668 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
them not. And it is very evident that Commissioner Lederle and his assistants have succeeded, first of all because of sheer ability and careful training for their life work. It was their brains and their education which helped them to solve problems never before solved which taught them how to reorganize the Department of Health in the interests of concentrated responsi- bility and the greatest possible working efficiency; which showed them the best way of stamping out smallpox and protecting school children from contagious diseases; which taught them the necessity of cleaning up "Chinatown," and of providing proper hospital accommodations for the sick; and, finally, many other useful lessons.
In the second place and this point should be emphasized even more strongly than the first Commissioner Lederle has succeeded because of his inspiring qualities as a leader of other men. His very honesty and courage, his sympathy and longing to serve his fellow-men all these qualities have helped him even more than mere brains and intellectual training. Call it the contagion of heroism, if you please. We have all known it at some time during our lives ; we have all tasted of that wondrous inspiration which brave and unselfish men or women carry with them wherever they go. It is the same thing which the school- boy looks up to in his leader, and which causes the smallest street urchins to gather around some companion who seems almost to have been born with the qualities of a hero and a leader of men. The writer has seen it all around him during his resi- dence in New York city, and it has filled him with new hope. He has seen it in the fire chief, the leader of a battalion of a hundred men, who would gladly give his life to the service of the city simply because it was his duty. He has known it in the police officer, the man who is brought into daily contact with the blackest crime and misery, who yet clings to his ideals and his natural love of honesty and purity. Everywhere around us there is this contagion of heroism which must inevitably spread from the leader to his followers. And where, therefore, we see it in New York's present commissioner of health, we should gladly hail it as a welcome sign of civic betterment ; for anyone who
