Public Expenditures. 305 their public service. This experience is only one of many un- toward and inevitable results of a distorted and perverted view of what a people have at stake in their state government. In- stead of looking upon the state organization as embodying opportunity and a precious heritage of common resources, it was regarded as an incubus to be shackled and repressed. State activities were viewed as involving consumption of resources with little if any redeeming outcome of production of either service or commodity. Public offices were but prizes in the game of politics, won by the few, the party leaders. These prizes the people had gotten into the ineradicable habit of putting up. With such a view of the essential character of the whole state establishment the sole achievement through which credit and acclaim might be won would be that of retrenchment. When a thing is regarded exclusively as a drain or outlay the effecting of any diminution of that outlay is the highest serv- ice. The state officials responded to this prevailing idea. Their only boasts were those of economy. This single criterion of merit is reiterated in all the state reports. This view of their state government, and the consequent attitude of the people, bore in themselves the causes of their own re-enforce- ment. The people could not help being sensible of what the government took from them for expenditures. This was ob- trusive and tangible. The service secured' in return, limited quite closely to the securing of law and order in a naturally law-abiding community, was not only intangible but also almost imperceptible. Receiving from this attitude of the peo- ple none of the higher rewards of public service, ardor and zeal in that service could not exist. The generous-minded and the competent were repelled from that service. It was mainly coveted by the shrewd, the designing and commercially minded. Constructive and conserving achievement failed to be realized. Intrigue and combination reigned and the mercenary motive was dominant. Ways of legitimatizing the appropriation to themselves of a goodly share of the public funds passing
