Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-03-31
THE FAMILY AND THE STATE IN CIVIL
IZ4TIoF.

relapse into barbarism. It is impossible
for the State to create an efficient sub
stitute for home training 1t is impossible
for the State to remedy the evils caused
by absence of home training. And SO
surely as the people anywhere tend to
put reliance in the State instead of in
the family, SO surely will they move
backward instead of forward.
We have said that the ordinance just
enacted in this city, is, in our opinion,
bad one. 1t is bad because it is distinct
step in the direction of paternalism, and
paternalism is incompatible with vigorous
progress of any kind. 1t is urged that such
an ordinance has become necessary, and
that however true it may be that parents
are responsible for the conduct of their
children, it will not do to refrain from TAX
ing measures to remedy the results of their
neglect. This is not sound argument.
The passage of the Curfew ordinance is in
the line of encouragement to parental
neglect. 1t is in effect recognition on the
part of the municipality OF the legitimacy
of this neglect. 1t is an attempt TO cure
one evil by bringing much more danger
GUS one into existence. The true and only
philosophical remedy for parental neglect
of duty is stimulation of the parental con-
science. It is not remedy to devise
sort of artificial parental authority, as has
been attempted. The only possible effect
of such measures can be to encourage the
apathy and Indifference to duty which are
accountable for hoodlumism. Fathers and
mothers who have not had the sense and
conscientiousness to control and disci
pline their children when they know that
the ruin of the latter might result from
their negligence, are not likely to become
more active and Jealous when they see the
corporation putting itself in their places
and undertaking to do their work.
All measures of this kind tend to emas-
culate and atrophy the public conscience.
If man who has temporarily lost the use
!. of his limbs be supported artifcially in
such manner that he can get on without
exercising them at all, they will become
permanently paralyzed. 1t is by grad
ually bringing them into use again, by ex-
ercising and stimulating the muscles and
nerves, that cure is to be effected. Pater
nalism of all kinds cripples independence.
Those who are accustomed always to lean
on something or somebody cease to be able
to walk alone. A people who learn to de-
pend upon the Government for what they
should do themselves, sooner or later lose
their energies and capacities, and sink into
helplessness. The tendencies of true civ:
ilization are all away from, and not toward,
paternalism. Genuine democracy contem-
plates the development of individual capa-
bilities to their fullest extent. The ideal
citizen of true democracy is one who is
self-poised and self sustaining, who asks
no support from any one, but is equipped
on all sides with vigorous potentialities.
But community which drifts away from
the spirit of the age, and begins to shift on
to the government the duties of the family,
and to seek in laws and regulations cures
for evils which grow out of this neglect of
responsibilities, is very sure to proceed
from bad to worse.
Paternahsm is an exotic. 1t has no ma.
tural utilization with the American theory
of civilization. It hourishes most rankly
in countries where liberty is least known
and understood. It is most emphatically
rejected where freedom has longest been
the heritage of the people. The pretense
that is in any way incumbent upon the
people to have recourse to paternal gov
eminent IS false and misleading one. The
effect of paternalism is not remedial, but
poisonous. When parents neglect their
duty there is but one true remedy, and
that is to lead them back to it. It can.
not mend matters to encourage the belief
that neglect of duty is of no consequence
1t is also necessary to deal plainly with
the silly cant which presumes to excuse
parental neglect as in some wayan evidence
of higher civilization. This is the most
pestilent nonsense. Parents who know no
better than to seek to govern their
children by argument alone, and who en-
courage impudence and selfshness in them
by according weight and Importance to
their ignorance, are precisely those who
are most responsible for hoodlumism. The
results of their absurd theories are seen in
the desperate recourse to Curfew ordi-
nances and the like. Their fantastic
and irrational system has notoriously
broken down at all points. Instead of
producing generation of reasonable, un-
selfish, well-mannered, self.respecting chill
dren, it has produced a generation of
rude, insolent, greedy, unmannerly,
thoroughly selfish young barbarians, so
utterly uncomfortable that their weak
parents think it necessary to invoke gov
ernmental aid to keep them within boundsf
There is no democracy in this maudlin
system of training. 1t is pure and unadul-
terated folly. Instead of being in the line
of higher culture, it is most emphatically
in the line of reversion TO barbarism. 1t
would not take more than three generations
of such system to undo all that has been
accomplished in the last three centuries,
and to reduce the descendants OF the pres
emit American to condition of almost ab-
solute anarchy and brutality. Recourse to
paternalisna must tend more and more in
this direction, moreover. 1t cures nothing,
but it paralyzes the faculties whose disuse
is responsible for all the evils. Curfew or
dinances may serve to cover up and conceal
the mischief for while, but all such meas
ures must result in increasing the demand
for paternal government, and in depriving
the people of still further independence
and individuaIism.
STORMY TIMES AT WASHINGTON.
It is very interesting to the American