Sec. 6. #Charity, and control of vice#.  The public relief of the defective classes, insane, feeble-minded, and paupers, is a part of the social protective policy.  The public interest undoubtedly is served by having these suffering classes systematically relieved, but the extent and nature of the provision are questions ever in debate.  Still more debated is temperance legislation, both as to licensing and as to prohibiting the liquor traffic.  Nowhere is the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor treated quite like the traffic in most other goods, because it is recognized that the public interest is affected in a different way.  While it is beyond question that society should protect itself and its innocent members against the drunkard, it is more doubtful whether it owes to the man, for his sake, protection against his own blunders.  Not even the gods can save the stupid.  Temperance legislation is strongest in its social aspect.  The opponent of it usually champions the individualist view; its partizans uphold, in varying degrees, the social view.

Similar questions arise regarding lotteries, gambling, betting, and horse-racing.  When a man backs a worthless horse against the field, money probably is transferred from the stupider to the shrewder party.  The philosopher may say that the sooner a prodigal and his money are parted the better; but the broken gambler remains a burden and a threat to honest society.  Gambling, lotteries, and speculation cause embezzlement, crime, unhappy homes, and wrecked lives.[6] Here are to be found with difficulty the true boundaries between ethics and expediency.  A busybody despotism may protect the fool, but it thereby helps to perpetuate and multiply his folly; yet if the fool is left alone, he too often is a plague to the wise and the virtuous.

Sec. 7. #City growth and the housing problem#.  In 1790, of our population only 3 per cent lived in cities of over eight thousand inhabitants; in 1900 the percentage was 33.  Then the largest city (Philadelphia) numbered 50,000; in 1910 the largest city (New York) numbered 5,500,000; that is, 110 times as large 120 years later.  The total number of persons living in cities of 8000 had increased in more than double that ratio.  The rapid growth of cities brought with it many evils.  Considered in their more material aspects, nearly all of these are summed up in the expression “the housing problem.”

As population grows denser in cities, land rises in value, yards and gardens narrow and then disappear, light, sun, and air are shut out, and cleanliness, decency, and home life become more difficult and, for many, impossible.  The residents gradually group themselves in districts corresponding to their economic incomes, and the poorer parts of the population become tenement dwellers in the neighborhood of factories or become segregated in “slum” districts of unsanitary and dilapidated houses.