CHAPTER X.

THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE.

We have considered some of the more important specifically industrial changes to be expected in the near future, which affect chiefly the "working classes." The state socialist passes lightly over such developments of advancing civilization and calls for drastic legislation to reach the desired end immediately. One fault, however, cannot be found with the German state socialist which may well be laid at the door of his American brother, a disregard of the relations of economic progress and political development. If, from his programme, the German struck off the numerous political reforms demanded, he would doubtless lose much of his interest in it. To the Englishman and the American the political privileges asked-for have long been familiar. The irrationality of German socialism in their eyes resides entirely in its purely economic proposals, of which experience under a republican government has shown the impracticability. The American socialist commits a great mistake if he supposes that the economic reforms demanded by state socialism could be accomplished without great changes in political institutions and general social relations. These would affect all classes and are not distinctively parts of the "labor problem.

Without going into details, it will be sufficient here to note some guiding principles, and to make a few

applications to present conditions. The American is not prone to suppose that the limit of the functions of the State has been definitively fixed for all time. He is ready to learn from experience the changes which new conditions require of a republic for securing the welfare of the whole people; but he will not commit the fault of emphasizing more than the German the importance of economic and industrial, compared with political and general social changes. He will not form a purely mythological conception of the State as a power omniscient, omnipotent and morally perfect, the intervention of which needs only to be secured to remedy every social evil.1 As George William Curtis said in his last address before the Civil Service Reform League, "the American Republic, greatest and best of all republics, has no more power than the Roman Republic by its name alone to secure freedom and wise progress. It is but an instrument, and its beneficent efficiency depends upon the intelligence, character, and conscience of the people who wield it, and upon the wisdom and skill with which it is kept in repair and adjusted to the changing conditions of its operation."

Every general consideration of reason leads the American to expect a steady enlargement of the

1 M. de Laveleye in his last work Le Gouvernement dans la Démocratie did well to reject the common fallacy that "society" is an "organism" in the sense of having a life and individuality of its own. Originating in the tendency to personification and the phrase "the social body," he says, this conception "is only a metaphor, and in the social sciences above all we should repeat with Paul Louis Courier, 'From metaphor and from the Evil One, good Lord, deliver us!' . . . Society is only the ensemble of relations between the individuals who compose it. Relations are not enough to constitute a person." (Book I. ch. ix.)

sphere and functions of the State, an evolution into something higher, more complex and far-reaching than the present form of government. But this should be a real and unforced evolution, in response to the actual needs of each generation, and determined, not by theoretical considerations and the persistent meddling of the doctrinaire, but by spontaneous social changes, often unexpected by the wisest. The American will attend to the special guarantees for the security of freedom and justice which the great size of our territory and the immense population subject to a central government make requisite. Lincoln's question means far more now than when he uttered it: "Must a government be of necessity too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence? Is there in all republics this inherent weakness?" One important matter here is the simple size of the governmental machine. The latest report of the Civil Service Commission gives the number of employees in the postal service of the United States in 1891 as 112,800; the number of other employees as 70,688. There has been, says the Commission, "a very startling growth in the number of government employees compared with the growth of population. This growth of a service which can be used for political ends is a rapidly increasing menace to republican government.' The existing situation, resulting from the long domination of the spoils system in American politics, offers many reasons for delaying any considerable enlargement of the powers committed to the city council, the State government, Congress, or the national executive. The wise reformer will agree with Mr. Curtis that our first duty is "to restrict still further the executive power as

exercised by party; the superstition of divine right has passed from the king to the party, and the old conviction of the law in the monarchy, that the king can do no wrong, has become the practical faith of great multitudes in this country in regard to party. Armed with the arbitrary power of patriotism, party overbears the very expression of the popular will. It makes the whole civil service a drilled and disciplined army whose living depends upon carrying elections at any cost for the party which controls it."

Some reformers, indeed, propose that city councils should assume complete control of street railways, for instance, believing that the whole people will then be so vitally interested in sound politics that a purer city government will at once be the consequence. This notion, however, is purely a priori, and it conflicts with experience. If the State is to do anything more for the public than it now does in America, the existing agencies must be first thoroughly purified. In no respect has the lack of a "political sense" been more evident among American socialists and semi-socialists than in their disregard of this necessity. The extension and perfecting of the Australian ballot system and the passage of stringent laws against the illegitimate use of money in elections are parallel steps with the reform in the Civil Service which the statesman sees to be urgent. The vigor of the strong opposition to these reforms would be much increased by multiplying the possibilities of corruption through the extension of the powers of the city council, for example, over gas-works and street railways. No little progress in the direction of civil service reform needs to be made before the American city can safely assume such powers as Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow

exercise with such good effect apparently. The question would remain whether under American conditions a close following of the methods pursued by these cities would be practicable; the chief difficulty, aside from the much wider basis of suffrage in our cities, would disappear with the disappearance of the corruption now disgracefully common.

The assumption by the American city of the manufacture of artificial light, for public uses and for sale to the citizens, is one of the early extensions of the powers now generally exercised which we are safest in predicting. At present, only three considerable cities, Philadelphia, Richmond, Va., and Wheeling, W. Va., - with seven much smaller cities in the South and West, own and carry on gas-works. Prof. E. W. Bemis, of the Chicago University, has ably stated the facts and the arguments for municipal ownership of gas in the United States.1 It is probable, however, that the establishment of an electric-light plant will be for some time to come a wiser proceeding for the American municipality than the assumption of the manufacture of gas. The difficulties of administration and the exposure to corruption are here much less. No fewer than 125 towns and cities now manufacture their own electric light, and their experience, thus far, is more favorable, financially and otherwise, than is the case with municipal gas-works. The analogy of municipal water-works, a system widely prevalent in the United States, appears to am

1 See his monograph on the subject in the publications of the American Economic Association, vol. vi., Nos. 4 and 5, and a supplementary article entitled, "Recent Results of Municipal Gas Making in the United States,” in The Review of Reviews for February, 1893.