Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/572

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
554
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

liking, does not seem, broadly speaking, to be in anybody's thoughts. The politicians ignore it entirely in all their calculations. Side by side, therefore, with the pictures drawn in the "temperance" lesson of the reeling, brawling inebriate, it would be well, we think, to place a picture of the citizen who, boasting that he belongs to a free State, yet holds his vote in fee for some trumpery office, and openly threatens to betray causes on which at times he grows eloquent if his private demands are not met. It is not always for himself personally that the free and enlightened elector wants an office. It may be for his brother, his father-in-law, his nephew, or his business partner; but whatever it is that he wants, or for whomsoever he wants it, he makes no scruple about using his franchise and such political influence as he possesses in order to compass his ends. Often the demands that are made are flagrantly unjust; sometimes they involve wasteful expenditure of public money; but none the less are they pressed by men who exult, as we have said, in the freedom of our institutions, and look with mingled pity and contempt upon communities that are content to dwell under the baneful shadow of some monarchical form of government. A splendid text-book could be made for the instruction of American youth if some prominent statesman would make a selection from his correspondence with office-seekers and wire-pullers, with tariff-mongers and contract jobbers. We say this matter is more pressing—far more pressing—than instruction in temperance, for the reason that if the youth leaves school unwarned and unfortified against the abuses of politics, he will almost at once find himself in an atmosphere in which conscience in regard to such matters is wholly ignored; he will be caught in the wheel work of the political machine and will become, while yet a youth, a political machinist himself.

The question as to how a low tone of political morality acts upon the general morals of the community is one on which we can not enter to-day. What we wish to insist on is that there is a crying need for explaining to the youth of the country not so much the technical details of our system of government though every boy and girl leaving school should have correct general ideas on that subject as the true principles which should govern political action here and everywhere, and the particular abuses, dangers, and diseases to which our own political system is exposed. Above all, the simple principle should be inculcated that political power can never be properly regarded as a private possession.


THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

It may savor of undue presumption to assert that the English language is the proper medium through which the anthropological history of Europe should first find expression. At first it would seem that the continental nations were most competent to unravel their own past history. This is indeed true, so far as each by itself is concerned. But when the task of combining them into a continental whole arises, the tables are turned. In no other department of science has political jealousy and hatred worked to greater harm than in anthropology; for Europe is divided into two armed camps—one led by the French, the other dominated by German influence. Their methods of work, their terminology, their conclusions, are all conflicting. Each claims priority, and each has a racial history of Europe which is suited to its own purpose. Hence