“No, indeed; I should think not!” was Horace’s hearty comment.
“But I see the way now, I think,” continued Reuben, meditatively, “to doing much better still. I see a good many ways in which you can help me greatly.”
“I should hope so,” smiled young Mr. Boyce. “That’s what I’m coming in for.”
“I’m not thinking so much of the business,” answered Reuben; “there need be no borrowing-of trouble about that. But there are things outside that I want to do. I spoke a little about this the other day, I think.”
“You said something about going into politics,” replied Horace, not so heartily. The notion had already risen in his mind that the junior member of the new partnership might be best calculated to shine in the arena of the public service, if the firm was to go in for that sort of thing.
“Oh, no! not ‘politics’ in the sense you mean,” explained Reuben. “My ambition doesn’t extend beyond this village that we’re in. I’m not satisfied with it; there are a thousand things that we ought to be doing better than we are, and I’ve got a great longing to help improve them. That was what I referred to. That is what has been in my mind ever since my return. You spoke about politics just now. Strictly speaking, ‘politics’ ought to embrace in its meaning all the ways by which the general good is served, and nothing else. But, as a matter of fact, it has come to mean first of all the individual good, and quite often the sacrifice of everything else. This is natural enough, I suppose. Unless a man watches himself very closely, it is easy for him to grow to attach importance to the honor and the profit of the place he holds, and to forget its responsibilities. In that way you come to have a whole community regarding an office as a prize, as a place to be fought for, and not as a place to do more work in than the rest perform. This notion once established, why, politics comes naturally enough to mean—well, what it does mean. The politicians are not so much to blame. They merely reflect the ideas of the public. If they didn’t, they couldn’t stand up a minute by their own strength. You catch my idea?”
“Perfectly,” said Horace, politely dissembling a slight yawn.
“Well, then, the thing to do is to get at the public mind—to get the people into the right, way of regarding these things. It is no good effecting temporary reforms in certain limited directions by outbursts of popular feeling; for just as soon as the public indignation cools down, back come the abuses. And so they will do inevitably until the people get up to a calm, high level of intelligence about the management of such affairs as they have in common.”
“Quite so,” remarked Horace.
“Of course all this is trite commonplace,” continued Reuben. “You can read it in any newspaper any day. My point is in the application of it. It’s all well enough to say these things in a general way. Everybody knows they are true; nobody disputes them any more than the multiplication-table. But the exhortation does no good for that very reason. Each reader says: ‘Yes, it’s too bad that my neighbors don’t comprehend these things better;’ and there’s an end to the matter. Nothing is effected, because no particular person is addressed. Now, my notion is that the way to do is to take a single small community, and go at it systematically—a house-to-house canvass, so to speak—and labor to improve its intelligence, its good taste, its general public attitude toward its own public affairs. One can fairly count on at least some results, going at it in that way.”