enjoying a sufficient income to enable them to keep up with the demands of their social set.

As we begin to look a little more closely into the intimate life of these people we may have our doubts as to whether they are the best people. Their social gatherings are often marred by drunkenness and debauchery; many of them idle away their time and squander their money on luxury and gambling. Their family life is frequently wrecked by divorce and their social relations disgraced by sensuality. Many of them-especially their young people-are becoming every day more irreligious.

Thereupon we turn to what would be termed in England the great middle class. They are the people in moderate circumstances and they form the bulk of our Protestant population; especially are they to be found among the Methodists and Baptists and Congregationalists. More healthy and normal standards of family life seem to prevail among them. Their recreations are simpler and more wholesome, they are more active and energetic in their work and seem to champion the moral and social ideals which have always been characteristically American. They are law-abiding citizens; they form the backbone of the sentiment which has put through and maintains in force prohibition. Then perhaps a little closer knowledge of these people gives us some qualms. We seem to detect signs that they are drifting into the quagmire of skepticism and irreligion and indifference. Their family life does not seem to be so happy and secure as it used to be.

In despair we determine to go a little further down the social scale-possibly the great working classes of the country are our best people. They live simply. They have large families. They come from strong and vigorous stocks. So far as religion is concerned, they are mostly to be found in the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches; some of them are Socialists and have broken away from all organized religious authority. Here, too, alas, we begin to have our doubts when we note how grossly our large cities are mis-governed and what incompetent charlatans these people elect as aldermen and mayors. Here, too, we find disrespect for law, a wide prevalence of drunkenness, the spirit of rebellion and discontent.

We are compelled then to revise utterly our method of determining who are our best people. If by best people we man those who are best for the stability of the nation, who furnish the best material for the Kingdom of God, who make the best friends and companions, we realize that we must not seek for them exclusively in any one layer of our population. They are to be found everywhere-among the rich and among the poor, among the capitalists and among the workers, among the old families of Puritan stock and among the latest immigrants from central Europe. Everywhere we shall find men and women and children who fear God, who deny themselves and make sacrifices for the highest ideals of life, who restrain their lower impulses, who are kindly and thoughtful and considerate in their relations with their neighbors. These are our best people. They are the salt of the earth, who preserve society from corruption and decay. They are the lights of the world in their several generations. Their life is nourished by a strong and living faith in God and their souls are rich and beautiful with the fruits of the Spirit.

The Disinclination to Be Reformed

IF

F a prosperous, well-dressed New Yorker should accost a workingman clad in greasy overalls and his face streaked with dirt, as he was trudging home from work in the late afternoon, and should put to him this question: "My dear fellow, will you not let me reform you?" it is likely that he would receive his answer in the form of a knockout blow on the jaw.

Even if the reformer had time to outline his proposed reforms— a better transit system, five-cent fares instead of ten, cleaner streets, an improved school system, the shaking up of the police department and a more efficiently conducted city administration-it is extremely unlikely that the representative of the masses would offer himself as a subject for vivisectional reform. This is the explanation, in pictorial form, of what has recently taken place in the municipal politics of Chicago, New York and Boston. The masses who make up the general public hate to be reformed and have cast the words of the reformers behind them. They wish to be permitted to go on as they are. They are creatures of habit and prefer to move along comfortably in the old, well-worn grooves. They are suspicious of experiments-especially when they are expected to be

the corpus vile upon which the experiments are to be made. They prefer their slovenly inefficient ways to the brand-new, untried methods of the uplifters. They nervously shrink from being lifted up lest they may be let down with a thud. The masses of our city populations are incurably conservative.

In some respects we must confess that we sympathize with the conservative masses, rather than with the disappointed reformers. Too many reformers are unbelievably cocksure and conceited-they are so certain of their own superiority. They wish to lift the people up to their own exalted plane, rather than co-operate with them so that all may rise together. The most striking virtue of the average political boss is his humility-he is so unmistakably one of the common people.

The masses of our American cities bear considerable resemblance to the peasants in Russia-they are an immovable rock against which all radical movements dash themselves in vain. The masses stand by the inherited values of the civilized tradition. They are suspicious of birth-control, of new-fangled methods of education, of improved political devices, of fetters imposed upon their freedom for their good. They have tasted some of the new wine in the new bottles of the reformers, but they shake their heads and insist that the old is better.

We do not wish to imply that we believe the reform of our metropolitan administrations is a hopeless task, but it can never be done until the reformers humbly learn lessons from the past and until they make themselves the champions of the conservative tradition in behalf of the common people and make them see that this tradition is endangered by the selfishness, incompetence and corruptions of the politicians in power.

Prohibition Class Legislation

THE

HE one-sided way in which prohibition is being enforced in our large cities has proved beyond a doubt that the constitutional amendment forbidding the manufacture and sale of alcoholic liquors was class legislation of the most biased sort.

The rich can get their cocktails and highballs and brandies and sodas anywhere and at any time because they can afford to pay

the exorbitant prices that bootleggers are demanding. The poor workingman must be content with coffee, tea, milk, soda water, or just plain water. Imagine a free American reduced to drinking water!

This of course is gross favoritism; it shows that our government is being manipulated for the benefit of the rich and the exploitation of the poor. In spite of the prohibition amendment the rich are still free to poison their systems with alcohol as much as they like. They can expose themselves to Bright's Disease and arteriosclerosis. They can break down their efficiency, impoverish their families, wake up every morning with a splitting headache and a dark brown taste, demoralize and seduce the young and innocent, cause to be born rickety and imbecile children, keep their wives up all night waiting for them, convert their homes into bear-gardens and devote days and sometimes weeks to a prolonged debauch.

But the poor-they are enslaved more ruthlessly than ever. They must look on while their children are properly clothed, shod and fed. They must endure the remorse. of finding their own health steadily improving. They must buy victrolas and spend their evenings with their families, or take them to the movies. They must undergo the agony of seeing their savings mount higher and higher until finally they are compelled to deposit their surplus in a savings bank. They must bear normal and happy children with none of those interesting eccentricities which have been traced to prenatal alcoholism. They must realize with chagrin that they are becoming better workmen, more interested in their jobs and better able to underbid the stupefied, sodden and drunken workmen of Europe. They may never again behold the inside walls of a jail or enjoy those model sleeping-quarters of the reformed modern prison. They must accustom themselves to the novelty of possessing minds that are surprisingly clear, so that in their leisure moments they can read and study and think. Before long the workers will become our intellectual classes! That will be the inevitable result of this iniquitous class legislation, which benefits the rich at the expense of the poor.

The Fallibility of Great Men

TH

HERE is a popular tendency in America to accept any wellknown man who has achieved widespread newspaper publicity as an authority on any subject upon which he chooses to speak. Henry Ford would be accepted by most people as a competent critic of the latest grand opera. Thomas Edison's opinion on any matter pertaining to religion would be hailed by vast numbers of people as an infallible utterance. Mr. H. G. Wells has become widely and deservedly popular as a novelist and as a publicist; therefore, when he writes a book upon the history of the world it at once becomes one of the "best sellers."

This is no doubt due to the intense veneration which American people have for success. They feel that if a man succeeds in any department in life he must necessarily be an able man, and if he is an able man his opinion on any subject must be well worth considering.

This reasoning is fallacious. It does not at all follow because a man has distinctive ability in one line that therefore he will be an authority on all other subjects. The very fact that he has devoted himself to one special department of knowledge or achievement is an indication that he does not know much about other subjects; he must necessarily have concentrated upon the particular subjects in which he has distinguished himself. He must have become more or less narrow-minded, otherwise he would not have succeeded. The man, for example, who has devoted all of his energy and thought to making money cannot possibly be an expert on systems of education any more than a pugilist can be an authority on poetry, or a manufacturer on the treatment of disease. In everyday life we do not really think that a man is an authority on any other subject except his own specialty. If we are seriously ill we consult the best doctor we can find, not a banker or a plumber. If we are in legal difficulties we go to a lawyer-we do not talk over our troubles with an artist or a writer. Why then should we consult a novelist on history?

Anyone who knows anything about anthropology or religion or economics or any special period of history will tell us that Mr. Wells' treatment of their particular subject is ridiculous. The experts know that he is ignorant or misinformed on almost every