AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION 965

taxes, pilferage, lazy and inept workers. Pat Moynihan, viewing our
cities, fixes his gaze on the instability of negro families, shirking of
paternal responsibility, and a high rate of illegitimacy. White racists
find the root of the problem in the influx of blacks, and black racists
blame the white man for all the trouble. Some think of the urban
crisis in terms of crime, some in terms of mass disorder and mob
violence, and some lump the two together, recognizing no difference
between them.

These analyses, though most have some validity, are faulty because
they fasten on only part of the problem. They focus on symptoms
rather than causes. Simplistic analyses such as these lead to ineffec-
tive treatment — to attempted cures that sometimes compound the
disease.

One of the members of your association, James Q. Wilson of Har-
vard, has made this point. He writes, "Speaking of urban problems
has real dangers, for it leads to the substitution of effect for cause and
thus the misdirection of remedial action. " Wilson goes on, "... slums
and bums and tars are not the cause of the problems, they are the
symptoms, and if we tear them down or clear them out or ban them
from one place, they will inevitably reappear somewhere else.... "

One example of misdirected remedial action is the George Wallace
prescription, that unfortunately seems to have wide appeal. Governor
Wallace promises, if elected, to station soldiers along the city streets
five yards apart. Now, it may even be true that if enough troops
cracked enough skulls, peace of a kind — a peace of sullen acquies-
cence to clubs and bayonets — could be brought to our cities — but at
what cost! What a waste of manpower! But more important, what
a loss of freedom!

Certainly we must have domestic tranquillity if we are ever to
solve our problems. But peace and order only create conditions in
which the host problems become soluble. They do not of themselves
solve the problems.

In addition to the Wallace illusion, there is the Humphrey illusion
about urban problems. The Vice President offers "a Marshall Plan
for the cities" — a plan which he tells us involves only more Federal
spending on present urban programs. The Marshall Plan is a mis-
nomer for the proposal, reflecting failure to recognize the vast differ-
ences between the present conditions of American cities and the con-
ditions of war-devastated Western Europe two decades ago. But —
more important — Vice President Humphrey wants to pursue policies