It seems that the principal factor in Amevlean life—at school, among men anywhere, in communities and the competition as to who can spend the most. It manifests itself in a thousand ways, and the idea is born in the present school system. It is common to find a man of good business intelligence who will complain most bitterly against. taxes, but he will leave you to enter the voting booth to vote for 4 new something or other for his own town, which he and his fellow towns man could very well get on without, but which he and all the other voters have hypnotized themselves into believing they must have, for the flimsy reason that some other place a dozen miles away has this something or other already.
It is easy to see, moreover, that there is no limit to this sort of thing.
Truly, it may be said that the voting mortal is a fool. It seems that. the business man in any community will vote for 2 hundred thousand, quarter of a million, a million or ten million, according to the size of his town or city, on the hypothesis that the money' spent in labour and purchase of Supt will Gribble back into his own and fellow citizens' pockets. It is strange reasoning, but it is general. It breeds extravagance many forms, and it seems to me that the time will come when many communities will come to realize and to regret that they stepped off on the wrong foot when they undertook to vie with the adjoining town.
Federal taxation in this country may be reduced, but that is of no advantage whatever if the local authies, through unreasoning local pride, create a burden for the community twice as heavy as the reduction.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.