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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. 
 
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