LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO 31 H3 From the Library of BISHC? v, : /RGE A. MILLER IN THE LIGHT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS By THOMAS C. HALL Professor of Christian Ethics in Union Theological Seminary New York NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & GRAHAM Copyright, 1910, by EATON & MAINS. TO MY WIFE IN MOST LOVING REMEMBRANCE OF JULY THE TWENTY-NINTH 1884 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAOE Preface 5 Introduction 7 I. The Social Outlook of Jesus 13 II. Paul and Social Theory 22 III. The Underlying Philosophy of our Examination of Social Reform 29 IV. What is Our Social Order? 39 V. Farther Examination of Our Social Order 52 VI. A Christian Estimate of Our Social Order 62 VII. The Christian Church and a Social Program .... 73 VIII. The Kingdom Dream 84 IX. The Individualistic Emphasis in the Kingdom Dream 97 X. The Social Emphasis in the Kingdom Dream. . . 110 XI. Classical Political Economy and the Kingdom Dream 121 XII. The Manchester School 127 XIII. Individualism in the United States 137 XIV. The Social Proposals of Anarchy 143 XV. The Individualism of Single Tax 155 XVI. Individualism and Democracy 165 XVII. The Social Emphasis and its Proposals 176 XVIII. The Rise of Socialism 190 XIX. Marxian Socialism 198 XX. State Socialism 222 XXI. Types of Continental Socialism 233 XXII. The Kingdom Dream and Social Amelioration . . 245 XXIII. Classification of Social Proposals of Amelioration 257 XXIV. The Ethics of Personal Relief 268 XXV. Social Amelioration and the Home 282 XXVI. Social Thinking and Education 295 XXVII. Social Thinking and the Workshop 310 XXVIII. Social Thinking and Admitted Social Evils 322 XXIX. The City and the Kingdom Dream 335 XXX. Political Machinery and the Kingdom 349 XXXI. Summary 359 XXXII. Selected Bibliography 369 3 PEEFACE THESE pages are especially addressed to in- telligent and earnest Christian men and women seeking light upon the social message of the religion of Jesus. The contents have been given to successive classes of young men in more technical and academic form than the purpose of this book permits. The aim is to arouse interest and discussion, and also to il- lustrate what seems to the writer should be the Christian adult 's way of looking at life. Those who are not professedly Christian may be in- terested in seeing what a modern Christian intelligence would wish put in the foreground of the Christian message. The treatment has been kept as simple and as untechnical as pos- sible. And every effort has been made by the writer to do justice to the various proposals he reviews. He has not been content at any point with merely secondhand sources of information. Some little repetition has not been avoided, and could not easily be avoided. May the book help to light the fires of social enthusiasm that are to show the way to God's kingdom upon earth ! INTRODUCTION IT is not as a specialist in political economy or social science that the average Christian citizen must face important decisions in the conduct of communal affairs. Nor can he wholly rely upon the advice of specialists. Not only are they often wrong ; but differing among themselves he must decide between the spe- cialists. Moreover, they many times cannot share the Christian interest or see things from our point of view. So far as we are Christians we should have our distinct vantage ground, and it is highly desirable that decisions be reached in the light of considerations from all quarters. It is quite generally assumed that self-interest sees clearly what is best for itself. This, however, is very far from being the case. The highest self-interest is often forgotten al- together. Self-interest blinds men as well as it illumines them. It is often exceedingly short- sighted. Yet it must ever enter into our calcu- lations. Generally a man or a community is the best judge of the real interest of that man or that community. The average man is not an expert in ethical discussion. Yet here again he must pass judg- ment upon the most intricate and complicated 7 8 INTRODUCTION ethical questions. Nor can he here call upon the specialist to decide for him. A decision that is made for us is not our moral decision. To be moral it must be directly or indirectly our own. Particularly the Christian citizen has an ex- tremely delicate and difficult task before him. He is living in a community that calls itself Christian but is not even confessedly organized upon the basis of the kingdom of God. We are, however, only really Christian in so far as we share the kingdom purpose of Jesus Christ. We must live and die for what he lived and died for. Just at this point, however, arise many ques- tions. What is the kingdom of God? What measures will bring it in I How is Jesus 's thought of it to be fitted into our modern world? How definite is our conception of it? The proposed social solutions that claim our attention promise more or less the fulfillment of our hope for the kingdom of God on earth, but are they practical? are they sufficient? are they in line with the actual movement of his- tory? To attempt an intelligent answer to these questions some knowledge must be had of the proposed social solutions. They must be object- ively examined, their claims considered, and then this criticism may take the form of scien- tific criticism from the point of view of the INTRODUCTION 9 political economist, or from the point of view of the ethical man. This later viewing point is the one we take. Making no pretense to more than amateur knowledge of political economy, and only deal- ing with it as it is forced upon our attention, we will attempt a survey of proposed social solutions and try to weigh them in the balance of a Christian ethical hope. We frankly ask these proposed reforms, What do you promise us as members in the future kingdom of God? In such an examination we hope to be help- ful, first, because we have gone to the actual sources, examining not what men say Henry George taught or Karl Marx believed, but what they themselves actually wrote; and, secondly, by subjecting the proposals to the simplest tests of the kingdom purpose, in the light of an ethical interpretation of that purpose. It is assumed throughout that the life and purpose of Jesus is not only authoritative for us, but is our highest authority. We do not attempt to prove this. That lies in the field of apologetics and defense of the Christian faith. On the other hand, we set forth no dogmatic system as belonging to the essence of the Chris- tian faith, for history has abundantly proved that Christian faith of the highest order and most effective energy has linked itself with 10 INTRODUCTION very different and mutually exclusive dogmatic systems. In the same way we assume the authority of Scripture, but it is the Scriptures as historically understood and critically interpreted. We have in them not legal canons, nor yet the- ological treatises, but inspired and inspiring in- terpretations of life from the point of view of religion. It is useless to go to Paul to find out whether railroads should be owned by the community or by individuals; and John's Gospel will give us no light upon the expediency of local op- tion. Our moral education would not be helped but hindered by a final divine answer to such questions. We become moral men by apply- ing our acquired ethical experience to new problems. And as Paul grew into the stature of Jesus Christ by trying to make the life of the risen Christ a key to the moral problems of Asia Minor, so we are to reach divine ma- turity trying to transform an age of steam and electricity into the age of the Son of God. The Church of the living God has a serious responsibility. What are we doing to make men citizens of the kingdom of God on earth? Men cannot be children of the kingdom purpose one day in the week, and beasts of prey, each seeking his own, the other six days. Men can- not live for ecclesiastical purposes in holy INTRODUCTION 11 fellowship and brotherly cooperation on Sun- day, and fly at one another's property in com- petitive struggle to the business death of the weaker on Monday. The unreality of much preaching is now dawning on many minds both in pew and pulpit. The reasonable man does not expect the pulpit to guide him in the details of his business or his politics. We are adult men and women and would and should resent interference with our moral autonomy. We do, however, ask that the Christian pulpit stand for definite, clear-cut moral and religious prin- ciples, which will enable us to organize the details of our life to conform to the hope of Jesus 's heart. On the one hand, the Christian life is en- dangered by being confused with answers to all sorts of interesting but relatively indifferent questions, like infant and adult baptism, the exact significance of the Lord's supper, the meaning of the atonement, etc., all of which are important questions, but which experience has shown are not fundamental, since high Chris- tian character has rested on different answers ; and, on the other hand, that the Christian life be made so vague, sentimental, and indefinite that it ceases to define anything or anybody, and loses all real regenerative life-giving char- acter. This work will try to make clear and definite 12 INTRODUCTION the issue between the really radical reconstruc- tion of human life demanded by the kingdom purpose, and the patching up of an existent order with no real faith in a completely divine- human life here on earth. True faith involves a hope of root-and-branch regeneration of so- ciety, from the lower animal to the divine moral life. Life is to be made again ''religious," bound together as a family of God in the bonds of redeeming, self-sacrificing, and therefore self -saving love. The ultimate foundation for this hope of a perfect Godlike life on earth is our faith in God's Fatherhood because we have seen God in Christ Jesus, and in and through him have been brought into fellowship with God as his coworkers. The various chapters divide themselves readily into three groups : those dealing with a transformation of society with the emphasis upon the individual; those dealing with an equally radical transformation of society with the emphasis upon the group ; then follow chap- ters upon schemes for social amelioration with- out radical departure from the present social order. Preliminary to this discussion we must ask ourselves, What was the ethical outlook of Jesus and of Paul, and what really constitutes the modern Christian man's dream of the king- dom and our modern philosophic outlook? CHAPTER I THE SOCIAL OUTLOOK OF JESUS JESUS 's teachings gain vividness and reality when we consider them in the light of what we know of the life of his day and the circum- stances of his history. He seems to have been an oldest son in a large family, and, if tradi- tion be correct, the support of a widowed mother. 1 The whole world of Jesus 's day was desperately poor. The glory of Borne and Athens was only comparative, and the few lived in what we would scarcely call comfort and the many hovered half-fed on the borderland of starvation. War, famine, disease, neglected motherhood and impoverished infancy kept down population, and in general only sound physique could withstand the strain. Taxation was shortsighted and inequitable, justice was roughly administered and cruel, the tyranny of the strong was held in check only by traditional restraint and by fear of secret violence. 1 The supposition of Cheyne (Ency. Bib., art. "Joseph") that we know nothing of Joseph is surely overdrawn criticism. Apart from the mention of Joseph in the narratives of the infancy, we have the reference in Luke 4. 22 and the two references in John 1. 45 and 6. 42, and in Matt. 13. 55 Jesus was called "the son of the builder" (6 rov r^/crovof vl6g). At the same time he plays little part, and had died before the crucifixion (John 19. 25-27). 13 14 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS Jesus came from the poorer fishing peasants of northern Palestine. His reputed father Joseph was a peasant housebuilder, 1 who seems, if our supposition is correct, to have died early and left, perhaps, the support of the family upon the young shoulders of the eldest boy. Hence ideal fatherhood had a meaning for Jesus which was born of his experience, and he thought constantly of God in terms of that fatherhood whose protecting earthly care he had so early lost. This would account for the relatively late and short public ministry of Jesus. He was not free until his brothers and sisters were on the way to self-support and could maintain the mother. This is important as giving a clue to Jesus 's thought of the kingdom of God. The human brotherhood is to be like an ideally organized family. The love that holds an ideal family together is the social bond. We are to do to each other as loving members of one family would have men do to them. God's fatherly forgiveness is our model for forgiving freely those who have offended us. Jesus had no sharp-cut theory about the rights of property. 1 Ernest Crosby has endeavored to show that the tradition that he was a carpenter is contradicted by the imagery of Jesus's teaching. He thinks of him as a farming peasant. But the two descriptions do not exclude one another. Each village had its workman, who in addition to tilling his field was the "builder" or "smith" to his community. SOCIAL OUTLOOK OF JESUS 15 The family commission of a well-ordered and loving family group includes, indeed, private possession, but always subject to the demands of love, and chiefly valuable as affording op- portunity for loving helpfulness. The scattered sayings of Jesus are gathered together and built into a "constitution of the kingdom" by Matthew, 1 in what we know as the "Sermon on the Mount," and here the ethics are those of a loving family. The ideal of life is service and helpfulness. Our joy is to do the will of the Father and to finish his work. The state as such hardly enters the thought of Jesus. Kings and other great people figure in his parables and poetry much as princes and kings do in Grimm's German stories. Of po- litical economy as a science of production and distribution of goods Jesus, of course, had not the remotest idea. Political ideals had no place in his conception of life. From political power even as a means for accomplishing his purposes he deliberately turns away, as is seen not only in the temptation drama, but in his refusal of Messianic kingship at the hands of the Galilean zealots. The tyranny of Caesar was an order in which men lived and to which they were bound to submit until the Messianic kingdom should 1 Compare author's "Messages of Jesus," pp. 110-126 (New York). 16 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS come. Caesar had his own, and God had his, and the latent opposition awaits God's time for historic manifestation. The Jewish apoca- lyptic hopes were, to say the least, not disre- garded by Jesus, nor were they completely subordinated to his main ethical postulate of the family relationship as including even our enemy and the oppressor. At the same time they had only religious and ethical interest for Jesus. Jesus 's conception of national place was rather of national responsibility. He here fol- lows and enlarges the thought of the great eighth century prophets. The house of Israel is God's means to the divine end. 1 The method of establishing God's kingdom is by proclama- tion. Thus Jesus has almost no place for a political state. The relations of the Jews to successive political states, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Borne, had stamped upon their mind the essential evil of political states, and the kingdom of God could only come as Daniel had predicted, in the fall and ruin of 1 The seeming slur on outside nations in the little poem Matt. 7. 6, "Give not that which is holy to dogs, Cast not your pearls before swine, Lest they trample them under their feet, And turning then also rend you," must be taken as a warning against loveless preaching to those we look upon as " dogs." See author's "Messages of the Synop- tics," p. 123. SOCIAL OUTLOOK OF JESUS 17 all hostile political states. Thus the early Christian Church was born in an atmosphere of passive resistance and latent rebellion against the existing Koman order. And yet this order was not to be and could not be suc- cessfully assailed with the sword. He who did thus assail it died by the sword. Taxes were to be paid, although under a sort of protest. 1 Even the temple tax grated upon the feelings of Jesus. He felt that "sons" should not be forced to pay tribute. 2 All loveless coercion was abhorrent to his spirit. The kings and rulers did all sorts of things, but the normal spiritual man had one simple principle to guide him, namely, love to God and his fellow men. Nothing was farther away from the thought of Jesus than the whole apparatus of natural rights which underlay the splendid stoic theory of man's relation to the state. Jesus had no quarrel with law as law, for unlike Paul he had had no experience of the crushing burden of obedience through fear. He grew up "going about his Father's business." He simply had no special interest in the state. The kingdom of God would soon come and make all states, pomps, rulers, etc., unnecessary. In that king- dom our relation to God would be that of lov- ing, well-ordered children, and our relation to 1 Compare Luke 20. 19-26 with the charge at his trial, Luke 23. 1-3. 2 Matt. 17. 25. 18 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS one another that of loving members of one family, caring for each other as a man cares for his own. The tremendously radical character of such teaching has hardly dawned upon us yet. Its implications would revolutionize conduct and belief at almost every point. The cheerful, steady proclamation of this cardinal fact of life by Jesus, in the face of all doubt, scorn, and opposition, as the one rational principle of life marks the uniqueness of the teacher in history. At the same time Jesus did not work out his principle in a social theory or a political plat- form. Had he done so it would simply have meant that such a theory would be useless in our steam-driven, electric-lit age, or that it would have effectively hampered all progress. It is each age's most delicate task to adjust the acquired ethical wisdom of the past to the con- tinually changing conditions of our lives. And therein consists the moral education of children of God. The extreme nationalism of the Jewish peo- ple was bound up with one of their most ad- mirable characteristics, namely, the sense of group solidarity. The disintegrating influence of the cosmopolitanism which had been the fate of the Jewish people was offset by intense family feeling. Into this Jesus entered and by his emphasis upon monogamy he gave a firm SOCIAL OUTLOOK OF JESUS 19 foundation upon which to build a group life. His relations with women and his conception of womanhood were Jewish and not Oriental. They were untainted by the slave atmosphere which corrupted the ideals of Greece and Rome, for Galilean peasants did not hold slaves. Sins against the family were equally sins whether committed by man or woman, but the woman was not more severely judged than the man, 1 and his intercourse with women was the simple free contact of humble village life. Above all, Jesus made contact with God de- pendent upon doing his will. The kingdom was to come, and it was doing the will of God on earth. The fatherly care of the sparrow and the very hairs of our head gave assurance that the doing of that will would insure peace, pros- perity, and rest to the weary and heavy laden. Jesus had no philosophy in the Greek sense of that word. It is inaccurate to class his ethics as eudaemonistic or categorical. He had only the deep and abiding faith that the love of God guarded the happiness of his children, and that to do God's will was the best road to happiness. The "reward" was indeed always linked with the action. At the same time the sinner's "re- ward" was not the same as the promised re- 1 This is the deep underlying significance of the tradition in John 7. 53 8. 11, which so offended a hellenistic world that it was often excluded from the Gospel. 20 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS ward of the Father. It was a reward because it was the reward of "the Father," and again we must think ourselves back into the atmos- phere of the well-ordered family where obe- dience has its "reward," but not in pounds, shillings, and pence. This thought of Jesus is therefore connected with his soul's desire to "show the Father" to the hungry men and women of his day. What obscures God is the world's disorder, its an- archy, selfishness, pride, greed, uncleanness, its tyranny and baseness, its fierce struggle for what God gives all freely if we would not push each other so. The care for the morrow be* comes bitter and weakening anxiety, whereas in the kingdom of God's love he knows what we have need of, and faith trusts him. This God- conscious life is strong even on the mount of temptation or in the bitterness of Gethsemane. The view of the world that was common in his day Jesus, no doubt, held. It would have cut him off from his generation, and so from all generations, had he entered the ancient world with a modern outlook. At the same time it was the Old Testament conception of that world, as that conception had grown and developed among the prophets and sages. And their interest in it had always been religious and ethical. The Babylonian stories of crea- tion and primitive sacrifice and priesthood had SOCIAL OUTLOOK OF JESUS 21 passed through divine and purifying processes ; they had been spiritualized and moralized into the loftiest revelation of a personal monotheism God had as yet granted his world. This was the atmosphere of Jesus 's outlook upon life, and in free, sinless, loving sonship he had a sense of full communion and fellowship with his Father. The great interpretation of God to the world in the loving life and sacrificial death of Jesus Christ is the primary fact of our Christian faith; and on the basis of that vision of God we must believe that the kingdom or reign of that Father is assured, and that our noblest life and sweetest service is the speedy estab- lishment of that kingdom of love and fellow- ship. CHAPTER II PAUL AND SOCIAL, THEOBY IT must be quite evident to anyone reading Paul that he looked out on life at a different angle from Jesus. We know of no such crisis in the life of Jesus as gave character to the whole of Paul's thinking. Paul felt himself a bondslave to the law, and found freedom. Jesus grew up in the sunshine of divine sonship from the beginning. On the other hand, Jesus was a simple Gali- lean rabbi. Paul was a highly educated Jewish scribe and a proud Eoman citizen. Jesus came calling Judaism to enter upon the Messianic life, and only when Judaism refused did he turn to the little group to whom the Father had given the kingdom. Paul also hoped for the return of Judaism, but only after the fullness of the nations had come. Hence for Paul the church group takes the place in his thought that is occupied by the kingdom of God in the teaching of Jesus. And before Paul had gone very far in his organizing work he was faced by questions Jesus had hardly at all to deal with. What was the relation of this international church to the 22 PAUL AND SOCIAL THEORY 23 Roman empire? The thirteenth chapter of Paul 's letter to the Romans gives us his clearest answer. Paul was not antagonized by the Jewish church on account of his theology. He was no theological " heretic." He was called in question for preaching the resurrection of Jesus, and upsetting the law. It is this later charge he replies to in Romans. Paul is not there setting forth theology, but ethics. He was accused of breaking down the morality of Juda- ism and of being an anarchist, a destroyer of the family and being antinomian. And Ro- mans is his defense against this charge. In the closing chapters he gives the first systematic presentation of a Christian ethics which we possess. For it is probably older than the account of the kingdom in Matthew's Gospel. And in this connection Paul deals with the Roman state. He sees in it, not indeed the kingdom, but a providential means for the maintenance of order, and therefore "ordained of God. ' ' Resistance to it must be legal resist- ance, so Paul himself appealed to Caesar, and defended his status as Roman citizen. What he admits also is that the fundamental purpose of the ruler is ethical, and therefore not to be despised. Of course, Paul put obedience to God before obedience to men, hence finally and in the essence of the thing government can claim our respect and loyalty only in so 24 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS far as its agents are ''ministers of God's'* di- vine order. What Paul, therefore, defends is rather what the Eoman empire should have been than what it was. He also, like Jesus, saw the uselessness of physical resistance on the part of the Chris- tian group, save only as that resistance was passive; and for two good reasons: first, the church was too small and weak to resist, and, secondly, it was vain since the coming of Jesus in power and glory was not far off. Then God would himself judge the earth. Paul did not know the times and seasons, and did not pretend to know them any more than Jesus did, but he cherished the hope that he would see the establishment of the reign of God in his own lifetime. The attitude of Jesus and of Paul should, surely, be substantially our attitude toward existing governments. Whether we live in China, Turkey, or America the government is a providential means of order to which we can and should resort, and to which, subject to con- science, we yield obedience. Yet, we must also confess that neither America, England, nor Germany, nor any existing government, is really Christ's kingdom. All are built upon force. In none of them is God's will done as in heaven. In all of them intemperance, prostitu- tion, violence, and corruption mark the char- PAUL AND SOCIAL THEORY 25 acter of the social order, even if in less degree than in ancient Borne. The teachings of Jesus to-day are still revo- lutionary. We could not make Matthew's con- stitution of the kingdom (Sermon on the Mount) the statute law of the United States without an entire change in our government, both in its purpose and machinery. Yet we want, as Christians, to make that constitution the law of all human life. That is just why we believe in regeneration, a rebirth of human life into the image of God, and the as badly in Tiep-^ of rfig-e.n.firation as the individual. We demand of the individual l ' con- version, ' ' and by that we mean an entire change in the man's purpose, a complete devotion of his will to God's will. Not less are we working to the "conversion" of the state, and an entire devotion of the corporate life to the life of God. War must cease, love must reign. All loveless coercion must pass away, and the family re- lationship dominate all life. All state com- plicity in the intemperance, prostitution, and violence must cease. And it must cease from within. The government must become the ex- pression of God's love shed abroad in our streets, market places, and places of amuse- ment. That at least is the dream of Christ, and for that purpose Paul organized the infant church. 26 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS Beyond this neither Jesus nor Paul gave us social theory. They would not have been use- fully employed had they done so. Perhaps we are not primarily called upon to supply social theory to the community. We, too, may feel that all we can do is to impart enthusiasm for the kingdom purpose to men who are better able to supply the theory of social reconstruc- tion. Each man must be sure in his own mind, and upon the firm foundation of God's love as incarnated in the life and purpose of Jesus Christ each one is building, some straw, some wood, some stone. And each man's building will be tried by fire. Paul and the apostles dealt with their situa- tion. We must deal with ours. We cannot go to them for any help in the details of our strug- gle for social justice, but we can go to them for fundamental principles governing life, and for inspiration in the struggle to realize in life the will of God. And this work is a work of divine faith. We cannot "know" that the kingdom is coming from history or science or political economy. Philosophy may leave us convinced optimists or fully persuaded pessimists. Our faith in God and our sonship is, in the last analysis, our only ground of hope. Because we believe that God is our Father and that we have seen that fact in the life and death of Jesus Christ, we also believe that this is God's world PAUL AND SOCIAL THEORY 27 and that its misery, injustice, greed, violence, savagery, and pollution are yet to pass away, and that joy, peace, love, brotherhood, and eternal life are to yet justify completely the faith we have in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We must be, however, intelligent citizens of our country as well as of the kingdom of God. When men ask us to help them sustain free trade or protection, to vote for prohibition or local option, to work for or against woman's suffrage, we dare not simply say, "What is there in it for me and my family?" We must ask, "How do these things relate themselves to the kingdom of God?" WTiere would Jesus and Paul have stood had their problems then been the same as ours I Neither Jesus nor Paul had to decide between the claims of philo- sophical anarchy and Marxian socialism. We must, often, however, either give a reason for the faith that is in us or discredit the kingdom in which we as Christians claim citizenship. Nor is it an easy task that is before us. Were we members of the Eoman Catholic com- munion we could try to find out what the Church teaches, although that is not easy either, and then submit ourselves to the judgment of "Mother Church." But as Protestants it is our glory and our heavy responsibility that we must always in the last analysis answer only 28 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS to God for our decisions. We may get, and should get, all the help we can; but at last we are alone with God, and he says to us, ' * Sons, ' ' and asks us what now we are going to do. Thus in his wisdom he educates us to fitness for companionship, adult companionship, with him. This is no light task. We must learn not only the principles of the kingdom but how to apply them. CHAPTER HI THE UNDERLYING PHILOSOPHY OP OTJE EXAMINA- TION OF SOCIAL REFORM OUB knowledge of life always starts either with ourselves as the knowing subjects or with the "outside" world as the thing known. Yet in point of fact we have no "outside world" that has not passed through our brain before we know it. If our brain is diseased that ' ' out- side world" is distorted and fantastic. When, however, the brain is what we call normal our knowledge enables us to act on our outside world with advantage to ourselves, and in the way other "normal" people act. If I am color blind, for instance, the only way I can find it out is by the experience of my eyes acting on colors which other people call red and put with reds, while I call red green and put it with greens. Now, I may be right, but a railroad company runs its trains on the other theory, so I am "abnormal" and do not get a situation on that line. Did we all start new from God's hand life would be far too short for us to accumulate the experience we need to deal successfully with the "outside world," or even with our own 29 30 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS thoughts. But no one does start in that way. We enter life with the brain tissue stored with the results of thousands and thousands of generations of like experimenters with our- selves. The little babe in the mother's arms is a bundle of inherited memories. The very handwriting of past generations will reveal itself in the childish copy book. No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself ; we are bound up in closest bonds with the past and the future. The nervous organization of any one of us is our tool handed to us sharpened or blunted by the experiences of the genera- tions before us. Our knowledge, then, is a social reaction upon the "outside world." But what we call the ''outside world" is after all our own defi- nite construction. I can think of myself; if I am sick I can put drugs into my body and treat it as part of the "outside" world. I can do the same with my mind. If my memory is poor I can go to work and exercise it and train it as I do my dog. So with even my will or feelings. I can educate them as I do my chil- dren. What, then, is this "I," and what is outside of this "I"? If I am an American I feel my country is my larger self; if I have family they are a part and the dearest part of "me." And this is not simply figure of speech. In our real life it is often impossible PHILOSOPHY OF OUR EXAMINATION 31 for us to distinguish between the "I" and the world outside the "I." So far as we do make the distinction it is that the "I" acts with purpose upon an "outside world." "We" start to do things which until they are done are, so far as we know, only creations of our brain. The essence of our "we-ness" is pur- pose. In the courtroom this is rudely admit- ted, and if I kill a man the judge and jury try to find out whether I purposed to do it, and measure my responsibility by my fundamental purpose. This purpose, then, which is central, and the purposing machine, is my "I," my most in- ward self. And this self is unstable and often shifting. To carry out even our most stable purpose we must also deal with a changing world and a changing knowledge of the world. Life is a constant adapting of our conduct to a changed and changing world in order to carry out our purpose. And our purpose be- comes fuller and clearer as we carry it out, and ends in joy or in sorrow as it was fitted to life's deepest reality for us. The strong successful man is one who has a relatively stable and fixed purpose, and who skillfully adapts his conduct to a changing world so that he makes that world, including in it other pur- poses, subordinate and tributary to his pur- pose. This requires knowledge of that 32 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS 11 world'* and skillful foresight into its prob- able changes. We need to know the "relation and bearing" of things. Nevertheless, our knowledge must always remain relative. We must always act even though we confess our fundamental ignorance. We speak of "matter," and no man is so en- tirely dogmatic as the materialist. But no one really knows what matter is or whether there is any such thing. We all use the tele- phone and the telegraph, but not the wisest man knows what electricity is, or if it "is." Our experience of the way things act is the extent of our knowledge, and we assume that they always act in the same way. We cannot prove it. In point of fact, new activity and new ways of acting meet us every day. No man knows how far what we call the mind can affect what we call the body. Yet we have all sorts of dogmatisms and downright "sure- nesses," and will always have them, for we cannot get along in life without them. Even false dogmatisms give stability to our pur- poses, and are often better than fruitless negations. When we look out on the stormy sea of life with its uncharted shoals, its rocks and wrecks, its weary salty stretches, and its wild, headstrong sailors plunging on to rocks that have been marked deadly in long ages past, we may well draw back. Can we sail PHILOSOPHY OF OUR EXAMINATION 33 those seas? Can we send out our children to sail amid those perils! Must each generation be a new weary quest of Odysseus? The heart of despair answers with Scho- penhauer, "No." The heart of faith cries out, "Yes." In all our ignorance our way is up to God, to knowledge, to truth, to holiness and victory. We cannot prove it, no more than we can prove that matter exists. But we find in thus believing stability for our purpose and joy in our hearts as we cry, "Now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be." Amid all the experiences of the ages this abiding faith under a thousand forms, and clothed in myriad phrases, has given strength, stability, courage, and clarity to men's loftiest purpose, and significance and reality of the highest kind to human life. For after all no certainty can transcend us. We must do the knowing. Are we sane or in- sane? No insane man is likely to confess or even know his insanity. We can only feel as sure as we know anything. This kind of cer- tainty is finality for us. And at many different points the confessedly finite erring mind reaches finality and "assurance." Every science and every religion rests upon exactly the same type of certainty. All come up from time to time against blank walls of ignorance and limitation. Dogmatism is the folly and failing 34 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS of all. The dogmatism of theology is not one whit more offensive than the scientific dogma- tism, say, of Haeckel, and not one whit more excusable. Dogmatism is the attempt to force your living, vital, all-consuming assurance upon another man from the outside; whereas all real assurance must come from within. "What is finality for us can become finality for some one else only when that person has the same type of assurance we have. The confession of tHe relativity of our knowledge is neither agnosticism nor the refusal to accept as final certain fundamental postulates. There must be gradations in our assurance. We may be convinced that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, but to-day no sensible man will hold that conviction with the same sense of assurance that he confesses that God is love, or that Jesus is the Son of God. That is highest assurance when it has become part of our being ; when we feel as Luther felt, "I can do no otherwise," and we are ready to stake life and reputation upon the issue. When we have reached knowledge that is final for us we are ready to fling our whole person- ality into the battle for its maintenance, so far as its maintenance affects our personal in- tegrity. So that even when we admit the theo- retical possibility of our being mistaken, prac- PHILOSOPHY OF OUR EXAMINATION 35 tically we are so convinced, so sure, so intensely filled with the conviction that we are right, that nothing can shake us. And no man who is in- capable of this highest assurance along some line is or can be efficient. Nor is there any but the one basis for any kind of certainty. All certainty is based upon our interpretation of what is happening in and about us, our experience of life. The modern methods of the library and the study can cer- tainly point to the results in modern life as the best evidence of this value. Eeligion must do the same thing. In the last analysis men are going to have religious assurance because of what it does in and for them and others. Our highest religious assurance comes when we can of personal experience say, "It did this for me, as it did it for others before me. ' ' For this reason the highest religious assur- ance will always rest upon a social or group basis. When a perfected humanity comes, it will not be difficult to accept a perfect Father of that humanity. Nor will we rest simply upon our own assurance, but upon the calm and widespread acceptance of the group. Nearly all our knowledge and assurance is now social. No man can personally do more than collect the experiences of others outside of his own narrow line of work and experience. Most of us would be hard put to it to demonstrate 36 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS the likelihood of the law of gravitation to a doubting savage who insisted that the stars stood still. We recognize the limitations of this assurance, but it is often all we have, and sometimes we must act upon it long before we "know" even in the most restricted sense of that abused word. It is hard to excuse the av- erage unmedical layman who will not accept the great balance of medical expert testimony to the value of vaccination. And if he does neglect it and gets smallpox we generally say, "Serves him right." At the same time, only medical dogmatism claims that there is no room for doubt. Often we are incapable of weighing the evi- dence that is presented. The judgment, for instance, of the ordinary layman on vaccina- tion is worthless. So that at times we must trust the best expert advice we can get, know- ing that its conclusions are tentative. At other times we are blameworthy if we have not per- sonally exhausted every means at hand to gain first-hand knowledge and data upon which to act. This is especially the case when we are called upon as Christian men to vote and act on po- litical measures that may help or hinder the kingdom. "We must, if possible, be informed at first hand as to the relation and value of such measures. More than once the Christian PHILOSOPHY OF OUR EXAMINATION 37 ^entiment has been misled and abused by selfish plotters who have raised false issues and invented party cries to lead men professing the kingdom purpose astray, and use them for the establishment of a reign of unrighteous- ness. Radical idealism in the Christian Church has often been hampered, and rendered inef- fective through the dogmatism and prejudices that prevent union of forces for a special end. The "good men," or "men of good will," are so set in their conception of the way the good is to be brought about, that they cannot work with other "good men" until they have convinced them fully in regard to mere machinery. Espe- cially in the United States we have idealism coming to us from England, Ireland, Germany, France, Russia, etc., but it dresses differently and speaks a different dialect according to the land of its origin. Whereas selfishness is united by self-interests, idealism is divided by its dress. If we can only learn to grade our assurance in some relation to the actual evi- dence we have at hand, we can bear and forbear with many who are idealists like ourselves but only speak a somewhat different dialect. Paul was a devout and convinced relativist. Now, he says, we see in a hand-glass dimly ; he knew that we but know in part ; it did not pre- vent him "being sure." Nothing could sep- 38 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS arate him from the love of God in Christ Jesus, neither life nor death. Yet he was not always sure that he had the "Spirit" and had to give tentative answers. Thus we must feel our way, and in the chap- ters that are to follow we are but trying to feel our way out of the bogs and quagmires into which society has stumbled. What political measures are most likely to give us the con- ditions of the kingdom dream? What proposed social solutions seem most calculated to intro- duce the theocratic democracy for which the prophets pleaded and for which Christ died? What theories of communal reorganization promise us most help in feeling our way out of moral dirt and savagery into the purity and peace of the divine life ? CHAPTER IV WHAT is OUR SOCIAL ORDER? ANY earnest ethical thinking must to-day be discontented with many existing conditions. Disorderly houses, saloons, ill-kept jails, a crim- inal class, suicides, and crime all mark our civilization. At the same time the question must always arise whether any drastic measures are needed, and whether any reorganization of the social order is either necessary or possible. We know the existing order, the future is un- known. Can we not so modify the existing order, so change its nonessentials, that it may serve as a basis for the kingdom of God? This is not only a fair question, but one which nine out of ten sensible Christian men, as well as men outside the Church, would answer in the affirmative. The burden of proof that the existing order needs radical change rests with those who make the social proposals, and all they should demand is a fair hearing. Again, in estimating the social order it is not fair to hold it entirely responsible for all the evils by which we are confronted. All social orders have had their excesses and their dis- eases. All men are opposed in theory to graft, 39 40 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS corruption, dishonesty, and other such ills. In our examination of the social order, therefore, we want to catch its real spirit and its funda- mental inwardness. "We want to find out not its abuses and its shames, but its ideals and the ends it sets before itself. To estimate this rightly is a delicate and difficult task, and when we have finished, the question will still arise, Can this be made thoroughly Christian? The fruitful division of the stages of human progress upward through the savage, barba- rian, nomadic-hunting, pastoral, agricultural, trading, feudal, commercial, and industrial eras can be maintained only up to a certain point. The lines of division are never really sharp. Each stage leaves its traces upon the civilization that comes after it. We have never ceased grazing cattle or plowing the fields, or, indeed, for that matter, going on the warpath like savages, and dressing ourselves in the flaunting rags of barbarism. At the same time, it is true that various ill-defined stages are marked by dominant interests and special or- ganizing conceptions. We advance by stages from the relatively simple, homogeneous and undifferentiated to the relatively complex, het- erogeneous and highly differentiated, as Her- bert Spencer would tell us. And although we can find historic survivals of all stages of human progress, except perhaps the very low- WHAT IS OUR SOCIAL ORDER? 41 est, every age is dominated by some one type of cultivation and some one spirit or interest. What, then, is the organizing spirit or in- terest of our social organization? It will not do as yet to call it Christian, although we shall have to examine this claim in a subsequent chapter. Too broad and indefinite is the defi- nition on the basis of iron or steam; for al- though coal and iron and steam are certainly notes of our age, they are only the materials with which the age works. As over against agrarianism or the pastoral life we are cer- tainly commercial; that is to say, we exchange our products. The great trade routes of the world are crowded with trains and vessels car- rying the products of our country to be ex- changed for the products of another. In these exchanges we have simply enlarged the world of the Great Awakening, whose religious ex- pression was the Reformation. And yet our modern world is different, essentially different, from this trading bour- geois world, The spirit and aims of the "free city" are not ours. The more the writer has studied the theology, ethics, and literature of the period of the Great Awakening (the four- teenth and fifteenth centuries), the more has the great difference dawned on his mind. We have confused ourselves along nearly all lines of historic thought by assuming that the trading 42 middle class of the later mediaeval period lived in our world, or that their answers to re- ligious and ethical questions were from our point of view. The thing that marks the change is not so much a new scientific method (Bacon's induction). Men have in actual life always found out things by experiment more or less systematically. Nor is it the great increase in the range of our sense perception, made possi- ble by the microscope, the telescope, etc. _jjQLfl.tjnfl-rfr g n"Tjg:orld is the new industrial- ism. We trade in things made by machinery in great quantities for trading purposes. Even our scientific methods are to some degree the chil- dren of our industrialism. The machine has forced upon us the weighing, measuring, and analysis of matter in a way never necessary before. The machine has also forced us to tap ever new forces of energy, and coal, oil, water, and electricity have been made the humble serv- ants of the machine. Its demands are great, and no doubt in the near future the sun's energy and the power stored up by wind and tide in ocean waves and currents will be also harnessed directly to the machine. This industrialism makes products for com- mercial exchange, and our age may therefore be called an age of commercial industrialism. This change affects all life. While it is per- fectly true that the herding of cattle and the WHAT IS OUR SOCIAL ORDER? 43 plowing of the fields must go on, they go on under completely changed conditions. The older agrarian age, for example, was one where exchange of products was relatively secondary. Even now there are limited regions where the content of life is raising things im- mediately needed, and only the surplus is ex- changed, and where the exchange is a very secondary matter. This is not, however, gen- erally the case. In an increasing degree the products of field and farm are grown and cared for simply that they may be exchanged, and the industrial situation is emphasized by the pres- ence of the farm machine and the dependence of the farm upon the locomotive and great mills for weaving and grinding. How irresistibly this change affects our think- ing and our conduct may be seen in following, for instance, the ethical literature. As an ex- ample one may take war. The feudal wars were for land. Land was the one main in- dustrial opportunity. As the world became commercial the great wars were for the com- mand of the trade routes and the command of the sea. The Roman empire passed substan- tially through these stages, 1 but she never reached industrialism. She reached out for 1 The social history of the Roman empire is of absorbing inter- est as seen in the pages of Mommsen, Ferrero, Dill, and Fried- laender, and yet even in these the political history often crowds out the really more important social history. 44 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS land, and when a military class ruled firmly trade sprang up and that class organized the nation for the command of the trade routes of the Mediterranean. Thus Carthage was de- stroyed and Rome reigned supreme. The attitude of industrialism to war is most interesting. The supply of the implements of war, weapons, ships, etc., is an immediate in- terest and exerts great pressure on all the great industrial nations. No one can say exactly how much of a factor contractors ' pressure was on Russia for supplying the things needed for war, but it is now known to have been very great. No one knows exactly how far the de- mand for more battleships is the result of in- dustrial demands to supply the expensive steel needed at the cost of the community; but it is known that the steel interests maintain no lobby in London, Berlin, or Washington to pre- vent great waste in battleships. But actual war is a very different matter. The dislocation of commercial industrialism by actual warfare is very great. The scene of the conflict may be ever so far away, yet nevertheless it at once introduces factors very difficult to estimate in old Broad or Wall Street. There is a steady and increasing need for stability in the markets upon which industrialism depends, and hence the curious paradox of nations spending half their revenue on things connected with war, and WHAT IS OUR SOCIAL ORDER? 45 at the same time preparing for a world peace. The time is perhaps not far away when com- mercial industrialism in the interests of sta- bility for the market of its products will for- bid war, as men are now forbidden to go armed on the streets and to avenge their own wrongs. Commercial industrialism is not, however, the whole story. It is a We will see in ChapIerXV what is meant by competition. The goal is the subordination of another's purpose to your own. It aims, there- fore, at the exclusion of the competitor as a competitor. He may go on living as your em- ployee or as your inferior, but he must not seek to compete. The competitive character of com- mercial industrialism may be taken for granted. But the farther question conies up, Why is in- dustrialism so competitive? And the answer gives us another clause in our growing defi- nition of the social order. Our commercial industrialism has profit for its incentive to action. The definition of profit for our purpose is simple; it is what remains to the owners of the industrial tools and oppor- tunity, after capital has been paid its interest and the wages of labor and superintendence have been deducted. 1 That there is often no profit does not affect the situation; the aim is profit. What often seemingly confuses those 1 This is, as the writer understands, Professor Ely's definition. 46 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS of us who are laymen in economic discussion is the fact that money is the conceptual machin- ery of commerce. Just as general concepts help us to think, so money enables commerce to abstract from the complicated process of production and exchange a "net profit" or loss in money. Money as money has no value. It is like a general concept, " table," "chair," which helps us deal with concrete individual tables and chairs. If gold could be extracted from sea water at ten cents an ounce it would cease to be the conceptual standard of value. For all value is purely relative. There can be no such thing as "absolute" value. The com- monest, cheapest rye bread would have more value than diamonds to starving men on a desert island. Human wants change, and only that has a value which meets human wants. Our commercial industrialism has not only satisfied human wants but is intensely inter- ested in creating them. There is, for instance, now a great and increasing pressure to get men to "want" automobiles. Thousands of dollars are being spent to create a want for this indus- trial product. The incentive to action is the profit in making and selling automobiles. After interest on the capital has been paid, and wages and superintendence have been deducted, the owners of the industrial opportunity hope, sometimes vainly, that a good share of the WHAT IS OUR SOCIAL ORDER? 47 product will still remain to them in the form of ''money," that is, credit at the bank or the evidences that they are the lawful possessors of claims upon products they need more than automobiles. But in another connection we will see that wealth is not simply possession; that a man might thinkably be the " wealthiest" man in the world and only possess a drawerful of legal doc- uments. Hence there remains a still farther note to the definition of our social order. It is a competitive commercial industrialism, with profits as incentive to action, and private pos- session of the productive tools and opportunity as its goal. Why? Because only by possessing the access to the productive opportunity and tools are we in any sense free. If we came to an island where twenty men had been wrecked before us, and had divided up the island and annexed the food supply, and owned also the guns and powder factory, the wood supply for making boats, etc., we could only live on the island and work for the twenty men on wages. When we shot game with their guns they could make us not only pay for the powder but for the use of their guns, and also rent for our shelter, and we would be at their mercy. Whatever we had over from our work and hunting, after eating enough to work and hunt some more, the twenty 48 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS men could demand of us as rent and interest. In point of fact that is what happens. Thou- sands of babies are "wrecked" on the shores of this island in God's universe which we call earth, and we who have been here before have mainly annexed the food-supplying and cloth- ing machinery as our private property, and as these babes grow up they must pay us rent and interest, and what that rent and interest is de- pends a good deal upon their necessity. Now, we ourselves bring babies to the island and as we do not want them to be wholly de- pendent on the other nineteen, we arrange that our babies have as big a share in the productive opportunity as possible. The bigger the share the more rent and interest can we get from the newcomers who have no claim but their capac- ity to work. Hence the real reason we want profits, and big profits, is that we may in the first instance be independent that is, be able to go to the sources of supply and work for our- selves, but also that if we like to we may stop work, and say to others outside, "If you will work for us you may have access to the ma- chinery and land we own." Stocks, bonds, se- curities, title deeds to houses, lands, etc., if well chosen, give us so large a share in the machinery that we can pay for superintendence, and pay lawyers to look after it, and can then with our wives and children be free to amuse WHAT IS OUR SOCIAL ORDER? 49 ourselves while others work for us. This is the goal of thrift and foresight. Only a few get to the point of even personal independence. Most of us must all our days work for those who own land or machinery, but the "successful" man is the one who gets by shrewdness or in- dustry or inheritance or crime to the point where he owns so much land and machinery that the mere rent will enable him to stop working if he wants to, and feed and clothe his wife and babies with the most costly and beautiful prod- ucts of industry. Several things keep this system working out remarkable results. The competition to get out of the predominantly working class into the predominantly owning class is stern and con- stant. It is, moreover, almost as hard at a certain stage of the process to maintain one's position in the owning class as to get into it. The habit of work is formed so that men who could stop go on ever accumulating larger and larger shares in the productive machinery. The fear of dropping back into the dependent class through business misfortune haunts even suc- cessful men. Every panic whitens the hair of men whom the world calls rich, for every year a goodly number fail in the struggle and drop back to be highly paid, perhaps, at the same time really dependent wage workers. Then, again, the children of the owning class 50 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS are apt to be softened and corrupted by luxury and extravagance, and with the third or fourth generation a large proportion have made ship- wreck of their lives. The hard work that kept the parents thrifty and sober has given way to idleness that makes the offspring languid and intemperate. And as a crowd of eager, intelli- gent, grasping competitors are always reaching after the productive machinery and the indus- trial opportunity there is a constant flux. The owning class is never as sharply separated from the working class as a description would seem to imply. The owning class work and the work- ing class own, and those who to-day are workers are to-morrow owners; but the social order is nevertheless one of two classes, those who must work or starve, and those who need not work if they do not want to. And there is always this sharp battle going on for the control of the pro- ductive machinery, which enables a man to work or not as he wants. The very effectiveness of profits as a spur to action depends, indeed, upon the productive machinery not being too widely distributed. Men and women will sooner work for them- selves and live rather badly than work for others even though better paid. That is one reason why free land has made the servant question acute. The system needs for its per- fect working the constant spur of necessity. WHAT IS OUR SOCIAL ORDER? 51 "Wages rise when the job seeks the man, wages fall when the man seeks the job. No organiza- tion to maintain wages can long resist the pressure of thousands out of a job. Perhaps at first wages are not lowered for fear of strikes, but all the men work harder to keep their work, and the weak and relatively incompetent are forced out into the waiting list, so that more work is 'done for the same wage. This con- stant fierce pressure produces a distinct and striking type of swift efficiency, and sharp, eager, restless adaptation to the exciting strug- gle. All classes are under its influence. It be- comes the prized ideal of manhood. Pulpit, press, Sabbath schools, colleges, teachers, and parents impress upon the young the need of taking every advantage and of watchful, con- stant energy in seeking openings, and thrifty employment of time in gaining ability for the struggle. CHAPTER V FAKTHEE EXAMINATION OF OUR SOCIAL ORDER WHEN men by working produce things in excess of their immediate need and can ex- change them for products they need more, both parties to the bargain are benefited. Exchange value is purely relative. If I fancy black roses and have enough money I may pay a huge sum which no one else in the world would care to pay for the flower. The market price is only the competitive value placed by human judg- ment on things several people want. In a simple community the exchange goes on by barter and simple market arrangements. But as life be- comes more highly complex men begin to an- ticipate pressing communal needs, and by buy- ing up the things needed when they are cheap or on the way can compel men to pay sums dic- tated by necessity. At first this was called "forestalling" and was punished by law in England up to 1844. In our complex world it is hard to ever secure a complete monopoly of anything. But the one aim is, of course, to ex- clude or limit all competition, and then we can get any price necessity dictates. And in all bargaining the ideal is to get as much as pos- 52 EXAMINATION OF OUR SOCIAL ORDER 53 sible for as little as possible. The climax is to get something for nothing. This is the reason that gambling is so much a mark of our age. The essence of gambling is the longing for a risk to get something for nothing. Early bar- tering had as its intent, at least, to give to each party to the bargain a benefit. An honorable business man wished to serve his customers and to give them benefits, such as they conferred on him in paying what he asked. Competition if it were free would regulate prices to what each one regarded as the price he could pay. Under our system free competition is impossible. Free trade we make impossible by tariff, free land is impossible because the supply is limited and it is now owned by private holders. Free machin- ery is made impossible by patents, etc. Clever business is, therefore, to obtain control of what everybody wants and get what price one can for it. It is also possible to create new wants which then the creator is in a place to supply. The ideal is to "make money." All want to make money, because with money wants can be supplied. The enormous part this conceptual machinery of finance plays in our commercial industrialism is because the control of the pro- ductive machinery and opportunity is always "on sale." In older communities there are some values that cannot be bought, or can be bought only 54 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS by indirection. One cannot buy long lineage, one can only connect oneself with it by possible marriage. Thrones and crowns of any im- portance cannot be bargained for in open market. In newer communities scholarship, personal qualities, gifts of one kind or another cannot be purchased. At the same time, money enables its possessor to acquire the services of these or at least their countenance. The gifted singer can be had for an evening, the entertain- ment of kings can be reached with the reflected importance upon the entertainer. Thus money representing abstractly human industry can be exchanged for almost anything that concretely satisfies human wants. If we actually saw the toil that is represented by a somewhat dirty ten-dollar bill, or a crisp ten-pound note, we would perhaps hesitate longer than we do in wasting so much human energy upon the things we buy and do. But money is but our conceptual machinery, and the toil it symbolizes and the conditions under which this toil is undertaken do not appeal to our imagination. Not only in our social order is the worker largely separated from the possession of his tool, but the price of toil is separated from the toiler and is made impersonal and unreal to the possessor of the price. All rents and in- terest are human toil. Without human toil EXAMINATION OF OUR SOCIAL ORDER 55 there would be neither rent nor interest. When anyone reflects on his income he must be struck with the fact that he cannot say, and no one can say, whether he has rendered any compensa- tion to the community for the toil and labor that that income really represents. We do not see the stain of little children's dirty fingers on our cotton fabrics, nor realize out of what weak- ness, perhaps, the price of an evening's amuse- ment has been wrung. In the vast complication of modern industrialism all human relationships have been changed, and the toil is the unseen quantity and the symbol, money, is the concrete reality. The money we get may be just com- pensation for our toil and adequate reward for real service rendered in exchange, or it may not be. It may be simply the tax that ownership can wring from man's necessity to use the pro- ductive machinery in order to live. Or it may be both. The two elements may mingle in such a way that no one is really in a position to say whether he is "earning his keep" or not. No one can say offhand, in other words, whether his life is parasitic or not. Some lives are, no doubt, definitely and indisputably parasitic, some lives are definitely worth far more than they ever cost the community, no matter how richly they may seem to have lived, and most lives are in all probability rendering a tribute of service to the owning class, and so are vie- 56 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS tims to some extent of the parasitic class, whereas many of us are semiparasitic and could not for the life of us say to what extent this is true. This has, perhaps, always been the case. The "worth" of a life belongs in the last analysis only to God's judgment. At the same time, when we calculate our toil in terms of the toil of our brothers, sisters, and of little chil- dren we could wish to be more certain we were really rendering them services equal in amount for their travail. It is foolish for the critic of our social order to underestimate the things that have been achieved under class ownership of the tools of production. This has been the way the tools have been owned in every period of human history since primitive communism broke down. The feudal, the commercial, the industrial epochs are those that shine out as the stages by which the world has been most successfully mastered by energetic, even if sometimes harsh, masters. Indeed, when the pen of genius draws the feudal period in the lines of beauty made familiar to us by Walter Scott, our hearts go back to it with a certain fondness, whatever may be its faults. So to-day the record of our indus- trial attainment is no mean history. Anyone who rises from the reading of Wallace's "Won- derful Century" without some sense of the good accomplished must be very much pre- EXAMINATION OF OUR SOCIAL ORDER 57 occupied by his own woes. And it must surely be conceded that many a man has been stirred and compelled by the pressure of commercial competition to almost superhuman endeavor. Not simply on its material side has much been done, but in the development of certain most valuable traits of character and in the empha- sis upon certain types of virtue the social order has a word to say for itself. To many it seems as if the whole progress of mankind depended on the fear of dependency on the one hand, and the hope of ownership on the other. These powerful spurs do not even now act with equal power on all or at all times of life, and many would look with distrust on any order in which these spurs were lacking. The social order has grown up out of the needs and feelings of men. The owners of the tools of production are not a band of unscrupulous conspirators to hold down the oppressed pro- letariat. In fact, it might almost be argued that they have been forced, in many instances, into leadership by the needs of their fellow men. Men are born into a social order which is the product of no single man's will. Nor has it come in a night. No one can say just when it came. Feudalism cannot be said to have per- ished at the time of the French Eevolution, for in point of fact feudalism is not quite dead yet, and, as we have seen, no sharp line can really 58 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS be drawn in history between the various social orders. One of the strong points of feudalism was the fact that the family attached to the land grew up with an overwhelming sense of the fitness of the social order. The divine right of kings was thrust upon kings by those who looked to kingship as a rock of protection. The over- lord never questioned the fitness and justice of his ruling position. He felt this was the only social order. It is one of the weaknesses of the present order that the owners of the tools have so often "come up" and are not born into the sense that whatever is is right. The possessing class as an industrial order, with its rapid change and constant new accessions, does not feel quite so sure that the order in which it finds itself is so eternally fit. One of the reasons an indus- trial possessing class seeks alliances with the older feudalism is just this sense of rawness and uncertainty which is disturbing, and can be to some extent offset by the time-honored as- surance of position and power the older landed and military feudalism possesses in so high a degree. Art expressions and ecclesiastical institu- tions have largely been handmaids waiting upon the wants and luxuries of the tool-owning class, and ministering to the life that was set up by EXAMINATION OF OUR SOCIAL ORDER 59 that class as the admirable life. Nor is it the least of the weaknesses of the art life of to-day and the ecclesiastical institutions that they are the handmaids of a class with but rather vague and unformed ideals of what is the admirable life. The social and aesthetic certainties of the older military feudal class are in quite amusing contrast to the nervous self-conscious question- ing and seeking of the newly forming industrial possessing class. No doubt with time traditions would form, as in the mediaeval free cities ; but the rapidity with which the personnel of the class changes is a distinct hindrance to the formation of its own ideals. So that up to the present, at least, it has largely had to live on ideals adapted from the older orders. Yet this very fact gives the new industrial owning class a much greater elasticity than feudalism ever possessed. Its ranks are con- stantly recruited by new blood. Caste is al- most excluded, and in spite of all endeavors to attain aloofness and to imitate the exclusive- ness of the feudal aristocracy, the attempt sel- dom succeeds, and this greatly to the advantage of the class, because with new life and strength it overcomes, as feudalism could not do, the ravages of luxury and the wastes of its nervous, often suicidal, haste. In another respect the new social order for commercial industrialism is only as old as 60 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS coal and steam differs from the older ones, in that more than ever the emphasis is upon brains and directing intelligence. Even the power of the owners of the tool to purchase this intelligence is limited. They cannot command men's loyalty as did the older social order. High intelligence soon robs those it serves if they are not always on the alert, and itself passes into ownership, while the former own- ers sink back into dependency and must again labor. This process forms one of the most in- teresting chapters in the history of any of the great centers of industrial supremacy. Thus acquisitive intelligence is ever on the alert and forges to the front. Great railroad magnates trust highly paid and clever subordinates, and the next generation sees these same subor- dinates dominating the situation, and perhaps employing the children of the former magnates. This change and excitement, this sense of possible ownership, keeps many loyal to the social order in the hope that sustains them of being at some time themselves masters instead of employees. Even though it is evident that the circle of ownership must always be small, and that it is probably growing steadily rela- tively smaller, yet no one is excluded absolutely by caste from the possible entrance into the ownership class, to be thus enabled to live off the industry of others. Even the colored race, EXAMINATION OF OUR SOCIAL ORDER 61 who are excluded from social mingling with whites, can yet now enter the ownership class and by holding land and machinery can and do in increasing numbers live off the industry of white employees. The bigness of this prize as taught in school and church makes many a man content to toil on even though outsiders see he has no chance to ever really attain the goal that nerves him to relatively contented struggle. Such, then, is in rough outline our social order, whose possible radical change we must then consider in the light of various proposals whose relation to a Christian ideal must then be examined. CHAPTEE VI A CHRISTIAN ESTIMATE OF OUR SOCIAL ORDER VIEWING the social order as it is, we are at once confronted with all kinds of charges, some of which are justified by unquestionable evi- dence, that corruption defaces the system. Naturally no man can defend the things charged against society along these lines. At the same time, our purpose is not the exposure of what all men condemn but the examination of the social system as it is in itself, and as honest men would defend it and perpetuate it. No social order will guarantee us against the abuses of cunning and the craft of designing and selfish men. As compared with the Eoman government as Jesus knew it, our political state is pure and just. Would Jesus be content with our social order, granting that it was uncor- ruptly managed, and that its full logic was per- mitted to work itself out! This is a serious question. We have reviewed briefly the ethical principles of Jesus as we understand them. We admit that Jesus was committed to no political program and to no social theory. Could he take our social order as we have outlined it, and as it is defended in 62 CHRISTIAN ESTIMATE OF OUR ORDER 63 the chief works on classical political economy, and make of it a basis for the kingdom of God? We take it as axiomatic that so long as we call ourselves Christians we want to do what he wanted to do, and that we pray as he taught us to pray, saying, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." This seems to-day one of the chief weaknesses of the Church of Jesus Christ in all its branches, that it contents itself with believing things about. Jesus, but does not take pains to. , "finish his vrork." After nineteen centuries God's king- dom has not yet been established among men, and it is surely our fault. Jesus has gone from us, but said to us, "Greater works than these shall ye do, because I go unto my Father." The works that Jesus did were, we confess, re- demptive works. Have we done greater re- demptive works than Jesus, and why not? To be honest with ourselves we must take up the teachings of Jesus as they were under- stood in his day, and apply the principles he laid down to our social order. If we find that they coincide, well and good, but if they disa- gree we shall have to ask ourselves whether we can transform the social order, or shall we give up Jesus, or shall we modify his teachings as good but impracticable? It may be granted that Jesus would have had no opinion if asked about our great factories 64 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS and mills. They could not have dawned upon the human intelligence of Jesus in Galilee. Com- mercial industrialism was an utterly strange thing to the age of the CaBsars. The world of that day was desperately poor as we count riches. Even wealthy men had no such com- forts as we deem requisite for our day; and the middle and poorer classes were probably chronically under-nourished, and in sickness utterly neglected or mistreated. When, however, we add the word "compet- itive" and define it as we have done to distin- guish it from emulation, by seeking its aim in the exclusion or subordination of your com- petitor, one asks at once, Is this doing to others as we would have men do to us? Is this the way loving brothers and sisters act in a well- regulated family circle? But if it is not, then can it be truly Christian ; that is, can Jesus build his kingdom upon a competitive basis? The family circle is no dead level. There are father and mother, elder brothers and older sisters, but the weak are not exploited in the interests of the stronger. Indeed, the humanizing effect of weakness in the family has often been pointed out. The little cripple is gently treated, the younger sisters cared for and petted, and the whole family life is softened and purified by its care for the weaker members. And this family relation is for Jesus the ideal. Respect CHRISTIAN ESTIMATE OF OUR ORDER 65 and obedience may be due from the younger to the elder, but the love that makes the father rush out to the prodigal son and put the robe and ring on him, that makes the little child the center of the kingdom group and that makes God Father, is a love that forbids all exploita- tion of another in simply our interest. Com- mercial competition could not be the atmosphere of a well-regulated Christian home, and the question then arises, Can it be the atmos- phere of the Christian state or the kingdom of God? The subordination of other men's lives and purposes to ours in the form of slavery we have overcome. We found it demoralizing both for the slave and the slaveholder. It was a long, slow process. Economic reasons as well as religious sentiment and moral arguments finally accomplished the task. Slavery stands condemned, although once it seemed indispensa- ble, and rooted in the soil as an institution. Is not, however, the demoralizing element any subordination of one man's purpose to another individual's? Must not men find their end either in themselves or a kingdom of moral purposes ? This is a question which raises the whole subject of such competition as we see going on all about us, where the deliberate ef- fort is to compel men to cease being our com- petitors and to become our dependents. The 66 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS bitter competition of society has as its logical goal a subordination that, if we examine it as frankly as we examined slavery in the North, will surely lead us to wonder how we could take the mote out of our brother's eye before getting clear vision by taking the beam out of our own eye. Paul and Jesus recognize, indeed, the inter- related society of any advanced people. But the model of these interrelations is the loving family circle. Some are leaders, others may be born for followers, but exploiting the fol- lowers and chaining them helplessly to the chariot of our purpose is not surely according to the sweet mind of Jesus, and a society whose fundamental note is this cannot call itself Christian. Even the prophetic dream of the Old Testa- ment had risen up against this theory of per- manent dependence. In the day of redemption men were to sit under their own vine and fig trees, and some were not to build that others might inhabit, some were not to plant that others might eat. We have failed to realize that vision. Workingmen build palaces into which they never again even look; they plant pleasant gardens whose fruit they never touch. This is done by the force of competition. Even granting that the working class are, as a rule, less competent than the wealthy own- CHRISTIAN ESTIMATE OF OUR ORDER 67 ing class, this according to Jesus would give no excuse for exploitation. And the evil is that exploitation is inevitable. The small shopkeeper is forced out of business perhaps to the advantage of the trade, and even to his own temporary advantage; for the great combinations have generally employed the more capable competitors whom they have forced out, and often on generous terms. At the same time he is now dependent, and a crowd of applicants for the place sooner or later re- duce the wages to the bare living point, and the exploitation of the laborer and the public he serves begins. It is inherent in a system built upon competition, whose goal and inner mean- ing is the subordination of the competitor to your purpose. In the family there must be a measure of emulation. Rivalry is a healthy and amusing stimulus. To try to do things better than they are being done, to do them better than your neighbor does them, has no necessary moral disadvantage. It may not always be the highest motive, but life is on different moral levels. The games of children and the healthy recre- ations of older ones reflect the sort of emula- tion that has only stimulus and gain for both contestants. We cannot all do all things better than anybody else. But we can all find our level in honest emulation. This does not, how- 68 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS ever, imply that because we cannot do all things better than anyone else, therefore our life is to be subordinated to the individual purpose of gain on the part of the successful competitor. It is this feature of modern competition that is making commercial defeat so fearfully bitter, and raising up an increasing army of discon- tented and angry disappointed men. If Jesus would surely have seen in modern competition elements distinctly immoral, what would he have farther said to the postulate that in business life profits are the stimulus to action? We all admit that profits are not the only stimulus to action, but it is distinctly claimed that in business the nerve is "profits." Men are not, we are told, in business for their health, they are in it to make money. Perhaps Jesus did not mean to be taken lit- erally when he said, ' ' Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth," but he certainly said it. It may be that Luke overemphasizes the stress Jesus laid upon personal poverty, but even granting that, his sayings elsewhere are quite definite. Not that Jesus was an ascetic far from it. Men called him a winebibber and friend of publicans and sinners. "We find him as often in the house of mirth and joy as in the house of mourning, and he did not even ask that his disciples fast or make sad faces. Yet we cannot think of Jesus making profits the CHRISTIAN ESTIMATE OF OUR ORDER 69 main stimulus to action, and he expressly sought to substitute another principle. Those who lived outside his realm of thought might do otherwise, but his servants were to make serv- ice, and not profits, the stimulus to action. Here again Jesus only stands on the common instinct of the race at its best. Any doctor, or minister, or teacher who was known to be in the business simply to ''make money" would be despised and distrusted ; and just so far as they are even suspected of it they are rightly con- demned. It was once also so of the legal pro- fession, before it was debauched and prosti- tuted by a few men to commercialism. And even now from time to time the profession stirs itself and seeks to reach a higher level. No community can, however, long sustain a double standard of morality. As in finance the cheaper metal if suffered at all is sure to drive out the dearer, so a lower morality if suffered at all will supplant the higher. The Christian business man has no more right to be in busi- ness for profits only than has his minister. Both in their several ways are simply servants of the community, and are there to serve and not to exploit. As far, indeed, as the morality of profits has had the sanction of organized Christianity, it has come in to commercialize and demoralize the pulpit, art, literature, edu- cation, and the home. Ministers and baseball 70 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS players are talked about as " ten- thousand-dol- lar men." Newspapers care more for circula- tion and profits than for truth and influence. The whole of our education is more or less un- sound because the educators vacillate vaguely between trying to turn out moral boys and girls and successful beasts of prey. Everyone theoretically denounces "greed," but the man who is in business simply to make profits, even if he fail lamentably, as we are told seventy- five per cent do, is in it for greed. If anyone reply that you can't change human nature, then the question arises, Was Jesus right or wrong? It does not make the slightest difference to the TielirfroF God what you think cy.y-., . i jj^T^"' *"* " ' ' **** i " ' .* " of the divinity of our Lord if at these essential points you have no faith in his teachings. Many are going to call him "Lord, Lord" wliom he will disown because he came only to minister. and they lived for profits which they then often did not get. Nor is the reply a sufficient one that you cannot change the matter until you change the social order, for Jesus lived in a social order he expected to change, and to change it with dramatic and swift suddenness. There is no more revolutionary literature in the world than Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 17. 20-37. We are sent to proclaim a new social order which Jesus called the kingdom of God CHRISTIAN ESTIMATE OF OUR ORDER 71 on earth. He died but left the work to us ; doing that work is the Christian life. Nor can we really believe that Jesus would be contented with the goal of the commercial struggle. It is confessedly for possession of the productive opportunity and the machinery of production. Dear to the heart of the whole social order is the private possession of rail- roads, mines, oil wells, quarries, land, etc. Life is cheap. Any legislation that seeks to protect children and women is scanned suspiciously, but any laws to protect property cannot be made too severe. No heresy is quite so black as any doubt thrown upon the uttermost sanctity of property. And the property that is sought is the revenue-producing property. This only is real wealth. Jesus himself had no such prop- erty, but he was evidently only opposed to it when made the goal, or when it interfered with our interest in a kingdom of God which he was trying to establish. The rich young man was told to sell all and follow Jesus, but the beloved disciple had a house in Jerusalem, it seems, and was fairly prosperous. It was not a dead level of primitive communism that Jesus seems to have looked for, but a new social order entirely transformed in the very motives of its life, in the very inwardness of its organization. It is not possession, but the desire of that possession which gives us power over our fellow men, 72 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS which has in it the seeds of corruption. And this desire is very subtle. A man does not need to be rich to be corrupted by it. Indeed, per- haps, the poor man is exposed to the longings for it even more than the prosperous one. Thus the follower of Jesus finds himself, like Jesus, living in a social order whose inward spirit no more reflects the teachings of the kingdom of God than did the social order which put Jesus to death, and yet we call it Christian. Because it is superficially Christianized, and be- cause many Christians live in it, and see no such contradictions in it as seem to stare us in the face, the Church of Jesus Christ goes on in sometimes quite deadly compromise with all the things the soul of Jesus hated. This raises most serious and pressing questions. To-day as never before men are troubled by the contra- dictions of life. Many a man says, "I can't do business and be a Christian." He is possibly wrong, but he feels the weight of the social order pressing upon him. He feels compelled to face the various proposed social solutions we have to briefly survey in hope of relief. And to the task now of asking what are the ethical and Christian elements in these proposals we must turn. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND A SOCIAL PROGRAM BEFORE even discussing the relation of the Christian Church to a social program we must decide in our own minds what we mean by the Church. The Roman Catholic conception was a definite one in its main outlines. From Cyprian on the Church was an institution, governed by a hierarchy, to which the word and sacraments and the keys of heaven and hell were committed. It was thus an ark of safety into which men and women were called for the saving of their souls. But it was also God's supreme authority, so that even kings and states ruled subject in the last analysis to the authority of the supreme Head of the Church. The Reformers differed somewhat widely in their definition of the Church, but agreed that to it were committed "the pure word and the sacraments" and they were unsatisfactory and indefinite in the extreme as to the function of the Church. It was only when John Wesley awoke from his dogmatic and ecclesiastical slumbers, and adapted German pietism to the needs of England, that a new and really Protestant definition of the Church became pos- 73 74 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS sible. No service that John Wesley rendered to our common Protestantism was greater than his real reform of the conception of the Church. He practically swept away the offensive aris- tocratic hierarchical conception. Bishops be- came the chief administrative servants of the Church; elders, the experienced elder brothers. The functions of the minister were not priestly, save as all Christians are kings and priests unto God, but prophetic, and even here they had no monopoly but only leading responsibility. Then, again, he restored the democracy, and even extended it to women. Nothing could be more attractive than George Eliot's picture of Dinah in "Adam Bede," and it is to this Metho- dist freedom that the world owes the life of Catherine Booth. And most important of all, the Church ceased to be an ark of salvation, and became for Wesley an institution for prop- aganda in the thoroughly Pauline sense. The class meeting was not simply a place where people held up looking-glasses to their souls and arranged their own spiritual toilet, it was a training ground for young Christians, where having faced the world in battle for the gospel they could be trained, consoled, inspired, and directed by veterans in the warfare. For this reason Wesley had no such scruples about the Methodists going their own way as had his brother Charles, and it was at this point that THE CHURCH AND A SOCIAL PROGRAM 75 Wesley really most seriously differed with High Calvinism and as over against it was essentially in the right. The High Calvinistic doctrine of the Church is much more Eoman Catholic than biblical, and needed greatly the evangelical revival. There is no room, therefore, in a biblical and evangelical doctrine of the Church for arro- gant pretensions to be an imperial hierarchy. We are servants of the community. We are in the communal life to redeem it by service, and by any service and all service that we can render it; so John Wesley, England's most learned fellow, taught little dirty street gamins their A, B, C's in the name of Jesus. We have no claim to usurp the function of the state. We do wish to convert the state and regenerate it by the indwelling love of God, but we have no business to rule it or to dictate to it. Indeed, there are a thousand questions it not only must settle, but can alone settle. The social order and the political state are not now Christian, and never have been really Chris- tian, even when calling themselves so. At the same time, the simple political mastery of the state by the Church will not make the state Christian. The Papacy tried that, and we now know with what tragic measure of failure. If the state is to become Christian it must become so by adopting the loving, redeeming life of 70 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS Jesus as the inspiration of all its activities. It must be ready to die the Messianic death, if need be, as did the Waldensian Church in the ages past. As yet no political state and no social order has really even sought to try Jesus and his teachings seriously. And we do not know what would happen if one did. The first one might, perhaps, have to die. Perhaps in such a state the only function of the Church would then be common, communal worship. At present the function of the Church is proclamation of the love of God in Christ Jesus and service in his name. We are to seek the reorganization of life on a really religious basis. We proclaim faith in God and man and in the coming kingdom of God on earth. For our work is immediately here and now. For thousands of people the only vision of God is the life about them. They may have heard about Jesus, but he is as unreal to them as Aristotle or Buddha. Only when Jesus is seen in some life does he become a reality. The mission of Christianity is to make God visible to men who can believe only when they see. This main mission of the Church must be car- ried out by activity along all sorts of lines. We have already spoken about the ministry of the Mediaeval Church in the way of art and music to the life of the race. The beauty of holiness is a very real revelation of God, and glorious THE CHURCH AND A SOCIAL PROGRAM 77 cathedrals, music, and paintings were no mean contribution to life. The difficulty was rather with the conception of God that underlay mediaeval art than with attempting to give it art expression. Puritanism reacted far too strongly at this point, and has left some of us a little starved on this side of our lives. We think we must have our visions of God in in- tellectual syllogisms rather than in artistic symbolism. There is, of course, always a large mission for the Church in constantly rationalizing and ex- plaining and defending her faith in a living God. Here the whole intellectual powers of trained men are needed. Their work is, like all scientific work, always tentative. The apology of one generation does not answer the doubts of another, and if pressed becomes unreal dog- matism. The old personal experience of God in Christ Jesus needs new theological formulae to make it real and vital to a generation that thinks in new phrases and new modes of ex- pression. Nor can the Church be content with any social order short of the absolute family of God in Christ Jesus, with none left out. To gain her end she must work, sacrifice, do and dare. She will colabor also with every agency that seems to. promise the uplift and purification of life. Those that are not against her are on her part. 78 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS But exactly as her art and her dogmas are tentative and often passing expressions of her life, and must never be identified with the in- wardness of her faith, so any political program can only be a very tentative expression of her faith in the coming kingdom. She dare not identify her message too closely with any po- litical program. Her ministers may personally be warm believers in single tax or socialism, in democracy or republicanism or in anarchy, and they would do well, now and then, to strongly assert their liberty as good citizens to absolute freedom in their political and social thinking. At the same time, they are preaching to men of good will and as eager citizens of the kingdom as they are, who cannot identify the kingdom of God with any such particular political program, and who can with perfect truth say Jesus never taught a political program. To tell a man he can only be Christian if he becomes a socialist, or votes for free trade, or advocates abolition, or stands for prohibition, is false to the facts of history. Many good Christians could not see eye to eye with brethren as good as they, and as earnest along their lines for a transformation of life into the image of God. Prohibition may some day be as universal as abolition, socialism may some day be the new social order, single tax may some day triumph ; but the really thoughtful Christian man will THE CHURCH AND A SOCIAL PROGRAM 79 feel that even if any one of these things is his favorite political program, he might thinkably get it and find the kingdom of God yet a long way off. We have abolition ; are we yet Chris- tian? We have communities where prohibition is not only law, but observed law; but are they fully Christian? Any and all political programs are at best but means to our end. We dare not at the peril of the Church's highest life substitute any po- litical program for her highest ideal. That is just what Gregory the Great did. In all sin- cerity he supposed that when the papal claims to rule the world were actually acknowledged the world would be then at last " Christian. " And what a mess the imperial hierarchy made of their world when it was gotten. The world has never quite recovered from the fearful dis- appointment, and even now still distrusts the Church with her sad and troubled record of mischievous political meddling. And our po- litical meddling to sustain the existing social order may be as unwise and mischievous med- dling as trying to introduce some new political program. Many a good Christian man thinks he is "conservative" and "safe" when he shuts his eyes to the rottenness around him and cries out, "All is well," and gives his energies to maintaining things as they are and stopping all changes. Was there ever a more dangerous 80 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS IN THE destroyer of real values than the Russian min- ister of culture, Pobiedonosszew? For every man has some political program, even if it is only letting others do the job, and he sitting by and criticising. He has some political ideal, however feeble, and when he insists that the Church take the same feeble attitude and weakly become the prop of the existing order, he is sinning against her as much as when the socialist tries to make her his tool for his par- ticular brand of political program. Every Christian man should be up and at it, trying to transform life into the image of God. And the Church of God should inspire and aid every honest man in his fierce fight for right- eousness, fair dealing, truth, and brotherhood. But each man must alone be responsible to his God for the particular judgments he forms as to the political program immediately neces- sary to make God's will as effective here on earth as it is in heaven. The identification of the kingdom with our conception of the king- dom is exceedingly foolish. "We may see clearly, or think we see clearly, the next step. We cannot possibly see much beyond the next step, and must leave other generations to work out their own questions. Where chattel slavery existed we now see clearly that the next step was abolition. Yet even to-day good Christian men could not unite in saying by what political THE CHURCH AND A SOCIAL PROGRAM 81 steps that had been best brought about. The actual way was so fearfully costly, bloody, and demoralizing that, glad as one must be that it led to liberty, the American who boasts of re- publican institutions must hang his head in shame that a war between brothers, costing a million lives and untold moral values, was the only way we found to do what Russia did with a stroke of the pen, and what England did with a bank check. It might be disastrous for the Christian Church to commit herself to any social order as the kingdom order, for no matter what im- provement it might be upon the older order as compared with some future order, it might prove profoundly defective. This, again, is the real weakness of Romanism. It is really in its inward spirit identified with paternal feudal- ism. It has no faith in the common man, who is always a child of Mother Church whose chief virtue is submission to overlordship. This is the danger that confronts Protestantism. "We may be so linked with the existing competitive industrialism that if it should pass away Prot- estantism would pass away with it, and as Protestantism has risen on the wrecks of feudal- ism, another religious expression would rise on the wrecks of bourgeois competitive industrial- ism. If this should be the case, however, it is be- 82 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS IN THE cause Protestantism has proved false to her cardinal Pauline teaching of the freedom which is in Christ Jesus and the moral autonomy of the Son of God. We are sons not of feudalism, nor of bourgeoise commercialism, nor yet of competitive industrialism; we are sons of the kingdom, and must keep our kingdom ideals pure and high and untouched by all entangling alliances with lower ideals. We are not sons of any political program, but of God's king- dom of loving justice. For this very reason, however, we must have political programs and be in earnest about them as the next step to the kingdom. We cannot give the task up, nor can we abandon the world to its present state. Each man should with all the intelligence at his disposal weigh the vari- ous social programs proposed, and eagerly seek to realize his program and gain others for it. If he thinks free trade the next step he should give himself heart and soul to free trade, cost what it may. It may hurt his business and alienate business friends. He is not seeking his personal profit, and is unchristian if he settles the question on that basis ; he is seeking loving justice and thinks high protection or free trade, as the case may be, the next step to it. The man who votes for free trade or high protection simply because it helps his business is animated by exactly the same selfish spirit THE CHURCH AND A SOCIAL PROGRAM 83 that leads an alderman to accept a bribe. How it affects him is only an index to the larger and more vital question, How does it affect the communal mother ? and on this basis alone must he answer his question. In the same way he may see in single tax or socialism the way out of Egypt into the promised land. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. Then let him bring his political program into touch with his religious enthusiasm, and it can be- come the expression of his religious life in the fullest manner. CHAPTER VIII THE KINGDOM DREAM No effort of the imagination is more inevita- ble and more unsatisfactory than the attempt to think what the future order will be, whether in heaven or on earth. The heaven that satis- fies the child seems to the adult hopelessly barren and unattractive, and the heaven of so much of our preaching seems to a healthy boy or girl a place to be carefully avoided. A social order that would satisfy one man seems dreary and wearisome to another. Well does the writer remember the impression made upon him by Bellamy's "Looking Backward." It almost reconciled him to the existing confusion, which in contrast seemed so much more pic- turesque than Bellamy's mechanical French garden. And yet that book proved the social awakening of many thousands. Such efforts must always take the character of day-dreams, changing and growing with the dreaming mind. Any portrayal of either a future heaven or a social order on earth is exposed to two dangers. It will be, on the one hand, exceedingly unat- tractive to another frame of mind, or, on the other, fills us only with restless and weary dis- 84 THE KINGDOM DREAM 85 satisfaction with our daily world in which God expects us to work cheerfully and strongly. While this is so it is equally inevitable that we live, as Christians, in a future world order wherein dwelleth righteousness. In a certain very real sense a true Christian must be "other-worldly." He cannot be true to the ideals of Jesus and not look eagerly forward to a coming kingdom, and what we look forward to must to some extent satisfy our imagination, and must be more or less definite and concrete. The full force of Paul's demand that we be not fashioned according to this world, but that we be transformed by the renewing of our minds, has often been broken by forgetting that last clause. We must gain the social mind. We must be transformed from our narrow indi- vidualism, or limited sympathy with our own little group, whether it be the family group or an ecclesiastical or even national group, and we must in spirit become members of the king- dom of God on earth, embracing all men in the future world order. This social mind cannot be gotten out of mere negations. Nor can it be gained at all if we are too much fashioned ac- cording to this world order. It is not in super- ficial externals that conformity to the existent order most reveals itself. It may, indeed, be, for a Christian, very proper to abstain from certain kinds of amusements and certain ways 86 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS of acting and dressing, but unless they are the signs of transformed mind they amount to but little. Our daydreams will depend in their very quality upon the stage of our intellectual and moral growth. Their character will largely be determined by the inmost wish, the transformed mind. As nearly all morality begins by inhibition, "Thou shalt not," so our social dream mostly begins by destructive criticism of the things that have grown hateful to us. And among the first of these is any economic dependence of one adult individual upon another. The dependence of one upon the group is not demoralizing, be- cause all are in like manner dependent. But as Aristotle saw that the highest manhood was not open to the slave class, so the highest moral development is imperiled by any and all eco- nomic dependence of one adult upon another. This is the reason why organized labor is evolv- ing a new morality of which the employing class knows little, and with which it can have no sympathy. The "slavery," as the employing class sees it, of the man in his union seems to the employer more galling than the unrestricted wage bargaining. In point of fact this is not so. The dependence of all in a group relation upon all has a very different morale from the dependence of one upon an individual. The enforcement of trade-union rules is like the THE KINGDOM DREAM 87 enforcement of house rules at a club, which may be ever so absurd but are made by all, and are thus part of a self-respecting moral autonomy, even if the exercise of the power is almost nominal. A famous club in New York still for- bids card-playing in its rooms, a restriction which would drive two-thirds of its members out if made by one individual for the good of the rest, even if they realized that it was for their good. Even God gives the adult the chance to sin and take the consequences, and thus makes men, and not puppets, of us. How economic equality is to be obtained is a social and political question. There is, how- ever, little doubt that in the dream of the king- dom economic equality will be the basis for a far nobler and fuller ethical life than is now possible to the average man, even though he be a very highly paid wage-worker and compara- tively little dependent upon any individual. The easy, arrogant assurance of the owning, ruling class marks their economic independence, but is itself a sign of the corruption caused by arbitrary order-giving and relatively irrespon- sible exercise of power. Economic pride and economic humility are alike distasteful to the well-regulated mind, and the kingdom dream will somehow get rid of both. The nobler ethics of the family relation, with its sense of loving dependence of all upon all, furnished to Christ 88 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS Jesus his basis for kingdom dreaming, and per- haps we can go no farther. The kingdom dream must surely, if true to Jesus, think of life as very differently motived from the present. The desire to gain freedom for oneself and potential mastery over others by private possession of the productive machin- ery and the industrial opportunity is confess- edly not a Christian motive. Even those who defend the existing order claim that they serve and, no doubt, the claim is in many cases justi- fied by the facts. Many a rich man has been the most useful servant of his generation but also its master, and in so far he is all too often corrupted by mastery and corrupts even those whom he longs to serve. One cannot read Marcus Aurelius without feeling that this had half dawned upon him, and flung over his life that shade of melancholy and helplessness so impressive in the writings of the Eoman world's best and most powerful hero. In the kingdom dream God is the chief servant of his own uni- verse, sending the rain upon the just and upon the unjust, and respecting the moral autonomy of his children whom he has trained through the long ages to be, not his vassals nor his wage servants, but his sons and friends. Abraham was the friend of God, and Jesus called his dis- ciples friends. Seeing him we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. The servant THE KINGDOM DREAM 89 knows not what his lord does, but to us in the kingdom dream science, philosophy, and the- ology will have shown us the way God works. We shall know what our Father is doing. Service will thoroughly reorganize human life and be its motive as it is God's motive. He that is greatest among us will be, like Lincoln, the community's chief est, humblest servant. The kingdom dream scorns the atheism that says, "You can't change human nature," for it has seen the future son of man in Christ Jesus and really believes on him. All the professed faith in unselfishness will become a reality, and as love begets love, so service will and does even now beget service, and the emulation in service will, in the kingdom dream, take the place of the present hybrid springs of action. Even now it is a hideous mistake to suppose that life is really kept agoing by the competitive strug- gle for the producing machinery. All the best in us revolts at the thought. A clergyman gets a check for preaching, but if the congregation supposed that that was the only reason he preached, how much good would the sermon do ? The kingdom dream sees love functioning as never before. To-day private ownership of the producing machinery is such a prize that over a rich man's grave the relatives often begin the deadly, hateful disputes that have become proverbial. A whole circle has waited in hungry 90 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS dependence for access to the "wealth," that is, control of the access to the industrial oppor- tunities that mean wealth. Now, at the rich man's death this access is to be distributed, and the indecent eagerness of the relatives is the theme of song and jest! While we recognize the fact that love functions in life, and should organize it as a whole, to-day our age is a prop- erty-organized age, and love's power is strictly limited. The young man must marry "pru- dently"; that means he must marry property. The young girl is congratulated on "a good alliance"; that means, again, a young man of property. "Above" or "below" social station really means a relation to economic efficiency represented by a certain control of industrial opportunity. This whole conception does not fit in with the kingdom dream of Jesus. The economic side and political difficulties he left to us to settle, but he saw love organizing the whole of life. We were to love our neighbors as ourselves, and every man in need was our neighbor. This conception excludes all coercion of a loveless kind from the kingdom dream. All passionate revenge and all rude force are barred by the thought of mankind living in the relationship of a well-regulated loving family. There is, therefore, here no place for war. Even nationality has no lines of serious separation, and men are all members one of another. THE KINGDOM DREAM 91 The object of activity will not be profits, but life. And by life will be meant the fullness of life self-expression, group-expression, family- expression in art, in worship, and in the re- ligion of daily service. At present these are but adjuncts to a hard nervous struggle, and even then generally commercialized and de- graded in the process. Just as the minister has hard work to keep the pew rentals from con- trolling his activity and degrading it, so the artist must be a man of singular faith and gen- ius who does not make concessions to the wretchedly low commercial standards of the day. In the kingdom dream at last the religious man and the artist can really express themselves, and give us God and Nature as only supreme religious and artistic genius can see them. The world is waiting and longing for such revela- tions, and in the kingdom dream they will come. When the Spirit of Truth is come he will lead us into all truth. There will be no longer dreary doubt as to whether life even at its best is worth our while ; there will be no hard, bitter struggle to really believe that a good God exists ; there will be no more weary waiting for long-delayed and satisfying visions of mercy and justice. We shall be in deed and in truth colaborers with God in making him visible in the just and lov- ing relations of the redeemed and glorified life. 92 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS The kingdom dream of Jesus moved mainly in the region of the religious and ethical life. At the same time, the material world will reflect the new life and new hope, and, on the other hand, this new economic world will give new hope and courage to all who are weak and oppressed. Our cities will really become places God can dwell in, fitted to be called his temple. There is little use in picturing simply the ma- terial side of the kingdom dream, partly because that is what is most often attempted, but more especially because of the confidence that there can be no wide separation between the spiritual and the material. They are aspects of a funda- mental unity. The brothel and saloon, the gambling hole and the dive, are the outward and visible sign of the inward and invisible corruption of our whole social order. The fresh air of economic freedom would slay these parasitic growths, as sunlight kills the disease germ. Men do not willingly go into disreputa- ble callings. They are forced into them by eco- nomic pressure, and naturally it is the weaker and less moral man who surrenders to the pres- sure. The kingdom dream sees the body politic robbed of none of its dignity and glory by the prostitution of its service for gain and place. Politics will become sacred and worshipful. Men and women will give themselves to this service with the devotion and patriotism with THE KINGDOM DREAM 93 which men enlist now for war and women offer themselves for nursing on the battlefield. The most fearful blots upon our social order, the prostitution of women and the exploitation of little children, will give way to the care of motherhood and the guardianship of the child as the most holy tasks intrusted to the com- munity. This dream is our inspiration to under- take concrete action for its realization. Each man may do something, but to do the best he can demands study, thought, and quickened social intelligence. The day is past when gen- eral happy-go-lucky kindliness can be accepted as a substitute for really intelligent social serv- ice. The stupid good humor of Mr. Pickwick, even if spread over the whole population, would give us neither the social mind nor the social efficiency the kingdom dream demands. This dream sees the energy now sometimes worse than wasted in piling up monopoly to the legal right of access to industrial opportunity, actually engaged as was Lincoln in guiding the country in its struggle not with internal foes, but with nature, and wringing from the forces of nature greater and greater stores of energy for the maintenance of life. The ideal of the kingdom is mastery, and its leaders will be masterful men, whom we will love and honor, because they will not be struggling for mastery over us, but over nature in our behalf. To-day 94 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS the greatest leaders of the race are hounded by suspicion and fear; and with, alas, a measure of truth, for how often has genius betrayed us, and corrupted by the ideals of the social order aimed not at mastery of the world but mastery over men ! Augustus Caesar, Charles the Great, Charles the Fifth, and Napoleon were all great men, fit for almost any task, and they rendered great services, but they left the world more enslaved than they found it; and it took blood and violence to break the chains forged while serving. This betrayal has been so common that men justly fear great leadership and sus- pect it until death has relieved them of their fears. That is why "Washington and Lincoln stand out so conspicuously and so lonely on the horizon of human history. In the kingdom dream such leadership will be naturally beloved and not feared. The tra- dition of selfless service will have been formed. The wretched hollowness and positive danger to beloved offspring of mastery over men left as a legacy will shock our souls as slavery re- volts right thinking now. To-day the master- ful man works, serves, advances civilization, and does great things for us all, but he demands as payment legal title to the productive machin- ery (stocks, bonds, and signs of wealth) for himself and his children to all generations. The children weakened by indulgence, watched by THE KINGDOM DREAM 95 a dozen servants, flattered and toadied to, prove in nine cases out of ten in the third or fourth generation either wicked or insane. They have not the stamina to stand the strain. And mis- guided love and ambition has piled up for the offspring a heritage of flattery, suspicion, con- tempt, envy, and hate on the part of those who now must bargain for access to the resources of the world. The danger in the kingdom dream is not of equality, but of almost idolatrous worship of the favorites of the people. We all like some- thing to look up to, we none of us desire a crude dead level of mediocrity. Even at the risk that popular idolatry involves of farther en- slavement, and in spite of the sad experience of centuries of betrayal, we still delight to idolize and clamorously proclaim some very foolish men heroes of wisdom, who profess to serve us. Little children are all idealists, it is said, and Jesus Christ took a little child and set him in our midst as an example. But all men have a large idealism in their nature^ only now the social order in which we live, with its malad- justments and wretched dislocations, holds down our idealism and leaves us the victims of our lower impulses. The kingdom dream believes in men as it believes in God. The Son of man speaks to the citizenship of the king- 96 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS dom and says, "Ye believe in God, believe also in me." This requires faith, so the man of the street shrugs his shoulders and passes on. But what has the Christian pulpit been preaching all these ages? It is easy to preach faith in things everybody accepts, but the faith of the kingdom is not easy, and yet a grain of it would move all the mountains of hesitation and doubt and difficulties that face us. Faith in Jesus Christ is faith in his kingdom as not only possi- ble here on earth but as waiting only until our faith brings in the kingdom drea^m. CHAPTER IX THE INDIVIDUALISTIC EMPHASIS IN THE KINGDOM DREAM THE breaking up of nation and family in the enslaved imperialism of Eome gave rise to a re- markable type of individualism. The proud Stoic and the more popular Cynic preacher taught a retreat out of the relations of life into lonely dependence on one's own soul. How revolu- tionary this doctrine was can be realized only by one who has followed the power of the group and the dependence of the individual upon the group all down human history. Indeed, the message fell only upon the ears of the culti- vated minority. It brought to them consolation and a proud self-reliance. Individualism re- ceived at its hands that intellectual and some- what aristocratic caste which it has never com- pletely lost. It was a product of the cosmo- politanism of the world and of the loss of all the fundamental liberties of the old Eoman nobility. There was, however, another cosmopolitan- ism within the limits of the empire which is one of the most remarkable facts in human history. A nation, mainly Semitic, it appears, was 97 98 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS scattered in the rush of conquering Babylon, and yet a minority held together by faith reestablished itself again in the old home, not, indeed, as a political group, save for the shortest time, but as a priestly religious com- munity. This community then scattered over the known world, conserving customs and lit- erature, and in spite of enormous losses by defection, persecution, and intermingling with surrounding populations, it has maintained itself as a religious, homeless group ever since. The cosmopolitanism of the Jew was very dif- ferent from the cosmopolitanism of the Roman Stoic. Its outlook was not the individual soul, it sought a future kingdom, and its proud resig- nation to the present had ever as a background the future reign. It was essentially a group cosmopolitanism. Yet it had many things in common with Roman Stoicism, and was its rival, it seems, in the Eoman circle of power and fashion. In Galilee the exclusiveness of a priestly caste had broken down as it had not in the central city of Jerusalem. The northern population of Palestine was restless and un- tamed. Here came the voice of One who taught an individualism as lofty as that of Stoicism, but gentler and more persuasive an individ- ualism that was profoundly religious rather than philosophical. The basis for the individualism of Jesus was THE INDIVIDUALISTIC EMPHASIS 99 the worth of the human soul in the sight of God. All men were to him potentially divine. He delighted to call himself the Son of man and to glory in the oneness, on the one hand, with the Father, and on the other with his brethren. His democracy was founded upon the equality of the family and not on the Stoic doctrine of ' * natural rights. ' ' The harlot, the publican and sinner were his sisters and brothers because children of a common Father. He laid empha- sis upon the eternal value of a human soul. The father's care on earth was but a feeble image of the heavenly Father's care of all his children. The hairs of our head are numbered. The ig- norant fisher folk of Galilee were watched over and kept because they were inherently worth- ful. The Stoic could raise himself out of the mass. For Jesus the mass was eternally valu- able in and for itself. This was never used by Jesus as a basis for political rights, or for philo- sophic reflection upon the relations of the indi- vidual to the group. He never appealed to the downtrodden to form a political party; at the same time he clearly recognized the fact that in the kingdom many of the first should be last, and many of the last should be first. To the despised and lowly he proclaimed the coming kingdom as their deliverance. Even granting that this side of the proclamation of Jesus had received from Luke possibly undue emphasis, 100 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS yet it is in all the Gospels, and permeates the whole message. Not possessions, whether of property or of genius, give a man his place in the Father's eyes, but his common humanity. Thus Jesus struck at caste even more effect- ively than Buddha. For he gave humanity the highest and divinest value, whereas for Buddha existence is an evil, and humanity's escape is to will not to exist. This profoundly religious democracy is not to be confounded with an aristocratic paternal- ism. God is perfect, and sends his rain upon the just and upon the unjust, thus rendering them service and maintaining relationship with them. But the prodigals can go away, and waste the father's goods, and God freely for- gives when they return again to claim sonship in the father's house. The thought is so pro- found and yet so simple that the ages have never taken it in. This democracy is not the democracy of unrelated units. It is not a dis- connected aggregate of disparate individuals. It is not even a voluntary association of polit- ical equals. It is the democracy of the well- regulated family from which, as we have seen, Jesus took so much of his inspiration. The kingdom dream dare not sacrifice any line of this invaluable individualism. The divine right to make our own mistakes and to learn our lessons is too entirely precious to THE INDIVIDUALISTIC EMPHASIS 101 ever lose it. We are none of us really full- grown. The best of us are still children. At the same time, we have our own lives to live, and our only possible way out of immaturity is God 's way, which is to intrust to us tasks far too heavy for us. And what we demand for ourselves we demand for others. The kingdom dream must be absolutely and entirely demo- cratic. It is no hierarchy of authority. The nations exercise authority, Jesus told his disci- ples, but they were to keep carefully away from it. He thought it a good thing that he himself was going away from them. And it was. They could never have unfolded the fullness of their limited powers while so dominated by his great personality. The wise teacher draws out what is in his pupils. He does not seek to stamp them forever with the impress of his own per- sonality. And Jesus was the wisest and great- est of teachers. His democracy was one of service. Jesus left us no government scheme for either church or state, but it is quite impossible to believe that he would have suggested autocratic powers for a group of superior persons "to rule us in the Lord." That was so exactly the Pharisaic model that if Jesus had liked it he would cer- tainly have said so. The self -constituted groups of "superior persons" who still wonder how the ignorant and common man had best be 102 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS governed are entirely ignorant of God's evi- dent purpose. It is far more important that the "ignorant, common man" learn to govern himself by doing it than that government be made ever so perfect. If efficient government of the common man were the highest goal, God could do that himself much better than any group of superior persons. But the goal is moral autonomy, and the avoidance of mistakes and waste is far too costly a procedure if pur- chased at the price of dependence even upon a most estimable group of superior persons. We are always having efficiency dinned into our ears by certain types of men. They think, alas! only in terms of economic and material efficiency. God seems to think in terms of moral and spiritual efficiency. And seemingly in his plan almost nothing is waste if it has to be suffered in the interests of moral efficiency. Now, moral efficiency can be gained only by taking enormous moral risks. The experiment of the garden of Eden would have seemed absurd to a group of superior persons, who would easily have arranged to supervise Adam and Eve in the interests of a nobler horticul- ture and a well-ordered world. God seems to have thought otherwise, and the long, tragic struggle for the priceless possession of moral freedom by self-government and moral auton- omy for the race then began. Any dream, then, THE INDIVIDUALISTIC EMPHASIS 103 of state socialism is delusive and forbidding. The traveler in Germany sees many things to admire and much to imitate. At the same time, a real democracy would prefer the dirty streets of New York, and the grime, moral and phys- ical, of Pittsburg, to the order and cleanliness of the smallest German town if that order were purchased at the price of state paternalism and submission forever to a caste of superior persons. In point of fact, however, the best government in Germany is not the aristocratic socialistic paternalism of Bismarck, but the relatively democratic city government by the people themselves. We have still both in New York, London, and Berlin to work out the very machinery of democracy. Nowher^ ha^ de- mocracy even been tried. We still have a pro- found and touching faith in self-constituted groups of superior persons "of intelligence, refinement, and culture/' which is not shaken even by witnessing the amusements of these superior persons or watching how they dress. The other superstition is equally absurd, that : the manual worker has something inherently noble and unselfish about him, and that if the proletariat were given full swing charity, justice, and democracy would at once blossom as the rose. Nothing of the kind would be the case. The proletariat is just as selfish, short- sighted, ignorant, and intolerant as all the 104 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS groups of superior persons of education and culture have proved thmeselves to be. That is not the point. The point is that selfishness, ignorance, and intolerance can be banished, and sanity, consideration, and justice be placed upon a firm footing, only by taking all the risks involved in letting adult men and women work out their own salvation. This we must do even at the tremendous risks any thoughtful man must face. At least so the really reli- gious world that walks by faith looks at it. At the awful risk of hell itself God gave man self- government. The issues of eternal life and death are in each man's hands. If God took that risk for the sake of moral autonomy we should not hesitate before the tremendous ven- ture of faith which real democracy unquestiona- bly involves. Moreover, history is one long record of the failure of groups of superior persons to actu- ally master the situation. The Roman aris- tocracy broke down hideously. The Greek oligarchies became namelessly corrupt. The aristocracies of the North Italian free cities left records which cannot be printed and sent through the United States mails. Germany is only now recovering from the mad follies of her aristocracy which cost her the Thirty Years' War, the revolutions of 1848, and a bleed- ing process that has filled the United States THE INDIVIDUALISTIC EMPHASIS 105 with embittered sons and daughters who are her most merciless critics. Nor is England any better off save only as her revolutions have from time to time displaced the aristocracy and put government on a broader basis. For aris- tocracy is alike debasing to the ruler and the* ruled. Slavery was, if possible, more of a curse to the slave-owning class than to the slaves themselves. These aristocracies were all groups of most attractive superior persons. In point of culture and refinement and intellectual power the aristocracy of Nero's court was probably superior to any similar group in London, Berlin, or New York. But mastery of men in the interests of a group seems to be inherently debasing, and individual kindliness seems in no way to exclude a collective cru- elty at which we shudder even while perpe- trating it. Will democracy do any better than oligarchy and aristocracy! We do not know. We have never really tried. It is the venture of faith in God's way of doing things. Of one thing, however, we may be sure we are made of one blood, and no man is common or unclean. We have desperately deluded ourselves into think- ing that a group of economically superior per- sons are thereby lifted up to a higher moral level. They are not. They can dress better, get their finger nails polished, their language 106 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS softened, and their intercourse made very much, more agreeable and entertaining, and their souls can dry up within them, or become sparks from burning hells of sensuality and lust. God is no respecter of economic possessions. With him all things are possible, and even rich men enter with joy into the dream of a really Chris- tian democracy, but it is a tremendous triumph for the divine when we break through our nar- row economic and class prejudices and really see ourselves as God sees us. The possession of wealth is probably not much more dangerous than the possession of any privilege. There are all kinds of Pharisaism. But how hardly shall they that have any measure of riches, culture, intelligence, graces, scholarship, or refinement really enter into the democratic kingdom dream. It is really easier for the camel to go through the eye of the needle, and few there be that really enter in. Even while we think we do, and try hardly for it, there lurks the arrogance and aloofness that marks and defiles class, caste, and clique. Not that poverty sanctifies the poor man. He is often brutalized by his sorrows, but Jesus saw plainly that he escapes some of the most subtle dangers that beset man's soul. And it is a matter of relation. Organized labor can become as demoralizingly aristocratic as the class that monopolizes the natural re- THE INDIVIDUALISTIC EMPHASIS 107 sources. The mediaeval guilds rotted in their exclusiveness and "went the wayv^ Churches can become exclusive, offensive clubs; reform movements can degenerate into new sects of the Pharisees. Charity organizations of all kinds can become aristocratic hindrances to any real democratic progress. We need faith, courage, intelligence, and constant watchfulness if we are to keep pure and bright the watchfires of a really Christian democratic ideal for the king- dom dream. Furthermore, this democracy, in strong con- trast to the individualism of Stoicism, must be a loving, brotherly democracy. It is not based upon ''natural rights," but upon loving, moral relationships. And all normal relations of serv- ice produce love. Aristotle long ago was puz- zled by the fact that the benefactor always loves the one he benefits more than the one benefited is likely to love the benefactor. A nurse gen- erally grows to love even the most unattractive and naughty child. It is almost purely a matter of time. Our pets in childhood were not the pretty dogs or the best singing birds, but the yellow pups whose broken legs or the scraggly birds whose injured wings made them depend- ent upon us, and so they wound themselves about our hearts. We served them, and so learned to love. Love is the firstborn child of service. When, therefore, parents let their 108 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS children grow up always being waited upon and never really trying to serve, they are carefully cultivating the loveless life, and they then vaguely wonder why the world is so full of pretty, heartless boys and girls. Such parents are robbing their children of their most pre- cious heritage, and themselves of the sweetest reward of parentage, when at last in the weak- ness of old age those children learn in the last services to their parents something of the untold treasures of real love. The hard practical man who may chance to read these pages will sneer and say there is not enough love to go round. He has no faith that there is enough love to oil the wheels of such a democracy. And perhaps he is at present right, though the writer does not think so. But even if he is, it is because we live in a world of economic privilege and profit, and not in one of service and brotherhood. Any proper social order founded on service would soon produce all the love needed for the running of our democracy. Love seeks no undue mastery. It may be ex- ceedingly jealous and often exacting, but if it is wise with the instinct of truest love it finds its reward in the growing response of the ex- panding life. With what exultation the child records the fact that at last its patience and service in behalf of a wounded bird has been rewarded by the little creature taking food THE INDIVIDUALISTIC EMPHASIS 109 from the nursing hand! With what joy the mother takes the first small gift from the little child whose life has cost her so much! What genuine pleasure it is to any true teacher to find any trace of his influence in the growing capacity of those now going their own ways to, perhaps, yet greater things than he ever dreamed for them! How far away from all thought of exploitation a loving democracy must move ! This divine respect for the human soul, this divine longing for love wrung from others by tender service, must be the final basis for a really Christian democracy. CHAPTEE X THE SOCIAL EMPHASIS IN THE KINGDOM DREAM JESUS would have been no true Jew had he not made the group prominent in his teachings. Judaism is essentially a family and tribal re- ligion. The older prophets hardly spoke to the individual as such. The tribal character of the responsibility before Jehovah is a marked characteristic of the whole attitude and feeling of the Old Testament. Many misapprehensions arise in reading it from making personal what was said to the group. If in the main the New Testament speaks to the individual soul, the Old Testament is in the main a social message. This social message was conserved to us by the piety of the early Church, which gratefully ac- cepted the older Scriptures together with the apostolic traditions as the basis of its life. The kingdom dream cannot, therefore, be understood as a gospel of individual extrica- tion, like Buddhism. It is a gospel of group re- demption. Only in the group is the fullest life open to any individual. Man is an animal save as he joins in the higher life of the humanity about him. However lofty the lonely separate- ness of Stoicism may seem in the turmoil and 110 THE SOCIAL EMPHASIS 111 confusions of an increasing disorder, it was es- sentially selfish, and in so far was corrupting. For that reason it could never really make marked headway as a national religion. When, therefore, Oriental cults came with a new group organization on the basis of religious and moral enthusiasm, the philosophic indi- vidualism of the Eoman-Hellenistic world had no chance. It was then that Christianity came, and, organized by Paul on the basis of the synagogue, and later deeply influenced by the sacramental mysteries, there sprang up the associated life of the Christian Church. It had, as we have seen, no clear political program. Jesus was thought by most Chris- tians to be so soon coming again, that almost the only duty was to live his life of purity and to prepare the world for his coming by earnest propaganda. Yet Paul did closely organize the group, not only for propaganda, but also for mutual instruction and growth in righteous- ness. Thus there was laid the foundation for the social group whose compromise with Con- stantine gave the world into the hands of a nominally Christian imperialism. One of the obstacles in the way of the group was the solitary hermit life. This importation either from India or Egypt represented to many a higher ideal than the old Jewish family group. At this point Athanasius bound the monastery 112 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS and the hermit to the social group, and helped, at least, in the process of socializing the ascetic ideal. So that from that on even the mon- astery became a center of social service and not a retreat from the world and its needs. The Reformation is always called "individ- ualistic," and Professor Nitti harps upon the undoubted fact that Protestantism was thus hampered. And yet the charge is not quite accurate. The Reformation laid new emphasis, it is true, upon the individual, but it also made much of the Church. The extreme individual- ism of some of the Anabaptists it most delib- erately rejected. The groups of the Reforma- tion thought were twofold the ecclesiastical group, with the pure word and the sacraments, and the national group, with the secular sword. Upon both these the Reformation leaders laid great stress. In these groups alone could, ac- cording to the Reformed leaders, the soul find its highest life. It may be said that Luther and Calvin taught almost as strongly as the Papacy that outside the Church there was no salvation. Like the Roman Catholic communion, Protes- tantism has always recognized as socially fundamental the man-woman-child group, and baptism is thus essentially a social sacrament. And although now and then a lonely soul like Milton may live his religious life on exalted planes alone without ecclesiastical contact or THE SOCIAL EMPHASIS 113 responsibility, the sober common sense of Protestantism has always recognized the churchly group as fundamental, and its con- tacts as ordinarily necessary for the highest religious development of the individual. It was a long step in advance of the Roman idea of the Church when Wesley made it again chiefly an organization for propaganda, but no one realized more vividly than John Wesley how essential it was that the fires of propa- gandist activity should always be kept lit and replenished in the social enthusiasm of an organized churchly group. Indeed, so earnestly did he feel that truth that he enormously in- creased the social effectiveness of all religious organization by laying the basis for new groupings. At the same time, the ecclesiastical group only exists to serve the still larger group. There is much loose talk about the "function of the Church." The Church is bound by the all-service of her great Master to serve in any possible way she can serve our common hu- manity. It is only a question how she may best serve. If there were no one to run a rail- road but the Church, then let her build and run railroads, as might be the case in China. Ordinarily it is wiser to leave the building of railways to others. At one time there was no one to teach North Germany how to farm and 114 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS garden, and the Christian Church rendered immortal service teaching farming and gar- dening. We now find it better done by other organizations. At one time the whole educa- tion of the race was the wise service of the Church; to-day it is gradually passing to other hands. We hope they will do it better. The supreme claim of the larger group made the Church build hospitals, and now sends out hun- dreds of medical missionaries. It is quite absurd to lay down rules about how, or where, or how far the Church group should serve our common humanity. It is simply a question of loving expediency as to where our service can best be rendered and our limited strength be most usefully applied. We do not want to leave the Word of God to serve tables, but we gladly serve tables if thereby we advance or reveal the Word of God. The claim of the group upon the individual is absolute, to life itself. When the country calls to war the brave give battle. And in the struggle for mastery over God's world the brave are called to battle, and, if needs must be, to die, for the group. The physician recog- nizes that, and in his search for truth dies a martyr to his research among the dangers of bacteria. The soldier recognizes that, and goes to the front. The real woman recognizes that, and faces with joy all the pain and perils THE SOCIAL EMPHASIS 115 of childbirth when God calls her to it. This supreme claim of the group is born with the savage, and is the unquestioned possession of primitive man. With us the sudden growth of the group, the enlargement of the world idea, has checked for a little its imperious sway over our minds. Yet it is only a check. Already the binding of the world together by railways and telegraph, by telephone and steamships, is greatly increasing the group feeling and the sense of our common human responsibility. Our hearts throb with Russia's struggle for freedom, and our minds go out to China in her wonderful shaking off of the traditions of the ages. It is the world group that is the object of the Church group, as is seen in foreign mis- sions. It is this interest that should give large- ness and breadth to our ecclesiastical thought and spirit. The kingdom must then be a social dream. We must recognize the social character of the future world redemption which we are sent forth to proclaim. The dream of the kingdom is of a triumph of righteousness and social justice here on earth. No glories of the other world, however real to us, can take the place of God's triumph here where his children have suffered so long. Thus Jesus taught us to dream and to pray and to work for a kingdom of loving justice here and now. At times a negro must be tempted to 116 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS wish for the transplanting of his race to an- other land, there to work out its destiny. But it can only be a momentary impulse. Mr. Booker T. Washington feels more justly and nobly when he teaches his race that here they have been enslaved and suffered, but that it is here they are to work out their own highest freedom. God's triumph would not be com- plete were it only beyond the veil, nor would it be complete were it confined to any one social group. So interdependent are the units of a group with each other and the group as a whole that individual salvation in the fullest sense is im- possible for any individual without group sal- vation. Paul's conception of salvation was complete freedom to be and to do righteous- ness. And yet we deceive ourselves if we think we can, or that anybody under existing circum- stances can, be really righteous. God who sees the heart may see we want to be and to do righteousness, and may accept for sheer love our childish labors and " count it to us for right- eousness, ' ' but all we do is stained and smeared by social injustice. There is little use striving against this or that particular form of ' * tainted money," for no one can tell whether the money that goes to pay the preacher 's salary is not the rent paid for disorderly houses. No one knows, who works for a corporation, how far justice THE SOCIAL EMPHASIS 117 and honesty mark the money that gives him his living, and yet he is bound to be a loyal and silent servant. No one can invest money and be sure that he is not profiting by all sorts of illegitimate privileges. We are surrounded by a social system that is in its inwardness frankly commercial and not Christian, and as the early Christians had to eat meat offered to idols ask- ing no questions, we walk helpless for the time being to do aught but protest against the sys- tem, and labor for social Christianization. We labor for the chance to live the full Christian life; our shirts unsoiled by sweated toil; our clothes not sewed in the sighing of overworked, underpaid Hebrew tailors ; our food untouched by cruelty and hardship to foreign girls and driven men; our merchandise not handled by girls driven by low wages to live the life of Parisian grisettes. The sweetest, simplest Christian home is in- vaded by the awful shadows of a diseased social order. Every pastor, every social worker, every faithful Young Men's Christian Associ- ation secretary knows the tragedies that are enacted daily, and the individual cannot even if he would gain social extrication. We are all mixed up with it in one way or another, and we never know just where we shall meet it. And the only answer is the paradox of Jesus he who would save his life must lose it for the 118 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS kingdom's sake. Individual salvation is a by- product of our kingdom activity. The man or woman who sets out to save the group, to really get social righteousness, finds salvation on the way. The taunt that was flung at Jesus best describes the situation. His enemies said, "He saved others, himself he cannot save." This was not only true, but he did not want to save himself. Had he tried to save his soul he would have lost it. He did not come to save his soul but the world, and the only really Christian life is the one we share with Jesus. The Church has always lost her soul when she began, like Peter, to think of herself on the stormy waters. When the ecclesiastical hier- archy began to treat world-rule as the end of her life the Reformation became a divine neces- sity. And it is the same with the individual church. One reason why so many churches are ready to die is because they are trying to save their own souls and meet expenses. The church that starts out to save the whole community by social service may be crucified, but it will not die of inanition. Nor can its program be too large and too vital. We dare not strain at gnats and swallow camels, nor dare we begin with our neighbor's mote before we take out the beam in our own eye. Why should not the churches of a country town get together and prayerfully ask, What is the "next step" for THE SOCIAL EMPHASIS 119 the social saving of the school, the street, the social life, the amusements, and the business of the community? They may not agree on doc- trine, ritual, or church government, but surely there are measures of the kingdom they can agree upon. Then there are political pro- grams they, perhaps, cannot agree to, but they can give "Godspeed" to members who do see, or think they see, the way clearly. The Church could, without committing herself to any social program, encourage her young people to try to find out from earnest and sincere men what they propose to do. The inquiry should be on broad lines. All seriously minded men with an ideal community as the goal might be heard. Much might be said only partly true, or even false, but even then correction would give in- telligent teaching its best chance. What the pulpit often now lacks is reality. The boys and girls are in great danger in our schools and colleges of catching only the negative and de- structive side of the modern view of the world. The Church can reach such only by equally vital teaching of the positive and lasting values, now in danger of being thrown away. We never had an age seemingly more hungry for real religious teaching. The old apology, and the old metaphysical theology, is, indeed, hope- lessly gone for the present. Those who saw in it the essence of religion are mourning. But 120 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS Jesus never was before so vital an issue in men's thoughts, and never before were the things he valued more in the foreground of religious dis- cussion. The call is loud and insistent. Men are everywhere asking, "What must we do to be saved?" What does it actually involve to say, "We belie vein Jesus" t Does it mean talking about him, or doing as he did? The crying need of to-day is the harnessing of the religious enthusiasm easily seen in the human life about us to social salvation, to the delib- erate and intelligent effort to realize Christian conditions in our midst. We should try to actually make it possible to live according to the Golden Rule. No doubt the main message at present from the Church is, "Awake out of sleep!" We must render any service in our power. We have before us the one ideal, a life that will reveal God. The man that cries out to-day for God does not see him because of greed, injustice, and oppression in the social order. He may see him in Christ Jesus, but we have yet to see him incarnate in his kingdom. The social incarnation of God is surely to be for some time to come the main message of the Christian pulpit. CHAPTER XI CLASSICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY AND THE KINGDOM DREAM THE Christian thinker turns with a very con- siderable degree of disappointment, surely, from the ordinary book on political economy written from the general classic standpoint. Not only does classical political economy generally ignore values he most prizes, but the practical influence of political economy seems so small. Its judgments are scoffed at openly. The al- most unanimous opinion, for instance, of clas- sical political economy both in England and the United States, and also in Germany, is in favor of free trade, and yet the arguments hardly receive even decent attention. On the currency question the same thing is true. In- deed, whereas twenty-five years ago there was a body of opinion which deserved to be called the accepted hypothetical positions from which all science starts, to-day one seeks in vain for any such agreement. When one looks broadly at the subject one sees that classical political economy has lost its authority for the same reasons that Scholas- ticism "went the way" in the Middle Ages. 121 122 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS It assumed the existing order as a closed sys- tem within which, indeed, men could and should rationalize their conclusions, but only within that system, and even under its authority. Moreover, it became utterly a priori and un- historic in spirit. One has only to take up such a work as "Political Economy," by Francis A. Walker, an industrious and clear writer, whose work is mainly based on the conclusions of men like Senior and Jevons and Cairnes, to see how completely the so-called "science of political economy" in its classic form has lost its way. While pretending to be wonderfully objective and earnestly scientific, it is little more than a labored defense of existing conditions. Walker says, "The economist, as such, has nothing to do with the question what men had better do; how nations should be governed; or what regulations should be made for their mutual intercourse. His business simply is to trace economic effects to their causes, etc. ' ' l At the same time, his work, like the work of Cairnes before him, is full of definitions that define nothing that really ever existed ; as, for instance, the definition of ' ' competition, ' ' 2 which must be ' ' the unstrained operation of individual self-interest among the buyers and sellers of any article in any market," and neither com- bination, nor custom, nor sentiment, whether 1 Francis A. Walker, "Political Economy," p. 16. 2 Page 74. POLITICAL ECONOMY AND GOD'S KINGDOM 123 of patriotism, gratitude, charity, or vanity, must interfere if it is to be free competition. It is easy to show, for instance, that with land and coal mines in private hands, and with patent laws and national boundaries, there never has been, and never could be, "free com- petition" in the sense in which Jevons, Cairnes, and Walker use the term; and yet they all go on easily and gently dogmatizing on the subject, as if we had it under our hand and could really examine it. Yet the real reason for the widespread lack of attention to men who have so much to teach us, lies, perhaps, deeper than even their dog- matic apriorism. It lies in their failure to grasp the fact that they are dealing with moral quantities and not with machines; that there are psychological laws as inexorable as the laws of exchange, and that just as medicine has now to retrace her steps and stop treating men as elaborate mechanisms and consider the moral and mental factors, so classical political economy must become both psychological and historical before it can collect or deal with the facts of our common human life. Because of this widespread sense of unrest there has been invented the hybrid science "sociology," with its ill-made hybrid name. It undertakes to examine society, taking in all the factors that go to make up human life and 124 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS to collect and relate the data of human ex- perience. While, no doubt, such examination of the data is most necessary, and the work done in so-called sociology has been most use- ful, it is extremely doubtful whether the right course would not have been simply to restore political economy to her lost estate and recall her to her real task. Above all, it is essential that the so-called sociology should not fall into the error of assuming that the collection of data is science. That is only a small part of scien- tific work; and fruitful collection of data will alway have as its guiding motive the testing of some tentative hypothesis needed for the explanation of our experience. At this point we greatly need the work of experts. Those of us who find ourselves as citizens compelled to weigh and test the claims of all manner of proposed social solutions are often sadly at sea because we have lost confidence in those who should be our pilots. The "laws*' of so- called political economy we discover are the unreal laws of an unreal world. We know no world peopled by mechanisms competing "without passion or vanity." The life we know is swayed by all sorts of passions and feelings, rational and irrational. We are, therefore, often quite adrift for lack of expert help, and as we must act as citizens POLITICAL ECONOMY AND GOD'S KINGDOM 125 we can act only on the best information at hand. The Christian citizen, just so far as he is Christian, lives to promote the kingdom of God on earth, for which he daily prays. He seeks to make all his political activity subor- dinate to his consuming desire that the will of God may be done on earth even as it is done in heaven. So far as he is really Christian he never asks, "What suits my self-interest? "but always and only, "What will promote the king- dom of God among men? What will subdue the misery and stay the wounds of the social organism?" Yet just here sentimental ignorance may in- volve us in all sorts of mistakes and blunders that do more, perhaps, to hinder the coming of the kingdom than even the selfishness of men with, perhaps, no kingdom purpose. It is therefore a Christian duty to-day for any man, to the limit of his strength, time, and capacity, to inform himself about the social condition and the proposed remedies. We are citizens of the kingdom of God and are working for moral order. We need all the help we can get to interpret the facts, but we must also watch closely the interpreters. This is the evil of the situation. Where shall we turn? We have lost confidence in those who should have been our guides. We see ourselves also surrounded by confident, dogmatic men who claim our ear for 126 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS all kinds of laws and remedies. Some say we are not Christian if we do not vote for prohi- bition, or socialism, or free silver. Others tell us we must simply save our souls and leave politics to the politicians. "We can do none of these things or leave them undone without a sense of responsibility as citizens of the king- dom of God working for his kingdom on earth. To help men who, like the writer, are still feeling the way toward a definite policy of social readjustment, we must undertake an ex- amination of the facts presented to us. We begin with the emphasis upon the individual, because although one cannot stop with the indi- vidual it generally happens to-day that the em- phasis lies there. At the same time, it is merely a difference of emphasis. The group and the individual are really not separable. When one begins with the individual one ends with the group; and when one begins with the group one ends with the individual. CHAPTER XII THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL CLASSICAL political economy in the United States, when urging us to the unimpassioned bloodless examination commended by Professor Walker, forgets that the importance of the so-called "Manchester school" arose from the fact that its political economy was a cry for reform. And with this school the classical po- litical economy of our schools and colleges is linked. The history of "Manchester political econ- omy" is interesting. England's politics were for many years almost wholly a question of the possession of the land. From the Conquest on there was nominally in England no private property in land. All land was, and in theory still is, held by the monarch in trust for the whole community. At the same time the access of the whole community to the land was never upon equal terms. "When, therefore, pest swept away nearly a third of the inhabitants of Eng- land, and land was cheap and access easy, Eng- land sprang into the glory and beauty of rela- tively democratic "Merrie England." As population again increased, and the 127 128 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS Church, which had absorbed enormous tracts of land, became an exacting landlord, sending huge sums of rental over the sea, not only to Rome, but even to England's hereditary foes, there arose then the first serious attempt to break away from vassalage to Rome. "Wic- lif's Lollard movement was not a religious movement only, it was also a land movement. This was both the strength and the weakness of the attempted reformation. It was in its spirit and aims a proletarian revolt against foreign domination, and although seemingly crushed, it was not crushed without planting the seeds of both theological and economic re- bellion, which were later to spring up into a harvest of social reforms. 1 The middle class was rising in power and wealth, partly through the newborn commerce, partly through the newborn learning. What a proletarian Lollard movement could not do because of its economic weakness, and its too sweeping attack upon all private property, this middle class succeeded in doing, and took over the lands of the Church as a spoil for itself and a sop for the aristocracy. For the old military aristocracy shared with the new rising aris- *The misinterpretation of Lollardism by a most full and learned student of it, Gairdner in his "History of Lollardism" (2 vols., London, 1908), is due to his ignoring the economic and social aspects of it, and treating it too exclusively as a theological movement. THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 129 tocracy in the ecclesiastical plunder. The English Eeformation has some very noble chapters. It was through and through a re- ligious movement at bottom, but this particular chapter is not pretty, and the Reformation had to wait for a John Wesley before even the re- ligious side of it was rounded out and made realty Protestant. Puritanism was the expression of this middle- class thought and feeling. It was not demo- cratic, and it was not proletarian, but exceed- ingly anxious for power and too eager to force its ideals upon the nation. This it nearly suc- ceeded in doing at the Revolution under Crom- well, but a process often observed in England really betrayed it. The old military feudal aristocracy struck hands with the leadership of the movement on its economic side, and es- tablished the throne again and the rule of what afterward (under William, 1688) became the great W T hig party. Had the Stuarts been willing for the sake of nominal royalty to sub- mit to what became Whig rule, they might be on the throne yet. But they were Tory, feudal and aristocratic through and through, and the Whig party had to rid itself of the incubus. One of the ways in which the Tory leaders were detached from the feudal interest was by corn laws and the control of the food market. 130 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS This was exceedingly important to them, for as industry and commerce rose farm rents be- came relatively unimportant, as compared with site rents for warehouses and factories, or rents for coal lands and water power. Only by taxing the food supply of the rapidly increas- ing population could farm rents be kept up. The hardships endured by the manufacturing population, utterly unprotected from exploita- tion by the commercial masters on the one hand, and the land-owning class on the other, called into being the sympathy that enabled the trad- ing interest in free trade to push its reform, and later enabled the landed aristocracy to put through factory reform (Lord Shaftes- bury). Out of this readjustment came the so-called Manchester school. Its emphasis was upon the freedom of the individual. It demanded free exchange for the manufactured products, and built up a most elaborate and useful political economy upon the needs of the great industrial community. Now, what happens constantly with both re- ligion and political economy is the prostitu- tion of its victories by the selfishness of a class. When the Christian Church by bloody sacrifice had won its way to paramount influence in the life of humanity, the military aristocracy of the Roman-Oriental world claimed it as its own THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 131 under Constantine, and the Church made the colossal blunder of entering most gladly into the compromise. It is easy for us to see the blunder now. It was not so easy to see it then. Exactly the same thing has happened with the Manchester political economy. Its victories over feudal selfishness x were used for the establishment of a type of individual- ism that exploited women and children in the factories and mines of the newborn industrial- ism, and that extended its protection over hor- rors of which England is now ashamed. A cry went up that is echoed in Charles Kingsley's " Alton Locke," and a distinct re- action set in against the teachings of Man- chester individualism. This was voiced not only by Owen and later by the Christian Social- ists, but also found expression in the factory acts, the bills for the protection of women and children, and later in the municipal reforms in which Manchester itself has an honorable place. In this reaction too much scorn may now be poured out upon the Manchester thinking. In its origin it exalted the individual as over against the feudal oligarchy which was crush- ing England's life. It stood for the moral au- tonomy of adult manhood. It recognized the 1 The reader interested, and wishing to convince himself of the facts, may turn to Adam Smith, Thorold Rogers, Green's "His- tory of the English People," etc. 132 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS larger world and sought to break down the narrow national boundaries of sometimes stupid and sometimes downright selfish tariff restrictions on the food supply of England. It tried seriously to formulate a program of po- litical and social reform. Its services to the political reconstruction of English life were not only considerable, but its emphasis upon the individual made directly for a larger and freer democracy. The reform bills by which the franchise was taken out of the hands of the land-owning oligarchy, "Whig and Tory, and a redistribution of the political power made pos- sible, were passed only because the individual- ism of Manchester thinking had so enormously weakened the patriarchal social structure. Moreover, it taught Englishmen to think in phrases of economic readjustment instead of merely political formulae. At the same time, the teachings of the Man- chester school were fearfully abused. Political freedom is a mere farce, while economic free- dom is impossible, and Manchester individual- ism was scholastic; it refused to consider any- thing as even worthy of examination that threatened the closed system of "private property. ' ' The ideal Christian family knows no "private property" that is not subject to the larger in- terest of the family life. Private possession is THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 133 at best but stewardship, nor is property the foundation of the family organization, but the spiritual life of love, service, and fellowship. To this property is only a means. The polit- ical economy of the Manchester school treated it as an end. And indeed nearly all classical political economy is cursed by the same un- fortunate misinterpretation of life. Human life was thought of as a means for the produc- tion and distribution of goods. Wealth was separated from its real significance as a means to social and communal well-being and joy. It was made the end of life. In its supposed in- terests, with the pronounced individualism of the "let alone" school of thinking as armor, a hard battle was and still is fought against every proposed reform. The sins of the governing oligarchy of the past had made men afraid of all government regulation, and the cry was al- ways raised that that government was best that governed least. This policeman theory of government struck indeed, at the aristocratic patriarchal system which cramped and stunted English life. At the same time, it was utterly without communal idealism or communal faith and hope. Even the old aristocratic semi-feudal system had much in it that was tender, beautiful, and socially effective. Even selfish landlordism was made to feel its responsibilities by feudal 134 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS tradition. Toryism looks back, as in Walter Scott, with longing eyes to the ethics and tra- ditions of the feudal days. In contrast with the savage anarchy of the early days of industrial "freedom" so called, those ways were ways of relative peace. The fearful excesses of indus- trial greed working in a competition that slew the man who did not sink to the level of the greediest produced a state of affairs shocking to all really Christian feeling. In the reports to Parliament facts were brought out shameful in the last degree, and made possible only by the insensate theory that the individual freedom to exploit one's fellow creatures was a heaven- born gift. Moreover, the "let alone" theory of the Manchester school was only half-baked and never really carefully thought through. It had no range of vision and no grasp of the historic situation. It was dominated by certain a priori assumptions, but had neither the courage nor the insight to press these home to their ex- treme application. It was clear, but shallow and really ill-informed, and in its later stages was hard, dogmatic, and ignorant. Most unfortunately, in some respects, its thinking has enormously influenced and even corrupted the religious feeling and thought of our common Protestantism. Whether in Eng- land or the United States the Churches directly THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 135 under the influence of English Liberalism have been held back from much social agitation and reform by the specter of interference with the " rights of property and the individual." And all too often property has been more than human life, and wealth-collecting more than the family basis of the national organization. This explains some of the strange political anomalies of English life to-day. Mr. Glad- stone, who was a born and bred aristocrat, with many most pronounced Tory sympathies, who never really had faith in the democracy, was followed to a man by the middle-class dissent of England. In spite of Mr. Gladstone's High Church views ; in spite of a bill of disestablish- ment in Ireland that left the Church really richer than she was before, and was an out- rageous job in many of its details ; in spite of a tenderness for all that is really dear to the Tory heart, Mr. Gladstone retained to the end the confidence and affection of the politically liberal party. He stood in the eyes of dissent- ing Liberalism for the protection of thrift and the will of the middle classes. Whether Mr. Gladstone would ever have really become a radical is an academic question, but if he had he would have lost the support of the English Chapel, for the Chapel is still thoroughly under the influence of Manchester, and is bent on conserving the values upon which the older 136 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS Liberalism laid so much stress. Radicalism in England is now largely the possession of the proletariat and the Established Church. And socialism of a centralized paternal character has a large following even in the oldest Tory strongholds. CHAPTER XIII INDIVIDUALISM IN THE UNITED STATES THE founding of the Republic was a work of great difficulty. The fear of a governmental oligarchy was ever present to men's minds. Thoughtful men were greatly influenced by the wave of feeling that was sweeping over France and Europe, and that formulated by the Ency- clopedists, Rousseau and Voltaire, was produc- ing that state of mind which made the political revolution possible. This sense of revolt against all authority was the natural reaction against the tyranny of both Church and State. This tyranny was well-nigh unchecked. The Reformation had not immediately made for political freedom. The reformers sought refuge from the Church in the arms of petty princes and powerful kings. The Roman Church has been a constant menace to all tyranny save its own. There had always been the possibility, in the last resort, of an appeal to the Pope. Where the Reformation came there arose at once, in England, in Germany, and in France, such despotisms as the feudal system had not tolerated. In England this tyranny had found its fate in Cromwell, and in France 137 138 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS matters were ripe for the final struggle there. In the meantime those who were shaping the destiny of the Eepublic guarded as best they could the interests of individual freedom and the security of property; both of which inter- ests had suffered so sadly all down England's weary wars after the Reformation. Thus a philosophy of individualism deeply influenced by French thinking controlled the educated and thoughtful few. France was, also, wildly popular because of her support against England in the war for independence. The frontier life which made " every man a self-supporting institution" deepened the dis- trust of all communal control. It was the ener- getic, forceful, independent man who made his way to America, and whose independence was strengthened and deepened by almost unlimited free land, and scope for individual energy. All bureaucratic restriction upon the individual was simply abhorrent to the soul of the early settler. He could not brook even the simplest interference with his varied activity. Gen- eration after generation grew up trained to the widest self-expression, and taught from infancy to distrust all centralized govern- ment. This reflected itself in the struggle for state rights, and in the tremendous jealousy which kept men from being willing to yield any power INDIVIDUALISM IN THE UNITED STATES 139 they could help to the central authority. So far as France influenced political theory her influence was all on this side. For among the French Encyclopedists there was a marked revival of the old Roman Stoic philosophy, with its emphasis upon individual rights and a natural order. The ethics of au- thority in the Church had gone almost alto- gether under the scorn and ridicule of the edu- cated, and Stoicism took its place. On the eco- nomic side this philosophy found expression in the work of Fra^ois Quesnay (1694-1774), the physician to Louis XV and the real founder of the French Physiocrats, whose work in the Encyclopedia and elsewhere was of great value. 1 They based their philosophy upon the faith that all wealth came from the soil, and that each man was entitled to free trade, freedom of person, opinion, property, and exchange. All our evils sprang, they said, from unwhole- some interference by the state with the natural rights of the individual. Taxes should be only upon the land, and landlordism was only a burden. They were the real authors of the laissez-faire school, and Adam Smith only adapted their thinking to the times in England. Their theories were swamped at the Eevolu- l The reader is referred to Gustav Cohn's "History of Political Economy" (Eng. tr. by Hill) or Ingram's "History of Political Economy." 140 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS tion, but they commanded the attention of the educated few. 1 Unfortunately, the teachings of Quesnay, so wholesome for France, where all land was mo- nopolized, affected American life only where it was least needed. No one dreamed in the days of the early Republic that land could ever be really a monopoly in the United States. The real teaching of the school fell unheeded, for it referred mainly to wholesome methods of taxa- tion. Even if they had been understood the American farmer would have revolted against the idea of the government being the universal landlord in the way the physiocrats taught. The revolt from feudalism was complete, the farmer thought. He never dreamed of millions of acres mortgaged to foreign landholders across the sea. The revival of Stoic emphasis upon free- dom and natural rights was, however, a wel- come war cry in the struggle against England. Religious life does not seem to have been warm and vigorous at the time of the Revolu- tion. Deism and decayed Puritanism, with a Tory Episcopacy, did not make a combination calculated to rouse enthusiasm. The evangel- ical revival which was already on the horizon had not yet dawned. The ethical life found its basis not in the teaching of Jesus so much as ^Turgot, Abb6 Bandeau, Marquis Mirabeau, and many others accepted the conclusions of Quesnay. INDIVIDUALISM IN THE UNITED STATES 141 in classic paganism. This classic basis reflects itself in the colonial building and in the colonial literature. The founders of the Republic were often deeply religious men, but the religion was that of the Roman Stoics. It is a mark of this Stoicism that cosmopolitanism has stamped upon it individualism. The family group had broken down in the Roman slave empire. The man stood alone, and sought his consolation in haughty independence and proud self-assertion. The Christian Church was often practically dominated by these classic ideals, and to this day Stoic paganism often resounds in evan- gelical pulpits with the words of Jesus as a peg upon which the teaching is hung. The social life was dominated, therefore, by a practical paganism under Church forms. Episcopacy was often feudal, aristocratic, and Tory. Presbyterianism was prevailingly intellectual, dogmatic, and legal. Congregationalism was much under the influence of a cold, hard legal type of Puritanism. Individual exceptions were, of course, striking and numerous. But the social influence of organized Christianity seems to have been slight, awaiting the great evangelical movement which awoke with Metho- dism and the Baptists in the forefront of a new battle for a really Christian world. Yet even evangelicalism addressed itself to the individual life, and taught a strongly indi- 142 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS vidualistic gospel. It sought to bring the soul and God together, and treated salvation as an intimate private matter. Salvation, it taught, should indeed result in a man's doing good to his fellow men. At the same time, the kingdom of God on earth was not made the goal of sal- vation. Nor did evangelicalism deal much with the thought of a redeemed group and a re- deemed national and political life. Particularly American evangelicalism remained a gospel of personal extrication from ruins for which it felt little responsibility. This individualism was often narrow and selfish, and affected un- favorably the social attitude of the organized churches toward great and growing evils, such as slavery and intemperance. It marked also the policy of the churches, making the scramble for good locations and rich pew-holders a mis- erable reproach to the name of Jesus. In the quite proper emphasis upon personal responsi- bility and the moral dignity of manhood, as well as the ethical autonomy of the real Chris- tian, organized evangelical Christianity not only neglected other values, but even almost forgot the thing she was sent to proclaim and for which she so earnestly prayed. CHAPTER XIV THE SOCIAL PEOPOSALS OF ANARCHY THE thoughtful Christian man will not let the popular wrath against social and revolutionary violence blind him to any good that there may be in the sober proposals of men of seeming good will. The insensate anarchy of violence will not be put down by foolish and equally in- sensate and indiscriminate attack. Out of the loins of American individualism has sprung a sober idealistic individualistic social proposal which for want of a better name the writer proposes to call atomistic anarchy. It had its herald in the writings of Josiah Warren, 1 who was followed by such extreme individualist teachings as those of Stephen P. Andrews and Colonel "William P. Greene. None of these men used the name anarchy, so far as the writer knows. But as a philosophy of life and under this name anarchy has been formu- lated by Benjamin E. Tucker. 2 The foundation of all individualistic think- ing is that man is the atom, the unit of society. The individual has his rights, and morality and i "True Civilization" (1846); "Equitable Commerce." a Editor of "Liberty." 143 144 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS political wisdom demand for the individual all freedom to do as he pleases so long as he is not interfering with the freedom of other men to do as they please. Anarchy says that as that gov- ernment is best that governs least, so the best government of all is no government at all. It simply follows up Adam Smith, Eicardo, Her- bert Spencer, and all laissez-faire teachers to the logic of their premises. This atomistic an- archy rejects all coercive government. The moral man will not be an aggressor upon his neighbor's liberty, and voluntary association for the protection of liberty will be sufficient to keep the peace. As no man has the right to coerce his fellow man, so no number of men have any right to coerce their fellow man. Basing its ethics upon the moral autonomy of Kant, it proclaims all external coercion as essentially immoral, and traces most of the evils of society to a coercive rule over the lives of men. The philosophy is clear-cut, and far more respectable than the somewhat muddled think- ing of Herbert Spencer. The ethics are bold and the economic speculation most attractive. At the same time, it is as a philosophy utterly unsound. Man is not the unit of society, but the man-woman-child group. All the evils that are so elaborately traced to coercion only spring from loveless coercion. The fact that the gov- THE PROPOSALS OF ANARCHY 145 ernmental type of coercion is loveless does in- deed condemn it, but coercion need not be, and increasingly is felt not to be, loveless. The mother's coercion of her child may be unwise, but if it is loving coercion it will neither harden nor demoralize. Moral autonomy is the goal and not the foundation of society. It is what we aim at. But society will never be wholly composed of morally autonomous adults, and therefore a place for loving coercion will always exist. Al- most everything charged against the cold and sometimes brutal coercion of the commonplace political government is true. At the same time, all political coercion is not loveless, and increas- ingly we may hope that it will become ethical (children's courts, probation officers, etc.). No Christian citizen should fail to read, if he have a chance, Governor Altgeld's little tract "Our Penal Machinery and Its Victims." But the remedy is not to remove the whole machinery as anarchy would do, but to make it the ex- pression of communal love. This Altgeld saw plainly, and his protest is against loveless force. It is the weakness of all individualist think- ing, that it starts with maturity, while life be- gins with infancy and ignorance. If we had a completely moral society perhaps anarchy would work, but any machinery would work 146 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS under such circumstances. What we actually deal with is an ignorant imperfectly moralized life set to aid and instruct a still more ignorant and helpless and wholly unmoralized infancy. Herbert Spencer's "Education" advocates a scheme that would be socially far too costly. We cannot let children burn off their hands at red-hot stoves in order to teach them not to touch red-hot stoves. We cannot let ignorant unmoralized men fling bombs about in the hope that they will sooner or later see the folly of it. Coercion, as Herbert Spencer himself sees, is a part of life. For the religious man the co- ercions of life are personal. He has the same confidence in the All-Father that the child has in the parent ; and save in circumstances of ex- ceptional unwisdom and brutality the coercions of a parent do not harden or embitter. The coercions of an even partially moralized group might have the same effect, and in fact do have in many instances the same effect. Loving moralized coercion would have no serious ob- jection raised against it even if not always equally wise. What we actually see in our police courts, in our jails and prisons, is loveless and often lawless coercion. Seeing this, anarchy would throw out the child with the bath. What is really needed is the moralizing of our co- ercions and not an impossible plea for their entire discontinuance. Such discontinuance THE PROPOSALS OF ANARCHY 147 would expose the weak and timid to even greater violence and injustice than they suffer now. Moreover, from the Christian point of view the emphasis upon the individual is a false one. Self-expression and individual liberty are not for the Christian man the ends of life. No man liveth to himself. Our life is a means to an end and receives its highest content as a means to the kingdom purpose. Of course, individual- istic anarchy is, at this point, frankly pagan. It is highly ethical and often deeply and pro- foundly religious, but its ethics are from pagan Eome, and its religion is vague and utterly nonchristian or even antichristian. Here is frankly a complete difference in ideals. The really Christian man lives the life of service and finds his highest joy in it. That, according to Christ, is the measure of faith. In losing life for the sake of others, he believes that he finds life. This is meaningless to the convinced in- dividualist. For such a one even wife and child may become such a hindrance to self-expres- sion, such a limitation to his liberty, that the highest morality demands their desertion. Not that he may not be the most devoted of hus- bands and kindest of fathers, but again he may not be, and the question may be one rather of temperament than of ethics. So Goethe was morally at his height when self-expression de- 148 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS manded the artistic ruin of maiden innocence, and he suffered for art's sake! Such questions are, of course, in the last analysis matters of our judgments as to what has value in life. Only it must be clearly recog- nized that the Christian estimate is one thing, and the anarchist estimate is another. Indi- vidualism may be right, but if so Christ Jesus was wrong. And however lofty and noble and inspiring the Stoicism of old Eome may be, at least it was a different nobility and another inspiration from that of Jesus Christ and his religion. Now, the Christian pulpit is often, in fact, tempted to really preach a weak and half- hearted individualism, and to mingle the ethics of anarchy with the teachings of Jesus. No mistake could be greater. To get a man to save himself first, and then go to work to save others, is the wrong way to go about the Father 's busi- ness. The man that starts in to save the .group and redeem others will get all the salvation he really needs as a by-product that is, if he starts in about it as Jesus did. This was the great lesson the Moravians taught John Wes- ley, and he never forgot it. The taunt of Christ's enemies should be true of every Chris- tian he saved others, himself he could not save. The anarchist indictment of our coercive gov- THE PROPOSALS OF ANARCHY 149 ernment is a terrible one. He who has looked into some of our county jails has looked into hell. But the indictment assumes that coercive government is the cause, whereas we have no experience of any other, and, alas! find every- where oppression, wrong, and cruelty. So far as we dare call ourselves Christian we are re- sponsible for these things. At the same time, Christian love has never had a chance to organ- ize society any more than atomistic anarchy. In each case faith alone sees the outcome. What the signs of the time are as indicating the speedy triumph of one or other each must read for himself. The churchly imperialism of the Middle Ages was not Christianity, nor is as yet any modern state a complete expression of the kingdom purpose of redeeming love. There is another type of anarchy that might appeal in some respects more strongly to the Christian than the self-centered individualism of atomistic anarchy. This type may be called communistic anarchy. Although here too the individual is in the foreground, yet the empha- sis is more distinctly upon the voluntary group. The reason for this may, perhaps, be found in the influence that the primitive group forma- tion of the "rnir" in Russia, and the guild of the Middle Ages has exercised over the minds of the leaders. Michael Bakouine may be re- garded as the father of the movement, and un- 150 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS fortunately he committed the movement to an "anarchy of deed" in a way that has hidden its real message from even thoughtful men. The movement was at first associated with com- munistic socialism, until in 1872 Karl Marx, who realized the utter incongruity of the two fundamental philosophies that underlay com- munistic anarchy and socialism, separated the movements, and from that on Marxian socialism and communistic anarchy have had little in common. The later leaders, like Prince Peter Kropotkin and Elisee Eeclus, have not made violence a part of their program although recognizing revolution as a possible feature of the tactics of the party. Communistic anarchy does not so much start with the individual as with voluntary group production, and communism, therefore, is the instrument of production. It was at this point that the early leaders found in the Interna- tional scope for their agitation. They, however, turned away with disgust from the almost mili- tary discipline that Karl Marx was bent upon making a part of the social democratic tactics. For them this amounted to a denial of "lib- erty," and a reassertion of the principle of authority, against which their main protest was directed. And strangely enough in the fan- tastic brains of some of them the thought finds place that they can "coerce" society into be- THE PROPOSALS OF ANARCHY 151 coming "noncoercive," and that this can be accomplished by isolated outrages which have only served to strengthen and make more arbi- trary the power society is willing to intrust to the police. The policy of outrage was born of the bitterness undoubted wrongs and in- justice have engendered in the minds of sincere but misguided fanaticism. The ethics, however, that underlie the serious contributions of men like Kropotkin and Eeclus are not by any means contemptible. They reveal their Hegelian training and their origin in Proudhon, as well as later Kantian influences. For their thought the robbing of the community of the necessary access to the in- struments of production is the crime of history, and all moral evils they trace to this "crime." There can be no morality without absolute in- dividual freedom. So also only autonomous voluntary groups can be really moral. As all identify religion with "authority," they turn away from it, but assert the highest life to be one of love, fellowship, peace, and cooperation. The family is the foundation of the communis- tic group, but that the family may be really moral the relationship must be free. Love must be the sole basis of monogamy, and not force. As soon as force is made a substitute for love the relationship is immoral. They think mo- nogamy natural, and only the immoral relations 152 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS introduced by commercialism and greed and maintained by coercion are responsible for the breaking up of the family life in middle-class commercialism. The ultimate conception of society is a freely organized communism, in which all human powers have full play and in which love and science will go hand in hand for the furtherance of the ideal life. All wrong, injustice, greed, ag- gression, violence, and fraud will stop so soon as all share freely in the enormous production voluntary communism will, they think, call out. With the economic objections, and particu- larly with the historical material dealing with communistic production, we are not here con- cerned. Undoubtedly there are points of contact be- tween the early hopes of Christianity and com- munistic anarchy. Even the book of Revela- tion shows how divine violence and catastro- phic revolution stirred the blood of hunted and outraged Christians. At the same time never was the word of Jesus revealed more plainly in its divine wisdom than when he said, "For all they that take the sword shall perish by the sword." The spasmodic and fruitless violence of the revolutionary communistic anarchy of early days has done more to strengthen reaction and encourage men in lawless and loveless co- ercion than reams of social refutation of THE PROPOSALS OF ANARCHY 153 anarchist theory. Every instinct of self- preservation on the part of the group reacts at once when a bomb is thrown, killing gen- erally more harmless and innocent bystanders than those really responsible, even in the minds of fanatics, for our social evils. Nor can the really thinking men and women of to-day be largely persuaded that a group of men strong enough to coerce all society by bombs into obedience to their theory can be trusted to organize society on the high ideal platform they proclaim. And this doubt is strengthened as one notes the high-handed tyranny the anarchistic social labor group re- veal in their organization, most of their time and energy being spent apparently in ''expel- ling" recalcitrant members. And yet this platform is less selfish and indi- vidual than that of the coldly intellectual atom- istic anarchy. The works of Kropotkin, like "Mutual Aid" and "Fields, Factories, and Workshops," cannot be neglected by the seri- ously minded student of social reorganization with a view to the coming kingdom. The diffi- culty is again with the fundamental attitude toward all government. With all its faults gov- ernment has been the culture-bearing instru- ment. The moralization, and not the abolish- ment of the government, is the goal. Even Nero's tyranny was better than the lawless 154 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS anarchy that preceded Rome 's rule. It may well be that coercive government, save for children and pathological criminals, might have no place in a moralized group. Yet the fact remains that even bad governments, such as that of Turkey and China, historically have made for righteousness, and have their support, not, as the anarchist believes, in pure force, but in the normal psychological reaction of the individ- ual to the group authority. With, therefore, both the philosophy and the tactics and its estimate of the meaning of gov- ernment and life the Christian man finds him- self hopelessly out of accord, however much a loving, voluntary, noncoercive government on the basis of a loving moralized family may ap- peal to him also as a most fitting expression of God's kingdom here on earth. CHAPTER XV THE INDIVIDUALISM OF SINGLE TAX THE philosophy of Henry George was born upon American soil, and is a product of the individualistic thinking so characteristic of life in the United States. In the remarkable work " Progress and Pov- erty" three separate elements are to be dis- tinguished. There is, first, the underlying phi- losophy of life; then there are the economic assumptions, and, thirdly, the proposed remedy. The Christian man has, probably, more con- tacts with the advocates of the single-tax move- ment than with almost any other social pro- posal, for it has sprung from the same great middle-class movement whence the larger Prot- estant denominations also have their main strength. In almost every congregation of really thoughtful Christians advocates of the single tax may now be found. It is of impor- tance, then, to relate the movement to our dream of the coming kingdom of God on earth. And although the economic side is not our main interest, the first thing a thoughtful Chris- tian man should do is to really take pains to find out what is actually proposed. 155 156 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS The movement is generally strongly anti- socialistic, because the individual, and not the producing group, is the center of interest. Henry George accepts the postulate of the French physiocrats. Free land, he says, will give us free men. The single-taxer strongly insists upon the division between the land as the common opportunity for all production, and the private property of the individual in what he produces. The group has a moral right to demand rent for what it should possess in com- mon, which is land ; but what a man produces is the result of his labor to that no one has a right but himself. The single-tax philosophy as held by Henry George, Louis Post, and others is that of natural rights. To the product of the individual the individual alone has a right; to the things the individual does not create, but which are given land, including all natural resources, such as mines, oil wells, forests, etc. the community has a "natural right," and then there are also values created by the community. No one indi- vidual has made the land of Manhattan Island of such enormous worth. It is from these "values" which the community has created that the community has a natural right to draw its revenue. In this philosophy the individual is the central figure. The ethics of the single-tax movement SINGLE TAX 157 are always distinctly individualistic. The clearest presentation of this philosophy and its ethics is by Mr. Louis Post in his work ' ' Ethics of Democracy. ' ' * The movement is also full of ethical enthusiasm. The evils of society are traced to our infringement of natural laws. The community takes in taxation values to which it has no right, and leaves to private owners values to which they have no right. This re- sults in all sorts of unjust and oppressive mo- nopoly; for the possession of the communal values gives private individuals a power of tax- ation to which they are not entitled. The economics are worked out by Henry George, but somewhat imperfectly, and with some concessions he need not in strict logic make. With the economics we are, of course, only in a secondary way interested. Now, the remedy proposed is that the com- munity reclaim by a single tax on land values, that is, on the rental value of land, its over- lordship of the industrial opportunities God gave to all, .and which the community should hold in trust for all. Single tax would not interfere with private possession of land and natural resources, but distinguishes between permanent tenure and private ownership. The community has a right to ask rent in proportion 1 Louis F. Post, "Ethics of Democracy" (Chicago, 2d ed., 1903). Compare especially Part I and Part II and Part V. 158 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS to the industrial opportunity. It has no right to the values the individual creates. These be- long to him. This brings in a word which has hitherto been, as far as possible, carefully avoided in these pages. The foundation of the social hope of individualism is faith in competition. The progress of society depends, it is claimed, upon free competition. There cannot, however, be free competition while some own the right of access to the industrial and agricultural oppor- tunities, and can tax their fellow men for the right to work God's earth. At this point single tax takes up the hope of the Manchester indi- vidualism, but shows where that hope betrayed the school, seeing that free trade without free access to the industrial and agricultural oppor- tunity was a relative farce. The work of Charles Darwin has given great force to the contention that life is a struggle in which the fittest out of vast numbers succeed, while the relatively unfit go down in the strug- gle, thus leading men ever upward to larger and freer life. With this struggle the indi- vidualist philosophy, as it underlies the Man- chester school's thinking, and the single tax, would not interfere but would demand only "a square deal," to use the sporting term drawn from the card table. Of course, if the natural resources are a monopoly of the few there can SINGLE TAX 159 be no even race. "With ninety per cent of the land in England in the hands of less than ten per cent of the population, it is evident that the race for material possession does not start fairly. The competition is begun with numbers heavily handicapped by ignorance, poverty, poor food, narrow surroundings, etc. The single-tax advocate hopes by throwing open all the natural opportunities of wealth to any energy fit to use those opportunities, first, to enormously increase production, so that pov- erty would cease to be possible, and, secondly, to so greatly stimulate the struggle among the really capable that efficiency now squandered by society will come easily to its own, and all the science and art that give us mastery over the world will reap the benefit. The appeal is a very powerful one. The evils of land monopoly are patent. London is choked by barren and relatively unused land, while her population starves for air and light and slaves to pay parasitic landlordism and burdensome land speculation profits that are stained by the blood of dying mothers and con- sumptive children. The same is true of every great city, and indeed of town and village. The man who improves his property is promptly fined by increased taxation, while the idle land reaps the benefit. Great sums of money are wasted holding land idle that never pays any 160 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS profit when at last sold, and which could have supported in the meantime a great industrious population. Everywhere that even an approach to land-value taxation has been tried the re- sults, as in Germany, have been fairly startling. As an economic measure the single tax has won its way to serious respect and consideration, and no Christian man has done his full duty to the kingdom dream who has not weighed its claims and sought to discover the truth that underlies it. 1 At the same time, while we may even accept the economic measure as perhaps the most promising and least revolutionary reform pro- posal, it is well for us to ask ourselves whether the underlying philosophy of competition must not be considered and perhaps restated before the Christian man can accept it. It shares, in the first place, the weakness of the outlook of anarchy upon life that it begins with the adult as the unit of society, whereas in point of fact this is unhistorical and un- psychological. The real unit of society is the man-woman-child group. There history and ethics and religion historically start. Then, again, Darwin's law of the survival of the fittest does not indicate who are the "fit." The competitive economic struggle crushed out 1 This side of the question may best be studied in Thomas Shearman's "Natural Taxation." SINGLE TAX 161 Jesus. It has, indeed, produced " successful" types. But are we really seeking as the end of human life supremely powerful, grasping, organizing men of economic ability? Is ''suc- cess" in the existing social and commercial world a passport to the kingdom of God on earth as Jesus painted it ? Even if we flung the race open under fairer conditions what types would come to the fore? The Christian man must ask himself what he means by competition. Emulation may be, in- deed, a necessary stimulus to exertion. We wish to paint, or write, or run, or play as well as possible to us. The Greek games gave prizes very freely, and the vanquished athletes got health and courage even in defeat. The Eoman show was bloody, deadly, and wholly demoral- izing. Even the victor often came away bear- ing disabling wounds to his grave. This is, alas! the picture of our existing commercial scramble. Why? Because the end of that kind of competition is the exclusion of the compet- itor to whom we are opposed. Even if land were thrown open to the energy best able to use it and pay for it, the quantity is limited. Energy could thinkably so occupy it that the relatively weak would be at their mercy then as now. Perhaps not. But the theory is at fault. Competition is not the spring of man's highest activity. It did not organize the 162 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS thought of Jesus or of Paul. The fittest to survive are often the children of sweet and gentle mothers to whom even the thought of the most harmless emulation never occurred. The earliest competition excluded the oppos- ing competitor with a club. That was wasteful, and as soon as wandering savages settled down on the land they made slaves instead of killing. As men became merciful they did not like to see their slaves starve, and rid themselves of some responsibilities by serfdom. So rose the great Eoman estates. The wage system is more economical still, but under all states lies the un- moralized struggle for economic advantage and the subordination of human life to our purpose. This is fundamentally immoral from the Chris- tian point of view. The individual lives not for himself but for the group, the man-woman- child group. This group, also, lives not for itself but for the larger group, and all for the kingdom of God. The moral appeal of single tax is therefore strongest when it is made on the basis of the communal property in our natural resources, and is weakest when the "rights" of the indi- vidual are made the starting point. Social ex- perience, indeed, recognizes the rights of the individual as a most valuable social asset, but as long as society claims the right to send its members on to the battlefield to die for the SINGLE TAX 163 group, so long men instinctively feel that all individual rights are subordinated finally to the group. This was the distinct teaching of Jesus. He never dealt with the economic and philosophical aspects of the question of private property and economic competition. But he looked at life religiously. Life was, for him, stewardship. To resolve this stewardship into an economic struggle for private property would have been for him unthinkable. Our present social order so far at it is commercial competition for per- sonal economic advantage, with profits as a stimulus to action, and private possession of the wealth-producing opportunities as its goal, would have been to Jesus as abhorrent as was the military aristocracy of Eome or the super- cilious theocracy at Jerusalem. The wise Christian critic of the single tax will therefore disassociate the philosophy from the economic measure. He may accept the eco- nomic measure as justified by common sense, social expediency, and what he knows of eco- nomics. It is a serious and important question which these pages can only lay before him. He must decide the main question in the light of the kingdom purpose, asking himself whether this is a wise and just economic measure for advancing the reign of loving justice among men. And, as we have said, no really Christian 164 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS man can afford to pass the question by without most serious consideration. This considera- tion must also be unselfish and broad-minded. He must ask himself, ' * Do I get any undue ad- vantage over my economically weaker brothers and sisters through land monopoly? and if so, will a single tax on land values help to break that monopoly?" If the answer is "Yes" to this last question, the answer "Yes" to the first should not stop him in his advocacy of a measure which in that case were sheer justice and love. NOTE. The modern single-tax advocates realize that there are communal values that must always remain more or less excluded from free competition, as railway franchises, tele- graph wires, telephone service, etc. These most of them would now "socialize" as they would the land, paying, perhaps, even more than the current price for the sake of communal con- trol. At the same time, even here they are in- clined to trust as much as possible to individual initiative and to free competition. Compare Oliver E. Trowbridge, "Bisocialism," and Henry George, Jr., * * The Menace of Privilege. ' ' CHAPTER XVI INDIVIDUALISM AND DEMOCEACY CALVIN, who was a pretty thoroughgoing aristocrat in thought and feeling, has defined democracy as "The rule of the many in which every man has power." A pure democracy would, of course, be one in which there was equality in political power. And yet even a politically pure democracy could only become essential democracy when economic equality en- abled each man to freely use his political power. Walt Whitman defines democracy as the de- sire to have nothing which the next man may not have the counterpart of at the same price. The Constitution holds up as an ideal a state in which all men are born free and (politically) equal. As slavery was recognized this was only an ideal. Government was rested by the same group of men upon the consent of the gov- erned. All this is felt instinctively to somehow ring false. Most of us feel that even politically we are not either free or equal, and that we have never really assented to the particular govern- ment under which we happen to live. In fact, many of us are politically too ignorant to either dissent or assent. 165 166 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS The danger the founders of the American Eepublic feared was the tyranny on the one hand of the mob, and on the other of the tyrant. They knew enough of history to realize the close relationship between the two. The French Rev- olution produced and made possible Napoleon. The violence of revolution in Russia has made the reaction to autocracy possible. The kill- ing of the police in Chicago has made the Amer- ican public willing to intrust power to police- men that not even Prussia permits. Individual- ism constantly forgets that submission to authority is a psychological reaction absolutely essential during the long years of human im- maturity. Fiske has pointed out the almost incalculable influence upon our life exercised by the long period of dependence of the child upon the parents and group. The menace of tyranny is great because the large part of the average life must be led under the conditions of a more or less benevolent tyranny. De- Morgan in " Alice for Short" has a touching analysis of the love and dependence of an abused, ill-treated child in its relation to the parents. No abuse hopelessly alienates a dog's affection for its master, and seemingly no out- rage completely undermines the touching con- fidence of the mass of men in the existing authority, whether in Turkey or Russia or New York. INDIVIDUALISM AND DEMOCRACY 167 Society is not an aggregate of disassociated units. It may not be properly called an organ- ism, but it is an organization, and an organiza- tion that is not chance nor a voluntary affair, nor yet a contract. It is an authoritative group, with all degrees of maturity from help- less infancy to powerful, well-developed per- sonalities. The nominal power is seldom in the same hands that yield the real power. The experts in Russia's history are not agreed among themselves to-day upon who is really ruling Russia. The ideal government would be that, no doubt, in which political power would be given in exact proportion to those who were morally and intellectually the maturest and most efficient. This ideal we cannot, at present, realize, and for the simple reason that no human wisdom can really determine grades of moral and intellectual maturity. Even the most extreme individualism would not give babies in arms a vote. But the time when a baby becomes an adult no one can fix. Some never become adults, even living to be old men and women. Democracy must always remain a relative thing. It should be the goal of our political ambition. And for this reason : So far as we are Chris- tian men and women we seek fellowship as sons and daughters of God with our Father. Our faith is that life's process is education for that 168 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS full fellowship and communion with him. The Protestant Christian ideal is not the contempla- tive life ; it is not being ''swallowed up in God's being," or quiescent enjoyment of him forever. Ai ifc best in Luther. JZLTvndale. in John-Wss- Tftv if. IH fftHQTyghip in the redeeming activity of Jesus Christ. We fill out in our bodies that "which is lacking of the sufferings of Jesus Christ for his body's sake, which is the Church. We share beyond the grave somehow, some- where, God 's eternal life. Hence the end of edu- cation is adult maturity and autonomous activ- ity. Political power is a means to this end as well as an end in itself. When at twenty-one we send a boy to the polls we do not, or ought not, to say to him simply, "You may go." We ought to say, "You are morally bound to go. You can achieve real political autonomy only by exercising your political right." It is ab- surd to think that the immature boy of twenty- one is the political equal of the President of the United States, but all the more necessary is it that he vote equally with the President that by exercising his power he may reach the same ma- turity. Thus God has intrusted us all with power far beyond our real capacity. What a mess we have made of our so-called civilization! How suggestively witty is Edward Carpenter's title, ' ' Civilization : Its Cause and Cure ! ' ' The chief INDIVIDUALISM AND DEMOCRACY 169 difficulty with aristocracy is, not that it has no faith in the people, but that it has no real faith in the divine ideal. It does not share God's hope that all men and women may become fit for his highest fellowship. One of the finest democrats in Christian his- tory since Paul was the highly cultured and most learned fellow of aristocratic Oxford John Wesley. One may read his diary from cover to cover and never really find out to what "economic class" he was preaching, save for incidental references to this or that circum- stance. All were to him "souls," potential kings and priests of the Most High. And all his wonderful talent for organization he put into the task of raising up men and women trained for propaganda. The Church was no "ark of comfortable safety for the soul"; it was God's instrument for redeeming the world, and every man, woman, and child in it was in it to be trained for the redemptive work. This was, as we have seen before, the fundamental note of his class-meeting system. The class leader was not simply probing into the souls of men and women to find out what was there, but experience and testimony were to fit all for redemptive service outside. He raised great leaders by giving men leadership. With all his seeming autocracy, he really left the organiza- tion most wisely to its own way. For his au- 170 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS thority was purely a means to an end, and that end was autonomy and Christian maturity. Aristocracy would sacrifice the discipline of life for the many to an ideal of efficiency of the few; moral and intellectual efficiency, so self- sufficient that it can permanently guide the relatively inefficient. Thus large numbers are condemned to a permanent childhood. They are taught to find their happiness in the light- heartedness of children. The slave population of the South before the war, outside the great cotton belt where they were commercially ex- ploited, was probably more light-hearted and gayer than that population is now. The Eoman Catholic Church knows no adult years for its lay membership, and offers to carry a load that weighs heavily at times on timid Protestants. Few of us really like to either think for our- selves or wield power and take its responsibility. We like to sit back and criticise like naughty incapable children, but only very few are really ''masterful." The result is that men are easily subjected to tyranny. It is easy to establish government, but exceedingly difficult to estab- lish self-government. But for men's souls' sake we must learn to take all the moral risks of immaturity. The mother bird pushes her little fluttering, unwilling offspring off the roofj because it must learn at last to fly and fee< itself. It was good for the disciples that Jesui INDIVIDUALISM AND DEMOCRACY 171 went away. They had to learn not to go to sleep in Gethsemane, and to take up themselves the work of the kingdom. The real democrat sees, then, in human moral autonomy a more real value than any amount of permanent economic efficiency. And even bad government that is training men for ma- turity is better than good government that leaves the large proportion contented children. A benevolent tyranny is hopelessly inefficient for the production of the highest values ma- ture men and women. Hence all tyranny has in God's good providence the seeds of rotten- ness in it. No man and no God is good enough or wise enough to really rule a son of God as a puppet or permanent playtoy. This is the pro- found truth of all individualism. The wildest anarchy would have a potential value greater than a peace bought with the price of man's surrender of his moral autonomy. God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in the same spirit and in truth, and all down the ages God has been seeking kindred souls to worship and fellowship with him. Indirectly Calvinism has done much to ad- vance democracy, but its ideal is not democratic. It reverted too strongly to the conception of a sacramental Church with a ministry holding the power of the keys and excluding the lay element from all the higher functions of the 172 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS Church. It knows no "lay" element in either its ruling or its preaching ministry. Its courts have no "laymen." Its highest councils ex- clude all "laymen." Its thought of God is all too often autocratic, kingly, and based rather upon the Old Testament 's revelation of Jehovah than upon the revelation of God our Father in the Lord Jesus Christ. The failure of individualism is that it so often seems to forget that authority may have a place, nay, must have a place, in training men for maturity. The Christian democrat may be intrusted with power if he use it not to simply promote economic efficiency, but to raise up self-governing men and women. As soon as au- thority is thought of as an end in itself, or as soon as the strong man begins to sacrifice the many, however benevolently, to a lesser ideal, then tyranny begins. Moral decay is as sure to set in as that night follows day. All author- ity, therefore, to be wholesome looks forward to its own supersession, and carefully provides for the trying moments of self-maintenance. That we will always have the poor and the in- efficient, the child and the weakling with us may be true, but only that we may transform the poor and the inefficient, the child and the weak- ling into strong men and women as far as in us lies. They need not always be the same poor and the same children. INDIVIDUALISM AND DEMOCRACY 173 The truly Christian man should be a democrat in this sense. For he believes in the eternal priceless character of each human being. He does not, indeed, start with a society of mature adults. This is unreal and unhistorical. He starts with the little family group, but at once realizes that the end of the group life is the training of all parents and children for larger and larger liberty. It is that liberty which comes only from self-control and the cultivation of those inner compulsions which at last give mastery over life and death in the name of the Father of life. This kind of Protestantism is serious busi- ness. It turns absolutely away from the tyranny of all merely outward authority. The authorities over life must speak to our inward sense of right and wrong, and must all appear before the judgment seat of the informed spirit. The parent trains the child to do at last its own thinking at the peril of wrong thinking. The Church trains its members to obey God rather than it or men. The ministry refuses to be a priesthood, and renounces all claim to infallible leadership or to stand between the child and its Father God. Traditions must all be tested again and again and by each genera- tion. The dangers are obvious and real. Life is a tremendous venture of faith. That life, however, is best guarded where its ultimate 174 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS autonomy is the goal of its education. The cloister is no longer possible, even if it ever effectively protected. Sooner or later the boy or girl must launch out on the stormy sea of life, and the compass and chart must be in the ship, and the boy and girl must be able to use them for themselves. Few of us really like to be Protestants. "We would like the minister, or the class leader, or the parent to tell us what to believe and what we are to do. Particularly in the things that are a little removed from the center of our in- terest we would like to have final authority. We hunger for something we do not have to think out for ourselves. But nothing has moral value for us that we have not made our own. We must in this sense be tremendous individual- ists. We get all the advice we can, we inform ourselves as fully as possible, in all nonessen- tial matters we bow to the will of the majority. But at the heart of the matter there is only one voice that can categorically command, and that is God's voice in our own inner conscience. And what we demand for ourselves we de- mand for others. We want autonomous matur- ity for all adult men and women. This is our ambition and our goal. It is a mark of the kingdom life. Thus we become Christian dem- ocrats on the basis of the group. The group exists for the individual in this sense, just as INDIVIDUALISM AND DEMOCRACY 175 the individual lives for the group. The end of the group life is the autonomy of the individual, not a permanent group tyranny. Government becomes the servant of the autonomous group. The kingdom is a kingdom of moral ends. Every political measure the Christian man weighs, anxiously asking, "What does that mean for the kingdom of God on earth?" He must read the lessons of history, he must weigh social loving expediency. He asks himself, "What effect will this measure have in making effective citizens of the kingdom of God 1 When shall the boy vote? Who has a duty to exer- cise the franchise? What machinery will best express the moral life of the community I What political party promises most for the future of the kingdom?" There are for the Christian man no "secular" questions. The goal is a kingdom of God with free citizenship in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. CHAPTER XVII THE SOCIAL EMPHASIS AND ITS PKOPOSALS ALL our knowledge rests ultimately upon our experience. Any explanation of life is an in- terpretation of our experience. The religious man finds in his experience things he must re- late in some way to all the rest of life. He has no quarrel with any genuine search for truth in any field, but also demands that any explanation of life offered to him for accept- ance take in all the facts, and no facts does he find more omnipresent than the religious facts and religious experience. As far back as search has taken us man seems to have had some sort of religious faith. The dead are given food for the life beyond, and some sort of communal meal with the gods is seemingly as early as any custom we can trace. Thus also the progress of man upward has been steadily accompanied by all kinds of religious acts. These are usually acts of the group. No doubt the thoughts of God are often childish and relatively unworthy. But we are all chil- dren and think, no doubt, even now unworthily of God. What we do see, however, is life or- ganized in group relationships, and that the 176 THE SOCIAL EMPHASIS 177 thought of God is always connected with this group relationship. From the earliest appearance of complicated life the male-female-child group forms the basis for all progress. There are all sorts of differences in the relations of that group. Even in humanity the composition of the group varies with the circumstances of the life. At certain stages polygamy, polyandry, descent through the woman, etc., mark the formation of the group. The direction, however, seems steadily to be toward monogamy, and the guarding of the immature life makes monogamy more than ever essential to the higher life as the period of immaturity is lengthened by new demands. The simple wants of savage life can be met by the boy as soon as the cortex of his brain is firm enough to give him fair control of his muscles. To-day the demands of the higher life would almost at once exhaust such resources. The boy in a great city should be carefully guarded and taught and protected against great nervous strains long after the little savage would have entered upon the mature life. This group life not only serves the purpose of moralizing the young, the parents are them- selves by it made ethical. Love is called out, the whole tribal group gains in moral depth from the affections cultivated by this guardian- ship of the young. The really unphilosophical 178 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS character of all proposals to remove children from their parents and bring them up under the state is made evident when one reflects upon the enormously important functions of parental affection even though it may not be as wise as the collective wisdom would be. Moreover, as we have seen, coercion is nec- essary in order to reap the benefit of social ex- perience. The immature child must obey, and that at times unquestioningly. A dozen times the hen may call her chickens uselessly under her wings because her silly head has mistaken a crow for a hawk, but if an overprecocious chicken too quickly tries to rationalize life, and refuses to be fooled again, that is the chicken the hawk gets. Even the most foolish parental care is better than the hopeless blank in the mind of the immature. Social experience is handed down as increas- ing instinctive acquirement; it is also handed down as unrationalized tradition. The last stage is the handing down of social experience in elaborate rationalized hypothesis. Educa- tion largely consists in putting the immature in a position to profit by social experience, and themselves in increasing degree to resolve the heritage thus gained into working maxims for their own and future generations. Hence the overwhelming importance of good traditions. A good rowing tradition will keep a college in THE SOCIAL EMPHASIS 179 Oxford at the head of the river until some other college enters into the tradition and perhaps improves upon it. For the 'same reason proper methods by which intellectual analysis will en- able us to separate the good from the bad, to follow up real trains of conditions, to act ra- tionally and yet independently, constitute the largest part of a real education. In ever greater measure the young of the group must be taught to think for themselves, because as life becomes increasingly complicated adjust- ment to its conditions requires ever greater mental capacity. Love and religion have been the great motive forces within the group that have kept, as it were, the higher life steadily advancing. Eco- nomic necessity is a wide term. The mere get- ting of food is a basis, but only a basis, for life. Imperative sexual impulses, and all manner of intellectual and artistic demands, social needs as well as personal requirements, become at times so important that even food seems a rela- tive good. The man who dies for his love or his religion, for his art or intellectual integrity, reveals the possible secondary character of what is normally primary in life. In the Old Testament we have a most won- derful picture of the social group held together under the most extraordinary difficulties by religious faith and family affection. The men- 180 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS tal superiority of the Jewish race is closely as- sociated to this day with its training of the young in the religious traditions of a memorable past. The social force of religious faith has had many illustrations all down history, but none quite comparable with that in the Old Testament. The thought of a Messianic kingdom, a reign of loving righteousness, was a steadily increas- ing power in Jewish thought from the eighth century before Christ down to the fall of Jeru- salem. The conception was also fundamentally democratic, for God was thought of in terms of national Fatherhood, at least when religious thought was at its best in Isaiah. The national group was, of course, in the forground, but when the religious feeling was purest and high- est the national group existed for the sake of revealing Jehovah to the world, and men would stream up to Jerusalem to worship Jehovah the God of Israel. Even when scattered and sep- arated the Jewish people kept the religious group in mind, and the synagogue became not only the center of the religious life but of the intellectual life suffused by religious faith. Materialism makes large claims for the future, but those claims rest on faith and guesses and not on the facts of human life. Up to the pres- ent, at least, the progress of the group is at every stage marked by a religious life that has THE SOCIAL EMPHASIS 181 suffused and given constancy to the higher life. Education has been religious. The national life has been religious. Art has been religious. The literature and songs of the race are prevail- ingly religious. It is curious, therefore, that men pretending to be scientific and historical, to rest only upon experience and facts, should not more diligently seek to know the facts, and ask themselves more seriously, "What is the underlying truth of the religious social experience?" Even if each economic stage produces its own type of religious experience, as may be, with great show of reason, contended, then the question arises, What kind of religion has permanent value, and what type will the new economic sit- uation men now dream about produce ? One social function of religion has been the uniting the group on a basis even more unshak- able than that of blood or tongue. In view of religious wars it may seem to some a mockery to speak of the unifying force of religion as one supreme social function. But religious wars are just the evidence of this. No wars have been so bitter because no bond holds so firmly as the religious bond. Only religion could weld the scattered nomads of the Arabic peninsula into the fighting force they have, under the influence of religion, time and again become. No other bond has resisted all sorts of pressure, includ- 182 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS ing economic pressure of the severest kind. The masters of society have not invented re- ligion, but they have always used or misused it. When Rome became cosmopolitan, and lost her simple tribal religious organization, the Roman emperors sought vainly for some re- ligion powerful enough to hold the empire together, and the only one strong enough was the great proletariat religion that called itself Christian. At the time Constantino subsidized^ it, it was already exceedingly corrupt. Never- theless it did the work he intended. And the reconstruction of the Eastern and Western empires is lasting historical evidence of the tremendous social force of the religious bond. The socially thinking historian must there- fore take religion into account, and reckon with the certainty that whatever else happens for generations religion is going to function, whether he likes it or no, and that the main question is therefore, How will it function, and what religious form promises the highest social result ? It is easy to predict the decay and disap- pearance of religion, but there are as yet no signs of this. It pervades life now as ever. Relatively indifferent masses have always ex- isted, and exist now. But there is no conclusive evidence that they are greater now than at any THE SOCIAL EMPHASIS 183 time, and a good deal of evidence that looks the other way. We must therefore review the social pro- posals with the religious factor constantly in mind. Indeed, as we start from Christian pre- mises it is important that we ask ourselves at the very beginning, What was the social hope of early Christianity, and how did it affect the history of our economic progress f It is in Christian countries that the most rad- ical and pronounced social proposals for the reconstruction of society have been made. It will be important to ask ourselves, What pre- ceded the various types of socialism which we. are called upon to review? At the same time, our review can be short because Professor Rauschenbusch in his admirable volume x has done the work so well. The alleged communism of early Christianity cannot be treated as an isolated phenomenon. This primitive communism was neither the cause of the Church's poverty at Jerusalem, nor had it any economic relationship to modern socialism. 2 It was the outcome of an impulse of brotherhood made real and given the glow and power of new religious enthusiasm. Yet Christianity started as a social hope. The 1 Walter Rauschenbusch, " Christianity and the Social Crisis," (New York, 1907). Compare Acts 2. 43-47; Gal. 2. 10; Acts 5. 4; 12. 12, 184 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS kingdom of God was to come, and to coine quickly. This meant, of course, various things to various minds, just as to-day socialism means very various things to various minds. To some early Christians the reign of God was simply a dramatic revenge for ancient wrongs. God would come and avenge the weak and op- pressed. To others it meant peace, holiness, and full and beautiful life for everybody in the spirit of the songs of Isaiah. To the loftiest Christian thought it meant the beauty of holi- ness made the possession of all by the dynamic of love working out brotherhood and forgive- ness in a God-forgiven life. As the expectancy of a speedy coming of catastrophic change faded, individual release and extrication, the hope of heaven, by de- grees, came to take the place of the social hope. Up to 323 A. D. the Church writers are exceed- ingly individualistic in their hope and faith. At the same time, the sacramental organization never really ceased to be a tremendous social power. The formulation of her life by Cyprian made of the Old Catholic Church an instrument that was seen to be supreme in efficiency as a political force. The change of emphasis was, however, marked. The Church became an imperial hier- archy, promising to individuals eternal salva- tion, and content to compromise with the secular THE SOCIAL EMPHASIS 185 imperialism so long as her main purpose was protected. 1 The change is best marked in Augustine 's great work ' ' The City of God. ' ' In spite of all the great social service of the Chris- tian Church, which sensible socialists are now coming to acknowledge, 2 it failed dramatically along two lines. It had no economic knowledge, and perhaps could not, at that economic stage, be expected to have it. The other limita- tion is more serious it was ethically defective. It had accepted Oriental dualism and Hellen- istic intellectualism, and had forgotten the theo- cratic democracy of the Old Testament. Its ethics were pervaded by an insidious selfish- ness, and the celibacy of the clergy deliberately selected the altruistic and religious elements in the community and made them either hypo- crites or sterile. The hierarchy was the coveted possession of selfish political rulers. The fatal compromise with Constantine worked havoc with the social ideals of primitive Christianity. And yet these ideals were not dead. And when the world awoke, and the discovery of America, trade and commerce, the printing press and gun- powder, the compass and Greek literature com- bined to stir men to new ambitions for the race, 1 The English reader may with profit consult Hatch's "Organ- ization of the Early Christian Church," the Bampton Lectures for 1880. 2 As in Hyndman's recent studies. 186 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS within the Church the old dream of a religious brotherhood reasserted itself. Campanella 's Civitas Solis and Moore's Utopia are but signs of the time. The Reformation was not simply a revolt against Roman Catholicism. It was a rebirth of humanity. It was a revolt against authority and tradition all along the line of human life. It had its several degrees and its several in- terests. Humanism revolted against authority in things of the mind. Nationalism revolted against imperial authority and ecclesiastical tyranny. The Anabaptists revolted against the authority of the oppressive oligarchies in both Church and State. The Reformers revolted against the authority of Rome in the religious life. It was this revolt that became the most effective and the most radical. It suffused the political, social, national, and even the intellec- tual ideals. Luther and Calvin were not only intellectual rebels against the particular au- thority of Rome, but flung their weight into the scale of national particularism as over against the crushing burdens of imperialism. We have only to think of Luther's letter to the German princes, and Calvin's reorganization of Geneva. Of the two movements, that of Luther and that of Calvin, the influence of Luther carried Swe- den, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and North Germany for the most part; whereas Calvin- THE SOCIAL EMPHASIS 18? ism fought for and lost France, but gained Scotland and a large place in the political life of England and England's colonies. It also gained Holland and a large place in Geneva. Of the political successes of Calvinism much has been written, but they were not without some grave disadvantages. Its social hope was distinctly not democratic, and in proportion as it was politically influential there was disappointment among the demo- cratic forces. It became the organizing con- ception of the great rising commercial middle class. Professor Max Weber regards it as the parent of the capitalism of the succeeding age. This seems to give it too much of a place in the social readjustment. It is perhaps fairer to say that it suffused the ideals of a class now rapidly coming to its own. It could do this only partially. In both Holland and England there was a distinct revolt against the Puritanism which made Calvinism, its creed. The remarkable thing in history is the per- sistence of forms that seem just on the eve of extermination. The feudalism of the Middle Ages has never been quite overcome, and the Roman Catholic Church has always found in these feudal and agrarian forces an ally. The Roman Catholic Church is often regarded as democratic in the United States because of her large congregations of poor people. But her 188 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS social ideal is an aristocratic paternalism, with feudalism as the underlying form. True it is that through her ministry she opens to individ- uals a door of hope by which the lowliest peas- ant may become the highest figure in the state. But such doors do not make democracy. The king has always as feudal overlord exercised the same right. The examples are many of pretty peasant girls becoming kings' mistresses and the duchesses of the land, and such adventurers as Churchill have always had open doors to them. This does not make democracy. The system is one of paternal aristocracy. The lay- man is always a ' ' child, ' ' the hierarchy is per- manently in loco parentis. There can, in the nature of things, be no real democracy. The goal can never be moral autonomy and religious maturity. The Reformation only partially broke with the feudal system. Lutheranism hardly at- tempted any effective break, and became more or less the somewhat subservient and ignoble tool of national feudalism. Calvinism became the religious ideal of a new commercial feudal- ism. Independency and the Anabaptists were too much disorganized, and still too much caught in a Jewish literalism in the use of Scriptures to give democracy a working basis for its higher life ; hence the counter-Kef orma- tion of Rome struck powerful blows at the new THE SOCIAL EMPHASIS 189 life, and although it did not wholly succeed it wrested for the time being almost all southern Europe from the grasp of the Eeformation. The situation in England, as we have seen, was not unlike that in Europe. There also the Eeformation began as a widespread revolt against the spiritual tyranny of Rome, but also had its political and intellectual revolts. There also Calvinism suffused the political ideals formed on the basis of a more democratic Lol- lardism, which in its inception had been pro- letariat, and England gave the world Puritan- ism in all its strength and weakness. There, also, feudalism revived and, more or less linked with High Church Catholicism, maintained her- self in England, and more than once even wrested from the middle class the political hegemony, and never wholly lost a large place of influence ; so that when the Whig party made its peace with the Church the feudal aristocracy largely recovered the ground lost at the Revo- lution. In all these movements we see religion functioning powerfully, and we are reminded of the folly and ignorance that expect to ignore religion in any social transformation of the future. CHAPTER XVHI THE RISE OF SOCIALISM THE name socialism has covered a great mul- titude of vague reform projects. At the same time it is now important to seek such defini- tion of the word as to bar out misunderstand- ings of the grosser sort. The fundamental thought of modern socialism is the communal ownership of the productive opportunities and tools. In this sense socialism is completely modern. It has only accidental contact with primitive communism. It does not seek to "divide up." It regards the dividing up proc- ess as having gone too far. It does not seek to bar out private possession. On the contrary, it complains that the vast mass of men possess too little. The formulation of the modern so- cialistic demands is so modern that the care- ful thinker and speaker should avoid saying that "Jesus was a socialist" or that the Church fathers were all "socialistic." In the modern sense they were no more socialists than they were free traders or antivaccinationists. Prim- itive group communism colors their thought, but primitive communism is not modern socialism. In one sense the French Physiocrats may truly be called "socialistic," in that they de- 190 THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 191 manded communal ownership of the soil as one of the chief industrial opportunities. Yet, as we have seen, they did this in the interests of the individual and the competitive struggle; whereas another note of socialism in its recent forms is that it seeks consciously to supplant industrial competition by industrial cooperation. The history of modern socialism has been so well written * that it is here only necessary to call attention to the work and influence of Robert Owen, whose energies were directed to the establishment of cooperative communities. He realized the wastes, moral and material, of competition and sought the remedy in an ex- tremely mechanical and unelastic type of cooperation. He farther crippled his useful- ness in England by extreme revolt from an ecclesiastical tyranny whose deadness and in- efficiency as they were seen in the State Church are now matters of acknowledged fact. But he underestimated the power of religion to re- assert herself, as in fact she was at that time already doing, in the Methodist movement and the evangelical revival. The relative failure of Owen is not difficult to explain. In the first instance his system was very mechanical and really grew up apart from all political experience. He wanted to divide England up into squares, and institute a po- i See Bibliography at the close of this volume. 192 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS litical machinery of such complication that half her energies would have been absorbed merely in trying to understand the machinery. Nor did Owen carefully enough distinguish between the product and the productive machinery. His co- operative system dealt rather with distribution than with production. England was not eco- nomically ripe even for consideration of such measure of communism in the productive ma- chinery as she now actually enjoys. Owen broke his heart over cooperative colonies, whose fatal weakness was that they sought industrial freedom amid competitive conditions, and ut- terly failed to realize that the social man is as necessary to any socialistic scheme as the social machinery, and ^ that social manhood is very slowly developed. It was at this point that what is now called English Christian socialism came into being. The best representative of this type of thought is Frederick Denison Maurice. 1 His interest was religious and ethical rather than economic. Nor had he any very clear notions as to the special economic measures needed to carry into < i Pronounced "Morris." The name "Christian Socialism" is older than Maurice and is said to have occurred in a letter to " The New World " in 1807. Saint Simon also linked " Socialism " and Christianity together, and the French Catholic priest de Lammenais (1782) preached a primitive communism and cooperative produc- tion. The best history is Kaufman's. See also Seligman in " Polit- ical Science Quarterly," June, 1886. THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 193 effect his social dream. He and Kingsley, to- gether with Ludlow, a young lawyer, saw only that the unequal competition of England's struggle was sowing tears and misery over England's towns and fields. They were awak- ened from their religious peace by the great Chartist movement (1837-48). At the same time, they were neither in the narrower sense socialists, nor were they even thoroughgoing democrats. The cooperative distribution in which they saw the first step toward economic liberty was, in point of fact, very little more than wholesale capitalist business in a rather loosely framed stock-company plan. As this new, raw machinery had to compete with older and more richly capitalized machinery, and had to do it with but little industrial experience and almost no industrial capital, it is rather amaz- ing that it did anything at all. It may seem to many as if this devoted group of men had really accomplished but little. Their projects nearly all failed. Their paper they had to abandon. The movement seemed to end only in defeat and disaster. But the defeat was only a seeming defeat. The Chartist movement, in spite of the mild- ness of its demands, 1 was, in point of fact, ex- *1. Universal manhood suffrage; 2. Annual Parliaments; 3. Vote by ballot; 4. No property qualification; 5. Payment of members; 6. Equal voting areas. 194 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS tremely radical at many points, and often led by men bitterly hostile to the Church and all institutional culture (cathedrals, Oxford and Cambridge, etc.). In the bitterness of their de- feat there is no saying what they might have taken up as a permanent attitude, but Maurice and his followers heartily and sincerely felt with them, came to them, and began to mediate between them and the possessing class. Their mission was largely the interpretation of the woes and demands of the exploited proletariat to the dull arrogance of the ruling class. That unionism and socialism in England to-day are not the fiercely antireligious organizations they often are on the Continent of Europe is largely the result of the Christian socialist movement. The lectures to which these 1 1 Christian social- ists" gave so much time and strength, and which interested men like Euskin, Toynbee, and later Morris (William) were the beginning of that national instruction which has made almost unhoped-for strides since then. In fact, it was out of the loins of this movement that Fabian socialism sprang. The cooperative stores that had their direct origin in Christian socialism have hardly a tithe of the importance that the educational and inspirational work had. Maurice anticipated some of the most modern modes of thought. He was a religious "prag- THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 195 matist" before the pragmatists. He looked out on life and sought to find the faith that "worked," that sustained and gave life. The test of truth for him was its life-giving power. He saw in the Old Testament the search after a theocratic democracy, and in Jesus Christ the leader into a new and perfect brotherhood of mankind. The economic measures were but means to an end, and that end was social fellow- ship with God. Thomas Hughes, Neale, and some of the ablest men in the Established Church came under his direct influence and he changed the whole current of their thought. He broke down for them the narrow class individ- ualism that still hampers so much of our Prot- estant thought. At the same time, the movement could not but be a preparatory movement. It was too uninformed and too vague to attract more than a selected few, and the loose use of the term "socialist" turned from it many sincere and thoughtful persons who realized the vagueness of its economic thought and the somewhat fan- tastic demands made upon human beings. Without this preliminary work, however, Fabian socialism would have been probably im- possible. When in 1884 a band of enthusiastic seekers after the higher life came into contact with Marxian socialism, imported from Ger- many, they felt that it could never be really 196 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS made intelligible in the German form to the stolid and untrained population of England. Marxian socialism has been carried on the wings of the idealistic materialism of Feuerbach. The Fabians resolved to aim at the reorganiza- tion of society by a long series of opportunist measures, all looking to the displacement of private ownership of the land and productive tools, and the gradual assumption of ownership by the community in the interests of all. The Fabian Society's policy has been to sup- port every movement looking to the transfer of industrial capital, where it seems to be pos- sible, from private to communal management. The society holds regular meetings, and pub- lishes at intervals tracts, 1 and some few books, like "Essays on Socialism," have been pub- lished. It relies, however, mainly on the out- side work of its membership. And men like H. G. "Wells, Bernard Shaw, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, Percy Alden, and Dr. Stanton Coit have access to a very wide public. If an American thinker has once been con- vinced that the goal of communal ownership of the land and machinery is the way to social justice and the kingdom of God, the tactics of the Fabian party are more likely to appeal to him than the somewhat high-handed and dog- 1 Over 130 have appeared, many of the greatest interest. The office of the society is at 3 Clement's Inn, Strand, London, W. C. THE RISE OF SOCIALISM 197 matic tactics of Marxian socialism in Germany. Nor is lie confronted at the start by the ig- norance of and hostility to religion which is partly the Church's fault and in part the fault of the philosophic history of the movement. The Fabian Society has done much to en- courage municipal trading, 1 and the municipal ownership and management of transit facilities. The reproach leveled at them by Marxian po- litical socialism is that the movement is es- sentially a middle-class movement. And, no doubt, this is true. But the impartial by- stander can hardly see why if the goal is the same this fact should interfere. However, Fabian socialism has made but relatively little headway in the United States, partly because, no doubt, the political conditions are distinctly different from those in England, and in part, perhaps, because Marxian socialism is less hostile to the religious life in America, and the same elements that in England have become Fabian socialists call themselves in the United States "Christian socialists," and lean to Marxianism. 2 1 The sanest statement is by Bernard Shaw, " Municipal Trading." The organ of this group, " The Christian Socialist" (5623 Drexel Avenue, Chicago, 111., semimonthly, 50 cents a year), is out and out Marxian. CHAPTER XIX MABXIAN SOCIALISM THE commanding influence of Karl Marx over the lives and thoughts of so large and intelli- gent a body of men compels us to give his teach- ings careful attention. A great deal of harm has been done to Christianity by ignorant criticisms of Marxian socialism by Christian preachers. The thoughtless many may applaud some clever mis statement, but the thoughtful few are offended or irritated. Many socialists are bitterly antichristian, not because they know anything about Christianity, but because they know a good deal about some Christian minis- ters. The sober-minded man wants to do justice to views which are sincerely held, no matter how untenable they may seem to him. The system of Karl Marx has three main elements. It is a political economy, which pro- fesses to take the place of the old classic po- litical economy, and which violently attacks the political economy of the schools as "bour- geoise" or " middle-class" political thinking. With the details of this dispute the average Christian man is little concerned. We can leave much to the experts in this field. But so 198 MARXIAN SOCIALISM 199 far as possible we should try to understand its main contentions. In the second place, it is a theory of life and a philosophy of history. Here come in historical elements, which again we can- not afford to ignore, although we may again have to leave details to be worked through more thoroughly than our strength or energy per- mits. And, lastly, it is a party tactics and a political program. The political economy rests largely on Marx's theory of surplus value. The philosophy is wrapped up in the economic or material inter- pretation of history. And the tactics and pro- gram consist in the class-conscious struggle of the proletariat for control of the productive machinery. So far as a layman can set forth the political economy it rests upon the assumption that whereas once the laborer owned the tools by which the industrial opportunity was exploited, to-day one class largely owns the industrial op- portunity and the tools, and the laboring man has practically to buy access to the productive machinery to support himself and his family. Where the opportunities are greater than the supply of labor the owner of the opportunity bids for the laborer, and wages are high. When the labor supply is abundant, then the laborer bids for the opportunity. As this hap- pens wages sink to the level of subsistence. The 200 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS laborer is so eager to "get a job" that he will work for just enough of the product to keep body and soul together. Hence it is to the interest of the owner of the opportunity and the tool to have a body of men clamoring for work, for thus the price of labor is reduced. Wealth, according to this theory, is not pos- session. A man may have thinkably no posses- sions save a few scraps of paper giving him legal title to productive opportunity and be very wealthy. Or a man may have paint- ings and jewels and even gold, and until he buys with it the right to get some of a laborer's product he is not wealthy. Wealth is the legal right from year to year to tax the worker with the tool on the industrial opportunity a certain percentage of his product for the right to work. Now, according to Karl Marx, if the writer understands his political economy and he has taken great pains to do so the organization of labor and machinery has enabled us to gain great values above those actually needed to repair and improve the machinery, to pay the laborers their subsistence wage, to meet taxa- tion, etc. This surplus value goes to the owner of the industrial opportunity and the tool. With this he not only buys new opportunity, but he is in a position to struggle successfully with those whose surplus value is less or nil. The result of this is the constant crowding MARXIAN SOCIALISM 201 out of the small owner of the tool by compe- tition, and the steady concentration of the con- trol of the surplus product with all the power it confers in fewer and fewer hands. This system Marx called capitalism. Marxian social- ism has no quarrel with capitalism as such. It recognizes the effectiveness of capitalistic organization. But it attacks the private owner- ship of capitalism, and thinks that as the concentration goes on steadily, at last there will be a sudden change, and the community will wrest the control of capitalism from the hands of the few and use it for the good of the many. According to this political economy there is a steady lowering of the wage scale as the com- petition for access to the machinery grows greater and greater, and the proletariat sinks deeper and deeper the more it is separated from the tool, and becomes dependent upon the owner of the tool (or industrial opportunity). The cycle of industrial crisis the Marxian socialist explains as the inevitable concomitant of the process of the crowding out of the weak and the readjustment of forces, when the con- trol is still further concentrated in the power- ful few. Thus each crisis is usually precipitated by the fall of some one of the competing capital- ists, and he and others sink from independency to a wage relationship. Often these become the highly paid agents of those who control the situ- 202 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS ation, but they remain agents. The once inde- pendent banker becomes the head of a railroad or a trust company. The once independent manufacturer becomes the highly paid director of a subsidiary company. The smaller man be- comes the clerk, the least influential sink to labor's position of selling their time and skill for what they will bring in a severe competition. Marx includes, of course, directing intelligence as labor, and recognizes the fact that all that actually supplies legitimate human wants is ministering productively (medicine, newspaper work, science, etc.). This process Marx expected to go on until the control would be in so few hands that a quiet and bloodless revolution would transfer the power of the few to the many in the interests of all. Thus capitalism would, as it were, become topheavy and the transformation would become sure. Such is in bare outline the political economy of Karl Marx. The intelligent Christian lay- man will be hardly quite satisfied with so brief a sketch and will turn to the abundant litera- ture for farther information. 1 It is seen at once how elaborate and complicated should be i The chief book of Karl Marx, " Das Capital," is now translated. There are also many simpler explanations of his system now printed. Compare a " socialist " catalogue by Kerr & Co., Chicago, of books on socialism, sent free for the stamps, " What to Read on Socialism.'! MARXIAN SOCIALISM 203 the scientific examination of so interesting but startling a reading of the economic situation. It is not fair to dismiss it with contempt. It is not wise to accept it without extremely care- ful testing of the alleged facts. One asks, "Is the wage scale sinking?" Organized labor claims to be able to maintain by strikes and organization a wage level, and has in this country thus far been a real barrier against socialism. The individualist has much to say in regard to the returning crisis, and its rela- tion to unwise interference with what he calls "natural" process. Some seem to think that as the stocks and bonds of these great corpora- tions become surer and steadier payers of interest the small investor will buy, and al- though control of the productive tool and the industrial opportunity may come into fewer and fewer hands, the basis of possession will be by this process greatly enlarged. And some of the great corporations, recognizing this situation, are endeavoring to widen the basis of posses- sion by encouraging their employees to invest in the stocks. 1 Other individualists have hoped that the di- vision of power in small electrical plants would enable the small producer to compete, perhaps, with the great capitalist system, and the wastes As the Steel Trust does, for instance, in regard to its preferred stock. 204 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS of great production under paid agents are, un- doubtedly, very great, as compared with the best results of the small private owner intensely interested in economy and personally supervis- ing the details of the business. The whole question of the nature of rent, of interest, and of wage is at issue. Certainly Karl Marx seems to the uninstructed layman to have no difficulty in disposing of the patent unrealities and scholasticisms of such books as those of Walker and Jevons. But he has his eye fixed upon the machinery rather than upon the land question, and one of the main conten- tions of a logical and consistent individualist is that in the competition land could be made an opportunity open to all alike by a rational sys- tem of taxation, and that then monopoly of the productive machinery would be impossible. Karl Marx's theory represents all those who get returns from simple ground rents, and in virtue of their ownership of the tools of in- dustry, as " parasitic." Most men may in ad- dition superintend, or even work, but in so far as returns come from simple ownership we have product consumed without social return. To the wastes of parasitism Marx traces the pov- erty and wretchedness of the working class. Workingmen build houses in which they never even look after their job is done on them. They build palace railroad cars in which they can MARXIAN SOCIALISM 205 never ride. They grow food so dainty they can themselves never eat of it. And productive labor is given up that labor riiay r "Be~"spent on 'luxury and idle display. 'That there is truth in this charge no one can deny. "When five full-grown adults devote themselves exclusively to the whims and wants of a pampered child, they are withdrawn from useful labor, and they generally spoil the child for all real usefulness in the world. All pat- ently unnecessary luxury means not only waste of product, but the withdrawal of labor from useful activity. Of course, luxury is a very indefinite term, but there is a luxury that is mere display of economic ability to pay. That in large cities, at least, this luxury is a heavy drain upon the communal resources is undoubted. How large it is, is a question po- litical economy has as yet hardly asked. What- ever else Karl Marx has done, he has asked us questions we must all consider and answer. He should surely awaken us from our dogmatic slumbers in the comfortable untruths of so- called "classical" political economy. Whether his political economy will stand the test of care- ful and impartial scientific examination is an- other question. It is, at least, extremely signifi- cant that a concise and readable answer at this point that will really bear examination and does not display fundamental ignorance of Karl 206 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS Marx's real position has yet to be written in English. No doubt, political economy in the colleges instructs at this point, but the honest layman seeking light outside finds the literature meager and unreal. The second great element in Marxian social- ism is its teaching in regard to the economic interpretation of history. Karl Marx worked in an atmosphere created by the philosophical speculation of Kant, Hegel, Fichte, and Feuer- bach. It is hardly just to call Feuerbach a ma- terialist in the ordinary English interpretation of that term. His thought was greatly in- fluenced by the extreme left of Hegelianism and bears the marks of Spinoza's substance with its two characteristics of thought and extension. But of these two Feuerbach places the sub- stance as extended in the foremost place, and yet his world is not a simple mechanism, but an intelligent unfolding of thought with substance as extended as the basis and ultimate reality. This type of intellectual materialism is the background of Karl Marx's " bread and butter" theory of history. Man demands certain things. Life is the seeking satisfaction of all his wants. Moreover, the ultimate want is food and shelter and raiment. Life is therefore a struggle for these things. His theory does not leave other wants out. The overmastering sexual impulse and artistic desires are real. At the same MARXIAN SOCIALISM 207 time, the economic factor is fundamental. To gratify other wants he must have food. In early history the tools and industrial oppor- tunity are the common property of the group, but group struggles with group. From the dawn of civilization life has been a struggle for the tool and industrial opportunity. With the incoming of private property in the tool there has been a steady economic struggle for mastery by a tool-possessing (including there- with the industrial opportunity land, etc.) class. In a feudal agrarian state the man who owned the land could make slaves or serfs of those who must either starve or work the land in his interest. With the coming of the ma- chine the class that owns the machine controls the life-purpose of the non-owner. Karl Marx then seeks to show that religions, arts, philosophy, law, and morals are the prod- uct of the master class and represent their interest and views of life, and that this class forces its religion and morality upon the pro- ductive class in the interests of the ruling class's ascendency. This is not done in full conscious- ness of the facts. It is done instinctively. The religion and morality that suits its fundamental purpose seems "right," what does not is "wrong" and exceedingly outrageous. Thus subservient classes are taught by priests and teachers essentially dependent upon the ruling 208 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS class that they must "honor the king," that they must be thrifty, temperate, industrious, and honest. And even though the parasitic or semiparasitic class is itself luxurious, idle, often intemperate and corrupt, it constantly praises those virtues which keep the working classes productively efficient. Thus the king and his nobles have concubines, and take savage per- sonal revenge in the interests of their "honor," yet the working classes are taught monogamy and told that violence is a crime. Thus there grows up a haughty aristocratic class feeling that dominates life and constructs a morality suitable to the purpose of the ruling master class. This feeling evolves a twofold morality, one for the master class. He must in feudal times be brave, keep his word when given to his equals, guard his "honor," be generous in the use of his power. He must exhibit pride of caste, and take sharp and sure revenge for injury. His great ethical precept is "loyalty," On this word the aristocratic class exclusive ethics is almost built. And instinctively the aristocratic mind constructs a hierarchy with loyalty holding this world together. His sexual morality is dominated by the same impulse. The wife who bears the heir to the land must at all costs be kept above reproach, so that the title to possession may not be un- certain. But he has little or no interest in MARXIAN SOCIALISM 209 sexual purity as such. Hence in chivalry the curious mingling of the wildest license and the most extravagant praise for womanly purity. This belongs to the class morality evolved by the possession of the land (the industrial oppor- tunity) by the feudal overlords. At the same time, feudalism forces in its own interest another morality upon the serf. Obedi- ence to law is commanded by lawless feudal chiefs. Humility is praised by proud and haughty barons. Industry and frugality are exalted by men who spend their lives in killing time in sport, and wasting the products of others' industry in fetes and shows and fashions in clothes. The institutional life is molded to suit the interests of this class. The Church be- comes a servant of the feudal hierarchy. Her bishops become " lord-bishops" and rule great estates. The hierarchy reflects the feudal ar- rangement even in details. Law follows suit, and becomes a mere reflection of the morality of the master class. Hence laws about posses- sion are so greatly in advance of laws protect- ing human life. Then, going on, Karl Marx tries to show that gunpowder and the machine changed the empha- sis. It is no longer the possession of the land but the possession of the tool that dominates the situation. Thus there arise a middle-class morality and a middle-class religion. The 210 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS substance of the analysis is the same. The middle class evolve a morality for themselves. They have come to their possessions by the exercise of certain capacities, and the virtues and forces that gave them dominance become their ethical foundation. They also have a double morality. On the one hand, they emphasize the virtues they need for themselves to maintain supremacy, and, on the other, the virtues, of a different spirit, which the work- ing class needs in order to be industrially effec- tive and useful to the tool-owning class. All this is not deliberate conspiracy, but the neces- sary instinctive reaction upon the surround- ings, and is the inevitable result of the struggle to maintain the supremacy of the tool-owning class. Thus Karl Marx meets the objection that "you can't change human nature." In point of fact, he says, morality is no fixed quantity, but is the product of our reaction upon the economic situation, and each new economic sit- uation produces the appropriate morality needed for its maintenance. On the basis of Feuerbach, Marx is a con- firmed optimist. The world is advancing stead- ily to an ideal. This characteristic of Feuer- bach 's philosophy seems to some of his followers an unreasonable and unprovable assertion. It certainly lies in the domain rather MARXIAN SOCIALISM 211 of faith than of historical demonstration. For complication is not always improvement, and it is open to anyone to deny the superiority of say civilization over barbarism (Max Steiner, Edward Carpenter). Indeed, from the point of view of the ethical student the discussion of Marx's economic in- terpretation of history is one of the most im- portant tasks at hand. It is quite evident that it is a system of economic determinism, and raises at once all the old theological disputes as to free will and sovereignty. For from a philo- sophical point of view it is of little consequence whether one is "determined" by God or by an "economic situation." And that is just where the modern empiricist, who bases all knowledge upon experience, quarrels with the high aprio- rism of this position. The sense of creative ac- tivity in the economic situation is as truly an experience as that we are acted upon by our environment. To say that creative freedom is an illusion is as dogmatic as the assertion that every man is absolutely free. Neither position explains our fundamental experience, which is of action and reaction upon our world. We may, then, at once concede that the forms of our morality are largely the result of the world acting upon us, but it is equally true that the world that acts upon us is largely the re- sult of our own creative activity. In an abso- 212 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS lute logical determinism there is no more room for real indignation and moral reaction than in extreme Calvinism. To call the fuss and fury that is produced by situations we have no con- trol over moral excitement is an abuse of terms. If we are the helpless creatures of economic fatalism, and could really come to believe this, we would stop being indignant, and would never again experience the sense of moral outrage. Yet these experiences are normal and funda- mental. No one is more deeply stirred at times than Karl Marx himself. And just as the high- est Calvinist makes his appeal to men as if they were free, so Karl Marx scolds and pleads in spite of economic determinism. The difficulty in both Marxian philosophy, rather as de- veloped by such as Loria than by himself, and High Calvinism is that they alike take over concepts built up out of our experience for one purpose and apply them to situations to which they have really no reference. The so-called "law of causal ty" has its basis in its extreme usefulness for certain great hu- man purposes. We can have no science, no systematic ethics, no philosophy, unless we ex- clude magic and consider the world as con- ditioned. And the study of conditions has no bounds. We always want to know "why" any- thing acts as it does. Long eons of experience have taught us, or should have taught us, to MARXIAN SOCIALISM 213 demand at every step the fullest possible ex- planation of the conditions under which all activity may be observed. But the end is mastery. To know the conditions under which electricity gives heat or light or power enables us to master electricity and make it our servant to cook our food or light our houses or move our trolley cars. And this sense of possible mastery is as primitive as final, as useful and indeed as essential as the law of cause and effect. To call one science and omit the other is alike unscientific and in point of actual expe- rience impossible. Whether we will or no, we live in a world of cause and effect, and of moral success and failure. When, therefore, it is properly interpreted the Marxian doctrine of economic determinism has nothing dreadful about it. It is part of the working apparatus of all scientific inquiry. We must study moral- ity as conditioned. This no more ends in fatalism than all acceptance of the law of causalty ends in fatalism. To the man who refuses to study the laws of health we say, "You are a fool, and perhaps a wicked fool." And the reason we say that is because we demand as a goal mastery over our bodies, and believe that we can act with or against the fundamental order of the universe. To know the conditions and act with the laws of the universe is not only wise but may be 214 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS virtuous ; to act against them is foolish and may be wicked. If anyone says this is illusion, then it is equally open to the Hindu to say all is il- lusion. "We certainly cannot demonstrate it, because we cannot get outside ourselves and our experience to look at the question as a bystander. 1 The third element of the Marxian world of thought is the class-conscious struggle. This is the outcome of Marx's theory that the pos- session of the tools is the dominant influence in shaping life, and also of his philosophy, with its abounding hopefulness, and his conviction that man is ultimately to master his environ- ment. Austin Lewis quotes Marx as saying, ''Backward I am in agreement with the ma- terialists, forward not," and again as writing a short critical note on Feuerbach, "The ma- terialistic doctrine that men are products of conditions and education, different men, there- fore, products of other conditions and a dif- ferent kind of education, forgets that circum- stances may be altered by man and that the educator has himself to be educated. It neces- sarily happens, therefore, that society is divided into two parts, of which one is 1 Two books will throw great additional light on this discussion : Fred. Engels's Feuerbach, " The Roots of the Socialist Philosophy " (Eng. tr., 1908), and Professor Seligman's " The Economic Interpre- tation of History '.'. (1902). MARXIAN SOCIALISM 215 elevated above society (Robert Owen, for exam- ple)." 1 As a consequence of this faith Marx taught that the working class would at length rise up and take final possession of the productive tools of society in the interest of all, and that the class struggle would thus come to an end, because society would no longer be divided into those who work and barely eat, and those who eat and barely do any work. He thought, there- fore, that the main duty of the day was to lead the working class into self-consciousness. He hoped to make the struggle for the tool a class- conscious struggle, whose victory would be in the real interests of all. For Marx taught that parasitic classes are bound to decay and be- come degenerate. Whatever the critic may think of Karl Marx's use of history, he is to be justly judged at this point. He did not advocate violence. No one can read his singularly instructive letters to the New York Tribune, when he was correspond- ing editor of that paper, upon the political situ- ation in Europe without seeing how hopelessly insensate he regarded such violence as, for instance, that of the later Paris Commune. Snpigijgrp naTi rmne onlv. according to Marx, ^ *^ ^"^^""^ ^ ^^W*"*^" 1 ^ ^^^ H ^'^^MM MMWM M*MMMMMMMVVOTHW* MI> * lMM **" M when the great majority of mankind are ear- nestly and intelligently in favor of it. Education J Marx on Feuerbach. Notes jotted down in Brussels, 1845. 216 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS and organization are therefore his watchwords. And he implored his followers to keep away from the violence of anarchy of action (Bakouine), and from all unnecessary chal- lenge of the strength of the ruling class. The point at issue, therefore, is of fact. Is there a class struggle? Are certain groups of men so animated by a sense of solidarity in the possession of the industrial opportunity that they stand instinctively for their com- mon interests ? The answer each man must give out of his own experience. There is certainly a sense in which a man should be " class" or ''group" conscious. A minister should respect his pro- fession and have a high regard for its best in- terests. A lawyer should care for the interests of his group. Organized workingmen are moralized and strengthened by their affection for their group. They should work and think for the best interests of their group. The ques- tion, however, goes deeper than that. The struggle of each group has its goal. How far should that goal be the possession of the pro- ductive tools of society? The answer of Karl Marx is only moral when the goal is the highest interest of all classes. Of course, this is what he believed and taught. His class-conscious struggle had as its goal what he believed, rightly or wrongly, to be the highest MARXIAN SOCIALISM 217 and largest life of all classes indeed, the abo- lition of all classes. Some may not agree with him that this is possible, or that the communal ownership of the industrial opportunity would do more than put the power in the hands of some other organization, but at least Karl Marx's hope was a moral one, and he must be acquitted of all intention to incite to class hate or class selfishness. Not so easily can one acquit popular teachers of class-conscious socialism, who ignorantly proclaim a doctrine of class hate as if that were Marxian. Particularly in Italy and France grave and dangerous misinterpretations of Marx at this point have led to political and eco- nomic confusion. It is, indeed, a question of how far Marx is himself responsible for these misinterpretations. Undoubtedly we all are under the influence of our surroundings. A young fellow educated at Harvard, Yale, or Princeton seldom fails to bear away the "group color." He may have ever so strong a personality. He may even strive against all onesidedness and provincial narrowness. At crucial points the "group color" will appear, and he decides his conduct in accordance with the group tradition. So the possessing class's privileges do give consciously, subconsciously, and unconsciously color to the thoughts of those who move in its 218 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS atmosphere. This is rather a group color than a conscious attitude, as may be seen in the fact that an English lackey is usually far more snob- bish than the master. The clerk in Wall Street thinks far more in the narrow prejudices of the street than even the intelligent and perhaps traveled employer. The ministry is exposed to the danger of narrowly and unintelligently reflecting the prejudices of the class to which it happens to minister. The question, then, arises as to how far any man can break away from his group prejudices. At this point only facts are really important. The claim of the moral man with faith in the moral impulse is that the emancipation is pos- sible, that even acknowledging the possible thraldom of the atmosphere of class privilege, this bondage can be and every day is broken by men of good will, and Karl Marx's own illustra- tion of Eobert Owen can be many times multi- plied. Moreover, the question is stated too simply to cover all the complications of the actual facts. The "class" or "group" consciousness that is fundamental in life's struggle is made up of many factors, and the maintenance of posses- sion is only one of these. The psychology of a group consciousness is as complicated or even more complicated than the individual conscious- ness. The consciousness of the possession of MARXIAN SOCIALISM 219 special privilege is, it is true, an organizing factor of often supreme importance, but not always, and the "class struggle" can never probably be made the simple division between the "haves" and the "have nots" which the early Marxian teaching would seem to require. In the political and economic struggle for power the issues are never really made as plain as dogmatic socialism demands. An illustra- tion is seen in the very attitude of the Demo- cratic-Socialist party of Germany toward na- tional defense, and when issues which are not immediately vital to the party are in debate. It is seen in the relative independence of the southern German states, where in spite of all protestations of loyalty to the party platform it is conceded that the Social Democracy is go- ing to go its own way in party tactics, and that under the strain of a sectional feeling too strong to resist. Whatever one may, then, think of the class- conscious struggle, it is only useful in the broad- est sense, and must be carefully guarded against directly immoral implications. This class-conscious struggle as taught by Marx is still farther modified by the changed place in the party program brought about by a change in the estimate of the actual forces at work. Marx and Engels confidently looked for the speedy consummation of capitalist concen- 220 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS tration and its inevitable bankruptcy. They, in fact, feared its downfall before the proletariat would be ripe for taking over of the social ma- chinery. Marx expected the increasing misery of the working class to accompany the concen- tration of capital. He made many brilliant predictions that have been fulfilled to the letter, but this is not one of them. In all the great capitalistic countries, England, Germany, France, the United States, etc., whatever may be said about relative poverty, the absolute con- dition of the working class has improved. This may be temporary, due to labor organization, old-age pensions, the fear of socialism, etc., but the fact remains that not only is the working class better off absolutely, but that the progress of socialism does not depend upon the increas- ing misery of the working class. On the con- trary, it seems almost as if a certain level of misery left men no time for organized discon- tent, as in the case of the poverty-stricken drunken proletariat of the London slums. The one watchword of the early program was to organize for the class struggle and all that hid that goal; all measures of mere ameliora- tion that softened the struggle were evil. The socialist took no interest in many things that must be regarded as vital. It is of the greatest consequence that parents, whether socialist or not, guard the educational interests of the MARXIAN SOCIALISM 221 family. It is of the greatest moment that all citizens, whether socialist or not, watch over the health interests of the boys and girls growing up about us. From the socialist standpoint it is of vast importance that its soldiers in the "class-conscious struggle" have sound bodies and as well trained minds as possible. The program of socialism has therefore widened, and must widen still more. There must be a re- interpretation of the teachings of the class- conscious struggle to take in the constantly enlarging experience. In this sketch of Marxian socialism it must surely become plain that the intelligent Chris- tian layman must carefully and intelligently consider the claims set up by so large, so active, and so earnest a set of his fellow citizens. CHAPTER XX STATE SOCIALISM IN 1878 Bismarck began a policy that had a complicated motive behind it. He desired the strengthening of the monarchy, the undermin- ing of the Social Democracy, and the welfare of the proletariat. Undoubtedly he rightly felt that the misery and discontent of a large ele- ment of the industrial population was a great weakness to Germany. The empire had at that time no colonies to speak of, and emigration was robbing her of her young and energetic laborers. Bismarck started about his task even before 1878 in his advocacy of state control of the railways of Germany. The confusion of railway management in Germany had been great. There were state railways, railways owned by private companies, railways owned by companies but financed by the various states, and when the empire was founded and Hanover and the French provinces were annexed, the empire came into possession of railways. It is said that in 1873 there were over ninety railway administrations in the country, with over a thousand different railway rates. Prussia, then under Bismarck's guidance, offered her rail- 222 STATE SOCIALISM 223 ways to the empire. The offer was not ac- cepted, and in 1876 Prussia began to purchase the railways, and to organize them as state railways. The confusion and corruption in the management of the roads made the expropria- tion of the railways popular. Only the radical Manchester theorists really opposed it, although had Social Democracy been as strong then as now it is doubtful whether it would not have made itself felt in opposition also. Its opposi- tion at that time counted for little. Bismarck had, no doubt, also military interests in view, and the empire as such was given special powers of supervision and unification. The various states, Bavaria, Baden-Baden, Wiirtemberg, Saxony, etc., followed Prussia's lead, and the complete expropriation of the railways (save small narrow-gauge experimental lines) may now be called practically complete. Marxian socialists repudiate state socialism utterly : first, because it is the paternalism of a class-ruled state; secondly, because the state ownership is used for making profits; and, thirdly, because the development of a great bureaucracy threatens the development of eco- nomic democracy. Bismarck spoke often of ' ' a monarchical paternally governed state. ' ' State socialism has as its ideal the government of persons. Its interest is the guardianship of human beings. Marxian socialism would deal 224 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS only with things, and leave persons to govern themselves. On this account Marxian socialism, unlike Fabian socialism, takes little interest in the state socialism of Germany. 1 The post office, the railways, the telegraph and telephone are only a few of the things a paternal state has taken over. Bismarck was seemingly prepared to go much farther than the states of Germany have gone, but he was an avowed opportunist and only went as far as he had occasion to go. He regarded it as the duty of the paternal state to find work for the working man willing to work, even if large public works became neces- sary. He was supported in his views by the Association for Social Politics, 2 which urged protection and also the care for the welfare of the workingman. Men like Adolph Wagner and Smoller gave him support in his proposals from the side of political economy, for which science he, however, now and then expressed supreme contempt. In 1879 Germany definitely abandoned free trade and entered upon a course of paternal state socialism. The radicals, most of the Na- tional Liberals, Bismarck's old party, and the Social Democrats opposed the change, but in >A sympathetic and Intelligent statement of state socialism is made by W. H. Dawson's " Bismarck and State Socialism ' (1891). Verein fur Socialpolitik. STATE SOCIALISM 225 vain. They did, however, prevent Bismarck pushing through his tobacco and brandy monop- olies, and delayed state insurance. From the conversion of Bismarck to state regulation of industry to the present day a whole series of elaborate laws have been passed. Some of them are provincial, others are imperial, and com- pulsory insurance, accident insurance, employ- ment offices, have been taken over by the state. The various municipal governments have un- dertaken the manufacture and distribution of gas, electricity and water. Slaughtering is done in municipal houses, and state regulation of mining and industry at times amounts almost to ownership. The old-age pensions (1889) are only the cul- mination of a series of laws that began in 1883 with insurance against sickness, and were un- dertaken avowedly to head off socialistic agi- tation. On March 8, 1881, the insurance act of that date was introduced among other things with the words, "The apprehension that a socialistic element might be introduced into legislation if this end were followed should not check us. So far as that may be the case it will not be an innovation, but the further de- velopment of the modern state idea, the result of Christian ethics, according to which the state should discharge, besides the defensive duty of protecting existing rights, the positive duty 226 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS of promoting the welfare of all its members, and especially those who are weak and in need of help, by means of judicious institutions and the employment of those resources of the com- munity which are at its disposal." 1 The progress of this type of paternal state socialism has been very rapid in Germany, and as yet commands the assent of the great ma- jority of the population. Even the theoretical objections of the Social Democracy do not make its opposition very strenuous. The military training of the whole population, the semi- feudal arrangements on the great estates, the traditions of the old aristocratic guild systems that survived the destruction of the guilds in Germany (from 1810 on), together with monar- chical traditions, work together for the exten- sion of a system that is not democratic, but which does hedge about the weak and hamper the power for oppression of the strong. At the same time, it is not socialism in the revolutionary sense, and its nondemocratic character makes it impossible to argue from its successes and failures to the course any democratic socialism would be likely to take. Nor is it easy to say how even the measures of state socialism and municipal socialism that are being introduced into England will work there, as conclusions drawn from German conditions Quoted by Dawson, " Bismarck and State Socialism," p. 111. STATE SOCIALISM 227 will not hold good for a country with an entirely different social and industrial training. On the whole, impartial critics seem to agree that state production and distribution in Ger- many compares unfavorably with private enter- prise at its best, but favorably with the average private enterprise. There is more personal initiative through eagerness to "make a career" than might be feared from the bureau- cratic character of its machinery. The state can command a better class of man for less salary than private enterprise, and can reward cheaply special services with titles, orders, etc. The atmosphere of state production is often arbitrary and autocratic, but municipal enter- prises are more directly in contact with the citizenship, and are more subject to praise and blame and more sensitive to it. A high standard of personal honesty and integrity has always been maintained, and shows no signs at present of being lowered. Considering the relative poverty of Germany, the railways have made steadier improvement than in England, France, or the United States, and life is safer on the railway than in any other country. At the same time, grave blunders have been made, and the element of profit has been often too much considered in the tariff changes. Public opinion has proved a more effective check upon abuses than might have been expected in a country 228 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS where press laws are exceedingly severe, and where all expressions of opinion must be made with a certain sense of possible responsibility for them before a court. Evidently the expansion of the function of the empire, the state, and the municipality suits the genius of the German people, and is bound to go forward. Democracy has not kept pace with the socialistic development, perhaps partly because the Social Democracy has stood off to one side, and so reactionary forces seem to the critic on the outside to be rather gaining than losing in strength. In recent rather fierce controversies with regard to the progress of democracy the evidence seems rather against its growth outside the Social Democracy, and even there centralization, the power of com- mittees, the leadership of one man reflect the reactionary spirit of Prussian hegemony. The influence of German state socialism, which is so much a child of her military train- ing, has made itself strongly felt in countries without her preparation. There can be no ques- tion that England is likely now to follow Ger- many along these lines. The old-age pension bill is perhaps to be followed by experiments in a state socialistic tariff expressly for the pur- pose of raising the funds that will be needed. Protection is essentially of the nature of pa- ternal state socialism. Municipal socialism has STATE SOCIALISM 229 already made rapid progress in England, and on a more democratic basis than in Germany. The protective tariff of the United States is in the same way paternalistic, and shows no signs of more than slight modification. In France, Switzerland, and Italy the social- ism is less paternal, and yet here also the state has in no one of these countries perfected its political democratic machinery. And in all these countries the paternal socialism seeks to regulate persons and their relations to each other and the state rather than to simply under- take production and distribution. This is what marks off the one type of socialism as over against democratic revolutionary socialism. State socialism is content with substantially the existing state and wishes only to extend its powers and perfect its machinery. It quarrels with the individualist, on the one hand, in re- gard to the function of the state, making it broader in its scope than the individualist teaches, and, on the other, with the Marxian so- cialist in that it refuses to believe in radical transformation, or in the expropriation of the tool-owning class save in specific cases. To the English Fabian or to the American socialist opportunist the contempt and suspicion of dogmatic socialism for state socialism in all its forms seems at first sight both narrow and academic. And yet there is a wide difference 230 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS in ideal, and it is, to say the least, doubtful whether the Marxian ideal could ever be really reached via state socialism, as Fabianism is apt to believe. So that from his standpoint the Social Democrat of Germany is probably right in his suspicion and dislike of state socialism. In Germany the seizure of the mines and natural resources, and a very wholesale taking possession of the forests and land, will not un- likely be the next steps in state socialism. That the process is bound to go forward is well-nigh certain. Not only is public opinion with the state, but the rivalry between the states and the competition between municipalities act in the same direction, as a constant pressure for- ward to larger ownership. And as the official class grows the pressure increases. As over against the organized force of the state, and especially the highly organized state of Ger- many, even the strongest combination of capital seems weak, and its powers of resistance are both variable and unequal. Happily the mu- nicipalities are relatively democratic in their organization, and enjoy a measure of autonomy to which American cities are, alas! strangers. Nevertheless state socialism is still on trial, and no matter how Marxian socialism may disavow it, socialism as a whole will be justly or unjustly judged by the measure of its failure or success. The reader of American and English news- STATE SOCIALISM 231 papers can hardly get from them any clear con- ception of the struggle going on in France, which is at bottom largely a struggle between Marxian and state socialism. That political confusions arise from the effort of the trium- phant ruling class to cut the ground from under the feet of the impatient proletariat by measures of state socialism, which the pro- letariat refuse in the name of socialism, sug- gests unreasonableness and lack of political logic; whereas this struggle is the result of the rather clear workings of the French mind, which demands the application of theory in a far more rigid manner than the Anglo-Saxon understanding does. And one reason why the political atmosphere in France is so stormy and dark is because the state socialism on the basis of which the middle class seeks to reorganize France 's life has no such military system and no such caste feeling to work with as has the rul- ing class in Germany. Hence paternal socialism is weak, and again and again, as just recently, suffers defeat at the hands of the organized proletariat. In Germany paternal social- ism has behind it a tradition still exceedingly powerful, a military system which is the pride of even the most peace-loving middle-class heart, an exceedingly efficient bureaucracy, and the tradition of Bismarck's great name. There if anywhere it has a chance to work out its 232 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS destiny. In France the aristocratic tradition is a burden to any cause it takes up, so signal have been its many historic failures. The mili- tary system lacks the cohesion of Germany. The official class is to some extent at least corrupted by Paris Boulevard life, or at least is suspected of a measure of corruption, and the paternal state socialism has no great name with which to conjure. To the bystander Borne 's attitude toward the paternal state socialism of France seems a shocking blunder. An alliance with it would have had no real dangers for authority as Borne understands that word. The separa- tion of Church and State has been a tremendous blow to the forces within the state upon which alone any system of paternal state socialism must rest. That from Eome's point of view a most important advantage has been thrown away may rejoice our Protestant hearts, but it does not inspire us with admiration for the political wisdom of Borne. What is the good of infallibility if one does not Tiave common senseT CHAPTER XXI TYPES or CONTINENTAL SOCIALISM THE Roman Catholic Church has always been repelled by the pronouncedly material and anti- religious attitude of revolutionary socialism. In her literature and teaching she identified socialism and liberalism, and regarded them as alike deadly foes. "With equally sure instinct Marxian socialism views Roman Catholicism with even more than the general suspicion with which she looks out upon the religious world. To understand this attitude one must realize the inner character of Koman Catholicism. The system rests upon authority. According to the consistent teaching of Eoman Catholicism God has given to an historic sacramental insti- tution, founded by Jesus Christ, the power of the keys, and authority to teach, to discipline, and to govern. This Church consists of priests, officers, and those under vows, and then the governed body of laymen. As over against the organized hierarchy there are no adult years for the lay members, they are always "chil- dren of Mother Church." The Church in her organized capacity is the overlord of life and conscience. The hierarchy was built up under 233 234 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS the same conditions that molded the great feudal system, and her ideas and conceptions of life are, with some important modifications, mainly feudal. With democratic socialism, therefore, Roman Catholicism could have no sympathy. It is often said that Roman Catholi- cism stands for the rights of property, 1 but this is only in part true. The whole feudal system is in the last analysis based upon the holding of the industrial opportunity (land) in trust. The overlord apportioned it to those under him, and they again to lesser holders, who in turn become responsible for their retainers, etc. As land was the tool of production, or rather the one opportunity for production, feudalism does not stand primarily for private owner- ship of the productive opportunity, which, as we have seen, is all that socialism contends against. In this respect also the ethics of Roman Catholicism are based upon the feudal conception. Ketteler says, "Catholic theo- logians are agreed in teaching that the right of property cannot be made to cover cases of ex- treme necessity." The whole monastery sys- tem was one long protest against private property in the productive opportunity. The real value of the temporal power of the Pope to the Roman Catholic system was not so much i Professor Nitti, for instance, p. 125 of " Catholic Socialism ". (Eng. tr., 1908). CONTINENTAL SOCIALISM 235 the fact that it guaranteed individual freedom to the Papacy. Conventions could do that even more effectively. The real significance was that the Pope claimed feudal overlordship over all authority and the right to dispose of even nations and princes. Temporal dominion is symbolic of this claim. Hence Leo XIII in his famous encyclical of May, 1891, against socialism was not really in- fallibly correct, for he confuses communism with socialism, and misstates the essential princi- ple of socialism. At the same time, he asserted plainly the feudal conception of society as con- stituted in permanent classes which it is dangerous to destroy, and in his practical pro- posals joins with Bismarck in demanding in practice state socialism, that is, the control by the state, of course under the direction of the hierarchy, of all persons, and their care and training. This is in itself a claim for the over- lordship in the interests of the community of the industrial opportunity and the productive tool, for private possession subject to overlord- ship is very different from the claims of modern capitalism. Hence there have sprung up in Austria and elsewhere Catholic socialist parties, whose plat- form is substantially a reorganization of society in a feudal socialism. They have been all too often furiously anti-Semitic, and the program 236 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS has varied much according to various degrees of culture and information. Marxian socialism has, of course, no sympathy either with the pro- nounced feudal character of their ideals, nor yet with the churchly pretensions of the move- ment. Hence there exists a rather bitter war between the Marxian democratic socialists and the feudal Roman Catholic socialists. This has not been decreased in virulence by the fact that Catholic socialism has been so fiercely anti- Semitic, whereas the numbers of Jewish citizens in the Social Democracy has always been rather remarkable; and one cannot forget that Karl Marx was a Jew. Particularly in Austria the landed feudal- ism and the Roman Catholic proletariat have united in attacking the new aristocracy of finance, which is largely Jewish. Indeed, it is not unworthy of notice that the leading spirit in early Christian socialism in Austria was the Protestant Rudolf Meyer, whose book on the "Emancipation of the Fourth Estate" is still influential, and that Marx and Engels are con- stantly the sources of inspiration for a violent propaganda against Jews. What is characteristic of this Austrian Chris- tian socialism is that the attempt is always to regulate production and distribution by regula- tion of persons, whereas Marxian socialism would regulate persons by the ownership of the CONTINENTAL SOCIALISM 237 means of production. This distinction is grounded in the feudal principle underlying Catholic socialism and the materialism that per- vades Marxian socialism. It is not accidental. Catholic socialism was organized in Austria by such " proletariats " as Count von Falkenhayn, Count Zallinger, Count von Vogelsang, Count Bloeme, Baron Dipauli, Count Belcredi, Count Taffe, and Prince von Lichtenstein ! And as a consequence its program guards against all interference with landlordism, and attacks only modern industry and capital. It would main- tain classes, but "urge them to humanity and Christian regard for each other." And it re- gards it as the duty of the state to guard at every step the activity of the citizen. The progress of Roman Catholic socialism along these lines has been steady in many countries. 1 But even where it has attained power its results have been exceedingly dis- appointing. Nor is it difficult from a modern Protestant point of view to see the reason for its relative ineffectiveness. Feudalism is no solution of the great industrial situation with its new demands and untried situations. The voluminous writings of the Catholic socialists reflect nothing quite so plainly as the utter lack of touch with the modern world of thought. The 1 For a sympathetic review see Professor Nitti's " Catholic Social- ism " (Eng. tr., 1908), pp. 100-357. 238 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS Vatican still cherishes the hope that the world will turn back to Thomas Aquinas. But if it did it would find there nothing of the critical philosophy, nothing of modern science, nothing about modern industry or modern democracy. Catholic socialism is trying to answer the ques- tions raised by these novelties in human life by resort to modes of thought and feeling to which the modern world is a stranger. Men begin to insist even within the pale of the Eoman com- munion that they are adults and not children, and must use their own reasons as they under- stand them. When, therefore, the questions at issue are economic and social, the restlessness under au- thority is even more pronounced than when the matter relates to theological abstractions ; more particularly as the Vatican has not been very happy in its own political and economic policy. Even intelligent and loyal Eoman Catholics ad- mit the grave political blundering in Italy and France. Of course, in this field the Pope is not infallible, and any loyal Roman Catholic may, even while confessing obedience, admit the mis- takes and question the wisdom of the Vatican. The anti-Semitism of the movement is alone enough to condemn it in the eyes of a large num- ber of the most thoughtful, and seems to add a moral to an economic mistake. For this reason the Christian socialism of CONTINENTAL SOCIALISM 239 Roman Catholicism seems to have little hope of ever really capturing the Vatican. It is even now more or less under suspicion, and cannot naturally thrive very markedly in this anom- alous position. Should it not receive the sup- port of Borne many faithful adherents to Catholic socialism are likely to be lost to the Church, for in spite of many protestations there are undoubtedly a fair number to whom, now, a social reorganization of society seems even more important than the maintenance of the unity of the Church. "Workingmen in consider- able numbers in Belgium, Germany, Austria, and perhaps to a less degree in Italy, France, and England, have been kept loyal to Rome and the Church by the leaders of Catholic socialism and the utterances of men like Cardinal Man- ning. At the same time, a betrayal of their hopes, or even lukewarmness in the pursuit of their interest, will unquestionably mean that many of these workingmen will go over to class- conscious and revolutionary socialism. If, on the other hand, which is almost un- thinkable, Eome should go over to feudal socialism of the Austrian type, she would frighten and drive off many of her most recent converts from the commercial and industrial classes. What is most likely to happen is a continuance of the halting and temporizing support of Catholic socialism where the follow- 240 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS ing is strong, as in Austria, and a considerable discouragement of it in strongly commercial and industrial communities. This policy is, however, easier in divided Protestantism than in a united Catholicism. What is the good of au- thority if it cannot give clear answers in mat- ters of the most vital and immediate im- portance f Protestantism exalts individual judgment and responsibility. No church, bishop, or pope can do more than humbly advise with the indi- vidual Protestant conscience. In the last analysis every important question must be settled by the individual in the presence of his God. The Protestant Church would do well to refrain from attempting authoritative answers to any question. It has no infallible authority, and can only reason in the light of the best available information. Not even in the matter of theology and doctrine can its decisions be more than tentative interpreta- tions of Scripture and life, and in the field of political programs and economic knowledge it is as weak as any other human organization. We are, therefore, as Protestants far less hampered as we seek to scan the economic horizon. And when Catholic socialists pre- sent to us their clumsy adaptations of Marx's economic interpretation of history, their emasculated class policy, and their complicated CONTINENTAL SOCIALISM 241 and impossible regulation of human life on the basis of outworn feudalism, we must be very strange Protestants if these things seem in the least attractive to us. Catholic social- ists are fond of identifying Protestantism with what they call "bourgeoise individual- ism," and say that it is for that reason that they make so little headway in our ranks. But apart from the individualism, which is to a large degree the strength of Protestantism, and which it would be a fatal mistake to sur- render for any feudalism, if we are going to be socialists, then it will surely be a socialism more intellectually respectable than that pre- sented to us by Eudolf Meyer or the columns of the "Vaterland." 1 Within Marxian socialism itself is arising another type of thought that has as yet hardly found full expression. It may be called op- portunist socialism, and yet it has no real re- lationship to Fabian socialism. It is the child not so much of the practical expediency which has governed Fabianism as of the philosophic thought that has so powerfully influenced con- tinental socialism. Sometimes this movement is called "re- vision" and sometimes it is linked with the name of Bernstein. Yet neither the name "revisionist" nor the works of Bernstein 1 The Austrian organ of Catholic socialism. 242 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS fully express the movement. Bernstein and Kampffmeyer are, indeed, its chief exponents, but philosophic empiricism and the doctrine of relativity in knowledge are the real parents of the new thought. According to these men Marxian socialism needs revision all along the line. Marx 's political economy can be shown to be in need of restatement, his policy of a class-conscious preparation for a revolution on the fall of capitalism must be changed to class-conscious preparation for a gradual superseding of the capitalist class. Moreover, the economic interpretation of history must more than ever emphasize the voluntary theory. The revisionists remain, for the most part, in the party, but in each trial of strength, as in 1901 and 1903, they have been beaten. 1 Their program includes more active partici- pation in the actual political doings of the bourgeoise government. Hence the action of the South German Social Democrats in voting for the financial budget was regarded as a victory for the revisionists, because up to this Social Democracy was always and everywhere in consistent opposition. Again the party re- buked this move, but it did it so gently that the South German party will probably go on doing what it deems best in local affairs. * The last meeting of the party seems to indicate a weakening of the opposition to revision and its leaders. CONTINENTAL SOCIALISM 243 These revisionists were regarded at first as " intellectuals" and "theorists," but they have been largely reinforced by organized labor, which is most anxious for immediate results. Moreover, municipal democratic socialism in France has been largely politically opportunist, and has accomplished remarkable things, so that here again the revisionist type of social- ism has had most welcome support. How far the modifications demanded by the more ad- vanced "revisionists" can be made without a split in the party an outsider cannot predict. There is in a dogmatic attitude a certain kind of strength that conscientious intellectual analy- sis cannot claim to possess. To the English mind some of the discussions seem extremely academic in which the revisionists seem to de- light. Whereas, on the other hand, the practical opportunist program appeals with especial force to the Anglo-Saxon political instinct. Mr. Victor Berger is understood to stand for the revisionist policy in the United States, but whether as the outcome of philosophic reflexion or because it appeals to him as a rational po- litical program the writer does not know. The underlying philosophy is, however, a radical empiricism very far removed from the Hege- lian and post-Hegelian thinking. To accept the teachings of Bernstein would, in the writer's judgment, involve even more radical changes 244 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS in the Marxian world of thought than even the revisionists foresee. It will throw open the gates to forces which once admitted into the well-organized dogmatic structure may do for it what modernism threatens to do to Roman Catholicism. It is already coloring the views of many who do not profess its cardinal princi- ples, and what the outcome may be no one can now accurately foresee. The views of the * ' syndicalists " are even less well organized. They rely upon trade- union organization, and rather scoff at political action. They look to such overwhelming organ- ization of the labor union movement and such close connection between the trades unions that when the time comes by one revolutionary stroke labor may claim its own. The move- ment has its main fighting strength in Italy and in France. CHAPTER XXII THE KINGDOM DKEAM AND SOCIAL AMELIORATION JESUS said a startling thing to the man who wished to go to the funeral rites of his father : "Let the dead bury the dead; follow thou me!" So imperative did he regard the call to the kingdom proclamation that not even the natural desire to show respect to the parent was to in- terfere. It was to be left to those to whom this was of primary importance. So also many radical reformers feel about the existing social order. And it must be confessed that the spirit- ual and ethical forces are often engaged with the dead in burying the dead. The ardent socialist would have us do nothing but pro- claim socialism, and the earnest single-taxer feels a measure of impatience with anything proposed short of land nationalization by taxa- tion. These reformers feel that all the evils against which various reforms are aimed would fall like the walls of Jericho if only we would march about the citadel with our trumpets and illumination. With a good deal of force they point out that the sentimental appeals of "charity" and various expressions of human kindliness meet with a response on the part of 245 246 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS the socially unawakened, who can attend to these matters, whereas the weightier matters of social justice and reorganization of the basis of our economic life can claim but few, who should not, therefore, waste their time and energy in ''burying the dead," however need- ful this may be, but that they should leave that to others. This point of view has also its representa- tives in the Church. To preach the gospel has seemed in all ages of impending crisis the main thing. Paul and Luther as well as Saint Francis looked for so quick and dramatic a re- appearance of Jesus that to ''evangelize" the world was the one thing needful. And we must never forget that the proclamation of the king- dom is the one thing Jesus sent us to do, and that one reason the world is not really "evan- gelized" is that we left the work of the kingdom to follow imperial shadows and settle all manner of philosophical and theological ques- tions, most of which we settled wrong. A very small object held closely to the eye shuts out the whole horizon, and the vision of the king- dom can be blotted out by holding too much in the foreground some quite desirable reform. Some who look for the coming in judgment of Jesus seem to hail with joy all signs of in- creasing evil on earth as heralds of his coming. Premillenarians are often in this group. To SOCIAL AMELIORATION 247 them and to many revolutionary socialists the world must wax worse and worse before it becomes better. As we have seen, Karl Marx looked out upon the increasing misery of the working class as a sure sign of the coming social reorganization. The sayings of Jesus, recorded in Mark 13 and Matthew 24, have been interpreted as predicting an increasing dis- organization of life, and wars and rumors of wars are even now regarded by some as actual signs of hope. If, however, this is what Jesus meant, then surely he was mistaken, for the world has -not become increasingly disor- ganized. But it is impossible to believe that this is just what he meant. Karl Marx has so far not been correct concerning the increasing misery of the working class. Both relatively and absolutely, as we have said, it is at least probable that they are better off than ever be- fore in history. The underlying truth of this catastrophic philosophy is that all life is process and crisis. The bud slowly grows and expands, and sud- denly a jar or a breath of air and it bursts out into the fullness of its beauty. Or a house de- cays and cracks, until some day for reasons no one knows it suddenly collapses and becomes a heap of ruins. Process and crisis thus follow one another in nature and history, and it is often impossible to separate very sharply be- 248 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS tween the two. Of the two the catastrophe is so much more dramatic and spectacular that it often leads us to forget the slow quiet process, without which there would have been no sudden change. Moreover, the sudden crisis is some- times an evil which more careful processional activity would have avoided. Thus Jesus fore- saw the ruin of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, but he mourned it. It was an unnecessary catastrophe. The beautiful city could have saved herself. The temple might still have stood and marked the continuity of history had the Jewish leaders but understood the trend of spiritual history and listened to the new prophetic voices God is ever awakening to new songs of deliverance. But Jerusalem would not, and crisis became inevitable. The parables of the kingdom in Matthew 13 reflect the ideal of Jesus. Here is slow proces- sional growth. It is hypercriticism to trans- form them, as a German critic tries to do, into catastrophic teaching. The whole modern teaching of evolution, although it cannot get quite rid of the movement of final separation from the parent form, looks out upon a world of definite process by almost infinitely small changes from generation to generation. Eevo- lution has always been a marked element in history, and it may perhaps always remain a factor. At the same time, we are really more SOCIAL AMELIORATION 249 interested in evolution and the evolutionary process. This seems to us the normal thing. Even in the spiritual history of the individual, although there may be dramatic suddenness, as in Paul's case, when we are gripped and changed, yet as far as we know the more normal experience was that of Jesus, who grew up "going about his Father's business," and al- though having moral crises, as on the mount of temptation or in the garden of Gethsemane, yet never having a sense of unforgiven sin. For Jesus grew up in the consciousness of per- fect and absolute union with the Father. We are not sinless, and sin involves us in the dark- ness and the shadows of the unforgiven life, but the ideal is that of Jesus, and in the king- dom we may surely hope that children will grow up in Christian families fully assured from the moment of dawning intelligence of their mem- bership in God's household and of perfect son- ship in the forgiven life. For this reason we are also interested in the orderly development of human life. Violence and crisis disorganize and dislocate. At times this may be bitterly needful, but it has grave disadvantages. The French Eevolution was necessary for all Europe, but it was fearfully costly for poor France. The surgeon's knife may be essential, but it is the last and most dis- agreeable resort. When, therefore, revolution 250 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS is proclaimed, and when despondent premil- lenarians look out eagerly for war and disaster, they are surely mistaking the normal course of history, and fixing their eyes upon the oc- casional, the abnormal, and the dramatic. If we are told that we have nothing to do with our social order as it is, because it is not the kingdom, another series of objections are raised. Here, again, both socialism and extreme religious sects illustrate this point. In the older history of Presbyterianism honest and sincere men refused to have anything to do with the political machinery of both Scotland and the United States because of failure of one kind or another to recognize what these men regarded as essential in religion. Because the name of God is not in the Constitution some good men will not even now vote. They refuse to recognize what is for them a Godless social and political order. So also the extreme Marx- ian socialists in Germany have in the past been in steady opposition to granting all taxes for the maintenance of what they regard as bour- geoise oppression. The remedy all these ex- tremists proclaim is, in fact, flight out of the social order, or at least a steady refusal to co- operate in any way with it. The reason they give is that any help or comfort only prolongs the existence of what they condemn. The state that is not Christian or not socialistic is inner- SOCIAL AMELIORATION 251 ently evil, and therefore from this standpoint all amelioration is unwise and bad, for it only prolongs the evil. The practical attitude of the pulpit has some- times been on the same side. We are told "not to meddle with politics," and the reform ac- tivities of the pulpit are often looked at askance, because they are thought of as identifying the pulpit too closely with what is more or less definitely regarded as inherently bad. Would Jesus or Paul have wished to maintain, we are asked, the imperialism of Nero? And of course this does raise serious questions. Can we who live in an ideal social order of love, fellowship, cooperation, and service really aid and help to maintain an order of strife, compe- tition, business struggle, and effort for mastery over men? Of course, for those who accept the existing order as actually expressive of the mind of God, these questions do not arise. If anyone honestly believes, as men honestly do believe, that our existent competitive com- mercial industrialism, with profits as incentive to action and control of the productive machin- ery as its goal, is the last word in our social evolution, then all such thinkers have to do is to rid the social order of its abuses. Such men should be hard at work cleansing the social order of intemperance, impurity, graft, dis- honor, injustice, ignorance, and violence, so as 252 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS to commend to us the social order they believe in and show us that it is the kingdom of God. Can we leave this work to such men, if we are persuaded that something more radical must be aimed at? This is a weighty question. It must be remembered, in the first place, that no social order is actually entirely pure in form. In all social orders of the past there have been the seeds from which sprang new social forms. Long before nomadism abandoned flocks and herds men began to plant crops, as did even hunting Indians, that could be quickly gath- ered before moving away. The shepherd of Tekoa who appears at Beth-el was probably not only a nomad shepherd, but a herald of a coming commercialism as he exchanged his fleeces and wools. The old commercialism had in it the seeds of landed feudalism, and feudal- ism had in it the elements of that nationalism which was to break feudalism and give us our limited republics. This belongs to the very evolutionary process. Nothing seems to break the continuity of history, and the sensible man must realize that he cannot do without history to tell him anything he may know about the present and the future. If we are to have a new social order its processes, its thought, its ethics, and its life must grow out of the older orders which it is to supplant. Whatever may be the function of revolution, it can never be more SOCIAL AMELIORATION 253 than incidental. We must deal with the evo- lutionary process so far as it is God's process, and our faith is that it is God's process. We are, in the second place, in life and of it. If the existing social order is wrong, we are wrong with it, and we have no desire to escape the burden; we do not wish, like Buddhists, to get out alone. Paul was willing to be separated even from Christ for his brethren's sake ac- cording to the flesh. We are of the world order, and are here to save the world order. With all its sins and shortcomings it is dear to the heart of God, and he gave his only beloved Son to save it. We can do no less. And if he came into it to save it, we will not save it by getting out of it. Jesus prayed not that we be taken out of the world, but that we be kept in it. But if we are in it, then it is as healing and help- ful elements. We must do red-cross work even if the whole battle is to the last degree abhorrent to our souls. Amelioration is, then, our service as we look forward to the time when ameliora- tion will become unnecessary. Of course, no real Christian believes that in the kingdom of God we shall still be struggling with the white plague and the dark red-light curse. In the kingdom that is to come there will be no unlit tenements, or mines worked by little children and half -naked women. In the kingdom where Jesus reigns in men's hearts profits couldn't 254 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS tempt men to debauch their fellows by gambling holes and drinking dives. But these things are with us now, and the red-cross work must be done for this generation. Many cannot wait for the kingdom of the distant future, for they live now in a world they have made and we have made into a weary, restless hell. And we are there and can touch their lips with drops of living water, and can do something to cool the flame ; and if in doing it we become less radical and less thoroughgoing it will be strange in- deed. Furthermore, if a new social order is to come the social man must be ready for it. Only in the work of amelioration can we get the train- ing we all need for the social age. We need it every one of us. We are all bound hand and foot in the particular place our little life as- signs to us. It may be organized labor or the ministerial profession, it may be law or busi- ness, but whatever it may be, it has its world in which we live. The best outlet by which to see the world in which other people live is the work of amelioration, the social patching up of the existent order. If it is bad we cannot really keep it alive, but we can learn its ways, and draw from its experiences, and prepare intel- ligently for what is to take its place. For this is of the utmost importance, namely, that we carry over the values of the SOCIAL AMELIORATION 255 old into the new. No social order has been without its own ethical triumphs. We have suffered with the ages, but we shall also reap with the ages, and the patience, faith, hope, and constancy born of our long struggle are values of priceless worth. Only in serving our own day and generation, not alone by procla- mation, but by works of healing and mercy, can we really discover the eternal values. Only in the actual battle with sin and suffering, with disease and death, can we know the joy and fellowship of work for humanity and the kingdom. The Christian life is ministry. It is a shame that in Protestantism this name has been monopolized by a class. There are only two classes in the adult population those that are Christian ministers and those that are of the world. It is only a difference of function that separates the teaching minister from the heal- ing minister or the justice-defending minister or the minister to the community in barter and commerce. The business man who is in business for the money that is in it is not Christian ; the business man who is in business as a minister of service is Christian. And our ministry is to body, soul, and spirit, to the whole of man, and to all human relations. Jesus went about doing good. The very proclamation of the coming kingdom has force as we are found 256 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS binding men's wounds and healing men's hurts. Some of us are deprived of many chances we eagerly covet in concrete social work to actually do the will of the Father as well as proclaim it, but as far as in us lies we are to be up and at it, trying to make this old world new, and to prepare it for the coming of the kingdom for which we pray. CHAPTER XXIII CLASSIFICATION OF SOCIAL PROPOSALS OF AMELIORATION IN the midst of the myriad reform proposals by which we are now happily surrounded it is important to waste as little strength as possible on impossible schemes, and to pick out from among those that appeal to our sympathies the ones that are the most fundamental. The in- telligent citizen interested in reform should try in the very beginning to formulate, however rudely, his ideal. What will really give us the kingdom? Do we really believe in democracy, or paternalism, or aristocracy, or plutocracy? Which form of regulation will most quickly give us an ideal society? Having constructed our ideal, then all reform proposals must be weighed, again tentatively, with this ideal in mind. With some well-meaning men we shall find ourselves unable cordially to cooperate because, perhaps, they believe in "the super- man," and we trust in aristocracy or democ- racy. They are in sympathy with measures that advance an ideal which we cannot really desire. There is no good in intelligent men working at cross purposes in the same organ- ization; and the habit of getting well-known 257 258 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS names together to support enterprises which just so far as they were successful would really undo all these well-known names stand for is one of the pathetically amusing evidences of the social ignorance of even well-educated men. Many social proposals are like the March Hare 's watch repairs in "Alice in Wonderland. ' ' He oiled his watch with butter, and it did not go, although it was the best butter. Constructive social work needs a fairly clear ideal of what is ultimately wanted, and our energies will largely go to those things that promise most for our ideal. Young reformers, and particularly young clergymen, are apt to give themselves to all and every earnest movement without really asking whither it leads and what is the animating spirit of the movement. Naturally one desires to be counted upon to fulfill all righteousness; at the same time, strength and means are limited, and one should often ask the question, ' * What is best worth while ! " Of course, loca- tion and calling determine in large measure the direction of our social activities. There are immediate interests that claim our attention, because if we neglect them no one else will take care of them. A church may have a number of its members interested in a " village improve- ment society," and its own grounds be the most unsightly on the street. It is, perhaps, a minor AMELIORATION MEASURES CLASSIFIED 259 matter, but if the church does not make a social sacrifice at this point it is not earning its exemp- tion from taxation. It is one of its minor but immediate interests. It is well, therefore, to seek some rational classification of various proposed reforms, and ask, "Where can my gifts, capacity, and position tell most for funda- mental righteousness 1 ' ' No matter how cautious the reformer is, no matter how convinced that all radical change would be a mistake, he can hardly look out on life and not see that it needs reform all along the line. And as he goes out into life he finds some association or other trying to reform al- most everything in sight. He may distrust "panaceas" as much as he pleases, what is offered for his acceptance are hundreds of pro- posals affecting almost every aspect of our social and political life. The need of reform, that is, transformation into God's image of the daily routine, becomes evident to the most thoughtless. The most dangerous and incau- tious thing is to stand still and do nothing. Many men interested in the existing order praise constantly the steady inertia of some of their fellow men, as though inertia were an in- fallible sign of good judgment and of sober common sense. By simply doing nothing the French king brought on the Eevolution. From the point of view of the conservation of existing 260 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS values simply to stand still is the most danger- ous course one can adopt. We must act. How shall we act? There are certain leading points of view al- ready made plain in the criticism of great political programs. The Christian man should ask about any reform, How far is it really democratic in the Christian meaning of that term, that is, how far will it promote that Chris- tian brotherhood which is at the bottom of all our social dreaming? And he must also ask how far it promotes that moral autonomy which is God's purpose for human life. Reforms that are thrust by force on unwilling men or com- munities seldom accomplish aught but moral confusion. The only morality that lasts has its springs in human purpose. A social state would not help men who do not want and are unwilling to have a social state. ^Largejmim- bers of well-meaning efforts have resulted in \ dreary failure because they were born in hope- less ignorance of the real workings of the human mind. Paternal schemes for benefiting workingmen without consulting them; aristo- cratic interference with the morals of "the inferior classes" by kindly groups of superior persons; loftily condescending efforts to "ele- vate" the homes of the "honest toilers," have met with cold reception or actual rebuff, and then we hear wails about the ingratitude of AMELIORATION MEASURES CLASSIFIED 261 the working class and the impossibility of "helping" them. Again, there is a constant pressure to force the morality of one set and station in life upon another. That is, no doubt, what Jesus meant when he said of the Pharisees, "They bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, but they themselves will not touch them with one of their little fingers." It was easy for the Pharisees in Jerusalem to wash before eating, to prepare food for Sabbath, to guard against contamination from the unclean, but how about underfed fishermen in Galilee I They could not always eat with clean hands, nor could they al- ways prepare their Sunday dinners before- hand. Men do not eat raw grain rubbed in their hands if they have other diet. It was a hungry peasant band that offended prosperous religi- osity by preparing food on the Sabbath as did Jesus and his disciples as they walked through the fields. All our reform movements must, to be effect- ive, work with the streams and currents of human thought. These are never wholly wrong, though seldom more than partly true. At the same time, they are the currents of ulti- mate progress. Jesus never became a zealot, but the dream of a new society, the discontent with the formal ecclesiasticism, belonged to the whole stream of human thought, and Jesus took 262 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS it, spiritualized it, deepened it, and gave it new and broader meaning. It is reforms that look forward toward the better dream that must have our attention and energy. According to our social theory we will therefore judge them. If our emphasis is that of the individual we can best cooperate with reformers who aim at the maintenance of such individualism as we have and its extension, and our activity will receive color from our ideal. If our ideal is rather of the socialist or collectivist type, again our social activity will receive its character from our so- cialist ideal. To conveniently classify various reform pro- posals it is perhaps well to begin with the indi- vidual, and thence proceed to the home group, with its questions of education and discipline for life, and then may follow the reforms of the workshop and the daily breadwinning life. Our modern life is dominated by the city, but the civic reforms only point the way to reforms that affect town and village, where in larger groups men and women meet and live. This naturally suggests the needed changes in our political machinery, looked at from the point of view of a really Christian democracy. And after the state come the great forward move- ments toward an international life, with its ultimate abandonment of war and reference to an international court. AMELIORATION MEASURES CLASSIFIED 263 For some these various reforms will effect a sufficient change, they think, and there is needed no dream of a reorganized society. This is not lack of moral earnestness or want of balanced judgment. With some it may be that they have no imagination to hold them to their task; with others it is skepticism as to the validity of in- tellectual arguments. With some it may be mental inertia or lack of fancy; with others it is lack of insight, perhaps, into the actual facts of life. The main question is, Do we see evil in our social order, and are we willing as far as we see it to apply remorselessly and at any personal sacrifice the remedy that seems to us to promise most? When we have seen an evil and think we have found a remedy, it generally for the time being fills our whole horizon, and it is natural and right it should. We need to be intense and in earnest, and n^thingisso crippled as the reforming mind that is too sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought to really make up and hold to a fixed plan. To the ardent individual- ist or socialist who sees the whole transformed society mapped out as clearly as a coast head- land on a bright winter day, the doubts and hesitancy, the half -believed objections, and the old well-worn difficulties that have been answered to the reformer's satisfaction a thou- sand times, but which only serve as an excuse 264 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS for the hesitant fear, seem simply stupid. He would plunge everybody at once into the heat of the battle, and is restlessly impatient that men are not willing to take his word for it that all difficulties have been foreseen and met. He thinks there must be moral obtuseness. And there often is, but more often we battle both within and without with an atmosphere which we did not create, but in which we have lived all our life long. It is the consciousness of our calling, or our surroundings, or our group ; and we not only cannot escape it, but it would be extremely unsettling and dangerous to be sud- denly deprived of it. It has its distinct mean- ing for us, and we will carry it into all our re- forming activity. Furthermore, it should not be forgotten that few of us have any large store of surplus energy. After the duties that must be attended to are done, after the expenses that must be met are provided for, there remains some little surplus, perhaps, of mental, phys- ical, and material resource. The claims upon it are insistent. The organized Church has her claim, the political situation makes an exceed- ingly imperative demand. Then come recre- ation and outside interests, and now to this preoccupied mind comes the claim of an en- tirely unknown social order, demanding faith and knowledge in high degree. No wonder that AMELIORATION MEASURES CLASSIFIED 265 old phrases serve the place of thought, and that half-rejected objections still excuse the mental inertia that refuses to grapple with so tremen- dous a theme. For this reason in classifying reform measures and trying to interest socially unawakened persons it is well to get them started on reforms near their life and along the line of least resistance. Many a father might be interested in children's courts if he once saw what it really means for hundreds of boys and girls like his own in all save dress and home training. Nearly all right-minded women can be moved by the woes and hardships of child labor. He who thinks he has a message and a program will often do well to work up to it by well-chosen steps, and train those who are awak- ening gradually to social moral autonomy. The classification of reform proposals is therefore not simply academic. The dream of the king- dom needs workers, and wise, tactful workers, both men and women, who will train as well as awaken. It is really of more importance to get men and women thinking for themselves on the basis of social righteousness than to carry them intellectually over into the ranks of this or that social proposal. Proper classification will also go a long way to comprehension of the real spirit of any re- form movement. When we ask ourselves, "What does this reform aim at?" we have al- 266 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS ready to some degree passed judgment on many of them ; for whatever our point of view it will .exclude some efforts that make their appeal to us, simply because their success would be really doing what we deem undesirable. Those who do not really believe in democracy will not be likely to want woman's suffrage. Those who see in the competitive process a wholesome stamping out of the inefficient should in good logic hardly contribute to rescue homes and various proposals for staying that process. Some contribute time and strength to organiza- tions that claim their sympathy, but which do not claim their really intelligent sympathy, and much would be gained in every way if men and women really took into consideration the ulti- mate aims of all measures of relief and reform. The distinctly Christian man would do well to keep the Christian point of view constantly in mind. The ultimate aim of the Christian life should be so distinct and clear that we would not go on, as we sometimes have gone on, being deceived by appearances, and lending aid and comfort to efforts that are actually antichris- tian. Thoughtless good nature sometimes ac- cepts intentions which are on their face good as sufficient warrant for supporting movements whose real outcome is destructive of our most highly prized values. The socially awakened Christian must try to think out for himself or AMELIORATION MEASURES CLASSIFIED 267 herself the outcome of all measures brought to our attention as they affect the whole situation. Only in this way can we really helpfully act, and struggle for conditions of life more truly noble and more consonant with the kingdom of God. It would be quite impossible to review all the proposals for relief, education, and reform that are now before us; it will not be possible to even so classify them that important groups are not omitted; but the remaining chapters will attempt to point out the bearings of various types of proposed relief and aid to wounded humanity in the light of Christian ethics. CHAPTER XXIV THE ETHICS OP PERSONAL, RELIEF THOSE who reduce the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount to a new code of external law regard themselves as bound to give to all who ask. The impossible character of this in- terpretation hardly needs any emphasis here. The principle at the bottom of the injunction is even more sweeping than any literal interpre- tation makes it. All life is a giving of ourselves to the limit of our capacity for others, if we are really trying to live as Jesus did. And in our giving the controlling purpose is redemptive love. When, therefore, anyone makes demand upon our time or strength or our material re- sources, the question is, "What is the loving thing to do, what most tends to redeem this human life ? " On the streets of a great city we are constantly addressed by persons who beg. It is perfectly hopeless to try to divide them into two classes, "the deserving poor" and "the undeserving poor." Who are we to say any man is deserving or undeserving? Freely we have received. Were we deserving? What is "deserving," and who is the judge? The objection to giving money on the street to all 268 THE ETHICS OF PERSONAL RELIEF 269 who ask it is not that some are deserving and others not, but that it is often the lazy, selfish, unloving thing to do. You may by it be de- moralizing a brother or sister even more thoroughly than hunger and cold are doing it. Even well-meant gifts do often demoralize, and nearly all unloving giving is poison. The coordination of works of mercy by "charity organization societies" in the United States has proved a most useful and necessary work. The fountains of benevolence were in danger of being stopped because fraud and injudicious help, with its outcome of moral danger, began to make men afraid to give. At the same time, it must be confessed that the ordinary " charity organization society" is only a stopgap. The officers who administer relief, no matter how tender-hearted and well-inten- tioned, are fairly swamped with applications. They at last come to feel that they are being "worked." The relief is impersonal and of- ficial, to some degree cold and hence demoraliz- ing. For it is bad to be dependent, to have to drop the role of service and be served, but to be served unlovingly, mechanically, hardens and degrades. In great cities a certain class take delight in "working" charity organiza- tions as a sort of game, and the officials become shrewd and suspicious, and applicants who come to them for the first time feel degraded 270 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS and humiliated by the close questioning and the necessary examination into the truth of state- ments made. The process, therefore, by which this natural shame is gradually overcome is a hardening and demoralizing process. Men who start out with good intentions soon become used to the game, and in spite of every care "work" to their own hurt the organized charity of the country. It is easy to criticise, and hard to suggest a remedy, but, useful as is organized charity for certain purposes, it can never really take the place of even less wisely given but more personal assistance. In addition the tests of "worthy" and "un- worthy" must be mechanical and unreal. The "work" test is not really a test as to whether men and women would be industrious under normal conditions. The work is artificial and somewhat unnatural, the conditions generally repulsive. What is meant by "unworthy" is, of course, that large class of persons who im- pose by false statement upon charity, and who by fraud live comfortably on the labor of others. To help any man to become a parasite, whether a wealthy parasite or a poor parasite, is to fatally wound his humanity. At the same time the line is very hard to draw. Who of us knows how far his or her own life is essentially para- sitic or semiparasitic? Who can tell how far applicants for relief are really past loving re- THE ETHICS OF PERSONAL RELIEF 271 demption? Suppose a patent "fraud" ap- proaches us. What is the loving thing, to him, to society, to yourself to do? Could you ac- tually change his mode of life and open his eyes to the ignoble misuse of his energies, you would have accomplished more for him and for society than if you had him " punished" for his fraud, and sent out even successfully terrorized into honesty. One great corrupting element in the almsgiv- ing of the Middle Ages was the sense that men did it not for the sake of the man relieved, but for the sake of the soul of the giver. It was regarded as a virtue to give away money and to live upon others. One saved one's soul by poverty and dependence. Whereas life is serv- ice, and we should give not to save our souls, but the souls of others. In all giving, therefore, the Christian seeks not simply the welfare, but the highest welfare, of his fellow men. The goal is autonomy. Hence anything that weakens the moral au- tonomy of a fellow man is bad. The reckless, ignorant giving of the Middle Ages was morally weakening. The defense of it by an English socialist reveals an entire misapprehension both of the spirit of the giving and the effects of it. It was feudalistic paternalism, and no matter what seemed to be the contentment and peace it purchased it purchased it in the long run at 272 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS the price of manhood and democracy in both the giver and the receiver. The giver must be intelligent, not to save his pocket or prevent himself being imposed upon, but for the sake of the receiver. It is often only an easy piece of luxury when one has the money to give it away. But it can do as much harm as good. And any use of money to superinduce depend- ence upon the giver at the expense of self -regu- lation is so much moral loss. It is therefore not a matter of indifference whether the help misfortune needs comes from the group or from the individual. Dependence upon the group has its marked dangers, but they do not compare with the danger of indi- vidual personal dependence upon another indi- vidual. Large areas of thought and feeling are fenced in when the relationship of the dependence is personal, which are open to sky and breeze when the relationship is of an indi- vidual to his group. And the reason of this is because the group is the larger self, and in its larger relations is dependent upon all the indi- viduals in it, giving a sense of autonomy even in obedience to its commands. This sense of interdependence is moral and stimulating where personal dependence is enervating and de- pressing. It is, of course, impossible to reach full au- tonomy in many cases. Some children never THE ETHICS OF PERSONAL RELIEF 273 become really mature, many never want to be- come independent and free. Yet the object of education is moral freedom, and even in deal- ing with those who appeal to us, so far as in us lies, the object is to render them capable of self-maintenance. And as we survey the various instrumentalities for aiding people those should appeal most strongly to us which have this as the goal. Thus hospitals have a foremost claim upon us. The sick man must, if possible, be restored to health. The hospital should be as ready of access as the public school. And all preventive treatment should be still more encouraged. There is terrible lack of proper social organiza- tion at this point. No one can deal for a few days with industrial inefficiency without realiz- ing how much of it is due not to idleness or laziness or drink or badness, but to physical and psychic ill health. Shortsightedness, growths in nose and throat, lack of nervous coordination, bad digestion, defective hearing, bad lungs or heart these force themselves upon us, together with all kinds of sexual derangements and hysterical impulses, as often primary causes of marked industrial in- efficiency. Many of these ills could be cured, more could have been prevented, all must be treated if self-maintenance is even to be hoped for. From the Christian point of view the value 274 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS of human life is supreme. The weakest de- mand our care, and here is where the red-cross work must begin. The need here of the personal touch is greater than anywhere else. The pain-racked mind and body is most sensitive to love and sympathy and cries out for human companionship in the hour of weakness. No theorist can be quite so extreme as to say, "Let them alone." Neither the advocate of ruth- less competition nor the radical reformer can quite face the logic of a position that says it is better to do nothing, the process of elimina- tion is wholesome, or do nothing until a new social order makes this thing impossible. Were they to persuade us to such neglect we would become brutalized and dehumanized. Pain, weakness, and immaturity educate us to try to help, and teach us the mystery of life. The goal of our endeavor is, of course, always self- maintenance, health, and independence, but we are nevertheless always in the presence of dependence and immaturity. Those who work in individual relief soon come to value economic independence, and to aim at it. It is, however, not always remem- bered that the basis of economic independence is independence of thought and moral auton- omy. All down the history of humanity group solidarity has been so important that any divergence was looked at with suspicion. To THE ETHICS OF PERSONAL RELIEF 275 maintain the "ways of the tribe" was the foundation of all virtue. This idea haunts us still. All individuality is looked upon as "freakish," or "crankism." And more par- ticularly the unfortunate ones from an eco- nomic point of view must "be sane and right- thinking" before they can appeal to the average sympathy. Here again much blundering is due to the official rather than personal point of view. It is true that unconventionality is a luxury that only the economically fortunate can at present indulge in, but society would be much richer if the special gifts and aptitudes of men were more studied, and if the personal relief consisted in adapting such aptitude to the needs of the community. To the conven- tional person all novelty of thought or feeling seems strange and even wicked. The com- fortable mind runs in a groove, and sees no advantage in the harum-scarum adventures of an all too curious inquirer. At this point the Salvation Army should teach us important lessons. It is amazing to see what that organization has gotten out of the waste products of humanity, and very largely by letting men and women work in their own way, and rather encouraging them to be "queer" and unconventional. It was also one of the strong points of early Methodism that men and women who joined it were at once 276 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS marked down as " eccentric," and thus were set free to live their own lives, and richly re- paid the community for this freedom. Ecclesi- asticism shares with all organization the char- acteristic that it instinctively opposes change and dislikes novelty, and church relief is often linked with cramping demands upon the recipi- ent. Nor is this the fault of churches only. All institutions are apt to ' ' standardize " conduct, and demand conformity to type in a most unwholesome way. For this reason in orphan asylums, industrial schools, reforma- tories, trade schools, etc., where a certain con- formity to an outward discipline is simply a mechanical necessity for without a certain routine the institution simply could not handle the crowd there is grave danger of marring the individual life forever. Individuality is repressed, moral autonomy is made almost im- possible, the whole reaction upon the individ- ual's world is impoverished and weakened. Those, therefore, who have to deal with insti- tutions for extended aid should bear this danger in mind, and offset the necessary rou- tine by distinct encouragement of all the latent "queernesses" without which the social inertia can never be overcome. Much that in an insti- tution or very conventional social group be- comes "queer" to the limits of insanity would have been simply charming and interesting di- THE ETHICS OF PERSONAL RELIEF 277 versity of thought and feeling in a more con- genial atmosphere. It would be well to avoid too great uniformity of dress, and even to cultivate, perhaps, irregularity of hours at some time in the day. For the most part meals must be eaten together, but if once a week or even oftener meals could be taken in the even- ing at any time within a certain range it would be a great relief to many institutions. It is easy for most of us to fall into routine, and many take a curious pride in having done the same thing for years at the same time in the same way, but such a habit can become the most fatal tyranny, and in the inevitable change of circumstances to which all are exposed the lack of power to adapt oneself to the new situation may prove disastrous. In all dealing, therefore, with those who for the time being are dependent the main thing is to keep future independence in mind. And this independence should be economic, mental, and moral. More particularly should the really thoughtful radical prize all work that lifts men out of the ruts into which weaker humanity easily sinks. The greatest difficulty moral and religious progress has to contend with is in- ertia ; the lack of interest ; the indifference and carelessness of the average man and woman. This is born of the small residuum of energy left over from the daily toil. Few of us have 278 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS much more than carries us rather ineffectively through the daily routine. To weaken indi- viduality or cramp any personal initiative is exceedingly shortsighted. All proposals that look toward the preven- tion of economic disadvantage should have the Christian man's support. The wageworker should be protected at the machine or on the railway. Insurance against accidents and old age, provision for self-respecting care in sick- ness or disability all these measures are far short of radical social readjustment, but they look forward to it and train men for it. The state paternalism of Germany is not the model most Christian radicals in America or England set before themselves. But it is in its workings compelling men to become democratic. And quite . recently steps have been taken looking toward the autonomy of trade organizations which may yet become models for industrial England and America. The world is linked to- gether now by steam and electricity, but the whole question of the labor market, and the question of supply and demand, is unorganized and inefficient. The manual worker is often tied to locality where he should be free to wander, and made to wander where he should have had an opportunity to take root with his family group in the soil. The help extended to the in- dividual must, therefore, not only seek his au- THE ETHICS OF PERSONAL RELIEF 279 tonomy, but try to supply him with access to the industrial opportunity. We are now confronted with the sorry spectacle of waste land and wasted men. The best help that can be extended is access to the tools of society and training in their use. Organized labor is sometimes naturally jealous of the aid extended to individuals, for it sees in those thus aided a favored competi- tion. Thus industrial training, trade schools, etc., may turn out, at the expense of the com- munity, favored artisans to compete with the less favored workingman's son and thrust him down into the ranks of the relatively unskilled. While this danger is real, the other alternative is far more serious. Nothing depresses the labor market more than the clamors for work of an ineffective and half-trained proletariat. Individual aid, therefore, if it really makes for independence and efficiency, is not so real a menace as the pressure of the crowd of appli- cants for work. In the end all inefficiency and disability is paid for by those who work with brain and muscle. He or she who extends individual aid should also remember that the main lack in all of us is inspiration and definite purpose. It may seem difficult or even impossible to greatly in- spire starving men or sick women. Yet often while feeding the hungry and nursing the sick 280 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS more would eventually be done for them by filling them with enthusiasm big enough to carry them forward in their struggle with economic disadvantage. Here religious enthusiasm has been the great restorer of human energy. To- day religious enthusiasm suffusing the social activity is actually giving men and women new economic efficiency and is restoring them to life and health. Churches and individuals can- not leave the "down and outs" to starve. and die, and while they are being cared for if they can be filled with hope and enthusiasm for the dream of God's kingdom here on earth they may be sent out no longer in the ranks of rather demoralized dependence, but as ministers to the communal life, and rich dispensers of the message of the coming city of God. For such brothers and sisters in misfortune the aspect of the religious life that has most significance will not be its theoretic and theological expla- nations, but its practical and immediate aims and ambitions. One reason why miscellaneous, indiscriminate giving does harm rather than good is that the moral impartation, the hope, courage, am- bition, and inspiration which are quite as much needed as the temporary relief, so seldom really accompany it. The recipient of real material kindness goes so often away depressed, sub- consciously humiliated, weakened in moral tone, THE ETHICS OF PERSONAL RELIEF 281 and yet all the more ready to abandon inde- pendence and trust to the exertions of others for support. Such demoralized natures are the hardest social material the would-be reformer finds. Even when they querulously complain they cannot be easily aroused to moral en- thusiasm or effective protest against even the conditions that were perhaps partly responsible for bringing them so low. Into Christian giv- ing there must be introduced the irrepressible courage and joy that breathe through Paul, and souls must even in the hour of their deser- tion and economic humiliation be made to feel that they have a part to play, and play nobly, in the coming of the kingdom of God, the reign of loving justice. CHAPTER XXV SOCIAL AMELIORATION AND THE HOME THE basis of the ethics of Jesus is the home group. The ideal fatherhood and the loving interrelations of brotherhood and sisterhood make up the constant background of Jesus 's thought. Hence, for those of us who believe with Jesus the breaking up of the home that is taking place under commercial industrialism is one of the most startling and depressing fea- tures of our ethical situation. The rise of in- dustrial womanhood is bad enough, but the grinding up of childhood in our glass and cotton factories is shameful in the last degree. One can hardly look at the bright facets of a cut glass without seeing in them the tears of little children robbed of their childhood. And we, the chief hypocrites and sinners in this busi- ness, then laugh at the army of industrial wrecks that figure in our " comic" supplements as " "Weary Willie." Who made poor little Willie so weary as a boy, swinging his glass tube or picking at the breaker, that work became a nightmare to him, and all the springs of normal industry snapped? In the dirty city telegraph office, in the messenger service, in the mills and 282 AMELIORATION AND THE HOME 283 mines Christian men and women may see the great army of exploited stunted childhood, from which, perhaps, in dividends we draw our com- fortable income. Some become useful and splendid citizens in spite of all we can do, but a great mass sink to the level of lowest industrial efficiency, 1 and many become thieves, tramps, and "yeggmen," to revenge bitter wrongs upon a community that richly deserves it. The seriously minded Christian who seeks the kingdom of God on earth should intelli- gently set about the work of saving the Ameri- can home. Even for the middle class, hotels, boarding houses, and light housekeeping flats are taking the place of homes, not only in the larger cities, but also in the towns. The Tene- ment Commission of New York has done some- thing to raise the character of tenement houses and rents have correspondingly increased! All indirect taxation falls most heavily upon the small home, and the abominable ingenuity of the taxation system of most countries is break- ing up the family and giving us a state of things that is beyond description. The grisette sys- tem has fastened itself upon New York, and scores of shop girls live the life of the Parisian grisette because wages are low, and pretty 1 For trustworthy facts see " Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science," vol. xxix, No. 1, 1907, and the sup- plements 1907-1908 on " Child Labor and Social Progress"; also the two handbooks on "Child Labor Legislation '? of 1907 and 1908. 284 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS dresses and a few hours of amusement seem little enough from life for them, when their rich sisters have so much ! Poor girls are sell- ing the bloom of their young womanhood for a mess of pottage. And we preachers in the pulpit prate of the American home ! We little know of what is going on all about us. The community has a direct interest in healthy motherhood and pure womanhood and clean manhood. But disease stalks sullenly among us, leaving its sad wake of ruined souls and bodies. In the great city the homeless life of thou- sands upon thousands suggests the need for temporary substitutes for the home for lonely boys and girls. The saloon, the dance hall, and the cheap and often nasty vaudeville are now almost a necessity for many thousands whom settlements, clubs, churches, and the Christian home might save in greater numbers. But responsible and wise regulation of the amusements of town and city is greatly needed. Here again the danger is great that a comforta- ble influential minority agitate for and secure measures that fit in with the ideas of right and wrong they hold, but which have no application to the quite different ethical life of other strata of society. The only safe guides are knowledge and sympathy. The day of rest is a priceless heritage, but a small badly ventilated hall bed- AMELIORATION AND THE HOME 285 room and a frowsy crowded "parlor" with the odors of the meal still in it are very unattract- ive places for the Sunday rest. Many a boy and girl straight from a country home of decency and cheerfulness has spent sad, lonely hours when first swallowed up by the great big seemingly heartless city. The churches do, of course, something, but one cannot "go all day to church, " as a nice Christian girl once said to the writer. One of the first interests is to keep one day in seven free from all unnecessary labor. Even the case of unorganized domestic labor should not be neglected. The law can- not enforce a religious day. Only the religious man can spend the day religiously. All the law can and should do is to secure opportunity for the religious man to spend it as he pleases. Nor can the law be based on the Old Testament. We are not on the basis of the Old Testament, and the "Lord's Day" was not a day when the early Christians could suspend labor. They were too economically dependent as slaves or wage- earners to determine how they should spend the day. They crept early to the morning sacrament, but the rest of the day was spent in work. Social expedience is the one basis on which the Christian man may safely and confidently appeal for a workless seventh of the time. All labor unions, all employees, all purveyors of 286 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS amusement should be encouraged to organize for the severest measures to protect every man in the enjoyment of one day in seven as a day of rest. Then the churches, schools, settlements, clubs, and Young Men's Christian Associations should see to it that the day is made in the highest sense a day of elevation, instruction, worship, and harmless unbending. For recre- ation is as needful as any other activity for the healthy minded, and the music supplied by the churches could be greatly improved and ex- tended. Men cannot be driven, they must be won to religion, and, of course, if any large body of our fellow citizens use the day for amusement simply, so long as they do not inter- fere with the rights of others, we should not prevent them. The hopeless character of any morality that is external to the life, and thrust upon it from without, is nowhere better seen than in the enforcement of Sunday regulations, wholesome enough for the lawmakers and not, perhaps, intelligently opposed by the majority, but simply unreal to them. Thus, for instance, a Scotch city in olden days was the most drunken and disorderly place in the United Kingdom on Saturday night, and the dreariest and most hopeless place for the poor on Sunday. The sober, industrious,, though formal and often pharisaic middle class were the respectable and AMELIORATION AND THE HOME 287 lawmaking majority. They enacted their mo- rality for all, and drunkenness and illegitimacy made "God-fearing" Edinburgh and Glasgow bywords. Not, indeed, that the churchgoing population was really drunken, but that the population was not really churchgoing even at the best of times. The ideal for the home would be one day in the week for its fullest enjoyment, but there must first be the home. Here is where Christian men and women who find it hard to accept any theory of social reorganization as yet presented to them are in duty bound to study the facts and to seek the causes for the rapid disinte- gration of the American home. In meetings of radical workingmen to-day one of the pressing and startling questions forcing themselves to the front is, what shall be the relation of un- married young workingmen and the unmarried industrial working girls, who cannot bear chil- dren because of the economic situation, but who crave companionship and the satisfaction of the most imperious instincts. No civilization bought at the price we seem called to pay for it is worth having. If it be said this is a ques- tion that is acute only in the great city the facts do not bear the statement out. Not only are we rapidly becoming a city population, but the con- ditions in the mill towns of New England and the South are described by those who know 288 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS them in much the same terms as the great cities. The Koman Catholic Church has sought to stay divorce, and points with stern reproach to the increasing evils of divorce in nearly all Protestant lands. It is not enough to make the reply that in countries like Spain, Italy, and France, which the Papacy had full opportunity to train and educate, concubinage is a recog- nized social factor against which the Church has protested vainly. The fact remains that divorces are a sign of deep-lying and terrible evils. If the home is to be conserved the moral and economic conditions out of which it comes must be studied. The basis of a really Chris- tian morality is the pure family group. If economic conditions are making that group dif- ficult or even in some cases impossible, then here is where social amelioration must begin. The comfortable possessing class must awake to the fact that at the feet of refined and deli- cately nurtured daughters whose lives seem now so safe there yawns a hell that is swallow- ing up their sisters, and that no one is safe. In thirty years the writer has himself seen the sons and daughters of the wealthy sink to the lowest economic level of the proletariat, and the foul contagion of the moral rottenness is wafted to the homes of seemingly sheltered lives, there to breed disease, despair, and death. AMELIORATION AND THE HOME 289 The subjects that must be considered in think- ing of the home are first rents. Why are rents so high with land so plentiful, materials cheap, and workingmen seeking work? Secondly, the whole subject of transportation has direct bearing on the city home. Men and women are crowded into small gloomy tenements because carfare to and from work for a working family of, say, three adult persons, means thirty cents a day, or one dollar and eighty cents a week, as well as the time spent going to and fro. This is a heavy tax, and increases the monthly rent of rooms away from the city by seven dollars and twenty cents. It is a serious question whether a great city should not make its trans- portation as free as its sidewalks, and pay for it as we pay for our sidewalks, seeing we all live by the labors of the population that moves to and fro on the street cars. Thirdly, the home suffers fearfully from the boys and girls so soon going out to labor, and by the economic claims upon the mother. There is, alas! often no home-maker left, and the unattractiveness of the sleeping place becomes a consequent neces- sity. Fourthly, the desperate attempt to keep up appearances in dress leads to a very dispropor- tionate expenditure on finery and showy clothes. And yet this is psychologically easily explained. The dress is with us a sign of eco- nomic ability ; and a natural ambition to appear 290 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS at one's best economically is further greatly emphasized by the fact that the actual wage is heightened by good appearance. The shop girl must "look smart," and a nice plainly dressed girl is actually at an economic disad- vantage. She starves herself for a new frock, or the latest whim of some fashionable "modiste," which she can secure a cheap imi- tation of. And so it goes all the way up. In the desperate race to keep up appearances of economic efficiency the home, which is unseen, suffers for the clothes and finery which are seen. This accounts also for the growing in- hospitality of American middle-class life. The home is not on a par with the dressing and expenditure on things visible to the outside, hence its doors are largely closed to outsiders that the disparity may not be observed. The flashy dressing of the American street has the same cause. Here on the street is for hundreds the only chance to display economic ability, but the same thing is increasingly true of London and Berlin and all industrial centers. The wealthy dress plainly on the streets be- cause they can display their jewels and silks at the opera, at balls, in theaters, and at all man- ner of social entertainments. The economically dependent must dress for the street, for here alone have they any chance to see and be seen. Hence the home suffers, and far up into the AMELIORATION AND THE HOME 291 highly paid labor classes, such as superintend- ents, teachers, professors, artists, and even doctors and lawyers. If it be asked, "Why must they display economic ability?" the answer is that again their wage-earning ca- pacity depends in a good degree upon their doing so. The young doctor must dress his wife well if he is going to be called "prosper- ous" and "successful." The young floor- walker must make a brave appearance and dress his family well to secure the respect of those who employ him and those who are employed with him. The home these do not see there he can save and sacrifice; the wife and daugh- ters are seen there he cannot save. Thus a pace is set and a habit of economic estimate is formed that tends to increasing extravagance and waste. Under this waste the home suffers more and more, and is increasingly abandoned for hotels, boarding houses, and cheaper sub- stitutes. Mere preaching will do little or no good. The unreality of every tirade against over- dressing is felt instinctively by all. The serv- ant tries to hide her economic dependence one day in the week, on her "night out" or on her "Sunday out," by dressing as nearly like her mistress as cheap department stores will enable her to do. The clerk tries to look like the son of the head of the house which employs him. 292 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS As our estimate of status is on the basis of economic ability, so each one seeks to raise his status by economic display, and clothes are the rude index of economic efficiency. Fifthly, the home suffers from the domestic ignorance of those who are intrusted with it. The life of a cash girl is not a good preparation for making a home. Some rise to the occasion, many fail utterly. The work of shop and mill unfits womanhood in many instances, both physically and psychically, for motherhood. The home hopefully begun proves through ig- norance and helplessness an impossible place. And before experience is gained the marriage bond of love and confidence has been fatally weakened. This leads to the sixth great danger to the home, namely, drink and drugs. Far more men and women are to-day suffering from drink and drugs than even the records of open drunk- enness would indicate. Many a woman has never been intoxicated, but is almost entirely dependent upon alcohol or drug stimulation learned in drinking patent medicines. And the saloon and bar need no more than mere mention to summon up before us ruined homes and blighted hopes. In many cases, however, a happy home would have prevented the attrac- tions of the barroom ever gaining a hold upon the young life, and the drug habit has arisen AMELIORATION AND THE HOME 293 directly out of the misery and discomfort that ignorance of home-making has caused. The basis of any proper advance toward the social conditions of the kingdom must be the home. Here is a wide field for social ameliora- tion. But it must be undertaken intelligently, and the causes must be sought out which are at work driving out the home. The decreasing American family will not be enlarged by preaching or scolding. There are material and spiritual conditions which must be studied, and when we know what are the conditions under, which the family is thus degenerating, then we may be in a position intelligently to indicate the lines along which remedy must move. In the meantime, even reform should be at- tempted carefully. London has broken up large slum areas, but the people that lived there have found the new houses too expensive, because ground rents bear so little of the burden of English taxation compared to the improve- ments. One population has been driven out to make room for a population better situated eco- nomically. As an experimental half measure it would be worth while to try taking off all taxation on low and medium improvements and putting the tax upon the ground rents. This at least would encourage the building of small homes, and would take some of the un- earned increment for public uses. The situa- 294 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS tion calls for communal economic reform. Cheap "charity" tenements will tend only to make the commercial supply, upon which at present we must depend, even more uncertain, and increasing the commercial risk means in- creasing average rents. CHAPTER XXVI SOCIAL THINKING AND EDUCATION EDUCATION is a broad term. Only a very small part of it is done in schools. It never quite stops, for life is, after all, the great edu- cator. At the same time, what is generally meant by education is organized education. This begins at school and goes on in various ways all through life. To-day extension lec- tures, sermons that are rather lectures than exhortations, Chautauqua circles, classes in settlements, are busy as never before. And happily it is at last dawning on some that all punishment that attempts to revenge injury is immoral, even on the level of the best Old Testament teaching, let alone that of Christ; and that punishment can be defended only as educational reaction to protect the communal life and restore an antisocial life to its normal relations. The gross absurdity of capital pun- ishment in an ordered community on this theory appears at once. One cannot educate a man by hanging him. One may conveniently divide education as primary, secondary, college and university training, supplementary extension training, the 295 296 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS education of prisons and reformatories, and the education that is unorganized, or only partly so, in libraries and the daily and other periodical literature. Everywhere there is room for a thoughtful Christian worker to do something for better education and to give what we have more definite social aim. In primary education the play of children is a large part. Under natural conditions of plenty of fresh air, grass, and light children might safely be left to educate themselves in games and romps that would give physical and mental vigor in the most natural way. But, unfortunately, we must pay heavy rents to the owners of the earth for sunshine, grass, and fresh air, so that for the mass of city children substitutes must be found. More- over, such are the cramped conditions of city life that children must often be actually taught to laugh and play. Nowhere is social ameliora- tion more in place than in attempting to over- come in some measure the handicap of economic disadvantage and in the caring for effective primary education. It is especially important that the children of the foreign population re- ceive particular attention. They are often at a great disadvantage, and nothing would so threaten our democracy as a "helot" popula- tion of aliens who, in ignorance of our life, would become the hewers of wood and drawers of SOCIAL THINKING AND EDUCATION 297 water. No republic can exist half helot and half free. The eagerness of foreign parents for education for their children is pathetic, and it is not creditable to us that this work is often so badly done. At this point those who interest themselves particularly in primary education should keep before them the definite aim of all good edu- cation to make men and women independent and capable of thinking through their own difficulties. Such education should take in life at all its points the physical life, the mental life, and the spiritual life. This last must be largely the work of the home and the religious organization, and it is very important that such work as that of the Religious Education Society receive the thoughtful consideration of Chris- tian men and women. 1 But at the same time, while efficiency is the aim of education, a further question ought to be raised which seldom is considered, namely, efficiency for what? The primary education may begin with the selfish, antisocial attitude of purely individualistic economic efficiency, or it may start the young life right in making it efficient for social service. It is not dogmatic teaching that is needed so much as actual organ- ization for right doing and kindly service. The 'Compare Journal, published bimonthly. General Secretary, Henry F. Cope, 72 East Madison Street, Chicago. 298 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS remarkable thing among the very young is the high affectionate idealism that may be called out and given direction and purpose. Miss Jane Addams justly complains of re- ligious teachers of all kinds that they are failing to enlist the young in high ethical and social activity, with the result of vacancy in the young life thirsting vaguely for the great, the noble, the heroic. The wild enthusiasm of the young for Lincoln recently evoked was not based upon any profound knowledge of Lincoln, but upon the idealism to which he corresponded as pre- sented in the schools. Playgrounds, parks, and free spaces should be regarded as not only a part but an important part of the communal educational machinery, and many places would do well to have trained instructors and nurses to guard the life that un- folds there. From a merely economic point of view it would be cheaper than the reformatories and hospitals otherwise needed. The socially thinking Christian must also really consider as never before whither our edu- cation in the secondary schools is tending. On the one hand, industrial training may be in- terpreted simply as a measure to increase the powers of an exploited proletariat, so the labor leaders and many socialists view the matter ; or it may be used as a pedagogic device to raise standards of self-help and autonomy. Here is SOCIAL THINKING AND EDUCATION 299 a place where the ideals of the teacher will largely control the outcome. And it is im- portant that we steer and do not simply drift. To read, write, and figure are not sufficient as an equipment for the boy and girl going out to our existing hard economic battle for access to the highly organized and priyaitel^ owned in- C^striaJ^pppjtunitj:. The wrrter hai^hnStnS more than one young man going out into life actually hindered in his struggle for economic success by the training in a secondary school. The cruel alternative is also often forced upon the teacher of training for the ideal life at the risk of economic failure, or training for the economic success the world praises at the risk of ideal bankruptcy. The Christian thinker ought to have no diffi- culty in deciding whether to train the young for the ideal future of loving service or for a selfish scramble no matter how successful as the world speaks of success. What great numbers of in- dustrial workers who are relatively inefficient need is an ideal. Nothing carries life more easily over its hard places than high purpose. Wesley realized keenly and shrewdly that the new religious enthusiasm of his following would result in economic efficiency, and that thrift would bring with it economic success with all its dangers. If the teachers in our schools could fire the hearts and lives of boys and girls with 300 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS high ideals of social service they would go out into life armed at many points to resist its dangers and to meet its needs. The Sabbath school is not very efficient in its definite instruction, but much more might be done to make it a center of social and religious inspiration. The actual impartation of instruc- tion is often amusingly faulty. Teachers who really know little about the Bible, and who pick up from critical or uncritical commentaries or "lesson leaves" a mass of misleading informa- tion, cannot impart very accurate instruction to restless children whom they see irregularly half an hour a week. At the same time, to undervalue the Sunday school, as some do, is to radically misunderstand its deeper function and highest mission. It can be made, and often is made, the place where religious and social enthusiasm lights fires that are never again quenched. Education is very largely a question of personal contact, and personal awakening and directing enthusiasm. For this reason the settlement has suddenly taken a large and very important place in the social education of the city population. The settlement workers are the ones who often profit most. They learn in personal contact things not written in the books. The Christian social thinker is of necessity interested in the settlement and its future. It is quite impossible SOCIAL THINKING AND EDUCATION 301 to justly estimate the enormous importance for the present emergency of the mediation of the settlement in the economic struggle. At a time when the "class-conscious struggle" is likely to be interpreted by both friend and foe as a doc- trine of " class hate," the settlement has a most important function in interpreting to the pos- sessing class the point of view of the nonpos- sessing class, and, on the other hand, to reveal to the nonpossessing class the inevitable char- acter of the point of view of the possessing class. The settlement would probably make as grave a mistake as the church would if it com- mitted itself without reserve to any political program. The formation of a political party, and the formulation of a party program, had better be left to other social forces. But both church and settlement have an almost endless task in the rousing of social enthusiasm and in the uncovering of social facts. Professor Sloane, in his lectures upon "The French Eevolution and Eeligious Eeform," 1 points out how much of the insensate violence of the French Eevolution was due to the cowardice and apathy of the higher Eoman Catholic clergy. The humbler clergy remained largely, he thinks, true to their flocks and duty; but the responsible hierarchy fled, and the pos- sible mediation they might have undertaken 1 Morse Lectures, 1901. 302 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS failed. The church has a great service to render in a proper educational mediation be- tween contending social forces, and the settle- ment is one means, and a most important means, for making that mediation intelligent and sav- ing us from the bane of most ecclesiastical meddling, namely, sentimentalism and unin- structed emotionalism. Christian social thinking must also interest itself in one of the great extensions of our edu- cational machinery, namely, the lecture and extension class. It is often pathetic to see the hunger of a few for the education and informa- tion many have vainly forced upon them. In connection with the library and the reading room such instruction can be made highly effective. In all libraries there should be class- rooms and a lecture hall where the living voice can make real the printed page, and the truly socially thinking Christian will stand for a large liberty in both choice of books and speaker. Truth need not be timid. Persecution and the boycott are not the weapons truth has ever found most effective. The noxious bacteria can stand almost everything save sunshine and light. What truth needs is air, sunshine, and light. Feeble timidity is always trying to steady the ark of God, and generally then gets hit by his lightning. Nor need anyone be discouraged unduly by the great preponderance of fiction SOCIAL THINKING AND EDUCATION 303 in the reading of the many. The somewhat starved and stunted life of all of us needs awakening on the side of feeling and imagi- nation. Darwin was a devourer of novels, and they had always "to come out right" if they were to meet with his approval. Even "blood and thunder" has its uses and its educational value. Good melodrama is extremely fascinat- ing. When at its highest in actual history, as when Luther stood before Charles the Fifth, or in the Bible, when Elijah stood on Mount Carmel, the situation is linked directly with our highest and largest moral experience. But in point of fact the melodramatic is nearly always joined with vice punished and virtue rewarded, whether in "Fidelio," by Beethoven, or in the "Betrayer Eevenged," on the Bowery stage; and the music is the impassioned yearning of every normal heart for justice and right doing. The danger of emotional excitement is that the emotions be excited only for the sake of the thrill, whereas the emotional excitement is the normal accompaniment of action, and without action seems to distinctly weaken subsequent moral reactions. This is true of any emotional excitement. The religious awakening that does not express itself at once in good works is hardening and unwholesome. For those who go to college and the uni- versity the social-thinking Christian has also a 304 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS special care. The dangers that beset the higher education seem inevitable under existing cir- cumstances. The intellectual pharisaism, the aristocratic aloofness, the supercilious attitude of the cultivated man to life, reflect the classic tradition, with its exclusive and aristocratic spirit. The pagan classics are still the founda- tion of a literary culture, and either they are so badly taught that they breed the immoral attitude of pretending to know what is really an unknown world, or they do actually form our thinking and leave us vaguely wondering what our alleged Christian teachers think of it all. There should be distinct pains taken by Christian teachers not only to know this pagan world, but to show how completely different its ideals were from those of Jesus, and that the pupil must choose. That we cannot serve Jesus and Plato, and that Paul and Lucretius are not on the same standing ground, should be care- fully pointed out, though the writer confesses he had to find it out for himself, though care- fully nurtured in a Christian college. More- over, the college life is haunted by the constant question, Am I getting ready for "success" in the competitive scramble, or am I really fitting myself for the highest social service? The in- structors even in theological schools are plagued by the same insistent question. Are men to be turned out to please congregations SOCIAL THINKING AND EDUCATION 305 and make * ' successes ' ' of their lives, or are they willing to inaico shipwreck of themselves for tlio kingdom's sake? It is quietly assumed that Jesus and Paul must be our models in all but their failures and the fierce antagonisms which they aroused. In Germany the more technical studies are characteristically called the "bread and butter studies. ' ' And yet for the Christian lawyer or doctor or scientist there is no "sec- ular life," no pursuit that is purely a matter of bread and butter. So far as he is a Christian his life is one of service, and so far as his life is one of redemptive service of the type of Jesus Christ's life he is Christian. He that is not against us, said Jesus, but is casting out devils, is on our part. The ideal, therefore, for college education as formulated by the Christian social thinker is efficiency in social service and in- spiration to engage in that service. And it is one of the hopeful signs of the times that this ideal is making great progress in the United States. The unorganized education going on in the daily press, the weekly paper, and the period- ical journal is very extensive. Some is bad, some very bad, some is good. We are rightly afraid of any official censorship of the press. Even the powers of the post office are excessive and open easily to abuse. At the same time, we must guard the immature, and the socially 306 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS thinking man or woman must consider the effect on youth of detailed accounts of crime, bru- tality, and suicide. How the news could be left free, and the all-important liberty of the press be maintained, or rather won again, is an im- portant question. For the time being probably all attempts at censorship would only do harm. It would not be the immature that would oc- cupy the censor's mind, but political or social opponents whom he honestly regarded as "dangerous." Nor should we forget that for the really socially thinking Christian the only value of "punishment," of prisons, and of reforma- tories is to protect society by making, if pos- sible, the unsocial man a member of God's kingdom. Having nothing to do with revenge or vengeance in fact, seeing that in God's family these things can have no place the restoration of the criminal to society is the aim of any rational "punishment." From the Christian point of view all loveless coercion is essentially immoral and degrading. So far, therefore, as discipline is unloving it works as the Christian foresees that it must work it simply hardens and makes more vicious. Hun- dreds of prisoners should be in hospitals or in places for mental disturbances; another large proportion should be in schools and places of instruction ; another large number should never SOCIAL THINKING AND EDUCATION 307 have been before the courts at all. After a/ x Christianized society has eliminated the eco- nomic causes that now confessedly produce most of the crime, the hospitals and schools will probably take care of all the rest. For the socially thinking Christian all insti- tutions of training have, therefore, as their goal the fitting of men for the life of coopera- tive service in the moralized kingdom of divine ends and purposes. It goes, therefore, with- out saying that all educational process, whether the organized education of school and institu- tion or the unorganized education of adver- tising billboards or the sights of the street, have the deepest interest for the intelligent Christian. We and our children are being trained by the thousand and one impressions made upon us daily and hourly. "What are some of these impressions ? It is of the greatest importance that a child grow up with a sense of order, of beauty, of peace and dignity, and also of interest in life and motion. The home supplies only a small fraction of the funda- mentally formative impressions that go to make up a child's life, or even an adult's life. It is not a matter of indifference, therefore, that with wearisome and sickening frequency we be in- vited to consume alcohol prepared as a patent medicine or to ruin our health with various articles of .diet prepared with embalming fluid. 308 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS Even if we be wise enough to leave advertised things as much as possible alone, we are haunted and annoyed at every step by the flaunted com- mercialism that is ruining our countryside as it has permanently disfigured Niagara Falls. Our education goes on, therefore, as our action and reaction upon our surroundings, and it is of primary importance in all education that order, beauty, freedom, and grace play upon our lives through the medium of the sense of perception. The services in our churches, and the very lines of our architecture, have significance for anyone who is slowly training himself to think in the language of the coming kingdom of God. We are still in bonds to the beautiful, paternal, authoritative Middle Ages. We build Gothic structures that reflect inadequately the mystery and awe of the forest and shadow forth its bending trees and dark cool spaces; then we light them with electricity and paint them with bright, gorgeous colors, and adorn them with massive golden pipe organs, and try to use these poor, weak monstrosities for auditoriums. The many buildings that must yet be built will educate to larger communal life, and will be built by men caught by the enthusiasm for the new Christian society, and with the artistic genius to really voice our highest yearnings and guide our aspirations. One sees already SOCIAL THINKING AND EDUCATION 309 in the public school buildings of our larger cities how the real adaptation to actual life and wants is giving us noble form. The communal democratic socially thinking Church will yet build real churches more really beautiful than even the mediaeval Gothic structures which voiced so well an earlier stage of religious feeling. CHAPTER XXVII SOCIAL THINKING AND THE WORKSHOP THE Christian man or woman, who has learned to really long for the kingdom of God on earth, looks out on the whole labor situation with new interest and more humble desire to actually understand. The first stage is gener- ally one of great enthusiasm for organized labor, and a general feeling that in all labor disputes the workingmen are always right and the owners of the producing machinery and in- dustrial opportunity always selfish and wrong. Then there is very generally a reaction. The narrow outlook and selfish shortsightedness of some labor organization pricks the sentimental bubble, and the sincere Christian dreamer feels cheated and disappointed. In the disputes be- tween the employing class and the employed class the issue is seldom a clear and definite one with right wholly on one side and wrong wholly on the other. Under our existing legal order the owners of the productive machinery and the industrial opportunity feel that they have a right to do what they will with their own. And they have in most cases a plain legal case for their point of view. Under our 310 THE WORKSHOP 311 existing legal scheme there can be no adjust- ment with any accuracy between the social values and the individual values. Where legal franchises are in question the companies oper- ating them are being forced to recognize the social character of their responsibility, and yet even here the interference of the community in the workings of these franchise-holding cor- porations has, in the judgment of many compe- tent and socially awakened men, been unfor- tunate and inequitable. The right of the community to interfere in the Great Northern merger case is now probably undisputed. And perhaps it was worth something to emphatically assert that right. But the wisdom of the inter- ference is a very different matter and is open to very serious question. Under our existing legal order nearly all isolated communal inter- ference in private corporations works a dis- tinct measure of injustice. In the same way the private owner of the industrial opportunity feels a natural resent- ment when this undoubted legal right is chal- lenged by organized labor, and particularly when it is challenged by illegal violence and abuse. In the competition for the exclusive ownership of the social machinery and the in- dustrial opportunity the present owners or their ancestors won the fight and gained the position of mastery. They often rendered great 312 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS social service in the organizing of the industrial machinery. Even the worst abuses of the com- petitive battle, like land speculation, wheat corners, stock gambling, etc., have in them ele- ments of justification on our existing basis. Land speculation has turned men to systematic exploitation of site values ; wheat corners have given farmers great temporary profits for their grain; stock gambling furnishes an index to and a market for certain legal values exceed- ingly convenient perhaps, under existing cir- cumstances, indispensable. As long as society admits that these opportunities should be privately owned, and as long as the legal right to them is not properly challenged, so long spasmodic and often hysterical communal in- terference at this or that point works hard- ship and is generally even socially unde- sirable. When it is urged that franchises were cor- ruptly gained, or that land, as in England, was stolen by act of Parliament, then the reply is that the remedy is to attack the corruption. If that was not done, or cannot now be success- fully done, the prima facie evidence is that the ownership is in good faith. Under our system there are always hundreds of holders of securi- ties who bought them in good faith, who had nothing to do with any corruption charged, and whose injury would be a social calamity. The THE WORKSHOP 313 world is a great workshop. This workshop is working under a distinct competitive system that has slowly grown up, not as the result of a "criminal conspiracy of the rich," or as the outcome of "the selfishness of a class," but as the answer to human needs, and in response to what the great mass of men thought right and just. Organized labor must consider two main questions : First, are the rules being kept? If they are not, then illegal violence is not the best way to enforce their keeping. Secondly, are the rules and conditions just and perma- nent? One of the main charges that may be urged against organized labor is that it has shared the unideal, selfish, scramble spirit that is so much the atmosphere in which we all live. It enters into the battle for a share in a common booty. It is willing to use the weapons of the economic struggle, and is surprised when it is beaten by those who have the advantage of possession, of mastery over the legal system, and the use of the most highly trained capacity money can buy. The Christian man or woman finds it hard to give to either side in the com- petitive struggle for profits and wage an un- divided sympathy. It is unfortunate that the organized church has often been conspicuously seen supporting the possessing class, but it would have been almost equally unfortunate if 314 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS the organized church had committed herself un- reservedly to organized labor. The Christian socially thinking man cannot compromise with his ideal of a kingdom of loving service, and he knows that shorter hours and higher wages won in a battle with the strike and the boycott as its weapon cannot give us that kingdom. He cannot condemn these weapons and leave hunger and homelessness, misery and idleness, uncondemned, which are the weapons by which a possessing class fights the strike and the boy- cott. Both parties to the unequal and depress- ing struggle need social awakening. The socially awakened man feels the need of red- cross work, he longs for just arbitration, but knows perfectly well that under competitive conditions the wage scale and the conditions of work are not in the absolute control of the em- ployer. He must meet competition with com- petition. He cannot give more than -his fellow employers give save under some exceptional conditions and in the long run survive in the struggle. Almost all the Christian man can ask the present employer is for him to support laws that will enforce on all manufacturers more equitable conditions. If it is profitable to employ little children in mines and mills the most greedy employer sets the pace ; the others must follow, however unwillingly, or give up THE WORKSHOP 315 their business. Laws, therefore, that compel even the most greedy to carry on their industry under more humane conditions should have the support of all really kind-hearted employers, in their own protection. In looking over the history of labor legislation in England and the United States it is discouraging to see how vio- lent has been the opposition on the part of the owners of the industrial machinery to even the most obviously just laws restricting the right to employ under unsocial conditions. Even for those who are earnestly in favor of the existing competitive system, and think it can be worked in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount in- deed, particularly for such it is a matter of the greatest importance to show that stunted childhood, abused motherhood, and unhealthy hovels are not essential evils of our social order. To demonstrate that the existing social order can be worked in the spirit of Jesus, the Christian socially awakened man must see to it that the laws protect the right thinking em- ployer, and do not expose him to ruinous com- petition on the part of greedy and exploiting employers. The great majority of men, whether pro- fessedly Christian or not, still believe that only the hope of profits can keep the organization of society running at full speed, and that if the incentive of mastery over the productive forces 316 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS were taken away genius would not function, and ability would stop working. To the con- vinced socialist this seems untrue, and to the Christian heart there certainly comes the thought that Jesus, Paul, Augustine, Luther, John Wesley, Shaftesbury, and Lincoln did not give the world their lives for the sake of profits, and that simply the motive of service would be enough in a truly Christian state. At the same time, for those who still think wages can be fixed only by competition, it is important that the wage system be cleared of scandals no one defends. Industrial woman- hood is in sad need of protection. Christian employers who know the facts must lead in the work of freeing the competitive system of the wrongs it is now working. That women of relatively tender years should be even now and then at the mercy of an intrusive floorwalker or superintendent calls for adequate remedy. Granting, as one may, that the abuse of this power is the exception and not the rule, the abuse is sufficiently possible and occurs often enough to make any Christian employer very watchful for the souls of the girls who are put by the competitive system at very low wages into his charge. Such work, therefore, as is done by the Consumers ' League, and by bodies of women who take an active interest in the lives of the growing number who must learn THE WORKSHOP 317 the meaning of "the long day,'* should have the support of the socially awakened con- science. For this reason also organizations of women workers should be protected and encouraged. The patience of the employer may be severely tried by what seem to him to be unreasonable whims and petty difficulties. But the only real remedy of lasting value is the education of responsible organizations. And many of the things that seem to the employer petty mean a great deal in the necessarily narrow lives of most of the employed women. The group spirit is responsible for evil and good, but in the long run the group spirit is the moralizing spirit. The employer is also under the domin- ion of the group spirit, and contributes for lockouts and to bear the expense of the legis- lative lobby because he does not want to "offend his fellow manufacturers," although he really at bottom may disapprove of the lockout and hate the buying of legislation. The same is true of the group spirit everywhere; it has its darker side, but loyalty to the group is a tremendously moralizing and elevating force, and it is naturally much weaker in women than in men. Hence the exploitation of unor- ganized women demands the most patient deal- ing with their education in organization, and the Christian employer has his distinct duty to 318 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS his "sisters and daughters in Christ Jesus " who are also his employees. The tone generally taken, of course, is that of battle. We hear true tales of ingratitude, folly, and wrongs on both sides. At the same time, the socially thinking Christian employer is not working for man's gratitude, not to please men, but to serve and advance the king- dom of God's redemptive loving purpose. He cannot remain Christian and think in the terms of battle and contest with his employees. They are his fellow workers, to be won to the king- dom purpose as far as it is possible for him to win them, but even when they are not so won his purpose must remain unshaken. The at- titude of Eobert Owen puts us to shame when we consider that he lived so wholly for the loving service of his fellow men, but was almost forced into repudiation of Christianity because of its opposition to his dream of loving justice. The early Christian socialists, so called, ad- vocated, as we have seen, "cooperation," and tried to start cooperative shops and cooperative factories. The movement has now become a part of English life, but it has not kept its idealism. Nor is it easy to see how this would have been possible in the midst of a com- petitive society. To a large degree they have become useful adjuncts to the existing system, but they are compelled to compete as organiza- THE WORKSHOP 319 tions on the same terms with all other in- corporated companies, and have the same in- terest in buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market, with profits in view, al- though the profits go to the whole cooperative stock company instead of to the owning few. At the same time, cooperation has a future in America. Bread, staple articles of diet, and clothing might be both manufactured and dis- tributed by organized cooperation as in Bel- gium and England. There are socially minded men and women who do not see their way clearly to any larger social program who might greatly aid a large number by unselfish service in the interest of cooperative distribution. Coal, oil, wood, and shoes could be sold of a much better quality for far less money than the little shop can afford to give them. Co- operation has the disadvantage of inflicting hardship upon numerous small but very waste- ful middlemen, who are driven out of business by successful cooperation and who therefore feel bitterly about it. It is particularly hard upon the little shop that is a mere assistance to the head bread-winner and gives employ- ment to wife and daughters. In England the "bad accounts" go to these little shops, whereas cooperation insists very sternly upon cash payment. The result is that with high rents and bad accounts the small shops near 320 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS cooperative stores have a hard time, and must charge highly for the credit they give as the only advantage they have over the cash co- operation. Nor must one overlook the experience in England, where the competition of the coopera- tive store had to meet skilled and trained dis- tributing machinery. The successful stock company is the survivor in a long battle. The weaker companies it has absorbed or forced to the wall. Any successful cooperation must face its possible failures in competition with trained and successful survivors in the commercial battle. Neither the unselfish enthusiasm nor the self-sacrifice of the early cooperation leaders saved them from dreary commercial errors which their trained opponents would never have made. More particularly in pro- duction were these experiments found most costly and generally fatal. Before, therefore, social enthusiasm begins any cooperative plans on a large scale it would be well to study thoroughly the English literature on the subject. 1 Moreover, cooperation can do little save operate with the wage scale set by competitive business outside, and the danger is that in seeking profits for the cooperators all the i Consult Bibliography, and see also the article in Bliss's " Ency- clopedia of Social Reform." THE WORKSHOP 321 evils of the competitive system, child labor, sweating, employment of women, over hours, etc., must be resorted to. Like some forms of charity, its main use is probably to edu- cate men and women socially, and force upon all the need of comprehensive knowledge of the situation, and the helplessness of the in- dividual in a competitive struggle for the private ownership of the industrial opportu- nity. Thus the Eochdale cooperative stores set apart large sums for "education" and propa- ganda, and this literature nearly always deals with the moral issues involved in mutual aid as over against the competitive struggle. It would, in the writer's judgment, be often a distinct advantage if trades unions were to en- gage in cooperation not only for the sake of the cheaper and better goods, but also for the sake of the increased sense of solidarity, and the experience that would be gained of large commercial operations, as well as for the sake of the constant emphasis placed upon cash payments. CHAPTER XXVHI SOCIAL THINKING AND ADMITTED SOCIAL. EVILS IP our interpretation of Jesus is correct his only social program was the extension to the whole of life of the loving relations that or- ganize the ideal family group. From this point of view anything, we repeat, that threatens the family group must seem fundamentally anti- social. The conservation of the family as the source of every virtue that is needed for the larger social group seems all-important. Hence what is generally known as the social evil must be viewed with peculiar dismay. Yet Jesus treated the outcast woman with special tender- ness. He recognized more clearly than his fol- lowers always have that she is the victim sinned against as well as sinning against so- ciety. Only the fearful economic pressure would drive more than a very few exceedingly superficial natures to the dreadful dangers and humiliations of a life of shame. For this reason the work of rescue is neither so hope- less nor so difficult as it has often been repre- sented, and it is unpardonable that the or- ganized Christian Church has done so little along these lines. Here if anywhere individual 322 ADMITTED SOCIAL EVILS 323 rescue work is called for without waiting for larger economic changes, which cannot do more than save future generations. The present is, however, also our care. This work must be undertaken mainly by tender-hearted and experienced Christian women, and to them also must be intrusted in large measure the preventive measures needed for reducing the number of tempted girls and betrayed women. Of course, shallow, vain natures, with exorbitant love of ease and dress and excitement, form a proportion of this sad procession, but, on the other hand, ignorance, helplessness, and fear are constantly keeping their thousands in bondage where Christian love could procure for them freedom and hope. Fiercely degrading is all quasi-municipal recognition by license and inspection. It is ut- terly hopeless from a sanitary point of view, and only inspires with false confidence. It is in the last degree degrading both for the women and the inspectors, and does not keep the police out of the corruption generally in- volved in this form of vice. And it makes any return to honest life exceedingly difficult. It is to be hoped that Anglo-American civilization will never blunder into the shames and disasters that have marked the continental experiences in many cities where inspection and license have been most thoroughly tried out, with an ap- 324 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS paratus for this purpose far superior to any- thing we possess. The socially thinking Christian must seek also to bring the whole question of divorce under some larger vision than simply viewing it as a personal crime. The Roman Catholic com- munion surely strains at a gnat and swallows a camel when it practically prefers wholesale concubinage to divorce. What is breaking up the American home? That question goes very deep down into our social organization. As we have seen, hotels, flats, boarding houses, com- petitive dressing, purposely childless mar- riages, wrong ideals of life, have deep-lying economic causes, and unless these are studied and taken into account and our divorce laws made and enforced with reference to these con- ditions, they will simply work deeper and worse confusion. When we have even approximately gained the ethical and economic conditions of the kingdom many of our most serious diffi- culties will disappear. Merely stopping di- vorces without stopping the underlying evils from which divorces spring might only increase immorality, and tend to deeper disintegration of the family and the home. Men and women must be made to feel the full significance of the sacrificial life, and when the marriage bond is rightly regarded in its social setting it will not be so lightly broken. ADMITTED SOCIAL EVILS 325 At this point the individualism of American life, and the more or less distinct feeling that every man liveth to himself and has only his highest duty to himself, works injury and leads to disappointment; for the man who starts out to live for his own pleasure never gets it. Happiness is really a by-product of life's ac- tivity, and when it is made an end is generally lost. The socially thinking Christian must often shudder at the tone of press and society toward the young girl who makes "a good match, ' ' that is, one that is economically favor- able, careless of whether the partnership is really a spiritual and intellectual match. The unevenly yoked with unbelievers are a large company. And it is not always the individual's fault. The commercial basis of the ordinary modern marriage is not a firm foundation on which to build a spiritual temple. The guardianship of the family means also the guardianship of the immature. The regu- lation of literature and advertisements comes under this head. No country has gone quite so far, perhaps, as the United States in attempts to abolish the sale and distribution of corrupt- ing literature, nor has the enforcement of the laws always been, perhaps, as judicious as one could wish. At the same time, it is so im- portant to avoid the premature awakening of the appetites in the young that a great deal can 326 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS be forgiven to overzeal. The question, how- ever, must arise whether the censorship is ef- fective and how far it is open to future abuse. Certainly more might be done by public taste and educated feeling toward the suppression or discouragement of offensive novels and plays. Without legal means, by the exercise of persua- sion and the weight of public opinion, something ought to be accomplished. It is hard to draw legal lines. The obnoxious cannot always be defined. The most foully suggestive things may wear the robe of seeming decency. All violent crime, all patent brutality, all evident appeal to low passion is strongly suggestive to certain minds, and suggestion that may sooner or later express itself in action. Appeals in carefully and gently worded letters to theater man- agers and advertising agents are not, as the writer knows, always in vain. Those who con- duct such amusements are there to make profits, but they are our fellow citizens, with their own standards of right and wrong, and generally ready to at least listen to what we have to say. Such pressure might do much to purify and cleanse the exceedingly offensive stage pro- ductions if it were properly organized and it were recognized as reasonable and considerate even without laws whose application would al- ways be difficult and sometimes ineffective and unjust in their working. ADMITTED SOCIAL EVILS 327 The Puritan attitude toward all amusement has all too often left an untrained childhood to seek out its recreations without any guidance, and the result in our greater cities has been in the last degree unfortunate. The dangers to the youth of both sexes as the city opens its doors to streams of young men and women from the country are simply appalling. The socially minded Christian in the small place or the large one has along this whole line a great responsibility, and one of the most delicate character. The positive side must be empha- sized rather than the negative. Life must be so filled with nobler and higher enthusiasms that the ignoble, low, and base will find no room. To a certain extent the same is true on the subject of temperance. The socially minded Christian wishes the destruction of the saloon because everyone had at last recognized its danger and had found a better place. But as the saloon evil is with us, and is a menace to imma- turity and to men of weak will, its regulation or prohibition has become a social necessity. The question is, What is possible? The temperance question has suffered by being confused with questions of legal expediency. Temperance is mandatory upon every Christian conscience. But when the issue is forcing our conscience upon others we are face to face with issues of social expedience and loving wisdom. The 328 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS evils of hypocrisy and of secret drinking, of winked-at lawlessness and of unjustified in- terference with another man's liberty, are evils so great as to give us from time to time pause, and compel us in each locality to ask, What is here the utmost we can demand and have the honest support of right-thinking men? Certainly local option is a good democratic device, and when the unit is small the law stands a good chance of enforcement when public opinion is behind the law. There are two types of drunkenness. The one is born of old social custom. In older days a narrow life, a lack of vital interest, seems to have led men to carouse, and from such excesses grew in hundreds of cases the nerve hunger which carried the finest intellects to drunken graves. This type of drinking is steadily on the decrease. Few men of any position or standing in the community would care to have it said of them that they even occasionally got intoxi- cated. Social drunkenness is steadily on the decline. But, unfortunately, another and just as deadly a drinking is taking its place. It may be called industrial drunkenness. The tired workingmen, the hard-driven young brokers, the overstrained business men, the worn-out in- dustrial women drink, not for social purposes, but to "keep up." And this drinking is even ADMITTED SOCIAL EVILS 329 more certainly ruinous than social drinking. Those who drink just to keep up soon drink steadily and increasingly. They may never get drunk, but many never get at any time quite sober. Such drinking is generally of concen- trated spirits. It is in a peculiar sense de- moralizing, because it is often not social but secret. The habit of depending on such stimu- lation grows steadily, and brain and body soon suffer the inevitable consequences. The slow workingman "braces up" with artificial stimu- lation. The fagged-out brain is urged on by a dose of alcohol. The wearied woman nerves herself for some further effort by a drink. The rather astonishing fact that the closing down of the public saloon in so large a territory of the United States has left the total amount of alcohol consumption almost unchanged can be accounted for only by the increase of this type of drinking. If medical experts like Forel are to be trusted, this kind of drinking, which is constant and "moderate," that is to say, never pro- ducing what may be properly called drunken- ness, is particularly bad for the offspring of such drinkers, and is morally and intellectually destructive. The drug habit undermines all sense of veracity, but this may be in part be- cause of its secret character. And it is remarka- ble that constant alcohol stupefaction seems, 330 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS like the drug habit, to also lower the sense of veracity and to produce a weak-willed and un- trustworthy type of character. The socially minded man will therefore re- member that any transformation of society that is to be carried out with a minimum of injustice and hardship will have to be carried out by men and women of clear brain and minds unclouded by stimulants. If competition is not to work its worst and most deplorable results upon the individual, this element in the situation must be consciously faced and a remedy found. The man who drinks because he is a ''little tired," and the woman who has some alcoholic patent medicine which she takes at lessening intervals as a "pick-me-up," are in distinct danger, and the more respectable they remain the less likely are they and their friends to notice the moral and physical damage they are doing to them- selves. The social drinker who "had a good time" paid for it with a sound headache. The industrial drinker seldom realizes how com- pletely the increasing irritation and depression, the recurring bursts of annoyance and lack of self-restraint, are due to his or her dependence upon a subtle poison of the nervous tissue. There is reason to fear also that some doctors are reckless in their prescriptions of drugs and alcohol to patients who really need fresh air and rest. ADMITTED SOCIAL EVILS 331 The wild excitement of certain phases of com- mercial competition favors this intense artificial stimulation. The business "deal" must at all costs be carried through. The disappointment of failure must be quietly borne. The gambling element that enters into busi- ness otherwise legitimate is another evil with which the socially thinking Christian finds him- self dealing. Nor can he always deal with it as a personal vice ; it is often an economic phe- nomenon. The essence of gambling is not the taking of a risk. Every farmer takes a risk when he plants his crop. The inwardness of all true gambling is taking a risk whose success in- volves getting without rendering an equivalent service for the getting. It is the "cost of some- thing for nothing, ' ' and it is an awful cost. Any legitimate business transaction involves the in- tent, at least, on each side of advantage to both seller and buyer. There may be bad judgment and disappointment, but the intent has been the satisfaction on both sides of legitimate wants. In gambling pure and simple there is no such intent. The gain of one is the loss of the other. In many, if not most, stock exchanges a certain percentage, variously estimated, is legitimate buying and selling with intent to satisfy legiti- mate communal needs. But a great deal is more or less pure gambling with no intent save the gaining profits without rendering any serv- 332 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS ice therefor. And so into seemingly quite le- gitimately conducted business schemes there may enter the same gambling spirit. This is the immoral element that enters into all ' 'fore- stalling," real estate speculation, "corners," and dubious "deals" on margin. The public hardly realizes just where the evil is, nor is it always easy to actually draw the line, because the morality is determined by the "intent" rather than by the social consequence. But the public conscience has always instinctively reacted against this gambling, and is bound to try and protect itself against the social consequences. It must be confessed that hitherto its efforts have been for the most part exceedingly vain, and largely because the effort has been rather to cure the symptoms than find out causes. And it is of vastly more importance to get at an ounce of cause than at a pound of symptoms. The mere desire to get something from your fellow man without trying to render him due service in return is immoral. The gentleman never wants to be "under undue obligation to his equal," but the slave class and the servile class have been exploited with but little thought of their welfare, and this has been the steady and permanently corrupting element in all aris- tocracies. The computation of service value is exceedingly difficult, but without at least the ADMITTED SOCIAL EVILS 333 desire to render full measure to those whom we serve and who serve us life has not even been touched by Christian morality. It is doubtful whether there is any exact standard by which to tell whether any trans- action, let us say in wheat or cotton, into which the element of speculation enters, is predom- inately legitimate or is gambling. Certainly the results of attempts faithfully made in Berlin to regulate the Exchange are not en- couraging. Under our existing order about all the community can do is to protect the imma- ture and to suppress any local nuisance like betting on race tracks, lotteries, pool rooms, etc. In doing this work the socially minded Christian should be counted upon, but he ought to be open-eyed to the fact that the evil is far deeper, and that it is almost forced upon men by the atmosphere in which we live. From earliest childhood we are taught that one of the chief virtues in life is the capacity to see our "chance" when it comes and to take full ad- vantage of it. The fact that the competition for a place as master of the productive machin- ery is open to all, even if not equal for all, leads boys and girls to dream of the "chance" that may enable them to supersede the present own- ers and employers and become themselves own- ers and employers. The "thrift" and daring needed have been, even in our churches and 334 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS Sunday schools, praised and inculcated. Yet it is doubtful if this whole attitude of mind has not been the profoundly demoralizing and ir- religious way of thinking that has made Jesus and the kingdom seem to honest boys and girls in America so unreal and fantastic. For at bottom gambling is the longing for mastery without service. And mastery without service is immoral, and the desire for it cor- rupting. Much that has been praised as thrift and industry has been corrupted by the motives that have been mingled with it. This Jesus saw clearly when he said to his disciples, "You know that the rulers of the nations lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Not so shall it be among you : but whosoever would become great among you shall be your servant; and who- soever would be first among you shall be your servant: even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. ' ' * Not that the Christian life is a denial of mastery, but its goal is not mastery over men but over the world, and this mastery, not by chance, nor by birth or luck, but by service. Matt. 20. 25-28. CHAPTEE XXIX THE CITY AND THE KINGDOM DREAM IT is not a little remarkable that the city seems always to have been in the center of the dream of the kingdom. The forces of human life, both good and evil, are at their height in the intensely associated life of the city. Many a brain-worker thinks with envy of the quiet and leisure of the country, only to discover that when he gets there the brain rests from its labors and refuses to do its regular work. The stimulation of the great city is a definite social force, and from the city have gone forth the revolutionary movements by which human life has steadily advanced. More particularly has Christianity always been a religion of the great city. Rome dominated her fortunes up to the Reformation, and even now both in Roman Catholic and in Protestant countries it is the city that forms the center of her religious life. At the same time, some of the most depress- ing problems of life are forced home on the socially minded thinker by the tremendous misery and squalor of the great city. More par- ticularly the American city presents disheart- ening features. The exploitation of human life 335 336 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS brings forth so evidently its harvest of social wrongs and individual evils in the centers of population, that one cannot but dream at times of a decentralizing process to give the people back to the land and the land back to the people. There can be no doubt that the farming popu- lation pays taxes far out of proportion, and so is driven from the land. A tax on land rentals would under existing conditions almost cer- tainly free a large proportion of farmers from taxation, but the farmers cannot see that fact and are generally in favor of the "protection" which taxes them out of all proportion to their earnings. One reason, at least, why "the poor crowd into our cities," as the phrase goes, is that they are crowded into the city by inequita- ble taxation. But this is not the only reason for the attraction of the great city. Some of the most important reasons for the growth of the city are, of course, economic. It is of great industrial advantage to mass men for production and distribution. With these causes more competent writers must deal. But besides these there are also psychological causes which are often ignored. Men do not live by bread alone, they live in dreams and hopes of future things. The normal man or woman is always drawing a prize in the future. The chil- dren are to grow up to be famous, the "job" is to be greatly improved, this or that success THE CITY AND THE KINGDOM 337 measured in the standards of the particular life is to be obtained. In fact, human life is al- ways lived distinctly in the future, and the city offers the more probable background for these dreams. Its richer color and more startling changes, its varied impressions, shake the rather starved imaginations of the overworked and underfed poorer tenth of our city popula- tion. Moreover, the misery of economic disa- bility is also not simply physical, it is psycho- logical, and its keenest pang is the sense of inferiority and failure, not always very defi- nitely formulated, but revealing itself in the attitude and speech. Now, this is relative, and companionship greatly lessens the pang. To be poorly dressed in a great company of well- dressed people is distinctly painful. To bear hardship that everybody else is suffering may not be pleasant, but it is not humiliating. The humiliation of poverty is felt far less in the crowded slum than in the country district or smaller town. The simple companionship of poverty lightens the load. Men and women who have touched the lowest levels of economic inability have said to the writer that the going down was the bitterest suffering, but once hav- ing found, as it were, the level it brought com- panionship, and the sense of loneliness was to some degree lost; "others were as badly off." Moreover, the city always offers some solace. 338 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS Its excitement, noise, confusion distracts, and misery needs distraction. Nothing is also more surprising in our individualistic society than the almost unlimited communism of a certain economic level. To the limited extent of their resources the poor are banded for self-main- tenance, and help each other in a surprising way. But this seems only to fully obtain in the great city. For this reason the socially minded man must study the psychology of the city. It has its very startling contrasts of great loneliness. No- where can misery hide more effectively than in the surging crowd. It has its atmosphere of ready and unlimited sociability; all sorts of companionship offer themselves easily to the one seeking them. Thus materials for dream- ing and opportunities for companionship make the city very attractive in spite of all its shadows. To the socially minded the city is full of hope. In it men and women are learning the absolute necessity for the associated life, and the tremendous power of cooperation. It dramatically demonstrates what union and organization can really do in mastering the material world for the higher life. But one great obstacle confronts the American city, and that is a fundamental distrust by the in- fluential class of the city democracy. This is THE CITY AND THE KINGDOM 339 really an aspect of the lack of faith in democ- racy which is characteristic of Puritanism. The American city needs larger autonomy. The en- deavors to protect it against itself are as futile as they are foolish. The result has been to simply play into the hands of exploiting com- mercialism. And even in the city there must be decentralization, and local requirements receive local attention in local autonomy. Only so will the different ethical ideals and moral levels ever reach a wholesome adjust- ment. One difficulty with the great Anglo- Saxon cities of to-day is that there is no homogeneity in the ethical ideal. The selfish antisocial forces are often leagued by common interest in one or other form of exploitation (saloons, dives, politics for money, etc.), but good men with the best ideals from Italy, Ger- many, Ireland, Sweden, or Bohemia, find little common ground among themselves or with Americans of equally good intentions, because the forms of their ethics differ so widely. The Italian citizen does things on Sunday which shock the Puritan soul, the Puritan seems to the German a hypocrite, and the Irishman has no understanding for the Swedish point of view. Only by wide experimentation and large liberty to make mistakes and learn in the making of them will it be possible to forge these broken pieces into Siegfried's conquering sword, and 340 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS the forging will have to be done by one who knows no fear of democracy. At the very basis of the city life is the matter of sanitation. All should be interested in this, no matter how selfish and sheltered the life. It is a good thing that some of the worst dirt diseases, like typhoid and tuberculosis, and scarlet fever, are contagious and infectious, and that the lesson of social solidarity is forced home on the most exclusively prosperous class by the death of children in that class of disease? bred directly by neglect of the great city. To pamper and shelter children is almost worse than to expose them, for when at last they do meet the bacteria they are unprepared and die where poorer and exposed children would have become gradually immune. The only effective way is to get rid of the causes which medical science is pointing out to us. The attempt to shelter is happily more or less vain, and so sanitation can be forced home as a tremendous power for social awakening. For only social activity is of any use. The individual is com- paratively helpless without communal support. The disease-breeding slums happily slay not only their inhabitants, but the children of those who thoughtlessly and carelessly live on the ground rents. Amid the fruitful causes of individual work- lessness and economic inefficiency ill health THE CITY AND THE KINGDOM 341 figures largely. Whole families are dragged down below the level of economic self-main- tenance by the expenses and difficulties involved in illness, often of a quite preventable nature. The streets that are badly kept cost the com- munity in pauperism and family decay eight or ten times the amount needed to really clean them up. The inevitable support of blinded and crippled children costs eventually far more than the school inspection which would so often stop the matter in the beginning. Now that at last we hardly like to see men and women die of starvation, and grudgingly assume their support rather than permit it, it should dawn on us that the prevention of starvation is best attained by the opening up of opportunity, and by seeing to it that men and women are phys- ically able to render service according to their ability. The military arrangements of Germany are exceedingly elaborate for maintaining the troops in good health, and the maintenance of the health of the great industrial army is just as much a matter of social concern, and we give it no proper attention as compared to the need. We need social prevention of disease, and a good beginning has been made, but neither the means at the disposal of health officers are adequate, nor is there the cooperation with them which would make the work tenfold more 342 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS effective. A Christian church in its neighbor- hood might profitably organize the forces for sanitary reform, for clean streets, proper in- spection of buildings, and cooperation with the medical forces for the prevention of disease. The cure of disease is important, but not nearly so important as the removal of the causes of disease. The church as a public servant of the com- munity should not be content to minister to its own group. It is released from taxation; it should pay back that debt by watchfulness over the material, spiritual, and social needs of the great shifting city population. It is the per- sonally most discouraging task the city pastor or Christian worker faces that he ministers to a "floating" population; that the church may be filled with those who from a pew-rental point of view only cause concern to the church treasurer. But it must be remembered that to touch a few of these lives and awaken them socially, and redeem them from selfish individ- ualism, is to make missionaries floating, like Paul's converts, all over the world. One reason Christianity spread was because it was a mes- sage to the discontented, disorganized, floating proletarian population, and so spread from city to city like wildfire. The message of the social kingdom may be carried into the smallest place by those who are not "heads of families, " THE CITY AND THE KINGDOM 343 but are just the disconnected, floating, restless elements with which Jesus and Paul had to do, and who need the message of work and hope as badly as did the proletarian underworld in the days of Borne. All the forms of city life need the touch of socially awakened men and women. There is great danger of official mechanism making havoc of the great social activities in which the community is engaged. Only the constant watchfulness of society will keep any institu- tion from lapsing into actual uselessness or even harmfulness. City hospitals, asylums, jails, houses of detention, stations, courtrooms, all need the intelligent study of individuals who have experience, who are unselfish, and who are socially awakened to the possibility of the vast city with its tremendous and fascinating life. The Church has been doing many things she can now well afford to hand over to the community; thus Protestantism feels little inclination to undertake parochial schools, but socially minded churches must not on that ac- count forget the public schools of the great city, and there is a very distinct work to be done in the examination and quickening of the public school system. It is often most un- fortunate that the possessing classes in sending their children to private schools lose sight of the public school and forget their real responsi- 344 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS bility for it. This is anti-social, and in some cases has led to a penurious policy in regard to the necessary outlay. The great public school of the city presents many questions, and only real experience can be of much use in dealing with the many rising difficulties. It is worth while asking, for instance, whether the whole career as school-teacher should not be made more attractive, and whether a larger number of men might not be employed. Such a question is raised when one asks how the schools are really fitting boys and girls for their particular life. The schools should never, for instance, be made to serve narrowly con- ceived religious ends. Jews and Koman Cath- olics, Protestants and unbelievers should all be able with quiet conscience to send their chil- dren to the public school, knowing they would not be abused for any denominational ends. But all of these believe in social service, and here a common ground for the highest kind of ethical teaching appears. It is a grave ques- tion whether much more might not be done to make the whole public school system stand for a practical ethical life which would find its highest religious sanction in the home or in the church, but whose activities were constantly explained and defended by the school. The local church, as such, should in most cases keep out of all municipal party struggle. THE CITY AND THE KINGDOM 345 Her very organization unfits her in many ways for effective service at this point. Her in- formation is no better than that of any other organization, and the temptation to abuse her confidence will be overwhelming. As individu- als men should demand all freedom to serve in any political party that seems to them to prom- ise most for the kingdom, whether Eepublican or Democrat, Prohibition, Labor, or Socialist, or any other. But the church has no particular faculty for coming to any infallible decision, and yet a mistake generally means the fatal weakening of the real message. But churches could render invaluable services by investiga- tion of local conditions, and the organization of young men's and women's clubs for particular social service in the neighborhood, and always with a view to finding out wliy this or that misery or abuse is permitted. To really get at causes is of far more importance than glossing over the situation. And often we can get at causes only by trying out this or that supposed remedy. The social settlement should have the earnest support of all right-thinking persons, nor should it be demanded that the settlement be "religious" in the ordinary meaning of that term that is, committed to dogmatic religious positions. For the sake of its highest useful- ness the settlement must be regarded by all its 346 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS neighbors as impartial and generally sympa- thetic with all right thinking and doing quite irrespective of creed or personal denomina- tional leaning. That the deepest inspirations of all true settlement work are religious will be quite evident enough in the life of unselfish serv- ice which is the mission of the social settlement. Even where a church maintains a settlement it is important that the workers be left exceed- ingly free, and that there be faith in the grad- ual correction of mistakes by increased ex- perience. Social training means more than broad sympathy ; it means knowledge of social conditions, and in the city this knowledge is exceedingly hard to get. The conditions are so complex and so changing that what is needed is elasticity and freedom to constantly adapt means to ends, and no one settlement work will be exactly like any other. What one service could we render to the heathen world greater than the building and maintaining a really Christian city? We would hardly need to send any more missionaries abroad, for all the nations would be sending to see how it was done. A Japanese student said to the writer that he wanted to go to London to see a " Christian city," and the writer's heart sank as he thought of Charles Booth's last volume of "Life and Labor in London," and as he saw in his mind's eye the long sad THE CITY AND THE KINGDOM 347 line of tattered sodden men and women wait- ing on Sunday morning for the opening of the gaudy gin palace on "the Lord's Day." The flashy and unwholesome excitements of the city must be offset by parks, museums, play- grounds, public music, clean and well-lighted places, noble buildings, reading rooms, and pub- lic education. These things must be made easy to us all. We have so little surplus energy left over after the necessary demands made upon us have been met that only when the higher life of beauty and spiritual rest and recreation is forced upon us do we really enter into it. There are always venturesome, energetic souls who at all costs seek and dare, but the average one of us needs almost to be taken into the king- dom of the higher life by violence. And more particularly should the city of the future care for its boys and girls as they emerge into adult years with the spirit of conquest and idealism ready to be corrupted and debased into a war against society and convention. The spirit- ual leadership of youth must find in the social activities of the new Christian city an outlet for the idealistic energies of youth's most feverish age. The communal life of the town and city has its duties to the whole man, and the ideal that should control us is, again, the conception of the family, in which there is loving care for the 348 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS weak and immature and earnest respect for each other, and where the communal life looks forward not to some bureaucratic supervision of adult life, but to the free autonomous de- velopment of human life in all its varied indi- viduality. Much of the charm to many minds of the big city is its real personal freedom. ' * One may live as one likes," is the constant reply to anyone asking young couples, for instance, why they want to go to the city. This freedom is not always well used, and often is shamefully abused. At the same time, it is the only hope for that highest liberty which consists in the free choosing of the good under the compulsion of the whole trend of the soul's deepest necessity. CHAPTER XXX POLITICAL MACHINERY AND THE KINGDOM ACCORDING to the theory underlying these discussions democracy means, in the last analy- sis, the political autonomy of the mature. It means that though the democracy chooses instruments for administration, and seeks by representatives to carry out its will, it does its own thinking and shapes its own policy. This theory seeks, then, so to modify and change the political machinery that democracy can make its will felt, and felt quickly and im- peratively. Many regard it as the function of democracy simply to choose a group of su- perior persons, fitted by capacity and education to do the thinking of the democracy, and feel a deep distrust of any direct action of the democ- racy upon the legislative and administrative functions of government. It is this conception that largely framed our existing republics in both France and the United States, and only very slowly is the other conception making headway in Switzerland. This theory of a representative democracy, or a democracy choosing superior persons to represent them and give them good government, seems to miss 349 350 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS the fact that good government is too expensive if gotten at the expense of the surrender of au- tonomy. At best government will be only an approach to the ideal, and it is probably far better that the democracy make its own mis- takes and suffer for them than that the best possible group of superior persons save them both the mistakes and the suffering. Of course, this involves a change in the esti- mate of self-government. It becomes a means for individual and communal development. All machinery of government has, therefore, its primary interest for the socially awakened man, who is thus consciously democratic, as he sees it aiming at the higher and more perfect self-expression of democracy. He has no il- lusions about the infallible character of de- mocracy. He realizes its hot passions, its shortsightedness, its collective and individual ignorance; but he also feels that no group of superior persons is free from very similar weaknesses; and he has no desire to hedge democracy about to save it from mistakes. He has only faith to believe that maturity is more precious than any amount of "good govern- ment" purchased at the price of permanent im- maturity. It is the weak, the hot-headed, and the superficial who most need to be taught by bitter experience the evils of hot-headedness ; and though it is sad that many innocent suffer POLITICS AND THE KINGDOM 351 with the foolish and ignorant, the socially awakened man realizes the value of solidarity and has no desire for personal extrication. Hence all new political machinery proposed must be weighed in accordance with the theory of government which underlies the ideal. Do we want direct and immediate democracy with all its dangers and possible mistakes? Then such questions as those of the recall, the refer- endum, proportional voting must be considered from that point of view. It may be a fair ques- tion whether such measures will promote democ- racy, but usually men argue about them with- out finding out whether they really want the same thing. If a man does not believe in any direct democracy, but prefers to be ruled by superior persons, then he will probably want to limit even more than now the right of franchise. This is not the place to discuss the possible efficiency of such proposals, but it is useless to even begin their discussion before asking the primary question, namely, Efficient for what? We all want good government, but the real democrat does not want it at the price of seZ/-government. Along the same lines the socially awakened man will ask whether women should vote. It is not primarily whether their voting would or would not improve the present government. It probably would do so far less than zealous ad- 352 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS vocates claim, but the question is a deeper one : Ought not women to have the education which voting means! Does she not need the ballot not alone for her protection, but in order that she may be compelled to consider what will pro- tect her? Granted that a woman's place is the home, the danger now is that soon there will be no home for her to go to. Mortgaged farms and rented tenements are not good foundations for homes. Hotels and boarding houses are breaking up more homes than politics are likely to do. The ballot has been a great political educator, and it has only just begun its work. Industrial woman brings no tears to the eyes of the tool-possessing class, but industrial womanhood is not the old foundation for the home. TVill the ballot take as many women from their homes and for as long a time as the factory system? The same point of view should in some measure determine our attitude toward all pro- posals for limiting the ballot by property and educational tests. The property-holding and the educated class do not need the ballot for protection. They can hire lawyers and poli- ticians to protect them, and education makes them often far too articulate. The dumb help- lessness of poverty and ignorance needs the ballot as its only expression, and as a mere safety valve it has proved useful to the social POLITICS AND THE KINGDOM 353 order. A certain type of violent radical might well wish for ballot restriction, for the alterna- tive would often be revolution, as in Turkey, or murder, as in Eussia. The anarchy of force might be so unwise as to wish for violence now headed off by the sense that the ballot is the proper remedy. But surely the Christian social thinker has no such notion. The whole race question must be dealt with in the same way. We give the negro a vote not because we pass judgment on his qualifica- tions for voting, but because he needs the ballot and we need to know what he wants. None of us are probably really qualified to vote, or in- deed to do most of the things we must do. We learn how to do them by doing them. We think little enough about our political duties, and if we did not have presidential elections every four years we would think still less. It is enormously important that a politically un- trained race of over ten millions of colored blood be compelled to think politically and to think in terms of the whole nation. The South- ern States that exclude the negro from the ballot are but complicating the whole situation by shutting themselves off from knowledge of what the negro wants, and by leaving him to a dumb and possibly bitter and unreasoning dis- content with the order about him. Special privilege and illegitimate monopoly 354 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS have great fears of the extension of democracy. Why? If the democracy is as ignorant and purchasable as it is represented to be, why do special privileges prefer to deal with the Senate and with smaller bodies? Democracy has, in- deed, been often corrupt and venial, so far as we have ever had democracy, and yet in history it is not easy to show that superior persons have given a government any freer from the stain of ignoble self-seeking than the more democratic forms. And to the socially minded the only hope is in a democracy; for if it can- not really govern itself, then there is no use in trying to govern it from the outside. Nor has democracy, so far as we have had it, done badly in the choice of its leaders. The entire monarchical history of Europe can hardly give us a list of names to compare in character and ability with Washington, John Adams, Jeffer- son, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln, and these are only six out of twenty-six of whom none was a scoundrel like Charles the First of England or any of the Bourbons, and some of whom were men of al- most as marked parts as those we have selected. What we want is not less democracy but more. We remember always as Christians that the scribes and Pharisees crucified Jesus, but the common people heard him gladly. How the machinery of our government is POLITICS AND THE KINGDOM 355 to be altered leaves large room for discussion, but the end before the socially awakened man is surely mapped out with some plainness. To have faith in democracy is to have faith in God's way with us, and to have faith in our- selves. We do not put our trust in princes, whether of birth or of commerce. Some of the radical leaders are at this point extreme and impractical. They would per- suade us to do no fussing with the "bourgeoise" political machinery. This is nonsense. The future-kingdom society will be made up of fallible men of blood and like passions with ourselves. It will need political machinery and all the experience the ages have gathered to run it at all. No experiments will be wasted, even failures will show us where the rocks lie. We shall often have to try out a dozen dif- ferent schemes to find one small improvement. Direct primaries, all sorts of absurd sumptuary laws, all matters of petty regulations some men will see on the face of them that they are good, some on their face that they are evil ; but only trial will help us to final conclusions. Often the experimentation works hardship and is expensive, but all life is expensive, and the most expensive thing of all is to sit still, as in the Orient, and let life go over us. The whole question of municipal socialism, improperly so called, must be tried out. If the special 356 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS privileges engaged in transit business are so sure that municipal ownership and operation would be a failure, why do they fight all ex- periments so vigorously? Of course, no one is wise enough to really know. Not even the great success in England and Germany and elsewhere is sure proof that we could do the same. The only way, however, to find out will be by ex- periment, perhaps costly experiment, but find out sooner or later the democracy certainly will. Naturally, for the Christian democratic thinker machinery is only a means to an end. No perfection of the machinery can do more than enable life to find self-expression. The main thing is to make the life, both communal and individual, really Christian. When, how- ever, the question of new political machinery is raised, he must desire that which most com- pletely enables democracy to express itself, whether Christian or no. If it is not Chris- tian, the sooner we find out, and set about mak- ing it Christian, the better. If it is Christian, then the wider its self-expression the better for the whole world. And this desire to make our democracy serviceable to the whole world should really influence every Christian man. This Eepublic of the United States is set on a hill, and Christian civilization is on trial. To Germany and France and to England and POLITICS AND THE KINGDOM 357 the United States men are turning from over all the world, but the Republic of the United States has until recently been the model to which the nations were distinctly turning. It is not now what it once was in the eyes of nations willing to learn. We have not held our place relatively as the leader of democracy and the political teacher in the family of nations. We must awaken from slumbers too secure. We have been so engrossed in the material con- quest of the continent that we have forgotten some values of really more concern than ma- chinery and clever business combination or tall buildings. We must gain again the leadership by show- ing, first, that in spite of all appearances to the contrary, we are really a democracy and not a plutocracy ; and, secondly, that we have not lost the political sense of the Anglo-Saxon race, and can still construct a political machinery that will make again the democracy articulate; and then, thirdly, we must show that we are a theocratic democracy. That God does really reign in popular institutions is our firm faith; without that faith we would have no interest in popular institutions. And, lastly, it must be a Christian theocratic democracy. The God who moves in our affairs we believe is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and this Divine Father we would manifest unto the 358 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS world. All the machinery of democracy has its highest significance only as it enables us to reveal God, the Father of our Lord Jesus, to men and make him known in the fullness of his glory. It is because the heavens declare the glory of God, and man's selfishness and sin hide him; it is because the earth showeth his handiwork and our cities reveal our selfishness and sordid- ness, that we long to make God manifest as he only can be made fully manifest in the lives of a perfected manhood. We seek a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteous- ness, that men may see what we know with all our hearts by faith in the Son of God, that God is the God of righteousness, of order, and of the beauty of holiness. CHAPTER XXXI SUMMARY RELIGION has always been social. It has functioned as a bond of union stronger than speech, or blood, or law, or geography. It must again become the bond of a new union of humanity. The new emphasis upon the social message is only reviving the old. Nor is the contrast between the social group and the indi- vidual quite the whole story. The real contrast is between the socially minded and the selfishly minded. The social message in no way mini- mizes the individual. On the contrary, the more the individual is exalted the greater the responsibility of the group for the individual. The infinite value of the individual soul is what gives reality to the social message. We are concerned for the poorest and most depraved because of the potential divinity in fullest glory and beauty in every life. What, then, must be the definite social min- istry of every Christian ministry? and all Christian life is Christian ministry. In every little hamlet there should be a group of serv- ants of the kingdom asking, How can we make our community really more like heaven on 359 360 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS earth? What can we do for the children? What can we do for social justice? What can we do for the lowly? What can we do for the boys and girls, that they may become active social servants? How can poverty be not simply relieved, but the causes of it abolished? How can we get rid of intem- perance, graft, the spirit of gambling, the ex- ploitation of human life? The question must be forced home by the Christian Church, What lack we yet that we may inherit eternal life? The first stage is inquiry. What is really wrong? Slavery was eating the heart out of us as a nation, and few saw it. Are there social evils as bad which are eating the heart out of us, and we don't see them? At the same time inquiry had better be carried on while actually doing something. A church asks, "Why do not the young men come?" Well, find out! Sooner or later a good many reasons will ap- pear that are not part of the general depravity of young men. Long, tedious hours in shop and factory, with unwholesome amusements and craving rather for excitement and distrac- tion than for edification and religious inspira- tion, mark a condition of our life. Is that nec- essary? We must find out, and one way is to get the young men interested in telling us as far as they know, and getting them to know more than they do about the facts. SUMMARY 361 Sermons and prayer meetings, class meet- ings and Sunday schools, are essential to a well- ordered church life, but they should only be inspiration and stimulus to something stretch- ing out beyond. The Church must organize her young people for doing things. She might, without committing herself to any political party, organize her young men to watch all parties, to understand their workings from the kingdom point of vantage and to cooperate with them as far as they make for righteous- ness. The Church needs to organize the ethical life of village, town, and city. The average town is torn by church cliques. The Methodists are a little more ''fashionable" than the Bap- tists, the Presbyterians struggle with the Epis- copalians for "social preeminence," so that the "nice people" may all go here or there. All this is frankly of the devil. The churches must cooperate for a common social purpose, along their various lines rendering each the service for which their organization fits them. To do this they must have some common basis of union, some common bond, and the kingdom purpose, the social regeneration of the present suffering communal life, may furnish that bond. Let the different denominations unite to get the town government or the country management praised for welldoing and cen- sured for evildoing and then shown how to do 362 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS well. What do the five or six churches in a township know of the county jail? "Well, let them find out! What do the average church members know of the real temptations to boy- hood and girlhood in their midst? Well, let them find out ! The whole school question is a pressing one. The wholesome separation of Church and State does not relieve a really min- istering church from trying to serve, and supply the religious and moral training the state actually asks us to do, by relieving us of all taxation on church property. Why are we not doing far more of it? Nor should we leave our brethren in the Roman communion out of our councils. They need us and we need them. We differ very widely in what we think makes a church, but we agree in believing that Jesus sent us to establish a kingdom of God on earth. And many godly priests would gladly cooperate in saving boys and girls from a material and irreligious life. Guilds, young people's associ- ations, men's clubs, women's societies are or- ganized to do something not for themselves or even for their church, but for the community. The wants of the community are manifold. It may be only tree-planting and keeping the vil- lage street attractive, but if it is done for the love of God and to show forth the beauty of his holiness, it is religious work. Education of a special kind can still be the SUMMARY 363 service of the churches. Why should not all the churches combine to organize the evening life of the community, and have lectures, con- certs, classes, inspiring social addresses from actual workers from church to church, not in the higgledy-piggledy confused competition of ordinary usage, but planned and ordered, and with such united force behind that success was assured from the start. To do it needs the "social mind," the power to forget self, and little jealousies, and local quarrels, and private feuds, and personal ambitions. But an en- thusiasm for God's kingdom can overcome all these obstacles if two or three are actually united in Christ's name to try. The churches must learn not to be afraid of hearing from all earnest men. No church com- mits itself to single tax by getting some repre- sentative single-tax leader to speak his message if he does it lovingly. No church commits her- self to Christian socialism or to socialism by getting a representative to explain the situa- tion. Labor unions should be heard; manu- facturers have their side of the case; let them be heard. We need to know all the forces that make up our complex life. Partisan spirit should not stop us from becoming intelligent by hearing what others think. Why should not all the churches in a par- ticular district come together and ask, "What 364 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS should be our next step?" "What can we do for God's kingdom here and now?" One of the dreadful concessions we have made to the competitive social order is that churches com- pete with one another and even drive one an- other out. All this socially minded churches will reverse. Weak churches will be aided if they are needed, and proper provision made to get rid of weak churches without hardship or injustice if they are not needed. It is not alone in the city that a federation of churches is needed to do God's work. Such church unions must struggle against communal bigotry. There are shocking narrow- nesses in our common Protestantism. We do not really believe that a man can be saved only in the Methodist Episcopal Church or the Protestant Episcopal Church, but we still often act as though we believed it. Our loyalty to denomination is an asset, but we are most loyal to our denomination when we and it are most loyal to the spirit of Jesus Christ our Master. The lines that divide us are largely of tempera- ment, of history, of honest conviction about ef- ficiency and order. Such opinions the socially minded church must hold with loving regard for all differing honest opinions. And nothing will so soon break down these narrownesses as common work and union with other brethren in the communal life. The SUMMARY 365 bond of common toil is the strongest and sweet- est bond. The churches of county, town, and city should organize for cooperative instead of competitive pastoral visitation. In that way the work would really be done, and the Church would actually touch again all lives that really wanted it. Moreover, the churches must learn that all questions are ultimately religious. It is not religiously indifferent how men are taxed. An unjust tax is robbery. It is not a religiously indifferent question who shall vote. It is ulti- mately a gross wrong to the community to ex- clude from it those who should vote with it, or to thrust upon it those who should not have a voice. All political machinery is ultimately religiously important, as giving the freedom to human life it needs for divine expression. There is no secular life for the Christian man. All things are ours, and all things are sacred. So far as the Church really breathes the spirit of Christ, and reflects the sacrifice of his life and love, it claims all life to make God known as we have seen God in the face of Jesus Christ our Elder Brother. We all need God, and we need him in all life. Business and pleasure, joy and sorrow, failure and success bring home to our hearts the need of God. But we need him in different ways and we see him differently. All life must at last 366 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS reflect God. The Church is on earth to help make him visible, to reveal God. Are we doing it? We call ourselves Trinitarians. Where is the great strength of that thought? It lies in the social character of God, in the infinite strength and variety of his nature. We cannot any more think of God as lonely power. He is our Father. We cannot think of God as simply King and Creator. He is our Elder Brother, in Jesus Christ. We cannot think of God as far away. He is the Holy Spirit and is now moving on men's hearts and minds to forward the great social redemption of God's beautiful world. To this work the socially minded ministry in pew and pulpit is called, namely, to reveal God. The cry is going up from many hearts, ' ' Show us the Father!" There are weary and rebel- lious workingmen who are being taught day in and day out that there is no God, that the churches are fooling them, that the ministry is a selfish, money-making, cowardly class insti- tution, and that the only way out is to over- throw all religion and abandon all churches. How shall we meet this attack? Shall we scorn the cry, and make no response to the complaint? If we do we are lost. God will raise up other and more religious forces to represent him. Let us find out how far we have given excuse for the attack by misrepresentations of God. SUMMARY 367 Let us learn to show him forth as we have seen him giving his life for the brethren. The workingman that sees the Church fling- ing her arms about his children, and guarding his home, will not think meanly of the God that Church proclaims. The business man who sees the Church stand steadily for the purity and peace of the communal life will listen to her message of social justice and brotherly co- operation. Never had the cause of religion a more open door to the hearts of men than the present time of heart-searching. We are living in the midst of a great religious revival of as much sig- nificance for the world's life as the Eeformation or the Evangelical Eevival. It is for us to enter the open door. And, lastly, the socially minded Church must be missionary. The souls in Eussia, China, Persia, Japan, Korea are as much our brothers and sisters as those who talk our tongue and have our color. Our machinery civilization is taking away their temples and their worship. Shall we leave them to materialism and godless- ness? Our vices and our rum are often taking away character and morals, our opium de- bauching and destroying soul and body. Shall we do nothing for them to redeem and restore ? Our competitive social order is in danger of dripping with the blood of dear little tender 368 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS Japanese children ; mere babes are making the things we buy. Shall we do nothing to show that we are rising ourselves in horror over child-slaughter and the degradation of indus- trial womanhood? Never before was mission- ary zeal so needed. Never before had the Church so great and so inspiring a message. God's kingdom is to be the kingdom of the whole earth, and the final brotherhood is to unite all nations. Social proposals have all ultimately the final significance for the Christian heart. Will they or will they not give us a nation that reveals God as he has never before been re- vealed in the social incarnation of the life of love? CHAPTER XXXII SELECTED BIBLIOGBAPHY THE student of social thinking will find an increasing multitude of books upon all phases of the subject. The following bibliography takes up the topics in the order in which they have been dealt with in this book. Nor is it possible to do more than select a few of the books which will give an introduction to these topics. Only such books as are accessible in English are referred to, as the literature in German, French, and Italian, as well as in less read tongues, is now so large that even selected references would have unduly burdened these pages. In most cases where the date of publi- cation is given it is the date of the copy used by the writer, and later editions may exist. It is important at the outset to become famil- iar with the new and inspiring literature that deals with the teachings of Jesus Christ. The volumes of Hastings 's ''Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels" (2 vols., 1906, 1908) are care- ful but conventional and traditional in treat- ment. Seeley's "Ecce Homo," although now uncritical, is still inspiring and useful. Excel- lent as an introduction to the study of Jesus * 369 370 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS style and message is Dalman's "The Words of Jesus" (Edinburgh, 1902), which is a transla- tion of the first part of his great German work. Highly useful is also Wendt's "The Teachings of Jesus" (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1892), and in a less thoroughgoing way A. B. Bruce 's "The Kingdom of God. ' ' Along these lines but with- out the critical apparatus is Peabody's "Jesus Christ and the Social Question," and more fully dealing with the sources Latham's "Pastor Pastorum" (1890) and Shailer Ma thews 's "The Social Teaching of Jesus" (1897). See also "The Messages of the Synoptics," by the writer (1901) and Bousset's "Jesus." The matter is treated most excellently in the form of sermons by Bishop C. Gore in "The Social Doctrine of the Sermon on the Mount." The Fabian Society also prints a little pamphlet by T. Clifford, "Socialism and the Teachings of Jesus, ' ' with an appended bibliography of some value. From the same standpoint are West- cott's admirable "The Incarnation, a Kevela- tion of Human Duties," and his "Social Aspects of Christianity." Compare also Briggs's "Ethical Teachings of Jesus." Of course, the Lives of Jesus by Andrews, Eders- heim, Weiss, etc., can all be usefully employed. The social teachings of Paul have been strangely neglected. He has been treated too exclusively as a theologian, although his the- SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 371 ology was neither central nor his strongest point. W. M. Ramsay's " Saint Paul the Trav- eler and Roman Citizen" (1896) is useful as giving the setting of Paul's thought, and also the sections of McGiffert's " Apostolic Age" that deal with Paul. Pfleiderer's "Paulinism" (Eng. tr., 1877) deals too much with Paul from the point of view of Hellenistic philosophy and forgets that Paul stood on the Old Testament and was a Jew. Weizsacker's "The Apostolic Age" (Eng. tr., 1895) gives materials for judg- ment, and Eenan's "Paul" is a most artistic creation. Extensive, however, as the literature is, the ethics of Paul and his social teachings must be largely gathered afresh from his letters. There is literature of great value in German, but the English material is defective. The student who is looking for a view of the world may begin with the work of Hume and Kant, and will find Lotze's " Microcosmus " (Eng. tr., 2 vols., 1885) a most valuable intro- duction to all the questions. There are many good psychologies now, and any one, like Hoff ding's or that of William James, will sup- ply the essential psychological basis for modern social thinking, but especially useful is J. M. Baldwin 's ' ' Social Interpretation in Mental De- velopment," and "Mental Development of the Child and the Race." Le Bon's work on "The Crowd" and Miinsterberg's "Psychology" 372 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS are also excellent. The background for the philosophy of this treatment may be found in Maurice's " History of Moral and Meta- physical Philosophy" (2 vols., 1886), Wundt's ''Ethics," Paulsen's "Ethics," and the ethical works of Kant (Eng. tr. by Abbott). Un- fortunately, Fechner's works are not in Eng- lish, but have profoundly influenced the phi- losophy of the writer. For histories of philosophy there is now no lack. Weber's "History of Philosophy" (Eng. tr., 1903) is simply invaluable. The last German edition of Ueberweg is the richest history in bibliography. The serious student of social thinking needs careful training in the theory of knowledge (epistemology) and in psychological method, but the ways of approach are too various to try to deal with the literature here. Anyone having to do critically with philosophical social- ism must be familiar at first hand with Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Feuerbach, and Karl Marx, whereas English empiric philosophy demands a first-hand acquaintance with Locke, Adam Smith, Darwin, Spencer, and above all with Hume. The study of our existing social order in- volves some knowledge of the philosophy of history and religion. Here again the method of approach is very various. Admirable as an introduction to the method is Morgan's "An- SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 373 cient Society" (1878). When European history is touched Freeman's ''General Sketch of European History" and Buckle's "Introduc- tion to the History of Civilization in England" are still classic starting points. So also the work of Bagehot, and particularly his ' ' Physics anl Politics. ' ' The whole field of anthropology is one for specialists, but Tylor's "Primitive Culture" and Frazer's "Golden Bough" re- veal to the amateur the method and goal of the science of primitive religion, and Andrew Lang's "Myth, Eitual, and Eeligion" is a val- uable antidote to dogmatism and too easy generalization. To these must be added Her- bert Spencer's "Sociology" and the first edition of his "Social Statics," although Spencer's philosophy is almost better set forth by John Fiske than by himself, in the * ' Outline of Cosmic Philosophy" (2 vols.). The political side may be studied in a most extensive literature, a clue to which is given in Dunning's "History of Po- litical Theories" (2 vols., 1905, 1908). To the science of so-called sociology the work of Gid- dings, "The Principles of Sociology," may be used as an introduction. For special study of American society Bryce's new edition of his "American Commonwealth," with certain faults, has highest value. But the serious stu- dent will take up McMaster's "History" or some of the many good histories, and will read 374 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS them in the light of the " Federalist" and the original documents. J. Allan Smith's "The Spirit of American Government" should also be read. Fiske, Wilson, and Burgess all deal with the political unfolding of the American Republic. The social thinker who is not a trained specialist in political economy is often con- fused and bewildered by the great variety of books. Probably the best thing is to begin with Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" (many editions, and annotated by Thorold Eogers, 2 vols.), and then take up J. E. Cairnes's "Lead- ing Principles of Political Economy Newly Expounded," or his "Character and Logical Method in Political Economy." He might then pass to John A. Hobson's "Evolution of Mod- ern Capitalism" (Contemporary Science Se- ries), which is rich in bibliography. Admirable in their clearness are all the outlines by Richard T. Ely, "Introduction to Political Economy," "Principles of Economics"; and rich in bibliographic reference is E. R. A. Seligman's "Economics," as are also highly useful his works on taxation. "Political Econ- omy," by Walker, is a fine example of con- fusion and scholasticism in this field. Ricardo's place is so historically important that his theory of rent should be mastered in the "Principles of Political Economy." To these may be SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 375 added John B. Common's "Distribution of Wealth," and Clark's volume under the same title. John J. Lalor's "Cyclopedia of Political Science" might be greatly improved, but has useful references. The two academies, the American Academy in Philadelphia and the Academy of Political Science in New York city, both publish important material, as does also the American Economic Association. For the literature of religious discontent with all existing orders the student turns to the books that deal with the kingdom of God, and here Maurice's "Social Morality" and "The Kingdom of Christ" are still important. The actual relation of the Church to social improve- ment is despondently given in Charles Booth's last volume of "Summary on Religious In- fluences ' ' in his invaluable series of ' ' Life and Labor in London," and the same theme is dif- ferently dealt with in Heath's "The Captive City of God. ' ' The best recent book along this line is Walter Eauschenbusch's "Christianity and the Social Crisis," and Ruskin's works, "Unto this Last" and "Munera Pulveris," have still inspirational value. More definite in their economic theory are Charles R. Brown in "The Social Message of the Modern Pulpit" and R. J. Campbell in "Christianity and the Social Order. ' ' The biblical material is treated of by Orello Cone, "The Rich and Poor in the 376 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS New Testament," and George Adam Smith, "Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the Old Testament." The social character of Old Testament teaching is also brought out by Driver in his "Isaiah and His Times." "The Social Results of Early Christianity" have been dealt with by Schmidt. Utterly uncritical and often misleading, but full of valuable material, is "Ward's "Ancient Lowly." These are but a few leading books, but the literature cited in their pages will open up still farther the world of their thoughts. When the student turns to definite social pro- posals it is well to go at once to the authorita- tive sources. Thus to find out what Anarchy actually teaches take up Bakouine, the com- munist-anarchist. Benjamin E. Tucker has translated his ' * God and the State ' ' ( 1883) . Or for philosophic anarchy the works of Peter Kropotkin on "Coming Anarchy," "Scientific Basis of Anarchy, ' ' and ' * Mutual Aid. ' ' Benja- min R. Tucker's own writings are easily ob- tained. Francis D. Tandy has also given a program in "Voluntary Socialism," which is anarchistic in purpose. So also the student of the single tax should take up authoritative literature like Thomas G. Shearman's "The Shortest Road to the Single Tax," or his "Nat- ural Taxation"; nor must he forget Henry George's own work, "Progress and Poverty." SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 377 Excellent and most clear is Louis E. Post's "The Single Tax," and also Leo Tolstoy's "A Great Iniquity." Wallace's "Land Nationali- zation" is another phase of this subject. The organs of the single-tax purpose may also be consulted, like "The Single Tax Review" and "The Public." On democracy as such see J. M. Kelley, "In- dustrial Democracy," where the ideal is an exceedingly democratic communalism. Also Lecky's "Democracy and Liberty," where democracy is ill-defined; Rose's "The Rise of Democracy," and William J. Allan's "Efficient Democracy. " It is unfortunate that individual- ism, democracy, communalism, and socialism are so seldom examined in their logic and inner spirit. But for a beginning see Ostrogorki's "Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties," Mrs. Bosanquet's "The Strength of the People," and John Stuart Mill's "Repre- sentative Government," which is thorough- going in its conception of democracy. For a philosophic discussion of the state see Bluntschli's "Theory of the State" (3d ed., Eng. tr., 1901), Mazzini's "Thoughts upon Democracy in Europe," and "Democracy and Reaction, " by Hobhouse (1904). The history of socialism has been so well written recently by various writers that Ely's services are in danger of being forgotten; yet 378 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS his history of European socialism is still use- ful, although superseded by Kirkup's "History of Socialism" and Morris Hillquit's "History of Socialism in the United States. ' ' The history of Christian socialism in England has been written by Kaufman, and W. H. Dawson has dealt with "German Socialism and La Salle." Utopian socialism begins with the "Republic*' of Plato, and has a long and honorable history through More's "Utopia" down to Edward Bellamy and William D. Howells in "Looking Backward" and "A Traveler from Altruria." To-day the foundation of nearly all schools of socialism is to be sought not in Eobert Owen or Louis Blanc, but in Karl Marx, whose work on "Capital" (Eng. tr.), with all its many defects, remains still the classic socialist text- book. Whether as believer or as critic the student of socialism is bound to become ac- quainted with Karl Marx at first hand. A help is Aveling's "Student's Marx." To under- stand the movement the work of Werner Sombart, "Socialism and the Social Move- ment," or Schaeffle's "Quintessence of Social ism," will be found clear. Or one may begin with John Spargo's "The Socialists, What They Are and What They Stand For," which is from the pen of a convinced socialist, which Sombart and Schaeffle are not. We then find a most extensive literature on all sides of the SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 379 subject : William Liebknecht, ' ' Socialism, What It Is and What It Seeks to Accomplish"; Hermann Kutter, "They Must, or God and the Social Democracy"; Achille Loria, "The Eco- nomic Foundations of Society," which is a shallow and mechanical interpretation of Marx ; E. Vanderveldt, "Collectivism and Industrial Evolution"; Morris and Bax on "Socialism, Its Growth and Outcome"; E. E. A. Seligman's "Economic Interpretation of History," which is an exceedingly just appreciation of Marx's real position; Charles H. Vail has several vol- umes, of which the most important is, perhaps, "Principles of Scientific Socialism"; A. W. Simons on "The American Farmer"; John Spargo's books, "The Bitter Cry of the Chil- dren," and especially "The Spiritual Signifi- cance of Modern Socialism." Critical of socialism are Max Hirsch's "Democracy vs. Socialism," and James Edward le KossignoPs "Orthodox Socialism, a Criticism." Very clever and illuminating is Veblen's "The Theory of the Leisure Class." Frederick Engels's "Socialism, Utopian and Scientific," is still classic, and is much read by socialists. So also is August BebePs "Woman under Social- ism." Very interesting for the socialist point of view is Isador Ladoff's "Pauperism and the Abolition of Poverty." Along with BebePs work on woman may be read Engels's volumes 380 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS on "The Origin of the Family" and "Private Property and the State." In England Robert Blatchford's "Merrie England" and "Britain for the British" have had enormous sale. His attack on Christianity is shallow and ill-tempered, but should be read by Christian teachers who want to know the cheaper type of objections to religion. The book is called "God and My Neighbor." Of all the many socialist publications probably either the "In- ternational Socialist Review" (Chicago) or the "English Review" would be the most useful journal for an outsider wishing to know the truth. Christian socialism has three separate types. The English type is very sentimental and some- what uninstructed, as in Fremantle's "Chris- tian Ordinances and Social Progress" or the works of Maurice already mentioned. But Kingsley's "Alton Locke" and Carlyle's thun- derings still have much value. See Stubbs's "Charles Kingsley and the Christian Social Movement," or A. E. Woodworth's "Christian Socialism in England." In the United States the so-called Christian Socialist Fellowship ac- cepts the Marxian party platform, but united with it the thought that thus Jesus 's will is to be carried out. See Rufus W. Weeks 's "What the Christian Socialists Stand For." There is also much literature that reflects socialist in- SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 381 spiration without any party commitment, as in H. C. King's " Theology and the Social Con- science," or Marshall Lang's "The Church and Its Social Mission," and Shailer Mathews's "The Church and the Changing Order." The relation of Christian socialism to Owen is dis- cussed by E. E. A. Seligman in an article of that title which has been reprinted. The difference between democratic and state socialism is brought out by W. H. Dawson in his "Bismarck and State Socialism. " Fabian socialism has a literature of its own. The Fabian Society of London issues an abundant literature, an introduction to which may be had in Sidney Webb's "Fabian Es- says," or his "Socialism in England," or "The London Program." The most familiar Fabian writer is the novelist H. Gr. Wells, whose "Old Worlds for New" presents the Fabian attitude of mind, and Bernard Shaw presents in "Mu- nicipal Trading" a fair account of the progress of the party. The "Social Science Series" is an almost invaluable series of publications along social lines (imported by Charles Scrib- ner's Sons), and among them many of the books are by Fabian socialists. The literature of social amelioration is too extensive to do more than point out a few books of especial significance. The land ques- tion needs particular treatment, and a good 382 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS introduction is Fustel de Coulanges's "Origin of Property in Land" and Stubbs's "The Land and the Laborers" ; also from the English point of view M. L. Balbeck's "Historical Sketch of the Distribution of Land in England," Bolton Hall's "Three Acres and Liberty," and "A Little Land and a Living" are practical. The work of charity has a literature all to itself. The "Survey" is one of the most valua- ble sources for information, and will keep the socially minded man or woman posted in regard to recent thought. ' ' The Hull House Maps and Papers" are also valuable as introductory to the questions raised. Practical and suggestive are Edward T. Devine's "The Practice of Charity" and "Principles of Belief." "Pov- erty," by Bobert Hunter, and General Booth's "In Darkest England and the Way Out," paint dark pictures of city poverty. Mrs. Josephine S. Lowell describes "Public Belief and Private Charity" without going very deeply into causes. Sir G. Nichols has written a useful "History of the English Poor Laws. ' ' Classic is B. S. Bown- tree's "Poverty: A Study of Town Life." The city has also almost its own literature, like Hugo's "Municipal Ownership in Great Britain" and the work of Samuel Loomis on "Modern Cities." Still very valuable and sug- gestive is Frank Parsons 's "The City for the People." Frederic C. Howe has a hopeful SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 383 view of "The City, the Hope of Democracy." Richard T. Ely has a small volume of admirable spirit on "The Modern City," and Josiah Strong is very interesting in his recent book on "The Twentieth Century City." The special city problems must be dealt with in the more technical literature, which is, happily, increas- ing fast. The temperance question cannot be properly handled in a few references. The temperance society has alone an enormous literature. Prob- ably Eowntree and Sherwell in "The Tem- perance Problem" introduce the question fairly, although their attitude is, of course, challenged. Raymond Calkins tries to point out ' ' Substitutes for the Saloon." The New York Committee of Fifteen has several reports. The Prohi- bition literature is large and exceedingly effect- ive. The prohibition by local option and the question of national prohibition have each large literatures. The whole question of the trusts is vital, and George L. Bohn has an admirable discussion, ' ' Facts about the Trusts and the Tariff. ' ' John Moody 's "Truth about the Trusts" has rich material. Frank Parsons 's "The Telegraph Monopoly" is admirable, and a complete legal survey is given in E. Parmelee Prentice's "Federal Power over Carriers and Corpora- tions." Two other books may be cited: J. W. 384 SOCIAL SOLUTIONS Jenks's "The Trust Problem" and W. Z. Eip- ley on "Trusts, Pools, and Corporations." Education has also its own literature. The best introduction to the modern treatment of it may be found in the Eeports of the United States Commissioner of Education, and in Bliss's "Encyclopedia of Social Reform." Ed- win G. Dexter has an admirable summary of the subject with many references. The last edition of Bliss's "Encyclopedia" is most admirable, and should be owned by every- one who is vitally interested and can afford the very moderate price for such exceedingly care- ful work. INDEX Addams, Miss Jane, 298 Almsgiving, 271-280 Altgeld, Governor, 145 Amelioration, social, 245 America, and individualism, 137 Amusements, Puritan attitude toward, 327 Anarchy, social proposals of, 143; atomistic, 143; com- munistic, 149 Apocalyptic hopes, Jewish, 16 Aquinas, Thomas, 238 Architecture and education, 308 Aristocracy, failure of, 104 Aristotle, and benefactor, 107 Assurance, and finality, 33; gradations in, 34; highest type, 34 Athanasius, and monastery, 111 Augustine, 185 Austrian socialism, 239 Autonomy, moral, of sons, 82 Bakouine, Michael, 149 Bellamy, "Looking Back- ward," 84 Berger, Victor, and revision- ism, 243 Bernstein, and revision, 241 Bismarck, aristocratic pater- nalism of, 103; and state socialism, 222 Bourgeoisie, rise of, 209 Buddhism, and caste, 100; and individual extrication, 110 C Calvin, and democracy, 165 Calvinism, services to democ- racy, 171 ; its political ideal, 187 Capitalism, definitions of, 201 Carpenter, Edward, 168 Caste, and industrial commer- cialism, 59 Catholic socialism, 236 Catholicism, Roman, attitude of, 170 Causality, law of, 212 Certainty, and finality, 33; basis of, 35 Charity organization, 269 Chartist movement, 193 Children, the possessing class and their, 49 Children's courts, 265 Church, Christian, and social program, 73; Roman Cath- olic conceptions of, 73; Re- former's definitions of, 73; and political program, 78; 385 386 INDEX and her functions, 113; its public services, 342; and party struggle, 344; and or- ganized ethical life, 361; separation from State, 362; missionary character of, 367 City, place and importance in social hope, 335-341 Class-conscious struggle, 214 Coercion, 17; loveless, 144 Color, the group, 217 Commercial struggle, goal of,71 Commune, Paris, 215 Communism, primitive, and Jesus, 71 Competition, definitions of, 64, 161; Walker's definition of, 122 Congregationalism, 141 Constantino, and the Church, 131, 182; and compromise with Christianity, 185 Constitution, the, and democ- racy, 165 Contemplative life, the, 168 Cooperation, 318, 321 Cosmopolitanism, Jewish, Ro- man, 98 Crisis, the industrial, 201 Cyprian, and Old Catholic Church, 184 D Darwin, Charles, 158 Democracy, and self-govern- ment, 350; and its machin- ery, 356; and plutocracy, 357 Democrat, the Christian, 172 Disestablishment in France, 232 Divorce, and the Roman com- munion, 288, 324 Dogmatism, definition of, 34 Dream, the kingdom, 84; and material side, 92; and de- mocracy, 101 Dress, 289 Dualism, Oriental, 185 E Economic interpretation of his- tory, 206 Education, 295, 297; unorgan- ized, 305 Encyclical of Leo XIII, 235 Encyclopedists, 137, 139 England, and land question, 127; land monopoly in, 159 Episcopacy, 141 Equality, economic, 87 Evangelicalism, American, 142 Exclusiveness, danger of, 107 Exploitation, 67; and democ- racy, 109 F Family, definition of, 64; emu- lation in, 67; male, female, child group, 177; its con- servation, 322 Feudalism, its wars, 43; beauty of, 56; and the family, 58; and the land, 58; and its charm, 134; and Roman Catholic Church, 187 Feuerbach, 206. INDEX 387 Fiske, John, and influence of childhood, 166 Forestalling, 52 France, and individualism, 138 Free trade, 121 G Gambling, essence of, 53; its suppression, 331 Games, the Greek, 161; the Roman, 161 George, Henry, 155 Germany, and the single tax, 160; state socialism of, 224; old-age pensions, 225 Gladstone, 135 Goethe, and individualism, 147 Golden Rule, the, 120 Government,PauTs attitude to, 23; efficiency of, 102; self- government and risks, 104 Group, its claim, 114; and the individual, 126; religion and the, 180 H History, its continuity, 252 Home, the passing of the, 283 Hospitals, 273 Idealism, hampered by, 37; United States and, 37 Individualism and the king- dom, 97 Individualism of Jesus, 99 Industrial training, 279 Industrial womanhood, and its protection, 316 Industrialism, the new, 42; commercial, 42; competitive, 45 Inhibition, morality and, 86 Intellectualism, Hellenistic, 185 Interest, meaning of, 54 Jerusalem, its ruin, 248 Jesus, social outlook of, 13; his view of the world, 20; and social theory, 26; and politi- cal program, 62; and wealth, 71 Joseph, 13-14 Judaism, family and tribal, 110 K Ketteler, on property, 234 Kingdom, constitution of, 15; the Messianic, 180; parables of, 248 Kingdom of God, Jesus's con- ception of, 14 Kingsley, Charles, 131; and Chartism, 193 Knowledge, relative, 32; rela- tion to experience, 32; social character of, 35 Kropotkin, Prince Peter, 150, 153 Labor, organized, and new morality, 86 Laissez faire, 133, 139, 144 388 INDEX Land speculation, 312 Lollard movement, the, 128 London and ground rents, 293 M Manchester school, the, 127 Marx, Karl, 150; elements of his system, 198 Mastery, its corruption, 94 Maurice, Frederick Denison, 192 Mediaeval Church, its ministry, 76 Memories, inherited, 30 Meyer, Professor Rudolf, 236 Mind, the social, 85 Ministry, the Christian, 255 Mir, Russian, 149 Money, definition of, 46; value of, 54; symbolic character, 55; tainted money, 116 Monogamy, Jesus and, 18, 177 Morality, double standardof , 69 Moravians, and John Wesley, 148 Municipal trading, 197 N Napoleon, and the Revolution, 166 Nationalism, Jewish, 18 Nomadism, 252 O Opportunity, productive, 47 Organized labor, 313; and strikes, 203 Owen, Robert, 131 ; and social- ism, 191 P Panaceas, 259 Parasitism, 55 Paternalism, aristocratic, 100 Paul, his social message, 22; contrast with Jesus, 22; charge against him, 23; and social theory, 26; and relativ- ism, 37; the Church as founded by, 111 Pharisaism, 261 Physiocrats, the French, 139; and socialism, 191 Pobiedonostzeff, 80 Political economy, classic, 121 Political programs, their sig- nificance, 79 Poor, deserving and undeserv- ing, 268 Post, Louis, 156 Premillenarians, 246 Presbyterianism, 141 Prisons, and their reform, 306 Privilege, dangers of, 106 Progress, Roman progress and its divisions, 40 Proletariat, the, and its char- acter, 103 Profits, definitions of, 45; as stimulus, 68 Proudhon, 151 Puritanism, 129 Purpose, and life, 31 Q Quesnay, Francois, 139 INDEX 389 R Railroads, German, 222 Rauschenbusch, Professor, 183 Reformation, and individual- ism, 112; definition of, 186 Rent, meaning of, 54; Marxian definition of, 204 Revelation of God, 366 Revolution, French, 249; Pro- fessor Sloane on, 301 Roman empire, its social his- tory, 43 Romance, and the drama, 303 Rousseau, 137 S Sabbath day, 285 Sabbath school, 300 Sacramental mysteries, and Christianity, 111 Salvation, individual, 118 Salvation Army, 275 Scholasticism, itsweakness,121 Schopenhauer, 33 Self, the larger, 30 Seligman, Edward A., 214 Servant question, the, 50 Service, and life, 89 Settlement, 300; social, and dogmatic religion, 345 Shaftesbury, Lord, 130 Single tax, individualism of, 155; ethics of, 156; eco- nomics of, 157; moral appeal of, 162; Christian criticism of, 163 Slavery, its overcoming, 65; its abolition, 80; curse of, 105 Smith, Adam, 139 Social emphasis, the, 176 Social order, and its estimate, 39; its organizing spirit, 41; its genesis, 57 Socialism, rise of, 190; defini- tion of, 190; and commun- ism, 190; English Christian, 192; Fabian, 194-196; Marx- ian, 198; state, 222; state, undemocratic character, 226; state, and militarism, 238 Sociology, its character, 123; and science, 124 Spencer, Herbert, 144; "Edu- cation," 146 Stoicism, its message, 97 Suffrage, woman's, 266, 351; and its limitations, 352; and the negro, 353 Surplus value, 199 Syndicalism, 244 Temperance, 327 Temple tax, Jesus and, 17 Thrift, goal of, 49 Tradition, transmission of, 178 Tribune, New York, 215 Trowbridge, Oliver R., and socialism, 164 Tucker, Benjamin R., 143 Value, exchange, and relative character, 52 Voltaire, 137 INDEX W Wages, 51 Waldensian Church, 76 War, relation to industrialism, 44; exclusion of, 90; and religion, 181 Washington, Booker T., 116 Wealth, what it is, 47; Marxian definition of, 200 Weber, Professor Max, story of capitalism, 187 Wesley, John, and the Church, 74, 113; his democracy, 169 Whig party, the, 129 Whitman, Walt, and democ- racy, 165 Wiclif, 128 World, the outside, 29 A 000 981 752 9