THE LITTLE DEMOCRACY
of $500. In reviewing these staggering figures Mr. Lathrop says:
"As New York's population grows, the figures per capital are constantly increased. Unless something cures this balloon-like tendency, these charges per capital will reach $1,000, or twice a whole year's total income of the average representative adult worker in the United States. What is the use in going on in this fashion? Is it pessimism to pause to consider? Is it not simple wisdom to do so? What business can endure when costs pile up faster than returns?"
This presents a bird's-eye view of some of the purely material problems of the city, but how much greater are those in which human life and human welfare and human progress are concerned; problems which cannot be stated in figures or crystalized in facts. These problems, too, are receiving the most thoughtful and the most expensive attention. Germany places a higher economic value on human beings than she does on material wealth, but she has dehumanized herself in the process of
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