A most serious hindrance to the development of enlightened public sentiment in our large cities has been the commercialization of the daily press. Our great dailies are on the whole far from being socially minded. This "defection of the daily press," says Professor Ross, "has been a staggering blow to democracy." The moral leadership enjoyed by Greeley, Dana, Halstead and others is gone. A study of the readers of the daily press in Chicago revealed the fact that the majority of men go to the newspaper for news or for advertising, but not for guidance on civic, moral or political issues. One looks in vain in the columns of the average paper for enlightened and unbiased discussions of such burning issues as capital and labor, government control, the problem of profits, the distribution of wealth, or the nature of democracy itself.

For this unfortunate situation the editor can hardly be blamed. He is in reality the victim of economic forces that have transformed the more or less poverty-stricken but independent organs of earlier days into great capitalistic enterprises. The great municipal daily is today to all intents and purposes a vast "business proposition," often representing millions. The owners of these great properties insist that they be run on a money-making basis. The newspaper, therefore, has become a "factory where ink and brains are so applied to white paper as to turn out the largest possible marketable product." In this way the commodity of publicity offered for sale for the convenience of the business world encroaches upon the ancient democratic and moral function of the newspaper as the faithful purveyor of the news, the mouthpiece of a free and democratic people, the keeper of the social conscience. The editorial column has become more or less an incident, a sop thrown to a time-honored tradition still dear to the hearts of a liberty-loving people.

1 Changing America, p. 131.

§ 6. THE POWER OF THE IDEAL

More than anything else perhaps the lack of spiritual vision, the inability to arouse the higher enthusiasm of men, is responsible for the failure to lift the civic spirit from the mire into which it has fallen through our neglect. We have little of that civic enthusiasm which led the citizens of Athens to spend large sums on public contests and, when victors, to ask no other reward than the privilege of erecting at their own cost a choregic monument on the streets of the city. The city will never solve its problems until it succeeds in arousing the spirit of noblesse oblige that prompts men to abandon lucrative positions to serve the community for the sheer love of it.

A movement that has proven most disconcerting to traditional party loyalties and has provoked much discussion is the spread of Socialism in American cities, such as Milwaukee, Akron, Columbus, and Dayton. In the recent campaign for the mayoralty of New York City the number of votes polled by the Socialist candidate, Mr. Hilquit, likewise challenges explanation. It is doubtless true that the spread of Socialism is due primarily to the moral bankruptcy of the old régime of city government. "It is in the boss-ruled, corporation-ridden, tax-burdened city, with its poorly paved, ill-lighted, dirty streets, its insufficient water-supply and air-filled mains, its industrial fire-traps, its graft-protected vice districts, its fat politicians, untaxed wealth, crooked contracts and wasteful resources, that Socialism finds its best object-lessons and has won some of its most significant, if not most of its numerous successes." 1

But this alone does not suffice to explain the attraction of Socialism to many sober American citizens. There is an unmistakable note of idealism running through the Socialist municipal programs. The emphasis of home rule, of municipal ownership, improved sanitation in tenements, free employment agencies, enlargement of the functions of the school 1 Hoxie, Journal of Political Science, Oct. 1911.

system, the erection of public institutions such as markets, cold-storage plants, abattoirs, and the introduction of the eight hour day in municipal work have all appealed to the imagination of men just beginning to feel the dynamic spirit of a new democracy. There is, underlying all these municipal programs, an emphasis of fundamental human values, a recognition of comprehensive social needs, for which we look in vain under the old regime of partisan politics. Most conclusively do these schemes for civic betterment and the response they have aroused in many cities prove the mistake of those who imagine that the selfish appeal of the spoils system or the economic motive of profit alone can be depended upon to inspire the hearts of men. To be sure, the "cohesive power of public plunder " has proven a powerful factor in the past in uniting men and in securing effective group action. But the power of these lower appeals was due as much to the lack of any competing ideal of a noble character as to the natural susceptibility of men to selfish interests. We have yet to learn in civic life the power of the ideal.

But such moral idealism can not come without adequate leadership. Where are we to look for such leadership in the city? Is it to be furnished by the pulpit, the school, the social worker, or the professions? Hardly. These may and are even now making their contributions. But the real leadership must come from that group which in reality shapes the spirit of our modern civilization, namely, the business man. For it is important to remember, as was pointed out in a previous chapter, that the present is an industrial civilization, shaped by the machine process and animated by the spirit of business enterprise. What the minister was to the society of Puritan New England, the business leader is to the modern social order. He is the high priest of the Great Society. To be sure, he holds this position of power not by any special merit of his own. The modern industrial society is the result of a long evolution. But those who occupy this place of power and of privilege in our modern life can not escape its responsibilities. The duty of pointing the way

to a better day can not be relegated to teacher, minister, politician or social reformer while the business man "plays the game for profits. The keeping of the social conscience of the city, in so far as it has a keeper, and the shaping of the social conscience of the city in so far as it can be shaped are largely in the hands of our leading business men. If the present industrial order breaks down, as some think that even now it shows signs of doing, the burden of responsibility for its moral bankruptcy will rest squarely upon the shoulders of the business man.

There is in every city an effective instrument through which the business man can make his influence felt, namely, the chamber of commerce. "The antedotc for false leadership," writes Mr. Lucius E. Wilson, vice-president of the American City Bureau, "is the modern chamber of commerce. Its organized machinery tests the soundness and the hopefulness of men and ideas as no other institution does." There is not lacking evidence that this influential agency of the business life of the city is gaining a new sense of its social responsibility. In opposition to its antiquated predecessors the modern chamber of commerce seems at last to be awakening to the true community spirit. It no longer talks the language of the smug materialism of other days though this language is still echoed in popular text-books on economics. Professor N. A. Brisco, for example, begins his excellent book Economics of Efficiency, with these words, "This is the age of industry. Industrial achievement is the aim and goal of all civilized nations." "Cities live by their business life with the outside world," says another writer, "and on this foundation build whatever superstructures of religion, culture and morals their inclinations and their means allow." To this must be opposed the words of President Hadley, "No economist of reputation at the present day would attempt to ignore the ethical aspects of an institution, as might have been done fifty years ago. He would say that nothing can be economically beneficial which was ethically 1 Community Leadership, p. 59.

bad, because such benefit could be only transitory." Wealth is of two kinds, material and immaterial. If we place in one heap all material wealth in manufactured products, mills, merchandise, newspapers and buildings, and set over against this the ideals that animate the masses, this intangible spiritual possession will outweigh the material. For in reality the material wealth is the creation of the spiritual wealth of the community.

Business leaders are beginning to draw a very healthful distinction between wealth and welfare. It is being realized that these two terms are not synonomous and that the latter must take precedence over the former in any sane philosophy of life. When once this fundamental distinction is grasped it will be possible to place a check upon the irrational expansiveness of profitism and to see that first and foremost the forces of the business world seek a normal standard of life. If we are ever to get away from wasteful economic selfassertion and succeed in the herculean task of rationalizing business enterprise and teaching it to recognize some far-flung goal of social and national good, it must be through the powerful influence of the group of men, who occupy the strategical position in our modern life. It can never be done effectively by those on the outside.

The business group who dominated the life of the city of a generation ago were wont to talk in mysterious and august tones of the primacy of "the interests of business." One gathered the impression that "business interests" were something apart from the life of the ordinary man and were sacrosanct. For government or the outsider to seek to penetrate this inner circle was not only dangerous but impudent intermeddling. It might even be imagined "that the human race was created for the good of Business—and, later, for the god of Business. These same selfish men acknowledged with becoming ponderosity that they were the high priests of the newly discovered god." But this air of mysterious and sacrosanct dignity no longer animates the business man of to-day. He is coming more and more to realize that the problems of