Many of these questions can be answered only by a study of individual experiences. Vices undoubtedly have their natural history, like certain forms of disease. They may therefore be regarded as independent entities which find their habitat in human environment, are stimulated by certain conditions, inhibited by others, but invariably exhibit through all changes a character that is typical.
In the early days the temperance movement had something of the character of a religious revival, and the effects were highly picturesque. In recent years the leaders have displayed a more deliberate strategy, but the struggle against the liquor traffic still has all the characteristics of a big popular movement, a movement which, having first conquered the rural districts, is now seeking to enforce itself in the cities.
On the other hand, the vice crusade started with the cities, where, in fact, commercialized vice is indigenous. The mere discussion of this subject in public has meant an enormous change in the sex mores. The fact that this movement is everywhere coincident with the entrance of women into a greater freedom, into industry, the professions, and party politics, is significant.
There are conditions peculiar to the life of great cities (referred to under the heading “Mobility of the Population of Great Cities”) which make the control of vice especially difficult. For example, crusades and religious movements generally do not have the same success in the city environment that they do in the smaller and less heterogeneous communities. What are the conditions which make this true?
Perhaps the facts most worth studying in connection with the movement for suppression of vice are those which indicate the changes which have taken place in fifty years in sex mores, particularly with reference to what is regarded as modest and immodest in the dress and behavior, and with reference to the freedom with which sexual matters are now discussed by young men and young women.
It seems, in fact, as if we were in the presence of two epoch-making changes, the one which seems destined finally to put intoxicating liquors in the category of poisonous drugs, and the other to lift the taboo which, particularly among Anglo-Saxon peoples, has effectually prevented up to the present time the frank discussion of the facts of sex.
Party politics and publicity.—There is everywhere at present a disposition to increase the power of the executive branch of the government at the expense of the legislative. The influence of state legislatures and of city councils has been diminished in some instances by the introduction of the referendum and the recall. In others they have been largely superseded by the commission form of government. The ostensible reason for these changes is that they offer a means for overthrowing the power of the professional politicians. The real ground seems to me the recognition of the fact that the form of government which had its origin in the town meeting and was well suited to the needs of a small community based on primary relations is not suitable to the government of the changing and heterogeneous populations of cities of three or four millions.
Much, of course, depends upon the character and size of the population. Where it is of American stock, and the number of voting citizens is not too great for thorough and calm discussion, no better school of politics can be imagined nor any method of managing affairs more certain to prevent jobbery and waste, to stimulate vigilance and breed contentment. When, however, the town meeting has grown to exceed seven or eight hundred persons, and, still more, when any considerable section are strangers, such as Irish or French Canadians, who have latterly poured into New England, the institution works less perfectly because the multitude is too large for debate, factions are likely to spring up, and the immigrants, untrained in self-government, become the prey of wire pullers or petty demagogues.[[16]]
For one thing, the problems of city government have become, with the growth and organization of city life, so complicated that it is no longer desirable to leave them to the control of men whose only qualification for handling them consists in the fact that they have succeeded in gaining office through the ordinary machinery of ward politics.
Another circumstance which has made the selection of city officials by popular vote impractical under the conditions of city life is the fact that, except in special cases, the voter knows little or nothing about the officials he is voting for; knows little or nothing about the functions of the office to which that official is to be elected; and, besides all the rest, is too busy elsewhere to inform himself about conditions and needs of the city as a whole.