Efficient democracy...

Contents

PAGE

I The Goodness Fallacy 1

II Statistics Ostracised 14

Preface

This book is an attempt to stimulate desire on the part of the reader to apply efficiency tests to himself as governor and governed.

To be efficient is more difficult than to be good. The average citizen honestly in favour of what he calls good government does not } T et understand that there are an intelligence and an efficiency as far beyond the reach of inefficient goodness as is business efficiency beyond the reach of mere good intention.

To test the goodness of a citizen, trustee or public official requires more than human judgment. Efficiency can and should be tested by those who benefit when it is present and suffer when it is lacking. Efficiency fosters goodness as time clock and cash register foster habits of punctuality and honesty. The goodness that has lasting value to one's fellow-man will be greatly increased and more widely distributed if efficiency tests are applied to all persons and all agencies that are trying to make to-morrow better than to-day.

Goodness tests waste character and energy by asking or allowing goodness to undertake work for which it is not prepared; efficiency tests, by adjusting burden to capacity, utilize character to its utmost.

viii Preface

The particular kind of intelligence needed by democracy is intelligence as to government and not intelligence as to ethics, fiction, law and business. A man may be a walking dictionary, living encyclopedia, bacteria wizard, or virtue personified, and yet not intelligent as to government. Given 100 so-called best citizens in a church parlour and 100 frequenters of a Bowery saloon, and it would be a rash man who would feel sure that the average intelligence as to government, its needs, its justice, its methods was higher in the parlour than in the saloon. In nearly all lines of business, in housekeeping, in certain branches of hospital, school and church work, it is already realised that good service means efficient service, that an honest man who is inefficient can do more to defeat the purpose for which he is employed than a dishonest man compelled by intelligent supervision to render efficient service. So far as this principle is accepted, efficiency tests are substituted for goodness tests. Where standards of administration are unsatisfactory ; where taxes are too high and buy too little ; where schools waste taxpayers' money, pupils' time and democracy's opportunity; where results of religious work are disappointing; where hospitals regularly incur deficits; where crime is neither controlled nor understood; where civic and educational leaders make futile protests against political corruption; where good intention is permitted to cover a multitude of administrative sins; where charity injures those

Preface ix

it aims to help; — efficiency tests will be found lacking.

Fortunately the ingredients of the efficiency test are simple: desire to know, unit of inquiry, count, comparison, subtraction, percentage, classification, summary. This book aims to awaken desire to know the essential facts regarding the administration of business, health, school, church, juvenile court, hospital, charity, bequest and government. It is addressed not so much to experts in accountancy, finance or political science as to that larger body of laymen who believe in representative government and are willing themselves to make sacrifices that their own intention and opinion shall be effective and democracy efficient.

Attention is especially invited to the Brief for the Establishment of an Institute for Municipal Research, Chapter 14. Millions of dollars are spent annually in this country to teach the ideals of government and the theories that shape its machinery. Universities and colleges and even high schools are introducing courses in political science, economics and sociology ; yet universities, colleges and high schools are ignoring the vast mines of information contained in the current experience of American cities and states. There is at present no mechanism for learning and publishing the facts of social life and public administration. Without these facts upon which to base judgment, the public cannot intelligently direct and control the administration of townx Preface

ship, county, city, state or nation. Without intelligent control by the public, no efficient, progressive, triumphant democracy is possible.

Of the chapters included in this volume, The Goodness Fallacy appeared in World's Work (November, 1906) ; Hospital Efficiency in the Journal of Sociology (November, 1906) ; Efficiency in Making Bequests in the Atlantic Monthly (March, 1907) ; Statistics Ostracised, in Modified Form, in the Outlook (February, 1906).

ILLUSTRATIONS

Robert M. Hartley

Frontispiece

Governor Charles E. Hughes Facing

Herman M. Biggs, M.D.

a

" 72

John J. Cronin, M.D.

" 80

Frank Tucker

" 98

U. S. Bureau of Education

(i

" 138

Rev. Edward Judson a

" 210

L. G. Powers a

" 228

Frederick A. Cleveland

M

" 258

Robert W. de Forest a

" 274

Rockefeller Institute — Junior Sea

Breeze

" ao*

BLANK FORMS

A Tentative Census Schedule

Daily Report for Relief Visitor

" 160

EFFICIENT DEMOCRACY i

Good men will administer well. This is the Goodness Fallacy that hampers civic progress and weakens church, charity, hospital and school. Like many other fallacies, it is attractive because of its promise and its flattery. Goodness, good, upright, conscientious, honourable and sterling are among the words that justify Talleyrand's definition of language, — "A means of concealing thought." We attribute to a speaker such noble qualities as he extols. To protest the need for good men as officers and directors is one way of advertising the quality of those who demand goodness. To uproot the Goodness Fallacy, therefore, is to deprive ourselves of one of the most soothing narcotic influences; namely, solemn auto-compliments "we know ain't so." Convinced that Good Government, in whatever field, will never be possible so long as goodness is to be the sole or even the chief qualification of public officers, it is proposed to substitute an Efficiency Test for the Goodness Test. Goodness is a false criterion for three reasons : First, we cannot agree upon its meaning. Second, it does not prevent the continuance of bad government. Third, other tests have been proved to be more trustworthy.

To apply consistently the goodness test in our choice of officer is impracticable, because we are by no means of one mind in our definition of goodness. To some of us, working and playing golf on Sunday are evils worse even than smoking cigarettes, playing cards, or using profane language. Hundreds of thousands of good people cannot believe in the goodness of others who refuse to subscribe to some particular orthodoxy or to a program of Sunday closing, prohibition or woman's suffrage. The incarnation of evil to the avenue, the ward healer, is the incarnation of good to the alley. One man deems ingratitude, selfishness or evasiveness incompatible with goodness ; while his neighbour overlooks these weaknesses if the candidate attends church regularly, supports his poor relations, organises enjoyable picnics, erects handsome monuments or gives liberally and frequently to charity. In other words, the Good Man we talk about so much does not exist ; or rather he exists in so many shapes and types that the composite can never be found. In defining the goodness qualification we never come nearer to agreement than this : You and I are seeking a type of public man that you, the audience, and I, the speaker, want each other to think we are.

Does the goodness test fail to stop bad government?

Goodness Often Supports Wrong 3

Serious as is the indictment, history justifies it. Most revolting crimes and most stupendous blunders have been committed from good motives, for example, the Spanish Inquisition, the massacres of Dronghela and St. Bartholomew, the expulsion of the Moors, Huguenots and Acadians, the murderous proselytising of Mohammed, the crucifixion of Christ. Religious zealotry too often ends in hate of man. To protect the goodness of Athens Socrates was made to drink hemlock. Epoch-making fallacies have always found earnest supporters among good men acting from good motives. The Hindoo mother is good when she throws her baby into the Ganges ; the western crusader is goor! when she takes law into her own hands and smashes saloon property; excess of patriotism led the Continental Congress to mistrust Washington; the good men of the South turned whitecap when the good men of the North forced an alleged vicious reconstruction policy upon them. In every contest our country has known goodness has supported wrong as well as right. Ldyalism in 1776 was the monopoly of good men, the kind we now want to enter politics ; Patrick Henry and James Monroe did their best to defeat the new constitution in 1787 ; the Knownothings were preeminently good; the Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist churches divided over slavery; Horace Greeley was Lincoln's harshest critic. There are at this very time good men so bigoted as to believe that all who oppose trusts, protective tariff, high license, are good while all who defend them are bad. Thus it happens that knowing a man to be good, upright, honourable, ehristian, furnishes no basis whatever for determining whether he believes in free silver or gold only, whether he is protestant, catholic, or Jew, republican or democrat, socialist or reactionary, total abstainer or moderate drinker, a help or a hindrance to his fellow-man. Still less does it of itself indicate his suitability for position of mayor, auditor, alderman, pastor, hospital trustee or school superintendent.

The goodness test wherever tried has been found wanting. History does not record the birth of the fallacy. It is unknown among primitive people. A merely good man had a poor chance among American Indians or Macedonians. The Norse must be able to fight, the Spartan must endure hardship and pain without flinching. For one brief period, "while Mediaeval Europe was sleeping off its debauch," the ideal of negative goodness was preached in spite of Christ's demand for effective goodness. The stormy reaction against self-centred religion and death-dealing filth drove asceticism into the background and put a premium on definite, objective, countable evidences of goodness in things done. The Quaker with his love of peace and friendliness threatened for a time to revive inactive goodness, but even Quaker approval demanded thrift, industry, business efficiency, and a good memory as to terms of contract. Neither the mediaeval despot nor his benevolent successor of the

Goodness A Fetish 5

eighteenth century selected marshals and fiscal ministers because of unimpeachable goodness. Democracy has never in practice been willing to honour and obey mere goodness, which seems to be a fetish reserved for latter-day critics of representative government, and for every-day use in religious, charitable and educational administration.

Outside of reform politics and so-called uplift work, we are primarily interested in goodness only as it may have a bearing on efficiency. Even in friendship congeniality is not conterminous with goodness ; we ask much more of a companion for an evening or for life. Our photographer must know how to take pictures ; our dressmaker or tailor must know how to fit clothes ; we do not forgive a blundering dentist because he is of irreproachable character. We measure the caterer's viands, not his morals. A gardener must grow beautiful plants, not good intentions. We buy a paper for its news and editorials, not for the goodness of its editor. Men of affairs do not advertise for "good girl stenographers." Good boys do not always win honours in school or promote school progress. Whether or not a builder has good motives is less important than whether he follows his contract. It has been found cheaper to pension "good" servants than to employ them. Shopping would be impracticable if the shopper were to seek good owners instead of good values. Goodness alone never qualified a woman to play Magda or Lady Macbeth; how many are too good to tip a customs inspector? A good man's club organised to disclose and prevent corrupt city government recently discovered that instead of having a surplus of $2,800, as advertised, it was over $40,000 behind. Politics has given numerous illustrations of unspotted leaders dooming good causes to failure because of their inefficiency. Goodness is not chosen to general an army in time of war; it cannot carry the heavier burden in time of peace. Stevenson was speaking of an inefficient good prince when he said, — "I would rather see a man capably doing evil than blundering about good."

The modern Diogenes does not go about with a lantern seeking goodness ; he looks for efficiency and expects goodness to be thrown in. He imposes a merit test and that test is based upon visible, countable results. He looks at the service rather than the server, and finds the cash register worth a dozen letters about goodness. In certain positions, to be sure, fidelity and goodness have a direct bearing upon service rendered, but most fiduciary relations require not only faithfulness and secretiveness, but ability to remember and to use the knowledge entrusted. A flagman's honesty does not atone for his inability to keep awake. Goodness in business matters has come to imply performance that is satisfactory, which in the world of business means efficiency. As among primitive men, inefficiency is bad, hurtful to one's fellow-man, a drag that is inimical, if not immoral. No man is good

Being Good For Something 7

unless good for something. Goodness is subjective and beyond scrutiny. Goodness for something is objective, and may be counted, weighed, tested.

In church work the goodness fallacy still persists, but is rapidly losing ground. The preacher must not only be good, but must know how to preach satisfactorily and to arouse general interest in parish work. To quote a celebrated divine, "After many painful lessons we have come to learn that when the stars spell G. P. C, they are quite as apt to mean Go Plough Corn as Go Preach Christ." The complex civilisation of our day, the possibilities and requirements imposed upon the pulpit by intelligence in the pew and by outside social conditions, have rendered it very difficult to procure effective pastor and efficient preacher in one man. Many churches are still compelled to compromise and to tolerate a poor preacher because of his unusual civic or parish leadership, or to overlook poor parish work because of effective preaching. But in very few parishes is a pastor now retained because of goodness only, even rural districts and the more ignorant city congregation, immigrant or negro, generally demanding more than goodness in their pastor. Ability to sing is beginning to be accepted as an indispensable qualification for the choir. Goodygoody books circulate little farther than water runs up hill. In selecting Sunday-school teachers, however, district visitors, city missionaries and committeemen, goodness and desire to do good are still extolled and permitted to hamper church progress, — against the law of attendance and interest, which, unknown to teachers and deaconesses, is effecting a revolution and a transition to the efficiency measure. For the foreign field medical missionaries of approved training are preferred, while all must first pass physical, educational and personality tests. Theological seminaries with lengthening courses, rigid examinations by men who apply the test of probable results, teachers' classes, deaconesses' training schools, — everywhere the unmistakable repudiation of the goodness test.

Not long since charity work was relegated to good souls, as was nursing. Superannuated preachers or Sunday-school teachers, some recently widowed church-member, high-minded young women or young men of "exceptional character," "sterling worth" and "good habits," were charged with the responsibility of redeeming the sinful or unfortunate suffering poor. We have now pretty generally gone over to the point of view that training, fitness, capacity to perform, are indispensable and by no means coexistent with desire to do or with mere goodness. To make this conviction more general three different schools of philanthropy have been recently organised in New York, Chicago and Boston. Even volunteer workers, it is now maintained, must be trained and their work supervised. Yet in many offices where clerks, stenographers, relief visitors, are chosen because of some efficiency test, executive officers and directors represent a survival of

In Hospitals and Schools 9

the goodness fallacy. It is still too generally assumed that good men may direct efficient and detect inefficient employees, — bankers and lawyers thus applying to themselves as trustees a test that they have found next to worthless when applied to their own employees and business associates.

Similarly in the world of hospitals the goodness fallacy survives in the choice of managers, in fewer instances in the selection of matrons and superintendents. For reasons that are obvious experience has substituted efficiency for goodness as a test of physician, nurse, and charwoman ; there is a growing tendency to apply the efficiency test to the bookkeeper and steward. But as to the managers themselves, the idea is cherished that a hospital will be run satisfactorily if its managers are "best citizens," "eminent" and of "undoubted worth."

In schools, too, as a rule, goodness has given way to efficiency as the avowed test for teacher and janitor, but not for school trustee. Neither the last named nor those who select him realise as yet that there is just as definite a measure of a trustee's fitness to direct as of a teacher's fitness to teach. Goodness has not in the past prevented egregious waste and error in school management. Nor has it analysed school experience so as to prevent the neglect of needy children, the ruthless waste of child life and the continuance of errors for decade after decade. The school text-book trade has been promoted in country as well as city by methods that in deception, favouritism, shamelessness, vaunted altruism and number contaminated surpass the possibilities in any business not supervised by goodness.

Different types of charitable organisation have paid heavy penalties for overestimating goodness. A classical example is furnished by the Lyman School for Boys. Year after year its directors, all praiseworthy altruists of the "Massachusetts type," lauded in general terms the wonderful character-building influence of this school. A chart was prepared for the Chicago Exposition to portray graphically this influence. But to the chagrin of all, the chart when completed showed that a distressingly large percentage of the boys were serving second and third sentences at various penal institutions, while a painfully small percentage could be referred to with pride. The directors believed their chart and devised for future guidance a new test, namely, results counted, efficiency.

At first thought politics may seem not to have felt the blighting influence of the goodness fallacy. In reality it is precisely in politics, — applied citizenship — that the evil results of this fallacy are most serious. The reader will doubtless remember the anguish experienced when he first heard the statement, — "Democracy is still on trial." To the American, drilled during school days in the principles of the Declaration of Independence, it is a cruel shock to hear the theory or the fact of representative government challenged.

GOVERNOR CHARLES E. HUGHES

whose messages, speeches and letters are characterized by frequent use of " efficient " and "efficiency."

In Charity and Politics 11

But as repeated evidences of trust abused dull our sensibilities, confidence and reverence give way to doubt and thinly disguised contempt. We are fortunate if cynicism does not lead beyond extenuation to direct or indirect participation in corrupt gain. Not less dangerous is the attitude expressed by a religious journal, — "If such corruption must exist, it should not be published." To some it is a consoling thought that Rome was not built in a day and that our national heroes have each and all found it necessary at times to overlook trifling aberrations from the strict path of rectitude in the interest of larger harmonies ; there is, therefore, ample time to mend slowly. The rank and file, however, live on reading about bribes, about sacred pledges broken, about ruthless violence at the polls or in the market place, — sluggishly resentful, yet convinced withal, that in matters of government peculiar codes obtain which condone if they do not glorify, the defeat of representative government and the success of evil.

At first glance there is hope in the far-reaching remedies suggested: universal education, restriction of immigration, referendum, manual training, proper home surroundings, opportunity for child play, wholesome recreation, civil service reform, woman suffrage, municipal ownership, Christian spirit, prohibition of the liquor traffic, doing good, electing good men to office, etc. But important as each remedy may be, we have abundant testimony that none is adequate of itself. Many of our worst corruptionists had in their youth unusual opportunity. Franchise stealing has gone on unabated during the administration of good men. The rural American sells his vote and his honour quite as readily and at times more cheaply than the foreigner herded in the city tenement. Civil service perpetuates incompetence, which in turn makes possible special favour and the misuse of funds. Homes where education, wholesome recreation, opportunity for play, are part of the standard of living turn out men who vote consistently for corrupt political machines. The boldest plunder of our day was in a city where municipal ownership exists and where municipal operation failed. As for Christian spirit, some other test is needed than communion with a religious body, for do not all of our chief boodlers and abettors of political wrong support some creed and contribute to some church? Growing distrust of panaceas is part of the general discouragement, which in its extreme manifestation denies all curative and preventive medicine for fear of entertaining quacks. We sit back in our study or at our business desk and relieve our souls of responsibility by reflecting that publicity will cure in time.

While believing unqualifiedly in the right sort of publicity, I know of no cure-all so futile and miseducating as the publicity that reveals theft and dishonour and immorality without properly locating and explaining the disease whose surface signs make

The Key to Efficient Goodness 13

scandal for magazine and newspaper. If the truly religious are to impress Christian standards upon government, if the educated are to give the benefit of their "enriched personality" to government, if the various remedies for political corruption hitherto offered are to be tested fairly, there must be means of estimating closely the conditions which make for corruption, injustice, ignorance, misery and ineffective public opinion. There is one key — Statistical Method — which offers to trusteeship what the block signal gives to the train despatcher, a prompt record of work accomplished and of needs disclosed.

II

To retrieve a fallen reputation is more difficult than to build anew. Caesar benefactor may be praised only after Caesar tyrant is buried. Confidence will not return until prejudice is removed. Statistics must pay the penalty for being now in ill repute. Ostracised and distrusted, it does not and should not "belong." Magazines impose a veritable quarantine before admitting it to the society of rhyme, fiction and advertising; they emphatically exclude it from the titlepage. Shunned by the untutored with almost superstitious dread, it is openly abhorred by the learned as dull, untrustworthy, even venal, a deserving butt for witticisms that never grow old, — "There is a hierarchy of liars, — plain liars, expert liars and statistics." Similar contumely and prejudice are meted out to Statistical and Statistician, the only near kin to Statistics that have not successfully repudiated their relationship. Proud words like State and Statesmanship have appropriated for themselves the reputability of the original Stat family. Not only have the accidents of two centuries favoured the pretenders, but Statistics and Statistician have too often seemed flagrantly to court disfavour. Whatever service these

Prejudice Against Statistics Justified 15

family blacksheep have rendered to mankind is obscured by their offences against clearness, interest and fairness, until few there are so poor as to do reverence to their mission or to acknowledge their important aid to social betterment. The statistician has, like the magician, yielded to the temptation to make his art seem beyond the reach of ordinary intelligence. When friends attempt a defence, they are apt to use language so technical, polysyllabic and foreign that the defence becomes itself an indictment, justifying the popular prejudice against all things statistical.

The wage earner ought to be grateful for economic statistics, when he is told that they are "a mass of facts expressed in figures which throw light on the economic organisation." The mother whose infant has died from a preventable disease should welcome vital statistics — "the science of numbers applied to the life history of communities and nations." Perhaps we have a right to expect public officials and captains of industry to covet a technique that an eminent lecturer and writer introduces with these words : "We understand as statistics, somewhat superficially considered, an extensive range of practical rather than theoretical problems. They are characterised by the effort to penetrate into the multitudinous phenomena of political and social life, of nature and civilisation, by the enumeration of characteristic facts, by classification and explanation." But for some years to come captain, official, mother and labourer will not appreciate their indebtedness to Statistics if it must be described in such language.

Next to unintelligibility, the chief weakness of Statistics that may be frankly admitted is untrustworthiness. The jocular admonition, — "Always indicate what you want to prove when you ask for statistics," was born of experience with the kind of statistics and statistician we know best. Who has not been victimised by spellbinders and spellbreakers of various political faiths, bent upon demolishing their opponent with statistics? Overwhelming proof vindicates prohibition ; similar statistics differently shuffled prove its utter failure. The tariff is a national crime ; by the same token, — statistics — it becomes the source of prosperity. Public officials stand on the statistical record of their administration ; which very record proves their downfall when opponents arrange the statistics. After we have seen the same proposition proved and disproved conclusively by the statistical method, should we wonder that men come to attribute the black lart to statisticians, classing them with lawyers who present not the truth, but a case, — assorted facts magically arranged to enforce magical conclusions ?

If confusion and untrustworthiness are weaknesses, dulness is almost a crime. With words and subjects as with men, a bore is more offensive, because less entertaining, than a violator of law. Like reading aloud in monotone, statistics are unforgivable and unpermissible if only because they bore. We rarely learn

When Statistics Bore 17

when bored. Yet who of us has not been bored almost to extinction by having our distinguished attention called to the difference between $75,213,408.53 and $73,907,055.84? We simply say, "What of it? Why take my time to listen to things that even you cannot remember without notes?" We are willing to grant that the statistician's mental gymnastics are wonderful. But he does not interest — he dare not therefore claim even the pretence of a hearing from me. / don't care for statistics, I don't trust them, I can't understand them. To them I am always "out."

This verdict is deserved, every bit of it, italics and all. The only question is, whether it is statistics alone that we dislike, or dulness, confusion and untrustworthiness, no matter what names they bear. Is not a bore by any other name as dull and exasperating? A familiar illustration of the defects conceded in the statistics and statisticians we know best is that of the mind subject to what the psychologist names "total recall," too close narration of non-essential details. This disease was characterised by one of two sisters whose voice once sounded clear above the roar of a tunnel train, — "Caroline, I just can't be interested in people I have never seen." In a little Minnesota town I once followed a crippled boy about for two hours hearing him repeatedly describe a runaway. "You see this bottle (an inch phial) ? Well, at about fifteen, no, thirteen, minutes to eight, Buck was standing at Doc's head, and I was holding the bottle like this, and was just after putting the cork in like this, when Doc started to run," etc. Like the small boy and Caroline, statisticians have erred not in trying to teach us the statistical method of learning interesting truths, but rather in trying to interest us in unimportant, uninteresting or forbidden subjects, this last including our own weaknesses, misinformation and false beliefs.

It was not always thus with Statistics. This much hated word began life in 1648 as the name for facts "which concern obviously the prosperity of the state, either in obstructing it or contributing to it." It is the direct descendant of an earlier word

Of the state — note — worthy — things.

For a century and a half it was considered an honour to be acquainted with Statistics. Rulers vied with one another in seeking worthy things, and sent agents to 'all corners of the earth to count facts that would add to political wisdom in their states. The professional counter of notable things found a ready market for his wares. Kings came to see that one of the most notable things of a state was its current experience. During the French Revolution the conviction that social facts would further liberty, equality and fraternity was so strong that an elaborate machinery was built up to discover and compile such facts. Unfortunately the men who counted went about uninstructed as to what constituted a remarkable

Every Man Likes His Own Statistics 19

thing. They passed over many matters of great interest that might have been counted, and tried to measure, weigh and guess about other things that could not be counted or measured. The tendency to guess was unchecked because those who had been supposedly keeping count of acts and acres had not in mind the same facts which the government investigator desired. As in other European countries and in America, a vast amount of useless and biased misinformation was given out in the name of Statistics that confused those who read and those who tried to apply it. The hitherto cherished title, Statistician, came to be a term of opprobrium, implying dull, untrustworthy, unintelligible statements or guesses about uninteresting things, or lies, white and black, about interesting things.