Page:Challenge of Facts and Other Essays.djvu/297

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
278
THE CHALLENGE OF FACTS

was lost. So far has this gone that some people seem to think it low and degrading to discuss political questions by political arguments, but make a merit of mixing up benevolence and business, patriotism and engineering enterprise, charity and civil government, emotion and legislation, sentiment and the administration of justice, the rights of man and police control, education and punishment, moral training and criminal law, equality and the supervision of industry, religion and sanitary regulation, humanity and the repression of vice.

This confusion has been anything but helpful in the solution of the great problems which the altered state of things has brought with it. In the old ante-war times this confusion would have made little difference, because there was little occasion to put any theories into practice on such a scale as to do great harm; but with a large debt, a depreciated currency, heavy taxation, a new order of things to create in the South, and wasted capital to replace, this confusion in political methods and in the sphere of the various institutions amongst which social work is divided has been most mischievous.

We have also reached, since the War, that stage in many of our industries at which the organizing activity of government becomes important to recognize and give legal sanction to usages, to collect information, and to furnish general public facilities. It is evident that the possible advantages from the Bureaus of Agriculture, Education, Statistics, the Census, and the Signal Service, from explorations of the new territories and from scientific expeditions, increase every year with the development of the nation, and that the loss is greater every year if the management is not enlightened.

If we look at another department of public life we find the same thing true. Our notion of what a modern city