, and who
performed menial tasks, digging sewers and building railroad
embankments. Later the Irish did the same work in the community, but as
quickly as possible handed it on to the Italians, to whom the name
"dago" is said to cling as a result of the digging which the Irishman
resigned to him. The Italian himself is at last waking up to this fact.
In a political speech recently made by an Italian padrone, he bitterly
reproached the alderman for giving the-four-dollars-a-day "jobs" of
sitting in an office to Irishmen and the-dollar-and-a-half-a-day "jobs"
of sweeping the streets to the Italians. This general struggle to rise
in life, to be at least politically represented by one of the best, as
to occupation and social status, has also its negative side. We must
remember that the imitative impulse plays an important part in life, and
that the loss of social estimation, keenly felt by all of us, is perhaps
most dreaded by the humblest, among whom freedom of individual conduct,
the power to give only just weight to the opinion of neighbors, is but
feebly developed. A form of constraint, gentle, but powerful, is
afforded by the simple desire to do what others do, in order to share
with them the approval of the community. Of course, the larger the
number of people among whom an habitual mode of conduct obtains, the
greater the constraint it puts upon the individual will. Thus it is that
the political corruption of the city presses most heavily where it can
be least resisted, and is most likely to be imitated.

According to the same law, the positive evils of corrupt government are
bound to fall heaviest upon the poorest and least capable. When the
water of Chicago is foul, the prosperous buy water bottled at distant
springs; the poor have no alternative but the typhoid fever which comes
from using the city's supply. When the garbage contracts are not
enforced, the well-to-do pay for private service; the poor suffer the
discomfort and illness which are inevitable from a foul atmosphere. The
prosperous business man has a certain choice as to whether he will treat
with the "boss" politician or preserve his independence on a smaller
income; but to an Italian day laborer it is a choice between obeying the
commands of a political "boss" or practical starvation. Again, a more
intelligent man may philosophize a little upon the present state of
corruption, and reflect that it is but a phase of our commercialism,
from which we are b