A MAGAZINE OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP
SHIFTING CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY
FROM THE INDIVIDUAL TO THE STATE
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HE INDIVIDUAL irresponsibility an J modern tendency to
shift the civic burden of citizenship from the shoulders of the
individual citizen to the state and the community, is directly re
sponsible for the many failures in political government and the
dangerous swinging of the pendulum in the wrong direction. As
a direct result many of the European nations are now in the
narrows of swiftly changing mental currents. The civic stability
that is based upon individual responsibility has lost much of its
hold on public confidence, and state responsibility, under rigid
rules of dictatorship in one form or another, is receiving con*
siderable attention as a preferable alternative. Unconsciously
America is dealing with this problem, more in fact than in name.
The American home life today is not the American home life
of yesterday. The answer may be found in our enormous child
delinquency, a problem that is growing more complex every year.
The parents of today are frequently so busy with group activi
ties for civic improvements and betterment and so heavily taxed
with business, social work and pleasure hunting, that their
children are left largely to shift for themselves. Parents who in
dulge in business or pastime pursuits to the extent that they neglect
their duties toward their children and fail to care for their moral and
spiritual needs, should find little relief in the thought that if
their children chance to stray into wayward paths, the uplift agen
cies which they have helped to set up and so generously sustained,
will step in to correct their erring progeny, under state super-
vision and state control. But there ought to be a pang of re-
morse at the thought that their parental deficiency and ciyic de-
linquency is a contributing factor in breaking down the chief
American institution in training for individual responsibility and
self-government—the American home.
APRIL, 1925
PORTLAND, OREGON