642 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
to use public funds to remove and to prevent disease or condi- tions that generate disease. We may differ in our theories of disease or in our belief as to the exact time and place where public funds shall be used, but we are of one mind that private wealth, private ignorance, private comfort, must be of secondary importance when and where public health is at stake. The theory is of the seventh stage socialistic; the administration may be in the first personal; second and first personal and comfort; first to third personal, comfort, commercial; first to fourth personal, comfort, commercial, nuisance; first to fifth
personal, comfort, commercial, nuisance, anti-slum ; first to sixth personal, comfort, commercial, nuisance, anti-slum, phil- anthropic ; or a combination of all with the motives of the last
socialistic. Emphasis will vary among and within states, but the variations in ideal are infinitely less than those in achieve- ment. Such variations as there are will be found to follow industrial variations and those in social theories. In classifying the situation and the tendency in any particular community, the seven stages of sanitary development ought to be of service.
This brings us to the statement that the limits to sanitary progress are to be sought, not in sanitary science, but in social theories that sanitary progress depends upon right theories of taxation. A complete health program presumes either a differ- ent distribution of our present appropriations or else a great increase in those appropriations. The divers obstacles to the former immediately suggest themselves ; retrenchment is imprac- ticable, even were it desirable. We must increase our revenues. To propose to levy upon wages, rents, interest, or earned profits would defeat the program at the outset. We must suggest a tax that will bring benefits without accompanying burdens, for we have not yet educated the majority of voters to a proper dollar-and-cent valuation of their own health and that of their dependents. If we cannot educate the voters to see that there is taxation which confers benefits without imposing burdens, we cannot carry out a complete sanitary program. If our econo- mists cannot demonstrate to the simplest, candid mind that there is such a thing as unearned increment on both capital and labor,
