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Title: Society - Its Origin and Development
Author: Rowe, Henry Kalloch
Language: English
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SOCIETY
ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT
BY
HENRY KALLOCH ROWE, Ph.D.
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND SOCIOLOGY IN NEWTON
THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTION
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
PREFACE
In studying biology it is convenient to make cross-sections of
laboratory specimens in order to determine structure, and to watch
plants and animals grow in order to determine function. There seems to
be no good reason why social life should not be studied in the same
way. To take a child in the home and watch it grow in the midst of the
life of the family, the community, and the larger world, and to cut
across group life so as to see its characteristics, its interests, and
its organization, is to study sociology in the most natural way and to
obtain the necessary data for generalization. To attempt to study
sociological principles without this preliminary investigation is to
confuse the student and leave him in a sea of vague abstractions.
It is not because of a lack of appreciation of the abstract that the
emphasis of this book is on the concrete. It is written as an
introduction to the study of the principles of sociology, and it may
well be used as a prelude to the various social sciences. It is
natural that trained sociologists should prefer to discuss the
profound problems of their science, and should plunge their pupils
into material for study where they are soon beyond their depth; much
of current life seems so obvious and so simple that it is easy to
forget that the college man or woman has never looked upon it with a
discriminating eye or with any attempt to understand its meaning. If
this is true of the college student, it is unquestionably true of the
men and women of the world. The writer believes that there is need of
a simple, untechnical treatment of human society, and offers this book
as a contribution to the practical side of social science. He writes
with the undergraduate continually in mind, trying to see through his
eyes and to think with his mind, and the references are to books that
will best meet his needs and that are most readily accessible. It is
expected that the pupil will read widely, and that the instructor will
show how principles and laws are formulated from the multitude of
observations of social phenomena. The last section of the book sums up
briefly some of the scientific conclusions that are drawn from the
concrete data, and prepares the way for a more detailed and technical
study.
If sociology is to have its rightful place in the world it must become
a science for the people. It must not be permitted to remain the
possession of an aristocracy of intellect. The heart of thousands of
social workers who are trying to reform society and cure its ills is
throbbing with sympathy and hope, but there is much waste of energy
and misdirection of zeal because of a lack of understanding of the
social life that they try to cure. They and the people to whom they
minister need an interpretation of life in social terms that they can
understand. Professional persons of all kinds need it. A world that is
on the verge of despair because of the breakdown of harmonious human
relations needs it to reassure itself of the value and the possibility
of normal human relations. Doubtless the presentation of the subject
is imperfect, but if it meets the need of those who find difficulty in
using more technical discussions and opens up a new field of interest
to many who hitherto have not known the difference between sociology
and socialism, the effort at interpretation will have been worth
while.
HENRY K. ROWE
NEWTON CENTRE, MASSACHUSETTS.
CONTENTS
PART ONE--INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER PAGE
I. CHARACTERISTICS OF SOCIAL LIFE 1
II. UNORGANIZED GROUP LIFE 16
PART TWO--LIFE IN THE FAMILY GROUP
III. FOUNDATIONS OF THE FAMILY 24
IV. THE HISTORY OF THE FAMILY 29
V. THE MAKING OF THE HOME 37
VI. CHILDREN IN THE HOME 42
VII. WORK, PLAY, AND EDUCATION 51
VIII. HOME ECONOMICS 60
IX. CHANGES IN THE FAMILY 67
X. DIVORCE 74
XI. THE SOCIAL EVIL 81
XII. CHARACTERISTICS AND PRINCIPLES 88
PART THREE--SOCIAL LIFE IN THE RURAL COMMUNITY
XIII. THE COMMUNITY AND ITS HISTORY 91
XIV. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 99
XV. OCCUPATIONS 104
XVI. RECREATION 108
XVII. RURAL INSTITUTIONS 115
XVIII. RURAL EDUCATION 120
XIX. THE NEW RURAL SCHOOL 127
XX. RURAL GOVERNMENT 136
XXI. HEALTH AND BEAUTY 144
XXII. MORALS IN THE RURAL COMMUNITY 151
XXIII. THE RURAL CHURCH 156
XXIV. A NEW TYPE OF RURAL INSTITUTION 162
PART FOUR--SOCIAL LIFE IN THE CITY
XXV. FROM COUNTRY TO CITY 169
XXVI. THE MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISE 180
XXVII. THE INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM 186
XXVIII. EXCHANGE AND TRANSPORTATION 201
XXIX. THE PEOPLE WHO WORK 212
XXX. THE IMMIGRANT 221
XXXI. HOW THE WORKING PEOPLE LIVE 230
XXXII. THE DIVERSIONS OF THE WORKING PEOPLE 238
XXXIII. CRIME AND ITS CURE 248
XXXIV. AGENCIES OF CONTROL 256
XXXV. DIFFICULTIES OF THE PEOPLE WHO WORK 263
XXXVI. CHARITY AND THE SETTLEMENTS 271
XXXVII. EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 280
XXXVIII. THE CHURCH 287
XXXIX. THE CITY IN THE MAKING 294
PART FIVE--SOCIAL LIFE IN THE NATION
XL. THE BUILDING OF A NATION 300
XLI. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE PEOPLE AS
A NATION 305
XLII. THE STATE 313
XLIII. PROBLEMS OF THE NATION 324
XLIV. INTERNATIONALISM 333
PART SIX--SOCIAL ANALYSIS
XLV. PHYSICAL AND PERSONAL FACTORS IN THE LIFE OF
SOCIETY 340
XLVI. SOCIAL PSYCHIC FACTORS 348
XLVII. SOCIAL THEORIES 357
XLVIII. THE SCIENCE OF SOCIOLOGY 364
INDEX 373
SOCIETY: ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT
PART I--INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER I
CHARACTERISTICS OF SOCIAL LIFE
1. =Man and His Social Relations.=--A study of society starts with the
obvious fact that human beings live together. The hermit is abnormal.
However far back we go in the process of human evolution we find the
existence of social relations, and sociability seems a quality
ingrained in human nature. Every individual has his own personality
that belongs to him apart from every other individual, but the
perpetuation and development of that personality is dependent on
relations with other personalities and with the physical environment
which limits his activity.
As an individual his primary interest is in self, but he finds by
experience that he cannot be independent of others. His impulses, his
feelings, and his ideas are due to the relations that he has with that
which is outside of himself. He may exercise choice, but it is within
the limits set by these outside relations. He may make use of what
they can do for him or he may antagonize them, at least he cannot
ignore them. Experience determines how the individual may best adapt
himself to his environment and adapt the environment to his own needs,
and he thus establishes certain definite relationships. Any group of
individuals, who have thus consciously established relationships with
one another and with their social environment is a society. The
relations through whose channels the interplay of social forces is
constantly going on make up the social organization. The
readjustments of these relations for the better adaptation of one
individual to another, or of either to their environment, make up the
process of social development. A society which remains in equilibrium
is termed static, that which is changing is called dynamic.
2. =The Field and the Purpose of Sociology.=--Life in society is the
subject matter of sociological study. Sociology is concerned with the
origin and development of that life, with its present forms and
activities, and with their future development. It finds its material
in the every-day experiences of men, women, and children in whatever
stage of progress they may be; but for practical purposes its chief
interest is in the normal life of civilized communities, together with
the past developments and future prospects of that life. The purpose
of sociological study is to discover the active workings and
controlling principles of life, its essential meaning, and its
ultimate goal; then to apply the principles, laws, and ideals
discovered to the imperfect social process that is now going on in the
hope of social betterment.
3. =Source Material for Study.=--The source material of social life
lies all about us. For its past history we must explore the primitive
conduct of human beings as we learn it from anthropology and
archæology, or as we infer it from the lowest human races or from
animal groups that bear the nearest physical and mental resemblance to
mankind. For present phenomena we have only to look about us, and
having seen to attempt their interpretation. Life is mirrored in the
daily press. Pick up any newspaper and examine its contents. It
reveals social characteristics both local and wide-spread.
4. =Social Characteristics--Activity.=--The first fact that stands out
clearly as a characteristic of social life is _activity_. Everybody
seems to be doing something. There are a few among the population,
like vagrants and the idle rich, who are parasites, but even they
sustain relations to others that require a certain sort of effort.
Activity seems fundamental. It needs but a hasty survey to show how
general it is. Farmers are cultivating their broad acres, woodsmen are
chopping and hewing in the forest, miners are drilling in underground
chambers, and the products of farm, forest, and mine are finding their
way by river, road, and rail to the great distributing centres. In the
town the machinery of mill and factory keeps busy thousands of
operatives, and turns out manufactured products to compete with the
products of the soil for right of way to the cities of the New World
and the Old. Busiest of all are the throngs that thread the streets of
the great centres, and pour in and out of stores and offices. Men rush
from one person to another, and interview one after another the
business houses with which they maintain connection; women swarm about
the counters of the department stores and find at the same time social
satisfaction and pecuniary reward; children in hundreds pour into the
intellectual hopper of the schoolroom and from there to the
playground. Everybody is busy, and everybody is seeking personal
profit and satisfaction.
5. =Mental Activity.=--There is another kind of activity of which
these economic and social phases are only the outward expression, an
activity of the mind which is busy continually adjusting the needs of
the individual or social organism and the environment to each other.
Some acts are so instinctive or habitual that they do not require
conscious mental effort; others are the result of reasoning as to this
or that course of action. The impulse of the farmer may be to remain
inactive, or the schoolboy may feel like going fishing; the call of
nature stimulates the desire; but reason reaches out and takes control
and directs outward activity into proper channels. On the other hand,
reason fortifies worthy inclinations. The youth feels an inclination
to stretch his muscles or to use his brains, and reason re-enforces
feeling. The physical need of food, clothing, and shelter acts as a
goad to drive a man to work, and reason sanctions his natural
response. This mental activity guides not only individual human
conduct but also that of the group. Instinct impels the man to defend
his family from hardship or his clan from defeat, and reason confirms
the impulse. His sociable disposition urges him to co-operate in
industry, and reason sanctions his inclination. The history of society
reveals an increasing influence of the intellect in thus directing
instinct and feeling. It is a law of social activity that it tends to
become more rational with the increase of education and experience.
But it is never possible to determine the quantitative influence of
the various factors that enter into a decision, or to estimate the
relative pressure of the forces that urge to activity. Alike in mental
and in physical activity there is a union of all the causative
factors. In an act of the will impulse, feeling, and reflection all
have their part; in physical activity it is difficult to determine how
compelling is any one of the various forces, such as heredity and
environment, that enter into the decision.
6. =The Valuation of Social Activities.=--The importance to society of
all these activities is not to be measured by their scope or by their
vigor or volume, but by the efficiency with which they perform their
function, and the value of the end they serve. Domestic activities,
such as the care of children, may be restricted to the home, and a
woman's career may seem to be blighted thereby, but no more important
work can be accomplished than the proper training of the child.
Political activity may be national in scope, but if it is vitiated by
corrupt practices its value is greatly diminished. Certain activities
carry with them no important results, because they have no definite
function, but are sporadic and temporary, like the coming together of
groups in the city streets, mingling in momentary excitement and
dissolving as quickly.
The true valuation of activities is to be determined by their social
utility. The employment of working men in the brewing of beer or the
manufacture of chewing-gum may give large returns to an individual or
a corporation, but the social utility of such activity is small.
Business enterprise is naturally self-centred; the first interest of
every individual or group is self-preservation, and business must pay
for itself and produce a surplus for its owner or it is not worth
continuing from the economic standpoint; but a business enterprise
has no right selfishly to disregard the interests of its employees and
of the public. Its social value must be reckoned as small or great,
not by the amount of business carried on, but by its contribution to
human welfare.
Take a department store as an illustration. It may be highly
profitable to its owners, giving large returns on the investment,
while distributing cheap and defective goods and paying its employees
less than a decent living wage. Its value is to be determined as small
because its social utility is of little worth. When the value of
activity is estimated on this basis, it will be seen that among the
noblest activities are those of the philanthropist who gives his time
and interest without stint to the welfare of other folk; of the
minister who lends himself to spiritual ministry, and the physician
who gives up his own comfort and sometimes his own life to save those
who are physically ill; of the housewife who bears and rears children
and keeps the home as her willing contribution to the life of the
world; and of the nurses, companions, and teachers who are mothers,
sisters, and wives to those who need their help.
7. =Results of Activity.=--The product of activity is achievement. The
workers of the world are continually transforming energy into material
products. To clear away a forest, to raise a thousand bushels of
grain, to market a herd of cattle or a car-load of shoes, to build a
sky-scraper or an ocean liner, is an achievement. But it is a greater
achievement to take a child mind and educate it until it learns how to
cultivate the soil profitably, how to make a machine or a building of
practical value, and how to save and enrich life.
The history of human folk shows that achievement has been gradual, and
much of it without conscious planning, but the great inventors, the
great architects, the great statesmen have been men of vision, and
definite purpose is sure to fill a larger place in the story of
achievement. Purposive progress rather than unconscious, telic rather
than genetic, is the order of the evolution of society.
The highest achievement of the race is its moral uplift. The man or
woman who has a noble or kindly thought, who has consecrated life to
unselfish ends and has spent constructive effort for the common good,
is the true prince among men. He may be a leader upon whom the common
people rely in time of stress, or only a private in the ranks--he is a
hero, for his achievement is spiritual, and his mastery of the inner
life is his supreme victory.
8. =Association.=--A second characteristic of social life is that
activity is not the activity of isolated individuals, but it is
_activity in association_. Human beings work together, play together,
talk together, worship together, fight together. If they happen to act
alone, they are still closely related to one another. Examine the
daily newspaper record and see how few items have to do with
individuals acting in isolation. Even if a person sits down alone to
think, his mind is working along the line on which it received the
push of another mind shortly before. A large part of the work of the
world is done in concert. The ship and the train have their crew, the
factory its hands, the city police and fire departments their force.
Men shout together on the ball field, and sing folk-songs in chorus.
As an audience they listen to the play or the sermon, as a mob they
rush the jail to lynch a prisoner, or as a crowd they riot in high
carnival on Mardi Gras. The normal individual belongs to a family, a
community, a political party, a nation; he may belong, besides, to a
church, a few learned societies, a trade-union, or any number of clubs
or fraternities.
Human beings associate because they possess common interests and means
of intercourse. They are affected by the same needs. They have the
power to think in the same grooves and to feel a common sympathy.
Members of the same race or community have a common fund of custom or
tradition; they are conscious of like-mindedness in morals and
religion; they are subject to the same kind of mental suggestion; they
have their own peculiar language and literature. As communication
between different parts of the world improves and ability to speak in
different languages increases, there comes a better understanding
among the world's peoples and an increase of mutual sympathy.
Experience has taught the value of association. By it the individual
makes friends, gains in knowledge, enlarges interests. Knowing this,
he seeks acquaintances, friends, and companions. He finds the world
richer because of family, community, and national life, and if
necessary he is willing to sacrifice something of his own comfort and
peace for the advantages that these associations will bring.
9. =Causes of Association.=--It is the nature of human beings to enjoy
company, to be curious about what they see and hear, to talk together,
and to imitate one another. These traits appear in savages and even in
animals, and they are not outgrown with advance in civilization. These
inborn instincts are modified or re-enforced by the conscious workings
of the mind, and are aided or restricted by external circumstances. It
is a natural instinct for men to seek associates. They feel a liking
for one and a dislike for another, and select their friends
accordingly. But the choice of most men is within a restricted field,
for their acquaintance is narrow. College men are thrown with a
certain set or join a certain fraternity. They play on the same team
or belong to the same class. They may have chosen their college, but
within that institution their environment is limited. It is similar in
the world at large. Individuals do not choose the environment in which
at first they find themselves, and the majority cannot readily change
their environment. Within its natural limits and the barriers which
caste or custom have fixed, children form their play groups according
to their liking for each other, and adults organize their societies
according to their mutual interests or common beliefs. With increasing
acquaintance and ease of communication and transportation there comes
a wider range of choice, and environment is less controlling. The will
of the individual becomes freer to choose friends and associates
wherever he finds them. He may have widely scattered business and
political connections. He may be a member of an international
association. He may even take a wife from another city or a distant
nation. Mental interaction flows in international channels.
10. =Forms of Association.=--It is possible to classify all forms of
association in two groups as natural, like a gang of boys, or
artificial, like a political party. Or it is possible to arrange them
according to the interests they serve, as economic, scientific, and
the like. Again they may be classified according to thoroughness of
organization, ranging from the crowd to the closely knit corporation.
But whatever the form may be, the value of the association is to be
judged according to the degree of social worth, as in the case of
activities. On that basis a company of gladiators or a pugilist's club
ranks below a village improvement society; that in turn yields in
importance to a learned association of physicians discussing the best
means of relieving human suffering. In the slow process of social
evolution those forms that do not contribute to the welfare of the
race will lose their place in society.
11. =Results of Association.=--The results of association are among
the permanent assets of the race. Man has become what he is because of
his social relations, and further progress is dependent upon them. The
arts that distinguish man from his inferiors are the products of
inter-communication and co-operation. The art of conversation and the
accompanying interchange of ideas and thought stimulus are to be
numbered among the benefits. The art of conciliation that calms
ruffled tempers and softens conflict belongs here. The art of
co-operation, that great engine of achievement, depends on learning
through social contact how to think and feel sympathetically. Finally,
there is the product of social organization. Chance meetings and
temporary assemblies are of small value, though they must be noted as
phenomena of association. More important are the fixed institutions
that have grown out of relations continually tested by experience
until they have become sanctioned by society as indispensable. Such
are the organized forms of business, education, government, and
religion. But all groups require organization of a sort. The gang has
its recognized leader, the club its officers and by-laws. Even such
antisocial persons as outlaws frequently move in bands and have their
chiefs. Organization goes far to determine success in war or
politics, in work or play. Like achievement, organization is the
result of a gradual growth in collective experience, and must be
continually adapted to the changing requirements of successive periods
by the wisdom of master minds. It must also gradually include larger
groups within its scope until, like the International Young Men's
Christian Association or the Universal Postal Union, it reaches out to
the ends of the earth.
12. =Control.=--The public mirror of the press reveals a third
characteristic of social life. Activity and association are both under
_control_. Activity would result in exploitation of the weak by the
strong, and finally in anarchy, if there were no exercise of control.
Under control activities are co-ordinated, individuals and classes are
brought to work in co-operation and not in antagonism, and under an
enlightened and sanctioned authority life becomes richer, fuller, and
more truly free.
Social control begins in the individual mind. Instincts and feelings
are held in the leash of rational thought. Intelligence is the guide
to action. Control is exerted externally upon the individual from
early childhood. Parental authority checks the independence of the
child and compels conformity to the will of his elders. Family
tradition makes its power felt in many homes, and family pride is a
compelling reason for moral rectitude. Every member of the family is
restrained by the rights of the others, and often yields his own
preferences for the common good. When the child goes out from the home
he is still under restraint, and rigid regulations become even more
pronounced. The rules of the schoolroom permit little freedom. The
teacher's authority is absolute during the hours when school is in
session. In the city when school hours are over there are municipal
regulations enforced by watchful police that restrict the activity of
a boy in the streets, and if he visits the playground he is still
under the reign of law. Similarly the adult is hedged about by social
control. Custom decrees that he must dress appropriately for the
street, that he must pass to the right when he meets another person,
and that he must raise his hat to an acquaintance of the opposite sex.
The college youth finds it necessary to acquaint himself with the
customs and traditions that have been handed down from class to class,
and these must be observed under pain of ostracism. Faculty and
trustees stand in the way of his unlimited enjoyment. His moral
standards are affected by the atmosphere of the chapter house, the
athletic field, and the examination hall. In business and civil
relations men find themselves compelled to recognize laws that have
been formulated for the public good. State and national governments
have been able to assert successfully their right to control corporate
action, however large and powerful the corporation might be. But
government itself is subject to the will of the people in a democratic
nation, and public opinion sways officials and determines local and
national policies. Religious beliefs have the force of law upon whole
peoples like the Mohammedans.
Social control is exercised in large measure without the mailed fist.
Moral suasion tends to supersede the birch stick and the policeman's
billy. Within limits there is freedom of action, and the tacit appeal
of society is to a man's self-control. But the newspaper with its
sensation and police-court gossip never lets us forget that back of
self-control is the court of judicial authority and the bar of public
opinion.
The result of the constant exercise of control is the existence of
order. The normal individual becomes accustomed to restraint from his
earliest years, and it is only the few who are disorderly in the
schoolroom, on the streets, or in the broader relations of life.
Criminals make up a small part of the population; anarchy never has
appealed to many as a social philosophy; unconventional people are
rare enough to attract special attention.
13. =Change.=--A fourth characteristic of social life is _change_.
Control tends to keep society static, but there are powerful dynamic
forces that are continually upsetting the equilibrium. In spite of the
natural conservatism of institutions and agencies of control, group
life is as continually changing as the physical elements in nature.
Continued observation recorded over a considerable period of time
reveals changing habits, changing occupations, changing interests,
even changing laws and governments. Inside the group individuals are
continually readjusting their modes of thought and activity to one
another, and between groups there is a similar adjustment of social
habits. Without such change there can be no progress. War or other
catastrophe suddenly alters wide human relations. External influences
are constantly making their impression upon us, stimulating us to
higher attainment or dragging us down to individual and group
degeneration.
14. =Causes of Change.=--The factors that enter into social life to
produce change are numerous. Conflict of ideas among individuals and
groups compels frequent readjustment of thought. The free expression
of opinion in public debate and through the press is a powerful
factor. Travel alters modes of conduct, and wholesale migration
changes the characteristics of large groups of population. Family
habits change with accumulation of wealth or removal from the farm to
the city. The introduction of the telephone and the free mail delivery
with its magazines and daily newspapers has altered currents of
thought in the country. Summer visitors have introduced country and
city to each other; the automobile has enlarged the horizon of
thousands. New modes of agriculture have been adopted through the
influence of a state agricultural college, new methods of education
through a normal school, new methods of church work through a
theological seminary. Whole peoples, as in China and Turkey, have been
profoundly affected by forces that compelled change. Growth in
population beyond comfortable means of subsistence has set tribes in
motion; the need of wider markets has compelled nations to try
forcible expansion into disputed areas. The desire for larger
opportunities has sent millions of emigrants from Europe to America,
and has been changing rapidly the complexion of the crowds that walk
the city streets and enter the polling booths. Certain outstanding
personalities have moulded life and thought through the centuries,
and have profoundly changed whole regions of country. Mohammed and
Confucius put their personal stamp upon the Orient; Cæsar and Napoleon
made and remade western Europe; Adam Smith and Darwin swayed economic
and scientific England; Washington and Lincoln were makers of America.
Through such social processes as these--through unconscious
suggestion, through communication and discussion that mould public
opinion, through changes in environment and the influence of new
leaders of thought and action--the evolution of folk life has carried
whole races, sometimes to oblivion, but generally out of savagery and
barbarism into a material and cultural civilization.
15. =Results of the Process.=--The results of the process of social
change are so far-reaching as to be almost incalculable. Particularly
marked are the changes of the last hundred years. The best way to
appreciate them is by a comparison of periods. Take college life in
America as an example. Scores of colleges now large and prosperous
were not then in existence, and even in the older colleges conditions
were far inferior to what they are in the newer and smaller colleges
to-day. There were few preparatory schools, and the young man--of
course there were no college women--fitted himself as best he could by
private instruction. To reach the college it was necessary to drive by
stage or private conveyance to the college town, to find rooms in an
ill-equipped dormitory or private house, to be content with plain food
for the body and a narrow course of study for the mind. The method of
instruction was tedious and uninspiring; text-books were unattractive
and dull. There were no libraries worthy of the name, no laboratories
or observatories for research. Scientific instruction was conspicuous
by its absence; the social sciences were unknown. Gymnasiums had not
been evolved from the college wood-pile; intercollegiate sports were
unknown. Glee clubs, dramatic societies, college journalism, and the
other arts and pastimes that give color and variety to modern
university life were unknown.
In the same period modes of thinking have changed. Scientific
discoveries and the principles that have been based on them have
wrought a revolution. Evolution has become a word to conjure with.
Scholars think in terms of process. Biological investigation has opened
wide the whole realm of life and emphasized the place of development in
the physical organism. Psychological study has changed the basis of
philosophy. Sociology has come with new interpretations of human life.
Rapid changes are taking place at the present time in education, in
religion, and in social adjustments. The rate of progress varies in
different parts of the world; there are handicaps in the form of race
conservatism, local and individual self-satisfaction and independence,
maladjustments and isolation; sometimes the process leads along a
downward path. On the whole, however, the history is a story of
progress.
16. =Weaknesses.=--In the thinking of not a few persons the handicaps
that lie in the path of social development bulk larger than the
engines of progress. They are pessimistic over the _weaknesses_ that
constitute a fifth characteristic of social life. These are certainly
not to be overlooked, but they are an inevitable result of incomplete
adaptations during a constant process of change. There are numerous
illustrations of weakness. Social activity is not always wisely
directed. Association frequently develops antagonism instead of
co-operation. In trade and industry individuals do not "play fair."
Corporations are sometimes unjust. Politics are liable to become
corrupt. In the various associations of home and community life
indifference, cruelty, unchastity, and crime add to the burdens of
poverty, disease, and wretchedness. A yellow press mirrors a
scandalous amount of intrigue, immorality, and misdemeanor. Government
abuses its power; public opinion is intolerant and unjust; fashion is
tyrannical; law is uncompromising. In times like our own economic
interests frequently overshadow cultural interests. In college
estimation athletics appear to bulk larger than the curriculum. In the
public mind prejudice and hasty judgments take precedence over
carefully weighed opinions and judicial decisions. Conservatism blocks
the wheels of progress, or radicalism, in its unbalanced enthusiasm,
destroys by injudiciousness the good that has been gradually
accumulating. The social machinery gets out of gear, or proves
inefficient for the new burdens that frequently are imposed upon it.
The social order is not perfect and needs occasional amendment.
17. =Resultant Problems.=--These weaknesses precipitate specific
social problems. Some of them are bound up in the family
relationships, like the better regulation of marriage and divorce, the
prevention of desertion, and the rights of women and children. Others
are questions that relate to industry, such as the rights of employees
with reference to wages and hours of labor, or the unhealthy
conditions in which working people live and toil. Certain matters are
issues in every community. It is not easy to decide what shall be done
with the poor, the unfortunate, and the weak-willed members of
society. Some problems are peculiar to the country, the city, or the
nation, like the need of rural co-operation, the improvement of
municipal efficiency, or the regulation of immigration. A few are
international, like the scourge of war. Besides such specific problems
there are always general issues demanding the attention of social
thinkers and reformers, such as the adjustment of individual rights to
social duties, and the improvement of moral and religious efficiency.
18. =The Social Groups.=--A broad survey of the current life of
society leads naturally to the questions: How is this social life
organized? and How did it come to be? The answers to these questions
appear in certain social groupings, each of which has a history and
life of its own, but is only a segment of the whole circle of active
association. These groupings include the family, the rural community,
the city, and the nation. In the natural environment of the home
social life finds its apprenticeship. When the child has become in a
measure socialized, he enters into the larger relations of the
neighborhood. Half the people of the United States live in country
communities, but an increasing proportion of the population is found
in the midst of the associations and activities of the larger civic
community. All are citizens or wards of the nation, and have a part
in the social life of America. Consciously or not they have still
wider relations in a world life that is continually growing in social
content. Each of these groups reveals the same fundamental
characteristics, but each has its peculiar forms and its dominant
energies; each has its perplexing problems and each its possibilities
of greater good. Through the environment the forces of the mind are
moulding a life that is gradually becoming more nearly like the social
ideal.
READING REFERENCES
GIDDINGS: _Principles of Sociology_, pages 363-399.
SMALL AND VINCENT: _Introduction to the Study of Society_, pages
237-240.
DEALEY: _Sociology_, pages 58-73.
ROSS: _Social Control_, pages 49-61.
ROSS: _Foundations of Sociology_, pages 182-255.
BLACKMAR AND GILLIN: _Outlines of Sociology_, pages 271-282.
CHAPTER II
UNORGANIZED GROUP LIFE
19. =Temporary Groups.=--A study of the organization and development
of social life is mainly a study of the mental and physical activities
of individuals associated in permanent groups. Conditions change and
there is a continual shifting of contacts as in a kaleidoscope, but
the group is a fixed institution in the life of society. But besides
the permanent groups there are temporary unorganized associations that
have a place in social life too important to be overlooked. They vary
in size from a chance meeting of two or three friends who stop on the
street corner and separate after a few minutes of conversation, to the
great mass-meeting, that is called for a special purpose and interests
a whole neighborhood, but adjourns _sine die_. Such groups are subject
to the same physical and psychic forces that affect the family, the
community, and the nation, but they tend to act more on impulse,
because there is no habitual subordination to an established rule or
order. A simple illustration will show the influences that work to
produce these temporary groupings and that govern conduct.
20. =How the Group Forms.=--Imagine a working man on the morning of a
holiday. Without a fixed purpose how he will spend the day, his mind
works along the line of least resistance, inviting physical or mental
stimulus, and sensitive to respond. He is not accustomed to remain at
home, nor does he wish to be alone. He is used to the companionship of
the factory, and instinctively he longs for the association of his
kind. He is most likely to meet his acquaintances on the street, and
he feels the pull of the out-of-doors. The influences of instinct and
habit impel him to activity, and he makes a definite choice to leave
the house. Once on the street he feels the zest of motion and the
anticipation of the pleasure that he will find in the companionship
of his fellows. Reason assures him from past experience that he has
made a good choice, and on general principles asserts that exercise is
good for him, whatever may be the social result of his stroll. Thus
the various factors that produce individual activity are at work in
him. They are similarly at work in others of his kind. Presently these
factors will bring them together.
Unconsciously the working man and his friend are moving toward each
other. The attention and discrimination of each man is brought into
play with every person that he meets, but there is no recognition of
acquaintance until each comes within the range of vision of the other.
They greet each other with a hail of good-fellowship and a cordial
hand-shake and stop for conversation. An analysis of the psychological
elements that enter into such an incident would make plain the part of
sense-perception and memory, of feeling and volition in the act of
each, but the significant fact in the incident is that these mental
factors are set to work because of the contact of one mind upon the
other. It is the mental interaction arising from the moment's
association that produces the social phenomenon. What are the social
phenomena of this particular occasion? They are the acts that have
taken place because of association. The individual would not greet
himself or shake hands with himself, or stop to talk with himself.
They are dependent upon the presence of more than one person; they are
phenomena of the group. Why do they shake hands and talk? First,
because they feel alike and think alike, and sympathy and
like-mindedness seek expression in gesture and language, and,
secondly, because their mode of action is under the control of a
social custom that directs specific acts. If the meeting was on the
continent of Europe the men might embrace, if it was in the jungle of
Africa they might raise a yell at sight of each other, but American
custom limits the greeting to a hand-clasp, supplemented on occasion
by a slap on the shoulder. In Italy the language used is peculiar to
the race and is helped out by many gestures; in New England of the
Puritans the language used would be of a type peculiar to itself, and
would hardly have the assistance of a changing facial expression.
To-day two men have formed a temporary group, group action has taken
place, and the action, while impulsive, is under the constraint of
present custom. What happens next?
21. =The Working of the Social Mind.=--Conversation in the group
develops a common purpose. The two men are conscious of common desires
and interests, or through a conflict of ideas the will of one
subordinates the will of the other, and under the control of the joint
purpose, which is now the social mind, they move toward one goal. This
goal soon appears to be the objective point of a larger social mind,
for other men and boys are converging in the same direction. At the
corner of another street the two companions meet other friends, and
after a mutual greeting the augmented party finds its way to the
entrance of a ball park. The same instincts and habits and the same
feelings and thoughts have stirred in every member of the group; they
have felt the pull of the same desires and interests; they have put
themselves in motion toward the same goal; they have greeted one
another in similar fashion, and they find satisfaction in talking
together on a common topic; but they do not constitute a permanent or
organized group, and once separated they may never repeat this chance
meeting.
22. =The Impulse of the Crowd.=--Once within the ball park and seated
on the long benches they are part of a far larger group of like-minded
human beings, and they feel a common thrill in anticipation of the
pleasure of the sport. They feel the stimulus that comes from
obedience to a common impulse. A shout or a joke arouses a sympathetic
outburst from hundreds. When they came together at first most of them
were strangers, but common interests and emotions have produced a
group consciousness. The game is called, and hundreds in unison fix
their attention on the men in action. A hit is made, in breathless
suspense the crowd watches to see the result, and with a common
impulse cries out simultaneously in approbation or disgust over the
play. As the game proceeds primitive passions play over the crowd and
emotions find free expression in the language that habit and custom
provide. The crowd is in a state of high suggestibility; it responds
to the stimulus of a chance remark, the misplay of a player, or the
misjudgment of an umpire; one moment it is thrown into panic by the
prospect of defeat, and the next into paroxysms of delight as the tide
of victory turns. On sufficient provocation the crowd gets into
motion, impelled by a common excitement to unreasoning action; it
pours upon the field, and, unless prevented, wreaks its anger upon
team or umpire that has aroused it to fury, but met with superior
force the crowd melts away, dissolving into its smaller groups and
then into its individual elements. A crowd of the sort described
constitutes one type of the incomplete group. It is a chance assembly,
moved by a common purpose but coalescing only temporarily, guided by
elemental impulses, and readily breaking up without permanent
achievement other than obtaining the recreation sought.
23. =The Mass-Meeting.=--Another and more orderly type appears in a
meeting of American residents in a foreign city to protest against an
outrage to their flag or an injustice to one of their number. Those
who assemble are not members of a definite organization with a regular
machinery for action. They are, however, moved by common emotion and
purpose, because they are conscious of a permanent bond that creates
mutual sympathy. They are citizens of the same country. They are
mindful of a national history that is their common heritage. They are
proud of the position of eminence that belongs to the Western
republic. There is a peculiar quality to the patriotism that they all
feel and that calls out a unanimous expression. Their minds work
alike, and they come together to give expression to their feelings and
convictions. They are under the direction of a presiding officer and
the procedure of the meeting is according to the parliamentary rules
that guide civilized assemblies. However urgent of purpose, the
speakers hold themselves in leash, and the listeners content
themselves with conventional applause when their enthusiasm is
aroused. After a reasonable amount of discussion has taken place, the
assembly crystallizes its opinions in the form of resolutions couched
in earnest but dignified language and disperses to await the action of
those in authority.
24. =International Association.=--Still another type is the incomplete
group that is composed of men and women of similar moral or religious
convictions who never assemble in one place, but constitute a certain
kind of association. Kipling could sing,
"The East is East and the West is West
And never the twain shall meet,"
yet through missionary efforts people of very different races and
habits of living and thinking have been brought to cherish the same
beliefs and to adopt similar customs. Thousands of such people in all
parts of the world constitute a unified group because of their mental
interaction, though they may never meet and are not organized in
common. The only medium through which one section has influenced
another may be a single missionary or book, but the electric current
of sympathy passes from one to another as effectively as the wireless
carries a message across leagues of space. In the same way sentiment
and opinion spread and reproduce themselves, even through long periods
of time. Before the middle of the nineteenth century Chinese sentiment
was so strong against the importation of opium from India that war
broke out with England, with the result that the curse was fastened
upon the Orient. The evil increased, spreading through many countries.
Meantime international fortunes brought the United States to the
Philippines and trade carried opium to the United States. Foreigners
in China combated the evil. The nation took a determined stand, and
finally, through international agreement under American leadership,
the trade and the consumption of opium were checked. Similarly slavery
was put under the opprobrium of Christendom, public opinion in one
nation after another was formed against it, laws were passed
condemning it, and at last it received an international ban. At the
present time, through agitation and conference, a world sentiment
against war is increasing, and pacifists in every land constitute an
expanding group of like-minded men and women who are determined that
wars shall cease in the future. These are all examples of unorganized
associations or incomplete groups.
25. =Experiments in Association.=--In the history of human kind
numerous experiments in association have been made; those which have
served well in the competition between groups have survived, and have
tended to become permanent types of association, receiving the
sanction of society, and so to be reckoned as social institutions;
others have been thrown on the rubbish heap as worthless. It is
generally believed, for example, that many related families in
primitive times associated in a loosely connected horde, but the horde
could not compete successfully with an organized state and gave way
before it. The local community in New England once carried on its
affairs satisfactorily in yearly mass-meeting, where every citizen had
an equal privilege of speaking and voting directly upon a proposed
measure, but there proved to be a limit to the efficiency of such
government when the population increased, so that a meeting of all the
citizens was impossible, and a constitutional assembly of
representative citizens was devised. Similarly national governments
have been organized for greater efficiency and machinery is being
invented frequently to increase their value.
26. =Kinds of Unorganized Groups.=--Unorganized groups are of three
kinds: There are first the normal groups that are continually being
formed and dissolved, but that perform a useful function while they
exist. Such are the chance meetings and conversations of friends in
all walks of life, and the crowds that gather occasionally to help
forward a good cause. They promote general intelligence, provide a
free exchange of ideas, and help to form a body of public opinion for
social guidance. There is often an open-mindedness among the common
people that is not vitiated by the grip of vested interests upon their
unwarped judgments, and the people can be trusted in the long run to
make good. Democracy is based upon the reliability of public opinion.
The second kind of unorganized group is one that is on the way to
becoming a permanent group sanctioned by society. A group of this type
is the boy's gang. By most persons the spontaneous association of a
dozen boys who live near together and range over a certain district
has been condemned as a social evil; recently it has become recognized
as a normal group, forming naturally at a certain period of boy life
and falling to pieces of its own accord a few years later. The
tendency of boy leaders is not only to give it recognition as
legitimate, but to use the gang instinct to promote definite
organizations of greater value to their members and to the community.
Another group of the same type is a so-called "movement," composed of
a few individuals who associate themselves in a loose way to further a
definite purpose, like the promotion of temperance, hold
mass-meetings, and create public opinion, but do not at once proceed
to a permanent organization. Eventually, when the movement has
gathered sufficient headway or has shown that it is permanently
valuable, a fixed organization may be accomplished.
The third kind of unorganized group is an abnormality in the midst of
civilization, a relic of the primitive days when impulse rather than
reason swayed the mind of a group. Such is the crowd that gathers in a
moment of excitement and yields to a momentary passion to lynch a
prisoner, or a revolutionary mob that loots and burns out of a sheer
desire for destruction. Such a group has not even the value of a
safety-valve, for its passion gathers momentum as it goes, and, like a
conflagration, it cannot be stopped until it has burned itself out or
met a solid wall of military authority.
27. =The Popular Crowd vs. the Organized Group.=--In the routine life
of a disciplined society there is always to be found at least one of
these types. Even the abnormal type of the passionate crowd is not
unusual in its milder form. Any unusual event like a fire or a circus
will draw scores and hundreds together, and the crowd is always liable
to fall into disorder unless officers of the law are in attendance.
This is so well understood that the police are always in evidence
where there are large congregations of people at church or theatre,
where a prominent man is to be seen or a procession is to pass. But
the popular mass is a volatile thing, and in proportion to its size it
expends little useful energy. It is never to be reckoned as equal in
importance to the organized company, however small it may be, that has
a definite purpose guiding its regular action, and that persists in
its purpose for years together. It is the fixed group, the social
institution, that does the work of the world and carries society
forward from lower to higher levels of civilization. Social efficiency
belongs to the organized type.
READING REFERENCES
COOLEY: _Social Organization_, pages 149-156.
GIDDINGS: _Elements of Sociology_, pages 129-140.
ROSS: _Foundations of Sociology_, pages 120-138.
ROSS: _Social Psychology_, pages 43-82.
MÜNSTERBERG: _Psychology, General and Applied_, pages 269-273.
DAVENPORT: _Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals_, pages 25-31.
PART II--LIFE IN THE FAMILY GROUP
CHAPTER III
FOUNDATIONS OF THE FAMILY
28. =The Fundamental Importance of the Family.=--Social life can be
understood best by taking the simplest organized group of human beings
and analyzing its activities, its organization, and its development.
The family is such a group and is, therefore, a natural basis for
study. It illustrates most of the phases of social activity, it is
simple in its organization, its history goes back to primitive times,
and it is rapidly changing in the present. Family life is made up of
the interactions of individual life, and, therefore, the individual in
his social relations and not the family is the unit of sociological
investigation, but until recent years the family group has been
regarded as of greater importance than the individual, and in the
Orient the family still occupies the place of importance. Out of the
family have developed such institutions as property, law, and
government, and on the maintenance of the family rests the future
welfare of society. It has been claimed that "the study of the single
family on its homestead would yield richer scientific knowledge and
more practical results in the great social sciences than almost any
other single object in the social world. Pursued historically, the
student would find himself at the roots of property, separate
ownership of land, inheritance, taxation, free trade and tariff, and
discover the germs of international law and the state. The great
questions of the day, as we call them, are little more than incidents
to the working out of the great social institutions, and these are the
expansions and modified forms of the family amid its unceasing support
and activity."
29. =The Family on the Farm.=--The best environment in which to study
the family is the farm. There the relations and activities of the
larger world appear in miniature, but with a greater simplicity and
unity than elsewhere. There the family gets closer to the soil, and
its members feel their relation to nature and the restrictions that
nature imposes upon human activity. There appear the occupations of
the successive stages of history--hunting, the care of domesticated
animals, agriculture, and manufacturing; there are the activities of
production, distribution, and consumption of economic goods. There a
consciousness of mutual dependence is developed, and the value of
co-operation is illustrated. There the mind ranges less fettered than
in the town, yet is less inclined toward radical changes. There the
family preserves and hands down from one generation to another the
heritage of the past, and stimulates its members to further progress.
In the family on the farm children learn how to live in association
with their kin and with hired employees; there much of the mental,
moral, and religious training is begun; and there is found most of the
sympathy and encouragement that nerves the boy to go out from home for
the struggle of life in the larger community and the world.
30. =Physical Conditions of Farm Life.=--Every group, like every
individual, is dependent in a measure on its physical environment. The
prosperity of the family on the farm and the daily activities of its
members wait often upon the quality of climate and soil and the temper
of the weather. The rocky hillsides of mountain lands like Switzerland
breed a hardy, self-reliant people, who make the most of small
opportunities for agriculture. A well-watered, rolling country pours
its riches into the lap of the husbandman; in such surroundings he is
likely to be more cheerful but less gritty than the Scottish
highlander. The pioneer settlers of America, in their trek into the
ulterior, faced the forest and its terrors, and every member of the
family who was old enough added his ounce of effort to the struggle to
subdue it. Their descendants enjoy the fruits of the earlier victory.
The well-trimmed woodland and fertile field are attractive to him;
nature in varying moods interests him. Even on the edge of the Western
desert the farmer is the master of a process of dry farming or
irrigation, so that he can smile at nature's effort to drive him out.
Science and education have helped to make man more independent of
natural forces and natural moods, but still it is nature that provides
the raw materials, that supplies the energy of wind and water and
sunshine, and that hastens prosperity if man learns to co-operate with
it. Success in the economic struggle of the family has always been
conditioned upon the physical environment, and it will always remain
one of the factors that shape human destiny.
31. =Inheritance of Family Traits.=--Another factor that enters into
family life is the physical nature of its members, the quality of the
stock from which the family is descended. Heredity is as important in
sociological study as environment. It is well known that a child
inherits racial and family traits from his ancestors, and these he
cannot shake off altogether as he grows older. Families have their
peculiarities that continue from one generation to another. The family
endowment is often the foundation of individual success. Without
physical sturdiness the man and woman on the farm are seriously
handicapped and are liable to succumb in the struggle for existence;
without mental ability and moral stamina members of the family fail to
make a broad mark on the community, and the family influence declines.
Mere acquisition or transmission of wealth does not constitute good
fortune. This fact of heredity must therefore be reckoned with in all
the activities of the family, and cannot be overlooked in a study of
the psychic factors which are the real social forces.
32. =The Domestic Function of the Family.=--The farm family for the
purpose of study may be thought of as composed of husband and wife,
children and servants, but the makers of the family are of first
importance for its understanding. The family has a long history, but
it exists, not because it is a long-established institution, but
because it satisfies present human needs, as all institutions must if
they are to survive. The family serves many ends, but as the primary
social instincts are to mate and to eat, so the principal functions of
the family are the _domestic_ and the _economic_. The normal adult
desires to mate, to have and rear children, and to make a home. To
this his sexual and parental instincts impel him; they are nature's
provision for the perpetuation of the race. The sex instinct attracts
the man and the woman to each other, and marriage is the sanction of
society to their union; the parental instinct gives birth to children
and leads the father and mother to protect the child through the long
years of dependence. Marriage and parenthood are twin obligations that
the individual owes to the race. Celibacy makes no contribution to the
perpetuation of the race, and unregulated sexual intercourse is a
blight upon society. Marriage lays the foundation of the home and
makes possible the values that belong to that institution. Children
hold the family together; separation and divorce are most common in
childless homes. Personal service and sacrifice are engendered in the
care of children; therefore it is that the family without children is
not a perfect family, but an abnormality as a social institution. For
these reasons custom and law protect the home, and religion declares
marriage a sacred bond and reproduction a sacred function.
It is the long experience of the race that has made plain the
fundamental importance of the marriage relation, and history shows how
step by step man and woman have struggled toward higher standards of
mutual appreciation and co-operation. From past history and present
tendencies it is possible to determine values and weaknesses and to
point out dangers and possibilities. As the family group is
fundamental to an understanding of the community, so the relation of
man and woman are essential to a comprehension of the complete family,
and investigation of their relations must precede a study of the
social development of the child in the home, or of the economic
relations of the farmer and his assistants. Nothing more clearly
illustrates the factors that enter into all human relations than the
story of how the family came to be.
READING REFERENCES
HENDERSON: _Social Elements_, pages 62-70.
ELLWOOD: _Sociology and Modern Social Problems_, 1913 edition,
pages 74-82.
BOSANQUET: _The Family_, pages 241-259.
DEALEY: _The Family in Its Sociological Aspects_, pages 1-11.
BUTTERFIELD: "Rural Life and the Family," _American Journal of
Sociology_, vol. 14, pages 721-725.
HENDERSON: "Are Modern Industry and City Life Unfavorable to the
Family?" _American Journal of Sociology_, vol. 14, pages
668-675.
CHAPTER IV
THE HISTORY OF THE FAMILY
33. =How the Family Came to Be.=--The modern family among civilized
peoples is based almost universally on the union of one man and one
woman. There is good reason to believe that this practice of monogamy
was in vogue among primitive human beings, but marriage was unstable
and it was only through long experimentation that monogamy proved
itself best fitted to survive. At first conjugal affection, which has
become intelligent and moral, was merely a sexual desire that led the
man to seek a mate and the maid to choose among her suitors. Unbound
by long-continued custom or legal and ceremonial restriction, the
primitive couple were free to separate if they pleased, but the
instinctive feeling that they belonged to each other, the habits of
association, adaptation, and co-operation, and jealousy at any
attention shown by another tended to preserve the relationship. The
presence of offspring sealed the bond as long as the children were
dependent, and strengthened the sense of mutual responsibility. The
children were peculiarly the mother's children since she gave them
birth, but the father instinctively protected the family that was
growing up around him, and procured food and shelter for its members,
though it is doubtful if he had any realization of his part in giving
life to a new generation.
During this period of social development, when the mother's presence
constituted the home and the children were regarded as belonging
primarily to her, descent was reckoned in the female line, the
children were attached to the maternal clan of blood relatives, and
such relatives began to move in bands, for the same reason that
animals move in packs and herds. Some writers speak of it as a
matriarchal period, but it does not appear that women governed; it is
more proper to speak of the family as metronymic, for the children
bore the mother's name and maternity outweighed paternity in social
estimate.
34. =The Patriarchal Household.=--When population increased and food
consequently became more difficult to obtain, the domestication of
animals was achieved, and nomadic habits carried the family from
pasture to pasture; rival clans wanted the same regions, wars broke
out, and physical superiority asserted its claims. The man supplanted
the woman as the important member of the household, reduced the others
to submission, added to his wives and servants by capture or purchase,
and established the patriarchal system. Descent henceforth was
reckoned in the paternal line, and society had become patronymic
instead of metronymic. It must not be supposed that this change
occurred very suddenly. It may have taken many centuries to bring it
about, but as the man learned his part in procreation and his power in
society, he delighted in his self-importance to lord it over the woman
and her children. The marriage relation ceased to be free and
reciprocal. The wife no longer had a choice in marriage. Bought or
captured, she was no longer wooed for a companion, but was valued
according to her economic worth. As population pressed, the
domestication of plants followed the taming of animals, but the
agricultural settlement of the family only made the woman's lot
harder, for she was the burden bearer on the farm.
35. =Polygyny.=--a better term than polygamy--was the inevitable
result of the patriarchal system. Man made the law and the law
recognized no restraint upon his sexual and parental instincts.
Improvements in living added to the resources of the family and made
it possible to maintain large households of wives, children, and
slaves. Polygyny had some social utility, because it increased the
number of children, and this gave added prestige and power to the
family, as slavery had utility because it provided a labor force; but
both were weaknesses in ancient society, because they did not tend in
the long run to human welfare. Polygyny brutalized men, degraded
women, and destroyed that affection and comradeship between parents
and their offspring that are the proper heritage of children. Wherever
it has survived as a system, polygyny has hindered progress, and
wherever it exists in the midst of monogamy it tends to break down
civilization.
Another variety of marriage that has been less common than polygyny is
polyandry. It is a term that signifies the marriage of one woman to
several husbands, and seems to have occurred, as in the interior of
Asia, only where subsistence was especially difficult or women
comparatively few. Neither polygyny nor polyandry were universal, even
where they were a frequent practice. Only the few could afford the
indulgence, much the largest percentage of the people remained
monogamous.
36. =Conflict and Social Selection.=--The supreme business of the
social group is to adapt itself to the conditions that affect its
life. It must learn to get on with its physical environment and with
other social groups with which it comes into relation. The methods of
adaptation are conflict and co-operation. The primitive savage and his
wife learned to work together, and his family and hers very likely
kept the peace, until through the increase of population they felt the
pinch of hunger when the supply did not equal the demand. Then came
conflict. Conflict is an essential element in all progress. There is
conflict between the lower and higher impulses in the human mind,
conflict between selfish ambition and the welfare of the group,
conflict among individuals and races for a place in the sun. It is
conceivable that the baser impulses that provoke much social conflict
may give way to more rational and altruistic purpose, but it is
difficult to see how all friction can be avoided in social relations.
It is certainly to be reckoned with in the history of group life.
The story of human progress shows that in the social conflict those
groups survive which have become best adapted to life conditions and
so are fitted to cope with their enemies. In the story of the family
male leadership proved most useful and was perpetuated, but the
practice of polygyny and polyandry proved in the long run to be
hurtful to success in the sturdy struggle for existence.
37. =Ancestor-Worship.=--When a practice or institution is seen to
work well it soon becomes indorsed by social custom, law, or religion.
The patriarchal system became fortified by ancestor-worship, which
helped to keep the family subordinate to its male head. Even the dead
hand of the patriarch ruled. The paternal ancestors of the family were
believed to have the power to bless or curse their descendants, and
they were faithfully placated with gifts and veneration, as has
continued to be the custom in China. Among the Romans the household
gods were cherished at the hearth long before Jupiter became king of
heaven; Æneas must save his ancestral-images if he lost all else in
the fall of Troy. At Rome the worship of a common ancestor was the
strongest family bond. The marriage ceremony consisted of a solemn
transfer of the bride from her duties to her own ancestors over to the
adoption of her husband's gods. This transfer of allegiance helped to
perpetuate the patriarchal system, and the sanction of religion
greatly strengthened the wedded relation, so that divorce and polygyny
were unknown in the old Roman period. But the absolute patriarchal
control of wife and children made the man selfish and arbitrary and
weakened the bond of affection and mutual interests, while Roman
political conquest strengthened the pride and power of the imperial
masters. Religion lost its prestige and the family bond loosened,
until from being one of the purest of social institutions in the early
days of the republic, the Roman family became one of the most
degenerate. This boded ill for the future of the race and empire.
38. =The Mediæval Family.=--The Roman family seemed in danger of
disintegrating, for the matron claimed rights that ran counter to the
rights of the man, when two new forces entered Roman society and
checked this tendency toward disintegration. The first was
Christianity, the second was Teutonic conquest. Christianity taught
consideration for women and children, but it taught submission to the
man in the home, and so was a constructive force in the conservation
of the family. Teutonic custom was similar to the early Roman. When
Teutonic enterprise pushed a new race over the goal of race conflict
and took in charge the administration of affairs in Roman society,
there was a restoration of the rule of force and so of masculine
supremacy. In the lord's castle and the peasant's hut the authority of
the man continued unquestioned through the Middle Ages, and the church
made monogamous marriage a binding sacrament; but sexual infidelity
was common, especially of the husband, and divorce was not unknown. In
the civilized lands of Christendom monogamy was the only form of
marriage recognized by civil law, and with the slow growth toward
higher standards of civilization the harshness of patriarchal custom
has become softened and the rights of women and children have been
increased by law, though not without endangering the solidarity of the
family. Similarly, the standards of sex conduct have improved.
39. =Advantages of Monogamy.=--The advantages of monogamy are so many
that in spite of the present restiveness under restraint it seems
certain to become the permanent and universal type as reason asserts
its right and controls impulse. Nature seems to have predetermined it
by maintaining approximately an equal number of the sexes, and nature
frowns upon promiscuity by penalizing it with sterility and neglect of
the few children that are born, so that in the struggle for existence
the fittest survive by a process of natural selection. A study of
biology and anthropology gives added evidence that nature favors
monogamy, for in the highest grade of animals below man the monogamic
relation holds almost without exception, and low-grade human races
follow the same practice.
There are moral advantages in monogamy that alone are sufficient to
insure its permanence. It is to the advantage of society that
altruistic and kindly feelings should outweigh jealousy, anger, and
selfishness. Monogamy encourages affection and mutual consideration,
and in that atmosphere children learn the graces and virtues that make
social life wholesome and attractive. Welcomed in the home, they
receive the care and instruction of both parents and become socialized
for the larger and later responsibilities of the social order. In the
altruism thus developed lie the roots of morals and religion. It is
well agreed that the essence of each is the right motive to conduct.
Love to men and to God is an accepted definition of religion, and
ethics is grounded on that principle. Love is the ruling principle of
the monogamic family; from the narrower domestic circle it extends to
the community and to all mankind.
40. =Marriage Laws.=--In spite of the general practice of monogamy as
a form of marriage and the noble principles that underlie the
monogamic type of family, sex relations need the restraint of law.
Human desires are selfish and ideals too often give way before them
unless there is some kind of external control. There have been times
when the church had such control, and in certain countries individual
rulers have determined the law; but since the eighteenth century there
has been a steady trend in the direction of popular control of all
social relations. This tendency has been carried farthest in the
United States, where public opinion voices its convictions and compels
legislative action. It is natural that the people of certain States
should be more progressive or radical than others, and therefore in
the absence of a national law, there is considerable variety in the
marriage and divorce laws, but no other country has higher ideals of
the married relation and at the same time as large a measure of
freedom.
At present marriage laws in the United States agree generally on the
following provisions:
(1) Every marriage must be licensed by the State and the act of
marriage must be reported to the State and registered.
(2) Marriage is not legal below a certain age, and consent of parents
must be obtained usually until the man is twenty-one and the woman
eighteen.
(3) Certain persons are forbidden marriage because of near
relationship or personal defect. Such marriage if performed may be
annulled.
(4) Remarriage may take place after the death of husband or wife,
after disappearance for a period varying from three to seven years, or
a certain time after divorce.
In the twenty-year period between 1886 and 1906 covered by the United
States Census of Marriage and Divorce slow improvements were made in
legislation, but a number of States are far behind others in the
enactment of suitable laws, and most of the States do not make the
provisions that are desirable for law enforcement. Yet there is a
limit of strictness beyond which marriage laws cannot safely go,
because they hinder marriage and provoke illicit relations. That limit
is fixed by the sanction of public opinion. After all, there is less
need of better regulation than of the education of public opinion to
the sacredness of marriage and to its importance for human welfare.
Without the restraints put upon impulse by the education of the
understanding and the will, young people often assume family
obligations thoughtlessly and even flippantly, when they are ill-mated
and often unacquainted with each other's characteristic qualities.
Such marriages usually bring distress and divorce instead of growing
affection and unity. Without education in the obligation of marriage
many well-qualified persons delay it or avoid it altogether, because
they are unwilling to bear the burdens of family support,
childbearing, and housekeeping. Society suffers loss in both cases.
41. =Reforms and Ideals.=--Because of all these deficiencies several
remedies have been proposed and certain of them adopted. Because of
the economic difficulties, it is urged that as far as possible by
legislation, illegitimate ways of heaping up wealth for the few at the
expense of the many should be checked, and that by vocational training
boys should be fitted for a trade and girls prepared for housekeeping.
To meet other difficulties it is proposed that popular instruction be
given from press and pulpit, in order that the moral and spiritual
plane of married life may be uplifted. The marriage ideal is a
well-mated pair, physically and intellectually qualified, who through
affection are attracted to marriage and through mutual consideration
are ready unselfishly to seek each other's welfare, and who recognize
in marriage a divinely ordered provision for human happiness and for
the perpetuation of the race. Such a marriage does not plant the seeds
of discord and neighborly scandal or compel a speedy resort to the
divorce court.
READING REFERENCES
DEALEY: _The Family in Its Sociological Aspects_, pages 12-84.
HOWARD: _History of Matrimonial Institutions_, II, pages 388-497.
GOODSELL: _The Family as a Social and Educational Institution_,
pages 5-47.
BOSANQUET: _The Family_, part I. "Report on Marriage and Divorce,
1906," _Bureau of the Census_, I, pages 224-226.
BLISS: _Encyclopedia of Social Reform_, art. "Family."
CHAPTER V
THE MAKING OF THE HOME
42. =The Story of the Home.=--Marriage is the gateway of the home; the
home is the shelter of the family. It is the cradle of children, the
nursery of mutual affection, and the training-school for citizenship
in the community. The physical comfort of its inmates depends upon the
house and its furnishings, but fondness for the home develops only in
an atmosphere of good-will and kindness.
The home has a story of its own, as has the family. In primitive days
there was little necessity of a dwelling-place, except as a nest for
young or a cache for provisions. A cave or a rough shelter of boughs
was a makeshift for a home. Thither the hunter brought the game that
he had killed, and there slept the glutton's sleep or went supperless
to bed. When the hunter became a herdsman and shepherd and moved from
place to place in search of pasture, he found it convenient to fashion
a tent for his home, as the Hebrew patriarchs did when they roamed
over Canaan and as the Bedouin of the desert does still.
A settled life with a measure of civilization demanded a better and a
stationary home, the degree of comfort varying with the desire and
ambition of the householder and the amount of his wealth. To thousands
home was little more than a place to sleep. Even in imperial Rome the
proletariat occupied tall, ramshackle tenements, like the submerged
poor who exist in the slums of modern cities. In mediæval Europe the
peasant lived in a one-room hovel, clustered with others in a squalid
hamlet upon the estate of a great landowner. The hut was poorly built,
often of no better material than wattled sticks, cemented with mud,
covered over with turf or thatch, usually without chimneys or even
windows. The place was absolutely without conveniences. Summer and
winter the family huddled together in the single room of the hut,
faring forth to work in the morning, sleeping at night on bundles of
straw, each person in the single garment that he wore through the day,
and at convenient intervals breaking fast on black bread, salt meat,
and home-brewed beer. There was no inducement for a landless serf to
spend care or labor upon houses or surroundings; pigs and babies were
permitted to tumble about both indiscriminately.
Peasant homes in the Orient are little if any better now than European
homes in the Middle Ages. The houses are rude structures and ill-kept.
In the villages of India it is not unusual to occupy one house until
it becomes so unsanitary as to be uninhabitable, and then to move
elsewhere. Even royal courts in mediæval Europe moved from palace to
palace for the same reason. It is a mistake to suppose that the
squalid conditions found in the slums are peculiar to them; they are
survivals of a lower stage of human existence found in all parts of
the world, due to psychical, social, and economic conditions that are
not easily changed, but conspicuous in the midst of modern progress.
43. =The Ancestral Type.=--In ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome only the
higher classes enjoyed any degree of comfort. Accustomed to
inconveniences, few even among them knew such luxuries as are common
to middle-class Americans. The castle and manor-house of the mediæval
lord were still more comfortless. In America the colonial log cabin
and the sod house of the prairie pioneer were primitively incomplete.
The struggle for existence and the difficulty of manufacture and
transportation allowed few comforts. American homes, even a hundred
years ago, knew nothing of furnaces and safety-matches, refrigerators
and electric fans, bathtubs and sanitary accommodations,
carpet-sweepers and vacuum cleaners, screen doors and double windows,
hammocks and verandas. Neither law nor social custom required a good
water or drainage system. A healthful or attractive location for the
house received little thought; outbuildings were in close proximity to
the house, if not attached to it. The furnishings of the house lacked
comfort and beauty. Interior decorations of harmonious design were
absent. Instruments of music were rare; statuary and paintings were
beyond the reach of any but the richest purse.
44. =Social Values.=--On the other hand, there was in many a dwelling
a home atmosphere that made up for the lack of conveniences. There was
a bond of unity that was felt by every member of the family, and a
spirit of mutual affection and self-sacrifice that stood a hard strain
through poverty, sickness, and ill fortune of every sort. Father and
mother, boys and girls were not afraid to work, and when the time came
for relaxation there was little to attract away from the home circle.
People had less to enjoy, but they were better contented with what
they had. They had little money to spend, but their frugal tastes and
habits of thrift fortified them against want, and there was little
need of public or private charity.
The home was frequently a school of moral and religious education.
Selfishness in all its forms was discountenanced. There was no room
for the idler, no time for laziness. Social hygiene and domestic
science were not taught as such, but young people learned their
responsibilities and grew up equipped to establish homes of their own.
Parents were faithful instructors in the homely virtues of
truthfulness, honesty, faithfulness, kindness, and love. Religion in
the family was by no means universal, but in hundreds of homes
religion was recognized as having legitimate demands upon the
individual; religious exercises were observed at the mother's knee,
the table, and the family altar; all the family attended church
together, and were expected to take upon themselves the
responsibilities of church membership.
45. =Gains and Losses.=--In the making of a modern home there have
been both addition and subtraction. Life has gained immeasurably in
comfort and convenience for the well-to-do, but the comfortless
quarters of the poor drive the man to the saloon and the child to the
streets. For the fortunate the home has become enriched with music,
art, and literature, but it has lost much of the earlier simplicity,
economic thrift, moral sturdiness, and religious principle and
practice. For the poor life is so hard that the good qualities, if
they ever existed, have tended to disappear without any compensation
in culture.
It is well understood that the home environment has most to do with
shaping individual character. If the homely virtues are not cultivated
there, society will suffer; if cold and cheerlessness are
characteristic of its atmosphere, there will be little warmth in the
disposition of its inmates toward society. Every home of the right
sort is an asset to the community. It is an experiment station for
social progress. Every married couple that sets up housekeeping starts
a new centre of group life. If they diffuse a helpful atmosphere
social virtues will develop and social efficiency increase. On the
other hand, many homes are a menace to the community, because an
ill-mated pair, poorly equipped for the struggle of existence, create
a centre of group life in which the individual is handicapped
physically and morally and too often becomes a curse to society at
large. When it is remembered that the home is at the same time the
power-house that generates the forces that push society forward, and
the channel through which are transmitted the ideas and achievements
of all the past, it will seem to be the supremely important
institution that human experience has devised and sanctioned.
46. =The Ideal Home.=--The ideal home toward which the average home
will be gradually approximating will be housed in a well-built
dwelling of approved architecture; erected in a healthy location with
room enough around it to give air space, and a bit of out-of-doors to
enjoy; tastefully furnished and decorated inside, but without
ostentation or extravagance; occupied by a healthy, happy family of
parents and children who care more for each other and for their
neighbors than for selfish pleasure and display, and who are learning
how to play a worthy part in the folk life of their community and
nation, and how to appreciate the highest and finest qualities that
mind and spirit can develop in themselves or others. If for economic
or social reasons any of this is impossible, there is a weakness in
society that calls for prompt repair.
READING REFERENCES
STARR: _First Steps in Human Progress_, pages 149-158.
JESSOPP: _The Coming of the Friars_, pages 87-104.
GILLETTE: _Constructive Rural Sociology_, pages 170-178.
CARNEY: _Country Life and the Country School_, pages 18-38.
RICHARDS: "The Farm Home," art. in _Cyclopedia of Agriculture_,
IV, pages 280-284.
CHAPTER VI
CHILDREN IN THE HOME
47. =Children Complete the Home.=--If the legend of the Pied Piper of
Hameln should come true and all the children should run away from
home, or if by some strange stroke of fortune no children should be
born in a village or town for ten years or more, the tragedy of the
childless home would be realized. There are localities and even
nations where the birth-rate is so small that population is little
more than stationary. In the United States the native birth-rate tends
to decline, while the rate of immigrant foreigners greatly exceeds it.
The higher the degree of comfort and luxury in the home the smaller
the birth-rate seems to be a principle of social experience. There are
selfish people who shirk the responsibilities and troubles of
parenthood, and there are social diseases that tend to sterility, but
the childless home is always an incomplete home. Children are the
crown of marriage, the enrichment of the home, the hope of society in
the future. The needs of the children stimulate parents to unselfish
endeavor. Children are the comfort of the poor and distressed. The
wedded life of a human pair may be ideal in every other respect, but
one of the main functions of marriage is unaccomplished when the
family remains incomplete.
48. =The Right to be Well-Born.=--The child comes into the home in
obedience to the same primary instinct that draws the parents to each
other. He calls out the affections of the parents and their
intellectual resources, for he is dependent upon them, and often taxes
their best judgment in coping with the difficulties that beset child
life. But they often fail to realize that the child has certain
inalienable rights as an individual and a potential member of society
that demand their best gifts.
There is first the right to be well-born. There is so much to contend
with when once ushered into the world, that a child needs the best
possible bodily inheritance. He needs to be rid of every encumbrance
of physical unfitness if he is to live long and become a blessing and
not a burden to society. Handicapped at the start, he cannot hope to
achieve a high level of attainment. It is little short of criminal for
a child to be condemned to lifelong weakness or suffering, because his
parents were not fit to give him birth. Yet large numbers of parents
make the thought of child welfare subordinate to their own desires. A
man's primary concern in choosing a wife is his own personal
satisfaction, not the birth and mothering of his children. Many young
women regard the attractiveness, social position, or wealth of a young
man as of greater consequence than his physical or moral fitness to
become the father of her children. There are thousands of persons who
are mentally deficient or unmoral, who nevertheless are unrestrained
by society from association and even marriage. It is a social
misfortune that the unfit should be taken care of by the tender
mercies of philanthropists and even permitted to propagate their kind,
while no special encouragement is given to those who are supremely fit
to give their best to the upbuilding of the race. The principle of
brotherly kindness requires that the weak and unfortunate be taken
care of, but they should not be permitted to increase. It is a
principle of social welfare that those who are incapable of exercising
self-control should be placed under the control of the larger group.
49. =Eugenics in Legislation.=--It is the conviction that the right to
be well-born is a valid one, that has given rise to the science of
eugenics. As a science it was first discussed by Francis Gallon, and
it has interested writers, investigators, and legislators in all
progressive countries. Various specific proposals have been made in
the interest of posterity, and agitation has resulted in certain
experiments in legislation. It is not proposed that any should be
required to marry, but it is thought possible to encourage the well
qualified and to discourage and restrain the incapable. Some of these
proposals, such as the offering of a premium by the State for healthy
children, or endowing mothers as public functionaries, are not widely
approved, but Great Britain in a National Insurance Act in 1911
included the provision of maternity benefits in recognition of the
mother's contribution to the citizenship of the nation. Restrictive
laws have been passed by certain of the States in America, which are
eugenic experiments. Feeble-mindedness, in so many ways a social evil,
is readily reproduced, and the weak-minded are easily controlled by
the sex instinct. To prevent this certain State legislatures have
forbidden the marriage of any feeble-minded or epileptic woman under
the age of forty-five. It is well known that insanity is a family
trait, and that criminal insanity is liable to recur if those who are
afflicted are permitted to indulge in parenthood. Certain States
accordingly annul the marriage of insane persons. Venereal disease is
easily transmitted; there has been a beginning of legislation
prohibiting persons thus tainted to marry. It is well established that
very many persons, while not actually tainted with such diseases as
tuberculosis and alcoholism, are predisposed to yield to their attack.
For this reason the scope of eugenic legislation is likely to be
extended. Some States have gone so far as to sterilize the unfit, that
they may not by any chance exercise the powers of parenthood; it is
urged in many quarters that clergymen require a medical certificate of
good health before sanctioning marriage.
50. =Family Degeneracy.=--Several impressive illustrations have been
published of degenerate families that show the far-reaching effects of
heredity. In contrast to these pictures, has been set the life story
of families who have won renown in successive generations because of
unusual ability. Nothing so effective is presented by any argument as
that of concrete cases. Perhaps the best known of these stories is
that of the Jukes family. About the middle of the eighteenth century a
normal man with a coarse, lazy vein in his nature built himself a hut
in the woods of central New York. In five generations he had several
hundred descendants. A study of twelve hundred persons who belonged
to the family by kinship or marriage was made carefully, with the
following findings. Nearly all of the family were lazy, ignorant, and
coarse. Four hundred were physically diseased by their own fault. Two
hundred were criminals; seven of them murderers. Fifty of the women
were notoriously immoral. Three hundred of the children died from
inherited weakness or neglect. More than three hundred members of the
family were chronic paupers. It is estimated that they cost the State
a thousand dollars apiece for pauperism and crime.
Another family called the Kallikak family, which has been made the
subject of investigation, is a still better example of heredity. The
family was descended from a Revolutionary soldier, who had an
illegitimate feeble-minded son by an imbecile young woman. The line
continued by feeble-minded descent and marriage until four hundred and
eighty descendants have been traced. Of these one hundred and
forty-three were positively defective, thirty-six were illegitimate,
thirty-three sexually immoral, mostly prostitutes, eight kept houses
of ill repute, three were criminal, twenty-four were confirmed
drunkards, and eighty-two died in infancy.
On the other hand, there are striking examples of what good birth and
breeding can do. It happened that the ancestor of the Kallikak family,
after he had sown his wild oats, married well and had about five
hundred descendants. All of them were normal, only two were alcoholic,
and one sexually loose. The family has been prominent socially and in
every way creditable in its history. In contrast to the Jukes family,
the history of the Edwards family has been written. Its members
married well, were well-bred, and gave much attention to education.
Out of fourteen hundred individuals more than one hundred and twenty
were Yale graduates, and one hundred and sixty-five more completed
their education at other colleges; thirteen were college presidents,
and more than a hundred college professors; they were founders of
schools of all grades; more than one hundred were clergymen,
missionaries, and theological professors; seventy-five were officers
in the army and navy; more than eighty have been elected to public
office; more than one hundred were lawyers, thirty judges, sixty
physicians, and sixty prominent in literature. Not a few of them have
been active in philanthropy, and many have been successful in
business. It is impossible to escape from the conviction that whatever
may be the physical and social environment, heredity perpetuates
physical and mental worth or defectiveness and tends to produce social
good or evil, and that the right to a worthy parentage belongs with
the other rights to which individuals lay claim. It is as important as
the right to a living, to an education, to a good home, or to the
franchise. Without it society is incalculably poorer and the ultimate
effects of failure are startling to consider.
51. =Marriage and Education.=--Some enthusiasts have demanded that to
make sure of a good bodily inheritance, individuals be permitted to
produce children without the trammels of marriage if they are well
fitted for parenthood, but such persons seem ignorant or forgetful
that free love has never proved otherwise than disastrous in the
history of the race, and that physical perfection is not the sole good
with which the child needs to be endowed, but that it must be
supplemented with moral, mental, and spiritual endowment, and with the
permanent affection and care of both parents in the home. Galton
himself acknowledges marriage as a prerequisite in eugenics by saying:
"Marriage, as now sanctified by religion and safeguarded by law in the
more highly civilized nations, may not be ideally perfect, nor may it
be universally accepted in future times, but it is the best that has
hitherto been devised for the parties primarily concerned, for their
children, for home life, and for society."
The greatest hope of eugenics lies in social education. Sex hygiene
must in some way become a part of the child's stock of information,
but knowledge alone does not fortify action. More important is it to
deal with the springs of action, to teach the equal standard of purity
for men and women, and the moral responsibility of parenthood to
adolescent youth, and at the same time to impress upon the whole
community its responsibility of oversight of morals for the good of
the next generation. Conviction of personal and social responsibility
as superior to individual preferences is the only safety of society in
all its relations, from eugenics through economics to ethics and
religion.
52. =Euthenics.=--Euthenics is the science of controlled environment,
as eugenics is the science of controlled heredity. The health and good
fortune of the child depend on his surroundings as well as on his
inheritance, and the gift of a perfect physique may be vitiated by an
unwholesome environment. Environment acts directly upon the physical
system of the individual through climate, home conditions, and
occupation; it acts indirectly by affecting the personal desires,
idiosyncrasies, and possible conduct. When the child of an early
settler was carried away from home on an Indian raid, and brought up
in the wigwam of the savage, he forgot his civilized heritage, and
love for his foster-parents sometimes proved stronger than his natural
affections. The child of the Russian Jew in Europe has little ambition
and rises to no high level, but in America he gains distinction in
school and success in business. A natural environment of forest or
plain may determine the occupation of a whole community; a fickle
climate vitally affects its prosperity. Whole races have entered upon
a new future by migration.
It is necessary to be cautious and not to ascribe to environment, as
some do, the sole influence. Every individual is the creature of
heredity plus environment plus his own will. But it is not possible to
overlook environment as some do, and expect by a miracle to make or
preserve character in the midst of conditions of spiritual
asphyxiation. If social life is to be pure and strong, communities and
families, through the official care of overseers of health and
industry and through the loving care of parents in the homes, must see
that children grow up with the advantages of nourishing food, pure
air, proper clothing, and means for cleanliness; that at the proper
age they be given mental and moral instruction and fitted for a worthy
vocation; that wholesome social relations be established by means of
playgrounds, clubs, and societies; that industrial conditions be
properly supervised, and young people be able to earn not alone a
living but a marriageable wage; and that some means of social
insurance be provided sufficient to prevent suffering and want in
sickness and old age. In such an environment there is opportunity to
realize the value that will accrue from a good inheritance, and there
is incentive to make the most of life's possibilities as they come and
go.
Ever since the importance of environment was made plain in the
nineteenth century, social physicians have been trying all sorts of
experiments in community therapeutics. Many of the remedies will be
discussed in various connections. It is enough to remark here that
social education, social regulation, and social idealism are all
necessary, and that a social Utopia cannot be obtained in a day.
53. =The Right to Proper Care.=--Granted the right of the child to be
well-born and the right to a favorable environment, there follows the
right to be taken care of. This may be involved in the subject of a
proper environment, but it deserves consideration by itself. There is
more danger to the race from neglect than from race suicide. It is
better that a child should not be born at all, than that he should be
condemned to the hard knocks of a loveless home or a callous
neighborhood. There is first the case of the child born out of
wedlock, often a foundling with parentage unacknowledged. Then there
is the child who is legitimately born as far as the law is concerned,
but whose parents had no legitimate right to bring him into the world,
because they had no reasonable expectation that they could provide
properly for his wants. The wretched pauper recks nothing of the
future of his offspring. Since the family group can never remain
independent of the community, it may well be debated whether society
is not under obligation to interfere and either by prohibition of
excessive parenthood or by social provision for the care of such
children, to secure to the young this right of proper care.
Cruelty is a twin evil of neglect. The history of childhood deserves
careful study side by side with the history of womanhood. In primitive
times not even the right to existence was recognized. Abortion and
infanticide, especially in the case of females, were practices used at
will to dispose of unwelcome children, and these practices persisted
among the backward peoples of Asia and Africa, until they were
compelled to recognize the law of the white master when he extended
his dominion over them. In the patriarchal household of classic lands,
the child was under the absolute control of his father. Religious
regulations might demand that he be instructed in the history and
obligations of the race, as in the case of the Hebrew child, or the
interests of the state might require physical training for its own
defense, as in the case of Sparta, but there was no consideration of
child rights in the home. Until the eighteenth century European
children shared the hardships of poverty and discomfort common to the
age, and often the cruelty of brutal and degraded parents; they were
often condemned to long hours of industry in factories after the new
industrial order caught them in its toils. In the mine and the mill
and on the farm children have been bound down to labor for long and
weary hours, until modern legislation has interfered.
There are a number of reasons why child labor has been common.
Hereditary custom has decreed it. Children have been looked upon by
many races as a care and a burden rather than a responsibility and a
blessing. Their economic value was their one claim to be regarded as a
family asset. Even the religious teaching of Jews and Christians about
the value and responsibility of children has not been influential
enough to compel a recognition of their worth, though their innocence
and purity, their faith and optimism are qualities indispensable to
the race of mankind if social relations are to approach the ideal.
54. =The Value of Work.=--Labor is a social blessing rather than a
curse. There can be no doubt that habits of industry are desirable for
the child as well as for the adult. Idleness is the forerunner of
ignorance, laziness, and general incapacity. It is no kindness to a
child to permit him to spend all his time out of school in play. It
gives him skill, a new respect for labor, and a new conception of the
value of money, if he has a paper route, mows a lawn, shovels snow, or
hoes potatoes. Especially is it desirable that a boy should have some
sort of an occupation for a few hours a day during the long summer
vacation. The child on the farm has no lack of opportunity, but for
the boy of the city streets there is little that is practicable,
outside of selling papers or serving as messenger boy or bootblack;
for the girl there is little but housework or department-store
service. Both need steady employment out of doors, and he who devises
a method by which boys and girls can be taught such an occupation as
gardening on vacant lots or in the city outskirts, and at the same
time can be given a love for work and for the growing things of the
country, will help to solve the problem of child labor and,
incidentally, may contribute to the solution of poverty, incipient
crime, and even of the rural problem and the high cost of living.
READING REFERENCES
BOSANQUET: _The Family_, pages 299-314.
GODDARD: _The Kallikak Family._
EAMES: _Principles of Eugenics._
SALEEBY: _Parenthood and Race Culture_, pages 213-236.
MCKEEVER: _Farm Boys and Girls_, pages 171-196.
GALTON: _Inquiries into Human Faculty._
CHAPTER VII
WORK, PLAY AND EDUCATION.
55. =Child Labor and Its Effects.=--Excessive child labor away from
home is one of the evils that has called for reform more than the lack
of employment. The child has a right to the home life. It is injurious
for him to be kept at a monotonous task under physical or mental
strain for long hours in a manufacturing establishment, or to be
deprived of time to study and to play. Yet there are nearly two
million children in the United States under sixteen years of age who
are denied the rights of childhood through excessive labor.
This evil began with the adoption of the factory system in modern
industry. The introduction of light machinery into the textile mills
of England made it possible to employ children at low wages, and it
was profitable for the keepers of almshouses to apprentice pauper
children to the manufacturers. Some of them were not more than five or
six years old, but were kept in bondage more than twelve hours a day.
Children were compelled to hard labor in the coal-mines, and to the
dirty work of chimney sweeping. In the United States factory labor for
children did not begin so soon, but by 1880 children eight years old
were being employed in Massachusetts for more than twelve hours a day,
and in parts of the country children are still employed at long hours
in such occupations as the manufacture of cotton, glass, silk, and
candy, in coal-mines and canning factories. Besides these are the
newsboys, bootblacks, and messengers of the cities, children in
domestic and personal service, and the child laborers on the farms.
The causes of child labor lie in the poverty and greed of parents, the
demands of employers, and often the desire of the children to escape
from school and earn money. In spite of agitation and legislation, the
indifference of the public permits it to continue and in some
sections to increase.
The harmful effects of child employment are numerous. It is true that
two-thirds of the boys and nearly one-half of the girls employed in
the United States are occupied with agriculture, most of them with
their own parents, an occupation that is much healthier than indoor
labor, yet agriculture demands long hours and wearisome toil. In the
cities there is much night-work and employment in dangerous or
unhealthy occupations. The sweating system has carried its bad effects
into the homes of the very poor, for the younger members of the family
can help to manufacture clothing, paper boxes, embroidery, and
artificial flowers, and in spite of the law, such labor goes on far
into the night in congested, ill-ventilated tenements. Children cannot
work in this way day after day for long hours without serious physical
deterioration. Some of them drop by the way and die as victims of an
economic system and the social neglect that permits it. Others lose
the opportunity of an education, and so are mentally less trained than
the normal American child, and ultimately prove less efficient as
industrial units. For the time they may add to the family income, but
they react upon adult labor by lowering the wage of the head of the
family, and they make it impossible for the child when grown to earn a
high wage, because of inefficiency. The associations and influences of
the street are morally degrading, and in the associations of the
workroom and the factory yard the whole tone of the life of
individuals is frequently lowered.
56. =Child-Labor Legislation.=--Friends of the children have tried to
stop abuses. Trade-unions, consumers' leagues, and State bureaus have
taken the initiative. Voluntary organizations, like the National Child
Labor Committee, make the regulation of child labor their special
object. They have succeeded in the establishment of a Federal
Children's Bureau in Washington, and have encouraged State and
national legislation. Most of the States forbid the employment of
children under a certain age, usually twelve or fourteen years, and
require attention to healthful conditions and moderate hours. They
insist also that children shall not be deprived of education, but
there is often inadequate provision made for inspection and proper
enforcement of laws.
The friends of the children are desirous of a uniform child-labor law
which, if adopted and enforced by competent inspectors, would prevent
factory work for all under fourteen years of age, and for weak
children under sixteen would prescribe a limited number of hours and
allow no night-work, would require certain certificates of age and
health before employment is given, and would compel school attendance
and the attainment of a limited education before permission is granted
to go into the factory. Without doubt, it is a hardship to families in
poverty that strong, growing children should not be permitted to go to
work and help support those in need, but it is better for the social
body to take care of its weak members in some other way, and for its
own sake, as well as for the sake of the child, to make sure that he
is physically and mentally equipped before he takes a regular place in
the ranks of the wage-earners.
57. =The Right to Play.=--The play group is the first social
training-ground for the child outside of the home, and it continues to
be a desirable form of association, even into adult life, but it is
only in recent years that adults have recognized the legitimacy of
such a claim as the right to play. It was thought desirable that a boy
should work off his restlessness, but the wood-pile provided the usual
safety-valve for surplus energy. Play was a waste of time. Now it is
more clearly understood that play has a distinct value. It is
physically beneficial, expanding the lungs, strengthening muscle and
nerve, and giving poise and elasticity to the whole body. It is
mentally educational in developing qualities of quickness, skill, and
leadership. It is socially valuable, for it requires honesty, fair
play, mutual consideration, and self-control. Co-operation of effort
is developed as well in team-play as in team-work, and the child
becomes accustomed to act with thought of the group. The play group is
a temporary form of association, varying in size and content as the
whim of the child or the attraction of the moment moves its members.
It is an example of primitive groupings swayed by instinctive
impulses. Children turn quickly from one game to another, but for the
time are absorbed in the particular play that is going on. No
achievement results from the activity, no organization from the
association. The rapid shifting of the scenes and the frequent
disputes that arise indicate lack of control. Yet it is out of such
association that the social mind develops and organized action becomes
possible.
If these are the advantages of play, the right to play may properly
demand an opportunity for games and sports in the home and the yard,
and the necessary equipment of gymnasium and field. It may call for
freedom from the school and home occupations sufficient to give the
recreative impulse due scope. As its importance becomes universally
recognized, there will be no neighborhood, however congested, that
lacks its playground for the children, and no industry, however
insistent, that will deprive the boy or girl of its right to enjoy a
certain part of every day for play.
58. =The Right to Liberty.=--The present tendency is to give large
liberty to the child. Not only is there freedom on the playground; but
social control in the home also has been giving place during the last
generation to a recognition of the right of the individual child to
develop his own personality in his own way, without much interference
from authority. It is true that there is a nominal control in the
home, in the school, and in the State, but in an increasing degree
that control is held in abeyance while parent, teacher, and constable
leniently indulge the child. This is a natural reaction from the
discipline of an earlier time, and is a welcome indication that
children's rights are to find recognition. Like most reactions, there
is danger of its going too far. An inexperienced and headstrong child
needs wise counsel and occasional restraint, and within the limits of
kindness is helped rather than harmed by a deep respect for authority.
Lawlessness is one of the dangers of the current period. It appears in
countless minor misdemeanors, in the riotous acts of gangs and mobs,
in the recklessness of corporations and labor unions, and in national
disregard for international law; and its destructive tendency is
disastrous for the future of civilized society unless a new restraint
from earliest childhood keeps liberty from degenerating into license.
59. =The Right to Learn.=--There is one more right that belongs to
children--the right of an opportunity to learn. Approximately three
million children are born annually in the United States. Each one
deserves to be well-born and well-reared. He needs the affectionate
care of parents who will see that he learns how to live. This
instruction need not be long delayed, and should not be relegated
altogether to the school. There is first of all physical education. It
is the mother's task to teach the child the principles of health, to
inculcate proper habits of eating, drinking, and bathing. It is for
her to see that he learns how to play with pleasure and profit, and is
permitted to give expression to his natural energies. It is her
privilege to make him acquainted with nature, and in a natural way
with the illustration of flower and bird and squirrel she can give the
child first lessons in sex hygiene. It is the function of the mother
in the child's younger years and of the father in adolescent boyhood
to open the mind of the child to understand the life processes. The
lack of knowledge brings sorrow and sin to the family and injures
society. Seeking information elsewhere, the boy and girl fall into bad
habits and lay the foundation of permanent ills. The adolescent boy
should be taught to avoid self-abuse, to practise healthful habits,
and to keep from contact with physical and moral impurity; the
adolescent girl should be given ample instruction in taking care of
herself and in preparing for the responsibility of adult life.
60. =Mental and Moral Education.=--Mental education in the home is no
less important. It is there that the child's instinctive impulses
first find expression and he learns to imitate the words and actions
of other members of the home. The things he sees and handles make
their impressions upon him. He feels and thinks and wills a thousand
times a day. The channels of habit are being grooved in the brain. It
is the function of the home to protect him from that which is evil, to
stimulate in him that which is good. Mental and moral education are
inseparably interwoven. The first stories told by the mother's lips
not only produce answering thoughts in the child mind, but answering
modes of conduct also. The chief function of the intellect is to guide
to right choice.
Character building is the supreme object of life. It begins early.
Learning to obey the parent is the first step toward self-control.
Learning to know the beautiful from the ugly, the true from the false,
the good from the evil is the foundation of a whole system of ethics.
Learning to judge others according to character and attainment rather
than according to wealth or social position cultivates the naturally
democratic spirit of the child, and makes him a true American. Sharing
in the responsibility of the home begets self-reliance and
dependableness in later life.
The supreme lesson of life is to learn to be unselfish. The child in
the home is often obliged to yield his own wishes, and finds that he
gets greater satisfaction than if he had contended successfully for
his own claims. In the home the compelling motive of his life may be
consecrated to the highest ideals, long before childhood has merged
into manhood. Such consecration of motive is best secured through a
knowledge of the concrete lives of noble men and women. The noble
characters of history and literature are portraits of abstract
excellences. It is the task of moral education in the home to make the
ideal actual in life, to show that it is possible and worth while to
be noble-minded, and that the highest ambition that a person can
cherish is to be a social builder among his fellows.
61. =Child Dependents.=--Many children are not given the rights that
belong to them in the home. They come into the world sickly or
crippled, inheriting a weak constitution or a tendency toward that
which is ill. They have little help from environment. One of a
numerous family on a dilapidated farm or in an unhealthy tenement, the
child struggles for an existence. Poverty, drunkenness, crime,
illegitimacy stamp themselves upon the home life. Neglect and cruelty
take the place of care and education. The death of one or both parents
robs the children of home altogether. The child becomes dependent on
society. The number of such children in the United States approximates
one hundred and fifty thousand.
In the absence of proper home care and training, society for its own
protection and for the welfare of the child must assume charge. The
State becomes a foster-parent, and as far as possible provides a
substitute for the home. The earlier method was to place the
individual child, with many other similar unfortunates, in a public or
private philanthropic institution. In such an environment it was
possible to maintain discipline, to secure instruction and a wholesome
atmosphere for social development, and to have the advantage of
economical management. But experience proved that a large institution
of that kind can never be a true home or provide the proper
opportunity for the development of individuality. The placing-out
system, therefore, grew in favor. Results were better when a child was
adopted into a real home, and received a measure of family affection
and individual care. Even where a public institution must continue to
care for dependent children, it is plainly preferable to distribute
them in cottages instead of herding them in one large building. The
principle of child relief is that life shall be made as nearly normal
as possible.
It is an accepted principle, also, that children shall be kept in
their own home whenever possible, and if removal is necessary that
they be restored to home associations at the earliest possible moment.
In case of poverty, a charity organization society will help a needy
family rather than allow it to disintegrate; in case of cruelty or
neglect such an organization as the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children will investigate, and if necessary find a better
guardian; but the case must be an aggravated one before the society
takes that last step, so important does the function of the home seem
to be.
62. =Special Institutions.=--It is, of course, inevitable that some
children should be misplaced and that some should be neglected by the
civil authorities, but public interest should not allow such
conditions to persist. Social sensitiveness to the hard lot of the
child is a product of the modern conscience. Time was when the State
remanded all chronic dependents to the doubtful care of the almshouse,
and children were herded indiscriminately with their elders, as child
delinquents were herded in the prisons with hardened criminals.
Idiots, epileptics, and deformed and crippled children were given no
special consideration. A kindlier public policy has provided special
institutions for those special cases where under State officials they
may receive adequate and permanent attention, and for normal dependent
children there is a variety of agencies. The most approved form is the
State school. This is virtually a temporary home where the needy child
is placed by investigation and order of the court, is given a training
in elementary subjects, manual arts, and domestic science, and after
three or four years is placed in a home, preferably on a farm, where
he can fill a worthy place in society.
63. =Children's Aid Societies.=--Another aid society is the private
aid society supervised and sometimes subsidized by the State. This is
a philanthropic organization supported by private gifts, making public
reports, managed by a board of directors, with a secretary or
superintendent as executive officer, and often with a temporary home
for the homeless. With these private agencies the placing-out
principle obtains, and children are soon removed to permanent homes.
The work of the aid societies is by no means confined to finding
homes. It aids parents to find truant children, it gives outings in
the summer season, it shelters homeless mothers with their children,
it administers aid in time of sickness. In industrial schools it
teaches children to help themselves by training them in such practical
arts as carpentry, caning chairs, printing, cooking, dressmaking, and
millinery.
Efficient oversight and management, together with co-operation among
child-saving agencies, is a present need. A national welfare bureau is
a decided step in advance. Prevention of neglect and cruelty in the
homes of the children themselves is the immediate goal of all
constructive effort. The education of public opinion to demand
universal consideration for child life is the ultimate aim.
READING REFERENCES
MANGOLD: _Problems of Child Welfare_, pages 166-184, 271-341.
CLOPPER: _Child Labor in the City Street._
MCKEEVER: _Training the Boy_, pages 203-213.
MCKEEVER: _Farm Boys and Girls_, pages 26-36.
LEE: _Constructive and Preventive Philanthropy_, pages 123-184.
FOLKS: _Care of Destitute and Neglected Children._
CHAPTER VIII
HOME ECONOMICS
64. =The Economic Function of the Home.=--Up to this point the
domestic function of the family has been under consideration. Marriage
and parenthood must hold first place, because they are fundamental to
the family and to the welfare of the race. But the family has an
economic as well as a domestic function. The primitive instinct of
hunger finds satisfaction in the home, and economic needs are supplied
in clothing, shelter, and bodily comforts. Production, distribution,
and consumption are all a part of the life of the farm. Domestic
economy is the foundation of all economics, and the family on the farm
presents the fundamental principles and phenomena that belong to the
science of economics as it presents the fundamentals of sociology. The
hunger for food demands satisfaction even more insistently than the
mating instinct. Birds must eat while they woo each other and build
their nests, and when the nest is full of helpless young both parents
find their time occupied in foraging for food. Similarly, when human
mating is over and the family hearth is built, and especially when
children have entered into the home life, the main occupation of man
and wife is to provide maintenance for the family. The need of food,
clothing, and shelter is common to the race. The requirements of the
family determine largely both the amount and the kind of work that is
done to meet them. However broad and elevated may be the interests of
the modern gentleman and his cultured wife, they cannot forget that
the physical needs of their family are as insistent as those of the
unrefined day laborer.
65. =Primitive Economics.=--In primitive times the family provided
everything for itself. In forest and field man and woman foraged for
food, cooked it at the camp-fire that they made, and rested under a
temporary shelter. If they required clothing they robbed the wild
beasts of their hide and fur or wove an apron of vegetable fibre.
Physical wants were few and required comparatively little labor. In
the pastoral stage the flocks and herds provided food and clothing.
Under the patriarchal system the woman was the economic slave. She was
goatherd and milkmaid, fire-tender and cook, tailor and tent-maker. It
was she who coaxed the grains to grow in the first cultivated field,
and experimented with the first kitchen garden. She was the dependable
field-hand for the sowing and reaping, when agriculture became the
principal means of subsistence. But woman's position has steadily
improved. She is no longer the slave but the helper. The peasant woman
of Europe still works in the fields, but American women long ago
confined themselves to indoor tasks, except in the gathering of
special crops like cotton and cranberries. Home economics have taught
the advantage of division of labor and co-operation.
66. =Division of Labor.=--Because of greater fitness for the heavy
labor of the field and barn, the man and his sons naturally became the
agriculturists and stock-breeders as civilization improved. It was
man's function to produce the raw material for home manufacture. He
ploughed and fertilized the soil, planted the various seeds,
cultivated the growing crops, and gathered in the harvest. It was his
task to perform the rougher part of preparing the raw material for
use. He threshed the wheat and barley on the threshing-floor and
ground the corn at the mill, and then turned over the product to his
wife. He bred animals for dairy or market, milked his cows, sheared
his sheep, and butchered his hogs and beeves; it was her task to turn
then to the household's use. She learned how to take the wheat and
corn, the beef and pork, and to prepare healthful and appetizing meals
for the household; she practised making butter and cheese for home use
and exchange. She took the flax and wool and spun and wove them into
cloth, and with her needle fashioned garments for every member of the
household and furnishings for the common home. She kept clean and tidy
the home and its manufacturing tools.
When field labor was slack the man improved the opportunity to fashion
the plough and the horseshoe at the forge, to build the boat or the
cart in the shop, to hew store or cut timber for building or firewood,
to erect a mill for sawing lumber or grinding grain. Similarly the
woman used her spare time in knitting and mending, and if time and
strength permitted added to her duties the care of the poultry-house.
67. =The Servant of the Household.=--Long before civilization had
advanced the household included servants. When wars broke out the
victor found himself possessed of human spoil. With passion
unrestrained, he killed the man or woman who had come under his power,
but when reason had a chance to modify emotion he decided that it was
more sensible to save his captives alive and to work them as his
slaves. The men could satisfy his economic interest, the women his sex
desire. The men were useful in the field, the women in the house.
Ancient material prosperity was built on the slave system of industry.
The remarkable culture of Athens was possible because the citizens,
free from the necessity of labor, enjoyed ample leisure. Lords and
ladies could live in their mediæval castles and practise chivalry with
each other, because peasants slaved for them in the fields without
pay. Slowly the servant class improved its status. Slaves became serfs
and serfs became free peasants, but the relation of master and servant
based on mutual service lasted for many centuries.
The time came when it was profitable for both parties to deal on a
money basis, and the workman began to know the meaning of
independence. The actual relation of master and servant remained about
the same, for the workman was still dependent upon his employer. It
took him a long time to learn to think much for himself, and he did
not know how to find employment outside of the community or even the
household where he had grown up. In the growing democracy of England,
and more fully in America, the workman learned to negotiate for
himself as a free man, and even to become himself a freeholder of
land.
68. =Hired Labor on the Farm.=--In the process of production in doors
and out it was impossible on a large farm for the independent farmer
and his wife to get on alone. There must be help in the cultivation of
many acres and in the care of cattle and sheep. There must be
assistance in the home when the birth and care of children brought an
added burden to the housewife. Later the growing boys and girls could
have their chores and thus add their contribution to the co-operative
household, but for a time at least success on the farm depended on the
hired laborer. Husband and wife became directors of industry as well
as laborers themselves. In the busy summer season it was necessary to
employ one or more assistants in the field, less often indoors, and
the employee became for a time a member of the family. Often a
neighbor performed the function of farm assistant, and as such stood
on the same level as his employer; there was no servant class or
servant problem, except the occasional shortage of laborers. Young men
and women were glad of an opportunity to earn a little money and to
save it in anticipation of the time when they would set up farming in
homes of their own. The spirit and practice of co-operation dignified
the employment in which all were engaged.
69. =Co-operation.=--The control of the manufacturing industry on a
large scale by corporations makes hearty co-operation between the
employing group and the employees difficult, but on the farm the
personal relations of the persons engaged made it easy and natural.
The art of working together as well as living together was an
achievement of the home, at first beginning unconsciously, but later
with a definite purpose. The practice of co-operation is a continual
object-lesson to the children, as they become conscious of the mutual
dependence of each and all. The farmer has no time to do the small
tasks, and so the boy must do the chores. There is a limit to the
strength of the mother, and so the daughter or housemaid must
supplement her labors. Without the grain and vegetables the housewife
cannot provide the meals, but the man is equally dependent upon the
woman for the preparation of the food. Without the care and industry
of the parents through the helpless years of childhood, the children
could not win in the struggle for existence. Nor is it merely an
economic matter, but health and happiness depend upon the mutual
consideration and helpfulness of every member of the household.
70. =Economic Independence of the Farm.=--Until well into the
nineteenth century the American farm household provided for most of
its own economic needs. A country store, helped out if necessary by an
occasional visit to town, supplied the few goods that were not
produced at home. Economic wants were simple and means of purchase
were not abundant. On the other hand, most of the products of the farm
were consumed there. In the prevailing extensive agriculture the
returns per acre were not great, methods of efficiency were not known
or were given little attention, families were large and children and
farm-hands enjoyed good appetites, and production and consumption
tended to equalize themselves. In the process of the home manufacture
of clothing it was difficult to keep the family provided with the
necessary comforts; there was no thought of laying by a surplus beyond
the anticipated needs of the family and provision for the wedding
store of marriageable daughters.
The distribution of any accumulated surplus was effected by the
simplest mechanism of exchange. If the supply of young cattle was
large or the wood-lot furnished more firewood than was needed, the
product was bartered for seed corn or hay. There was swapping of
horses by the men or of fruit or vegetable preserves by the women.
Eggs and butter disposed of at the store helped to pay for sugar,
salt, and spices. New incentives to larger production came with the
extension of markets. When wood and hay could be shipped to a distance
on the railroad, when a milk route in the neighborhood or a milk-train
to the city made dairy products more profitable, or when market
gardening became possible on an extensive scale, better methods of
distribution were provided to take care of the more numerous
products.
71. =Social and Economic Changes in the Family.=--The fundamental
principles that govern the economic activities of the family are the
same as they used to be. Industry, thrift, and co-operation are still
the watchwords of prosperity. But with the development of civilization
and the improvements in manufacture, communication, and
transportation, the economic function of the family has changed.
Instead of producing all the crops that he may need or the tools of
his occupation, the farmer tends to produce the particular crops that
he can best cultivate and that will bring him the largest returns.
Because of increasing facilities of exchange he can sell his surplus
and purchase the goods that will satisfy his other needs. The farmer's
wife no longer spins and weaves the family's supply of clothing; the
men buy their supply at the store and often even she turns over the
task of making up her own gowns to the village dressmaker. Where there
is a local creamery she is relieved of the manufacture of butter and
cheese, and the cannery lays down its preserves at her door. Household
manufacturing is confined almost entirely to the preparation of food,
with a varying amount of dressmaking and millinery. In the towns and
cities the needs of the family are even more completely supplied from
without. Children are relieved of all responsibility, women's care are
lightened by the stock of material in the shops, and the bakery and
restaurant help to supply the table. Family life loses thereby much of
its unity of effort and sympathy. The economic task falls mainly upon
the male producer. Even he lives on the land and in the house of
another man; he owns not the tools of his industry and does business
in another's name. He hires himself to a superior for wage or salary,
and thereby loses in a measure his own independence. But there is a
gain in social solidarity, for the chain of mutual dependence reached
farther and binds more firmly; there is gain in community
co-operation, for each family is no longer self-sufficient.
READING REFERENCES
BOSANQUET: _The Family_, pages 221-227, 324-333.
THOMAS: _Sex and Society_, pages 123-146.
SMALL AND VINCENT: _Introduction to the Study of Society_, pages
105-108.
MASON: _Woman's Share in Primitive Culture._
WEEDEN: _Economic and Social History of New England_, I, pages
324-326.
CHAPTER IX
CHANGES IN THE FAMILY
72. =Causes of Changes in the Family.=--The family at the present time
is in a transition era. Its machinery is not working smoothly. Its
environment is undergoing transformation. A hundred years ago the
family was strictly rural; not more than three per cent of the people
lived in large communities. Now nearly one-half are classified as
urban by the United States census of 1910, and those who remain rural
feel the influences of the town. There is far less economic
independence on the farm than formerly, and in the towns and cities
the home is little more than a place in which to sleep and eat for an
increasing number of workers, both men and women. The family on the
farm is no longer a perfectly representative type of the family in the
more populous centres.
These changes are due mainly to the requirements of industry, but
partly at least to the desire of all members of the family to share in
urban life. The increasing ease of communication and travel extends
the mutual acquaintance of city and country people and, as the city is
brought nearer, its pull upon the young people of the community
strengthens. There is also an increasing tendency of the women folk to
enter the various departments of industry outside of the home. It is
increasingly difficult for one person to satisfy the needs of a large
family. This tends to send the family to the city, where there are
wider opportunities, and to drive women and children into socialized
industry; at the same time, it tends to restrict the number of
children in families that have high ideals for women and children.
Family life everywhere is becoming increasingly difficult, and at the
same time every member of the family is growing more independent in
temper. The result is the breaking up of a large number of homes,
because of the departure of the children, the separation of husband
and wife, the desertion of parents, or the legal divorce of married
persons. The maintenance of the family as a social institution is
seriously threatened.
73. =Static vs. Dynamic Factors.=--There are factors entering into
family life that act as bonds to cement the individual members
together. Such are the material goods that they enjoy in common, like
the home with its comforts and the means of support upon which they
all rely. In addition to these there are psychical elements that enter
into their relations and strengthen these bonds. The inheritance of
the peculiar traits, manners, and customs that differentiate one
family from another; the reputation of the family name and pride in
its influence; an affection, understanding, and sympathy that come
from the intimacy of the home life and the appreciation of one
another's best qualities are ties that do not easily rend or loosen.
On the other hand, there are centrifugal forces that are pushing the
members of the family apart. At the bottom is selfish desire, which
frets at restriction, and which is stimulated by the current emphasis
upon personal pleasure and individual independence. The family
solidarity which made the sons Democrats because their father voted
that party ticket, or the daughters Methodists because their mother's
religious preferences were for that denomination, has ceased to be
effective. Every member of the family has his daily occupations in
diverse localities. The head of the household may find his business
duties in the city twenty miles away, or on the road that leads him
far afield across the continent. For long hours the children are in
school. The housewife is the only member of the family who remains at
home and her outside interests and occupations have multiplied so
rapidly as to make her, too, a comparative stranger to the home life.
Modern industrialism has laid its hand upon the women and children,
and thousands of them know the home only at morning and night.
74. =The Strain on the Urban Family.=--The rapid growth of cities,
with the increase of buildings for the joint occupancy of a number of
families, tends to disunity in each particular family and to a
reduction in the size of families. The privacy and sense of intimate
seclusion of the detached home is violated. The modern apartment-house
has a common hall and stairway for a dozen families and a common
dining-room and kitchen on the model of a hotel. The tenements are
human incubators from which children overflow upon the streets,
boarders invade the privacy of the family bedroom, and even sanitary
conveniences are public. Home life is violated in the tenement by the
pressure of an unfavorable environment; it perishes on the avenue
because of a compelling desire to gain as much freedom as possible
from household care.
The care of a modern household grows in difficulty. Although the
housekeeper has been relieved of performing certain economic functions
that added to the burden of her grandmother, her responsibilities have
been complicated by a number of conditions that are peculiar to the
modern life of the town. Social custom demands of the upper classes a
far more careful observance of fashion in dress and household
furnishings, and in the exchange of social courtesies. The increasing
cost of living due to these circumstances, and to a constantly rising
standard of living, reacts upon the mind and nerves of the housewife
with accelerating force. And not the least of her difficulties is the
growing seriousness of the servant problem. Custom, social
obligations, and nervous strain combine to make essential the help of
a servant in the home. But the American maid is too independent and
high-minded to make a household servant, and the American matron in
the main has not learned how to be a just and considerate mistress.
The result has been an influx of immigrant labor by servants who are
untrained and inefficient, yet soon learn to make successful demands
upon the employer for larger wages and more privileges because they
are so essential to the comfort and even the existence of the family.
Family life is increasingly at the mercy of the household employee. It
is not strange that many women prefer the comfort and relief of an
apartment or hotel, that many more hesitate to assume the
responsibility of marriage and children, preferring to undertake their
own self-support, and that not a few seek divorce.
75. =Family Desertion.=--While the burden of housekeeping rests upon
the wife, there are corresponding weights and annoyances that fall
upon the man. Business pressure and professional responsibility are
wearying; he, too, feels the strain upon his nerves. When he returns
home at evening he is easily disturbed by a worried wife, tired and
fretful children, and the unmistakable atmosphere of gloom and
friction that permeates many homes. He contrasts his unenviable
position with the freedom and good-fellowship of the club, and chafes
under the family bonds. In many cases he breaks them and sets himself
free by way of the divorce court. The course of men of the upper class
is paralleled by that of the working man or idler who meets similar
conditions in a home where the servant does not enter, but where there
is a surplus of children. He finds frequent relief in the saloon, and
eventually escapes by deserting his family altogether, instead of
having recourse to the law. This practice of desertion, which is the
poor man's method of divorce, is one of the continual perplexities of
organized charity, and constitutes one of the serious problems of
family life. There are gradations in the practice of desertion, and it
is not confined to men. The social butterfly who neglects her children
to flutter here and there is a temporary deserter, little less
culpable than the lazy husband who has an attack of _wanderlust_
before the birth of each child, and who returns to enjoy the comforts
of home as soon as his wife is again able to assume the function of
bread-winner for the growing family. From these it is but a step to
the mutual desertion of a man and a woman, who from incompatibility of
temper find it advisable to separate and go their own selfish ways, to
wait until the law allows a final severance of the marriage bond.
It is indisputable that this breaking up of the home is reacting
seriously upon the moral character of the present generation; there is
a carelessness in assuming the responsibility of marriage, and too
much shirking of responsibility when the burden weighs heavily. There
is a weakening of real affection and a consequent lack of mutual
forbearance; there is an increasing feeling that marriage is a lottery
and not worth while unless it promises increased satisfaction of
sexual, economic, or social desires and ambitions.
76. =Feminism.=--There can be no question that the growing
independence of woman has complicated the family situation. In
reaction against the long subjection that has fallen to her lot, the
modern woman in many cases rebels against the control of custom and
the expectations of society, refuses to regard herself as strictly a
home-keeper, and in some cases is unwilling to become a mother. She
seeks wider associations and a larger range of activities outside of
the home, she demands the same rights and privileges that belong to
man, and she dreams of the day when her power as well as her influence
will help to mould social institutions. The feminist movement is in
the large a wholesome reaction against an undeserved subserviency to
the masculine will. Undoubtedly it contains great social potencies. It
deserves kindly reception in the struggle to reform and reconstruct
society where society is weak.
The present situation deserves not abuse, but the most careful
consideration from every man. In countless cases woman has not only
been repressed from activities outside of the family group, but has
been oppressed in her own home also. America prides itself on its
consideration for woman in comparison with the general European
attitude toward her, but too often chivalry is not exercised in the
home. Often the wife has been a slave in the household where she
should have been queen. She has been subject to the passion of an hour
and the whim of a moment. She has been servant rather than helpmeet.
Upon her have fallen the reproaches of the unbridled temper of other
members of the family; upon her have rested the burdens that others
have shirked. Husband and children have been free to find diversion
elsewhere; family responsibilities or broken health have confined her
at home. Her husband might even find sex satisfaction away from home,
but public opinion would be more lenient with him than with her if
she offended. The time has come when it is right that these
inequalities and injustices should cease. Society owes to woman not
only her right to her own person and property, but the right to bear,
also, her fair share of social responsibility in this modern world.
Yet in the process of coming to her own, there is danger that the wife
will forget that marriage is the most precious of human relations;
that the home has the first claim upon her; that motherhood is the
greatest privilege to which any woman, however socially gifted, can
aspire; and that social institutions of tried worth are not lightly to
be cast upon the rubbish heap. It is by no means certain that society
can afford or that women ought to demand individualistic rights that
will put in jeopardy the welfare of the remainder of the family. The
average woman has not the strength to carry properly the burden of
home cares plus large political and social responsibilities, nor has
she the money to employ in the home all the modern improvements of
labor-saving devices and skilled service that might in a measure take
her place. Nor is it at all certain that the granting of individual
rights to women would tend to purify sex relations, but it is quite
conceivable that the old moral and religious sanctions of marriage may
disappear and the State assume the task of caring for all children. It
is clear that the rights and duties of women constitute a very serious
part of the problem of family life.
77. =Individual Rights vs. Social Duties.=--The greatest weakness to
be found in twentieth-century society is the disposition on the part
of almost all individuals to place personal rights ahead of social
duties. The modern spirit of individualism has grown strong since the
Renaissance and the Reformation. It has forced political changes until
absolutism has been yielding everywhere to democracy. It has extended
social privileges until it has become possible for any one with push
and ability to make his way to the top rung of the ladder of social
prestige. It has permitted freedom to profess and practise any
religion, and to advocate the most bizarre ideas in ethics and
philosophy. It has brought human individuals to the place where they
feel that nothing may be permitted to stand between them and the
satisfaction of personal desire. The disciples of Nietzsche do not
hesitate to stand boldly for the principle that might makes right,
that he who can crush his competitors in the race for pleasure and
profit has an indisputable claim on whatever he can grasp, and that
the principle of mutual consideration is antiquated and ridiculous.
Such principles and privileges may comport with the elemental
instincts and interests of unrestrained, primitive creatures, but they
do not harmonize with requirements of social solidarity and
efficiency. Social evolution in the past has come only as the struggle
for individual existence was modified by consideration for the needs
of another, and social welfare in the future can be realized only as
men and women both are willing to sacrifice age-long prejudice or
momentary pleasure and profit to the permanent good of the larger
group.
READING REFERENCES
COOLEY: _Social Organization_, pages 356-371.
BRANDT AND BALDWIN: _Family Desertion._
DEALEY: _The Family in Its Sociological Aspects_, pages 85-95,
109-118.
GOODSELL: _The Family as a Social and Educational Institution_,
pages 456-477.
HOWARD: _History of Matrimonial Institutions_, III, pages 239-250.
CHAPTER X
DIVORCE
78. =The Main Facts About Divorce.=--An indication of the emphasis on
individual rights is furnished by the increase of divorce, especially
in the United States, where the demands of individualism and
industrialism are most insistent. The divorce record is the
thermometer that measures the heat of domestic friction. Statistics of
marriage and divorce made by the National Government in 1886 and again
in 1906 make possible a comparison of conditions which reveal a rapid
increase in the number of divorces granted by the courts. Certain
outstanding facts are of great importance.
(1) The number of divorces in twenty years increased from 23,000 to
72,000, which is three times the rate of increase of the population of
the country. If this rate of progress continues, more than half the
marriages in the United States will terminate in divorce by the end of
the present century.
(2) In the first census it was discovered that the number of divorces
in the United States exceeded the total number of divorces in all the
European countries; in the second census it was shown that the United
States had increased its divorces three times, while Japan, with the
largest divorce rate in the world, had reduced its rate one-half.
(3) Divorces in the United States are least common among people of the
middle class; they are higher among native whites than among
immigrants, and they are highest in cities and among childless
couples.
(4) Two-thirds of the divorces are granted on the demands of the wife.
(5) Divorce laws are very variable in the different States, but most
divorces are obtained from the States where the applicants reside.
79. =Causes of Divorce.=--The causes recorded in divorce cases do not
represent accurately the real causes, for the reason that it is easier
to get an uncontested decision when the charges are not severe, and
also for the reason that State laws vary and that which best fits the
law will be put forward as the principal cause. Divorce laws in the
United States generally recognize adultery, desertion, cruelty,
drunkenness, lack of support, and crime as legitimate grounds for
divorce. In the five years from 1902 to 1906 desertion was given as
the ground for divorce in thirty-eight per cent of the cases, cruelty
in twenty-three per cent, and adultery in fifteen per cent.
Intemperance was given as the direct cause in only four per cent, and
neglect approximately the same. The assignment of marital
unfaithfulness in less than one-sixth of the cases, as compared with
one-fourth twenty years before does not mean, however, that there is
less unfaithfulness, but that minor offenses are considered sufficient
on which to base a claim; the small percentage of charges of
intemperance as the principal cause ought not to obscure the fact that
it was an indirect cause in one-fifth of the cases.
It is natural that the countries of Europe should present greater
variety of laws and of causes assigned. In England, where the law has
insisted on adultery as a necessary cause, divorces have been few. In
Ireland, where the church forbids it, divorce is rare, less than one
to thirty-five marriages. In Scotland fifty per cent of the cases
reported are due to adultery. Cruelty was the principal cause ascribed
in France, Austria, and Rumania; desertion in Russia and Sweden. The
tendency abroad is to ascribe more rather than less to adultery.
The real causes for divorce are more remote than the specific acts of
adultery, desertion, or cruelty that are mentioned as grounds for
divorce. The primary cause is undoubtedly the spirit of individual
independence that demands its rights at the expense of others. In the
case of women there is less hesitancy than formerly in seeking
freedom from the marriage bond because of the increasing opportunity
of self-support. The changing conditions of home life in the city,
with the increasing cost of living, coupled with the ease of divorce,
encourage resort to the courts. The unscrupulousness of some lawyers,
who fatten their purses at the expense of marital happiness, and the
meddlesomeness of relatives are also contributing causes. Finally the
restraint of religion has relaxed, and unhappy and ill-mated persons
do not shrink from taking a step which was formerly condemned by the
church.
80. =History of Divorce.=--The history of divorce presents various
opinions and practices. The Hebrews had high ideals, but frequently
fell into lax practices; the Greeks began well but degenerated sadly
to the point where marriage was a mere matter of convenience; the
Romans, noted for their sterling qualities in the early days of the
republic, practised divorce without restraint in the later days of the
empire.
The influence of Christianity was greatly to restrict divorce. The
teaching of the Bible was explicit that the basis of marriage was the
faithful love of the heart, and that impure desire was the essence of
adultery. Illicit intercourse was the only possible moral excuse for
divorce. True to this teaching, the Christian church tried hard to
abolish divorce, as it attempted to check all sexual evils, and the
Catholic Church threw about marriage the veil of sanctity by making it
one of the seven sacraments. As a sacrament wedlock was indissoluble,
except as money or influence induced the church to turn back the key
which it alone possessed. Separation was allowed by law, but not
divorce. Greater stability was infused into the marriage relation. Yet
it is not possible to purify sex relations by tying tightly the
marriage bond. Unfaithfulness has been so common in Europe among the
higher classes that it occasioned little remark, until the social
conscience became sensitive in recent decades, and among the lower
classes divorce was often unnecessary, because so many unions took
place without the sanction of the church. In Protestant countries
there has been a variable recession from the extreme Catholic ground.
The Episcopal Church in England and in colonial America recognized
only the one Biblical cause of unfaithfulness; the more radical
Protestants turned over the whole matter to the state. In New England
desertion and cruelty were accepted alongside adultery as sufficient
grounds for divorce, and the legislature sometimes granted it by
special enactment.
81. =Investigation and Legislation in the United States and
England.=--The divorce question provoked some discussion in this
country about the time of the Civil War, and some statistics were
gathered. Twenty years later the National Government was induced by
the National Divorce Reform League to take a careful census of
marriage and divorce. This was published in 1889, and revised and
reissued in 1909. These reports aroused the States which controlled
the regulation of marriage and divorce to attempt improved
legislation. Almost universally among them divorce was made more
difficult instead of easier. The term of residence before divorce
could be obtained was lengthened; certain changes were made in the
legal grounds for divorce; in less than twenty years fourteen States
limited the privilege of divorced persons to remarry until after a
specified time had elapsed, varying from three months to two years.
Congress passed a uniform marriage law for all the territories. It was
believed almost universally that the Constitution should be amended so
as to secure a federal divorce law, but experience proved that it was
better that individual States should adopt a uniform law. The later
tendency has been in this direction.
At the same time, the churches of the country interested themselves in
the subject. The Protestant Episcopal Church took strong ground
against its ministers remarrying a divorced person, and the National
Council of Congregational Churches appointed a special committee which
reported in 1907 in favor of strictness. Fourteen Protestant churches
combined in an Interchurch Committee to secure united action, and the
Federal Council of Churches recorded itself against the prevailing
laxness. The purpose of all this group action was to check abuses and
to create a more sensitive public opinion, especially among moral and
religious leaders.
In Great Britain, on the other hand, divorce had always been
difficult. There the strictness of the law led to a demand for a study
of the subject and a report to Parliament. The result was the
appointment of a Royal Commission on Divorce and Matrimonial Causes,
consisting of twelve members, which investigated for three years, and
in 1912 presented its report. It recognized the fact that severe
restrictions were in force, and a majority of the commission regarding
marriage as a legal rather than a sacramental bond, favored easier
divorce and a single standard of morality for both sexes. It was
proposed that the grounds for legal divorce should be adultery,
desertion extending over three years, cruelty, incurable insanity
after confinement for five years, habitual drunkenness found incurable
after three years, or imprisonment carrying with it a sentence of
death. A minority of the committee still regarding marriage as a
sacrament, favored no relaxation of the law as it stood.
82. =Proposed Remedies.=--Various remedies have been proposed to stem
the tide of excessive divorce. There are many who see in divorce
nothing more than a healthy symptom of individual independence, a
revolt against conditions of the home that are sometimes almost
intolerable. Many others are alarmed at the rapid increase of divorce,
especially in the United States, and believe that checks are necessary
for the continued existence of the family and the well-being of
society. The first reform proposed as a means of prevention of divorce
is the revision of the marriage laws on a higher model. The second is
a stricter divorce law, made as uniform as possible. The third is the
adoption of measures of reconciliation which will remove the causes
that provoke divorce.
The proposed laws include such provisions as the prohibition of
marriage for those who are criminal, degenerate, or unfitted to
perform the sex function; the requirement of six months' publication
of matrimonial banns and a physical certificate before marriage; a
strictly provisional decree of divorce; the establishment of a court
of domestic relations, and a prohibition of remarriage of the
defendant during the life of the plaintiff. These are reasonable
restrictions and seem likely to be adopted gradually, as practicable
improvements over the existing laws. It is also proposed that the
merits of every case shall be more carefully considered, and the
judicial procedure improved by the appointment of a divorce proctor in
connection with every court trying divorce cases, whose business it
shall be to make investigations and to assist in trying or settling
specific cases. Experiment has proved the value of such an officer.
83. =Court of Domestic Relations.=--One of the most significant
improvements that has taken place is the establishment of a court of
domestic relations, which already exists in several cities, and has
made an enviable record. In the early experiments it seemed
practicable in Kansas to make such a court a branch of the circuit and
juvenile courts, so arranged that it would be possible to deal with
the relations of the whole family; in Chicago the new tribunal was
made a part of the municipal court. By means of patient questioning,
first by a woman assistant and then by the judge himself, and by good
advice and explicit directions as to conduct, with a warning that
failure would be severely treated, it has been possible to unravel
hundreds of domestic entanglements.
84. =Tendencies.=--There can be no question that the present tendency
is in the direction of greater freedom in the marriage relation.
Society will not continue to sanction inhumanity and immorality in the
relations of man to woman. Marriage is ideally a sacred relation, but
when it is not so treated, when love is dead and repulsion has taken
its place, and especially when physical contact brings disease and
suffering, public opinion is likely to consider that marriage is
thereby virtually annulled, and to permit ratification of the fact by
a decree of divorce. On the other hand, it is probable that increasing
emphasis will be put on serious and well-prepared marriage, on the
inculcation of a spirit of mutual love and forbearance through the
agency of the church, and on the exhaustion of every effort to
restore right relations, if they have not been irreparably destroyed,
before any grant of divorce will be allowed. In this, as in all
problems of the family, the spirit of mutual consideration for the
interests of all concerned is that which must be invoked for a speedy
and permanent solution. Education of young people in the importance of
the family as a social institution and in the responsibility which
every individual member should feel to make and keep the family pure
and strong as a bulwark of social stability, is the surest means of
preventing altogether its dissolution.
READING REFERENCES
"Report on Marriage and Divorce," 1906, _Bureau of the Census_,
I, pages 272-274, 331-333.
"Reports of the National League for the Protection of the Family."
POST: _Ethics of Marriage and Divorce_, pages 62-84.
DEALEY: _The Family in Its Sociological Aspects_, pages 96-108.
HOWARD: _History of Matrimonial Institutions_, III, pages 3-160.
WILLCOX: _The Divorce Problem._
CHAPTER XI
THE SOCIAL EVIL
85. =Sexual Impurity.=--A prime factor in the breaking up of the home
is sexual impurity. The sex passion, an elemental instinct of
humanity, is sanctified by the marriage relation, but unbridled in
those who seek above all else their own pleasure, becomes a curse in
body and soul. It is not limited to either sex, but men have been more
self-indulgent, and have been treated more leniently than erring
women. Sexual impurity is wide-spread, but public opinion against it
is steadily strengthening, and the tendency is to hold men and women
equally responsible. For the sake of clearness it is advisable to
distinguish between various forms of impurity, and to observe the
proper terms. The sexual evil appears in aggravated form in commercial
prostitution, but is more prevalent as an irregularity among
non-professionals. Sexual intercourse before marriage, or fornication,
was not infrequent in colonial days, and in Europe is startlingly
common; very frequently among the lower classes there is no marriage
until a child is born. Sexual infidelity after marriage, or adultery,
is the cause of the ruin of many homes. In the cities and among the
well-to-do classes the keeping of mistresses is an occasional
practice, but it is far less common than was the case in former days,
when it was the regular custom at royal courts and imitated by those
lower in the social scale.
86. =Prostitution.=--Prostitution, softened in common speech to "the
social evil," is a term for promiscuity of sex relationship for pay or
its equivalent. It is a very old practice, and has existed in the East
as a part of religious worship in veneration of the power of
generation. In the West it is a frequent accompaniment of intemperance
and crime. Modern prostitutes are recruited almost entirely from the
lower middle class, both in Europe and America. Ignorant and helpless
immigrant girls are seduced on the journey, in the streets of American
cities, and in the tenements. Domestic servants and employees in
factories and department stores seem to be most subject to
exploitation, but no class or employment is immune. A great many
girls, while still in their teens, have begun their destructive
career. They are peculiarly susceptible in the evening, after the
strain of the day's labor, when they are hunting for fun and
excitement in theatres, dance-halls, and moving-picture shows. In
summer they are themselves hunted on excursion steamers, and at the
parks and recreation grounds. The seduction and exploitation of young
women has become a distinct occupation of certain worthless young men,
commonly known as cadets, who live upon the earnings of the women they
procure. Three-fourths of the prostitutes have such men dependent on
them, to whom they remain attached through fear or need of pecuniary
relief in case of arrest, or even through a species of affection,
though they receive nothing but abuse in return. Once secured, the
victim is not permitted to escape. Not many women enter the life of
prostitution from choice, but when they have once yielded to
temptation or force, they lose their self-respect and usually sink
into hopeless degradation, and then do not shrink from soliciting
business within doors or on the streets.
87. =Promotion and Regulation of Vice.=--The social evil is centred in
houses of ill fame managed by unprincipled women. The business is
financed and the profits enjoyed by men who constantly stimulate the
trade to make it more profitable. As a result of investigations in New
York, it is estimated that the number of prostitutes would be not more
than one-fourth of what it is were it not for the ruthless greed of
these men. The houses are usually located in the poorer parts of the
city, but they are also to be found scattered elsewhere. In cases
where public opinion does not warrant rigid enforcement of the law
against it, the illicit traffic is disregarded by the police, and
often they are willing to share in the gains as the price of their
leniency. As a rule the business is kept under cover and not
permitted to flaunt itself on the streets. Definite segregation in a
particular district has been attempted, and has sometimes been favored
as a means of checking vice, but this means is not practised or
favored after experiment has shown its uselessness as a check upon the
trade. Government regulation by a system of license, with registration
of prostitutes and regular though superficial examination of health,
is in vogue in parts of western and southern Europe, but it is not
favored by vice commissions that have examined into its workings.
88. =Extent of the Social Evil.=--It is probable that estimates as to
the number of prostitutes in the great urban centres has been much
exaggerated. In the nature of the case it is very difficult to get
accurate reports, but when it is remembered that the number of men who
frequent the resorts is not less than fifteen times the number of
women, and that in most cases the proportion is larger, it is not
difficult to conceive of the immense profits to the exploiters, but
also of the enormous economic waste, the widely prevalent physical
disease, and the untold misery of the women who sin, and of the
innocent women at home who are sinned against by those who should be
their protectors.
A "white-slave traffic" seems to have developed in recent years that
has not only increased the number of local prostitutes, but has united
far-distant urban centres. It is very difficult to prove an intercity
trade, but investigation has produced sufficient evidence to show that
there is an organized business of procuring victims and that they have
been exported to distant parts of the world, including South America,
South Africa, and the Far East.
89. =The Causes.=--The social evil has usually been blamed upon the
perversity of women and their pecuniary need, but investigation makes
it plain that the causes go deeper than that. The first cause is the
ignorance of girls who are permitted to grow up and go out into the
world innocently, unaware of the snares in which they are liable to
become enmeshed. Added to this ignorance is the lack of moral and
religious training, so that there is often no firm conviction of right
and wrong, an evil which is intensified in the city tenements by the
conditions of congested population. A third grave cause is the public
neglect of persons of defective mentality and morality. Women who are
not capable of taking care of themselves are allowed full liberty of
conduct, and frequently fall victims to the seducer. An investigation
of cases in the New York Reformatory for Women at Bedford in 1913
showed one-third very deficient mentally; the Massachusetts Vice
Commission in 1914 reported one-half to three-fourths of three hundred
cases to be of the same class. It seems clear that a large proportion
of prostitutes generally belong in this category. It has been
estimated that there are now (1915) as many defective women at large
in Massachusetts as there are in public institutions.
Poverty is an important factor in the extension of the sexual evil. It
is notorious that thousands of women workers are underpaid. In
factories, restaurants, and department stores they frequently receive
wages much less than the eight dollars a week required by women to
maintain themselves, if dependent on their own resources. The American
woman's pride in a good appearance, the natural human love of ease,
luxury, and excitement, the craving for relaxation and thrill, after
the exacting labor of a long day, all contribute to the welcome of an
opportunity for an indulgence that brings money in return. The agency
of the dance-hall and the saloon has also an important place in the
downfall of the tempted. Intemperance and prostitution go together,
and places where they can be enjoyed are factories of vice and crime.
Many so-called hotels with bar attachment are little more than houses
of evil resort. Especially notorious for a time were the Raines Law
hotels in New York City, designed to check intemperance, but proving
nurseries of prostitution. Commercial profit is large from both kinds
of traffic, and one stimulates the other.
Among minor causes of the social evil is the postponement or
abandonment of marriage by many young people, the celibate life
imposed upon students and soldiers, the declaration of some physicians
that continence is injurious, and lax opinion, especially in Europe.
90. =The Consequences.=--It is impossible to measure adequately the
consequences of sexual indulgence. It is destructive of physical
health among women and of morals among both sexes. It results in a
weakening of the will and a blunting of moral discernment. It is an
economic waste, as is intemperance, for even on the level of economic
values it is plain that money could be much better spent for that
which would benefit rather than curse. But the great evil that looms
large in public view is the legacy of physical disease that falls upon
self-indulgent men and their families. The presence of venereal
disease in Europe is almost unbelievable; so great has it been in
continental armies that governments have become alarmed as to its
effects upon the health and morale of the troops. College men have
been reckless in sowing wild oats, and have suffered serious physical
consequences. Most pathetic is the suffering that is caused to
innocent wives and children in blindness, sterility, and frequent
abdominal disease. This is a subject that demands the attention of
every person interested in human happiness and social welfare.
91. =History of Reform.=--Spasmodic efforts to suppress the social
evil have occurred from time to time. The result has been to scatter
rather than to suppress it, and after a little it has crept back to
its old haunts. Scattering it in tenements and residential districts
has been very unfortunate. The cure is not so simple a process.
Neither will segregation help. It is now generally agreed, especially
as a result of recent investigations by vice commissioners in the
large cities, that there must be a brave, sustained effort at
suppression, and then the patient task of reclaiming the fallen and
preventing the evil in future.
Organization and investigation are the two words that give the key to
the history of reform. International societies are agitating abroad;
other associations are directly engaged in checking vice in the United
States, most prominent of which is the American Vigilance Association.
Rescue organizations are scattered through the cities. Especially
active have been the commissions of investigation appointed privately
and by municipal, State, and Federal Governments, which have issued
illuminating reports. The United States in 1908 joined in an
international treaty to prevent the world-wide traffic in white
slaves, and in 1910 Congress passed the Mann White Slave Act to
prevent interstate traffic in America.
92. =Measures of Prevention and Cure.=--The social evil is one about
which there have been all sorts of wild opinions, but the facts are
becoming well substantiated by investigations, and these
investigations are the basis upon which all scientific conclusions
must rest, alike for public education and for constructive
legislation. No one remedy is adequate. There are those who believe
that the church has it in its power to stir a wave of indignation that
would sweep the whole traffic from the land, but it is not so simple a
process. It is generally agreed that both education and legislation
are necessary to check the evil. The first is necessary for the public
health, and to support repressive laws. As a helpful means of
repression it is proposed that the social evil, along with questions
of social morals, like gambling, excise, and amusements, shall be
taken out of the hands of the municipal police and the politicians,
and lodged with an unpaid morals commission, which shall have its own
special corps of expert officers and a morals court for the trial of
cases appropriate to its jurisdiction. This experiment actually has
been tried in Berlin. Measures of prevention as well as measures of
repression are needed. Restraint is needed for defectives; protection
for immigrants and young people, especially on shipboard, in the
tenements, and in the moving-picture houses; better housing, better
amusements, and better wages for all the people. Finally, the wrecks
must be taken care of. Rescue homes and other agencies manage to save
a few to reformed lives; homes are needed constantly for temporary
residence. Private philanthropy has provided them thus far, but the
United States Government has discussed the advisability of building
them in sufficient numbers to meet every local need. Many old and
hardened offenders need reformatories with farm and hospital where
they can be cared for during a long time; some of the States have
provided these already. The principles upon which a permanent cure of
the social evil must be based are similar to those that underlie all
family reform, namely, the rescue as far as possible of those already
fallen, the social and moral education of youth to nobler purpose and
will, the removal of unfavorable economic and social conditions, and
the improvement of family life until it can satisfy the human cravings
that legitimately belong to it.
READING REFERENCES
ADDAMS: _A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil._
WILLSON: _The American Boy and the Social Evil._
MORROW: _Social Diseases and Marriage_, pages 331-353.
KNEELAND: _Commercialized Prostitution in New York City_, pages
253-271.
CHAPTER XII
CHARACTERISTICS AND PRINCIPLES
93. =Social Characteristics Illustrated by the Family.=--A study of
the family such as has been made illustrates the characteristics of
social life that were noted in the introductory chapter. There is
activity in the performance of every domestic, economic, and social
function. There is association in various ways for various purposes
between all members of the family. Control is exercised by paternal
authority, family custom, and personal and family interest. The
history of the family shows gradual changes that have produced
varieties of organization, and the present situation discloses
weaknesses that are precipitating upon society very serious problems.
Present characteristics largely determine future processes; always in
planning for the future it is necessary to take into consideration the
forces that produce and alter social characteristics. Specific
measures meet with much scepticism, and enthusiastic reformers must
always reckon with inertia, frequent reactions, and slow social
development. In the face of sexualism, divorce, and selfish
individualism, it requires patience and optimism to believe that the
family will continue to exist and the home be maintained.
94. =Principles of Family Reform.=--It is probably impossible to
restore the home life of the past, as it is impossible to turn back
the tide of urban migration and growth. But it is possible on the
basis of certain fundamental principles to improve the conditions of
family life by means of methods that lie at hand. The first principle
is that the home must function properly. There must be domestic and
economic satisfactions. Without the satisfaction of the sexual and
parental instincts and an atmosphere of comfort and freedom from
anxiety, the home is emptied of its attractions. The second principle
is that social sympathy and service rather than individual
independence shall be the controlling motive in the home. As long as
every member of the family consults first his own pleasure and comfort
and contributes only half-heartedly to create a home atmosphere and to
perform his part of the home functions, there can be no real gain in
family life. The home is built on love; it can survive on nothing less
than mutual consideration.
95. =The Method of Economic Adjustment.=--The first method by which
these principles can be worked out is economic adjustment. It is
becoming imperative that the family income and the family requirements
shall be fitted together. Less extravagance and waste of expenditure
and a living wage to meet legitimate needs, are both demanded by
students of economic reform. It is not according to the principles of
social righteousness that any family should suffer from cold or
hunger, nor is it right that any social group should be wasteful of
the portion of economic goods that has come to it. There is great
need, also, that the expense of living should be reduced while the
standards of living shall not be lowered. The business world has been
trying to secure economies in production; there is even greater need
of economies in distribution. Millions are wasted in advertising and
in the profits of middlemen. Some method of co-operative buying and
selling will have to be devised to stop this economic leakage. It
would relieve the housewife from some of the worries of housekeeping
and lighten the heart of the man who pays the bills. A third
adjustment is that of the household employee to the remainder of the
household. The servant problem is first an economic problem, and
questions of wages, hours, and privileges must be based on economic
principles; but it is also a social problem. The servant bears a
social relation to the family. The family home is her home, and she
must have a certain share in home comforts and privileges. A fourth
reform is better housing and equipment. Attractive and comfortable
houses in a wholesome environment of light, air, and sunshine, built
for economical and easy housekeeping, are not only desirable but
essential for a permanent and happy family life.
96. =The Method of Social Education.=--A second general method by
which the principles of home life may be carried out is social
education. Given the material accessories, there must be the education
of the family in their use. Children in the home need to know the
fundamentals of personal and sex hygiene and the principles of
eugenics. In home and in school the emphasis in education should be
upon social rather than economic values, on the significance of social
relationships and the opportunities of social intercourse in the home
and the community, on the personal and social advantages of
intellectual culture, on the importance of moral progress in the
elimination of drunkenness, sexualism, poverty, crime, and war, if
there is to be future social development, and on the value of such
social institutions as the home, the school, the church, and the state
as agencies for individual happiness and group progress. Especially
should there be impressed upon the child mind the transcendent
importance of affectionate co-operation in the home circle, parents
sacrificing personal preferences and anticipations of personal
enjoyment for the good of children, and children having consideration
for the wishes and convictions of their elders, and recognizing their
own responsibility in rendering service for the common good.
Sanctioned by law, by the custom of long tradition, by economic and
social valuations, the home calls for personal devotion of will and
purpose from every individual for the welfare of the group of which he
is a privileged member. The family tie is the most sacred bond that
links individuals in human society; to strengthen it is one of the
noblest aspirations of human endeavor.
READING REFERENCES
DEALEY: _The Family in Its Sociological Aspects_, pages 119-134.
POST: _Ethics of Marriage and Divorce_, pages 105-127.
HOWARD: _History of Matrimonial Institutions_, III, pages 253-259.
THWING: _The Recovery of the Home._ A Pamphlet.
PART III--SOCIAL LIFE IN THE RURAL COMMUNITY
CHAPTER XIII
THE COMMUNITY AND ITS HISTORY
97. =Broadening the Horizon.=--Out of the kindergarten of the home the
child graduates into the larger school of the community. Thus far
through his early years the child's environment has been restricted
almost entirely to the four walls of the home or the limits of the
farm. His horizon has been bounded by garden, pasture, and orchard,
except as he has enjoyed an occasional visit to the village centre or
has found playmates on neighboring farms. He has shared in the
isolation of the farm. The home of the nearest neighbor is very likely
out of sight beyond the hill, or too far away for children's feet to
travel the intervening distance; on the prairie the next door may be
over the edge of the horizon. The home has been his social world. It
has supplied for him a social group, persons to talk with, to play
with, to work with. Inevitably he takes on their characteristics, and
his life will continue to be narrow and to grow conservative and hard,
unless he enlarges his experience, broadens his horizon, tries new
activities, enjoys new associations, tests new methods of social
control, and lets the forces that produce social change play upon his
own life.
Happy is he when he enters definitely into community life by taking
his place in the district school. The schoolhouse may be at the
village centre or it may stand aloof among the trees or stark on a
barren hillside along the country road; physical environment is of
small consequence as compared with the new social environment of the
schoolroom itself. The child has come into contact with others of his
kind in a permanent social institution outside the home, and this
social contact has become a daily experience. Every child that goes to
school is one of many representatives from the homes of the
neighborhood. He brings with him the habits and ideas that he has
gathered from his own home, and he finds that they do not agree or
fuse easily with the ideas and habits of the other children. In the
schoolroom and on the playground he repeats the process of social
adjustments which the race has passed through. Conflicts for
ascendancy are frequent. He must prove his physical prowess on the
playground and his intellectual ability in the schoolroom. He must
test his body of knowledge and the value of his mental processes by
the mind of his teacher. He must have strength of conviction to defend
his own opinions, but he must have an open mind to receive truths that
are new to him. One of the great achievements of the school is to fuse
dissimilar elements into common custom and opinion, and thus to
socialize the independent units of community life.
98. =Learning Social Values in the Community.=--The school is the door
to larger social opportunity than the home can provide, but it is not
the only door. The child in passing to and from school comes into touch
with other institutions and activities. He passes other homes than his
own. He sees each in the midst of its own peculiar surroundings, and he
makes comparisons of one with another and of each with his own. He
estimates more or less consciously the value of that which he sees, not
so much in terms of economic as of social worth, and congratulates or
pities himself or his schoolmates, according to the judgments that he
has made. He stops at the store, the mill, or the blacksmith shop,
through frequent contact becomes familiar with their functions, and
thinks in turn that he would like to be storekeeper, miller, and
blacksmith. He sees the farmer on other farms than his own gathering
his harvest in the fall, hauling wood in the winter, or ploughing his
field in the spring, and he becomes conscious of common habits and
occupations in this rural community. He gets acquainted with the
variety of activities that enter into life in the country district in
which his home is located, and he learns to appreciate the importance
of the instruments upon which such activity depends for travel from
place to place. By all these means the child is learning social values.
After a little he comes to understand that the community, with its
roads, its public buildings, and its established institutions, exists
to satisfy certain economic and social needs that the single family
cannot supply. By and by he learns that, like the family, it has grown
out of the experience of relationships, and can be traced far back in
history, and that as time passes it is slowly changing to adapt itself
to the changing wants and wishes of its inhabitants. He becomes aware
of a present tendency for the community to imitate the larger social
life outside, to make its village centre a reproduction in miniature of
the urban centres; later he realizes that the introduction of foreign
elements into the population is working for the destruction of the
simple, unified life of former days, and is introducing a certain
flavor of cosmopolitanism.
It is this growth of social consciousness in a single child,
multiplied by the number of children in the community, that
constitutes the process of social education. A community with no
dynamic influences impinging upon it reproduces itself in this way
generation after generation, and at best seems to maintain but a
static existence. In reality, few communities stand still. The
principle of change that is characteristic of social life is
continually working to build up or tear down the community structure
and to modify community functioning. The causes of change and their
methods of operation appear in the history of the rural community.
99. =Rural History.=--The history of the rural community falls into
two periods--first, when the village was necessary to the life of the
individual; second, when the individual pioneer pushed out into the
forest or prairie, and the village followed as a convenient social
institution. The community came into existence through the bond of
kinship. Every clan formed a village group with its own peculiar
customs. These were primitive, even among semi-civilized peoples.
Among the ancient Hebrews the village elders sat by the gate to
administer justice in the name of the clan; in China the old men still
bask on a log in the sun and pronounce judgment in neighborly gossip.
The village existed for sociability and safety. The mediæval Germans
left about each village a broad strip of waste land called the mark,
and over this no stranger could come as a friend without sounding a
trumpet. Later the village was surrounded by a wall called a tun, and
by a transfer of terms the village frequently came to be called a
mark, or tun, later changed to town. Place names even in the United
States are often survivals of such a custom, as Charlestown or
Chilmark. The Indian village in colonial America was similarly
protected with a palisade, and village dogs heralded the approach of a
stranger, as they do still in the East.
100. =The Mediæval Village.=--The peasant village of the Middle Ages
constitutes a distinct type of rural community. A consciousness of
mutual dependence between the owner of the land and the peasants who
were his serfs produced a feudal system in which the landlord
undertook to furnish protection and to permit the peasant to use
portions of his land in exchange for service. Strips of fertile soil
were allotted to the village families for cultivation, while
pasture-land, meadow, and forest were kept for community use. Even in
the heart of the city Boston Common remains as a relic of the old
custom. On the mediæval manor people lived and worked together, most
of them on the same social level, the lord in his manor-house and the
peasants in a hamlet or larger village on his land, huddling together
in rude huts and in crude fashion performing the social and economic
functions of a rural community. In the village church the miller or
the blacksmith held his head a little higher than his neighbors, and
sometimes the lord of the manor did not deign to worship in the common
parish church, but the mass of the people were fellow serfs, owning a
common master, working at the same tasks, by custom sowing and reaping
the same kind of grain on the same kind of land in the same week of
the year. They attended the court of the master, who exercised the
functions of government. They worshipped side by side in the church.
The same customs bound them and the same superstitions worried their
waking hours. There was thus a community solidarity that less commonly
exists under modern conditions.
There was no stimulus to progress on the manor itself. There were no
schools for the peasant's children, and there was little social
intelligence. The finer side of life was undeveloped, except as the
love of music was stirred by the travelling bard, or martial fervor or
the love of movement aroused the dance. There was no desire for
religious independence or understanding of religious experience. The
mass in the village church satisfied the religious instinct. There was
no dynamic factor in the community itself. Besides all this, the
community lived a self-centred life, because the people manufactured
their own cloth and leather garments and most of the necessary tools,
and, except for a few commodities like iron and salt, they were
independent of trade. The result was that every stimulus of social
exchange between villages was lacking.
The broadening influence of the Crusades with their stimulus to
thought, their creation of new economic wants, and their contact of
races and nationalities, set in motion great changes. Out of the
manorial villages went ambitious individuals, making their way as
industrial pioneers to the opportunity of the larger towns, as now
young people push out from the country to the city. New towns were
founded and new enterprises were begun. Trade routes were opened up.
The feudal principality grew into the modern state. Cultural interests
demanded their share of attention. Schools were founded, and art and
literature began again to develop. Even law and religion, most
conservative among social institutions, underwent change.
101. =The Village in American History.=--The spirit of enterprise and
the disturbed political and religious conditions impelled many groups
in western Europe to emigrate to new lands after the geographical
discoveries that ushered in the sixteenth century. They were free to
go, for serfdom was disappearing from most of the European countries.
The village life of Europe was transplanted to America. In the South
the mediæval feudal village became the agricultural plantation, where
the planter lived on his own estate surrounded by the rude cabins of
his dusky peasantry. The more democratic, homogeneous village life of
middle-class Englishmen reproduced itself in New England, where the
houses of the settlers clustered about the village meeting-house and
schoolhouse, and where habits of industry, frugality, and sobriety
characterized every local group. In this new village life there came
to be a stronger feeling of self-respect, and under the hard
conditions of life in a new continent there developed a self-reliance
that was destined to work wonders in days to come. The New World bred
a spirit of independence that suited well the individualistic
philosophy and religion of the modern Englishman. All these qualities
prophesied much of individual achievement. Yet this tendency toward
individualism threatened the former social solidarity, though there
was a recognition of mutual interests and a readiness to show
neighborly kindness in time of stress, and a perception of the social
value of democracy in church and state.
102. =Individual Pioneering.=--The pioneer American colonies were
group settlements, but they produced a new race of individual pioneers
for the West. Occasionally a whole community emigrated, but usually
hardy, venturesome individuals pushed out into the wilderness, opening
up the frontier continually farther toward the setting sun. By the
brookside the pioneer made a clearing and erected his log house; later
on the unbroken prairie he built a rude hut of sod. On the land that
was his by squatter's right or government claim he planted and reaped
his crops. About him grew up a brood of children, and as the years
passed, others like himself followed in the path that he had made,
single men to work for a time as hired laborers, families to break new
ground, until the countryside became sparsely settled and the nucleus
of a village was made.
Such pioneers were hard-working people, lonely and introspective.
They knew little of the comforts and none of the refinements of life.
They prescribed order and administered justice at the weapon's point.
They were emotional in religion. They required the stimulus of
abundant food and often of strong drink to goad them to their various
tasks. Frontier pioneering in America reproduced many of the features
of former ages of primitive life and compressed centuries into the
space of a generation. It was distinctly individualistic, and needed
socializing. The large farm or cattle-range kept men apart, the
freedom of the open country attracted an unruly population, and in
consequence frontier life tended to rough manners and lawlessness.
Isolation and loneliness produced despondency and inertia, and tended
to individual and group degeneration.
Even in a growing village men and women of this type had few social
institutions. There was little time for schooling or recreation. A
circuit-riding preacher held religious services once or twice a month,
and in certain regions at a certain season religious enthusiasm found
vent in a camp-meeting, but religion often had little effect on habits
and morals. Local government and industry were home-made. The settlers
brought with them customs and traditions which they cherished, but in
the mingling of pioneers from different districts there was continual
change and fusion, until the West became the most enterprising and
progressive part of the nation, continually open to new ideas and new
methods. There was a wholesome respect for church and school, and as
villages grew the settlers did not neglect the organization and
housing of such institutions; store, mill, and smithy found their
place as farther east, and later the lawyer and physician came, but
the pioneer could do without them for a time. Inventiveness and
individual initiative were characteristics of the rural people, made
necessary by their remoteness and isolation.
103. =The Development of the West.=--With increasing settlement the
rural pioneer gave place to the farmer. It was no longer necessary for
him to break new ground, for arable acres could be purchased; neither
was it necessary to turn from one occupation to another to satisfy
personal or household needs, for division of labor provided
specialists. Hardship gave way to comfort, for the land was fertile
and experience had taught its values for the cultivation of particular
crops. Loneliness and isolation were felt less severely as neighbors
became more frequent and travelled roads made communication easier.
Group life expanded and institutions became fixed. Every neighborhood
had its school-teacher, and even the academy and college began to dot
the land. Churches of various denominations found root in rural soil,
and a settled minister became more common. A general store and
post-office found place at the cross-roads, and the permanent
machinery of local government was set up. Out of the forest clearings
and prairie settlements evolved the prosperous farm life that has been
so characteristic of the Middle West.
But the prosperous life of these rural communities has not remained
unchanged. Speculation in land has been creating a class of
non-resident agricultural capitalists and tenant cultivators, and has
been transforming the type of agricultural population over large
sections of country. Soil exhaustion is leading to abandonment of the
poorest land and is compelling methods of scientific agriculture on
the remainder. These conditions are producing their own social
problems for the rural community.
READING REFERENCES
SMALL AND VINCENT: _Introduction to the Study of Society_, pages
112-126.
CHEYNEY: _Industrial and Social History of England_, pages 31-56.
CUBBERLEY: _Rural Life and Education_, pages 1-62.
WILSON: _Evolution of the Country Community_, pages 1-61.
CARVER: _Principles of Rural Economics_, pages 74-116.
ROSS: "The Agrarian Revolution in the Middle West," _North
American Review_, September, 1909.
GILLETTE: "The Drift to the City in Relation to the Rural
Problem," _American Journal of Sociology_, March, 1911.
CHAPTER XIV
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE
104. =Physical Types.=--To understand the continually changing rural
life of the present, it is necessary to examine into the physical
characteristics of the country districts, the elements of the
population, the functions of the rural community, and its social
institutions.
The physical characteristics have a large part in determining
occupations and in fashioning social life. A natural harbor,
especially if it is at the mouth of a river, seems destined by nature
for a centre of commerce, as the falls of a swift-flowing stream
indicate the location of a manufacturing plant. A mineral-bearing
mountain invites to mining, and miles of forest land summon the
lumberman. Broad and well-watered plains seem designed for
agriculture, and on them acres of grain slowly mature through the
summer months to turn into golden harvests in the fall. The
Mississippi valley and the Western plain into which it blends have
become the granary of the American nation. The railroad-train that
rushes day and night from the Great Lakes toward the setting sun moves
hour after hour through the extensive rural districts that
characterize the great West. There are the mammoth farms that are
given to the one enormous crop of wheat or corn. Alongside the
railroad loom the immense elevators where the grain is stored to be
shipped to market. Here and there are the farm-buildings where the
owner or tenant lives, but villages are small and scattered and
community activity is slight.
Similarly, in the South before the Civil War there were large
plantations of cotton and tobacco, dotted only here and there with the
planter's mansion and clumps of negro cabins. Village life was not a
characteristic of Southern society. The old South had its picturesque
plantation life, and the aristocracy made its sociable visits from
family to family, but that rural type disappeared with the war. With
the breaking up of the old plantations there came a greater
diversification of agriculture, which is going on at an accelerated
pace, and social centres are increasing, but there is still much rural
isolation. Among the remoter mountains lingers the most conservative
American type of citizens in the arrested development of a century
ago, with antique tools and ancient methods, scratching a few acres
for a garden and corn-field, and living their backward, isolated life,
without comfort or even peace, and almost without social institutions.
In the East the country is more broken. Large farms are few, and
agriculture is carried on intensively as a business, or is united with
another occupation or as a diversion from the cares and tasks of the
town. Farms of a score to a few hundred acres, only part of which are
cultivated, form rural communities among the hills or along a river
valley. Here and there a few houses cluster in village or hamlet,
where each house yard has its garden patch, but the inhabitants of the
village depend on other means than agriculture for a living. On the
farms dairy and poultry products share with agriculture in rural
importance, and no one crop constitutes an agricultural staple. In New
England the villages are comparatively near together, and social life
needs only prodding to produce a healthy development.
105. =Characteristics of Population.=--Rural life feels in each region
the reactions of nature. The narrow life of the hills, the open life
of the plains, the peaceful life of the comfortable plantation with
its lazy river and its delightful climate, each has its peculiar
characteristics that are due in part at least to nature. But these
features are complicated by social elements of population. The
American rural community of to-day is composed of individuals who
differ in age and fortune and kinship, and who vary in qualities and
resemblances. There are old and young and middle-aged persons, men and
women, married and single, persons with many relatives and others with
few, native and foreign born, strong and weak, well and ill, good and
bad, educated and illiterate. Yet there are certain characteristics
that are typical.
In the first place, for example, there is a considerable uniformity of
age in the population of a certain type of community. In those
agricultural districts where individuals own their own homes, the
number of elderly people is larger than it is in the city, and the
young people are comparatively few, for the reason that their
ambitions carry them to the city for its larger opportunities, and in
the older States many a farm becomes abandoned on the death of the old
people. In districts where tenant-farming is largely in vogue, gray
hairs are much fewer. The tendency is for the original farmers who
have been successful to sell or rent their property and move to town
to enjoy its comforts and attractions, leaving the tenants and their
families of children.
In the second place, it is characteristic of long-settled rural
communities that there is an interlocking of family relationship, with
a number of prevailing family names and a great preponderance of
native Americans; but in portions of the West and in rural districts
not very remote from the large cities of the East there is a large
mixture, and in spots a predominance of the foreign element. In the
third place, small means rather than wealth and a sluggish contentment
rather than ambition is characteristic of the older rural sections; in
newer districts ambition to push ahead is more common, and prosperity
and an air of opulence are not unusual.
106. =The Composition of Rural Communities.=--In an analysis of
population it is proper to consider its composition and its manner of
growth. In making a survey or taking a census of a community there are
included at least statistics as to age, sex, number and size of
families, degree of kinship, race parentage, and occupations. Records
of age, sex, and size of family show the tendencies of a community as
to growth or race suicide; kinship and race parentage indicate whether
population is homogeneous; and occupations indicate the place that
agriculture holds in a particular section of country. By a comparative
study of statistics it is easy to determine whether a community is
advancing, retrograding, or standing still, and what its position is
relative to its neighbors; also to find out whether or not its
occupations and characteristics are changing.
107. =Manner of Growth.=--The manner of growth of a community is by
natural excess of births over deaths, and by immigration of persons
from outside. As long as the former condition obtains, population is
homogeneous, and the community is conservative in customs and beliefs;
when immigration is extensive, and more especially when it goes on at
the same time with a declining birth-rate and a considerable
emigration of the native element, the population is becoming
heterogeneous, and the customs and interests of the people are growing
continually more divergent. The immigration of an earlier day was from
one American community to another, or from northern Europe, but rural
communities East and West are feeling the effects of the large foreign
immigration of the last decade from southern and eastern Europe and
from Asia.
108. =Decline of the Rural Population.=--The rural exodus to the
cities is even more impressive and more serious in its consequences
than the foreign influx into the country, though both are dynamic in
their effects. This exodus is partly a matter of numbers and partly of
quality. A distinction must be made first between the relative loss
and the actual loss. The rural population in places of less than
twenty-five hundred persons is steadily falling behind in proportion
to the urban population in the country at large. There are many
localities where there is also an actual loss in population, and in
the North and Middle West the States generally are making no rural
gain. But the most disheartening element in the movement of population
from the point of view of rural communities is the loss of the most
substantial of the older citizens, who move to the city to enjoy the
reward of years of toil, and of the most ambitious of the young people
who hope to get on faster in the city. Loss of such as these means
loss of competent, progressive leaders. Added to this is the loss of
laborers needed to cultivate the farms to their capacity for urban as
well as rural supply. The loss of labor is not a serious economic
misfortune, for it can be remedied to a large extent by the
introduction of more machinery and new methods, but the loss of
population reproduces in a measure the isolation of earlier days, and
so tends to social degeneration. It is idle to expect that the
far-reaching causes that are contributing to city growth will stop
working for the sake of the rural community, but it is possible to
enrich community life so that there will be less relative attraction
in the city, and so that those who remain may enjoy many of the
advantages that hitherto have been associated with the city alone.
READING REFERENCES
HART: _Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities_,
pages 11-37.
GILLETTE: _Rural Sociology_, pages 32-46, 281-292.
ANDERSON: _The Country Town_, pages 57-91.
SEMPLE: _Influences of Geographic Environment._
GALPIN: "Method of Making a Social Survey in a Rural Community,"
_University of Wisconsin Circular of Information_, No. 29.
CARROLL: _The Community Survey._
CHAPTER XV
OCCUPATIONS
109. =Rural Occupations.=--An important part of the study of the rural
community is its social functions. These do not differ greatly in name
from the functions of the family, but they have wider scope. The
domestic functions are confined almost entirely to the homes. The
village usually includes a boarding-house or a country inn for the
homeless few, and here and there an almshouse shelters the few
derelicts whom the public must support.
Economic activities in the main are associated with the farm home. The
common occupation in the country is agriculture. Individuals are born
into country homes, learn the common occupation, and of necessity in
most cases make it their means of livelihood. Rural people are
accustomed to hard labor for long hours. There are seasons when
comparative inactivity renders life dull; there are individuals who
enjoy pensions or the income of inherited or accumulated funds, and so
are not compelled to resort to manual labor, and there are directors
of agricultural industry; there are always a shiftless few who are
lazy and poor; but these are only exceptions to the general rule of
active toil. Not all rural districts are agricultural. Some are
frontier settlements where lumbering or mining are the chief
interests. Even where agriculture prevails there are varieties such as
corn-raising or fruit-growing regions; there are communities that are
progressively making use of the latest results of scientific
agriculture, and communities that are almost as antique in their
methods as the ancient Hebrews. Also, even in homogeneous districts,
like those devoted to cotton-growing or tobacco-culture, there are
always individuals who choose or inherit an occupation that supplies a
special want to the community, such as carpenters, blacksmiths, and
masters of other crafts. Occupations indicate an attempt to gear
personal energies to the opportunities or requirements of a physical
or social environment.
All these occupations have more than economic value; they are
fundamental to social prosperity. It is self-evident that the
physician and the school-teacher render community service, but it is
not so clear that the farmer who keeps his house well painted and his
grounds in order, and who is improving his cattle and increasing the
yield of his fields and woodland by scientific methods, and who
organizes his neighbors for co-operative endeavor, is doing more than
an economic service. Yet it is by means of inspiration, information,
and co-operation that the community moves forward, and he who supplies
these is a social benefactor.
110. =Differentiation of Occupation.=--If community life is to
continue there must be the producers who farm or mine or manufacture;
in rural districts they are farmers, hired laborers, woodcutters,
threshers, and herdsmen. In the co-operation of village life there
must be the craftsmen and tradesmen who finish and distribute the
products that the others have secured, such as the miller, the
carpenter, the teamster, and the storekeeper. For comfort and peace in
the neighborhood there must be added the physician, the minister, the
school-teacher, the justice of the peace, and such public
functionaries as postmaster, mail-carrier, stage-driver, constable or
sheriff, and other town or county officials. Without specific
allotment of lands as on the feudal estate, or distribution of tasks
as in a socialistic commonwealth, the community accomplishes a natural
division of labor and diversification of industry, supports its own
institutions by self-imposed taxes and voluntary contributions, and
supplies its quota to the larger State of which it forms a democratic
part. In spite of the constant exercise of individual independence and
competition, there is at the foundation of every rural community the
principle of co-operation and service as the only working formula for
human life.
111. =Co-operation.=--One great advantage of community life over the
home is the increased opportunity for co-operation. In new
communities families work together to erect buildings, make roads,
support schools, and organize and maintain a church. They aid each
other in sickness, accident, and distress. Farmers find it profitable
to unite for purposes of production, distribution, communication,
transportation, and insurance. It may not seem worth while for a
single farmer to buy an expensive piece of agricultural machinery for
his own use, but it is well worth while for four or five to club
together and buy it. The cost of an irrigation plant is much too high
for one man, but a community can afford it when it will add materially
to the production of all the farms in a district. In a region
interested mainly in dairying a co-operative creamery can be made very
profitable; in grain-producing sections co-operative elevator service
makes possible the storage of grain until the demand increases values;
in fruit-raising regions co-operation in selling has made the
difference between success and failure. A co-operative telephone
company has been the means of supplying several adjacent communities
with easy communication. Co-operative banks are a convenient means of
securing capital for agricultural use, and co-operative insurance
companies have proved serviceable in carrying mutual risks.
The advantages of such co-operation are by no means confined to
economic interests. The best result is the increasing realization of
mutual dependence and common concern. Co-operation is an antidote to
the evils of isolation and independence. A co-operative telephone
company may not pay large dividends, and may eventually sell out to a
larger corporation, but it has introduced people to one another,
brightened circumscribed lives, and taught the people social
understanding and sympathy. But aside from all such artificial forms
of co-operation, the very custom of providing such common institutions
as the school and the church is a valuable form of social service,
entirely apart from the specific results that come from the exercises
of the schoolroom and the meeting-house.
112. =Why Co-operation May Fail.=--Many co-operative enterprises fail,
and this is not strange. There is always the natural conservatism and
individualism of the American people to contend with; there is
jealousy of the men who have been elected to responsible offices, and
there is lack of experience and good judgment by those who undertake
to engineer the active organization. Sometimes the method of
organization or financing is faulty. Such enterprises work best among
foreigners who have a good opinion of them, and know how to conduct
them because they have seen them work well in Europe. Every successful
attempt at economic co-operation is a distinct gain for rural
community betterment, for upon co-operation depends the success of the
efforts being put forth for rural improvement generally.
113. =Competition Within the Group.=--Co-operation is of greatest
value when it includes within it a wholesome amount of individual
competition for the sake of general as well as individual gain. Boys'
agricultural clubs, organized in the South and West, have raised the
standards of corn and tomato production by stimulating a friendly
spirit of rivalry among boys, and as a result the fathers of the boys
have adopted new and more scientific methods to increase their own
production. Agricultural fairs may be made powerful agencies for a
similar stimulus. At State and county fairs agricultural colleges and
experiment stations find it worth while to exhibit their methods and
processes with the results obtained; wide-awake farmers get new ideas,
which they try out subsequently at home; young people are encouraged
to try for the premiums offered the next year, and steadily the
general level of excellence rises throughout the district.
READING REFERENCES
MCKEEVER: _Farm Boys and Girls_, pages 171-196, 275-305.
GILLETTE: _Rural Sociology_, pages 20-31.
"Country Life," _Annals of American Academy_, pages 58-68.
KERN: _Among Country Schools_, pages 129-157.
FORD: _Co-operation in New England_, pages 87-185.
COULTER: _Co-operation Among Farmers_, pages 3-23.
HERRICK: _Rural Credits_, pages 456-480.
CHAPTER XVI
RECREATION
114. =Recreation and Culture.=--Besides the economic function the
community has recreative and cultural functions to perform, and these
need recognition and improvement. As the child in the home has a right
to time and means for play, so the community, especially the young
people, may lay claim to an opportunity for recreation; as the child
has the right to learn in the home, so the people of the community
should have cultural privileges. These demands are the more
imperative, because the city has so much of this sort to offer, and
the country community cannot hold its young people unless it provides
a reasonable amount of attractions. It needs no particular institution
to bring this about, but it needs a new spirit to recognize and enjoy
the advantages that are possible even in thinly settled localities.
Every opportunity for sociability strengthens just so much a natural
instinct, increases the sense of social values, and enlarges the
sphere of relationships.
In the community, as in the home, children have the first claim to
consideration. The recreative impulse is strong in them. When they
graduate from the home into the school they find opportunity for the
expression of this impulse through their new associations. On the way
to and from school and at recess they have opportunity to indulge
their impulses and to use their powers of invention. Among the younger
children the desire for muscular activity makes running games of all
sorts popular; as boys grow older they imitate the primitive impulse
to hit and run, so well provided for in games of ball; girls enjoy
their recreation in a quieter way as they grow older, and show a
tendency to association in pairs. Associations formed in play are not
usually lasting ones, but the playground reveals individual
temperament and personal qualities that are likely to determine
popularity or unpopularity. These play associations develop qualities
of leadership, loyalty, honesty, and co-operation that tend to label a
child among his mates with a reputation that he carries into later
life.
115. =The Gang.=--Since play is a natural instinct it is to be
expected that children will seek a natural rather than an artificial
way of expressing the instinct. Organization at best can only direct
activities, giving recognition to the social inclinations of
childhood. For example, it is not easy for a school-teacher to
organize a boys' society and to direct it in such activities as appeal
to him. The boys prefer to choose their own mates and their own chief,
and the activities that appeal to them are not the same as those that
seem to their elders to be most suitable. Between the ages of ten and
sixteen the boy tends to gang life. He may work on the farm all day,
but evenings and Sundays, if he is permitted to amuse himself, he
joins a gang. Obviously the characteristics of the gang are seen best
in the city, but they are not materially different in the country.
Hunting and fishing may be enjoyed at odd times of leisure by the boy
without companions, but the delights of the swimming-hole can be
enjoyed thoroughly only as he has the companionship of other boys, and
skating gains in virtue as a sport with the possibility of hockey on
the ice. This liking for companionship exhibits itself in the habitual
association of boys of a certain district for mutual enjoyment. On
every possible opportunity they get together in the woods, pretend
they are Indians, hunt, fish, and fight in company, build their own
camps and plunder the camps of other gangs, and practise other
activities characteristic of the savage age through which they are
passing. Gangs exhibit a love of cruelty to those whom they may
plague, a fondness for appropriating property which does not belong to
them, and if possible provoking chase for the sake of the thrill that
comes from the attempt to get away. Group athletics of various sorts
are popular. Six out of seven gangs have physical activities as the
purpose of their organization. The boys do not necessarily adopt any
particular organization or choose a leader; on the contrary, they are
a natural group, tacitly acknowledging the leadership of the most
masterly and versatile individual, finding their own headquarters and
adopting the forms of activity that appeal most to the group,
according to the season and the opportunities of the region of country
where they belong.
116. =Leadership of Boys.=--The gang is but one expression of the
group instinct. It is often a nursery of bad habits that sometimes
lead to crime and degeneracy, but it is capable of being used for the
good of boyhood. The gang develops the virtues of loyalty to the group
and loyalty to the group principles. It stimulates self-sacrifice and
co-operation, honor and courage. These virtues can be cultivated by
the man who aspires to boy leadership and directed into channels of
usefulness as the boy passes on toward manhood. But there must be a
frank recognition of the place of the gang in boy life, and not only a
remembrance of one's own boyhood days, but also an appreciation of
them. One of the best ways that has been devised for securing adult
leadership without loss of the gang spirit and characteristics is the
Boy Scout movement. It transforms the unorganized gang into the
organized patrol, and affiliates it with other patrols in a wide
organization, adopts the natural activities of boys as a part of its
programme, and adds others of absorbing interest. Obedience is added
to the boy's other virtues, and social education is acquired rapidly.
117. =Varieties of Boys' Clubs.=--The gang is one of the few natural
groups of the community, and should be related to other institutions.
It should not be hampered by them, but should receive the
encouragement and assistance of home, school, and church. The Boy
Scout movement has been associated with the churches; other boys'
organizations have been connected with the Sunday-schools; the home
and the day-school may well provide resources or quarters for the
gang, and recognize its activities. But the gang is not the only
organization suited to the boys of a community. There are special
interests provided for in more artificial groups, such as athletic,
debating, agricultural, or natural history clubs. These attract
like-minded individuals from all parts of the community, and help to
balance the clan spirit developed by the gang. These clubs may centre
in school or meeting-house or have quarters of their own. One
provision that is needed for the satisfaction of boy life in the rural
community is the field or green where two rival gangs may contend
legitimately for supremacy in sport, or clubs from different
neighborhoods may test their prowess and arouse local pride and
enthusiasm. The green needs little or no equipment, but it gains
recognition as the boys' own training-field and serves as a safeguard
to the health and morals of the youth of the community. The gang and
the green are the proper social institutions of boy life in the rural
community.
118. =Girls' Clubs.=--The instinct of the girl is not the same as that
of the boy. She has other interests that require different
organization. Her disposition is less active, and she does not so
readily form a group organization. She associates with other girls in
a set that is less democratic than her brother's gang. It has its
rivalries and enmities, but hateful thoughts, angry words, and
slighting attitudes take the place of the active warfare of the boys.
Girls enjoy clubs that are adapted to their interests. Reading clubs,
cooking clubs, sewing clubs, musical organizations, and philanthropic
societies are useful forms of neighborhood association, and their
activities may be correlated with the work of the home, the school,
and the church more easily than those of their brothers.
In the country girls' organizations are very properly based on the
interests of the farm, with which they are so closely related. They
combine, as their brothers do, on the economic principle, organizing
their poultry clubs, preserving clubs, or knitting clubs, but the
social purpose is not lost sight of in the particular economic
concern. An hour of sociability properly follows an hour of economic
discussion or activity. Schoolgirls are very willing to accept the
leadership of their teacher in a nature or culture club which will
broaden their interests and stimulate their ambitions. One of the
organizations that has sprung into existence on the model of the Boy
Scout movement is the organization of Camp-Fire Girls. It is designed
to meet the demand for companionship in a wholesome, pleasant way, and
by its incentives to healthy activity and womanly virtue it helps to
build character.
119. =Recreation in the Country.=--The recreative instinct is not
confined to children. For the adult labor is lightened, worries
banished, and carking care is less corroding, if now and then an
evening of diversion interrupts the monotony of rural life, or a day
off is devoted to a picnic or neighborhood frolic. There is the same
interest in the country that there is in the city in methods of
entertainment that satisfy primitive instincts. The instinct for human
society enters into all of them. Other specific causes produce a
fondness for the various forms of diversion indulged in. Among
uncultured people especially an evening gathering soon proves dull
unless there is something to do. Cards occupy the mind and hands and
create a mild excitement that banishes troublesome thoughts and
anxieties. Dancing breaks up the stiffness of a party, brings the
sexes together, and provides the exhilaration of rhythmic motion. Barn
frolics at maple-sugar or harvest time accomplish the same end, only
less satisfactorily. Musicales and amateur theatricals provide an
exhibition of skill, cultivate the æsthetic nature, gratify the
dramatic instinct, and furnish opportunity for mutual acquaintance
among the people of the community, who meet all too seldom in social
gatherings, and at the same time they furnish wholesome entertainment
for the community at small expense. The proceeds are used for local
advantage, instead of being carried out of town. The passing show and
moving pictures are less desirable. They are often cheap and
degrading, though the kinetoscope can be made valuable for education.
The out-of-door gatherings that occur when the countryside is not too
busy to plan or enjoy them are a helpful means of cultivating a
community spirit. Athletic contests on the boys' own field readily
become a community affair, with a speech and refreshments afterward,
and the award of a prize or pennant to the victorious individual or
team. The old-fashioned picnic to lake or woods or hilltop is one of
the best means for forming and strengthening friendships and for
giving persons of all ages a good time. Friendly contests of various
sorts all come into play to add to the pleasure of the day. Fourth of
July, Arbor Day, Old Home Week, and other occasions, give opportunity
for recreation and the cultivation of neighborhood interests.
120. =A Community Centre.=--Aside from the natural isolation and lack
of energy and social interest among country people, the lack of
efficient leadership is the most serious handicap to organized
sociability. Added to these is the want of a neighborhood centre both
convenient and suitable. A community building, tasteful in
architecture and equipped for community use, is a great desideratum,
but is not often available. There seems to be no good reason why the
schoolhouse should not be such a social centre as the community needs,
but most school buildings are not adapted to such use. In the absence
of any other provision it is the privilege of the rural church to
furnish the opportunity for neighborhood gatherings, and there is a
growing conviction that this is one of the opportunities of the church
to ally itself to general community interests. The church represents,
or should represent, the whole community of men, women, young people,
and children. It has all their interests at heart. It makes provision
for them in Sunday-school, young people's societies, and other groups.
It recognizes the social interests in festivals and sociables. It may
usefully add to its functions that of raising the standards of
community recreation, if no other proper provision for it exists; it
is under obligation to find wholesome substitutes for the abuses that
exist in the field of amusement which it commonly condemns.
READING REFERENCES
CURTIS: _Play and Recreation for the Open Country._
PUFFER: _The Boy and His Gang._
_Boy Scout Handbook; Handbook for Scout Masters._
_The Book of the Campfire Girls._
STERN: _Neighborhood Entertainments._
CUBBERLEY: _Rural Life and Education_, pages 117-126.
CHAPTER XVII
RURAL INSTITUTIONS
121. =The Complexity of Social Life.=--Closely allied to the agencies
of recreation are the institutions that promote sociability and
incidentally provide means of culture. It is not possible to separate
social life into compartments and designate an institution as purely
recreational or cultural or religious. There is a blending of
interests and of functions in such an organization as the grange or
the church, as there is in one individual or group a variety of
interests and activities. The whole social system is complex,
interwoven with a multitude of separate strands of personal desires
and prejudices, group clannishness and conservatism, rival
institutions developing friction and continually compelled to find new
adjustments. Society in constantly in motion like the sea, its units
continually striking against one another in perpetual conflict, and as
continually melting into the harmony of a mighty wave breaking against
the shore and forming anew to repeat the process. The difference is
that social life is on an upward plane, its activities are not mere
repetitions of a process, but they result in definite achievement,
which in the process of centuries becomes an accumulated asset for the
race. The most lasting achievements are the social institutions.
122. =The Village and the Country Store.=--Of all the social
institutions of the rural community, the most important is the village
itself. There scattered homesteads find their common centre of
attraction; there houses are located nearer together and the spirit of
neighborliness develops; there tradesmen and professional persons make
their homes and at the same time diversify interests and provide for
the wants of the community. The school and the church are often
located in the open country, but the village forms the nucleus of
social intercourse and there are most of the institutions of the
community.
The most primitive among these institutions is the country store. It
has economic, social, and educational functions. It supplies goods
that cannot be produced in the community, it serves as a mercantile
exchange for local produce. It helps to remove the necessity of home
manufacture of many articles. On occasion it may include an agency for
insurance or real estate; it is frequently the village post-office; it
contains the public bulletin-board; often the proprietor undertakes to
perform the banking function to the extent of cashing checks. Socially
the store serves a useful purpose, for it is the centre to which all
the inhabitants come, and from which radiate lines of communication
all over the neighborhood. It is a clearing-house for news and gossip,
and takes the place of a local press. It was formerly, and to some
extent is still, the social club of the men of the community during
the long winter evenings. As such it performed in the past an
educational function. Boxes, firkins, bales of goods, superannuated
chairs, and the end of a counter constituted the sittings, and men of
all ages occupied them, as they listened to harangues and joined in
the discussions. The group constituted the forum of democracy, where
politics were frequently on debate, where public opinion was formed,
where conservatism and progressivism fought their battles before they
tested conclusions at the ballot-box, where science and religion
entered the lists, where local interests were threshed out in the
absence of more general excitement and crops and agricultural methods
filled in the pauses. In recent years the store circle has
degenerated. The better class of habitual members has organized its
lodges or found satisfaction in the grange, while the hangers-on at
the store, barber-shop, or other loafing-place indulge in small talk
on matters of no real concern.
123. =The Sewing Circle.=--What the country store has done for the men
as a means of communication and stimulus, the ladies' aid society or
church sewing circle has done for the women. Its opportunities are
less frequent, but it provides an outlet for ideas and opinions that
without it cannot easily find expression. At the same time it provides
active occupation for a good cause, which is more than can be said of
the men's forum. When it adds to its exercises a supper to which the
other sex is admitted, it performs a yet wider social service.
124. =The Grange.=--The grange is an institution that includes both
sexes and combines the interests of young people with those of their
elders. Its primary purpose was to consolidate the common interests of
a farming community and to stimulate economic prosperity, but it has
included several social features, and in many localities exists merely
for social purposes. It is an institution that is well adapted to
become a social and educational centre for the rural community. When
the child has advanced from the home to the school and, graduating
from school, has entered into the adult life of the community, the
grange serves as a training-school for civic service. In the
grange-room, in company with his like-minded parents and friends in
the community, he learns how to hold his own in debate in
parliamentary fashion, he discusses improved agriculture and listens
to lectures from masters of the science, he gains literary and
historical knowledge, and from time to time he participates in the
social diversions that take place under grange auspices. Music
enlivens the meetings, and occasionally a feast is spread or an
entertainment elaborated. The Farmers' Union is a similar
organization, originating in the South in 1902.
Such rural interests as these have come into existence spontaneously
and continue to provide social centres of community life because other
institutions do not satisfy. The home, the school, and the church are
often spoken of as the essential institutions of the American
community, but they do not at best perform all the functions of
neighborhood life. The boys' gang, the circle of men about the stove
at the corner grocery, the women's sewing circle or club, and the
grange, each in its own way performs a necessary part of the group
activities, and deserves recognition among the institutions that are
worth while. It is scarcely necessary to note that they have their
evils, but these are not of the nature of the institution. As the gang
can be guided to worthy ends, so the energies of the store club and
the sewing circle can be turned into channels of usefulness and low
talk and scandal-mongering abolished. As for the grange, it is capable
of becoming the most valuable social centre of the community, if it
maintains the ideals of its existence and co-operates heartily with
other social institutions of worth, like the church.
125. =Farmers' Institutes.=--Another type of organization exists which
can hardly be called institutional, but which performs a useful
community service. As illustrations may be mentioned the farmers'
club, the farmers' institute, and the Chautauqua movement. These are
organizations or movements for stimulating and broadening the
interests of farm regions. They bring together the farmers and their
families, sometimes from several neighborhoods and for several days,
for the consideration of agricultural problems and for entertainment
and mutual acquaintance. They are able to attract speakers from the
State agricultural college or board, and even from national halls, and
they become a valuable clearing-house of ideas and experience. They
serve much the same purpose as a church or teachers' convention, and
are restricted to a limited number of persons. Farmers' institutes
have become a regular part of the State system of agricultural
education throughout the country, and a large staff of lecturers and
demonstrators exists for local instruction. The particular interests
of women and young people are receiving recognition in institutes of
their own in connection with the larger gatherings. The expense of
such institutes is met by the government. Their success is, of course,
dependent on the attendance and intelligent interest of the farm
people, who gain greatly in inspiration and knowledge from contact
with one another and from the experts to whom they listen. The
institutes prove the value of association for the enrichment of
individual and family life by means of suggestion, communication, and
concerted activity.
READING REFERENCES
BUCK: _The Granger Movement._
BUTTERFIELD: _Chapters in Rural Progress_, pages 104-120, 136-161.
CARNEY: _Country Life and the Country School_, pages 90-107.
GILLETTE: _Rural Sociology_, pages 208-213.
CUBBERLEY: _Rural Life and Education_, pages 117-159.
CHAPTER XVIII
RURAL EDUCATION
126. =The School as a Social Institution.=--There is one institution
in every American community that stands as the gateway into the
promised land of a richer life. This is the school. It supplements
home training and prepares for the broader experiences of community
existence. Into it goes the raw material of the bodies and minds of
the children, and out of it comes the product of years of education
for the making or marring of the children of the community. The school
of the present is of two types. One is the relic of an earlier time,
with few changes in equipment, organization, or function; it has not
shared in the process of evolution enjoyed by certain other
institutions of society. The other type is progressive. It has been
continually finding adjustment to its environment, fitting itself to
meet local needs, and is therefore abreast of the times in educational
science. The demand of the age is that the progressive school keep
advancing, and as fast as possible the backward school work up to the
standard of efficiency.
It is a sociological principle that every social institution
approximates to the standards of the community as a whole. If
community life is static, school and church stay in the ruts; if it is
retrograding, they are losing ground; if it is progressive, they
gradually show improvement. On the other hand, the community
frequently feels external stimulus, first through one of its
institutions, so that the institution becomes a means of betterment.
Recent years furnish examples of a new impulse generated in the
neighborhood by a teacher or a minister who enters the locality with
new ideas and unquenchable zeal.
127. =Three Fundamental Principles of Education.=--There are three
fundamental principles that ought to have recognition in every
school. The first of these is the principle that education is to be
social. The pupil has to learn how to live in the community. In the
home he becomes socialized so far as to learn how to get along with
his own relatives and intimates, but the school teaches him how to
deal with all sorts of people. He gets acquainted with his
environment, both social and physical. What kind of people are living
in the homes of the neighborhood? What are their characteristics,
their ideals, their failings? What are their occupations, their race
or nationality, their measure of comfort, poverty, or wealth? How are
they hindered or helped by their natural surroundings, and have they
easy means of communication and transit with the outside world? What
are the principles that govern social intercourse, and how can the
pupil learn to put them into practice? How is he to reconcile his own
individual rights with his social obligations? These are fundamental
questions that deserve careful answer, and that must be made a part of
the school curriculum if the community is to enjoy social health. It
matters little how such subjects are named in any course of study, but
it is essential that the principles of social living should be taught
under some title.
A second principle of education is that it should be vocational. The
school children, after graduation, must make their own way in the
world. Every normal youth looks forward in anticipation to the time
when he will be earning his own support and the support of a family of
his own. Every normal girl hopes to be mistress of a home of her own.
There are certain things that they need to know if they are to make a
success and to build happy homes. Their first business is to know how
to make a home. Naturally they want to know the story of the family as
a social institution, how the home is purchased or rented, the
essentials of a good home, both in its equipment and in the spirit
that animates it, the duties and rights of every member of the family,
and the relations of the family to the community. The question arises:
How may the home-maker provide for the support of the family? What are
the available occupations, and how by manual and mental training may
he equip himself for usefulness? How may the home-keeper do her part
to make the home attractive and comfortable by a study of domestic
science and home-management? Obviously, the curriculum should have a
place for such studies as these that are so essential to peace and
happiness and comfort in the home.
A third principle is that education is to be cultural. Social and
vocational knowledge are essential, broad culture of the mind is
highly desirable. No citizen of the United States is expected to grow
to maturity ignorant of the simple arts of reading or spelling
correctly, writing a fair hand, and solving correctly the simple
problems of arithmetic. Beyond this many schools provide a smattering
of æsthetic training through music and drawing. These are subjects of
study in the elementary schools. But culture involves more than these.
An appreciation of literature, of the meaning and value of history, of
the importance of science in the modern world, of the life of nations
and races outside of our own country, of right thinking and right
conduct with reference to all our individual relations, constitutes
for all persons a mental training that is almost indispensable. To
acquire this cultural education requires time and the elimination of
the less valuable from the accepted course of study. It is a most
wholesome tendency that is prolonging the terms and the years of
compulsory education if that education is based on the right
principles, and that is discussing the possibility, first, of using
part of the long summer vacation to supplement the work of the present
school year, and, secondly, of giving to the young people of every
State a free university education. It is never to be forgotten that
culture may and should go on through life, but that will not occur
unless habits of study are formed in early years, and the school years
will always remain the golden opportunity for an education.
128. =Education as It Is.=--On these fundamental principles every
educational system should be built. Actual education falls far short
of the standard. This standard cannot be reached without proper
educational ideals, expert teaching, and adequate equipment. The
ideal has been narrow. Stress is put upon one type of education. In
the past it has been cultural above the lower grades, and, because it
has been almost exclusively so, more than half the pupils have dropped
out of school before entering high school. In recent years there has
been a new emphasis on practical training, and vocational courses have
tended to crowd out some of the cultural courses. The social education
which is most important of all has been incidental or omitted
altogether. Public opinion needs to be educated to the point of
understanding that all three types of training are imperatively
needed.
There is a serious difficulty, however, in the way of a supply of
teachers for this broad education. It is necessary to extend reform
among the normal schools, but this can take place only after they have
felt the demand from the grades. Another difficulty is the expense of
providing the necessary equipment for vocational education. This does
not prevent the introduction of social teaching or a proper attention
to culture, but courses in manual training and domestic science
usually cost more than most school boards are willing to meet. This is
not an insurmountable obstacle, for cheap appliances are in the market
and better school boards can be elected when the people want them.
129. =Wanted--a Better Rural Education.=--The school in the rural
community has its own peculiar weaknesses. First among these
weaknesses is the fact that education is not in terms of rural
experience. It is an accepted educational principle of instruction to
begin with that which is simple and familiar, and to work out to that
which is complex and more remote. On that principle the rural school
should make use of local geography, of rural material in arithmetic,
of literature and music with a rural flavor, of nature study with
drawings from nature. The opposite has been the case, with the result
that the child appreciates neither his surroundings nor his
opportunities, but looks upon them as something to be avoided for the
more important urban life, with whose activities he has become
familiar through his daily tasks.
A second weakness is that rural education omits so much of importance
to the child who must make his living in the country. To discuss rural
conditions in a natural and systematic way, beginning with the family
and working out into the social life of the community; to study the
economic side of life first on the farm and then in the neighborhood,
getting hold of the underlying principles of agriculture, becoming
familiar with the action of various soils and crops and the best
methods of cultivation and protection from harm, to prepare by a few
simple lessons in household science for the responsibility of the
home, is to provide the bases of success and happiness for the boys
and girls of the country. Rural education, therefore, needs
redirection.
130. =The Quality of Teaching.=--The child in the country has a right
to as good instruction as the city child, but because of the poverty
and penuriousness of school districts and the maintenance of too many
small schools, rural communities pay small salaries and cannot command
good teaching. There are thousands of schools scattered over the
country with less than ten pupils in attendance, housed in cheap,
unattractive buildings, with teachers who have had no normal-school
training, and who have no enthusiasm for the work they have to do.
They may hear twenty or more classes recite on numerous subjects in
the course of a day, but there is no stimulus to teacher or pupil, and
school hours provide little more than a conventional method for
passing the time. In such communities as these there is rarely any
efficient superintendence of teaching by a paid supervisor, and the
school board is unqualified to judge on any other basis than the cost
of schooling for a limited number of weeks.
The small district school has the effect of strengthening the
isolation that is the bane of the country regions. It continues to
exist because every farmer wants the school near by for the
convenience of his own family. The history of the "little red
schoolhouse" throws a glamour of romance about the district
headquarters, but in actual experience the district school has
outlived its usefulness. There is a strong movement to consolidate
district schools and at some conveniently central point, with
attractive and ample grounds, to build, equip, and man a school
adequate to the needs of the community. Experience shows that the
expense need be no greater, because better teachers can be secured for
a given expenditure when fewer are needed, and with a greater number
of scholars there may be a regular system of grading and classes large
enough to arouse enthusiasm and ambition. The district school operates
on the principle of division of labor in educational production, but
it does not enjoy the benefits of co-operation or combination for
efficiency, while the consolidated school secures these advantages and
at the same time a better division of labor through the grades. Rural
education needs reorganization.
131. =A Discouraging Environment.=--Too many a rural community, like
old China, has been facing the past. It has lacked courage and
ambition. The atmosphere has been one of gloom and discouragement.
This community temper appears in the social groups; it is felt in the
home, and it is present in the school. It has been typical of whole
sections of rural country. Dilapidated school buildings, plain and
unkempt in appearance and cheap in construction, have been set in the
midst of barren surroundings, unshaded by trees and unadorned with
shrubs, without walks or drives to the entrance, and without even a
flagpole as an evidence of patriotic enthusiasm. Inside the building
there is insufficient light and ventilation, and the old-fashioned
furniture is ill adapted to the needs of the pupils. The whole
structure is almost devoid of the conveniences and modern devices for
making school life either comfortable or worth while. In such an
environment there is none of the stimulus that the school should
furnish. The best pupil, who might respond quickly to stimulus, tends
to sink to the level of the meanest, the mental horizon, cramped at
home, is hardly broadened during school hours, and the main purpose
for the existence of the institution is not achieved.
READING REFERENCES
FISKE: _The Challenge of the Country_, pages 151-170.
FOGHT: _The American Rural School_, pages 154-253.
CARNEY: _Country Life and the Country School_, pages 133-301.
KERN: _Among Country Schools._
GILLETTE: _Rural Sociology_, pages 233-263.
BRYAN: _Poems of Country Life._
CHAPTER XIX
THE NEW RURAL SCHOOL
132. =Nature Study in the New Rural School.=--In striking contrast to
such a defective rural institution as has been presented is the new
rural school and the country-life movement of which it is a vital
part. The first step in the new education is a growing recognition of
the function of the school to relate its courses of study and its
activities to the daily experience of the pupil. The background of
country life is nature; therefore nature study is fundamental in the
new curriculum. Careful observation of natural objects comes first,
until the child is able to identify bird and bee and flower. To
knowledge is added appreciation. The beauty of fern and leaf, of
brookside and hillside, of star-dotted and cloud-dappled sky, is not
appreciated by mere observation, but waits on the education of the
mind. This is part of the task of the teacher. The economic use of
natural objects and natural forces is secondary, and should remain so,
but the new education takes the knowledge which has been gained by
observation and the enthusiasm which has been distilled through
appreciation, and applies them to the social need. Agriculture comes
to seem not only an occupation for economic ends, but a vocation for
social welfare also. With all the rest there is a moral and religious
value in nature study. Nature is pre-eminently under the reign of law;
obedience to that law, adjustment to the inexorable demands of nature,
are essential to nature's children. No more wholesome moral lesson
than this can be taught to the present generation of children. Nature
ministers also to the spiritual. Power, order, beauty, intelligence
speak through the language of the natural world to the human soul, and
the thoughtful child can be led to see through nature to nature's
God. Such a God is not a theory; in nature the divine presence is
self-evident.
All theory in the new rural school is based on experimentation.
Together the new teacher and the pupils beautify the grounds and the
interior of the school building; they plan and make gardens and try
all sorts of gardening experiments; they grow the plants that they
study, and, best of all, they see the process of growth; from the use
of soil and seed and proper care they learn lessons in practical
agriculture that give satisfaction to all employed as book studies
alone never could, and they make possible a far better type of
agriculture when the pupils have fields of their own. Nor is it
necessary for pupils to wait for their maturity, for many a lesson
learned at school and demonstrated in the neighborhood is promptly
applied on the neighboring farms.
133. =The Study of the Individual.=--A second subject of study in the
new rural schools is the individual. Nature study is essential to a
rural school, but "the noblest study of mankind is man." Though it is
highly important that the individual should regard social
responsibility as out-weighing his own rights, it would be unfortunate
if the importance of the individual were ever overlooked. The nature
of the physical self, the requirement of diet and hygiene, the moral
virtues that belong to noble manhood and womanhood, the possible
self-development in the midst of the rural environment that is the
pupil's natural habitat are among the worthy subjects of patient and
serious study through the grades. Neither physiology, psychology, nor
ethics need be taught as such, but the elementary principles that
enter into all of them belong among the mental assets of every
individual.
134. =Rural Social Science.=--In the same way it is not necessary and
perhaps may not be advisable to teach rural sociology or economics by
name, even in the high school. With the extension of the curriculum to
include agriculture, there is need of some consideration of the
principles of the ownership and use of land, farm management, and
marketing. Practical instruction in accounts, manual training, and
domestic science find place in the new school. Fully as important as
these is it to explain the social relations that properly exist in the
home, the school, and the neighborhood, to show the mutual dependence
of all upon one another, and to point out the advantages of
co-operation over a prideful individualism and frequent social
friction. Along with these relationships, or supplementary to them,
belong the larger relations of country and town and the reciprocal
service that each can render to the other, the characteristics and
tendencies of social life in both types of community, and the effects
of the changes that are taking place in methods of doing business and
in the nature and characteristics of the people of either community.
Following these topics come the problems of rural socialization
through such agencies as the school, the grange, and the church, and
the application of the principles already learned in a study of social
relations.
135. =Improvement in Economy and Efficiency.=--While the curriculum of
the schools is being fitted to the needs of the community, it is
desirable that there should be improvement of economy and efficiency
in the whole system of education. This is being accomplished partly by
better supervision and teaching, but also by a consolidation of
schools which makes possible better grading, an enlarged curriculum,
improved teaching, and a deeper interest among the pupils. But one of
the best results that come from school consolidation is to the
community itself. A consolidated school means a larger and
better-equipped building. It often has a large assembly hall, a
library, and an agricultural laboratory. The new school has within it
tremendous potencies. It may become under proper direction an
educational centre for people of all ages and degrees of attainment.
Continuation schools for adults, especially the young and middle-aged
people, who were born too soon to enjoy the advantages of the new
education, are possible in the late autumn and winter. Popular
lectures and demonstrations on subjects of common concern and
entertainments based on rural interests find place at this centre.
Mixed occasionally with a rural programme belongs instruction in wider
social relations and world affairs.
136. =The Teacher a Community Leader.=--With the consolidated school
comes the well-trained teacher, and such a teacher deserves new
recognition as a community leader. In Europe and in some parts of
rural America the teacher has a permanent home near the schoolhouse,
as a minister has a parsonage near the meeting-house. Such a teacher
has an interest in community welfare, and a willingness to aid in
community betterment. Whether man or woman, he becomes naturally a
community leader, and with the backing of public sentiment and
adequate support a distinct community asset. Such a teacher is more
than a school instructor. He becomes a social educator of the people
by interpreting to them their community life; he becomes a social
inspirer to hope, ambition, and courage as he unfolds possible social
ideals; he becomes a guide to a new prosperity as he defines the
methods and principles on which other communities have worked out
their own local successes. Through the medium of the teacher the
neighborhood may be brought into vital contact with other communities
in a district or whole county, and may be brought together to consider
their common interests and to try experiments in co-operation, first
for educational purposes and then for general community prosperity.
At first the rural teacher in many localities will have enough to do
with securing proper accommodations for the children in school, for
good buildings frequently wait for a teacher who has the courage to
demand and persist in getting them; but the larger work for the
community is only second in importance and adds greatly to the
responsiveness of the older people to the suggestions of the teacher.
One great weakness in the past has been the short term of service of
the average teacher. It takes time to accomplish changes in a
conservative community, and the new education will be successful only
as the new teacher becomes a comparative fixture. To build oneself
into the life of a rural community as does the physician, and to
ennoble it with new ideas and higher ideals, is a missionary service
that can hardly be surpassed at the present time in America.
137. =Higher Education.=--The normal school, the rural academy or
county high school, and the college have their part in rural
education. It rests with the normal school to supply the trained
teacher and the normal schools rapidly are meeting the demands of the
present situation. Training classes for rural teachers have been
established in high schools or academies in twelve or more States.
More and more these higher schools are relating their courses of study
to the rural life in which so many of them are placed.
138. =What the University Can Do.=--An increasing number of young
people from the country are going to college. The college was founded
on the principle of educating American youth in a higher culture than
local elementary schools could provide. It is the function of the
college and the university to open wider vistas for the individual
mind than is otherwise possible, to do on an infinitely larger scale
what the teacher is attempting in the elementary grades. These higher
schools are passing through a humanizing process; they are making more
of the social sciences and the art of living well; and they are
allying themselves with practical life. In the case of established
institutions with traditions, and often with trustees and alumni of
conservative tastes and tendencies, there are difficulties in the way
of their rapid adaptation to vocational needs. It is probably best
that a certain class of them should stand primarily for intellectual
culture, as technical and agricultural schools stand for their
specialties, but the true university should be representative of all
the social interests of all the people in the State.
An illustration of what the university can do in social service for a
whole State occurs in the recent history of the University of
Wisconsin. It conceived its function to be not solely to educate
students who came for the full university course. It considered the
needs of the people of the State, and it planned to provide
information and intellectual stimulus for as wide a circle as
possible. It provided correspondence courses. It sent out a corps of
instructors to carry on extension courses. It made affiliations with
other State institutions. It reached all classes of the people and
touched all their social interests. It became especially useful to the
farmers. In spite of scepticism on the part of the people and some of
the university officers, those who had faith in the wider usefulness
of the university pushed their plan until they succeeded in organizing
a short winter course in agriculture for farmers' sons and then for
the older farmers, branched out into domestic courses for the women,
and even made provision for the interests of the boys and girls.
Reaching out still further, the university organized farmers' courses
in connection with the county agricultural schools, established
experiment stations, and encouraged the boys to enter local contests
for agricultural prizes. By these means the university has become
widely popular and has been exceedingly beneficial to the people of
the State.
139. =The Public Library.=--While the school stands out as the leading
educational institution of the rural community, it is by no means the
sole agency of culture. Alongside it is the library. Home libraries in
the country rarely contain books of value, either culturally or for
practical purposes. Circulating libraries of fiction are little
better. School libraries and village libraries that contain
well-selected literature are to be included among the desiderata of
every countryside. A few of the great books of all time belong there,
a small collection of current literature, including periodicals, and
an abundant literature on country life in all its phases. It is the
function of the library to instruct the people what to read and how to
read by supplying book lists and book exhibits, and by demonstrating
occasionally through the school or the church how books may be read to
get the most out of them. In the days before public libraries were
common in this country, library associations were formed to secure
good literature. Such associations are still useful in small
communities that find it impossible to sustain a public library, and
they serve as a medium for securing from the State a travelling
library, which has the special advantage of frequent substitution of
books. Or the school library may be the nucleus of a literary
collection for the whole community--advantageously so if the school
building is kept open as a community centre.
140. =Reading Circles and Musical Clubs.=--The value of the library
to the public consists, of course, not in the presence of books on the
shelves, but in their use. Such use is encouraged by the existence of
literary or art clubs and reading circles. They supply the twofold
want of companionship and culture. The proper basis of association is
similarity of interests. Local history or geology, nature study,
current public events in State or nation, art in some of its phases,
or the literature of a particular country or period, may be the
special consideration of a club or reading circle; in every case the
library is the laboratory of investigation. One of the conspicuously
successful organizations of the last thirty years, showing how
organization grows out of social need, is the Chautauqua movement.
Starting as an undertaking in Sunday-school extension by means of a
summer assembly and local reading circles, in which the study of
history, literature, and science was added to Bible study, the
movement has grown, until it is represented by a thousand summer
institutes, with numerous popular lectures and entertainments, and it
is one of the most useful educational agencies anywhere in the United
States.
Every community is interested in music. Music has a place on every
programme, whether of church, school, or public assembly. A musical
club is one of the effective types of organization for those who are
like-minded in country or town. There are two varieties of
organization, the first of persons who join for the pleasure that
comes from agreeable society, the second of those who enter the
organization for the musical culture to be obtained. Whether for
diversion or study, a musical club is well worth while. Under the
influence of music antagonisms soften, moroseness disappears, and
sociability and good cheer take their place. The old-fashioned
singing-school was one of the most popular of local social
institutions; something is needed to fill its place. A club or band
for the serious study of instrumental music not only gives culture to
individuals, but is also an asset of increasing value to a church or
community.
141. =Woman's Clubs.=--These have become so common that they need no
special description, but as a social phenomenon they have their
significance. They mark a new era in the emancipation of ideas; they
are indicative of a new interest and ambition, and they are
training-schools for future citizenship. They are of special value
because of the wide areas of human interest that are brought within
scope of discussion. For rural women they are a great boon, and while
they have been most numerous in the larger centres, they may easily
become a universal stimulus and guide to higher culture everywhere. In
the absence of a grange they may serve as a centre of farm interests,
and discussion may be made practical by the application of acquired
knowledge to local problems, but their great value is in broadening
the women's horizon of thought and interest beyond their own affairs.
If rural men would organize local associations or brotherhoods for
similar assembly and discussion of State and national interests they
could multiply many times the benefits that come from the associations
and discussions that occur on special days of political rally and
voting. The rural mind needs frequent stimulus, and it needs frequent
association with many minds. For this reason the cultural function is
to be provided for by a method of congregation and organization
approved by experience, leadership is to be provided and occasional
stimulus applied, and life is to be enriched at many points. It is for
the people themselves to carry on such enterprises, but the initiation
of them often comes from outside. Usually, perhaps, the number of
people locally who have a real desire for culture are few, but it is
through the training of these few that judicious, capable leaders of
the community are to be obtained.
READING REFERENCES
HART: _Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities_,
pages 197-277.
CUBBERLEY: _Rural Life and Education_, pages 161-347.
CARNEY: _Country Life and the Country School_, pages 336-340.
DAVIS: _Agricultural Education in the Public Schools._
EGGLESTON AND BRUÉRE: _The Work of the Rural School_, pages
193-223.
HOWE: _Wisconsin: an Experiment in Democracy_, pages 140-182.
_Country Life_, pages 200-210.
FOGHT: _The American Rural School_, pages 254-281.
CHAPTER XX
RURAL GOVERNMENT
142. =The Necessity of Government.=--Institutions of recreation and
culture are in most cases the voluntary creation of local groups of
individuals, except as the state has adopted a system of compulsory
education. Government may be self-imposed or fixed by external
authority, in any case it cannot be escaped. It can be changed in form
and efficiency; it depends for its worth upon standards of public
opinion; but it cannot cease to exist. As the activity of the child
needs to be regulated by parental control in the home and by the
discipline of the teacher in the school, so the activity of the people
in the community needs to be regulated by the authority of government.
Self-control on the part of each individual or the existence of custom
or public opinion without an executive agency for the enforcement of
the social will, is not sufficient to safeguard and promote the
interests of all. Government has everywhere been necessary.
143. =The Reign of Law.=--The existence of regulation in the community
is continually evident. The child comes into relation to law when he
is sent to school to conform to the law of compulsory education. He
goes to school along a road built and maintained by law, takes his
place in a school building provided by a board of education or school
committee that executes the law, and accepts the instruction of a
teacher who is employed and paid according to the law. His hours of
schooling and the length of terms and vacations are determined by the
same authority. During his periods of recreation he is still under the
reign of law, for game laws regulate the times when he may or may not
hunt and fish. When he grows older and assumes the rights of
citizenship he must bear his part of the burdens of society. He has
the right to vote as one of the lawmakers of the land, but he is not
thereby free to cast off the restraints of law. He must pay his
proportion of the taxes that sustain the government that binds him,
local, State, and federal taxes. He must perform the public duty of
sitting on a jury or administering civic office if he is summoned
thereto. Even in his own domicile, though he be householder and head
of a family, he may not injure the public health or morals by
nuisances on his own premises, his financial obligations to creditors
are secured against him by law, even the possession of his acres is
made certain only by public record. It makes no difference whether the
legal restrictions under which he lives are local or national, they
are all a part of the system for which he and his neighbors are
responsible, and which as citizens they are under obligation to
maintain.
144. =Political Terms.=--It is important to understand and use
correctly certain terms which occur in this connection. The state is
the people organized for the purpose of exercising the authority of
social control. In its sociological sense it is not restricted to a
large or small area, but in political parlance it is used with
reference to a large district which possesses a certain degree of
authority over all the people, as the State of New York, or the
sovereign state of Great Britain. Government is the institution that
functions for social control in accordance with the will of the people
or of an individual to whose authority they submit. Politics is the
science and art of government, and includes statesmanship as its
highest type and the manipulation of party machinery as its lowest
type. Law is the body of social regulations administered by government
ostensibly for the public good. Each of these may be and in the past
has been prostituted for private advantage. In the state one man or a
small group has seized and held the sovereign power through the force
of personal ascendancy or the prestige of birth or wealth, and has
used it for himself, as history testifies by numerous examples. The
forms of government in many cases have not been well adapted to the
functions that they were designed to perform. The despotic
administrative agencies that were overthrown by the French Revolution
were ill-adapted to the governmental needs of the lower classes. Much
of the governmental machinery of the American republic has not matched
the constitutional forms that were originally provided, and the
Constitution has had to be stretched or amended if the government of
the founders of the republic was not to be revolutionized. So law and
politics have had to be reorganized, revised, and reinterpreted to fit
into the social need. Law is a conservative factor in progress, but it
adapts itself of necessity to the demands of equity.
145. =The Will of the People.=--On the continent of Europe rural
government is arranged usually by the central authority of the nation;
in America it is more independent of national control. On this side of
the water the colonial governments often interfered little with local
freedom, and after the Revolution the people fashioned their own
national organization, and in giving it certain powers jealously
guarded their own local privileges. They were willing to sacrifice a
general lawmaking power and grudgingly to permit the nation to have
executive and judicial authority, but they retained the management of
local affairs, including the raising and expenditure of direct taxes.
Local government, therefore, has continued to reflect the mind of the
community, a mind occasionally swayed by emotional impulse, but
usually controlled by a love of order, and by an Anglo-Saxon pride in
self-restraint. The will of the people has made the government and
sanctions its actions. It may be that the will is not fixed or united
enough to force itself effectually upon a set of public officials, and
may await reform or revolution to become forceful, yet in the last
resort and in the long run the will of the people prevails. By the
provisions of a democratic constitution judgment is frequently passed
by the people upon the administration of government, and it is within
their power to change the administrative policy or to reject the
agents of government whom they have previously elected. Locally they
have the advantage of knowing all candidates for office. The
efficiency of rural government depends much on its revenue, and
farmers are reluctant to increase the tax rate; slowly they are
learning the value of good roads and good schools.
146. =The Ancient History of the Community.=--The government of the
rural community has a history of its own, as has the community itself.
This government gradually fits itself to meet local needs, but it is
slow to put away the survivals of earlier forms and customs that have
outlived their usefulness. The history of the community goes back to
primitive times, when the clan group recognized common interests and
acknowledged the leadership of the chief or head man. Custom was the
law of the clan, and its older members assisted the chief in
interpreting custom. Government in the community developed in two
ways, one along the path of centralization of authority, the other in
the growth of democracy. One tendency was to attach an undue
importance to ancient custom, and to throw about it a veil of sanctity
by connecting it with religion. Such a community in its conservatism
came to possess in time a static civilization, but it lacked virility
and commonly fell under the control of a neighboring energetic
community or prince. This is the usual history of the Oriental
community. The other tendency was to adapt local law and organization
to changing circumstances, and to make use of the abilities of all the
members of the community, to give them a voice in the local assembly,
and a right to hold public office. Such progressive communities were
the city states of Greece, the republic of Rome, and the rural
communities of the barbarian Germans before they settled in the Roman
Empire. When the Greek communities became decadent they fell under
foreign dominion; Rome imperialized the republic, but never forgot how
to rule well in her municipalities; the Germans passed on their
democratic ways to the English, and from that source they were brought
to America.
147. =Two Types of Rural Government.=--In America there have been two
types of rural government growing out of the manner of original
settlement. In New England the colonists settled near together in
villages grouped about the meeting-house. One or more villages
constituted a town for purposes of government. In these small
districts it was possible for all the citizens to meet frequently, and
in an annual assembly the voters of the community elected their
officers and adopted the necessary local regulations. Long custom
transplanted oversea had kept a close connection between church and
state, and until the new American principle of separation was
universally adopted, the annual town meeting in Massachusetts was a
parish meeting, in which the community voted with reference to the
needs of the church as well as of the state. In the South community
life was less closely knit, and town meetings were not in vogue. The
parish held its vestry meetings for the transaction of ecclesiastical
business, for episcopacy was the established church; overseers of the
poor were elected at the same meetings. There were county assemblies
for social and judicial purposes, but in each a few prominent people
in the neighborhood managed affairs and perpetuated their privileges,
as among the landed gentry of England. It was in these ways that
popular government continued along the path of material and social
progress in the North, while in the South a plantation aristocracy
conservatively maintained its colonial ideas and institutions,
including slavery.
With wider settlement there was an extension of these sectional
differences, except near the border of both, where a blending of the
two took place to some extent. County organization was necessary for a
time, while the country was thinly settled, but neighborhoods
organized as school districts, and by a natural process the school
district became the nucleus of a township government, at first for
school purposes and later for the self-government of the whole
community. In some cases, as in Illinois, it was made optional with
the people of a county whether they would organize a township
government or not, but wherever the two systems entered into
comparison and competition the township government proved the more
popular. As long as pure democracy remains there must be a small local
unit of government, and the New England town meeting seems wonderfully
well adapted to the purpose of self-government. The recent tendency
to extend democracy in the form of political primaries and the
referendum is a stimulus to such organization, and it may be expected
that the town system will continue to extend, even in the South.
148. =Town and County Officials.=--The town meeting is held in a
public building. In colonial days the close connection between church
and state made it proper that the meeting should be in the
meeting-house; in the West, where the school was the nucleus of local
organization, the schoolhouse was the natural voting place. In
present-day New England even a small village has its town house,
containing a large hall, which serves for town meetings and for
community assemblies for various social purposes. In the town meeting
the administrative officers, called selectmen, are chosen annually,
and minor officers, including clerk, treasurer, constables, and school
committee; there the community taxes itself for the salaries of its
officials, for the support of the town poor, for the maintenance of
highways, and for such modern improvements as street lights and a
public library. Personal ability counts for more than party
allegiance, though each political party usually puts its candidates in
the field. An important function of the local voters is the decision
under the local-option system that prevails in the East, as to whether
the sale of intoxicating liquors shall be licensed for the ensuing
year; under an increasing referendum policy the acts of the State
legislature are frequently submitted for review to the local voters.
Where the town system does not exist or is part of a larger county,
officers are elected for more extended responsibility. The functions
of county officers are mainly judicial. Among the county officers are
the sheriff elected by the people to preserve order and justice
throughout the region, the coroner whose duty has been to investigate
sudden death or disaster, and to hold an inquest to determine the
origin of crime if it existed. The county commissioners or supervisors
are executive officers, corresponding to the selectmen of the town;
the clerk and treasurer of the county have duties similar to the town
officers with those titles.
149. =Political Relations and Responsibilities.=--The local
community, alike under township and county government, is a part of a
larger political unit, and so has relations with and responsibilities
to the greater State. The town meeting may legislate on such matters
as the erection of a new schoolhouse or the building of a town
highway, but it cannot locate the post-office or change the location
of a State or county road. It may make its local taxes large or small,
but it cannot increase or diminish the amount of the State tax or
regulate the national tariff. The townsman lives under the
jurisdiction of a law that is made by his representatives in the State
legislature or the national Congress, and he is tried and punished for
the infraction of law in a county, State, or national court. As a
citizen of these larger political units he may vote for county, State,
and national officials, and may himself aspire to the highest office
in the gift of his countrymen.
150. =Political Standards.=--To a foreigner such a system of
government may seem exceedingly complex, but by it self-government is
preserved to the people of the nation, and a good degree of efficiency
is maintained. There are problems of social control that need study
and that produce various experiments in one State or another before
they are widely adopted; there is corruption of party politics with
unscrupulous methods and machinery that is too well oiled with
"tainted" money; but local government averages up to the level of the
intelligence and morals of the community. If the schoolhouse is an
efficient centre for the proper training of boys and girls to
understand their social relations and civic responsibilities, and if
the meeting-house is an efficient centre for the discussion of social
ethics and a religion that moves on the plane of earth as well as
heaven, then the town house will give a good account of itself in
intelligent voting and clean political methods. If the school-teacher
and the minister have won for themselves positions of community
leadership, and are educators of a forceful public opinion, and if the
community is sufficiently in touch with the best constructive forces
in the national political arena to feel their stimulus, the political
type locally is not likely to be very low. A self-governing people
will always have as good a government as it wants, and if the
government is not what it should be, the will of the people has not
been well educated.
READING REFERENCES
FAIRLIE: _Local Government in Counties, Towns, and Villages._
FISKE: _Civil Government in the United States_, pages 34-95.
HENDERSON: _Social Elements_, pages 292-317.
HART: _Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities_,
pages 92-105.
COOLEY: _Social Organization_, pages 402-410.
CHAPTER XXI
HEALTH AND BEAUTY
151. =Health and Beauty in the Community.=--Rural government formerly
limited its range of activity to political and economic concerns. The
individualism of Americans resented the interference of government in
other matters. If property was made secure and taxed judiciously for
the maintenance of public institutions, the duty of government was
accomplished. The individual man was prepared to assume all further
responsibility for himself and family. Such matters as the health of a
rural community and its æsthetic appearance were left to individual
initiative and generally were neglected. On many occasions the
housewife showed her sympathy and kindliness by nursing a sick
neighbor, but the members of the community had little appreciation of
the seriousness of contagion and infection, no knowledge of germs, and
small thought of preventive measures. The appearance of their
buildings and grounds was nobody's business but their own. They had no
conception of the social obligation of each for all and of all for
each. The result was an unnecessary amount of illness, especially of
tuberculosis and typhoid fever, because of insanitary buildings and
grounds, and a general air of shabbiness and neglect that pervaded
many communities. It was not that the people lacked the æsthetic
sense, but it had not been trained, and in the struggle for the
subjugation of a new continent all such minor considerations must give
way to the satisfaction of elemental wants.
Slowly it is becoming understood that health and beauty are matters
that demand public attention and regulation. Good fortune and
happiness are not purely economic and political concerns. Well-kept
roads, clean and well-planned public buildings, sanitary farm
structures, properly drained farm lands, and pure drinking water may
not add to the number of bushels an acre, but they prolong life and
add to its comfort and satisfaction.
When it seems no longer strange to bother about health conditions, it
will be relatively easy to give attention to rural æsthetics. If a
schoolhouse or a meeting-house is to be erected, it will give greater
satisfaction to the community if the principles of good architecture
are observed and the building is set in the midst of trees and
shrubbery and well-kept lawn. With such an object-lesson, the people
of the community will presently contrast their own property with that
of the public, the imitative impulse will begin to work, and
individuals will begin to make improvements as leisure permits. There
are villages that are ugly scars on a landscape which nature intended
should be beautiful. With misdirected energy, farmers have destroyed
the wild beauty of the fence corners and roadsides, mowing down the
weeds and clearing out the brush and vines in an effort to make
practical improvements, while with curious oversight they have
permitted the weeds to grow in the paths and the grass to lengthen in
the yard. Many a farm in rural communities has untidy refuse heaps,
tottering outbuildings, rusting machinery, and general litter that
reveal the absence of all sense of beauty or even neatness, yet the
farmer and his wife may be thrifty, hard-working people, and
scrupulously particular indoors. Their minds have not been sensitized
to outdoor beauty and hideousness. They forget that nature is
æsthetic; they live in the midst of her beauty, but their eyes are dim
and their ears are dull, and it is difficult to instruct them.
Happily, recent years have brought with them a new sense of the
possibilities of rural beauty. Children are learning to appreciate it
in the surroundings of the schoolhouse and the tasteful decorations of
its interior; their elders are buying lawn-mowers and painting their
fences, and America may yet rival in attractiveness the fair
countryside of old England.
152. =Is the Town Healthier than the Country?=--It has been commonly
believed that country people are healthier than townspeople. Their
life in the open, with plenty of exercise and hard work, toughens
fibre and strengthens the body to resist disease. It has also been
supposed that the city, with its crowded quarters, vitiated air, and
communicable diseases, has a much larger death-rate. It is true that
city life is more dangerous to health than a country existence if no
health precautions are taken, but city ordinances commonly regulate
community health, while in the country there is greater license.
Exposure gives birth to colds and coughs in the country; these are
treated with inadequate home remedies, because physicians are
inconveniently distant or expensive, and chronic diseases fasten
themselves upon the individual. Ignorance of hygienic principles,
absence of bathrooms, poor ventilation, unscreened doors and windows,
and impure water and milk are among the causes of disease.
There is as much need of pure air, pure water, and pure food in the
country as in the city, and the danger from disease is no less
menacing. The farmer loses vitality through long hours of labor, and
is susceptible to disease scarcely less than is the working man in
town. And he is more at fault if he suffers, for there is room to
build the home in a healthful location, where drainage is easy and
pure air and sunshine are abundant; there is water without price for
cleansing purposes, and sanitation is possible without excessive cost.
In most cases it is lack of information that prevents a realization of
perils that lurk, and every rural community should have instruction in
hygiene from school-teacher, physician, or resident nurse.
153. =Rural Health Preservers.=--Three health preservers are needed in
every rural community. These are the health official, the physician,
and the nurse. There is need first of one whose business it shall be
to inspect the sanitary conditions of public and private buildings,
and to watch the health of the people, old and young. It matters
little whether the official is under State or local authority, if he
efficiently and fearlessly performs his duty. Constant vigilance alone
can give security, and it is a small price to pay if the community is
compelled to bear even the whole expense of such a health official.
Community health is often intrusted to the town fathers or a district
board with little interest in the matter; on the other hand, the agent
of a State board is not always a local resident, and is liable to
overlook local conditions. It is desirable that the health official be
an individual of good training, familiar with the locality, and with
ample authority, for in this way only can safety be reasonably secure.
It is by no means impracticable to give a local physician the
necessary official authority. He is equipped with information and
skilled by experience to know bad conditions when he sees them and to
appreciate their seriousness. Whether or not a physician is the
official health protector of the community, a physician there should
be who can be reached readily by those who need him, and who should be
required to produce a certificate of thorough training in both
medicine and surgery. If such a medical practitioner does not
establish himself in the district voluntarily, the community might
well afford to employ such a physician on a salary and make him
responsible for the health of all. As civilization advances it will
become increasingly the custom in the country as well as in the city
to employ a physician to keep one's general health good, as now one
employs a dentist to examine and preserve the teeth. Medical practice
must continually become more preventive and less remedial. It may seem
as if it were an unwarranted expansion of the social functions of a
community that it should care for the health of individuals, but as
the interdependence of individuals becomes increasingly understood,
the community may be expected to extend its care for its own welfare.
154. =The Village Nurse.=--Alongside the physician belongs the village
or rural nurse. Already there are many communities that are becoming
accustomed to such a functionary, who visits the schools, examines the
children, prescribes for their small ailments or recommends a visit to
the physician, and who stands ready to perform the duties of a trained
nurse at the bedside of any sufferer. The support of such a nurse is
usually maintained by voluntary subscription, but there seems to be no
good reason why she should not be appointed and paid by the organized
community as a local official. She is as much needed as a
road-surveyor, surely as valuable as hog-reeve or pound-keeper. It is
a valid social principle, though rural observation does not always
justify it, that human life is not only intrinsically more valuable to
the individual or family than the life of an animal of the herd, but
it is actually worth more to the community.
155. =The Village Improvement Society.=--To secure good health
conditions, interested persons in the community may organize a health
club. Its feasibility is well proved by the history of the village
improvement society. There are two hundred such societies in
Massachusetts alone, and the whole movement is organized nationally in
the American Civic Federation. Their object is the toning up of the
community by various methods that have proved practicable. They owe
their organization to a few public-spirited individuals, to a woman's
club, or sometimes to a church. Their membership is entirely
voluntary, but local government may properly co-operate to accomplish
a desired end. Expenses are met by voluntary contribution or by means
of public entertainments, and its efforts are limited, of course, by
the fatness of its purse. Examples of the useful public service that
they perform are the demolition of unsightly buildings and the
cleaning up of unkempt premises, the beautification of public
structures and the building of better roads, the erection of drinking
troughs or fountains, and the improvement of cemeteries. Besides such
outdoor interests village improvement societies create public spirit,
educate the community by means of high-class entertainments, art and
nature exhibits, and public discussion of current questions of local
interest. They stand back of community enterprises for recreation,
fire protection, and other forms of social service, including such
economic interests as co-operative buying and marketing and the
extension of telephone or transportation service.
The initial impulse that sets in motion various forms of village
improvement frequently comes from the summer visitor or from a teacher
or minister who brings new ideas and a will to carry them into
action. In certain sections of country, like the mountain region of
northern New England, summer people are very numerous, through the
weeks from June to October, and not a few of them revisit their
favorite rural haunts for a briefer time in the winter. It is not to
be expected that they are always a force for good. Sometimes they make
country residents envious and dissatisfied. But it is not unusual that
they give an intellectual stimulus to the young people and the women,
compel the men to observe the proprieties of social intercourse, and
encourage downcast leaders of church and neighborhood to renewed
industry and hope. They demand multiplied comforts and conveniences,
and expect attractive and healthful accommodations. Where they
purchase and improve lands and buildings of their own they provide
useful models to their less particular neighbors, and thus the leaven
of a better type of living does its work in the neighborhood.
156. =Principles of Organization.=--The principles that lie at the
basis of every organization for improvement are simple and practicable
everywhere. They have been enumerated as a democratic spirit and
organization, a wide interest in community affairs, and a perennial
care for the well-being of all the people. Public spirit is the reason
for its existence, and the same public spirit is the only force that
can keep the organization alive. Every community in this democratic
country has its fortunes in its own hands. If it is so permeated with
individualism or inertia that it cannot awake to its duties and its
privileges, it will perish in accordance with the law of the survival
of the fittest; if, on the contrary, it adopts as its controlling
principles those just mentioned, it will find increasing strength and
profit for itself, because it keeps alive the spirit of co-operation
and mutual help.
READING REFERENCES
HART: _Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities_,
pages 66-82, 106-130.
GILLETTE: _Rural Sociology_, pages 147-167.
HARRIS: _Health on the Farm._
FARWELL: _Village Improvement_, pages 47-53, Appendix.
WATERS: _Village Nursing in the United States._
CHAPTER XXII
MORALS IN THE RURAL COMMUNITY
157. =Social Disease and Its Causes.=--Rural morals are a phase of the
public health of the community. Immorality is a kind of social
disease, for which the community needs to find a remedy. The amount of
moral ill varies widely, but it can be increased by neglect or
lessened by effort, as surely as can the amount of physical disease.
Moral ill is due to the individual and to the community. The judgment
of the individual may be warped, his moral consciousness defective, or
his will weak. He may have low standards and ill-adjusted
relationships. Selfishness may have blunted his sympathy. All these
conditions contribute to the common vices of community life. But the
individual is sometimes less to blame than the community. Much moral
ill is a consequence of the imperfect functioning of the community. A
man steals because he is hungry or cold, and the motive to escape pain
is stronger than the motive to deal lawfully with his neighbor; but if
the community saw to it that adequate provision was made for all
economic need, and if moral instruction was not lacking, it would be
unlikely to happen. Similar reasons may be found for other evils. It
is as much the business of the community to keep the social atmosphere
wholesome as it is to keep the air and water of its farms pure. It
should provide moral training and moral exercise.
158. =How Morals Develop.=--Without attempting a thoroughly scientific
definition of morals, we may call good morals those habitual acts
which are in harmony with the best individual and social interests of
the people of the community, and bad morals the absence of such
habits. Of course the acts are the consequence of motives, and in the
last analysis the question of morals is rooted in the field of
psychology or religion; but the inner motive is revealed in the
outward act, and it is customary to speak of the act as moral or
immoral. Moral standards are not unvarying. One race differs from
another and one period of history differs from another. Primitive
custom was the first standard, and was determined by what was good for
the group, and the individual conformed to it from force of
circumstances. If he was to remain a member of the group and enjoy its
benefits he must be willing to sacrifice his selfish desires. His
consciousness of the solidarity of the group deepens with experience,
and his feelings of sympathy grow stronger, until impulsive altruism
becomes a habit and eventually a fixed and purposeful patriotism. By
and by religion throws about conduct its sanctions and interprets the
meaning of morality. However imperfect may be the relations between
good morals and pagan religions, Judaism and Christianity have
combined religion with high moral ideals. The Hebrew prophets declared
that God demanded justice, kindness, and mercy in human relations
rather than acts of ceremony and sacrifice to himself, and Jesus made
love to neighbor as fundamental to holiness as love to God. Such a
religion becomes dynamic in producing moral deeds.
159. =The Social Stimulus to Morality.=--It is customary to think of
the homely virtues of truthfulness, sobriety, thrift, and kindliness
as individual obligations, but they are not wrought out in isolation.
Isolation is never complete, and virtue is a social product. The
farmer makes occasional visits to the country store, where he
experiences social contacts; there is habitual association with
individual workers on the farm or traders with whom the farmer carries
on a business transaction. His personal contacts may not be helpful,
and his wife may lack them almost altogether outside of the home; the
result is often a tendency toward vice or degeneration, sometimes to
insanity or suicide, but it is seldom that there are not helpful
influences and relations available if the individual will put himself
in the way of enjoying them. Good morals are dependent on right
associations. Human beings need the stimulus of good society,
otherwise the mind vegetates or broods upon real or fancied wrongs
until the moral nature is in danger of atrophy or warping. Family
feuds develop, as among the Scotch highlanders or the mountain people
in certain parts of the South. Lack of social sympathy increases as
the interests become self-centred; out of this characteristic grow
directly such evils as petty lawlessness, rowdyism, and crime. The
country districts need the help of high-grade schools and proper
places of recreation, of the Young Men's Christian Association or an
association of like principles, and most of all of a virile church
that will interpret moral obligation and furnish the power that is
needed to move the will to right action.
160. =Rural Vices.=--The moral problems of the rural community do not
differ greatly from those of the town. The most common rural vices are
profanity, drunkenness, and sexual immorality. Profanity is often a
habit rather than a defect in moral character, and is due sometimes to
a narrow vocabulary. It is a mark of ignorance and boorishness. In
many localities it is less common than it used to be. The average
community life is wholesome. Not more than twenty per cent of American
rural communities have really bad conditions in any way, according to
the investigations made by the United States Rural Life Commission in
1908. Considering the monotony and hardships of rural life, it is much
to the credit of the people that most communities are temperate and
law-abiding. Intemperance is one of the most common evils; there is a
longing for the stimulant of liquor, which appears in some cases in
moderate drinking and in other cases in the habit of an occasional
spree in a near-by town, when reason abdicates to appetite. Lumbermen
and miners, whose work is especially hard and isolation from good
society complete, have been notorious for their lapses into
intemperance, but it is not a serious problem in three out of four
communities the country over, and a wave of temperance sentiment has
swept strongly over rural districts. Gambling is a diversion that
appeals to those who have few mental and pecuniary resources as an
offset to the daily monotony, but this habit is not typical of rural
communities.
Investigations of the Rural Life Commission showed that sexual
immorality prevails in ten to fifteen per cent of the rural
communities, and they trace much of it to late evening drives and
dances and unchaperoned calls, but on the whole the perversion of the
sex instinct is less common than in the cities. The young are
generally trained in moral principles, the religious sanctions are
more strongly operative, and the conduct and character of every
individual is constantly under the public eye. Young people in the
country marry at an earlier age than in the city, and husband and wife
are normally faithful. Crime in the country is peculiar to degenerate
communities, elsewhere it is rare. Juvenile delinquency occurs, and
there are not such helpful influences as the juvenile court of the
city; on the other hand, most boys are in touch with home influences,
feel the restraint of a law-abiding community, and know that
lawbreaking is almost certain to be found out and punished.
161. =Community Obligation.=--Moral delinquency in the rural community
lies in the failure to provide social stimulus to individual members.
The farmer has as good reason to be ambitious for success and to feel
pride in it as has the city merchant, but he has small local
encouragement to develop better agriculture on his own farm. He has as
much right to the benefits of association in toil and co-operation in
effecting economies and disposing of his products as the employer or
working man in town. He is equally entitled to good government, to
wholesome recreation, to a suitable and efficient education, and to
the spiritual leadership of a progressive church. Without the spur of
community fellowship his life narrows and his abilities are not
developed. With the help of community stimulus the individual may
develop capacity for individual achievement and social leadership of
as fine a quality as any urban centre can supply. It is well known
that the strong men of the cities in business and the professions have
come in large proportion from the country. If such qualities developed
in the comparative isolation and discomfort of the past, it is a moral
obligation of rural communities of the future to do even more to
produce the brawn and brain of city leaders in days to come.
READING REFERENCES
WILSON: _The Evolution of the Country Community_, pages 171-188.
ANDERSON: _The Country Town_, pages 95-106.
DEALEY: _Sociology_, pages 146-165.
HART: _Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities_,
pages 166-175.
HOBHOUSE: _Morals in Evolution_, I, pages 364-375.
SPENCER: _Data of Ethics_, chapter 8.
_Report of Committee on Morals and Rural Conditions of the General
Association of Congregational Churches of Massachusetts_,
1908.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE RURAL CHURCH
162. =The Value of the Rural Church.=--Of all the local institutions
of the rural community, none is so discouraging and at the same time
so potential for usefulness as the country church. It has had a noble
past; it is passing through a dubious present; it should emerge into a
great future. The church is the conserver of the highest ideals. Like
every long-established institution, it is conservative in methods as
well as in principles. It regards itself as the censor of conduct and
the mentor of conscience, and it fills the rôle of critic as often as
it holds out an encouraging hand to the weary and hard pressed in the
struggle for existence and moral victory. It is the guide-post to
another world, which it esteems more highly than this. Sometimes it
puts more emphasis on creed than on conduct, on Sunday scrupulousness
than on Monday scruple. But in spite of its failings and its frequent
local decline, the church is the hope of rural America. It is
notorious that the absence of a church means a distinctly lower type
of community life, both morally and socially. Vice and crime flourish
there. Property values tumble when the church dies and the minister
moves away. Many residents rarely if ever enter the precincts of the
meeting-house or contribute to the expense of its maintenance, yet
they share in the benefits that it gives and would not willingly see
it disappear when they realize the consequences. In the westward march
of settlement the missionary kept pace with the pioneer, and the
church on the frontier became the centre of every good influence. It
is impossible to estimate the value of the rural church in the onrush
of civilization. Religion has been the saving salt of humanity when it
was in danger of spoiling. In the lumber and the mining camp, on the
cattle-ranch and the prairie, the missionary has sweetened life with
his ministry and given a tone to the life of the open and the wild
that in value is past calculation.
163. =The Church in Decline.=--In the days when it seems declining,
the strength of the rural church is worth preserving. There are
hundreds of rural communities where the young people have gone to the
town and population has steadily fallen behind. There are hundreds
more where the people of a community have drawn wealth from the soil,
and with a succession of good crops and high prices have accumulated
enough to keep them comfortable, and then have sold or leased their
property and moved into town. The purchasers or tenants who replaced
them have been less able to contribute to church support or have been
of a different faith or race, and the churches have found it difficult
to survive. Doubtless some of these churches could be spared without
great loss, for in the rush of real or expected settlement, certain
localities became over-churched, but the spectacle of scores of
abandoned churches in the Middle West has as doleful an appearance as
abandoned farms in New England.
164. =Is It Worth Preserving?=--It would be a misfortune for the
church to perish out of the rural districts, for it performs a
religious function that no other institution performs. It cherishes
the beliefs that have strengthened man through the ages and given him
the upward look that betokens faith in his destiny and power in his
life. It calls out the best that is in him to meet the tasks of every
day. It ministers to him in times of greatest need. It teaches him how
to relate himself to an Unseen Power and to the fellowship of human
kind. The meeting-house is a community centre drawing to itself like a
magnet family groups and individuals from miles around, overcoming
their isolation and breaking into the daily monotony of their lives,
and with its worship and its sermon awakening new thoughts and
impulses for the enrichment of life. Nor does its ministry confine
itself to things of the spirit. The weekly Sunday assembly provides
opportunity for social intercourse, if no more than an exchange of
greetings, and now and then a sociable evening gathering or
anniversary occasion brings an added social opportunity.
165. =The Country Minister.=--The faithful rural minister also carries
the church to the people. His parish is broad, but he finds his way
into the homes of his parishioners, acquaints himself with their
characteristics and their needs, and fits his ministrations to them.
Especially does he carry comfort to the sick and soothe the suffering
and the dying. No other can quite fill his place; no other so builds
himself into the hearts of the people. He may not be a great thinker
or preach polished sermons; his hands may be rough and his clothes
ill-fitting; but if he is a loyal friend and ministers to real
spiritual need, he is saint and prophet to those whom he has
brothered.
In the rural economy each public functionary is worthy or unworthy,
according to his personal fidelity to his particular task. A poorly
equipped board of government is not worth half the salary of the
school-teacher. That official may not hold his place or gain the
respect of his pupils unless he meets their needs of instruction with
a degree of efficiency. But a public servant who fills full the
channels of his usefulness is worth twice what he is likely to get as
his stipulated wage. The community can well afford to look kindly upon
a minister of that type, to encourage him in his efforts for the
upbuilding of the community, and to contribute to an honorable stipend
for his support.
166. =The Problems.=--The rural church has its problems and so has the
rural minister. There are the indifferent people who are irreligious
themselves and have no share in the activities of the religious
institution. There are the insincere people who belong to the church
but are not sympathetic in spirit or conduct. There are the
cold-blooded people who gather weekly in the meeting-house but do not
respond to intellectual or spiritual stimulus, and who chill the heart
of the minister and soon quench his enthusiasm. It is not surprising
if he is restless and changes location frequently, or if he becomes
listless and apparently indifferent to the welfare of his flock, when
he meets no response and himself enjoys no stimulus from his own kind.
All these conditions constitute the spiritual problem. Beyond this
there is the institutional problem. The church finds maintenance
difficult, often impossible without outside assistance. Failing to
minister to any purely community need except on special occasions, or
to assume any responsibility of leadership in civic or social affairs,
it does not receive the cordial support of the community to which as a
social institution, conserving the highest interests, it is reasonably
entitled. It must be remembered that in America there can be no
established church supported by the State, as in England. The church
is on a different footing in every community from that of the public
school. It is therefore dependent on the good-will of the community
and must cultivate that good-will if it is to succeed. Most rural
churches have yet to become a vital force, not only energizing their
own members, but reaching out also to the whole community, seeking not
their own growth as their chief end, but by ministering to the
community's needs, realizing a fuller, richer life of their own.
167. =The Needs of the Church.=--The rural church needs reorganization
for efficiency, but changes must be gradual. A local church that is
democratic in its form of organization, with no external oversight, is
likely to need strengthening in administration; a church that intrusts
control to a small board or is governed from the outside probably
needs to get closer to the people, but differences in church
government are of small practical consequence. It does not appear that
it makes much difference in the success of a rural church whether its
organization is Episcopal, Presbyterian, or Congregational. The
machinery needs modernizing, whatever the pattern. It is a part of the
task to be undertaken by every up-to-date country minister to consider
possible improvements in the various departments of the church. It is
as likely that the children are being as inefficiently taught in the
Sunday-school as in the every-day school, that organizations and
opportunities for the young people are as lacking as in the community
at large, that discussions in the Bible class are as pointless as
those in any local forum. It is more than likely that the church is
failing to make good in a given locality because it is depending on a
few persons to carry on its activities, and these few do not
co-operate well with one another or with other Christian people. The
functions of the church are neither well understood nor properly
performed. It has small assets in community good-will, and it is in no
real sense a going concern.
168. =The New Rural Church.=--Here and there a church of a new type is
meeting manfully these various needs. It has set itself first to
answer the question whether the church is a real religious force in
the community, and what method may best be used to energize the
countryside more effectually for moral and religious ends. Old forms
or times of worship have needed changing, or an innovating individual
has taken a hand temporarily. Then it has faced the practical problem
of religious education. Most churches maintain a Sunday-school and a
Woman's Missionary or Aid Society. Certain of them have young people's
organizations, and a few have organized men's classes or clubs. Each
of these groups goes on its own independent course. There is no
attempt to correlate the studies with which each concerns itself, and
there is much waste of effort in holding group sessions that
accomplish nothing. The new church directors simplify, correlate, and
systematize all the educational work that is being attempted, improve
courses of study and methods of teaching, and propose to all concerned
the attainment of certain definite standards. In the third place, the
new rural church adopts for itself a well-considered programme of
community service. Its opportunity is unlimited, but its efforts are
not worth much unless it approaches the subject intelligently, with a
knowledge of local conditions, of its own resources, and of the
methods that have been used successfully in other similar localities.
Nothing less than these three tasks of investigation, education, and
service belong to every church; toward this ideal is moving an
increasing number of churches in the country.
READING REFERENCES
BUTTERFIELD: _The Country Church and the Rural Problem._
FISKE: _The Challenge of the Country._
WILSON: _The Church of the Open Country._
NESMITH: Chapter on "The Rural Church" in _Social Ministry._
HART: _Educational Resources of Village and Rural Communities_,
pages 176-196.
_Report of Country Life Commission_, 1908.
CHAPTER XXIV
A NEW TYPE OF RURAL INSTITUTION
169. =A New Type of Institution.=--The rural community everywhere is
in need of a new social institution. Those which exist have been
individualistic in purpose and method and only incidentally have been
socially constructive. The school has existed to make individuals
efficient intellectually, that they might be able to struggle
successfully for existence. The church has existed as a means to
individual salvation from future ill. Social good has resulted from
these institutions, but it has not been fundamental in their purpose.
The new rural institution that is needed is a centre for community
reconstruction. If the school or the church can adapt itself to the
need, either may become such an institution; if not, there must be a
new type.
It has often been said that the characteristic evil of rural life is
the isolation of the people, but this must be understood to mean not
merely an isolated location of farm dwellings but a lack of human
fellowship. In the city the majority of people might as well live in
isolated houses as far as acquaintance with neighbors is concerned,
but they do not lack human fellowship because they have group
connections elsewhere. In the country it is hardly possible to choose
associates or institutional connections. There is one school prepared
to receive the children of a certain age, and no other, unless they
are conveyed to a distance at great inconvenience; the variety of
suitable churches is not large. It is necessary to cultivate neighbors
or to go without friendships. But rural social relations are not well
lubricated. There are few common topics of conversation, except the
weather, the crops, or a bit of gossip. There are few common interests
about which discussion may centre. There is need of an institution
that shall create and conserve such common interests.
170. =A Community House.=--The first task is to bring people together
to a common gathering place, where perfect democracy will prevail, and
where there may be unrestricted discussion. There is no objection to
using the schoolhouse for the purpose, but ordinarily it is not
adapted to the purposes of an assembly-room. The meeting-house may
serve the purpose, but to many persons it seems a desecration of a
sacred building, and except in the case of a single community church
there is too much of the denominational flavor about it to make it an
unrestricted forum. Ideally there should be a community house erected
at a convenient location, and large enough to accommodate as many as
might desire to assemble. It should be equipped for all the social
uses to which it might be put. It should be paid for by the voluntary
contributions of all the people, but title to the property should be
in the hands of a board of trustees or associates who would be
responsible for its maintenance and for the uses to which it would be
put. These persons must be men and women of the town in whose judgment
the people have full confidence. Regular expenses should be met by
annual payments, as the Young Men's Christian Association is sustained
in cities all over the country, and by occasional entertainments. A
limited endowment fund would be helpful, but too large endowment tends
to pauperize a local institution.
171. =Intellectual Stimulus.=--The second task is to put the community
house to use. There are numerous ways by which this can be done, but
the best are those that fit local need. Of all the needs the greatest
is stimulus to thought. Ideally this should come from the pulpit of
the rural church, but its stimulus is usually not strong, it is
commonly confined to religious exhortation, and it reaches only a few.
All the people of the community need to think seriously about their
economic and social interests, and to be drawn out to express
themselves on such subjects. The old-fashioned town meeting provided a
channel for such discussion once a year. What is needed is a
town-meeting extension through eight or nine months of the year. The
community house offers an opportunity for such an extension. Under
the initiative and guidance of one or two energetic local leaders,
inspired by an occasional outside lecturer, such as can be obtained at
small expense from agricultural colleges and other public agencies,
almost any American community ought to carry on a forum of public
discussion for weeks, taking up first the most urgent questions of
community interest and passing on gradually to matters of broader
concern.
172. =Social Satisfaction.=--As the adults of the community need
intellectual stimulus, so the young people need social satisfactions.
The salvation of the American rural community lies largely in the
contentment of the young people, for without that quality of mind they
leave the country for the town, or settle back in an unprogressive,
unsocial state of sullen resignation. There must be opportunity for
recreation. The community house should function for the entertainment
of its constituency in ways that approve themselves to the associates
in charge. But it is not so much entertainment that is wanted as an
opportunity for sociability, occasions when all the youth of the
community can meet for mutual acquaintance and the beginnings of
courtship, and for the stimulus that comes from human association. If
association and activity are characteristic of normal social life, it
is unreasonable to suppose that rural young people will be contented
to vegetate. If they cannot have legitimate opportunities to realize
their impulse to associated activity, they will provide less
satisfactory unconventional opportunities. One of the best means for
promoting sociability and providing an outlet for youthful energy in
concert has been found in the use of music. The old-fashioned
singing-school filled a real need and its passing has left a distinct
gap. Where musical gatherings have been revived experience has shown
that they are a most effective stimulus to a new community
consciousness. The country church choir has long been regarded as a
useful social as well as religious institution, but the community
chorus is far more effective. It is possible to uncover latent talent
and to cultivate it so that it will furnish more attractive
entertainment for the people than that which is imported at far
greater expense from outside. Among the foreigners who are finding
their way into rural localities, there is sometimes discovered a
musical ability that outranks the native, and no other method of
approach to the immigrant is so easy as by giving his young people a
place in the social activities of the community.
173. =Continuation Schooling.=--A further use for the community house
is educational. The older education of the district school was
defective, and the new education is not enjoyed by many a farmer's boy
or girl, because they cannot be spared in the later years of youth for
long schooling. An adaptation of the idea of continuation schools for
rural young people so that they may apply the new sciences to country
life is greatly to be desired. The local school principal or county
superintendent or an extension teacher from a State institution may be
found available as director, and it belongs to the community to
provide the necessary funds. For older people some of the same courses
are suitable, but they should be supplemented with lectures of all
sorts. It has been demonstrated many times that popular lecturers can
be secured at small expense in different parts of the country,
especially in these days when there are so many agencies to push the
new agricultural science, and other subjects over a wide range of
interests will not fail to find exponents if a demand for them can be
created.
174. =Community Leadership.=--In the last analysis the prime factor in
the rural situation is the community leader. Institutions can do
little for the enrichment of rural life if personality is wanting. It
is the leader's energy that keeps the wheels of the machinery turning,
his wisdom that gears their action to the needs of the community. It
is desirable that the leader should spring from the community itself,
acquainted with its needs and voicing its aspirations. But more
communities get their leaders from outside and are often more willing
to accept such a leader than if he came up out of their midst, for the
proverb is often true that a prophet is without honor in his own
country.
175. =Qualities of Leadership.=--Social leadership is dependent upon
certain qualities in the person who leads and in those who are led.
The attitude of the people of the community is fundamental. The
stimulus that the leader applies must find response in their inner
natures if his energy is to become socially effective. If there is not
a latent capacity to action, no amount of stimulus will avail. It is
safe to assume that there are few local communities in America that
will fail to respond to the right kind of leadership, but certain
qualities in the leader are essential for inspiration. It is not
necessary that he should be country born, but it is essential that he
love the country, appreciate its opportunities, and be conscious of
its needs. He cannot hope to call out these qualities in the people if
he does not himself possess them. And it must be a genuine love and
appreciation that is in him, for only sincerity and perfect honesty
can win men for long. It is essential that he have breadth of sympathy
for all the interests of the people that he seeks for his own; he may
not think lightly of farming or storekeeping, of education or
recreation, of morals or religion. He must be devoted to the
community, its servant as well as its leader, content to build himself
into its life. It is not necessary that the leader should be a trained
expert, a finished product of the schools, desirable as such equipment
is, but it is essential that he know how to call out the best that is
in others, to play upon their emotions, to appeal to their intellects,
to energize their wills. He must not only understand their present
mental processes, but he must have a vision of them when they have
become transformed with new impulses and ambitions, and converted to
new and nobler purposes. He needs an unquenchable enthusiasm, a gentle
patience, an invincible, aggressive persistency, a contagious optimism
that will carry him over every obstacle to ultimate victory. It is
essential that he possess fertility of resource to adapt himself to
circumstances, that he have power to call out action and executive
ability to direct it. Most important of all is a magnetic personality
such as belonged to the great chieftains of history who in war or
peace have been able to attract followers and to mould them in
obedience to their own will.
176. =Broad Opportunities.=--A leader such as that described has an
almost unlimited field of opportunity to mould social life. In the
city the opportunity for leadership may seem to be larger, but few can
dominate more than a small group. In the country the start may be
slower and more discouraging, but the goal reaches out ahead. From
better agriculture the leader may draw on the people to better social
ideals, to a new appreciation of education and broad culture, to a
truer understanding of ethics and religion. He may refashion
institutions that may express the new in modern terms. But when this
is accomplished his work is not done. He may reach out over the
countryside and make his village a nucleus for wider progress through
a whole county. Even then his influence is not spent. The rural
communities in America are feeders of the cities; in them is the
nursery of the men and women who are to become leaders in the larger
circles of business and professional life, in journalism and
literature, in religion and social reform. Many a rural teacher or
pastor has built himself into the affections of a boy or a girl,
incarnating for them the noblest ideals and stimulating them to
achievement and service in an environment that he himself could never
hope to fill and with a power of influence that he could never expect
to wield. The avenues of opportunity are becoming more numerous. The
teacher and the minister have advantages of leadership over the county
Young Men's Christian Association secretary and the village nurse, but
since personal qualities are the determining factors, no man or woman,
whatever their position, can make good the claim without proving
ability by actual achievement. Any man or woman who enters a
particular community for the first time, or returns to it from
college, may become a dynamo of blessing to it. There waits for such a
leader the loyalty of the boys who may be won for noble manhood, of
the girls who may become worthy mothers of a better generation of
future citizens, of men and women for whom the glamour of youth has
passed into the sober reality of maturer years, but who are still
capable of seeing visions of a richer life that they and their
children may yet enjoy. There are ready to his hand the institutions
that have played an important part, however inefficiently in rural
life, the heritage of social custom and community character that have
come down from the past, and the material environment that helps or
hinders but does not control human relations and human deeds. These
constitute the measure of his world; these are clay for the potter and
instruments for his working; upon him is laid the responsibility of
the product.
READING REFERENCES
CURTIS: _Play and Recreation for the Open Country_, pages
195-259.
FISKE: _The Challenge of the Country_, pages 225-266.
COOLEY: _Human Nature and the Social Order_, pages 283-325.
MCNUTT: "Ten Years in a Country Church," _World's Work_, December,
1910.
MCKEEVER: _Farm Boys and Girls_, pages 129-145.
CARNEY: _Country Life and the Country School_, pages 1-17,
302-327.
PART IV--SOCIAL LIFE IN THE CITY
CHAPTER XXV
FROM COUNTRY TO CITY
177. =Enlarging the Social Environment.=--In the story of the family
and the rural community it has become clear that the normal individual
as he grows to maturity lives in an expanding circle of social
relations. The primary unit of his social life is the family in the
home. There the elemental human instincts are satisfied. There while a
child he learns the first lessons of social conduct. From the home he
enters into the larger life of the community. He takes his place in
the school, where he touches the lives of other children and learns
that he is a part of a larger social order. He gets into the current
of community life and finds out the importance of local institutions
like the country store and the meeting-house. He becomes accustomed to
the ways that are characteristic of country people, and finds a place
for himself in the industry and social activity of the countryside.
When the boy who has grown up in a rural community comes to manhood,
his natural tendency is to accept the occupation of farming with which
he has become acquainted in boyhood, to woo a country maid for a mate,
and to make for himself a rural home after the pattern of his
ancestors. In that case his social environment remains restricted. His
relations are with nature rather than with men. His horizon is narrow,
his interests limited. The institutions that mould him are few, the
forces that stimulate to progress are likely to be lacking altogether.
He need not, but he usually does, cease to grow.
178. =Characteristics of the City.=--Certain individuals find the
static life of the country unbearable. Their nature demands larger
scope in an expanding environment. To them the stirring town beckons,
and they are restless until they escape. The city is a centre of
social life where the individual feels a greater stimulus than in the
home or the rural community. It resembles the family and the village
in providing social relations and an interchange of ideas, but it
surpasses them in the large scale of its activities. It presents many
of the same social characteristics that they do, but geared in each
case for higher speed. Its activities are swifter and more varied. Its
associations are more numerous and kaleidoscopic. Its people are less
independent than in the country; control, economic and political, is
more pervasive, even though crude in method. Change is more rapid in
the city, because the forces that are at work are charged with dynamic
energy. Weakness in social structure and functioning is conspicuous.
In the large cities all these are intensified, but they are everywhere
apparent whenever a community passes beyond the village stage. The
line that separates the village or small town from the city is an
arbitrary one. The United States calls those communities rural that
have a population not exceeding twenty-five hundred, but it is less a
question of population than of interests and activities. When
agriculture gives place to trade or manufacturing as the leading
economic interest; when the community takes on the social
characteristics that belong to urban life; and when places of business
and amusement assume a place of importance rather than the home, the
school, and the church, the community passes into the urban class.
Names and forms of government are of small consequence in
classification compared with the spirit and ways of the community.
179. =How the City Grows.=--The city grows by the natural excess of
births over deaths and by immigration. Without immigration the city
grows more slowly but more wholesomely. Immigration introduces an
alien element that has to adjust itself to new ways and does not
always fuse readily with the native element. This is true of
immigration from the country village as well as from a foreign
country, but an American, even though brought up differently, finds it
easier to adapt himself to his new environment. An increasingly large
percentage of children are born and grow to maturity in the city.
There are thousands of urban communities of moderate size in America,
where there are few who come in from any distance, but for nearly a
hundred years in the older parts of the country a rural migration has
been carrying young people into town, and the recent volume of foreign
immigration is spilling over from the large cities into the smaller
urban centres, so that the mixture of population is becoming general.
180. =The Attraction of the City.=--Foreign immigration is a subject
that must be treated by itself; rural immigration needs no prolonged
discussion once the present limitations of life in the country are
understood. Multitudes of ambitious young people are not contented
with the opportunities offered by the rural environment. They want to
be at the strategic points of the world's activities, struggling for
success in the thick of things. The city attracts the country boy who
is ambitious, exactly as old Rome attracted the immature German. The
blare of its noisy traffic, the glare of its myriad lights, the rush
and the roar and the rabble all urge him to get into the scramble for
fun and gain. The crowd attracts. The instinct of sociability draws
people together. Those who are unfamiliar with rural spaces and are
accustomed to live in crowded tenements find it lonesome in the
country, and prefer the discomfort of their congested quarters in town
to the pure air and unspoiled beauty of the country. They love the
stir of the streets, and enjoy sitting on the door-steps and wandering
up and down the sidewalks, feeling the push of the motley crowd. Those
who leave the country for the city feel all these attractions and are
impelled by them, but beyond these attractions, re-enforcing them by
an appeal to the intellect, are the economic advantages that lie in
the numerous occupations and chances for promotion to high-salaried
positions, the educational advantages for children and youth in the
better-graded schools, the colleges, the libraries, and the other
cultural institutions, and such social advantages as variety of
entertainment, modern conveniences in houses and hotels, more
beautiful and up-to-date churches, well-equipped hospitals, and
comfortable and convenient means of transportation from place to
place.
181. =Making a Countryman into a Citizen.=--It is important to enter
into the spirit of the young people who prefer the streets and blocks
of the town to the winding country roads, and are willing to sacrifice
what there is of beauty and leisure in rural life for the ugliness,
sordidness, and continuous drive of the city; to understand that a
greater driving force, stirring in the soul of youth and thrusting
upon him with every item of news from the city, is impelling him to
disdain what the country can give him and to magnify the
counter-attractions of the town. He has felt the monotony and the
contracted opportunity of farm life as he knows it. He has experienced
the drudgery of it ever since he began to do the chores. Familiar only
with the methods of his ancestors, he knows that labor is hard and
returns are few. He may look across broad acres that will some day be
his, but he knows that his father is "land poor." As a farmer he sees
no future for agriculture. He has known the village and the
surrounding country ever since he graduated from the farmyard to the
schoolhouse, and came into association with the boys and girls of the
neighborhood. He knows the economic and social resources of the
community and is satisfied that he can never hope for much enjoyment
or profit in the limited rural environment. The school gave him little
mental stimulus, but opened the door ajar into a larger world. The
church gave him an orthodox gospel in terms of divinity and its
environment rather than humanity on earth, but stirred vaguely his
aspirations for a fuller life. He has sounded the depths of rural
existence and found it unsatisfying. He wants to learn more, to do
more, to be more.
One eventful day he graduates from the village to the city, as years
before he graduated from the home into the community. By boat or
train, or by the more primitive method of stage-coach or afoot, he
travels until he joins the surging crowd that swarms in the streets.
He feels himself thrilling with the consciousness that he is moving
toward success and possibly greatness. He does not stop to think that
hundreds of those who seek their fortune in the city have failed, and
have found themselves far worse off than the contented folk back in
the home village. The newcomer establishes himself in a boarding-house
or lodging-house which hundreds of others accept as an apology for a
home, joins the multitude of unemployed in a search for work, and is
happy if he finds it in an office that is smaller and darker than the
wood-shed on the farm, or behind a counter where fresh air and
sunlight never penetrate. He will put up with these non-essentials,
for he expects in days ahead to move higher up, when the large rewards
that are worth while will be his.
In the ranks of business he measures his wits with others of his kind.
He apes their manners, their slang, and their tone inflections. He
imitates their fashions in clothes, learns the popular dishes in the
restaurants, and if of feminine tastes gives up pie for salad. He goes
home after hours to his small and dingy bedroom, tired from the drain
upon his vitality because of ill-ventilated rooms and ill-nourishing
food, but happy and free. There are no chores waiting for him now, and
there is somewhere to go for entertainment. Not far away he may have
his choice of theatres and moving-picture shows. If he is æsthetically
or intellectually inclined, there are art-galleries and libraries
beckoning him. If his earnings are a pittance and he cannot afford the
theatre, and if his tastes do not draw him to library or museum, the
saloon-keeper is always ready to be his friend. The youth from the
country would be welcomed at the Young Men's Christian Association on
the other side of the city, or at a church if there happened to be a
social or religious function that opened the building, but the saloon
is always near, always open, and always cordial. Poor or rich, or a
stranger, it matters not, let him enter and enjoy the poor man's club.
It is warm and pleasant there and he will soon make friends.
182. =Mental and Moral Changes.=--The readjustments that are necessary
in the transfer from country to city are not accomplished without
considerable mental and moral shock. Changing habits of living are
paralleled by changing habits of thought. Old ideas are jostled by
new every hour of the day. At the table, on the street, in office or
store, at the theatre or church the currents of thought are different.
Social contacts are more numerous, relations are more shifting,
intellectual affinities and repulsions are felt constantly; mental
interactions are so frequent that stability of beliefs and
independence of thought give way to flexibility and uncertainty and
openness to impression. Group influence asserts its power over the
individual.
Along with the influence of the group mind goes the influence of what
may be called the electrical atmosphere of the city. The newcomer from
the country is very conscious of it; to the old resident it becomes
second nature. City life is noisy. The whole industrial system is
athrob with energy. The purring of machinery, the rattle and roar of
traffic, the clack and toot of the automobile, the clanging of bells,
and the chatter of human tongues create a babel that confuses and
tires the unsophisticated ear and brain. They become accustomed to the
sounds after a time, but the noise registers itself continually on the
sensitive nervous system, and many a man and woman breaks at last
under the strain. Another element that adds to the nervous strain is
haste. Life in the city is a stern chase after money and pleasure.
Everybody hurries from morning until night, for everything moves on
schedule, and twenty-four hours seem not long enough to do the world's
work and enjoy the world's fun. Noise and hurry furnish a mental
tension that charges the urban atmosphere with excitement. Purveyors
of news and amusement have learned to cater to the love of excitement.
The newspaper editor hunts continually for sensations, and sometimes
does not scruple to twist sober fact into stirring fiction. The
book-stall and the circulating library supply the novel and the cheap
magazine to give smack to the jaded palate that cannot relish good
literature. The theatre panders to the appetite for a thrill.
In these circumstances lie the possibilities of moral shock. In the
city there is freedom from the old restraint that the country
community imposed. In the city the countryman finds that he can do as
he pleases without the neighbors shaking their heads over him. In the
absence of such restraint and with the social contact of new friends
he may rapidly lower his moral standards as he changes his manners and
his mental habits. It does not take long to shuffle off the old ways;
it does not take much push or pull to make the unsophisticated boy or
girl lose balance and drift toward lower ideals than those with which
they came. Not a few find it hard to keep the moral poise in the
whirlpool of mental distraction. It is these effects of the urban
environment that help to explain the social derelicts that abound in
the cities. It is the weakness of human nature, along with the
economic pressure, that accounts for the drunkenness, vice, and crime
that constitute so large a problem of city life and block the path of
society's development. They are a part of the imperfection that is
characteristic of this stage of human progress, and especially of the
twentieth-century city. They are not incurable evils, they demand a
remedy, and they furnish an inspiring object of study for the
practitioner of social disease.
He who escapes business and moral failure has open wide before him in
the city the door of opportunity. He may, if he will, meet all the
world and his wife in places where the people gather, touching elbows
with individuals from every quarter of the country, with persons of
every class and variety of attainment, with believers of every
political, æsthetic, and religious creed. In such an atmosphere his
mind expands like the exotic plant in a conservatory. His individual
prejudices fall from him like worn-out leaves from the trees. He
begins to realize that other people have good grounds for their
opinions and practices that differ from his own, and that in most
cases they are better than his, and he quickly adjusts himself to
them. The city stimulates life by its greater social resources, and
forms within its borders more highly developed human groups. Beyond
the material comforts and luxuries that the city supplies are the
social values that it creates in the associations and organizations of
men and women allied for the philanthropic, remedial, and
constructive purposes that are looking forward to the slow progress of
mankind toward its highest ideals.
183. =The City as a Social Centre.=--The city is an epitome of
national and even world life, as the farm is community life in
miniature. Its social life is infinitely complex, as compared with the
rural village. Distances that stretch out for miles in the country,
over fields and woods and hills, are measured in the city by blocks of
dwellings and public buildings, with intersecting streets, stretching
away over a level area as far as the eye can see. Social institutions
correspond to the needs of the inhabitants, and while there are a few
like those in the country, because certain human needs are the same,
there is a much larger variety in the city because of the great number
of people of different sorts and the complexity of their demands.
Every city has its business centres for finance, for wholesale trade,
and for retail exchange, its centres for government, and for
manufacturing; it has its railroad terminals and often its wharves and
shipping, its libraries, museums, schools, and churches. All these are
gathering places for groups of people. But there is no one social
centre for all classes; rather, the people of the city are associated
in an infinite number of large and small groups, according to the
mutual interests of their members. But if the city has no four
corners, it is itself a centre for a large district of country. As the
village is the nucleus that binds together outlying farms and hamlets,
so the city has far-flung connections with rural villages and small
towns in a radius of many miles.
184. =The Importance of the City.=--The city has grown up because it
was located conveniently for carrying on manufacturing and trade on a
large scale. It is growing in importance because this is primarily an
industrial age. Its population is increasing relatively to the rural
population, and certain cities are growing enormously, in spite of Mr.
Bryce's warning that it is unfortunate for any city to grow beyond a
population of one hundred thousand. The importance of the city as a
social centre is apparent when we remember that in America, according
to the census of 1910, 46.3 per cent of the people live in
communities of more than 2,500 population, while 31 per cent of the
whole are inhabitants of cities of 25,000 or more population. When
nearly one-third of all the people of the nation live in communities
of such size, the large city becomes a type of social centre of great
significance. At the prevailing rate of growth a majority of the
American people will soon be dwelling in cities, and there seems to be
no reason to expect a reversal of tendency because modern invention is
making it possible for fewer persons on the farm to supply the
agricultural products that city people need. This means, of course,
that the temper and outlook of mind will be increasingly urban, that
social institutions generally will have the characteristics of the
city, that the National Government will be controlled by that part of
the American citizens that so far has been least successful in
governing itself well.
185. =Municipal History.=--The city has come to stay, and there is in
it much of good. It has come into existence to satisfy human need, and
while it may change in character it is not likely to be less important
than now. Its history reveals its reasons for existence and indicates
the probabilities of its future. The ancient city was an overgrown
village that had special advantages for communication and
transportation of goods, or that was located conveniently for
protection against neighboring enemies. The cities of Greece
maintained their independence as political units, but most social
centres that at first were autonomous became parts of a larger state.
The great cities were the capitals of nations or empires, and to
strike at them in war was to aim at the vitals of an organism. Such
were Thebes and Memphis in Egypt, Babylon and Nineveh in the
Tigris-Euphrates valley, Carthage and Rome in the West. Such are
Vienna and Berlin, Paris and London to-day. Lesser cities were centres
of trade, like Corinth or Byzantium, or of culture, such as Athens.
Such was Florence in the Middle Ages, and such are Liverpool and
Leipzig to-day. The municipalities of the Roman Empire marked the
climax of civic development in antiquity.
The social and industrial life of the Middle Ages was rural. Only a
few cities survived the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, and new
centres of importance did not arise until trade revived and the
manufacturing industry began to concentrate in growing towns about the
time of the Crusades. Then artisans and tradesmen found their way to
points convenient to travel and trade, and a city population began the
processes of aggregation and congregation. They grew up rough in
manners and careless of sanitation and hygiene, but they developed
efficiency in local government and an inclination to demand civic
rights from those who had any outside claim of control; they began to
take pride in their public halls and churches, and presently they
founded schools and universities. Wealth increased rapidly, and some
of the cities, like the Hansa towns of the north, and Venice and Genoa
in the south, commanded extensive and profitable trade routes.
Modern cities owe their growth to the industrial revolution and the
consequent increase of commerce. The industrial centres of northern
England are an illustration of the way in which economic forces have
worked in the building of cities. At the middle of the eighteenth
century that part of Great Britain was far less populous and
progressive than the eastern and southern counties. It had small
representation in Parliament. It was provincial in thought, speech,
and habits. It was given over to agriculture, small trade, and rude
home manufacture. Presently came the revolutionary inventions of
textile machinery, of the steam-engine, and of processes for
extracting and utilizing coal and iron. The heavy, costly machinery
required capital and the factory. Concentrated capital and machinery
required workers. The working people were forced to give up their
small home manufacturing and their unprofitable farming and move to
the industrial barracks and workrooms of the manufacturing centres.
These centres sprang up where the tools were most easily and cheaply
obtained, and where lay the coal-beds and the iron ore to be worked
over into machinery. From Newcastle on the east, through Sheffield,
Leeds, Birmingham, and Manchester, to Liverpool on the west and
Glasgow over the Scottish border grew up a chain of thriving cities,
and later their people were given the ballot that was taken from
certain of the depopulated rural villages. These cities have obtained
a voice of power in the councils of the nation. In America the
industrial era came somewhat later, but the same process of
centralizing industry went on at the waterfalls of Eastern rivers, at
railroad centres, and at ocean, lake, and Gulf ports. Commerce has
accelerated the growth of many of these manufacturing towns. Increase
of industry and population has been especially rapid in the great
ports that front the two oceans, through whose gates pour the floods
of immigrants, and in the interior cities like Chicago, that lie at
especially favorable points for railway, lake, or river traffic. As in
the Middle Ages, universities grew because teachers went where
students were gathered, and students were attracted to the place where
teachers were to be found, so in the larger cities the more people
there are and the more numerous is the population, the greater the
amount of business. It pays to be near the centre of things.
READING REFERENCES
HOWE: _The Modern City and Its Problems_, pages 9-49.
GILLETTE: _Constructive Rural Sociology_, pages 32-46.
STRONG: _Our World_, pages 228-283.
NEARING AND WATSON: _Economics_, pages 123-132.
GIRY AND REVILLE: _Emancipation of the Mediæval Towns._
BLISS: _New Encyclopedia of Social Reform_, art. "Cities."
CHAPTER XXVI
THE MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISE
186. =Preponderance of Economic Interests.=--Such a social centre as
the city has several functions to perform for its inhabitants. Though
primarily concerned with business, the people have other interests to
be conserved; the city, therefore, has governmental, educational, and
recreational functions as a social organization, and within its limits
all kinds of human concerns find their sponsors and supporters.
Unquestionably, the economic interests are preponderant. On the
principle that social structure corresponds to function, the structure
of the city lends itself to the performance of the economic function.
Business streets are the principal thoroughfares. Districts near the
great factories are crowded with the tenements that shelter the
workers. Little room is left for breathing-places in town, and little
leisure in which to breathe. Government is usually in the hands of
professional politicians who are too willing to take their orders from
the cohort captains of business. Morals, æsthetics, and recreation are
all subordinate to business. Even religion is mainly an affair of
Sunday, and appears to be of relatively small consequence compared
with business or recreation. The great problems of the city are
consequently economic at bottom. Poverty and misery, drunkenness,
unemployment, and crime are all traceable in part, at least, to
economic deficiency. Economic readjustments constitute the crying need
of the twentieth-century city.
187. =The Manufacturing Industry.=--It is the function of the
agriculturist and the herdsman, the miner and the lumberman, to
produce the raw material. The sailor and the train-hand, the
longshoreman and the teamster, transport them to the industrial
centres. It is the business of the manufacturer and his employees to
turn them into the finished product for the use of society.
Manufacturing is the leading occupation in thousands of busy towns and
small cities of all the industrial nations of western Europe and
America, and shares with commerce and trade as a leading enterprise in
the cosmopolitan centres. The merchant or financier who thinks his
type of emporium or exchange is the only municipal centre of
consequence, needs only to mount to the top of a tall building or
climb a suburban hill where he can look off over the city and see the
many smoking chimneys, to realize the importance of the factory. With
thousands of tenement-house dwellers it is as natural to fall into the
occupation of a factory hand as in the rural regions for the youth to
become a farmer. The growing child who leaves school to help support
the family has never learned a craftsman's trade, but he may find a
subordinate place among the mill or factory hands until he gains
enough skill to handle a machine. From that time until age compels him
to join the ranks of the unemployed he is bound to his machine, as
firmly as the mediæval serf was bound to the soil. Theoretically he is
free to sell his labor in the highest market and to cross the
continent if he will, but actually he is the slave of his employer,
for he and his family are dependent upon his daily wage, and he cannot
afford to lose that wage in order to make inquiries about the labor
market elsewhere. Theoretically he is a citizen possessed of the
franchise and equal in privilege and importance to his employer as a
member of society, but actually he must vote for the party or the man
who is most likely to benefit him economically, and he knows that he
occupies a position of far less importance politically and socially
than his employer. Employment is an essential in making a living, but
it is an instrument that cuts two ways--it establishes an aristocracy
of wealth and privilege for the employer and a servile class of
employees who often are little better than peasants of the belt and
wheel.
188. =History of Manufacturing.=--The history of the manufacturing
industry is a curious succession of enslavement and emancipation.
Until within a century and a half it was closely connected with the
home. Primitive women fashioned the utensils and clothing of the
primitive family, and when slaves were introduced into the household
it became their task to perform those functions. The slave was a
bondman. Neither his person nor his time was his own, and he could not
hold property; but he was taken care of, fed and clothed and housed,
and by a humane master was kindly treated and even made a friend. When
the slave became a serf on the manorial estate of mediæval Europe,
manufacturing was still a household employment and old methods were
still in use. These sufficed, as there was little outside demand from
potential buyers, due to general poverty and lack of the means of
exchange and transportation. Certain industries became localized, like
the forging of iron instruments at the smithy and the grinding of
grain at the mill, and the monastery buildings included apartments for
various kinds of handicraft, but the factory was not yet. Then
artisans found their way to the town, associated themselves with
others of their craft, and accepted the relation of journeyman in the
employ of a master workman; there, too, the young apprentice learned
his trade without remuneration. The group was a small one. For greater
strength in local rivalries they organized craft guilds or
associations, and established over all members convenient rules and
restrictions. Increasing opportunities for exchange of goods
stimulated production, but the output of hand labor was limited in
amount. The position of the craftsman locally was increasingly
important, and his fortunes were improving. The craft guilds
successfully disputed with their rivals for a share in the government
of the city; there was democracy in the guild, for master and
journeyman were both included, and they had interests much in common.
A journeyman confidently expected to become a master in a workshop of
his own.
189. =Alteration of Status.=--Under the factory system the employee
becomes one of many industrial units, having no social or guild
relation to his employer, receiving a money wage as a quit claim from
his employer, and dependent upon himself for labor and a living. For
a time after the factory system came into vogue there were small shops
where the employer busied himself among his men and personally
superintended them, but the large factory tends to displace the small
workshop, the corporation takes the place of the individual employer,
and the employee becomes as impersonal a cog in the labor system as is
any part of the machine at which he works. It used to be the case that
a thrifty workman might hope to become in the future an employer, but
now he has become a permanent member of a distinct class, for the
large capital required for manufacturing is beyond his reach. The
manufacturing industry is continually passing under the management of
fewer individuals, while the number of operatives in each factory
tends to increase. With concentration of management goes concentration
of wealth, and the gap widens between rich and poor. Out of the modern
factory system has come the industrial problem with all its varieties
of skilled and unskilled work, woman and child labor, sweating, wages,
hours and conditions of labor, unemployment, and other difficulties.
190. =The Working Grind.=--There are many manufacturing towns and
small cities that are built on one industry. Thousands of workers,
young and old, answer the morning summons of the whistle and pour into
the factory for a day's labor at the machine. A brief recess at noon
and the work is renewed for the second half of the day. Weary at
night, the workers tramp home to the tenements, or hang to the trolley
strap that is the symbol of the five-cent commuter, and recuperate for
the next day's toil. They are cogs in the great wheel of industry,
units in the great sum of human energy, indispensable elements in the
progress of economic success. Sometimes they seem less prized than the
costly machines at which they work, sometimes they fall exhausted in
the ranks, as the soldier in the trenches drops under the attack, but
they are absolutely essential to wealth and they are learning that
they are indispensable to one another. In the development of social
organization the working people are gaining a larger part. The
factory is educating them to a consciousness of the solidarity of
their class interests. All class organizations have their faults, but
they teach their members group values and the dependence of the
individual on his fellows.
191. =The Benefits of the New Industry to the Workers.=--It must not
be supposed that the industrial revolution and the age of machinery
have been a social misfortune. The benefits that have come to the
laboring people, as well as to their employers, must be put into the
balance against the evils. There is first of all the great increase of
manufactured products that have been shared in by the workers and the
greatly reduced price of many necessaries of life, such as matches,
pins, and cooking utensils. Invention has eased many kinds of labor
and taken them away from the overburdened housewife, and new machinery
is constantly lightening the burden of the farm and the home.
Invention has broadened the scope of labor, opening continually new
avenues to the workers. It is difficult to see how the rapidly
increasing number of people in the United States could have found
employment without the typewriter, the automobile, and the numerous
varieties of electrical application. The great number of modern
conveniences that have come to be regarded as necessaries even in the
homes of the working people, and the local improvements in streets and
sidewalks, schools and playgrounds that are possible because of
increasing wealth, are all due to the new type of industry.
Conditions of labor are better. Where building laws are in force,
factories are lighter, cleaner, and better ventilated than were the
houses and shops of the pre-factory age, and the hours of labor that
are necessary to earn a living have been greatly reduced in most
industries. There have been mental and moral gains, also. It requires
mental application to handle machinery. An uneducated immigrant may
soon learn to handle a simple machine, but the complicated machinery
that the better-paid workmen tend requires intelligence, care, and
sobriety. The age of machinery has brought with it emancipation from
slavery, indenture, and imprisonment for debt, and has made possible
a new status for the worker and his children. The laborer in America
is a citizen with a vote and a right to his own opinion equal to that
of his employer; he has time and money enough to buy and read the
newspaper; and he is encouraged and helped to educate his children and
to prepare them for a place in the sun that is ampler than his own.
READING REFERENCES
CHEYNEY: _Industrial and Social History of England_, pages
199-239.
NEARING AND WATSON: _Economics_, pages 206-212, 256-266.
HENDERSON: _Social Elements_, pages 143-156.
ADAMS AND SUMNER: _Labor Problems_, pages 3-15.
BOGART: _Economic History of the United States_, pages 130-169,
356-399.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM
192. =What It Means.=--The industrial problem as a whole is a problem
of adjusting the relations of employer and employee to each other and
to the rapidly changing age in the midst of which industry exists. It
is a problem that cannot be solved in a moment, for it has grown out
of previous conditions and relationships. It must be considered in its
causes, its alignments, the difficulties of each party, the efforts at
solution, and the principles and theories that are being worked out
for the settlement of the problem.
193. =Conflict Between Industrial Groups.=--The industrial problem is
not entirely an economic problem, but it is such primarily. The
function of employer and employee is to produce material goods that
have value for exchange. Both enter into the economic relation for
what they can get out of it in material gain. Selfish desire tends to
overcome any consideration of each other's needs or of their mutual
interests. There is a continual conflict between the wage-earner who
wants to make a living and the employer who wants to make money, and
neither stops long to consider the welfare of society as a whole when
any specific issue arises. The conflict between individuals has
developed into a class problem in which the organized forces of labor
confront the organized forces of capital, with little disposition on
either side to surrender an advantage once gained or to put an end to
the conflict by a frank recognition of each other's rights.
It is not strange that this conflict has continued to vex society.
Conflict is one of the characteristics of imperfectly adjusted groups.
It seems to be a necessary preliminary to co-operation, as war is. It
will continue until human beings are educated to see that the
interests of all are paramount to the interests of any group, and
that in the long run any group will gain more of real value for itself
by taking account of the interests of a rival. Railroad history in
recent years has made it very plain that neither railway employees nor
the public have gained as much by hectoring the railroad corporations
as either would have gained by considering the interests of the
railroad as well as its own.
Industrial conflict is due in great part to the unwillingness of the
employer to deal fairly by his employee. There have been worthy
exceptions, of course, but capitalists in the main have not felt a
responsibility to consider the interests of the workers. It has been a
constant temptation to take advantage of the power of wealth for the
exploitation of the wage-earning class. Unfortunately, the modern
industrial period began with economic control in the hands of the
employer, for with the transfer of industry to the factory the laborer
was powerless to make terms with the employer. Unfortunately, also,
the disposition of society was to let alone the relations of master
and dependent in accordance with the _laisser-faire_ theory of the
economists of that period. Government was slow to legislate in favor
of the helpless employee, and the abuses of the time were many. The
process of adjustment has been a difficult one, and experiment has
been necessary to show what was really helpful and practicable.
194. =More than an Industrial Problem.=--In the process of experiment
it has become clear that the industrial problem is more than an
economic problem; secondarily, it is the problem of making a living
that will contribute to the enrichment of life. It is not merely the
adjustment of the wage scale to the profits of the capitalist by class
conflict or peaceful bargaining, nor is it the problem of unemployment
or official labor. The primary task may be to secure a better
adjustment of the economic interests of employer and employee through
an improvement of the wage system, but in the larger sense the
industrial problem is a social and moral one. Sociologists reckon
among the social forces a distinction between elemental desires and
broader interests. Wages are able to satisfy the elemental desires of
hunger and sex feeling by making it possible for a man to marry and
bring up a family and get enough to eat; but there are larger
questions of freedom, justice, comity, personal and social development
that are involved in the labor problem. If wages are so small, or
hours so long, or factory conditions so bad that health is affected,
proper education made impossible, and recreation and religion
prevented, the individual and society suffer much more than with
reference to the elemental desires. The industrial problem is,
therefore, a complex problem, and not one that can be easily or
quickly solved. Although it is necessary to remember all as parts of
one problem of industry, it is a convenience to remember that it is:
(1) An economic problem, involving wages, hours, and conditions of
labor.
(2) A social problem, involving the mental and physical health and the
social welfare of both the individual worker, the family, and the
community.
(3) An ethical problem, involving fairness, justice, comity, and
freedom to the employer, the employee, and the public.
(4) A complex problem, involving many specific problems, chief of
which are the labor of women and children, immigrant labor, prison
labor, organization of labor, insurance, unemployment, industrial
education, the conduct of labor warfare, and the interest of the
public in the industrial problem.
195. =Characteristics of Factory Life.=--Group life in the factory is
not very different in characteristics from group life everywhere. It
is an active life, the hand and brain of the worker keeping pace with
the speedy machine, all together shaping the product that goes to
exchange and storage. It is a social life, many individuals working in
one room, and all the operatives contributing jointly to the making of
the product. It is under control. Captains of industry and their
lieutenants give direction to a group that has been thoroughly and
efficiently organized. Without control and organization industry could
not be successfully carried on, but it is open to question whether
industrial control should not be more democratic, shared in by
representatives of the workers and of the public as well as by the
representatives of corporate capital or a single owner. It is a life
of change. It does not seem so to the operative who turns out the same
kind of a machine product day after day, sometimes by the million
daily, but the personnel of the workers changes, and even the machines
from time to time give way to others of an improved type. It is a life
that has its peculiar weaknesses. The relations of employer and
employee are not cordial; the health and comfort of the worker are
often disregarded; the hours of labor are too long or the wages too
small; the whole working staff is driven at too high speed; the whole
process is on a mechanical rather than a human basis, and the material
product is of more concern than the human producer. These weaknesses
are due to the concentration of control in the hands of employers. The
industrial problem is, therefore, largely a problem of control.
196. =Democratizing Industry.=--When the modern industrial system
began in the eighteenth century the democratic principle played a
small part in social relations. Parental authority in the family, the
master's authority in the school, hierarchical authority in the
church, official authority in the local community, and monarchical
authority in the nation, were almost universal. It is not strange that
the authority of the capitalist in his business was unquestioned. Only
government had the right to interfere in the interest of the lower
classes, and government had little care for that interest. The
democratic principle has been gaining ground in family and school,
state and church; it has found grudging recognition in industry. This
is because the clash of economic interests is keenest in the factory.
But even there the grip of privilege has loosened, and the possibility
of democratizing industry as government has been democratized is being
widely discussed. There is difference of opinion as to how this should
be done. The socialist believes that control can be transferred to the
people in no other way than by collective ownership. Others
progressively inclined accept the principle of government regulation
and believe that in that way the people, through their political
representatives, can control the owners and managers. Others think
that the best results can be obtained by giving a place on the
governing board of an industry to working men alongside the
representatives of capital and permitting them to work out their
problems on a mutual basis. Each of these methods has been tried, but
without demonstrating conclusively the superiority of any one.
Whatever method may come into widest vogue, there must be a
recognition of the principle of democratic interest and democratic
control. No one class in society can dictate permanently to the people
as a whole. Industry is the concern of all, and all must have a share
in managing it for the benefit of all.
197. =Legislation.=--The history of industrial reform is first of all
a story of legislative interference with arbitrary management. When
Great Britain early in the nineteenth century overstepped the bounds
of the let-alone policy and began to legislate for the protection of
the employee, it was but a resumption of a paternal policy that had
been general in Europe before. But formerly government had interfered
in behalf of the employing class, now it was for the people who were
under the control of the exploiting capitalist. The abuses of child
labor were the first to receive attention, and Parliament reduced the
hours of child apprentices to twelve a day. Once begun, restriction
was extended. Beginning in 1833, under the leadership of Lord
Shaftesbury, the working man's friend, the labor of children under
thirteen was reduced to forty-eight hours a week, and children under
nine were forbidden to work at all. The work of young people under
eighteen was limited to sixty-nine hours a week, and then to ten hours
a day; women were included in the last provision. These early laws
were applicable to factories for weaving goods only, but they were
extended later to all kinds of manufacturing and mining. These laws
were not always strictly enforced, but to get them through Parliament
at all was an achievement. Later legislation extended the ten-hour law
to men; then the time was reduced to nine hours, and in many trades
to eight.
In the United States the need of legislation was far less urgent.
Employers could not be so masterful in the treatment of their
employees or so parsimonious in their distribution of wages, because
the laborer always had the option of leaving the factory for the farm,
and land was cheap. Women and children were not exploited in the mines
as in England, pauper labor was not so available, and such trades as
chimney-sweeping were unknown. Then, too, by the time there was much
need for legislation, the spirit of justice was becoming wide-spread
and legislatures responded more quickly to the appeal for protective
legislation. It was soon seen that the industrial problem was not
simply how much an employee should receive for a given piece of work
or time, but how factory labor affected working people of different
sex or age, and how these effects reacted upon society. Those who
pressed legislation believed that the earnings of a child were not
worth while when the child lost all opportunity for education and
healthful physical exercise, and that woman's labor was not profitable
if it deprived her of physical health and nervous energy, and weakened
by so much the stamina of the next generation. The thought of social
welfare seconded the thought of individual welfare and buttressed the
claims of a particular class to economic consideration in such
questions as proper wages. Massachusetts was the first American State
to introduce labor legislation in 1836; in 1869 the same State
organized the first labor bureau, to be followed by a National bureau
in 1884, four years later converted into a government department.
Among the favorite topics of legislation have been the limitation of
woman and child labor, the regulation of wage payments, damages and
similar concerns, protection from dangerous machinery and adequate
factory inspection, and the appointment of boards of arbitration. The
doctrine of the liability of employers in case of accident to persons
in their employ has been increasingly accepted since Great Britain
adopted an employers' liability act in 1880, and since 1897 compulsory
insurance of employees has spread from the continent of Europe to
England and the United States.
198. =The Organization of Labor.=--These measures of protection and
relief have been due in part to the disinterested activity of
philanthropists, and in part to the efforts of organized labor, backed
up by public opinion; occasionally capitalists have voluntarily
improved conditions or increased wages. The greatest agitation and
pressure has come from the labor-unions. Unlike the mediæval guilds,
these unions exist for the purpose of opposing the employer, and are
formed in recognition of the principle that a group can obtain
guarantees that an individual is helpless to secure. Like-mindedness
holds the group together, and consciousness of common interests and
mutual duties leads to sacrifice of individual benefit for the sake of
the group. The moral effect of this sense and practice of mutual
responsibility has been a distinct social gain, and warrants the hope
that a time may come when this consciousness of mutual interests may
extend until it includes the employing class as in the old-time guild.
The modern labor-union is a product of the nineteenth century. Until
1850 there was much experimenting, and a revolutionary sentiment was
prevalent both in America and abroad. The first union movement united
all classes of wage-earners in a nation-wide reform, and aimed at
social gains, such as education as well as economic gains. It hoped
much from political activity, spoke often of social ideals, and did
not disdain to co-operate with any good agency, even a friendly
employer. Class feeling was less keen than later. But it became
apparent that the lines of organization were too loose, that specific
economic reforms must be secured rather than a whole social programme,
and that little could probably be expected from political activity.
Labor began to organize on a basis of trades, class feeling grew
stronger, and trials of strength with employers showed the value of
collective bargaining and fixed agreements. Out of the period grew the
American Federation of Labor. More recently has come the industrial
union, which includes all ranks of labor, like the early labor-union,
and is especially beneficial to the unskilled. It is much more radical
in its methods of operation, and is represented by such notorious
organizations as the United Mine Workers and the International Workers
of the World.
199. =Strikes.=--The principle of organization of the trade-union is
democratic. The unit of organization is the local group of workers
which is represented on the national governing bodies; in matters of
important legislation, a referendum is allowed. Necessarily, executive
power is strongly centralized, for the labor-union is a militant
organization, but much is left to the local union. Though peaceful
methods are employed when possible, warlike operations are frequent.
The favorite weapon is the strike, or refusal to work, and this is
often so disastrous to the employer that it results in the speedy
granting of the laborers' demands. It requires good judgment on the
part of the representatives of labor when to strike and how to conduct
the campaign to a successful conclusion, but statistics compiled by
the National Labor Bureau between 1881 and 1905 indicate that a
majority of strikes ordered by authority of the organization were at
least partially successful.
The successful issue of strikes has demonstrated their value as
weapons of warfare, and they have been accepted by society as
allowable, but they tend to violence, and produce feelings of hatred
and distrust, and would not be countenanced except as measures of
coercion to secure needed reforms. The financial loss due to the
cessation of labor foots up to a large total, but in comparison with
the total amount of wages and profits it is small, and often the
periods of manufacturing activity are so redistributed through the
year that there is really no net loss. Yet a strike cannot be looked
upon in any other way than as a misfortune. Like war, it breaks up
peaceful if not friendly relations, and tends to destroy the
solidarity of society. It tends to strengthen class feeling, which,
like caste, is a handicap to the progress of mankind. Though it may
benefit the working man, it is harmful to the general public, which
suffers from the interruption of industry and sometimes of
transportation, and whose business is disturbed by the blow to
confidence.
200. =Peaceful Methods of Settlement.=--Strikes are so unsettling to
industry that all parties find it better to use diplomacy when
possible, or to submit a dispute to arbitration rather than to resort
to violence. It is in industrial concerns very much as it is in
international politics, and methods used in one circle suggest methods
in the other. Formerly war was a universal practice, and of frequent
occurrence, and duelling was common in the settlement of private
quarrels; now the duel is virtually obsolete, and war is invoked only
as a last resort. Difficulties are smoothed out through the diplomatic
representatives that every nation keeps at the national capitals, and
when they cannot settle an issue the matter is referred to an umpire
satisfactory to both sides. Similarly in industrial disputes the
tendency is away from the strike; when an issue arises representatives
of both sides get together and try to find a way out. There is no good
reason why an employer should refuse to recognize an organization or
receive its representatives to conference, especially if the employer
is a corporation which must work through representatives. Collective
bargaining is in harmony with the spirit of the times and fair for
all. Conference demands frankness on the part of all concerned. It
leads more quickly to understanding and harmony if each party knows
the situation that confronts the other. If the parties immediately
concerned cannot reach an agreement, a third party may mediate and try
to conciliate opposition. If that fails, the next natural step is
voluntarily to refer the matter in dispute to arbitration, or by legal
regulation to compel the disputants to submit to arbitration.
201. =Boards of Conciliation.=--The history of peaceful attempts to
settle industrial disputes in the United States helps to explain the
methods now frequently employed. In 1888, following a series of
disastrous labor conflicts, Congress provided by legislation for the
appointment of a board of three commissioners, which should make
thorough investigation of particular disputes and publish its
findings. The class of disputes was limited to interstate commerce
concerns and the commissioners did not constitute a permanent board,
but the legislative act marked the beginning of an attempt at
conciliation. Ten years later the Erdman Act established a permanent
board of conciliation to deal with similar cases when asked to do so
by one of the parties, and in case of failure to propose arbitration;
it provided, also, for a board of arbitration. Meantime the States
passed various acts for the pacification of industrial disputes; the
most popular have been the appointment of permanent boards of
conciliation and arbitration, which have power to mediate,
investigate, and recommend a settlement. These have been supplemented
by State and national commissions, with a variety of functions and
powers, including investigation and regulation. The experience of
government boards has not been long enough to prove whether they are
likely to be of permanent value, but the results are encouraging to
those who believe that through conciliation and arbitration the
industrial problem can best be solved.
202. =Public Welfare.=--There can be no reasonable complaint of the
interference of the government. The government, whether of State or
nation, represents the people, and the people have a large stake in
every industrial dispute. Society is so interdependent that thousands
are affected seriously by every derangement of industry. This is
especially true of the stoppage of railways, mines, or large
manufacturing establishments, when food and fuel cannot be obtained,
and the delicate mechanism of business is upset. At best the public is
seriously inconvenienced. It is therefore proper that the public
should organize on its part to minimize the derangement of its
interests. In 1901 a National Civic Federation was formed by those who
were interested in industrial peace, and who were large-minded enough
to see that it could not be obtained permanently unless recognition
should be given to all three of the interested parties--the employers,
the employees, and the public. Many small employers of labor are
bitterly opposed to any others than themselves having anything to say
about the methods of conducting industry, but the men of large
experience are satisfied that the day of independence has passed. This
organization includes on its committees representatives of all
parties, and has helped in the settlement of a number of
controversies.
203. =Voluntary Efforts of Employers.=--It is a hopeful sign that
employers themselves are voluntarily seeking the betterment of their
employees. It is a growing custom for corporations to provide for the
comfort, health, and recreation of men and women in their employ.
Rest-rooms, reading-rooms, baths, and gymnasiums are provided;
athletic clubs are organized; lunches are furnished at cost;
continuation schools are arranged. Some manufacturing establishments
employ a welfare manager or secretary whose business it shall be to
devise ways of improving working conditions. When these helps and
helpers are supplied as philanthropy, they are not likely to be
appreciated, for working people do not want to be patronized; if
maintained on a co-operative basis, they are more acceptable. But the
employer is beginning to see that it is good business to keep the
workers contented and healthy. It adds to their efficiency, and in
these days when scientific management is putting so much emphasis on
efficiency, any measures that add to industrial welfare are not to be
overlooked.
204. =Profit-Sharing.=--Another method of conferring benefit upon the
employee is profit-sharing. By means of cash payment or stock bonuses,
he is induced to work better and to be more careful of tools and
machinery, while his expectation of a share in the success of the
business stimulates his interest and his energy and keeps him better
natured. The objections to the plan are that it is paternalistic, for
the business is under the control of the employer and the amount of
profits depends on his honesty, good management, and philanthropic
disposition. There are instances where it has worked admirably, and
from the point of view of the employer it is often worth while,
because it tends to weaken unionism; but it cannot be regarded as a
cure for industrial ills, because it is a remedy of uncertain value,
and at best is not based on the principle of industrial democracy.
205. =Principles for the Solution of the Industrial Problem.=--Three
principles contend for supremacy in all discussions and efforts to
solve the industrial problem. The first is the doctrine of _employer's
control_. This is the old principle that governed industrial relations
until governmental legislation and trade-union activity compelled a
recognition of the worker's rights. By that principle the capitalist
and the laborer are free to work together or to fight each other, to
make what arrangements they can about wages, hours, and health
conditions, to share in profits if the employer is kindly disposed,
but always with labor in a position of subordination and without
recognized rights, as in the old political despotisms, which were
sometimes benevolent but more often ruthless. Only the selfish,
stubborn capitalist expects to see such a system permanently restored.
The second principle is the doctrine of _collective control_. This
theory is a natural reaction from the other, but goes to an opposite
extreme. It is the theory of the syndicalist, who prefers to smash
machinery before he takes control, and of the socialist, who contents
himself with declaring the right of the worker to all productive
property, and agitates peacefully for the abolition of the wage system
in favor of a working man's commonwealth. The socialist blames the
wage system for all the evils of the present industrial order, regards
the trade-unions as useful industrial agencies of reform, but urges a
resort to the ballot as a necessary means of getting control of
industry. There would come first the socialization of natural
resources and transportation systems, then of public utilities and
large industries, and by degrees the socialization of all industry
would become complete. Then on a democratic basis the workers would
choose their industrial officers, arrange their hours, wages, and
conditions of labor, and provide for the needs of every individual
without exploitation, overexertion, or lack of opportunity to work.
Serious objections are made to this programme for productive
enterprise on the ground of the difficulty of effecting the transfer
of the means of production and exchange, and of executive management
without the incentive of abundant pecuniary returns for efficient
superintendency; even more because of the natural selfishness of human
beings who seek personal preferment, and the natural inertia of those
who know that they will be taken care of whether they exert themselves
or not. More serious still are the difficulties that lie in the way of
a satisfactory distribution of the rewards of labor, for there is sure
to be serious difference of opinion over the proper share of each
person who contributes to the work of production, and no method of
initiative, referendum, and recall would avail to smooth out the
difficulties that would be sure to arise.
206. =Co-operation.=--The third principle is _co-operation_. The
principle of co-operation is as important to society as the principle
of division of labor. By means of co-operative activity in the home
the family is able to maintain itself as a useful group. By means of
co-operation in thinly settled communities local prosperity is
possible without any individual possessing large resources. But in
industry where competition rules and the aim of the employer is the
exploitation of the worker, general comfort is sacrificed for the
enrichment of the few and wealth flaunts itself in the midst of
misery. There will always be a problem in the industrial relations of
human beings until there is a recognition of this fundamental
principle of co-operation. The application of the principle to the
complicated system of modern industrialism is not easy, and attempts
at co-operative production by working men with small and incapable
management have not been successful, but it is becoming clear that as
a principle of industrial relation between classes it is to obtain
increasing recognition. If it is proper to admit the claims of the
employer, the employee, and the public to an interest in every labor
issue, then it is proper to look for the co-operation of them all in
the regulation of industry. The usual experiments in co-operative
industry have been the voluntary organization of production, exchange,
or distribution by a group of middle or working class people to save
the large expense of superintendents or middlemen. Co-operation in
production has usually failed; in America co-operative banks and
building associations, creameries, and fruit-growing associations
have had considerable success, and in Europe co-operative stores and
bakeries have had a large vogue in England and Belgium, and
co-operative agriculture in Denmark. But industry on a large scale
requires large capital, efficient management, capable, interested
workmanship, and elimination of waste in material and human life. To
this end it needs the good-will of all parties and the assistance of
government. Unemployment, for instance, may be taken care of by giving
every worker a good industrial education and doing away with
inefficiency, and then establishing a wide-spread system of labor
exchanges to adjust the mass of labor to specific requirements.
Industry is such a big and important matter that nothing less than the
co-operation of the whole of society can solve its problems.
This co-operation, to be effective, requires a genuine partnership, in
which the body of stockholders and the body of working men plan
together, work together, and share together, with the assistance of
government commissions and boards that continually adjust and, if
necessary, regulate the processes of production and distribution on a
basis of equity, to be determined by a consensus of expert opinion. In
such a system there is no radical derangement of existing industry, no
destruction of initiative, no expulsion of expert management or
confiscation of property. Individual and corporate ownership continue,
the wage system is not abolished, efficient administration is still to
be obtained, but the body of control is not a board of directors
responsible only to the stockholders of the corporation, and managing
affairs primarily for their own gain, but it consists of
representatives of those who contribute money, superintendence, and
labor, together with or regulated by a group of government experts,
all of whom are honestly seeking the good of all parties and enjoying
their full confidence. Toward such an outcome of present strife many
interested social reformers are working, and it is to be hoped that
its advantages will soon appear so great that neither extreme
alternative principle will have to be tried out thoroughly before
there will be a general acceptance of the co-operative idea. It may
seem utopian to those who are familiar with the selfishness and
antagonism that have marked the history of the last hundred years, but
it is already being tried out here and there, and it is the only
principle that accords with the experiences and results of social
evolution in other groups. It is the highest law that the struggle for
individual power fails before the struggle for the good of the group,
and a contest for the success of the few must give way to co-operation
for the good of all.
READING REFERENCES
ELLWOOD: _Sociology in Its Psychological Aspects_, pages 188-194.
ADAMS AND SUMNER: _Labor Problems_, pages 175-286, 379-432,
461-500.
_Bulletins of the United States Department of Labor._
CARLTON: _History and Problems of Organized Labor_, pages 228-261.
GLADDEN: _The Labor Question_, pages 77-113.
HENDERSON: _Social Elements_, pages 167-206.
CROSS: _Essentials of Socialism_, pages 11, 12, 106-111.
WYCKOFF: _The Workers._
CHAPTER XXVIII
EXCHANGE AND TRANSPORTATION
207. =Mercantile Exchange.=--Important as is the manufacturing
industry in the life of the city, it is only a part of the economic
activity that is continually going on in its streets and buildings.
The mercantile houses that carry on wholesale and retail trade, the
towering office-buildings, and the railway and steamship terminals
contain numerous groups of workers all engaged in the social task of
supplying human wants, while streets and railways are avenues of
traffic. The manufacture of goods is but a part of the process;
distribution is as important as production. All these sources of
supply are connected with banks and trust companies that furnish money
and credit for business of every kind. The economic activities of a
city form an intricate network in which the people are involved.
Hardly second in importance to manufacturing is mercantile exchange.
The manufacturer, after he has paid his workers, owns the goods that
have been produced, but to get his living he must sell them. To do
this he establishes relations with the merchant. Their relations are
carried on through agents, some of whom travel from place to place
taking orders, others establish office headquarters in the larger
centres of trade. Once the merchant has opened his store or shop and
purchased his goods he seeks to establish trade relations with as many
individual customers as he can attract. Mercantile business is carried
on in two kinds of stores, those which supply one kind of goods in
wholesale or retail quantities, like groceries or dry goods, and those
which maintain numerous departments for different kinds of
manufactured goods. Large department stores have become a special
feature of mercantile exchange in cities of considerable size, but
they do not destroy the smaller merchants, though competition is often
difficult.
208. =The Ethics of Business.=--The methods of carrying on mercantile
business are based, as in the factory, on the principle of getting the
largest possible profits. The welfare of employees is a secondary
consideration. Expense of maintenance is heavy. Rents are costly in
desirable locations; the expense of carrying a large stock of
merchandise makes it necessary to borrow capital on which interest
must be paid; the obligations of a large pay-roll must be met at
frequent intervals, whether business is good or bad. All these items
are present in varying degree, whatever the size of the business,
except where a merchant has capital enough of his own to carry on a
small business and can attend to the wants of his customers alone or
with the help of his family. The temptation of the merchant is strong
to use every possible means to make a success of his business, paying
wages as low as possible, in order to cut down expenses, and offering
all kinds of inducements to customers in order to sell his goods. The
ethics of trade need improvement. It is by no means true, as some
agitators declare, that the whole business system is corrupt, that
honesty is rare, and that the merchant is without a conscience.
General corruption is impossible in a commercial age like this, when
the whole system of business is built on credit, and large
transactions are carried on, as on the Stock Exchange, with full
confidence in the word or even the nod of an operator. Of course,
shoddy and impure goods are sold over the counter and the customer
often pays more than an article is really worth, but every mercantile
house has its popular reputation to sustain as well as its rated
financial standing, and the business concern that does not deal
honorably soon loses profitable trade.
Exchange constitutes an important division of the science of
economics, but its social causes and effects are of even greater
consequence. Exchange is dependent upon the diffusion of information,
the expansion of interests, and growing confidence between those who
effect a transaction. When mutual wants are few it is possible to
carry on business by means of barter; when trade increases money
becomes a necessary medium; world commerce requires a system of
credit which rests on social trust and integrity. Conversely, there
are social consequences that come from customs of exchange. It
enlarges human interests. It stimulates socialization of habits and
broader ideas. It encourages industry and thrift and promotes division
of labor. It strengthens social organization and tends to make it more
efficient. Altogether, exchange of goods must be regarded as among the
most important functions of society.
209. =Business Employees.=--The business ethics that are most open to
criticism are those that govern the relations of the merchant and his
employees. Here the system of employment is much the same as in the
factory. The merchant deals with his employees through superintendents
of departments. The employment manager hires the persons who seem best
qualified for the position, and they are assigned to a department.
They are under the orders of the head of the department, and their
success or failure depends largely on his good-will. Wages and
privileges are in his hand, and if he is morally unscrupulous he can
ruin a weak-willed subordinate. There is little coherence among
employees; there are always men and women who stand ready to take a
vacant position, and often no particular skill or experience is
required. There has been no such solidifying of interests by
trade-unions as in the factory; the individual makes his own contract
and stands on his own feet. On the other hand, there is an increasing
number of employers who feel their responsibility to those who are in
their employ, and, except in the department stores, they are usually
associated personally with their employees. Welfare work is not
uncommon in the large establishments, and a minimum wage is being
adopted here and there.
One of the worst abuses of the department store is the low-paid labor
of women and girls. It is possible for girls who live at home to get
along on a few dollars a week, but they establish a scale of wages so
low that it is impossible for the young woman who is dependent on her
own resources to get enough to eat and wear and keep well. The
physical and moral wrecks that result are disheartening. Nourishing
food in sufficient quantities to repair the waste of nerve and tissue
cannot be obtained on five or six dollars a week, when room rent and
clothing and necessary incidentals, like car-fare, have to be
included. There are always human beasts of prey who are prepared to
give financial assistance in exchange for sex gratification, and it is
difficult to resist temptation when one's nervous vigor and strength
of will are at the breaking-point. It is not strange that there is an
economic element among the causes of the social evil; it is remarkable
that moral sturdiness resists so much temptation.
210. =Offices.=--The numerous office-buildings that have arisen so
rapidly in recent years in the cities also have large corps of women
workers. They have personal relations with employers much more
frequently, for there are thousands of offices where a few
stenographers or even a single secretary are sufficient. Office work
is skilled labor, is better paid, and attracts women of better
attainments and higher ideals than in department store or factory.
Office relations are pleasant as well as profitable. The demands are
exacting; labor at the typewriter, the proof-sheets, or the
bookkeeper's desk is tiresome, but the society of the office is
congenial, working conditions are healthful and cheerful in most
cases, and there are many opportunities for increasing efficiency and
promotion. The office has its hardships. Everything is on a business
basis, and there is little allowance for feelings or disposition.
There are days when trials multiply and an atmosphere of irritation
prevails; there are seasons when the constant rush creates a wearing
nervous tension, and other seasons, when business is so poor that
occasionally there are breakdowns of health or moral rectitude; but on
the whole the office presents a simpler industrial problem than the
factory or the store.
211. =Transportation.=--A third industry that has its centre in the
city but extends across continents and seas is the business of
transportation. Manufactured goods are conveyed from the factory to
the warehouse and the store, goods sold in the mercantile
establishment are delivered from door to door, but enormous quantities
of the products of economic activity are hauled to greater distances
by truck, car, and steamship. The city is a point to which roads,
railways, and steamship lines converge, and from which they radiate in
every direction. By long and short hauls, by express and freight, vast
quantities of food products and manufactured goods pour into the
metropolis, part to be used in its numerous dwellings, part to be
shipped again to distant points. Along the same routes passengers are
transported, journeying in all directions on a multitude of errands,
jostling for a moment as they hurry to and from the means of
conveyance, and then swinging away, each on its individual orbit, like
comet or giant sun that nods acquaintance but once in a thousand
years.
The business of transportation occupies the time and attention of
thousands of workers, and its ramifications are endless. It is not
limited to a particular region like agriculture, or to towns and
cities like manufacturing; it is not stopped by tariff walls or ocean
boundaries. An acre of wheat is cut by the reaper, threshed, and
carted to the elevator by wagon or motor truck. The railroad-car is
hauled alongside, and with other bushels of its kind the grain is
transported to a giant flour-mill, where it is turned into a whitened,
pulverized product, packed in barrels, and shipped across the ocean to
a foreign port. Conveyed by rail or truck to the bakery, the flour
undergoes transformation into bread, and takes its final journey to
hotel, restaurant, and dwelling-house. Similarly, every kind of raw
material finds its destination far from the place of its production
and is consumed directly or as a manufactured product. This gigantic
business of transportation is the means of providing for the
sustenance and comfort of millions of human beings, and in spite of
the extensive use of machinery it requires at every step the
co-operative labor of human beings.
212. =Growth of Interdependence.=--It is the far-flung lines of
commerce that bind together the peoples of the world. Formerly there
were periods of history, as in the European Middle Ages, when a social
group produced nearly everything that it needed for consumption and
commerce was small; but now all countries exchange their own products
for others that they cannot so readily produce. The requirements of
commerce have broken down the barriers between races, and have
compelled mutual acquaintance and knowledge of languages, mutual
confidence in one another's good intentions, and mutual understanding
of one another's wants. The demands of commerce have precipitated
wars, but have also brought victories of peace. They have stimulated
the invention of improved means of communication, as the demands of
manufacturing stimulated invention of machinery. The slow progress of
horse-drawn vehicles over poor roads provoked the invention of
improved highways and then of railroads. The application of steam to
locomotives and ships revolutionized commerce, and by the steady
improvements of many years has given to the eager trader and traveller
the speedy, palatial steamship and the _train de luxe_.
Transportation depends, however, on the man behind the engine rather
than on the mass of steel that is conjured into motion. Successful
commerce waits for the willingness and skill of worker and director.
There must be the same division and direction of labor and the same
spirit of co-operation; there must be intelligence in planning
schedules for traffic and overcoming obstacles of nature and human
frailty and incompetence. The teamster, the longshoreman, the
freight-handler, and the engineer must all feel the push of the
economic demand, keeping them steadily at work. A strike on any
portion of the line ties up traffic and upsets the calculations of
manufacturer, merchant, and consumer, for they are all dependent upon
the servants of transportation.
213. =Problems of Transportation.=--There are problems of
transportation that are of a purely economic nature, but there are
also problems that are of social concern. The first problem is that of
safe and rapid transportation. The comfort and safety of the millions
who travel on business or for pleasure is a primary concern of
society. If the roads are not kept in repair and the steamship lanes
patrolled, if the rolling-stock is allowed to deteriorate and become
liable to accident, if engine-drivers and helmsmen are intemperate or
careless, if efficiency is not maintained, or if safety is sacrificed
to speed, the public is not well served. Many are the illustrations of
neglect and inefficiency that have culminated in accident and death.
Or the transportation company is slow to adopt new inventions and to
meet the expense that is necessary to equip a steamer or a railroad
for speed, or to provide rapid interurban or suburban transit. Poor
management or single tracks delay fast freights, or congested
terminals tie up traffic. These inconveniences not only consume
profits and ruffle the tempers of working men, but they are a social
waste of time and effort, and they stand in the way of improved living
conditions. The congestion of population in the cities can easily be
remedied when rapid and cheap transit make it possible for working men
to live twenty or thirty miles out of town. The standard of living can
be raised appreciably when fast trolley or steam service provides the
products of the farms in abundance and in fresh condition.
Another problem is that of the worker. The same temptation faces the
transportation manager that appears in the factory and the mercantile
house. The expenses of traffic are enormous. Railways alone cost
hundreds of millions for equipment and service, and there are periods
when commerce slackens and earnings fall away. It is easier to cut
wages than to postpone improvements or to raise freight or passenger
rates. In the United States an interstate commerce commission
regulates rates, but questions of wages and hours of labor are between
the management and the men. Friction frequently develops, and
hostility in the past has produced labor organizations that are well
knit and powerful, so that the railroad man has succeeded in securing
fair treatment, but there are other branches of transportation service
where the servants of the public find their labor poorly paid and
precarious in tenure. Teamsters and freight-handlers find conditions
hard; sailors and dock-hands are often thrown out of employment. Whole
armies of transportation employees have been enrolled since
trolley-lines and automobile service have been organized. Fewer
persons drive their own horses and vehicles, and many who walked to
and from business or school now ride. Transportation service has been
vastly extended, but there are continually more people to be
accommodated, and motor-men, conductors, and chauffeurs to be adjusted
to wage scales and service hours.
214. =Monopoly.=--A persistent tendency in transportation has been
toward monopoly. Express service between two points becomes controlled
by a single company, and the charges are increased. A street-railway
company secures a valuable city franchise, lays its tracks on the
principal streets, and monopolizes the business. Service may be poor
and fares may be raised, unless kept down by a railroad commission,
but the public must endure inconvenience, discomfort, and oppression,
or walk. Railroad systems absorb short lines and control traffic over
great districts; unless they are under government regulation they may
adjust their time schedules and freight charges arbitrarily and impose
as large a burden as the traffic will bear; the public is helpless,
because there is no other suitable conveyance for passengers or
freight. It is for these reasons that the United States has taken the
control of interstate commerce into its own hands and regulated it,
while the States have shown a disposition to inflict penalties upon
recalcitrant corporations operating within State boundaries. It is the
policy of government, also, to prevent control of one railroad by
another, to the added inconvenience and expense of the public. But
since 1890 there has been a rapid tendency toward a consolidation of
business enterprises, by which railroads became united into a few
gigantic systems, street railways were consolidated into a few large
companies, and ocean-steamship companies amalgamated into an
international combination.
215. =Government Ownership vs. Regulation.=--Nor did monopoly confine
itself to transportation. The control of public utilities has passed
into fewer hands. Coal companies, gas and electric light corporations,
telegraph and telephone companies tend to monopolize business over
large sections of country. Some of these possess a natural monopoly
right, and if managed in the interests of the public that they serve,
may be permitted to carry on their business without interference. But
their large incomes and disposition to oppress their constituents has
produced many demands for government ownership, especially of coal
companies and railroads, and though for less reason of telephone and
telegraph lines. Government ownership has been tried in Europe and in
Australasia, but experience does not prove that it is universally
desirable. There are financial objections in connection with purchase
and operation, and the question of efficiency of government employees
is open to debate. Enough experiments have been tried in the United
States to render very doubtful the advisability of government
ownership of any of these large enterprises where politics wield so
large a power and democracy delights to shift office and
responsibility. But it is desirable that the government of State and
nation have power to regulate business associations that control the
public welfare as widely as do railroads, telegraph-lines, and
navigation companies. By legislation, incorporation, and taxation the
government may keep its hand upon monopoly and, if necessary,
supersede it, but the system which has grown up by a natural process
is to be given full opportunity to justify itself before government
assumes its functions. It is hardly to be expected that government
regulation will be faultless, American experience with regulating
commissions has not been altogether satisfactory, but society needs
protection, and this the government may well provide.
216. =Trusts.=--The tendency to monopoly is not confined to any one
department of economic activity. Manufacturing, mercantile, and
banking companies have all tended to combine in large corporations,
partly for greater economy, partly for an increase of profits through
manipulating reorganization of stock companies, and partly for
centralization of control. In the process, while the cost of certain
products has been reduced by economy in operating expenses, the
enormous dividend requirements of heavily capitalized corporations has
necessitated high prices, a large business, and the danger of
overproduction, and a virtual monopoly has made it possible to lift
prices to a level that pinches the consumer. By a grim irony of
circumstance, these giant and often ruthless corporations have taken
the name of trusts, but they do not incline to recognize that the
people's rights are in their trust. Not every trust is harmful to
society, and certainly trusts need not be destroyed. They have come
into existence by a natural economic process, and as far as they
cheapen the cost of production and improve the manufacture and
distribution of the product they are a social gain, but they need to
be controlled, and it is the function of government to regulate them
in the interests of society at large. It has been found by experience
that publicity of corporate business is one of the best methods of
control. In the long run every social organization must obtain the
sanction of public opinion if it is to become a recognized
institution, and in a democratic country like the United States no
trust can become so independent or monopolistic that it can afford to
disregard the public will and the public good, as certain American
corporations have discovered to their grief.
217. =The Chances of Progress.=--Every economic problem resolves
itself into a social problem. The satisfaction of human wants is the
province of the manufacturer, the merchant, and the transporter, but
it is not limited to any one or all of these, nor is society under
their control. The range of wants is so great, the desires of social
beings branch out into so many broad interests, that no one line of
enterprise or one group of men can control more than a small portion
of society. The whole is greater than any of its parts. There will be
groups that are unfortunate, communities and races that will suffer
temporarily in the process of social adjustment, but the welfare of
the many can never long be sacrificed to the selfishness of the few.
Social revolution in some form will take place. It may not be
accomplished in a day or a year, but the social will is sure to assert
itself and to right the people's wrongs. The social process that is
going on in the modern city has aggravated the friction of industrial
relations; the haste with which business is carried on is one of its
chief causes; but the very speed of the movement will carry society
the sooner out of its acute distresses into a better adjusted system
of industry. So far most of the world's progress has been by a slow
course of natural adjustment of individuals and groups to one another;
that process cannot be stopped, but it can be directed by those who
are conscious of the maladjustments that exist and perceive ways and
means of improvement. Under such persons as leaders purposive progress
may be achieved more rapidly and effectually in the near future.
READING REFERENCES
HADLEY: _Standards of Public Morality_, pages 33-96.
NEARING: _Wages in the United States_, pages 93-96.
NEARING AND WATSON: _Economics_, pages 241-255, 314-320.
VROOMAN: _American Railway Problems_, pages 1-181.
BOLEN: _Plain Facts as to the Trusts and the Tariff_, pages 3-236.
BOGART: _Economic History of the United States_, pages 186-216,
305-337, 400-418.
MONTGOMERY: _Vital American Problems_, pages 3-91.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE PEOPLE WHO WORK
218. =Economic vs. Social Values.=--Economic interests may receive
first attention in the city, but the work that is done is of less
importance than the people who work. Things may so fill the public
mind that the real values of the various elements that enter into life
may become distorted. A penny may be held so close to the eye as to
hide the sun. Making a living may seem more important than making the
most of life. Persons who are absorbed in business are liable to lose
their sense of proportion between people and property; the capitalist
overburdens himself with business cares until he breaks down under the
nervous strain, and overworks his subordinates until they often become
physical wrecks, but it is not because he personally intends to do
harm. Eventually the social welfare of every class will become the
supreme concern and the study of social efficiency will fill a larger
place than the study of economic efficiency.
219. =The Social Classes.=--There is a natural line of social cleavage
that has made it a customary expression to speak of the upper, the
middle, and the lower classes. It is impossible to separate them
sharply, for they shade into one another. Theoretically, in a
democratic country like America there should be no class distinctions,
but in colonial days birth and education had an acknowledged social
position that did not belong to the common man, and in the nineteenth
century a wealthy class came into existence that wrested supremacy
from professional men and those who could rely alone on their
intellectual achievements. It has never been impossible for
individuals to push their way up the social path of success, but it
has been increasingly difficult for a self-made man to break through
into the circle of the _élite_. There are still young men who come
out of the country without pecuniary capital but with physical
strength and courage and, after years of persistent attack, conquer
the citadel of place and power, but the odds are against the youth
without either capital or a higher education than the high school
gives. Without unusual ability and great strength of will it is
impossible to rise high if one lacks capital or influential friends,
but with the help of any two of these it is quite possible to gain
success. Employers complain that the vast majority of persons whom
they employ are lacking in energy, ambition, and ability. Important as
is the possession of wealth and influence it seems to be the psychic
values that ultimately determine the individual's place in American
society. We shall expect, therefore, to find an upper class in society
composed of some who hold their place because of the prestige that
belongs to birth or property, and of others who have made their own
way up because they had the necessary qualities to succeed. Below them
in the social scale we shall expect to find a larger class who,
because they were not consumed by ambition to excel, or because they
lacked the means to achieve distinction, have come to occupy a place
midway between the high and the low, to fill the numerous professional
and business positions below the kings and great captains, and to hold
the balance of power between the aristocracy and the proletariat.
Below these, in turn, are the so-called masses, who fill the lower
ranks of labor, and who are essential to the well-being of those who
are reckoned above them.
220. =The Worth of the Upper Class.=--It is a common belief among the
lowly that the people who hold a place in the upper ranks are not
worthy of their lofty position, and there are many who hope to see
such a general levelling as took place during the French Revolution.
They are fortified in their opinion by the lavish and irresponsible
way in which the wealthy use their money, and they are tantalized by
the display of luxury which, if times are hard, are in aggravating
contrast to the hardship and suffering of the poor. The scale of
living of the millionaire cannot justify itself in the eyes of the
man who finds it difficult to make both ends meet. Undoubtedly society
will find it necessary some day to devise a more equitable method of
distribution. But it is a mistake to suppose that most of the rich are
idle parasites on society, or that their service, as well, as their
wealth, could be dispensed with in the social order. In spite of the
impression fostered by a sensational press that the average person of
wealth devotes himself to the gaieties and dissipations of a
pleasure-loving society, the truth is that after the self-centred
years of callow youth are over most men and women take life seriously
and only the few are idlers. If the investigator should go through the
wealthy sections of the cities and suburbs, and record his
observations, he would find that the men spend their days feeling the
pulse of business in the down-town offices, directing the energies of
thousands of individuals, keeping open the arteries of trade, using as
productive capital the wealth that they count their own, making
possible the economic activity and the very existence of the persons
who find fault with their worthlessness. He would find the women in
the nature of the case less occupied with public affairs, but
interested and enlisted in all sorts of good enterprises, and, while
often wasteful of time and money, bearing a part increasingly in the
promotion of social reforms by active participation and by generous
contributions. The immense gains that have come to society through
philanthropy and social organization, as well as through the channels
of industry, would have been impossible without the sympathetic
activity of the so-called upper class.
221. =Who Belong to the City Aristocracy?=--Most of those who belong
to the upper class are native Americans. They may not be far removed
from European ancestry, but for themselves they have had the advantage
of a rearing in American ways in the home, the school, and society at
large. They are both city and country bred. The country boy has the
advantage of physical strength and better manual training, but he
often lacks intellectual development, and usually has little capital
to start with. The city youth knows the city ways and possesses the
asset of acquaintances and friendships, if not of capital, in the
place where he expects to make a living. He is helped to success if
the way is prepared for him by relatives who have attained place and
property, but he is as often cursed by having more money and more
liberty than is good for him, while still in his irresponsible years.
No place is secure until the young man has proved his personal worth,
whether he is from the city or the country and has come up out of
poverty or from a home of wealth.
222. =Sources of Wealth.=--The large majority of persons of wealth
have won or inherited their property from the economic industries of
manufacturing, trade, commerce, and transportation, or real estate.
Certain individuals have been fortunate in their mining or
public-service investments; others make a large income as corporation
officials, lawyers, physicians, engineers, and architects, but most of
them have attained their success as capitalists, and they are able to
maintain a position of prominence and ease because they use rather
than hoard their wealth. It is easy to underestimate the usefulness of
human beings who finance the world of industry, and in estimating the
returns that are due to members of the various social classes this
form of public service that is so essential to the prosperity of all
must receive recognition.
223. =How They Live.=--Unfortunately, the possession of money
furnishes a constant temptation to self-indulgence which, if carried
far, is destructive of personal health and character, weakens family
affection, and threatens the solidarity of society. The dwelling-house
is costly and the furnishings are expensive. A retinue of servants
performs many useless functions in the operation of the establishment.
Ostentation often carried to the point of vulgarity marks habits of
speech, of dress, and of conduct both within and outside of the home.
Every member of the family has his own friends and interests and
usually his own share of the family allowance. The adults of the
family are unreasonably busy with social functions that are not worth
their up-keep; the children are coddled and supplied with predigested
culture in schools that cater to the trade, and if they are not
spoiled in the process of preparation go on to college as a form of
social recreation. There are exceptions, of course, to this manner of
life, but those who follow it constitute a distinct type and by their
manner of living exert a disintegrating influence in American society.
224. =The Middle Class.=--The middle class is not so distinct a
stratum of society as are the upper and lower classes. It includes the
bulk of the population in the United States, and from its ranks come
the teachers, ministers, physicians, lawyers, artists, musicians,
authors, and statesmen; the civil, mechanical, and electrical
engineers, the architects, and the scientists of every name; most of
the tradesmen of the towns and the farmers of the country; office
managers and agents, handicraftsmen of the better grade, and not a few
of the factory workers. They are the people who maintain the
Protestant churches and their enterprises, who make up a large part of
the constituency of educational institutions and buy books and
reviews, and who patronize the better class of entertainments and
amusements. These people are too numerous to belong to any one race,
and they include both city and country bred. The educated class of
foreigners finds its place among them, assimilates American culture,
and intermarries in the second generation. Into the middle class of
the cities is absorbed the constant stream of rural immigration,
except the few who rise into the upper class or fall into the lower
class. In the city itself grow up thousands of boys and girls who pass
through the schools and into business and home life in their native
environment, and who constitute the solid stratum of urban society.
These people have not the means to make large display. They are
influenced by the fashions of the upper class, sometimes are induced
to applaud their poses or are hypnotized to do their bidding, but they
have their own class standards, and most of them are contented to
occupy their modest station. Only a minority of them own their homes,
but as a class they can afford to pay a reasonable rent and to furnish
their houses tastefully, to hire one or two household servants, and to
live in comfort. Twenty years ago they owned bicycles and enjoyed
century runs into the country on Sunday: since then some of them have
been promoted to automobiles and enjoy a low-priced car as much as the
wealthy appreciate their high-priced limousines. As in rural villages,
so in the city they form various groups of neighbors or friends based
on a common interest, and find entertainment and intellectual stimulus
from such companionship. On the roster of social organizations are
musical societies and bridge clubs, literary and art circles, dramatic
associations, women's clubs, and men's fraternities. The people meet
at dances, teas, and receptions; they mingle with others of their kind
at church or theatre, and co-operate with other workers in settlements
and charity organizations. They educate their children in the public
schools and in increasing numbers give them the benefit of a college
education.
People of the middle class are by no means debarred from passing up to
a higher social grade if they have the ability or good fortune to get
ahead, nor are they guaranteed a permanent place in their own native
group unless they are competent to keep their footing. There is no
surety to keep the independent tradesman from failing in business or
the careless youth from falling into intemperate or vicious habits;
many hazards must be crossed and hindrances overcome before an assured
position is secured in the community, but the opportunities are far
better than for the handicapped strugglers below.
225. =Bonds of Union Between Classes.=--Though the middle class is
distinct from the aristocracy of society in America, it is not shut
off from association with it. The same is true in a less degree of the
lowest class. Party lines are vertical, not horizontal. Religious and
intellectual lines are only less so. The politician cannot afford to
ignore a single vote, and the working man's counts as much as the
plutocrat's. There are few churches that do not have representatives
of all classes, from the gilded pew-holder to the workman with dingy
hands who sits under the gallery. The school is no respecter of class
lines. The store, the street-car, and the railroad are all common
property, where one jostles another without regard to class.
Friendship oversteps all boundaries, even of race and creed.
226. =The Lower Class.=--The lower class consists of those who are
dependent upon others for the opportunity to work or for the charity
that keeps them alive. They commonly lack initiative and ambition; if
they have those qualities they are hindered by their environment from
ever getting ahead. Sometimes they make an attempt in a small way to
carry on trade on their own resources, but they seldom win success.
Their skill as factory operatives is not so great as to gain for them
a good wage, and when business is slack they are the first to be laid
off the pay-roll, and they help to swell the ranks of the unemployed.
Because of the American system of compulsory education they are not
absolutely illiterate, but their ability is small; they leave school
early, and what little education they have does not help them to earn
a living. They do not usually choose an occupation, but they follow
the line of least resistance, taking the first job that offers, and
often finding later that they never can hope for advancement in it.
Frequently they are the victims of weak will and inherited tendencies
that lead to intemperance, vice, and crime. Thousands of them are
living in the unwholesome tenements that lack comfort and
attractiveness. There is no inducement to cultivate good habits, and
no possibility of keeping the children free from moral and physical
contamination. As a class they are continually on the edge of poverty
and often submerged in it. They know what it is to feel the pinch of
hunger, to shiver before the blasts of winter, and to look upon coal
and ice as luxuries. They become discouraged from the struggle as they
grow older, often get to be chronically dependent on charity, and not
infrequently fall at last into a pauper's grave.
227. =The Degenerate American.=--Many of these people are Americans,
swarms of them are foreigners who have come here to better their
fortunes and have been disappointed or, finding the difficulties more
than they anticipated, have settled down fairly contented in the city.
Many persons think that it is the alien immigrant who causes the
increase in intemperance and crime that has been characteristic of
city life, but statistics lay much of the guilt upon the degenerate
American. There are poor whites in the cities as there are in the
South country. The riffraff drifts to town from the country as the
Roman proletariat gravitated to the capital in the days of decadence.
A great many young persons who enter the city with high hopes of
making a fortune fail to get a foothold or gradually lose their grip
and are swept along in the current of the city's débris. Illness,
accident, and repeated failure are all causes of degeneration.
Along with misfortune belongs misconduct. Those causes which produce
poverty like intemperance, idleness, and ignorance, are productive of
degeneracy, also. They render the individual unfit to meet the
responsibilities of life, and tend not only to incompetence but also
to sensuality and even crime. Added to the various physical causes are
such psychical influences as contact with degraded minds or with base
literature or art, loss of religious faith, and loss of
self-confidence as to one's ability to succeed.
Personal degeneracy tends to perpetuate itself in the family. Drunken,
depraved, or feeble-minded parents usually produce children with the
same inheritances or tendencies; family quarrelling and an utter
absence of moral training do not foster the development of character.
A slum environment in the city strengthens the evil tendencies of such
a home, as it counterbalances the good effects of a wholesome home
environment. Mental and moral degeneracy is always present in society,
and if unchecked spreads widely; physical degeneracy is so common as
to be alarming, resulting in dangerous forms of disease, imbecility,
and insanity. Society is waking to the need of protecting itself
against degeneracy in all its forms, and of cutting out the roots of
the evil from the social body.
READING REFERENCES
NEARING: _Social Religion_, pages 104-157.
COMMONS: "Is Class Conflict in America Growing?" art. in _American
Journal of Sociology_, 13: 756-783.
HENDERSON: _Social Elements_, pages 276-283.
NEARING AND WATSON: _Economics_, pages 185-193.
WARNER: _American Charities_, pages 59-117, 276-292.
PATTEN: _Social Basis of Religion_, pages 107-133.
BLACKMAR AND GILLIN: _Outlines of Sociology_, pages 499-512.
CHAPTER XXX
THE IMMIGRANT
228. =The Immigrant Problem.=--An increasing proportion of the city's
population is foreign born or of foreign parentage. For a hundred
years America has been the goal of the European peasant's ambition,
the magnet that has drawn him from interior hamlet and ocean port.
Migration has been one of the mighty forces that have been reshaping
society. The American people are being altered by it, and it is a
question whether America will maintain its national characteristics if
the volume of immigration continues unchecked. Europe has been deeply
affected, and the people who constitute the migrating mass have been
changed most of all. And the end is not yet.
The immigrant constitutes one of the problems of society. Never has
there been in history such a race movement as that which has added to
one nation a population of more than twenty million in a half century.
It is a problem that affects the welfare of races and continents
outside of America, as well as here, and that affects millions yet
unborn, and millions more who might have been born were it not for the
unfavorable changes that have taken place because of the shift in
population. It is a problem that has to do with all phases of group
life--its economic, educational, political, moral, and religious
interests. It is a problem that demands the united wisdom of all who
care for the welfare of humanity in the days to come. The heart of the
problem is first whether the immigrant shall be permitted to crowd
into this country unhindered, or whether sterner barriers shall be
placed in the way of the increasing multitude; secondly, if
restrictions are decided upon what shall be their nature, and whose
interests shall be considered first--those of the immigrant, of the
countries involved, or of world progress as a whole?
The problem can be approached best by considering (1) the history of
immigration, (2) the present facts about immigration, (3) the
tendencies and effects of immigration. Migrations have occurred
everywhere in history, and they are progressing in these days in other
countries besides the United States. Canada is adding thousands every
year, parts of South America are already German or Italian because of
immigration, in lesser numbers emigrants are going to the colonies
that the European nations, especially the English, have located all
over the world. European immigration to North America has been so
prolonged and abundant that it constitutes the particular phenomenon
that most deserves attention. Other nations have fought wars to secure
additional territory for their people; the immigrant occupation of
America has been a peaceful conquest.
229. =The Irish.=--Although the early occupation of this continent was
by immigration from Europe, after the Revolution the increase of
population was almost entirely by natural growth. Large families were
the rule and a hardy people was rapidly gaining the mastery of the
eastern part of the continent. It was not until 1820 that the new
immigration became noticeable and the government took legislative
action to regulate it (1819). Between 1840 and 1880 three distinct
waves of immigration broke on American shores. The first was Irish.
The Irish peasants were starving from a potato famine that extended
over several years in the forties, and they poured by the thousand
into America, the women becoming domestic servants and the men the
unskilled laborers that were needed in the construction camps. They
built roads, dug canals, and laid the first railways. Complaint was
made that they lowered the standards of wages and of living, that
their intemperate, improvident ways tended to complicate the problem
of poverty, and that their Catholic religion made them dangerous, but
they continued to come until the movement reached its climax, in 1851,
when 272,000 passed through the gates of the Atlantic ports. The
Irish-American has become an important element of the population,
especially in the Eastern cities, and has shown special aptitude for
politics and business.
230. =Germans and Scandinavians.=--The Irishman was followed by the
German. He was attracted by-the rich agricultural lands of the Middle
West and the opportunities for education and trade in the towns and
cities. German political agitators who had failed to propagate
democracy in the revolutionary days of 1848 made their way to a place
where they could mould the German-American ideas. While the Irish
settled down in the seaboard towns, the Germans went West, and
constituted one of the solid groups that was to build the future
cosmopolitan nation. The German was followed by the Scandinavian. The
people of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were increasing in number, but
their rough, cold country could not support them all. As the Norsemen
took to the sea in the ninth century, so the Scandinavian did in the
nineteenth, but this time in a peaceful migration toward the setting
sun. They began coming soon after the Civil War, and by 1882 they
numbered thirteen per cent of the total immigration. They were a
specially valuable asset, for they were industrious agriculturists and
occupied the valuable but unused acres of the Northwest, where they
planted the wheat belt of the United States, learned American ways and
founded American institutions, and have become one of the best strains
in the American blood.
231. =The New Immigrants.=--If the United States could have continued
to receive mainly such people as these from northern Europe, there
would be little cause to complain of the volume of immigration, but
since 1880 the tide has been setting in from southern and eastern
Europe and even from Asia, bringing in large numbers of persons who
are not of allied stock, have been little educated, and do not
understand or fully sympathize with American principles and ideals,
and for the most part are unskilled workmen. These have come in such
enormous numbers as to constitute a real menace and to compel
attention.
TABLE OF IMMIGRATION FOR THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1914
(Races numbering less than 10,000 each are not included)
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| South Italians 251,612 |
| Jews 138,051 |
| Poles 122,657 |
| Germans 79,871 |
| English 51,746 |
| Greeks 45,881 |
| Russians 44,957 |
| North Italians 44,802 |
| Hungarians 44,538 |
| Croatians and Slovenians 37,284 |
| Ruthenians 36,727 |
| Scandinavians 36,053 |
| Irish 33,898 |
| Slovaks 25,819 |
| Roumanians 24,070 |
| Lithuanians 21,584 |
| Scotch 18,997 |
| French 18,166 |
| Bulgarians, Servians, and Montenegrins 15,084 |
| Mexicans 13,089 |
| Finns 12,805 |
| Dutch and Flemings 12,566 |
| Spanish 11,064 |
+--------------------------------------------------------+
232. =Italians and Slavs.=--Most numerous of these are the Italians.
At home they feel the pressure of population, the pinch of small
income, and heavy taxation. Here it costs less to be a citizen and
there are more opportunities for a livelihood. Gangs of Italian
laborers have taken the place of the Irish. Italians have established
themselves in the small trades, and some of them find a place in the
factory. Two-thirds of them are from the country, and they find
opportunity to use their agricultural knowledge as farm laborers. In
California and Louisiana they have established settlements of their
own, and in the East they make a foreign fringe on the outskirts of
suburban towns. North Italy is more progressive than the south and the
qualities of the people are of higher grade, but the bulk of
emigration is from the region of Naples and Sicily. Among the southern
Italians the percentage of illiteracy is high, they have the
reputation of being slippery in business relations, and not a few
anarchists and criminals are found among them. It is not reasonable to
expect that these people will measure up to the level of the steady,
reliable, and hard-working American or north European, especially as
large numbers of them are birds of passage spending the winter in
Italy or going home for a time when business in America is depressed.
Yet the great majority of those who settle here are peaceable,
ambitious, and hard-working men and women.
Alongside the Italian is the Slav. There are so many varieties of him
that he is confusing. He comes from the various provinces of Russia,
from the conglomerate empire of Austro-Hungary, and from the Balkan
states. In physique he is sturdier than the Italian and mentally he is
less excitable and nervous, but he drinks heavily and is often
murderous when not sober. The Slav has come to America to find a place
in the sun. At home he has suffered from political oppression and
poverty; he has had little education of body or mind; he is subject to
his primitive impulses as the west European long ago ceased to be. It
is not easy for America to assimilate large numbers of such backward
peoples, but the Slav is coming at the rate of three hundred thousand
a year. The Slav is depended upon for the hard labor of mine and
foundry, of sugar and oil refineries, and of meat-packing
establishments. Hundreds and thousands are in the coal and iron
regions of Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, and West Virginia. The
Bohemians and Poles more frequently than the others bring their
families with them, and to some extent settle in the rural districts,
but the bulk of the Slavs are men who herd in congested
boarding-houses, move frequently from one industrial centre to
another, and naturally are very slow to become assimilated.
233. =The Jews.=--Of all the races that have found asylum in America
none have felt abroad the heavy hand of oppression more than the Jew.
He has been the world's outcast through nineteen centuries, but in
America he has found freedom to expand. One-fifth of all the Jews are
already in America, and the rate of immigration is not far from
140,000 a year. The immigrant Jews are of different grades, some are
educated and well-to-do, but the masses are poor, and the most recent
immigrants have low ideals of living. Few of those who come settle in
the country districts; the large majority herd in the city tenements
and engage in small trades and manufacturing. Jewish masters are
unmerciful as sweaters, unprincipled as landlords, and disreputable as
white slavers, but no man rises above limitations that others have set
for him like the Jew, and with ambition, ability, and persistence the
race is pushing its way to the front. The young people are eager for
an education, and are often among the keenest pupils in their classes.
Later they make their mark in the professions as well as in business.
The Jew has found a new Canaan in the West.
234. =The Lesser Peoples.=--Besides these great groups that constitute
the bulk of the incoming millions, there are representatives from all
the nations and tribes of Europe. All parts of Great Britain have sent
their people, and from Canada so many have come as almost to
impoverish certain sections. French-Canadians are numerous in the mill
cities of New England. From the Netherlands there has always been a
small contingent. Portugal has sent islanders from the Azores and Cape
Verde. The Finns are here, the Lithuanians from Russia, the Magyars
from Hungary. The Greeks are pouring in from their sunny hills and
valleys; they rival the Italians in the fruit trade, and monopolize
the bootblack industry in certain cities. With the twentieth century
have come the Turks and their Asiatic subjects, the Syrians and the
Armenians. All these peoples have race peculiarities, prejudices, and
superstitions. Most of their members belong in the lower grades of
society and their coming is a distinct danger to the nation's future.
There can be no question, of course, that individuals among them
possess ability and even talent, and that certain groups like those
from Great Britain and the Netherlands are exceptions to the general
rule, but there is a strong conviction among social workers and
students that those who are here should be assimilated before many
more arrive. Definite measures are advocated by which it is expected
that the government or private agencies may be able to make over these
latest aliens into reputable, useful American citizens.
235. =Public Attitude toward Immigration.=--Although interest in
national and immigrant welfare is far less keen than it well might be,
the tremendous consequences of the wide-spread movement have not
passed unnoticed. Wage-earners already here have felt the effects of
low-grade competition and have clamored for restrictive legislation.
On race rather than economic grounds Asiatics have been excluded
except for the few already here. Federal regulation has been increased
with reference to all immigrant traffic. This has been based
increasingly on investigation by private effort and government
commission, and governments and churches have established bureaus on
immigration. Aid associations maintain agents to safeguard the
newcomer from exploitation, both on the journey and in port. From all
these sources a body of information has been gathered that throws
light on the causes and effects of immigration.
236. =Causes and Effects.=--The primary cause is industrial. The
desire of the people to improve their economic and social condition is
the compelling motive that drives them, in spite of homesickness and
ignorance, to venture into an unknown country and to face dangers and
difficulties that could not be foreseen. Three out of four who come
are males, pioneers oftentimes of a family that looks forward to a
larger migration later on. Friends on this side encourage others and
commonly supply the necessary funds. Eighty per cent of all who come
into Massachusetts make the venture in hope of finding better
industrial conditions or to join relatives or friends. In some
countries, like Russia, religious and political oppression are
expelling causes, and the military service required by the European
Powers drives young men away. It has been demonstrated that forty per
cent of the immigration is not permanent, but that for various reasons
individuals return for a season, some permanently.
Immigration has its good and bad effects. There are certain good
qualities in many of the immigrant strains that are valuable to
American character, and it cannot be denied that the exploitation of
national resources and the execution of public works could not have
been accomplished so rapidly without the immigrant. But the bad
effects furnish a problem that is not easily solved. Immigrants come
now in such large numbers that they tend to form alien groups of
increasing proportions in the midst of the great cities. There is
danger that the city will become a collection of districts--little
Italy, little Hungary, and little Syria--and the sense of civic unity
be destroyed. Even more significant is the high birth-rate of the
foreigner. Statistics show that with the greater birth-rate of the
immigrants there is a corresponding decline in the native birth-rate,
so that the alien is supplanting the native American stock. Along with
race degeneracy goes lack of industrial skill and declining wages, for
the foreigner is ignorant, often unorganized, and willing to work and
live under worse conditions than the native American. Among the
disastrous social effects are increasing poverty and crime, lack of
sanitation, and an increase of diseases that thrive in filth.
Illiteracy and slow mentality lower the general level of intelligence.
Lack of training in democracy renders the average immigrant a poor
citizen, though some State laws give him the ballot without delay. In
morals and religion there is more loss than gain by immigration.
American liberty tends to become license, scores of thousands lose all
interest in the church, and moral restraint is thrown off with the
ecclesiastical yoke. Plainly when the immigrant population is
predominant in a great city the problem of immigration becomes vital
not only to the local municipality but also to the nation, which is
fast becoming urban.
237. =Americanizing the Alien.=--After all is said, the immigrant
problem is not insoluble. There is much in the situation to make one
optimistic. Thus far the native stock has been able to survive and to
give its best to the newcomer. The immigrant himself has no desire to
destroy American institutions. He comes longing to share in their
benefits. America is to him an Eldorado, a promised land flowing with
milk and honey. His children, through the schools and other contacts,
learn the language that his tongue is slow to acquire, and absorb the
ideas and ideals that are typically American. After all, it is the
spirit rather than the form of the institutions that make them
valuable. The upper-class American, who is too indifferent to go to
the polls on election day, is less patriotic and more harmful to
American institutions than the Italian who is too ignorant to vote,
but would die on the battle-field for the defense of his adopted
country. Many agencies are at work to help the alien adjust himself to
American ways and to make him into a good citizen. In the last resort
the Americanization of the foreigner rests with the attitude of the
native American toward him rather than with the immigrant himself.
READING REFERENCES
ROSS: _The Old World in the New_, pages 24-304.
FAIRCHILD: _Immigration_, pages 213-368.
COMMONS: _Races and Immigrants in America_, pages 198-238.
ROBERTS: _The New Immigration._
JENKS AND LAUCK: _Immigration._
WOODS: _Americans in Process._
WILLIS: "Findings of the Immigration Commission," art. in _The
Survey_, 25: 571-578.
CHAPTER XXXI
HOW THE WORKING PEOPLE LIVE
238. =In Europe.=--A large proportion of the immigrants from Europe
have been peasants who have come out of rural villages to find a home
in the barracks of American cities. In the Old World they have lived
in houses that lacked comfort and convenience; they have worked hard
through a long day for small returns; and a government less liberal
and more burdened than the United States has mulcted them of much of
their small income by heavy taxes. Young men have lost two or three
years in compulsory military training, and their absence has kept the
women in the fields. From the barracks men often return with the
stigma of disease upon them, which, added to the common social evils
of intemperance and careless sex relations, keeps moral standards low.
Thousands of them are illiterate, few of them have time for
recreation, and those who do understand little of its possibilities.
Religion is largely a matter of inherited superstition, and as a
superior force in life is quite lacking. To people of this sort comes
the vision of a land where government is democratic, military
conscription is unknown, wages are high, and there is unlimited
opportunity to get ahead. Encouraged by agents of interested parties,
many a man accumulates or borrows enough money to pay his passage and
to get by the immigration officer on the American side, and faces
westward with high hope of bettering his condition.
239. =In America.=--On the pier in America he is met by a friend or
finds his way by force of gravity into the immigrant district of the
city. Usually unmarried, he is glad to find a boarding place with a
compatriot, who cheerfully admits him to a share of his small
tenement, because he will help to pay the rent. With assistance he
finds a job and within a week regards himself as an American. Later
if it seems worth while he will take steps to become a citizen, but
recently immigrants are less disposed to do this than formerly. Many
immigrants do not find their new home in the port of landing; they are
booked through to interior points or locate in a manufacturing town
within comfortable reach of the great city; but they find a place in
the midst of conditions that are not far different. Unskilled Italians
commonly join construction gangs, and for weeks at a time make their
home in a temporary shack which quickly becomes unsanitary. Wherever
the immigrant goes he tends to form foreign colonies and to reproduce
the low standards of living to which he has been accustomed. If he
could be introduced to better habits and surrounded with improved
conditions from the moment of his arrival he would gain much for
himself, and far more speedily would become assimilated into an
American; as it is, he is introducing foreign elements on a large
scale into a city life that is overburdened with problems already.
Changes in the manner of living are often for the worse. Instead of
their village houses set in the midst of the open fields here, they
herd like rabbits in overpopulated, unhealthy warrens, frequently
sleeping in rooms continually dark and ill-ventilated. They still work
for long hours, but here under conditions that breed discouragement
and disease, in the sweat-shop or the dingy factory, and often in an
occupation dangerous to life or limb. Though they are free from the
temptations of the military quarters, they find them as numerous at
the corner saloon and the brothel, and even in the overcrowded
tenement itself. If they bring over their families or marry here, they
can expect no better home than the tenement, unless they have the
courage to get out into the country, away from all that which is
familiar. Rather than do that or knowing no better way, they swarm
with others of their kind in the immigrant hive.
240. =Tenement House Conditions.=--In New York large tenements from
five to seven stories high, with three or four families on each floor,
shelter many thousands of the city's workers. These are often built
on lots too small to permit of air and light space between buildings.
Some of them contain over a hundred individuals. Three-fourths of the
population of Manhattan is in dwellings that house not less than
twenty persons each. The density of population is one hundred and
fifty to the acre. Twelve to eighteen dollars a month are charged for
a suite of four rooms, some of them no better than dark closets.
Instances can be multiplied where adults of both sexes and children
are crowded into one or two rooms, where they cook, eat, and sleep,
and where privacy is impossible. Thousands of children grow up
unmoral, if not immoral, because their natural sense of modesty and
decency has been blunted from childhood. The poorest classes live in
cellars that reek with disease germs of the worst kind, and sanitary
conditions are indescribable.
If these conditions were confined to the immigrant population,
Americans might shrug their shoulders and dismiss the subject with
disparaging remarks about the dirty foreigner, but housing conditions
like these are not restricted to the immigrant, whether he be Jew or
Gentile. The American working man who finds work in the factory towns
is little better off. The natural desire of landlords to spend as
little as possible on their property, and to get the largest possible
returns, makes it very difficult for the worker to find a suitable
home for his family that he can afford to pay for. Yet he must live
near his work to save time and expense. Old and dilapidated houses are
ready for his occupancy, but though they are often not so bad as the
large tenements, with their more attractive exteriors, they are not
fit dwellings for his growing family. A flat in a three-decker may be
obtained at a moderate rental, but such houses are usually poorly
built, of the flimsiest inflammable material, and they, too, lack
privacy and modern conveniences.
241. =Effects of these Conditions.=--It must not be supposed that
these evils have been overlooked. Building associations and private
philanthropists have erected improved tenements, and have proved that
the right sort of structures may be made paying investments. State
and municipal governments have appointed commissions and departments
on housing, fire protection has been provided, better sanitary
conditions have been enforced, and hopelessly bad buildings have been
destroyed. But slums grow faster than they can be improved, and the
rapidly growing tenement districts need more drastic and comprehensive
measures than have yet been taken. The housing problem affects the
tenant first of all, and in countless instances his unwholesome
environment is ruining his health, ability, and character; but it also
affects the community and the nation, for persons produced by such an
environment do not make good citizens. The roots of family life are
destroyed, gaunt poverty and loathsome disease hold hands along dark
and dirty stairways and through the halls, foul language mingles with
the foul air, and drunkenness is so common as to excite no remark.
Sexual impurity finds its nest amid the darkness and ill-endowed
children swarm in the streets.
242. =Possible Improvements.=--There must be some way out of these
evil conditions that is practicable and that will be permanent. Those
who are interested in housing reform favor two kinds of
measures--first, the prevention of building in the future the kind of
houses that have become so common but so unsatisfactory, and the
improvement of those already in existence; second, provision of
inexpensive, attractive, and sanitary dwellings outside of the city,
and cheap and rapid transit to and from the places of labor. Both of
these methods are practicable either by voluntary association or State
action, and both are called for by the social need of the present.
There are definite principles to be observed in the redistribution of
population. The principle of association calls for group life in a
neighborhood, and it is as idle to think that people from the slums
can be contented on isolated farms as it is to suppose that they can
be converted readily into prosperous American agriculturists. Close
connection with the town is indispensable. The principle of adaptation
demands that the new homes shall answer to the needs of the people
for whom they are provided, and that the neighborhood shall be suited
to those needs. The houses will need to be enough better than those in
town to offset the greater effort of travel. The principle of control
demands that the new life of the people be regulated as effectively as
it can be by municipal authority, and if necessary that such municipal
authority be extended or State authority be localized. There are
difficulties in the way of all such enterprises, but social welfare
requires improvements in the way the working people live.
It is notorious that immigrants and working people generally have
larger families than the well-to-do. The children of the city streets
form a class of future citizens that deserve most careful attention.
The problem of the tenement and the flat is especially serious,
because they are the factories of human life. There the next
generation is in the making, and there can be no doubt about the
quality of the product if conditions continue as they are. It is
important to inquire how the children live, what are their occupations
and means of recreation, their moral incentives and temptations, and
their opportunities for the development of personality.
243. =How the Children Live.=--The best way to understand how the
children live is to put oneself in their place. Imagine waking in the
morning in a stuffy, overcrowded room, eating a slice of bread or an
onion for breakfast and looking forward to a bite for lunch and an
ill-cooked evening meal, or in many cases starting out for the day
without any breakfast, glad to leave the tenement for the street, and
staying there throughout waking hours, when not in school, using it
for playground, lunch-room, and loafing-place, and regarding it as
pleasanter than home. Imagine going to school half fed and poorly
clothed, sometimes the butt of a playmate's gibes because of a drunken
father or a slatternly mother, required to study subjects that make no
appeal to the child and in a language that is not native, and then
back to the street, perhaps to sell papers until far into the night,
or to run at the beck and call of the public as a messenger boy. Many
a child, in spite of the public opposition to child labor, is put to
work to help support the family, and department store and bootblack
parlor are conspicuous among their places of occupation. Mills and
factories employ them for special kinds of labor, and States are lax
in the enforcement of child-labor laws after they are on the statute
books.
244. =The Street Trades.=--Employment in the street trades is very
common among the children of the tenements. There are numerous
opportunities to peddle fruit and small wares at a small wage;
messenger and news boys are always in demand, and the bootblacking
industry absorbs many of the immigrant class. By these means the
family income is pieced out, sometimes wholly provided, but the ill
effects of such child labor are disturbing to the peace of mind of the
well-wishers of children. Street labor works physical injury from
exposure to inclement weather and to accident, from too great fatigue,
and from irregular habits of eating and sleeping. It provokes resort
to stimulants and sows the seeds of disease, vice, and petty crime.
Moral deterioration follows from the bad habits formed, from the
encouragement to lawbreaking and independence of parental authority,
and from the evil environment of the people and places with which they
come into contact. Children are susceptible to the influence of their
elders, and easily form attachments for those who treat them well.
Saloons and disorderly houses are their patrons, and when still young
the children learn to imitate those whom they see and hear. Even for
the children who do not work, the street has its influence for evil.
The street was intended as a means of transit, not for trade or play,
but it is the most convenient place for games and social enjoyments of
all sorts. The little people become familiar with profane and obscene
language, with quarrelling and dishonesty, and even with more serious
crime, and no intellectual education in the schoolroom can counteract
the moral lessons of the street.
245. =Playgrounds.=--Various experiments for keeping children off the
street have been proposed and tried. Vacation schools in the summer
provide interesting occupations and talks for those who can be
induced to attend; their success is assured, but they reach only a
small part of the children. Gymnasiums in the winter attract others of
the older class, but the most useful experiments are equipped and
supervised playgrounds. For the small children sand piles have met the
desire for occupation, and kindergarten games have satisfied the
instinct for association. The primitive nature of the child demanded
change, and one kind of game after another was added for those of
different ages. Swings, climbing ladders, and poles are always
popular, and for the older boys opportunities for ball playing,
skating, and coasting. All these activities must be under control. The
characteristics of children on the playground are the same as those of
their elders in society. Authority and instruction are as necessary as
in school; indeed, playgrounds are a supplement to the indoor
education of American children.
246. =The City School.=--The school is expected to be the
foster-mother of every American child, whether native or adopted. It
is expected to take the children from the avenue and the slum, those
with the best influences of heredity and environment, and those with
the worst, those who are in good health and those who are never well,
and putting them all through the same intellectual process, to turn
out a finished product of boys and girls qualified for American
citizenship. It is an unreasonable expectation, and the American
school falls far short of meeting its responsibility. It often has to
work with the poorest kind of material, sometimes it has to feed the
pupil before his mental powers can get to work. It has to see that the
physical organs function properly before it can get satisfactory
intellectual results. The school is the victim of an educational
system that was made to fit other conditions than those of the
present-day city; the whole system needs reconstructing, but the
management is conservative, ignorant, or parsimonious in many cases,
or too radical and given to fads and experiments. Yet, in spite of all
its faults and delinquencies, the public schools of the city are the
hope of the future.
The school is the melting-pot of the city's youth. It is the
training-school of municipal society. In the absence of family
training it provides the social education that is necessary to equip
the child for life. It accustoms him to an orderly group life and
establishes relations with others of similar age from other streets or
neighborhoods than those with which he is familiar. It teaches him how
intelligent public opinion is formed, and brings him within the circle
of larger interests than those with which he is naturally connected.
He learns how to accommodate himself to the group rather than to fight
or worm his way through for a desired end, as is the method of the
street. He learns good morals and good manners. He finds out that
there are better ways of expressing his ideas than in the slang of the
alley, and in time he gains an understanding of a social leadership
that depends on mental and moral superiority instead of physical
strength or agility. As he grows older he becomes acquainted with the
worth of established institutions, and his hand is no longer against
every man and every man's hand against him. He likes to share in the
social activities that occur as by-products of the school--the musical
and dramatic entertainments, the athletic contests, and the debating
and oratorical rivalries. By degrees he becomes aware that he is a
responsible member of society, that he is an individual unit in a
great aggregation of busy people doing the work of the world, and that
the school is given him to make it possible for him to play well his
part in the activities of the city and nation to which he belongs.
READING REFERENCES
VEILLER: _Housing Reform_, pages 3-46.
RIIS: _How the Other Half Lives._
CLOPPER: _Child Labor in the City Streets._
MARTIN: "Exhibit of Congestion," art. in _The Survey_,20: 27-39.
GOODYEAR: "Household Budgets of the Poor," art. in _Charities_,
16: 191-197.
"The Pittsburgh Survey," arts, in _The Survey_, vol. 21.
LEE: _Constructive and Preventive Philanthropy_, pages 109-184.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE DIVERSIONS OF THE WORKING PEOPLE
247. =The Demand for Recreation.=--The natural instinct for recreation
is felt by the working people in common with persons of every class.
They cannot afford to spend on the grand scale of those who patronize
the best theatres and concerts, nor can they relax all summer at
mountains or seashore, or play golf in the winter at Pinehurst or Palm
Beach. They get their pleasures in a less expensive way in the parks
or at the beach resorts in the summer, and at the "movies,"
dance-halls, and cheap theatres in the winter. They have little money
to spend, but they get more real enjoyment out of a dime or a quarter
than thousands of dollars give to some society buds and millionaires
who are surfeited with pleasure. Recreation to the working people is
not an occupation but a diversion. Their occupation is usually
strenuous enough to furnish an appetite for entertainment, and they
are not particular as to its character, though the more piquant it is
the greater is the satisfaction. Craving for excitement and a stimulus
that will restore their depleted energies, they flock into the
dance-halls and the saloons, where they find the temporary
satisfaction that they wanted, but where they are tempted to lose the
control that civilization has put upon the primitive passions and to
let the primitive instincts have their sway.
It is a prerogative of childhood to be active. If activity is one of
the striking characteristics of all social life, it is especially so
of child life. The country child has all out-of-doors for the scope of
his energies, the city boy and girl are cramped by the tenement and
the narrow street, with occasional resort to a small park. It requires
ingenuity to devise methods of diversion in such small areas, but
necessity is the mother of invention, and the children of the city
become expert in outwitting those whose business it is to keep them
within bounds. This kind of education has a smack of practicality in
that it sharpens the wits for the struggle for existence that makes up
much of the experience of city folk, but it also tends to develop a
crookedness in mental and moral habits through the constant effort to
get ahead of the agents of social control.
248. =Street Games.=--To understand how the youth of the city get
their diversions it is well to examine a cross-section of city life on
Saturday afternoon or Sunday. Family quarters are crowded. Tenements
and apartments have little spare space inside or outside. Children
find it decidedly irksome indoors and naturally gravitate to the
street, to the relief of their elders and their own satisfaction.
There they quickly find associates and proceed to give expression to
their restless spirits. It is the child's nature to play, and he uses
all his wits to find the materials and the room for sport. His
ingenuity can adapt sticks and stones to a variety of uses, but the
street makes a sorry substitute for a ball-field, and while the girl
may content herself with the sidewalk and door-steps, the boy soon
looks abroad for a more satisfying occupation. Among the gangs of city
boys no diversion is more enjoyable than the game of craps, learned
from the Southern negro. With a pair of dice purchased for a cent or
two at the corner news-stand and a few pennies obtained by newspaper
selling or petty thieving the youngster is equipped with the necessary
implements for gambling, and he soon becomes adept in cleaning out the
pockets of the other fellows.
249. =Young People's Amusements.=--Meantime the older boys and girls
are seeking their diversions. At fourteen or fifteen most of them have
found work in factory or store, but evenings and Sundays they, too,
are looking for diversion. The girls find it attractive to walk the
streets, while the boys frequent the cheap pool-room, where they find
a chance to gamble and listen to the tales of the idlers who find
employment as cheap thieves and hangers-on of immoral houses. From
these headquarters they sally forth upon the streets to find
association with the other sex, and together they give themselves up
to a few hours' entertainment. A few are contented to promenade the
streets, but amusement houses are cheap, and the "movies" and
vaudeville shows attract the crowd. For a few dimes a couple can have
a wide range of choice. If the tonic of the playhouse is not
sufficient, a small fee admits to the public dance-hall, where it is
easy to meet new acquaintances and to find a partner who will go to
any length in the mad hunt for pleasures that will satisfy. From the
dance-hall it is an easy path to the saloon and the brothel, as it is
from the game of craps and the pool-room to the gambling-den and the
criminal joint. It is the lack of proper means for diversion and
proper oversight of places of entertainment that is increasing the
vice, drunkenness, and crime that curse the lives of thousands and
give to the city an evil reputation.
250. =The Saloon as the Poor Man's Club.=--The saloon is an
institution peculiar to America, but it is the successor of a long
line of public drinking houses. There were cafés among the ancients,
public houses among the Anglo-Saxons, and taverns in the colonies. At
such places the traveller or the working man could find social
companionship along with his glass of wine or grog, and by a natural
evolution the saloon became the poor man's club. It is successful as a
place of business, because it caters to primitive wants and social
interests in considerable variety. It is a never-failing source of
supply of the strong waters that bring the good cheer of intoxication,
and lull into torpid content the mind that wants to forget its worry
or its misery. It is a place where conventionality is laid aside and
human beings meet on the common level of convivial good-fellowship. It
is the avenue to fuller enjoyment in billiard-room, at card-table, in
dance-hall, and in house of assignation, but though the door is open
to them there is no obligation to enter. It is first aid to the
sporting fraternity, the resort of those who delight in pugilism,
baseball, and the racetrack, the dispenser of athletic news of all
sorts that is worth talking about. It frequently provides a free
lunch, music, and games. It is the agent of the political boss who
mixes neighborhood charity with the dispensing of party jobs. "The
saloon is a day-school, a night-school, a vacation-school, a
Sunday-school, a kindergarten, a college, a university, all in one. It
runs without term ends, vacations, or holidays.... It influences the
thoughts, morals, politics, social customs, and ideals of its
patrons."
251. =Substitutes for the Saloon.=--An institution that fills a place
as large as this in the social life of the American city must be given
careful consideration, and cannot be impatiently dismissed as an
unmitigated social evil. The saloon is unsparingly denounced as the
cause of intemperance, prostitution, poverty, and crime, and much of
the charge is a fair indictment, but it is easier to condemn its
abuses than to find a satisfactory substitute for the social service
that it performs. If the saloon must go, something must be put in its
place to perform its helpful functions. It may have to be legislated
out of existence in order to check intemperance, for the satisfaction
of thirst is its principal attraction, and its prime function is to
furnish drink, but the law can be more easily enforced if other social
centres are available where the average man can feel equally at home.
A model saloon managed by church people or labor unionists has been
tried, but has failed to solve the problem. The Young Men's Christian
Association on its present basis does not reach the class of men that
frequents the saloon. Coffee-houses, reading-rooms, municipal
gymnasiums, and baths, may each provide a small part, but none of
these nor all together fill the gap that is left after the saloon is
abolished. Attractive quarters, recreational facilities, and a spirit
of democracy and freedom appear absolutely essential to any successful
experiment in substitution. The patrons wish to be consulted as to
what they want and what they will pay for, and unless the substitute
is self-supporting it is sure to fail. The most promising experiment
is an athletic club maintained by regular dues, where there is
abundant room for sport and conversation, and where it is possible to
secure food at a moderate price and to enjoy lively music at the same
time. Under a reasonable amount of regulation such an establishment
cannot become a public nuisance, and it supplies a social need on a
sound economic basis.
252. =Monopoly Experiments.=--It has been proposed to draw the virus
of the saloon by removing the element of private profit and placing
the traffic under State management. The South Carolina dispensary
system was such an attempt. It broke up the saloon as a social centre,
for drinking was not allowed on the premises, but it did not stop the
consumption of liquor, the profits went to the public, and the saloon
element became a vicious element in politics. The Norwegian or
Gothenburg system was another experiment of a similar sort. The liquor
traffic was made respectable by the government chartering a monopoly
company and by putting business on the basis not of profit, but of
supplying a reasonable demand of the working class. Fifty years' trial
has reduced consumption one-half, has improved the character of the
saloon, and has removed the immoral annexes. The system is not
compulsory, but the people must choose between it and prohibition. The
main objection raised against State monopoly or charter is that the
government makes an alliance with a traffic that is injurious to
society, and that is contrary to the fundamental principle of
government. At best it can be regarded as only a half measure toward
the abolition of the trade in intoxicants.
253. =The Seriousness of the Liquor Problem.=--There can be no doubt
that the liquor problem is one of the serious menaces to modern
health, morals, and prosperity. Intemperance is closely bound up with
the home, it is a regular accompaniment of unchastity, it is both the
cause and the result of poverty, it vitiates much charity, it is a
leading cause of imbecility and insanity, and a provocative of crime.
It stands squarely in the way of social progress. It is a complex
problem. It is first a personal question, affecting primarily the
drinker; secondly, a social question, affecting the family and the
community; thirdly, an economic and political question, affecting
society at large. Consequently the solution of the problem is not
simple. Different phases of the problem demand a variety of methods.
Intemperance may be approached from the standpoint of disease or
immorality. It may be treated in medical or legislative fashion. It
may receive the special condemnation of the churches. One of the most
effective arguments against it is on the basis of economic waste. The
best statistics are incomplete, but the conservative estimate of a
national trade journal gave as the total direct expense in 1912,
$1,630,000,000. This minimum figure means eighteen dollars for every
man, woman, and child in the country. The indirect cost to society of
the wretchedness and crime that result from intemperance is vastly
greater. United States internal-revenue statistics indicate an
increased consumption in all kinds of liquor between 1900 and 1910,
although the territory under prohibition was steadily enlarging.
254. =Causes and Effects of the Traffic.=--The leading causes of
intemperance are the natural craving of appetite and the pleasure of
mild intoxication, the congenial society of the saloon and the habit
of treating, and the presence of the public bar on the streets of the
poorer districts of the city. The mere presence of the saloon is a
standing invitation to the men and boys of the neighborhood, and it
grows to seem a natural part of the environment. It is far more
attractive than the cheerless tenement and the tiresome street. The
sedative to tired nerves and stimulant for weary muscles is there; the
social customs of the past or of the homeland re-enforce the social
instincts of the present and draw with the power of a magnet.
The effects of intemperance may be classified as physical losses,
economic losses, and social losses. The immediate physical effect is
exhilaration, but this is succeeded by lassitude and incompetency. The
stimulus gained is momentary, the loss is permanent. It is well
established that even small quantities of alcohol weaken the will
power and benumb the mental powers. Habitual use depletes vitality and
so predisposes to disease. Life-insurance policies consider the
alcoholic a poor risk. The economic effect is a great preponderance of
loss over gain. Somebody makes money out of the consumer, but it is
not the farmer who produces the grain, the railroad company that
transports it, or the government that taxes it; less than formerly is
it the individual saloon-keeper, but the brewer and distiller who in
increasing numbers own the local plant as well as manufacture the
liquor. Neither the nation that taxes the manufacture for the sake of
the internal revenue, nor the city or town that licenses the sale,
gets enough to compensate for the economic loss to society. Among the
specific losses to consumers are irregularity and cessation of
employment, due to the unreliability of the intemperate workman and
the consequent reluctance of employers to hire him--a reluctance
increased since employers are made liable to compensate workmen for
accidents; the poverty and destitution of the families of habitual
drinkers; and the enormous waste of millions of dollars that, if not
thus wasted, might have gone into the channels of legitimate trade.
Finally, there is a wide-spread social effect. Intemperance ranks next
to heredity as the cause of insanity. One-third to one-half of the
crime in the country is charged to intemperance. Alcohol makes men
quarrelsome, upsets the brain balance, and introduces the user to
illegal and immoral practices. The saloon corrupts politics. It has
been estimated that the liquor traffic controls two million votes, and
some of it is easily purchasable. When it is remembered that the
saloon is in close alliance with the gambling interest, the
white-slave interest, the graft element, the political bosses, and the
corrupt lobbies, it is easy to see that it constitutes a serious
danger to good government throughout the nation.
255. =The Temperance Crusade.=--Intemperance has grown to be so
wide-spread and serious an evil that a crusade against it has gathered
strength through the nineteenth century. In colonial days the use of
liquors was universal and excited little comment, but groups of
persons here and there, especially the church people, opposed the
common practice of tippling and began to organize in order to check
it. It was not a total-abstinence movement at first, but was designed
particularly to check the use of spirituous liquors. Temperance
revivals swept over whole States, but were too emotional to be
permanent. When the second half of the century began organization
became more thorough and the Good Templars and Woman's Christian
Temperance Union assumed the leadership of the cause. These
organizations stood for total abstinence and State prohibition, and by
temperance evangelism and temperance education the women especially
pushed their campaign nationally and abroad. Among all temperance
agencies the Anti-Saloon League organized in Ohio in 1893, and
extending through the United States, has been most effective. It has
federated existing agencies and enlisted organized religion. It has
pushed no-license campaigns in States that had an optional law, has
secured the extension of prohibition to scores of counties in the
South and West, and has extended the area of State-wide prohibition,
an experiment begun in Maine in 1851, until eighteen States are now
under a prohibitory law (1915).
256. =Remedies for Intemperance.=--There is a general agreement among
people who reflect upon social ills that intemperance is a curse upon
large numbers of individuals and families through both its direct and
indirect effects. It seems well established that even moderate
drinking produces physical and mental weakness and even as a temporary
stimulant is of small value. It is not so clear how to check the evil
without injuring personal interests and violating the liberty which
every citizen claims for himself as a right. Three methods have been
proposed and tried as remedies for intemperance. The first of these is
public appeal and education. Public addresses in which arguments are
presented and an appeal made to the emotions have led to the signing
of pledges, and sometimes to the control of elections, but they have
to be repeated frequently to keep the individual who is moved by his
impulses up to the standard. Slower is education through the press and
through the school, where the evil effects of alcohol are demonstrated
scientifically, but it has been tried patiently, and there is
continually a large output of temperance literature.
257. =Regulation.=--A second method that has been used extensively is
regulation. It seems to many persons that the use of liquor cannot be
stopped, and if it is to be manufactured and sold, it is best to
regulate it by a form of license. In many of the American States the
people are allowed local option and vote periodically, whether they
will permit the legal manufacture and sale of intoxicants, or will
attempt to prevent it for a time. Local option has kept a great many
towns and counties "dry" for years, and it is a step toward
wide-spread prohibition. It is regarded by many as a better method
than a State prohibition that is ineffective. Those who oppose all
licensing on principle, do so on the ground that there should be no
legal recognition of that which is known to be a social evil.
258. =Prohibition.=--Prohibition is to most temperance advocates the
master key that will unlock the door to happiness and prosperity. The
enforcement of prohibition in Russia after the European war began in
1914 had very impressive results in the better conduct and enterprise
of the people. Where it has been carried out effectively in the United
States, the results soon appear in diminished poverty and wretchedness
and in a decrease of vice and crime. The legitimacy of this method is
recognized even by liquor manufacturers, and they are willing to spend
millions of dollars to prevent national prohibition, realizing that
though it would not destroy their business it would greatly lessen the
profits. The prohibition policy has bitter enemies among some who are
not personally interested in the business. They think it is too
drastic and call attention to the sociological principle that
prohibitions are a primitive method of social control, but the trend
of public opinion is strongly against them on the ground that
prohibitions are necessary in an imperfect human society. Government
increases its regulation of business of all kinds, and the police
their regulation of individuals. The failure of half-way measures has
added to the conviction that prohibition rigidly enforced is likely to
be the only effective method for the solution of the liquor problem.
READING REFERENCES
STELZLE: _The Workingman and Social Problems_, pages 21-50.
MOORE: "Social Value of the Saloon," art. in _American Journal of_
_Sociology_, 3: 1-12.
MELENDY: "The Saloon in Chicago," art. in _American Journal of_
_Sociology_, 6: 289-306, 433-464.
CALKINS: _Substitutes for the Saloon._ _Regulation of the Liquor
Traffic_ (American Academy), pages 1-127.
PEABODY: _The Liquor Problem: A Summary._
GRANT: "Children's Street Games," art. in _The Survey_, 23:
232-236.
PARTRIDGE: _The Psychology of Intemperance_, pages 222-239.
CHAPTER XXXIII
CRIME AND ITS CURE
259. =The Problem of Crime.=--Habitual self-indulgence is at odds with
the idea of social control. The man who resents interference with his
diversions and pleasures is disposed to defy law, and if he feels that
society is not treating him properly he is liable to become a
lawbreaker. This is one of the reasons for the prevalence of crime,
which on the whole increases rather than diminishes, and is a factor
of disturbance in city life. Statistics in the United States show that
in thirty years, from 1880 to 1910, the criminal population increased
relative to population by one-third. This is only partly due to
immigration, nor is it mainly because a large majority of criminals
escape punishment. Two facts are to be kept constantly in mind: (1)
Crime depends upon certain subjective and objective elements, and
tends to increase or decrease without much regard to police
protection. (2) As long as there are persons whose habits and
character predispose them to crime, as long as there are social
inequalities and wants that provoke to criminal acts, and as long as
there are attractive or easy victims, so long will thieving and arson,
rape and murder take place.
The problem of crime is not a simple one. The individual and his
family and his social environment are all involved and changes in
economic conditions affect the amount of crime. The task of the social
reformer is to determine the causes of crime and to apply measures of
reform and prevention. The science of the phenomena of crime is called
criminology, that of punishment is named penology.
260. =Its Causes.=--If there is to be any effective prevention of
crime there is needed a clearer understanding of its causes.
Criminologists are not agreed about these; one school emphasizes
physical abnormalities as characteristic of the criminal, another
considers environment the controlling influence. The removal of
physical defect has repeatedly made an antisocial person normal in his
conduct, and it seems plain, especially from the investigations of
European criminologists, that certain individuals are born with a
predisposition to crime, like the alcoholic inheriting a weak will, or
with insane or epileptic tendencies that may lead early to criminal
conduct; but it is not yet proven that a majority of offenders are
hereditary perverts. A stronger reason for crime is the unsatisfied
desire or the uncontrolled impulse that drives a man to take by force
that to which he has no lawful claim. This desire is strengthened by
the social conditions of the present. In all grades of society there
are individuals who resort to all sorts of means to get money and
pleasure, and those who are brought up without moral and social
training, and who feel an inclination to disregard the interests of
others are ready to justify themselves by illegal examples in high
life. Given a tenement home, the streets for a playground, the saloon
as a social centre, hard, unpleasant, and poorly paid labor, a yellow
press, and a prevailing spirit of envy and hatred for the rich, and it
is not difficult to manufacture any amount of crime.
261. =Special Reasons for Crime.=--Certain special circumstances have
tended to encourage crime within the last few generations. The freedom
and natural roughness of frontier life gave an opportunity for
lawlessness and appealed to those who are scarcely to be reckoned as
friends of society. In the mining and lumber camps gambling and
drinking were common, and robbery and murder not infrequent. The
American Civil War, like every war, stimulated the elemental passions
and nourished criminal tendencies. Human life and rights were
cheapened. The brute in man was evoked when it became lawful to kill
and plunder. The moral effects of war are among the most lasting and
the most pernicious. More recently the conditions of existence in the
cities have generated crime and are certain to continue to do so as
long as slums exist.
The liberty that is characteristic of America easily becomes license,
especially if restraint has been thrown off suddenly, as in the case
of the immigrant, or of the country youth arriving in the city for the
first time and dazzled by the opportunities of his new freedom or with
a grudge against society because it has not been hospitable to him.
The amount of crime is increased also by the constant increase of
legislation. The social regulations that are necessary in the city
tend to become confused with the more serious violations of the moral
code, and because the first are frequently broken with impunity acts
of crime seem less iniquitous. All these reasons help to explain the
increase of crime in the cities. It is worth noticing that the blame
for it is not to be placed on the immigrant. In spite of his
misunderstanding of American law and custom, his overcrowding in
houses and streets, his ill-treatment economically and socially, and
his common disappointment and discouragement because his dreams of
wealth and progress have not materialized, the immigrant as a rule is
law-abiding when sober and is less responsible for crime than the
degenerate American. It is important to remember that there is a
constant inflow of undesirable elements of American population into
the cities, as well as an influx of aliens from Europe. The
proletariat is not all foreign.
262. =Measures of Prevention.=--Crime calls for prevention and
punishment. Improvements in both are taking place. Various methods of
prevention are being proposed and these should be considered
systematically. The first step is to prevent the reproduction of the
bad. It has even been proposed to take away the life of all who are
regarded as hopeless delinquents. Less severe but still radical is the
proposal, actually in practice in several States, to sterilize such
persons as idiots, rapists, and confirmed criminals. The same end
demanded by eugenics may be accomplished by segregating in life
confinement all but the occasional criminals. A second step is the
right training of children by the improvement home conditions, to
include pensioning the mother if necessary, that she may hold the
family together and bring the children up properly. The school helps
to train the children, but industrial training is needed to take the
place of the street trades.
A third step is provision for specific moral and religious education.
Many persons think that however good may be the moral influence of a
school, there is need of supplementary instruction in the home and the
church. In the school itself character study in history and literature
helps, and attention to the noble deeds in current life; the
introduction of forms of self-government and the study of the life and
organization of society are also useful; but some way should be
devised for the definite training of children in social and moral
principles that will act as an antidote to antisocial tendencies.
Experiments have been tried in the affiliation of church and school,
and it has been urged that the State should appropriate money for
religious training in the church, but the objection is made that such
procedure is contrary to the American principle of the separation of
church and state. The need of such education awaits a satisfactory
solution.
263. =The Big Brother Idea.=--The most hopeful method of prevention is
to provide a friend for the human being who needs safeguarding. Many a
grown person needs this help, but especially the boy who is often
tempted to go wrong. The Big Brother movement, starting in New York in
1905, befriended more than five thousand boys in six years, and
branches were formed in cities all over the country. In Europe the
minister is often made a probation officer by the state, to see that
the boy or youth keeps straight. In this country through the agency of
court or charitable society in some cities each boy in need has his
special adviser, as each family has its friendly visitor; sometimes it
is a probation officer, sometimes the judge of a juvenile court,
sometimes only a charitably minded individual who loves boys. Through
this friend work is found, to him difficulties are brought and
intimate thoughts confided, and the boy is encouraged to grow morally
strong. The immigrant, whether boy or man, often ignorant and stupid,
especially needs such friendly assistance. The Boy Scout movement may
be extended, or a substitute found for it, but some such organization
is needed for the immigrant boy and the native American who is
compelled to rely on his own resources. The fear of the law is
undoubtedly a deterrent from crime, but it is inferior to the
inspiration that comes from friendliness.
264. =Educating Public Opinion.=--One of the important preventives of
crime is work--steady, well-paid, and not disagreeable work, with
proper intervals of recreation; added to this a social interest to
take the place of the saloon and the dance-hall. With these belong
improved housing, a better police system, and cleaner politics. The
education of public opinion will eventually lead to a general demand
for all of these. The press has the great opportunity to mould public
opinion, but in its search for news, especially of a sensational
character, it discusses crime in such a way as to excite a morbid
interest in its details, and sometimes in its repetition, and the
newspaper rarely discusses measures of crime prevention. Many believe
that a large responsibility rests upon the church to educate public
opinion with regard to social obligation. They declare that the people
need to be taught that certain social conditions are turning out
criminals as regularly as the factory machine turns out its particular
product, and then they need to be aroused in conscience until the will
to prevent the evil is fixed. The minister, priest, or rabbi is
summoned by the age to be both a prophet and a teacher of ways and
means to a people too often unheeding and careless.
265. =Theories of Punishment.=--The old theory of punishment was that
the state must punish the criminal in proportion to the seriousness of
his crime, and that the penalty must be sufficiently severe to deter
others from similar crime. This primitive theory has been giving way
to the new theory of reformation. This theory is that the object of
arrest and imprisonment is not merely the safety of the public during
the criminal's term of imprisonment, but even more the reformation of
the guilty man that he may be turned into a useful member of society.
The reformatory method has been introduced with conspicuous success
into a number of the American States, and is being extended until it
seems likely to supplant the old theory altogether.
266. =Three Elements in the Method of Reformation.=--The reformatory
system includes three elements that are comparatively new. The first
of these is the indeterminate sentence now generally in practice in
the United States. According to this principle, the sentence of a
prisoner is not for a fixed period, but maximum and minimum limits are
set, and the actual length of imprisonment is determined by the record
the prisoner makes for himself. The second element is reformatory
discipline. The whole treatment of the prisoner, his assignment to
labor, his participation in mental, moral, and religious class
exercises, are all designed to stimulate manhood and to work a
complete reformation of character. The third element is conditional
liberation, or the dismissal of the prisoner on parole. According to
this method, the prisoner is freed on probation, if his record has
been good, before his full term has expired, and is under obligation
to report to the probation officer at stated intervals until his final
discharge. If his conduct is not satisfactory he can be returned to
prison at any time. This probation principle has been extended in
application, so that most first offenders are not sent to a penal
institution at all, but are placed on their good behavior under the
watchful eye of the probation officer. Experience with the reformatory
method shows that about eighty per cent of the cases turn out well. In
the sifting process of the reformatory there are always a few
incorrigibles who are turned over to the penitentiary, and most
recidivists, or old offenders, are sentenced there directly.
267. =Helping the Discharged Prisoner.=--Two experiments have been
tried to help the discharged prisoner and to improve the treatment of
the juvenile criminal. It is a part of the reformatory system to
prepare the way for a prisoner's return to society by teaching him a
trade while in confinement, and finding him a place to work when he
goes out, but under the old system a man was turned loose from prison
with a small sum of money, to redeem himself, when he felt the
timidity natural to an ex-convict and the stigma of his reputation,
and in most cases took the easiest road and returned to crime. To aid
him friendly societies were organized, and even now they prove
necessary to get a man on his feet. The Volunteer Prison League was
organized by Mrs. Ballington Booth to help in the reformation of men
in prison and to aid them when they return to society, and homes have
been established to give them temporary refuge. Through these efforts
not a few criminals that seemed incurable have been reformed.
268. =The Juvenile Court.=--The juvenile court is the result of the
enlightened modern policy of dealing with the criminal. It was the old
custom to conduct the trial of the juvenile offender in the same way
as older men were tried, and to commit them to the same prisons. They
soon became hardened criminals through their associations. But
experience proves that with the right treatment a majority of those
who fall into crime before the age of sixteen can be redeemed to
normal social conduct. Experiments with boys showed that there was a
better way of trial and punishment than that which had been in vogue,
and the juvenile courts that they devised have been widely adopted.
The new plan is based on the principle of making friends with the boy.
Personal inquiry into the conditions of his life is made before the
trial, then the judge hears the case in private conference with the
boy, and after consultation gives directions for his future conduct.
It is plain that the right principle of dealing with crime is to
secure the reformation of the criminal and the protection of society
with a minimum amount of punishment. Retaliation is no longer the
accepted principle; reformation has taken its place. Fundamental to
all the rest is the prevention of crime by providing for the needs of
children and youth. Methods of reform and reclamation are made
necessary, because youthful impulses are not gratified in a way that
would be beneficial, and habits are allowed to develop that lead to
antisocial practices. Society can protect itself only by providing
means for comfortable living, suitable employment, wholesome
recreation, and social education.
READING REFERENCES
HENDERSON: _Cause and Cure of Crime._
WINES: _Punishment and Reformation_, pages 1-265.
BARROWS: _Reformatory System in the United States_, pages 17-47.
ELIOT: _The Juvenile Court and the Community_, pages 1-185.
TRAVIS: _The Young Malefactor_, pages 100-183.
CHAPTER XXXIV
AGENCIES OF CONTROL
269. =Characteristics of City Government.=--The activities and
associations of such large groups as the people who live in cities
must be under social control. It is a principle of American life that
the individual be permitted to direct his own energies as long as he
does not interfere with the comfort and happiness of others, and in
the country there is a large measure of freedom, but in the close
contacts of city life constraint has to be in force. In contrast to
the strict surveillance that is practised in certain countries,
Americans, even in the cities, have seldom been watched or interfered
with. The police have been guardians of peace and safety at street
crossings and on the sidewalks; occasionally it has been necessary to
arrest the doings of disorderly persons, to the annoyance of convivial
spirits and small boys, but their functions as petty guardsmen have
not given police officers great dignity in the eyes of citizens. City
officials have confined their efforts to the routine affairs of their
office, and have so often spent their spare time and the city's money
freely for the satisfaction of their personal interests that municipal
government has gained the reputation of being notoriously corrupt, and
has been left to ward politicians by the better class of citizens.
Nevertheless, municipal government represents the principle of control
and stands in the background as the preserver of the interests of all
the people.
270. =The Relation of the City to the State.=--The American city is
almost universally a creature of the State. Town and county government
were transplanted from England and naturally accompanied the settlers
into the interior, but the city came as a late artificial arrangement
for the better management of large aggregations of population, and
the form and details of government were prescribed by State charter.
The State has continued to be the guardian of the city, often to the
detriment of municipal interests. If a city wishes to change the form
of local administration, it must ask permission from the State
Legislature, and every such question becomes entangled with State
politics, and so is not likely to be judged on the merits of the
question. Indeed, the whole history of city government condemns the
intense partisanship that has directed the affairs of the city in its
own interest when the real interests of all the people irrespective of
party should have been cared for with business efficiency.
271. =Functions of the City Government.=--Among the recognized
functions of the city government is, first, the normal function of
operation. This includes the activity of the various municipal
departments like the maintenance of streets, the prosecution of
various public works, and the care of health by inspection and
sanitation. Secondly, there are the regulative and reformatory
functions, which make it necessary to organize and maintain a police
and judicial force and to provide the necessary places of detention
and punishment. Thirdly, there are educational and recreational
functions represented by schools, public libraries, parks, and
playgrounds. The tendency is for the city government to extend its
functions in order to promote the various interests of its citizens.
It is demanded that the city provide musical entertainments, theatres,
and athletic grounds, that it open the schools as social centres and
equip them for that purpose, that it beautify itself with the most
approved adornments for twentieth-century cities; in short, that it
regard itself as the agent of every kind of social welfare at whatever
cost. Obviously, this programme involves the city in large expense,
and there is a limit to the taxation and bonded indebtedness to which
it can resort, but better financial management would save much waste
and make larger funds available for social purposes without the
necessity of raising large additional sums.
272. =How the Regulative Function Works.=--Doubtless it will be always
true that the regulative function in its largest sense will be the
main business of the city government. The interests of individuals
clash. The self-interest of one often runs counter to the interests of
another, and the city government is their mediator. At every turn one
sees evidences of public oversight. The citizen leaves home to go to
work in the morning. A sidewalk is provided for his convenience and
safety if he needs or prefers to walk. The abutters must keep it in a
safe condition; open coal scuttles, heaps of sand or gravel, or other
obstructions must not remain there, and in winter ice must not
threaten hurt. A street is kept clear for the citizen's carriage or
automobile if he drives down-town, and a franchise is given a
street-railway on certain conditions to provide cheap and rapid
transit. For the convenience of the public the street is properly
drained and paved, at night it is lighted and patrolled. No
householder is permitted to throw ashes or garbage upon the public
thoroughfare, no landowner can rear a building above a certain height
to shut out light and air. The citizen arrives down-town. The public
building in which he works or where he trades is inspected by the city
authorities, the market where he buys his produce is subject to
regulation, the street hawker who calls his own wares must procure a
license to sell goods--law is omnipresent.
273. =The Police.=--The offender who violates city ordinances must
expect to be arrested. Policemen are on the watch to detect such
violations and promptly give warning that they cannot be permitted.
Repeated violation leads to arrest and trial before a police-court
justice, with the probable penalty of a fine or temporary detention in
jail. In case of serious crime, the trial is before a higher court,
and the punishment is more severe. Such control is necessary for the
preservation of order because there are always social delinquents
ready to take advantage of too great freedom. A certain class of
offenses seems to require different handling. Moral obliquity such as
the maintenance of disorderly houses is a corrupting influence, and
the police departments of cities have frequently been charged with
conniving at immoral practices. Police officials have been found to
have their price, and graft has become notorious. For this reason a
special morals police has been proposed to have charge of such cases,
and experiments have been tried already on that plan.
274. =Organization of the City Government.=--(1) _In America._ The
police department is but one of several boards or official departments
for the management of municipal affairs. The administrative officers
are appointed or elected, and are usually under the supervision of the
city executive. The usual form of city government is modelled upon the
State; a mayor corresponds to the governor and a city council of one
or two chambers usually elected by wards is parallel to the State
Legislature. The mayor is the executive officer and the head of the
administrative system, the council assists or obstructs him,
appropriates funds, and attends to the details of municipal
legislation. Political considerations rather than fitness for office
have usually determined the choice of persons for positions.
(2) _In Europe._ In Europe municipal government is treated as a
business or professional matter, not one of politics, and the results
have been so much more satisfactory that American cities have begun to
reform their governments. In England cities are governed according to
the Local Government Act of 1888, by which cities of more than fifty
thousand people become counties for administrative purposes, and
control of administration is vested in a council elected by voters of
the city. Councillors are regarded with high honor, but their work is
a work of patriotism, for they are unpaid, with the result that the
best men enter the city councils. Administration is carried on through
various committees and through department officials who are retained
permanently. In Germany the cities are managed like large households,
and their officials are free to undertake improvements without
specific legislative permission. The mayor or burgomaster is usually
one who makes a profession of magistracy, and he need not be a citizen
of the city that he serves. In administration he is assisted by a
board of experts known as magistrates, who are elected by the council,
usually for life. The council is the real governing body, and its
members are elected by the people for six years, one-third of them
retiring periodically, as in the United States Senate. The activities
of the German cities are more numerous than in this country, yet they
are managed economically and efficiently.
275. =Organizing Municipal Reform.=--The earliest reform movements in
the United States were spasmodic uprisings of outraged citizens who
were convinced of the corruption of city government. Among the
pioneers in organization were leagues of reform in Chicago, Baltimore,
and Boston, organized between 1874 and 1885. In 1887 the Massachusetts
Society for Promoting Good Citizenship was formed. The weakness of the
early movements was the temporary enthusiasm that soon died away after
a victory for reform was gained at the polls; within a short time the
grafters were in the saddle again. The year 1892 marked an epoch, for
in that year the first City Club was organized in New York, followed
by Good Government Clubs in many cities, and finally by the National
Municipal League in 1894. Two hundred reform leagues in the larger
cities united in the National Reform League, with its centre in
Philadelphia. After 1905 a new impetus was given to civic reform by
the new moral emphasis in business and politics. Better officials were
elected and others were reminded that they were responsible to the
people more than to the political machine. An extension of reform
effort through direct primary nominations came into vogue on the
principle that government ought to be by the people themselves: that
democracy means self-control. The extension of municipal ownership was
widely discussed on the principle that the people's interests demanded
the better control of public utilities. There was apparent a new
recognition that the city government was only an agent of popular
control, not an irresponsible bureau for the enrichment of a few
officials at the public expense.
276. =Commission Government.=--In a number of cases radical changes
were made in the charter of the city. Galveston and several other
Texas cities tried the experiment of substituting a commission for
the mayor and council. The Galveston idea originated in 1901, after a
hurricane had devastated the city, and the mayor and aldermen proved
unable to cope with the situation. Upon request of an existing civic
committee the State legislature gave to the city a new charter, with
provision for a commission of five, including a mayor who ordinarily
has no more power than any other commissioner. Each man was to manage
a department and receive a salary. In four years the commission saved
the city a million dollars. Des Moines, Iowa, added to the Galveston
plan the initiative, the referendum, and the recall, put in force a
merit system for subordinate officials, and adopted the non-partisan
open primary. These experiments proved so popular that in 1908-9 not
less than one hundred and thirty-eight cities, including most of the
large ones, proposed to make important changes in their charters,
adopting the most prominent features of the new plan, or adapting the
new to the old system.
Commission government has been defined as "that form of city
government in which a small board, elected at large, exercises
substantially the entire municipal authority, each member being
assigned as head of a rather definite division of the administrative
work; the commission being subject to one or more means of direct
popular control, such as publicity of proceedings, recall, referendum,
initiative, and a non-partisan ballot." Commission government is less
cumbersome and less partisan than the old system and tends to be more
efficient, but the public needs to remember that it is the men in
office and not the form of government that make the control of
municipal affairs a success or failure. In a few cases only
disappointment has resulted from the changes made, and commission
government is still in its experimental stage.
277. =The City Manager.=--A modification of the commission plan was
tried in several cities of the South and Middle West in 1913-14. This
has been called the city-manager plan. It is founded on the belief
that the city needs business administration, and that a board of
directors is not so efficient as a single manager employed by the
commission, who shall have charge of all departments, appoint
department heads as his subordinates, and thus unify the whole
administration of municipal affairs. The manager is responsible to the
commission, and through it to the people, and may be removed by the
commission, or even by popular recall. Such a plan as this is, of
course, liable to abuse, unless the commissioners are high-minded,
conscientious men, and it has not been tried long enough to prove its
worth. The best element in the whole history of recent municipal
changes is the earnest effort of the people to find a form of
administrative control that will work well, and this gives ground for
belief that the experiments will continue until the American city will
cease to be notorious for misgovernment and become, instead, a model
for the whole nation.
READING REFERENCES
_Commission Government and the City Manager Plan_ (American
Academy), pages 3-11, 103-109, 171-179, 183-201.
GOODNOW: _City Government in the United States_, pages 69-108.
BRYCE: _The American Commonwealth_ (abridged edition), pages
417-427.
SHAW: _Municipal Government in Continental Europe_, pages 1-145.
ZUEBLIN: _American Municipal Progress_ (revised edition), pages
376-394.
CHAPTER XXXV
DIFFICULTIES OF THE PEOPLE WHO WORK
278. =The Fact of Misery.=--A brief study of the conditions in which a
city's toilers live and work and play makes it plain that the people
have to contend with numerous difficulties. Large numbers of them are
in misery, and there are few who are not living in constant fear of
it. To a foreigner who did not understand America, it would seem
incredible that misery should be prevalent in the midst of wealth and
unbounded natural resources, when mines and factories are making
record-breaking outputs, when harbors are thronged with ships and the
call for workers goes across the sea. But no one who visits the
tenements and alleys of the city fails to find abundant evidence of
misery and want. People do not live in dark rooms and dirty
surroundings from choice, sometimes as many as two thousand in a
single block. They do not willingly pay a large percentage of their
earnings in rent for a tenement that breeds fever and tuberculosis.
They do not feed their babies on impure milk and permit their children
to forage among the garbage cans because they care nothing for their
young. They do not shiver without heat or lose vitality for lack of
food until they have struggled for a comfortable existence to the
point of exhaustion. Misery is here as it is in the Old World cities,
and it leads to weakness and disease, drunkenness, vice, and crime.
279. =Easy Explanations.=--It is impossible to unravel completely the
skein of difficulties in which the people are enmeshed, or to simplify
the causes of the tangle. It is easy to blame a person's wretchedness
on his individual misconduct and incompetency, to say, for example,
that a man's family is sick and poor because he is intemperate. There
might be truth in the charge, but it would probably not be the whole
truth. It is easy to go back of the circumstance to the weak will of
the man that made him a prey to impulse and appetite and kept him
primitive in his habits, but that alone would not explain conditions.
It is easy to charge misery upon the ignorance of the woman in the
home who is wasteful of food and does not know how to provide for her
family, or to charge lack of common sense to the home-makers when they
try to raise six children on an income that is not enough for two. It
is very common to lay all misery at the door of the capitalist who
underpays labor and feels no responsibility for the life conditions of
his employee. No one of these explains the presence of misery.
It is easy to propose to society a simple remedy like better housing,
prohibition, or socialism, when the only correct diagnosis of
conditions demands a prolonged and expensive course of treatment that
involves surgical action in the social body. It is easy to raise money
for charity, to endow hospitals, and to talk about made-to-order
schemes for ending unemployment, poverty, and panic, but it is soon
discovered that there is no panacea for the evils that infest society.
Back of all personal misconduct or misfortune, of all social specific
or cure-all, is the fundamental difficulty that misery exists, that
its causes are complex, and that all efforts to provide efficient
relief on a large scale have failed, as far as history records.
280. =Poverty and Its Extent.=--Misery appears commonly in the form of
sickness, vice, and poverty. One of these reacts upon another, and is
both the cause and the result of another. Mental and moral incapacity,
ignorance of hygiene, weakness of will, habits that seem incurable,
all of these produce the first two in a seemingly hopeless way;
poverty appears to be incurable above the rest. It is poverty that
prevents fortifying the will by increasing physical stamina and moral
courage, it is poverty that drives a man; to drink or desperation, and
it is poverty that prescribes the unfavorable surroundings that do so
much to keep a man down. Poverty is a danger flag that indicates the
probability of deeper degradation and calls for the individual or
group that is better off to lend a hand. Poverty is a goad, a thorn
in the flesh of society, that is pushing it along the road of social
reform. Private philanthropy, legislative enactment, and much talking
are being tried as experiments to find a solution of the difficulty,
but theorists and practitioners are not yet in full agreement as to
the way out.
There are, of course, different degrees of poverty, ranging from the
helpless incompetents at the bottom of the scale to those who are in a
fair degree of comfort, but who have so little laid aside for a rainy
day that they live in constant fear of the poorhouse. Some struggle
harder than others, and maintain an existence on or just above the
poverty line--these are technically the poor. Charles Booth defines
the poor as those "living in a state of struggle to obtain the
necessaries of life." A few cease to struggle at all and, if they
continue to live, manage it only by living on permanent charity--these
are the paupers. This is a distinction that is carefully made by
sociologists and is always convenient.
It is difficult to estimate the extent of poverty with any accuracy,
but a few estimates of skilled observers indicate its wide extent.
Charles Booth thought that thirty per cent of the people of London
were on or below the poverty line. Robert Hunter has declared that in
1899 eighteen per cent of the people in New York State received aid,
and that ten per cent of those who died in Manhattan received pauper
burial. Alongside these statements are the various estimates of 80,000
persons in almshouses in the United States, 3,000,000 receiving public
or private aid, with a total annual expense of $200,000,000. The
number of those who have small resources in reserve are many times as
great, but industrious, frugal, and self-respecting, they manage to
take care of themselves.
281. =Causes of Poverty.=--It is still more difficult to speak exactly
of the relative importance of the causes of poverty. Investigation of
hundreds of cases in certain localities makes it plain that poverty
comes through a combination of several factors, including personal
incompetence or misconduct, misfortune, and the effects of
environment. In Boston out of one thousand cases investigated
twenty-five years ago (1890-91), twenty per cent was due to drink, a
figure nearly twice as much as the average found in other large
cities; nine per cent more was due to such misconduct as
shiftlessness, crime, and vagrancy; while seventy per cent was owing
to misfortune, including defective employment and sickness or death in
the family. Five thousand families investigated at another time in New
York City showed that physical disability was present in three out of
four families, and unemployment was responsible in two out of three
cases. In nearly half the families there was found defect of
character, and in a third of the cases there was widowhood or
desertion or overcrowding. Added to these were old-age incapacity,
large families, and ill adjustment to environment due to recent
arrival in the city.
Taking these as fair samples, it is proper to conclude that the causes
commonly to be assigned to poverty are both subjective and objective,
or individual and social. It was formerly customary to throw most of
the blame on the poor themselves, to charge them with being lazy,
intemperate, vicious, and generally incompetent, and it is useless to
deny that these appear to be the direct causes in great numbers of
instances, but as much of the negro and poor white trash in the South
was found to be due to hookworm infection, so very many of the faults
of the shiftless poor in the cities are due more indirectly to lack of
nourishment, of education, and of courage. Over and over again, it may
be, has the worker tried to get on better, only to get sick or lose
his job just as he was improving his lot. The tendency of opinion is
in the direction of putting the chief blame upon the disposition of
the employer to exploit the worker, and the indifference of society to
such exploitation; it is the discouraging conditions in which the
working man lives, the uncertainty of employment and the high cost of
living, the danger of accident and disease that constantly hangs over
the laborer and his family, that devitalizes and disheartens him, and
casts him before he is old on the social scrap heap.
Summing up, it is convenient to classify the causes of poverty as
individual and social, including under the first head ignorance,
inefficiency, illness or accident, intemperance, and immorality, and
under the second unemployment, widowhood, or desertion, overcrowding
and insanitation, the high cost of living versus low wages, and lack
of adjustment to environment.
Poverty is one of those social conditions that appear in all parts of
the country, even in the smaller villages, but it is more dreadful and
wide-spread in the great cities. In smaller communities the cases are
few and can be taken care of without great difficulty; to the larger
centres have drifted the poor from the rural regions, and there
congregate the immigrants who have failed to make good, until in large
numbers they drain the vitals of the city's strength. Yet the problem
of poverty is not new. It would be difficult to find any ancient city
that did not have its rabble or mediæval village without its
"ne'er-do-weel"; and in every period church or state or feudal group
has taken its turn in providing relief. In recent years the principle
of bestowing charity has been giving way to the principle of
destroying poverty at the roots by removing the causes that produce
it. This is no easy task, but experience has shown that it is the only
effective way to get rid of the difficulty.
282. =Proposed Methods of Solution.=--The solution of the problem of
poverty cannot be found in charity. Properly administered charity is a
helpful means of temporary relief, but if it becomes permanent it
pauperizes. It never will cure poverty. In spite of all charity
organization, poverty increases as the cities grow, until it is clear
that the causes must be removed if there is to be any hope of
permanent relief. A better education is proposed as an offset to
ignorance. Women need instruction in cooking, home making, and the
care of children, for girls graduating from a machine or the counter
of a department store into matrimony cannot reasonably be expected to
know much about housekeeping. Such evils as divorce, desertion,
intemperance, and poverty are due repeatedly to failure to make a
home. Proper hygienic habits, care of sanitation, simple precautions
against colds, coughs, and tuberculosis, make a great difference in
the amount of misery. It is a question worth considering whether the
home end of the poverty problem is not as important as the employment
end. For the man's ignorance and inefficiency it is proposed that the
vocational education of boys be widely extended.
The social causes of poverty lead into other departments of
sociological study, like the industrial problem, and it is useless to
talk about a cure for poverty as an isolated phenomenon, yet there are
certain principles that are necessarily involved. The whole subject of
the poor needs thorough study. Organizations like the charity
societies already have much data. The Russell Sage Foundation in New
York City is making invaluable contributions to public knowledge. The
reports of the national and State bureaus of labor contain a vast
amount of statistical information. All this needs digestion. Then on
the basis of investigation and digestion of information comes prompt
and intelligent legislation for the amelioration of poverty, until the
most shameful conditions in employment and housing are made
impossible. Only persistent legislation and enforcement of law can
make greedy landlords and capitalists do the right thing by the poor,
until all society is spiritualized by the new social gospel of mutual
consideration and educated to apply it to community life.
283. =Pauperism.=--Pauperism is poverty become chronic. When a family
has been hopelessly dependent so long that self-respect and initiative
are wholly gone, it seems useless to attempt to galvanize it into
activity or respectability, and when a group of such families
pauperizes a neighborhood, heroic measures become necessary. The
families must be broken up, their members placed in institutions where
they cannot remain sodden in drink or become violent in crime, and the
neighborhood cleansed of its human débris. Pauperism is a social pest,
and it must be rooted out like any other pest. If it is allowed to
remain it festers; nothing short of eradication will suffice. But when
once it is destroyed living conditions must be so reformed that
pauperism will not recur, and that can be only by constant vigilance
to prevent a continuance of poverty. The problem is one, and its
solution must involve both poverty and pauperism.
284. =Unemployment.=--One of the causes of wide-spread poverty is
unemployment. This is due sometimes to physical weakness or lack of
ability or character, but as often to industrial depression or lack of
adjustment between the labor supply and the employer. There is always
an army of the unemployed, and it has increased so greatly through
immigration and otherwise that it has demanded the serious attention
of sociologists and legislators. Charitable organizations have given
relief, but it is not properly a question of charity; private agencies
have made a business of bringing together the employer and the
employee, but not always treating fairly the employee; permanent free
labor exchanges are now being tried by governments.
The National Conference on Unemployment, meeting in 1914, recommended
three constructive proposals, which include most of the experiments
already tried in Europe and America. These are first the regularizing
of business by putting it on a year-round basis instead of seasonal;
second, the organization of a system of labor exchanges, local and
State, to be supervised and co-ordinated by a national exchange; and
third, a national insurance system for the unemployed, such as has
been inaugurated successfully in Germany and Great Britain.
The problem of unemployment is less complicated than many social
problems, and there is every reason to believe that through careful
legislation and administration it can be largely removed. The problem
of those who are unable to work or unwilling to work is solved by
means of public institutions. The whole problem of poverty awaits only
intelligent, energetic, and united action for its successful solution.
READING REFERENCES
DEVINE: _Misery and Its Causes_, pages 3-50.
HUNTER: _Poverty_, pages 66-105, 318-340.
HENDERSON: _Dependents, Defectives, and Delinquents_, second
edition, pages 12-97, 160-209.
CARLTON: _History and Problems of Organized Labor_, pages 431-445.
MARTIN: "Remedy for Unemployment," art. in _The Survey_, 22:
115-117.
BOOTH: _Pauperism._
CHAPTER XXXVI
CHARITY AND THE SETTLEMENTS
285. =The Impulse to Charity.=--The first impulse that stirs a person
who sees another in want is immediately to relieve the want. This
impulse to charity makes public begging profitable. It is an impulse
creditable to the human heart, but its effects have not been approved
by reason, for indiscriminate charity provokes deception, and is
certain to result in chronic dependency. Wise methods of charity,
therefore, constitute a problem as truly as poverty itself. Experience
has proved so conclusively that the old methods of relief are
unsatisfactory, that it has become necessary to determine and
formulate true principles of relief for those who really desire to
exercise their philanthropy helpfully. How to help is the question.
286. =History of Relief.=--Some light is thrown on the subject from
the experience of the past. The whole notion of charity as a social
duty was foreign to ancient thought. Families and clans had their own
dependents, and benefit societies helped their own members. The Hebrew
prophets called for mercy and kindness, Jesus spoke his parable of the
good Samaritan, and the primitive Christians went so far as to
organize their charity, so that none of their members would fail of a
fair share. The church taught alms-giving as a deed of merit before
God, and all through its history the Catholic Church has done much for
its poor. In the Middle Ages it was a part of the feudal theory that
the lord would care for his serfs, but in reality they got most help
at the doors of a monastery. In modern times the church has shifted
its burden to the state. This was inevitable in countries where there
was no state church, and it was in accordance with the modern
principle that the state is organized society functioning for the
social welfare of all the people.
In America the colonies and then the States adopted the English custom
of relieving extreme need. At first it was possible for local
committees to take care of their poor by doles furnished sparingly in
their homes, and to place the chronic dependents in almshouses. The
former practice is known as outdoor relief, the latter as indoor
relief. Such relief was not administered scientifically, and did not
help to reduce the amount of poverty. The almshouses were the
dumping-ground of a community's undesirables, including idiots and
even insane, cripples and incurables, epileptics, old people, and
orphan children, constituting a social environment that was anything
but helpful to human development. After a time it became necessary for
the State to relieve the local authorities. The defectives and
dependents became too numerous for the local community to take care
of, and enlightened philanthropy was learning better methods. The
result has been the gradual extension of State care and the
segregation of the various classes of incompetents in various State
institutions, including hospitals for the insane, the epileptic, and
the morally deficient, sanitaria for those who suffer from alcoholic
and tuberculous diseases, and schools for the proper training of the
youth who have come under public oversight.
287. =Voluntary Charity.=--Public relief has been supplemented
extensively by voluntary charity. This has become increasingly
scientific. Indeed popular ideas have been largely transformed during
the last generation. In the small towns and villages where there was
little destitution, and where all knew one another's needs, there was
no special need of scientific investigation or charitable
organization, but in the large cities it became necessary. Thomas
Chalmers in Scotland and Edward Denison and Octavia Hill in England
demonstrated the conditions and the advantages of organized effort.
The first charity organization society was organized in 1869 in
London. Its fundamental principle was to help the poor to help
themselves rather than to give them alms. Its aim was to federate all
the charitable efforts of London, and while this has not proved
practicable, it has greatly increased efficiency and has helped to
bind together philanthropic effort all over England. The income of the
various charitable agencies of London alone was reported to be
$43,000,000 in 1906.
In the United States the first organization on the English model was
the charity organization society of Buffalo, founded in 1877; Boston
followed with a similar organization the next year. These were
followed by the organization of a National Conference of Charities and
Corrections, which holds annual meetings and publishes reports that
are a valuable storehouse of information. Many charitable agencies of
various kinds contribute to the work of relief, some of them really
helpful, others actually blocking the way of genuine progress, but all
showing the strength of the philanthropic motive in American cities.
The closer their alliance with the associated charities the more
effective are their measures of charity. Three stages have marked the
history of the charitable organization societies, as they have learned
from experience. The first has been called the repressive stage. The
fear of pauperizing recipients of charity made the societies too
strict in their alms-giving, so that hardships resulted that were
unnecessary, but such a course was the natural reaction against the
indiscriminate charity that had been in vogue. This stage was
succeeded by the discriminative, in which help is given
discriminatingly, as investigation shows a real need at the same time
that efforts are being put forth to make prolonged giving unnecessary.
Closely combined with this discrimination, which is in constant use,
is the third method of construction. By this constructive method the
worker tries to get at the cause of the particular case of poverty and
to alter the social conditions so that the cause shall no longer act.
Experience and experiment have produced numerous specific measures of
a constructive sort, like the establishment of playgrounds and public
parks, kindergartens and schools for specific purposes, social
settlements and school centres, municipal baths and gymnasiums,
tenement-house reforms and the prevention of disease.
288. =Friendly Visiting.=--The functions of charity organization
societies have been described as the co-ordination and co-operation of
local societies rather than direct relief from the central
organization, thorough investigation of all cases, with temporary
relief where necessary, the establishment of friendly relations
between the poor and the well-to-do, the finding of work for those who
need it, and the accumulation of knowledge on poverty conditions. The
actual contact of charitable societies with the people has been mainly
through friendly visitors who voluntarily engage to call on the needy,
and who meet at regular intervals to discuss concrete cases as well as
general methods. These visitors have the advantage of bringing their
spontaneous sympathy to bear upon the specific instances that come to
their personal attention, whereas the officials of the charity
organization society inevitably become more callous to suffering and
tend to look upon each family as a case to be pigeonholed or
scientifically treated, but the conviction is growing, nevertheless,
that the situation can be effectively handled only by men and women
who are genuinely experts, trained in the social settlements or in the
schools of philanthropy. Whether a voluntary church worker or a
charity expert, it is the business of the visitor to make thorough
investigation of conditions, not merely inquiring of landlord or
neighbors, or taking the hurried testimony of the family, but
patiently searching for information from those who have known the case
over a long period, preferably through the charity organization
society. Actual relief may be required temporarily and must be
adequate to the occasion, but the problem of the visitor is to devise
a method of self-help, and to furnish the courage necessary to
undertake and carry it through. It is important to consider in this
connection the character and ancestry of the family, its environment
and the social ideals and expectations of its members, if the steps
taken are to be effective. The two principles that underlie the whole
practice of relief are, first, to restore the individual or family to
a normal place in society from which it has fallen, or to raise it to
a normal standard of living which it has never before reached;
secondly, to make all charity discriminative and co-operative, that it
may accomplish the end sought without pauperizing the recipient.
289. =Public and Private Agencies.=--Institutions and agencies of
relief are of two kinds, public and private. It is one of the
functions of every social group to promote the welfare of its members.
It is to be expected, therefore, that the church and the trade-union
will help their own poor, but it is just as proper to expect that the
whole community, and even the whole state, will take care of its own
needy. The distinction between public and private agencies is not one
of fundamental sociological principle, but one of convenience and
efficiency of administration. Where the state has extended its
activities, as in Germany, relief by such a method as the Elberfeld
system is practicable; where public opinion, as in the United States,
is not favorable to remanding as much as possible to the government,
it is thought best that private agencies should supplement State aid,
and in most cases make it unnecessary.
290. =Arguments for and Against Private Agencies of Relief.=--Some
argue that private agencies should do it all. In spite of the large
resources at the command of the state and the frequent necessity of
legislation to handle the problem, they claim that public aid
humiliates and degrades the recipient, while private assistance may
put him on his feet without destroying his self-respect; and that
public charity is too often unfeeling and tends to become a routine
affair, while private aid can deal better with specific cases, show
real interest and try experiments in the improvement of methods. There
are those who would have all charity given back to the church. They
believe the responsibility would stimulate the church's own life,
extend its influence among the unchurched, show that it had an
interest in the bodies as well as the souls of the people, and bring
about co-operation between churches in the districts of town or city.
It is of the genius of true religion to be helpful, and the church
could soon learn wise methods. In answer to this argument the reply is
that at present the indiscriminate charity of the church is doing
real harm; that the church does not like to co-operate with other
agencies; that it does not have adequate resources to deal with the
problem or legal authority to restrain mendicants or segregate the
various classes of dependents; and that all persons in the community
ought to share in the responsibility of poor relief, and not all are
in the church. They recognize the valuable aid of such organizations
as the Hebrew Charities and the work of the St. Vincent de Paul
Society of the Catholics, but they believe that such as these at best
can be only auxiliary to the state.
An illustration of the usefulness of private associations appears in a
group of seven boys of foreign parentage in New York City, who
organized themselves in 1903 into a quick-aid-to-the-hungry committee.
They were only thirteen years old and poor. They lived on the East
Side, and pennies and nickels did not make a full treasury. But they
knew the need and had an instinct for helping the right people. In
seven years these boys helped in more than two hundred and fifty
emergency cases; their pennies grew to dollars as they earned more;
their charity developed their self-respect; they held weekly meetings
for debate, and several of them made their way through college. Funds
were supplied, also, from friends outside, who were glad to aid such a
worthy enterprise. The great need among private agencies is fuller
co-operation with one another and with public boards and institutions.
Then duplication of effort, misunderstandings, and wastefulness are
avoided, and the hope of a decline in conditions of poverty increases.
There are limits, however, to the ability of private agencies to
control the situation. There are cases where the organized community
or state must take a hand. There are lazy persons who will not support
themselves or their families; there are certain persons who are
chronically ill or dependent; there are various types of defectives
and delinquents. All these need the authority of the public agencies.
Then there are constructive activities that require the assistance and
sanction of government, like parks and playgrounds, industrial
schools, employment bureaus, the establishment and administration of
state institutions, and the enforcement of health, sanitary, and
building laws. Of course there is often inefficiency in government
management. The local almshouse needs reforming, and the overseers of
the poor should be trained experts. The organization and
superintendence of state institutions is not ideal, and building
arrangements need improvement, but there is a steady gain in the
efficiency of boards of trustees and local managers. There is a
willingness to learn from experience and a disposition to raise the
standards in all departments of administration.
291. =The Social Settlement.=--However efficient an official board may
be in the discharge of its duties, it cannot expect to call out from
the beneficiary so enthusiastic a response as can a real friend. The
best friends of the poor are their neighbors. It is well known that a
group of families in a tenement house will help one of their number
that is in specific difficulty, and that the poor give more generously
to help their own kind than do those who are more well-to-do. It was a
conviction of these principles of friendliness and neighborliness that
led to the first social settlements. Because a person lives in an
undesirable part of the city he is not necessarily a subject for
charity, and the settlement is in no sense to be thought of as a
charitable agency. It is a home established among the less-favored
part of the population by educated, refined, sympathetic people who
want to be neighborly and to bring courage and cheer and helpfulness
to the struggling masses. The original residents of Hull House in
Chicago believed that class alienation could be overcome best by the
establishment of intimate social relationships, and they were willing
to sacrifice their natural social advantages for the larger good.
Settlements are not exclusively of the city, but the stress of life is
sternest in the cities, and most of the experiments have been made
there. They are oases in the desert of the buildings and pavements of
brick, with their grime and monotony, and if the people of the desert
will camp for an hour and drink of the spring, those who have planted
the oasis will be well pleased. To attract them the settlement workers
have organized clubs and classes for united study and activity in
matters that naturally interest the people of the neighborhood; they
have music and dancing and amateur theatricals, and often they supply
domestic or industrial training in a small way for the young people
who frequent the settlement. The residents aim to give the people what
they want; they do not impose anything upon them. They try to satisfy
economic and social wants. They try to stimulate the people of the
neighborhood to desire the best things that they can get. They
co-operate with the police and other departments of the city
government, with the library, and with the school. They assist in
procuring work for those who want it; they encourage the people to be
thrifty and temperate; they help them to get baths and gymnastic
facilities, playgrounds, and social centres. They frequently carry on
investigations that are of great value and assist charitable agencies
in their inquiries and beneficence. They call frequently upon the
people in their homes and encourage them to ask for counsel and help
if they are in trouble.
The settlement idea grew out of a growing interest in the common
people. It was stimulated by Maurice's establishment at London of a
working man's college, with recent Cambridge graduates as teachers,
and by university extension work in Cambridge; it was suggested
further by the location of Edward Denison in the East End of London in
1867. In 1885 Canon Barnett, of St. Jude's Church, London, founded
Toynbee Hall under Oxford auspices. The first settlement in the United
States was established in New York in 1887, and soon became known as
the University Settlement. Hull House in Chicago was started two years
later; the first settlement in Boston was founded under the auspices
of the Andover Theological Seminary. Most settlements avoid church
connections, because of the danger of misunderstandings among people
of widely differing faiths.
The settlement has existed long enough to become a true social
institution. It has remained true to its original principle of
neighborliness, but it has increased its activities as occasion
demanded. It has been a useful object-lesson to churches and city
governments; some of its methods have been imitated, and in some of
the cities its efforts have become unnecessary in certain directions
because the city government itself has adopted its plans. The
settlement has its critics and its devoted supporters; it is one of
the voluntary experiments that shows the spirit of its promoters and
that helps along social progress, and it must be estimated among the
assets of a community. Here and there in the country among certain
groups, as lumbermen, miners, or construction workers, or even in a
settled town, many of the methods of the settlement are likely to find
acceptance, and the settlement idea of neighborliness is fundamental
to all happy and successful social life.
READING REFERENCES
DEVINE: _Principles of Relief_, pages 10-28, 171-181.
WARNER: _American Charities_, pages 301-393.
CONYNGTON: _How to Help_, pages 56-219.
HENDERSON: _Modern Methods of Charity_, pages 380-511.
HENDERSON: _Social Settlements._
ADDAMS: _Twenty Years at Hull House_, pages 89-153.
CHAPTER XXXVII
EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES
292. =The Schools of the City.=--An important function of city
government and of other institutions is the education of the people
who make their home in the city or come to it to broaden their
culture. The city provides for its young people as the country
community does, by locating school-buildings within convenient reach
of the people of every district, but on a much larger and usually a
more efficient scale. Better trained teachers, better grading, a more
modern equipment and well-proved methods give an advantage in
education to the city child, though there are drawbacks in overcrowded
buildings and narrow yards for play. The opportunities for social
education are broader in the city, for the child comes into contact
with many types of people, with a great variety of social
institutions, and with all sorts of activities. It is these
advantages, together with the higher institutions for study, that
attract hundreds and sometimes thousands of students to the prominent
social centres. The colleges and universities, the normal schools, the
music and art institutes and lecture systems are numerous and attract
correspondingly.
293. =The Press as an Educator.=--The institutions directly concerned
with instruction are supplemented by other educational agencies. Among
these is the press. The press is an institution that exerts a mighty
force upon every department of the city's life. It is at the same time
a business enterprise and a social institution. It is a public
misfortune that the newspaper, the magazine, and the book publishing
house is a private business undertaking, and often stands for class,
party, or sectarian interests before those of the whole of society.
There is always a temptation to sacrifice principle to policy, to
publish distorted or half-true statements from selfish interest, and
to prostitute influence to individuals or groups that care little for
the public welfare. The publication of a statement or narrative of a
crime or other misdemeanor tends by suggestion to the imitation of the
wrong by others; it is a well-known fact that a sensational story of
suicide or murder is likely to provoke others in the same manner. It
is a grave question whether the realistic fiction so much in vogue and
published in such quantities is not a baneful text-book on modern
society. But when it chooses the press becomes an instrument of
immense value to the public. It can turn the light of publicity on
dark and dirty places. It can and does provide a means of wise
utterance on questions of the day. It keeps a record of the good as
well as the evil that is done. It is a means of communication between
local groups everywhere, for it publishes what everybody wants to know
about everybody else. It introduces the antipodes to each other, and
makes it possible for far-sundered groups to unite even
internationally for a good cause. As the railroad binds together
portions of a continent, so the press links the minds of human beings.
294. =A Metropolitan Newspaper.=--Take a metropolitan newspaper and
see how it reflects the current life of society. Economic interests of
buyer and seller are exploited in the advertising columns. In no other
way could a merchant so persuasively hawk his wares or a purchaser
learn so readily about the market. The wholesaler and jobber find
their interests attended to in special columns provided particularly
for them. Financial interests are cared for by stock-exchange
quotations, news items, and advertisements. All kinds of social
concerns are taken care of in the news columns, items collected at
great expense from the four quarters of the globe. Gatherings for a
great variety of purposes are recorded. Educational and religious
interests are given space, as well as sports and amusements; last
Sunday's sermon jostles the latest scandal on Monday morning; weather
probabilities and shipping news have their corners, as well as the
fashion department and the cartoon. The newspaper is a moving picture
of the world.
295. =The Value of the Press.=--The most valuable service rendered by
the press is its education of the public mind, so that public opinion
may register itself in intelligent action. It provides a forum for the
discussion of issues that divide sects and parties, and helps to
preserve religious freedom and popular government. Except that it is
so frequently trammelled in uttering itself frankly on important
public questions, it gives an indication of the trend of sentiment and
so makes possible a forecast of future public action. The very variety
of printed publications, from the sensational daily sheet to the
published proceedings of a learned society, insures a healthy
interchange of ideas that helps to level social inequalities and
promotes a mutual understanding among all groups and grades of
society. The cheapened process of book publication on a large scale,
and the investment of large sums of money in the publishing business,
with its mechanics of sale management as well as printing, has made
possible an enormous output of literature on all subjects and has
widened the range of general information in possession of the public.
The whole system of modern life would be impossible without the press.
296. =The Library and the Museum.=--In spite of the efficient methods
used for selling the output of the press, large numbers of books would
be little read were it not for the collections of books that are
available to the public, either free or at small cost. The public
library is an educative agency that serves its constituency as
faithfully as the school and the press. Its presence for use is one of
the advantages that the city has over the country, though the public
library has been extended far within one or two decades. The child
goes from home to school and widens the circle of his acquaintances in
the community; through the daily newspaper the adult gets into touch
with a far wider environment, reaching even across the oceans; in the
library any person, without respect to age, color, or condition, if
only he possess the key of literacy to unlock knowledge, can travel to
the utmost limits of continents and seas, can dig with the geologist
below the surface, or soar with the astronomer beyond the limits of
aviation, can hob-nob with ancient worthies or sit at the feet of the
latest novelist or philosopher, and can learn how to rule empires from
as good text-books as kings or patriarchs possess.
What the library does for intellectual satisfaction the museum and
art-gallery do for æsthetic appreciation. They make their appeal to
the love of beauty in form, color, or weave, and call out oftentimes
the best efforts of an individual's own genius. Often the gift of one
or more public-spirited citizens, they register a disposition to serve
society that is sometimes as useful as charity. Philanthropy that
uplifts the mind of the recipient is as desirable as benevolence that
plans bodily relief; the soul that is filled has as much cause to
bless its minister as the stomach that is relieved of hunger. The
picture-galleries of Europe, the tapestries, the metal and wood work,
the engravings, and the frescoes, are the precious legacy of the past
to the present, not easily reproduced, but serving as a continual
incentive to modern production. They set in motion spiritual forces
that uplift and expand the human mind and spur it to future
achievement.
297. =Music and the Drama.=--Music and the drama have a similar
stimulating and refining influence when they are not debauched by a
sordid commercialism. They strengthen the noblest impulses, stir the
blood to worthy deeds by their rhythmic or pictorial influence, unite
individual hearts in worship or play, throb in unison with the
sentiments that through all time have swayed human life. Often they
have catered to the lower instincts, and have served for cheap
amusement or entertainment not worth while, but concert-hall and
theatre alike are capable of an educative work that can hardly be
equalled elsewhere. When in combination they appeal to both eye and
ear, they provide avenues for intellectual understanding and activity
that neither school nor press can parallel. Recent mechanical
inventions, such as automatic musical instruments and moving pictures,
have added greatly to the range and effectiveness of music and the
drama, but they only intensify and popularize the appeal to the
senses. It is to be remembered that individual and social stimuli must
be varied enough to touch men at all points and call out a response
from every faculty of their nature. These arts, therefore, that make
life real and socialize it and cheer men and women on their way, play
a vital part in the education of society and deserve as serious
consideration as the other educational agencies and institutions that
find a place in the social economy of the community. Numerous amateur
musical and dramatic societies testify to the interest of the people
in these refined arts.
298. =The Need of Social Centres.=--Books and pictures, music and the
drama are so many mild stimulants to those who use and appreciate
them, but there are large numbers of people who rarely read anything
but the newspaper, and who attend only cheap entertainments. These
people need a spur to high thoughts and noble action, but they do not
move in the world of culture. They need a stronger stimulant, the tang
of virile debate about questions that touch closely their daily
concerns, discussions in which they can share if they feel disposed.
In large circles of the city's population there is a lack of
facilities for such public discussion, and for that reason the people
fall back on the prejudices of the newspapers for the formation of
their opinions on public questions. Disputes sometimes wax warm in the
saloon about the merits of a pugilist or baseball-player; questions of
the rights of labor are aired in the talk of the trade-union
headquarters; but the vital issues of city, state, and nation, and the
underlying principles that are at stake find few avenues to the minds
of the mass of the people. In the country the town meeting or the
gathering at the district schoolhouse provides an occasional
opportunity, or the grange meeting supplies a forum for its members,
but even there the rank and file of the people do not talk over large
questions often enough. In the city the need is great.
299. =The City Neighborhood.=--It is well understood that large cities
have most of their public buildings and business structures in one
quarter, and their residences in another; also that the character of
the residential districts varies according to the wealth and culture
of their inhabitants or the nationality and occupation to which they
belong. The city is a coalition of semidetached groups, each of which
has a unity of its own. The necessities of work draw all the people
together down-town along the lines of streets and railways; now and
then the different classes are shaken together in elevators and
subways; but when they are free to follow their own volition they flow
apart. Those who are on terms of intimacy live in a neighboring
street; the grocer from whom they buy is at the corner; the school
where their children go is within a few blocks; the theatre they
patronize or the church they attend is not far away; the physician
they employ lives in the neighborhood. Except the few who get about
easily in their own conveyances and have a wide acquaintance, city
dwellers have all but their business interests in the district in
which they live, and which is seldom over a square mile in extent.
Some municipalities are coming to see that each district is a
neighborhood in itself and needs all the democratic institutions of a
neighborhood. Among these belongs the assembly hall for free speech.
It may well become a centre for a variety of social purposes, but it
is fundamentally important that it provide a forum for public
discussion. As the rich man has his club where he may meet the
globetrotter or the leader of public affairs distinguished in his own
country, and as the woman's club of high-minded women has its own
lecturers and celebrities of all kinds, so the working man and his
wife have a right to come into contact with stimulating personalities
who will talk to them and to whom they can talk back.
300. =Forum for Public Discussion.=--Such democratic gatherings fall
into two classes. There is the public lecture or address, after which
an opportunity for questions and public discussion is given, and there
is the neighborhood forum or town meeting, at which a question of
general interest is taken up and debated in regular parliamentary
fashion. In a number of cities both plans have been adopted. On a
Sunday afternoon or evening, or at a convenient time on another
evening of the week, a popular speaker addresses the audience on a
theme of social interest, after it has been entertained for a half
hour with music; following the address a brief intermission allows for
relaxation, and then for an hour the question goes to the house, and
free discussion takes place under the direction of the leader of the
meeting. Sometimes series of this sort are supplied by churches or
other social organizations; in that case many of the speakers are
clergymen, and in some forums the topics are connected with religious
or strictly moral interests; but even then the discussion is on the
broad plane of the common concerns of humanity, and there is a zest to
the occasion that the ordinary religious gathering does not inspire.
The second plan is modelled after the old-fashioned town meeting that
was transplanted from the mother country to New England, and has
spread to other parts of the United States. It is a gathering of all
who wish to discuss freely some question that interests them all, and
it is more strictly co-operative than the first plan, for there is no
one speaker to contribute the main part of the debate, but each may
make his own contribution, and by the power of his own persuasion win
for his argument the decision of the meeting. Besides stimulating the
interest of those who take part, such a debate is a most effective
educator of the public mind in matters of social weal.
READING REFERENCES
HENDERSON: _Social Elements_, pages 228-253.
KING: _Social Aspects of Education_, pages 65-97, 264-290.
WARD: _The Social Center_, pages 212-251.
WOLFE: _The Lodging House Problem_, pages 109-114.
_Addresses and Proceedings of the National Education Association,
1905_, pages 644-650, "Music as a Factor in Culture."
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE CHURCH
301. =The Place of the Church in the Urban Community.=--In the city,
as in the country, the religious instinct expresses itself socially
through the institution of the church or synagogue. Spiritual force
cannot be confined within the limits of a single institution; religion
is a dynamic that permeates the life of society; yet in this age of
specialization, and especially in a country like the United States,
where religion is a voluntary affair, not to be entangled with the
school or the State, religion has naturally exerted its influence most
directly through the church. Charity and settlement workers are
inspired by a religion that makes humanitarianism a part of its creed,
and a large majority of them are church members, but as a rule they do
not attempt to introduce any religious forms or exercises into their
programmes. Most public-school teachers have their religious
connections and recognize the important place of religion in moulding
character, but religious teaching is not included in the curriculum
because of the recognized principle of complete religious liberty and
the separation of church and state. The result has been that religion
is not consciously felt as a vital force among many people who axe not
directly connected with an ecclesiastical institution. Those who are
definitely connected with the church in America contribute voluntarily
to its expenses, sometimes even at personal sacrifice. Most people who
have little religious interest realize the value of the mere presence
of a meeting-house in the community as a reminder of moral obligations
and an insurance against disorder. Its spire seems to point the way to
heaven, and to make a mute appeal to the best motives and the highest
ideals. The decline of the church is, therefore, regarded as a sign of
social degeneracy.
302. =Worship and Church Attendance.=--The church exists in the city
because it has certain specific functions to perform. To maintain
public worship, to persuade to definite convictions and inspire to
noble conduct, to furnish religious education, and to promote social
reform are its essential responsibilities. Worship is a natural
attitude to the individual who is prompted by a desire to adjust
himself to the universe and to obtain the peace of mind that follows
upon the establishment of a right relationship. To most people it is
easier to get into the proper atmosphere and spirit of worship in a
public assembly, and they therefore are accustomed to meet at stated
intervals and bow side by side as if in kinship together before the
Unseen. Long-established habit and a superstitious fear of the
consequences that may follow neglect keep some persons regular in
church attendance when they have no sense of spiritual satisfaction in
worship. Others go to church because of the social opportunities that
are present in any public gathering.
In recent years church attendance has not kept pace with the
increasing population of the city. A certain pride of intellect and a
feeling of security in the growing power of man over nature has
produced an indifference to religion and religious teachers.
Multiplicity of other interests overshadows the ecclesiastical
interests of the aristocracy; fatigue and hostility to an institution
that they think caters to the rich keeps the proletariat at home. In
addition the tendency of foreigners is to throw off religion along
with other compulsory things that belonged to the Old World life and
to add to the number of the unchurched.
303. =Evangelism and the History of Religious Conviction.=--A second
function of the church is to exert spiritual and moral suasion. It is
a social instinct to communicate ideas; language developed for that
purpose. It is natural, therefore, that a church that has definite
ideas about human obligation toward God and men should try to
influence individuals and even send out evangelists and missionaries
to propagate its faith widely. Those churches that think alike have
organized into denominations, and have arranged extensive propaganda
and trained and ordained their preachers to reason with and persuade
their auditors to receive and act upon the message that is spoken.
Several of the large cities of the United States contain
denominational headquarters where world-wide activities receive
direction, veritable dynamos for the generation of one of the vital
forces of society.
The convictions that prompt evangelism and missionary zeal are the
result of centuries of race experience. The Catholic, the Protestant,
and the Jewish churches have all grown out of religious experience and
religious thinking that have their roots in early human history. The
very forms of worship and of creed that constitute the framework of
religion in a modern city church date far back in their origins. The
religious instinct appears to be common to the whole human race. In
primitive times religious interest was prompted by fear, and the early
customs of sacrifice and worship were established by the group to
bring its members into friendly relations with the Power outside
themselves that might work to their undoing. Temples and shrines
testified to man's devotion and stirred his emotions by their symbols
and ceremonies. A special class of men was organized, a priesthood to
mediate with the gods for mankind. Children were taught to respect and
fear the higher powers, and their elders were often warned not to stir
the anger of deity. As the human mind developed, impulse and emotion
were supplemented by intellect. As man ruminated upon nature and human
experience he was satisfied that there was intelligence and power in
the universe, divine personality similar to but greater than himself,
and his reason sanctioned the religious acts to which he had become
accustomed. He added a creed to his cult. He did not associate his
moral ideas and habits with his religious obligations; these ideas and
habits grew out of the customs that had been found to work best in
social relations. Pagan religions were slow to develop any kinship
between religion and morals. It was among the Hebrews that the loftier
idea of a God of holiness and justice, who demanded right and kindly
conduct among men, came into prominence, and a few religious prophets
went so far as to declare that sacrifice was less important than
conduct. The fundamental teachings of Christianity were based on the
same conception of social duty and on the religious conception of God
as benevolent and loving, calling out loving fealty of heart rather
than external rite and sacrifice. In Christian times religion has
become a spiritual and moral motive power throughout the world.
304. =Church Organization.=--Throughout its long history society has
adjusted the organization of its religious activities to social custom
and social need. The church in any country is a name for an organized
system, with its nerve-centres and its ganglia ramifying into the
remotest localities. In the local community it binds together its
members in mutual relations, even though they live on different sides
of a city, or even in the suburbs. It has its relations to young and
old, and plans for the spiritual welfare of human beings of every age
through its boards and committees, classes and clubs. It presents a
variety of group types to match the inclinations and opinions of
different types of mind. One type is that of a closely knit,
centralized organization, claiming ecclesiastical authority over
individual opinions and practices on the principle that religion is a
static thing, a law fixed in the eternal order, and not to be improved
upon or questioned. Another type is that of loosely federated
ecclesiastical units, flexible in organization and creed, cherishing
religion as a dynamic thing, suiting itself to the changing mind of
man and adjusting itself to individual and social need. It is a social
law that both theology and organization conform in a degree to the
prevailing social philosophy and constitution, and therefore no type
can remain unchanged, but relatively one is always conservative and
the other always liberal, with a blending of types between the two
extremes. Denominational divisions are due partly to variety of
opinion, partly to ancestry, and partly to historical circumstance;
some of these divisions are international in extent; but through every
communion runs the line of cleavage between conservatism and
liberalism in the interpretation of custom and creed. The tendency of
the times is to minimize differences and to bring together divergent
types in federation or union on the ground that the church needs unity
in order to use its strength, and that religion can exert its full
energy in the midst of society only as the friction of too much
machinery is removed.
305. =Religious Education.=--A third function of the church is
religious education. This function of education in religion belongs
theoretically to the church, in common with the home and the school,
but the tendency has been to turn the religious education of children
over to the school of the church. The minister, priest, or rabbi is
the chief teacher of faith and duty, but in the Sunday-school the
laity also has found instruction of the young people to be one of its
functions. Instruction by both of these is supplemented by schools of
a distinctly religious type and by a religious press. As long as
society at large does not undertake to perform this function of
religious education, the church conceives it to be one of its chief
tasks to teach as well as to inspire the human will, by interpreting
the best religious thought that the centuries of history have handed
down, and for this purpose it uses the latest scientific knowledge
about the human mind and tries to devise improved methods to make
education more effective. Education is the twin art of evangelization.
306. =Promotion of Social Reform.=--As an institution hoary with age,
the church is naturally conservative, and it has been slow to champion
the various social reforms that have been proposed as panaceas. It has
been quite as much concerned with a future existence as with the
present, and has been prompt to point to heavenly bliss as a balance
for earthly woe. It has concerned itself with the soul rather than the
body, and with individual salvation rather than social reconstruction.
It is only within a century that the modern church has given much
attention to promoting social betterment as one of its principal
functions, but within a few years the conscience of church people has
been goading them to undertake a campaign of social welfare. Other
institutions have needed the help of the church, and in some cases the
church has had to take upon itself the burden that belonged to other
organizations; moral movements, like temperance, have asked for the
powerful sanction of religion, and the church has used its influence
to persuade men. What has been spontaneous and intermittent is now
becoming regular and continuous, until a social gospel is taking its
place alongside individual evangelism. The Biblical phrase, "the
kingdom of God," is being interpreted in terms of an improved social
order. Religion, therefore, becomes a present-day force for progress,
and the church an agency for social uplift.
307. =Adapting the Church to the Twentieth Century City.=--The church
in the country has a comparatively simple problem of existence. It
fits into the social organization of the community, and in most cases
seldom has to readjust itself by radical changes to fit a swift change
in the community. It is different with the church in the city. Urban
growth is one of the striking phenomena of recent decades; local
churches find themselves caught in the swirl, grow rapidly for a time,
and then are left high and dry as the current sweeps the crowd farther
along. Often the particular type that it represents is not suited to
the newer residents who settle in the section where the church stands.
It has the option of following the crowd or attempting a readjustment.
To decamp is usually the easier way; readjustment is often so
difficult as to be almost impossible. Financial resources have been
depleted. The existing organization is not geared to the customs of
the newcomers. Forms of worship must be improved if the church is to
function satisfactorily. The popular appeal of religion must be
couched in a new phraseology, often in a new language. Religious
educational methods must be revised. Social service must be fitted to
the new need. Small groups of workers must be organized to manage
classes and clubs, and to get into personal contact with individuals
whose orbit is on a different plane. The church must become a magnet
to draw them within the influence of religion. It finds itself
compelled to adopt such methods as these if it is not to become a mere
survival of a better day.
If, however, a locally disabled church can call upon the resources of
a whole denomination, it may be able to make the necessary adjustments
with ease, or even to continue its spiritual ministry along the old
lines by means of subsidies. It is reasonable to believe that society
will find a way to adjust the church to the needs of city people. It
cannot afford to do without it. The church has been the conserver and
propagator of spiritual force. It has supplied to thousands of persons
the regenerative power of religion that alone has matched the
degenerating influence of immoral habits. It has produced auxiliary
organizations, like the Young Men's Christian Association and the
Young Women's Christian Association. It has found a way, as in the
Salvation Army, to get a grip upon the weak-willed and despairing.
Missions and chapels in the slums and synagogues in the ghettos have
carried religion to the lowest classes. These considerations argue for
a wider co-operation among city people in strengthening an institution
that represents social idealism.
READING REFERENCES
TRAWICK: _The City Church and Its Social Mission_, pages 14-22,
50-76, 95-99, 122-160.
STRAYER: _Reconstruction of the Church_, pages 161-249.
MENZIES: _History of Religion_, pages 19-78.
RAUSCHENBUSCH: _Christianizing the Social Order_, pages 7-29,
96-102.
MCCULLOCH: _The Open Church for the Unchurched_, pages 33-164.
COE: _Education in Religion and Morals_, pages 373-388.
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE CITY IN THE MAKING
308. =Experimenting in the Mass.=--The modern city is a gigantic
social experiment. Never before have so many people crowded together,
never has there been such a close interlocking of economic and social
and religious associations, never has there been such ease of
communication and transit. Modern invention has given its aid to the
natural effort of human beings to get together. The various interests
that produce action have combined to make settlement compact. The city
is a severe test of human ability to live peaceably and co-operatively
at close quarters. In the country an unfriendly man can live by
himself much of the time; in the city he is continually feeling
somebody's elbows in his ribs. It is not strange that there is as yet
much crudeness about the city. Its growth has been dominated by the
economic motive, and everything has been sacrificed to the desire to
make money. Dirty slums, crowded tenements, uncouth business blocks,
garish bill-boards and electric signs, dumped rubbish on vacant lots,
constant repairs of streets and buildings--these all are marks of
crudity and experimentation, evidences that the city is still in the
making. Many of the weaknesses that appear in urban society can be
traced to this situation as a cause. The craze for amusement is partly
a reaction from the high speed of modern industry, but partly, also, a
social delirium produced by the new experience of the social whirl.
Naturally more serious efforts are neglected for a time, and
institutions of long standing, like the family, threaten to go to
pieces. A thought-provoking lecture or a sermon on human obligation
does not fit in with the mood of the thousands who walk or ride along
the streets, searching for a sensation. The student who looks at
urban society on the surface easily becomes pessimistic.
309. =Reasons for Optimism.=--This new experience of society will run
its course. Undoubtedly there will go with it much of social loss, but
there is firm ground for believing that there will be more of social
gain. It is quite necessary for human beings to learn to associate
intimately, for population is steadily increasing and modern
civilization makes all classes and all nations more and more dependent
on one another. The pace of life will slow down after a time, there
will be less of social intoxication, and men and women will take their
pleasures more sanely. Eventually they will listen to a message that
is adapted to them, however serious it may be. One of the most hopeful
factors in the situation is the presence of individuals and organized
groups who are able to diagnose present conditions, and who are
working definitely for their improvement. Much of modern progress is
conscious and purposeful, where formerly men lived blindly, subject,
as they believed, to the caprice of the gods. We know much about
natural law, and lately we have learned something about social law;
with this knowledge we can plan intelligently for the future. There is
less excuse for social failure than formerly. Cities are learning how
to make constructive plans for beautifying avenues and residential
sections, and making efficient a whole transportation system; they
will learn how to get rid of overcrowding, misery, and disease. What
is needed is the will to do, and that will come with experience.
310. =Reasonable Expectations of Improvement.=--Any soundly
constructive plan waits on thorough investigation. Such an
organization as the Russell Sage Foundation, which is gathering all
sorts of data about social conditions, is supplying just the
information needed on which to base intelligent and effective action.
On this foundation will come the slow process of construction. There
will be diffusion of information, an enlistment of those who are able
to help, and an increased co-operation among the numerous agencies of
philanthropy and reform. The most obvious evils and those that seem
capable of solution will be attacked first. Intelligent public opinion
will not tolerate the continued existence of curable ills. Pure water,
adequate sewerage, light, and air, and sanitary conveniences in every
home will be required everywhere. Community physicians and nurses will
be under municipal appointment to see that health conditions are
maintained, and to instruct city families how to live properly.
Vocational schools and courses in domestic science will prepare boys
and girls for marriage and the home, and will tend to lessen poverty.
Undoubtedly the time will come when it will be seen clearly that the
interests of society demand the segregation of those who cannot take
care of themselves and are an injury to others. Hospitals and places
of detention for mental and moral defectives, and the victims of
chronic vice and intemperance, as well as criminals of every sort,
will seem natural and necessary. Larger questions of immigration,
industrial management, and municipal administration will be studied
and gradually solved by the united wisdom of city, state, and nation.
311. =Agencies of Progress and Gains Achieved.=--An examination of
what has been achieved in this direction by almost any one of the
larger cities in the United States shows encouraging progress. Smaller
cities and even villages have made use of electricity for lighting,
transportation, and telephone service. The water and sewerage systems
of larger centres are far in advance of what they were a few years
ago. Bathrooms with open plumbing and greater attention to the
preservation of health have supplemented more thorough efforts to the
spread of communicable diseases. Increasing agitation for more
practical education has led to the creation of various kinds of
vocational schools, including a large variety of correspondence
schools for those who wish specific training. There are still
thousands of boys and girls who enter industrial occupations in the
most haphazard way, and yield to irrational impulse in choosing or
giving up a particular job or a place to live in; similar impulse
induces them to mate in the same haphazard way, and as lightly to
separate if they tire of each other; but the very fact that
enlightened public opinion does not countenance these practices, that
there are social agencies contending against them, and that they are
contrary to the laws of happiness, of efficiency, and even of
survival, makes it unlikely that such irrational conduct can persist.
As for the social ills that have seemed unavoidable, like sexual vice,
current investigation and agitation, followed by increasing
legislation and segregation of the unfit, promises to work a change,
however gradual the process may be. Numerous organizations are at work
in the fields of poverty, immigration, the industrial problem, reform
of government, penology, business, education, and religion, and
thousands of social workers are devoting their lives to the betterment
of society.
312. =Conference and Co-operation.=--Improvement will be more rapid
when the various agencies of reform have learned to pull together more
efficiently. It is frequently charged that the friction between
different temperance organizations has delayed progress in solving the
problem of intemperance. It is often said that there would be less
poverty if the various charitable agencies would everywhere organize
and work in association. The independent temper of Americans makes it
difficult to work together, but co-operation is a sound sociological
principle, and experience proves that such principles must be obeyed.
If the principle of combination that has been applied to business
should be carried further and applied to the problems of society,
there can be no question that results would speedily justify the
action. Perhaps the greatest need in the city to-day is a union of
resources. If an honest taxation would furnish funds, if the best
people would plan intelligently and unselfishly for the city's future
development, if boards and committees that are at odds would get
together, there is every reason to think that astonishing changes for
the better would soon be seen.
Suppose that in every city of our land representatives of the chamber
of commerce, of the city government, of the associated charities, of
the school-teachers, of the ministers of the city, of the women's
clubs, of the Young Men's Christian Association and the Young Women's
Christian Association, of the labor-unions, and of the agencies that
cater to amusement should sit together once in two weeks in conference
upon the interests of all the people of the city, and should honestly
and frankly discuss the practical questions that are always at the
fore in public discussion, and then should report back for further
conference in their own groups, there can be no doubt that the various
groups would have a far better understanding and appreciation of one
another, and in time would find ways and means to adopt such a
programme as might come out of all the discussion.
313. =The Crucial Test of Democracy.=--World events have shown clearly
since the outbreak of the European war that intelligent planning and
persistent enforcement of a political programme can long contend
successfully against great odds, when there is autocratic power behind
it all. Democracy must show itself just as capable of planning and
execution, if it is to hold its own against the control of a few,
whether plutocrats, political bosses, or a centralized state, but its
power to make good depends on the enlistment of all the abilities of
city or nation in co-operative effort. There is no more crucial test
of the ability of democracy to solve the social problems of this age
than the present-day city. The social problem is not a question of
politics, but of the social sciences. It is a question of living
together peaceably and profitably. It involves economics, ethics, and
sociological principles. It is yet to be proved that society is ready
to be civilized or even to survive on a democratic basis. The time
must come when it will, for associated activity under the self-control
of the whole group is the logical and ethical outcome of sound
sociological principle, but that time may not be near at hand. If
democracy in the cities is to come promptly to its own, social
education will soon change its emphasis from the material gain of the
individual to co-operation for the social good, and under the
inspiration of this idea the various agencies will unite for effective
social service.
READING REFERENCES
HOWE: _The Modern City and Its Problems_, pages 367-376.
GOODNOW: _City Government in the United States_, pages 302-308.
ELDRIDGE: _Problems of Community Life_, pages 3-7.
ELY: _The Coming City._
_Boston Directory of Charities_, 1914.
PART V--SOCIAL LIFE IN THE NATION
CHAPTER XL
THE BUILDING OF A NATION
314. =Questions of the Larger Group.=--In any study of social life we
have to find a place for larger groups than the family and the
neighborhood or even the city. There are national units and even a
certain amount of international unity in the world. How have they come
to exist? What are the interests that hold them together? What are the
forms of association that are practicable on such a large scale? Is
there a tendency to stress the control of the group over its
individual members, even its aristocracy 01 birth or wealth? These are
questions that require some sort of an answer. Beyond them are other
questions concerning the relations between these larger groups. Are
there common interests or compelling forces that have merged hitherto
sovereign states into federal or imperial union? Is it conceivable
that such mutually jealous nations as the European powers may
surrender willingly their individual interests of minor importance for
the sake of the larger good of the whole? Can political independence
ever become subordinate to social welfare? Are there any spiritual
bonds that can hold more strongly than national ambitions and national
pride? Such questions as these carry the student of society into a
wider range of corporate life than the average man enters, but a range
of life in which the welfare of every individual is involved.
315. =The Significance of National Life.=--The nation is a group of
persons, families, and communities united for mutual protection and
the promotion of the general welfare, and recognizing a sovereign
power that controls them all. Some nations have been organized from
above in obedience to the will of a successful warrior or peaceful
group; others have been organized peacefully from below by the
voluntary act of the people themselves. The nation in its capacity as
a governing power is a state, but a nation exercises other functions
than that of control; it exists to promote the common interests of
mankind over a wider area than that of the local community. The
historic tendency of nations has been to grow in size, as the
transmission of ideas has become easy, and the extension of control
has been made widely possible. The significance of national life is
the social recognition at present given to community of interest by
millions of individuals who believe that it is profitable for them to
live under the same economic regulations, social legislation, and
educational system, even though of mingled races and with various
ideals.
316. =How the Nation Developed.=--The nation in embryo can be found in
the primitive horde which was made up of families related by ties of
kin, or by common language and customs. The control was held by the
elderly men of experience, and exercised according to unwritten law.
The horde was only loosely organized; it did not own land, but ranged
over the hunting-grounds within its reach, and often small units
separated permanently from the larger group. When hunting gave place
to the domestication of animals, the horde became more definitely
organized into the tribe, strong leadership developed in the defense
of the tribe's property, and the military chieftain bent others in
submission to his will. As long as land was of value for pasturage
mainly, it was owned by the whole tribe in common. When agriculture
was substituted for the pastoral stage of civilization, the tribe
broke up by clans into villages, each under its chief and advisory
council of heads of families. So far the mode of making a living had
determined custom and organization.
Village communities may remain almost unchanged for centuries, as in
China, or here and there one of them may become a centre of trade, as
in mediæval Germany. In the latter case it draws to itself all classes
of people, develops wealth and culture, and presently dominates its
neighbors. Small city states grew up in ancient time along the Nile in
Egypt, and by and by federated under a particularly able leader, or
were conquered by the band of an ambitious chieftain, who took the
title of king. In such fashion were organized the great kingdoms and
empires of antiquity.
Social disintegration and foreign conquest broke up the great empires,
and for centuries in the Middle Ages society existed in local groups;
but common economic and racial interests, together with the political
ambition of princes and nobles, drew together semi-independent
principalities and communes, until they became welded into real
nations. At first the state was monarchical, because a few kings and
lords were able to dominate the mass, and because strength and
authority were more needed than privileges of citizenship; then the
economic interest became paramount, and merchants and manufacturers
demanded a share in government for the protection of their interests.
Education improved the general level of intelligence, and invention
and growing commerce improved the condition of the people until
eventually all classes claimed a right to champion their own
interests. The most progressive nations racially, politically, and
economically, outstripped the others in world rivalry until the great
modern nations, each with its own peculiar qualities of efficiency,
overtopped their predecessors of all time.
317. =The Story of the United States.=--The story of national life in
the United States is especially noteworthy. Within a century and a
half the people of this country have passed through the economic
stages, from clearing the forests to building sky-scrapers; in
government they have grown from a few jealous seaboard colonies along
the Atlantic to a solidly welded federal nation that stretches from
ocean to ocean; in education and skill they have developed from
provincial hand-workers to expert managers of corporate enterprises
that exploit the resources of the world; and in population they have
grown from four million native Americans to a hundred million people,
gathered and shaken together from the four corners of the earth. In
that century and a half they have developed a new and powerful
national consciousness. When the British colonies asserted their
independence, they were held together by their common ambition and
their common danger, but when they attempted to organize a government,
the incipient States were unwilling to grant to the new nation the
powers of sovereignty. The Confederation was a failure. The sense of
common interest was not strong enough to compel a surrender of local
rights. But presently it appeared that local jealousies and divisions
were imperilling the interests of all, and that even the independence
of the group was impossible without an effective national government.
Then in national convention the States, through their representatives,
sacrificed one after another their sovereign rights, until a
respectable nation was erected to stand beside the powers of Europe.
It was given power to make laws for the regulation of social conduct,
and even of interstate commerce, to establish executive authority and
administrative, judicial, and military systems, and to tax the
property of the people for national revenue. To these basic functions
others were added, as common interests demanded encouragement or
protection.
318. =Tests of National Efficiency.=--Two tests came to the new nation
in its first century. The first was the test of control. It was for a
time a question whether the nation could extend its sovereignty over
the interior. State claims were troublesome, and the selfish interests
of individuals clashed with revenue officers, but the nation solved
these difficulties. The second test was the test of unity, and was
settled only after civil war. Out of the struggle the nation emerged
stronger than it had ever been, because henceforth it was based on the
principle of an indissoluble union. With its second century have come
new tests--the test of absorbing millions of aliens in speech and
habits, the test of wisely governing itself through an intelligent
citizenship, the test of educating all of its people to their
political and social responsibilities. Whether these tests will be
met successfully is for the future to decide, but if the past is any
criterion, the American republic will not fail. National structures
have risen to a certain height and then fallen, because they were not
built on the solid foundations of mutual confidence, co-operation, and
loyalty. Building a self-governing nation that will stand the test of
centuries is possible only for a people that is conscious of its
community of interests, and is willing to sacrifice personal
preferences and even personal profits for the common good.
READING REFERENCES
BRYCE: _The American Commonwealth_ (Abridged Edition), pages
3-21.
DEALEY: _Development of the State_, pages 26-48.
BLUNTSCHLI: _Theory of the State_, pages 82-102.
MULFORD: _The Nation_, pages 37-60.
BAGEHOT: _Physics and Politics_, pages 81-155.
USHER: _Rise of the American People_, pages 151-167, 182-195,
269-281.
CHAPTER XLI
ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE PEOPLE AS A NATION
319. =The Reality of the Nation.=--Ordinarily the individual is not
pressed upon heavily by his national relationships. He is conscious of
them as he reads the newspaper or goes to the post-office, but except
at congressional or presidential elections they are not brought home
to him vividly. He thinks and acts in terms of the community. The
nation is an artificial structure and most of its operations are
centralized at a few points. The President lives and Congress meets at
the national capital. The departments of government are located there,
and the Supreme Court holds its sessions in the same city. Here and
there at the busy ports are the custom-houses, with their revenue
officers, and at convenient distances are district courts and United
States officers for the maintenance of national order and justice. The
post-office is the one national institution that is found everywhere,
matched in ubiquity only by the flag, the symbol of national unity and
strength. But though not noticeably exercised, the power of the nation
is very real. There is no power to dispute its legislation and the
decisions of its tribunals. No one dares refuse to contribute to its
revenues, whether excise tax or import duties. No one is unaware that
a very real nation exists.
320. =The Social Nature of the Nation.=--In thinking of the nation it
is natural to consider its power as a state, but other functions
belong to it as a social unit that are no less important. Its general
function is not so much to govern as to promote the general welfare.
The social nature of national organization is well expressed in the
preamble to the national Constitution: "We the people of the United
States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice,
insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote
the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves
and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America." The general welfare is a somewhat vague
term, but it includes all the interests of the people, and so
indicates the scope of the national function.
321. =The Economic Function.=--The nation has an economic function. It
is its business to encourage trade by means that seem most likely to
help, whether by subsidies, tariffs, or expert advice; to protect all
producers, distributers, and consumers by just laws and tribunals, so
that unfair privileges shall not be enjoyed by the few at the expense
of the many, and to provide in every legitimate way for the spread of
information and for experimentation that agriculture, mining, and
manufacturing may be improved. Evidences of the attempt of the United
States to measure up to these responsibilities are the various tariffs
that have been established for protection as well as revenue, the
interstate and trade commissions that exist for the regulation of
business, and the individuals and boards that are maintained for
acquiring and disseminating information relating to all kinds of
economic interests. The United States Patent Office encourages
invention, and American inventors outnumber those of other nations.
The United States Department of Agriculture employs many experimenters
and expert agents and even distributes seeds of a good quality, in
order that one of the most important industries of the American people
may flourish. At times some of the national machinery has been
prostituted to private gain, and there is always danger that the
individual will try to prosper at the expense of society, but the
people more than ever before are conscious that it is the function of
the nation to promote the _general_ welfare, and private interests,
however powerful, must give heed to this.
322. =Manufacturing in Corporations and Associations.=--Back of all
organization and legislation lies a real national unity, through
which the nation exercises indirectly an economic function. In spite
of a popular jealousy of big business in the last decade, there is a
pride in the ability of American business men to create a profitable
world commerce, and middle-class people in well-to-do circumstances
subscribe to the purchase of stocks and bonds in trusted corporations.
Without this general interest and participation such a rapid extension
of industrial enterprise could not have taken place. Without the lines
of communication that radiate from great commercial and financial
centres, without the banking connections that make it possible for the
fiscal centres to support any particular institution that is in
temporary distress, without the consciousness of national solidarity
in the great departments of business life, economic achievement in
America would have come on halting feet. This unity is fostered but
not created by government, and no hostile government can destroy it
altogether.
To further economic interests throughout the nation all sorts of
associations exist and hold conventions, from American poultry
fanciers to national banking societies. Occasionally these
associations pool their interests and advertise their concerns through
a national exposition. In this way they find it possible to make an
impression upon thousands of people whom they are educating indirectly
through the printing-press. It would be an interesting study and one
that would throw light on the complexity and ubiquity of national
relations, if it could be ascertained locally how many individuals are
connected with such national organizations, and what particular
associations are most popular. If this examination were extended from
purely economic organizations to associations of every kind, we should
be able to gauge more accurately the strength of national influence
upon social life.
323. =Health Interests.=--If this national unity exists in the
economic field it is natural to expect to find it in the less material
interests of society. The sense of common interests is all-pervasive.
National health conditions bring the physicians together to discuss
the causes and the therapeutics. How to keep well and to get strong,
how to dress the baby and to bring up children are perennial topics
for magazines with a national circulation. Insurance companies with a
national constituency prescribe physical tests for all classes.
Government takes cognizance of the physical interest of all its
citizens, and passes through Congress pure-food and pure-drug acts.
National societies of a voluntary nature also cater to health and
happiness. Long-named organizations exist for moral prophylaxis and
for the prevention of cruelty to children and animals. Vigilance
associations of all sorts stand guard to keep children and their
elders from contamination. Society protects itself over wide areas
through such associated recognition of the mutual interests of all its
members.
324. =National Sport.=--Recreation and sport also present national
features. Every new phase of recreation from playgrounds to philately
presently has its countrywide association. There is a conscious
reaching out for wide fellowship with those who are interested in the
same pursuits. The attraction of like-mindedness is a potent force in
every department of life. Certain forms of relaxation or spirited
rivalry have attained to the dignity of national sports. England has
its football, Scotland its golf, Canada its lacrosse, the United
States its baseball. The enthusiasm and excitement that hold whole
cities in thrall as a national league season draws to its close, is a
more striking phenomenon than Roman gladiatorial shows or Spanish
bull-fights. Persons who seldom if ever attend a game, who do not know
one player from another, wax eloquent over the merits of a team that
represents their own city, while individuals who attain to the title
of "fans" handle familiarly the details of the teams throughout the
league circuit. Why should Olympic contests held in recent years
between representatives of different nations, or international tennis
championships, arouse universal interest? It is inexplicable except as
evidence of collective consciousness and a national pride and loyalty.
The same spirit has entered into university athletics. The great
universities have their "rooters" scattered all over the land, and
the whole nation is interested in the Thames or Henley races and the
Poughkeepsie regattas. There are intercollegiate tennis championships
and chess tournaments, football contests between the leaders East and
West, all-America teams, and even international rivalries.
325. =The Function of Education.=--Nation-wide ties and loyalties in
sport do not call for the official action of the nation, though
national officials as individuals are often devoted to certain sports,
but the nation has other functions that may be classed as social. No
duty is more pressing, not even that of efficient government, than the
task of education. The National Bureau of Education supplemented by
State boards, officially takes cognizance of society's educational
interests. In education local independence plays a large part, but it
is the function of government to make inquiry into the best theories
and methods anywhere in vogue, to extend information to all who are
interested, and to use its large influence toward the adoption of
improvements. Government in certain States of the American Union even
goes so far as to co-operate with local communities in maintaining
joint school superintendents of towns or counties. It is appropriate
that a democratic nation should give much attention to the education
of the people because the success of democracy depends on popular
intelligence.
The efforts of the government are seconded by voluntary organization.
It is not unusual for college presidents or ordinary teachers to meet
in conference and discuss their difficulties and aspirations, but a
National Education Association is cumulative evidence that Americans
think in terms of a continent, and that their interests are the same
educationally in all parts of the land. It is no less true of other
agencies of culture than the schools. Cultural associations of all
kinds abound. Some of them are limited by State boundaries, not a few
are national in their scope. There is a national Chautauqua;
institutes with the same name hold their sessions all over the land.
Music, art, and the drama, sometimes the same organized group of
artists, appeal to appreciative audiences in Boston, New Orleans,
Chicago, and San Francisco. Popular songs from the opera, popular
dances from the music-halls sweep the country with a wave of imitative
enthusiasm. There are national whims and national tastes that chase
each other from ocean to ocean, almost as fast as the sun moves from
meridian to meridian.
326. =National Philanthropy.=--So much of national life is voluntary
in direction and organization in America, as compared with Germany or
Russia, that it is easy to overlook its national significance. As a
national state the United States does not attempt philanthropy. The
separate States have their asylums as they have penitentiaries and
reformatories, but the nation performs no such function. Yet
philanthropic organization girdles the continent. The National
Conference of Charities and Corrections is one instance of a society
that meets annually in the interest of the depressed classes,
discusses their problems, and reports its findings to the public as a
basis for organized activity. Such an organization not only represents
the humanitarian principles and interest of individuals here and
there, but it helps to bind together local groups all over the country
that are working on an altruistic basis. Whole sections of territory
join in discussing still wider human interests. The Southern
Sociological Conference appeals to the whole South and calls upon the
rest of the country for speakers of reputation and wisdom.
327. =The Federal Council of Churches.=--It is fundamental to the
spirit and word of the American Constitution that church and state
shall not be united, but this does not prevent religious interests
from being cherished nationally, and ecclesiastical organizations from
having national affiliations. Modern churches are grouped first of all
in denominations, because of certain peculiarities, but most of the
denominations have spread over the country and propagated their type
as opportunity offered. National conferences and conventions,
therefore, take place regularly, bringing together Episcopalians,
Presbyterians, Baptists, or Methodists, as the case may be, to
consider the interests that are most vital to the denomination as a
whole, or which the denomination as a whole, in place of the local
churches, holds within its sphere of control. Politics and sectional
interests have sometimes divided denominations, large bodies have
sometimes split along conservative or radical lines, but the national
ideal has never been lost sight of, and national organizations enjoy
dignity and prestige. One of the most recent illustrations of a still
broader interest and deeper consciousness is the federation of more
than thirty evangelical Protestant denominations for better
acquaintance and larger achievement. Temporary movements and even a
definite Evangelical Alliance have been in evidence before, but now
has come a permanent organization, to include all the religious
interests that can be held in common, and especially to stress the
more ambitious programme of social regeneration. The Federal Council
of the Churches of Christ in America has yet to prove that it is not
ahead of the times, but it is an earnest of a religious interest that
oversteps the bounds of creed and denominational organization and
calls upon the various divisions of the Protestant Church to unite for
a national campaign.
328. =The Scope of National Life.=--Social life in the nation is not
confined to any organization. It does not wait upon government to
perform its various functions. It goes on because of the constant flow
and counterflow of population through all the channels of acquaintance
and correspondence, of travel and trade. People feel the need of one
another, are in constant touch with one another, and inevitably are
continually exchanging commodities and ideas. Barriers of race and
language, of tariff walls and national conventions stand in the way of
exchange between individuals of different nations, though a strenuous
commercial age succeeds in making breaches in the barriers, but
opportunity within the nation is free, and such natural barriers as
language and race differences speedily give way before the mutual
desires of the native and the hyphenated American.
READING REFERENCES
DEALEY: _Development of the State_, pages 63-115.
_Reports of the Commissioner of Education._
_American Year Book_, 1914, _passim._
WARD: _Year Book of the Church and Social Service_, 1916, pages
24-29.
CHAPTER XLII
THE STATE
329. =The State and Its Sovereignty.=--The various economic and social
functions that are exercised by the people as a nation can be
performed in an orderly and effective way only when the people are
organized politically, and the nation has full powers of sovereignty.
When the nation functions politically it is a state. States may be
large like Russia, or small like Montenegro; they may have full
sovereignty like Great Britain, or limited sovereignty like New York;
the fact that they exercise political authority makes them states. It
is conceivable that this political authority may be exercised through
the sheer force of public opinion, but the experience of the newly
organized United States under the Articles of Confederation showed
that national moral suasion was not effective. History seems to prove
that society needs a machinery of government able to legislate and
enforce its laws, and the tendency has been for a comparatively small
number of states to extend their authority over more and more of the
earth's surface. This has become possible through the maintenance of
efficient military forces and wise local administration, aided by
increasing ease of communication and transportation. Once it was a
question whether the United States could enforce its law as far away
as western Pennsylvania; now Great Britain bears unquestioned sway
over the antipodes. Many persons look forward to the time when the
people of all nations will unite in a universal state, with power to
enforce its will without resort to war.
330. =Why the State is Necessary.=--There are some persons, commonly
known as anarchists, who do not believe that government is necessary.
They would have human relations reduced to their lowest terms, and
then trust to human nature to behave itself properly. There are other
persons known as Socialists, who would have the people in their
collective capacity exercise a larger control than now over human
action. Neither of these classes represents the bulk of society.
Common sense and experience together seem to demand a government that
will exercise a reasonable control, and by reasonable is meant a
control that will preserve the best interests of all and make general
progress possible. The political function of the nation is both
coercive and directive. When we think of a state we naturally think of
the power that it possesses to make peace or war with foreign powers,
to keep order within the nation, to enforce its authority over any
individual or group that breaks the laws that it has made; but while
such power of control is essential and its exercise often spectacular,
it is paralleled by the directive power. There are many social
relations that need definition and much social conduct that needs
direction. A man and a woman live together and bring up a family of
children. Who is to determine their legal status, the terms of
marriage, the rights of parenthood, the claims of childhood, the
rights and obligations of the family as a part of the community? The
family accumulates property in lands, houses, and movable possessions.
Who will make the acquisition legal, insure property protection, and
provide legally for inheritance? Every individual has his personal
relation to the state, and privileges of citizenship are important.
Who shall determine the right to vote and to hold office, or the duty
to pay taxes or serve in the army or navy? In these various ways the
state is no less functioning politically for the benefit of the people
than when coercing recalcitrant citizens, warning or fighting other
nations, or legislating in its congressional halls. Its opportunity to
regulate the social interests of its citizens is almost illimitable,
for while a written constitution may prescribe what a state may and
may not do, those who made the constitution have the power to revise
it or to override its provisions.
331. =Theories of the State.=--Archæological and historical evidence
point to the family as the nursery of the state. There was a time when
the contract theory was popular. It was believed that the state became
possible when individuals agreed to give up some of their own
individual rights for the sake of living in peace with their neighbors
and enjoying mutual protection. There is no doubt that such a mutual
arrangement was made in the troublous feudal period of mediæval
European history, just as the original thirteen American colonies gave
up some of their individual powers to make possible a real American
state, but the social-contract theory is no longer accepted as a
satisfactory explanation of the origin of government. There was no
_Mayflower_ compact with the bushmen when Englishmen decided to live
with the natives in Australia.
There is another theory that eminently wise men, with or without
divine assistance, formulated law and government for cities and
tribes, and that their codes were definitely accepted by the people,
but the work of these men, as far as it is historical at all, seems to
have been a work of codifying laws which had grown out of custom
rather than of making new laws. Still another theory that was once
held strenuously by a few was that of the divine right of kings, as if
God had given to one dynasty or one class the right to rule
irresponsibly over their fellows. Individual political philosophers,
like the Greek Aristotle and the German Bluntschli have published
their theories, and have influenced schools of publicists, but the
political science of the present day, basing its theories on observed
facts, is content to trace the gradual changes that have taken place
in the unconscious development of the past, and to point out the
possibilities of intelligent progress in future evolution.
332. =How the State Came to Be.=--The true story of the development of
the state seems to have been as follows. The roots of the state are in
the family group. When the family expanded into the tribe, family
discipline and family custom easily passed over to tribal discipline
and tribal custom, strengthened by religious superstition and the
will of the priest. But not all chieftains and all tribes have the
same ability or the same disposition, so that while political custom
and religious sanctions tended in the main to remain unchanged, an
occasional exception upset the social equilibrium. Race mixture and
conflicting interests compelled organization on a civil rather than a
tribal basis. Or an ambitious prince or a restless tribe interfered
with the established relations, and presently a powerful military
state was giving law to subjugated tribes. Egypt, Persia, Rome, Turkey
have been such states. On a larger scale, something of the same sort
has happened in the conquest of outlying parts of the world by the
European Powers, until one man in Petrograd can give law to Kamchatka,
a cabinet in London can determine a policy for the government of
India, or the United States Congress can change the administration of
affairs in the Philippines. Military power has been the weapon by
which authority has been imposed from without, legislative action the
instrument by which authority has been extended within.
333. =The Government of Great Britain.=--The government of Great
Britain is one of the best concrete examples of the growth of a
typical state. Its Teutonic founders learned the rudiments of
government in the German forests, where the principles of democracy
took root. Military and political exigencies gave the prince large
power, but the people never forgot how to exert their influence
through local assembly or national council. In the thirteenth century,
when the King displeased the men of the nation, they demanded the
privileges of Magna Carta, and when King and lords ruled
inefficiently, the common people found a way to enlarge their own
powers. Representatives of the townsmen and the country shires took
their places in Parliament, and gradually, with growing wisdom and
courage, assumed more and more prerogatives. Three times in the
seventeenth century Parliament demanded successfully certain rights of
citizenship, though once it had to fight and once more to depose a
king. In the nineteenth century, by a succession of reform acts, King
and Parliament admitted tradesmen, farmers, and working men to a full
share in the workings of the state, and only recently the Commons have
supplanted the Lords as the leading legislative body of the nation.
The story of Great Britain is a tale of growing democracy and
increasing efficiency.
The story of local government and the story of imperial government
might be placed side by side with the story of national government,
and each would reveal the political principles that have guided
British progress. Social need, patient experiment, and growth in
efficiency are significant phrases that help to explain the story.
Every nation has worked out its government in its own way, interfered
with occasionally by interested parties on the outside, but the
general line of progress has been the same--local experimentation,
federation or union more often imposed than agreed upon by popular
consent, and a slow growth of popular rights over government by a
privileged few. Present tendency is in the direction of safeguarding
the interests of all by a fully representative government, in which
the individual efficiency of prince or commoner alike shall have due
weight, but no one sovereign or class shall rule the people as a
whole.
334. =The Organization of Government.=--The political organization
depends upon the functions that the state has to perform, as the
structure of any group corresponds to its functions. The modern
national machinery is a complicated system, and is becoming more so as
constitutional conventions define more in detail the powers and forms
of government, and as legislatures enter the field of social reform,
but the simplest attempt at regulation involves several steps, and so
naturally there are several departments of government. The first step
is the election of those who are to make the laws. Practically all
modern states recognize the principle that the people are at least to
have a share in government; this is managed by the popular election of
their representatives in the various departments of government. The
second step is lawmaking by the representative legislature, congress,
or parliament, usually after previous deliberation and recommendation
by a committee; in some states the people have the right by referendum
to ratify or reject the legislation, and even to initiate such
legislation as they desire. The third step is the arrangement for
carrying out the law that has been passed. This is managed by the
executive department of the government. The fourth step is the actual
administration of law and government by officials who are sometimes
elected and sometimes appointed, and who constitute the administrative
department of the political organization. A fifth step is the passing
upon law and the relation of an individual or group to it by judicial
officers attached to a system of courts. These departments of the
state, with whatever auxiliary machinery has been organized to assist
in their working, make up the political organization of the typical
modern state.
335. =The Electoral System.=--There is great variety in the degree of
self-government enjoyed by the people. In the most advanced nations
the electoral privileges are widely distributed, in the backward
nations it is only recently that the people have had any voice in
national affairs. Usually suffrage is reserved for those who have
reached adult manhood, but an increasing number of States of the
American Union and several foreign nations have admitted women to
equal privileges. Lack of property or education in many countries is a
bar to electoral privilege. Pauperism and crime and sometimes
religious heterodoxy disfranchise. The variety and number of officials
to be elected varies greatly. The head of the nation in the states of
the Old World generally holds his position by hereditary right, and he
has large appointive power directly or indirectly. In some states the
judiciary is appointed rather than elected on the ground that it
should be above the influence of party politics. The chief power of
the people is in choosing their representatives to make the laws. Most
of these representatives are chosen for short terms and must answer to
the people for their political conduct; by these means the people are
actually self-governing, though the execution of the law may be in
the hands of officers whom they have not chosen. Democratic
government is nevertheless subject to all the forces that affect large
bodies exerted through party organizations, demagogues, and a party
press, but even opponents of democracy are willing to admit that the
people are learning political lessons by experience.
336. =The Legislative System.=--Legislation by representatives of all
classes of the people is a new political phenomenon tried out most
thoroughly among the large nations by Great Britain, France, and the
United States. Even now there is much distrust of the ability of the
ordinary man in politics, and considerably more of the ordinary woman.
But there have been so many extraordinary individuals who have risen
to political eminence from the common crowd, that the legislative
privilege can no longer be confined to an aristocracy. The old
aristocratic element is represented to-day by a senate, or upper
house, composed of men who are prominent by reason of birth, wealth,
or position, but the upper house is of minor importance. The real
legislative power rests with the lower chamber, which directly
represents the middle and lower classes, professional, business, and
industrial. The action of lawmaking bodies is usually limited in scope
by the provisions of a written constitution, and is modified by the
public opinion of constituents. Important among the necessary
legislation is the regulation of the economic and social relations of
individuals and corporations, provision for an adequate revenue by
means of a system of taxation, appropriation for the maintenance of
departments of government and necessary public works, and the
determination of an international policy. In the United States an
elaborate system of checks and balances gives the executive a
provisional veto on legislation, but gives large advisory powers to
Congress. In Great Britain the executive is the chief of the dominant
party in Parliament, and if he loses the confidence of the legislative
body he loses his position as prime minister unless sustained in a
national election.
In all legislative bodies there are inevitable differences of opinion
and conflicts of interests resulting in party divisions and such
opposite groups as conservatives and radicals. The formulation and
pursuance of a national policy is, therefore, not an easy task, and
the conflict of interests often necessitates compromise, so that a
history of legislation over a series of years shows that national
progress is generally accomplished by liberalism wresting a modicum of
power from conservatism, then giving way for a little to a period of
reaction, and then pushing forward a step further as public opinion
becomes more intelligent or more courageous.
337. =The Executive Department.=--Legislative bodies occasionally take
vacations; the executive is always on duty in person or through his
subordinates. Popularly considered, the executive department of
government consists of the president, the king, or the prime minister;
actually it includes an advisory council or cabinet, which is
responsible to its chief, but shares with him the task of the
management of national affairs. The executive department of the
government stands in relation to the people of the nation as the
business manager of a corporation stands in relation to the
stockholders. He must see that the will of the people, as expressed by
their representatives, is carried into effect; he must appoint the
necessary administrative officials for efficient service; he must keep
his finger upon the pulse of the nation, and use his influence to hold
the legislature to its duty; he must approve or veto laws which are
sent to him to sign; above all, he must represent his nation in all
its foreign relations, appoint the personnel of the diplomatic force,
negotiate treaties, and help to form the international law of the
world. It is the business of the executive to maintain the honor and
dignity of the nation before the world, and to carry out the law of
his own nation if it requires the whole military force available.
338. =Administrative Organization.=--The executive department includes
the advisers of the head, who constitute the cabinet. In Europe the
cabinet is responsible to the sovereign or the parliament, and the
members usually act unitedly. In the United States they are appointed
by the President, and are individually responsible to him alone. In
their capacity as a cabinet they help to formulate national policy,
and their influence in legislation and in moulding public opinion is
considerable, but their chief function is in administering the
departments of which they have charge. It is the custom for the heads
of the chief departments of government to constitute the cabinet, but
their number differs in different states, and titles vary, also. In
general, the department of state or foreign affairs ranks first in
importance, and its secretary is in charge of all correspondence with
the diplomatic representatives of the nation located in the world's
capitals; the department of the treasury or the exchequer is usually
next in importance; others are the departments of the army and navy,
of colonial possessions, of manufacturing and commerce, mining, or
agriculture, of public utilities, of education or religion, and for
judicial business. Each of these has its subordinate bureaus and an
army of civil-service officials, some of whom owe their appointment to
personal influence, others to real ability. The civil officials with
which the public is most familiar are postal employees, officers of
the federal courts, and revenue officials. Such persons usually hold
office while their party is in power or during good behavior. Long
tenure of office tends to conservative measures and the spirit of
bureaucracy, while a system by which civil office is regarded as party
spoil tends to corruption and inefficiency. The business of
administration is becoming increasingly important in the modern state.
339. =The Judicial System.=--There is always danger that law may be
misinterpreted or prove unconstitutional. It is the function of the
judicial department of government to make decisions, interpreting and
applying the law of the nation in particular cases brought before the
courts. The law of the nation is superior to all local or sectional
law; so is the national judiciary supreme in its authority and
national in its jurisdiction. The judicial system of the United States
includes a series of courts from the lowest district courts, which are
located throughout the country, to the Supreme Court in Washington,
which deals with the most momentous questions of national law. In the
United States the judicial system is complicated by a system of lesser
courts, State and local, independent of federal control, attached to
which is a body of police, numerous judges, juries, and lawyers; the
higher courts also have their justices and practising lawyers, but
there is less haste and confusion and greater dignity and ability
displayed. There has been much criticism in recent years of antiquated
forms of procedure, cumbrous precedent, and unfair use of
technicalities for the defeat of justice, but however imperfect
judicial practice may be, the system is well intrenched and is not
likely to be changed materially.
340. =The Relation of National to District Governments.=--In some
nations there are survivals of older political divisions which once
possessed sovereignty, but which have sacrificed most, if not all, of
it for the larger good. This is the case in such federal states as the
German Empire, Switzerland, and the United States. Each State in the
American nation retains its own departments of government, and so has
its governor and heads of departments, its two-chambered legislature,
and its State judiciary. State law and State courts are more familiar
to the people than most of the national legislation. In the German
Empire each state has its own prince, and in many respects is
self-governing, but has been more and more sinking its own
individuality in the empire. In the British Empire there is still
another relation. England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland were once
independent of each other, but military and dynastic events united
them. For local legislation and administration they tend to separate,
and already Ireland has obtained home rule. Beyond seas a colonial
empire has arisen, and certain great dominions are united by little
more than ties of blood and loyalty to the mother country. Canada,
Australia, and South Africa have gained a larger measure of
sovereignty. India is held as an imperial possession, but even there
experiments of self-government are being tried. The whole tendency of
government, both here and abroad, seems to be to leave matters of
local concern largely to the local community and matters that belong
to a section or subordinate state to that district, and to centralize
all matters of national or interstate concern in the hands of a small
body of men at the national capital. In every case national or
imperial authority is the court of last resort.
READING REFERENCES
BLISS: _New Encyclopedia of Social Reform_, art. "Anarchism."
DEALEY: _Development of the State_, pages 127-234.
WILSON: _The State_, pages 555-571.
BLUNTSCHLI: _Theory of the State_, pages 61-73.
_Constitution of the United States._
BRYCE: _The American Commonwealth_ (abridged edition), pages
22-242, 287-305.
CHAPTER XLIII
PROBLEMS OF THE NATION
341. =Government as the Advance Agent of Prosperity.=--It is common
philosophy that society owes every man a living, and it seems to be a
common belief that the government owes every man a job. There are, of
course, only a few government positions, and these are rushed after by
a swarm of office-seekers, but campaign orators have talked so much
about a full dinner pail and the government as the advance agent of
prosperity, that there seems to be a popular notion that the
government, as if by a magician's wand, could cure unemployment, allay
panics, dispel hard times, and increase a man's earning power at will.
A little familiarity with economic law ought to modify this notion,
but it is difficult to eradicate it. Society cannot, through any one
institution, bring itself to perfection; many elements enter into the
making of prosperity. It depends on individual ability and training
for industry, on an understanding of the laws of health and keeping
the body and brain in a state of efficiency, on peaceful relations
between groups, on the successful balancing of supply and demand, and
of wages and the cost of living, on personal integrity and group
co-operation. All that the government can do is to instruct and
stimulate. This it has been doing and will continue to do with growing
effectiveness, but it has to feel its way and learn by experience, as
do individuals.
342. =How It Has Met Its Responsibility.=--This problem of prosperity
which is both economic and social, is the concern of all the people of
the nation, and any attempt to solve it in the interest of one section
or a single group cannot bring success. That is one reason for many of
the social weaknesses everywhere visible. Government has legislated
in the interests of a group of manufacturers, or the courts have
favored the rich, or trusts have been attacked at the demands of a
reforming party, or labor has been immune from the application of a
law against conspiracy when corporations were hard hit. These
weaknesses, which are characteristic of American democracy, find their
parallels in all countries where modern industrial and social
conditions obtain. But government has lent its energies to the
upbuilding of a sound social structure. It has recognized the need of
education for the youth of the land at a minimum cost, and the States
of the American Union have made liberal grants for both academic and
special training to their State universities, agricultural colleges,
and normal schools. It encourages the country people to enrich their
life and to increase their earnings for their own sake and for the
prosperity of the people who are dependent upon them. It stimulates
improved processes in manufacturing and mining, and protects business
against foreign competition by a tariff wall; it tries to prevent
recurring seasons of financial panics by a stable currency and the
extension of credits. It provides the machinery for settling labor
difficulties by conciliation and arbitration, and tries to mediate
between gigantic combinations of trade and transportation and the
public. It has pensioned liberally its old soldiers. It has attempted
to find a method of taxation that would not bear heavily on its
citizens, but that at the same time would provide a sufficient revenue
to meet the enormous expense of catering to the multifarious interests
of a population of a hundred million people.
343. =The Problem of Democracy.=--The problem of prosperity is
complicated by the problem of democracy. If by a satisfactory method a
body of wise men could be selected to study carefully each specific
problem involved, could experiment over a term of years in the
execution of plans worked out free from fear of being thrown out at
any time as the result of elective action by an impatient people,
prosperity might move on more rapid feet. In a country where power is
in the hands of a few a specific programme can be worked out without
much friction and rapid industrial and social progress can be made, as
has been the case during the last fifty years in Germany; but where
the masses of the people must be consulted and projects depend for
success upon their sustained approval, progress is much more spasmodic
and uncertain. Everything depends on an intelligent electorate,
controlled by reason rather than emotion and patient enough to await
the outcome of a policy that has been inaugurated.
This raises the question as to the education of the electorate or the
establishment of an educational qualification, as in some States. Is
there any way by which the mass of the working people, who have only
an elementary education, and never see even the outside of a State
university, can be made intelligent and self-restrained? They will not
read public documents, whether reports of expert commissions or
speeches in Congress. Shall they be compelled to read what the
government thinks is for their good, or be deprived of the suffrage as
a penalty? They get their political opinions from sensational
journals. Shall these publications be placed under a ban and the
nation subsidize its own press? These are questions to be considered
by the educational departments of State and nation, with a view to a
more intelligent citizenship. Democracy cannot be said to be a
failure, but it is still a problem. Government will not be any better
than the majority of the citizens want it to be; hence its standards
can be raised only as the mental and moral standards of the electorate
are elevated. Education, a conscious share in the responsibility of
legislation, and sure justice in all controverted cases, whether of
individuals or classes, are necessary elements in winning even a
measure of success.
344. =The Race Problem.=--The difficulties of American democracy are
enormously enhanced by the race problem. If common problems are to be
solved, there must be common interests. The population needs to be
homogeneous, to be seeking the same ends, to be conscious of the same
ideals. Not all the races of the world are thus homogeneous; it would
be difficult to think of Englishmen, Russians, Chinese, South
Americans, and Africans all working with united purpose, inspired by
the same ideals, yet that is precisely what is expected in America
under the tutelage and leadership of two great political parties, not
always scrupulous about the methods used to obtain success at the
polls. It is rather astonishing that Americans should expect their
democracy to work any better than it does when they remember the
conditions under which it works. To hand a man a ballot before he
feels himself a part of the nation to which he has come, before he is
stirred to something more than selfish achievement, before he is
conscious of the real meaning of citizenship, is to court disaster,
yet in being generous with the ballot the people of America are arming
thousands of ignorant, irresponsible immigrants with weapons against
themselves.
The race problem of America is not at all simple. It is more than a
problem of immigration. The problem of the European immigrant is one
part of it. There is also the problem of the relation of the American
people to the yellow races at our back door, and the problem of the
negro, who is here through no fault of his own, but who, because he is
here, must be brought into friendly and helpful relation with the rest
of the nation.
345. =The Problem of the European Immigrant.=--The problem of the
European immigrant is one of assimilation. It is difficult because the
alien comes in such large numbers, brings with him a different race
heritage, and settles usually among his own people, where American
influence reaches him only at second hand. Environment may be expected
to change him gradually, the education of his children will modify the
coming generation, but it will be a slow task to make him over into an
American in ideals and modes of thinking, as well as in industrial
efficiency, and in the process the native American is likely to suffer
loss in the contact, with a net lowering of standards in the life of
the American people. To see the danger is not to despair of escaping
it. To understand the danger is the first step in providing a
safeguard, and to this end exact knowledge of the situation should be
a part of the teaching of the schools. To seek a solution of the
problem is the second step. The main agency is education, but this
does not mean entirely education in the schools. Education through
social contact is the principal means of assimilating the adult; for
this purpose it is desirable that some means be found for the better
distribution of the immigrant, and as immigration is a national
problem, it is proper for the national government to attack that
particular phase of it. Then it belongs to voluntary agencies, like
settlements, churches, and philanthropic and educational societies to
give instruction in the essentials of language, civics, industrial
training, and character building. For the children the school provides
such education, but voluntary agencies may well supplement its secular
training with more definite and thorough instruction in morals and
religion. It cannot be expected that the immigrant problem will settle
itself; at least, a purposeful policy wisely and persistently carried
out will accomplish far better and quicker results. Nor is it an
insoluble problem; it is not even necessary that we should severely
check immigration. But there is need of intelligent and co-operative
action to distribute, educate, and find a suitable place for the
immigrant, that he may make good, and to devise a restrictive policy
that will effectually debar the most undesirable, and will hold back
the vast stream of recent years until those already here have been
taken care of.
346. =The Problem of the Asiatic Immigrant.=--The problem of the
Asiatic immigrant is quite different. It is a problem of race conflict
rather than of race assimilation. The student of human society cannot
minimize the importance of race heredity. In the case of the European
it holds a subordinate place, because the difference between his
heritage and that of the American is comparatively slight. But the
Asiatic belongs to a different race, and the century-long training of
an entirely different environment makes it improbable that the Asiatic
and the American can ever assimilate. Each can learn from the other
and co-operate to mutual advantage, but race amalgamation, or even a
fusion of customs of thought and social ideals is altogether unlikely.
It is therefore not to the advantage of either American or Asiatic
that much Asiatic immigration into the United States should take
place. To agree to this is not to be hostile to or scornful of the
yellow man. The higher classes are fully as intelligent and capable of
as much energy and achievement as the American, but the vast mass of
those who would come here if immigration were unrestricted are
undesirable, because of their low industrial and moral standards,
their tenacity of old habits, and with all the rest because of their
immense numbers, that would overrun all the western part of the United
States. When the Chinese Exclusion Act passed Congress in 1882, the
Chinese alone were coming at the rate of nearly forty thousand a year,
and that number might have been increased tenfold by this time, to say
nothing of Japanese and Hindoos. While, therefore, the United States
must treat Asiatics with consideration and live up to its treaty
obligations, it seems the wise policy to refuse to admit the Asiatic
masses to American residence.
A part of the Asiatic problem, however, is the political relation of
the United States and the Asiatic Powers, especially in the Pacific.
This is less intimately vital, but is important in view of the rapidly
growing tendency of both China and Japan to expand in trade and
political ambitions. This is a problem of political rather than social
science, but since the welfare of both races is concerned, and of
other peoples of the Pacific Islands, it needs the intelligent
consideration of all students. It is desirable to understand one
another, to treat one another fairly and generously, and to find
means, if possible, of co-operation rather than conflict, where the
interests of one impinge upon another. All mediating influences, like
Christian missions, are to be welcomed as helping to extend mutual
understanding and to soften race prejudices and animosities.
347. =The Negro Problem.=--Not a few persons look upon the negro
problem as the most serious social question in America. Whatever its
relative merits, as compared with other problems, it is sufficiently
serious to call for careful study and an attempt at solution. The
negro race in America numbers approximately ten millions, twice as
many as at the close of the Civil War. The negro was thrust upon
America by the cupidity of the foreign slave-trader, and perpetuated
by the difficulty of getting along without him. His presence has been
in some ways beneficial to himself and to the whites among whom he
settled, but it has been impossible for two races so diverse to live
on a plane of equality, and the burden of education upon the South has
been so heavy and the race qualities of the negro so discouraging,
that progress in the solution of the negro problem has been slow.
The problem of the colored race is not one of assimilation or of
conflict. In spite of an admixture of blood that affects possibly a
third of the American negroes, there never will be race fusion.
Assimilation of culture was partly accomplished in slave days, and it
will go on. There is no serious conflict between white and colored,
when once the question of assimilation is understood. The problem is
one of race adjustment. Fifty years have been insufficient to perfect
the relations between the two races, but since they must live
together, it is desirable that they should come to understand and
sympathize with each other, and as far as possible co-operate for
mutual advancement. The problem is a national one, because the man of
color is not confined to the South, and even more because the South
alone is unable to deal adequately with the situation. The negro
greatly needs efficient social education. He tends to be dirty, lazy,
and improvident, as is to be expected, when left to himself. Like all
countrymen--a large proportion live in the country--he is backward in
ways of thinking and methods of working. He is primitive in his
passions and much given to emotion. He shows the traits of a people
not far removed from savagery. It is remarkable that his white master
was able to civilize him as much as he did, and it is not strange that
there has been many a relapse under conditions of unprepared freedom,
but it is only the more reason why negro character should be raised
higher on the foundation already laid.
The task is not very different from that which is presented by the
slum population of the cities of the North. The children need to be
taught how to live, and then given a chance to practise the
instruction in a decent environment. They need manual and industrial
training fitted to their industrial environment, and every opportunity
to employ their knowledge in earning a living. They need noble ideals,
and these they can get only by the sympathetic, wise teaching of their
superiors, whether white or black. They and their friends need
patience in the upward struggle, for it will not be easy to socialize
and civilize ten million persons in a decade or a century. Such
institutions as Hampton and Tuskegee are working on a correct basis in
emphasizing industrial training; these schools very properly are
supplemented by the right kind of elementary schools, on the one hand,
and by cultural institutions of high grade on the other, for the negro
is a human being, and his nature must be cultivated on all sides, as
much as if he were white.
348. =The Race Problem a Part of One Great Social Problem.=--The race
problem as a whole is not peculiar to America, but is intensified here
by the large mixture of all races that is taking place. It is
inevitable, as the world's population shifts in meeting the social
forces of the present age. It is complicated by race inequalities and
race ambitions. It is fundamentally a problem of adjustment between
races that possess a considerable measure of civilization and those
that are not far removed from barbarism. It is discouraging at times,
because the supposedly cultured peoples revert under stress of war or
competition or self-indulgence to the crudities of primitive
barbarism, but it is a soluble problem, nevertheless. The privileged
peoples need a solemn sense of the responsibility of the "white man's
burden," which is not to cultivate the weaker man for the sake of
economic exploitation, but to improve him for the weaker man's own
sake, and for the sake of the world's civilization. The policy of any
nation like the United States must be affected, of course, by its own
interests, but the European, the Asiatic, the negro, and every race or
people with which the American comes in contact ought to be regarded
as a member of a world society in which the interlocking of
relationships is so complete that the injury of one is the injury of
all, and that which is done to aid the least will react to the benefit
of him who already has more.
READING REFERENCES
DEALEY: _Development of the State_, pages 300-314.
USHER: _Rise of the American People_, pages 392-404.
MECKLIN: _Democracy and Race Friction_, pages 77-122.
COMMONS: _Races and Immigrants in America_, pages 17-21, 198-238.
COOLIDGE: _Chinese Immigration_, pages 423-458, 486-496.
GULICK: _The American Japanese Problem_, pages 3-27, 90-196,
281-307.
CHAPTER XLIV
INTERNATIONALISM
349. =The New World Life.=--The social life that started in the family
has broadened until it has circled the globe. It is possible now to
speak in terms of world life. The interests of society have reached
out from country to country, and from zone to zone, just as a child's
interests as he grows to manhood expand from the home to the community
and from the community to the nation.
The idea of the social solidarity of all peoples is still new. Ever
since the original divergence of population from its home nest, when
groups became strange and hostile to one another because of mountain
and forest barriers, changing languages, and occasionally clashing
interests, the tendency of the peoples was to grow apart. But for a
century past the tendency has been changing from divergence to
convergence, from ignorance and distrust of one another to
understanding, sympathy, and good-will, from independence and
ruthlessness to interdependence and co-operation. Numerous agencies
have brought this about--some physical like steam and electricity,
some economic like commerce and finance, some social like travel and
the interchange of ideas through the press, some moral and religious
like missions and international organizations for peace. The history
of a hundred years has made it plain that nations cannot live in
isolation any more than individuals can, and that the tendency toward
social solidarity must be the permanent tendency if society is to
exist and prosper, even though civilization and peace may be
temporarily set back for a generation by war.
350. =The Principle of Adaptation vs. Conflict.=--This New World life
is not unnatural, though it has been slow in coming. A human being is
influenced by his physical needs and desires, his cultivated habits,
his accumulated interests, the customs of the people to whom he
belongs, and the conditions of the environment in which he finds
himself. While a savage his needs, desires, and interests are few, his
habits are fixed, his relations are simple and local; but when he
begins to take on civilization his needs multiply, his habits change,
and his relations extend more widely. The more enlightened he becomes
the greater the number of his interests and the more points of contact
with other people. So with every human group. The process of social
development for a time may intensify conflict, but there comes a time
when it is made clear to the dullest mind that conflict must give way
to mutual adaptation. No one group, not even a supernation, can have
everything for itself, and for the sake of the world's comfort and
peace it will be a decided social gain when that principle receives
universal recognition. World federations and peace propaganda cannot
be effective until that principle is accepted as a working basis for
world life.
351. =The Increasing Recognition of the Principle of
Adaptation.=--This principle of adaptation has found limited
application for a long time. Starting with individuals in the family
and family groups in the clan, it extended until it included all the
members of a state in their relations to each other. Many individual
interests conflict in business and society and different opinions
clash, but all points of difference within the nation are settled by
due process of law, except when elemental passions break out in a
lynching, or a family feud is perpetuated among the hills. But war
continued to be the mode of settling international difficulties.
Military force restrained a vassal from hostile acts under the Roman
peace. But the next necessary step was for states voluntarily to
adjust their relations with one another. In some instances, even in
ancient times, local differences were buried, and small federations,
like the Achæan League of the Greeks and the Lombard League of the
Middle Ages, were formed for common defense. These have been followed
by greater alliances in modern times. But the striking instances of
real interstate progress are found in the federation of such States
as those that are included within the present United States of
America, and within the new German Empire that was formed after the
Franco-Prussian War. Sinking their differences and recognizing one
another's rights and interests, the people of such united nations have
become accustomed to a large national solidarity, and it ought not to
require much instruction or persuasion to show them that what they
have accomplished already for themselves is the correct principle for
their guidance in world affairs.
352. =International Law and Peace.=--This principle of recognizing one
another's rights and interests is the foundation of international law,
which has been modified from time to time, but which from the
publication of Hugo Grotius's _Law of War and Peace_ in the
seventeenth century slowly has bound more closely together the
civilized nations. There has come into existence a body of law for the
conduct of nations that is less complete, but commands as great
respect as the civil law of a single state. This law may be violated
by a nation in the stress of conflict, as civil law may be derided by
an individual lawbreaker or by an excited mob, but eventually it
reasserts itself and slowly extends its scope and power. Without
international legislative organization, without a tribunal or a
military force to carry out its provisions, by sheer force of
international opinion and a growing regard for social justice it
demands attention from the proudest nations. Text-books have been
written and university chairs founded to present its claims,
international associations and conventions have met to define more
accurately its code, and tentative steps have been taken to strengthen
its position by two Hague Conferences that met in 1899 and 1907. Large
contributions of money have been made to stimulate the cause of peace,
and as many as two hundred and fifty peace societies have been
organized.
353. =Arbitration and an International Court.=--Experiments have been
tried at settling international disputes without resort to war. Great
Britain and the United States have led the way in showing to the world
during the last one hundred years that all kinds of vexatious
differences can be settled peacefully by submitting them to
arbitration. These successes have led the United States to propose
general treaties of arbitration to other nations, and advance has been
made in that direction. It was possible to establish at The Hague a
permanent court of arbitration, and to refer to it really important
cases. Such a calamity as the European war, of course, interrupts the
progress of all such peaceful methods, but makes all the plainer the
dire need of a better machinery for settling international
differences. There is reasonable expectation that before many years
there may be established a permanent international court of justice,
an international parliament, and a sufficient international police
force to restrain any one nation from breaking the peace. Only in this
way can the dread of war be allayed and disarmament be undertaken;
even then the success of such an experiment in government will depend
on an increase of international understanding, respect, and
consideration.
354. =Intercommunication and Its Rewards.=--The gain in social
solidarity that has been achieved already is due first of all to
improved communication between nations. In the days of slow sailing
vessels it took several weeks to cross the Atlantic, and there was no
quicker way to convey news. The news that peace had been arranged at
Ghent in 1814 between Great Britain and the United States did not
reach the armies on this side in time to prevent the battle of New
Orleans. Even the results of the battle of Waterloo were not known in
England for several days after Napoleon's overthrow. Now ocean
leviathans keep pace with the storms that move across the waters, and
the cable and the wireless flash their messages with the speed of the
lightning. Power to put a girdle around the earth in a few minutes has
made modern news agencies possible, and they have made the modern
newspaper essential. The newspaper requires the railroad and the
steamship for its distribution, and business men depend upon them all
to carry out their plans. These physical agencies have made possible a
commerce that is world-wide. There are ports that receive ships from
every nation east and west. Great freight terminal yards hold cars
that belong to all the great transportation lines of the country.
Lombard Street and Wall Street feel the pulse of the world's trade as
it beats through the channels of finance.
Improved communication has made possible the unification of a great
political system like the British Empire. In the Parliament House and
government offices of Westminster centre the political interests of
Canada, Australia, South Africa, Egypt, and India, as well as of
islands in every sea. Better communication has brought into closer
relations the Pan-American states, so that they have met more than
once for their mutual benefit.
Helpful social results have come from the travel that has grown
enormously in volume since ease and cheapness of transportation have
increased. The impulse to travel for pleasure keeps persons of wealth
on the move, and the desire for knowledge sends the intellectually
minded professional man or woman of small means globe-trotting. In
this way the people of different nations learn from one another; they
become able to converse in different languages and to get one
another's point of view; they gain new wants while they lose some of
their professional interests; they return home poorer in pocket but
richer in experience, more interested in others, more tolerant. These
are social values, certain to make their influence felt in days to
come, and by no means unappreciable already.
355. =International Institutions.=--These values are conserved by
international institutions. Societies are formed by like-minded
persons for better acquaintance and for the advancement of knowledge.
The sciences are cherished internationally, interparliamentary unions
and other agencies for the preservation of peace hold their
conferences, working men meet to air their grievances or plan
programmes, religious denominations consult for pushing their
campaigns. The organizations that grow out of these relations and
conferences develop into institutions that have standing. The
international associations of scholars are as much a part of the
world's institutional assets as the educational system is a recognized
asset of any country. They are clearing-houses of information, as
necessary as an international clearing-house of finance. The World's
Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the International Young Men's
Christian Association are moral agencies that bring together those who
have at heart the same interests, and when they have once made good
they must be reckoned among the established organizations that help to
move the world forward. Not least among such institutions are the
religious organizations. The closely knit Roman Catholic Church, that
has held together millions of faithful adherents in many lands for
centuries, and whose canon law receives an unquestioning obedience as
the law of a nation, is an illustration of what an international
religious institution may be. Protestant Churches, naturally more
independent, have moved more slowly, but their world alliances and
federations are increasing to the point where they, too, are likely to
become true institutions.
356. =Missions as a Social Institution.=--Those institutions and
movements are most useful that aim definitely to stimulate the highest
interests of all mankind. It is comparatively simple to provide local
stimulus for a better community life, but to help move the world on to
higher levels requires clear vision, patient hope, and a definite plan
on a large scale. Christian missionaries are conspicuous for their
lofty ideals, their personal devotion to an unselfish task, their
persistent optimism, and their unswerving adherence to the programme
marked out by the pioneers of the movement. It is no argument against
them that they have not accomplished all that a few enthusiasts
expected of them in a few years. To socialize and Christianize half
the people of the world is the task of centuries. With broad
statesmanship missionary leaders have undertaken to do both of these.
Mistakes in method or detail of operation do not invalidate the whole
enterprise, and all criticism must keep in mind the noble purpose to
lift to a higher level the social, moral, and religious ideas and
practices of the most backward peoples. The purpose is certainly no
less laudable than that of a Chinese mission to England to persuade
Great Britain to end the opium traffic, or a diplomatic mission from
the United States to stop civil strife in Mexico.
357. =Education as a Means to Internationalism.=--Internationalism
rests on the broad basis of the social nature of mankind, a nature
that cannot be unsocialized, but can be developed to a higher and more
purposeful socialization. As there are degrees of perfection in the
excellence of social relations, so there are degrees of obligation
resting upon the nations of the world to give of their best to a
general levelling up. The dependable means of international
socialization is education, whether it comes through the press, the
pulpit, or the school. Every commission that visits one country from
another to learn of its industries, its institutions, and its ideals,
is a means to that important end. Every exchange professor between
European and American universities helps to interpret one country to
the other. Every Chinese, Mexican, or Filipino youth who attends an
American school is borrowing stimulus for his own people. Every
visitor who does not waste or abuse his opportunities is a unit in the
process of improving the acquaintance of East and West, of North and
South. Internationalism is not a social Utopia to be invented in a
day; it is rather an attitude of mind and a mode of living that come
gradually but with gathering momentum as mutual understanding and
sympathy increase.
READING REFERENCES
STRONG: _Our World_, pages 3-202.
FOSTER: _Arbitration and the Hague Court._
FAUNCE: _Social Aspects of Foreign Missions._
MAURENBRECKER: "The Moral and Social Tasks of World Politics,"
art. in _American Journal of Sociology_, 6: 307-315.
TRUEBLOOD: _Federation of the World_, pages 7-20, 91-149.
PART VI--SOCIAL ANALYSIS
CHAPTER XLV
PHYSICAL AND PERSONAL FACTORS IN THE LIFE OF SOCIETY
358. =Constant Factors in Social Phenomena.=--Our study of social life
has made it plain that it is a complex affair, but it has been
possible to classify society in certain groups, to follow the gradual
extension of relations from small groups to large, and to take note of
the numerous activities and interests that enter into contemporary
group life. It is now desirable to search for certain common elements
that in all periods enter into the life of every group, whether
temporary or permanent, so that we may discover the constant factors
and the general principles that belong to the science of society. Some
of these have been referred to already among the characteristics of
social life, but in this connection it is useful to classify them for
closer examination.
First among these is the physical factor which conditions human
activity but is not a compelling force, for man has often subdued his
environment when it has put obstacles in his way. This physical
element includes the geographical conditions of mountain, valley, or
seashore, the climate and the weather, the food and water supply, the
physical inheritance of the individual and the laws that control
physical development, and the physical constitution of the group. A
second factor is the psychic nature of human beings and the psychical
interaction that goes on between individuals within the group and that
produces reactions between groups.
359. =The Natural Environment.=--The early sociologists put the
emphasis on the physical more than the psychic factors, and
especially on biological analogies in society. It seemed to them as if
it was nature that brought men together. Mountains and ice-bound
regions were inhospitable, impassable rivers and trackless forests
limited the range of animals and men, violent storms and temperature
changes made men afraid. Avoiding these dangers and seeking a
food-supply where it was most plentiful, human beings met in the
favored localities and learned by experience the principles of
association. Everywhere man is still in contact with physical forces.
He has not yet learned to get along without the products of the earth,
extracting food-supplies from the soil, gathering the fruits that
nature provides, and mining the useful and precious metals. The
city-dweller seems less dependent on nature than is the farmer, but
the urban citizen relies on steam and electricity to turn the wheels
of industry and transportation, depends on coal and gas for heat and
light, and uses winter's harvest of ice to relieve the oppressive heat
of summer. Rivers and seas are highways of his commerce. Everywhere
man seems hedged about by physical forces and physical laws.
Yet with the prerogative of civilization he has become master rather
than servant of nature. He has improved wild fruits and vegetables by
cultivation, he has domesticated wild animals, he has harnessed the
water of the streams and the winds of heaven. He has tunnelled the
mountains, bridged the rivers, and laid his cables beneath the ocean.
He has learned to ride over land and sea and even to skim along the
currents of the air. He has been able to discover the chemical
elements that permeate matter and the nature and laws of physical
forces. By numerous inventions he has made use of the materials and
powers of nature. The physical universe is a challenge to human wits,
a stimulus to thought and activity that shall result in the wonderful
achievements of civilization.
360. =The Human Physique.=--Another element that enters into every
calculation of success or failure in human life is the physical
constitution of the individual and the group. The individual's
physique makes a great difference in his comfort and activity. The
corpulent person finds it difficult to get about with ease, the
cripple finds himself debarred from certain occupations, the person
with weak lungs must shun certain climates and as far as possible must
avoid indoor pursuits. By their power of ingenuity or by sheer force
of will men have been able to overcome physical limitations, but it is
necessary to reckon with those limitations, and they are always a
handicap. The physical endowment of a race has been a deciding factor
in certain times of crisis. The physical prowess of the Anakim kept
back the timid Israelites from their intended conquest of Canaan until
a more hardy generation had arisen among the invaders; the sturdy
Germans won the lands of the Roman Empire in the West from the
degenerate provincials; powerful vikings swept the Western seas and
struck such terror into the peaceful Saxons that they cried out: "From
the fury of the Northmen, good Lord, deliver us."
361. =Biological Analogies.=--The physical factor in society received
emphasis the more because society itself was thought of as an organism
resembling physical organisms and dependent upon similar laws. As a
man's physical frame was essential to his activity and limited his
energies, so the visible structure of social organization was deemed
more important than social activity and function. Particularly did the
method of evolution that had become so famous in biology appeal to
students of sociology as the only satisfactory explanation of social
change. The study of animal evolution made it clear that heredity and
environment played a large part in the development of animal life, and
Darwin pointed out that progress came by the elimination of those
individuals and species least fitted to survive in the struggle for
existence and the perpetuation of those that best adapted themselves
to environment. It was easy to find social analogies and to reach the
conclusion that in the same way individuals and groups were creatures
of heredity and environment, and the all-important task of society was
to conform itself to environment. Of course, history disproved the
universality of such a law, for more than once a race has risen above
its environment or altered it, but it seemed a satisfactory working
principle.
Biological analogies, however, were overemphasized. It was a gain to
know the workings of race traits and the relation of the individual to
his ancestry, but to excuse crime on the ground of racial degeneracy
or to despise a race and believe that none of its members can excel
because it is conspicuous for certain race weaknesses has been
unfortunate. Similarly there was advantage in remembering that
environment is either a great help or a great hindrance to social
progress, but it would be a social calamity to believe in a physical
determinism that leaves to human beings no choice as to their manner
of life. The important truth to keep in mind is that man and
environment must be adapted to each other, but it often proves better
to adapt environment to man than to force man into conformity to
environment. It is the growing independence of environment through his
own intellectual powers that has given to civilized man his ascendancy
in the world. It is a mistake, also, to think that a struggle for
existence is the only means of survival. As in the animal world, there
comes a time in the process of evolution when the struggle for selfish
existence becomes subordinated to effort to preserve the life of the
young or to help the group by the sacrifice of the individual self, so
in society it is reasonable to believe that the selfish struggle of
individuals will give way by degrees to purposeful effort for social
welfare, and that the solidarity of the group rather than the interest
of the individual will seem the highest good. Then the group will care
for the weak, and all will gain from the strength and prosperity of
the whole.
362. =The Importance of the Individual.=--While it is true that
individual interests are bound up with the prosperity of the group,
and that the food that he eats, the clothes that he wears, and the
money that he handles and uses are all his because social industry
prevails, there is some danger of overlooking the importance of the
individual. Though he does not exist alone, the individual with his
distinctive personality is the unit of society. Without individuals
there would be no society, without the action of the individual mind
there would be no action of the social mind, without individual
leadership there would be little order or progress. The single cell
that made up the lowest forms of animal life is still the unit of that
complex thing that we call the human body, and the well-being of the
single cell is essential to the health and even the existence of the
whole body; so the single human being is fundamental to the existence
and health of the social body. No analysis of society is at all
complete that does not include a study of the individual man.
363. =The Psychology of the Individual.=--Self-examination during the
course of a single day helps to explain the life forces that act upon
other individuals now and that have forged human history. In such
study of self it soon becomes apparent to the student that the
physical factor is subordinate to the psychic, but that they are
connected. As soon as he wakes in the morning his mental processes are
at work. Something has called back his consciousness from sleep. The
light shining in at his window, the bell calling him to meet the day's
schedule, the odor of food cooking in the kitchen, are physical
stimuli calling out the response of his sense-perceptions; his mind
begins at once to associate these impressions and to react upon his
will until he gets out of bed and proceeds to prepare himself for the
day. These processes of sensation, association, and volition
constitute the simple basis of individual life upon which the complex
structure of an active personality is built.
The individual will is moved to activity by many agencies. There is
first the instinct. As a person inherits physical traits from his
ancestors, so he gets certain mental traits. The demand for food is
the cry of the instinct for self-preservation. The grimace of the
infant in response to the mother's smile is an expression of the
instinct for imitation. The reaching out of its hand to grasp the
sunshine is in obedience to the instinct for acquisition. All human
association is due primarily to the instinct for sociability. These
instincts are inborn. They cannot be eradicated, but they can be
modified and controlled.
Obedience to these native instincts produces fixed habits. These are
not native but acquired, and so are not transmitted to posterity, in
the belief of most scientists, but they are powerful factors in
individual conduct. The individual early in the morning is hungry, and
the appetite for food recurs at intervals through the day; it becomes
a habit to go at certain hours where he may obtain satisfaction. So it
is with many activities throughout the day.
Instincts and habits produce impulses. The savage eats as often as he
feels like it, if he can find berries or fruit or bring down game;
impulse alone governs his conduct. But two other elements enter in to
modify impulse, as experience teaches wisdom. The self-indulgent man
remembers after a little that indulgence of impulse has resulted
sometimes in pain rather than satisfaction, and his imagination
pictures a recurrence of the unhappy experience. Feeling becomes a
guide to regulate impulse. Feeling in turn compels thought. Presently
the individual who is going through the civilizing process formulates
a resolve and a theory, a resolve to eat at regular times and to
abstain from foods that injure him, a theory that intelligent
restraint is better than unregulated indulgence. In a similar way the
individual acts with reference to selecting his environment. Instinct
and habit act conservatively, impelling the individual to remain in
the place where he was born and reared, and to follow the occupation
of his father. But he feels the discomforts of the climate or the
restrictions of his particular environment, he thinks about it,
bringing to bear all the knowledge that he possesses, and he makes his
choice between going elsewhere or modifying his present environment.
Discovery and invention are both products of such choices as these.
364. =Desires and Interests.=--These complexes of thinking, feeling,
and willing make up the conscious desires and interests that mould the
individual life. Through the processes of attention to the stimuli
that act upon human nature, discrimination between them, association
of impressions and ideas that come from present and past experience,
and deliberate judgments of value, the mind moves to action for the
satisfaction of personal desires and interests. These desires and
interests have been classified in various ways. For our present
purpose it is useful to classify them as those that centre in the
self, and those that centre in others beyond the self. The primitive
desires to get food and drink, to mate, and to engage in muscular
activity, all look toward the self-satisfaction which comes from their
indulgence. There are various acquired interests that likewise centre
in the self. The individual goes to college for the social pleasure
that he anticipates, for intellectual satisfaction, or to equip
himself with a training that will enable him to win success in the
competition of business. In the larger society outside of college the
art-lover gathers about him many treasures for his own æsthetic
delight, the politician exerts himself for the attainment of power and
position, the religious devotee hopes for personal favors from the
unseen powers. These are on different planes of value, they are
estimated differently by different persons, but they all centre in the
individual, and if society benefits it is only indirectly or
accidentally.
As the individual rises in the scale of social intelligence, his
interests become less self-centred, and as he extends his acquaintance
and associations the scope of his interests enlarges. He begins to act
with reference to the effect of his actions upon others. He sacrifices
his own convenience for his roommate; he restrains his self-indulgence
for the sake of the family that he might disgrace; he exerts himself
in athletic prowess for the honor of the college to which he belongs;
he is willing to risk his life on the battle-field in defense of the
nation of which he is a citizen; he consecrates his life to missionary
or scientific endeavor in a far land for the sake of humanity's gain.
These are the social interests that dominate his activity. Mankind has
risen from the brute by the process that leads the individual up from
the low level of life moulded by primitive desires to the high plane
of a life directed by the broad interests of society at large. It is
the task of education to reveal this process, and to provide the
stimuli that are needed for its continuance.
365. =Personality.=--No two persons are actuated alike in daily
conduct. The pull of their individual desires is not the same, the
influence of the various social interests is not in the same
proportion. The situation is complicated by hereditary tendencies, and
by physical and social environment. Consequently every human being
possesses his own distinctive individuality or personality. Variations
of personality can be classified and various persons resemble each
other so much that types of personality are distinguished. Thus we
distinguish between weak personality and forceful personality,
according to the strength of individuation, a narrow or a broad
personality according as interests are few and selfish or broadly
social, a fixed or a changing personality according to conservatism or
unsettled disposition. Personality is a distinction not always
appreciated, a distinction that separates man from the brute because
of his self-consciousness and power of self-direction by rational
processes, and relieves him from the dead level that would exist in
society if every individual were made after the same pattern. It is
the secret of social as well as individual progress, for it is a great
personality that sways the group. It is the great boon of present life
and the great promise of continued life hereafter.
READING REFERENCES
ROSS: _Foundations of Sociology_, pages 165-181.
ELLWOOD: _Sociology in its Psychological Aspects_, pages 94-123.
DEALEY: _Sociology_, pages 96-98, 200-230.
NEARING AND WATSON: _Economics_, pages 60-98.
DARWIN: _Descent of Man_, chap. XXI.
DRUMMOND: _Ascent of Man_, pages 41-57, 189-266.
GIDDINGS: _Inductive Sociology_, pages 249-278.
CHAPTER XLVI
SOCIAL PSYCHIC FACTORS
366. =The Social Mind.=--As individual life is compounded of many
psychic elements that make up one mind, so the life of every group
involves various factors of a psychic nature that constitute the
social mind. The social mind does not exist apart from individual
minds, but it is nevertheless real. When emotional excitement stirs a
mob to action, the unity of feeling is evidence of a social mind. When
a congregation recites a creed of the church the unity of belief shows
the existence of a social mind. When a political land-slide occurs on
the occasion of a presidential election in the United States, the
unity of will expresses the social mind. The emotional phase is
temporary, public opinion changes more slowly; all the time the social
mind is gaining experience and learning wisdom, as does the
individual. Social consciousness, which at first is slight, increases
gradually, until it fructifies in social purpose which results in
achievement. History is full of illustrations of such development.
367. =How the Social Mind is Formed.=--The formation of this social
mind and its subsequent workings may be illustrated from a common
occurrence in frontier history. Imagine three hunters meeting for the
first time around a camp-fire, and analyze their mental processes. The
first man was tired and hungry and camped to rest and eat. The second
happened to come upon the camp just as a storm was breaking, saw the
smoke of the fire, and turned aside for its comfort. The third picked
up the trail of the second and followed it to find companionship. Each
obeying a primal instinct and conscious of his kind, came into
association with others, and thus by the process of aggregation a
temporary group was formed. Sitting about the fire, each lighted his
pipe in imitation of one another; they communicated with one another
in language familiar to all; one became drowsy and the others yielded
to the suggestion to sleep. Waking in the morning, they continued
their conversation, and in sympathy with a common purpose and in
recognition of the advantages of association, they decided to keep
together for the remainder of the hunt. Thus was constituted the group
or social mind.
With the consciousness that they were congenial spirits and shared a
common purpose, each was willing to sacrifice some of his own habits
and preferences in the interest of the group. One man might prefer
bacon and coffee for breakfast, while a second wished tea; one might
wish to break camp at sunrise, another an hour later; each
subordinated his own desires for the greater satisfaction of camp
comradeship. The strongest personality in the group is the determining
factor in forming the habits of the group, though it may be an
unconscious leadership. The mind of the group is not the same as that
of the leader, for the mutual mental interaction produces changes in
all, but it approaches most nearly to his mind.
368. =Social Habits.=--By such processes of aggregation,
communication, imitation, and association, individuals learn from one
another and come to constitute a like-minded group. Sometimes it is a
genetic group like the family, sometimes an artificial group like a
band of huntsmen; in either case the group is held together by a
psychic unity and comes to have its peculiar group characteristics.
Fixed ways of thinking and acting are revealed. Social habits they may
be called, or folk-ways, as some prefer to name them. These habits are
quickly learned by the members of the group, and are passed on from
generation to generation by imitation or the teaching of tradition.
There are numerous conservative forces at work in society. Custom
crystallizes into law, tradition is fortified by religion, a system of
morals develops out of the folk-ways, the group life tends to become
static and uniform.
369. =Adaptation.=--Two influences are continually at work, however,
to change social habits--the forces of the natural environment and
interaction between different groups. Both of these compel adaptation
to surroundings if permanence of group life is to be secured. Family
life in the north country illustrates the working of this principle of
adaptation. In the days of settlement there was a partial adaptation
to the physical environment. Houses were built tight and warm to
provide shelter, abundant food was supplied from the farm, on which
men toiled long hours to make a living, homespun clothing was
manufactured to protect against the rigors of winter, but ignorance
and lack of sufficient means prevented complete adaptation, and
society was punished for its failure to complete the adaptation.
Climate was severe and the laws of health were not fully worked out or
observed, therefore few children lived to maturity, although the
birth-rate was high. Economic success came only as the reward of
patient and unremitting toil, the shiftless family failed in the
struggle for existence. Tradition taught certain agricultural methods,
but diminishing returns threatened poverty, unless methods were better
adapted to soil and climate. Thus the people were forced slowly to
improve their methods and their manner of living to conform to what
nature demanded.
No less powerful is the influence of the social environment. The
authority of custom or government tends to make every family conform
to certain methods of building a house, cooking food, cultivating
land, selling crops, paying taxes, voting for local officials, but let
one family change its habits and prove conclusively that it has
improved on the old ways, and it is only a question of time when
others will adapt themselves better to the situation that environs
them. The countryman takes a city daily and notes the weather
indications and the state of the market, he installs a rural telephone
and is able to make contracts for his crops by long-distance
conversation, he buys an improved piece of machinery for cultivating
the farm, a gasolene engine, or a motor-wagon for quick delivery of
produce; presently his neighbors discover that he is adapting himself
more effectually to his environment than they are, and one by one
they imitate him in adopting the new methods. By and by the community
becomes known for its progressiveness, and it is imitated by
neighboring communities.
This process of social adaptation is a mental process more or less
definite. A particular family may not consciously follow a definite
plan for improved adaptation, but little by little it alters its ways,
until in the course of two or three generations it has changed the
circumstances and habits that characterized the ancestral group. In
that case the change is slow. Certain families may definitely
determine to modify their habits, and within a few years accomplish a
telic change. In either case there are constantly going on the
processes of observation, discrimination, and decision, due to the
impact of mind upon mind, both within and outside of the group, until
mental reactions are moving through channels that are different from
the old.
370. =Genetic Progress.=--The modification of folk-ways in the
interest of better adaptation to environment constitutes progress.
Such modification is caused by the action of various mental stimuli.
The people of a hill village for generations have been contented with
poor roads and rough side-paths, along which they find an uneasy way
by the glimmer of a lantern at night. They are unaccustomed to
sanitary conveniences in their houses or to ample heating arrangements
or ventilation in school or church. They have thought little about
these things, and if they wished to make improvements they would be
handicapped by small numbers and lack of wealth. But after a time
there comes an influx of summer visitors; some of them purchase
property and take up their permanent residence in the village. They
have been accustomed to conveniences; in other words, to a more
complete adaptation to environment; they demand local improvements and
are willing to help pay for them. More money can be raised for
taxation, and when public opinion has crystallized so that social
action is possible, the progressive steps are taken.
What takes place thus in a small way locally is typical of what is
going on continually in all parts of the world. Accumulating wealth
and increasing knowledge of the good things of the city make country
people emigrate or provide themselves with a share of the good things
at home. The influence of an enthusiastic individual or group who
takes the lead in better schools, better housing, or better government
is improving the cities. The growing cosmopolitanism of all peoples
and their adoption of the best that each has achieved is being
produced by commerce, migration, and "contact and cross-fertilization
of cultures."
371. =Telic Progress.=--Most social progress has come without the full
realization of the significance of the gradual changes that were
taking place. Few if any individuals saw the end from the beginning.
They are for the most part silent forces that have been modifying the
folk-ways in Europe and America. There has been little conception of
social obligation or social ideals, little more than a blind obedience
to the stimuli that pressed upon the individual and the group. But
with the awakening of the social consciousness and a quickening of the
social conscience has come telic progress. There is purpose now in the
action of associations and method in the enactments of legislatures
and the acts of administrative officers. There are plans and
programmes for all sorts of improvements that await only the proper
means and the sanction of public opinion for their realization. Like a
runner poised for a dash of speed, society seems to be on the eve of
new achievement in the direction of progress.
372. =Means of Social Progress.=--There are three distinct means of
telic progress. Society may be lifted to a higher level by compulsion,
as a huge crane lifts a heavy girder to the place it is to occupy in
the construction of a great building. A prohibitory law that forbids
the erection of unhealthy tenements throughout the cities of a state
or nation is a distinctly progressive step, compulsory in its nature.
Or the group may be moved by persuasion. A board of conciliation may
persuade conflicting industrial groups to adjust their differences by
peaceful methods, and thus inaugurate an ethical movement in industry
greatly to the advantage of all parties. Or progress may be achieved
by the slow process of education. The average church has been
accustomed to conceive of its functions as pertaining to the
individual rather than to the whole social order. It cannot be
compelled to change by governmental action, for the church is free and
democratic in America. It cannot easily be persuaded to change its
methods in favor of a social programme. By the slower process of
training the young people it can and does gradually broaden its
activities and make itself more efficiently useful to the community in
which it finds its place.
373. =Criticism as a Means of Social Education.=--Education is not
confined to the training of the schools. It is a continuous process
going on through the life of the individual or the group. It is the
intellectual process by which the mind is focussed on one problem
after another that rises above the horizon of experience and uses its
powers to improve the adaptation now existing between the situation
and the person or the group. The educational process is complex. There
must be first the incitement to thought. Most effective in this
direction is criticism. If the roads are such a handicap to the
comfort and safety of travel that there is caustic criticism at the
next town meeting, public opinion begins to set definitely in the
direction of improvement. If city government is corrupt and the tax
rate mounts steadily without corresponding benefits to the taxpayers,
the newspapers call the attention of citizens to the fact, and they
begin to consider a change of administration. Criticism is the knife
that cuts to the roots of social disease, and through the infliction
of temporary pain effects a cure. Criticism has started many a reform
in church and state. The presence of the critic in any group is an
irritant that provokes to progressive action.
374. =Discussion.=--Criticism leads to discussion. There is sure to be
a conflict of ideas in every group. Conservative and progressive
contend with each other; sometimes it is a matter of belief, sometimes
of practice. Knots of individuals talk matters over, leaders debate
on the public platform, newspapers take part on one side or the other.
In this way national policies are determined, first by Congress or
Parliament, and then by the constituents of the legislators. Freedom
of discussion is regarded as one of the safeguards of popular
government. If social conduct should be analyzed on a large scale it
would be found that discussion is a constant factor. In every business
deal there is discussion of the pros and cons of the proposition, in
every case that comes before the courts there are arguments made on
both sides, in the maintenance of every social institution that costs
money there is a consideration of its worth. Even if the discussion
does not find voice, the human intellect debates the question in its
silent halls. So universal is the practice of discussion and so prized
is the privilege that this is sometimes called the Age of Discussion.
375. =Decision.=--Determination of action follows criticism and
discussion in the group, as volition follows thinking in the case of
the individual. One hundred years ago college education was classical.
In the time of the Renaissance and the Reformation a revival of
interest in the classics produced a reaction against mediævalism, and
in time fastened a curriculum upon the universities that was composed
mainly of the ancient languages, mathematics, and a deductive
philosophy and theology. In the nineteenth century there began a
criticism of the classical curriculum. It was declared that such a
course of study was narrow and antiquated, that new subjects, such as
history, the modern languages, and the sciences were better worth
attention, and presently it was argued that a person could not be
truly educated until he knew his own times by the study of sociology,
politics, economics, and other social sciences. Of course, there was
earnest resentment of such criticism, and discussion ensued. The
argument for the plaintiff seemed to be well sustained, and one by one
the governing boards of the colleges decided to admit new studies to
the curriculum, at first grudgingly and then generously, until
classical education has become relatively unpopular. Public opinion
has accepted the verdict, and many schools have gone so far as to make
vocational education supplant numerous academic courses. Similarly
criticism, discussion, and change of front have occurred in political
theories, in the attitude of theologians to science, in the practice
of medicine, and even in methods of athletic training.
Criticism and discussion, therefore, instead of being deprecated,
ought to be welcome everywhere. Without them society stagnates, the
intellect grows rusty, and prejudice takes the place of rational
thought and volition. Feeling is bottled up and is likely to ferment
until it bursts its confinement and spreads havoc around like a
volcano. Free speech and a free press are safety-valves of democracy,
the sure hope of progress throughout society.
376. =Socialized Education.=--A second step in the educational process
is incitement to action. As criticism and discussion are necessary to
stimulate thought, so knowledge and conviction are essential to
action. The educational system that is familiar is individualistic in
type because it emphasizes individual achievement, and is based on the
conviction that individual success is of greatest consequence in life.
There is increasing demand for a socialized education which will have
as its foundation a body of sociological information that will teach
individuals their social relations, a fund of ideas that will be
bequeathed from generation to generation as the finest heritage, and a
system of social ethics that will produce a conviction of social
obligation. The will to do good is the most effective factor that
plays a part in social life. This socializing education has its place
in the school grades, properly becomes a major subject of study in the
higher schools, and ideally belongs to every scheme of continued
education in later life. The social sciences seem likely to vie with
the physical sciences, if not eventually to surpass them as the most
important department of human knowledge, for while the physical
sciences unlock the mysteries of the natural world the social sciences
hold the key to the meaning of ideal human life.
READING REFERENCES
ELLWOOD: _Sociology in Its Psychological Aspects_, pages 329-340.
GIDDINGS: _Principles of Sociology_, pages 132-152, 376-399.
GIDDINGS: _Descriptive and Historical Sociology_, pages 124-185.
COOLEY: _Social Organization_, pages 3-22.
WARD: _Psychic Factors of Civilization_, pages 291-312.
BLACKMAR AND GILLIN: _Outlines of Sociology_, pages 329-348.
DEALEY: _Sociology_, pages 67-68, 84-87, 243-257.
ELLWOOD: _Sociology and Modern Social Problems_, revised edition,
pages 354-367.
CHAPTER XLVII
SOCIAL THEORIES
377. =Theories of Social Order and Efficiency.=--Out of social
experience and social study have emerged certain theories of social
order and efficiency which have received marked attention and which
to-day are supported by cogent arguments. These theories fall under
the three following heads: (1) Those theories that make social order
and efficiency dependent upon the control of external authority; (2)
those theories that trust to the force of public opinion trained by
social education; (3) those theories that regard self-control coming
through the development of personality as the one essential for a
better social order.
378. =External Authority in History.=--The first theory rests its case
on the facts of history. Certain social institutions like the family,
the state, and the church have thrown restraint about the individual,
and when this restraint is removed he tends to run amuck. From the
beginning the family was the unit of the social order, and the
authority of its head was the source of wisdom. Self-control was not a
substitute for paternal discipline, but was a fact only in presence of
the dread of paternal discipline. The idea of absolute authority
passed over into the state, and absolutism was the theory of
efficiency in the ancient state, down to the fall of the Roman Empire
in the West. It was a theory that made slavery possible. It
strengthened the position of the high priest of every religious cult,
created the thought of the kingdom of God and moulded the Christian
creeds, and made possible the mediæval papacy. It has been the
fundamental principle of all monarchical government. It has remained a
royal theory in eastern Europe and Asia until our own day, and
survives in the political notion of the right of the strongest and in
the business principle that capital must control the industrial system
if prosperity and efficiency are to endure.
Irresponsible absolutism has been giving way slowly to paternalism.
This showed itself first in a growing conviction that kings owed it to
their subjects to rule well. Certain enlightened monarchs consulted
the interests of the people and, relying on their own wisdom,
instituted measures of reform. This type of paternalism was not
successful, but it has been imitated by modern states, even republics
like the United States, in various paternalistic measures of economic
and social regulation. Those who hold the theory that external
authority is necessary have been urgent in calling for the regulation
of railroads, of trusts, and of combinations of labor, until some have
felt that the authority of representative democracy bore more heavily
than the authority of monarchy. It is the principle of those who favor
government regulation that only by governmental restraint can free
competition continue, and everybody be assured of a square deal; their
opponents argue that such restraint throttles ambition and is
destructive of the highest efficiency that comes as a survival of the
fittest in the economic struggle.
379. =Socialism.=--Socialism is a third variety of the theory that
social order and efficiency depend on external authority. Socialists
aim at improving the social welfare by the collective control of
industry. While the advocates of government regulation give their main
attention to problems of production, the Socialists emphasize the
importance of the proper distribution of products to the consumers,
and would exercise authority in the partition of the rewards of labor.
They propose that collective ownership of the means of production take
the place of private ownership, that industry be managed by
representatives of the people, that products be distributed on some
just basis yet to be devised by the people. All that will be left to
them as individuals will be the right to consume and the possession of
material things not essential to the socialistic economy. Certain
Socialist theories go farther than this, but this is the essence of
Socialism. Socialists vary, also, as to the use of revolutionary or
evolutionary means of obtaining their ends.
The main objections that are made to the theory of Socialism are: (1)
That it is contrary to nature, which develops character and progress
through struggle; (2) that private property is a natural right, and
that it would be unjust to deprive individuals of what they have
secured through thrift and foresight, even in the interest of the
whole of society; (3) that an equitable distribution of wealth would
be impossible in any arbitrary division; (4) that no government can
possibly conduct successfully such huge enterprises as would fall to
it; (5) that Socialism would destroy private incentive and enterprise
by taking away the individual rewards of effort; (6) that a
socialistic régime would be as unendurable an interference with
individual liberty as any absolutist or paternal government that the
past has seen.
380. =Educated Public Opinion.=--The second group of theorists is
composed of those who would get rid of prohibitions and regulations as
far as possible, and trust to the force of an educated public opinion
to maintain a high level of social order and efficiency. It is a part
of the theory that constraint exercised by a government established by
law marks a stage of lower social development than restraint exercised
by the force of public opinion. But it must be an educated public
opinion, trained to appreciate the importance of society and its
claims upon the individual, to function rationally instead of
impulsively, and to seek the methods that will be most useful and
least expensive for the social body. This training of public opinion
is the task of the school first and then of the press, the pulpit, and
the public forum. Public and private commissions, organized and
maintained to furnish information and suggest better methods, make
useful contributions; public reports, if presented intelligibly,
impartially, and concisely, are among the helpful instruments of
instruction; reform pamphlets will again perform valuable service, as
they have in past days of moral and social intensity; but it is
especially through the newspapers and the forums for public discussion
that the social thinker can best reach his audience, and through these
means that commission reports can best be brought to the attention of
the people. It may very likely be necessary that press and platform be
subsidized either by government or by private endowment to do this
work of social training.
381. =Individualism.=--The third group of theorists rejects all
varieties of external control as of secondary value, and has no faith
in the working of public opinion, however well educated, unless the
character of the individuals that make up the group is what it should
be. These theorists regard self-control coming through the development
of personal worth as the one essential for a better social order. This
individualist theory is held by those who are still in bondage to the
individualism that has characterized social thinking in the last four
hundred years. There is much in the history of that period that
justifies faith in the worth of the individual. Along the lines of
material progress, especially, the individualist has made good.
Looking upon what has been achieved the modern democrat expects
further improvement in society through individual betterment.
The arguments in defense of the individualist theory are: (1) That
natural science has proved that social development is achieved only
through individual competition, and that the best man wins; (2) that
experience has shown that progress has been most rapid where the
individual has had largest scope; (3) that it is the teaching of
Christian ethics that the individual must work out the salvation of
his own character, must learn by experience how to gain self-reliance
and strength of will, and so has the right to fashion his own course
of conduct.
382. =The Development of Personal Worth.=--It is evident, however,
that the usefulness of the individual, both to himself and to others,
depends on his personal worth. The self-controlled man is the man of
personal worth, but self-control is not easy to secure. Defendants of
the first two theories may admit that self-control is an ideal, but
they claim that in the progress of society it must follow, not
antedate, external authority and the cultivation of public opinion,
and that time is not yet come. Only the few can be trusted yet to
follow their best judgment on all occasions, to be on the alert to
maintain in themselves and others highest efficiency. Human nature is
slowly in the making. One by one men and women rise to higher levels;
social regeneration must therefore wait on individual regeneration.
Seeing the need of a dynamic that will create personal worth, the
individualist has turned to religion and preached a doctrine of
personal salvation. He has seen what religion has done to transform
character, and he believes with confidence that it and it alone can
create social salvation if we give it time.
At the present time there is an increasing number of social thinkers
who regard each of these three theories as containing elements of
value, but believe that there is something beyond them that is
necessary to the highest efficiency. They consider that external
authority has been necessary, and look upon a strong centralized
government with power to create social efficiency as essential, but
they expect that an increasing social consciousness will make the
exercise of authority gradually less necessary. They have great
confidence in trained public opinion, but do not forget that opinion
must be vitalized by a strong motive, and mere education does not
readily supply the motive. They look for a time when individual worth
will be greater than now, and they recognize religion as a powerful
dynamic in the building of character, but they regard religion as
turned inward too much upon the individual. They would develop
individual character for the sake of society, and make a socialized
religion the motive power to vitalize public opinion so that it shall
function with increasing efficiency. A socialized religion supplies a
principle, a method, and a power. The Hebrew prophets and Jesus laid
down the principle that there is a solidarity of interests to which
the claims of the individual must be subordinate and must be
sacrificed on occasion. The prophets and Jesus taught a method of
experimentation, calling upon the people whom they addressed to test
the principle and see if it worked. The prophets and Jesus showed that
power comes in the will to do and in actual obedience to the
principle. They looked for an improved social system reared on this
basis which would be a real "kingdom of God," not merely the economic
commonwealth of the Socialist, but a commonwealth governed by the
principle of consecration to the social welfare, spiritual as well as
physical.
383. =Social Ideals.=--At the basis of every theory lies the
individual with social relations. To socialize him external authority
is the primitive agent. This authority may give way in time to the
restraint of public opinion made intelligent by a socialized
education, but effective public opinion is dependent on the
development of personal worth in the individual. The most powerful
dynamic for such development and for social welfare in general is a
socialized religion. If all this be true, what is it that comprises
social welfare? In a word, it is the efficient functioning of every
social group. The family, the community, the nation, and every minor
group, will serve effectually the economic, cultural, social, and
spiritual needs of the individuals of whom it is composed. Perfect
functioning can follow only after a long period of progress. Such
progress is the ideal that society sets for itself. In that process
there must be full recognition of all the factors that enter into
social life. There is the individual with his rights and obligations,
who must be protected and encouraged to grow. There are the
institutions like the family, the church, and the state that must
receive recognition and maintenance. There must be liberty for each
group to function freely without arbitrary interference, as long as
its privileges and acts do not interfere with the public good. Ideal
social control is to be exercised by an enlightened and
self-restrained public opinion energized by a socialized religion. All
improvements must not be looked for in a moment, but can come only
slowly and by frequent testing if they are to be permanently
accepted. The system that would result would be neither absolutist,
socialistic, nor individualistic, but would contain the best elements
of all. It would not be forced upon a people, but would be worked out
slowly by education and experiment. Social institutions would not be
tyrannous but helpful, and human happiness would be materially
increased.
READING REFERENCES
ELLWOOD: _Sociology in Its Psychological Aspects_, pages 352-381.
NEARING AND WATSON: _Economics_, pages 443-493.
BLACKMAR AND GILLIN: _Outlines of Sociology_, pages 373-392.
DEALEY: _Sociology_, pages 351-361.
SKELTON: _Socialism_, pages 16-61.
CARNEGIE: _Problems of To-day_, pages 121-139.
CHAPTER XLVIII
THE SCIENCE OF SOCIOLOGY
384. =Sociology vs. Social Philosophy.=--Sociology is one of the
recent sciences. It had to wait for the scientific method of exact
investigation and the scientific principle of forming conclusions upon
abundant data. Naturally, theories of society were held long before
any science came into existence, but they were of value only as
philosophizing. Some of these theories were published and attracted
the attention of thoughtful persons, but they did not affect social
life. Some of them developed into philosophies of history, based on
the preconceived ideas of their authors. Now and then in the first
part of the nineteenth century certain social experiments were made in
the form of co-operative communities, which it was fondly hoped would
become practical methods for a better social order, but they almost
uniformly failed because they were artificial rather than of natural
growth, and because they were based on principles that public opinion
had not yet sanctioned. The story of the predecessors of modern
sociology naturally is preliminary to the history of sociology itself.
385. =Philosophers and Prophets.=--Two classes of men in ancient time
worked on the problems of society, one from the practical standpoint,
the other from the philosophic. One group of names includes the great
statesmen and lawgivers, like Moses, who laid the foundations of the
Hebrew nation and gave it the nucleus of a legal system; Solon and
Lycurgus, traditional lawgivers of Athens and Sparta, and several of
the earlier kings and later emperors of Rome. The other group is
composed of men who thought much about human life and disseminated
their opinions by writing and teaching. For the most part they were
idealistic philosophers, but their influence was far-reaching in time.
In the list belong Plato, who in his _Republic_ outlined an ideal
society that was the prototype of later fanciful commonwealths;
Aristotle, who made a real contribution to political science in his
_Politics_; Cicero, who himself participated actively in government
and wrote out his theories or spoke them in public, and Augustine, who
gave his conception of a Christian state in the _City of God_.
During the period when ancient ways were giving place to modern, and a
transition was taking place in the realm of ideas, Thomas More, in his
_Utopia_, and Campanella in his _City of the Sun_, published their
conceptions of an ideal state, while Machiavelli took society as it
was, and in his _Prince_ suggested how it might be governed better.
These are all evidences that there was dissatisfaction with existing
systems, but no unanimity of opinion as to possible improvements.
Later theories were no more satisfactory. The French Revolutionary
philosophers, especially Rousseau, with his theory of voluntary social
contract, and the Utopian dreamers who followed, were longing for
justice and political efficiency, but their theories seem crude and
visionary from the point of view of the social science of the present
day.
386. =Experimenting with Society.=--Robert Owen in England and Fourier
and Saint-Simon in France were prophets of an ideal order which they
tried to establish. Believing that all men were intended to be happy,
and that happiness depended on a reorganization of the social
environment in which property should be socialized, at least in part,
they organized volunteers into model communities, expecting that their
success would attract men everywhere to imitate the new organization.
The arrangement of industry was planned in detail, a co-operative
system was organized that would keep every man busy at useful labor
without working him too hard, would take away the profits of the
middleman by a well-planned system of distribution, and would allow
liberty in social relations as far as consistent with the general
good, but would subordinate the individual to the community. Certain
of the Utopians thought that it would be necessary for the state to
determine the minutiæ of daily life, and for a few directors to
prescribe activities, and they introduced a uniformity in dress, food,
and houses that savored of the old-fashioned orphan asylum. These
features, together with the failure to understand that social
institutions could not be made to order, and that human nature was not
of such quality as to make an ideal commonwealth at once actual, soon
wrecked these utopian schemes and brought to an end the first period
of socialistic experiments.
387. =Biological Sociologists.=--Not a few writers in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, before sociology was born, recognized the
need and the possibility of a true science of society. Scholars were
studying and writing upon other sciences that are related to
sociology--biology, history, economics, and politics. Scientific
information about the various races of mankind was accumulating. At
length Auguste Comte, a Frenchman, found a place for sociology among
the sciences and declared it to be the highest of them all. In 1842 he
completed the publication of the _Positive Philosophy_, in which he
maintained that human society is an organism similar to biological
organisms, and that its activities can be systematized and
generalizations be deduced therefrom for the formation of a true
science. In his _Descriptive Sociology_ and later works Herbert
Spencer in England amplified the theory of Comte and arranged a mass
of facts as evidence of its truth. He put too much emphasis on
biological resemblances in the opinion of present-day sociologists,
but his emphasis on inductive study and his generalizations from
biology were important contributions to the development of the new
science.
388. =Psychological Sociologists.=--Comte and Spencer were followed by
other biological sociologists whose names are well known to students
of the science. Interest was aroused in Great Britain, on the
continent of Europe, and in America. Students were influenced by
conclusions that were being reached in biology, in economics, and in
other allied departments of thought, but the one science which became
most prominent to the minds of sociologists was psychology. Ward's
_Dynamic Sociology_, published in 1883, marked an epoch, because it
called special attention to the psychic factors that enter into social
life. After him it became increasingly clear that the true social
forces were psychic, though physical conditions affected social
progress. A younger school of sociologists has come into existence,
and the science is being developed on that basis. More than one
individual thinker has made his special contribution, and there is
still a variety of opinion on details, but the general principles of
the science are being worked out in substantial agreement. It is not
to be expected that such a complex and comprehensive science could be
completed in its short history of approximately half a century, or
that it can ever be made exact, like mathematics or the natural
sciences, but there is every reason to expect the development of a
body of classified facts that will be of inestimable value in
attacking social problems, and of principles that will serve as a
guide through the labyrinth of social life. The value of any science
is not in the perfection of its system, but in the practical
application which can be made of it to human progress.
389. =Relation of Sociology to the Natural Sciences.=--Sociology has
relations to an outer circle of general sciences and to an inner
circle of social sciences. It is itself but one of the social
sciences, though it is regarded as chief among them. Man looks out
upon the universe, of which he is but an atom, and asks questions.
Astronomy brings to him the findings of its telescopes and spectrum
analyses. Geology explains the transformations that have taken place
in the earth on which he lives. Physics and chemistry analyze its
substance and reveal the laws of nature. Biology opens up the field of
life. Psychology investigates the structure and functions of the human
mind, and shows that all activity is at base mental. At last the new
sociology discloses human life in all its complex relationships, the
function of the social mind, and the channels through which it works.
Since social life is lived in a world where physical and mental
factors are constantly in action, there is a close connection between
all the sciences. Although social life is not so closely similar to
animal life as was thought previously, the principles of biology are
important to the sociologist because biology is the science of all
life. Psychology is important because it is the science of all mind.
390. =Relations of Sociology and Other Social Sciences.=--There are
many phases of human experience and differences of relationship.
Obviously the specific sciences that deal with them have a still
closer relation to sociology. Economics, for example, has as its field
the economic relations and activities that are connected with the
business of making a living. The production, distribution, and use of
material things is the subject that absorbs the economist. The
sociologist makes use of the facts and principles of economics to
throw light on the economic functions of society, but the economic
field is only one sector of his concern. In a similar way political
science is related to sociology. It deals with the organization and
development of government and embraces the departments of national and
international law, but the governmental function of the social group
is but one of the divisions of the interests that absorb the
sociologist. He uses the data and conclusions of the political
scientists, but in a more general way. It is the same with the
sociologist and history. History supplies much of the data of the
sociologist from the records of the past. It deals with social life in
the concrete, and historical interpretation is essential to an
understanding of social phenomena, but sociology takes the past with
the present, analyzes both, and generalizes from both as to the laws
of the social process. Pedagogy deals with the history and principles
of education. Sociology is interested in the educational function of
the family, of the community, and of the nation, but again its
interest is from the standpoint of abstraction and generalization.
Ethics is a science that treats of the right and wrong conduct of
human beings. It is very closely associated with sociology, because
the valuation of conduct depends on social effects, but the moral
functioning of the group is but one phase of social life, and,
therefore, ethics is far narrower in its range than sociology.
Theology, the science of religion, has sociological implications. As
far as it is a science and not a philosophy, it rests upon human
interest and human experience, and it is becoming increasingly
recognized that these human interests depend on social relationships,
but all the religious interests of men are but one part of the field
of sociology.
It is clear that each of the social sciences holds a relation to
sociology of the particular to the general. Sociology seeks out the
laws and principles that unify all the rest. It does not include them
all, as does the term social science, but it correlates and interprets
them all. It is not the same as philosophy, for that subject has for
its field all knowledge, and especially tries to probe to the secrets
of all being, and to learn the meaning of the universe as a whole,
while sociology is restricted to social life. Each has its distinct
place among the studies of the human mind, and each should be
distinguished carefully from its rivals and associates.
391. =Social Classification.=--When we enter into the field of
sociology itself we find other distinctions to be necessary. The
novice frequently confounds similar terms. Not infrequently sociology
and socialism are used as synonymous terms by persons who know little
of either, so that it is necessary to point out that socialism is a
particular theory of social organization and functioning, while
sociology is the general science that includes all varieties of social
theory, along with social fact, and especially is it necessary to
explain that any fallacies of socialistic theory do not invalidate
well-established conclusions of social science. Another common error
is to identify sociology with social reform. Social pathology is too
important a branch of sociology to be omitted or minimized, but it is
only one division of the subject, and all measures as well as theories
of social reform are only a small part of the concern of sociology.
Such terms as philanthropy, criminology, and penology all have
connection with sociology, but they need to be carefully
differentiated from the more general term.
Sociology itself has been variously classified under the terms pure
and applied, static and dynamic, descriptive and theoretical. Terms
have changed somewhat, as the psychological emphasis has supplanted
the biological. It is important that terms should be used correctly
and should be sanctioned by custom, but it is not necessary to make
sharp distinction between all the different divisions, old and new.
Classification is a matter of convenience and technic; though it may
have a scientific basis, it is entirely a matter of form. There is
always danger that a particular classification may become a fetich. It
is the life of society that we study, it is the improvement of social
relations at which we aim. Whatever method best contributes to this
end is valid in classification for all except those who delight in
science for science's sake.
392. =The Permanent Place of Sociology.=--The study of the science of
social life is eminently worth while, for it deals with matters that
are of vital importance to the human race and every one of its
individual members. For that reason it is likely to receive growing
recognition as among the most important subjects with which the human
mind can deal. It is vast in its range, exacting in its demand of
unremitting investigation and careful generalization, stimulating in
its intense practicality. Its abstractions require the closest
reasoning of the scholar, but its basis in the concrete facts of daily
life tends to make it popular. Once understood and appreciated,
sociology is likely to become the guide-book by which social effort
will be directed, and the standard by which it will be measured. As
progress becomes in this way more telic it will become more rapid.
Social life will approach more nearly the norm that sociology
describes, but until the day that society ceases to be pathological,
sociology will teach a social ideal as a goal toward which society
must bend its energies. As human life is the most precious gift that
the world bestows, so the science of that life is worthy of being
called the gem of the sciences.
READING REFERENCES
DEALEY: _Sociology_, pages 19-40.
BLACKMAR AND GILLIN: _Outlines of Sociology_, pages 13-47,
541-564.
GIDDINGS: _Principles of Sociology_, pages 3-51.
ELLWOOD: _Sociology in Its Psychological Aspects_, pages 29-65.
ROSS: _Foundations of Sociology_, pages 15-28, 256-348.
SMALL: _General Sociology_, pages 40-97.
INDEX
Achievement, 5, 115, 341.
Activity, 2-6, 88, 111, 117, 164, 170, 188, 236, 237, 298, 346.
Adaptation, 31, 234, 333-335, 342, 343, 349-351.
Administration, 320, 321.
Adultery, 75-78, 81.
Æsthetics, 144.
Aggregation, 348.
Agricultural clubs, 107, 118.
Agricultural colleges, 107, 164.
Agricultural fairs, 107.
Agriculture, 52, 99, 100, 104, 106, 118.
Almshouses, 272.
American Civic Federation, 148.
American Federation of Labor, 192.
American Vigilance Association, 85.
Amusements, 86, 164, 238-240.
Ancestor-worship, 32.
Arbitration, 191, 194, 195, 335, 336.
Art, 283.
Assimilation, 327.
Association, 6-9, 17-23, 53, 54, 88, 108, 109, 111, 118, 133, 152,
164, 170, 188, 233, 236, 240, 254, 294, 307, 308, 337, 338,
344-346, 348, 349.
Athletics, 109, 111, 112, 196, 237, 240, 308, 309.
Attention, 345, 351.
Banks, 106, 307.
Big Brother idea, 251.
Biological analogies, 342, 343.
Birth-rate, 42.
Boards of Conciliation, 194, 195.
Boy Scouts, 110, 251.
Boys' Clubs, 110.
Cabinet, 320, 321.
Camp-Fire Girls, 112.
Catholic Church, 76, 271, 276.
Census of marriage and divorce, 35, 74, 77.
Change, 10-13, 88, 129, 170, 173-176, 189, 236, 351.
Charity, 242, 267, 271-277.
Charity organization, 57, 267, 272-276.
Charter, 257, 260, 261.
Chautauqua Movement, 118, 133, 309.
Child labor, 49-53, 190, 191, 235.
Children, 42-59.
Dependency of, 56-58.
Relief of, 57, 58.
Rights of, 42, 48, 53-55.
Children's aid societies, 58.
Chinese Exclusion Act, 329.
Christianity, 32, 76.
Church, The, 156-161, 252, 287-293, 310, 311, 338, 353.
In the city, 287-293.
In the country. See Rural church.
Church charity, 275, 276.
Church organization, 290-293.
City, The, 169 ff., 294-299.
Attraction of, 171, 172.
Characteristics of, 169.
Economic interests in, 180.
Government of, 256-262.
Growth of, 170.
History of, 177-179.
Importance of, 176.
Improvement of, 295-298.
In the making, 294-298.
Manager, 261, 262.
Neighborhood, 284, 285.
Opportunities in, 173, 175.
Classes, 212-218.
Classification, 370.
Clubs, 107, 110-112, 116, 118, 133, 134, 148.
Collective bargaining, 194.
College life, 10, 12, 85, 131, 132.
Commerce, 205, 206, 337.
Commission government, 260, 261.
Commissions, 195, 199, 233.
Communication, 116, 118, 281, 288, 294, 307, 336, 337, 349.
Community house, 163, 164.
Community leadership, 164-168.
Community obligation, 154.
Competition, 107, 198, 227.
Conference, 297, 298.
Conflict, 31, 115, 186, 187, 194, 320, 328, 334, 353.
Congregational churches, 77.
Control, 9, 10, 88, 136, 142, 170, 188, 189, 197-199, 203, 208-210,
234, 246, 256, 258, 298, 303, 314, 352, 357, 358.
Co-operation, 31, 53, 63, 89, 90, 105-107, 129, 130, 198-200, 205,
206, 297, 298, 365.
Cost of living, 69, 76, 89.
Country store, 116.
Court of Domestic Relations, 79.
Courts. See Judiciary.
Craft guilds, 182.
Crime, 75, 84, 90, 154, 228, 235, 240, 242, 244, 246, 248-255.
Causes of, 248-250.
Discharge, 253, 254.
Prevention of, 250-252.
Punishment, 252-254.
Reformation, 252, 254.
Criticism, 353.
Crowds, 22, 23.
Cruelty, 48, 49, 75, 77, 78.
Custom, 139, 152, 334, 349.
Dance-halls, 82, 84, 238, 240.
Decision, 351, 354.
Defectives, 84, 86.
Degeneracy, 43-46, 218, 219, 228.
Delinquency, 154.
See Crime.
Democracy, 141, 189, 190, 196, 298, 309, 316-319, 327.
Democracy in industry, 189, 190.
Department stores, 201, 203.
Dependency, 56, 57, 271.
See Charity.
Desertion, 70, 75, 77, 78, 267.
Desires, 334, 345-347.
Difficulties of working people, 263-270.
Discrimination, 345, 351.
Discussion, 284-286, 353, 354.
Division of labor, 62, 125.
Divorce, 74-80, 88.
Catholic attitude toward, 76
Causes of, 75, 76, 267.
Difficulty of, 77.
History of, 76.
In Europe, 74-78.
Laws of, 74-79.
Protestant attitude toward, 76, 77.
Remedies for, 78, 79.
Divorce court, 79.
Divorce proctor, 79.
Drama, 283, 284.
See Theatre.
Duelling, 194.
Dynamic society, 2, 10.
East, The, 100, 139, 140, 224.
Economics, 180, 368.
Education, 55, 120-131, 280, 327, 328, 331, 339, 346, 353-355.
Agricultural, 124, 127, 128.
Cultural, 122, 132.
Industrial, 251, 331.
Moral and religious, 160, 251, 287, 291.
Principles of, 120-124.
Rural, 120-131.
Vocational, 121, 123, 267, 268, 296.
Weaknesses of, 123, 124.
Edwards family, 45, 46.
Elberfeld system, 275.
Election, 317, 318.
Employers' liability, 191, 192.
Environment, 25, 26, 40, 47, 48, 99, 100, 105, 121, 125, 169, 235,
248, 327, 334, 340-343, 345, 350, 351.
Erdman Act, 195.
Ethics, 202, 368.
Eugenics, 43-47, 90.
Euthenics, 47, 48.
Evangelical Alliance, 311.
Evangelism, 288, 289.
Evolution, 342, 343.
Exchange, 64, 201-203.
Executive, 320, 321.
Experimentation, 128, 187.
Factory life, 188.
Factory system, 51, 182-184.
Family, 24 f., 88-90.
Changes in, 65, 67-69, 76.
Functions of, 26, 27, 88.
History of, 29-33.
Mediæval, 33, 37-39.
On the farm, 25, 26, 64, 65, 350.
Reform, 88-90.
Roman, 32, 37.
Study of, 24.
Urban, 68.
Farmers' Institute, 118.
Farmers' Union, 117.
Federal Council of churches, 77, 310,
311.
Federation, 334, 335.
Feeble-mindedness, 44, 84.
Feeling, 344, 345, 355.
Feminism, 71, 72.
Folk-ways. See Social habits.
Forum, 284-286, 360.
Friendly visiting, 274.
Galveston plan, 260, 261.
Gambling, 153, 235, 239.
Gangs, 22, 109-111.
Germans, 223, 259, 260, 269, 322, 335.
Girls' clubs, in, 111, 112.
Government, 136-143, 195, 208, 256-262, 313-327.
City, 256-262.
National, 313-323.
Rural, 136-143.
Government ownership, 208, 209.
Grange, 117, 284.
Great Britain, 44, 259, 269, 316, 317, 322.
Group consciousness, 18, 192.
Habits, 334, 345.
Hague Conferences, 335.
Health, 85, 144-148, 196, 233, 242, 267, 307, 308.
Clubs, 148.
Nurses and physicians, 147, 148, 296.
Officials, 146, 147.
Hebrew Charities, 276.
Heredity, 26, 46, 249, 342.
History, 368.
Home, 37-42.
Children in the, 42, 90.
Education in the, 39, 55, 56.
History of the, 37-39.
Ideal, 40.
Man in the, 70.
Modern, 39, 40, 67-71.
Rural, 121, 122.
Values of the, 39, 40.
Women in the, 69.
Home economics, 60-66.
Hospitals, 272, 296.
Hours of labor, 190, 207.
Housing, 86, 89, 230-234, 252, 350.
Hull House, 277, 278.
Imitation, 349, 351.
Immigrants and Immigration, 82, 86, 102, 170, 171, 221-229, 250, 327-329.
Asiatic, 328, 329.
Causes and effects of, 227, 228.
German, 223.
History of, 221-226.
Irish, 222.
Italian, 224, 225.
Jewish, 225, 226.
Lesser peoples, 226.
Problems of, 327.
Scandinavians, 223, 224.
Slavs, 225.
Imprisonment, 78.
See Crime.
Impulse, 345.
Individual, The, 128, 144, 151, 152, 192, 203, 248, 343-347, 360.
Individualism, 72, 73, 75, 78, 88, 89, 107, 144, 149, 360.
Industrial control, 189, 190.
Industrial problem, 183, 186-200.
Principles for solution of the, 197-200.
Industrial reform, 190.
Industrial revolution, 178, 184.
Industrial schools, 58.
Initiative, 261.
Insanity, 44, 78, 244.
Instincts, 27, 109, 111, 112, 344, 345, 348.
Insurance, 106, 269.
Intemperance, 75, 78, 84, 90, 153, 233, 240, 241.
Results of, 242-244.
See Temperance.
Interests, 302-304, 311, 334, 345-347.
International law, 320, 335.
International Workers of the World, 193.
Internationalism, 333-339.
Invention, 184, 206, 341, 345.
Irish, 222.
Italians, 224, 225.
Jews, 225, 226.
Judiciary, 321, 322.
Jukes, 44, 45.
Juvenile courts, 154, 254.
Kallikak family, 45.
Labor, 61-63.
Division of, 62.
Hired, 63.
Organization of, 192, 193.
Labor bureaus, 191, 193, 268.
Labor conditions, 184.
Labor exchanges, 269.
Labor unions, 192, 193, 207.
Lack of support, 75.
Law, 136, 137, 142, 258, 321, 322, 349.
Lawgivers, 364.
Lawlessness, 54, 55, 235.
Legislation, 319, 320.
See Social legislation.
Liberty, 54, 55.
Libraries, 132, 282, 283.
License, 83, 246.
Like-mindedness, 192, 308.
Local Government Act, 259.
Local option, 141, 246.
Manufacturing, 180-185.
History of, 181-183.
Marriage, 27, 20-36, 46, 76, 79, 84.
Ideals of, 35, 36, 79.
Laws of, 34, 35, 77, 78.
Reforms, 35.
Mass meeting, 19.
Massachusetts Society for Promoting Good Citizenship, 260.
Maternity benefits, 44.
Metronymic period, 30.
Misery, 263.
Missions, 338, 339.
Mobs, 22, SS, 348.
Monogamy, 29, 31, 33.
Monopoly, 208-210, 242.
Morals, 151-155, 175, 230, 232, 235, 237, 242, 349.
Definition of, 151.
In the city, 175, 230, 232, 235, 237.
Rural, 151-155.
Morals commission, 86.
Morals court, 86.
Moving pictures, 82, 86, 112, 238, 240, 283.
Municipal ownership, 260.
Municipal reform, 260.
Music, 133, 164, 165, 237, 241, 283, 284, 310.
Nation, The, 300-332.
Economics in, 306, 307.
Education in, 309.
Functions of, 305-311, 314.
Government of, 313-323.
Health in, 307, 308.
History of, 301, 302.
Philanthropy in, 310.
Problems of, 324-332.
Sport in, 308.
National Bureau of Education, 309.
National Conference of Charities and Corrections, 273, 310.
National Conference on Unemployment, 269.
National Divorce Reform League, 77.
National Education Association, 309.
National Insurance Act, 44.
National Municipal League, 260.
National Reform League, 260.
Nature study, 127.
Neglect, 48, 75.
Negro problem, 329-331.
Newspapers, 252, 281, 284, 336, 353, 354, 360.
Occupations, 104, 181, 235, 345.
Offices, 204.
Organization, 2, 8, 9, 22, 23, 109, 110, 111, 118, 133, 140, 149,
182-184, 188, 196, 210, 259, 260, 200-293, 317-323.
Organization of labor, 192, 193.
Parks, 238.
Parole, 253.
Paternalism, 358.
Patriarchal household, 30, 32, 49, 61.
Pauperism, 268.
Personality, 1, 54, 344, 347, 349.
Personal worth, 360, 361.
Persuasion, 352.
Philosophers, 364, 365.
Placing-out system, 57, 58.
Play, 53, 54, 109, 235, 236, 239.
Playgrounds, 108, 235, 236.
Police, 258, 259.
Political science, 368.
Politics, 137, 138, 141, 142, 194, 244, 252, 260.
Polyandry, 31.
Polygyny, 30, 31.
Population, 100-103, 176, 177, 223, 232, 248.
Characteristics of, 100, 101.
Composition of, 101, 102, 223.
Congestion of, 207.
Growth of, 102.
Poverty, 84, 90, 228, 242, 246, 266-270.
Causes of, 267-269.
Remedies for, 267, 268.
Press, The, 280-282.
Primaries, 141, 260, 261.
Probation, 251, 253.
Profanity, 153, 235.
Profit-sharing, 196.
Progress, 351-353.
Genetic, 351, 352.
Telic, 352, 353.
Prophets, 365, 366.
Prosperity, 324, 325.
Prostitution, 81-88.
Protestant-Episcopal Church, 77.
Psychology, 344-346.
Public opinion, 34, 35, 59, 78, 79, 81, 82, 123, 142, 210, 237, 246,
252, 282, 320, 359-361.
Punishment. See Crime.
Race problem, 327-332.
Railways, 207, 208.
Raines Law hotels, 84.
Reading-circles, 133.
Reason, 3, 4, 17.
Recall, 261.
Recreation, 53, 54, 108-114, 164, 196, 235, 238, 252, 254, 308, 309.
Referendum, 141, 193, 198, 261.
Reformatories, 84, 86.
Relief, 57, 58, 267, 271-277.
Religion, 34, 39, 230, 287-293, 349, 361.
Religious education, 160, 287, 291.
Remarriage, 77.
Rescue homes, 86.
Royal Commission on Divorce, 78.
Rural church, 156-161.
Function of, 157, 160.
Minister of, 158.
Needs of, 159, 160.
New, 160.
Problems of, 158, 159.
Value of, 156, 157.
Rural emigration, 67, 102, 172, 173.
Rural Life Commission, 153, 154.
Russell Sage Foundation, 268, 295.
St. Vincent de Paul Society, 276.
Saloon, The, 84, 173, 238, 240, 241, 243.
Salvation Army, 293.
Scandinavians, 223, 224.
Schools, The, 120-131, 141, 236, 280.
Consolidated, 125, 129,
Continuation, 129, 165.
Curriculum of, 121, 122, 127, 128, 354.
District, 124, 125, 284.
Normal, 123, 130, 131.
State, 58.
Teaching in, 124, 129, 130.
School districts, 140.
Scientific management, 196.
Segregation, 83, 85, 250, 272, 296.
Self-control, 360, 361.
Servant class, 62, 63, 69, 82, 89, 182.
Settlements, 277-279.
Sewing-circles, 116, 117.
Sex hygiene, 55, 90.
Sexual impurity, 81, 88, 90, 153, 154, 233.
See Prostitution.
Slavery, 62, 182.
Slavs, 225.
Slums, 38, 231-233.
Sociability, 108, 111, 164, 171.
Social analysis, 340-371.
Social centres, 117, 163, 164, 176-179, 241, 242, 284-286.
Social characteristics, 2-14, 88, 129.
Social contract, 315.
Social degeneration, 103.
Social development, 2, 334, 342, 360.
Social education, 35, 39, 46, 56, 80, 86, 87, 90, 110, 121, 123, 237,
254, 330, 331.
Social elements. See Social factors.
Social factors, 4, 16, 17, 68, 187, 188, 333, 334, 340-356.
Physical, 343.
Psychic, 344-356.
Social groups, 14-23, 53, 54, 349, 350.
Social habits, 349, 351.
Social ideals, 362, 363.
Social institutions, 21, 24, 57, 58, 90, 115-120, 162, 168, 169, 237,
280, 337-339, 357.
Social legislation, 44, 52, 53, 142, 190, 191, 194, 222, 250, 268.
Social mind, 17-19, 54, 344, 348.
Social organization. See Organization.
Social pathology, 369.
Social problems, 14, 210, 221, 228, 242, 298.
Social reform, 369.
Social relations, 1, 6-8, 24, 31, 47, 90, 108, 169, 187, 189, 195,
203, 237, 314, 332, 334, 365.
Social science, 128, 129, 298, 355, 365.
Social selection, 31, 342, 343.
Social service, 89.
Social sympathy, 89.
Social theories, 315, 357-363, 365.
Social utility, 4.
Social values, 39, 40, 108, 337.
Social weaknesses, 13, 14, 88, 123, 124, 170, 175, 189, 324.
Social welfare, 73, 186, 191, 196, 202, 210, 212, 300, 343, 358.
Socialism, 197, 314, 358, 359, 369.
Objections to, 359.
Society, 1, 2.
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 57.
Sociology, 2, 364-371.
Biological, 366.
Psychological, 366.
Relations of, 367-369.
Source material, 2.
South, The, 99, 100, 140, 261.
South Carolina dispensary system, 242.
Southern Sociological Conference, 310.
Standard of living, 207, 222, 231, 327, 329.
State, The, 57, 272, 313-323.
History of, 315, 316.
Theories of, 315.
State schools, 58.
Static society, 2, 10, 139, 169.
Sterilization, 250.
Stimulus, 18, 56, 238, 283, 341, 344, 345, 347, 351, 352.
Stock exchange, 202.
Street trades, 235.
Strikes, 193, 194.
Struggle for existence, 342, 343.
Summer visitors, 148, 149, 351.
Sweating, 52.
Syndicalism, 197.
Telephone, 106.
Temperance, 244.
Anti-Saloon League, 245.
Education, 245.
Good Templars, 245.
No license, 245.
Prohibition, 245, 246.
Regulation, 246.
Total abstinence, 245.
Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 245, 338.
Tenant farming, 101.
Tenements, 69, 82, 84-86, 230-234, 239, 263.
Theatre, 82, 238, 240, 283.
Theology, 369.
Theories. See Social theories.
Town meetings, 140-142, 163, 284-286.
Toynbee Hall, 278.
Tradition, 349, 350.
Transportation, 204-208, 336, 337.
Trusts, 209, 210.
Unemployment, 199, 269.
United Mine Workers, 193.
United States, 302-304, 335.
United States Census, 67.
United States Department of Agriculture, 306.
United States Patent Office, 306.
Universities, 131, 132, 308, 309, 354.
University of Wisconsin, 131, 132.
University Settlement, 278.
Unorganized groups, 16-23.
Utopians, 365.
Venereal disease, 44, 85.
Vice commissions, 83-85.
Vice reform, 85, 86.
Village, The, 115, 301.
Improvement Society, 148, 149.
Nurse, 147, 148.
Vocational training, 35, 296.
Volunteer Prison League, 254.
Wages, 84, 86, 89, 203, 204, 207, 222, 228.
War, 90, 194, 249, 334.
West, The, 99, 102, 223, 224, 261.
White-slave traffic, 83, 86, 244.
See Prostitution.
Will of the individual, 264, 344, 355, 362.
Will of the people, 138, 320.
Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 245, 338.
Woman's clubs, 134.
Woman's work, 61, 62, 84, 190, 191.
Working people, The, 183, 184, 212, 230-234, 238, 263-270.
Worship, 288, 289.
Young Men's Christian Association, 153, 163, 173, 241, 293, 298, 338.
Young Women's Christian Association, 293, 298.
* * * * *
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