that the children of the city have. To qualify the farm children for farm life, plans are proposed for establishing agricul- tural schools, in which farm works may be more fully and better taught and the farm and the farm life made more interesting. The country public school is not as competent, from the nature of the case, as city schools, equipped with special teachers, department methods, and better school paraphernalia, to educate the young. The essen- tial idea underlying the idea of agricultural schools is to render the prospective young farmer better equipped to wrest success from the soil. These schools should be in close proximity to the common schools. The migration of boys from the country to the city is a cause of many downfalls and ruined fu- ture citizens. Rural agricultural schools would stem in a degree the flow of young blood to the thrill of the city, and also show the beauty and blessings of the farm, since "the farmer feeds us all." Farming is a natural occupation, and the most natural pursuit of all. Should the young 116 THE FUTURE CITIZEN men remain on the farm, they would be assured of a living, and relieve somewhat the congested labor market of the cities and help in so far to solve the "labor problem." The best thing is to grow up on the farm and assimilate the farm spirit and ideal and science, and enjoy farm indepen- dence and honor and a contented, green old age. The farm life is open, healthful, exposed, full of hard work and overtime, but food is palatable and rest sweet. The theoretical farming, illustrated by Horace Greeley in "what he knew about farm- ing," has not proved a success. It is real, practi- cal. The industrious farmer is the salt of the earth. His home is nearer heaven than is the city dweller's. GROWTH OF CITIES When Washington was President only SA per cent, of the four millions of people were in the cities; now at least 35 per cent, are in the cities. The overcrowding of the cities and their congested districts make a return to the farm a neces- sity. The United States is just now money-mad, graft is rife, and the quality of the moral sense unstrained. The pendulum, naturally, will swing back again, and we will return to the simple life. A French writer predicts that in the cycle of a century very few persons will live in the cities, and that they will then be but places of business. However, since the days when the sons of men built Babel, and Achilles' wrath gave rise to the saying, "Troy was," and men populated No, cities have existed, and will exist to the end of time. REMEDIAL EFFORTS 117 COST OF LIVING It means poor citizenship, in a comparative degree, when wages are all consumed in living, — food, rent, clothes, fuel, medicine, extravagance, with nothing left for amusements, luxury, enjoyment, qualification for labor and happi- ness. A surplus of wages would alleviate the hide- bound conditions of a toil-weary life, and life would be benefited by the removal of tax from industry and putting it on privilege and inheri- tance — if we may agree as to what "privilege" means. The socialistic idea of placing a dual tax on land values and buildings is nothing more than a palliative measure, to say the very least, and for unequal justice it holds the palm. It is simply a measure to oppress the rich, and perhaps for no better reason than that his energies have won success and riches. Years ago the grangers fought the railroads, fought the high rates of transportation, and charged railroads with the failure of the farmers. Now the dealer between the farmer and the con- sumer is caught between the upper and the nether millstone, and the railroads are properly accred- ited with helping the farmer get his products cheaply to the consumer. And the politician is no longer esteemed as a go-between. The railroads and the farmer now co-operate to their mutual benefit at the expense of the consumer. The cost of food, fuel, clothing, and other items of living, has advanced since 1898, forty-four per 118 THE FUTURE CITIZEN cent. In other words, it requires 1.44 to-day to purchase the same goods that $1 would purchase then ; or what $1000 would buy then it takes $1440 to buy now. This means that incomes must be proportionately increased or the cost of living decreased. This increase in prices cannot be laid to transportation, for freight rates have been steadily reduced. The consumer has not reaped the benefit of this reduction in transportation rates. And railroad earnings are two hundred and forty million dollars less annually than in 1898. The cost of things is no less. Then the only other one to benefit by this state of things is the dealer or the seller. The sellers are the merchants and the farmers. A comparison of prices shows that the products of the farm will buy at least twice as much as they would thirty years ago. The reason for failure on the farm to-day is less be- cause of low prices than of extravagance, than of luxuriousness. It is true that these times heighten the sense that demands luxuries, such as were not required in pioneer times. Organiza- tion has increased the demand for luxuries and superfluities upon the part of the laboring classes that a half century ago were not dreamed of, did not enter the mind of man as a part of his pos- sibilities or wishes. So that our leading sin now is extravagance. People are prospering and lit- erally wasting their money, and too many are squandering a life that might be made serviceable to home and country. REMEDIAL EFFORTS 119 So many unfair forms of life exist now, and so many false sentiments are current, that it is no wonder young lives are shaped by them, and the future citizen imbibing a force that will alter the destiny of our people and affect the future of the state and the churches. TEMPEEANCE It enters not into our purpose here to discuss the success or failure of legal prohibition, but to indicate how to suppress the evil — a personal affair. There are those who say that prohibition, a sort of paternalism and sumptuary measure as ordinarily treated by legislators, is the only or at least the only present available and immediate remedy; and others say it has failed where tried. Perhaps no one questions the harmful effects of intemperance, its insidiousness, reaching and per- meating families, affecting the future of boys' lives, and therefore injuring city, government, home, and church. The effects of intemperance on the future citizen cannot be estimated in words. Not the theories of legislation or legislators, not remedies for the evil of the "wine when it is red," not the methods to exterminate intemperance by law and force, but how to save the child so that such remedies will be needless. The disgrace of Noah still disgraces men and women. Primarily abstemiousness is an individual mat- ter, each one directing himself in this as in his morals and beliefs and politics. Much said on the 120 THE FUTURE CITIZEN subject is pure sentiment and therefore of no prac- tical value. The truth seems to be that temper- ance is as much a matter of education as of legis- lation. As long as the habit of drink possesses men, they will have liquor to drink, law or no law. A help to temperance reformation may be gained by making the saloon impossible — the creature of the demand, the external thing, the symptom, so to speak, — but genuine temperance lies still be- yond that. This problem in cities is complex and insistent. Women orators have said, with some reason for the statement, that liquor is increasing the human riffraff, ragtag and bobtail, the law-breakers, gamblers, confidence men, female dishonor, boot- leggers, and bringing alcoholism upon children and hereditary intoxication. It is a precursor of pov- erty, ignorance, filth, wasted energies, premature death, insanity; of shadows, palsied hopes, "white slave" traffic. A good legend for a saloon mirror would be: "Crime and disease sold here. Our goods guaranteed to maim and destroy, even into the third and fourth generation." A measure practiced by a Scotch manufacturer was to increase wages ten per cent, to men who came to him at the end of the year and said they had been total abstainers. He said "it worked like a charm." Railroads are refusing to employ men who drink. Fewer and fewer are becoming the positions open to men with the drink habit. Con- vinced that legal prohibition is practically impos- REMEDIAL EFFORTS 121 sible in any large community, Cardinal Gibbons thinks that the best means to promote temperance is to limit the number of saloons by high license. For a second violation of a law like this he advised the revocation of the license. Any incessant vio- lation of a prohibitory law causes it to be viewed with disrespect. It is not that laws may not be enacted against this great evil, but what good have they done? State management of saloons has not been a success. The Norwegian plan of granting a commercial company a monopoly of the business has done good, but has not removed the cause for the saloons. In Denmark a policeman picks up the incapable drunk in the street, sends him in a cab to the station to sober up, then sends him home, and the bill of expenses for this care for the inebriate is presented to the owner of the saloon where the poor fellow got his last drink. In Turkey the punishment for the first offense is the bastinado; punishment is again inflicted for the second and third offenses; after that the of- fender becomes "privileged," and may be care- fully taken home by a policeman. It has been proposed by commissioners for the District of Columbia to grant power to all citizens to arrest any one seen staggering on the street. He may be cared for in an inebriate hospital, and the expenses for the hospital treatment must be borne by himself. It seems to go more radically toward this great evil, to teach the children sanitary science, and IftSt THE FUTURE CITIZEN the dangers of alcohol to health, life, prospects, society, government, and the church. The saving of individuals must have in it the view of society, and society cannot be saved that does not take account of individuals. But no system of society, no socialism, no laws, will prevent the mistakes of young men, who have full powers, every op- portunity, all inducements to manliness, but who will not be manly. Real reformation must begin under the skin, beneath the surface, in the mind and heart. RELIGION IN SCHOOLS state religion — no. Sectarian religion — no. Church doctrines and rules and interpretations of the Bible and rites and sacraments and theology — no. But where some sect interposes itself against religion in the schools, to heed the ob- jectors is, in a manner, to recognize their form of religion. Such open opposition puts discredit upon the Bible itself, and places it in the Index Expurgatorius. Our schools are non-sectarian, and still a divine product of the Bible. In exclud- ing it from the schools, we may, like the farmer, be nourishing a cold viper in our bosoms. If the Bible in the public schools should be thought to hurt some, let them not turn and try to injure the public schools. There is no law to forbid the establishment of their own schools. Congress can make no law "prohibiting the free exercise of religion," but sects strive to do it. No one cares to be forced into an acceptance of sectarian- REMEDIAL EFFORTS 123 ism, of course, or have the foundations of his gov- ernment removed. In view of this misguided op- position to the common schools, it is no wonder that so many have impossible, unaccountable, ir- responsible ideas. The hope is entertained that all classes of opin- ions and creeds will become so Americanized in time that taxation for any general purpose will not fall unwillingly on any one group of citizens who cannot subscribe to the general purpose of the tax. It is a difficult matter, however, to levy a gen- eral school tax that will not be offensive to the moral conscience of un-American institutions. It would be fatuous for the government to submit to the dictations of special groups of men, for that would mean their triumph. Even as it is they have little hesitancy in striving to sway the politi- cal mind to their limited purposes. A judge of the court has said : "This wiping out of the minds and hearts of the children of all reference to Christ is fearful to con- template. Our children are the hope of the coun- try, and it is our duty to inform them on matters religious. . . . It is a calamity that it should occur in a great country of eighty millions of people." Commercialism rules out the sense of helpful- ness. The day of service is passing; the day of selfishness is at hand. Johnny is taught that with a good arithmetic lesson, some day he may own a sweatshop of his own. Educational methods are 1«4 THE FUTURE CITIZEN becoming too individualistic, drilling into the head the idea of getting ahead, of using other means for that purpose, and destroying the human sense of service to others. The absence of Biblical in- fluence in our public schools will cause distress- ful injury to our national life. The moral force of the American school system is apparent in the opposition of certain religious sects, who regard them as militating against their special brand of morals, as interfering with their propagandism and power. In this fact is seen how well men perceive in the child the future citi- zen and religionist. The schools being so corre- lated to the home, it seems that schools ought also to teach morality. Those who maintain separate schools perceive the necessity of teaching religion in them, the chief object indeed of such schools. The primary object of the schools is to train up the future citizen for usefulness and success, not merely for material life, and to conquer his wayward emotions, and give better direction to his tendencies and aspirations and hopes, and stim- ulate him to right thinking, right feeling, right acting, — all there is of life. In its fullness it is to put conduct above career, character above call- ing, to make men fit for good citizenship. Said one educator: "For after all that has been said, the determining factor in life, that which makes it worthy or unworthy, a blessing or a curse to the individual and to society, is the choice between right and wrong, and conscienceless intelligence REMEDIAL EFFORTS 1«6 is more dangerous than conscienceless ignorance, because it means increased power, without in- creased protection against its abuse." Another man wrote : "A man is more than a citizen, a voter, an office holder. He is brother, husband, father, man, and has a spiritual nature which requires fullest training. . . . Every man is a con- stituent part of society, and has a present and eternal responsibility. Character within ourselves and fitness for service to others, are the great end of discipline, the great purpose of life's experi- ences, at home, in society, in church, in govern- ment." CHAPTER XIII CHILD LABOR After toiling and maintaining a child until it is fourteen, it is singular how suddenly the child's labor is discovered to be absolutely necessary to the "bread and butter" problem in some families. Socialists, in an extraordinary interest in child life, in ex parte energy as one in a weak cause, declare that the poor child, under present institu- tions, is but a by-product for the use of capital. To be sure, much of the sentiment is maudlin, excessive, hasty, but quite due to the seriousness of the subject. There are always enthusiasts, as there are poor. There have been federations of societies and committees interested in child labor abuses, for the better urging of the education and physical development of the child, so that it may meet the requirements of industrial efficiency and the demands of citizenship. The problem of living is the greatest thing in life, with most people, and has been since God cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. So parents, who permit their children to work for them, are more reprehensible than the employer. The abuse heaped on the employer is neither just nor brotherly, when an equal share of censure belongs to the unfeeling parent that leads his child and offers him as a sacrifice to the employer. No one is going into the parental home and drag the 126 CHILD LABOR 1^7 child to the factory or the mine. Labor unions have with malicious persistence heaped censure alone upon the manufacturer, but notwithstand- ing this injustice it produced a wholesome senti- ment and brought about laws restricting child labor in factories. The message of President Roosevelt, read to Congress, December, 1906, urged the passage of national laws to control or regulate child labor. President Taft has since made the same recommendation. Some child labor bills, — a sort of sop to Cerberus, — have been brought up in Congress. LEGAL ENACTMENTS The states have laws regulating child labor, but they in general hedge about the employer with fines and penalties that they seem to be the prod- uct of malice rather than of universal justice. The child and the parent are privileged characters un- der these laws, no penalties attaching to them, as if "Bidding the law make court'sy to their will." In general child labor laws fix the age limit at fourteen, below which no child shall be em- ployed for wages by any firm employing as many as five persons. And they limit the hours of labor and forbid the night work of all under sixteen. Investigators say that night work is ruining boys, especially the boys in the messenger service. In the shadow of darkness they are sent on ille- 128 THE FUTURE CITIZEN gitimate errands, sent to saloons for "half pints," to drug stores for opium, and worst of all, to dis- orderly houses with notes. Only in Russia are children allowed to work all night, just as they do in the United States. There is little hope of promotion to some better employment for the night-working boy, who has entered the "blind alley" or "dead end" of industry. And few of them learn trades, and are perforce recruits for the ranks of the unemployed and undesirables. Night work is a device for the moral and physical destruction of boyhood and future manhood. No child, or boy, should be permitted to enter the industrial world until he can read and write and cipher. There is great need of a general fed- eral law, defining the age, the hours of labor, health, educational tests, character of the employ- ment and its sanitary condition, and affixing penal- ties. The emancipation of childhood from the slavery of labor, and preserving its rights to a fair chance in life by law are demanding. Servitude should not be its price of birth. It should not be obliged to sell its birthright for a mess of pottage. Too often is it the case that the parent enters the gang of aristocratic non-producers, when his child be- comes a breadwinner. Indeed, child labor is dwarf- ing mentally, physically, socially, and can be justi- fied on no ground beyond immediate emergency. POVERTY The causes of poverty lie in the blood, in the CHILD LABOR 1189 training, in environment. Pauperism is due to: — 1. Extravagance. 2. Shiftlessness. S. Laziness. 4. Domestic infelicity. 5. Misfortune. 6. Low ideals. 7. Two sets of children in the same family. 8. Environment. 9. Atavism. 10. Ir religion. 11. Ignorance. 12. Intemperance. 13. Sickness. 14. Unsanitary conditions. 15. Incompetency. 16. Want of trade and skillfulness. 17. Lack of owvrage d^esprit^ or the spirit of labor. 18. Want of remunerative employment. And out of poverty comes disease, extremity^ poor citizenship. Honest poverty may not be a crime, but it is dreadfully unfortunate and incon- venient. It is not always the fault of the individ- ual, but it is so too frequently. It is not always to be overcome, because of outward circum- stances, misfortune, sickness, accidents, and un- fortunate ventures. It is a cause for gratitude that there is no law yet to compel one man to open his purse, engage in business, and employ another because he demands it. And position should be- 130 THE FUTURE CITIZEN long to no one who does not deserve it, after an investigation by a committee. CHAEITY Organized charity has in mind the immediate relief of distress, removal of the evils to health, correction of poor sanitary conditions, and the uplift from bad environments, not omitting to en- force the spirit of education in the young. Those who are somewhat ancient in their habits can only be corrected by death. The slums in New York are said to be the worst in the world. And Jacob Riis has not been able to remove the conditions of "the submerged tenth." The great charity worker of the seventeenth century was St. Vincent de Paul. Frederick Oza- man, founder of the St. Vincent de Paul society in 1836, showed the needs of co-operation in help- ing the poor back to normal self-support. The giving of food to needy school children, regardless of the parents' worthiness or unworthi- ness, cannot be justified for the reason that no parent should be guiltless of all responsibility for his progeny. Supposedly the majority of the children to receive such benefits would come from the streets, intemperate homes, and the otherwise improvident and shiftless. Doubtless underfeed- ing has as many sins to answer for as overfeeding. Who should do this sort of reform work and who is to pay for it, are questions not easily deter- mined. The debt for this work would be an afflic- CHILD LABOR 181 tion, if not a punishment, of the industrious and tax-paying citizen. A breakfastless boy is in no condition to study in the school room. Such a measure would open the sluice-way for imposture. Paris has tried something of this kind, and Lon- don has considered it with a view to its adoption. Hungary views every child as a government as- set, and endeavors to make him a valuable citizen. It is conceded in the United States that poor chil- dren should be assisted to attend school. WRONGS OF CHILD EMPLOYMENT There have been organized societies for the sup- pression of child labor through the creation of a public sentiment favoring such a step. They gave public lectures, sent out statistics, and otherwise informed the public about it. Since 1885 there has been an increase, speaking generally, of fifty per cent, in population and one hundred per cent, in child labor. The "bitter cry of the poor chil- dren," in the nature of things, militates against good citizenship. He who purchases the products of child labor, must not say the guilt lies entirely at the door of the "inhuman octopus," or the low- wage manufacturer, or the want of legal enact- ments. The assertion, on the other hand, that nothing must interfere with business, that jugger- naut of the age, is no less heartless than it is un- sound. There is no play for the child of the mill, no time for reading and recreation, no cultivated gar- 132 THE FUTURE CITIZEN dens, no home comforts, no time for school, and it becomes prematurely old. Young mothers are there, with a child misbegotten, misborn, under- sized, feeble, marked with hereditary weakness, handicapped for life. They will be less men than their fathers, and will not be able to fight Bunker Hills and Getty sburgs. The flabby, scrawny, weak-eyed factory population, their lot is seem- ingly hopeless. The spirit of commercialism has them like an obsession. The introduction of ma- chinery, steam and electricity has made child labor possible. Nearly two millions of children under fourteen are at work in the factories of the United States, living daily in the sight of the greed of the commercial spirit, and unable to obtain an under- standing of the benefits of higher citizenship and the love of God ! Stunted by early, untimely labor, drudging in the mill, in the factory, in the mine, they are robbed of the best good of life. Parents, can you not see, will you not see, this ruin inflicted on your own flesh and blood ! The corrupt atmo- sphere of their associates, the awful things they hear, the temptations that come to them, the sug- gestion of the immoral and the low, where are they drifting. This is not sentiment, it is truth. Another thing. The boy laborer is taught too soon to strive for personal success and personal triumph, which is a form of heartless selfishness that brings injury and injustice to others. He does not see the value of character development and of human brotherhood. CHILD LABOR 188 Sometimes they come to think society their nat- ural enemy, and because it is stronger than they are is therefore to be shimned and escaped. He makes a Pariah of himself. That boy needs the honest touch of human fellowship and the guidance of a wise and holy hand. He should not become a derelict for the want of attention and friends. Out of such come the outcasts, the skum, and the recidivists. God save the boys. They make men. CHAPTER XIV THE AMERICAN SPIRIT There are not only false sentiments of life and religion and politics that lead astray, but also false theories of philosophy and business and aims that inoculate the life of a man and spoil his use- fulness. They are the results of environment and disposition, are finite conclusions that produce their consequent erroneous attitude toward exist- ing conditions, are bad thinking that cause bad conduct and affect manhood and citizenship. Travelers, not from Altruria, but from abroad, have written some true criticisms of the American spirit and some partial ones. Nothing human is perfect, and therefore has its critics. For one thing it is different from the Old World ideals and policies and methods, and one coming out of dif- ferent surroundings may see something to tell us for our good and he may be so overwhelmed at its newness that he can see only what impresses his mental organization most. IS IT IDEAMSM OR MATERIALISM Professor G. Ferrero, the keen-sighted Italian, thinks that idealism, not materialism, is a note of the American life of the present period, — less of the utilitarian and practical spirit than is sup- posed by the Old World. He thought America "one of the most mystical countries of our epoch." And he could not fail to see the "erroneous activity 134 THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 135 that spent fabulous sums on behalf of chimerical ideals." But he said this of the rich, not of the masses. Others have seen but a short epoch for the phenomenal spirit that actuates the American commercial and social life. In a remarkable speech recently Sir Thomas Dewar, an English knight, said in a toast, that the United States is "the greatest republic the world has ever seen, and the greatest empire the world has ever seen. The most sanguine dreams could not have foretold what a stern and solemn fact is the position of the great republic which we see to-day, and no man can prophesy the effect of an- other generation of evolution and progress. The unbounded enterprise and enthusiasm and energy of the American citizen have already staggered the world in the development of the unlimited re- sources of the unbounded richness of that im- mense country. Education begins after you have left school, and in my visits to that country every two years my astonishment is stirred within me at the enormous advance it is making. Their democratic ways are such that every citizen seems to work for the welfare of the state, and the first and foremost ambition is 'our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country,' governed by one who has risen from the people and administered by constitutional freedom. Coun- tries of the past have gone by steps and starts, but the progress of the United States has been one triumphant rush into prosperity, which every 186 THE FUTURE CITIZEN one must admit and admire, and the consensus of all that is represented by the White House and the wide selection of the state in the all-powerful president taking his position among the countries of the world." The converse of this, as it might seem, but which in fact is an endorsement of it, is the opin- ion of a German judge. He declares that "Amer- ica is a peril not only for England and Germany, but for all Europe, to which the yellow peril is al- together secondary. Our imperial cousins in America are the greater danger. As the dollar is bigger, it will annihilate the shilling and the mark, unless Europe sets up its own Monroe doctrine, 'Europe for Europeans.' " It was his opinion that eventually all Europe, including England, must combine in an economic alliance, or otherwise America will conquer the world in an economic struggle and exhaust Europe. He was for trade dominion for Europe against their dangerous rival, America, who was likely to gain the trade dom- ination of the world. The world is beginning to dread the mighty magic growth of the United States, its restlessness and strength, its physical and mental forces. ALARM AT OUR PUBLIC DEBT Friends within our own border express alarm at our rapid increase in the public debt, national, state, county and municipal. It is true we are living in an age of world-wide financial delirium. THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 137 and we have become extravagant, scarcely desir- ing economy. Up to the time of the Spanish- American war and the inception of the Panama canal work, the public debt decreased, but since then it has increased. This is due to the new American spirit. It has been concealed under the polite fiction of "certificates of indebtedness" to cover treasury deficits. Taking no account of the debts of countries, municipalities and school dis- tricts, the aggregate debt of all the states and ter- ritories, less sinking fund assets, in 1880 was $274,745,772; in 1890 it was $211,210,487, and twelve years later, in 1902, it was $234,908,873. For the ten-year period the decrease was 23.1 per cent., and the increase for the twelve-year period was 11.2 per cent. As a result of this increase, one economist asserts that the price of foodstuffs is from 10 to 70 per cent, more than ten years ago. The ordinary expenses of the government between the years 1890 and 1898 increased more than 121 per cent., and between 1898 and 1909 increased more than 201 per cent. Now, it ap- pears that public opinion takes no interest in na- tional economy, and encourages the hand to dip any length in the public treasury for an appropri- ation for local interests. It would be well, in order to save the public moneys, to place the public ex- penditures in the care of a board who would see that all expenses were made on a purely business basis. All measures should be taken to guard against a waste of the public's money ; there should 188 THE FUTURE CITIZEN be a conservation of the national capital. The immense increase in the wealth of the world has developed a sentiment that the supply of capital is inexhaustible, and it has stimulated the spirit of mankind and diverted wealth from productive to unproductive uses. These national financial facts aifect the state of the future citizen. IS THE DAY OF PAETY BOSSES PAST The government, it is plain, is less responsible for our legislative and financial sins than party bosses. It is predicted that the American public will soon see and grow tired of party rule, and in their awakening will overthrow party domina- tion and choose men to public office on their per- sonal merit, — ^the office seek the man. Boss rule should end, no doubt, for the results are not satis- factory. But the old always dies hard. There is no doubt but boss rule in politics affects the public sense of honor, and in so far licenses greed and graft. It is in a degree qualifying the future citizen to understand less the moral obliquities of peculation and the reproach that should attach to one who fails in doing what honor commands him to do. WHIMS OF POPULAR CLAMOR Excellent as is the work of the press, and great as is the part it is doing for the American citizen, it is regrettable that it has the fault of "giving the public what it wants." In doing this the press THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 139 subjects itself to the accusation of catering to the whims of popular clamor. The public should be led, not followed, if the best good is to be derived from the attitude and influence of a press in form- ing the uneducated public. This great medium of information has grown opinionless, or else it merely gives a few boneless ideas, under the eye of policy or the fear of financial injury. Men competent to form conclusions are lamenting that the press, the daily press, is in the business for the money there is in it, — dominated by commercial- ism, — and they are making a plea for cleaner, more fearless, more honest journalism. The criti- cism is not directed at its literary character, but at its truculent spirit. It has ceased to be a "moulder of public opinion," in the highest sense, and is putty in the hands of its commercial master. No one is more conscious of this serious fact than the brainy men themselves directing the concern. They dislike the attitude of being a beggar at the door of patronage, a thing for charity from the advertising world, a thing that can be bribed to silence for money. In the "stony stare" of business its independence van- ishes, and for this reason it has lost its fearless independence and its former high caste. It has become simply a "reflector" of what the public does and thinks. Its yellow streak is borrowed from the public. Hence historians will seek its columns, not for great ideas, but for its reflection of the public spirit of the hour, which is chiefly 140 THE FUTURE CITIZEN a burden of human frailties rather than of human excellences. The best men of the press are saying to themselves the lamentation of Cardinal Wolsey. It would be manifestly unfair to say it has no ex- cellences, that it is hopelessly bad, or that the pen- dulum will not swing back again in no far-off future. All will admit, and newspaper men them- selves the first, that it is not now at its best. A press that sets class against class, or that gives in its news columns methods of crime to the young, or that suppresses or perverts facts for money or for policy, or that is afraid to express itself, or that caters to wealth, is in no sense to be wholly approved. The press of that character is not doing its best to form superior future citizens. It needs no prophetic eye to see what will result from such causes. AS OTHERS SEE US Perhaps the novelist was nearly correct when he made an Englishman say of us that it is a mis- take for the English to take interest in us, for the reason that we are noisy, without real confidence in ourselves, restless and merely imitative instead of inventive. This was not meant to apply in a material sense. The fact is that this great Ameri- can people, about whom so many travelers write notes, is not given very seriously to the study of the great questions of public policy and the intri- cate problems of administration that must of necessity arise under a republican form of govern- THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 141 ment. Into the very blood of the young man shoald be instilled — "The austere virtues, strong to save; The honor, proof of place or gold. The manhood never bought nor sold'* — the true American spirit. Education is advancing at the cost of culture and refinement and good taste. The life within is one thing and the flesh on the bones is another. GOVERNMENT AFFECTS CHARACTER The people controlled by imperialism are no happier than the people torn by anarchy. The national character can only be estimated by con- sidering the whole body of the people, in all their ingoings and outgoings. In view of the astound- ing municipal corruptions that have come to light in the last few years, it is not far amiss to say that public spirit and national pride are at a low ebb. Corruption rots public enterprise and abuses pub- lic morals and harms private character. Incor- ruptible, fearless, honest, faithful men there are, but the offices are filled commonly with place seek- ers, and this fact is not good evidence of a fit man for the place. The demands of administration grow, but human capacities and facilities remain unchanged, and opportunities to betray the inter- ests of the people multiply as the burdens of gov- ernment increase. The corruptions of the hour will not always continue, we have the faith to say. 14a THE FUTURE CITIZEN The allegation is made that the government concerns itself more with the material things of life, than with the peace and harmony of the fam- ily. This is true in part, but the laws enacted by the lawmakers apply to the protection of person and family and property, and in so far they pro- mote peace and success and general welfare. In our land all vital governmental principles have their basis in the Bible, and for this all respectable citizens rejoice. THE COMMERCIAL SPIRIT The dominant note in this age is business. If business demands the sacrifice upon the altar of mammon of men, and even friends, then the sacri- fice is made. Everything must give way to busi- ness. It is business, not friends that occupies the mind of man now. Commercialism is competition, and competition is the survival of the fittest. Com- mercialism is pure materialism and laughs at sen- timent and all the poetic beauties of the past that have entered into and helped to shape men into what they are. And the position of the church, that "character-building is the greatest thing in the world," that character is the man, is looked upon by commercialism as the idle fancy of dream- ers. The personal element is eliminated by busi- ness. It is useless, it seems, to originate phrases against business, for "business and barbarism" are unmoved by them. The utilitarian idea is the atlas of modern society. There are no more Louis THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 143 Agassizs to say they "have no time to make money." It is true money has its place, is a man's friend, and is a mighty agent for good if rightly applied. Riches do indeed grant privileges that poverty denies. Often social poverty, quantitative and qualitative, attends the exclusiveness that wealth imposes, despite the supposed benefits granted by its possession. SOULLESS BUSINESS Personal touch becomes less and less possible as a business concern or corporation increases its output and adds to the number of its laboring force. One who in private life would despise snob- bishness and servility, in business or politics will cringe to the stronger for the sake of his personal advantage. Both business and politics will un- man him. And then, too, we come to hate the suc- cessful man, for no reason than that he is suc- cessful. Business hardens, intensifies the forces in a man that are exercised for the accumulation of wealth, and smothers out his sense of human sympathy and helpfulness. It gives rise to the classification of the poor and the rich, and causes class hatred. It is material in its aims, and height- ens a disregard for the interests of others. It is selfish ; it is unkind. Our eternal happiness, or our everlasting misery develop around the smallest word in the English language, — the pronoun I. Corporations, soul- less, use the corporate We. Perhaps it is unpalat- 144 THE FUTURE CITIZEN able to say that both church and college classes are as conscienceless as the laboring class, or the corporate class. The development of the class through soulless business is one of the central dan- gers of the day. Classes cannot exist together in peace. Manifestly human' intellectual force is drifting toward what is corporate, collected, cen- tralized, to the threatened submergence of the per- sonal "I myself." In his address in Paris, Colonel Roosevelt advised the cultivation of what he called "the commonplace, every-day qualities and vir- tues." He said "every one of us needs a helping hand now and then." In his speech in Berlin a little afterward he said: "When men get too com- fortable and lead too luxurious lives, there is al- ways danger lest the softness eat like an acid into their manliness of fiber." IS THERE A REMEDY A man cannot dissociate his morals and his busi- ness, whatever he may say to soothe his conscience, for he can't escape the effects of his life lived nor the results of his thinking. What does this atti- tude of mind and heart mean.'^ For one thing it is materializing man, and the future citizen will start where the present one leaves off and go on and bring disaster on the finer human excellence, cheapening and coarsening themselves. The economic interpretation of history com- pletely satisfies the man "whose God is the belly," and who has never learned that "man shall not live THE AMERICAN SPIRIT 145 by bread alone." The Great Teacher said: "Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for the body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the food, and the body than the raiment?" This philosophy is correct. Morals and ethics have had much to do with the rise and fall of nations. No economic system or code of laws can save a nation whose people do not think and live aright. It is not to be disputed that we as a people are making prog- ress and that we are not drifting wholly to the bad. No human economic system can escape the limita- tions of finite conception, and hence no system of sociology can supplant the divine plan of human life; — ^humility, helpfulness, sacrifice, love. As we live, we die. "Through poverty many have sinned; and he that seeketh to be enriched, turneth away his eye. As a stake sticketh fast in the midst of the joining of stones, so also in the midst of buying and sell- ing, sin shall stick fast." Ecclesiasticus 27:1,2. CHAPTER XV SOCIALISM One of the coming problems is socialism, and already its leavening power is seen in the increas- ing converts to its doctrines. Its insidious effect upon the young, soon to be the future citizens, is scarcely commensurable at present. It has bobbed up as one of the interminable topics, and it is not needful to enter at length upon it here. A few condensed statements will suffice. Putting aside mincing words, considered in its entirety it is little more than an unwarranted theory exploited till it has come to be believed in by the exploiters themselves and by others to whom any "change" would be acceptable. It is true the trend of thought now among the common people is toward socialism, due to the propagandism of this political cult, and the want of time and thought to investigate by the new adherents. Some- how they take it to mean a "division of the spoils" or property, and to them the division would be a momentary but illusory blessing. An imprac- ticable, delusive phase of this theory lies in its en- tire freedom from the limitations of reality and experience, being supported by no precedents of history, legislation, nation-building. All their writing has the color of idealism, the argument of the speculative. It claims to be a system of self-help for each and every one; aims to over- 146 SOCIALISM 147 throw the present system of commercialism and capitalism, of the markets, of the wage system, of competition, of individualism; and in fact it might also claim that it is a displacement of the need for prayer and faith in the Divinity. En- thusiasts assert it is coming and will prevail; but if it should, in the destiny of all finite things it will go again for something else, — for restless, finite man produces nothing perfect. '% A THREAT In any true analysis of the motive for advocat- ing such a theory, it is seen that it is a threat by disgruntles and by exploiters of self striking at moneyed interests. Thus it operates as a check on the present ways of social institutions, a break on individual progress, a counter-irritant for the present national government. It is a com- pulsory system, requiring all private property to be sequestered to the state, and rendering it impos- sible for any one to possess anything, except may- be in a most niggardly and restricted sense. Busi- ness fears the destructive ism. It is not a Utopia, and far short of a millennium. It professes to have no bosses, but in rerum natura it uses the word we. They propose to squelch large corpora- tions by a tax that will amount to confiscation eventually, — a sort of legal pillaging in the name and interest of the state, — and give employment to the unwillingly idle. And this sort of thing they misbrand "a little step toward a higher phase 148 THE FUTURE CITIZEN of civilization." (Not all changes are reforms, be it understood, nor all so-called reforms wise.) Hence, this attitude defined means that its advo- cates in their thriftlessness are begging paupers, combining for power and for the overthrow of the present conditions that induce individual thrifti- ness and discourage shiftlessness. The seed of discontent planted by this selfish system will never be removed by their own theory of government. One born with a certain character, no government can recreate it. ITS AIMS This plan of universal ownership by a govern- ment trust denies the right of private ownership and "predatory wealth" (a phrase that sounds sweet and picturesque to them), and rejects all private concentration of whatever kind. Denying concentration, yet in fact building up one of the most stupendous trusts the mind of man can con- ceive of — government ownership and government trust. The promoters of this thing have toned down its original destructive tendencies into terms of mildness without altering its spirit, — a suppres- sion of its dangerous tendencies to present needs. It now speaks of its initiative steps, for policy's sake. The idea of collectivism for individualism, as a corrector of all human ills (ills that must neces- sarily exist according to the law of compensa- tion), is not up to the claims made for it. The regulation of the output of production and of dis- SOCIALISM 149 tribution tends to degrade and deteriorate human character and diminish human efforts. A co-op- erative commonwealth is visionary, impracticable. To secure power and concentrated effort these theorists place the emphasis upon the ballot and less upon anarchistic force, a thing held in reserve. History records the failure of all entirely co-op- erative plans ever attempted. The theory is that socialism will institute, willy-nilly, hedonism. No — not while men are men and God's plan of duality prevails. A man can as easily run away from himself, leave his frame of mind behind by travel- ing over the world, as be supremely happy in his present form of ego, of self-centered human na- ture. It is a fundamental fact that man is a com- plex being, and has both a self and a non-self side. To attain the best, these elements must have an even balance and harmony, or disaster will follow. In a sociologic sense these dual elements are con- centration and individualism, two unchangable elements. Every sane man is a responsible agent first, but the visions of the socialists would make him an automaton, the instrument of an outside will. It is a common truism that man is respon- sible to himself and to society. This he can't be as the agent of an organization, the puppet of a superior external interest. GENERAL EFFECT OF SOCIALISM Now, robbery has existed since the time of Achan, and perhaps in one way or another always 150 THE FUTURE CITIZEN will exist. Peculation and taxes in some form go on. Socialism is but legalized robbery of the riches of individual effort, for the purpose of dis- sipating it like a prodigal to all. When all is dis- tributed then — the deluge. It takes, all told and last told, very fluent definitions, but it means after all, a general levelling somehow, a professed equal- ity of material welfare, ignoring the moral and mental best good of all. It professes to bequeath the best good through equality and general level- ing. As before said it has been found imprac- ticable under every condition and test ever tried, and doesn't accord with the wishes and nature of people in mass association, for individuality can- not be suppressed. It is still a fundamental ele- ment of man. It seems not to be far from the truth to say that socialism, in the first instance, is a birth of hysterical discontent, — a neurotic phil- osophy. It is a contradiction of itself, for its sole purpose is the gaining of more money and store for the individual, which it disclaims concern for in its philanthropic efforts for the conscienceless mass as a unit. It is against opportunism, legal- ism, individualism, and is mass centralism. Now, life itself is a question of temperament, of temper, of disposition, of quality of spirit, not of place or locality or condition. So this well-padded theory is wrong and needless. One of its fine- spun issues is that the competitive system causes poverty, which it proposes to abolish, as well as to obviate the need of labor. SOCIALISM 151 A GIGANTIC TEUST The one primary aim of socialism, as it is taught to-day (it may be different to-morrow), is government ownership of public utilities, of all means of production, — a trust of stupendous mag- nitude, the full scope of which is not seen by its advocates, however assertive they may be in their views of it. It professes that government owner- ship is the only possible way to have the co-opera- tive system in its best effects. If, as these politi- cal doctrinaires define it, "a trust is a predatory system, a receiver of stolen goods," what then must their planned remedy be.'' We see that after all, this system is but a form of governmental re- lief, instead of an effort at the reformation of the man. Now, no law is sane that is founded on suspicion. And this system lays all sorts of claims on the assumption that present conditions are all wrong, — ^a sort of wholesale denunciation of things that don't accord with itself. It is itself the outcome of the liberty it would destroy, and the possibility of the human personal endeavor stimulated by personal ownership which it would suppress, — a sort of political suicide. It repudiates the com- petitive system, a stimulus to individual effort, on the ground that it is strife and makes trusts and investments possible and gives employment to men by the wage system. The claim is that it would give a better distribution of wealth, omitting to outline a better means for the distribution of 152 THE FUTURE CITIZEN energy and personal effort. Indeed it is a taxa- tion upon and punishment of personal energy and responsibility, and a substitution of mass energy and responsibility. It offers no inducements to personal skill and fails to regard the divergencies of personality. It would make law supreme and interrupt Providence in its manifestation through man's make-up; violate the privilege of contract and coerce men to mass interests. EQUALITY Since the well-organized propagandism for the distribution of socialistic literature, it is needless to define the materialistic phase of the system, which, in general terms, means equality of distri- bution of the material things of life, equality of "chance," of choice, of results, of nature's oppor- tunities ; omitting equality of personal powers, of effort, of production, of physical and mental ca- pabilities, of religion, of energies, of birth force, of talents, of labor; coercing the shrewd personal individuality to the level of incompetents and de- fectives and lazy; denying him the right of exer- cise of his God-given abilities, and making him a cog in a machine; lowering his privileges and opportunities, his rights divine to the level of mass rights and thoughts, and levelling life to a material plane. But the law of heredity is averse to equal- ity, to dead levels, to Procrustean parallelisms or correspondence, and ignores equality of minds and hearts and personal forces and statures and color SOCIALISM 153 of eyes. The inequality of the division of things as they are now is more an evidence of the inequal- ity of personal powers than of errors in the condi- tions of men and the distribution of wealth and products. The demand for the equal distribution of material things omits to consider the equality of effort and of production. A DIVISION OF SAVINGS The whole scheme seems to see no further than a "divy" of savings. One laborer saved a remnant of his earnings, leaving off some of the enjoy- ments that another laborer got by spending all his wages. Both received equal wages, — ^that far cor- responding with the socialistic view. But while the incomes were equal, the enjoyments were not equal because the expenditures were unequal and the character for enjoyments were unequal. And now ignoring the fact that the spendthrift had the enjoyments that the economizer had not, — ignor- ing this inequality and making no provision for remedying the injustice, — they say he is a robber, or he would have no more than they do, and de- mand, without justice or reason, a share of his sav- ings. They spent their own earnings, and now they want to spend a part of the other man's ; want a division again for more enjoyment. They are not willing themselves to divide with the other either wages or enjoyments. Now equality, in any material sense, is inequal- ity, in this : It gives to one who doesn't deserve it. 164 THE FUTURE CITIZEN or can't earn it, an equal share with every other one, rewarding the lazy and the drunkard and the one with bad habits, and robbing the deserving, energetic, leaving him only an equal remainder. The active one gets only an average individual part, based on mass effort. There is no estimate made of worth, energy, force, skill, — only on units in a mass, — a more soulless method than that of any corporate concern. The fundamental contra- diction between equality of possessions and equal- ity of capacity will always remain. More social equality demands more individual equality, not more purse equality. And legal equality, unfortunately maybe, cannot compensate for physiological and psychological inequality. Variety, not equality, is indeed written in all nature by the Creator. The restlessness and strenuous- ness of this age, planning laws and formulas to bring about equality (of what.?) will not precipi- tate the millennium upon an unsuspecting public. The scheme seems to be an appeal to government and environment to correct the moral and mental and physical and health inequalities. The hard- ships imposed by the Edenic curse cannot be re- moved, for God is unalterable. There should be no rule by groups, or by bosses, or by men of false ideas. This political scheme is an issue respecting the institution of PRIVATE PROPEETY It is a denial of the prescriptive and legal right SOCIALISM 165 to property, a menace to vested interests. The right to property is the right to life, for when living is delegated to superior state interests there is no bond of guarantee that it will be forthcom- ing. Hence, the right of man to private owner- ship of property is a natural right founded on the laws of nature. Necessity, as per Blackstone for one, begets man's claim to personal ownership, and the state should second nature and protect this claim from infringement. For man's existence is anterior to state, which is but his creature. Hence, it can create no rights, only define them. Destroy the right of personal diligence, and stagnation en- sues. Toil is not for pleasure, but out of neces- sity. The state cannot occupy the place of the father, for the family is a social unit that precedes the state. No ideal system of affairs can induce men to toil without compensation. The abolition of rent, interest, and profit cannot obviate the necessity for toil. The future citizen saturated with such sentiments has the seed of revolution in him. CHAPTER XVI LABOR It is by no means certain that labor organiza- tions should be immune and exempt from criticism. They are also human. They deserve no more fa- vors, and should have no less, than any other class of men. The assumption that any human plan can remedy all ills of the body politic and bring universal peace is too broad, and at once invites suspicion. After many years of active organization discus- sion pro and con has presented every phase of the "labor problem," and the effort of ambitious labor to gain dominance in business industries and dic- tatorial powers in governmental affairs has failed utterly, as it should. Many have questioned the competency of labor to do what it had aspired and undertaken to do. And now the pendulum is swinging back, and the "open shop," the policy of the counter organizations that labor provoked into existence for self-defense, is advocated as against the "closed shop," the policy of labor. Labor has had its triumphant hour of supremacy, through self-exploitation, and now must find its proper niche in the affairs of men. Opposing or- ganizations of employers have brought labor unions to a "sober second thought," much to the peace of business and the comfort of the innocent public. 156 LABOR 157 WORK AND HAPPINESS Labor is an evil, or God would not have im- posed it on man as a punishment for his trans- gression in the Garden of Eden. Though Ruskin believed "God intended every man to be happy in his work," yet his idea is at variance with man's sense of what punishment means, — an evil for re- forming the culprit and for protecting the inno- cent. The finite Ruskin said a man would be happy in his work if he was fitted for it, if he did not do much of it, and if he had a sense of success in it. Now these qualifications will give but a relative degree of pleasure in work. For no one likes to work for work's sake. The fatigue toxin is not a cause of happiness, except in a reflective manner. That laziness is called a curable malady by the medical "experts," we are made to under- stand that a man can be doctored into happiness by curing his dislike for work. Again, strikes evince a dislike for work, and few would be guilty of working if necessity did not force it upon them. If men loved to work there would be no idlers, and therefore not enough work to go round. Strange as it may sound, toilers would have to be forced to quit. Since the angry Edenic decree, it is the fate of man to have to toil. The earth, God's gift to man, must be tilled to yield a crop. Apostrophis- ing labor a writer makes it say — "Those who enlist in my ranks shall possess Fruits of my golden estate : 158 THE FUTURE CITIZEN An of the millions who toil I will bless ; They shall enjoy who create. Labor shall render rewards to her own, ("' After God's equable plan; i They are the truest nobiUty knownA - Who render service to man. ^ Onward and upward I march to the height ; There are my standards unfurled. Over them blazoned this legend of light : Labor that conquers the world." THE LABOR MOVEMENT The labor movement is an agitation, and we are not aware that it has any other ground for its existence than utility and selfishness. It has never been told us that labor superseded the church in teaching morals and purity to the peo- ple. As a movement looking after material things, it claims that by reflex action man will be benefited socially and spiritually, — that is, the manual laborer. The activities of business are developing a cos- mopolitanism that makes men restless, unsettled, nervous. Out of this also comes aspiration be- yond human capacity, which necessarily precipi- tates discontent and failure. These things have place among the causes of decline in men. The poor man grows hard and bitter and peevishly stubborn, and his children imbibe his spirit. Faith goes with honorable poverty, ego with haughty riches. It has been often said that no body of men can legislate contentment into a man or selfishness out of him. LABOR 169 The public is tired of the empiricism and im- perialism of labor movements, and since it has dwindled into a political organization for selfish ends, its doom is sealed. Labor unions are grouchers and teach others to grouch and grow discontented and unhappy. There is no silver lining to their cloud of anger at capital. They are unjustly exercised about non-unionism and are rebellious against nature, and natural con- ditions, and the God-curse of the sweat of the face. They are excessively unhappy because there is a kingdom of starch and soap. TRUE INWARDNESS OF THE MOVEMENT Labor unions, in a way, curse the character of the person, who surrenders his liberty and be- comes a slave of them, and are responsible for much of the discontent and corruption of the day. They are in the first place antagonistic and aggressive. In the second place they are dis- criminating, classifying men as union and non- union or "scabs." And if we may speak analyt- ically and not antagonistically, we read further that the labor unions want: — 1. Higher wages (and hard times). 2. Less hours of labor (and better opportu- nities for something else). 3. Equal opportunities for all (not to eat, to be sure, but to work). 4. Power to compel (not to be compelled). 5. More amusements (less concern for the general welfare). 160 THE FUTURE CITIZEN 6. Less individual accumulations (which would seem to mean fewer opportunities to labor). 7. Better conditions (not better hearts). 8. Its share (not better service). 9. Co-operation (not social uplift). 10. Union domination (not better men). In re injunctions and courts The labor element holds itself in very readiness to be the censor in ordinary of all economic con- ditions, to reprobate capital and kill the goose that lays the golden ^gg without being able to see what they are doing, or to supply another. With unskilled hesitation they charge corruption on law-makers because the special class laws they demand are not put upon the statute books. They aver the decision of courts are money-made, and choose to consider themselves fearfully in- jured if court decisions are averse to them. And with malignant emphasis they talk of im- peaching courts, and otherwise show their insub- ordination to law. Thus they are not without a breath of suspicion against them for corrupting the judgment and wisdom of youths, not as Soc- rates did, but by example and purposes. Charges without submitted proof are flung against the highest as well as the lowest officials of the coun- try, and all grades between. Especially are in- junction proceedings denounced, because they in- terrupt violence to private property. It is in truth a shame that any property holder has to LABOR 161 appeal to courts for injunctions to restrain labor leaders from murder and violence. On the other hand it ought not to require Federal injunctions to lie against combinations of capital to prevent their plundering the people. Now, no man or condition is cured by law, though this idiotic no- tion is common among the people. The cause and cure for these evils lie only in the hearts of the people, and not on the pages of the statute books. Until labor unions were made responsible to law, violence was rampant and much foolish, fatuous sacrifice of property made, as some of the inglo- rious and meaningless strikes attest. And when courts instituted proceedings against them, the legal decrees were called "difficulties and hard- ships" placed discriminatingly upon labor. Then courts were insulted and their proceedings were called government by injunction and centralized despotism, and the end of the liberty of the "peo- pie" (unions, meaning) had come. The courts, as they said, were institutions for oppressing the weak to favor the strong. They defied the courts, disregarded their mandates in contempt of au- thority and law, fell into the hands of officers and were sent to jail after fair trial, and then, posing as martyrs, reproached everything that had for its object law and order. They were neither law abiding nor willing to submit to trial for their of- fenses, yet proclaiming inconsistently to be great devotees of law and peace. They likened them- selves to Christ, who was persecuted for right- 162 THE FUTURE CITIZEN eousness' sake, and talked loftily of the Constitu- tion and the people (unions, meaning), the source of law and power. They demanded "freedom of action," the "right of boycott," primary and sec- ondary, the right to proscribe business houses by listing them as "firms they did not patronize," and if judges interposed they were "despotic usurpers" bribed by plutocrats. Such a position naturally gave rise to the conclusion that they favored violence and rapine, and were infected with barbarism and savagery. But, the law is not inimical to labor, being universal in its applica- tion to lawbreakers, and is indeed more speedily applied to corporations when they break it, for they command no public sympathy. Courts are not infallible, though men of wisdom and the most level-headed judgment sit upon the bench. In- junctions are merely court orders to interdict op- pression and distraint while considering the mer- its of the case. In opposition to "property rights," the cause for all this legal activity is not far to seek. All this seems to be rank heresy from the labor standpoint, but yet its truth is apparent. LABOR BOYCOTT The acme of foolishness was reached when a labor union in St. Louis warned President Taft, April 26, 1910, not to attend a baseball game in that city, because the St. Louis club had decided the Cleveland club was "unfair." This command LABOR 163 to the President bore a penalty of $5 for viola- tion thereof. The right to do this came through the "honorary membership" thrust upon him by some union. The Cleveland club came on the expurgatorius or unfair list because it employed for some trifling bit of work non-union men. There is no justification of violence or a boycott, that is un-American, barbarous, inhuman, repul- sive. It breeds rancorous bitterness between men and arouses murderous, undying hate. It de- stroys valuations, property, business, and dis- turbs the innocent but afflicted public. It is an evil and that continually and doesn't comport with that greatest of all commands, love thy neighbor as thyself, and bears no commendation in it of the party employing such a measure brought down from man's savage state. It is in utter antagonism of the principles of free govern- ment and the spirit of our forefathers who gave their lives that we might have civil liberty and protection from the crimes of ignorance. Those who even think of employing it only advertise their incompetency to manage the liberties of the people, should they be trusted with positions of public trust. And then again, why should labor strive to enforce sympathy and compel aid, in- stead of proceeding in the manly way to merit and achieve it! THE POWERS THAT BE The conclusion of the whole matter is found in Romans 13th, where obedience "to the higher 164 THE FUTURE CITIZEN powers" is enjoined, "for there is no power but of God." Paul observes further in this connec- tion that rulers are no terror to the law-abiding, only to the evil doer. All rulers are ministers of God for good or for wrath. The error lies not in the ruler, but in the people, whom the ruler chas- tises at God's command. When writing to Titus (3:1) Paul presented the same advice, "to be in subjection to rulers, to authorities, to be obedi- ent." Again to the Hebrews (13:17) he in- structed them to "obey them that have the rule over you, and submit to them." James (3:3) illustrated the same idea when he spoke of putting "horses' bridles into their mouths" to guide them. Now this is good philosophy, for reformation be- longs to the sinner as his duty to himself, and not first to seek to reform the other fellow. Refor- mation, like charity, should begin at home, and like the obedience of Christ to the authorities, even to death, radiate it out upon others by ex- ample. Good people are not rebellious. It is useless to kick against the pricks, for fate is of God. On the other hand Moses (Exodus 23: 1 to 9) tells judges not to oppress any one unjustly. As to the question when rebellion is permissible and the sufficiency of the causes for it, it is unset- tled. It would seem that the modem thought is that there are no sufficient causes for the injured party itself to determine upon, for the time is at hand for arbitration by some permanent interna- tional court. LABOR 166 ABOLISH POVERTY He who is born poor will die poor, is a saying. Moreover, it is only three generations from shirt- sleeves to shirtsleeves. "For the poor shall never cease out of the land." (Deuteronomy 15:11.) The wearing out of life in a ceaseless struggle to "lay up for the children" is a foolish material- istic idea. If they are not competent to earn a living and solve the problem of life somehow, they deserve to die the death, for they are not worth keeping alive. Your riches destroy too fre- quently your child, and before your accumula- tions are dissipated, as they surely will be, your own flesh and blood have been brought to pre- mature death, mere worthless trash, ruined by luxury and riches. Moreover, no one is bound to work for another to spend in riotous living. He certainly can spend his earnings more dis- creetly than one who has never earned a dollar and therefore knows not its worth. Poverty cannot be abolished, any more than can its converse, riches. These two are relative, and will always remain, under the law of oppo- sites. Parents of paupers, degenerates, defectives and criminals must first be removed, or disallowed to produce their kind. Society ought to protect itself from those who ought not to be and have no good reason for their existence. This is the race suicide that should be indulged in. Society's obligation to the underworld, the submerged tenth, is its elimination, for it can never be any- 166 THE FUTURE CITIZEN thing but a menace to itself and to the community. This question of stirpiculture and eugenics is tabooed without wisdom. Stock raising all are familiar with, but the propagation of the human animal — a human soul — admits of no investiga- tion! Yes, we are our brother's keeper. How- ever, as long as men are imperfect, and that will be for aye, no human scheme will make all men good and happy. LABOR DICTATION Labor is not the ordy saving element of society, nor the only one to be considered. Labor is a tyranny. It dogmatizes over its slave members. It presumes to regulate business and industry and capital under penalty of deprivation and dis- tress. It is selfish. It is not on the broad basis of universal brotherhood, for it extrudes the rich, though asserting that a pain to one is a pain to all alike. It is not a philosophy of service and sacrifice and manly co-operation and counsel with capital, its natural master and minister. When employers and property owners decide for themselves about their own affairs or business, labor interposes with a "thou shalt not." The question of authority for this interposition is an- swered by "it is the ipso jure of labor itself." The right of ownership in the concern is brushed aside as with a wave of the hand. LABOR 167 REMOVE THE RICH Since George's idea of "Progress and Poverty" through confiscation of rents and the development of the "single tax" theory, the passing of the idle rich and "predatory wealth" has become a favor- ite theme of the echoists. The removal of wealth would be a curse greater than the evils of wealth. The remedy is not in the removal of riches, but in the removal of the poor and the energyless by better men and women. Jeremiads against the idle "well-fed drones" are from "windjammers" who know not the first letter of the causes of hard- ships and poverty. The call to action in life's work is to every one alike, but not all to follow the same pursuit. Doubtless the divine decree, "in the sweat of thy face," has no exceptions. The call is to higher manhood, and to the idleness of devising schemes for relieving "man's inhu- manity to man." These smooth-tongued artists of disruption and disorder would learn something of God's purpose in man and His relation to him by a study of the Old Bible, one of the most inter- esting studies of human social relations that is ex- tant in the world. A false sense prevails and is taught about liberty and peace and equal division of the spoils. He who loses hope, should lose it, and doubtless would lose it under any conditions. There is no hope for the born gloomy, and no remedy for him. He must live out his days as he is and die. It is very nonsense to talk of govern- mental conditions "driving" men and women to 168 THE FUTURE CITIZEN lower stages of manhood and womanhood, to drink, to crime, to moral death. Such excuses for one's exercise of his desires and impulses are no excuses adequate. It is not intended to say by all this that a weak man may not be bolstered up by encouragement and moral support, but it is in- tended to say that all the conditions in the world may be rejected if he is inclined that way. The idiot will remain the idiot still. The infamous careers of the rich man's sons, with the very best conditions, illustrate the point fully. Not the re- moval of the rich so much as the removal of those elements in the creature that militate against the highest manhood. No nation is stronger than its citizens. America has every power now, and that may mean weakness and possible decline. CHAPTER XVII CITIES A PROBLEM City governments in the United States have been honeycombed by grafters, as witness San Francisco, Philadelphia, St. Paul, Pittsburg, and in less degree many other cities that might be named. Corruption is fairly rushing in a wave. But the pendulum will swing back again in time. All sorts of proposals are given as remedies for this state of municipal robbery of the people. It cannot be said that this bold peculation of public funds is wholly due to conditions, for no man is obliged by external force to steal. The character of the citizen must be taken into account also. Indeed the extravagance and waste and poor business management of municipal affairs at present is appalling. Rev. Josiah Strong in his "The Twentieth Century City" considers "the unprecedented and disproportionment develop- ment of material civilization" to the neglect of the spiritual and moral the great cause for decline in municipal official honor. In this statement it is easy to see that he proposes as a remedy a greater emphasis on man's higher social instincts and his religious nature. His conclusions are correct, but the methods for bringing about man's higher development are not particularly defined. COMMISSION GOVERNMENT Bungled from start to finish, and stealing and 169 170 THE FUTURE CITIZEN enlarged budgets and taxes wasted and raised higher every year, it seems the clock has struck and we should wake up. A Representative said in Congress recently: "Municipal government in this country is going to the dogs, and it behooves the American people to begin working out a rem- edy. At present the commission plan of govern- ment seems to offer the best promise of reform." This form of civic government has been tried in Des Moines, Iowa, and elsewhere, with consider- able success. In brief, the commission plan is sim- ple and direct, actuated by the continuous force of public opinion. Originating in Galveston, Texas, the plan was made more effective in Des Moines. The city's business is divided into five departments, and five men elected and held re- sponsible for the administration of these depart- ments, one at the head of each. Des Moines also added three provisions: the Recall, by which any or all of the heads of departments may be ousted; the Initiative, by which a measure may be passed by popular vote; and the Referendum, by which any action may be vetoed. A direct vote of the people controls the franchises. It must not be forgotten that men move, not the movement moves. Officials under the public eye, under any other platform would render as efficient service. The people here directly guard their own and re- move the incompetent manager of their municipal affairs. The results of the Des Moines experiment were CITIES A PROBLEM 171 the reduction of crime, the physical renovation of the city, and less cost for the achievements brought about. It has improved official honesty and been a great gain to the public. PUBLIC OWNERSHIP Many city franchises, while affording much service to the general public, are too often but the encroachment of corporate greed, and end in pub- lic abuse. It is fatuous to assume, permit it to be said tersely, that to make the rich poor will on that very account make the poor rich. Nor can the politician settle these problems. Public ownership has its favorable side, and also its op- posite. The destruction of corporative interests in the city, with human impulses unbound and set free, would not be a panacea for civic evils, while officials remained free to devise schemes for robbing the public. To make returns on invest- ments small and uncertain, by petty legislative restrictions, would defeat the activity of the world's great commercial captains and business geniuses. Those who would destroy or reduce large fortunes, it is safe to say, have had nothing to do with making them. Disqualified by nature and habits such persons, to be sure, could not manage large industrial concerns successfully, however large they may talk about the business. No doubt some public functions can be better managed by the body politic through its agents, than if managed by interested individual enter- m THE FUTURE CITIZEN prise. It is no longer an experiment for cities to own and conduct street railways, water supply, gas industry, electric lighting plants, public heat- ing plants, and telephone service. But municipal ownership is a form of pater- nalism, and has its objections. All these things in the long run are but makeshifts, mere treat- ment of the symptoms, environmental alterations, and do not reach the root of the matter, the re- form of the man, the renovation of his nature. They have no special merit as remedial measures, for they do not touch the causes for civic ills. The true remedy applies to the home, the birth of the child, the training of parents for parent- age, education of the child and qualifying it in some trade for its life work. PRESENT MASS MIND The leading aim of all combinations, whether labor or monopolistic, is dominion, but they smother the aim in the soothing, sugar-coated terms of speech "that speaks and purposes not," and so disguise it as to mislead people. Self-in- terested promoters are scarcely to be expected to seek the truth for truth's sake. And hence they are unloosing all the corrupt influences, like Pan- dora, and giving license to the unbridled moral and mental inequalities of the young, who may some day precipitate blood, as has already been done, if they clash with law and order. The mass mind is growing toward less and less respect for CITIES A PROBLEM 173 present institutions, for Sunday, for church, for men in high places, and less and less faith in laws and conditions and customs. This increasing want of respect for others, for property, for es- tablished beliefs, is very bad leaven, — as witness France's tragic moral and material revolution. It is the human tendency to split into tribes and fragments, to produce moral Babels, to sow drag- ons' teeth, as national and tribal and church di- visions testify. Python's eggs will reproduce pythons. No system of guards and safety appli- ances and checks will ever be sufficient to prevent this inharmony, as long as the pythons are repro- duced. The tendency of cosmopolitanism is to alter, if not remove, the established order of things. The age is hurrying ; it is the speed of wheels that is giving worry to city councils and state legisla- tures. The commercialized mind is without the governor of a sufficient conscience; hence the cor- ruptions of the day. Grafters are not good citi- zens. That is an unfriendly spirit that does not read- ily support everything that has contributed to make this the greatest people on earth, present or past. There is excessive and exaggerated criti- cism of capital, of vested rights, of schools, of the Bible in the schools, of churches, of estab- lished government, and those who do this are enemies in spirit to existing conditions and cus- toms, and without regarding those who believe in these things, they would alter them to suit their 174 THE FUTURE CITIZEN own peculiar ideas and customs. Muck-raking for the purpose of self-exploitation and less for correction of real corruption, is not to be ap- proved in any sense. These times of strenuosity and haste naturally lead to excesses and errors, and the intemperate language of the muck-rakers engenders a hateful feeling which breeds a pessi- mistic attitude toward all things in easy and un- easy converts. To be sure, it is not the whole of philosophy to be either entirely pessimistic or en- tirely optimistic. Usually muck-rakers paint their own intemperate feelings, their own state of soul, showing their diet of smut, and this bene- fits no one nor any condition. The strenuosity of life has gotten into the freedom of speech, and muck-rakers believe they are reformers instead of a Mt. Ida of voluptuous speech, — mere self-agi- tation. Emphasis and enthusiasm are noble and essential qualities, necessary to conquer success in life, but they should be guided by the reason that objects to the injury to others. The muck- raking that is inspired by an ungoverned emo- tion, or by a nature that can't escape the exercise of its desire for offense and garbage aromas, publishes itself more than it does the evil. The true spirit of the loving, courteous critic is to do God's service to all men and be honest in opinion. Legitimate fault-finding will do this. The intem- perate explosions of verbal wrath against some- thing, without making any investigation as to the facts, bear in themselves a warning. Such a con- CITIES A PROBLEM 176 dition of public mind is more to be dreaded than the state of things against which it hurls its an- athemas. This continued flow of denunciation after a while makes a permanent impression upon the younger mind, that later becomes a cause of revolt. The misbranding of things by these ver- bal vandals, certainly is neither an evidence of a reformer nor an honest man, and further it mani- fests nothing of the genuine patriot. Epithet-en- gendered hate is a difficult thing to deal with, be- cause its reason is poor-bom and degenerate. MENACE IN CONGESTED CITIES Those who assemble in congested quarters of a town, do not find the environment wholly un- congenial. If it is measurably true that every one finds his congenial environment, then these crowded people in miserable dens (and the mis- erableness of a den is a comparative matter) would be Pariahs out of their class. Every one seeks his level. He can go no higher than the force in him propels him upward and forward. These people prefer proximity to beautification, because their ideals are low. Much of the senti- ment against the corruptions of contact is that of people who compare conditions to their own as the standard of measurement. But this is not saying that the poor do not need help, or cannot be helped. MOKALS OF CHRIST The Christian churches are practically of one 176 THE FUTURE CITIZEN opinion in respect to the serious problem of mass immorality. Institutional concerns can do much for those massed in menacing multitudes. The betterment of these people is to be brought about by educational and Christianizing influences, as well as by social uplift. These people are suscep- tible of very much, and deprived of the oppor- tunity of initiation as they believe, they lie down in their assumed helplessness and wait for the touch of the better to come to them. They suffer for the want of touch with the good and true. INTERNATIONAL PEACE Most international entanglements can be traced to differences about trade. The people are pro- ducers of that which nations exchange between themselves. Hence the people indirectly become involved in international disputes. With possible international legal courts in view, or a world court, as it should be called, all international dif- ferences could be arbitrated and a pacific adjust- ment effected. Enormous naval and military equipments, which impose an almost intolerable tax burden upon the people, would become use- less. It would be a more reasonable way of settling differences than by the sword. The Israelites, when their burden of making bricks without straw became unbearable longer, instead of making war, peaceably fled from their Egyptian oppressors. Tranquility brings the spirit of benevolence toward others. The human butcher is a devil incarnate. CITIES A PROBLEM 177 Peace affords the opportunity for education, ele- vates the standard of citizenship, and displaces the martial spirit with peace laleges such as Hor- ace sang. Peace saves money, blood, broken hearts; bequeaths quiet homes; encourages peace- ful industries and plenty; and beats swords into plowshares and pruning hooks. War exploits labor and impoverishes the toiler and desolates the land. The sentiment is growing for national dis- armament, and that day must come sooner or later. The people will not always submit to pay the bankrupting bills of war, though war is a gratification in man of his savage element, which has within him its counterpart, peace. CHAPTER XVIII THE CHURCH Does church-going make better citizens? Is the church doing all it can to induce men to attend its services and save themselves? Is the church effete and obsolete? The general answer to these questions is: — In God alone, in the church his means to an end, is the world to be redeemed. As long as God's hand is over his church and as long as men are to be saved — and that will be till the end of time — ^the church cannot become obso- lete. Through the shortcomings of human effort perhaps the church, speaking generally, is not do- ing all it can to induce men to attend upon divine ministrations. But no unbiased mind will charge the church with the misdoings of some of its un- repentant members whose names by mistake are on the church roster. The church is doing a noble part to keep itself pure and unspotted, and its efforts to lead men to Christ are great and many and continuous. What church attendance does for a man will ap- pear as we proceed. WORK OF THE CHURCH In the first place, America has now become the home of the Gospel. It is no small blessing to be a dweller in a land of Christian churches. 178 THE CHURCH 179 The church trains the conscience, an essential and practical matter. An unjust manufacturer, merchant or corporation has not a well-trained conscience. All laws that aim to curb or suppress saloons are due to the church's influence and effort, and this work is justified also from an economical view. The church strengthens a man against tempta- tion. The greatest work of the church is the build- ing of character. Man is more than an animal, and needs instruc- tion for his moral self. Man needs more than util- itarian benefits, more than that afforded by ma- terialism. The Christian church is evangelizing the world. She is placing the Bible in every land, in every tongue. Her softening, peaceful, influences are making men better, whether they know it or not, for no one can dwell in the shadow of the church and not be better for it. She has given to man a Christian civilization, the benefits of which cannot be estimated in words. The glory of the church is in her beneficent purpose to save men and make them better citizens and better fathers and better husbands. THE WORKINGMAn's GRIEVANCE AGAINST THE CHURCH The workingman thinks he has a grievance against the church, and this attitude of mind bodes 180 THE FUTURE CITIZEN no good to him or the future citizen who may pin his faith to the justice of union labor movements. As they say it, they have no Sunday clothes good enough, and still they have feelings as well as anybody. They scarcely accuse the church for making the conditions hard for them to live and being unable to buy good clothes. Their attitude is that the church has become too starchy, not too good for them, — a question of sartorial character. They are not recognized at church on a social equality. It must be noted here that the church is not a close corporation, nor does it ostracise any one because of his own self-classification. They believe in Christ and his teachings, would like to find a welcome and a home-like, fellow feeling, but the church seems too cold for them. They aver that they see their boss six days in the week, and do not want to see him on the seventh. The church they classify as a rich man's insti- tution, saying Jesus was on the side of the poor, but the churches are on the side of the rich. The church does nothing for them, they com- plain, gives them no work, nor ministers to their wants in times of need or of sickness. There are uptown churches and downtown churches, and missions for the poor to be shoved off in. Not being good enough to be associated with on week days, why should they seek the church people on Sunday.? They stand aloof, on the ground that the church THE CHURCH 181 does not meet them, does not concern itself for them, doesn't take their side in the fight for a bet- ter condition, but aligns itself on the side of the "money power." HIS NEED OF THE CHURCH The element of fairness is absent from the accu- sation that the church is to be blamed for his neg- lect to attend. He needs the church for its edu- cating force, for its elevating power, for the good standing in which it places him, for the character it gives him, for the friends it makes him, for the correction of any unbiased views he may have, for the hope it extends to him, for the alteration of the thought that the church does not care for him and regards him as of no particular value. He needs the church as a defense. To crush the rich man, a brother in the highest sense, would be a fatal mistake. He needs the church because it sus- tains him against his worst enemy, the saloon. The church makes him a better, steadier producer, and a more industrious citizen. Cut off from the church, the power house, as it were, he will give less moral strength to his son, — make him a moral consumptive, — and he perforce less to his son, and so on with far-reaching tendency. The church throws restraints around the chil- dren and makes them respectable and self-respect- ing. Homes without restraints cause children to go away. The church then puts around young and old the needed restraints upon licensed im- pulses. 182 THE FUTURE CITIZEN Nevertheless, the church's influence reaches into institutions that the man on the outside will not recognize. And what would he be in a place with no church influences? CHURCH AND UNIONS It is regrettable that so small a per cent, of laboring people are in the church, having lost faith in its character and force for good. The church and the union have a magnificent oppor- tunity to work together for good and the extension of brotherly love. The church and the laboring man, in the plan of the Infinite Father, are one. Therefore they should stand together, or they will fall together. If the church loses its sense of hu- manity and its brotherly feeling for all men, its day of good influences is at an end. And if labor loses sight of the moral needs and purposes of life, it cannot survive. The sense of suspicion, bitter- ness, arrogance, and hate between men, originating in differences of situation and character of pur- suits, must be destroyed. The estrangement of labor from the church inevitably means the degra- dation and injury of both. They should co-op- erate in the social aims of Christ, and cultivate more of Christ's spirit of charity and love and for- giveness. The reason why laboring people despise the rich Christian men is not far to seek. Many of the rich are in the church, so laboring people avoid the church. Their method of logic also condemns THE CHURCH 183 the principles of religion, which the rich men pro- fess, making no distinction between the man and the principles he professes. To them the man and religion are identical. They misunderstand the church and its mission, and to clear up this con- fusion of mind should be the aim and duty of the church. The church needs to go among the com- mon people as Christ did. Working people believe the church stands aloof from labor federations, looking upon them as a wrong, and to keep herself unspotted from the world she shuns the very appearance of evil. MASSES HOSTILE TO RELIGION There is a diiference between the philosophy of the poor and of the rich. They have different viewpoints of life. Their dreams of life differ. The poor have faith, the rich have doubts. The poor have lost respect for church rites, the rich rejoice in "pride, pomp and circumstance." The poor distrust the church, even when it brings gifts and messages of "peace on earth"; the rich convert the church into a sort of club fellowship. Since the aggregate of one's thoughts constitute all there is of him, the character of the thoughts will determine the character of the aggregate. So the difference of thought and viewpoint between the rich and the poor must essentially produce dif- ferent results in their lives. Since one obeys his thoughts, hence his thoughts become his salvation or his curse. The attitude or acts of any one are 184 THE FUTURE CITIZEN but an expression of his thoughts. The conclu- sion is inevitable that the masses dislike the church, for they do not go there. If Solomon's figure may be reapplied, one goes often to see his lady love. The masses do not go at all. The church, they say, is no longer a popular institution — viewed with disrespect. The magnifi- cence of the building and church appointments is taken as an evidence that the rich own and "run it." In these costly temples the poor are stran- gers, have no welcome except in form, and can find no "church home." But, to be fair, it is not can- did to make the church responsible for female dis- honor, drunken sots, corruption, thieving, dishon- esty, when the truth is that it is the only police power that keeps men from flying at each other's throats and cutting their lives out. No benefit can come to humanity from any other source than goodness, and this embraces truth, truth-telling, Christ, honesty, purity, justice to labor as well as to capital — ^no warfare, industrial or social, no class consciousness, no antagonisms. DUTY OF THE CHURCH Labor representations have told ministerial as- sociations, when invited to address them in asso- ciation meeting, that Christ loved the poor and lowly, but at present the church does not, for it panders to the wealthy for support. It is perhaps not harsh to reach the conclusion from this that labor's opposition to the church as its foe is due THE CHURCH 185 to its fight upon the rich. They say they are the target for criticism from pulpit and public. The church's work is Christ's work. Therefore it must do as Christ did, — go where men are, get closer in touch with them, nearer to those who bear the brunt of the battles of life, be more sociable and neighborly with them, be one with them, be their church. Like Paul it should "become all things to all men, that it may by all means save some." In addition to the study of the Bible the min- ister must go forth among men at their daily toils and study the questions of humanity outside of the church. For there are no "classes" of souls in heaven. Not that souls are "equal" in essence there, but that sympathy and sociability are inter- changed equally. Perhaps "ranks" there are need- less. If Christ showed here on earth a partiality for the poor and antagonized the rich, he never- theless proved that he was the friend of aU. "For in one spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free." Even the rich man who was sent away to dispose of his possessions, was not denied the benefits of the faith because he was rich. Had he been, what a poor, limited philosophy Christ would have given to all men. In heaven there are no nationalities or sex distinctions; at least after the "resurrec- tion they neither marry nor are given in mar- riage." Men must alter their finite philosophy to harmonize with Christ's, or they cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. 186 THE FUTURE CITIZEN It is said the church is not philanthropic toward labor. This is not true, for the church aims at the good of all men. To be a mere post-mortem emigration society is not the whole purpose of the church. It is the only authentic teacher of the uni- versal prayer, "Our Father." All say that, — let it be so. It will help to establish his kingdom on earth. BREAKERS AHEAD The church has not had an unvarying course of progress and triumph from the time of its estab- lishment upon earth to the present. But there can be no doubt but the stone cut out of the moun- tain will in God's own time fill all the earth. The unhappy sentiments of the day bear in them danger to the Christian civilization that has been built up with so much patience, zeal and toil. The laws of Moses guarded the Jews by strict enact- ment against fellowship and marriage with stran- gers, lest they be overcome by social conquest. Though God's special, pet people, the Jews were nevertheless easily induced into unfaith and idola- try. The prophets foretold their calamities, brought on by their own wilful estrayings. "For thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be filled with customs from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they strike hands with the children of strangers." Sen- timent is a powerful thing in the alteration of men and manners. Corruptions easily steal in, like little foxes, and men depart from the old land- marks. THE CHURCH 187 In another sense natural decay is progress, and the new enters the place of the old and effete. Cus- toms and rites serve their day and purpose and are displaced by those necessary the next day. But the eternal facts of God cannot die. "Truth crushed to earth shall rise again^ — The eternal years of God are hers; But Error, wounded, writhes with pain. And dies among his worshippers." There is lack of the spirit of worship, since the pendulum has swung back upon textual criticism, commonly called "higher criticism." The right of private judgment has made the "I," the sub- jective, the arbiter of destiny, instead of the "thou shalt," the external. The "I" is exercising its privilege. COMPETENCY OF THE CHURCH Is the church competent and sufficient to teach ethics in adequate force to save the growing up men and women, since the schools ignore Biblical morals out of respect for a few who are disposed to disregard the needs and wishes of the majority.^ The effect of this omission of the Bible from schools is to loosen the child's mind from morals, if indeed the absence of moral instruction in its sus- ceptible period of life does not leave it ignorant of the highest and best force in life. The average age of conversion is 16.3 years, and the number coming into the church diminishes up to the age of twenty-five, where but two per cent, make a 188 THE FUTURE CITIZEN decision for a church life. Youth is the seed time of life. It may be said that after this period "He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat ; it ever changes with the next block." Nearly 33,000,000 persons in the United States are members of the religious denominations, or a little over one in three. The mass sentiment out- side of the church is twice as great as that within the church. The contest is unequal, the danger great. NEW COMMANDMENT St. John's new commandment is, "Love one an- other." Therein lies the true remedy. This is eternal in its application and results. The others, chiefly relating to environment, cannot be perma- nent. The major remedy is in the correction of the creature. Socialism is not comprehensive, for it deals with secondary things, conditions. The minor matter of environment is not without some efiicacy. The mistake is in making it primary. To do that is at once to destine the movement to failure. Sentiment, character of thought, belief, is the greatest thing in shaping the human character, the future citizen. As a man thinks, so he is. Some of the mistakes of sentiment have been pointed out, so that better manhood and woman- hood might be developed. Many other fallacies not named here enter into and lead men astray. The church proclaims the best and correct phi- THE CHURCH 189 losophy of life, or else there is none anywhere. Then Pyrrho was correct when he reasoned, "Be- cause everything is contradictory, everything is false." Therefore Pyrrho's axiom is false. Moral manhood is declining, because so many fail to attend church, where true manhood and womanhood is taught. The future citizen is not coming up to the level of the highest manhood. This, however, is not saying that his opportunities for mental culture are not perhaps better than ever before in the history of education, but it is saying that he is not attending the highest college on earth, the school of perfect morals. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY Return to desk from which borrowed. This book is DUE on the last datejtamped below. FEB 3 1948 l9May49MV' RECT -_ JUL i y Wb/ P,UG2«)'60-9''5'' LD 21-100m-9/47(A5702sl6)476 YC 07356 327403 UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA LIBRARY