They are skeptical of humanity, of virtue. There is a belief that every man has his price, that politics is a machine, to be run for the benefit of those who have it in charge. There is, even among honorable men, a tendency to joke at public scandals, to sneer at Sunday-school politics and womanish ideals.
“Now, to me, this hard and cold skepticism betokens a rottenness and a corruption in the body politic scarcely less terrible to contemplate than the open, high-handed peculation which occasionally startles the community and forms a nine days’ wonder.
“For, as I need not say, a sick man is as sure to die from blood-poisoning as from an open cancer. The latter may shock us more, but the former is just as deadly. And the danger to this great city to-day is not so much from the dynamite of the anarchist as from the indifference and inactivity of the men and women who have your brains, your wealth, your culture, and many of them your nominal Christianity.
“Pardon me if I seem to be addressing you, my elders and betters, as if I were presuming to tell you anything new or anything which you could not state quite as forcibly as I may do.
“It is not that I have anything new to say that I venture to speak thus, but that I may clearly state my own position and grounds for action in the matter which I shall soon present to you.
“You have observed that I have used the more comprehensive term ‘citizen’ instead of ‘voter,’ and it is for this reason that I have used it. The duties of the citizen apply to every one who is a recipient of the benefits of the state, and this includes that half of the community whom their own indifference and the
PREJUDICES AND TRADITIONS
of the majority of voters still exclude from their rightful share in this matter of public housekeeping which we call municipal government.
“It is the duty of the male citizen to vote, and not only to vote, but to attend the caucuses which alone insure the possibility of having a worthy candidate. It is also his duty to pay his taxes and keep his sidewalk clean, but his duty does not end here. It is his imperative duty as an honorable citizen to see that this subtle poison, which, bred from germs of selfishness and ignorance, is creeping through the veins of our people, shall be arrested ere a complete social upheaval teach us the painful lesson that vigilance alone is the price of liberty.
“It seems to me that the duty of the citizen is coextensive with life and opportunity. It is not a duty which the man or woman of conscience can lay aside between election days. The good citizen must be always a refuter of error, an initiator of reform, in short, a person whose conscience gives him no rest until what ought to be has been substituted for what is.