f. Neither have I ever taken the trouble to
familiarize myself with even the more important city buildings.

Of course I know the City Hall by sight, but I have never been inside
it; I have never visited the Tombs or any one of our criminal courts; I
have never been in a police station, a fire house, or inspected a single
one of our prisons or reformatory institutions. I do not know whether
police magistrates are elected or appointed and I could not tell you in
what congressional district I reside. I do not know the name of my
alderman, assemblyman, state senator or representative in Congress.

I do not know who is at the head of the Fire Department, the Street
Cleaning Department, the Health Department, the Park Department or the
Water Department; and I could not tell, except for the Police
Department, what other departments there are. Even so, I do not know
what police precinct I am living in, the name of the captain in command,
or where the nearest fixed post is at which an officer is supposed to be
on duty.

As I write I can name only five members of the United States Supreme
Court, three members of the Cabinet, and only one of the congressmen
from the state of New York. This in cold type seems almost preposterous,
but it is, nevertheless, a fact--and I am an active practicing lawyer
besides. I am shocked to realize these things. Yet I am supposed to be
an exceptionally intelligent member of the community and my opinion is
frequently sought on questions of municipal politics.

Needless to say, the same indifference has prevented my studying--except
in the most superficial manner--the single tax, free trade and
protection, the minimum wage, the recall, referendum, or any other of
the present much-mooted questions. How is this possible? The only answer
I can give is that I have confined my mental activities entirely to
making my legal practice as lucrative as possible. I have taken things
as I found them and put up with abuses rather than go to the trouble to
do away with them. I have no leisure to try to reform the universe. I
leave that task to others whose time is less valuable than mine and who
have something to gain by getting into the public eye.

The mere fact, however, that I am not interested in local politics would
not ordinarily, in a normal state of civilization, explain my ignorance
of these things. In most societies they would be the usual subjects of
conversation. People naturally discuss what inter