428 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
given enough power to enable them to betray their weaknesses; as a kind lady may permit herself to give a tramp five cents, believing that, although he may spend it for drink, he cannot get very drunk upon so small a sum.
All might have gone well upon this doctrinaire plan, as it still does in many country places, if there had not been a phe- nomenally rapid growth in cities upon an entirely changed basis. Multitudes of men were suddenly brought together in response to the nineteenth-century concentration of industry and com- merce a purely impersonal tie; whereas the eighteenth-century city attracted the country people in response to the more normal and slowly formed ties of domestic service, family affection, and apprenticeship. Added to this unprecedented growth from indus- trial causes, we have in American cities multitudes of immigrants, coming in successive migrations, often breaking social ties which are as old as the human family, and renouncing customs which may be traced to the habits of primitive man. Both the country- bred and immigrant city-dwellers would be ready to adapt them- selves to a new and vigorous civic life founded upon a synthesis of their social needs, but framers of our carefully prepared city charters did not provide for this expanding demand at the points of congestion. They did not foresee that after the universal fran- chise has once been granted, social needs and ideals are bound to enter in as legitimate objects of political action; while, on the other hand, the only people in a democracy who can legitimately become the objects of repressive government are those who are too underdeveloped to use the franchise, or those who have for- feited their right to full citizenship. We have, therefore, a muni- cipal administration in America which is largely reduced to the administration of restrictive measures. The people who come most directly in contact with its executive officials, who are the legitimate objects of its control, are the vicious, who need to be repressed ; the poor and semidependent, who appeal to it in their dire need ; or, from quite the reverse reason, those who are trying to avoid an undue taxation, resenting the fact that they should be made to support that which, from the nature of the case, is too barren to excite their real enthusiasm.
