The Municipal Government of San Francisco, Part V [pp. 491-498]

THE MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT OF SAN FRANCISCO.
ity for work is now forever gone, and
when death comes, he is buried in the
potter's field at the public cost, and his
life leaves nothing but a dream of human
cruelty, which has passed and gone
without any permanent result.
Happily both for society and the man
himself, it is only brutal ignorance which
enables him to bear the evils thus outlined, otherwise there would be social
revolution and the man would be himself
shot down. But he bears his troubles
like a brute, with the patience of a dove
or the stubborn courage of a bulldog. He
may yelp like a cur, howl like a wolf,
steal like a fox, and under the heels of
oppression and injustice he may squirm
like a harmless worm. Moreover, like
the animals, he has no reasonable appreciation of the cause of all his sufferings,
and therefore accepts his destiny as inevitable fate. Being ignorant of his inalienable right to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness, he charges no one
with their loss, and feels no sense of the
injustice done him. He has learned
only to look to his employer for work
and to the public for their charity, and
these delude him by dangling before his
imagination the advance agent of prosperity, more protection, and the millenium, which is to be the consequence of a
financial revolution.
And now turn to the still more painful
picture of the man brought up in the public schools and face to face with destitution, walking the streets and tramping
the roads in his shabby genteel clothes,
and with halting gait, and willing, perhaps for the first time, to try his hand at
common labor. He also has a special history. He may have started at the very
top, happy and rich, living in luxury on
another's labor, but now he is at the bottom all the same, and unlike the ignorant
tramp, he knows the full meaning of the
fall. Not having been taught the true
value and practise of productive industry,
the first descent to idleness was both natral and easy. With idleness he found
self-indulgence, dissipation, debauchery,
drunkenness, and in its turn, disease.
And now he discovers that no idle man
is honest, as no honest man is idle, and
for the first time learns that business is
business, and that cheating, embezzlement, repudiation, and breach of trust,
are the means by which smart men live
and prosper,-that to be found out is regarded either as stupidity or misfortune,
to be pitied or despised, and his delusion
only vanishes when he gets to jail. From
thence he goes on tramp, then to the hospital and almshouse, and as usual to the
potter's field. This history affords abundant proof that wealth, and education,
such as generally prevails, as readily become sources of mischief as instruments
for good, that they help to deprave as
well as elevate mankind, that material
prosperity generates as many evils as it
destroys, and that it produces the same
moral and physical degeneration upon the
educated as does simple want of employment oil the poor and ignorant. It also
proves that physical, not intellectual,
labor is the true foundation and support
of life, that man must live by the sweat
of his brow, and not by the sweat of his
brain, and that this sweat must be the
consequence of productive industry, not
of Turkish baths, gymnastics, and football; that no amount of intellectual cultivation will prevent dependence on others for the material necessities of life.
Man at his best is still an animal, and
food is his first necessity. Until it is procured in tolerable quantity and with some
degree of certainty, questions of education and freedom take a second place. In
this matter government has put the cart
before the horse by providing all with
free education and by leaving hunger to
take its chance without help or even opportunity. The last thing thought of is
the practical cultivation of the land as a
means of education, and no one suspects
that the spade, the rake, and the hoe, are
the A B C of industry.
But again, in his present struggle
against destitution the American citizen
begins to realize that the glorious Declaration of Independence is nothing but a
grim delusion. In his prosperity he regarded it as the charter of his inalienable
rights, the want of which before his present difficulties he had never felt. He had
been taught, and believed implicitly, that
no power on earth had the right to restrict his liberty, or to use and appropriate his share of the endowments the Creator had bestowed upon him for the sustenance of his life, the preservation of his
freedom, and his pursuit of happiness and
495