Of late, we have been treated to accounts written by well-meaning ladies and gentlemen who have assumed clever disguises and have gone out to work—­for a week or a month—­among the proletariat.  But can we thus learn anything new of the fundamental problems of working men, working women, working children?  Something, perhaps, but not those great central problems of Hunger and Sex.  We have been told that only those who themselves have suffered the pangs of starvation can truly understand Hunger.  You might come into the closest contact with a starving man; yet, if you were yourself well-fed, no amount of sympathy could give you actual insight into the psychology of his suffering.  This suggests an objective and a subjective approach to all social problems.  Whatever the weakness of the subjective (or, if you prefer, the feminine) approach, it has at least the virtue that its conclusions are tested by experience.  Observation of facts about you, intimate subjective reaction to such facts, generate in your mind certain fundamental convictions,—­truths you can ignore no more than you can ignore such truths as come as the fruit of bitter but valuable personal experience.

Regarding myself, I may say that my experience in the course of the past twelve or fifteen years has been of a type to force upon me certain convictions that demand expression.  For years I had believed that the solution of all our troubles was to be found in well-defined programmes of political and legislative action.  At first, I concentrated my whole attention upon these, only to discover that politicians and law-makers are just as confused and as much at a loss in solving fundamental problems as anyone else.  And I am speaking here not so much of the corrupt and ignorant politician as of those idealists and reformers who think that by the ballot society may be led to an earthly paradise.  They may honestly desire and intend to do great things.  They may positively glow—­before election—­with enthusiasm at the prospect they imagine political victory may open to them.  Time after time, I was struck by the change in their attitude after the briefest enjoyment of this illusory power.  Men are elected during some wave of reform, let us say, elected to legislate into practical working existence some great ideal.  They want to do big things; but a short time in office is enough to show the political idealist that he can accomplish nothing, that his reform must be debased and dragged into the dust, so that even if it becomes enacted, it may be not merely of no benefit, but a positive evil.  It is scarcely necessary to emphasize this point.  It is an accepted commonplace of American politics.  So much of life, so large a part of all our social problems, moreover, remains untouched by political and legislative action.  This is an old truth too often ignored by those who plan political campaigns upon the most superficial knowledge of human nature.