LIBRARY] UNIVERSITV*OF CALIFORNIA SAN Dl EG presented to the UNIVERSITY LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO by Robert F. Lewis THE NEW WORLD-LIFE BY THE SAME AUTHOR MY RELIGION IN EVERYDAY LIFE THE CHALLENGE OF THE CITY THE NEXT GREAT AWAKENING THE TIMES AND YOUNG MEN EXPANSION UNDER NEW WORLD CONDITIONS RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS FOR SO- CIAL BETTERMENT THE NEW ERA OUR COUNTRY OUR WORLD THE NEW WORLD-LIFE BY REV. JOSIAH STRONG, D.D., AUTHOR OF "OuR COUNTRY," "THE NEW ERA," "EXPANSION UNDER NEW WORLD CONDITIONS," ETC., ETC. "Scoop down yon beetling mountain, and raise- thai jutting cape, A world is on your anvil, now smite it into shape. What is this iron music whose sound is borne afar 1 The hammers of the world-smiths are beating out a star." GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1913 Copyright, 1913, by DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian CONTENTS CHAPTEB PAGE INTRODUCTION , vii PART I THE NEW WORLD-LIFE I. A NEW WORLD-TENDENCY .... 3 II. A NEW WORLD-INDUSTRY .... 19 III. A NEW WORLD-PEACE 37 IV. A NEW WORLD-IDEAL 53 PART II THE NEW WORLD-PROBLEMS V. THE NEW PROBLEM OF INDUSTRY . 87 VI THE NEW PROBLEM OF WEALTH . . 126 VII. THE NEW RACE PROBLEM .... 159 VIII. THE NEW PROBLEM OF THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 176 IX. THE NEW PROBLEM OF LAWLESSNESS AND OF LEGISLATION .... 203 X. THE NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY . . 228 INDEX 285 INTRODUCTION "OuR COUNTRY" appeared in 1886. An American in India wrote me after reading it, "I hope your next book will be entitled 'Our World.'" Here it is; and I have been at work on it during all these years. "Our Country" pointed out a national crisis and discussed certain national perils. "Our World" calls attention to a world-crisis, and considers certain world- problems which, unless they are duly solved, will be- come imminent world-perils. During historic times, when social or economic pressure has forced a crisis, there has always been until now an escape by migration. But No Man's Land has been exhausted; there are no more New Worlds. The problems which come with increasing density of population can no longer be evaded. When, in the long past, civilizations have become corrupt and effete, waiting barbaric hordes have over- whelmed degenerate peoples, and civilization has be- gun anew. But there is no more fresh, unspoiled barbaric blood whose infusion can vivify a decaying civilization. If civilization necessarily engenders cor- ruption and effeminacy, then is the race doomed, and it is time to pray for Huxley's friendly comet to execute the sentence. In other words, society in its evolution has reached a stage in which the great human prob- lems that vitally concern not the privileged classes, nor the dominant races, nor the Great Powers alone, but mankind Our World must be faced. They vii viii INTRODUCTION can no longer be postponed to some other age, nor trans- ferred to some other people. There is no other people, and I had almost said that unless these pressing world- problems find early solution, there will be no other age. There is being developed a new world-life with vitally important implications a new world-industry, a new world-peace, and a new world-ideal, after which men are now groping. This new world-life and a state- ment of the new world-problems which grow out of it occupy this volume. No solution of these problems is here attempted, but only an analysis which shows their real nature and then* imperative importance. In the second volume the writer will undertake to show that the Christianity of Christ not only recognizes the new world-ideal after which men are now feeling, but defines, illuminates, and glorifies it; that Jesus, who always had the world-vision, laid down the world- principles by which alone the great world-problems can be solved and the new world-ideal realized. It will also be shown that Institutional Christianity is now on trial, and that only as it grasps the world-significance of the teachings of Jesus and applies his principles to world-salvation can it hope to survive. The third volume will discuss the scientific principles revealed by the new knowledge, which at the same time lay a new responsibility on society and justify a new hope for humanity. These principles confirm the social teachings of Jesus and assist in their application to existing social conditions. This volume will then apply the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of science to the solution of the great world-problems, and show that whether the new civilization issues in a heaven on earth or a hell on earth depends on the INTRODUCTION ix practical application of these teachings to human affairs. In the fourth volume it will be shown that America is the great laboratory of the world, where these prob- lems which concern all peoples are farthest advanced and will soonest reach a crisis; and that we have some special facilities for solving them. There will then be pointed out some special relations which we sustain to Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia, together with certain practical measures demanded by the world-crisis on which we are entering. PART I. THE NEW WORLD-LIFE The New World -Life CHAPTER I A NEW WORLD-TENDENCY CAN there be no such thing as a permanent civiliza- tion? Is humanity, in its successive generations, con- demned to the task of Sisyphus? Powers have arisen, have built on the ruins of civili- zations which they have overthrown, have waxed great and greater until there was no more opposition to over- come, and then, weakened by their own success, have declined and perished. Exploration reveals the cynical fact that a mound in the valley of the Euphrates, the Tigris, or the Nile is the tomb of perhaps a dozen dead cities, which have been built one upon another. The remains of ancient civilizations are like geologic strata which mark the long ages in which different forms of life came and went. Even in this "New" World we find the remains of two prehistoric civilizations in North America, one earlier than the other, both of which were succeeded by savagery. In Peru antiquarians point out the remains of four different civilizations superimposed one upon another prior to the Spanish occupation. Is this historic round necessary? Do civilizations, like men, naturally have their birth, childhood, youth, mature life, old age, and death? Such seems to have been the record of history; but does this vicious 3 4 THE NEW WORLD-LIFE circle belong to the constitution of things? Professor Patten remarks: "No truth confronts us more baldly than this, that periods of decay and reaction have interrupted those of life and construction. The fail- ure to find a sound basis for civilization is tragic enough to overcome the most courageous with the scourging fear that the instability of social structures is the result of some fatal defect in the constitution of the earth itself I" 1 Not only does this fear rise like a spectre from the study of the dead past, but it is sug- gested to many minds by the present outlook upon the world. It goes without showing that world-wide changes are now in process. With the inauguration of the industrial revolution in every land; with the building of transcontinental railways and interoceanic canals; with the substitution of constitutional govern- ment for ancient despotism; with Russia, Turkey, China, and Persia feeling after parliamentary institu- tions; with the popular education and freedom of speech which must needs accompany the growth of democracy; with the rise of new sciences and their revolutionary results in the material world, it is quite evident that existing civilizations are in a condition of flux. Moreover, with the development of the scien- tific method and its application not only to the phe- nomena of nature but to history, religion, and theology, authority has been overturned, the anchorage of many has been loosened and they have been set adrift amid the conflicting currents of modern speculation. The complexity of present-day life overwhelms us. We are lost in details. The world seems to live only a day at a time. The newspaper habit distorts or de- stroys our perspective; it fixes attention on the happen- 1 "The New Basis for Civilization," p. 31. A NEW WORLD-TENDENCY 5 ings of the hour and passes before the mind a rapidly shifting panorama a sort of continuous presentation of perpetually dissolving views, which to the average mind is a meaningless jumble of events. When we stop to think at all, we wonder whether in the government of the world there is a fixed purpose, a comprehensive plan, and orderly progress toward its accomplishment. The ancient tradition of a time when "the morning stars sang together " indicates an early apprehension of the harmony of the physical universe. This concep- tion which was once a poetic fancy is now recognized as an established scientific fact. Newton's vast gener- alization, embracing all worlds and systems of worlds, transforms their meaningless movements into the visible music of the spheres. Neither sun nor mote floating in its beams makes a jarring note hi the infinite harmony. Great and small, far and near, are alike comprehended under one and the same law. Furthermore, the fact that man has discovered no celestial body which contains elements other than those of the earth is more than a hint of the unity of creation. Again, we have reached the conception that truth is a unit, that from the "Flower in the crannied wall" up to its Creator the whole of any one truth is all truth. The scientific method, the correctness of which is suf- ficiently demonstrated by its priceless results, is based on the absolute harmony of all truth. This harmony is not always obvious, but a wide angle of vision so often reveals principles which are apparently conflicting as only the opposite poles of the same great truth that we have learned to ascribe all such apparent conflicts to mental myopia. 6 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE Again, the principle of evolution, equally applicable to physical, mental, moral, and spiritual development, serves to unify the ages through which "One increasing purpose runs," and shows that the universal law of cause and effect is the unbroken thread on which the centuries are strung. As there is no isolated particle of matter and no unrelated truth, so there are no iso- lated and unrelated events. Says Henry Drummond: "Science for centuries devoted itself to the cataloguing of facts and the discovery of laws. Each worker toiled in his own little place the geologist in his quarry, the botanist in his garden, the biologist in his laboratory, the astronomer in his observatory, the historian in his library, the archaeologist in his museum. Suddenly these workers looked up; they spoke to one another; they had each discovered a law; they whispered its name. It was Evolution. Henceforth their work was one, science was one, the world was one, and mind, which discovered the oneness, was one." 1 This oneness of the evolutionary process, this oneness of truth, this identity of elements, this oneness of the law of cause and effect, each embracing the physical, men- tal, and moral spheres, show that these several spheres are all parts of one comprehending whole because all are subject to the same great laws. It is not difficult in this scientific age to believe hi the oneness of nature which is under law, but to many minds history seems little more than a chaos of dis- cordant happenings, without purpose or plan. It is easy to recognize a harmony in the physical world which apparently does not exist in the moral world. In the latter human wills, which are a law unto them- selves^ enter in to complicate the problem. Different l The Ascent of Man," pp. 8, 9. A NEW WORLD - TENDENCY 7 individuals, classes, and nations have different interests and conflicting purposes; hence the great world discord. The divine problem in the moral universe is to make all moral beings glad to obey while leaving all free to dis- obey. It is evident that until this problem is solved, the diverse and perverse operation of human wills must obscure, more or less, the benevolent plan and purpose of the Divine Government. If there is such a purpose discernible amid the con- fusion of the world, it is of the utmost importance to discover it, and to acquaint ourselves as far as possible with the plan by which that purpose is being realized, in order that we may be intelligent and efficient co- labourers with God to the accomplishment of that end. Professor Drummond wrote seventeen years ago: "To discover the rationale of social progress is the ambition of this age." 1 The rapid movement of events and the increasing light of science encourage me to believe that this ambition is now within measurable distance of being realized. It is becoming more and more evident that man as well as nature is under law. While it may be impossible to tell what an individual will do under given condi- tions, it may be possible to anticipate with great con- fidence what a class or a tribe or a nation will do under the same conditions. Nothing is more uncertain than the life of an individual, but few things in the future are more sure than the number of men out of a mil- lion who will die in a given time. We are learning much of the laws of life, of the importance of environ- ment, of the reflex influence of mind and body on each other, and of a thousand other things which bear on human progress and the destiny of the race. By mak- 1<4 The Ascent of Man," p. 3. 8 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE ing a study sufficiently broad, therefore, we may hope to trace tendencies which are indicative of a very definite goal toward which the world is moving. A NEW WORLD-TENDENCY If the Mississippi Valley were tilted only a few hun- dred feet, the great river would flow north and empty into the Hudson Bay instead of the Gulf. Such a reversal of its current would profoundly affect the United States. Much more profound and much far- ther-reaching will be the results of the reversal of a stream of tendency which took place during the past century. This stream flowed in one direction for unnumbered thousands of years. Its origin dates back to the be- ginning of the lowest form of life on this planet. From this single living cell, so science tells us, came the end- less variations of vegetable and animal life, ever appear- ing in new forms, as life, in its progress over the earth, adapted itself to an ever-changing environment. The constantly widening current of this stream of tendency has borne with it multiplying customs, languages, laws, religions, philosophies, industries, institutions, forms of government, nations, races, and civilizations. The tendency of the long past has been toward diversity, that of the longer future will be toward oneness. The change hi this stream of tendency is not a tem- porary deviation from its age-long course a mere bend in the river. It is an actual reversal of the current, which beyond a perad venture will prove permanent. This change, absolutely unique in the history of the world, and unspeakably more important than any pos- A NEW WORLD -TENDENCY 9 sible political, social, or physical convulsion, lias been so gradual and so silent that it has scarcely been noticed. Let us hi the barest possible outline indicate this momentous change. It is a fundamental law of life that it must be adapted to its environment. If environment materially changes, life must adapt itself, accordingly or perish. Environment, as we shall see in a later chapter devoted to that subject, embraces all physical condi- tions, such as soil, temperature, humidity, the con- formation of the earth's surface, food, clothing, home, and the like. It also includes institutions, laws, cus- toms, and all influences, social, intellectual, moral, and spiritual. Wherever primitive man began, his multiplying descendants were at length forced to move outward by the pressure of population on the means of subsistence, different groups came in contact with different environ- ments which speedily began to work in them variation from the parent stock. Some for better protection took possession of mountain fastnesses and wooded regions, and subsisting by the chase, and by gathering wild fruits and berries, remained savage. Some were crowded out to dry upland plains, and living by means of domesticated animals became nomadic like the Arabs. Some took possession of well-watered valleys and rose by various stages from savagery to an agri- cultural civilization, becoming builders of villages and cities like the Egyptians and Assyrians; while others halted at the seacoast, and naturally became fishers, sailors, and merchants, developing in the course of ages a commercial civilization like the Phoenicians and Greeks. Thus radically different environments pro- duced radically different civilizations. 10 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE The more widely peoples were scattered, the greater became climatic differences, which emphasized the divergence of their habits and characteristics. Those who occupied warm climates needed little clothing and but little shelter from the elements, and a generous soil provided food hi response to little effort. In the course of generations both physical and mental habits were fixed which harmonized with these easy conditions of life. More northern peoples were forced by the rigours of their climates to provide adequate shelter, warm cloth- ing, and a winter's supply of food. They were thus stimulated to form active habits of body and mind. Living languages, like all living things, grow. Peoples separated by mountain ranges, deserts, and seas found themselves, in the course of generations, unable to understand each other, though their ancestors had spoken the same tongue. Thus isolation developed differences which again increased isolation. Nature, ever seeking to conform life to its environ- ment, gradually adapted physical types to differences of climate, food, habit, and condition, until in the course of generations racial characteristics were differentiated and fixed. These racial characteristics of course include mental and moral differences as well as physical. In tropical and subtropical Asia nature is overwhelming; deserts are so vast, mountains are so high, heat is so intense, drouths, famines, and earthquakes are so terrible, that men are cowed and almost paralyzed. They are awed by forces in the presence of which they are helpless, and become fatalists. They live in the grasp of irresist- ible power, the consciousness of which tends to develop the religious frame of mind. And it is a significant A NEW WORLD -TENDENCY 11 fact that every great religion in the world to-day originated among Asiatic peoples. As Buckle has pointed out, such physical conditions as exist in India are far better calculated to cultivate the imagination than the understanding, and to stimulate the spirit of reverence than that of inquiry. In Europe, on the other hand, nature is on a smaller scale. She does not terrorize. Men were, therefore, emboldened to undertake her conquest; hence the development of the sciences, and a mighty impulse to Western progress. Until the nineteenth century there was but little contact between different peoples. They were sepa- rated, not only by distances hard to overcome, but by differences of speech, of faith, of mental habit and mode of life, of custom and costume, of government and law; and isolation tended steadily to emphasize the diver- gence which already existed. Thus increasing differ- ences of environment perpetuated and intensified the differences of civilization which they had created. In other words, until the nineteenth century the stream of tendency down all the ages was toward diversity. Then came the profound change, the results of which are, in their magnitude and importance, beyond all calculation. Steam annihilated nine tenths of distance, and electricity has cancelled the remainder. Isolation is, therefore, becoming impossible, for the world is now a neighbourhood. This means that differences of en- vironment will, from this time on, become constantly less. The swift ships of commerce are mighty shuttles which are weaving the nations together into one great web of life. True, there has been commerce since the 12 THE NEW WORLD -LIFE early ages; but caravans could afford to carry only precious goods, like fine fabrics, spices, and gems. These luxuries did not reach the multitude, and could not materially change environment. But modern commerce scatters over all the world the products of every climate, in ever-increasing quantities. For- merly, all peoples were sustained by local products, which differed as widely as the climates which produced them. Now Europeans import a large proportion of their food, and differences of diet are being gradually elim- inated. We are sending many millions of tons of cereals to Europe and Asia every year, while cold storage enables the American and the Australian to supply the English market with fresh meats. In like manner, peoples were once confined to the clothing which they were able to produce. Now wools, cottons, silks, and all textile goods are exchanged by the ends of the earth Mr. Emerson calls coal "a portable climate," which is certainly true of a refrigerator car. To-day the cli- mate of one country may be shipped to another. With ice, coal, furnaces, and the various products of our manufactures, we find that homes are being equipped throughout the world in much the same way. There is probably no civilized land on the globe now where the sewing machine and the kerosene lamp are not found, each working important changes, and helping to bring very different peoples under very similar conditions. Houses in different countries are becoming more and more alike. There are parts of Cairo and of Constan- tinople where the American might easily imagine he was in Chicago or San Francisco. Thus there is a growing tendency to modify the A NEW WORLD -TENDENCY 13 physical differences of environment. Nor is this ten- dency confined to the elimination of physical differences. The press is producing a climate of opinion which is becoming ever wider and is destined to be universal. Millions now read the same printed page and think the same thoughts. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century several hundred million Bibles, Testaments, and portions of the Scripture have been issued in about 490 different translations enough to furnish every family of the human race with a copy. There are many great periodicals in many different countries which are international in their circulation and in- fluence. The Outlook, for instance, sends thousands of copies every week to more than ninety different countries outside of the United States. There is an increasing body of literature which is read by all cul- tivated peoples, through which increasing numbers are coming to live in the same intellectual world. No one can estimate to what extent Shakespeare has helped to harmonize human thinking. Science, which knows no frontier, is every day removing something from the domain of opinion, and therefore of strife, to that of actual knowledge; and every such addition to recognized truth enlarges the common ground where all men may stand. Men long since ceased quarrelling over the Copernican theory. Isolation is the mother of ignorance, and ignorance is the prolific mother of misunderstandings and preju- dices, racial, national, political, and religious. Human nature is fundamentally the same among all peoples. A cultivated American lady who had recently come into contact with Italian labourers and other immigrants remarked, "The strangest thing to me is that people who are so different are so much alike." If men get 14 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE near enough really to discover one another, they find that they have more in common than in difference. Accordingly the closer contact of modern life, its wider relations, its many-sided education, its facilities for travel are all dispelling misunderstandings and up- rooting prejudices. Nowhere have prejudices been so bitter as hi the religious world. Men of different creeds have religi- ously "hated one another for the love of God." And nowhere have differences been more multiplied or magnified. One of the fundamental principles of the Protestant Reformation was the right of private judg- ment, and this principle has divided and subdivided until the United States Census recognizes over one hundred and fifty different denominations, among whom there are fourteen different brands of Baptists, and seventeen different styles of Methodists. Now, however, the various denominations are drawing nearer to each other; those of the same great family are holding great international gatherings. In a few instances closely related bodies have become organically one and many are hoping, praying, and working for a re- united Christendom. The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America includes thirty-two Protestant denominations and represents a church membership of approximately 20,000,000. Not only do the representatives of different Christian creeds dare to do justice to each other, but one of the closing and crowning wonders of the nineteenth century was the friendly gathering of religionists of every name hi what was indeed a "Parliament of man" for the sympathetic study of all the great faiths of the world. Christian missionaries in ever-increasing numbers are zealously toiling to disciple the nations, and to bring A NEW WORLD - TENDENCY 15 all men ultimately to the acceptance of the same fun- damental religious truths. In the political world an early response to this new tendency was the unification of Germany and that of Italy. Witness more recently the provinces of Canada, the colonies of Australia, and those of South Africa uniting into nations; occupying hi the case of Canada and Australia lands well nigh or quite as ample as our own. Capital, consolidating hi larger masses, and labour moving toward more and more comprehensive organi- zation, exemplify this tendency in the world of industry. The rapid extension of organized industry is the most potent of all the forces which are co-operating to pro- duce this world-wide movement, because it is effecting the profoundest changes hi environment. The way in which peoples have gained then* livelihood has been the chief cause hi determining the type of their civili- zation; and the organization of industry introduces a radically new type of civilization because it creates radically new conditions of life. This organization of industry, which is most perfectly exemplified in Europe and the United States, is beginning to work f ar-reaching changes hi Asia, and is on its way around the world. The industrial revolution inevitably produces a social revolution, and creates a social organization which is co-extensive with the industrial organization. It will be shown in the following chapter that we have already entered on the organization of a world- industry, which means the ultimate organization of a world- society, a profound modification of the environment of all peoples, and the harmonizing influences of a world- life. The world-life is both manifested and promoted by 16 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE the Postal Union of the world, by oceanic cables con- necting continents, and by inter-continental systems of railway; also by the existence and growth of inter- national law. The establishment of the Court of Arbitration at The Hague, which was one of the great events of modern times, will by its decisions contribute to the existing body of international law, and will also serve to develop and educate an international or world conscience. 1 Ethical standards were once quite local and extremely diverse; then they became tribal, then national, and now world standards are being established. Thus conditions, which for thousands of years tended to diversity, have now been superseded by con- ditions which tend to oneness. It should be observed further that the new move- ment is much more rapid than the old one. Many of the differences which separate men required centuries for their perceptible development. But now every year marks long strides in the tendency to subordinate differences, to emphasize resemblances, to sink the small in the great, and to merge the many in the one. If a traveller should enter Chesapeake Bay and explore the Susquehanna River, threading his way among its many islands, he would presently find it branching and branching again. Ascending any one of these smaller streams, he would discover that it divides and subdivides until, high up in the Alle- ghanies, he would reach the numberless springs which feed all these streams. Crossing the divide, he would soon come upon other 'For a further development of this subject see the author's "Ex- pansion," chap. VIII. A NEW WORLD - TENDENCY 17 springs whose rivulets soon join to form a brook. These brooks are all hastening to find a creek which surely loses itself in a river. And thus throughout the Mississippi Valley, with its million square miles, he would find numberless streams, all unconsciously but surely seeking each other, until at length they unite in the mighty artery which carries then* flood to the gulf and the sea. The race has now crossed the great divide of human history, and numberless streams of tendency are all unconsciously moving toward the oneness of the great future. But we must not imagine that the future is to undo the work of the past. Differences have been developed for a purpose. An organism is impossible without dif- ferentiation, and the greater the differences between its several organs, the higher is the form of life. If men had not differed from each other, civilization could have made little or no progress. "God fulfills himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." Harmony is nobler than unison. The work of the past has been to fashion the many different instru- ments for a world orchestra, and all history has been filled with their discords while in the making. But now the work of harmonizing is well begun, and the time will surely come when they will be attuned to heaven's keynote. The angels' song of nineteen centuries ago has waited long for earth's antiphonal, but each New Year brings nearer the great consummation when all nations, kin- dreds, tongues, and peoples shall join to raise the Gloria in excelsis "Peace on earth, good will to men." 18 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE "For lo, the days are hastening on. By prophet bards foretold, When with the ever-circling years Comes round the age of gold; When peace shall over all the earth Its ancient splendours fling, And the whole world give back the song Which now the angels sing." CHAPTER II A NEW WORLD-INDUSTRY FOUR thousand years ago and more, caravans of camels made their way across the sands of Arabia be- tween Nineveh and Babylon on the east and the cities of the Nile Valley on the west. Sea-borne commerce was carried in small vessels poorly built and propelled with oars. Even a thousand years later, when men had begun to supplement oars with sails, the little ships crept from headland to headland and sailed only by day. Sometimes on long voyages the crews were com- pelled to replenish their exhausted supplies by halting on some shore long enough to sow and reap a crop; while caravans which traveled between the Mediter- ranean and China occupied more than a year hi the round trip. Futhermore, to the perils of the desert and the sea were added those of the robber and the pirate. Commerce under conditions so difficult and danger- ous was of course correspondingly costly, and only expensive luxuries would bear transportation. Such traffic, apart from serving to increase the meagre knowl- edge of geography and of distant peoples, concerned only the merchants engaged in it and their rich patrons. With the discovery of the mariner's compass and the substitution of sails for oars commerce entered on its second great stage. The utilization of wind made larger ships practicable, and it became possible to trans- 19 20 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE port with profit much less costly goods. Traffic was thus extended to a thousand conveniences and com- forts which touched the lives of the common people. But over-sea commerce is of course limited by facil- ities for land transportation, which feeds it. Its in- fluence, therefore, could penetrate a great area, and profoundly affect national life only after the advent of the railway. Commerce, therefore, entered on its third great stage in the nineteenth century when it was so cheap- ened and extended by steam that nations began to depend on each other in part for the necessaries of life. It would require a fleet of 300 vessels such as the Greeks and Phoenicians propelled with oars to carry the cargo of a single modern steamer, and it would take from 375,000 to 500,000 camels to transport the wheat which during the busy season passes over any one of our great east and west railways in a single day. This profound change in the means of transportation and in the volume of traffic is not greater than the change which is being wrought by it in the conditions of national existence and in the creation of a new world- life. Animal life rises in the scale of being as the various organs and members of the individual are differentiated and integrated; and differentiation and integration are no less essential to the evolution and elevation of the social organism. If every man had been born like every other, if all had been endowed with identical tastes and talents, with the same powers and adaptations, civilization could have made little or no progress, and society could never have had a highly organized Me. The fact that men have different gifts, and gifts that supplement each A NEW WORLD - INDUSTRY 21 other, is an unmistakable indication that they were intended to render different and supplemental services to each other; and when the first exchange of such ser- vices was made, the first step toward civilization was taken. In like manner, if every country had been a repetition of every other, if all had possessed the same climate and identical natural resources, there would have been little or no inter-communication, and each nation would have lived an independent and isolated life. Moreover, that life would have been of a very low order, for isola- tion is the mother of barbarism. But the wide varia- tions of climate and the vast differences of natural resources and of all the conditions of life naturally and inevitably resulted in a variety of national character- istics, habits, adaptations, industries and products, which made possible the development of a world-com- merce and the organization of a world-industry. It is modern transportation, with its rapidly increas- ing facilities, which is transforming this great possi- bility into a splendid actuality, because every reduction in the cost of transportation widens the area of compe- tition, and competition, as we shall see, tends to local- ize industries where natural resources confer natural advantages. The working of this principle finds an excellent example in the economic history of the United States, because, stretching across a continent and ex- tending from the Arctic regions to subtropical latitudes, it possesses a great variety of climates and resources, and, further, because communication throughout this vast region has been rendered easy by means of an unequalled railway mileage. Early in the economic history of the American people roads were few and bad, and as yet canals and railways 22 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE had not been thought of. Population was sparse, and economically the scattered villages were practically independent of each other. Every considerable hamlet had its village blacksmith and its village trader. An occasional water-power made possible a grist-mill and sawmill, between which and then* circle of patrons there was absolute interdependence. Communication was so difficult as to forbid any considerable compe- tition between different villages. McMaster remarks: 1 "Taking the country through, it may be said that to transport goods, wares, or merchandise cost ten dollars per ton per hundred miles. Articles that could not stand these rates were shut from market, and among them were grain and flour, which could not bear trans- portation more than 150 miles." In this simple age of homespun each farmer's family produced its own food, and for the most part its own clothing. The traffic of the villages with the distant city was confined to the exchange of farm products for an occasional luxury, or for the few articles of home use, like crockery, glass, and hardware, which the farmer and his good wife could not themselves produce. Each miller, smith, and trader was a little monopolist. But as roads improved, the influence of competition began to be felt; and the advent of the railway was the beginning of a new economic era. Between different communities connected by rail, prices could not vary more than the cost of transporta- tion. Facilities of transportation, therefore, deter- mined the area of competition; and within this area the miller, or trader, or manufacturer, who commanded greater natural advantages or larger capital, or was endowed with better business abilities, or was the l " A History of the People of the United States," Vol. Ill, p. 464. A NEW WORLD - INDUSTRY 23 master of more effective methods, would ultimately drive his competitors out of business, and possess him- self of his late rivals' trade. Thus within a given region, the area of which was determined by facilities of trans- portation, competition tended powerfully to concen- trate and localize industries. With the extension of railways throughout the United States and their organization into great systems, the cost of transportation was marvellously reduced, and the area of competition correspondingly widened. While it once cost ten dollars to move a ton of freight a hundred miles, according to Edward Atkinson a skilled mechanic can now for one day's wages move his year's supply of bread and meat 2,000 miles. Under such conditions competition gradually drove capital out of unprofitable forms of industry into profitable, or transferred it from less competent management to more competent; so that the tendency to concentrate and localize industries was illustrated on an ever-en- larging scale until, by reason of natural resources or of certain advantages of climate, different national in- dustries became characteristic of different sections of the continent. Thus New England can no longer produce her own food. This inability is not agricultural but economic. She cannot afford to grow wheat, because the neces- sary amount of capital and labour, if put into manu- factures, the product of which is exchanged for the wheat of Minnesota or of the Dakotas, gives to her a larger return. In like manner she draws her meat from the Prairie States, her subtropical fruits from Florida and Southern California, her cotton from the Gulf States, her wool, apart from foreign importations, from the Rocky Mountain States, her hard woods 24 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE from the Middle States, her coal and iron from Penn- sylvania, and her precious metals from the Rocky Mountains. Thus industry, by being differentiated and localized hi different sections of the country, has become organ- ized on a national scale. It is making the interest of one section the concern of all, so that a calamity falling on one industry or on one state is felt by all the others. The various sections of the United States have now become necessary to one another, and live a common economic life as they live a common political life. The conditions necessary to produce this outcome were, first, diversity of climate together with varying natural resources; second, improving facilities of trans- portation; and, third, free competition. The effect of such a conjunction of conditions depends in no wise on distances or natural boundaries, whether the inter- course is between different countries or between sec- tions of the same country. 1. A glance shows that there is the same physical basis for the economic unity of the world as for that of the United States. There is of course a wider variation of temperature between the frigid and torrid regions of the earth than between the Gulf and the Great Lakes. There is a vastly greater range of humidity between the dry uplands of Peru and the flood-scoured Khasi Hills of India than between any two sections of the United States. It is evident, therefore, that the various coun- tries of the world, taken together, have a greater variety of climates and of corresponding fruits, cereals, forests, flocks, and herds than is possible to our own. For in- stance, among the fauna which we do not have there are the camels of hot, dry countries, the elephants of Asia and Africa, the chamois of Switzerland, and the llamas, A NEW WORLD - INDUSTRY 25 alpacas, and vicunas of Peru. And rich as we are in minerals, there are kinds which we do not possess in commercial quantities. 2. It is also evident that the facilities of a world- commerce are rapidly increasing. In 1840 the total foreign commerce of the world was less than $3,000,000,000; now that of the United States alone reaches $4,000,000,000 and that of Germany exceeds $3,000,000,000, while that of Great Britain is now greater than was the combined commerce of all nations in 1850. As railway transportation hi the United States has been cheap enough to result, under competition, in the localizing and organizing of our great industries on a national scale, there can be no doubt that sea trans- portation has become cheap enough to stimulate a like tendency hi the industries of the world because water rates are only a fraction of rates by rail. Furthermore, there can be no doubt that the world's commerce is to continue increasing under the stimulus of the industrial revolution, the rapid increase of wealth, and the progress of invention. 3. The third condition necessary to work out the gradual organization of a world-industry is free competition, which will not be lacking among the nations. There are many who lament the economic order of the past and vainly seek to restore it because they utterly fail to appreciate the influence of competition under the powerful stimulus of improving facilities of transportation. No one more ably represents this class than Prince Kropotkin. In his interesting work, "Fields, Factories and Workshops" (p. 5), he main- tains that " the ideal of society that is, the state 26 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE toward which society is already marching is a society of integrated labour . . . where each aggrega- tion of individuals, large enough to dispose of a cer- tain variety of resources it may be a nation, or rather a region produces and itself consumes most of its own agricultural and manufactured products." I regard such a society as wholly impossible since transportation has entered upon its third stage of development; and if such a society could be realized, it would be a long step back toward barbarism, be- cause by its independence it would isolate itself. Great Britain was the first nation to occupy the in- dustrial field. For a large part of the nineteenth cen- tury she held undisputed possession. At length not only the United States, but also France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Russia undertook to manu- facture for themselves. Prince Kropotkin interprets this as "the decentraliza- tion of industries," and the first step toward the realiza- tion of his social ideal. But instead, it is the first great step toward international competition which will ultimately and inevitably result in the shifting of great industries until they are concentrated and local- ized according to the varying climates and natural resources of the different countries of the world, pre- cisely as they were shifted and localized in the United States under the same compelling influences. It will be said, however, that this national organiza- tion of industry in America took place where there was absolute free trade between all the states, while outside of Great Britain competition is not free between the great manufacturing nations, but hampered by a protective tariff. A NEW WORLD - INDUSTRY 27 CHINA'S "OPEN DOOR" Two things are to be said in reply. First, even if the great manufacturing nations had no dealings one with another, China's "Open Door," which means that the various nations may compete for her trade on equal terms, would be quite sufficient to arouse and sustain a keen competition between them. Here is a population greater than that of all Europe. And this giant, awak- ing from a nap of several thousand years, is discovering that he needs all the habiliments of modern civilization. The standard of living is low in China, but it is rising and will continue to rise. Elevating that standard 25 per cent, would be equivalent commercially to adding 100,000,000 to the population. When China's standard has risen to one half our own, it will be, for purposes of trade, like lifting out of the Pacific two North American continents, peopled by two nations like those of the United States and Canada. What an addition to the world's markets that will be! And what a tremendous stimulus it will give to the competi- tion of the nations struggling to win it. Of course the nation that can lay down the desired goods at the low- est price will gain the market. What will be the de- cisive advantage in that struggle? Technical skill, scientific knowledge and apparatus, artistic taste, and manufacturing secrets have all been important, but now all knowledge and skill ignore frontiers and at length become international possessions. Manufactur- ing success which is built on any one or even all of these rests on an unstable and temporary foundation. Nor can low wages afford any better promise of success, be- cause they cannot insure low labour cost. Low effi- ciency almost invariably accompanies a low wage. 28 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE Dr. Arthur H. Smith in his admirable work, "Chinese Characteristics," says: 1 "We have known a foreigner, dissatisfied with the slow progress of his carpenters in lathing, to accomplish while they were eating their dinner as much work as all four of them had done in hah* a day." Moreover, wages are unstable, and rise with the rising standard of living, which is stimulated by the introduction of machinery. It is the best machine with the best man behind it that produces the lowest labour cost. There is, however, one advantage which is fixed, viz., natural resources, and when in the close and prolonged international competition of the future the variable advantages have been equalized, and therefore neu- tralized, what nature has done for a country will prove decisive, and will therefore ultimately work out the international differentiation of industries. A dozen years ago Mr. Carnegie laid down the axiom that " raw materials have now power to attract capital, and also to attract and develop labour for their manu- facture in close proximity, and that skilled labour is losing the power it once had to attract raw materials to it from afar." Since then there have been many confirmations of this judgment that it is much easier and cheaper to move skilled labour and capital than to transport raw materials. The international differentiation of industries, which must take place under the operation of economic laws, will be accompanied by the reorganization of national industries, as capital is withdrawn from unprofitable, and reinvested hi profitable, enterprises; and both of these processes, international and national, are now taking place. P. 45. A NEW WORLD - INDUSTRY 29 The well-known and much lamented fact that the arable land of England is steadily passing out of cul- tivation affords an illustration. While the popula- tion of Great Britain from 1874 to 1910 increased about 50 per cent., the acreage cultivated for food decreased 22 per cent. This was not due to a lack of patriotism nor to shortsightedness on the part of Englishmen. It was because capital found more profitable investment elsewhere. Old England, like New England, can no longer afford to produce her own food. Only her most fertile soils and best agriculture can compete success- fully with the cheap land of other countries. During the period in which England has been abandoning agriculture she has been creating wealth as never before in all her history. Great Britain is certainly vastly richer and probably much more civilized and much better fed than the nation would have been had it re- mained primarily agricultural. Do we forget the age- long misery and degradation of England's "Man with the hoe?" This is no apology for existing industrial conditions, many of which are criminally bad, but the remedy is not to abandon the factory for the farm. This movement is farther advanced in England than elsewhere simply because England is the oldest indus- trial country. The redistribution of population in the United States and the disproportionate growth of cities not only here and in England but wherever manu- factures have been introduced are only the early mani- festations of a new- world phenomenon a part of a great cosmic process which few seem to comprehend and against which many who fail to understand the signs of the times are vainly contending. In struggling against economic laws they are fighting against the 30 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE stars in their courses. They might as well argue with the east wind or rebuke the incoming tide. But in the profound changes which are taking place throughout the world, and especially hi the Celestial Empire, the question arises whether China may not be- come a manufacturing nation, and stop her inviting "Open Door" with a tariff wall. China is undoubtedly destined to become a great manufacturing nation and an important part of the organized life of the world, but it will take time. During the mediaeval period the several European nations slowly attained individuality and became solidified. China and India must achieve a corresponding con- solidation before they can become component parts of the world's organized life. Changes are of course much accelerated by modern conditions, but this process which occupied several centuries in Europe can hardly require less than several generations in Asia. For the present, China need inspire no fear as an in- dustrial rival. A government hi transition and an entire civilization in a state of flux make impossible the stability which great industrial enterprises and the free investment of capital demand. Cheap labour and great natural resources will avail but little in a world competition until China has in good measure over- come jealousy of "the foreign devil," oriental deliber- ateness, dearth of capital, popular superstition, ignorant labour, the official "squeeze," universal graft, nepotism, and an inefficiency of management which is monu- mental. An international competition of some scores of years will work out its natural results before the withdrawal of Chinese markets shall cease to stimulate that competition. A NEW WORLD -INDUSTRY 31 TARIFF WALLS A second reply may be made to the objection that protective tariffs will prevent the free competition between nations necessary to differentiate the great industries between them. It is of importance to the world as well as to itself that each nation should develop those resources with which nature has peculiarly favoured it. This would enable each nation to produce the greatest possible results with the least possible effort. But any infant industry could be easily overwhelmed and smothered by importations from a country where that industry was already well developed; hence the necessity of pro- tecting that industry until it is sufficiently grown to meet fair competition. Some years ago the late William E. Dodge called my attention to an iron support in the doorway of his busi- ness block in New York. It was an absolutely plain Doric pillar ten or twelve feet high. "When this house was built," said he, "that pillar could not be cast in America, and it was necessary to send to Eng- land for it." The iron sceptre, so long held by Eng- land, has now been passed over to the United States. Without a protective tariff this gigantic industry could never have been born, or would have been strangled in its cradle. But to resort to protection in order to develop in- dustries naturally foreign to our country is quite a dif- ferent thing. If we were willing to make a sufficiently enormous investment, we could undoubtedly grow under glass the tropical fruits which we now import; and such a "home industry" could be sustained by put- ting a sufficiently high tariff on imported fruits. But 32 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE how foolish it would be to make ourselves pay ten or twenty times as much for such fruit as it would cost if grown under natural conditions and imported free, all for the sake of furnishing capital another oppor- tunity for investment? The same amount of capital invested in the tropics would produce vastly larger returns, we should get our fruit for a small fraction of the cost of the artificially grown product, and many more people would be able to enjoy it. This is simply an extreme illustration of the folly of the protective policy which aims to acclimate indus- tries which superior natural advantages locate else- where. When each nation employs its capital and labour in producing those things which each country can pro- duce more cheaply than any other, and these products are freely exchanged, it is quite obvious that the world's return for the capital invested and labour expended will be much larger than under the existing protective system. A division of labour among individuals according to the adaptations of each is found to be vastly more advantageous than for each to undertake to produce what each consumes; and the principle is no less applicable to nations. Statesmanship, however, is supposed to require that each nation should, as nearly as possible, supply its own wants, and especially its requirements for food. This old idea dies hard, though the whole trend of modern civilization is against it. It is inherited from the thousands of years in which commerce was slowly passing through its first and second stages, when a nation must get its food directly from the soil or perish. It is only a little more than a hundred years since the A NEW WORLD - INDUSTRY 33 exporting of food was very commonly forbidden by law. But the attempt of an agricultural people to make themselves more independent by establishing their own manufactures renders them in due time vastly more dependent. They become increasingly depend- ent on other peoples for their raw materials, their markets, and their food. When manufactures are once begun competition renders the multiplication of machinery as inevitable as if governed by a law of natural increase. 1 And that multiplication is much faster than the increase of population. During the last hah* of the nineteenth century, while our population was increasing three- fold our manufactures increased eighteenfold. Accord- ingly as soon as the home market is supplied foreign markets become an imperative necessity. The nation no sooner becomes independent of those who wish to sell than it becomes dependent on those who wish to buy. Commerce is a matter of exchange. If there are to be exports there must also be imports. Like the arterial and veinous systems of the body, the one implies the other. President McKinley, who when in Congress gave his name to a high tariff bill, came to see that such a tariff was a handicap. In his last speech, delivered the day before he was assassinated, he said: "Our capacity to produce has developed so enormously and OUT products have so multiplied that the problem of more markets requires our urgent and immediate attention." After referring to "our increasing surplus," he continued: "A system which provides a mutual exchange of com- l For the demonstration of this proposition see the writer's "Ex- pansion," Chap. Ill, "Foreign Markets a New Necessity." 34 THE NEW WORLD -LIFE modities is manifestly essential to the continued and healthful growth of our export trade. We must not repose in fancied security that we can forever sell every- thing and buy little or nothing. . . . What we produce beyond our domestic consumption must have vent abroad. The excess must be relieved through a foreign outlet, and we should sell everywhere we can and buy wherever the buying will enlarge our sales and productions, and thereby make a greater demand for home labour. The period of exclusiveness is past. . . . Commercial wars are unprofitable. . . . Reciprocity treaties are in harmony with the spirit of the times." That public opinion in the United States has now reached the same conclusion is indicated by Congressional adoption of President Taft's policy of reciprocity with Canada. A manufacturing nation learns in a couple of genera- tions, more or less, that a rapidly increasing surplus demands foreign markets, and reciprocity in order to secure them, under threat of industrial paralysis with starvation in the presence of superabundance. Reci- procity is of course free trade so far as it goes, and its advantages once enjoyed naturally lead to the fullest application of the principle. As soon as a nation has distanced all rivals hi a given industry, it no longer needs to protect that industry, so that as fast as international competition works out the differentiation and coordination of the world's indus- tries that result will eliminate international competition. Thus "cut-throat" competition will at length cut its own throat a suicide which will be altogether com- mendable, and one on which both heaven and earth will smile. If it were otherwise, if the powerful stimulus of com- A NEW WORLD - INDUSTRY 35 petition were perpetual, the world would at length reach a terrible impasse. The industrial revolution is on its way around the world. As the nations, one after another, undertake each to manufacture for itself, there will follow two well-defined results. Population will rapidly increase. There is a natural limit to an agricul- tural population, but practically none to the density of a manufacturing population. When Germany was an agricultural nation her surplus population was com- pelled to emigrate. Now that the nation has become chiefly industrial, the large natural increase finds employment at home. Thus emigration was reduced from 220,000 in 1881 to 25,000 in 1910. Another thing happens: As an ever-increasing per- centage of population enters industrial pursuits, the city grows disproportionately and the once agricultural nation imports more and more food. Not one of the great manufacturing nations of Europe now produces its own food supply. The United States has been for many years the greatest agricultural country in the world, but for more than a century an ever-decreasing percentage of our population has been engaged in agriculture; and not a few will be surprised to learn that during the year ending June 30, 1910, we imported food to the value of over $512,000,000. And if we, with such an extent of latitude and longitude and a corresponding variety of climates, and with a popula- tion of only twenty-six to the square mile, import food, what of European nations, Germany, for instance, which is 57,000 square miles smaller than our one State of Texas, and has a population of 310 to the square mile? If under the whip and spur of competition these two tendencies were to become world-wide, where would a manufacturing world find its food? 36 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE But, as has been shown, by the coordination and integration of the world's various industries, including agriculture, there will be reached at length an industrial peace, a world equilibrium, which will forever do away with the jealousy and strife, the fear and fraud, the strain and waste, of selfish competition. CHAPTER III A NEW WORLD-PEACE WITH Europe an armed camp, with the nations building battleships at one another, and with eastern peoples as well as western beating their ploughshares into swords and their pruning-hooks into spears, there would seem to be little prospect of universal and per- manent peace. But there are forces at work in the world which are destined to wage successful warfare against war and ultimately to destroy its destruction. "Universal peace," says Professor Seligman, 1 "can exist only when one country is so powerful that it dominates all the others as in the case of imperial Rome or when the chief nations have grown to be on such a footing of equality that none dares to offend its neighbour, and the minor countries are protected by the mutual jealousies of the great powers." The latter alternative represents approximately the existing unstable equilibrium. The former is a very common prescription for ending strife, and as old and futile as it is common. Napoleon wanted to establish a world's peace by having only one empire, with himself at the head of it; and it was precisely that kind of a struggle for peace which plunged Europe into the horrors of the Napoleonic wars. He was saner, however, when at St. Helena he said, "The more I study the world, the more am I convinced of the inability of brute force to create '"The Economic Interpretation of History," p. 129. 37 38 THE NEW WORLD -LIFE anything durable." There are various races each of which would like to end the race conflict by the com- plete dominance of one. For several centuries Christian and Mohammedan strove to establish a lasting peace, each by trying to slay the other; and there are various Christian sects to-day praying that they "all may be one," the principal hindrance to the answer of their united prayer and unanimous desire being that each sect wishes to be that particular "one." But such methods of achieving the perfect peace of perfect oneness are utterly unnatural. Nature abhors identities as much as she does vacuums. The heavenly bodies are not all suns nor are they all planets, nor do they all move in like orbits. "One star differeth from another star in glory." What infinite variety has nature, what numberless genera and species and fami- lies? And nature sees to it that individuals of the same variety, and even offspring of the same parents, differ from one another. It is these differences that make possible the glorious harmonies of life. If all life were the same, it may be questioned whether any life would be worth while. God's method is not unity through identity but through variety, through differences which supple- ment and serve one another. If your two hands were duplicates each of the other, they would be far less useful. They are like, yet different; and their differ- ence is no less important than then* likeness. Seneca says: "God divided man into men so they might help one another"; and he gave them different gifts that they might be mutually dependent. The most perfect oneness possible to human beings is that of the mar- riage relation, which is based no less on what the sexes have in difference than on what they have in common. A NEW WORLD - PEACE 39 Whether in the individual, the family, the community, or the nation, wherever there is one life, we find dif- ferent members and organs having different functions, and rendering different services, together with common aims, common sympathies, and common interests; or in a word we find differentiation and integration. If the reader will recall the two preceding chapters, he will note that hi them were shown these two proc- esses taking place on a world- wide scale. These two movements, each of universal scope, are coordinate, and the progress of each facilitates that of the other. By means of the two there is being organized a world- life with the profound changes which that implies. 1 Nations have long looked on each other as necessary rivals, if not as natural enemies. They have sought to live separate lives; they have pursued selfish and, therefore, shortsighted policies; they have plotted and warred to weaken each other; they have set up arti- ficial barriers to commercial intercourse; they have erected national instead of universal standards of ethics; and have honoured national bigotry as patri- otism. But the same forces which united separate and jealous communities, of circumscribed lives and conflicting interests, into a common national life are still at work, and are now organizing separate nations into a common world-life, which will afford the same basis and guaranty of permanent peace between the nations that the national life provides for peace be- tween its constituent communities. This will constitute a new world-peace. Not one depending on treaties, or skilful diplomacy, or mutual fear and equal preparedness for war, but on the com- *For a further discussion of the subject see the author's "Ex- pansion," pp. 214-246. 40 THE NEW WORLD -LIFE mon interests and sympathies, and on the mutual needs and services of a world organism, in which each nation is a member of a world body-politic. Militarist authors seem to be wholly unaware of this inevitable development of a world-life under the operation of economic laws, or they ignore its signifi- cance. They insist not only that war is unavoidable but that it is a biological necessity. Let Von Moltke's famous letter to Bluntschli speak for the whole class. "A perpetual peace," says the great Field Marshal, " is a dream, and not even a beautiful dream. War is one of the elements of order in the world established by God. The noblest virtues of man are developed there- in. Without war the world would degenerate and dis- appear in a morass of materialism." Men whose minds are saturated with the science of brute force are not likely to appreciate the quiet compulsion of economic laws, and those whose hope of promotion and fame de- pends on war are hardly the ones to contemplate it in a judicial spirit. The Hon. John Jay told me that when he was United States Minister to the Austrian court he met Prince Bismarck, who related to him how he assured himself that the German armies were really prepared for action just before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. Bismarck had invited Von Moltke and another general of high rank to dine with him on the day that King William and the French ambassador met for the final conference. At the dinner table the great Chan- cellor said to his guests, " Gentlemen, I have heard from the Kaiser, and learn that everything has been settled amicably. We shall have no need of your services." "Instantly, "said the Prince," the two generals sprangto their feet with exclamations of the utmost disappoint- A NEW WORLD -PEACE 41 ment and disgust; and then I knew that we were ready to fight." Von Moltke knew perfectly the condition of his army, and was master of the science of war, but that knowledge in no way qualified him to speak of the place of war in the economy of nature, or of its value to man- kind. An executioner might be the most skilful heads- man in all the realm, but that fact would hardly fit him to pass on the question of capital punishment while he fondly fingered his blade. Those who must needs see visions of battlefields, for the horrors of which they share the responsibility, are in sore need of some fallacy with which to fool themselves, if they want to sleep nights; and such a fallacy is found in their appeal to the theory of natural selection. Vice-Admiral Ahlefeld (retired) of the German navy contends that "deer and antelope thrive best where there are lions and tigers to kill them; that civilization gets forward fastest on a powder cart, and that enduring world-wide peace would mean degeneracy and be a misfortune for the human race." When primitive man and his fellow struggled bare- handed for a mate, like two stags, the survival of the fittest illustrated the natural law. But the first weapon introduced an artificial element, and the invention of firearms removed war from the operation of the law of natural selection so far as physical "fitness" was con- cerned. A weakened, half -starved peasant could then triumph over the bravest and mightiest knight long before sword or lance could reach him. A bullet has no such respect of persons as a French nobleman of the eighteenth century attributed to God when he said, "The Almighty would hesitate a long time before he would damn a gentleman." Physique counts for little 42 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE or nothing in battle now. A dwarf can aim a gun and pull a trigger as well as a giant, and the giant makes much the larger target. The little Japanese beat the big Russians. The Arabs who rushed to death en masse before Kitchener's rapid-firing guns lacked neither strength nor courage. In modern warfare it is not the physical superiority of the soldiers which is decisive, but equipment, numbers, and generalship. War no longer helps to eliminate the unfit and thus to improve the stock. On the contrary, it is the finest physical specimens who are demanded for armies, and who are killed off or maimed in battle, so that every war serves to depress the physical standard of the nations engaged in it. "Three million men the elite of Europe perished in the Napoleonic wars. It is said that after those wars the height standard of the French adult population fell abruptly one inch. However that may be, it is quite certain that the physical fitness of the French people was immensely lowered by the drain of the Napoleonic wars, since, as the result of a century of militarism, France is compelled every few years to reduce the standard of physical fitness in order to keep up her effective military strength, so that now even three-foot dwarfs are impressed. There is no height limit at all." 1 Surely the advocates of war are reduced to a forlorn hope when they have to argue that the race will degen- erate unless its best physical specimens are killed off at frequent intervals! There is no reason to suppose that military men are acquainted with the law of evolution, and the use they make of it shows that they are not. Let a scholar and a student of evolution speak. Says Professor John 'Norman Angells' "Great Illusion," p. 217. note. A NEW WORLD - PEACE 43 Fiske: "As regards the significance of man's position in the universe, this gradual elimination of strife is a fact of utterly unparalleled grandeur. Words cannot do justice to such a fact. It means that the wholesale destruction of life, which has heretofore characterized evolution ever since life began, and through which the higher forms of organic existence have been produced, must presently come to an end hi the case of the chief of God's creatures. It means that the universal struggle for existence, having succeeded in bringing forth that consummate product of creative energy, the Human Soul, has done its work and will presently cease. In the lower regions of organic life it must go on, but as a determining factor in the highest work of evolution it will disappear." 1 Again the same author says else- where: "The action of natural selection upon man is coming to an end, and his future development will be accomplished through the direct adaptation of his wonderfully plastic intelligence to the circumstances in which it is placed. Hence it has appeared that war and all forms of strife, having ceased to discharge their normal function and having thus become unnecessary, will slowly die out." 2 Von Moltke's declaration that the noblest virtues of man are developed in war is as contrary to science as it is repugnant to religion and ethics. Let Mr. Darwin himself speak on this point. He says: "Important as the struggle for existence has been, and even still is, yet as far as the highest part of man's nature is con- cerned, there are other agencies more important. For the moral qualities are advanced either directly or in- directly much more through the effect of habit, the "'The Destiny of Man," pp. 96, 97. '"The Idea of God," p. 163. 44 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE reasoning powers, instruction, religion, etc., than through natural selection." 1 Among men the struggle for life has passed from the biological to the economic field, and in the preceding chapter it was shown how the competitive industrial struggle between the nations would at length arrest itself by creating a world-life involving the common interests and interdependence of its constituent nations. It will be objected that the tenacity with which every nation clings to its own sovereignty will make such a world organization impossible. But the several German states uniting to form the Empire, and the thirteen original States or colonies joining to establish the Union, show that sovereign political entities are willing to relinquish a portion of their authority when a sufficient motive is offered. The motives for such a world organization are gam- ing strength every year. By no means the least is the staggering load of militarism, involving the double financial burden of army and navy Pelion piled upon Ossa. Europe's war expenditure in time of peace is now $2,000,000,000 annually. In this connection glance at the rapid increase of investments in foreign countries which are the fruit- ful cause of international complications. With the exception of Europe and parts of the United States the development of the earth's natural resources is only begun. The vast amount of capital needed for the development of Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, Australia, Africa, and all Asia cannot be created in these countries rapidly enough. It is accord- ingly flowing in ever-enlarging streams from Europe and the United States. American manufacturers have '"Descent of Man," second edition, p. 618. A NEW WORLD - PEACE 45 spent $300,000,000 on subsidiary factories in Canada, and our capitalists have invested $1,000,000,000 in Mexico. And not only are we sending money to undeveloped countries, but we invest upward of $500,000,000 every year in the stocks and bonds of Europe. It is estimated also that Americans have spent $100,000,000 in planting factories in the Old World. France produces for investment an annual surplus of half a billion, a large proportion of which goes abroad. She has already loaned $15,000,000,000 to other nations, and her present foreign investments amount to nearly $160 for every inhabitant. She has given hostages to all peoples, for there is not a nation in the world that she could fight without injuring the foreign property of her own people. According to consular reports Great Britain, Germany, and France hold more than $63,690,000 of paper securities which belong to the various nations of the globe. 1 Europe holds more than a billion dollars of national debts against the South American republics. At the begin- ning of the century Germany had $457,000,000 invested hi South America. There are $2,000,000,000 of British money invested in the industries of Argentina alone. The English statistician, Mulhall, told us a dozen years ago that two thirds of all Great Britain's capital created since 1882 had gone into foreign investments. And in 1909 British investments abroad had reached a total of $13,500,000,000 scattered over the world. The late King Edward drew a much larger revenue from the United States than George III ever exacted from the American colonies. 2 Thus are foreign hi vestments binding the nations of the world into one bundle of 1 Daily Consular and Trade Reports, May 9, 1912. 'Harold Bolce in "The New Internationalism," p. 55. 46 THE NEW WORLD -LIFE common interest, and at the same time preparing con- ditions which will require world legislation or adjudi- cation. We have already seen how commerce is bringing the nations into closer relations. The Greek word mean- ing to exchange also means to reconcile. The exchange of products tends to remove prejudices and animosities because it extends acquaintance, and, what is more, because it creates interdependence. The prosperity of every nation will depend more and more on that of others as manufactures increase and their products are exchanged. And as the well-being of each nation passes increasingly into the power of others, new rights and obligations will be created for the protection and enforcement of which a world-wide authority will be necessary. The modern system of credit is something that those who believe the world will always permit itself to be threatened with the convulsions of war seem to leave out of account. Down to the discovery of America, which was a powerful stimulus to commerce, wealth had consisted almost wholly in real estate. But with the development of commerce the volume of business became vastly greater than could be done on a cash basis, and a system of credit was rendered inevitable. The amount of gold in circulation is only a small frac- tion of the vast sum represented by the total trans- actions of the business world; but it suffices as long as confidence prevails. When, however, that confidence is lost, payments are demanded which the currency of the world cannot meet, hence panic and failure. Then money goes into safe hiding, and industry suffers paralysis. Some one says that nothing is so timid as a million dollars except two millions. It does not require A NEW WORLD - PEACE 47 actual war to frighten capital ; even a threat of it is suf- ficient to send securities tumbling. There are other inducements which might help to reconcile nations to the idea of relinquishing a portion of their authority to a world organization for the sake of making war impossible, but I have confined myself to economic considerations because I wish to compare the nations of the western world to-day with the Thirteen States or colonies just prior to the formation of the national Government. Let there be no doubt that it was commercial neces- sity which induced the States to surrender some of their authority to the federal Government. Said Danial Webster: "WTiatever we may think of it now, the Constitution had its immediate origin in the con- viction of the necessity for uniformity or identity in commercial regulations." 1 When the Panama Canal is opened the whole occi- dental world North and South America, together with all Europe will be more closely related in point of time and common interests than were the original Thirteen States when the necessities of commerce forced them to form the compact of the Union. The two geographical extremes of the colonies were as far separated as Berlin and the Barbary States, or as London and the Black Sea. An old lady in New York has in her possession a journal written by an aunt, which describes a trip from New York City to Albany and return early in the nineteenth century. The voy- age up the river occupied nine days, and the return voyage seven. The sixteen days of my lady's journey would now suffice for a trip from New York to Albany and return plus another across the Atlantic and Europe 'Quoted by Mr. Bridgman, "World Organization," p. 47. 48 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE to Constantinople. And it must be remembered that this voyage of nine days, due north, carried the travel- ler only halfway across one of the original States. We must also remember that roads were then few and poor, and that railway travel and steam naviga- tion had never been thought of. To have made one's way at that time from the north of Massachusetts colony (now the State of Maine) to the southern part of Georgia would have involved much more time, toil, expense, and exposure than to travel to-day from San Francisco to Jerusalem or from St. Petersburg to Val- paraiso. Washington had been buried for two weeks before his death was known in Boston. And as late as 1828 it took a month for the country to learn the result of the presidential election. It is quite true that the peoples of Europe and of North and South America have differences of blood, language, and religion as well as differences of institu- tions and laws. It is also true that the organic laws of the colonies were very unlike, and that there were also important differences of blood. While Massa- chusetts and Virginia were of pure English stock, settlers from Ireland, Sweden, France, Holland, and southern Germany formed very important elements in the other colonies. But if these differences between occidental nations to-day are greater than were the like differences be- tween the colonies, it must not be forgotten that econo- mic interests are incomparably greater now than then, and it was the economic interests which were the decisive consideration in forming the Union. Each of the colonies was agricultural; each was capa- ble of living within itself; there was nothing corre- sponding to the existing interdependence of western A NEW WORLD -PEACE 49 nations for food and for other necessaries of life. Manufactures and commerce had begun, but there was nothing to suggest the vast international investments and the sensitive system of credit which now exist. There are a hundred times as many people whose well-being is involved, and a thousand times as much wealth at stake in Europe and the Americas to-day as there were in the colonies at the close of the Revolu- tionary War. Of course the federation of the western powers would mean the federation of the world. And I venture the assertion that there is a much greater need of the United States of the World to-day than there was of the United States of America four generations ago. This need is increasing and will continue to in- crease until all opposition is overwhelmed and Im- manuel Kant's prophecy of "a State of Nations" is fulfilled. The federation of the world is the less difficult be- cause we have before our eyes the accomplished fact of forty-eight commonwealths, several of which are each larger than Great Britain and Ireland, and twenty-two of which are each larger than England and Wales, federated into a nation which stretches across the con- tinent and is as large as all Europe. Our Constitution, which Gladstone pronounced "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man," solves the prob- lem of great states and small, living together in per- fect security, without treaties or jealousies, without armament or fear. Under such conditions armies and navies are irrele- vant; greatness and influence do not depend on area or numbers, and lust for territorial aggrandizement, which Gladstone called the "original sin of nations/' 50 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE does not exist. Massachusetts would not be a whit more the leader of all the States in education and legis- lation if she had the area of Texas, which is thirty-two times her own. Is not the spectacle of America "one from many" more than a suggestion to the nations of the earth? But the federation of the world is something more than a great hope, a glorious vision. There is an active movement in the direction of organization which shows actual beginnings. Since the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, which adjusted the questions left by the Napole- onic campaigns, there have been hi Europe and Amer- ica more than seven hundred such assemblages of real importance, counting those both of a public and of a pri- vate character. These congresses have done much to express and to create public opinion, to guide the action of different powers, and gradually to unite the forces of civilization. It would be only a natural evolution if the Inter- parliamentary Union should be officially transformed into the lower chamber of an international parliament, of which the Hague Conference constituted the upper chamber. There is awaiting such a legislative body an impor- tant docket such subjects as world coinage, weights and measures, customs and postal regulations, arbi- tration, world patents, sanitary regulations for ports, industrial interests, and the control of world monop- olies. Of course the principle of home rule, which ob- tains in the United States, would be extended to this world parliament, limiting its jurisdiction to world interests. It would be a natural and not a difficult step to ele- vate the Hague tribunal into the Supreme Court of A NEW WORLD - PEACE 51 the World. There is prospect that the International Court of Arbitral Justice, created by general agreement, will be erected at The Hague at a date not remote. It is an interesting fact that in Central America there is a real international court of justice for five nations, with compulsory jurisdiction over all their differences ; "the first institution in the world," says Mr. Albert K. Smiley, "which has sat in judgment on nations." A world executive would be created to carry into effect the declarations of the world will. Mr. Bridg- man, in his work, "World Federation," 1 calls attention to several minor executive offices of world scope which have already been created, one the permanent secre- tary of the Universal Postal Union, whose office is at Berne, Switzerland; another is that of the Interna- tional Committee of Weights and Measures; and a third is the Permanent Administration Council in connection with the Hague court. Doubtless many subordinate executives will be required before a world president appears. From the above it seems not too much to say that a world government is now incipient, and that its three great branches already exist hi embryo. I cannot doubt that its complete evolution will accompany the development of the new world-life which is being or- ganized under the conditions of the new civilization. When the United States of the World is an accom- plished fact disarmament will of course follow, save only a sufficient force on sea and land to do the world's police duty. The vision of a world's peace seen by Isaiah, sung by Dante, nobly planned by Henry of Navarre in his "Great Design," and powerfully advoated in Kant's 'Chapter VI. 52 THE NEW WORLD -LIFE "Eternal Peace," will surely be realized as one of God's eternal designs, declared alike by revelation and reason, and infallibly wrought out by His unfailing laws. "Force and Right," said Rochefoucauld, "rule the world; Force till Right is ready." Force brute force has long held the sceptre, but in these great days it no longer requires the eye of a prophet to see Right preparing her coronation robes, and making ready to ascend the world's willing throne. CHAPTER IV A NEW WORLD-IDEAL SOCRATES in the "Phaedo" compares the people of his day, to whom the lands about the Aegean were the whole world, to ants and frogs about a marshy pond. Where would he find a fitting comparison for people of the same sort in our day? The development of a world-life bids us pry out our horizon, and learn to think in world terms. But it is more difficult to actualize the far future than to make real the people who live beyond our horizon. Books of travel and photographs help the imagination when it journeys outward, but not when we direct it forward. There are, however, materials from which to shape a world-ideal which shall beckon us. Facts are God's alphabet, from which we may decipher tendencies, and tendencies are prophetic. From the lowest forms of life on this planet up to the high level where the first man was achieved however short the steps, however long the time marks a prog- ress beyond all measurement. Again from the first cave-dweller to a Lincoln or a Gladstone the intellect- ual and spiritual distance is interstellar in its immen- sity. And can any one suppose that this upward tendency of life which for uncounted millenniums has asserted itself is now arrested? Says Professor Fiske: "The most essential feature of man is his improvable- 53 54 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE ness. . . . This psychical development of man is destined to go on in the future as it has gone on in the past. The creative energy which has been at work through the bygone eternity is not going to become quiescent to-morrow." 1 While the belief that humanity is to progress beyond the ills which have marred every generation is enor- mously strengthened by the doctrine of evolution, it is not dependent on that doctrine. Immanuel Kant, recognized as the world's greatest philosopher since Plato and Aristotle, and who died before Darwin was born, regarded progress as the cardinal principle for the interpretation of history. He says: "The idea of human history viewed as founded upon the assump- tion of a universal plan in nature gives us a new ground of hope, opening up to us a consoling view of the future, in which the human race appears in the far distance as having worked itself up to a condition in which all the germs implanted in it by nature will be fully developed and its destiny here on earth fulfilled." This he re- garded as " a justification of nature, or, rather let us say, of Providence" But while such wide comparisons reveal a progress which is obvious to the most dyspeptic vision, there is always room for the moralists who deplore the degener- acy of their own times. They remind us of the leech- like tenacity with which greed and graft have fastened themselves on political and business life, of the mad rush for wealth, and of the dissipation and extrava- gance of the rich, while we are called upon to sigh for the honest industry, the sturdy genuineness, and the self-sacrificing patriotism of the fathers. In this connection, a letter written by George l "The Destiny of Man," pp. 71, 72. A NEW WORLD -IDEAL 55 Washington in 1778 to his friend Benjamin Harrison is interesting. He says: "If I was to be called upon to draw a picture of the times and of men, from what I have seen and heard and hi part known, I should in one word say that idleness, dissipation, and extrava- gance seem to have laid hold of most of them; that speculation, peculation and an insatiable thirst for riches seem to have got the better of every other con- sideration and almost every order of men. I need not repeat to you that I am alarmed and wish to see my countrymen roused." 1 "It is said that the oldest- known piece of writing hi Egyptian hieroglyphics, set down some five thousand years ago, consists hi a lament over the passing of the good old days." 2 Why is it that in all ages men have generally looked upon the past as greater and better than the present? "There were giants hi those days." Characters seem to loom larger through the mists of history, like objects seen in a fog. Perhaps it is because they escape that familiarity which breeds contempt. Absence and remoteness give play to the imagination. It is the great deeds or the great words of distinguished men which are remembered. Such deeds and words are comparatively rare hi any human experience. We for- get that the lives which we so justly venerate were 'The following which appeared in the press some years ago would seem to throw some light on the question of increasing or decreasing peculations: "The average loss to the public treasury during the administration of Van Buren was $11.75 on each $1,000 received and disbursed; during that of Polk, $4.08; during that of Buchanan, $3.81; during that of Lincoln, 76 cents; during that of Johnson, 57 cents; during that of Grant, 24 cents; during that of Arthur, 18 cents; during that of Hayes, 3 cents; during that of Cleveland, 2 cents; while that of our late President McKinley shows not one cent's loss, as far as has been made public, in the money paid into the public treasury." 'Professor Shaler's "The Citizen," p. 331. 56 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE mostly filled with commonplace like our own; and we unconsciously clothe them with the dignity and worth which were not their daily dress but their especial ornaments. Thus imagination glorifies the past and pictures it of heroic mold. To most men of moral earnestness their own times have seemed degenerate, and especially so when ethical standards were rising. Thus every generation has seen the world's golden age in the past. But the wise man wrote, "Say not thou, 'What is the cause that the former days were better than these?' for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this." 1 It is a highly significant fact that men are now transferring the golden age to the future. This new confidence hi the world's future springs from new facts in the world's experience, which facts justify a new world-ideal. I cannot imagine an infinitely good and wise Creator who had not a purpose worthy of His goodness, His greatness, and His wisdom. I cannot imagine any higher or more benevolent purpose for this world than bringing all its moral creatures into perfect harmony with the perfect will of this perfect being. Because that will is benevolent, and because it is made known to man in revelation and in nature, man's highest good can be realized only through perfect obedience to the laws thus made known. These laws are not imposed on man from without, but implanted in his nature. An ideal society, therefore, whether local, or national, or world-wide, is one which lives in harmony with all the laws of its own being, thus actualizing its highest possibilities. 'Eccle. 7:10. A NEW WORLD - IDEAL 57 The complete realization of this world-ideal would involve perfect obedience to all the laws of life, physi- cal, mental, moral, spiritual, and social, together with a comprehensive knowledge of the laws necessary to the mastery of the physical world. If the hope of even approximating such an ideal seems visionary, it must be remembered how brief has been the period of man's civilized Me as compared with his probable future on the earth. Though the human race is supposed to have existed between 200,000 and 300,000 years, "it has been conscious of its existence," says Professor Lester F. Ward, "only about 10,000 years. The most that it has accomplished of any value to itself has been done within 2,000 years, and its great work within 200 years. In a word, relatively speaking, man has only just begun to exist. The conditions of existence on this earth are now at their optimum. Abundance of air and water, heat and light, great vari- ety of surface, soil, climate, mineral resources and all the materials and forces of nature ready to yield to the magic wand of science. There are no indications that these conditions will change in an entire geologic epoch. These favourable conditions are certainly liable to last as long as the tertiary period just closed has lasted, namely, about 3,000,000 years. They may continue 12, 000,000. "! To us one million years means eternity. Surely, as Tennyson says: " This fine old world of ours is but a child. Still in its go-cart." The two great obstacles to progress and the two great sources of human misery in the world's past have been l Bmwn (Univ.) Alumni Monthly (March, 1907). Quoted by Professor Dealey in "Sociology," pp. 191, 192. 58 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE ignorance and selfishness. Ignorance has made men the victims of fear and superstition, of want and fam- ine and pestilence, of heat and cold and flood, and of ignoble content while lacking the numberless good things nature was waiting to bestow. Selfishness has made men the victims of one another by war, oppres- sion, slavery, murder, robbery, theft, fraud, outrage, revenge, and a thousand other wrongs; and, at the same time, notwithstanding all his wrongs at the hands of others, it has made every man his own worst enemy. These two great drags on the progress of the race are now in process of being removed by the new knowl- edge and the new altruism. Let us see how these two new facts in the world's experience are related to the realization of this world-ideal. I. THE NEW KNOWLEDGE The new knowledge we call science. Until the dis- covery and application of the scientific method, which will be the subject of a later chapter, the schooling of the race was mostly at the hands of experience a hard master, whose method is not "a word and a blow," but the blow with no word either of warning or of explanation. The tuition, which has been paid in suffering, has been high, and the progress slow. While such schooling, in the course of a couple of hundred thousand years, has afforded much valuable knowledge which has become the common property of the race, it could never teach the science of life nor the art of living. These had to wait for the new knowl- edge of the nineteenth century, whose elevation above all previous knowledge was so vast and at the same time so abrupt that it might almost be called a mighty cataclysm in the intellectual life of the race. A NEW WORLD - IDEAL 59 Alfred Russel Wallace, "to whom jointly with Dar- win the world is indebted for that conception of evolu- tion which is the most important scientific phase of thought of the century," asserts that the discoveries, inventions, and practical applications of science which were made during the nineteenth century both out- weigh and outnumber all that had preceded in all time. We are told by Professor A. E. Dolbear that at the beginning of the nineteenth century the following individual sciences had no existence physical astron- omy, physical geography, geology, botany, chemistry, heat, thermodynamics, light, electricity, paleontology, morphology, biology, neurology, psychology, anthro- pology, sociology, history, non-Euclidian geometry. Among others, he might have added the exceedingly important science of bacteriology, which has been created within a generation. "These sciences," he adds, " embody almost all the knowledge we have/' When we consider that, aside from spiritual truth, the greater part, and the more important part, of all the world's knowledge to-day is only about one hundred years old, how glorious is the reasonable expectation for the long future. Much that the future will unfold will doubtless be as far beyond our present conceptions as the existing temple of science is beyond anything that Lord Bacon could imagine when, in the "Novum Organum," he laboured upon its foundations. And the marvels which in future centuries will spring from the application of laws and forces whose existence is as yet unsuspected, we can no more anticipate than Shake- speare could have anticipated that the nineteenth cen- tury would actualize his imagination, and even out- nimble Puck in putting a girdle around the earth. There are some directions in which we have nearly 60 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE reached the limit of knowledge and achievement, as, for instance, exploration. In 1800, 60 per cent, of the earth's surface was unexplored; now with the discovery of the south pole the last great geographical secret has been surrendered. But generally speaking there is every reason to believe that the achievements of science have only begun. Each new step gained gives a van- tage ground for the next. "To him that hath shall be given." The conditions of scientific investigation are constantly improving. Instruments and methods are being carried to a higher degree of perfection. At the Centennial Exposition, in 1876, the telephone was only an interesting toy. Now it has become a neces- sity of civilization; and in New York during the single hour from 11 A. M. to noon 180,000 conversations are had over the wire. At the close of the nineteenth cen- tury the sending of a "wireless" a few miles was a triumph. The other day a man in California and another in Japan exchanged wireless messages across the Pacific ; which renders credible the prophecy made a few years ago that we should soon talk freely across the Atlantic. "Hello, Paris! This is New York. Please give me the Musee Social! " would make France seem like an adjoining county. Furthermore, our vast and rapidly accumulating wealth is appropriating increasing sums to scientific research. The Carnegie Institution at Washington has received $25,000,000 from its benefactor. In the observatory which it has established on Mount Wilson in California, Professor Hale, by entirely new processes, has become a Columbus of the heavens. His first test-plate revealed 16,000 new worlds, and his second, 60,000 more, which have never been seen by men, "some of them ten times larger than our sun." There A NEW WORLD - IDEAL 61 is being prepared for Professor Hale a new lens 100 inches in diameter, which will have three times as much power as the strongest lens ever made. Such improved instrumentalities are being used by ever-increasing numbers of well-equipped men. Pro- fessor Charles S. Minot says that there are now at least 10,000 men of substantial ability carrying on original scientific researches. What vast additions, then, to our store of knowledge may be expected from the twentieth century, and from the twentieth century after the twentieth ! It is easy to recognize the miracles of change which have been wrought by applied science in communica- tion, transportation, manufactures and hi all material civilization during the past century. But do we appre- ciate the fact that the discoveries of science have worked changes no less profound and far more impor- tant in man himself? 1. Science is emancipating us from the tyranny of the past, of custom, and of authority. Just in propor- tion as one gams the scientific spirit does he cease to be controlled by prejudice and by preconceived notions. His opinions are not heirlooms, nor have they been im- posed on him by authorities, nor voted for him by majorities. He does not cling to them because they are old, nor does he adopt them because they are new. He accepts them on evidence of then* truth and, as long as he believes them to be true, holds to them regardless of consequences. Conservatism is often nothing but mental or moral inertia, and measures one's unwillingness to readjust his living or his thinking to a new fact or a new idea. We are told 1 that in the year 1818 the school board of 'See the Chicago Daily News for August 19, 1911. 62 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE Lancaster, Ohio, being asked for the use of the school- house in which to debate railroads and telegraphs, replied as follows: "You are welcome to the use of the schoolhouse to debate all proper questions in, but such things as railroads and telegraphs are impossi- bilities and rank infidelity. There is nothing in the Word of God about them. If God had designed that his intelligent creatures should travel at the frightful speed of fifteen miles an hour by steam he would have clearly foretold it through his holy prophets. It is a device of Satan to lead immortal souls down to hell." Such immobility of course became impossible in the midst of a rapidly changing environment. If we should make a study of the science, art, litera- ture, music, industry, politics, education, ethics, and theology of the past century with reference to deter- mining what was the most distinctive feature in the progress of each, we should find one and the same thing characteristic of them all, namely, freedom. This is of course a comment on the emancipation of the human mind which has wrought its declaration of indepen- dence into every product of its activity. And this freedom of the mind, with its promise of progress, has been won for all time. 2. The new knowledge has given to us a new out- look, in which old things intellectual have passed away, and all things have become new. Chemistry has revolutionized our conception of the universe from beginning to end. Geology has revolu- tionized our conception of the earth and of its prepara- tion for life. Biology has revolutionized our conception of the development of life, and of the creation of man. The discovery of evolution has given to us a nobler con- ception of man, a deeper appreciation of the dignity and A NEW WORLD - IDEAL 63 worth of the human body by showing how incalculable was its cost, has revealed unhoped for possibilities of the race, and has shown how on broad lines these pos- sibilities may be realized. The comparative study of languages, laws, customs, and institutions has placed in our hand the true key to history, and has compelled its rewriting. The race without a history would be like a man without a memory. It would not be pos- sible to profit by the successes and failures of the past. Wisdom, which is distilled from experience, would be impossible. We know much more of the past than our fathers could, and may, therefore, profit by the laws of social evolution as they could not. With an increasing knowledge of the evolution of society has come a revolutionary change in ethics. It is asserted, and I think justly, that there was a greater ethical advance during the nineteenth century than during the Christian era preceding. Not only was there a development of ethical principles, and an ex- tension of the field of applied ethics, but there took place a profoundly significant change in emphasis, from the individualistic insistence on rights to the social insistence on duties, indicating that ethics had been newly vitalized. With the new principles of historic interpretation has come a new knowledge of the times in which the He- brew and Christian Scriptures were written; and a new light has been thrown upon then- meaning, resulting in a new interpretation of Christianity . . . new only because it is so old that it had been forgotten for many centuries. l 'The re-discovery of the Christianity of Christ and its perfect adaptation to the needs of the new civilization will be discussed in Parts III, IV, and VI. 64 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE The new knowledge of creation has very naturally given to us a new conception of the Creator, and of his relations to his works. Prior to this new knowledge men conceived of God as the great First Cause, operat- ing upon matter from without as we do; hence what is known as the carpenter theory of creation, and the governmental theory of God's relations to his creatures. Men are now coming to think of him as immanent in the universe though distinct from it the "Infinite and Eternal Energy from which all things proceed." He now reveals himself through the operation of nat- ural laws, which are expressions of his will, and not by the suspension nor the infraction of those laws. We think of his relations to us as vital rather than legal, and believe that they are better expressed by the word Father than by the word Governor, not forgetting that fatherhood implies authority as well as love. These changes which have taken place in theology, in ethics, and in all the abstract sciences, are changes in man himself. There has been, of course, no change in eternal truths, but in our conception and interpre- tation of these truths. The change has been in us. Surely *'.... Through the ages One increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened With the process of the suns." With such radical changes in our world of thought, with new conceptions of God and of the universe, it is not strange that we are gaming a new conception of human life, of its meaning and of its possibilities. 3. Science has placed a new emphasis on the future. Men could not gain even a rudimentary knowledge of natural science without discovering that this is not a A NEW WORLD - IDEAL 65 finished world, but one in process of becoming. Noth- ing bears the stamp of finality. Nature in all her on- going looks toward the future. When "the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep," it was being prepared for the lower forms of life; and when it was fitted for the higher forms they appeared. Evolution looks always toward the future, for which the present is ever making preparation. So far as science gives us a knowledge of exact laws it confers on us the gift of prophecy. As Comte put it, "All science has prevision for its aim." The astrono- mer calculates eclipses long in advance, while the chem- ist, physicist, and biologist are all able not only to fore- see, but, within limits, to control the future. There is good promise that social science will in due time enable us in large measure to shape the future of the race. 4. The new knowledge has given to us the begin- nings of Eugenics, which Sir Francis Galton, its founder, defines as follows : " Eugenics is the study of the agencies under social control, that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally." The wonderful results which have been achieved in breeding plants and animals more than suggest the possibility of improving the human stock by observing the same vital laws. WTieat has been "made to order" which fulfilled all of the several "details and specifi- cations" required. We shall see when we devote a chapter to this subject that "the fundamental proc- esses of heredity are the same in all organisms," 1 whether vegetable, animal, or human. Heredity and variability are known factors or forces which operate not haphazard but under vital laws. We already have l Kellicott's "The Social Direction of Human Evolution," p. 212. 66 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE some knowledge of these laws, and a corresponding control of them. If increasing knowledge gives us increasing control, as we have a right to expect, we shall have, in due time, "the science of being well born." We already know enough to give the next generation a better start in life than its parents had provided that knowledge were generally used. The knowledge just referred to together with the sterilization of the unfit, on which happily several of our states have already legislated, furnishes a reason- able ground of hope that as the law of natural selection ceases to apply to man, and the race is made respon- sible for its own improvement, it will not lack the means of meeting that responsibility successfully. 5. Again, science is not only acquainting us with the laws of heredity but also with the influence of environ- ment, which it is placing increasingly under our control. A knowledge of the laws of life, individual and social, and of the influences of environment gives us all neces- sary data for the true art of living. The applied sciences together with unprecedented wealth give us a control of environment never dreamed of prior to the new knowledge. We are now able by transforming the conditions of life to transform life itself; that is, we modify our environment, and our changed environ- ment by reacting modifies us. Many millions are now eating such food, living in such houses, working under such conditions and with such wages that it is impossible for them to live normal lives, and disease and degradation are inevitable. But all these conditions are remediable; and sociology gives us good courage to expect that the curse of pov- erty will be removed. In this connection it is possible only to allude to the A NEW WORLD - IDEAL 67 change which a knowledge of heredity and the control of environment are capable of working in humanity. A chapter will be devoted to each of them as principles, the application of which will enable us to solve some of the problems of the new civilization. 6. Nowhere does the new knowledge shine with such beneficent light and with such glad promise for the future as hi the new preventive medicine, and in the new aseptic and antiseptic surgery. To few men is humanity so deeply indebted as to the eminent chemist, Louis Pasteur, to whose investiga- tions we owe the most marvellous progress in curative and preventive medicine ever recorded. More than two centuries ago the minute organisms, called bacteria, were known to exist. So infinitestimal are they that "1,500 of them laid end to end would barely reach across the head of a pin." So tremendous is their rate of multiplication that it has been esti- mated that a single germ, under favourable conditions, may in two days produce nearly 200 times as many bacteria as there are people on the globe. It was only about a generation ago that Pasteur's experiments demonstrated the soundness of the germ theory of disease. With a knowledge of the cause of many of the most terrible diseases soon came the means of cure and of prevention. In order to appreciate hi some measure the incal- culable results of this revolution in medicine it is necessary to glance at the ravages of pestilences before which humanity has been well nigh helpless until recently. The bubonic plague has repeatedly scourged the earth since the time of Trajan. In 543 A. D. it carried off 10,000 persons hi Constantinople in a single day. 68 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE It is believed to have been the black death of the four- teenth century, which at its first visitation in that cen- tury is estimated to have swept away from two thirds to three fourths of the population in various parts of Europe, and even a larger proportion in England. It appeared in each succeeding century, repeatedly in the eighteenth, and with less frequency and virulence in the nineteenth. Breaking out in India in the latter part of that century, it has, in fourteen years, num- bered between eight and nine million people among its victims in that unhappy country. Science has now discovered the cause of the bubonic plague, its method of propagation, and the means by which its spread is prevented. A hundred years ago smallpox was one of the most hideous and fatal diseases. At that time, we are told, one tenth of all the people on the globe perished, and nearly twice as many were permanently disfigured, by its ravages. It is estimated that during the century preceding the introduction of vaccination 50,000,000 people died of smallpox in Europe alone. Now where vaccination is compulsory, as in Prussia, smallpox is practically eliminated. Yellow fever has made many cities of the tropics veritable plague spots. Ships have sailed into the harbour of Santos, Brazil, to rot there because every man on board was swept away by the pestilence. Though the home of this scourge is in the tropics, it has visited the United States more than one hundred times since 1702. And between 1793 and 1900 there were no less than 500,000 cases of yellow fever in this country. In Memphis, in 1878, when the city had a population of 19,500, there were 17,600 persons stricken with the fever, of whom 6,000 died. When the French were at work A NEW WORLD - IDEAL 69 on the Panama Canal, this plague exacted a terrible death toll. In 1910, Colonel Gorgas, U. S. A., whose brilliant work of sanitation has given to the Canal Zone a lower death rate than that of the United States, pointing to one of the hospital buildings, remarked to the writer, "In that house 1,200 Frenchmen died of yellow fever." But the horror of this pestilence passed with the nine- teenth century, and by means of scientific sanitation it has been entirely overcome hi the Canal Zone. Havana had never once been free from it for more than one hundred years; but hi 1900 the true explanation was fully established, and under the preventive measures adopted by Colonel Gorgas there was not a single death from yellow fever in 1902. One hardly knows which to admire most, the rare acumen which divined the strange secret of the plague or the splendid heroism and martyrdom which demon- strated the theory. When we are more civilized and more Christianized we shall erect monuments to men who have saved life rather than to those who have destroyed it. Doctor Lazear was one of the martyrs who yielded to this yellow death in order that humanity might gain the victory over it. In the fitting words of Doctor Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard, engraved on a memorial tablet in the Johns Hopkins Hospital, "With more than the courage and the devotion of the soldier, he risked and lost his life to show how a fearful pestilence is communicated and how its ravages may be pre- vented." As for typhoid fever, we are told that it has passed beyond the catalogue of diseases, and become a crime. 70 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE There is a long list of preventable infectious diseases l whose origin is now known, and in stamping out which more or less progress has been made. The antitoxin treatment of diphtheria has wrought wonders, saving many tens of thousands of lives yearly. Tuberculosis is being brought under control, and many are alive to- day who will undoubtedly live to see the great white plague only a memory. Pasteur's declaration that " It is within the power of man to rid himself of every parasitic disease" has become the motto of the new preventive medicine. It should be added that there are other diseases which, like scurvy, though not in- fectious, are now preventable. Indeed, when we have learned how to breathe, and how to eat, and how to exercise in a word, how to live our good doctors, to whom the world owes so much, will, most of them, have lost their occupation. The revolution in surgery, during the last half cen- tury, has been even more complete than thatin medicine. The greater part of this progress has been accomplished within a generation, so that a well-known surgical writer declares that there has been more advance in medicine and surgery in the past thirty years than had been achieved in the preceding thirty centuries. For this new surgery, which is working such wonders of healing, the world is chiefly indebted to Joseph Lister, who demonstrated that the infections which so com- monly followed surgical operations and so often resulted hi death were caused by microbes, from which the new surgery successfully protects the patient. Formerly surgeons invaded the abdomen only in 'This list includes typhoid fever, cholera, tuberculosis, dysentery, pneumonia, diphtheria, meningitis, bubonic plague, syphilis, gonor- rhoea, leprosy, tetanus, anthrax, influenza, malaria, blood-poisoning, and the sleeping sickness. A NEW WORLD -IDEAL 71 desperate cases. Now in operations for certain abdominal tumours the death rate has been reduced from 75 per cent, to less than 5 per cent.; and the eminent surgeon, Dr. W. W. Keen, speaks of this region as "almost the surgeons' playground." The success- ful transfusion of blood from a healthy person to a sick one, removing the entire stomach without destroy- ing the functions performed by it, sewing together severed nerves, or using a part of an uninjured nerve to splice an injured one, and delicate operations on the brain and heart, never dreamed of until recent years, are among the miracles of the new surgery. Not a few cases are on record in which wounds of the heart have been operated upon successfully. It has been demonstrated that it is practicable to transplant from one animal to another many organs and portions of organs, including kidneys, limbs, sec- tions of arteries and bones, and to make them perform their various functions for their new owners with entire success; which fact suggests the possibility of an im- portant human application. As every branch of the surgical art is making rapid progress there is every reason to expect many new and unimagined triumphs of skill for the relief of human suffering. A new anaesthetic has just been found by a Boston surgeon which overcomes the disadvantages of ether, and can be used, we are told, without the slightest danger or discomfort. 7. Perhaps no one thing would do more for the race than largely increasing its stock of vitality. Whether we are well or sick, hopeful or despondent, whether our children are vigorous or puny, whether our work is a daily delight or a perpetual drag, whether our nerves 72 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE tingle with the joy of living or nothing seems worth while and nothingness would be a boon, may all de- pend on having just a little more vitality than is de- manded for the day's duties or just a little less. " I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly." Not more lives, but more life, physical, intellectual, and spiritual, is what the race needs. If all men could live "more abundantly," a multitude of ills, both seeming and real, would dis- appear like nightmares and bats before the morning sun. "Vital energy may be expended by the muscles, the nerves, or the brain that is, in muscular action, in feeling, or in thinking and of course strength expended in any one of these three directions is not available for use in either of the other two." 1 Muscular toil, pro- longed to exhaustion, leaves little strength for brain and nerves; hence the perpetuation of a peasant class, which with little refinement of thought and feeling is unable to develop culture because it must needs carry an upper class on its shoulders. There was little cult- ural civilization in the world until slavery made leisure possible. Thanks to the new knowledge, our slaves are now iron and steel instead of flesh and blood, and it has become possible for the race to husband its vital energy for the development of the finer sensibilities and of the power of thought, and for the enrichment of life in a thousand ways. It is true that in many occupations hours are still excessive and toil is exhausting, but hours are being shortened, and the progress of invention makes greater demands on the workman's brains and less on his muscles. The fact that steam and electricity are being 'The author's "The Times and Young Men," pp. 197-199. A NEW WORLD - IDEAL 73 substituted for muscular energy gives assurance of an unequalled advance in cultural civilization and in the joy of living when the multitude, released from the necessity of spending all their vital force in the struggle to live, shall have learned to use it for the noblest ends. Culture will then cease to be the peculiar prerogative of the few and become the common heritage of the many. The refinement of the multitude cannot seem more chimerical to the cultivated few to-day than the educa- tion of the many seemed to the literate few when it was first proposed. Charles Dickens, when visiting America, wrote to his friends in England that a man with seven heads would attract less attention in Boston than a man who could not read and write. Illiteracy has now been reduced to so narrow limits in many lands that we confidently look for its extinction, and dare to believe in a good day coming when Dickens's hydra-headed monster would be ignored anywhere in the presence of an illiterate man. The new knowledge is as yet very new, and, com- paratively speaking, it is known to few. But it has already given us power which transcends the highest flights of men's imagination a hundred years ago; it has created a new civilization; it has given to the world a new outlook, and has revealed undreamed of possi- bilities. Who will be so rash as to limit its revelations in the long future? It is the province of science to discover to us natural laws by which we subdue nature to the uses of human welfare, and to reveal the laws of life, both individual and social, by the knowledge of which society may live in harmony with the laws of its own being, thus actual- 74 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE izing its highest possibilities, and realizing our social ideal. II. THE NEW ALTRUISM "Thou shalt starve ere I want" was the motto of an ancient Scottish family. That was in the good old days when greed could be frank and free, when the might of the broad claymore made right, when the claims of a clansman were sacred to be sure, but, once across the border, the moral law ceased to be binding. Modern competition has the same working motto, but, like the English constitution, it is unwritten. Present- day greed is usually sufficiently well advised to keep on the safe side of the law, but relegates all moral re- straints to No Man's Land. "Man to man is a wolf." That was Plautus's broad comment on human nature 2,000 years ago. Even if he has not so wide a range now as formerly, the wolf of selfishness still ravens in every community. "Every man for himself" is the working motto of an individ- ualistic civilization. Between buyer and seller selfish- ness is assumed as a matter of course. Business as conducted, not for the service of society but for pri- vate gam, is a school of selfishness which is in session six days in the week and takes no vacations. Yes, human nature is selfish, but I reject utterly that aphorism of satisfied selfishness. "You can't change human nature." That is precisely what can be done, and is being done. Professor Huxley, after remarking, "I see no limit to the extent to which intelligence and will . . . may modify the conditions of existence," adds, "And much may be done to change the nature of man himself. The intelligence which has converted the brother of the wolf into the faithful guardian of the A NEW WORLD -IDEAL 75 flock ought to be able to do something toward curb- ing the instincts of savagery in civilized man." 1 The nature which belonged to our prehuman ancestors changed profoundly when man became man; and human nature has slowly changed ever since. Only a few generations ago our ancestors, on gaming a victory over their enemies, slew the women and children. And only a few generations further back, they found sport in tossing babies into the air and catching them on the points of spears. Our abhorrence of the back- ward and unspeakable Turk for doing precisely what our own forefathers once did shows how much Anglo- Saxon human nature has changed in a few centuries. And human nature is going to keep on changing. Our descendants will look back on many of the abuses of to-day, which spring from our selfishness, with the same astonished horror with which we listen to tales of mediaeval torture. Such changes indicate the progress of civilization and the elevation of ethical standards. But there is another and much more radical transformation which is in perfect harmony with nature's system. Matter rising from the mineral kingdom to the vegetable be- comes subject to new laws, is beautified, and won- derful change is born into life. Again, matter rises into the animal kingdom, again becomes subject to new laws, is again glorified, and another marvel matter begins to feel, enters into new possibilities, is born into a higher life. There is another and still more marvellous advance. The brute becomes subject to moral law, and beauty of body and power of thought are multiplied a thousandfold. He ceases to be brute and man is born. But the evolution and elevation need *" Evolution and Ethics," p. 85. 76 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE not end here. Man by yielding himself to other and still higher laws, the social laws of love, service, and sacrifice, is born again born into the kingdom of heaven, and the glory of God shines upon his head. Selfishness can never be completely dethroned in the individual, or in society until love has been completely enthroned. It is at this point that the religious ele- ment enters in as essential to the realization of our social ideal. We can here only recognize it, however, as several chapters will be devoted to it in Part III. One reason, and I think the principal reason, why more progress has not been made in overcoming selfish- ness is because it has not been recognized as the great taproot of all moral evil. It has been looked upon as only one of many branches of the tree, perhaps a mere twig. Doubtless in most well-regulated families un- selfishness is placed about on a par with cleanliness. Indeed, there is far more effort to make faces and hands clean than to make character unselfish. Where is selfishness recognized and abhorred as the supreme social ill, and the mother of 1,000 others, more destruc- tive of human happiness and well being than famine and plague combined, for there is never a day in all the year when this moral pestilence is not at work in all the world? It has already been said that ignorance and selfish- ness have been the two great obstacles to human prog- ress, and the two great causes of human wretchedness. Millions of people are at work helping to remove the world's ignorance. The school, the college, the uni- verity, the press, are all more or less effectively aiming at this end; but how many people are there in the world, and how many institutions are there, whose business it is to overcome human selfishness? This country A NEW WORLD - IDEAL 77 spends upward of $400,000,000 a year on its public schools alone, the avowed object of which is to make the people intelligent. I have yet to hear of the state or the municipality that has appropriated 400 cents for the avowed purpose of making the people unselfish. Our individualistic civilization with its competitive organization of industry assumed selfishness not only as a universal fact in business, but as a universal necessity, which hi all business relations justifies it, thus bewild- ering the judgment and benumbing the conscience; for that which is right anywhere cannot be wrong in itself. Laissez faire is the old political economy's euphem- ism for Cain's famous, or rather infamous, answer, "Am I my brother's keeper?" But with the coming of the new social civilization, hi which reciprocal re- lations are ever growing more intimate and more com- plex, this "let alone" policy became as really impossible between the various organs and members of human society as between the various organs and members of a human body. In this new and less unfavourable environment emerges the new altruism. This new spirit is so obvious that it is almost super- fluous to cite illustrations. In answer to it govern- ments are wrestling with social problems. Under its influence employers are discovering that they owe their employees something more than wages. We see an expression of it in social settlements, and in number- less philanthropic organizations. The single city of Philadelphia has 2,376 separate agencies engaged in benevolent work, more than half of which aim solely at the relief of physical suffering. In New York (including only Manhattan and the Bronx) simply to catalogue similar institutions, with a few descriptive 78 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE lines, requires 403 pages in a 12-mo. volume an increase of 102 pages in ten years. For the purpose of giving intelligent direction to these new altruistic efforts several schools of philanthropy have been opened and in them hundreds of young men and women are being trained for these new professions. It is only a few years since the first chair of sociology was estab- lished hi one of our universities; now such chairs are a matter of course. Professor Bailey of Yale University, after taking a party of his students, seventy-five in number, on their annual survey of social conditions and social work in New York, remarked: "You will find that 25 per cent, of these young men here with me will go back to their own cities after graduation and plunge with then* whole hearts into just such work as they see attempted here. ... I think the world is on the verge of a splendid new era of social spirit, and that the colleges do well to make their courses tend hi that di- rection, away from the old-time academic work that was nothing if not aloof from life and its pressing problems." Dr. Woodrow Wilson, when inducted into the presi- dency of Princeton University, said: "Here hi America, for every man touched with nobility, for every man touched with the spirit of our institutions, social service is the high law of duty, and every American university must square its standards by that law or lack its na- tional title." Doctor Butler, when inaugurated presi- dent of Columbia University, said: "The university is bound by its very nature to the service of others," and the keynote of President James's inaugural address at the University of Illinois was that "the object of all education is to fit men for service." It should be observed hi this connection that the ideas and spirit of educated young men and women are prophetic, be- A NEW WORLD - IDEAL 79 cause they become the teachers of the next generation. Moreover, the press, which is the university of all the people, is giving the same teaching; and of making many books, magazines, and papers devoted to social interests there is no end. The churches also are be- ginning to see that they have a mission to society as well as to the individual. l Only those can appreciate the increase of the altruis- tic spirit during the past quarter of a century who can compare that period with the preceding twenty-five years. There has been a most encouraging change, but it is only a good beginning. There is still quite enough selfishness in the world to "go 'round"; we are all a little selfish except those of us who are a good deal so. There is abundant reason to believe that progress toward the realization of a high social ideal for the world is to be increasingly rapid in the future. Satisfaction and despair alike paralyze effort. Our ideals seem attainable lest we despair, and like the horizon they move on as we approach lest we be satis- fied. The social progress of the world in the past has been much impeded by the satisfaction of the privileged class, who were more than content to have the existing social system continue undisturbed, and by the hope- lessness of the unprivileged, who have much of the time despaired of anything better. But there is now spreading through all classes a noble discontent, which is intelligent and unselfish, which knows that condi- tions can be improved and purposes that they shall be. 'For other phases of the altruistic spirit and its causes see the author's "Our Country," pp. 121-124, also his "Expansion," pp. 227-230. 80 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE "Could'st thou in vision see Thyself the man God meant, Thou never more would'st be The man thou art, content." This is as true of society as of the individual. Many good people have been inactive in the presence of recognized evils because they imagined these evils were permanent a necessary part of a providential scheme of things. This world was intended to be a "vale of tears"; why struggle against the inevitable? This view has enabled many a man who was guilty of moral lazi- ness or of moral cowardice to lay the flattering unction to his soul that he was submissive to the divine will. In the past, few people have had a worthy social ideal for then* community, then* country, or for the world. Now, however, in the kingdom of heaven, come hi the earth, some of us believe that we see a vision of precisely the society "God meant"; and once having seen it, we can never again be content with society as it is. This is the stimulus of a new and glorious ideal. Moreover, there is the added inspiration of full con- fidence that this ideal is to be realized. The vision of "the New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven" to earth is a prophecy which not only expresses God's desire but reveals his purpose. It is objected that "there can be nothing perfect in this world except a perfect fool." But if we may not reach absolute perfection, the law of progress is a prom- ise that we may always more and more closely approxi- mate it. Jesus, however, did not hesitate to hold up the standard of absolute perfection. He said, "Be ye, therefore, perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." 1 He measures the required per- l Matt. 5:48. A NEW WORLD - IDEAL 81 fection by that of God himself. In like manner, in the Lord's Prayer, He makes the perfection of heaven the standard for earthly society, for the full realization of which in the world we should daily pray, and there- fore daily work. "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." 1 The very fact that we are able to conceive of per- fection, individual and social, to long for it, and to struggle toward it, relates us to God and heaven. No brute is stirred by such an ideal. Its self-satisfaction is its doom. The fact that man is never wholly satis- fied, that his ideal rises as he climbs, is more than an "intimation of immortality." It is his hunger for the infinite asserting itself. It is his divine sonship rising into consciousness, and stretching out its arms to God, his Father, hi perfect harmony with whom alone his hunger can be satisfied. "I shall be satisfied when I awake in his likeness." The perfection of heaven as an ideal for an earthly society is quite as reasonable, quite as scriptural, as is the perfection of God as a personal ideal while here on the earth. Indeed, to hold to the one without the other is inconsistent and irrational. And yet there are multitudes of Christian people in the world who accept for themselves the required personal standard, and who would deem it disloyalty to God to become reconciled to any defect of character in themselves, who never dream that hi accepting any evil of society as necessary and permanent they are guilty of treason to the kingdom of God; and treason to the Kingdom is treason to the King. There is nothing irrational or fanciful in setting before the community and the world the highest pos- 'Matt. 6:10. 82 THE NEW WORLD -LIFE sible social ideal each member of society living in glad obedience to the laws of his own life, physical, mental, and spiritual, thus actualizing the ideal man- hood, and all individuals and peoples living in normal relations with each other, thus realizing the ideal society both for the nation and for the world. In the long past God has had little help from man in working toward the realization of this ideal. Com- paratively few have wanted to help and fewer still have known how. As we have seen, ignorance and selfish- ness have been the two great obstacles in the path of human progress; but love brings men into harmony with God's purpose, and science brings men into har- mony with God's methods. The course of evolution in the mineral, vegetable, and animal worlds was unin- terrupted by perverse wills, but man has power to resist the divine benevolence and hence to retard his own progress. When, however, human wills act in full harmony with the divine, they will then help as much as they have heretofore hindered. Until the dawn of the new knowledge the race blundered upward in the dark. Now the searchlight of science is turned upon our upward road, and we shall run in the way of God's commandments when our heart has been en- larged with love. Knowledge and benevolence are all that are needed to make men efficient colabourers with God in build- ing the Holy City in the earth. Give a great architect a great opportunity with materials which have great possibilities, and we may confidently expect correspondingly great results. The Builder of the New Jerusalem in the earth has wis- dom and skill and power which are infinite. Consider then the human materials with which He is at work in A NEW WORLD -IDEAL 83 the world. What possibilities of wise intelligence, of controlled power, of heroic endurance, of sacrificial service, of glowing love, of radiant beauty, of unspeak- able blessedness, of Godlike character there are in human nature! As yet these possibilities are realized only here and there, but every new discovery of science, every new creation of art, every new act of heroism, every new triumph of righteousness, every new embodi- ment of spiritual beauty in the world, every character transformed into the likeness of Christ is a prophecy of what is yet to come in ever-increasing fulness. Think then what the world will be when sin and wretched- ness and want and disease shall be as rare as they are now familiar; when knowledge shall be as universal as is ability to know; when joy shall beat in every heart, and blessedness shall be as every-day as human life, and brotherhood as broad as human kind; when the Pauls, and Xaviers, and Livingstones who have gladly worn out their lives for brother men shall have ceased to be singular, and the passion for humanity shall be the common mark of common men! Will it be earth or heaven? Or, rather, will it not be both? In the glowing words of Edwin Markham: " We men of earth have here the stuff Of Paradise we have enough! We need no other thing to build The stairs into the Unfulfilled No other ivory for the doors No other marble for the floors No other cedar for the beam And dome of man's immortal dream. Here on the paths of every day Here on the common human way Is all the busy gods would take To build a heaven, to mould and make New Edens. Ours the stuff sublime To build Eternity in time!" PART II THE NEW WORLD-PROBLEMS CHAPTER V THE NEW INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM IN 1769, the same year in which the Duke of Welling- ton and Napoleon Bonaparte were born, James Watt patented his steam-engine, which was destined to exert more influence in shaping the world's future than both of these great captains put together. The Napoleonic wars changed the map of Europe; the steam-engine gave to the world a new civilization. The late William E. Dodge told me that his grand- father, a resident of New York City, once asked the prayers of his church as he was about to undertake "the long and perilous journey to Rochester." An English friend of mine on his westward way around the world was overtaken by a business cablegram at Seattle. "I concluded," said he, "that I would just take a run back to London and talk the matter over with my partners." Now this "run back to London," including three thousand miles across the mountains, canyons, rivers, and plains of a continent, plus three thousand more across the ocean, involved less of time, less of discomfort, and less of actual danger than " the long and perilous" journey from New York to Rochester. The one inci- dent represented the beginning of the nineteenth cen- tury, the other that of the twentieth. The radical change in travel and transportation which took place during the past hundred years fairly repre- 87 88 THE NEW WORLD -LIFE sents the profound revolution in industry and, there- fore, in every phase of civilization, the greater part of which has occurred within the memory of living men. National religions, national ideals, and national heroes have all had far-reaching influence hi shaping civilizations, but no one of these can compare with industry in the constancy and universality of its opera- tion, or in the magnitude of its effects. Bodily wants are no more real than intellectual and spiritual needs, but they are vastly more conscious and clamorous, and among all peoples and in all ages they have afforded the chief stimulus to action. A radical change, therefore, in the character or methods of industry has always involved a like change in civilization. The transition from hunting to the tending of flocks and herds was an advance from savagery to civiliza- tion in its most primitive form. The change from pas- toral life to the cultivation of the soil substituted the house for the tent, and by anchoring peoples, trans- formed customs, governments, laws, institutions, and all the conditions of life. Thus civilization evolved from the nomadic to the agricultural type. In other words, a new method of gaining a livelihood created a new civilization. Slowly the mechanical arts developed, and their products, together with those of different climates, cre- ated a basis for trade. Not only goods, but ideas were exchanged by caravans and ships. Cities were built, and a commercial civilization appeared which was as different from agricultural as agricultural was different from nomadic. Again, a new method of gaining a livelihood had created a new civilization. Down to the nineteenth century the world's work had NEW PROBLEM OF INDUSTRY 89 been done by muscles; and vital power was expensive. It required years to produce a hundred horse-power or man-power and it was costly to maintain; but when mechanical power was substituted for vital, there came the profoundest change in the history of material civil- ization. The new power could be easily and quickly produced, and cheaply maintained. Its general appli- cation has revolutionized agriculture, commerce, and industry. Each of these three elements enters into modern civilization, but the mechanical arts have been so utterly transformed and their products so astonishingly multiplied that the new civilization is appropriately called "industrial," and this profoundest change in the history of the world is known as the Industrial Revolution. By this revolution the western world has been re- created. Until the advent of mechanical power the great bulk of the world's wealth was in land. Under the feudal system landed property was almost as unob- tainable as it was immovable, except by inheritance. Those who held it were the privileged class who were born to position and possession. Land could not be alienated without the consent of the heirs; hence the rigidity of society. The peasant no more strove for wealth than for wings, which were about equally im- possible. But with the advent of the industrial revolu- tion an ever increasing proportion of wealth became portable a very important fact. As long as most of the world's wealth was immovable and inaccessible trade and commerce were necessarily restricted within narrow limits; capital for the development of natural resources was not available; there was little or no appeal to energy, enterprise, initiative, ingenuity, 90 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE administrative and financiering abilities precisely the qualities which in a single century have created the bewildering wealth of America. The cheap power, however, which Watt gave to the world stimulated invention so that the productiveness of labour in the field of manufactures was multiplied ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred fold or more. Thus there was a new and rapid creation of portable wealth which was of vast significance. As movable wealth multi- plied it passed more and more into the hands of men who were gifted with marked commercial instincts and abilities; and with the greater part of the capital in possession of the bourgeoisie they emerged as a new power, becoming at length the ruling class. The landed proprietors, when they were dominant, had something more than wealth. They could lay claim to birth and breeding, and to all the traditions of aristocracy. With the inheritance of the land came certain magisterial duties and dignities together with recognized obligations to society expressed hi the phrase, noblesse oblige. But the accession of the bour- geoisie to power was the crowning of bald wealth, unadorned by rank, gifts, or graces a step the far- reaching importance of which no one could have fore- seen. It marked the downfall of the aristocracy of birth and the rise of the aristocracy of wealth. Thus the industrial revolution introduced the capi- talistic system or era, and created the new problem of wealth a blessing or a curse? Different races kept the peace admirably so long as they were separated by nearly impassable moun- tains, deserts, and seas, but modern conditions of trans- portation and communication have reduced the world to a neighbourhood and have multiplied contacts; and NEW PROBLEM OF INDUSTRY 91 industrial competition is increasing international fric- tion and interracial jealousy. Thus the industrial revolution is creating a new race problem brothers or enemies? When power was muscular, every worker had his own, and industry was individualistic. But the sta- tionary steam-engine de-individualized power and centralized it. Steam, therefore, de-individualized industry and organized it; hence it is de-individualizing civilization, and rendering it social or collective. The old relations of the individual to his fellows have been radically changed, and many questions are raised as to what these relations ought to be and are to be. The industrial revolution, therefore, has created a new problem of the relations of the individual and so- ciety the balance of both or the sacrifice of one? All of these great problems which have come with the new civilization are problems of readjustment. A radical change of environment requires that life should adapt itself or perish. In many respects there have been greater changes during the past century than during many tens of thousands of years preceding. A century is but a day in the life of the race and read- justment in that brief period demands a wholly un- precedented rate of movement. This puts a vast pressure on legislatures, which in the United States are asked to pass on thousands of measures every year; and the result of this congestion is much ill-advised legislation. The industrial revolution, therefore, has created a new legislative problem science or the rule of thumb? With the discovery of the sea route to the East by da Gama, and the settlement of America, the world was waiting only for the new mobility given to wealth 92 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE and the new facility of manufacture to inaugurate an unprecedented era of commerce. The advent of the railway gave another great impetus to oversea traffic by connecting the interior with the coast. The new facilities of travel by land and sea mobilized great popu- lations and made easy their redistribution in response to new industrial demands, while an enormous develop- ment of manufactures concentrated ever-increasing numbers at points commercially advantageous. Thus the industrial revolution created the new problem of the city the dominion of the world for good or for evil? These six problems are rapidly becoming world- problems because the industrial revolution, from which they spring, is rapidly becoming a world revolution. They will each be discussed in succeeding chapters; in this we are especially concerned with the industrial problem. I. THE NEW EVOLUTION OP SOCIETY The transition from domestic industry to the fac- tory system has radically changed men's relations to one another. This marks the most important advance in the evolu- tion of society since man became man. The progenitors of man were under the law of the jungle; there was no sense of right or wrong. Not until self -consciousness was evolved could conscience appear; then came moral accountability, and man had become human. Social life, like every other form of life, is organic, and has followed the laws of evolution. It has de- veloped from lower to higher forms, corresponding NEW PROBLEM OF INDUSTRY 93 more or less closely to the great divisions of the animal kingdom. Society rose in the scale of life as rapidly as it was able to differentiate and coordinate its various organs and their functions. Says Professor John B. Clark, of Columbia University: "Social differentia- tion is division of labour, a thing which has but a rudi- mentary existence in the most primitive tribes, which develops hi the intermediate types, and is carried to an indefinite extent hi high civilization. In everything that can be termed a society a traceable degree of inter- dependence exists among the members; and, with advancing civilization, each member labours less and less for himself, and more and more for the social whole. This is economic altruism, to the future de- velopment of which no limits can be assigned." 1 The division of labour is the very essence of organized in- dustry; and the subdivision of labour has become so minute that organized industry has given a tremen- dous impetus to the higher organization of society. Indeed, with the coming of the industrial revolution, society has undergone a change so momentous that it has developed not only entirely new conditions, new possibilities and new perils, but also new attributes a social consciousness, which makes possible, and is making actual, a social conscience and the recognition of new social rights and duties; there is appearing also a new social spirit. Thus within two or three generations the social organism has achieved the same plane of evolution that man reached when he gained a conscience and became human. We may say that society has now been human- ized and has become responsible. Of course we recognize the fact that human life has l "The Philosophy of Wealth," pp. 38,39. 94 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE always been more or less social, but in order to mark the profound change which has taken place we appropri- ately speak of the old civilization as "individualistic" and of the new as "social" or "collective." Though it was true in St. Paul's time that "no man liveth unto himself, and no man dieth unto himself," it is evident that hi recent years men of the same community have come to live one life as never before in the history of the world. As long ago as 1790 Edmund Burke, against the prevailing theory of his day, said : "It (society) is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science, a partnership in all art, a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained hi many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living but between those who are living and those who are dead, and those who are to be born." 1 This passage inspired a feeling of "pro- found surprise" in Benjamin Kidd. "For Burke," he says, "had even at the date in question, risen to the height of perceiving society as science will undoubtedly perceive it in the future that is to say, as a living and developing organism." 2 Herbert Spencer, as we are well aware, taught that society is a living organism, and pointed out many likenesses between the social organism and the in- dividual organism. He also noted some striking dif- ferences which later science has transferred to the list of resemblances. Professor John B. Clark writes: "The parts of an "'Reflections on the Revolution in France,"&c. '"Principles of Western Civilization," p. 118. NEW PROBLEM OF INDUSTRY 95 organism have been said to be so related that 'each is at the same time the means and the end of all the others.' The rootlet of a tree shares with the remote leaf the nutriment which it absorbs from the earth, and the leaf shares with the rootlet that which it gathers from the sunlight and the air. This universal interdepend- ence of parts is a primary characteristic of social organisms; each member exists and labours, not for him- self, but for the whole, and is dependent on the whole for remuneration. The individual man, like the root- let, produces something, puts it into the circulating system of the organism, and gets from thence that which his being and growth require; he produces for the market, and buys from the market. Every producer is serving the world, and the world is serving every consumer." He continues, "The analogy between society and the human body was familiar to the an- cients. It is a discovery of recent times that a society is not merely like an organism; it is one in literal fact." 1 II. MAL-ADJTJSTMENT The Labour problem like all other problems of life is one of adjustment. The existing maladjustment is twofold, of spirit and of form. '"The Philosophy of Wealth," pp. 37, 38. Professor Lester F. Ward would not go so far as to call society an organism, but in an address before the American Sociological So- ciety (December 27-29, 1906) said : " If it is not an ' organism "... it is at least a great organization, bound together by organic ties in all its parts. To be more specific, sociology shows us that human institutions constitute the structures, organs, and 'organic parts of society, and that they are not independent, but are connected into one great system, which is society." Professor Drummond says ("The Ascent of Man," p. 266): "It has long been perceived that society is an organism, and an organism which has grown by natural growth like a tree." 96 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE 1. The old individualistic spirit has been brought over into the new social order. The fundamental law of every organism, binding on every organ and member, is the law of service that is, each for all, and all for each. This being true, an attempt on the part of the various members of the social organism to live each for itself must of necessity work confusion. In the human body the head, the hands, the feet have common interests. If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. All parts of the body are served in common and built up by the blood, which, like money, is the "circulating medium." If one arm does more work than the other, it receives more pay that is, it draws to itself more blood, with the result that it gets more growing material and hence becomes stronger than the other. Just hi proportion as the brain works, it draws blood to itself and is built up. The more any member spends by its activity, the more it is compensated; so that the body has what might be called a self-adjusting wage system which is perfectly equitable. Now let us suppose that the several members of the body become selfish, and there takes place, in conse- quence, what St. Paul calls a "schism in the body." Forgetting that they are mutually dependent, the eye says to the hand, "I have no need of thee"; or the head says to the feet, " I have no need of you" ; or hands and feet organize a strike against the head and refuse to feed it. How much added strength would the muscles get by refusing food to the mouth? Or, we will suppose that the self-adjusting wage system of the body gets out of order, with the result that there arises a dispute between the brain and the NEW PROBLEM OF INDUSTRY 97 limbs as to which is entitled to more of the "circulating medium." The limbs say: "Anybody can see that we are the workers; we produce the results. Let the brain try to swing a pick, or climb a ladder, or plough a furrow, or carry a load without us, and it will dis- cover that we do the world's work, and create the world's wealth." Accordingly the limbs by some com- bination succeed in drawing to themselves much of the blood which belongs to the brain. In consequence the brain becomes weakened and does not direct the movements of the limbs intelligently. And if this robbery of the brain goes far enough, unconsciousness follows and the man "faints away "; then how much is all the muscular power of the limbs worth? Or, we will suppose that the head proposes to en- large itself at the expense of the limbs, on the ground that they are mere machines and represent nothing but brute strength; that it is the brain which produces the arts and sciences and the progress of civilization, and has all the wants of civilized life and therefore needs, no less than it deserves, most of the "circulating medium." Accordingly it draws more and more of the blood to itself, with the result that the efficiency of the limbs is impaired; the health of the whole body (including the head) suffers; and if the rush of blood to the head is sufficiently aggravated, it produces apo- plexy; the brain loses all power of thought and enjoy- ment, and the whole man is prostrated. Whether the above illustration has any force with the reader will depend on his view of the relations of capital and labour whether their interests are common or antagonistic. Professor Huxley remarks : "I think it may not be too much to say that, of all the political delusions which are current in this queer world, the 98 THE NEW WORLD -LIFE very stupidest are those which assume that labour and capital are necessarily antagonistic. . . . On the contrary, capital and labour are, necessarily, close allies." 1 On the other hand, Mr. N. O. Nelson, who is both an employer and a firm friend of labour, refers to the "irreconcilable conflict of interests" between the two, and says: " . . . in their relation as employer and hired hand they conflict in a way which may in all fairness be called irrepressible." 2 Both of these views are correct. That is, when the relations between em- ployers and employees are normal then- interests are common. When these relations are abnormal their interests are conflicting. The converse is also true; so that the practically universal conflict of interests to-day indicates that abnormal relations are practically uni- versal. In organized industry "The time is out of joint" because the spirit of selfish competition controls where unselfish cooperation would normally exist. It is not difficult to see how competition, which was mild under individualistic industry, developed into the "cut- throat" variety as industry became more and more highly organized. In individualistic industry the shopkeeper was at the same time the artisan and the retailer. It was not easy for him to enlarge his business rapidly for that would necessitate both additional capital which was difficult to get and additional customers who were hardly less difficult to obtain, because personal acquain- tance served to bind customers to then- regular dealers. Competition was, therefore, mild and doubtless whole- some. '"Evolution and Ethics," pp. 186, 187. '"Labour and Capital," p. 344. NEW PROBLEM OF INDUSTRY 99 Machinefacture, however, was much cheaper than handfacture; so that the shopkeeper soon learned that he could buy cheaper than he could make. It was also found that large sales would compensate for narrow margins of profit. The shopkeeper, therefore, had every motive to give up making and to invest all of his limited capital in trading. This enabled him to buy more largely and more cheaply, and therefore decidedly undersell his rivals who clung to the old system, thus compelling them to adopt the new. In this way goods were multiplied, prices reduced, the standard of living raised, and competition increased from the retailer back to the manufacturer, who learned, after a time, that enlarging the output materially re- duced the cost of production. This of course led to the massing of capital, through successive stages, up to the development of the trust. Throughout this evolution from the old industry to the new, competition compelled concentration, and concentration stimulated competition until its inten- sity found relief in practical monopoly. Professor Clark thus describes the industrial system which was revolutionized by machinery: "The era was one of uneconomical methods of work, of divided and localized production, of large profits and small sales, of high prices to society as a consumer, of little general wealth, but of comparative equality and con- tentment among the middle class in the community." 1 It is interesting to observe how precisely opposite at every point are the conditions under organized in- dustry. We see a surprising economy in methods of work, centralized production supplying an ever extend- ing market, small margins of profit and large sales, low l "The Philosophy of Wealth," p. 122. 100 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE prices to the consumer, an enormous increase of wealth, and a like increase of inequality between classes and of discontent among workingmen. We may remind ourselves, in passing, that this is the revolution which is on its way around the globe, over- turning civilizations, and remaking the world. It is the old individualistic spirit expressed in selfish competition, growing ever more intense under the new conditions, which has caused most of the disorders by which industry is afflicted, and has produced many subordinate labour problems. It is selfishness which creates the problem of sweated industry, and that of child labour, and that of women in industry, making them the industrial competitors of men instead of co- labourers with them, thus profoundly affecting the family and the home. It is selfishness which compels men to work long hours, often times under unsanitary conditions and such high pressure as to wear them out by middle life, when they are flung away. One half of the steel workers hi America have a regular twelve- hour day ; and a third of those actually engaged in manu- facturing processes worked, in 1910, not only twelve hours a day but seven days a week. There are a dozen industries or occupations in this country in which the same hours obtain the same monotonous grind of eighty -four hours every week. What opportunity have such men to develop the intellectual and spiritual We, and to cultivate the domestic, social, and civic virtues? There are many thousands of workmen in the steel industry who work either eighteen or twenty- four consecutive hours regularly every two weeks. Says Mr. John A. Fitch, expert on the "Pittsburgh Survey": "If I were to sum up what the men who work in the steel mills all over the United States have NEW PROBLEM OF INDUSTRY 101 said to me about this thing, I should quote their own explosive words : 'It's hell.'' Industrial accidents, of which there are more than half a million every year, constitute another labour problem of ever-growing importance. Some of these accidents are due to the carelessness of workmen, but overwork and the lack of safety appliances are respon- sible for many. More than one half are undoubtedly preventable. In the labour problems mentioned above instead of making wealth a means of producing manhood and womanhood, selfishness sacrifices men, women, and little children to the production of wealth. One might suppose that goods are made to be consumed by men; but selfishness consumes men in making goods. Again, in a normal society the object of production of every sort is to supply the members of society with the necessaries, conveniences, and comforts of life; and it is important that prices should be low that all may share as generally as possible. Selfishness, however, which makes profit instead of service the object of production, often restricts the output for the express purpose of raising or sustaining prices. In like manner it "cor- ners" foodstuffs, thus deliberately coining wealth out of human suffering and life. Again, selfish competition prepares conditions for industrial panics and the resulting paralysis, during which idle men, who would gladly work, starve in the midst of glutted markets. It was a sad illustration of dislocation in the industrial system when in London a few years ago, in response to an advertisement for a porter at a wage of $4.50 a week and meals, 3,000 men applied for the situation. Again, it is selfish competition which treats labour as 102 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE a mere commodity, buying it as one would buy raw materials in the cheapest market. This naturally leads to the organization of capital and labour in two hostile camps, with resulting strikes, lockouts, and riots. Of course there develop class antagonism and class con- sciousness on which socialism feeds and grows. The following statement of certain evils growing out of conditions created by modern industry is from the quadrennial address of the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church: 1 "We live in an age in which the vast enterprises essential to the progress of the world require the association of men of large means under corporate management. Out of this necessity have grown serious wrongs and consequent resistance. "Organized capital stands indicted at the bar of public judgment for the gravest crimes against the common welfare. Among the counts in that indict- ment are such as these: "1. Conspiring to advance prices on the staple com- modities indispensable to the life, well-being and prog- ress of the people. "2. Resorting to adulteration of foods, fabrics, and materials in order to increase profits already excessive. "3. Destroying the competition in trade through which relief might be expected under normal conditions. "4. Suborning legislation, and thus robbing the people of the first orderly recourse of the weak against the strong. "These are sins against humanity. If God hates any sin above another, it must be the robbery of the poor and defenceless. Otherwise His love fails when it is most needed and might find its largest opportunity. . . . This is not saying that all corporations deal 'Meeting in Minneapolis, May, 1912. NEW PROBLEM OF INDUSTRY 103 treacherously with the people. There are honourable exceptions. But enough is known of the heartless greed that fattens off of the hunger-driven millions to warrant the strongest protective associations on the part of the people." This passage was followed by a condemnation of lawless violence, the boycott, and other abuses incident to the struggle between organized capital and organized labour. These are not the utterances of professional agitators, nor of biased labour leaders, but of men whose position and habit of mind enable them not only to utter the convictions of the great church which they officially represent, but to express the enlightened Christian conscience of the nation. Each and all of the evils specified above are counts in the indictment of selfishness, which is the inspiring spirit of organized industry. Not that all employers and all employees are selfish. There are both selfish and unselfish men in both camps; and the latter are often the unwilling victims of the system in which they find themselves entangled. But they have not un- derstood the fundamental cause of industrial troubles. They have supposed that every man had to work for his own personal interest, of course, and that there was no other way. They have accordingly expected noth- ing else of each other. Selfishness as the inspiring motive of industry has had the sanction of orthodox economic science. Professor Perry says: "In the whole field of exchange the just and comprehensive rule always will be, that when men exchange services with each other, each party is bound to look out for his own interest, to know the market value of his own service, and to obtain the best terms for himself which he can make. Capital does this for itself, and labourers 104 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE ought to do this for themselves, and if they are per- sistently cheated in the exchange, they have nobody to blame but themselves." Here is a frank recogni- tion that selfishness is the basis of the relations between capital and labour, and a shameless declaration that this basis is not only inevitable but right. Such teachings have benumbed the conscience and blinded the eyes; and men have not understood that such a spirit in the midst of a great organized life whose fundamental law was unselfish service, was a malad- justment which must inevitably work confusion. 2. Furthermore, the existing aristocratic form of in- dustry is a maladjustment to our democratic form of government, The truth of the above proposition is so obvious that it hardly needs to be re-enforced by argument. A writer in the "Encyclopedia Britannica'" (ninth edition, 1888) said: "The great American Republic seems to be entering upon a new era, in which it must meet and solve a new problem the reconciliation of democracy with the modern conditions of production." 1 What seemed to be a peculiarly American problem a quarter of a century ago is now rapidly becoming a world problem. The most notable and most nearly universal movement of modern times has been the rise of the common people. The industrial revolution is also enveloping the civilized world, strengthening the democratic movement by intensifying the spirit of popular discontent, and, at the same time under the influence of competition, massing capital and centraliz- ing control, thus rendering the organization of indus- try increasingly autocratic an anomalous condition which is obviously unstable and transitional. 'Vol. XXIH, p. 787. NEW PROBLEM OF INDUSTRY 105 An agricultural population is scattered. The in- dustrial revolution by creating cities masses the people. Great numbers of workingmen are brought into close contact under like conditions. They have many things hi common. They of course discuss then* com- mon interests, and soon learn to organize in order to improve the conditions of labour. Thus they become conscious of their power and learn to assert themselves. The disturbances in Russia which began with strikes in St. Petersburg in January, 1905, easily and quickly took on a political complexion and became revolution- ary in character. Thus the new industrial civilization stimulates the democratic spirit. Asia has been agri- cultural and despotic; it is to become industrial, like Europe and America, with a consequent impetus to the democratic movement. On the eastern bank of the Nile at Karnak a part of Homer's "hundred-gated" Thebes are stupen- dous ruins of ancient temples. The wondering travel- ler is struck by the sight of mighty pillars only lately fallen. His guide explains that a recent overflow of the river, rising to an extrordinary height, has reached and undermined their ancient foundations, and columns which had defied time for more than thirty centuries toppled to destruction. A mighty tide of democracy is rising throughout the world, undermining the ancient pillars of despotism, and popular institutions both in church and state are being built on the ruins of autoc- racy. In modern industry, however, growing organ- ization has meant combination with ever-increasing centralization of capital and of direction. The consoli- dation of railways into ever greater combinations, and culminating in the Harriman system affords a striking example. Before his death Mr. Harriman virtually 106 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE dominated about 75,000 miles of railway, enough to cross the continent twenty-five times, and nearly four times the railroad mileage of England. A writer 1 in a popular magazine stated that this railroad king exer- cised a taxing power almost as great as that possessed by any parliament. This certainly was taxation with- out representation. The maladjustment of our industrial system to our political system is thus recognized by Dr. Washington Gladden: "Our industries are still largely on an auto- cratic or feudalistic basis. We have been trying to correlate a political democracy with an industrial feudalism. They do not work well together. I do not think that they will endure together. They are antagonistic principles. . . . We may say what Lincoln said cf slavery and freedom: the country will become eventually all democratic or all feudalistic. The workings ?n will lose their political liberty or they will gain their industrial liberty." 2 Indeed, without the latter, the former is of no great value. Said President Emeritus Eliot of Harvard University in his Faneuil Hall address, July 4, 1911: "Does not American experience in the nineteenth century go to show that political freedom is of limited value unless it is accompanied by genuine social and industrial free- dom?" In the preceding discussion it has been shown that the industrial revolution has brought men into such intimate relations of interdependence as to make unself- ish service the natural law of organized society; that selfishness, which is the accepted law of organized in- 'Burton J. Hendrick in McClure's for October, 1909. *The Outlook, March 18, 1911. NEW PROBLEM OF INDUSTRY 107 dustry, has caused maladjustment both of spirit and form in the new social order, and is responsible for the resulting industrial evils, many and great, which call loudly for remedy. Organized capital and organized labour utterly fail to recognize the real cause of their differences, and the principal measures of relief which they propose serve only to aggravate that cause. That is, their struggles against each other intensify the selfishness of both. Organized skilled labour in seeking its own interests sacrifices those of unorganized labour and those of capital. Syndicalism is so willing to sacrifice all other interests to those of unskilled labour that capitalism and unionism'at the time of the Lawrence strike actually forgot their old feud and joined hands to fight their common enemy. Socialism depends for its growth on class conscious- ness, and assiduously cultivates class antagonism. Capitalism is only one of a thousand forms in which selfishness expresses itself. Socialism proposes a rem- edy which would remove that particular symptom, but which sustains no relation to the disease. Philanthropy, keenly alive to the many social evils which come from the existing maladjustment, has formed many organizations to cope with specific abuses. It has also formulated a long legislative programme in- tended to compass needed reforms. These efforts are in general most commendable and should enlist the active co-operation of every lover of his kind, but they can only mitigate the effects of selfishness; they are palliative rather than remedial. Not one of the remedies proposed in any quarter undertakes to go to the root of industrial and social evils, or even recognizes the existence of that root. In 108 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE this chapter I have attempted a diagnosis; the remedy will be considered in a subsequent chapter. I shall now undertake to outline the natural results of continuing the present policy of ignoring the cause of existing industrial and social ills. III. SHADOWS OF COMING EVENTS If the existing spirit of selfishness continues to dominate industry, three results may be expected to follow. 1. Increasing production without corresponding distribution will aggravate existing popular discon- tent. The Hon. Carroll D. Wright is quoted as saying that "two hours and fifteen minutes daily work by each able-bodied man, if systematically applied, would produce all the food, clothing and shelter that people need." This, of course, assumes the use of the modern instruments of production. Many men work four and five times that number of hours, and do not receive enough to support a family in decency. The applica- tion of steam has enormously increased wealth, but there has been no corresponding increase in the purchasing power of wages. The problem of pro- duction has been solved, but that of distribution remains to keep the workmgman sore under a sense of injustice. Sir Robert Giffen shows that while population hi Great Britain increases only l%o per cent, per annum, wealth increases 3 per cent. This fact, however, has not prevented the rapid increase of popular discontent and its effective expression at the polls. Nor has the rapid increase of national wealth made contented and NEW PROBLEM OF INDUSTRY 109 happy the 800,000 people in London who go habitually hungry. J Some years ago Edward Atkinson declared it to be "a well-established fact that about 90 per cent, of the community expend one half of their income or more for food." When rent has been paid, or taxes, insurance, and repairs have been provided for, together with cloth- ing, fuel, and medicines, how much remains for the higher nature? "Man doth not live by bread only." "The life is more than meat." I can easily believe that since Mr. Atkinson's statement was made, some eighteen years ago, the figures have changed some- what. But if only one tenth of the population (9,000,000) were living on this low physical plane, it would be a serious matter; and if a large majority of the people are thus living, there is something radically wrong. To tell them that since 1850 our per capita wealth has increased four and a half-fold and our national wealth seventeenfold only deepens their conviction that they are not getting their fair share. It will be shown in the following chapter that the aggregate increase of wealth during the next half cen- tury will undoubtedly be vastly greater than during the past fifty years. If labour is paid only what the "iron law" dictates (that is the law of selfishness as administered by capital) we may be assured that popu- lar discontent will increase as rapidly as wealth. Why not profit by past experience? There is every reason to expect that like causes under like conditions will produce like results. Prof. John R. Commons points out a certain recurring cycle in our economic history which passes from stage to stage with regular 'These figures are the result of statistics carefully gathered by social settlement workers in the East End of London. 110 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE and instructive sequences. First, rising prices and profits with factories running over time; then increased cost of living and longer hours impel workmen to de- mand higher wages and reduced hours. Strikes are at first successful and labour unions grow; then em- ployers begin their counter-organization, and the courts are appealed to. Sooner or later the unions are defeated. Competition brings prices down; depression ensues with its widespread unemployment; and then follows the period of social or political agitation, and all sorts of isms find a quick soil. Says Professor Commons: "This cycle has been so consistently re- peated, although with varying shades and details, that it has compelled recognition." 1 This cycle will no doubt continue to recur so long as selfishness is considered the natural law of the industrial world and makes mutual enemies of employers and employees, unless, indeed, in some period of unequalled depression and distress there occurs a convulsion which shatters our industrial system. There is a popular discontent hi Europe which has not been equalled since the revolution of 1848. Indeed there is a great world ferment as wide as modern civili- zation and as deep as the sense of injustice which has taken possession of workingmen a situation which can be ignored only at the peril of society. Judge Gary, at a public dinner, referring to this "sinister feel- ing of unrest throughout the world," remarked: "I say to you that things are being said and printed similar to the incendiary speeches which aroused the peasants of France and caused the French revolution. Unless something is done the spark will burst into a flame." '"Documentary History'of American Industrial Society." Intro- duction to Vols. V and VI, p. 19. NEW PROBLEM OF INDUSTRY 111 Agitation was not the "cause" of the French Revolu- tion. Incendiary utterances might be the occasion, but could not possibly be the cause of a nation-wide or world-wide uprising. A torch never sets anything on fire where there is nothing inflammable. Some millions of prosperous and contented citizens do not extemporize "a sinister feeling of unrest throughout the world" simply to oblige fanatical agitators. World- wide movements spring from world-wide conditions and causes. 2. Again, if the existing spirit of selfishness continues to dominate industry, increasing manufactures and inventions will at length drive the world into an im- passe. There is a sort of mechanical Malthusianism which is a much greater menace to society than the much dis- cussed doctrine of Malthus, but which so far as I know has never been formulated, nor even recognized. I refer to the fact that so long as industry is inspired by selfish competition machinery will inevitably tend to increase more rapidly than population, or the demands of a rising standard of living, or both together; which, unless industry becomes unselfish, will create all the misery of widespread and increasing unemployment. Machinery might be employed to shorten the hours of labour, to lighten the burdens of toilers, and to reduce the cost of living. If such were its actual use, it would be an unmixed blessing. But as a matter of fact labour-saving devices are introduced not for the sake of the workmen, nor for that of the purchasing public, but in order to increase the profits of the business. It is quite true that machinery has shortened the hours of labour, has increased wages, and in many instances has reduced prices, but these results were incidental. 112 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE The object of the management in installing more effec- tive machinery is not to make men but to make money. Let us glance at some of the ulterior results of this policy. Under existing conditions every competitor for the market takes into consideration not the public welfare, nor even the good of the industry as a whole, but only his own private interests. If there is greater produc- tion than the market demands, sales become slow; competition grows sharper and prices fall. The only way to get the market is to undersell competitors; hence a powerful incentive to reduce the cost of pro- duction to a minimum. In addition to the economies which are possible to all manufacturers there are two advantages which are gamed by only a part of them. One is the cheaper production which comes from en- larging the plant and increasing the output, the other is derived from the invention of more effective machinery. Thus industrial depression, contrary to what might be expected, operates as a powerful stimulus to the pro- duction of machinery, and especially to the invention of that which will have greater labour-displacing power. Every financial panic is sure to be followed by a large number of labour-saving inventions. Another stimulus to the increase of machinery is the strike. Every time an employer is thus embarrassed he has an added incentive to procure iron and steel workers which never throw up their job. Strikes, there- fore, stimulate the invention of automatic machines. One boy now produces wire screening for which the manufacturer was formerly dependent on 200 men. Under these influences the products of machinery increase much more rapidly than population. During the last half of the nineteenth century our population NEW PROBLEM OF INDUSTRY 113 increased threefold, while our manufactured products increased from $1,019,000,000 in 1850 to $13,039,000,000 in 1900. In like manner while the population of Europe increased 50 per cent, her manufactures in- creased 200 per cent. A part of the increasing surplus is absorbed by the rising standard of living, but such a rise, which involves a change of national habits, is necessarily slow, as is also the growth of population, while the multiplying of machinery or its increased effectiveness not unfrequently doubles the output of a given product in a single decade. We may judge of the increase of machinery in France from the fact that the horsepower of her steam-engines in fifteen years (1891-1906) increased over 600 per cent, while her population was practically stationary. With machine products increasing two or three or four times as fast as home consumption, enlarging foreign markets becomes a vital necessity. Great Britain, Germany, France, and the United States are by far the greatest manufacturing nations of the world, and they have all just about doubled their manu- factured exports during the past quarter of a century England and France a little less, Germany and the United States considerably more. These are the nations which have most enlarged their colonial possessions during that period; and these same nations have the four greatest navies in the world. Japan, Russia, and Italy are all interested in becoming great manufac- turing peoples, they are also much interested in territorial expansion, and they rank next as naval powers. This threefold interest in manufactures, colonial expansion, and battleships is not a mere coincidence but a logical sequence. Great Britain got the start of the rest of the world, and for some generations she was 114 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE the one great manufacturing power, the one great colonial power and the one great naval power. It was not until after Germany and France became great manufacturing nations that the one saw the importance of a "Greater Germany" and the other the necessity of a "Greater France." It was under similar condi- tions that the United States entered on oversea expan- sion. It is multiplying machinery this mechanical Malthusianism which within the past generation has driven European Powers to seize 5,000,000 square miles in tropical and subtropical zones an area nearly one half greater than the whole continent of Europe. There must be a colonial outlet for the prod- uct of machinery which is forever grinding its increas- ing grist. And then, of course, there must be a navy capable of protecting this oversea commerce which has become essential to the very life of the nation; hence the mad race which the manufacturing nations are running in naval construction. These nations are willing to build navies at any cost of money and then fight at any cost of life because they see that they must sell their increasing surplus or suffer the horrors of unemployment, starvation, and riot. The pith of my contention is that while the produc- tion of machinery can and does respond to the increas- ing demands of enlarging markets, it cannot, under selfish competition, be limited to that demand; nor, indeed, can its increase be stopped when demand ceases to increase and begins to shrink. There is, therefore, always a tendency for machine-made products to in- crease faster than home consumption. Said the Hon. Carroll D. Wright: "It is incontrovertible that the present manufacturing and mechanical plant of the United States is greater far greater than is NEW PROBLEM OF INDUSTRY 115 needed to supply the demand; yet it is constantly being enlarged, and there is no way of preventing the en- largement." l As yet there are only four great machine- using nations, and they are by far richer than any others. Wherever manufactured products go (and where are they not going?) there is a desire awakened on the part of the people to increase their wealth by manufacturing for themselves. Japan's manufactured exports have increased eightfold in a quarter of a cen- tury. China has her city whose tall chimneys remind one of Pittsburgh. India is establishing factories equipped with the best machinery. Manufacturing has begun hi South America, and will receive a power- ful impulse from the isthmian canal. The agricultural peoples of Europe, South Africa, Australia, and Canada are all beginning to manufacture. If selfish competi- tion continues to be the accepted law of industry, the time will doubtless come when it can be said of each one of these peoples, "Its manufacturing plant is far greater than is needed to supply the demand yet it is constantly being enlarged, and there is no way of pre- venting the enlargement." These peoples will begin manufacturing to supply the home demand, precisely as we, the French and the Germans did. But they cannot stop when the home demand is supplied. When in all of these countries machine products are increasing two or three times as fast as home consump- tion what will happen? What will men do with a world surplus? Is it not evident that if selfishness is permitted to control industry, it will ultimately make of machinery such a monster as was created by Frank- enstein? 3. Again, if the spirit of selfishness continues to *The Forum, February, 1898, p. 671. 116 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE animate Industry, strikes will probably increase in number, extent and destructiveness. Capital and labour are each struggling to control industry in its own interest. We have seen that under normal conditions those interests are common but under existing conditions they are opposed. It has been shown that in organized industry, under the in- fluence of selfish competition, capital naturally de- velops the autocratic spirit, while labour by an equally natural process develops the democratic spirit. Of course in the close relations of organized industry these two opposing spirits must inevitably come into conflict. The increasing antagonism between capital and labour is shown by the rapidly increasing number of strikes during the past generation. From 1881 to 1885 the average number of strikes in the United States annually was 498. From 1901 to 1905 (the latest published statistics) the average number annually was 2,792. While the population increased about 50 per cent, and manufacturing establishments doubled, the number of strikes increased fivefold. Doubtless men will some day look back on the strike as a singularly crude and barbarous resort for rational beings, but there is little reason to expect that a ten- dency will weaken so long as its causes are strengthen- ing. A developing class consciousness together with increasing mutual suspicion and antagonism is pre- paring the way for a new and important evolution in the industrial situation. The fact that the class of workingmen is constantly being recruited from South- ern and Southeastern Europe, while the capitalistic class is almost wholly composed of Americans or of foreigners who have been well Americanized, serves to estrange the two classes more and more, and to NEW PROBLEM OF INDUSTRY 117 interpose differences of race, language, and often of religion, as added obstacles to mutual understanding and friendly relations, thus further preparing the way for a change which is already in sight. One of the most important advantages heretofore enjoyed by capital in its struggle with labour is that the latter has been divided into two camps hostile to each other organized and unorganized labour. In- deed, quite as often as otherwise, unorganized labour has been the ally of capital; and when strikes have been lost by organized labour defeat has generally been due to unorganized labour. The shocking series of 101 dynamite explosions in seventeen different states, in- volving the sacrifice of more than 100 lives and the destruction of several million dollars' worth of property, culminating in the wrecking of the Los Angeles Times building and the death of twenty-one persons, was aimed quite as much at unorganized labour as at capital. The trade union has been dominated by the skilled man. It has been comparatively easy for skilled work- men to organize and greatly to improve their condition thereby. The more skilled their work, the more neces- sary have they been to their employers, and the more easily have they secured their demands, enforced by effective organization. The trades unions, with the exception of rare and rather disastrous excursions into politics, have confined themselves generally to gaming larger wages and shorter hours. The unions have con- cerned themselves much more with the interests of their respective trades than with the great labour problem as a whole. This problem, in its many aspects and wide relations, is becoming far more the concern of unskilled than of skilled labour, partly because the former class is much 118 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE the larger and is constantly growing under the in- fluence of invention. Economists have assured us that while the introduction of machinery temporarily displaces labour it ultimately creates more labour than it at first displaces. This opinion was based on the experience of Great Britain when she was the workshop of the world and had a practically unlimited market; but the situation radically changed when other nations became manufacturing competitors. It has been demonstrated that under certain conditions machinery does displace vastly more labour than it creates; and, again, machinery which costs many men their employ- ment often creates no demand whatever for labour except that involved in its own construction, which in comparison is negligible. In one of the great fac- tories of Chicago a mechanic invented a lathe attach- ment which increased the effectiveness of the workman twelvefold, and as a result eleven out of every twelve workmen in that department lost their job. It was the irony of fate that the inventor himself was one of the victims of the new economy. He got nothing for his invention, and he was too old to learn a new trade, so that his ingenuity which saved the company a fortune in wages reduced him to literal beggary. This illustrates the inevitable result of a large propor- tion of inventions under the existing selfish system. Nearly all great manufacturing enterprises have various departments, each of which produces one part of the entire product, or performs some one process. All of these departments must of course work in harmony; one cannot run ahead of the others. When, therefore, an invention in one department multiplies the effec- tiveness of the workman, the inevitable result is not to increase the output of that department but to reduce NEW PROBLEM OF INDUSTRY 119 the working force. There is a vast number of such inventions which do not increase the general product, thus stimulating demand and ultimately creating more labour to meet it, but simply throw men out of em- ployment. Massachusetts statistics show that only a very small proportion of men thrown out of one trade take up an- other. They are either too old or too discouraged to acquire new skill which may be rendered useless any day by a new invention. They simply drop into the great and increasing army of the unskilled, and help to swell the existing volume of discontent. Machinery enables the unskilled workman to sup- plant the skilled precisely as steam power discounts the strength of the man and makes the woman and child his successful rivals. Machinery is becoming more and more automatic. Once the tool was the implement of the man who did the work; now the man is the attendant of the machine which does the work. Once there was one weaver to each loom; now one man attends fifteen, twenty-five, thirty, and in rare instances even forty different Northrop looms; and often hun- dreds of these looms are kept running unattended during the noon hour. The skill of a single inventor renders useless that of hundreds of thousands of opera- tives. Here is an automatic knitting machine, which with no one near shapes the sock, at the heel substi- tutes white yarn for blue, which it does again at the toe, narrows it off, cuts the white yarn, lays down the sock, and begins another with blue yarn, completing a pair in ten minutes. One boy keeps twenty machines oiled and supplied with yarn, and these twenty ma- chines produce over 1,000 pairs of socks a day. Of course unskilled work commands lower wages, 120 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE which are less equal to the support of a family; hence wife and children are forced to become wage- workers, and the unskilled workman finds himself directly in- volved in phases of the labour problem which perhaps do not personally affect the skilled workman. It is the unskilled worker, therefore, who is more likely to be thoroughly discontented with the whole labour situation and to become an agitator or a revolutionist. Moreover, machinery and the minute subdivision of labour have an important influence hi shaping character. The "all around" mechanic is far more independent; much more likely to develop self-reliance and initiative. With the increasing subdivision of labour, work is simplified until it often becomes but a single process or movement. The workman is per- petually reminded of his dependence on others with whom he is compelled to co-operate. He becomes deeply conscious of the solidarity of industry, and more readily unites with his comrades for common action. Of course unorganized labour is helpless; and this is especially true of unskilled labour. Increasing efforts, therefore, are being made to include all labour in its organized ranks so as to present a united front to or- ganized capital. With the increasing importance of unskilled labour in those ranks it is evident that the policy of labour in the industrial struggle is destined to be controlled more and more by the unskilled ele- ment. The process which has just been briefly sketched has created a new situation of momentous possibilities, and has prepared the way for a new labour movement which is already attracting anxious attention both in Europe and America. Syndicalism, or the "I. W. W." (the Industrial Work- NEW PROBLEM OF INDUSTRY 121 ers of the World) is a social philosophy which pro- poses a new solution of the labour problem. While socialism calls for the public ownership of all means of production and of distribution, syndicalism demands that labour take over the ownership and direction of our entire industrial system finance, transportation, factories, mines and all. Said one of its advocates: "We are doing the real work now, only we get one seventh of what we produce. We propose to have seven sevenths." Bent on social revolution syndicalists are impatient of the slow methods of legislation. Their weapon is the "general strike." Says the London Times: "The general strike of syndicalism is not a means of securing higher wages. It is a revolutionary act. ... It aims at the complete overthrow of the existing order by the cessation of all activity. The manual workers stop work, society comes to a standstill, food is soon exhausted, there is no public lighting or conveyance, plundering and disorder begin, the soldiers are called out but refuse to turn against the rioters, and lo! the revolution is accomplished. Then the trade unions step in, take over the economic assets of the nation, reorganize them, and there you are." Syndicalism started in Paris in 1895 and received a strong impetus seven years later. It has now become powerful in France, and for nearly ten years its in- fluence has been felt in Spam, Russia, Holland, and Sweden. The general strike has been attempted in various countries with sufficient success to cause not a little distress on the part of workingmen's families, which are the first to suffer, and not a little fear on the part of the general public. In 1905 the whole struc- ture of Russian society was shaken by the "universal 122 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE strike." There was a railway tie-up all over Russia, and by reason of sympathetic strikes everywhere in- dustrial and commercial life came to a standstill. A correspondent of the London Daily Mail wrote: "If the strike lasts, all is over. We shall drown in a red torrent." There was a "general strike" proclaimed in Sweden which before the end came cost innumerable tragedies hi the homes of the poor. A like attempt to paralyze society was made hi France, which was over- come by M. Briand, but only after it had been enor- mously costly. A year later a similar undertaking was made in Great Britain. Early hi 1912 the coal strike well nigh prostrated British industry for the time being. Press dispatches stated, "The magnitude of the strike is almost inconceivable. It has affected hi a direct way, counting only the miners and the other men thrown out of work with their families, more than 4,000,000 persons. In other respects it has paralyzed practically the whole life of the nation. Prices of food have gone up, fuel is virtually unattainable, railroads have curtailed their services, shipping has been held up, and every branch of industry stopped to a greater or less extent." These attempts suggest what tremendous possibil- ities lie in this sort of "masterly inactivity." With the increasing subdivision of labour and the further organization of national and world industry the inter- dependence of men and of nations becomes ever greater, and the possible evil which may be inflicted by a general strike is correspondingly enhanced. Moreover, the feasibility of such a strike is con- stantly increasing. As yet men are mere tyros in organization. Industry as now organized is a great school in which workingmen are being daily drilled hi NEW PROBLEM OF INDUSTRY 123 concerted action; and as the solidarity of labour grows, and class antipathy deepens, the day approaches, when the general strike can disorganize society and inau- gurate anarchy. Failure will attend premature efforts here as in Europe, and the strikers will be the greatest sufferers, which will further embitter the industrial class against the capitalistic class, and increase the score which the former will remember against the final day of reckoning. Many think the strikers cannot hold out long enough to succeed. But national boundaries do not separate workingmen. They are recognizing common interests and learning to make common cause. Suppose syndi- calism gains control of labour in Great Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, what is to prevent the workingmen of three of these countries furnishing supplies to the strikers of the fourth until labour has won its fight in each? It is believed by some that the real origin of the I. W. W. in this country was immediately after the end of the bitter and bloody strike of the miners in Colorado in 1905. The same men were prominent in both. They are now strong enough here to sustain several regular periodicals. They appeared in strength at the Paterson, Lawrence, and New Bedford strikes. The spirit, aim, and methods of the syndicalists are exhibited in the following statement, made by the national organizer at New Bedford, and reported by Mr. Bruce Barton in the Congregationalist. "We are fighting a war; this is merely a battle. . . . Between battles we make the boss pay the bills. We go back to work. Of course we don't have to be as careful as we were before. Perhaps the cloth we turn out won't be perfect always, and sometimes a bolt will seem to get 124 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE slashed with a knife, and occasionally a monkey wrench will drop into a loom, or a piece of shafting will fall, or a steam pipe will get plugged up, or the electric wires will get short circuited. Maybe a fire might break out in one of the mills. It's all part of the war. The boss practises the same tactics when he puts adulterated food on the market for us workers, or sells us his rotten products at high prices. Between capital and labour there is a war; and capital has no rights which labour is bound to respect. We produce every- thing; we mean to have everything. ... Of course the owners hate us; of course they'd like to see us hanged. I don't blame them. I'd feel that way if I were a capitalist. It's because they see that we are growing and realize that our programme means their extinction that they dread us so. If they grant what we're asking this time, it only postpones the trouble. We'll go back to work, but we won't be satisfied. We'll stay just long enough to save some money and bring the mills into their busy season and then we'll walk out again. . . . Ours is a constant war, and the end of it is the overturn of society and the abolition of the private ownership of wealth." Syndicalism has enough in common with socialism to draw heavily from the ranks of the latter. "Its tendency," says John Graham Brooks, "is steadily toward anarchy, and it is extremely likely within a few years seriously to plague the socialist party, as now organized, as it will surely plague the public." 1 How widespread and virulent this industrial pesti- lence becomes will depend on the extent to which the existing sefish competition prepares the way for it. It has been shown (1) that increasing production with- l Tke Survey, April 6, 1912, p. 80. NEW PROBLEM OF INDUSTRY 125 out corresponding distribution would stimulate the deep-seated and growing resentment against the capi- talistic class; it has been shown (2) that under selfish competition machinery would be produced far beyond the needs of the world, preparing conditions for the general prostration of industry ; and further it has been shown (3) that increasing machinery, used not for the service of society but for the swelling of dividends, is so transforming both the conditions of work and work- ingmen themselves as to inaugurate, without doubt, a labour "war," with possibilites of incalculable disorder and distress. There is already sufficient bitterness of class feeling to make the situation serious. It is not necessary to incite the frenzy of the French Revolution, condensed into that ferocious word of Diderot's that "the en- trails of the last priest should serve as halter to the last king." If there is lacking that insanity of class hatred which was the dynamite of the great French explosion, modern science has placed ready to the hand of every enemy of society instruments of destruc- tion which belittle those of every other age. Surely the selfish philosophy of industry is no longer workable. Selfishness is not only unsocial but anti- social It is disintegrative. Hence the more multi- plied and far reaching, the more complex and delicate human relations are, the more destructive does selfish- ness become. "Every man for himself" in the midst of the new social order is an anachronism. It is the spirit of the eighteenth century animating the body of the twentieth. It is the tiger of the jungle let loose in the busy marts of men. CHAPTER VI THE NEW PROBLEM OP WEALTH AN Imperial Chinese Commissioner said to me a few years ago that the government of New York City collected from its (then) less than 4,000,000 inhabi- tants larger revenues than the imperial government of China collected from its 400,000,000 people. Our greater wealth is certainly not due to superior industry or frugality. The Chinese toil almost incessantly, and their standard of living is probably not one twentieth as high as ours; but for a century the West has com- manded methods of producing wealth of which the East, until recently, has known nothing. Poverty has been the great economic problem of the past; wealth will be the greater economic problem of the future. Let us look at the several elements of the problem. I. THE NEW CREATION OF WEALTH Nature is given to man and he is commanded to "subdue" it. Here are the several elements out of which wealth is created, viz., human want, raw material, and the power which subdues it to human use. There can be no wealth where there are no wants. Slowly the wants of primitive man increased and impelled him to adapt nature's materials to satisfy them. Gradually he discovered an increasing number of uses which could be made of vegetable, animal, and mineral for food, 126 127 clothing, shelter, weapons, and the like. With mul- tiplying wants came civilization, and in nature's storehouse numberless raw materials were found which increasing ingenuity and skill transformed into wealth. Thus for many tens of thousands of years man's desire for wealth grew and his knowledge of raw ma- terials grew, but his power that of his muscles by which he transformed these materials into articles of use remained the same. Then, late in the history of the race, only four generations ago, came a sudden and profoundly important change, viz.: 1. The substituting of mechanical for vital power. For thousands of years the only way to multiply the product was to multiply the number of muscles which furnished the power, which of course correspondingly multiplied the number of mouths; and as one set of muscles could produce but little more than their owner and those dependent on him ought to consume it was impossible for the world to become rich. In order to double the product it was necessary to double the number of those who must share the product. When, however, mechanical power was substituted for vital, when it became possible to rely on the steam- engine instead of the muscles of man or beast, power could be multiplied tenfold or a hundredfold without increasing the number of mouths by one. That is, it now became possible to increase power indefinitely without correspondingly increasing the demands on the products of that power; hence the new creation of wealth. 2. But this is not all. Science is enriching the world. It is constantly increasing our knowledge of the earth and its materials, and revealing unsuspected sources of wealth. The value of our mineral products is well 128 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE above $2,000,000,000 a year. Some of these minerals which now add many millions annually to our wealth were either unknown or supposed to be worthless a few years ago. Thus with ever-multiplying human wants, with the possibility of unlimited power, and with science ever finding new possible values in the mineral, vegetable and animal world, there is literally no limit to the pos- sible wealth of mankind. Science, moreover, is not only discovering new raw materials, but is revealing new and more economical methods of reducing them to use. The surprising progress of Germany during recent years affords an excellent illustration of the creation of wealth by the application of science to industry. Notwithstanding the comparative poverty of her natural resources, things "made in Germany" are finding their way into the markets of the world in damaging competition with English manufactures. Doubtless the time will come when the industries of every people will cease to be conducted by rule of thumb and become scientific. The progress of material civilization consists very largely in the elimination of waste wasted material, wasted power, wasted time, wasted opportunity. Science confers on us the touch of Midas by which we transform waste into wealth. A few years ago cotton growers did not know what to do with the seed. They threw it away. Its quantity clogged the streams. It became a nuisance. Now the cotton seed products yield $70,000,000, in a single year. Every great factory employs men who devote all their time to eliminat- ing loss or transforming it into profit. There are not a few industries in which the main product is all "velvet," as manufacturers call it, because the by- NEW PROBLEM OF WEALTH 129 products, once wasted but now utilized, pay the entire cost of the manufacture. Scientific management is revealing a measure of efficiency the possibility of which has heretofore been unsuspected. The motions of a bricklayer hi laying a single brick have been reduced from eighteen to six. Of a picked gang of men, each one, after having been scientifically trained, handled forty-seven and a half tons of pig iron per day instead of twelve and a half tons which had been the average rate. There are at least 50,000 workmen in the United States who are employed under the new system, and who are receiving from 33 to 100 per cent, higher wages than others of the same class where scientific management has not been introduced, while the output per man has, on the average, been doubled. * If the feeling of suspicion and hostility now so common between capital and labour can be exchanged for active co-operation, scientific management promises largely to increase the profits of employers, the wages of workmen, and the wealth of the nation. A serious loss is that by fire, which during the past thirty-three years has aggregated in the United States not less than $5,147,000,000. During the past ten years the average annual waste by fire has been $227,000,000. It can hardly be supposed that modem science and efficiency will long suffer such burnt- offerings on the altar of ignorance and carelessness. But our greatest and most lamentable waste is that of human life. The most eminent physicians tell us that of every hundred deaths forty-two are unneces- sary. Professor Fisher of Yale, considering only the economic aspect of this waste, says: "The loss every l The American Magazine, March, 1911, p. 574. 130 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE year through preventable deaths and sickness amounts in the United States to nearly three billion dollars." 1 With the great advances which are being made in hygiene, sanitation, medicine, and surgery, it is safe to say that this waste will be increasingly reduced in the future. Of course the amazing increase of -production since the middle of the nineteenth century has enormously stimulated consumption; but notwithstanding the rapid elevation of the standard of living, the increase of wealth has been still more rapid. H. THE NEW SURPLUS OF WEALTH 1. Consider our present assets. According to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, the wealth of the United States was $7,000,000,000 in 1850, and $107,000,000,000 in 1904. During the first two years of this century we saved two thousand million dollars more than all the wealth that had been accumulated in this country from the first settlement down to 1850 nearly two and one half centuries. And this surplus of $9,000,000,000 placed to our credit in two years, doe's not represent our creation of wealth, which was very much greater, but what we added to our capital after an extrava- gance of expenditure which 250 years ago would have amazed the kings of the earth. The Rt. Hon. James Bryce, who knows America as few Americans know it, on revisiting this country in 1905, wrote: "That which most strikes the visitor to America to-day is its prodigious material develop- ment. . . . The Republic is as wealthy as any two of the greatest European nations." 2 'New York Times, March 5, 1911. *The Outlook, March 25, 1905. NEW PROBLEM OF WEALTH 131 Such statements stagger many, especially our Euro- pean friends, who would like to know how our ap- praisals are made, and whether they contain as much of wind and water as of substantial value. Various specialists, including such men as the Eng- lish statistician, Michael G. Mulhall, and the American statistician, Carroll D. Wright, made estimates of our wealth at the close of the last century, and in every in- stance their estimates were larger than the census appraisal of 1900. It would look as if the census fig- ures, if in error, were too small rather than too large. Mr. L. G. Powers of the Bureau of the Census puts it in this way: If the people of the United States should decide to abandon their present form of govern- ment and to organize as a corporation, and if all the present possessions of the people were turned over to it, the value of the assets of the new company would equal the appraisal of the national wealth made by the Unites States Census. 1 Mr. Carroll D. Wright, speak- ing of the census, says: "By 'wealth' is meant all the tangible property of the country at its true valuation that is, its market value." Our wealth in 1900 is given by the Census as $88,517,000,000; and for 1910 is "estimated" at $130,000,000,000, which may be regarded as conser- vative, in view of the statement of the Treasury Department for 1904, which gave our wealth at that date as $107,104,000,000. On the supposition that the rate of increase from 1900 to 1904 continued until 1910, our wealth would then have been about $135,000,000,000. Our per capita wealth which was $307 in 1850 had become $1,414 in 1910. From which it appears that 1 The American Journal of Sociology, September, 1908, p. 171. 132 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE notwithstanding the rapid growth of our population, our wealth has grown four times as rapidly. 2. But we are especially concerned with our future wealth. Can we reach any reasonable estimate of its increase? It is certain that science has not yet ransacked nature. He who knows most of the mysteries of matter best knows that we have made only a beginning. The more we extend the horizon of the known, the more vast becomes the boundary of the recognized unknown. Here are resources that need no conserving. The new power and the new science which have created the new wealth are only in their infancy. If power is produced without heat, and at a small fraction of its present cost, which some engineers anticipate at an early date, it will give another impetus to material civili- zation and to the creation of wealth second only to that caused by the substitution of mechanical power for vital. Forces are known to exist which have not yet been utilized; and chemistry suggests treasures which can never be exhausted. But to turn from the possible to the actual, it may be objected that for years we have so recklessly exploited our available resources as to have robbed the future, and that we cannot, therefore, expect our wealth to continue increasing during the next half century at the rate of the past fifty years. American enterprise has been short-sighted and selfish, it is true, but I do not think the heritage of future generations has been im- poverished. Even if it has, we must remember that the development of the natural resources of the earth, as a whole, is only begun. There are incalculable resources in Asia, Africa, South America, Australia, the East Indies, Alaska, and Canada, which have not NEW PROBLEM OF WEALTH 133 yet been touched. Europe and the United States are the only countries in the world where any considerable portion of the possible wealth has been made actual wealth. As we saw in the preceding chapter, under modern conditions capital is as necessary for the develop- ment of natural resources as is labour. Europe and America, therefore, will have to furnish most of the capital for opening mines, installing electric plants, constructing railways, building factories, and providing the machinery now employed hi all kinds of industry. Thus the remarkable opportunities enjoyed by capital in opening up the United States during the past half century will be multiplied several fold by being ex- tended to the ends of the earth, and will continue for at least another fifty years. Our argument does not require us to look further than that into the future at present, for during the next half century, or less, will come the great world crisis, the supreme world opportunity, which will be pointed out in a later chapter. In view of the undoubted fact that the cost of power will decrease, that raw materials will increase both in abundance and variety, that waste will diminish, and that science will be applied more and more to industrial methods, it would not seem to be unreasonable to assume that our wealth will grow during the next fifty years at as large a rate of increase as during the past fifty. The percentage of increase has varied widely from decade to decade, as follows. From 1860-'70 the increase was 86 per cent.; from 1870-'80 it was 41.8; from 1880-'90 it was 52.5; from 1890-1900 it was 36.1, and from 1900-'10 it was 46.8. The average rate for 134 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE the five periods was 52.6 per cent. But instead of tak- ing this, let us be conservative and take the lowest rate for the hah* century, viz., 36.1 per cent., which we must remember is only three and six tenths per cent, per annum. Sir Robert Giffen tells us that the wealth of Great Britain increases 3 per cent, yearly. As our wealth is increasing far more rapidly than that of Great Britain it is certainly conservative to assume that it will advance on the average at least 3.6 per cent, annually during the next half century. On the assump- tion then that each decennial census for the next fifty years will show an increase in our wealth of 36.1 per cent, over the preceding, our assets in 1960 will be $607,000,000,000. Our wealth increased something over eightfold during the preceding half century. In view of all the facts pointed out, an increase of con- siderably less than fivefold during the next half cen- tury should not seem incredible. Even if we cut these figures in two hi the middle, they would still equal the present wealth of Great Britain and Ireland, France, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Italy, the Nether- lands, Switzerland, and Spam, all combined. In 1860 the natural resources of the United States were decidedly more developed than are the natural resources of Asia, Africa, South America, Australia, Canada, and Alaska to-day. But since 1860, hi fifty years, we have created astounding wealth out of half a continent, and have made only a good beginning. With four continents and a half to be developed during the next fifty years or so, and with unequalled facilities for furnishing steel rails, bridges, locomotives, mining machinery, electric appliances, and a thousand other requirements of the new civilization, together with abundant and rapidly increasing capital eagerly seek- NEW PROBLEM OF WEALTH 135 ing opportunity for investment, would it not be a little strange, if we failed to add 3%o per cent, to our wealth annually? And yet if we do this, we shall amass vastly more wealth in fifty years than all Europe has saved in fifty centuries! III. THE NEW POWER OF WEALTH 1. Wealth is more powerful than formerly not only because there is more of it but because wealth has many new equivalents. That is, there are many new and rapidly increasing wants which only wealth can satisfy. If a savage has only two wants, wealth has to him only two equivalents. If we have two thousand wants, wealth means a thousand tunes as much to us as to him. It is a characteristic of civilization that it mul- tiplies wants. There are many hundreds of people in the United States whose business it is to create new wants. The government issued nearly 36,000 patents in 1910; and the object of every one of those inventions was to create a new want, or to furnish a more desir- able method of supplying an old one. A few years ago no one wanted an automobile; now many millions of dollars are invested and many thousands of men are employed in supplying this new demand. And there is many a man with whom this new want is so imperious that he is willing to mortgage his home in order to gratify it. Our wants are becoming innumerable and insatiable. A well known American spends $60,000,000 in collecting paintings, antiques, and curios. And in proportion as our wants increase the power of money increases, so that the influence of wealth is growing ever greater, and like the pressure of the atmosphere, is exerted in all directions. 2. Again, the power of wealth is increased by its 136 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE concentration. The proverb that wealth breeds wealth is ancient. In economics as in physics the greater mass has the greater attracting power. There is a strong tendency for the one talent to get into the hands of the man that has ten talents. "For unto him that hath shall be given . . . but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." In this utterance Jesus only stated a law as old as wealth. In recent years, however, there has been a concen- tration of wealth and power which is a new phenomenon. Prof. William G. Sumner regarded it as but a mode of securing more perfect integration, "one feature of a grand step in societal evolution." The significant fact for our purpose is not the con- centration of ownership but of control. It is stated that the stock of the United States Steel Corporation $1,528,000,000 par value is owned by about 70,000 different persons, which we may call a wide dis- tribution of wealth. But the control of this powerful corporation is vested in a board of twenty -four direc- tors, and this board is guided by the executive and finance committees, which are largely dominated by their chairmen, who were no doubt under the influence, if not the control, of the great banker who organized the corporation and in large measure swayed its policy. The reason a body of soldiers is more effective than a mob many times its numbers is because military organ- ization and drill concentrate the entire force in the hand of its commander. In like manner concentrated wealth, because it can be wielded by one man or a small coterie, is more effective than many tunes as much wealth scattered among many owners. Modern facilities of communication and exchange make it pos- sible for the great financier to manipulate forces sepa- NEW PROBLEM OF WEALTH 137 rated by oceans, and to apply the power of vast wealth here or on the other side of the globe in an instant a power such as Caesar and Napoleon never imagined. IV. THE NEW PERILS OF WEALTH The economic advantages of centralizing the control of wealth are many and great. We are concerned in this connection with 1. The peril of concentrated wealth. We have just seen how the property of 70,000 people, concentrated in a single great corporation, may be brought under the control of the representatives of one man. In like manner it is possible to concentrate the control of many great corporations. In 1903 a writer in the World's Work gave a list of corporations the aggregate wealth of which indicated "in approximate figures the extent of the Morgan influence," viz., $6,268,000,000. In 1911 a writer in the Wall Street Journal gave a list of banks, trust companies, and in- surance companies by name, together with railroads and industrials, all controlled by Mr. Morgan, the assets of which aggregated $4,874,197,897. Railroads partly financed by him and other interests brought the grand total up to $9,300,000,000, as the aggregate wealth actually controlled or indirectly influenced by this one man. This is $2,000,000,000 more than the entire wealth of the nation in 1850, when many men still alive were beginning business. If our economic system remains the same, and no legal impediment is imposed, in view of the opportunities afforded by the approaching development of four and a half continents, it is entirely conceivable that fifty years hence a single coterie may 138 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE control as much of the world's wealth as is now owned by all the people of the United States. We have seen that Europe and America will furnish most of the capital for the development of those por- tions of the earth which are still undeveloped. This will confer on private citizens in European countries and the United States an international power which is not possessed by governments. Take an illustration from international investments already large, but destined to be incomparably larger. The Electric Light and Power Company of Rio de Janeiro has harnessed a waterfall in suburban moun- tains and brought the power to the city, where the Com- pany controls not only the electric lighting and the gas plant, but also the telephone and tram systems, and is able to furnish manufacturers with power at half the cost of steam. Here is a fourfold monopoly of alien capital which holds in its grasp the very vitals of a city having 1,000,000 inhabitants the political and commercial capital of a land as large as our own. Suppose the legis- lature to be venal not a violent supposition; poli- ticians have been known to have itching palms what is to prevent an indefinite prolongation of the life of the franchise? The present officials of the company are most cour- teous and high-minded gentlemen; but who shall guar- antee their successors? 1 Such instances, by no means rare, will soon be com- mon everywhere; and in addition to the opportunity for oppression which will be afforded conscienceless greed, a vast amount of wealth will be drained away from 'This company has been recently reorganized with enlarged powers, and a capital stock of $120,000,000. NEW PROBLEM OF WEALTH 139 the countries where it is produced for the further en- richment of Europe and the United States. Just how such economic control may ultimately com- plicate international political relations remains to be seen. It was large English holdings in the Suez Canal which led to the British occupation of Egypt. In view of the fact that the virgin resources of the globe are so largely in the hands of coloured races, while the world's capital is chiefly in the hands of the white race, we hardly need to be reminded of the hor- rors of the Congo to suggest the danger of a wide recrudescence of slavery in disguised forms, of which Sir Charles Dilke gave warning shortly before his death. But the almost measureless power of vast concentra- tions of wealth comes more closely home to us. Such power is essentially inconsistent with the spirit and institutions of democracy. Daniel Webster is quoted as saying, "Liberty cannot long endure in a country where the tendency is to concentrate wealth in the hands of the few." Said President Hadley of Yale in his inaugural address: "The increase of wealth is a per- petual menace to old-fashioned democratic equality." And in an address at the same University, the eminent historian and publicist, Ambassador James Bryce, said: 1 "The power of money is the root of all evil in government and is the real danger to democracy. The damage done by it is more than that done by apathy and indifference." The history of liberty is the history of the distribu- tion of power. Only as political power has been wrested from the few and divided among the many have men become free. We recognize the people as *"Self Interest as a Hindrance to Good Citizenship," October 16, 1908. 140 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE the source of political power. When they delegate that power to their representatives it returns to them by limitation after one, two, or four years. Moreover, it is carefully defined by constitutional restrictions. Let us suppose now that political power is grasped by the strongest hands, regardless of fitness or of the will of the people. Let us suppose that the amount of power which can be thus gained has no constitutional or other limits, that it is not automatically terminated after a few years, but, after having been exercised through life, it is conferred on natural heirs, to be in- definitely augmented and transmitted by them. How long should we be a free people? How long would it be before our democracy lapsed into feudalism and absolutism, "tempered by the fear of assassination?" Our supposition simply carries us back to a time prior to the birth of civil liberty. Now the power of concentrated wealth is quite as real as political power; it is much more subtle and is further reaching; moreover it is capable of growing to unlimited proportions. Why should we fear the con- centration of the one power and not that of the other? The power of centralized wealth has various ways of controlling legislation. It can subsidize the venal press, thus powerfully influencing public opinion. By regulating the flow of credit it can precipitate financial ruin upon many, at its pleasure. By the ubiquity of its power it can exploit certain raw materials throughout the world, thus limiting the activities of various industries By controlling the wages of hundreds of thousands of workmen it can lay its hand on the lives of millions of the people. NEW PROBLEM OF WEALTH 141 By cornering the necessaries of life it can raise the death rate. By increasing the cost of living it can raise the age of marriage and lower the birth rate, thus penetrating to the most personal and intimate relations of life. By closing the door of opportunity to enterprise, and by repressing initiative it can do much to elimi- nate individuality and impoverish character. In a word, the unchecked concentration of wealth is capable of destroying popular liberties and of reducing us to a slavery as real as any from which humanity has emancipated itself. And if we become enslaved, it will make little difference how we catalogue the kind of power which oppresses us. That concentrated wealth has already become peril- ous is obvious when we gain any real appreciation of the enormous figures given above. We were told that one man controlled $4,874,000,000. Let us translate this statement into more comprehensive terms. The rev- enues which meet the immense expenditures of a great government must be vast. Let us now add to the total annual revenues of the United States, ordinary and ex- traordinary, those of Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Austria-Hungary, and all these combined fall short by $187,000,000 of the vast wealth which we are told was "actually controlled" by one man, while nearly as much more was "indirectly influenced" by him. Is there anything undemocratic hi this? Doubtless there is more than one private citizen in the United States who holds in his hand decidedly more power than the King of Great Britain and Ireland and the Emperor of India. Is there anything undemocratic in this? Several years ago one of the most distinguished mem- 142 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE bers of the Supreme Court, the late Justice Harlan, said to me: "I regard vast and increasing corporate wealth as the supreme peril of the United States." 2. Turn now to the peril of luxury which has followed wealth like a blighting shadow. Few who command the means of gratifying every desire are strong enough to live the simple life. In- clination to self-indulgence, always a strong current, is a stream which, unless dammed by a powerful will, always flows down to lower levels. Luxury renders effeminate, then sensuous, then sensual; and national sensuality means national decay. Men are never pam- pered into greatness. Herodotus wrote: "It is a law of nature that faint-hearted men should be the fruit of luxurious countries, for we never find that the same soil produces deh'cacies and heroes." Climates where the conditions of life are too easy have never grown great civilizations. It is those conditions of life which both compel and reward struggle that produce national greatness. In the world's past, luxury was a peril of the few; it is now a peril of large and rapidly increasing numbers. There are luxuries within easy reach of the average man to-day, which were impossible to the king a few genera- tions ago. Not only does wealth tend to breed luxury, but quickly acquired wealth is almost invariably prodigal of expenditure. When wealth has descended through many generations there have usually come with it both a heredity and a training which conserve it. It is the "new rich" who set the most extravagant and criminal standards of living. A large manufacturer of silverware and jewellery and dealer in diamonds, who controls that business in Canada, said to me: "When the 'nesv NEW PROBLEM OF WEALTH 143 rich' disappear we shall go out of business." The industrial revolution, therefore, which has quickened the creation of wealth, say a hundredfold, and which is rapidly spreading over the world, is enormously in- creasing the peril of luxury. Obviously this peril is greater here in the United States than elsewhere, because wealth is greater and increasing more rapidly here than anywhere else. In an ode "To The Invincible Republic" William Watson says: And as thou art vast, So are the perils vast, that evermore In thine own house are bred; nor least of these That fair and fell Delilah, Luxury, That shears the hero's strength away, and brings Palsy on nations. Flee her loveliness, For in the end her kisses are a sword. The great and sudden influx of gold and silver from Mexico and Peru stimulated the luxury and decay which undermined Spanish greatness in the sixteenth century, and conquered the most powerful empire in the world, to arms invincible. The wealth which is now being poured into the lap of civilization is incom- parably greater than Aztec or Inca ever knew, or Spanish avarice ever dreamed, and the suddenness of its acquisition places a vast and unprecedented strain on the moral strength of the nations. Says Prince Kropotkin: "For the first time in the history of civilization, mankind has reached a point where the means of satisfying its needs are in excess of the needs themselves." Society in general has hereto- fore faced the probability of an annual deficit; in the future it will face an annual surplus a new situation in the world's history, creating a widely different en- 144 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE vironment with profoundly different influences on character. Human nature is lazy and needs the lash of necessity to bring it up to the mark. It was Emerson, I think, who said: "Every man is as lazy as he dares to be;" and some of us are very courageous. Society will grow more " courageous"~as the surplus grows. It was when his barns were full to bursting that the rich fool said: "Soul take thine ease." Strong characters are bred in the presence of great necessities behind and great obstacles before. It was the alternative of struggle or death which forced life to rise from lower to higher forms. Struggle, as we have seen, is no less a necessity of the higher than of the lower life; and it is only after the higher motives have grown strong and commanding that it is safe to be released from the struggle for material good. One of the greatest perils of the near future is that increasing multitudes will be released by wealth from the necessity of struggling for themselves without ever feeling the noble compulsion to struggle for others. Under such conditions what is to prevent the moral muscles from becoming flabby? 3. A more general peril than that of luxury is the spirit of commercialism, which both inspires the strug- gle for wealth and is stimulated by it. From the beginning the vast majority of the race have been occupied in gaining a livelihood. Riches have been too far beyond the reach of the many to attract. Even when Europe was inflamed by the great discovery of Columbus to engage in maritime adventure for gold, the common people had no expectation of wealth; the El Dorado sought was too remote. But in America the new civilization, with its wonderful dis- coveries, its swift changes, its expanding cities, its appreciating values, its opportunities for fortunate in- NEW PROBLEM OF WEALTH 145 vestment, has brought great possibilities to every man's door. Not only do the conditions of life make riches a greater prize here than elsewhere, but they put that prize within the reach of vastly greater numbers, so that it appeals to the popular imagination. I suppose it is safe to say that at some time in their lives the great majority of Americans have hoped to become rich. Certainly there are millions among us, as nowhere else, who are struggling not simply for a livelihood but for wealth, which is a very different thing, is inspired by a very different motive and has very different results. The former has been one of the most important factors in the elevation and education of humanity; but the latter intensifies materialism, strengthens covetousness and often produces money madness. "They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition." 1 ; 4. Another peril is popular discontent, which is aggravated by each of the perils which have been dis- cussed, and which cannot continue growing indef- initely without culminating in social revolution. While it is true that more men gain wealth now than ever before, those who win the prizes, as in a lottery drawing, must needs be comparatively few; so that the great majority of those who hope and strive for it are disappointed. In the old industry a man might take pride in his craft and really enjoy his handiwork, but it is difficult to be enthusiastic over the mechanical processes of a machine, or at the prospect of standing all of one's life behind a counter or over a ledger. When, therefore, 'Tim. VI : 9. For a further discussion of the subject see the writer's "Our Country," pp. 166-171. 146 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE a young man gives up all hope of becoming rich, he naturally grows discontented with the industrial and social system which condemns him for life to the tread- mill. Moreover the luxury which looks down on him from the palace, and mocks him from the show window, and flashes past him in the automobile, excites his envy and increases his discontent. What do men of this large class think when they read of paying $10,000 for a cradle, $38,000 for a washstand, and $65,000 for a dressing table, $1,000 for a hat pin, and $20,000 for a hat a man's hat, too! $50,000 for a piano, $75,000 for opera glasses, $280,000 for a string of pearls, and $600,000 for a diamond necklace. A year or two ago the papers announced the com- pletion of the $7,000,000 mansion of a former senator. This palace has 121 rooms for one small family. Mrs. Booth found seven families huddled in one small room in this same city of New York. In the same paper hi which were described the $300,000 pipe organ, the $500,000 worth of rugs, and the $2,000,000 worth of pictures in this $7,000,000 palace I read on another page: "Peking, China, Dec. 19. Roads in the Yangtse-Kiang famine districts are dotted with the dead and the dying from hunger, and the cold season is intensifying the distress. It is estimated that more than a million children have been sold by their parents to procure food." Look on this picture, and then look on that. Is there a suggestion of anything wrong, any fuel for feeding the flame of popular discontent, in such antithetic facts? At an elaborate dinner in New York each cigarette was rolled, not in white paper, but in a one-hundred dollar bill. And when this ingenious method of destroy- NEW PROBLEM OF WEALTH 147 ing money was discovered by the guests it was greeted with loud applause. Such people in their "social racing" or competitive display have sunk one stage lower than devoting them- selves to pleasure regardless of expense; as Colonel Waring said: "They devote themselves to expense without regard to pleasure." I should like to see this man who had "money to burn," without a metaphor, and who burned it, set to work on a farm or in a coal mine until with honest toil and sweat he had earned as many hundred dollars as he thus destroyed with vulgar ostentation. But a severer punishment would be a just appreciation of his own criminal folly, his wanton contempt of human misery. An honest look at himself, with a vision of a background filled with hollow cheeks and big, hungry eyes, would bring a self-loathing more terrible far than the nakedness and hunger and frost which he had flouted. , What is the natural effect on a man, whose stomach and pocket are alike empty, when he reads of a dinner costing $250 a plate? At a banquet given in honor of a dog, the host in the midst of the dinner formally decorated the dog with a diamond collar worth $15,000. That dog collar would have given several promising young men or women a liberal education. We read of silver bathtubs and perfumed baths for pets; of a pink Persian kitten's "wearing a gold crown on its head and a gold order around it neck." Its owner, a prominent New York society woman, boasts that she was the first to give a cat a pair of fine diamond earrings; "bangles and necklaces had become so very hackneyed." I may add parenthetically that if 148 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE diamond earrings or any other kind must be worn, they look rather less barbarous in the ears of a cat than in the ears of a human being. We read also of a two- story house for twenty -six cats, each having its own bed and bedstead, which in cold weather are warmed with hot-water bottles. There are children in this city who sleep four or five in a bed, and there are others in every great city every winter night who do not look for hot-water bottles, because they have no beds to warm. It is stated that a fashionable dog to-day must have not only overcoat, shoes, and umbrella, but at least a half dozen pocket handkerchiefs, "embroidered with its own initial or with its owner's name or crest." One of these is carried in a little pocket in the side of the elaborately braided and embroidered blanket, "to be used whenever the 'poor darling' has a cold or is troubled with watery eyes." We read of a dog that has a complete gold service on which his carefully cooked food is served to him. In this new day and new world of measureless opportunity to transmute gold into service, such a shameless and criminal use of wealth is far worse than Nero's shoeing his mules with gold. We also read of a $50,000 French poodle with a private nurse, a private maid, and a private footman. This dog usually rises at 8 A. M., is combed and dressed, takes some cream, and breakfasts at ten. What a mistake many children made when they were born human beings instead of kittens or puppies ! I cannot think there are many who are guilty of such beastly wallowing in wealth; and the few might be fit- tingly ignored but for the measureless mischief which they do. These disgusting stories are very likely exag- NEW PROBLEM OF WEALTH 149 gerated; but if so, their inaccuracy does not blunt my point, which is the effect produced by such statements on the popular mind and especially on workingmen. Every one of the above stories has been given wide publicity. Workingmen generally believe that labour is the sole originator of wealth, and that if justice were done, the wealth of the nation would be divided among those who have produced it. How are such men affected by stories of luxury which is obviously crimi- nal, especially when they are out of work and their families are hungry? What do they think when they hear the much quoted remark of the late Pierre Loril- lard, viz.: "A man with $100,000 a year is in the un- happy position where he can see what a good time he could have if only he had the money." And added that easy circumstances meant "a thousand dollars a day and expenses." This may have been but a "flam- boyant jest," but the scale of living of a certain class of multi-millionaires suggests that it may have been a jest spoken in earnest. At any rate it is easy for those, to take it seriously who desire to do so. Of course there are multi-millionaires, and many of them, who do not belong to this criminal class and who would denounce such wicked folly as strongly as any one, but an embittered man who is nursing his dis- content does not make nice distinctions. Again, popular discontent is aggravated by the con- centration of wealth. Several years ago there appeared a statement in the press that by reason of a drop in certain stocks Mr. Rockefeller, for a time, lost a million dollars a minute. If this was true, by a reversal of conditions he might have gamed a million dollars a minute quite as easily. Later the public read that one of the large owners 150 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE of the Singer Sewing Machine property went to bed worth many millions and woke up the next morning worth $29,000,000 more. The truth of these statements does not concern my argument. They may or may not have been gross exag- gerations. The significant point is that such state- ments are published and that the existing concentration of wealth makes them credible. What is their effect on popular discontent? If the twelve apostles had remained workingmen, and had been condemned to live and work until they had earned $29,000,000, when would then* indeter- minate sentence expire? Utterly disregarding the market wage, we will allow them each $3/ a day, which is much more than the average toiler gets in the United States, to say nothing of other countries and other ages. Supposing they never get a day off not even Sunday, at this writing they would be millions of dollars behind, and would have to work on until the year 2240 before their aggregate earnings would amount to $29,000,000. To earn that amount in one year, at the same wage, would require an army of 26,000 men. To create that amount of wealth in one night, had that been necessary, 9,666,000 workmen would have had to toil while our stockholder slept, and then have handed over their wages in the morning. "Twenty-nine millions in a night!" or "A million dollars a minute!" carries tons of social dynamite. Doubtless many can prove (to then* own satis- faction) that it is utterly unreasonable for the working- man to be discontented; but such proof adds nothing to his income and subtracts nothing from his wants. When Sir Robert Giffen shows that workingmen are receiving larger wages than their grandfathers did, NEW PROBLEM OF WEALTH 151 many infer that poverty is decreasing, and that dis- content ought to decrease. But poverty, like wealth, is relative. It depends on the relation which supply sustains to want. If a naked savage has only one want, he is rich as often as he gluts his appetite. Diog- enes in his tub was so opulent that Alexander could not enrich him except by stepping out of his sunshine; and the miser is always poor no matter how many his millions. A man may have five times as many things as his grandfather had, but if he wants ten times as many things as his grandfather wanted, he is only one half as well off, and is probably twice as discontented. There are certain facts bearing on popular discontent which are obvious enough to all but the significance of which seems largely to have escaped notice. There are many people now living in a fool's paradise who having "much goods laid up for many years" are eating, drinking, and making merry, quite heedless of the mutterings which threaten in due time to grow articulate with a summons to judgment. President J. G. Schurman of Cornell University, addressing the National Corn Exposition at Omaha, said: "Colossal fortunes are on trial in this country. Whether and how far it is worth while to encourage and protect them is a question for the future," adding that the voters of the country would answer that question. And the popular vote will decide that question in accordance with the popular conception of right and justice. There are others who, like Judge Gary, quoted in the preceding chapter, are much more impressed by the peril than by the injustice of existing conditions. It is well, however, to be cool-headed and open-eyed; well neither to scare others nor to fool ourselves, but to recognize facts precisely as they are, give to them a 152 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE sober-minded interpretation, and then follow the dic- tates of wisdom. The first fact to which I would call attention in con- nection with this world-wide feeling of unrest is the existence of an abundance for all, wherever organized industry has gone. From the beginning there have been but two steps to the economic millennium, namely, adequate production and adequate distribution. As we have seen, the sub- stitution of mechanical power for vital power, almost within the memory of living men, has given to the world a new power of production which is actually in excess of its power of consumption. In case of the great staples caution must be exercised lest the market be glutted and deranged by then* unrestricted increase. This enormous supply has enormously stimulated demand, with the result that in all so-called industrial countries the standard of living has wonderfully risen during the last half century. Abraham Lincoln, when he left the practice of law to become President, had earned a modest home and had accumulated $8,000. He hoped some time to increase it to $20,000, which he said was "as much as any man ought to want." If I may be permitted to draw an illustration from my own experience, when I was a boy, fifty years ago, many a time did I tramp thirty miles for ten cents. Since then there has been a vast expansion of the horizon of the world in which we live, and of that in which we want to live; and the higher our standard of living rises the wider grows the horizon of desire that is, the more we have the more we want. There has been an unprecedented increase of wealth and an unprecedented increase of wants, but not a cor- responding distribution of the new wealth to meet the NEW PROBLEM OF WEALTH 153 new wants; hence popular discontent. Or, in other words, this world- wide unrest is due to the fact that the first of the two great economic steps has been taken and the second has not. There are those who think that the poor are much better off than formerly. But I imagine that no one thinks so who is personally acquainted with the slums of our great cities, or who has made a scientific study of the subject. Let us call to the witness stand a man who had been trained all his lif e to see things as they are, in whom the scientific habit of mind had been con- firmed, who had lived as a medical officer in the East of London, and spoke out of his own ultimate knowl- edge, viz., Professor Huxley. Referring to the in- creasing mass of the wretched in great cities, he says: "It is a condition in which food, warmth, and clothing, which are necessary for the mere maintenance of the functions of the body in their normal state, cannot be obtained; in which men, women, and children are forced to crowd into dens where decency is abolished, and the most ordinary conditions of healthful existence are impossible of attainment; in which the pleasures within reach are reduced to brutality and drunken- ness; in which the pains accumulate at compound interest in the shape of starvation, disease, stunted development, and moral degradation; in which the prospect of even steady and honest industry is a life of unsuccessful battling with hunger, rounded by a pauper's grave. . . . When the organization of society, instead of mitigating this tendency, tends to continue and intensify it, when a given social order plainly makes for evil and not for good, men naturally enough begin to think it high time to try a fresh ex- periment. I take it to be a mere plain truth that 154 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE throughout industrial Europe there is not a single large manufacturing city which is free from a large mass of people whose condition is exactly that described, and from a still greater mass who, living just on the edge of the social swamp, are liable to be precipitated into it." 1 Let us remember that this is not the "incendiary speech" of a professional agitator, but the deliberate finding of a dispassionate man of science; and volumes more of like testimony might be cited. There are many poor to-day who are as destitute as the poor of two or three generations ago, because they have simply nothing; and as the rich are vastly richer than ever before, it follows that the extremes of so- ciety are far more widely separated now than ever before. The great increase in production has, there- fore, aggravated popular discontent. If there is a famine at sea, men are likely to accept short rations with heroism because necessity is upon them. If, however, it is discovered that there is an abundance for all, and that the common seamen are starving because the officers are secretly living in lux- ury, look out for mutiny ! The agitation to which many vainly object is an effort to induce society to take the second great eco- nomic step. The remedies which are urged for social ills, whether socialism, or trades unionism, or single taxism, or syndicalism, are all more or less intelligent attempts to solve the problem of distribution. The second fact to which I ask attention in connec- tion with this widespread and deepening discontent is the modern spirit of democracy. When the difference in their possessions was only one of many differences between the rich and the poor, Nineteenth Century, February, 1888. NEW PROBLEM OF WEALTH 155 when the rich had many wants of which the poor knew nothing, when the difference in education and culture fixed a great gulf between the two classes, when title and political power came by birth, it seemed to both classes that they were made of different kinds of clay. They were different beings, differently endowed; and the wealth of the one class was as fitting as the poverty of the other. The ignorant poor, therefore, no more envied the rich then* riches than they envied the birds their wings, or kings their sceptres. The possession of wealth by the few was, like the divine right of kings, a part of the natural order of things, an expression of the will of heaven. Now all this is changed by the spirit of democracy, which spirit is asserting itself not only hi Western Europe but in the very seats of historic absolutism Russia, Turkey, Persia, and China. In our own country we are nurtured on the doctrine that "all men are born free and equal," which of course does not mean that men are equal in natural endow- ments any more than in stature, but that men are equal before the law, and ought to have equal opportunities; so that the average man, instead of explaining why he wants as much as others, would like an explanation why others have more than he. This is a new and most significant attitude in the history of the world. A third fact which must be reckoned with in connec- tion with popular discontent is the general diffusion of knowledge. Not only has our population as a whole the benefit of our public-school training, but unprecedented numbers are gaining a liberal education. The last census shows that in our universities, colleges, professional, normal, art, and music schools there are 395,000 students; and 156 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE every three or four years they will be replaced by in- creasing numbers. These men and women are generally capable of appreciating all that is noblest in civilization, and of "coveting earnestly the best gifts" both for themselves and for their fellow men. The great majority of them do not belong to the wealthy class, and they are many times more numerous than the very rich. These lib- erally educated men and women know something of history and its lessons, of the danger of concentrated power and of luxury; they have learned something of existing social conditions and their menace to the wel- fare of the race. Probably most of them have studied political economy, and know something of the sources, the meaning, and the responsibilities of wealth. Their training has made them capable not only of a deep dis- content but of an intelligent discontent, which is far more dangerous to the existing order of things. Moreover, knowledge has given to this class power. In pulpit and press they are to be the educators of public opinion; and in school and college they are to mould the ideas of coming generations. The great thinkers and writers, the great investigators and revealers of truth, who shape religious, ethical, polit- ical, social, and economic doctrines are not as a rule possessers of wealth. Evidently the ancient monopoly of knowledge by the few and the rich has been destroyed, and its inde- structible power has passed forever to the people. There is one more significant fact which must be remembered in connection with popular discontent, namely, that political power has passed from the few to the many. It is true that the political bosses and their hench- NEW PROBLEM OF WEALTH 157 men have for years tricked the people and filched their power, but as Lincoln said: "You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Demos has been asleep, but he has become restless in his slumbers and is arousing himself; and when the giant is fully awake he will soon be fully free. Until modern times political power, the power of knowledge, and the power of wealth have all belonged to one small class; and this threefold cord enabled the few to bind the many in an almost unbroken servitude. Such concentration of power created a condition of stable equilibrium. To-day the power of wealth is hi the hands of the few, while political power and that which comes from education are both popularized. This, I submit, creates a condition of unstable equilib- rium. We are building a leaning tower of Pisa with an indefinite number of courses to be added. If we con- tinue building on existing lines, the time will certainly come when we shall pass the centre of gravity and pre- cipitate a catastrophe. There cannot possibly be an in- creasing concentration of staggering wealth, increasing popular wants, increasing popular discontent, and in- creasing popular consciousness of power without reach- ing a crisis. As President Schurman said in the address already referred to: "The majority must be reasonably satis- fied with our institutions, or our institutions will be modified to meet then* views and sentiments." The increasing dissatisfaction with the existing social system is partially recorded in the rapidly growing socialist vote. 158 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE SOCIALIST VOTE IN UNITED STATES In 1888 2,068 1892 21,175 1896 36,503 1900 127,553 1904 408,230 1908 420,890 1912 898,119 There are many others who are thoroughly dissatis- fied with the existing system who, like myself, do not believe that socialism is the way out. In my judgment the true solution of the problem of wealth (which will be discussed in a later chapter) must be found and generally accepted, or one of two things must follow either the wealth of the nation will be made the wealth of the people by a radical change in the fundamental laws of the land, or the rich will be despoiled by violence that is, I believe that the penalty of failure will be socialism or anarchy. If it should prove to be the latter, it may be another Reign of Terror under the forms of law, or the blind fury of unorganized mobs like those of 1877, immensely magnified, when after long industrial depression we had bloody riots and incendiary fires which destroyed not less than a hundred million dollars worth of property, and ten States reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific called on the President of the United States for troops to help restore order, or it may be the organized violence of syndicalism which scoffs at the state and all of the institutions of organized society. The Hon. E. J. Phelps, professor of law at Yale University, and Minister to Great Britain under Presi- dent Cleveland, wrote in a letter to William E. Dodge (I quote from memory) : " I hope for the ultimate tri- umph of the Republic, but not until after a period of anarchy, followed by the man on horseback." CHAPTER VII THE NEW RACE PROBLEM To AMERICANS the subject of this chapter suggests the problem of the Negro or that of the immigrant, or both. But one who would make any considerable prog- ress toward grasping the real significance, or the true solution, of this problem must, like John Wesley, " take the world for his parish." Race antipathy, from which arises the race problem, though primitive and savage in origin has not been out- grown by civilization, nor is it always overcome by the broaden ing influences of culture. Plato congratulated the Athenians because they beyond all other Greeks, had shown in their relations to Persia "a pure and heartfelt hatred of the foreign nature." I. The race problem, instead of disappearing with the increasing enlightenment of the world, has become distinctly more complicated in recent times. For a thousand years Asiatics had made conquests on European soil. For two centuries they had held Russia in as complete subjection as Britons now hold India. But since the Turks recoiled from the walls of Vienna hi 1687 the East has been powerless before the armies of the West. For two hundred years and more she has been despoiled by European nations. The story is told by Matthew Arnold in four lines : "The East bowed low before the blast, In patient deep disdain; She let the legions thunder past, Then plunged in thought again." 159 160 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE Europe was called by Divine Providence to rule Asia, of course. This was an obvious part of "the white man's burden." The Great Powers were com- placently preparing to divide China among themselves when suddenly a little Asiatic David brought to his knees a mighty European Goliath, and yellow men in China, and brown men in India, and black men in Africa were thrilled by Japan's success over Russia, for it was the first time in two hundred years that the arms of Asiatics had triumphed over those of Europeans. It was the victory of every dark race in the world, for the white man had bullied them all. The spell of ages was broken; and men who had cringed before abuse were aroused to self-assertion by a new hope begotten of victory. There was a deepening of race consciousness which uttered itself in the cry: "China for the Chinese!" and "India for the Hindus!" Even the long-suffering black man caught the contagion and answered the call of Asia with "Africa for the Africans!" But quite apart from the Russo-Japanese war and its issue, the conditions of the new civilization, which are forcing the nations into closer relations, were sure to create increasing friction and to compel a new study of this old problem. There are people, not a few, who get on admirably so long as they live on opposite sides of the town, but who quarrel if they try to live under the same roof. The world is becoming one house. Many a husband and wife who have been divorced might have remained excellent friends if they had never married; but on coming into the closest physical re- lations they discovered that there was no corresponding oneness of spiritual life; and it was found that physical NEW RACE PROBLEM 161 propinquity, without a like closeness of sympathy, of tastes, of ideas and purposes, results in friction and repulsion. Now the conditions of modern travel and traffic are bringing the nations into close physical contact while in other respects they are far apart. The world is being made one commercially more rapidly than it is being made one spiritually; hence increasing friction and race antagonism. Again, these same conditions of modern civilization make it possible to transport cheap labour from one country to another where it can command a much higher wage. The coloured races all have a much lower standard of living than the white, which enables them to underbid the lower grades of white labour, and to grow rich on wages which would starve a white man. Thus interracial competition La the labour market adds new fuel to the ancient flame of race antipathy. The same remark is applicable, of course, to different white peoples who have different standards of living. Interracial competition in manufactures also is likely further to embitter race feeling. Why should not Asia adopt Western industrial methods just as Japan adopted Western military methods, and with a like purpose? Indeed this is already being done. Factories, equipped with the best machinery run by steam and electricity, and directed by native experts trained in Europe and America, are rapidly multiply- ing not only in Japan but also in China and India, where plenty of cheap labour and raw material are available. Says a writer in the Indian Review (Madras) : "In one respect, the Orient really is menacing the West, and so earnest and open-minded is Asia that no pretence or apology whatever is made about it, nor is 162 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE any effort put forth to hide it from the occidental. The Easterner has thrown down the industrial gaunt- let, and from now on Asia is destined to witness a progressively intense trade warfare, the occidental scrambling to retain his hold on the markets of the East and the oriental endeavouring to beat him in a battle in which heretofore he has been an easy victor." The time might easily come when manufacturers in the United States would urge the necessity of cheap Asiatic labour on this side of the Pacific to compete successfully with cheap Asiatic labour on the other side. II. It can be shown, moreover, that without doubt there will be a further complication of the race prob- lem in the not remote future. There is in China an appalling death rate, and a still higher birth rate, the increase in population according to Dr. Timothy Richards 1 being about 4,000,000 a year. The introduction of Western medicine, hygiene, and sanitation will greatly reduce the death rate. Scientific sanitation alone is likely to cut the death rate in two in the middle, for China is in the condition of mediaeval Europe touching the need of these reforms. In addition to bringing the ravages of pestilence under control, international commerce and railway transpor- tation will make impossible the terrible famines in which so many millions have perished in the past. On the other hand, the rising standard of living and the incoming of machinery, with its tax on the ner- vous system, will reduce the birth rate; but it must be observed that the causes modifying the birth rate will 'Doctor Richards is an influential missionary who has been made a mandarin of high rank, and has for years been an official adviser of the Imperial Government. NEW RACE PROBLEM 163 operate only slowly with the evolution of the new civil- ization, while those which are destined to reduce the death rate will be largely under the control of govern- ment and will operate widely and rapidly on official action. This warrants the expectation that for a period of years the rate of increase in the population will be materially accelerated with a growing tendency to emigration. Moreover, this tendency to emigrate will be further stimulated by the introduction of machinery and other provisions of modern civilization which for the time being will throw great numbers out of employment. For instance, the capital city of one of the provinces, a few years ago, introduced public water works. When they were opened the entire force of water-car- riers suddenly found themselves without a job. Of course it is well known that in the long run much machinery gives more work than it takes away, but the readjustment, which is necessarily slow, is always attended in a populous country with much suffering. Still further, Confucianism lays upon every adherent the duty of making yearly offerings at the graves of his ancestors, which forbids distant migrations. We are told that nearly all of the Chinese outside of China are from Canton. The great bulk of China's 400,000,000 is as yet a fixed population. But while this vast reservoir of humanity is rapidly rising, the dam which restrains it is being weakened. Both the religion and the science of the West are undermining the super- stitions of the Chinese, the railways are accustoming them to travel, and as this enormous population becomes increasingly mobile, a tremendous outward pressure will apparently make a vast emigration inevitable. 164 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE As cultural civilization rises the birth rate falls. With the increasing demands made on the nervous system, less vitality goes to the setting up of new lives. Under the operation of this law the world will, no doubt, ultimately reach a balance between birth rate and death rate. But it will be many generations before this bal- ance is attained in China where the most sacred duty of life is to multiply offspring. We may, therefore, expect that for many yars to come, and especially until China has readjusted herself to the new civilization, there will be a great Chinese emigration. There is a "Yellow Sea" of humanity, vast, pent, and pressing, capable of sending across the Pacific a human tidal wave mighty enough to submerge our continent and to overwhelm our civilization. In this connection let me again remind the reader that the comparatively unoccupied lands of the world, Alaska, Canada, the western half of the United States, South America, New Zealand, Australia, Siberia, and South Africa, are all hi the possession of the white race, and that all of these countries except the last named look out on the Pacific. As a crutch to comprehension, that we may gam some idea of China's swarming millions, let us suppose that her population continues to gain for a century at the present rate, without the expected acceleration. Let us suppose further that these Pacific lands, now in the possession of white men, are entirely depopulated, and that the inhabitants of China in the year 2,000 are evenly distributed throughout their own country and these other lands rimming the Pacific. The United States would then have a population of 115,500,000, all Chinese (present population 91,272,000), the Dominion of Canada would have hi round numbers 125,000,000 NEW RACE PROBLEM 165 Chinese (present population 5,371,000), Siberia would have 158,000,000 Chinese (present population 7,878,000) South America would have 250,000,000 Chinese (pres- ent population 40,000,000), New Zealand would have 3,400,000 Chinese (present population 1,048,000), and Australia would'have 98,000,000 Chinese (present popu- lation 2,974,000). But, says the thoughtful reader, great and dense populations grow at a falling, not at a constant, rate of increase. That is true. Good reasons, however, have been given for expecting a rising rate of increase in the growth of Chinese population for some generations to come. But let us set those considerations aside and be very conservative. We will suppose that the aver- age rate of increase for this century falls one half. The present rate of increase, according to Doctor Richards, is 1 per cent, annually, which is only about one half our own. If the annual increase should average for the century only one half of 1 per cent. about one quarter of our own China could still preserve her present density of population and send out 2,000,000 emigrants every year, or a surplus of 200,000,000 during the century. That number would be more than sufficient to double the present population of each of the Pacific lands occupied by white men. That is, if 200,000,000 Chinese were distributed throughout Canada, the United States, South America, New Zea- land, Australia, and Siberia, it would be sufficient to place a Chinese alongside of every human being now living in these countries, and would still leave more than 50,000,000 undisposed of. What has been said of China is more or less appli- cable to all Asia. As was shown in a preceding chapter the industrial revolution is to encircle the earth. 166 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE Orientals are determined by the establishment of manu- factures to supply their own markets and to dispute with occidentals the markets of the world. This will pulverize what Professor Bagehot called the "cake of custom." It will shatter fossilized Astatic society. Modern industry remade Europe and the United States during the nineteenth century. Notwithstand- ing they were the most progressive countries in the world, the introduction of machinery caused a pro- found revolution in both. Imagine then, if you can, the changes which the new industry will compel among people who have not moved for thousands of years. The new Japan affords an example. As one of her sons said: "Nothing remains the same except the natural scenery." This turning and overturning in Asia, which will include the emptying of many tens of thousands of villages into the cities, will uproot the people and, so to speak, mobilize nations. It will be long before orientals, with their child marriages, learn to restrict the birth rate; and with the same economic causes at work which, during the past century, created and sustained European emigration, there must be during this century a tremendous outward pressure in all Asia, already illustrated in Japan. The destination of this vast migration would nat- urally be the comparatively unoccupied lands of the white race. It is evident, therefore, that with the white and coloured peoples facing each other across the Pacific, the world must reckon with a race problem of the first magnitude. Of course, self-defence is the first law of nature, but the policy of the United States touching the race prob- lem should be dictated by something more than self- interest. The welfare of humanity, including orientals NEW RACE PROBLEM 167 themselves, is concerned. As the race problem is a world problem, so there ought to be a race policy which is a world policy, adapted to every race and nation, and adopted by all. Before attempting any discussion of such a policy, which will be done hi a later chapter, let us determine, if we can : III. Precisely what the race problem is. Anthro- pologists have attempted to divide mankind into races according to certain distinctive peculiarities such as colour, nose, teeth, and skull; but with all then* investi- gations they have arrived only at a "reasoned igno- rance." There is no scientific basis for such division, but for convenience the word race will be used as in the following table, which is based on estimates by John Bartholomew, F. R. G. S., revised to 1909. RACE LOCATION NUMBER Indo-Germanic or Aryan Europe, Persia, etc. 625,000,000 (white) Mongolian or Turanian Greater part of Asia 630,000,000 (yellow and brown) Semitic or Hamitic North Africa, 65,000,000 (white) Arabia Negro and Bantu Central Africa 150,000,000 (black) Hottentot and Bushman South Africa 150,000 (black) Malay and Polynesian Australasia and 35,000,000 (brown) Polynesia American Indian North and South 15,000,000 (red) America Total 1,520,150,000 For 3,000 years the most enterprising and aggres- sive peoples of the great Aryan race, under many dif- 168 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE ferent names and at different times, crossed from con- tinental Europe to Great Britain. There these diverse but related white stocks slowly blended into the Eng- lishman. When the coloured races were all on the distant and dim horizon of his thought and the race problem as we now see it had not yet risen above that horizon, it was quite natural that to the Englishman (himself an ex- ceedingly fine blend) the final solution of racial dif- ferences should be the reduction of all mankind to a single racial type. This idea was naturally brought to America, and until recently was rather taken for granted, especially at the North: and dissent from this view was supposed to indicate more or less race preju- dice. But my study of the subject has led me to a very different conclusion; and, if I may say so, instead of any feeling of repulsion toward coloured races, I am con- sciously attracted to them when I see Chinese, Japanese, Hindus, or Negroes, due doubtless to my early training. In my judgment, the reduction of all the races to a single type would not be possible, even if it were de- sirable; and again, it would not be desirable, even if it were possible. 1. There are half a dozen obstacles to universal amalgamation which would be decisive even if race prejudice were wholly overcome. Difference of civilization is an obstacle, including as it does conflicting ideas and ideals of life, strange cus- toms, habits, foods, and a thousand other things so necessary to the comfort of the native and so fatal to the comfort of the foreigner. Difference of language is another obstacle. Com- mon speech is necessary to common sympathy, com- mon understanding, and common action. NEW RACE PROBLEM 169 Difference of religion is a greater obstacle than either of the preceding. It is his religion which has kept the Jew a Jew for thousands of years. He has made him- self at home among all peoples; he has adjusted him- self to all civilizations; he has learned to speak all languages; he has become a patriot in every nation, but as long as he has kept his faith it has kept him, separate and peculiar. When he has lost his faith or changed it, he has been absorbed. The above-named obstacles may be overcome and have been, but the following are permanent and in- superable. Differences of climate make impossible the universal distribution of the several races without which universal amalgamation could not take place. In a large part of Africa, the Negro by many centuries of adjustment has become immune to climatic in- fluences which are usually fatal to white men. The same is true of tropical peoples in general. The idea has been abandoned that the tropics can be permanently colonized by the white race. Great distances are absolutely prohibitive of the amalgamation of different peoples. With modern facilities of transportation we may get a quarter of a million Italian immigrants in a single year; and in time their descendants will be absorbed by the Ameri- can people; but this migration has not even the re- motest tendency to amalgamate the 35,000,000 people who live and will continue to live in Italy with the 91,000,000 people who live in America. Italy could send us 500,000 every year and yet keep her own num- bers intact. Vast numbers cannot migrate, and, therefore, cannot come into contact with great numbers at a distance. During historic times scores of peoples have dis- 170 THE NEW WORLD -LIFE appeared utterly. Some have been carried away cap- tive and lost; some have been scattered; some have been absorbed, and some have been destroyed by sword, pestilence, and famine. It is evident that the larger and more consolidated the racial mass, the more difficult it must be to eliminate it in any of the above- mentioned ways. It is impossible to carry away cap- tive 400,000,000 Chinese or any other large body of people. It is impossible to lose them, or to scatter them, or to absorb them, or to massacre them. Nor is it conceivable that any great people could under modern conditions be annihilated by famine or pestilence. And there is not the remotest indication that the Chinese, or any other multitudinous people, contem- plate race suicide. Doubtless there are now existing remnants of peoples which are destined to disappear, but the fact which con- cerns us is that there are several great races whose numbers and vigour stamp them with permanence. We know that in times far remote barbarous peoples often migrated. Many of them were nomadic; many were driven out by enemies; many, having little to leave behind, were attracted to more civilized regions by the hope of spoil. Conquered peoples who were neither driven out nor slaughtered were overlaid by their conquerors. Both peoples occupying the same territory, the two racial stocks interpenetrated, and in process of tune coalesced by reason of constant con- tact. Knowing that hundreds of different peoples have thus blended hi the past, without reflecting on changed conditions we imagine that a general blend of the exist- ing races may take place in the long future. We forget how insignificant in point of numbers were ancient NEW RACE PROBLEM 171 peoples when compared with modern nations and races. According to the estimates of Bodio, the entire population of the earth at the death of the Emperor Augustus was only 54,000,000, and of course much smaller in the earliest historic times. If we may rely on Bodio 's estimates, there are three times as many black men, twelve times as many brown and yellow men, and twelve times as many white men hi the world to-day as existed on the entire globe in the time of Augustus. That is, these three races alone could fur- nish population for twenty-seven such worlds as then existed. Instead of many small racial stocks, numbering each a few hundred thousands or at most a few millions, we now have a few races, numbering from scores of mil- lions to hundreds of millions each. Evidently under conditions so radically changed, the causes which once reduced whole peoples of different stocks to a single blend are no longer operative. In the case of the six great divisions of mankind all of the obstacles to the blending of races, which were discussed above, exist hi superlative measure. Each race numbers many millions. They are separated by great distances, which though easily overcome by individual travellers are impossible to vast multitudes. They live in climates which in some instances are fatal to other races. Their civilizations are on different and divergent planes. Their languages are as unlike as their skins; and their religions are mutually antagonistic. We can better appreciate how conclusive are these considerations when we see how completely conditions, much more favourable, have failed to produce a single racial type. In Austria-Hungary, peoples having different strains 172 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE of blood and speaking different tongues have lived in adjoining regions for hundreds of years without amal- gamating, though they all belong to the white race. In Switzerland we see precisely the same conditions with the same result. In Turkey, peoples separated by blood, language, and religion have lived side by side for centuries and still remain as separate and distinct as they were hundreds of years ago, though they too are white. The Scotch and English have occupied different parts of the same snug little island for a thousand years or so. For some hundreds of years they have had the same religion, the same language, the same civilization, and the same government, and yet they remain two distinct peoples, though both belong to the white race. It is true there have been numerous marriages between them, but it is quite safe to say that there are many more Englishmen without Scotch blood and many more Scotchmen without English blood to-day than there were 100 years ago. In Peru there are only about 3,000,000 inhabitants. When the Spaniards conquered the Incas the num- bers involved were small; the two races occupied not adjoining territories but the same; the climate was not hostile to either race; the Indians accepted the religion of the Spaniards; there seems to have been no objec- tion on the part of either race to the mixture of the two; and yet after nearly 400 years, though their blood has been mingled in all possible proportions, the few whites have not yet been absorbed; there is pure blood on either side of the various admixtures. How then shall 625,000,000 white peoples, living in Europe and in North and South America, mix with 630,000,000 yellow and brown peoples, living in Asia? And how shall NEW RACE PROBLEM 173 these 1,255,000,000 amalgamate with 150,000,000 black peoples living in Africa, not to mention 65,000,000 Semitic peoples and 50,000,000 Polynesians and In- dians living on opposite sides of the earth? And if in a single country, after nearly 400 years, there are three or four times as many different types as there were when the process of amalgamation began, how. many eter- nities would it take the populations of the globe, in- habiting different continents, separated by oceans, mountains, and deserts, to reduce their many types to one? Even if that were a consummation devoutly to be wished, it would be physically impossible of accom- plishment, for the existing races would propagate their respective kinds more rapidly than interracial marriages could take place. Beyond a peradventure, in the several great divisions of mankind enumerated above, we now see before us the permanent elements of the final world mosaic. 2. But if the fusion of the few great races were en- tirely practicable, it would not seem to be desirable. Suppose the flowers, endless in variety of form, colour and tint, could be reduced to a single variety, a com- promise in form, a blend in colour; would the world be any more beautiful for it? If the different breeds of horses, adapted to different uses, could be blended into a single complex hybrid would it be a gain? If the vast variety of gifts now distributed among the members of the white race could hi the course of time be shaken up together, so to speak, and evenly dis- tributed among the members of some future generation, so that each should have the same gifts and graces as every other, reducing all to a dead level of uniformity, would it improve the race and advance civilization? 174 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE Why should there be an endless variety in every species below man, whether vegetable or animal, and only one kind of man? The conception is in conflict with the whole plan of creation. The law of the universe itself is " One from many," as the etymology of the^word indicates dif- fering worlds and systems turned into one; not the one- ness of identity, of mere repetition, but the oneness of coordination; not unison but harmony. The law of progress everywhere is increasing dif- ferentiation with integration. Is it to be supposed that after following this law or method in all the stages of creation, as made known to us, God abandons it when he reaches the crown of all his works the final civilization? Why should the Creator have occupied some hun- dreds of thousands of years in developing these differ- ences, if he intends to have them cancelled by man? If we recognize any plan in creation, we must accept such a differentiation of the human family as an ex- pression of the divine purpose, infinitely wise and benevolent. And it behooves us as colabourers together with God to find that purpose, if possible, that we may work with him and not against him. This conclusion affords not the slightest excuse for race antipathy. The experience of mankind has con- vinced all peoples that close consanguinity must be a bar to marriage; and scientific observation seems likely to show that the mixture of races most widely diver- gent is perhaps hardly less a violation of nature. But there is in this fact no reason why there should not be as genuine respect and esteem and fellowship between the races as between brother and sister; no reason why the spirit of brotherhood which obtains in the NEW RACE PROBLEM 175 home should not be extended to the family of nations and races. The race problem, then, is not to reduce all races to a single type, thus silencing the discords which have made so much of the past hideous, but rather to per- fect each note and tune them all for heaven's harmony of brotherhood on earth. CHAPTER VIII THE NEW PROBLEM OF THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY IT is an old debate, on either side of which have been ranged emperors and kings, statesmen and philoso- phers, revolutionists, armies, and whole nations what is the real goal of civilization, the true aim of government society or the individual? Doctor Crozier, Bishop of Down and Connor, says: "All political schemes whatever, whether they be practical or speculative, have consciously or uncon- sciously as then* object, one or other of the following ends either the order, symmetry, and durability of society as a whole, or the elevation and expansion of the individual mind. Those who support the one, would subordinate the enlargement and elevation of the in- dividual to the order and symmetry of society as a whole; those who support the other, would postpone the symmetry and order of society to the elevation and expansion of the individual. The one would make each man a mere cog or wheel in the vast organized mechanism of society, the other would make him con- versant with the highest his nature is capable of, and would make room for him to expand to the utmost limit of his being. Accordingly, the watchword of the one is Order, of the other, Progress; of the one, Des- potism (more or less disguised perhaps); of the other, Liberty. The one would tighten the bonds that keep 176 THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 177 man dependent on and subservient to man; the other would relax them. The one preaches a religion of social duty; the other of individual expansion and en- largement. Among recent political thinkers, Comte and Carlyle have taken then* stand on the one; Emer- son, Mill, and Spencer on the other." 1 The ancients were impressed by the importance and power of society as embodied in the state, while mod- erns in general exalt the worth and the rights of the individual. Says Doctor Mulford: "The tendency of the political speculation of the old world, in Greek and Roman thought, was to regard the state as above and before the individual, so that the existence of the latter was subordinate and secondary the individual existed only for the state, and the state alone existed as an end in itself. There was the assumption of a necessary contradiction, and the solution was in the negation of the individual. In Greece, the state ac- knowledged no moral and allowed no formal limitation to its power. It took upon itself the immediate and exclusive conduct of life. It was to dispose of all, and not only to prescribe the avocations and regulate the affairs, but to direct even the thoughts and affections of men. It compelled the individual to engage in public pursuits and fill public offices and execute public trusts in the same manner as if subject to a military discipline. "In contrast with this, the tendency of modern political speculation, in its abstract systems, has been to regard the individual as above and before the state, so that the existence of the latter is subordinate and secondary the state exists for the individual, and the individual alone exists as an end in himself." 2 '"Civilization and Progress," pp. 134, 135. '"The Nation," p. 258. 178 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE In order to reach a clear understanding of the prob- lem before us, let us glance at the truths emphasized by the individualist, and then at those which especially impress the collectivist; the coordinate relations of the individual and society will then be pointed out, together with historic illustrations of the consequences of sacri- ficing either to the other; and finally attention will be called to some new elements of the problem. I. THE INDIVIDUAL VERSUS SOCIETY A Hindu lawgiver said long ago: "Single is each man born; single he dieth; single he receiveth the re- ward of his good, and single the punishment for his evil deeds." Moral beings can never absorb one an- other as drops of water touch and coalesce. However closely men may be attracted or forced together, and however interlaced then* lives, the individual remains the moral unit the irreducible moral minimum. No human being can by any possibility divest himself of his accountability to God. No oath of allegiance to state or church or secret order can render him personally irresponsible. It follows, therefore, that he cannot be absorbed by the state or by any other organization. It follows also that he has certain rights which must be respected. If I have duties to God from which no one can release me, I have rights of which no one shall rob me. In this conviction are rooted both civil and religious liberty. Whether we base liberty on Christian ethics, or on a principle of abstract right like the French revolution- ary school, or on principles of utility and experience like John Stuart Mill, the inestimable value of in- dividual liberty has been abundantly demonstrated by history. THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 179 During the Middle Ages both Church and State suppressed individual liberty and therefore repressed and oppressed the individual. But when in the Ger- man Reformation the right of private judgment was won there was a rapid development of individualism and of civil and religious liberty. This movement cul- minated in the nineteenth century; and it is no mere coincidence that this most individualistic century of history has contributed incomparably more to the prog- ress of civilization than any other. Moreover, during this most individualistic age the most individualistic peoples, the British and the American, have outstripped all others. That is, there has been the greatest advance where government or society has placed the least re- straint on the individual. Among people who have little individuality custom becomes a tyranny. Says Mr. Mill: "The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement." 1 It is the men and women of greatest individuality, that is, of independence, initiative and originality who rebel against the tyranny of outworn custom or creed and inaugurate the new. Mr. Mill says that "nothing was ever yet done which some one was not the first to do," and declares that "all good things which exist are the fruits of originality." 2 It was by no accident that the most individualistic peoples of ancient and modern tunes produced the world's greatest litera- tures, namely, the Greek and the English. On the other hand, monotony of physical and mental characteristics in undeveloped races and lower animals is obvious. '"Essay on Liberty," p. 125. 'Ibid., p. 117. 180 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE Individualists also properly point to the value of progress which depends on liberty. Any such organization of society, any such exten- sion of the powers of government as would prevent the free development of individuality would sterilize genius and fossilize civilization. II. SOCIETY VERSUS THE INDIVIDUAL If there are those who lay the chief emphasis on the rights, duties, and liberties of the individual, there are others who look upon the institutions, laws, and con- ventions of society as of supreme importance. They tell us, and truly, that without authority there would be anarchy, and with anarchy civilization would perish. Ordered society is the first condition of all the bless- ings of civilization. As Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews puts it: "All that we possess, whether of mental or of mate- rial stores, beyond what would be ours had we always lived in Central Africa is due to society." Not one of the great works of genius which enrich all nations and all generations no triumph of literature, of painting, of sculpture, of architecture, of invention would have been possible apart from society. After calling atten- tion to the prevalent error which regards society and the state as arbitrary creations, not belonging to man in a condition of nature, but artificially added later, Doctor Andrews says: "Kindred is the error of sup- posing that the social organism exists simply for the sake of the individual. Society is in part an end in itself. Man is greater and more glorious than any man. The totality of human relations, as a totality, is a splendid product, worthy of Almighty effort. Far from being accidental, mere scaffolding or instrumen- THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 181 tality, it is the innermost, essential part of creation* destined to stand forever." 1 Many have deemed the individual of incomparably more worth than society because the soul is immortal; but that society is not immortal is pure assumption. Indeed, the Scriptures always represent heaven as a society, and therein is its perfection. God saw in the beginning that it was "not good for man to be alone." Society was not an afterthought, nor was it of artificial origin. It began with the first human pair; and without it human history would have ended with the first human being. Society has a life of its own which is vast, complex, and continuous; and is constantly growing more vast and more complex. It is gaining self-consciousness, intelligence, and a conscience. Mulford does not hesi- tate to say that society is not only an organism but a person, with a mission of its own, having its origin immediately in God and its vocation only from him. 2 Rank in the scale of being rises with increasing com- plexity; and the life of society is infinitely more complex than that of the individual. Its higher rank is also suggested by the fact that it is later in gaining self- consciousness and a conscience; and "Tune's noblest offspring is the last." A perfected society seems to me the most exalted of all conceivable creations; as much more glorious than the suns and systems of the physical universe as Godlike character is more glorious than matter. And the harmony of ten thousand free wills perfectly attuned to one perfect will is as much nobler than the beauty of a single soul as the full organ is nobler than the shepherd's pipe. l " Essay on the Duty of a Public Spirit." "The Nation," pp. 260 and 267. 182 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE m. THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY The child is by nature a knight-errant. Wherever he comes upon a conflict of any sort he wants to cham- pion one side against the other; and many adults never outgrow this characteristic of childhood, never attain the judicial temper of mind. The champions on either side of this ancient debate seem to have assumed that the individual and society are unequally, yoked together, that then* interests naturally conflict, and that the one can prosper only at the expense of the other; hence the heat which the debate so often develops. It seems to have been forgotten that a philosophy of any sort which commends itself to many thinking men age after age must have a measure of truth in it, and that not until that truth is recognized can the error which is mixed with it be overcome. In any great de- bate there is a very strong presumption of truth on both sides. Indeed, almost every sphere of human knowl- edge affords illustrations of the polarity of truth. It is the perfect balance of the centrifugal and centrip- etal forces which preserves the order of the universe. There needs to be a like balance between rights and duties, between liberty and law, between progress and security to achieve a like order in the moral world. To champion the individual against society is like championing rights against duties, forgetting that each implies the other, and that neither can exist with- out the other. He who has duties but no recognized rights is a slave; and he who has rights but no recog- nized duties is a tyrant. Liberty without law means the violence of license; while law without liberty means despotism. Progress without security would be only THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 183 a euphemism for ever shifting anarchy; while security without progress entails death and fossilization. We must not think of the individual as quite apart from society, the state, government, and naturally antagonistic to them. He is not only a person but a social being, and government, the state, and society are rooted in his nature. Professor Lieber justly says: " We must start from the pregnant fact that each man is made an individual and a social being, and that his whole humanity with all its attributes, moral, religious, emotional, mental, cultural, and industrial, is decreed forever to revolve between the two poles of individual- ism and socialism, taking the latter term in its strictly philosophical adaptation. 1 When we choose the individual or society and champion the one against the other we set up a false alternative or antithesis, and reveal a radically wrong conception of the origin of individuality and of sociality and, therefore, of the relations of the individual and society to each other. Every human being is not only the child of his par- ents but the child of the race, and inherits the universal racial characteristics. He is endowed not only with the individualistic instincts of self-preservation but also with the social instincts of affection, imitation, bashful- ness, shame, love of approbation, sympathy and the like, which link him to his kind. If none of his ancestors married relations, their number, of course, doubled in each generation one remove further. That is, he had four grandparents, eight great grandparents, and in the tenth generation there were 512 men and 512 women cotemporaries scattered perhaps very widely over the world the different strains of whose blood all "'Inaugural Address." 184 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE meet in equal measure in his veins. What varied and also conflicting traits "run in his blood"; and how are those feelings, impulses, appetites, desires, and im- pressions which are common to the race, and those which are common to the people of the same civiliza- tion repeated and reinforced in him ! Of course many of the marriages among his ancestors were more or less consanguineous, but after making due allowance for this, it must be evident, in view of the thousands of generations back of every human being, that we are each one the offspring of many hundreds of thousands, or millions, of ancestors. Sir Francis Galton estimated that a child's inheritance from its ancestors, no farther back than the Norman Conquest, is a composite of some 16,000,000 lives. Every man without giving any thought to the matter has, I suppose, a dim impression that in some special measure he is descended from the line of ancestors whose name he bears, and that he is especially in- debted to them for his inherited characteristics. We say that Emperor William is a Hohenzollern, that our President is a Wilson, and our neighbour a Smith, forgetting that so far as blood is concerned each one of them is equally related to a thousand other families. When we sketch our family tree we select some ances- tor whose name we bear, perhaps the one who first landed in America, and make him the trunk. The branches, dividing and subdividing, represent succeed- ing generations, until we locate ourselves as a little twig. The roots of this immigrant ancestor are out of sight, and like other roots under ground. Do we forget that this trunk came from a ramification of roots infinitely greater and more complex than the branches? THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 185 And do we forget that each of the many marriages indicated in this tree connects it vitally with another tree equally complex in its system of branches and roots? In fact our family tree is one of the accessory trunks of a banyan, which represents society; and each individual twig of every branch partakes of the one vast and complex life. Society cannot be better or worse than the individuals who are its constituent elements. To change it is to change them; and to change them is to change it. Their interests may seem to conflict, but fundamentally and finally they are the same. There may be circum- stances which call on the individual to sacrifice himself for society, but wherever there is an actual conflict of interests I believe it is because the life of one or the other, or of both, is not normal. Says Professor J. M. Baldwin: "There is but one human interest, when all is said, and that is both individual and social at once." 1 Down to the time of Adam Smith statesmen acted on the belief that the enrichment of one nation meant the impoverishment of another; and even Lord Bacon thought that this was a self-evident truth. But with the development of a world-life interests become com- mon, and now we know that the prosperity of other nations is favourable to our own. In like manner as it becomes obvious that society is living one life, of which the individual is a part, the old and common conviction that their interests are antagonistic is dis- appearing. It is sufficiently obvious that society can have no existence apart from the individuals of w r hom it is com- posed, and that the individual can have no existence '"The Individual and Society," p. 170. 186 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE apart from society which gives to him his life and nourishes it through helpless years. It is not equally obvious that society can develop its sociality, can rise to a higher form of social organization, only as the indi- vidual is individualized, and that the higher individua- tion of the individual can take place only in connection with society, and is conditioned by social progress. Let us try to make this clear, for I think this important fact, which is fundamental to a correct un- derstanding of the relations of the individual and society, was quite unknown to any earlier generation. The primitive man has a very low degree of individu- ality. Such is the solidarity of the group, in feeling, thinking and acting, that each man is little more than a repetition of every other. "The primitive man," says Professor Tufts of the University of Chicago, "finds most of the technique of life his occupation, his lodging, his costume, his fighting, his religion all set for him. In all these he thinks and speaks less as 'I' than as 'we.' The Arabs never say, 'The blood of M. or N. has been spilt,' naming the man; they say, 'Our blood has been spilt.'" "Individuality and sociality pass through the following process: Society begins with no sharp distinction between self and others, with no definite rights, no personal duties, no positive freedom, no strictly personal responsibility. As rational standards are gradually set up and brought to bear upon the conflicting claims of individuals, or upon the conflicts between individuals and the group all these positive factors in individuality and social obligation assert their value and gain explicit recogni- tion." 1 Our powers are, of course, developed by their '"Studies in Philosophy and Psychology," "On Moral Evolution," pp. 18, 19, 20. THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 187 use. What a muscle is depends on what it does. Placed under such unnatural conditions that it could never be used, a muscle could never be developed. A sense of duty is developed only by doing duty. "He that doeth righteousness is righteous." If a veritable Romulus or Remus could be suckled by a wolf, and by this unhuman foster mother brought to self -support without ever having come into contact with his own kind, he would be in character much more wolfish than human; his intellectual and moral life would remain dormant because he would never have been brought into intelligent and moral relations with intelligent and moral beings. Apart from his fellows a human being could not develop his moral or intellectual nature; that is, could not become a man. As Professor Baldwin says: "The social relation is in all cases intrinsic to the life, interests, and purposes of the individual" 1 We are told that Helen Keller remembers when she had only physical appetities and desires. In other words, she can remember when she was an animal perhaps the only human being of whom this has been true. There were wonderful possibilities of intellectual and moral life and beauty lying dormant in her brain, but they were only possibilities because she was cut off from society. No one can doubt for a moment that had she remained thus isolated her intellectual and moral life would have remained undeveloped. That is, she was individualized through social relations. And if, instead of coming under the training of a wonderfully patient and skilful teacher, she had been placed among the aborigines of Australia and sight and hearing had been given to her, evidently her degree of individua- l "The Individual and Society," p. 28. 188 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE tion would have been as slight as the sociality of those savages is low. 1 On the other hand, society can achieve a higher order only by individualizing the individual. Organisms rise in the scale of being just hi proportion as their organs increase in number, variety, and complexity. Variety is much more than the spice of life; it is an index of life's rank. "All progress in the world of life," says Dr. C. W. Saleeby, "has depended on cell-differen- tiation." 2 Individuals may be called the cells of the social organism; and the primitive group, in which there is only a very limited variation among individuals, is of low order, and can rise only as its members develop different adaptations and abilities. In high civiliza- tions there is not only a great variety of gifts among men, but an almost immeasurable difference in endow- ments. The differentiation of labour made the organi- zation of industry possible, and powerfully stimulated social development; and by making the interdepend- ence of men complete and obvious induced the new social self -consciousness, which has raised society to a higher rank in the moral universe, and immeasurably increased its noble possibilities. Thus the individual and society are so related that the progress of each is conditioned by that of the other. IV. THE SACRIFICE OF EITHER TO THE OTHER In the Orient the individual has been only a means to society as an end. In the Occident society has become little more than a means to the individual as an end; 1 Just after I had written the above sentences Miss Keller said in a public address: "It was the hands of others that made this miracle in me. Without my teacher I should be nothing. Without you I should be nothing, We live by and for each other." '"Woman and Womanhood," p. 88. THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 189 and this would seem to be the fundamental difference between the civilization of the East and that of the West. Let us glance at the results of this lack of balance. 1. Whatever the cause of the suppression of the individual throughout the Orient, the fact is every- where obvious. The story is told that years ago when the Shah of Persia was visiting England and making the rounds of public institutions, his interest was greatly aroused by a gallows which was shown him in a prison. Being curious to know how it worked, he requested that a prisoner might be brought out and hung; and when informed that in England a man could not be put to death without due process of law, he replied: "Very well; here is one of my men. Hang him!" Whether true or not, the story gives a correct appraisal of human life according to oriental standards. When numbers of Europeans and Americans were killed at the time of the Boxer rebellion, their respec- tive governments exacted a large indemnity. Soon after the massacre of a large number of Chinese work- men at Rock Springs, Wyoming, a generation ago, the Hon. J. L. M. Curry expressed his profound regret to the Chinese minister, accredited to the United States, with whom he was crossing the ocean. We should suppose that the minister would have had at least an official interest in the outrage, but" instead His Excel- lency dismissed the matter with a wave of the hand, exclaiming in a tone of supreme contempt: "Chinese! Bilgewater ! " In old Japan a human being as such had no value. "Hence," we are told by Dr. Sidney L. Gulick, "the liberty allowed the samurai of cutting down, in cold blood, a beggar, a merchant, or a farmer on the slightest provocation, or simply for the purpose 190 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE of testing his sword." l After his personal observations in Asia, President Henry Churchill King writes: "Oriental civilizations are predominantly communal. There is hi the Orient practically no true individualism, in the Western conception of individualism, no ade- quate sense of the Christian conception of the priceless value and sacredness of the individual person. The individual life, for the most part, has been dominated to an almost unbelievable extent by the community." 2 To such a degree has individuality been sacrificed to the communal principle in Asia that it is seriously debated by occidentals whether personality is or is not an attribute of the oriental mind. The fact that the individual is only a means to society as an end is so undisputed that it does not need to be argued, and is sufficiently illustrated by the foregoing. The outstanding result of this arrested development of the individual is the end of progress and the fossiliza- tion of society. When civilization had advanced to the agricultural stage the secure possession of land became a necessity of life. Orientals in general live on land which is the property of the despotic ruler a sovereign who makes the law which he administers. Under such conditions where land and, therefore, life might be arbitrarily taken there was but one check to the most tyrannical use of power, namely, custom. We find, therefore, that hi all oriental communities custom has all the sacredness of law. Indeed, there is much less violation of custom in the East than of law in the West. Any who had sufficient independence to dis- regard custom suffered the most terrible social penal- ties, to which were added the awful retributions of '"Evolution of the Japanese," p. 258. 1 The Oberlin Alumni Magazine, November, 1910, p. 57. THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 191 religion. Thus throughout the East inviolate custom became a sort of unwritten constitution which alone could protect the people from the caprice of arbitrary power. Says Dr. J. P. Jones : " India is a land where custom is denied the past is their glory. . . . Under such a system all innovations are out of place, individual ambitions are crushed. To resemble their ancestors is the summum bonum of their life." 1 Doctor Gulick remarks: "Let the 'cake of custom' become so rigid that every individual who varies from it is branded as a heretic and a traitor, and the progressive evolution of that community must cease." 2 After thirty years of experience among the Chinese, Doctor Yates wrote in 1877: "The generation of to-day is chained to the generations of the past." 3 In one of his unequalled works on the Chinese Dr. Arthur Smith says: "It is true of the Chinese, to a greater degree than of any other nation in history, that then* Golden Age is in the past. The sages of antiquity themselves spoke with the deepest reverence of more ancient 'an- cients.' Confucius declared that he was not an origina- tor, but a transmitter. It was his mission to gather up what had once been known, but long neglected or misunderstood." 4 As has been already remarked, it is the man who varies most widely from the common type, the man of greatest originality or individuality, who is most likely to break through established custom. It is, therefore, where individuality has been suppressed or its development arrested that the reign of custom is the '"India's Problems," p. 17. 1 "Evolution of the Japanese," p. 334. * Quoted by Dr. Arthur Smith in "Chinese Charactristics," p. 184. ' "Chinese Characteristics," p. 115. 192 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE most absolute, the most universal and the most per- manent, la a comprehensive passage Walter Bage- hot outlines the process by which ancient civilizations became fossilized. "No one," he says, "will ever com- prehend the arrested civilizations unless he sees the strict dilemma of early society. Either men had no law at all, and lived in confused tribes, hardly hanging together, or they had to obtain a fixed law by processes of incredible difficulty. Those who surmounted that difficulty soon destroyed all those who lay in their way who did not. And then they themselves were caught in their own yoke. The customary discipline, which could only be imposed on any early men by terrible sanctions, continued with those sanctions, and killed out of the whole society the propensities to variation which are the principle of progress." 1 Where it is customary not to struggle against un- toward circumstances, it is easy to see that the doc- trine of fatalism would obtain and further paralyze effort. Where ancient custom is sacred and reverence for the past is profound, the worship of ancestors naturally becomes a religious rite, and this is an essential part of both Shintoism and Confucianism. Furthermore, a suppressed individuality was a prepared soil for Bud- dhism which aims at the suppression of all desire and seeks to attain Nirvana vacuity. An undeveloped individuality invites, and, indeed necessitates despotism, and is naturally accompanied by the communal organization of society and the pa- triarchal organization of the family. The sacrifice of individuality, therefore, lies at the foundation of the political, religious, social, and domes- "' Physics and Politics," p. 57. THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 193 tic institutions of oriental civilization. We can im- agine, then, what an unequalled overturning there will be as increasing contact with the West individualizes more and more the swarming millions of the East. The revolutionary changes in Japan afford an illus- tration and a prophecy, for the Japanese are being rapidly individualized. 2. The greater development of individuality in Europe may be attributed to the more favourable environment afforded by European physical geography which differs so widely from that of Asia. In the East great civilizations arose where great rivers and extended valleys made it easy for a tribe to grow into a numerous people of the same blood, having the same language, traditions, and religion, the same customs, habits, and ideas, the same laws, institutions, and government. These conditions which were most favourable to an extended organization of society were least favourable to the development of individuality, which is stimulated by a conflict of ideas and the competition of conflicting interests European civilization, on the other hand, was the outcome of conditions in which mountain ranges and seas separated peoples sufficiently to favour the de- velopment of different characteristics and different institutions, though not great enough to isolate peoples and prevent that intercourse which is necessary to stimulate, and to disseminate new ideas. The existence of a tendency toward individuation in Europe may account for the fact that Christianity an Asiatic religion spread westward rather than eastward. Jesus has been claimed both as an individu- alist and as a socialist, which is fairly good evidence that he was neither. But if he was a champion of 194 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE neither the individual nor society against the other, he recognized the possibilities of organized society and the inherent value of the individual as no one else has ever done. Indeed, he has been called " The discoverer of the individual." The Christian religion teaches individual responsibility to a personal God as does no other. This further individualized the West, and pre- pared a soil for the growth of civil and religious liberty, which is necessary to the full development of self- consciousness, for only when one possesses the full power of self-direction, and is fully conscious of his responsibility for his acts can he be fully conscious of himself. It was accordingly in Europe, and during a great religious struggle, that the individual first gained full self-consciousness and won the right of private judgment. This gave a new and great impulse to the individua- tion of occidental civilization, from which have sprung its most distinctive characteristics, both good and bad its literature and art, its science and invention, its education and its moral reforms. But while this differentiation of individuals has borne these noble fruits and has resulted in a higher organiza- tion of society there has been at the same time a self- assertion of the individual which has been detrimental to society and has worked many sore evils. We are often reminded that the progress of civiliza- tion has been from status to contract. This marked the rising importance of the individual; and as man gamed the right of individual contract, and each man assumed responsibility for himself the sense of social respon- sibility was naturally weakened. This new liberty and life which came to the individual stimulated invention and exploration, which afforded THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 195 new opportunities and offered new rewards to energy, enterprise, and initiative. Thus the competitive struggle for individual gain and increasing individu- ation each developed and intensified the other. The fierce struggle of every man for himself was not likely to encourage very tender consideration of con- sequences to society, and especially so in view of the fact that this selfish indifference to others, this laissez- faire policy, was justified as a correct economic prin- ciple. It has been a central doctrine of the Manchester school of economy to disassociate all sense of respon- sibility from the economic process. Cobden frankly said: "We have no commission to administer justice to the world." The result has been the administration of much injustice, and the rise of such abuses as child labour, the sweatshop, the congestion of the slum, and many others. Under the feudal system the overlord had a recog- nized and acknowledged responsibility for his retainers, and under the earlier system of slavery, even at its worst, the master was moved by self -interest to some care for the physical welfare of his slaves; but under the conditions of the new industry, as employed men be- came the guardians of their own rights and made their own bargains, the employer naturally came to feel that his duty to his employees had been discharged when he had paid them their wages. In like manner men engaged in manufactures, or trade, or any other competitive endeavour, naturally fixed their eyes on their rivals rather than on the public welfare, with the result that everybody's business be- came nobody's business, which opened the door wide to all sorts of public abuses, such as the corrupt giving of franchises, the growth of the white slave traffic, the 196 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE development of police graft, which is selling the protec- tion of the law to criminals, and other forms of festering municipal putrefaction. This ulcerous manifestation of selfish individualism, suppurates and comes to a head in the person of the political boss, whose power is often greater than the authority of the municipal or state executive. The executive represents society; the boss represents himself. "He is in politics," as one of that ilk stated on the witness stand, "to fill his own pockets every time." He hardly needed to take his oath to it; we could have believed a simple affirmation. The lack of the social spirit in industry has enabled the selfish individualist to become stronger than the state, and with the aid of lawyers, as unscrupulous as they are acute, to sacrifice the interests of society to himself and his stockholders. State governments have legislated in vain against the trusts; and the national government, in trying conclusions with them, has won barren victories. Another illustration of the sacrifice of society to a perverted and vicious individualism, in the name of personal liberty, is seen in the amount and character of the evidence required to convict the keepers of gambling dens, and of disorderly houses, their inmates, professional thieves, and hi many states saloon- keepers. These parasites on the body of society all flourish in defiance of law, while citizens weakly lament that nothing can be done. Antiquated laws originally framed to protect the individual against the tyranny of the crown now serve as a shield to protect the profes- sional criminal against society another illustration of Walter Bagehot's declaration that "the whole his- tory of civilization is strewn with creeds and insti- THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 197 tutions which were invaluable at first, but deadly afterwards." 1 Again, differences between men which nature evi- dently intended for the greater interdependence, unity, and perfection of society have been so exaggerated by a selfish individualism as to make the many dependent on the few, and to split up society into hostile classes and warring interests. Says Justice Howard, of the Appel- late Division of the Supreme Court of New York: "The highest fortunes, and in many instances, the most abject poverty of all ages exist in this country; colos- sal corporations more powerful and wealthy than an- cient kingdoms are amongst us; gigantic combinations and trusts, under the command of one individual, with more men and money than Athens had at the battle of Marathon, are in our midst; and children are toiling in canneries and families are huddled in dark basements. . . . And our laws tolerate it all." 2 One November morning when walking through Bryant Park, New York, I met a man carrying a dozen glorious chrysanthemums, and only a few rods behind him another having his arms filled with hundreds of blossoms of the same flower but of ordinary size. I had seen a parable. It is well worth while to pinch a hundred buds, and to sacrifice a hundred common- place blossoms to a single magnificent bloom what Maeterlinck would call a fleece of snow, a globe of red copper, a sphere of old silver or a trophy of alabaster or amethyst; but when it conies to pinching a hundred or a thousand human lives to make one "superman," that is not liberty, but anarchy. '"Physics and Politics," p. 74. 'An address before the LaSalle Institute, Troy, N. Y.. January 27. 1913. 198 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE It has been shown that sacrificing the individual to society, instead of benefiting society, arrests its develop- ment. In like manner, sacrificing society to the in- dividual, instead of benefiting the individual, impairs his freedom, and injures his interests, which proves that they are interdependent and that fundamentally then: interests are the same. It is, therefore, evident that all schemes of social regeneration which ignore or sacrifice either the in- dividual or society must prove fallacious and mis- chievous. Thus socialism 1 and anarchism are alike condemned, as is syndicalism also, which is socialistic in its aim and anarchistic in its methods. Both in the Orient and in the Occident the balance between the individual and society has been lost, and to the great detriment of civilization in both. But we cannot redress the lost balance by legislation. The readjustment of laws to modern conditions is greatly needed in both hemispheres; but though wise laws can mitigate they cannot cure existing evils. Laws, after all, are only makeshifts until the moral evolution can overtake the material. "The fitting adjustment be- tween individual independence and social control" which Mr. Mill demanded is a compromise not a per- manent solution. The perfect adjustment of opposing forces which maintains the balance of the material universe is only a temporary recourse in the moral world. We need not opposing but cooperating forces, or rather principles, which will perfectly sup- plement and complete each other. And precisely such a solution, for which the ages have waited, is made by applying to this new old problem the teach- *In another chapter I shall undertake to show at some length that socialism would utterly fail to solve the social problem. THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 199 Ings of Jesus; which application will be made in a later chapter. V. NEW ELEMENTS OF THE PROBLEM For thousands of years the process of individuation has been suspended in the East, which resulted in the paralysis of progress; and now for the first time in all history close and increasing contact with the West is administering a powerful stimulus to the individual. Judging from European experience this must mean that profound changes of the most fundamental character are impending in Asia. Glancing over our shoulder at European history, we see that progress has moved in an immense zigzag across the centuries, alternating between an individualizing tendency which has con- tinued for ages, and a socializing tendency which has continued for other ages. Each alternating angle of progress shows that the new direction was a reaction from the preceding; and though each new advance was made possible by the preceding, it was also in some measure at the expense of the preceding. Thus under the Roman Emperors there was great advance in the direction of social organization, but it was at the expense of individual liberty. Then came the incursions of the barbarians with fresh, unspoiled blood which reinvigo- rated southern Europe. They were free, but theirs was a wild, lawless kind of freedom. There was progress in the development of the individual until it culminated in those splendid types of the age of chivalry, which still kindles our imagination. And then again society began to reorganize; law and order and commerce were ex- tended as power passed from the barons to the kings, from weaker to stronger hands, until society was organ- ized in great kingdoms. But this extension of authority 200 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE was increasing at the expense of personal liberty, until with the Renaissance and the Reformation there came another reaction toward individual freedom a freedom of a higher type than that of the barbarians and from that time until a few years ago progress was in the direction of the development of the individual, and the great reforms of the past four hundred years have been the winning of individual rights by the de- struction of political, industrial, and social tyrannies, and sometimes, as we have seen, at the sacrifice of real social values. Each of these great changes in the direction of prog- ress has been attended by great revolutions, and each has been the beginning of a new type of civilization. When, therefore, in Asia the inertia of millenniums is overcome and that vast mass of 850,000,000 begins to move in the direction of the liberation and elevation of the individual, the magnitude of the resulting revolu- tions is beyond human forecast. That movement has already begun; the restlessness of India portends coming changes of vast moment; the new Chinese re- public means that a nation which had been looking backward for more than four thousand years has now set its face to the future; while the miracle of trans- formation in Japan is well advanced toward com- pletion. But scarcely less significant than this new oriental movement of the individual is the new occidental move- ment of society. The great impetus given to individu- alism by theGermanReformation continued through the greater part of the nineteenth century, during which it struggled, with changing odds, against the new social spirit that has made itself increasingly felt since the middle of that century; and now this new movement toward a higher organization of society is rapidly gain- ing momentum. In the latest presentation of this ancient problem of the individual and society there are two elements which are entirely new. As was pointed out in Chapter V, society has now achieved self-consciousness, which means that, from this time on, it must take conscious direction of its own destiny. Our study of the individual and society shows that heretofore conditions which have been favourable to the development of the one have been unfavourable to the development of the other. I deem it a mat- ter of high significance that now for the first time in the history of the race the same conditions are favourable to the development of both. I re- fer to the increased facilities for transportation and communication which have come with steam and electricity. These are the forces which have so pro- digiously stimulated organization in all directions. They make the social organization and government of 100,000,000 people inhabiting a continent to-day far easier and simpler than the social organization and government of the few colonists occupying one tenth of that area when the Union was formed. At the same time these forces operating through the press and through the contacts of commerce are bringing all civilizations into touch and creating a universal rivalry, are making the world a forum, thus producing the stimulus of a perpetual conflict of ideas, which con- stitute the most favourable conditions for the develop- ment of the individual. In a word, these great forces which are now exerting so profound an influence on civilization are far more favourable to organization than the conditions which produced the vast organiza- 202 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE tions of Asia, and at the same time are much more stimulating to the individual than those which gave the first impulse to the individualism of Europe. "Surely such a change, harnessing together to the chariot of the world's progress these two principles which for thousands of years have drawn, now one and then the other, or one against the other, is so significant that it marks nothing less than the beginning of a new era in the history of the race." 1 1 The writer's " New Era," p. 27. See the whole passage, pp. 22-40. CHAPTER IX THE NEW PROBLEM OF LAWLESSNESS AND OF LEGISLATION I. LAWLESSNESS THE Great Republic has stamped upon itself the mark of Cain. In the United States from 1885 to 1912 inclusive there were 202,679 murders and homicides. These figures are the total of the numbers annually reported by the Chicago Tribune for twenty-eight years. For the last ten years the annual average has been 8,818. The Hon. Andrew D. White, writing in 1912 and referring to the number of homicides in this country during the preceding year as upward of 8,000, says: "I need hardly remind your readers that no other civilized country shows any approach to the figures above given. Great Britain and the British-American dominions upon our borders, which are supposed to live under laws substantially like our own, have rela- tively only about one tenth of the yearly percentage of murders shown by the statistics of the United States. ... A similar difference, greatly to our disadvantage, exists between Continental European nations and our own." The American Prison As- sociation's committee on criminal procedure declares that " 10,000 homicides are committed in this country every year more than the aggregate number for any ten civilized nations exclusive of Russia." One 204 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE of the judges of Georgia has declared from the bench that there are more homicides committed in that one State than in the whole British Empire, with its population of 400,000,000. But the fatal outcome of hot-blooded quarrels, however numerous, cannot brand us so deeply with the mark of Cain as do the lynchings in which large numbers often participate. Not content with in- flicting quick and sure death, the favourite diversion of the mob, reverting to the savagery of the Dark Ages, is to roast its writhing victim at the stake, while the community complacently looks on, and enterprising newspaper men take snapshots at the horror from commanding windows. Seven years ago Judge Amidon stated that "during the last seventy-five years nowhere in the British Empire has a man been snatched from the custody of the law and sacrificed to mob violence." 1 Con- trast this statement with the fact that in the United States more than half a hundred are done to death by "lynch law" in a single year, some of them having been taken violently from the sheriff's keeping. The most civilized land is not altogether free from violence, and is liable to mobs, which are the most merciless and ferocious of all wild beasts. Our un- speakable shame lies not so much in the horrible crimes of a maddened mob as in the cool and reasoned justification of such barbarism on the part of men who are supposed to be civilized. This revolting lawlessness was, a few years ago, elaborately defended before a Chautauqua audience. The Governor of Arkansas, the chief guardian of the laws of the common- 1 The Outlook, July 21, 1906. LAWLESSNESS AND LEGISLATION 205 wealth, made a public defence of negro lynching, and promptly received from the lips of President Roosevelt the rebuke he so richly merited. Another Governor recently announced: "In South Carolina, let it be understood that when a negro assaults a white woman all that is needed is that they get the right man and they who get him will neither need nor receive a trial." He forgot to mention to his constituents by what judicial procedure an insensate mob was to make sure of getting "the right man." And in reply to the obvious and unanswerable criti- cism that the constitution of his state guaranteed to every man accused of crime a legal trial, he cried, "To hell with the constitution!" This was not said to a company of "lewd fellows of the baser sort," but to the "House of Governors," and to the general public. We have heard of teaching crime by sug- gestion, but this was instigating crime by an official pledge of immunity from punishment. And this teacher of anarchy goes unimpeached. A candidate for Congress asks for the suffrages of his fellow citizens explicitly on the ground that he stands on the platform of " lynch law," which is treason to democracy. Think of it! A man asks to be elected to the highest law- making body in the land on the ground of his con- tempt for law. A man could adopt such a political platform only in the belief that a majority of his constituents had a like contempt for law. And most atrocious of all, a clergyman prostitutes the pulpit to incite the people to mob violence, and later from the same pulpit justifies the appalling crime of which they have been guilty. What blasphemy to add divine sanction to the violation of divine law! What is the heresy better worthy of a church trial? 206 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE And yet, so far as I know, that man could remain in the ministry unchallenged. It may be said that the lawlessness above mentioned is of a special sort, and originated under exceptional conditions. But in view of the municipal corruption, so often and so recently laid bare, the United States may be as justly accused of having an itching palm as of being red-handed. Indeed, I do not know of any class of crimes to which we can plead "Not guilty." The Century Magazine, 1 in an editorial entitled "Lawlessness the National Vice," said: " In the last twelve months every variety of lawlessness known to man private and official, labour and corporate, family and social has been on view, in a degree of extreme development. And although these many crying instances were not evenly distrib- uted over the country, similar events, differently placed in other years, remind us that no particular region has a monopoly of lawlessness, or is wholly immune." We need not wonder that a very able and discrimi- nating Englishman, a lecturer in Cambridge Univer- sity, who had been making a close study of us for some months, when asked what he liked least in America, replied: "You Americans do not obey law because it is law." When we ask why Americans are lawless, impromptu explanations are at hand. We are told, and truly, that the punishment of crime is neither sure nor swift; that so far as capital crime is concerned our administration of justice has broken down; that in Germany, for instance, convictions equal 95 per cent, and a fraction, while here they are only 1.3 per cent.; that here men who are undoubtedly guilty 1 For June, 1910. LAWLESSNESS AND LEGISLATION 207 are permitted to escape on mere technicalities. Mr. White quotes an eminent judge as saying: "The taking of life as a penalty for high crime, by due process of law, and under the most careful safeguards, seems to be the only way of taking life to which the average American has any objection." But capital crimes are not the only ones we are loath to punish. The annual report of the Police Commissioner of New York City informs us that, during 1912, 18,556 criminals were let off under suspended sentences; that of these, 417 had been convicted of burglary, 548 of petty larceny, 346 of grand larceny, and 18 of rape, which in several of our States is punishable by death or life imprisonment. We are further informed that "the Judges restored to the proprietors of gambling houses 39 roulette wheels, 36 roulette tables, 16 faro tables, 11 crap tables ... 11 steel doors designed to defend the places against police raids, 67,000 poker chips . . . and other paraphernalia necessary for gambling." Why should property which can have only a lawless use be returned to breakers of the law? In many of our courts of justice crime does not seem to be very seriously discouraged. Fur- thermore, when criminals, at great expense, have finally been locked up, an excessive use of the pardoning power often opens the prison door and turns them loose on society. Again, we are reminded that officials who have sworn to enforce the law make its execution depend on the demands of public opinion, or rather, on their interpretation of public opinion. Thus the execution of the law becomes optional with officials. Again, we are told that the root of the whole matter is the fact that there is little discipline in the typical American family; that neither in the home nor in the 208 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE school are our children trained to obey, and, therefore, grow up with little respect for law or authority of any kind. These facts are beyond dispute, and weighty, but the facts themselves need to be accounted for. Why are American children permitted to grow up without wholesome discipline at home or at school? Why are public officials permitted to regard as optional that which their oath of office requires them to do? Why are we so slow to inflict legal punishment and so hasty with lynch law? When we attempt to account for American law- lessness, we must recognize certain historical influ- ences. A frontier has moved across the continent in advance of the restraints and the established in- stitutions of civilized society; and frontiersmen, hun- dreds of miles removed from a court of justice, not unnaturally reverted to primitive methods and took justice, or what they believed to be justice, into their own hands. The undisciplined freedom and lawless retribution of the frontier have exerted an influence on every section of the country, which it may take several generations to overcome. Again, there has been an unquestioned inheritance from slavery. Here are ten million negroes, many of whom are adult children, and all of whom are the descendants of adult children, who had freedom and its rights thrust upon them, but who had to learn slowly, if at all, its accompanying duties. They were released from their former masters long before they became their own masters, with inevitable results to themselves, to their children and to society. Again, millions of immigrants, reared under paternal governments, have here found themselves with a new LAWLESSNESS AND LEGISLATION 209 freedom from supervision; and, compelled in many respects to become a law unto themselves, it is not strange that they have often mistaken liberty for license. But when all these causes have been allowed due weight there is still a large unexplained remainder of lawlessness. Is not this to be ascribed to American individualism? As we saw in the preceding chapter, occidentals are vastly more individualistic than orientals. Of all occidentals the most individualistic are the English- speaking peoples; and of all English-speaking peoples the most individualistic are the Americans. Pioneers are generally characterized by a strong individuality. They must needs be courageous, independent, re- sourceful, self-reliant. Not only does a new country, with its hardships and adventures, act as a principle of selection to attract such men, but the conditions of life on the frontiers of civilization serve to inten- sify such characteristics. The early pioneers in the New World were strongly individualistic; and when the westward movement began, it was those of each succeeding generation who had most of the pioneer spirit that pushed on into the wilderness and created a new frontier. Lincoln's strong individuality was a natural inheritance from five generations of pioneers, reinforced by the environment of his early life. All Americans, with the exception of recent immigrants, have been themselves pioneers or the descendants of pioneers. This has done much to stamp them with a pronounced individualism. A scattered population, engaged in agriculture, is independent; each farmer does his own thinking; each is his own master; the attention of each is fixed on 210 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE his own interests. Such a people are proverbially individualistic; and until recent years such has been the inheritance and training of the American people from the beginning. The tyranny of Church and State in France and the writings of the Encyclopaedists, Voltaire and Rous- seau, prepared the way for the revolt against all authority which expressed itself in the Revolution. The individualistic spirit of the American colonists, which blossomed in the Declaration of Independence, was naturally friendly to French ideas, and French support of American arms during the Revolutionary War made them increasingly popular. Jefferson, Frank- lin, and Thomas Paine, who did so much to shape the opinions and the institutions of the young republic, were intensely individualistic in their teachings. There was accordingly developed a philosophy of life which was thoroughly individualistic in government, society, and in industry; and which was reenforced by the individualistic type of religion that the German Reformation had stamped on Protestantism. Thus by the interplay of these various influences there was evolved an intense individualism in which by far the greater part of our population is still steeped. An individualistic community is lacking in social consciousness, the social conscience, and the social spirit. It has, therefore, only a dim sense of law which represents society and guards the rights of all against each, and of each against all. Hence from the landing of the Pilgrims to the present time there has been a strong disposition to make the individual a law unto himself. We have not in America, and apparently have never had, the profound and wholesome reverence for law which is the glory of Englishmen, and is at LAWLESSNESS AND LEGISLATION 211 the same time]the strength and the ornament of English institutions. We are now prepared to examine briefly the new elements in the situation. It was shown in the pre- ceding chapter that in recent years, for the first time in human history, conditions have become favourable to the growth of the social spirit and the higher organi- zation of society, and, at the same time, favourable to the further individualizing of the individual. We have seen that increasing organization was the inevi- table result of the modern industrial system. All the conditions of modern life make it simply impossible to stay the tide already setting strongly toward a larger, more conscious, more perfect life of society. But this increasing development of society will not be, as heretofore, at the cost of individual freedom and growth. As will be shown in a later chapter, it will be favourable to a normal individuation, to an un- selfish individualism. There is, however, an individ- ualism which is intensely selfish, and with this the new social spirit is in deadly conflict. For four hundred years the individual has been gain- ing greater importance. The time was when Church or State controlled or tried to control his religious faith, his political opinion, his occupation, his habits, and many of the small details of life. King Christian II of Denmark, for instance, who lived in the beginning of the sixteenth century, "prescribed by heavy penalty, not only how the street and entry of houses ought to be swept, but when and how benches and tables in the houses were to be scoured." 1 Now the individual enjoys not only the civil and religious liberty guaran- teed by law, but also that emancipation, that larger free- 'Lieber's "Political Ethics," -Vol. I, p. 201. 212 THE NEW WORLD -LIFE dom conferred by science and invention. Electricity, steam, and chemistry have given to the untitled man a freedom of speech, a liberty of travel, an exercise of power which the proudest monarch did not possess a few years ago. Add to all this the resources of great wealth, and our citizen becomes an uncrowned king, whose orders are obeyed by thousands even in distant lands. Myriads of men in the United States to-day have power to resist society and to inflict injury upon it never possessed before even by great noblemen. No one will question that the powerful individualism of many of these men is of the selfish type. It goes without saying that large numbers of our wealthy men exemplify the highest type of citizenship; but there is a large class who in the competitive struggle have developed strong personalities, who are accus- tomed to beat down obstacles, who have acquired the habit of success, who are more determined as to the end than scrupulous as to the means, and who will reach the goal even though it lies beyond broken laws. The conditions which produce this type are common and will continue. Education multiplies wants, liberty affords the opportunity of gratifying them, wealth provides the means, and self-gratification stimulates self-will, which of course fosters lawlessness. This is a vicious, abnormal, and dangerous individualism, which will doubtless continue for many generations. And it is a type by no means confined to the rich; there is self-indulgence enough in every class of society to foster an assertion of self which is thoroughly anti- social. But while the social spirit and the spirit of selfish individualism are both found in alt classes of society, there are forming two camps new in recent years, LAWLESSNESS AND LEGISLATION 213 at least in this country, between which a portentous struggle has already begun a struggle between the rights of property and the rights of the people, the rights of the privileged few and the rights of the un- privileged many. The two champions in this struggle are the legislatures and the courts. The legislatures, representing of course popular majorities, enact laws demanded by the people. This legislation often seems to intelligent conservatives dangerous and subversive of fundamental principles, and they look to the courts to protect their rights. To this appeal the courts are more than liable to respond by declaring the new law unconstitutional. Take a single example, the decision of the New York Court of Appeals touching the Workmen's Compensation Act. The law con- cerning industrial accidents is inadequate, and in- efficient, and works injustice to injured men and their families. A commission, appointed by the legislature for that purpose, after a careful investigation of the whole subject, recommended certain legislation, which though of a radical character was passed, "not only with a most surprising lack of protest from the employing classes, but with the active support of great employers. . . . This legislation was supported by associations of the Bar in the State, whose repre- sentatives urged that the gross injustice of the present system needed radical changes. . . . This legisla- tion was based upon a principle, not new and untried, but in successful operation in England and in every great commercial country in Europe. When this law was tested in the courts, the Court of Appeals, however, declared that this principle which was social justice as recognized in England and on the Continent was in New York confiscation of property of employers 214 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE without due process of law." 1 It was therefore uncon- stitutional, and such a law could not be enacted without first accomplishing the almost impossible task of amending both the state and the national con- stitutions. When the fathers shaped and the colonists adopted the Constitution and formed the Union, history was filled with examples of the encroachments of authority upon the rights of the individual; and the tyranny of government was fresh in mind. Considering, therefore, the age in which our fundamental law came into being, the foreign influences and the domestic conditions which moulded it, we cannot wonder that it was strongly individualistic; indeed, it would have been unaccountable had it been otherwise. Our government was based on the "social contract" theory of society, formulated in the eighteenth century, according to which the governed reserved certain natural rights of which they could never be deprived by the government a theory of society long since exploded. That conception regarded society as static or at rest, and logically made the amending of our Constitution exceedingly difficult. We now know that society is dynamic or progressive, and federal govern- ments established since our own, namely, those of the Dominion of Canada, the German Empire, and the Commonwealth of Australia, all make the amending of the fundamental instrument much easier. The English constitution, being unwritten, is alive and grows with the growth of public opinion; ours can be changed only when the demand becomes overwhelming. A fundamental law of all life is that of adjustment. We are in the midst of a flood of changes, to which 'George W. Alger in the Atlantic Monthly, November 1911, p. 662. LAWLESSNESS AND LEGISLATION 215 timely adjustment must be made, if the orderly development of the nation is to continue and popular upheavals are to be avoided. If our federal constitu- tion were easily adjusted to changed conditions, necessary amendments would be frequent and slight. The danger now is that all adjustment will be resisted until the inevitable change is cataclysmal. Count Leo Tolstoi wrote: "Every revolution begins when society has outgrown the view of life on which the existing forms of social life are based." The new conditions created by the industrial revolution are rapidly substituting the social conception of life for the individualistic, and the social problems thus created are not soluble on individualistic principles which have so strong a hold on Americans. As Dr. Goodnow, professor of Administrative Law at Columbia Univer- sity, says: "The tremendous changes in political and social conditions due to the adoption of improved means of transportation and to the establishment of the factory system have brought with them problems whose solution seems to be impossible under principles of law which were regarded as both axiomatic and permanently enduring at the end of the eighteenth century." 1 The framework of our institutions is based on the discredited principles to which Professor Goodnow refers. Our legislatures are straining to find room for much-needed labour legislation inside that framework. Our courts, not having learned, as yet, the lesson of "The Chambered Nautilus," declare very truly that the builders of that structure never intended it to shelter anything of the kind. Now the question is, Will civilization take up permanent quarters in the 1 "Social Reform and the Constitution," p. 1. 216 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE eighteenth century along with the courts, or will something happen? I more than suspect that something will happen, but it is not yet clear what that something will be. Some critics of the judiciary believe that it is preparing the way for socialism because they are convinced, with the socialists, that the conservatism of the courts is a demonstration of "the powerlessness of the American state to bring about justice by law, and of the breakdown of constitutional government." Others believe that the courts are preparing the way for the popular recall of judicial decisions or of judges, which is already demanded by many of the people as was shown by the large Progressive vote in the Presi- dential election of 1912. Again there are judges and lawyers, who are as much dissatisfied as the people, and who are asking the courts to reform themselves. Said Justice O. Howard, of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, in a recent address already quoted : " It is not well to scoff at the muttering of the people; there is much reason for it. Revolu- tionary measures are to be avoided. The movement should begin from within; it is well for the great jurists of the land, the judges of the last resort, to take heed of the temper of the times; unbend from their conser- vatism and work out the reform themselves. . . . Unless the judges act the people will act." Senator La Follette writes: "A new problem entered into the movement toward democracy the problem of re- moving the dead hand of precedent from the judiciary and infusing into it the spirit of the times." 1 Presi- dent Hadley of Yale University is quoted as saying: "We are in the dilemna where the work of the courts 'From the Introduction of Gilbert E. Roe's "Our Judicial Oli- garchy." LAWLESSNESS AND LEGISLATION 217 must be undone or we shall have a revolution. And "the great jurist," Judge Seymour D. Thompson, protesting against the encroachments of the courts upon the people's power, added: "There is danger that the people will see these things all at once; see their enrobed judges doing their thinking on the side of the rich and powerful; see them look with solemn cynicism upon the sufferings of the masses, nor heed the earthquake when it begins to rock beneath their feet; see them present a spectacle not unlike that of Nero fiddling while Rome burns. There is danger that the people will see all this at one sudden glance, and that the furies will then break loose and that all hell will ride on their wings." A discussion of our courts is pertinent to our subject because they have done so much to undermine popular confidence in themselves and in the law. Whatever may be said of American individualism, as a people we have had until recent years unquestioning venera- tion for our judiciary, which has done much to curb our lawless temper. Our fathers feared the abuse of executive power, and, therefore, restricted it within narrow limits. We have often had occasion to dis- trust both the intelligence and the honesty of our legislators, but we have had great reverence both for the purity and the learning of our judges. Many decisions of our courts, however, during the last few years have rudely shaken this confidence, especially on the part of workingmen. There is a long list of judicial decisions which they believe to have been un- justly made in favour of capital and against labour. 1 They no longer look upon the law as made by the people and for the people. There is a very common l North American Review, November, 1911. 218 THE NEW WORLD -LIFE conviction among them that the law is one thing and justice another; and a law which is believed to be unjust has no sanctity. It may inspire fear but not respect. And when the mob feels its strength, it is a short and easy step from despising the law to violating it. There are in all lands numbers of men who deliberately commit crime and take their chances of being caught. They do not blaspheme the law as unjust; the trouble is they do not fear it. Far more significant and in- comparably more dangerous, especially in a republic, is the lack of confidence in the law shown by multi- tudes of peaceably disposed and industrious citizens. Such distrust undermines the very foundations of our institutions and prepares the way for revolution and anarchy. It is not unnatural to assume that the labouring classes are biased against the courts, but there has been much in the conduct of the judiciary in recent years to impair the confidence of an unbiased public, and to excite general criticism; for instance, the reversal of lower courts by higher, which courts are in turn often reversed by a supreme court. A single illustration must suffice. "In the year 1910 Basso, a bootblack, in the basement of one of the business blocks of Rochester, refused to serve Burks because the latter was a negro. The law of the State of New York requires full and equal accommodation in hotels and *other places of public accommodation.' The question, therefore, was: Is a bootblack-stand a place of 'public accommodation'? The first court said, 'No'; the second, 'Yes'; the third 'No'; the fourth, 'Yes, but.'" 1 The decision seemed to be a toss-up 'Cited by Rev. Percy S. Grant in North American Review, Novem- ber, 1911. LAWLESSNESS AND LEGISLATION 219 between the odd and even number of courts. Law so construed and determined would not appear to have an overwhelming amount of inherent "majesty." And not only do different courts differ as to the interpretation or constitutionality of the law, but differ- ent members of the same court. Many Federal and state statutes have been set aside by the Supreme Court of the United States, and usually by a divided vote. Sometimes a single vote has been decisive. A notable instance was the decision concerning the income tax in 1895. It was first approved by a majority of one. A month later Justice Shiras changed his vote, which reversed the court. Thus one man put the Supreme Court on record on both sides of the same question. For thirty days the statute was constitu- tional, and then by the same authority the law, un- changed, became unconstitutional. While a majority of one is decisive as to what the law is, it may well leave a doubt in the lay mind as to what it ought to be. Workingmen are not altogether alone in thinking that the law or its administration discriminates against the poor man. It may be that Dives retains the greatest legal talent which clears him on some tech- nicality or otherwise. If convicted, he often gets off with a fine, while the poor man goes to prison. Or, if, after exhausting all possibilities of appeal, Dives is finally locked up, powerful influences are enlisted to procure an early pardon. Whether or not the poor man's dissatisfaction with the law is justified, it is very real. Before " Captain Jack" of the Modoc Indians was executed for the "Tragedy of the Lavabeds," he was asked if he had anything to say. In reply he broke a number of twigs and laid them on the ground in a straight line, a short distance from each other. Point- 220 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE ing at the first he said, "White man"; at the second "Indian"; at the third, "White man"; at the fourth, "Indian," and so on throughout the row. Then taking a stick and drawing a zigzag line which in- cluded every other twig, he said : " Crooked line white man's law Take in every Indian Leave out every white man." The working man has very much such a conception of what he calls "the rich man's law." A large number of workingmen have come to believe that justice is denied them, and that their only re- course is a labour "war" a dangerous word, which befogs many a judgment and excuses violence abhor- rent to the common conscience. The dynamite conspirators convicted at Indianapolis afford an example. We cannot believe that their crimes were ex- cused by labour in general, but it is evident they must have represented many besides themselves. Had those thirty-three men all lived in the same city, their crimes would have been far less significant. The fact that they lived in fourteen different states and twenty- three different cities, from Boston to San Francisco and from Minneapolis to New Orleans, shows that their attitude of mind is not local. If there was one such man in each of twenty-three large cities, there were doubtless a considerable number or many in those cities and in others. Resort to dynamite is simply an extreme illustration of the methods deliberately adopted by the Industrial Workers of the World. Syndicalism, which has made its power felt in France and England and in other European countries, is an expression of the modern and abnormal individualism which deliberately proposes to accomplish its aim by violence. The disorders which it inaugurates are not the wild and unpremeditated excesses of a passionate LAWLESSNESS AND LEGISLATION 221 mob, but deliberately planned methods, which have been duly justified by a reasoned philosophy. Syndi- calism expressly repudiates political and legal methods as too slow. It exhibits a cool contempt of authority which is by no means confined to the United States, but is symptomatic of the times. The militant methods of the English suffragettes afford another illustration of the same thing. Their unwomanly and un-English lawlessness is an assertion of the new and extreme individualism an individualism which is false because it is detrimental to social progress. Women who attempt to demonstrate their fitness to make laws by violating them are only injuring a most worthy cause which is destined to triumph not only in England but everywhere else by virtue of its in- herent reasonableness and equity. The studied vio- lence employed both by syndicalists and suffragettes is a modern application of the Jesuitical teaching that the end justifies the means. St. Paul expresses his opinion of those who say, "'Let us do evil that good may come,' whose damnation," he says, "is just." 1 There is appearing both in Europe and in the United States an open conflict between the constituted authorities on the one hand and men and women on the other who believe that they have rights which are denied them by the law; and this conflict will be waged by a much more developed and determined individualism than has ever before entered upon a struggle for popular rights. The most serious part of such a conflict is the fact that so many estimable, law-abiding people are on the wrong side of the real question, and so many law- 'Rom. 3:8. 222 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE breakers are on the right side of it, which serves to confuse the issue and to prolong the struggle. It is urgently important for the judiciary to dis- cover the twentieth century, and for the courts and legislatures to adjust the law to the changed condi- tions of a new civilization; in a word, to transfer the law from the wrong to the right side of the conflict, and so end the strife. To quote once more from Justice Howard of New York's Supreme Bench: "The laws will command respect only when they are worthy of respect. Wooden ploughs once elicited admiration; to use them now would excite only ridicule. Many old laws concerning co-employers, contributory negligence, assumed risks, master and servant, rules of procedure and rules of evidence are wooden ploughs; the use of them now obstructs progress and defeats justice. It is almost superstition to venerate ancient laws." This brings us to a brief discussion of II. THE NEW PROBLEM OF LEGISLATION Readjustment to a new civilization is a bewildering task of great magnitude, which grows greater and more imperative the longer it is delayed. If resisted too long, the only alternative is violent revolution. Transition from a civilization which is individualistic, rural, and agricultural to one which is collective, urban and industrial involves an enormous amount of legislation. New, multiplied, and close relations create new rights and new duties which must be recog- nized by new laws. The coming of steam has turned over to women and children work which once required the muscle of men. The coming of the factory system and of agricultural machinery has transformed the home. There are new dangers to health, to life and LAWLESSNESS AND LEGISLATION 223 limb; new perils to the family; and new moral pitfalls for the young. The organization of industry has changed all the conditions of labour. There is scarcely a human interest or relationship which has not been profoundly affected, scarcely a field of human en- deavour which has not been materially changed. We might as well try to do the work of the twentieth century with the tools of the eighteenth as to attempt to meet modern needs with the laws and precedents of half a dozen generations ago. During the last half century, since Western civiliza- tion became so obviously transitional, there has been an immense increase in the volume of legislation; as Mr. Bryce tells us, "incomparably greater than in any previous age"; and it is much greater in the United States than anywhere in Europe. With the Anglo- Saxon's faith in the ballot box as a panacea for political and social ills, some thousands of men are sent to our legislative halls every year or two who are expected to accomplish certain results by making new laws or amending old ones; hence the flood of legislation, which is as regular, but by no means as beneficent, as the annual inundation of the Nile, and which adds, on the average, some 15,000 laws and 25,000 pages to the statute books of the United States every year. The adjournment of the Sixty-second Congress left 38,200 pending bills to die automatically. Besides Congress, there are forty-eight state legislatures which are no mean tributaries to the flood. Within a few days after the opening of the New York Legislature of 1913 over twelve hundred bills were introduced; and during the previous year there were 2,859. Notice briefly the results of this legislative con- gestion. A wise and independent judgment upon 224 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE each of the hundreds or thousands of bills introduced would require a knowledge of the fundamental prin- ciples of jurisprudence, acquaintance with the existing body of law, and familiarity with perhaps a dozen different sciences. To ask this of each legislator is of course to demand the impossible. These bills are of necessity referred to committees which have power to kill and to make alive. There results the lobby with the special pleading of supposed experts who, generally speaking, are by no means disinterested, together with a system of compromises and exchanges between mem- bers of different committees, so that few bills are intelligently passed or rejected on their merits; and usually a mass of legislation is rushed through at the last with little or no scrutiny. Much of this legislation is superfluous. A large proportion of it is of a special character, and is enacted because general laws applicable in the premises have been permitted to become dead letters. Another large proportion is ineffective a part of it intention- ally so. Sometimes political bosses permit the passage of a "reform" measure to satisfy the "truly good," and so quiet agitation and keep the disaffected in line; but they see to it that the law has no teeth. The reformers thank God for their "victory," dismiss the committees whose hard work has aroused the public, and return, one to his farm, another to his merchandise, only to discover in due course that the new law is useless or worse. Again, laws enacted with the best of intentions are not infrequently so full of loopholes that an un- scrupulous lawyer can show a client how to escape the meshes of the net. Much of this unscientific legislation produces un- LAWLESSNESS AND LEGISLATION 225 expected and perhaps mischievous results, like the famous or infamous Raines law in New York, which was intended to restrain the liquor traffic, but was found to promote prostitution. Not a little of this experimental legislation is pro- nounced unconstitutional by the courts. An obvious result of existing conditions and methods is the rapid creation of a labyrinth of legislation in which a man with the best of intentions might easily get lost. Said a New York lawyer to an acquaintance: " Do you know how many laws you, as a good citizen, obey?" "Couldn't guess," was the reply. "It is not possible to state the number exactly," said the lawyer, "but as accurately as can be calculated by the author of a voluminous digest of laws and myself, the number is 21,260." "Why, I had no idea I was such a good man as all that," remarked the "good citizen." The lawyer continued. " This includes the laws of the United States, but does not include the absolutely innumerable ordinances, regulations and rules issued by police, fire, tenement, water, street, licenses, alder- manic, dock, charity and other departments, which have all the force of law. You can get into jail quicker probably for disobeying an ordinance of the Health Department or a traffic regulation of the Police De- partment than you can for disobeying the holy tariff law." Another evil result of existing methods of legislation is the great diversity and conflict of laws in different states, as for instance, touching marriage and divorce. Making the same act legal in one state and illegal in another serves to blur moral distinctions. It would be difficult to convince the average mind that what is morally right in one state becomes morally wrong 226 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE when one steps over an imaginary line. Laws which are thus inconsistent, which are hastily enacted, easily amended, and often evaded or unenforced, cannot command the reverence of the people. Our great body of complex, confused, and rapidly increasing legislation invites litigation, obstructs the courts and aggravates the law's delay, which often furnishes an excuse for lynching, thus loosening the very foundations of popular government which rest on respect for law. Legislation thus far in all countries having legis- lative bodies has been mostly by rule of thumb. It has been experimental hit and miss a large part of it "miss." The following illustrates how we are feeling our way. A commission was appointed in 1907 to suggest changes in the charter of New York City. It was found on investigation that during the ten years since the charter was adopted the legislature had made more than 350 amendments to it; in addition to which there had been, during the same period, approximately 650 separate and special acts directly affecting the city. What is needed now, and profoundly needed, is scien- tific legislation. Heretofore such legislation has been impossible. The necessary data for it have not been available. Under existing conditions, the methods above described have been compulsory and the results inevitable. What legislators have needed and lacked is predigested information not the arguments of interested lobbyists, but the findings of disinterested experts. The Orient stands in even more imperative need of scientific legislation than the Occident, for profounder changes are taking place there than here. LAWLESSNESS AND LEGISLATION 227 In a later chapter it will be shown how the legislative bodies of the world may apply the scientific method to the solution of this world problem. It is possible to enact many laws so obviously scientific, so de- monstrably fit, that a modernized court would no more think of declaring them unconstitutional than it would think of declaring unconstitutional the law of gravitation or the Magna Charta. Such legislation will be the first step and a long step toward solving the problem of lawlessness. CHAPTER X THE NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY THE city is superlative. In it the new civilization is at its best, and at its worst. There is our Chris- tianity most aggressively Christian, and there is our paganism most frankly pagan. There is life most strenuous, and there is death busiest. There are the greatest prizes of success, and there are the uttermost failures. There are the excessively rich, and there are the most miserably poor. Dives and Lazarus are there separated by an impassable gulf, but within easy seeing distance; and it seems to some careless observers that Dives is in heaven and Lazarus in hell. The city is the source of the influences, best and worst, which permeate the land. In its future are the greatest possibilities of blessing and of cursing to mankind. I. THE GREATER CITY The cities of the future will certainly be much greater than those of the past or present. Four principal causes contributed to the growth of ancient cities, namely, the fear of enemies, political considerations, the social instinct, and commerce. These causes were either temporary or much restricted in their action. For thousands of years city walls were necessary for protection; but sooner or later war destroyed the cities which the fear of war had produced. NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 229 Many ancient cities became great as the capitals of mighty empires; but their glory passed with that of thrones and dynasties. The social instinct has always been operative, but never until recent years has it been free to produce the results possible to it. Inasmuch as man is a gregarious animal, cities have always been as large as they could well be. Until modern times, however, it has been difficult to furnish supplies for a great city. Food, water, fuel, and building materials could be procured only with great labour and expense. Now the railway and the triple-expansion marine engine have made it possible to feed any number of millions gath- ered at one point, and to transport building materials and fuel thousands of miles, while scientific engineer- ing supplies water to large populations far removed from rivers and lakes and makes possible a city in a desert. Now for the first time in the history of the race is the social instinct fully free to assert itself. Commerce, like the social instinct, has been a per- manent factor in the growth of cities, but it is a thou- sandfold greater now than it was in ancient times. Its influence as a city-builder has been as much en- hanced by the conditions of the new civilization as has that of the social instinct. When we contrast a caravan of camels with a transcontinental freight train of 100 cars, and a little coasting ship with a transatlantic liner, we have a basis for comparing the cities produced by ancient commerce with those which are being created by modern commerce. Furthermore, in the past, commerce unmade as many cities as it made. The discovery of unknown countries and the opening of new routes of travel destroyed commercial supremacy as often as they 230 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE created it. But there are no more unknown countries to be discovered, and after the cutting of the Isthmian canal there will be no more geographical changes of the first magnitude. The great world-routes of travel and transportation will then have been permanently established; and instead of destroying with one hand while she builds with the other, commerce will work with both hands for the perpetual enlargement of the great cities of the earth. Moreover, causes which for thousands of years de- stroyed cities or retarded their growth, are becoming less operative or have ceased altogether. Never again prob- ably will a city be laid waste by a victorious army. When the Germans captured Paris they destroyed nothing but French prestige. Instead of pillaging and burning as conquerors used to do they demanded a war indemnity. It is doubtless safe to say that, with modern facilities of transportation and with the ever-continued triumphs of medical science, famine and pestilence will never again depopulate a city. In the long past the difficulty of obtaining an adequate water supply prepared the way for great conflagrations, made filth inevitable, and resulted in a frightful death- rate, which greatly retarded the natural growth of the city. Modern engineering, progress in fire- proof construction, and the science of sanitation are steadily and surely removing these age-long limitations of growth. Not only will the obstacles to the growth of great cities in the past be overcome in the future, and the constructive causes be far more operative, but there will be vastly greater populations out of which to grow cities. We have no certain and exact knowledge of the NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 231 population of the entire world at any time but the most intelligent estimates suffice for the purposes of rough comparison. According to Bodio, as remarked in a preceding chapter, the population of the earth at the death of the Emperor Augustus was 54,000,000. At the beginning of the eighteenth century it is believed to have been 640,000,000, and at the beginning of the nineteenth 1,500,000,000. Thus according to these estimates the world's inhabitants increased decidedly more during the eighteenth century than during the seventeen hundred years preceding. Population has increased as civilization has made more abundant provision for human wants. Since the English took control of Egyptian finances in 1882 the population has increased more than twice as fast as before. 1 According to Mulhall the population of Europe hardly exceeded 50,000,000 five hundred years ago. It is now 400,000,000; and to these great numbers must be added 100,000,000 descendants in America and other non-European lands. The enormous increase of European populations in recent centuries made possible the surprising growth of large cities. After the decline of Rome, Con- stantinople was the only city in Europe which could boast 100,000 inhabitants. At the beginning of the sixteenth century there were six or seven such cities, and at its end thirteen or fourteen. In 1800 there were only 22 cities in all Europe having 100,000 inhabitants or more. In 1900 the number had risen to no less than 139 ; and 29 of these had each a population of 400,000 or more. In 1800 our metropolis had only 79,216 inhabitants. In 1900 it had 3,437,202, and in 'Prof. Walter Francis Wilcox, "The Expansion of Europe in Its Influence on Population." 232 THE NEW WORLD -LIFE 1910 it had grown to 4,766,883, while our cities of 100,000 or more numbered forty-seven, and contained nearly 20,000,000 people. In 1800 no capital in Europe had a population of 1,000,000. London had 958,800; Paris, 546,900; Berlin, 173,400; Vienna, 232,000, and St. Petersburg 270,000. The latest statistics of these cities are as follows: London, 7,252,963; Paris, 2,846,986; Berlin, 2,064,153; Vienna, 2,004,291, and St. Petersburg, 1,907,708. Thus in a f single century the total population of these five cities in- creased over 700 per cent.; and London alone has now more than three times the population of all five a hun- dred years ago. The unprecedented growth of the city during the past century ought to prepare us for an immense development during the present century, in view of the fact that the same causes continue operative, and that there is every reason to expect a continued expansion of the world's population. Sir Robert Giffen, the English statistician, believes that "unless some great internal change should take place in the ideas and conduct of the European races themselves, this population of 500,000,000 will in another century become one of 1,500,000,000 to 2,000,000,000." But the growth of the world's population is by no means confined to the European races as some seem to think. The population of India was estimated at 178,500,000 in 1851; it is now 300,000,000. And according to Timothy Richards, a British missionary, who is a mandarin of high rank and who has been for many years an official adviser of the Chinese Government, the population of China is increasing 4,000,000 a year, which is 1 per cent, per annum. NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 233 It must not be forgotten that the causes which have so enormously stimulated the growth of occidental populations during the past century are, with the progress of the new civilization, becoming more and more operative throughout the Orient, reducing the death rate, and at the same tune raising the birth rate by multiplying the means of gaining a livelihood. Of course the world's population cannot increase indefinitely. The time will come when the refinement of the nervous organization no less than the pressure of population on the means of subsistence will so modify the reproduction of the race as to establish an equilib- rium between the birth rate and the death rate; but that time for the world at large is yet remote. With the agricultural resources of Africa, South America, Australia, Canada, and Siberia only very partially developed, and the food products of the United States no doubt capable of being much more than doubled, while vast food resources of the sea are wholly ignored, there need be no fear that the world's food supply will not keep pace with its growing population for many generations to come. Dean Bailey of Cornell University is bold enough to say: "Where the earth now supports one human being, we expect, before it die, that it will support hundreds." 1 The population of the civilized world is now increasing about 1 per cent, per annum, and at that rate will double in less than a century, whereas we are told by Professor Hollander of Johns Hopkins University that during the past fifteen years "the average annual increase in the five great cereals, wheat, corn, oats, rye, and barley, has been about 2.5 per cent." 2 At "'The Outlook to Nature," p. 52. 'The Atlantic, October, 1912. 234 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE which rate the supply of cereals will double in less than forty years. Not only will there be an immense increase in the population of the world, but the greater part of this increase will be so distributed as to give a tremendous impetus to American commerce and a corresponding stimulus to the growth of American cities. Such are the room and resources of the various Pacific lands as to insure their becoming much more populous. It is a striking fact, remarked in a preceding chapter, that with the exception of Africa, the greater part of which is unfavourable to white life, most of the sparsely occupied and habitable portions of the earth are ranged around the Pacific Alaska, Canada, the United States west of the Mississippi, South America, New Zealand, Australia, and Siberia. Thus the greater part of the room for the expansion of the race is pre- cisely here. Europe has a population of 106.9 to the square mile; Asia, 57.7; Africa, 1 15.7; North America, 13.8 and the United Sates west of the Mississippi 10.1 ; 2 South America, 5.3; and Australasia, only 1.4; while that of Siberia is about the same as that of Austral- asia. The present population of these regions is only one fifth that of Europe, though Europe could be carved out of their combined area six times. 3 It is large enough to make all Asia, with nearly enough left over to make two Europes, and yet contains only one sixteenth as large a population as Europe and l l use the estimates of the geographer and statistician Ernest George Ravenstein, F. R. G. S. His figures for Africa, however, are 11. I deduct the Great Sahara, which is as large as the United States. The statistics are for 1890. "Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society." 'Population of 1910. *See the writer's "Expansion," Chapter VI. NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 235 Asia. These countries taken together have greater natural resources than the two continents of the Old World, and when well developed could surely sustain as large a population as now subsists in Europe and Asia, with the natural resources of the latter so par- tially developed. That would mean an addition of about 1,200,000,000 to the present population of the lands surrounding the Pacific. If these lands were only one hah* as densely peopled as Asia and Europe, they would contain 734,00,000 instead of their present 75,000,000. China and India, with their mining and manufacturing resources almost wholly undeveloped, support 720,000,000 inhabitants, and China and India might be carved out of the above area four times. Without question these Pacific lands will be peopled by many hundreds of millions, who by means of the Panama Canal will be brought into close commercial relations with the Mississippi Valley. Every city on a navigable tributary to the Mississippi will then be a seaport in direct water communication with the greater part of the world's population, and in touch with the centre of the world's commerce. For some thousands of years the Mediterranean was the "Midland Sea," the Great Sea, the centre of the world's commerce, wealth, and power. Then that centre passed to the Atlantic; and with the cutting of the Isthmus it will soon pass on to the Pacific, there to remain for all time. " Geographical differences, which need not detain us, give only a scant supply of rain to the Old World and an abundance to most of the New. Accordingly the greatest river systems are here, and the only great deserts are there. We must not be surprised, there- fore, that the geographers find as much arable land 236 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE in America, North and South, as in Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, viz., about 10,000,000 square miles." 1 The Encyclopaedia Britannica says: 2 "Paradoxical as the fact may appear, we are satisfied that the new continent, though less than half the size of the old, contains at least an equal quantity of useful soil and much more than an equal amount of productive power." If this statement is correct, the average acre in America is more than twice as productive as the average acre in Europe, Asia, and Africa. It con- tinues with the following astonishing statement, which is based on scientific data: "If the natural resources of the American continent were fully developed, it would afford sustenance to 3,600,000,000 of inhabit- ants." This statement will seem less incredible when we consider that if this vast number were all placed in our one State of Texas, there would be but 21 to the acre. If, however, incredulity cuts these figures in two in the middle, they would still make America capable of supporting 1,800,000,000, which is 200,000,000 more than the present population of the globe. These estimates, even if we allow wide margins for error, make it morally certain that the United States will at some time, not remote, be the home of several hundred millions probably five or six tunes our present population at least. This would mean the multiplication of our existing urban population by five or six, even if there were not a most significant drift from country to city. Impressive as are the above facts, they only prepare the way for another which is absolutely decisive of the place of the city in the civilization of the future. 'My "Expansion," p. 167. 'Article on America, Ninth Edition, Vol. I, p. 717. NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 237 II. THE CRY OF " BACK TO THE LAND " Under the conditions of the new civilization urban population must of necessity grow faster than rural population. The United States Census now classifies as urban population that residing in cities and other incorporated places of 2,500 inhabitants or more; all else of course is rural. For one hundred and twenty years the urban popu- lation of the United States has been growing faster than the rural. During the first thirty years of that period it grew 1.6 times faster; from 1900 to 1910 it grew 3.14 times faster. In continental United States as a whole the rural population increased only 11.1 per cent, from 1900 to 1910, while the urban population increased 34.9 per cent. In New Hampshire, Vermont, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri the rural population actually decreased. In only two States, Montana and Wyoming, did the rural population increase more rapidly than the urban. And in those states where the rural rate of increase was greatest the urban rate was more than twice as great as the rural. The wonderful growth of American cities during the past century has not been due, as many have supposed, to temporary or exceptional causes like the develop- ment of a virgin continent and the stimulus of an un- precedented immigration. European peoples had no virgin resources to develop, and what we gained by immigration they lost by emigration, and yet European cities have grown like our own. Indeed, in many Euro- pean countries the percentage of urban population is much larger than in the United States. 238 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE But, it is asked why must the disproportionate growth of the city continue of necessity? Because that disproportionate growth is the inevitable effect of the new industrial civilization, and that civili- zation has come to stay. For the growth of urban and rural populations in recent times Professor John M. Gillette formulates the law as follows: "The increase of rural population is in inverse, and that of urban population is in direct proportion to the degree of industrialization." 1 This law will be found to hold substantially between our different states, be- tween the various countries of Europe, and between Europe and Asia. The population of a country may be very dense with only a small proportion of it urban, as in the case of Bengal where only 4.8 per cent, of the people are city dwellers; and again a country may be only sparsely settled and have a large percentage of urban population, as in the case of Australia where two thirds of the people are in cities. It depends chiefly on the extent to which industry has been or- ganized and machinery has been applied to it. We must observe that in agriculture machinery produces results very different from those produced by it in manufactures. When the manufacturer sets up machinery which doubles the effectiveness of his workmen he can of course double his output in the same factory in a given time. But when the farmer adopts similarly effective machinery he does not pro- duce twice the crop from the same acreage and in the same time. He can plant and cultivate and harvest with one half of the labour and time formerly ex- pended, but he cannot speed-up the seasons so as to *" Publications of the American Sociological Society," Vol. V, p. 136. NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 239 grow two crops instead of one. The only way for him to get the full benefit of the machinery is to increase his acreage, and that means a decrease in the number of men employed. With a sufficiently expanding market all the manu- facturers in a given country might double their plants, but all the farmers could not double the size of their farms. There is a physical limitation in the way. One hah* of the farmers could double the size of their farms only as the other half quit farming. Thus machinery necessarily tends to reduce the percentage of the population engaged in agriculture, while in manufactures, by greatly reducing the cost of the product, it may so increase consumption as to create an added demand for labour. This leads us to another exceedingly important difference between agriculture and manufactures. The amount of food which a man can eat has a natural and necessary limit, while his demand for the products of the mechanical and fine arts depends on his purse and his taste a limit which is artificial and change- able. Try it. Here is a man whose annual income increases from a thousand dollars to a hundred thou- sand. He does not now eat a hundred times as much as formerly. He does not eat any more, though he eats more expensive food. His table may now cost him three or four times as much as it did, but not much of the increased expenditure goes to the farmer. He may, however, spend a hundred times as much on houses and grounds, on automobiles and furniture, on books and paintings, and statuary, and articles of virtu. His wife may wear a million dollars' worth of diamonds at one time, if his bank account is good enough and her taste is bad enough. The only limit 240 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE to his miscellaneous expenditures is his wealth and his wants, both of which are rapidly growing. There is, therefore, a well known economic law that as wealth increases the proportion expended for food grows steadily less while the proportion expended for miscellaneous objects grows steadily greater. It is evident that the product of our farms and the output of our mines and factories must be limited by the demand. When, therefore, the world's demand for food has been satisfied those who gain their living by supplying the food market can increase in number only as fast as the world's population increases, while those who live by supplying the artificial wants of civilization will increase as fast as population increases multiplied by the increase of per capita wealth and wants. The latter class, therefore, which is mostly urban, must necessarily increase more rapidly than the rural population. This shows how utterly futile is the attempt to relieve the congestion of the city by transferring the "landless man" to the "manless land." The fallacy, however, which is contained in the popular cry, "Back to the soil," is so tenacious of life, and has gained an acceptance so well nigh universal that we must take time to kill it again. 1 'Under the circumstances I make no apology for using some of the material which appeared in "Expansion," pp. 91-98, and in "The Challenge of the City," pp. 21-35. Considerable material is intro- duced here which I have not used previously. For some phases of the subject not taken up in this connection see the above references. It is singular that so many intelligent and able men, seeking relief from the ills of the crowded city, should be misled by this quack remedy. The British and Danish governments have furnished some millions of dollars in furtherance of the effort to distribute popula- tion on the land. A single philanthropist gave General Booth $500,000 for the same purpose. Books have been written, and num- berless articles and editorials have appeared in magazines and papers, NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 241 The country life movement, which must not be confounded with the subject of our discussion, is exceedingly important and altogether admirable. It aims to improve the social and economic conditions of the rural population, which is urgently desirable for many reasons. all echoing the cry "Back to the land." Many organizations have been formed to actualize the idea. We read: "The Little Land League will unite and stimulate attempts already made by Indus- trial and Farm Training Schools, Demonstration Garden Farms, Co- operative Farm Instruction Colonies, Suburban Homecroft- Villages, Garden Cities and Rural Settlements, to open the gateway of oppor- tunity through which a steady stream of humanity may pass from the congested cities back to the country, to suburban, comfortable living." Lest such an array on one side of the question be deemed conclu- sive against a single humble writer I may be permitted to quote a few scholars whose opinions have great weight. President King of Oberlin College says ("The Moral and Religious Challenge of Our Times," pp. 26-28): "The inevitable growth of the cities, too, brings to the moral and religious forces what Dr. Josiah Strong has justly called 'the challenge of the city.' And he makes it perfectly clear that there is no way by which our civilization may evade this chal- lenge. The causes of the movement toward the city, as he says, 'are permanent, and indicate that this movement will be permanent.' . . . The inevitable trend of population, therefore, is toward the city, and none of the various devices for scattering people to the country can prevent the continued growth of great cities; though there are undoubted elements of value in these movements. . . . As Docter Strong says, 'the sudden expansion of the city marks a profound change in civilization, the results of which will grow more and more obvious.' " Dean L. H. Bailey is widely known as an author and as the head of the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University, also as Chairman of the Commission on Country Life appointed by President Roosevelt. He is not only a scholar and a scientist who has a practical knowledge of agriculture, he is also a philosopher who takes a comprehensive view of the relations of agriculture to civiliza- tion. No one has thought more clearly or accurately on this vital subject than he. In an address in New York City, January 21, 1911, he said that the back-to-the-farm movement was "socially and economically unsound." Says Dr. A. F. Weber, "the general prop- osition remains true that the great cities (the class of 100,000+ population) are bound to absorb an ever-increasing proportion of the country's population." Studies in History, Economics and Public Law (Edited by the Faculty of Political Science of Columbia Uni- versity, Vol. XI, pp. 424,448). 242 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE The back-to-the-farm movement, on the other hand, springs from many motives and has in view various objects, chief among which is the relief of the city. As Dean Bailey says: "It is in part an effort of the city to relieve its congestion, in part a desire to find labour for the unemployed, in part the result of the doubtful propaganda to decrease the cost of living by sending more persons to the land, in part the desire of certain persons to escape the city, and in part the effort of real-estate dealers to sell land." He might have added that it is also in part an attempt of railroad officials and of bankers to improve their busi- ness. This whole back-to-the-land movement is based on a number of mistaken assumptions, most of which are survivals from the individualistic age whose spirit is still dominant. Some of these assumptions were once true; all of them are now false. 1. "Back to the land" assumes, perhaps uncon- sciously, that the farmer is the one independent man in the community. So far as his movements are concerned, the farmer still enjoys a large measure of personal independence, but economically he has become, through the organi- zation of industry, the most widely dependent man in the world. In the age of homespun his family was practically sufficient unto itself. Its prosperity and comfort depended on the intelligent and versatile industry of its members who provided directly for their own wants. Whether they can now have a thousand of the necessaries and comforts of life, whether they can satisfy the mortgage, perhaps, and keep the home, depends not simply on the faithfulness with which they toil, but on the prices of the two or three staples NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 243 they produce, and those prices depend on the crops in several continents, and on how many hundreds of millions of people want them and are able to buy them. Manufacturers by means of patents or other- wise fix their own prices, but farmers have their prices fixed for them. Their income depends on many millions of people scattered through "many lands, because they are now absolutely bound by the law of supply and demand touching the great staples of food and of raw materials in which the whole civilized world is concerned. 2. "Back to the land" assumes that the cultiva- tion of the soil is the most natural and normal oc- cupation of mankind, and one which must remain of supreme importance because food will always be the one great necessity. It is time to recognize the fact that with the progress of civilization and the multiplication of intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual wants food necessarily becomes a relatively less important object of effort and ex- penditure. It is the one great necessity of the savage, but not of the civilized man. A good many of us would prefer going to business hungry rather than naked. Organized society has many needs which are vital, and of many necessities it is idle to speculate as to which is the most necessary. Nor is agriculture any more "natural and normal" than the chase or the herding of cattle and sheep, which antedated it by many tens of thousands of years. Agriculture, which was inconsistent with the roving habits of uncivilized man, came late in the history of the race; and it is certainly conceivable that it may be superseded by chemical science. Professor Drum- mond speaks of "manufacturing nutrition" as more 244 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE than probable, and adds: "It is not the visionaries who have dared to prophesy here. In a hundred labo- ratories the problem is being practically worked out, and, as one of the highest authorities (Prof. Remsen) assures us, 'The time is not far distant when the artificial preparation of articles of food will be accom- plished.' 5>1 If man's food is ever produced without passing through the vital laboratory of nature, agri- culture will shrink to the production of the raw mate- rials of manufactures; unless, indeed, science also spins our wool and cotton from mineral substances. In any event, as agriculture grows either absolutely or rela- tively less important, the city will necessarily become greater and more dominant. 3. "Back to the land" assumes that agriculture is the natural asylum of those who have failed in the city, and that the solution of the problem of the unemployed must come from the soil. There are multitudes in the world who are inad- equately clothed, and clothing is as necessary to a civilized man as food; why not set the poor of the city and the unemployed generally to weaving and tailoring? You tell me that there are three insuper- able obstacles : it would require both capital and special skill, which the unemployed do not possess, and it would overdo and derange the industry. Exactly; and these three objections are equally conclusive against seeking a solution of the problem in agriculture. Capital has become as indispensable in agriculture as in mercantile business or manufactures. "Ten dollars for every acre," we are told, "must be invested in artificial fertilizers, manures, and crops ploughed under to bring back to fertility the worn land; and from '"The Ascent of Man," p. 213. NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 245 $12 to $15 per acre must be invested in machinery." This means from $2,300 to $2,500 for every 100 acres. Any land which can be bought or leased for a trifle is so poor that it would require extra fertilizing, or so far from the railway that marketing crops would be expensive. In addition to capital for land, fertiliz- ers, machinery, and stock, there are the living expenses which must be provided for while the crops are grow- ing. It may be true that philanthropic people stand ready to help, but philanthropy is the solution of no economic problem. If it were seriously attempted to provide for the unemployed in the way proposed, philanthropy would be intolerably and increasingly burdened, for land is rapidly appreciating in value, and will continue to rise as population grows more dense. From 1900 to 1910 the average value per acre of all the farms in the United States, exclusive of buildings, increased 108 per cent. If there were ever a trace of truth in the old saying that "any fool can farm," it was in the individualistic age when each farmer produced practically all he con- sumed, and he, his family and his stock consumed practically all he produced. Now when every farmer must produce for the market he must compete with men who have scientific knowledge and skill. If the "fool" is unable to produce crops for the market price, which is highly probable, he can no more con- tinue farming than he could continue running a department store, selling goods at less than cost. Overproduction is as possible and as mischievous in agriculture as anywhere else, and I will show presently the historic results of a long period of overproduction. But let us suppose that those who have failed in the city and the unemployed generally are transferred to 246 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE the land, and that special training, wise superintend- ence and generous loans enable these assisted farmers and gardeners to gain the market, for which they have to compete with others already on the soil. In every occupation there are those who because of various handicaps barely succeed, but who by dint of hard struggle manage to hold on and retain their self-respect. There are many such who make only a sorry success on the land, and these are the ones who are forced out of the market by the assisted farmers and gardeners whom a mistaken philanthropy has placed on the land and to whom it has given a fictitious success. Have we no sympathy for these deserving families thus driven to failure and to the city to lay their burden on the blind philanthropy which moves in a circle and arrives nowhere? If charity must destroy or impair manhood, it is cruel kindness to supply an increasing stream of fresh victims. Ever since farming as a part of organized industry became competitive there has been a steady stream of such families flowing from country to city, and the more the landward movement grows the more will this cityward stream be swollen that is, the more this back-to-land cry succeeds, the worse it will fail. There is a large percentage of failures in all oc- cupations, whether professional, mercantile, industrial, or agricultural. The list of abandoned jobs of all sorts is immeasurably longer than the list of "abandoned farms." There is no propriety in trying to gather the failures of all occupations into agriculture. It is highly probable that failure has been due to some disability, mental, moral, or physical, which disability would be as operative in the country as in the city. Wonderful progress is being made in the knowledge NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 247 of agriculture, and the more scientific agriculture becomes, the more hopeless will be the fanning ven- ture of the untrained man. Mr. W. M. Hays, As- sistant Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, says : " The expert in farm management has no trouble in demonstrating that the proper and effective man- agement of the 160-acre farm gives opportunity for the exercise of a wider knowledge of details and a broader philosophy than conducting a bank." 1 We should hardly expect to solve the problem of the unemployed by making bank officials of all the men who have failed in the various occupations. The problem of the unemployed is a problem of the boy rather than of the man. We must begin with the child. The problem can be solved not by hunting a job for the man, but by making a man whom the job will hunt. It is well to do our utmost for the unfortunates; it is better to stop raising unfortunates. The cheap man will find only a cheap job or none at all. Touching industrial education, Mr. Edward A. Rumely says: "We begin by cutting the maple tree into a cord of wood, worth from $3 to $7, and each tree furnishes material for one day's work. This same tree, if sawed into lumber, is worth $20, and would furnish employment for three or four days for one man. If quarter-sawed, and more carefully treated, it might be worth $40, and would furnish employment for more skilled and better paid workers and for a period of from ten to twelve days. And this same lumber, in a furniture factory, would pro- duce furniture worth from $100 to $500, and would furnish employment directly and indirectly equal to from six months to one year's work for one man. And, l The Outlook, August 5, 1905, p. 865. 248 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE finally, if he had the highest artistic ability and the skill of an Italian wood carver, he might produce ob- jects with an art value ranging into many thousands of dollars, upon the return from which he could live his whole life. The whole range of values in this series, from $7 worth of cord wood to the $7,000 art- object, depends upon the degree of refinement ex- tended to identically the same raw material through quantity and quality of labour employed upon it." 1 Of course there are defectives whom training can never make anything else, and there are men and women who have been broken on the wheel of fortune, for whom society should wisely and tenderly care. The country appears to be peculiarly suited to the special needs of such; and it seems fitting that mother earth should make some amends by holding them in her lap a while before they are finally hidden away in her bosom. I make no criticism of such beneficent work. My contention is that reason and experience alike forbid all hope of finding in this new crusade any solution of the city's problem of poverty or of congestion. New York's Committee on the Congestion of the City wrote to the "House of Governors": "The most sympathetic observer of the work of private charities in distributing population and reviving general farming, and the most unbiased student of the work in these directions of private companies realizes that they have signally failed to effect any material increase proportionately of the number actively engaged in agriculture, gardening, dairying, 'From an address before the Second Annual Conference of the Bankers' Committee on Agricultural Development and Education, Minneapolis and St. Paul, August 7 and 8, 1912. NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 249 etc. Large resources are necessary for this purpose, and sometimes expropriation of land. The failure of these private organizations is amply demonstrated by the revelations of the census of the flight from the land to the city." The committee's appeal to the Federal and State governments to undertake the distri- bution of the people on the land is a striking illustration of another common misapprehension. 4. It is believed that if the experiment could only be tried on a scale sufficiently great, it would certainly relieve the congestion of the city. Suppose our Government makes an experiment on a scale which all will agree is not only ample but extravagant. We will suppose that Great Britain and Ireland are depopulated, loosed from their anchor- age, towed across the Atlantic, joined to our eastern coast, and opened to settlement. Then deal in like fashion with the German Empire, France, Italy, Denmark, Holland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland. We will suppose that our Government proposes to try this experiment with a thoroughness that will be decisive for all time. Even the most determined champions of the back-to-the-farm policy would not advocate force in its execution. The Government could hardly be expected to arrest city dwellers, and to carry them in chains to the waiting land. The very most that could be reasonably asked would be that the Government, having purchased these empires and kingdoms, should throw them open to free settlement, making a present of a farm to every man who was willing to take it and work it. Let us suppose further that millions, driven by land-hunger, take possession of this vast region. If, after the completion of this experiment on a scale 250 THE NEW WORLD -LIFE so enormous, the United States census showed that during the entire period of settlement our urban population had increased more rapidly than the rural, and that notwithstanding this tremendous artificial stimulus given to agriculture the percentage of the people engaged in it had steadily decreased, would you not confess that your back-to-the-farm movement was hopeless and its theory fallacious? An experiment on the above scale has actually been tried, and with precisely the above results. From 1850 to 1900 our Government gave away several million farms 463,000,000 acres an area some- what greater than that indicated in our supposition. For sixty years previous the urban population had been growing faster than the rural, and, notwith- standing the unparalleled fact that the people flocked to the land in such numbers as to take up an average of 25,000 acres every day for fifty years, the urban popu- lation continued to grow faster than the rural. From 1850 to 1880 the rate of increase of the city population was more than twice as great as that of the rural, and from 1880 to 1900 it was more than three times as great. Furthermore, notwithstanding the enormous artificial impetus given to agriculture greater than can ever be given by any back-to-the-land agitation the proportion of the whole population engaged in agriculture fell from 21 per cent, in 1850 to 13 per cent, in 1900, while the proportion of those engaged in mechanical pursuits rose from 4 per cent, in 1850 to 9 per cent, in 1900 more than double. The distribution of several million people upon the land not only did not stop the growth of the cities; it stimulated that growth, and created other cities, many and great. If the Mississippi Valley had never NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 251 been settled by farmers, there would never have been a Chicago or St. Louis, a Minneapolis or St. Paul, or a hundred other thriving cities which are growing, and will continue to grow, faster than the rural popu- lation. Agriculture, which is now a part of the world's organized industry, demands and creates cities as markets, and as necessary centres of manufacture and distribution. Let us look a little more closely at the results of this experiment in economics and sociology, tried by our Government on such a magnificent scale that it can never again be repeated and does not need to be. Many who are now raising the cry, "Back to soil!" have forgotten or are not old enough to remember the long and terrible depression in agriculture which was the natural and inevitable result of overproduc- tion during the last hah* of the nineteenth century. Under the Homestead Act of 1866, the United States during the thirty years following gave away 2,000,000 farms; and under the Timber-Culture Act over 550,000 more farms were given away during the same period. As was remarked by the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, in his Report for 1896, "This giving of something for nothing has resulted in an abnormally rapid increase of the acreage under tillage in the United States during the last thirty years." Of course abnormally large production re- sulted in abnormally low prices, and in some parts of the West corn was burned for fuel because it was cheaper than wood or coal. The farmer's complaint of low prices for his produce was perennial, and in many instances the mortgage was the most flourishing thing on the farm. The agricultural depression still 252 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE prevailing in the early nineties both in the United States and Europe was treated in a report of our Department of Agriculture by the statistician, J. R. Dodge, and thus summarized hi the New York Times: "The prevalence of low prices is noted, and a feeling of discouragement hi rural circles throughout the world is indicated. It is and has been especially severe hi Great Britain, and is the subject of complaint, discussion, and official investigation hi Germany, France, Italy, and other countries. It is present in monarchies and republics, under diverse currencies and economic systems. But is less severe here than in other countries. Though prices of implements, utensils, and fabrics are also low, the farmer's interest account is unreduced and his mortgage harder to lift. "The main cause of low prices is referred to the inexorable law of supply and demand. Corn and wheat and other staples are cheap because of over- production. Immigration has increased the popula- tion 5,000,000 in ten years. Intercontinental areas have been carved into farms, free to natives and foreigners, opening millions of acres to cultivation. Railroad extension has stimulated production and overwhelmed the East with Western products. Spec- ulation first and utilization afterward have produced results that have astonished the world with a plethora of bread and meat. The Old World has joined with the New to crowd the mountain valleys, slopes, and far-stretching plains of a continent with beeves in the haunts of the once countless herds of the buffalo. "Extended comparisons show how, in the progress of forty years, production had outrun population in its wildest strides. It is shown that wheat-growing NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 253 has become a philanthropic mission to make cheap bread consistent with low wages in Great Britain; that the Northwestern missionaries continue sowing the seed and floating their bread across the waters, mourning for the profits that do not return after many days. . . . Depression more intense will result, it is predicted, if farmers continue ... to walk in the furrows their fathers turned, and seek to live and die hi the same overdone and profitless routine." Big-hearted people who are hurt by the hunger of the poor would like to multiply the tillers of the soil until the world's stomach is full. There are those who believe that so long as many are hungry and some are starving there can be no such thing as over- production of food. But those in Europe and America who starve do so not because there is no food to buy, but because they have nothing to buy with, and if production were doubled they would still be desti- tute. Then- great problem is one of distribution rather than production. Indeed, overproduction, when great enough, aggravates the situation, which was illustrated many times during the period of which I am writing. For instance, in 1888 American farmers cultivated 25,000,000 acres more than in 1880, and their total cereal product was 491,000,000 bushels greater; but the market being overdone, they received $41,- 000,000 less for their great crops than for the smaller crops of 1880. That is, they had $41,000,000 less to spend for farm machinery and for the comforts of life than they had had eight years before. This would naturally derange the prices of manufactured articles, and throw workmen out of employment, so that people no doubt starved in Chicago, New York, and London just as they do now when food is high. 254 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE A man without a job is worse off when food is cheap than the man with good wages when food is dear. John W T . Bookwalter says: 1 "Of the staple cereals, oats, wheat, and Indian corn, there were produced in that territory alone (the plains of the West) over one billion tons in the twenty years between 1870 and 1890 an amount far greater than had hitherto been produced in the whole prior history of the nation." And yet, notwithstanding this enormous development of agriculture, and, indeed, largely because of it, the urban population grew more rapidly than the rural. Abnormal food production on the free and virgin soil of the West threw many farms out of cultivation in the East, and stimulated the tide toward the city. A comparative study of the census of 1880 and that of 1890 shows that 39 per cent, of all the townships in the United States in 1880 lost population during the ten years following. Thus in New England 62 per cent, were more or less depleted; in New York, 69.5 per cent.; in Ohio, 58 per cent.; in Illinois, 54 per cent. That is, hi the latter State 792 townships lost population, while Chicago in ten years leaped from 500,000 inhabitants to more than 1,000,000 and the urban population of the whole country increased 61 per cent. The same cause operated still more powerfully in Europe where with higher land values it cost more to produce food than in the United States. Great Britain in half a century doubled her wealth by means of manufactures and foreign investments, but mean- while her land values declined $690,000,000, 2 and from 1851 to 1881 the number employed in agriculture '"Rural vs. Urban," p. 135. 'David A. Wells, "Recent Economic Changes," p. 423. NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 255 shrunk 1,100,000. Meanwhile cities in Great Britain and on the continent were growing rapidly. No doubt many thought that the destitute of the city could get at least a living, if they would only turn back to the land, but it was found hi various European countries that food products did not bring enough to pay for their production a temporary justification of Emerson's remark after the failure of the Brook Farm experiment that "though no land is bad, land is worse." Thus in the department of Aisne, one of the richest in France, a tenth of the land was abandoned; and from 1851 to 1881 the agricultural population of France de- creased 2,310,000. In Russia 80,000 landowners, find- ing the cost of ownership greater than the proceeds of cultivation, surrendered their land and tens of thousands of them joined the ranks of the great army of beggars. Germany, Austria, Spam, Portugal, and Belgium afforded no exception to the general rule. This widespread disturbance was due to two causes the application of machinery to agriculture, which always and everywhere reduces the number of men necessary to produce the requisite food supply, and the importation of cheap food from America, made inevitable by the vast expansion of agriculture in the West. Thus multitudes of European peasants, driven from the soil, flocked to the cities, and other multitudes migrated to America, where millions swelled the population of the cities and other millions settled on the soil, which stimulated the tide of Americans, moving from country to city. The opening of an empire of virgin soil to free settle- ment was as really a great economic and sociological experiment as if it had been so intended by our Gov- ernment; and if the back-to-the-land theory had the 256 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE slightest value as a solvent of the problems of city congestion and city poverty, it should have relieved both American and European cities in the course of the half century during which it was tried on such a magnificent scale. On the contrary, it greatly stimu- lated the growth, intensified the congestion, and aggra- vated the poverty of the city in both continents. 5. Nor is the cityward movement due to the stupidity and perversity of human nature which lead men to exchange the better for the worse. The preachers of this gospel of social salvation by land assume that if only a sufficient number of city people could be induced to prefer farming, they would migrate to the country; and if rural life could be made more attractive to the young people, they would stay on the farm. Do some hundreds of thousands of men in this country work underground because they have con- ceived an eccentric dislike to sunlight and fresh air? And does their number increase or decrease as a larger or smaller proportion of the population share this idiosyncrasy? We spend our breath in vain urging that God evidently intended men to live above the surface of the earth rather than below it, and that this natural and ancient mode of life is pleasanter, more healthful and less dangerous than the arti- ficial custom of living underground. Even though we quite convince ourselves and the miners, too, we shall not diminish their numbers unless our eloquence reduces the economic demand for coal and iron. To undertake certain kinds of work is practically to accept a sentence of death to be executed by oc- cupational disease in ten years. Does the number of men enaged in such trades indicate how many NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 257 among us are tired of life and prefer slow suicide to swift? Or if these trades were made only half as deadly, would they attract twice the number of work- men? In organized industry the agreeableness, the health- fulness, and the safety of an occupation do not deter- mine the number engaged in it. Numbers are regulated by economic demand. Pleasant or unpleasant conditions of work deter- mine the class of people, but not the number of people, who will engage in it. By all means let us improve the conditions of country life as much as possible for the same reasons that it is desirable to improve the conditions of life everywhere, but not with the expectation that it will affect in any measure the relative numbers in country and city. Just as many will live on the land (whether it is more or less pleasant) as find it econom- ically profitable to do so; and only so many will find it economically profitable as are necessary to supply the demand for farm products. On the other hand, the increasing advantages of the large city will increasingly attract the semi- urban element, whose industries generally can be carried on as successfully in the city as in the village. Furthermore, the greater profits of production on a large scale are likely to deplete the small town and the semi-urban population. 6. Once more, it is assumed by the advocates of this theory that by making agriculture sufficiently scientific and, therefore, remunerative the tide from country to city could be arrested, if not actually reversed. The value of scientific methods in agriculture is 258 THE NEW WORLD -LIFE that they make a given investment of effort, time and money produce a larger dividend in crops. This of course increases profits, but it decreases the number of men who share the profits. Increasing knowledge of plant life and of soils, and all labour-saving ap- pliances which make work on the farm more produc- tive inevitably releases a certain amount of labour for other occupations. A special report in the census of 1880 says: "It is, in fact, estimated by careful men, thoroughly conversant with the changes that have taken place, that in the improvement made in agricultural tools, the average farmer can, with suffi- cient horsepower, do with three men the work of fifteen men forty years ago, and do it better." 1 And of course the continued advance in the application of machinery to farming has been very great since 1880. For instance, after many failures, a successful cotton picking machine has now appeared which does the work of sixty pickers. The influence of machinery on the productiveness of farm labour is well illustrated by the relative amount of human labour required to produce a bushel of wheat in 1830 and in 1894. In the former year it required three hours and three minutes of work; in the latter it required ten minutes. That is, in raising wheat, one man hi 1894 could do the work which required eighteen two generations earlier. 2 It becomes evident, therefore, that the greater the progress in agricultural knowledge and machinery the smaller will be the number of men required to raise a given quantity of farm products; and as the 'Tenth Census, Vol. II, p. 76. S U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Statistics and Bulletin 94, p. 61. NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 259 amount of food which the world can consume is limited, the effect of scientific agriculture, as soon as that limit is reached, will be to reduce the number of those engaged in producing the world's foodstuffs. And that limit, let me add, would be quickly reached provided the destitute had means with which to buy food. If we suppose that 10 per cent, of the civilized world are only hah* fed, it would require an increase of only 5 per cent, of the food supply to meet the deficiency. Beyond that no more food would be eaten, if produced. And Mr. Hays in the article already quoted, says that the work of plant breeding will add ten per cent, annually to our crop products, and possibly 25 per cent. Agricultural science has as yet made only a begin- ning. Indeed, Dean Bailey says it has not yet become a science. We can fix no limit to man's improvement of the soil or of plant life. 1 Because of the large num- ber of scientific workers employed, the Department of Agriculture at Washington has been called the greatest research university in the world. The department has 13,858 employees, all told, and expends an annual appro- priation of nearly $25,000,000. There are also many agricultural experiment stations scattered through the United States which are doing original and valuable work. Furthermore, there has been a great revival in the study of agriculture in Europe during the past generation, which was inspired by American compe- tition. It may well be questioned, therefore, whether progress in scientific agriculture will not be great l " It is possible, with the most prolific varieties and the utmost care to produce as high as one thousand five hundred grains of wheat from a single grain. . . . By this method from sixty-two to ninety bushels of wheat to the acre have actually been obtained." James J. Hill's "Highways of Progress," p. 35. 260 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE enough for years to come to provide for all increase of the world's population, which at present is not far from 1 per cent, per annum. And so long as that is the case agricultural population will remain stationary and all increase of population will be urban. I do not forget that a large proportion of farm products are raw materials for manufactures. But if scientific cultivation increase their output 10 per cent, per annum, it will be more than adequate. Moreover, any increase of rural population in order to supply raw materials for manufactures implies a much greater increase of urban population, because it takes many persons to consume, and to prepare for consumption, the wool or cotton which one farmer produces; and the better farmer he is the larger will be the number for whom he will provide work and food in the city. At present, one person engaged in agriculture in the United States furnishes farm prod- ucts for eight persons, besides exports whose total is $1, 000,000,000 ; l which means that one farm worker provides food and raw materials for about ten. When, therefore, our present productiveness fairly represents that of the whole world, only one tenth of the world's population can engage in agriculture; and that propor- tion will be reduced as rapidly as science and invention increase the average productiveness of farm labour. The attempt to arrest the tide toward the city by making the farmer and his equipment more effective undertakes to overcome an effect by making more operative its principal cause ! Apart from chemical possibilities, there are only two methods of increasing the food supply. One is by *U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Statistics, Bulletin 94, p. 57. 261 enlarging the area under cultivation; the other is by improving agriculture. The experience of the United States during the nineteenth century demonstrates, as we have seen, that the former method does not restrict the growth of the city. Early hi the century the making of new settlements was necessarily slow because transporta- tion was poor and forests had to be felled. When the pioneer reached the prairie, settlement proceeded more rapidly, and during the latter hah* of the century legislation, immigration, and railway transportation conspired to stimulate the movement beyond all precedent. But whatever the rate of settlement, slow or fast, the urban population increased more rapidly than the rural throughout the century; and not only so, but the percentage engaged in agriculture steadily decreased. Even if we imagine that under some untried condi- tions the occupation of new lands might drain the cities, this restriction of their growth could be only temporary because hi every country there is only a limited amount of arable land. This fact alone, quite apart from other considerations, would necessitate the ultimate dominance of the city. If the entire agricultural population were fully determined to stay on the soil, any increase in that population would necessitate the subdivision of farms until an inevitable limit was reached, and then all further increase would be forced to migrate to the city. That is, want of room fixes a natural and necessary limit to the growth of agricultural population in every land, while cities may grow indefinitely great, without any limit whatever, so long as they can secure adequate supplies, for which they may draw upon all the world. 262 THE NEW WORLD -LIFE If the one method of increasing the food supply demands more land, the other requires more man, and in agriculture, as we have seen, the more man the fewer men. When the world's arable land is all under cultivation, any increase of the food supply must depend on more skillful agriculture. Every consider- ation of public welfare and of private reward will then draw able men (perhaps the ablest) to the cultivation of the soil, and inefficient farmers will be driven from the land by competition. There is absolutely no escape from the conclusion that the increasing disproportion between rural and urban population must continue until there has been reached the largest world population consistent with the accepted standard of well-being for the race. An established equilibrium between the birth rate and the death rate will then keep the whole population station- ary except as science may increase the possibilities of food production. It has been imagined by some that because electricity is easily distributed it will eventually, by establishing cottage industries, distribute the population which steam has concentrated. But power is only one of several factors in manufacturing. Raw materials are cheaper when bought in large quantities, and the organization of industry on a large scale affords many economies. Moreover, facilities of transportation and easy access to the labor market are very important considerations in industrial competition. These ad- vantages of big business make it impossible for the electric motor to carry competitive industry back to the home or the village. This whole back-to-the-farm philosophy is utterly fallacious because it ignores fundamental economic 2G3 and social facts and violates fundamental economic and social laws, which are as stubbornly indifferent to sentiment, persuasion, and command as are other natural laws. Queen Elizabeth undertook a back-to-the-land move- ment when she issued a proclamation against the further growth of London; and King Canute attempted a back-to-the-sea movement when he forbade the further encroachment of the tide; and they both had the same measure of success that is attending the modern movement. A tendency to leave the country for the city was recognized and resisted long before Elizabeth's day. Aristotle thought the ideal city should be limited to 10,000 inhabitants. Plutarch warned his generation against the growth of great cities. Cicero made re- peated efforts to turn back the tide from the country. Virgil lamented the disposition to abandon the farm for the city; "The plough is no longer honored; the husbandmen have been led away, and the fields are foul with weeds." Justinian resorted to legal measures to put a period to the growth of the city, as did also mediaeval statesmen and monarchs. The further growth of Paris was repeatedly prohibited by law during the sixteenth century. Many proclamations against the growth of London were issued by the Tudors^and Stuarts; 1 but the authority of the sovereign is no more effective against natural law than is the lament of the poet. For two thousand years men have deplored and resisted the growth of the city; and for two thousand years resistance has failed. The opposition to the 'A. F. Weber's "The Growth of Cities," p. 454. 264 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE growth of the city was once reinforced by devastating armies, pestilence, famine, and fire. Does any one imagine that with these enemies of the city's growth overcome, and with the influences which promote that growth multiplied a thousandfold there is now any better prospect of successful opposition? The world must become reconciled to living in cities. It is useless to spend time deploring the in- evitable, and worse than useless to shut our eyes to facts because we do not like them. Certainly there is peril when civilization is dominated by a rabble- ruled city, but economic and social laws will have their way just the same. They are as indifferent to any danger which may be involved in their operation as gravitation is indifferent to the peril of stumbling over a precipice. The remedy must be found not in the worse than forlorn hope of fighting the inevitable, but in con- centrating our efforts on making the inevitable the preferable. m. THE MEANING OP THE CITY'S DOMINANCE Let us turn now to consider the significance of the fact that urban population must certainly and neces- sarily outgrow the rural. 1. The significance of the city's overwhelming numbers. It is the average man on whom the success of popular institutions depends. In the past this fateful man has lived in the country; in the near future he will live in the city. What the national physique is to be whether it is to improve or degenerate, will be settled in the city. The intelligence of the nation will be measured by the intelligence of the city. The moral NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 265 standards of the nation will be determined by the morals of the city. In the past, country and city have powerfully in- fluenced each other, but there is a constant shifting of wealth, of population, of influence, and of power, which is steadily weakening the influence of the country on the city, and as steadily strengthening the influence of the city on the country. With the city in possession of the press and of the greater part of the nation's wealth it already exercises commanding influence, and with the dominance which in a democracy goes with majorities it will soon sway commanding power. In the nineteenth century the country con- trolled the city; early in the twentieth the city will control the country. With the redistribution of population which is taking place rural districts sustain a loss in Congres- sional representation, and urban districts make a gain. Changed legislative apportionments will modify the political complexion of our State legislatures and be reflected in the United States Senate. Thus our legislative bodies, State and national, are so constituted that they respond quickly to the changing political weight of country and city. If the popular belief is correct that the strength of one of the two great political parties of the past century is in the country while that of the other is in the city, the early and increasing predominance of urban popu- lation, quite apart from any other cause, would suffice to account for a political overturning. Of course there will always be representatives of the great parties in both city and country, but as rural and urban populations represent different industries they will easily come to an issue over what they regard 266 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE as conflicting interests. For instance, farmers want protection for their food products, and city dwellers want cheaper food. Canada has magnificent agri- cultural resources. From the basin of the Red River, we are told, to the Saskatchewan there are 213,000,000 acres of wheat lands a region, 1,200 miles long and averaging 300 miles in width. If Canada is foolish enough to follow our example, and deplete her virgin soil, she can affect our agriculture as we affected European during the last half of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, to the south of us there are the vast tropical areas of Mexico, Central and South America, with cheap labour at hand. If American manufactur- ers, paying comparatively high wages, find it difficult to meet foreign competition, there will be a vigorous effort to force down the price of food in order to reduce wages. Here are materials for a conflict between city and country, the issue of which cannot be doubtful. The fact that the city is to have an increasing majority of the population makes it morally certain that in due time we shall abolish our "Corn Laws" as England did hers in 1846. In their attitude toward various moral problems, like temperance and the saloon, the country and the city are antagonistic. The religious complexion of rural and urban popu- lation is widely different. Protestant strength is rural, while Roman Catholic strength is urban. Only 19.8 per cent, of the Protestant membership is in cities of 25,000 or more inhabitants, and 80.2 per cent, is outside such cities; while 52.2 per cent, of the Roman Catholic membership is in such cities, and 47.8 per cent, outside. Protestants outside such cities have a majority of 10,860,000. Roman Catholics hi such NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 267 cities have a majority of 2,193,000. In the country and the smaller cities, Protestants are nearly three times as strong as Roman Catholics. In the cities having a population of 25,000 or more, Roman Catholics are 50 per cent, stronger than the Protestants; and in the two largest cities they are twice as strong. Thus, so far as we can see, the disproportionate growth of the city will in due time reverse the attitude of the nation on questions of the highest importance. If this were all, it would be much, but we cannot appreciate the greatness of the change which is coming to our country and to the world unless we consider; 2. The significance of a changed environment in its influence on an ever increasing majority of the people. Up to the present time the greater part of mankind have been reared in a rural environment. From this time on an ever increasing proportion, and at length a large majority, will be reared in an urban environment. Already 77 per cent, of the people of England and Wales live in cities, and there their children are reared; and it is only a question of time when nearly or quite as large a proportion of Americans will live in cities. W T ith the existing redistribution of population, what- ever essential difference there is between the country and the city becomes a characteristic difference be- tween the dominant civilization of the past and the dominant civilization of the future. There are differences between rural and urban en- vironment, like the shameful housing conditions and the high mortality, which are a reproach to the city, but which are by no means necessary. There are others however which would seem to be essential. The contacts of the country are chiefly with nature, while those of the city are with human nature. On 268 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE the farm the influence which the parent exerts over the child is shared with few others; in the city a thou- sand influences reach the child which the parent cannot control. This, I take it, is the principal reason why ideas and methods change more slowly from generation to generation in the country. The farmer is conser- vative. New ideas root more easily among dense populations. Wide intercourse renders men less opin- ionated; hence the broader-mindedness of the city. Then, too, the urbanite is subject to more powerful stimuli, such as greater possibilities of success and failure, a more intense competition, and more rapid changes of fortune. Furthermore, in the growing city a decreasing proportion of the people own their homes, which has an important influence on character and life. On the farm most men are proprietors; in the city most men are renters. Men have long believed that he who becomes the owner of a bit of the earth has given bonds to maintain the existing order of society. But when the race becomes predominantly urban, it is likely to slip this ancient anchor. Thus certain characteristics which in an agricultural civili- zation we have come to consider a part of the permanent fibre of human nature may be distinctly modified, and with important results, when the larger portion of humanity come under a radically different environ- ment. There are great and grave possibilities bound up in the fact that the nation (and ultimately the race) is to become as generally and as thoroughly urban- ized as heretofore it has been generally and thoroughly ruralized. Furthermore, as the race changes its home it will also change its occupation; and we have seen in a previous chapter how profoundly the occupation influences NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 269 the life. Thus with the predominance of the city, civilization becomes predominantly industrial instead of agricultural; and as the nation and the race are industrialized, the new industrial problems become national and racial in their scope and significance. We may also observe that the urban standard of living is much higher than the rural. The constant transfer of population from country to city will, therefore, operate as a constant stimulus to all in- dustries except the production of the food supply, on which there will be no increasing demand because a given population in the city eats no more than the same number in the country. Again, by the changed environment involved in the redistribution of the population the great majority of the people are not only urbanized and industrial- ized but also socialized. The farmer's remoteness from his neighbours permits and encourages a freedom and independence of action impossible to the city dweller and worker. The many processes involved in preparing the soil, planting, cultivating, and har- vesting a crop are not like those embraced in making a shoe, carried on at the same time by different work- men. They are consecutive, carried on by the same man at different times. The close proximity of others is not constantly forced upon the sub-conscious- ness of the farmer. He does not have to time his movements with reference to a workman at his left and another at his right. He plans his work and does it with little or no reference to others. He decides all questions in the light of his own personal interests and convenience. The farmer is naturally individualistic, just as the agricultural civilization of the past has been individualistic. 270 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE When, however, the farmer moves to town all these conditions of life change. His relations to others become far more intimate and complex. New in- fluences constantly operative modify him much and his children more. The conditions of urban life and of organized industry gradually create a different habit of mind. The vastly increased interdependence, necessitating many services received and many ren- dered, the refinement of the nervous system and the quickening of human sympathies which belong to the complex, social organism of modern civilization, all help to develop and cultivate the new social spirit necessary to the solution of the new social problems. If the great majority of our population were to remain rural and, therefore, strongly individualistic, it may well be doubted whether the great social prob- lems of the city would ever find solution. Certain it is that the social legislation enacted by the present British Government would have been impossible if England had remained chiefly agricultural. Thus as a nation, once rural, becomes predominantly urban, there takes place something more than a redis- tribution of population; there is wrought a change in the temper and spirit of the people; the nation is being socialized; and civilization which was rural, agri- cultural, and individualistic becomes urban, industrial, and collective. This trend of population to the city, which is now the despair of so many good people, may be seen some day to be the providential preparation for the solution of the social problems which at present it undoubtedly complicates. 3. But we have not dropped our plummet to the bottom of this fact and sounded its deepest significance NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 271 until we have considered the unborn cities of Asia and of the lands bordering the Pacific. The problem of the city is not simply national in its scope. It is as wide as the world, for the industrial revolution which is giving to the city its new signif- icance, is destined to invade all countries. This revo- lution is older in Europe than in the United States; it is well under way in Japan, and is beginning in India and China. The effects of this revolution will be more profound in Asia than in Europe and America, because the vast majority of that continent's 800,- 000,000 and more live in villages, and wherever the industrial revolution goes it empties the villages into the cities. The redistribution of population in Asia, necessitated by the coming of the new civilization, will mass several hundred millions in cities. And not only will Asiatic millions be subjected to a radical change of environment in being removed from the village to the city, they must also undergo the transformation involved in catching up with mod- ern civilization. The journey for which occidentals have taken three thousand years the orientals will have to accomplish in three generations. By the incoming of a new and radically different civilization they will be compelled in this brief period to adjust themselves to new and radically different conceptions and condi- tions of life. Moreover, vast changes in the Circum-Pacific countries already referred to, may be expected to be crowded into so brief a period as to constitute nothing less than a great world-crisis. We have seen that these countries are capable of sustaining many hundreds of millions, and that at present they are only very partially developed. There 272 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE are good reasons for believing that their development will take place during the present century. "At the beginning of the nineteenth century our national territory was less than one fourth of its present area, and only a small portion of that was settled. ... In bringing this continental wilder- ness under the yoke of civilization, we organized during the century twenty-nine great commonwealths, twenty-four of which are each larger than all England, and the average area of the twenty-nine is greater than that of England, Wales, and Denmark in one. During that century population increased nearly 71,000,000, or 1,300 per cent." 1 In fifty years the last hah* of the century we settled twice as much territory as we had occupied during the 250 years preceding. This enormous acceleration in the rate of settlement was due in part to the application of machinery to agriculture, the development of more effective methods of mining, and the increase of capital, but it was chiefly the result of railway transportation. Since they came to our aid their efficiency has been increased many fold. We have now nineteen times as much capital as we possessed in 1850. Mining machinery and railway construction have been vastly improved; agricultural machinery has increased the effectiveness of the farmer many times; and in addi- tion to all this electricity has mightily reinforced civil- ization. Furthermore, Europe is deeply interested in the economic development of these countries, and has already invested some billions in them. The Czar has offered his European subjects extraordinary in- ducements to settle in Siberia. A large stream of immigration is entering Western Canada. And the 'See the writer's "Challenge of the City," p. 9. NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 273 Isthmian canal will have a powerful influence on the future of Western South America, New Zealand, and Australia. In view of all of the above facts, it would seem to be less of an undertaking for Great Britain, Russia, Germany, France, Italy, and the United States to develop the resources of these Circum-Pacific countries during the next fifty years than it was for the eastern third of the United States to develop the western two thirds during the last hah* of the nineteenth century. The rapid increase of the world's population is a motive for pressing the development of these Pacific lands. At the present rate of growth the population of the civilized world would double in less than a hundred years. That motive is emphasized by the rapidly rising standard of living. Raising that stand- ard 100 per cent, is commercially equal to doubling the population. It is not impossible that from these two causes the world's demand for the raw materials of manufacturers will increase fourfold during this cen- tury. This will furnish Europe and America abundant motive, and the increase of their capital by many hun- dreds of millions annually will afford abundant means for opening up the undeveloped resources of the con- tinents rapidly. The fact that during the nineteenth century over 500 cities were born in the United States places it beyond reasonable doubt that the redistribution of Asia's 850,000,000 inhabitants and the development of the resources of the world's virgin lands will give birth to some thousands of cities. This process of world development and transformation will not be completed during this century any more than the development of our great West was completed during 274 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE the nineteenth century. But settlement and the demands of commerce, manufactures, and mining fixed the new centres of population and shaped begin- nings which will mould the future. What the nine- teenth century was to the undeveloped regions of the United States, the twentieth century will be to the undeveloped countries of the earth. The extreme difficulty of remodelling a city makes beginnings significant and prophetic. l Montreal, Que- bec, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and New Orleans all have a distinctive character to-day which was given to them by their founders. This is a new for- mative age, for the men of the next two or three gen- erations will found the cities which will shape and dominate the civilizations of the greater part of man- kind. What if the founders of London, of New York, and of Chicago could have foreseen what we see, and could have foreknown what we know concerning the influence of environment, the effects of congestion, the importance of good sanitary conditions, and the like, how different would have been these cities to-day, how much less of misery and degradation, of vice and crime, of disease and death would they have known? The stamp which during the next two or three generations will be given to the new civilization through the city will influence the future, world without end. To seize the opportunity is to fashion the mould into which the new and plastic civilization will be run. To miss the opportunity is to leave future generations to file the cold cast. When the tremendous significance of the coming city flashed upon my mind, it shook me, body and soul, 'See the writer's "Our Country," Chap. XII, "The Influence of Early Settlers." NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 275 like an ague. I wish it might shake millions of men out of their lethargy, and millions of money out of their pockets to meet the mighty emergency involved in this vast cosmic transformation. Let us have done with the false and foolish cry, "Back to the soil," which is a futile attempt to evade the problem of the" city. It is worse than useless because it distracts attention from the real problem and diverts funds from well-matured and scientific plans which would throw valuable light on the whole subject but which have been forced to lie on the shelf for precious years. We have thus far discussed the city in the abstract. It will help us to a clearer conception of its significance to glance for a moment at a concrete example. 4. Consider New York City as a prophecy. Do we appreciate the meaning of that little row of figures which tells us that in 1910 the population of New York was 4,766,883? That is 2,000,000, more people than rebelled against George III in 1776. That is 420,000 more people than can be found hi the remainder of the State. That is a larger population than lives in any one of forty-four great States of the Union; large enough to make two States like Cali- fornia with its great cities, or two like Iowa, or Minne- sota, or Wisconsin. This one city would make five Colorados with a sufficient remainder to populate Utah and Vermont. It could furnish inhabitants for three New England States, for Delaware, and for nine commonwealths west of the Mississippi, and then have left people enough to make a city twice as large as Aristotle thought any city ought to be. New York has twice the population of Norway, a million more than live in the twenty-two cantons of Switzerland, 276 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE and nearly 400,000 more than live in the continent of Australia. I try to make New York real to our apprehension because it is prophetic of several other cities in our own country and many others in the world. When our urban population is eight times its present magnitude (and that will be long before the nation's population has increased eightfold) St. Louis, Boston, and Cleve- land, if they get their due share, will each be as large as the New York of 1910. Philadelphia will then be more than twice as large as the present metropolis, and Chicago more than three times as large. If New York then has eight times its present numbers, it will still fall short of the expectations of Mr. H. G. Wells, who in his Anticipations, suggests that in time London, St. Petersburg, and Berlin will each exceed 20,000,000, while New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago will probably contain twice that number. These figures seem incredible only because they are unfamiliar. New York has increased fifteenfold in seventy years within the memory of many of its citizens. Is it incredible that, as the world's metrop- olis, it will gain sevenfold in all the ages to come? London, as the world's metropolis, has gamed six- fold since 1800 when its population was just under a million. But we have no adequate conception of the city's place in the world's future unless we have some appre- ciation of the wealth which is being concentrated therein far more rapidly than population. The ex- penditures of a municipality are a suggestion of the resources of its citizens. The total of New York's budget for 1913 would meet the entire annual ex- penditures of the Dominion of Canada twice over with NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 277 nearly enough left to provide for the budget of the Australian commonwealth. It is five times that of the kingdom of Norway, and seven times that of the kingdom of Greece. It is sufficient to relieve the governments of Turkey, China, and Persia of their annual burdens with a trifle of $7,000,000 left over. 1 In a rapid impressionist sketch like this we can give no time to details. We can make no mention of the thousands of philanthropic and charitable organiza- tions of New York. We cannot enter one of the 133 hospitals, nor consider the work of one of the 1,133 churches, nor visit one of the 570 public school build- ings, to say nothing of colleges, universities, professional and private schools. We must confine our attention to those facts which indicate the wide relations of the city with the nation and the world. The factories of New York City draw their raw materials from all the earth, and send their products to all peoples. They number 25,938, counting only those which are organized under the factory system. The imports and exports of the city amount to $1,746- 000,000 $19 for every man, woman, and child of the United States. The exchanges of the clearing- house for a single year make a total of $102,553,000,000 about $100 for every human being on the planet and averaging $338,000,000 in daily clearings. The possible influence of the press of a great city is suggested by the total issue of all its periodicals, daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly, for a year. There are 927 such papers and magazines published in New York. 'The annual expenditures of Canada are $84,064,000; of the Au- stralian Commonwealth $29,988,000; of Norway $36,839,000; of Greece $27,209,000; of Turkey $157,745,000; of China $21,220,000; and of Persia $7,174,000. The budget of New York City for 1913 is $193,000,000, or $528,000 a day. 278 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE One third of them do not give their circulation. The total number of copies issued by the remaining 620 in one year is 2,003,863,000. This would supply 424 copies to every resident of the city, or 22 to every inhabitant of the United States, or one to every mem- ber of the race, with a surplus of 400,000,000 for some other planet. These periodicals, which discuss well-nigh every subject of human interest, are issued in twenty- eight different languages, indicating the highly hetero- geneous character of the population. l Such a city is a gigantic world ganglion, whose nerves thrill with the life of mankind. The problem of the city is immensely complicated by this heterogeneous character of its population. Let us attempt to visualize it. By some magic greater than that of science we will transport the two English cities of Oxford and Canterbury across the sea and establish them on some spacious site as the American home of 78,000 Englishmen. To this beginning we will add a suburb of Glasgow having 23,000 Scotchmen. Close by we will place the town of Cork with its 102,000 inhabitants, and around it we will gather the entire population of Limerick County, namely, 142,000 adding enough Irish villages to make the whole a city of 252,000 Irishmen. From Norway we will bring Fredrikshald and Larvik with their 22,000 souls. Sweden shall furnish us Halsingborg with villages enough added to make a city of 35,000. Emperor William shall transfer to us Posen and Utrecht, throw- ing in a few dozen villages, together making a city of l The languages are as follows, Arabic, Armenian, Bohemian, Chinese, Croatian, Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Magyar, Nor- wegian, Polish, Roumanian, Russian, Ruthenian, Slovak, Slovinian, Spanish, Swedish, Syrian, and Yiddish. NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 279 279,000 Germans. Austria shall present us with Prague and its 224,000 people, while Hungary shall add a city with an unpronouncable name, making 266,000 from the Dual Empire. Constanza multi- plied by two will give us a city of 32,000 Roumanians which shall be added to our cosmopolitan population. Italy shall part with Venice, Pisa, Verona, and Como, which with their surrounding villages will add a city of 340,000 Italians. From Russia shall come Kishinev, Sebastopol, Astrakhan, and Constadt, also villages from Poland, Finland, and the Caucasus, all together making a Russian city of 483,000. When we have transported across the continent Vancouver with its 25,000 Cana- dians, and have brought from Timbuktu villages enough to make a little city of 16,000 coloured people we shall still lack nearly 100,000 to represent New York's foreign-born population. How shall we do justice to the polyglot character of this people, more motley than the dwellers in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, and like them "out of every nation under heaven"? To complete our cosmopolitan city we will collect 1,000 villages, averaging ninety-eight souls each, from every corner of every continent, "Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, and dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pam- phylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians," and all the rest. Among our city's 1,927,713 foreign-born you shall scarcely search in vain for men from under every sky. "Complete," did I say? Our city is not yet half grown and lacks many characteristic elements. The American-born of foreign or mixed parentage are almost as numerous as the foreign-born, and constitute 280 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE a separate problem. To provide for them we will make room for eighteen more cities, each having 100,000 inhabitants; that is, as large as Albany; or more accurately, eighteen cities widely varying in size but averaging 100,000 each. And now we have reached the most difficult part of our undertaking, for there are 921,318 native-born of native parentage for whom we must provide. What shall we do for those of American stock? We have brought English cities for Englishmen, and Italian cities for Italians, and German cities for Germans, but there are no American cities in America! It is said that in Cincinnati an American-born citizen was not permitted to vote because he was unable to pro- duce naturalization papers. The best we can do is to select cities in the Southland where as yet there are comparatively few immigrants and place them alongside of our collection of foreign cities, and of our nameless cities filled with native-born citizens of foreign names and foreign blood. We will add Rich- mond, Va., with 127,000 inhabitants; Charlotte, N. C-, with 34,000; Columbia, S. C., with 26,000; and Charles- ton with 58,000; Augusta, Ga., with 37,000, and Atlanta with 154,000; Jacksonville, Fla., with 57,000; Mont- gomery, Ala., with 38,000, and Birmingham with 132,000; Austin, Texas, with 29,000; Little Rock, Ark., with 45,000; Lexington, Ky., with 35,000; Chat- tanooga, Term., with 44,000, and Nashville with 110,000. We have now to add only a city of 75,000 American-born negroes, and our picture of New York is complete. Surely a great city is a little world a human wil- derness whose millions are mostly strangers one to another, and yet strangely united in one vast and NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 281 varied life. What a multiplicity of races, of languages, of customs, of religions, of virtues and of vices ! What contrasts of characters; what conflict of opinions, preju- dices, of principles, what common and yet what rival interests; what a maze of motives; what a labyrinth of possibilities ! But one eye in the universe can measure it all. The chief significance of this strange and mighty city is that it is prophetic. To-day there is but one New York; to-morrow there will be several; the day after there will be many. New York is prophetic not only of the vast size of many future cities, but also of their heterogeneous character. The typical city of Europe and Asia was produced by the natural increase of its population and by additions of the same blood from the country. Notwithstanding the presence of a few foreigners, the typical city of the Old World has been and still is homogeneous. We think of London as thoroughly cosmopolitan, and yet the Census Report for 1901 shows that 94 per cent, of the population were natives of Great Britain, and that only 2.98 per cent, were foreigners. Contrast this with New York, 40 per cent, of whose population are foreign-born and only 19 per cent, are native-born of native parentage. The composition of the city created by the new civilization is profoundly influenced by modern facilities of trans- portation. We may, therefore, expect the coming cities of the Pacific countries to be highly composite in char- acter. This is of vital concern to democracy. A strong sultan might successfully govern a conglomerate popu- lation in Constantinople, of many races, of many tongues, of many religions, but how shall such a popu- lation govern itself? Common political action implies 282 THE NEW WORLD - LIFE common understanding, common interests, common aims. Without these "popular government" means boss government. We know how New York governs, or rather mis- governs itself. Would we trust New York to govern the nation? What would become of democracy? The city in control of the nation and yet incapable of se//-control is like Nero on the throne. We have seen that the city will certainly and of necessity dominate the nation and the world; and we have seen the significance of this fact, that it means far more than political control. We have seen that the city will determine the physique, the intellect, the moral character, the destiny of the race. The problem of the city, then, is the advance problem of the nation and of the world. The modern city is the microcosm of the new civilization. It is in the city that the new industrial problem must be solved, for the city is the centre of industrial organization. It is in the city that the new problem of wealth must be solved, for there is wealth massed. It is in the city that the new race problem must be solved, because it is there that the races are forced into the closest competitive relations. It is in the city that the new problem of the relations of the individual and society must be solved, because there is the social organism most complex. It is in the city that the new problem of legislation must be solved, because there the readjustments required by i the new civilization are most radical and most numerous. Thus as the meridians of the earth radiate from one pole and focus in the other, so these great world problems of the new civilization spring from the hi- NEW PROBLEM OF THE CITY 283 dustrial revolution and gather in the city. The prob- lem of the city, therefore, is nothing less than the problem of civilization, the problem of building in the earth the New Jerusalem. It is the problem of society's actualizing its highest possibilities by living in har- mony with the laws of its own being, thus realizing the new social ideal. Does such a problem seem beyond all human power and possibility of solution? Not to those who believe in God and in the coming of his kingdom. At the beginning of the Divine-human Book our first glimpse of man is in a garden. It is a paradise of perfect beauty, of perfect simplicity, of perfect innocence. It is a paradise of virtue unfallen because of virtue untried. We turn to the close of the book, and there we catch another glimpse of man in a perfect estate. We see in this vision not the beauty of inno- cence, but the beauty of holiness. We see not the unstable peace of virtue untried, but the established peace of virtue victorious. In the first picture we see individualistic man; in the second we see socialized man. In the first we see man unfallen, sustaining right relations to his Creator. In the second we see man redeemed, sustaining right relations to his God and to his fellows. The story of this marvellous human drama begins hi the country; its denouement is in the city. The crown and consummation of our civilization the full coming of the Kingdom of God on earth is typified not by a garden, but by a city a Holy City into which shall enter nothing unclean, and nothing that maketh a lie. Paradise lost was a garden; Paradise regained will be a city. 284 THE NEW WORLD -LIFE In this volume it has been shown that there is being developed a new world-life; that the new altruism and the new knowledge justify and demand a new world- ideal; that the new world-problems which are forced upon us by this new world-life spring from the selfish- ness and ignorance which the new altruism and the new knowledge are calculated to remove. The following volume will show that the new that is, the social interpretation of Christianity not only anticipates this great ideal which to the modern world is new, but clarifies, spiritualizes, and vitalizes it. Furthermore, it will show that the new altruism is only a faint suggestion of the enthusiasm for humanity which the social interpretation of Christianity will cre- ate when it has been generally accepted by the churches, thus furnishing a new inspiration and an achieving power which the beneficence of the world has hereto- fore lacked. It will also point out the social principles of Jesus which must be followed in employing the new methods revealed by the new knowledge (science) for the solution of the great social problems. Thus it will be shown that the teachings of Jesus afford the aim, the principles, and the motive power for realizing the world-ideal after which men are groping to-day. INDEX PAGE Agriculture, Department of 259 Effects of scientific 257-262 Ahlefeld, Vice- Admiral 41 Altruism, the new 74-83 Amalgamation of races not desirable 173-175 not possible 168-173 obstacles to universal 168-173 Amidon, Judge 204 Andrews, Dr. E. Benjamin 180 Angell, Norman 42 Arnold, Matthew 159 Atkinson, Edward 23, 109 Austria-Hungary, populations of 171,172 "Back to the Land" 237-264 Bagehot, Prof. Walter 192,196 Bailey, Dean L. H 78, 233 note 241, 242, 259 Baldwin, Prof. J. M 185,187 Bible, circulation of 13 Bishops of the M. E. Church, utterances of 102, 103 Bismarck, Prince 40 Bookwalter, John W 254 Boss, the political 196 Brooks, John Graham 124 Bryce, Rt. Hon. James 130, 139, 223 Bubonic plague, ravages of 67 Buckle 11 Burke, Edmund 94 Butler, Dr. N. M 78 Canada, reciprocity with 34 Capitals of Europe, population of 232 Carnegie, Andrew 28, 60 China, increase of population of 162-165 famine in, 146; "open door," 27-30 revenues of 126 Cities yet unborn 270-275 City, causes of growth of 228-230 dominance of, meaning of 264-283 in politics 265, 266 in moral questions 266 in religion 266, 267 285 286 INDEX environment, influence of 267-270 problem of the 228-283 new problem of the 91, 92 Civilization in condition of flux 4 Clark, Prof. John B 93, 94, 95 Climate, influence of 10 Colonies, manufacturers and navies 113, 114 Cobden, Richard 195 Commerce, influence of, on cities 229, 230 of the world 25 three stages of 20-23 Commercialism, perils of 144, 145 Commons, Prof. John R 109, 110 Competition, "cut-throat" 34, 35 free 25 Comte 65 Congestion of the city, committee on 248, 249 Court of Arbitral Justice, International 51 Creation, unity of 5, 6 Crozier, Bishop 176, 177 Curry, Hon. J. L. M 189 Custom, development of, in Orient 190, 191 Darwin, Charles 43 Democracy, modern spirit of 154, 155 Density of populations 234 Dickens, Charles , 73 Discontent, intelligent 155, 156 popular, and increasing production 108-111 peril of 145-158 Divide, crossing the 16, 17 Dodge, Mr. J. R 252, 253 Dodge, Mr. William E 31, 87, 158 Dolbear, Prof. A. E 59 Drummond, Prof. Henry 6, 7, 95, 243, 244 Economy, orthodox political, selfish 103, 104 Eliot, President Emeritus 69, 106 Emerson 12, 255 Emigration, Asiatic 163-167 Chinese 163-165 Environment 9-17, 66 Eugenics 65, 66 Evolution 6 Family tree 183-185 Federal Council of Churches of Christ 14 Fisher, Professor 129, 130 Fiske, Prof. John 43, 53, 54 Fitch, Mr. John A 100, 101 Frontier, influence of, on lawlessness 208 Galton, Sir Francis 65 Gary, Judge 110 Giffen, Sir Robert 108, 134, 232 INDEX 287 Gillette, Prof. John M 238 Gladden, Dr. Washington 106 Gladstone 49 Goodnow, Professor 215 Gorgas, Colonel 69 Great Britain, cultivated area of 29 Gulick, Dr. Sidney L 189, 191 Hadley, President 139, 216 Hague, the 51 conference 50 court of arbitration at 16 tribunal 50 Hale, Professor 60, 61 Harlan, Justice 142 Hays, Mr. W. M. . 247, 259 Heaven as a social ideal 81 Herodotus 142 Hollander, Professor 233 Howard, Justice 197,216, 222 Huxley, Professor 74, 97, 153 Ideal social, defined 56 Ideal, a new world- 53-83 Immigration, influence of, on lawlessness 208, 209 India, population of 232 Individual, the, developed hi Occident 193-198 suppressed in Orient 189-193 explains Oriental civilization 192, 193 and society 176, 202 new problem of the relations of 91, 199-202 and society, the sacrifice of either to the other 188-199 versus society 178-180 society versus 180-181 Individualism, a vicious 212 development of American 209, 210 influence of, on crime 209, 210 Industrial Workers of the World 220, 221 Industry, evolution of organized 98, 99 mal-adjustment of, to democracy 104, 106 new problem of 87-125 new world- . . . . 19-36 selfishness in 100-104 and type of civilization 88, 89 Investments, foreign 44, 45 "I. W. W." (Industrial Workers of the World) 120-124 Jack, Captain 219, 220 James, President 78 Jay, Hon. John 40 Jones, Dr. J. P. . . . . 191 Judiciary, conservatism of the 215-222 Kant, Immanuel 49, 54 Keen, Dr. W. W 71 288 INDEX Keller, Helen 187, 188 Kidd, Benjamin 94 King, President Henry C 190 note 241 Knowledge, the new 58-74 Kropotkin, Prince 25, 26, 143 Labor displaced by machinery 118, 1 19 to be controlled by unskilled element 120 La Follette, Senator 216 Laissez-faire 77 Laws, a labyrinth of 225 evils of conflicting 225 Lawlessness, problems of 203-222 Lazear, Doctor 69 Legislation by rule of thumb 226 need of scientific 226, 227 new problem of 91 problem of 222-227 volume of recent 223, 225 Lieber, Prof. Francis 183 Lincoln's wealth 152 Lister, Joseph 70 London, 800,000 habitually hungry in 109 Lynch Law defended 204, 205 Lorillard, Pierre ; 149 Luxury, peril of 142-144 Machinery, automatic 119 different effects of, as applied to agriculture and manu- factures 238, 239 displacing labor 118, 119 influence of, on character 120 threatening increase of 111-115 Malthusiasm, mechanical 111-115 Manufacturers and food supply 35 colonies, and navies 113, 114 increasing more rapidly than population 112, 113 Markham, Edwin 83 McKinley, President 33 McMasters 22 Medicine, new preventive 67-70 Mill, J. S 179, 198 Minot, Prof. C. S 61 Moltke, Field Marshal von 40,41 Money to burn 146, 147 Morgan, wealth controlled by J. P 137, 141 Mulford, Dr. Elisha 177 Napoleon 37 Nature, changes in human 74 75 Navies, colonies and manufactures 113, 114 Nelson, Mr. N. 98 New England's sources of supply 23, 24 INDEX 289 New York City as a prophecy 275-5283 annual budget 5276, 277 churches, hospitals, schools 277 clearing-house, exports and imports 277 factories 277 philanthropies 277, 278, population 231, 232, 275, 276 press 277, 278 nationalities in 278-280 Oneness, movement toward 11-17 Open door of China 27-30 Orient, menace of 161, 162 Overproduction, effects of 251-256 Panama Canal Zone, sanitation of 69 Pasteur, Louis 67, 70 Patten, Professor 4 Peace, a new world- 37-52 Perry, Professor 103, 104 Peru, ancient civilizations in 3 population of 172 Phelps, Hon. E. J 158 Philadelphia, philanthropies of 77 Plato 159 Plantus 74 Population of world 231 in tune of Emperor Augustus 171 Populations, density of 234 Power, vital and mechanical 127 Problem of lawlessness 203-222 legislation 222-227 the city 228-283 the individual and society 176-202 the new race 159-175 Production, increasing, and popular discontent 108-111 Race, age of the 57 the new problem of the 159-175 problem of, growing more complicated 159-175 Races, location and number of 167 new problem of the 90, 91 Railways, influence of 20, 23 Richards, Dr. Timothy 162, 232 Religions of Asiatic origin 10, 11 Rio de Janeiro, Electric Light and Power Co. of 138 Rochefoucauld 52 Rumely, Mr. E. A 247. 248 Russo-Japanese War 160 Saleeby, Dr. C. W 188 Schurman, President J. G 151, 157 Science, 58-74 Selfishness 58, 76 and increasing strikes 116-124 290 INDEX in Industry 100-104 coming results of 108-125 leading to an industrial impasse 111-115 Seligman, Professor 37 Seneca 38 Service the law of every organism 96, 97 Shiras, Justice 219 Slavery, influence of, on lawlessness 208 Smallpox, ravages of 68 Smiley, Albert K 51 Smith, Dr. Arthur H 28, 191 Social contract theory, our government based on 214 Socialist vote 158 Society, ideal, defined 56 maladjustment of form 104-106 spirit 95-104 new attributes of 93 evolution of 92 the individual and society 176-202 versus the individual 180, 181 Socrates 53 Spain, the fall of 143 Steam-engine, influence of 87 on commerce 20-23 Strikes, the general 121-123 Strikes, influence of, on machinery 112 Sumner, Prof. William G 136 Surgery, the new 70, 71 Syndicalism 120-124, 220, 221 Tariff walls 31-34 Tennyson 57, 64 Tendency, a new world- 8-18 Thompson, Judge Seymour D 217 Tolstoi, Count Leo 215 Trades unions 117 Treasury, loss to public treasury, note 55 Tree, the family 183-185 Tufts, Professor 186 Turkey, populations of 172 Unemployed, problem of the 244-249 United States, lawlessness in the 203-222 of the world 49-52 possible population of 236 steel Corporation 136 wealth of 130-135 Virgil 263 War advocated by militarists 40 expenditure 44 Ward, Prof. Lester F 57 note 95 Waring, Colonel 147 INDEX 291 Washington 55 Watson, William 143 Wealth, concentration of 135, 136 influence of portable wealth 89, 90 science on 127-129 loss of, by fire 129 new creation of 126-130 equivalents of 135 peril of concentrated 137-142 perils of 137-158 power of 135-136 problem of 89, 90. 126-158 surplus of 130-135 of United States 130-135 in 1960 134 of the world undeveloped 132, 133 wallowing in 146-149 Weber, Dr. A. F., note 241 Webster, Daniel 47,139 Wheat culture, possibilities of, note 259 White, Hon. Andrew D 203, 207 Wilson, Dr. Woodrow 78 Workmen's Compensation Act 213 World's wealth undeveloped 132, 133 World-ideal, a new 53-83 industry, a new 19-36 peace, a new 37-52 population of the 171, 231 tendency, a new 8-18 united States of the 49-52 Wright, Hon. Carroll D 108, 114, 115, 131 Yates, Doctor 191 Yellow fever, ravages of 68 THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 Box 951388 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. A 000740131 8