tude for the poor that does not express itself in charitable societies, charity-organization societies, and a host of other philanthropic groups. Generally those included in such groups work with a deep and unselfish interest and are ahead of, rather than behind, their time. If boards in charge of endowed orphanages, rescue homes, and free hospitals filled vacancies from names submitted in turn by these groups, it would be impossible for the management to continue long at odds with the best contemporary knowledge and ideals. No doubt the board itself should fill every third or fourth vacancy in its membership in order that unorganized or minor interests should not go unrepresented. Moreover, when a nominee is personally obnoxious to a part of its members a board should have the right to call for another nomination.

Here then is a means of recruiting the governing boards of quasi-public institutions which insures their ready response to the best forces of their time and yet does not entangle them with the political organization and open the door to "politics." If the ultimate authority over the enormous blocks of wealth being left for public purposes is not linked in some such way with the living. élite of society, it is absolutely certain that in a century, perhaps in much less time, the stately foundations rising about us will be cursed by our posterity as citadels of stupidity, prejudice, and perhaps even of political conservatism and class self-interest.

PERVERSION

CHAP.

XXV

There Is

an Insti

against

Founders cherish the pathetic delusion that their college, No way of charity, or religious house may be kept to the charted course; Insuring that what they launch with enthusiasm will look sunward through tution all time. This vain hope inspires the endeavors of the friends of the Pull of a beneficent organization so to fortify it by means of irrepealable Gravity charter, autonomy, and gifts in perpetuity that no meddling hand may ever interfere with its blessed work.

But alas, no human foresight can save from degeneration a structure that has high aims and puts a strain on ordinary human. nature. Despite your checks and safeguards, in a few generations perhaps it will have become the exact opposite of what was intended. Your beacon is now a will-o'-the-wisp, your rock of salvation a quicksand, your healing spring an infected pool. There is indeed no way to keep it true to its purpose save to make

CHAP.
XXV

The More Brillant Its Suc

cess, the

Sooner an

Institution

Will

Become

Infested

with Self

Seekers As

It Wins
Members
and
Wealth

It Will Be

Headed by

an Admin

istrator Rather

than an In spirer, So That Its Fire Dies Down

Forms and
Rules

Count

for More, the Spirit for Less

it responsive to those in each generation who are spiritual brothers of the founder.

In the higher realm nothing perverts like quick success. A furore floods a movement with enthusiasts incapable of rising to the plane of the founders. The warmer the reception of a new art, the sooner it will be discredited by imitators and quacks. The higher a young religious order flames up, the sooner its pure fire dies in the rush of the unspiritual. With rapid expansion the membership grades down, and after the pioneers and their disciples are gone the character of the organization changes. Thus three centuries after St. Francis his "Little Brothers were "arrogant mendicants, often of loose morals, begging with forged testimonials, haunting the palaces of the rich, forcing themselves into families, selling the Franciscan habit to wealthy dying sinners as a funeral cloak to cover many sins." Erasmus dreamed that St. Francis came to thank him for chastising the Franciscans.

As a body expands, the man of organizing ability is called to the helm rather than the inspirer and prophet. A university which has grown rapidly owing to the rare learning and zeal of its teachers may, a generation later, come under the control of men skilful in organizing the teaching force and handling large classes. Impatient at having to spend so much of their time on administration, the real scholars, bit by bit, relinquish their authority to organizers, and the spirit of the institution changes. In this way Frate Elias, skilful organizer and friend of the Pope, but not in the least a saint, succeeded St. Francis at the head of the Franciscan Order. After Constantine the bishop of the church becomes less apostolic, while the typical Methodist bishop of to-day is. scarcely a spiritual son of Wesley.

With the organizer comes less faith in spontaneity and more stress on form as embodying the founder's ideal. The life of the monastery is directed less by religious impulse and more by rules, the work of the research institute less by fruitful ideas and more by routine. Everything runs "as if by clockwork," only the one does not produce great characters, nor the other great discoveries. While St. Francis lived the stern rule of absolute poverty was applied with "the genial concessions and exceptions he knew how to make," whereas half a century later, under St. Bonaventura, his monks had to follow a formal and lifeless discipline.

To carry flowers or a staff, to twirl the end of one's girdle cord,
to sit with crossed legs, to laugh, to sing aloud, were all un-
worthy of Franciscan decorum. St. Francis cherished the sweet-
est friendship with Santa Clara, but in time the friar was forbid-
den even to look at a woman, much less speak familiarly with her.
When by its merits a body has gathered momentum and won
prestige it becomes a standing temptation to the unscrupulous.
If they can worm into it or, better yet, gain control of it, they
can convert its store of power to their private purposes. Thus
the popes of the Renaissance enriched themselves and their fam-
ilies by misusing the vast authority of the Roman church, while
the representatives of the East India Company employed the
great power of the company to practice extortion upon the rulers
and people of India in order to build up their private fortunes.
As a body gains wealth and popularity, it holds its members by
benefits, so that they will tolerate a concentration of authority
which would wreck a young society. Masterful organizers who
love power for its own sake magnify their office. In a religious
organization control becomes established in the clerical order.
St. Francis was a mere layman, but Albert of Pisa, the first priest
to become head of his order, instituted that laymen should no
longer be elected as officers. In England by the middle of the
sixteenth century the charitable foundations were regularly in
the hands of monks and priests. A royal edict took the direc-
tion of hospitals from clergy and nobles and lodged their man-
agement in the hands of "bourgeois, shopkeepers, and laborers."
Early in the same century the right of choosing officers in the
English craft guilds was restricted to their liveried members, and
later, control passed from them to a still more select body, the
Court of Assistants, which, beginning as an informal committee
of the wealthier brethren in livery and especially such as had
held offices in the guild, became a co-optative council well-nigh
absolute in the affairs of the society.

Thus the body becomes machine rather than organism. With out voice the rank and file lose the genial we-feeling that once warmed their hearts. They stick to the organization for the benefits it gives or the opportunities it offers, but their loyalty is less pure than when it was truly theirs. Moreover, just as control slips away from them to a higher class, so may the benefits. leave them. The Roman baths were originally intended for the

CHAP.

XXV

Finally the
Institution

Managers

But Not
Those

Whom It
Was In-
tended to
Serve

poor, but under the later empire they were the exclusive privilege of the wealthy and one of their most luxurious forms of enjoyment. The thirty-three endowed grammar schools of London were all metamorphosed to teach the children of the higher class. Harrow, one of the most expensive of English schools, was founded by a bricklayer for the free education of the ranks in which he had been born. Male trustees twist foundations left for the sexes equally, to the service of the male sex. For instance, the endowments of Christ's Hospital given for the most destitute classes and " for girls as much as for boys" were found in 1865 to be educating 1,100 boys and only 25 girls, nearly all from the middle classes.

Finally the institution becomes an end in itself. The univerServes Its sity exists for the benefit of its dons. The state prison is conducted as a provider of cheap labor for the prison contractor. A local charity becomes the means of enhancing the social prestige of the ladies back of it. The courts of chancery instituted for the protection of orphans whose money was liable to misappropriation by unscrupulous relatives had become in Dickens' time a machine which sucked up all their money in interminable lawsuits, the lawyers being far more dangerous to the orphans than the guardians from whom the lawyers were to protect them. Military orders like the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitalers, founded to defend the Holy Sepulcher, came to fight each other more than they fought the Mussulman. In a millennium and a half the assembly (ecclesia) of the believers in a religion of love was transformed into a great temporal monarchy throttling intellectual freedom and cruelly destroying its exposers and critics.

In View of
Its Liabil-

version an

Not Con

Society
Should

Since the independent structure is never safe from perversion, ity to Per- organized society should beware of bestowing upon it favors and Institution privileges. An unmodifiable charter should never be granted. trolled by Buildings actually used for public worship, education, or relief may be left tax free, but the exemption should not extend to other Have Fair property of a private corporation. The one-sided partnership, so common in some of our states, whereby the public furnishes an annual subsidy to be expended at the discretion of the private charity, has shown the ugliest tendencies and should cease. Public funds should never be given to an educational institution not under public control. No legitimate service should be withheld

Play but

Nothing

More

by the state in order to leave the field clear for the private agency. The public asylum, school, university, library, or research institute should be set up in order to correct and spur the private institute. The self-constituting governing board should be looked upon with suspicion, and the state's right of visitation, report, supervision, and revision should not be allowed to lapse through disuse.

CHAP.

XXV