ssments, and salaries all at once, and
collecting blackmail from everything in sight. Its charges for the
lesson it taught us came high; but we can afford to pay them. If to
learning it we add common sense, we shall discover the bearings of it
all without trouble. Yesterday I picked up a book,--a learned
disquisition on government,--and read on the title-page, "Affectionately
dedicated to all who despise politics." That was not common sense. To
win the battle with the slum, we must not begin by despising politics.
We have been doing that too long. The politics of the slum are apt to be
like the slum itself, dirty. Then they must be cleaned. It is what the
fight is about. Politics are the weapon. We must learn to use it so as
to cut straight and sure. That is common sense, and the golden rule as
applied to Tammany.

Some years ago, the United States government conducted an inquiry into
the slums of great cities. To its staff of experts was attached a
chemist, who gathered and isolated a lot of bacilli with fearsome Latin
names, in the tenements where he went. Among those he labelled were the
_Staphylococcus pyogenes albus_, the _Micrococcus fervidosus_, the
_Saccharomyces rosaceus_, and the _Bacillus buccalis fortuitis_. I made
a note of the names at the time, because of the dread with which they
inspired me. But I searched the collection in vain for the real
bacillus of the slum. It escaped science, to be, identified by human
sympathy and a conscience-stricken community with that of ordinary human
selfishness. The antitoxin has been found, and it is applied
successfully. Since justice has replaced charity on the prescription the
patient is improving. And the improvement is not confined to him; it is
general. Conscience is not a local issue in our day. A few years ago, a
United States senator sought reelection on the platform that the
decalogue and the golden rule were glittering generalities that had no
place in politics, and lost. We have not quite reached the millennium
yet, but since then a man was governor in the Empire State, elected on
the pledge that he would rule by the ten commandments. These are facts
that mean much or little, according to the way one looks at them. The
significant thing is that they are facts, and that, in spite of slipping
and sliding, the world moves forward, not backward. The poor we shall
have always with us, but the slum we need not have. These two do not
rightfully belong together. Thei