And government, be its form what it may, is but the reflection of all these qualities. The city, said Coriolanus, is the people, and as Jones used to say, with those strange embracing gestures, "I believe in all the people."
XXXVIII
However, all these confused elements make the
task of a mayor exceedingly difficult, especially in
America where there are, not so many kinds of
people, but so many different standards and customs
and habits. When one gets down into humanity,
one beholds not two classes, separate and distinct
as the sexes, but innumerable classes. In Toledo
something more than twenty languages and dialects
are spoken every day, and as the mayor is addressed
the chorus becomes a very babel, a confusion of
tongues, all counseling him to his duty. The result
is apt to be perplexing at times. The rights
of "business" in the streets and to the public property,
the proper bounds within which strikers and
strike breakers are to be confined, the limitations
of the activities of pickets, the hours in which it is
proper to drink beer, who in the community should
gamble, whether Irishmen or Germans make the
better policemen; the exact proportion of public
jobs which Poles and Hungarians should hold;
whether Socialists on their soap boxes are obstructing
traffic or merely exercising the constitutional
right of free speech, whether there are more Catholics
than Protestants holding office; whether the
