I can hardly pass from this subject without a word of praise for the work in behalf of the public health. The active, intelligent labour of such men as Professor Irving Fisher on the propagandist side, and Doctor Flexner and Doctor Stiles on the practical side, cannot be praised too highly. It is made possible by charity. Both Messrs. Rockefeller and Morgan, admittedly two of the greatest of our capitalists, have given millions to this work. Every year other uncounted millions pour into it from men and women in every city in the land. The work is spreading, growing wider, drawing into itself better medical talent, greater surgical skill, and deeper and deeper devotion on the part of its backers. Help of this sort does not debauch the masses, for it does not lessen the self-respect of its recipients. The hospitals that are springing up all over the land, built and supported by private capital, are milestones in the march of progress, and I would give full honour to the men that plant them. In my own circle I know a good many people who think that they are charitable; and I know a few charitable people. It is a habit of my mind to ridicule the fads and fancies of my class; and I am sorry to be obliged to admit that, in the vast majority of cases with which I come personally in contact, the charity of my class is one of two things: it is either simply a fad, with little real genuine spirit of helpfulness behind it, or else it is, as it were, a sop to fear. A good many people seem to think that it is up to the rich to distribute largess to the poor, whether the poor want it or not. They ignore the economics of the matter, if indeed they know them. They have come to be afraid of the growing pressure from below, and they think that by indiscriminate charity they can lessen it. So they give ships of corn to the masses. You remember, perhaps, that, in the later plutocracy of Rome, after the triumph of Sulla, it came to be a regular habit, when frenzied mobs of Romans or would-be Romans threatened death and ruin to the plutocrats, for various and sundry men to buy shiploads of corn in Egypt and distribute them gratis to the Roman _plebs_. It is true that, in all human probability, the plutocracy of Rome prolonged its life for more than half a century by just such means. If a mob of slaves is hungry, and you give them something to eat, they will go home and eat it; and, in the meantime, if you happen to be a Roman senator with plenty of money, your hired thugs may be able to find the leaders of the delayed revolution and put them beyond any possibility of raising further trouble.