xcuse for pruriency in drama, in novels, in
moving pictures and in other ways that are distinctly vicious in their
effect. They promote lubricity and although such literature and
exhibitions may have the support of good people who think they are
advocating great principles, they should be condemned.

Take another instance. Of course we all wish penitentiaries to be free
from disease, and we are interested in prison reform to the extent of
making them as healthful as possible for the prisoners. But this idea of
making society a scapegoat and ridding everybody from responsibility for
his sins, on the theory that his grandfather or grandmother was wicked
and he is only doing it because of his heredity, makes the preservation
of law and order impossible, and destroys the peace and comfort of those
who are law-abiding. The penitentiary is a place for punishment and
reformation. It is not a rest cure or a summer hotel. I have no doubt
that prison discipline can be improved; but changes based on the theory
that convicted criminals are disguised heroes who only need an appeal to
their honor and freedom from restraint to make them good citizens will
have humiliating but perhaps instructive results.

But these extravagances should not blind us to the real benefit of this
growing sense of brotherhood among men. It is shown not only by the fact
that it is preached in the pulpits and emphasized in the press and in
magazines, but, still more, by the fact that it has been taken up by
politicians. When they get hold of a subject and believe it needs
elaboration, you may know that it has a lodgment with the people. Nor
can we ignore the fact that this feeling has been increased by
indignation at the political and social corruption incident to our
enormous material development. The people have become ashamed of it in a
sense.

With many, this growing sense of brotherhood stimulates the movement
toward state socialism. Our excessive paternalism leads on to this. The
view that the government can do anything, remedy every evil, level every
inequality and make everybody happy, would have a most disastrous effect
on production and individual effort and enterprise. The next step will
be to curtail the right of property. It is difficult to define Socialism
as a practical plan of government. The plan as set forth in a little
book published in Austria called "The Quintessence of Socialism" is as
definite as any that I know. It involves such gov