University of California Irvine INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY BY EDWARD GARY HAYES, Pn.D. 2RorEssoR OF SOCIOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS //Af COPYRIGHT, 1915, 1918, BT D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Printed in the United States of Americm PREFACE This is an elementary textbook with the limitations which that fact implies. It is intended for the use of classes and also for general readers who desire a clearer view of the field of thought designated by the much used word "sociology." Such a book must aim to serve two purposes. First, it must present as much as space permits of the accepted results of study in this field, to the reader who may have no further formal instruction in sociology, and whose further progress will be gained by independent thought and reading. Second, it must afford to the student, who will pursue more intensive courses in subdivisions of sociology, an outline of the entire field, and a sense of the relation of those special topics, which he may later study more intensively, to the subject as a whole. Each of these purposes requires the elementary textbook to be compendious so as to afford a view in perspective. The best bopks in sociology have been written by men who were contributing actively to the new body of teaching, and who have been too much preoccupied with the original materials, in the production of which their minds were engaged, to give adequate time and space to the contributions of others. As a. consequence, it is hardly too much to say of the textbooks in sociology which have thus far been produced, that in propor- tion to their originality and intellectual excellence has been their failure as compendiums or outlines. A compendium of sociology must include not only a sum- mary of the chief abstract teachings in all branches of the subject, but also some practical applications, the result of hard experience and of investigation into specific evils and their causes, and of empirical efforts at reform as interpreted in the light of scientific principles. This corresponds with the practice of elementary textbooks in economics, which include practical suggestions on money, taxation, and labor problems vi PREFACE along with theoretical discussion. This practice interrupts, to a slight degree, the course of scientific exposition, but is justified by its usefulness. I have been influenced by the example of the best text- i books in economics and psychology to do without a multitude of footnotes, but I have inserted a considerable number of references, (i) when it has seemed especially desirable to call the attention of the reader to some passage that supplements the text, or (2) to some book that should be universally asso- ciated with the particular doctrine under discussion, or else (3) to afford opportunity to verify some statement that might otherwise be questioned, and (4) in case of direct quotation. It might seem more logical to reverse the order of parts I and 2. As it now stands, the book presents the conditions which affect the life of society before it presents the inner nature 'of the life of society. This order has been adopted because it better develops the conception of society as a realm of cause and effect, and also because it places first those mat- ters about which the student already knows something, in many of which he is already interested, which he expects to study when he registers for a course in sociology, and which are more material and easier, postponing those which are more psychological and difficult, which would cause him sur- prise if not disappointment if first presented, and for the study of which he requires some preparation, but which are the very soul of the subject when really understood. This arrangement is the result of much experimentation during thirteen years of teaching sociology. Some readers may be inclined to criticize the inclusion of a few pages which might have been omitted if it had been possible to take for granted that all students of this text would have fresh in mind the facts and principles of biology, psy- chology, and economics. But it is impossible to take that for granted, and sociology, like general biology, requires some reference to facts of antecedent sciences. In some universities where numerous courses in sociology are offered, it may be thought best to omit portions of the mat- ter which deals with charities, criminology, and social evolu~ PREFACE vii tion, because these subjects are to be covered by other courses. And an omitted part may be used later in connection with a subsequent course. Even in such universities, however, the brief outline of these topics here given may preferably be retained undiminished as an introduction to more extensive work, and as bringing the parts of the subject into their re- lations. The author desires to express his thanks to the following persons who have read portions of the book in manuscript : Professor Felix von Luschan, of the University of Berlin, who read the part on social evolution ; Professor E. L. Bogart and Assistant Professor R. E. Heilman, of the Department of Economics in the University of Illinois, who read the part on the necessity for social regulation of the distribution of wealth; Professor Charles Zeleny and Assistant Professor J. A. Detlefsen, of the Departments of Zoology and of Genetics in the University of Illinois, who read the parts which utilize biological data. Of course the kindness rendered by these gentlemen involves them in no responsibility for anything here contained. The book is offered with the hope that it may promote comprehension and insight, and help some of its readers to ''find themselves," with reference to the perplexing intellectual problems, the opportunities, and the responsibilities of the life we live in society. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. October, 1915. NOTE TO SIXTH EDITION. In the sixth edition various typographical errors have been corrected. The only important alterations in the sense occur on pages 16, 65, 70 and 116. Complete new plates of the in- dex were made after the first printing. May, igi&. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER PAGE I. THE NATURE OF THE STUDY 3 Sociology studies good and bad alike, 3. The point of view, 4. Art and science, 8. Practical application of sociology, 10. The need of a new world view, 12. Sociology as an intellectual pursuit, 13. Comte's hierarchy of the sciences, IS- II. WHAT Is INVOLVED IN SOCIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION 18 Causation, 18. Explanation and scientific law, 20. Problem phenomena, their constituent ele- ments, and their environing conditions, 22. The kinds of conditioning phenomena, 24. PART I THE CAUSES WHICH AFFECT THE LIFE OF SOCIETY I. GEOGRAPHIC CAUSES WHICH AFFECT THE LIFE OF SOCIETY III. GEOGRAPHIC CAUSES AND THEIR SOCIAL EFFECTS . 29 The less conspicuous geographic differences so- cially important, 29. Geographic conditions de- termine the size of populations, 29. The eco- nomic occupations of a people are determined by their geographic environment, 30. Stagnation and progressiveness are conditioned largely by geographic surroundings, 31. Lawlessness is the natural consequence of geographic inacces- sibility and poverty of natural resources, 32. The form of government is affected by geo- graphic conditions, 32. Tastes and social and CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE domestic customs are influenced by geographic conditions, 34. Ethical differences are largely influenced by geographic environment, 34. Mythologies and religions are influenced by geographic environment, 35. Geographic con- ditions affect the moods and psychic ten- dencies of a people, 36. The routes fol- lowed by migration, war, and commerce have been marked out by geographic highways, 37. The sociological importance of geographic con- ditions, 37. Limitations on the importance of geographic conditions, 39. II. TECHNIC CAUSES THAT AFFECT THE LIFE OF SOCIETY IV. RURAL CONDITIONS 42 Formation of population, 42. Population may increase in numbers too rapidly, 43. Agrarian aristocracy and population pressure, 47. Den- sity and communication, 50. Rural solitude, 51. Rural community, 51. Hamlet, 51. Village, 55. V. THE CITY 60 Nine characteristics of the city, 60. The growth of cities, 65. The causes of increasing urbani- zation, 67. What makes Americans out of Europeans? 70. VI. PERSONAL GROUPS AND CROWDS 74 Personal groups, 74. The group of two, 76. The federal character of large groups, 77. Crowds, 78. Safeguards against crowd perils, 81. VII. SOCIAL EFFECTS OF THE AMOUNT, FORMS, AND DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 84 Effects of the forms of wealth, 84. Transpor- tation, 86. Housing, 87. Educating the public on the subject of housing, 90. City planning, 93. Municipal conveniences, 94. Relation of CONTENTS xi CHAPTER PAGE the distribution of wealth to sociological prob- lems, 95. Effects of distribution of wealth upon the health of the people, 96. Poverty is effec- tive in preventing the attainment of the ethical and cultural values of life, 100. Actual dis- tribution of wealth in the United States, 103. VIII. THE INADEQUACY OF ECONOMIC LAW TO EXPLAIN OR CONTROL JUSTLY THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH AND THE NECESSITY OF SOCIAL CON- TROL 109 Why do we have so much poverty in our rich land? 109. Labor bought at forced sale, no. Labor not protected by cost of production, in. The differential, 112. No share in primary dis- tribution, 115. Organization, 116. Though present distribution is indefensible, equality of incomes is neither expedient, just, nor feasible, 117. What of the rank and file? 118. Do we need plutocrats? 119. Wealth as success, 119. Competition as a cure-all, 121. Should the manager retain all that his activity at present conditions? 125. Gains from chance and from foresight, 126. Gains of organization, 127. Gains of bargaining power, 128. Conclusion, 131- IX. How MAY SOCIETY REGULATE THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH? 133 Public opinion and law, 133. Trust-busting, 135. Will the amount that now forms the differential be produced if part of it is diverted to labor? 137. Factory legislation, 139. Tenement laws and city planning, 140. Employers' liability, compensation and industrial insurance laws, 140. The modern view, 141. The socialization of wealth by taxation, 145. The unearned incre- mentj 148 xii CONTENTS CHAPTER . PAGE X. FURTHER PROPOSALS FOR THE SOCIAL REGULATION OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH . . . . 151 Minimum wage boards, 151. Collective bargain- ing, 152. Profit-sharing and cooperation, 154. Bipartite cooperation, 156. Prevent stock- watering and limit stock gambling, 1^7. A com- mission for corporations, 160. Government ownership, 164. Socialism, 164. Reform by violence, 167. Necessity for development in industrial legislation, 168. Law no cure-all, 169. XL TYPES OF POVERTY 171 The care of dependent children, 171. Care of the aged, 175. Care of the physically defec- tive, 176. Dependency due to moral abnormal- ity, 181. The unemployed but employable, 185. XII. CHARITY ORGANIZATION 189 Underlying principles, 189. Institutional and non-institutional relief, 190. The Elberfeld system, 193. Charity organization societies, 194. Prevention of overlapping and imposture, 194. Properly conducted investigation, 196. Communication between need and source of supply, 196. To restore the impoverished to economic independence, 197. Examples, 199. An agency of research and public instruction, 201. The almshouse, 203. Government supervision, 205. Conclusion, 207. III. PSYCHOPHYSICAL CAUSES WHICH AFFECT THE LIFE OF SOCIETY XIII. THE HEREDITARY CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POPU- LATION 209 Data which physiology furnishes to sociology, 209. Relations of biological traits to social life, 211. Two classes of socially important psy- chophysical conditions, 212. Instinct, 213. Pre- disposition, 215. General predispositions, 218. CONTENTS xiii CHAPTER PAGE Economic predispositions, 220. Social predis- positions, 221. Only minor variations in in- stincts and predispositions of normal individu- als, 227. General neural traits, 230. Tempera- ment, 234. Metabolism, 236. XIV OTHER HEREDITARY CHARACTERISTICS OF POPULA- TION. RACE. EUGENICS 239 Race, 239. Racial as distinguished from cul- tural differences, 242. Ages, 244. Sex, 245. Chivalry, 247. Hereditary defects, 248. Feeble- mindedness, 249. Retarded children, 251. Bi- ology and caste, 252. The method of inheri- tance, 254. Eugenics, 258. Unplanned selective agencies, 261. XV. IMMIGRATION 267 Effect of immigration on native birth rate, 267. Immigration and the standard of living, 269. Immigration and national development, 270. America aspires to world leadership, 271. The new immigration, 272. Immigration laws, 273. XVI. ACQUIRED POPULATION-TRAITS AND PUBLIC ( HEALTH 277 Are acquired characteristics inherited? 277. Does the type of humanity advance ? 279. Bio- logical evolution and social evolution, 281. The methods of progress, 281. Preventable dis- eases, 282. Losses due to preventable diseases, 285. Occupation and disease, 287. Stunted youth, 288. School hygiene, 289. Socialization of medical science, 291. Drugging, 292. Ve- nereal disease, 295. Second nature, 297. Sub- conscious set, 298. IV. SOCIAL CAUSES WHICH AFFECT THE LIFE OF SOCIETY XVII. THE DETERMINATION OF THE LIFE OF SOCIETY FROM WITHIN 301 XIV CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE We pass to the inner essence of society, 301. Association the inclusive social relation, 302. Association depends on communication and is always a causal relation, 304. Social suggestion, 306. Doubt and thought, 307. Social sug- gestion determines conduct and the desire for conduct determines invention, 311. Error may work for a time, 313. Psychological prin- ciple underlying these two statements concern- ing social suggestion, 314. Sympathetic radia- tion, 316. Imitation, 320. XVIII. PRESTIGE AND ACCOMMODATION 323 Prestige, 323. Kinds of prestige, 324. Nature and grounds of prestige, 328. Accommodation, 333- PART II NATURE AND ANALYSIS OF THE LIFE OF SOCIETY XIX. THE NATURE OF THE LIFE OF SOCIETY .... 339 Life of society, 339. The in and out of con- scious life, 340. Experience-activity, 342. The essential social phenomena are psychic, 344. The scientific and practical problems of soci- ology, 345. The sociophysical phenomena, 347. The first characteristic of social activities, 350. The second characteristic of social activities, 351. The third characteristic of social activi- ties, 352. Relation between sociology and psy- chology, 354. XX. THE ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION OF SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 357 Tarde, Giddings, DeGreef and Small, 357. A further classification, 360. Creeds and sciences, or social ideas, 362. Social sentiments. Preva- lent activities in which feeling predominates, CONTENTS xv CHAPTER 364. The arts of life, social practices, 373. The fourth kingdom of realities, 381. PAGE 383 XXI. MODES OF VARIATION IN SOCIAL ACTIVITIES . . Social phenomena vary in prevalence, 383. So- cial phenomena vary in strength, 384. Com- pound social activities vary in uniformity, 386. Compound social activities vary in content, 388. Compound social activities vary in phase, 389. XXII. MODES OF VARIATION IN SOCIAL ACTIVITIES RA- TIONALIZED SOCIAL ACTIVITIES ; Jfc-^c, . . . 398 Rational acceptance, 398. Affinity of certain kinds of activity for certain phases, 400. Cul- ture peoples and nature peoples, 403. Institu- tions, 405. Organization, 409. XXIII. NATURAL SOCIAL ORDER ..... . . . . 411 Static and dynamic, 413. The radical and con- servative principles, 415. The first characteris- tic of a society, 417. The second characteristic of a society, 418. The third characteristic of a society, 419. Population and society, 419. Nature of the social unity, 422. Kinds of socie- ties, 424. Societies and the social process, 426. Definitions, 427. The social realities, 430. XXIV. SOCIET'Y AND THE INDIVIDUAL ....... 431 Identity of individual and social activities, 431. Subjective individual and objective social real- ity, 432. Individual life composite, 434. The unit of investigation, 436. What determines in- dividuality? 437. Paradoxes, 441. Sociology the study of life, 444. PART III SOCIAL EVOLUTION XXV. THE PERSPECTIVE OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION .... 449 Comparative and genetic sociology, 449. An- XVI CONTENTS thropology, ethnology and sociology, 451. So- cial evolution and cosmic evolution, 454. Social evolution continuous with biological evolution, 455. Animal invention, 458. Man and his poor relations, 461. Stages of social evolution, 463. The stages of social evolution according to Vierkandt, Steinmetz and Comte, 469. Eco- nomic stages or types, 471. XXVI. ADDITIONAL ELEMENTS IN THE THEORY OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION 474 Application of general principles of evolution to social realities, 474. Invention, 477. Attention foci, 479. The fixation of social species, 480. Cross-fertilization of cultures, 482. Folkways and mores, 483. Natural selection, 485. XXVII. EXAMPLES OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION 490 Implements, 490. Play as random experimenta- tion, 491. Cooking, 492. Agriculture, 494. Domestication of animals, 496. Personal adorn- ment, 499. The desire for visible distinction, 501. Esthetic conventionality, 502. Clothing, 506. XXVIII. EXAMPLES OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION (Continued) . 508 Language; 508. Organic reactions are intelli- gible to others, 508. Mimicry, 509. Association of sounds with experiences, 510. The general- ized notion of using sounds as symbols, 512. Grammar, 513. Writing, measuring, and count- ing, 516. Property and commerce, 519. XXIX. EXAMPLES OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION (Continued) . 525 The family, 525. Exogamy, 526. The classifi- catory system of relationships, 529. The ma- tronymic family, 531. Transition to patronymic family, 532. Group marriage, polyandry, and polygamy, 534. Slavery, 536. Origin of the - state, 538. Morality, 541. CONTENTS xvu XXX. EXAMPLES OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION (Continued) . The evolution of religion, 551. Magic, 552. Zoomorphism, 555. Ancestor worship, 559. Inspiration, 565. Miracles, 567. Homologies in religion, 569. The three stages of social evo- lution, 571. 551 SOCIAL CONTROL XXXI. THE PROBLEM AND PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL CONTROL 581 The necessity of social control, 581. The prin- * ciples of social control, 585. The perversion of social control, 586. Not law but personality is the ultimate basis of social order, 588. The * first of the essential virtues reliability, 588. Control of animalism, 590. The third essential trait, 591. The social spirit, 591. The reason- ableness of good conduct, 592. XXXII. CRIME AND ITS CAUSES 596 The law as an agency of social control, 596. Vice, sin, immorality, tort and crime, 597. Classes of crime, 598. Classes of criminals, 599. Is there a criminal type ? 599. The extent of crime, 609. XXXIII. CRIME AND ITS TREATMENT 611 The motive of punishment, 611. Development of criminal procedure, 611. Trial by jury, 615. The training of criminal lawyers, 616. Indi- vidualization and criminal procedure, 618. In- dividualization after conviction, 619. Reforma- tory treatment, 620. The jail, 624. Other sug- gestions, 624. Juvenile courts, 625. War, 627. XXXIV. RELIGION, PUBLIC OPINION, AND POLITICS AS AGENCIES OF SOCIAL CONTROL 632 Legal religion, 632. Public sentiment, 634. Politics in the light of sociological principles, xvm CONTENTS 637. Interest groups, 639. The inclusive po- litical interest, 643. Politics and progress, 646. The principle of "unmitigated hostility," 648. XXXV. EDUCATION 652 Educational aims from the social viewpoint, 652. The variability of individuals and of so- ciety, 659. Education the chief agency of social control, 665. Education and progress, 666. XXXVI. . EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL . . 669 The family, 669. Divorce, 673. Art and play, 674. Manners and ceremony as agencies of control, 679. The press as an agency of social control, 680. The church, 685. BIBLIOGRAPHY 691 INDEX * 709 INTRODUCTION CHAPTER I THE NATURE OF THE STUDY Sociology Studies G-ood and Bad Alike. Apparently many persons turn to sociology with the idea that it is a study of vice, crime, and poverty, and that the typical sociological exercise is "slumming." It is, however, at least as important scientifically to understand the normal as to understand the abnormal, and at least as important practically to know how to promote the good as to know how to combat the evil. We should at the outset divest ourselves of the one-sided idea that sociology is a study of evils, and look forward rather to a study of social life as a whole, good and evil existing together. In this respect sociology does not differ from any other science that deals with a department of life. Sociology has as much to do with poverty, vice, and crime as botany has to do with parasitism and the diseases of plants, and it also has as much to do with the normal life of society as botany has to do with the normal life of plants. The illustration may be made still more accurate by saying that slavery, war, and parts of that which, at our stage of civilization, is called vice, are as natural, and in that sense as normal, as honest industry. Weeds are at least as natural as wheat, and the sociologist as well as the botanist or any other scientist must study the realities as they are naturally produced before he is prepared to exercise a selective control over their produc- tion. He must study the activities that go on in society as they are, and they are in part good and in part bad, accord- ing to our standards ; it may be as important both for science and for those practical activities which may be guided by science that we understand the one as the other. 3 4 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY The Point of View. Whatever else sociology may mean, it stands for the adoption of a distinct and consistent attitude, or point of view, in the discussion of intellectual problems the solution of which practically affects the life of man. I. It means, first, that social problems are to be discussed with primary reference not to the gains of the wealthy, nor to the stability and strength of states, but to the welfare of all the people. From this it results that a set of problems, once largely neglected, comes into the center of attention, namely, the problems of the distribution of wealth, oppor- tunity, education, health, and the joys and worth of life. Machiavelli could teach that even the conscience of the indi- vidual should be sacrificed to the welfare of the state. Not long ago the liaison of a prince made history, but in the same year ten thousand subjects might starve and the fact be omitted by historians. Then an economic writer could declare that "high wages are the great obstacle to British trade"; but we regard high wages as the best evidence of the success of business, for we see wages not as an expense to be kept down but, by a reversal in point of view, as a product to be increased, as shares in the distribution of the proceeds re- ceived by participants in industry. Business and the state we regard as existing for the general good, and good or evil experienced by each individual counts at par. Economics may be quite justified in insisting that it is a science of wealth rather than of welfare, or comprehensive ethical aims ; and political science may be equally justified in regarding itself as the study of methods by which policies may be carried out, rather than as a study of social policies. If so, it is clear that each of these, though immensely impor- tant in itself, deals with a limited aspect of the field of social reality. Sociology aims at nothing less than the transfer of ethics from the domain of speculative philosophy to the domain of objective science. It regards human welfare, which can be realized only in society, as a distinct kind of reality, the causation of which calls for scientific investigation. It has been common to sav: "Science deals with what is, and only THE NATURE OF THE STUDY 5 philosophy can deal with what ought to be." Sociology replies that good and evil are parts of what is, that human expe- rience is as real as any other reality, and that the promotion of good and the limitation of evil must rest upon scientific comprehension as truly as the control of any other results. The thorough-going adoption by sociology of the ethical point of view involves not only a distinct set of special prac- tical problems, but also a distinct set of general fundamental problems such as: (a) what, as a matter of fact, are the ultimate values involved in social life; (b) what are the existing conscience codes and social policies of different peo- ples; (c) how have these widely varying codes arisen; (d) what justification in facts is there for the demands of these codes or of any codes of conduct; (e) what change in exist- ing codes does this matter of fact criterion require? Soci- ology proposes to be a general science of values and of valua- tions ; of valuations as they arise and become intrenched in social sentiments and dominate the contrasting life of different societie's, and of -values as they exist for human experience with special reference to the modes of causation by which these values are promoted or destroyed. First then, the sociological point of view is ethical. 2. The sociological point of view is causal. Sociology regards the character and welfare of mankind, individually and collectively, not as a matter of fate, predestination, or class heritage, nor even of free will, considered as an excep- tion to the universal reign of law, and requiring only exhorta- tion to transform men and society ; but rather man's character and welfare are regarded as resulting from causal conditions, which up to the limits of the power of human intelligence must be understood. It is knowledge of causation which gives to man power over results. This has been proved in the realm of material phenomena. The knowledge that con- sequences issue in accordance with an orderly method of causation prompts man to conduct, which so conditions those consequences that they will turn out in accordance with his interests; for man is himself a part of the causal process of nature -in all his actions caused, and also a cause of his 6 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY own ruin or fulfillment, according to his ignorance or his knowledge of the method by which this ruin or this fulfill- ment issues from those conditions of which his own activity forms a part. Holding this view, sociology is bound to seek the general principles of causal explanation that show, not only how values are realized or destroyed, and how conscience codes arise and become a social heritage, but also how all social sentiments, beliefs, and practices, customs, institutions, and correlated systems of social activity evolve. 3. The sociological point of view is functional. It re- quires the transfer of chief attention from the external forms and incidents of social life to the inner essence of it, finding that the ultimate facts to be explained are built out of preva- lent ideas, sentiments, and practices, that the ultimate values to be promoted are in human experience, and that progress and reform fundamentally consist in development of wants, interests, judgments and ideas, and that the passage of laws, or the production or distribution of wealth, or anything else whatever, has little significance for progress save as it ex- presses or promotes such inner changes in the life of society. The meaning of this will not be clear to the reader until he has made considerable progress in the study of sociology, but he will come to see that its importance is as great as that of either of the other elements in the sociological point of view. 4. The sociological point of view is synthetic. It implies belief that the time for synthesis has come ; not that analysis has yielded all its fruits, but that instead of perpetuating the practice by which every social science exaggerates, and almost inevitably to some degree distorts, one set of factors by view- ing it with too little regard for its interrelationship with other factors, one social science shall busy itself explicitly with the task of correlation, and with those generalizations which are based upon data, parts of which are furnished by each special social science, generalizations which find applica- tion in every subdivision of social reality, and which serve as safeguards against the dangers of narrow specialization, and as lamps to deeper insight. THE NATURE OF THE STUDY 7 As general biology is the science of physical life, so gen- eral sociology is the science of social life. As biology has generalizations which are based on data, furnished by every subdivision of biological facts, generalizations which also find application in every subdivision of biological reality, to mol- lusks and to vertebrate mammals, to the facts of cryptogamic botany and to the facts of physical anthropology, to all organic life from the toadstool to man, so general sociology has its generalizations based on data gathered from every subdivision of social life and applying to every subdivision of social life. Former abuses of the supposed analogy between societies and biological organisms need not deter us from carrying out the comparison between general biology and general sociology as follows: (a) The principles of biological evolution are based on investigation which extends to all divisions of phys- ical life, and they apply to the production of all types of physical life, so that the investigator of Mendel's law experi- ments, now with peas or other vegetables, and now with rabbits or other animals, and applies his generalizations to man. The data and the investigations involved and the appli- cations of the laws of physical evolution cover the entire fields of both botany and zoology in all their subdivisions. Like- wise the data, investigation, and application of the principles of social evolution relate equally to the entire field of politics, religion, ethics, and all other social activities, (b) The same comparison as that between biological and social evolution may be drawn between biological ecology and the sociological study which traces the relations of social activities (ethical, religious, economic, political, and of every kind) to their material environment, (c) A similar comparison may be drawn between physiological chemistry, and social psychology. Physiological chemistry sets forth processes of life, animal and vegetable, in all their subdivisions, much as social psy- chology investigates the intermental relations which afford the only fundamental explanation of customs and institu- tions of every kind, (d) Cellular histology resembles the analysis of institutions and customs into their repetitious elements. 8 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY This comparison to general biology does not exhaust the definition of general sociology, .especially because there is nothing in general biology that can be compared to sociological ethics. 5. Adoption of the sociological point of view means that all prejudices and settled questions shall be subject to reex- amination, in the light of adequate investigation and of the adopted conclusions of all previous sciences. We are to study, not as Republicans or Democrats, Northerners or Southerners, employers or employed, Americans or Euro- peans, but unprejudiced as if seated in a star and looking down upon earthly sects and parties a hard requirement, to be ap- proached, not easily to be fulfilled. All the social sciences aim to share in this fifth characteristic, but sociology, besides mak- ing this a conscious aim is peculiarly adapted to promote this intellectual achievement since it studies the method by which prejudices, sentiments, and beliefs arise and spread. Sociology, then, is ( I ) ethical, regarding the weal and woe of all men as facts to be accounted for. (2) It views the facts of human experience as caused, and belonging to the orderly course of nature. (3) Though caused in part by material facts, the essence of the life of society is seen to be made up of a functional process of conscious activities. (4) Sociology sets itself to the task of synthesis, and searches out those principles which operate throughout the realm of social realities. (5) In the study of these facts, it aims to dissolve all bonds of party, sect, and prejudice. Art and Science. Sociology does not begin by -telling how to usher in the millennium. Hundreds have set themselves to answer the question, how shall we mend society ? for every one who has set himself to understand society. At present the most practical of all social tasks is the task of comprehen- sion. Sociology would be a respectable pursuit if it were nothing but the art of wise social action, correlating the light shed by all the sciences upon practical problems of amelioration and progress, for which no single science affords the necessary guidance, just as the art, or science, of medicine correlates the practical knowledge of surgical mechanics, THE NATURE OF THE STUDY 9 Rontgen rays, electricity, chemistry, physiology, bacteriology, psycholo'gy and whatever else can serve the ends of healing and preventing bodily suffering. But sociology proposes to be not only a practical art, but also a science. Comte and his followers go further, and say that sociology will prove to be not only a science, but one of the more fundamental sciences. This, they say, is because social causation proceeds according to distinct fundamental principles not discovered by any other science. We commonly speak of the esthetic arts and the practical arts, and art in both of these senses we distinguish from science. This distinction between art and science must not be too strictly drawn ; nevertheless, it has its usefulness. There is a clear difference between the art of dyeing cloth in fast colors, and the science of chemistry which discovered the aniline dyes and the methods of their use; or between the art of medicine, and the sciences of physiology and bacteriology and the other sciences which underlie the practice of medicine. Art aims directly to do, while science aims primarily to understand. In this sense sociology is primarily science and not art, although it well may hope, like other sciences, to afford the basis upon which art may be established. Science is doubly worth while. It is an end in itself and a means to all other ends. As an end in itself, knowledge sat- isfies one of the elemental human desires. Purely scientific pur- suits have frequently seemed trivial to "practical" men. Those who first learned to send an electric current across a laboratory table were said to be playing with the "toys of science," but the intellectual problems with which they dealt were not trivial. And it must not be forgotten that it is their activities, and not those of the "practical" men, that have made possible our great inventions and our control over nature. It was not the effort to send messages that made possible the discovery of the telegraph and telephone and of wireless telegraphy, but the effort to understand electricity. Trying to cure dis- eases yielded some crude knowledge of the effects produced by certain roots and herbs, but it is the bacteriologist with his cultures, the biologist with his bell jars of earthworms 10 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY and sea-urchins, who give us the knowledge of the secrets of life and disease upon which the arts of scientific medicine are founded. The scientists themselves with their electric toys and all their curious researches have as a rule been unable to see that they were making possible any important prac- tical results. They were busy in answering intellectual needs, in finding answers to hard questions. Yet there is but little knowledge about human life and its immediate conditions which has not been utilized as a means to other good. The order of progress has been, first, the crude arts developed by blundering empiricism, the method of trial and failure and occasional success, which takes man only a little way and at painful cost toward the mastery of life's problems; then science and comprehension ; and at last the scientific arts leading to fuller satisfactions. Incomparably, the most impor- tant fact of recent history has been the expansion of the. sciences. It is the scientists and not captains of industry nor generals nor statesmen who have contributed chiefly to our mastery over the material world, to say nothing of the reor- ganization of our intellectual life. Therefore, science, while of value as an enlargement of life, is of value also as the mightiest of all our tools. Practical Application of Sociology. But is it reasonable to suppose that the science of sociology can ever lead to devel- oped social arts which will make it possible to control social situations and mold them in the interest of human welfare, as we have learned to control and manipulate material realities ? If we do not modify the social realities it will not be because we have no need of doing so. We have measurably solved the problems involved in utilizing our material sur- roundings. Although we shall still welcome improvements in the methods of agriculture, manufacture, and transporta- tion, yet, speaking relatively, we may say that those problems have been solved. But has human welfare been attained? Approximately a tenth of our population has not even its physical necessities adequately supplied. Hundreds of thou- sands in our country annually die needless deaths, are need- THE NATURE OF THE STUDY II lessly maimed or undermined in health, grow into vicious, shiftless, worthless, hopeless beings. Good human possibilities, are born into the world never to be fulfilled. If we could look with seeing eyes beyond the youthful and the fortunate, to see the wreckage and ruin and woe, we might agree that Huxley spoke with justification when he suggested that should the ex- periment of human life go no further, we should have reason to hail the advent of some friendly comet that would sweep the whole phantasmagoria out of existence. Even if we had solved the special problems of the defective, dependent, and delin- quent presented by the lowest tenth of our population, there would remain a problem even greater, which is presented by the medium five to eight-tenths, made up of steady laboring folk and of those who, in respect to culture and character, compose the mass. Agricultural scientists affirm that the corn lands of a state so rich in soil and so well tilled as Illinois might, by scientific methods, be made to double their produc- tion. It is probably quite as true that the values realized in the lives of these masses of our population might be doubled. They have not even discovered their own possibilities. The progress that we now need is progress toward securing the prevalence of desirable activities correlated into a social situa- tion in which we shall utilize the material, resources now under our control, and the human resources still so unman- ageable, in such a way that the unmistakable possibilities of good, that now go unrealized, shall not be allowed to incur by wholesale the failure of their fulfillment. But granting the tremendous desirability of modifying prevalent social activities, the ideas, moral standards, ambi- tions, and practices of men, the question remains: are they subject to modification by the application of sociological knowledge? Our present inability to control social situations is great, but is it greater than the abject helplessness in which men once stood in the presence of the physical environment? No science, while in its earlier stages, reveals what its prac- tical applications are to be. The achievements of the physical sciences were once not only incredible but also unimaginable. There are already inspiring glimpses of possible applications 12 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY of sociological principles. Comparative sociology, as we shall see later, at least has demonstrated that no other phenomena in nature are more variable than the activities, sentiments, and ideas of men. At this stage of our study familiar facts must serve to illustrate this variability. A ruffian is con- verted and becomes a minister of salvation. Japan, who had shut her gates to foreigners and clung to hoary traditions, becomes the eager seeker of occidental knowledge and meth- ods, and brings her army, her government, her manufac- tures "up to the minute." We may know what we are, but no people knows what it might become in two generations. The most inveterate sentiments, enthusiasms, and detestations may in time be reversed. The course of life seems fixed by a kind of fate only because we have not understood the causes by which it is directed. In proportion to our knowledge of causes and our power to manipulate them is our power over results. We are sometimes told that the last forty years of the nineteenth century witnessed a greater progress in the utilization of the earth's material resources than all the cen- turies that had gone before.- This was due to the tremendous development of the physical sciences during that period, which gave us knowledge of the causation by which material results are molded. What we now supremely need is scientific com- prehension of social conditions, for in this field as in that of material realities comprehension -alone can be the basis of any adequate control. The achievement of such comprehen- sion is the supreme intellectual task, and the supreme prac- tical task of the twentieth century. The Need of a New World View. There is an additional practical result which may be hoped for as a consequence of the intellectual movement of which sociology is the most characteristic expression: we need a new world view. By a world view, I mean a set of dominant ideas in the light of which we form our opinions and shape our life pol- icies, and from which we derive motives; ideas of the sort to which Comte referred when he said, "Ideas rule the world or throw it into chaos," ideas of the sort for which a wise man prayed when he said, "Give me a great thought that I THE NATURE OF THE STUDY 13 may warm my soul withal." Among our ideas there are some that stand out like a general among an army of privates. Such is the idea of gravitation among our notions of physical realities. The presence of a few such ruling ideas concern- ing life may organize all our ideas about life into a "world view." Their absence reduces our ideas about life to a chaos or a fog. To have an ennobling world view in the sense just defined might even be said to be the prime need of men, for with- out that, conscious lives cannot be well lived. It is one of the deepest tragedies when an individual loses his world view and therewith his sense of values and his motives. And it is possible for a whole society to have its ennobling motives run low, so that it stands like a mill upon the bank of a stream that has dried away until it can no longer turn the wheels. Even barbarians have sometimes held a world view which gave them zest and power and a certain nobility. Great errors have sometimes proved inspiring and far better than universal vagueness and doubt. Radical changes in the intellectual outlook imply modifications in the world view. And never have there been changes so rapid and so radical as those which have taken place in recent years. Our forefathers ,tiad a definite world view by which, according to a kind of Divine fatalism, each saw his life as an element in a provi- dential course of events. But the details of that world view which served our fathers so well were formulated in a pre- scientific past. The new and inspiring world view which we now deeply need will not result from study of material nature. It must be derived from a study of the facts of human life. Such study can yield us a world view in accord- ance with which each will see his life as a factor in a natural order, in which inestimable values are at stake, to be forfeited or achieved through an intelligible process of causation, in which, for good or evil, all men cooperate. Sociology as an Intellectual Pursuit. It was pointed out above that science has two kinds of value : value as an end in itself, as part of an elevated, satisfying, and truly human 14 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY life; and also value for practical application in seeking other ends. Sociology proffers values of both these kinds. We have just seen that the practical applications of sociology are to be sought in the promotion of welfare through the modification and organization of prevalent activities, and also in the development of a world view at once inspiring and scientific. What shall we now say of sociology as an end in itself, as a part of life? What shall we say of the intellectual interest inherent in the pursuit of investigations that deal with those realities which are of the most intimate concern to men, and the causation of which present the most intricate of problems ? When Herbert Spencer set himself to write a synthetic philosophy which should focus the light which had been shed by all the sciences, he found that one great area of facts, namely the facts of social life, had not yet been subjected to scientific analysis, and that a synthetic philosophy could not be written until this gap in the explorations of science had been filled. So he undertook some contribution to this neglected field, and, as a consequence, at least one-third of all his writing was devoted to sociology. Auguste Comte also applied himself to the task of writing a philosophy which should be a synthesis of science, a "Philosophic Positive." Like Spencer, he perceived that the positive or synthetic philosophy could not be written until the methods of science had been applied to the study of social facts and, as a result, about one-half of his positive philosophy is a contribution to soci- ology. Thus it was that Comte whose writings shortly pre- ceded those of Spencer came to invent the word "sociology" and is now spoken of as the first sociologist. Recently some of the most preeminent representatives of physical science and of psychological science, speaking independently each from his separate point of view, have agreed in the opinion that as the nineteenth century was the blossoming time of material sci- ences, so the twentieth century should be the blossoming time of the sciences which deal with man's conscious life. The study of society acquires special interest not only from the character of the subject matter but also from the fact that it is the chap- ter now opening in the world's intellectual life. THE NATURE OF THE STUDY 15 Comte's Hierarchy of the Sciences. Both Comte and Spencer set themselves to explain why it was that this most interesting field of research had waited so long for scientific treatment. They found two causes. Spencer points out that it is in part because the intense interest of man in the prob- lems here involved makes him cling to his prejudices. He fears to disturb the world view that in a prescientific age had satisfied him and to unsettle cherished opinions and sentiments. This renders him unwilling, and even unable, to assume the unbiased and disinterested attitude of scientific investigation. The second reason was emphasized chiefly by Comte. He said it lay in the fact that social realities are of all phenomena the most complex in their causation, and therefore the most difficult' of scientific explanation. In this connection Comte proposed his famous hierarchy of the sciences, saying, that as a matter of necessity those sciences which deal with the simpler phenomena preceded those which attack the phenomena which are more complex, not merely because the former are easier of explanation, but also because their explanation is a necessary step in prepara- tion for the explanation of the more complex realities. Thus it was indispensable to have a knowledge of the movements of liquids and gases which is afforded by physics, and also the further knowledge of chemistry, before we could have our present science of physiology; and it was necessary to have physiology before we could have the present psychology ; and it is necessary to have both physiology and psychology 1 be- fore the explanations of sociology can be sought with success. Comte's conception of the hierarchy of the sciences may be paraphrased as follows: Those sciences come first that are broadest in application but thinnest in content. Thus mathe- matics applies to all phenomena but tells us very little about any single phenomenon, and in mathematics the ancients made great progress. Next came astronomy which applies to the .whole solar system and more but adds comparatively little to 1 With reference to psychology this does not exactly follow Comte's statement. He omits psychology from the hierarchy of fundamental sciences, as is explained below. 16 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY our knowledge of details. Then, by the same rule, follow in order physics and chemistry ; after them biology which tells us so much but applies only to living beings, and last of all sociol- ogy applying only to the interrelated lives of the highest or- ganisms but dealing with the phenomena which are of all the richest in content. It would have indicated still more clearly the reasons for such an order to say that scientific progress depends upon the observation of facts. Mathematics came first because it needs only such concrete facts as are observable anywhere by any student. Many of the movements of the heavenly bodies all men must see. Not till later do those sciences come which almost from the beginning require elaborate technique of ob- servation and experiment, journeys of exploration and patient comparison of facts widely scattered in space and time. While, however, those sciences come first that deal with facts of widest range, those most accessible to common observation, this does not mean that within a given field of science the broadest generalizations are the first truths to be discovered. On the contrary the broadest generalizations within a given science wait upon an extensive knowledge of particulars ; and this is a reason why general sociology came later than the specific social sciences. According to Comte mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and sociology are the only "abstract" or fundamental sciences, and such disciplines as geology and psychology are "concrete" sciences, which apply the teach- ings of abstract sciences to special problems, but furnish no fundamental principles of explanation. Geology is mainly an application of physics ; and psychology, according to Comte, is an application of biology (neurology and cerebral physi- ology) and of sociology. Comte and his followers, including such writers as Roberty and Caullet, agree with Baldwin in saying that the development of mind depends upon associa- tion, and they go beyond Baldwin in teaching that sociology and physiology supply all the fundamental principles necessary for the explanation of psychic phenomena. American sociolo- THE NATURE OF THE STUDY i; N gists prefer to regard psychology as having a place in the hierarchy of fundamental sciences, sociology resting on psychology, psychology on biology, biology on chemistry, etc. Sociology, then, as both Comte and Spencer pointed out, is necessarily the latest born of all, because, first, it is the most intricate and therefore requires as instruments in its researches or as data for its explanations the results achieved by the antecedent sciences, just as every added physical science has in turn been built upon the foundation reared by its predecessors 1 ; and second, because it is of all sciences the most fraught with human interests and so the last to be removed from the dominion of passion and prejudice and to be included in the gradually extending realm of calm, dis- interested research and reflection. These great writers who have attempted to bring all science into one perspective do not hesitate to say that sociology is the supreme science. 2 This, however, has reference rather to her tasks and opportunity than to her achievements already made. Soci- ology as yet has comparatively little conquered territory, and is upon the outmost firing line of the world's intellectual advance. 1 This does not mean that all progress must be made in the simpler science before any progress can be made in the more complex, but that considerable progress must be made in the simpler before any consider- able progress can be made in the more complex, and that additional progress in the simpler opens the way for additional progress in the more complex. 2 Such a judgment from such writers as Comte and Spencer is at least interesting, particularly since they were distinguished for their grasp upon the whole field of science. This breadth of grasp is illus- trated in that while we think of Spencer primarily as a Sociologist, many think of him primarily as a biologist, and an eminent German psychologist has called Spencer the greatest psychologist that has ever . used the English language. CHAPTER II WHAT IS INVOLVED IN SOCIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION Causation. The goal of science is causal explanation. It is therefore of fundamental importance for us to have clearly in mind what we mean by "causes" and by "explanation." The word cause is^ used in three senses, namely, with reference to the "first cause." "second causes." and "final The first cause is that which is conceived of as being ante- cedent to all phenomena. It may be called God, or it may be referred to in the language used by Spencer when he said that nothing is more certain than that we are always in the presence of an infinite and eternal energy from which all things proceed. It is the "one power" of the monistic modern philosopher. It is conceived to be measureless, immanent, omnipresent, operative wherever any phenomenon appears, in every atom of matter beneath our feet and in the remotest star, in every pulsation of light, in every chemical change or functional process. It continuously causes everything that appears, and without its action every phenomenon would cease. The first cause is absolutely beyond our observation. We know it only by inference from its manifestations. We con- ceive it to be the very substance of every phenomenon, but it is not itself phenomenal. It is as present and pervasive as the atmosphere or the ether, 1 but accessible to no human sense. It is beneath and beyond all science and with it science. as such, has nothing to do. By a final cause is meant a terminus ad quern, an aim, an end, a finis. If one should ask what is the cause of a large 1 Physicists are now considering whether the idea of the ether must not be replaced by some doctrine still more recondite. 18 SOCIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION I number of students entering a certain house at about the same hour daily, the answer might be, "Dinner," or, ''The thought of dinner; it is their boarding-house." Final causes or ends of action can be used only in explaining the conduct of intelligent beings. It may be conceived that there is a final cause for the existence and maintenance of the universe. If so, it has its abode only in the infinite intelligence. Two sorts of phenomena are sometimes denoted by the term "final cause," it being used in the one case to denote a thought and desire existing within the actor's mind, in the other case to denote an external reality toward which he presses. If final causes play any part at all in scientific expla- nation it is because they are also second causes ; that is, con- ditioning phenomena antecedent to resultant phenomena which are to be explained. Except as they may be regarded as second causes, science has no more to do with final causes than it has to do with the first cause. Second causes are those phenomena which are necessary a antecedent conditions of some other phenomenon which has been taken as an object for explanation. Of all these three kinds of causes, it is with second causes alone that science deals. It is conceived that the first manifestations of the One Power were simple but that they combined to form the con- ditions of additional manifestations; that these new mani- festations combined with each other and those which had preceded them to form the conditions of yet other phenomena ; that these in turn, when added to all that had gone before, afforded the conditions of still other phenomena 2 ; that this was repeated until there was accomplished the evolution of systems of inorganic matter and the ascending forms of vegetable and animal life, culminating in man and the activi- ties of man. Every observable phenomenon is thus condi- 1 "Necessary" in the language of science and common-sense. Science, as distinguished from metaphysics, does not discuss the ques- tion of absolute necessity. " The word "phenomena" does not mean "things" alone, but a!so ftualities, movements, relations, etc. 20 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY tioned upon the preexistence of antecedent phenomena, and upon certain necessary relations in which the antecedent phe- nomena are assembled, these relations themselves being in fact phenomena, that is, observable realities, as truly as the things which stand in these relations to each other. Every fact in nature, every thought or act of man, every breath of a living thing, the path of every snowflake in January, is linked with other facts which we term its "causes," or "conditions," in the absence of which it could not appear, and each of these conditioning facts, in turn, is linked with yet others by which it is conditioned, so that the whole of nature is knit up in a unity of mutual causation. The task of science is to set forth the mutual conditioning of phe- nomena, by which they exist together in a system of ante- cedents and consequences. The antecedent phenomena which condition the rise of resultant phenomena are called second causes in contrast with the universal first cause. Second causes are the conditions, sine qua non, cf any result which is to be explained. Soil, seed, sunshine and the farmer's labor are such causes or conditions of the autumn crop. Every phenomenon which is capable of scientific expla- nation is in this sense caused, and it is to discover this causa- tion which is the goal of science. It is a knowledge of this causation which renders possible the practical applications of science, for it is by controlling the conditions upon which results depend that desired results are obtained and the unde- sired are avoided. Explanation and Scientific Law. A clear conception of what is meant by causation carries with it our idea of ex- planation. An explanation is a statement of the antecedent conditions, including conditioning relations f which make pos- sible the resultant phenomenon which was to be explained. Thus the explanation of a chemical reaction and a resulting compound includes a statement of all the substances which enter into the reaction, their quantities, their states of mass, mixture, and temperature, and 'whatever must be brought into conjunction in order to secure by experiment the same reaction and the same resulting compound. A scientific law SOCIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION 21 in the most perfect form is a generalized explanation ; that is, an explanation which applies not merely to a single fact but also to a whole class of facts. There can be no law for the appearance of a unique phenomenon ; it may be explained but its explanation cannot be generalized. A causal law of science is a statement ^Q.f the conditions out of which a recurrent phenomenon regularly emerges. Explanation of a single occurrence may be thus symbolized, x representing the phenomenon to be explained and a b c its necessary antecedent or accompanying conditions : x ab c A causal law may be thus symbolized: x x x x x x x x x ab c ab c ab c ab c ab c ab c ab c ab c ab c etc. According to Wilhelm Wundt a scientific law has the three following characteristics * : 1. It is a statement in which subject and predicate are logically independent ideas ; that is, the predicate is not implied in the subject. For example, the statement that every normal man has four limbs, or twenty-four ribs, is not a scientific law, because the possession of four limbs and twenty-four ribs is included in the idea of a normal man. 2. A scientific law either states or implies a causal rela- tionship. "A causal law," which is the highest form of scien- tific law, is the explicit statement of a generalized causal explanation. The name "empirical law" may be given to the statement of any regular relationship between independent concepts which implies the existence of some causal relation- ship underlying this observed regularity, whether that cause is already known or still an undiscovered object for future scientific search. 3. A scientific law is a general truth which may serve as a guide leading to further discoveries ; thus the law that man must eat or die, though it is a true empirical law and 1 "Methoden-Lehre." Stuttgart, 1895. Part II, p. 129 seq. 22 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY rests upon well understood causation, yet does not open a pathway into the unknown in such a way as to be esteemed a scientific law. Problem Phenomena, Their Constituent Elements, and Their Environing Conditions. Each of the higher sciences in the hierarchy has to deal with three sets of phenomena. First are those which it undertakes to explain, which may be called its problem phenomena and which are symbolized by x in the preceding illustration. Second are the conditioning phenom- ena, which are the terms in its explanations, and are sym- bolized by a b c in the same illustration. Third are the elements into which the problem phenomena must be analyzed, which may be symbolized by win o in the expression, x = m n o. It is of importance to observe that the problem phenomena of a distinct science all belong to one distinct class, while the conditioning phenomena may belong to all classes. Thus, the problem phenomena of botany are of one distinct class, but the conditioning phenomena by which they are explained in- clude peculiarities of soil, variations in climate, etc., which are not botanical facts at all. Moreover," the botanical facts them- selves when analyzed into their elements are found to be composed of a number of minute physical and chemical facts. The failure to observe the contrast between conditioning phenomena and problem phenomena, as well as between the problem phenomena and the elemental phenomena of which they are composed and which, uniting, form a new and com- plex reality quite different from the particular elements enter- ing into the combination, has caused a great deal of confusion of thought among those who have attempted to define sociology or to prove or disprove its importance as an independent science. Failure to distinguish between the problem phenomena and the elements of which they are composed confuses soci- ology with psychology, for as we shall see more clearly here- after, customs and institutions are composed of accepted ideas, sentiments of approval and disapproval, and common prac- tices ; that is to say, the massive and complex social realities SOCIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION 23 are composed of minute psychic elements. Failure to dis- tinguish between problem phenomena and conditioning phe- nomena confuses sociology with geography, physical anthro- pology, hygiene, engineering as applied to housing and sanita- tion, and whatever plays a part in conditioning social realities. Sociology must deal with massed and correlated psychic elements, and with environmental factors of every kind by which social customs and institutions are effectively condi- tioned. Some people think that dealing with such a wide range of facts makes of sociology a hodge-podge, an attempted science, without boundaries and incapable of definition. But in this respect sociology is in exactly the same kind of posi- tion as biology, which, in order to deal successfully with its task, must recognize that all living beings and all physiological processes are massed and correlated physical and chemical facts, and in its ecology must explain variations in animal and vegetable species by reference to land elevation, quan- tity of rainfall, amount of light, etc., thus doing for biological forms exactly what sociology does for social types. The chemist, physicist, meteorologist, and geographer do not com- plain of the biologist because he employs chemical, physical, meteorological and geographic facts in the solution of his problems. If they did, the biologist would answer: "Can you as a chemist, or physicist, or meteorologist, or geographer, solve the problems of biology?" The reply of the sociologist is the same. This kind of objection is removed by an under- standing of the proper mode of outlining the field of a science, which clearly differentiates problem phenomena from their constituent elements and especially from their conditions, and their consequences. The problem phenomena of sociology are of one clear and distinct class, as much so as those of the best established sciences. But neither they nor any other complex phenomena can be understood except by being seen and described with reference to their elements and their con- ditions and their consequences. The relation of sociology to psychology and to the physical sciences is freed from all vagueness or difficulty if these considerations are once clearly apprehended. 24 INTRODUCTION TO -SOCIOLOGY The Kinds of Conditioning Phenomena. The conditioning' phenomena which determine prevalent social activities are of four kinds : geographic, technic, psychophysical, and social. 1. Geographic conditions are the natural physical environ- ment presented by the country inhabited and include: (i) aspect, (2) climate, (3) soil, (4) water supply, (5) other mineral resources, (6) flora, (7) fauna, (8) topography. 2. Technic conditions are the material products of human work, which, having once been produced, are conditions of further activities ; geographic conditions are the natural phys- ical environment and technic conditions are the artificial phys- ical environment. Rivers are part of the geographic environ- ment, but canals and bridges are part of the technic environ- ment; caves are geographic, houses are technic; mountain passes are geographic, roads and railroads are technic ; bays are geographic, but harbors, dredged and fitted with docks, are technic; herds of buffalo are geographic, but herds of domesticated and man-bred cattle are technic. Geographic and technic conditions alike are physical conditions of social activity, yet it is of great practical and theoretical importance to distinguish clearly between them, because geographic con- ditions are little subject to human control, while technic con- ditions are so highly subject to human control that their modification is one of the chief methods of progress ; and also because geographic conditions have their iajor signifi- cance in explaining the earlier and indigenous stages of social evolution, while the relative importance of technic conditions increases as social progress becomes more advanced and more cosmopolitan. Technic conditions are of two main sorts: (i) wealth, (j2,) grouping of population. Migration is a technic achieve- ment as truly as the transportation of goods ; so is the assem- bling and maintenance of city groups ; so indeed is all in- crease of population beyond the tiny primitive hordes which were the only population units produced by unaided nature. The important variations in wealth as a technic condition of social activities are : (a) its forms, including nomadic herds, cultivated fields, and villages of settled abodes, steam-driven SOCIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION 25 factories, railroads, etc.; (b) its amount, and (c) the distri- bution of its ownership or use among the individuals and classes of the population. The important variations in popu- lation groups are (a) in numbers, and (b) in distribution in space. 3. Psychophysical conditions are either (i) congenital or (2) acquired. Congenital psychophysical conditions include: (a) age, (b) sex, (c) race, (d) psychic predisposition, tem- perament, natural endowment, (e) hereditary disease and defect. Acquired psychophysical conditions include: (a) acquired diseases and defects, (b) developed strength and skill, (c) psychic dispositions, such as habits, second nature, and subconscious set. In this connection it is necessary to have clearly in mind that no idea, belief, or sentiment, nor any part of the content of consciousness is ever inherited, but only the capacity for them. No one ever inherits in the literal biological sense, either his politics or his religion, or his conscience or his trade. The business of sociology is to bring together into one ex- plaridtion all of the numerous and diverse conditions that determine the content of the life of society and of the indi- viduals of whom society is composed. 4. Social conditions. Most important of all in deter- mining what shall be approved and what condemned by the conscience of the Southerner, the Northerner, the Israelite, or the Turk, what creeds, crafts, prejudices and ambitions shall prevail in a given society, are the social conditions ; that is, the already prevalent ideas and sentiments by which each individual and each generation is surrounded. In the study of social conditions it will be necessary to observe (i) the kinds of activity which prevail in a given social environment, and (2) the forms of relationship in which these activities stand to each other. What is meant by forms of relation- ship will be made clear later on. 1 1 With the foregoing discussion compare articles by the present writer on "The Social Forces Error." American Journal of Sociology, xvi, 613, 642. PART I THE CAUSES WHICH AFFECT THE LIFE OF SOCIETY I. GEOGRAPHIC CAUSES WHICH AFFECT THE LIFE OF SOCIETY CHAPTER III GEOGRAPHIC CAUSES AND THEIR SOCIAL EFFECTS The Less Conspicuous Geographic Differences Socially Im- portant. We are all familiar in a superficial way with the obvious fact that the activities of a people are largely deter- mined by their geographic environment. Life cannot be the same in arctic regions as in the tropics, nor upon deserts of drifting sand as upon the grassy steppes which afford the natural home for wandering shepherds and their herds, nor upon the seacoast with its fisheries and commerce as among the mountains with their forests and mines. But it is not alone the extreme and unusual manifestations of nature which affect the life of man. On the contrary the very absence of extremes has helped to make Europe the seat of the richest civilization. So relatively inconspicuous a fact as the absence of a creature adapted to be domesticated .and milked might cause one incipient social type to be crushed out in the struggle for existence, or the presence of a creature" adapted to be- come a beast of burden might .enable one people to grow into a triumphant race, corftributors to a dominant civilization, and the absende of such a creature might condemn another race to backwardness and final extinction. The follow- ing effects of geographic conditions deserve particular men- tion: 1. Geographic Conditions Determine the Size of Popula- tions. Thronging cities are found at points of geographic advantage. And in the original development of civilization populations first assembled in considerable density where na- 29 30 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY ture was especially lavish of food. Thus the valleys of the Nile, Euphrates, Ganges, and Piho became cradles of civiliza- tion. The familiar differences between city and country life illustrate the importance of different degrees of density of population in determining the character of society. Far more in the earlier stages of development, when social activities were mainly indigenous, any great advancement was conditioned upon considerable density and number of population. Divi- sion of occupations could not go far save in considerably numerous groups. Where the numbers were large the chances of invention were proportionally increased, and where popu- lation was dense there was similar increase in the chances that such inventions as occurred would not be lost but would spread, and enter into fertile combination with other elements of progress. Moreover, the permanence and accumulation of a strain of social development has been largely conditioned upon the military strength which enabled a group to maintain itself and to absorb other groups, and this in turn depended largely upon numbers. 2. The Economic Occupations of a People Are Determined by Their Geographic Environment. Geographic situation de- termines both demand and supply. For example, the economic products demanded in a cold country are not the same as those demanded in a hot country. Supply and the occupations of production are determined also by the raw materials and natural advantages available. In one region the men will be farmers ; in another, herdsmen ; in another, fishers and sailors ; in another, hunters, trappers, woodsmen; in another, miners. The business of one locality is determined by the presence of deposits of coal and iron; of another, by the presence of waterpower, and of another by the presence of lumber or quarries or clay for the making of pottery and bricks. Thus, we have steel mills at Pittsburgh, and textile factories where the rivers that pass the Appalachians 'to empty into the Atlantic afford abundant power. The correspondence between the economic occupations of a people and the geographic charac- ter of the region in which they live is very complete during all the earlier stages of development and until the railroad GEOGRAPHIC CAUSES 31 makes it possible to redistribute raw materials, fuel, and finished products. Moreover, whatever determines the way in which a people get their living, largely determines the way in which they live, so that the geographic conditions which prescribe their economic activities thereby indirectly determine to a very large extent all the other departments of their social life. It affects their form of government as will presently be ex- plained. It influences the domestic organization polyandry in Tibet arises from poverty of soil; woman has rights and influence among fisher folk of the seashore, where men are much away from home and leave its management to their spouses ; the pastoral life of the steppes has for its correlate the patriarchate and as a rule polygyny. The occupations of a people give direction to their intellectual interests and to their esthetic and recreational tastes, and to their original religious creeds. 3. Stagnation and Progressiveness Are Conditioned Largely by Geographic Surroundings. Mountain barriers, swamps, forests and deserts hinder the intercommunication which is the first condition of social progress, while rivers which are "highways that carry you," good harbors inviting a people to put to sea, mountain passes and other natural routes of travel, promote rapid social progress in favored regions. However, under some circumstances a certain degree of re- moteness may aid progress. Thus Egypt early acquired a large enough population for fertile intercommunication through the lavish gifts of the Nile, and the wealth and progress there accumulated was, during the earlier stages of civilization, more easily defended from marauders by reason of the distance of other centers of population, which was caused by the surrounding desert. Egypt, however, was successively visited and peopled by various wandering folk. Isolation tends everywhere to stagnation, which, in the" case of primitive peoples, occurs as soon as the most urgent natural wants have found a customary mode of satisfaction. On the other hand, the crust of custom is broken up where con- tact with other groups brings the indigenous modes of thought 3 2 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY and practice into frequent competition with those of other people, allowing not only a survival of the fittest, but also a fertile combination of diverse inventions. 4. Lawlessness Is the Natural Consequence of Geographic Inaccessibility and Poverty of Natural Resources. This is true for two reasons : first, because the people of a poor and inaccessible region feel little need of protection from invaders, and so do not desire and will not tolerate a strong guard over them; and second, because offenders in an inac- cessible region are not easily caught and punished. Banditti and feuds and other forms of violence survive longest in mountain fastnesses where the arm of the law can with difficulty reach the offender, while in the open plain order is established with comparative ease, not only because all men are within the reach of the law, but also because all men desire that the law shall be strong, since their accessibility renders them open to the attacks of marauders. If a fertile plain exists in the neighborhood of mountain wilds the inhabitants of the plain tend to develop a government strong enough to hold at bay their poor and envious neighbors of the mountain- sides and also to repress the disorders of their own unruly members. Geographic conditions indirectly affect the rapidity with which order is developed in that a region which is favorable to the accumulation of wealth calls for strong gov- ernment to protect its treasures. Thus, in the case just supposed, the poverty of the mountaineers combines with their inaccessibility to postpone order, while the wealth of the plainsmen combines with their accessibility to hasten it. 5. The Form of Government Is Affected by Geographic Conditions. Exclusively agricultural regions are nearly always aristocratic because land is a natural monopoly, and where agriculture is the only or chief source of wealth power goes with the possession of the land. Immigrant agriculturists, taking possession of a new territory, may remain democratic or become increasingly so as long as free land is obtainable. But as soon as the population increases so that land is costly then those who possess land may readily obtain more, but the landless foborer can rarely obtain land enough to supDoi? GEOGRAPHIC CAUSES 33 him; and such persons tend to become tenants or hired laborers if not serfs. In an old agricultural community the rich and powerful, by gradually increasing their holdings, widen the gulf between them and the landless. There are two forms of agrarian aristocracy. First is that which gradually replaces common ownership of land among a long established agricultural people; and second, that in which land is seized by the chiefs of an invading people. \ Commerce, on the other hand, tends to democracy. If people are settled about a favorable harbor or route of trade, and if they develop any industry the products of which can be exchanged and that depends upon skill and industry and not upon the utilization of a raw material that is liable to monopoly, then they tend to become democratic, as did the maritime cities of Greece and Italy, and the halting places of the caravans that connected Europe with the Orient. These did not become democratic in the modern sense of the word. That consummation waited for the development of popular ideals concerning the universal rights of man, and could not be brought about directly by mere geographic in- fluences. But they were democracies in the sense that many were well-to-do, and the well-to-do were free. Commerce breaks down aristocracy not only because a larger number be- come prosperous, but also because social classes are no longer separated by an impassable line of stratification. Where com- merce exists the poor peddler may become the rich merchant, and the son of the bankrupt, once wealthy, sinks into poverty. On the other hand, landed estates are less easily dissipated, as well as less easily acquired, and descend from generation to generation, so that the stratification of society becomes permanent, and the illusions of caste grow up. Not only does the noble claim to be of different clay from the peasant, but also the peasant, who was born in a hut, is attired in hodden gray, speaks the dialect of the furrow and not of the hall, and plods through a life of toil in the habit of obedience, admits that he is of inferior stuff and does not aspire to equality with those who sit in state or ride in armor. 34 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY and are taught from childhood to feel themselves born to command. Further, the early democracies are limited to dense populations collected within a small area among whom com- munication and cooperation are easy, for without facility of communication the many cannot combine to form and express^ a common will. 6. Tastes and Social and Domestic Customs Are Influenced by Geographic Conditions. Football is out of place in the tropics, and ice-skating is impossible. Athletic sports are indigenous to cool climates, and are sometimes the objects of amazement to inhabitants of torrid regions. The long even- ings of the northern winter call into being suitable pastimes. The working hours of torrid regions are interrupted at mid- day and the siesta is an established custom. Hours for calling and for social reunions and for work differ from place to place. Still more marked are the differences in dress, in houses, and in household furnishings and conveniences. These practical differences occasion differences in the fancies -of fashion in dress and in architecture and in the art crafts which furnish the esthetic elements in household goods and articles of personal use. So great are these differences that the arts and fashions of one people seem to another strange and fantastic. The materials available in a given locality for making articles of use and beauty also affect the development of tastes. Clay makes possible ceramic arts, and marble was necessary to the Grecian taste for temples and statues. The art of Greece is due in part to the quarries of Mount Pentelicus. 7. Ethical Differences Are Largely Influenced by Geo- graphic Environment. The study of comparative sociology reveals the fact that the conscience codes of various peoples differ amazingly, and these ethical differences are largely influenced by geographic environment. We are all familiar with the fact that the commercial and manufacturing North with relatively little use for the clumsy labor of the slave found it comparatively easy to see the moral objections to slavery, while in the agricultural South refined, gentle, and Christian people were long able to regafcj GEOGRAPHIC CAUSES 35 slavery as a divine institution. Certain environments tend to pastoral industry and patriarchal society. There filial duty is the supreme obligation; child-bearing is the wife's ambi- tion ; sexual irregularities are seriously condemned, but the increase of the family of the great by polygynous marriages is thoroughly approved. Such was the family of Abraham. Under the feudalism naturally resulting from predominant agriculture, obedience and loyalty form the central pillar of the ethical structure; each prays that he may do his duty in his lot and station in becoming obedience to his betters. But in commercial democracy independence and individual pride are the motives of honor, and the test of honor is not a loyalty to one's own patriarchal or feudal superiors which may sanction treachery and pillage to all outsiders save the accepted guest, but an honesty that extends even to the merchant from overseas. In northern latitudes the sharp alternation of the seasons demanding that each season's work must be done at its proper time necessitates promptness and energy that does not wait for impulse. There nature, which enriches man by accumu- lated margins of saving but is never lavish, enforces thrift and economy, and these become customs of society, habits of the individual, and prized virtues. But the thrift of the Northerner often looks to his Southern brother like niggardli- ness, and the ease and lavishness of the Southerner to the Northerner may seem like laziness, disregard of obligation, and prodigality. 8. Mythologies and Religions Are Influenced by Geo- graphic Environment. What the nature-myths of a people shall be depends in part upon what aspects of nature in their neighborhoods are most impressive, whether they live by the sea, upon the banks of a great river, among the moun- tains, in the depths of the forest, or on a plain where the overarching sky with sun and stars chiefly command the gaze. Moreover, geographic environments affect religions indirectly through the other social forms to which they give rise. The existing form of earthly power and authority tends to shape man's notion of divine rule. Cruel despotisms are wont to 36 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY have bloodthirsty gods, and the patriarchal, as compared with other equally early forms of government, seems the most favorable to belief in a god interested in the welfare of his people. Indeed the patriarchate through the development of reverence and worship for the spirits of departed ancestors opens wide the way to belief in a father-god. 9. Geographic Conditions Affect the Moods and Psychic Tendencies of a People. It is a fact familiar to us all that in humid weather the vital flame seems to burn with little draft, while in a crisp atmosphere it leaps up brightly. The rapidity or slowness of evaporation seems to affect directly the chem- istry of the vital processes. Not only are the general vital processes, upon which the action of the brain and nervous system depends, affected by conditions of heat, light, and moisture, but the nerves themselves are directly stimulated or depressed. To this cause it has been ascribed that the cradles of civilization have been found in dry regions like the Egyptian oasis in the desert and the plains of Iran and of Central America. The original seats of civilization have been in climates that were warm as well as dry. In the earth's warm belt only occasional spots have sufficient dryness and rapidity of evap- oration, and these are said to have been the original seed plots or nurseries from which the germs of civilization have spread. Though food was abundant yet it was probably quite impossible that indigenous civilization like that of Egypt should arise in the dank heat that prevails in certain other portions of Africa. The wine of America's "translucent, transcendent, transplendent" atmosphere quickens the life of her people. Not only does climate affect the permanent tendencies of races, but passing changes of the seasons x affect the moods of men. Alternations of the seasons give variety to life and stimulation to the imagination. Further, the experienced teacher or prison warden knows that there are muggy days 1 Albert Leffingwell : Influence of the Seasons upon Conduct. Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., London, 1892. E. G. Dexter : Weather Influences. Macmillan, N. Y., 1904. GEOGRAPHIC CAUSES 37 when his wards are restless and capable of more erratic mischief than concentrated endeavor. The lashing of a dry wind increases nervous instability and crime. The curve of the statistics of crime shows a regular alternation of rise and fall corresponding to the change of the seasons, crimes against the person increasing in summer and crimes against property in winter. Even suicide, the causes for which would seem perhaps more peculiarly personal than the causes of any other human act or experience, fluctuates regularly with cli- matic changes. The frequency of suicide is much less in the despairing season of winter, with its scarcity of work and pinch of hunger and cold, than it is in the irritating and enervating heat of summer. And the darkness of night everywhere gives to crime its chief opportunity. 10. The Boutes Followed by Migration, War, and Com- merce Have Been Marked Out by Geographic Highways. These routes have been the great distributors of human popu- lations, customs, and commodities. The other determinant of the distribution and present location of societies has been the presence of natural resources. Furs lured the Russians, though not a migratory people, around the world through trackless frozen wastes of northern Canada, Alaska, and Siberia. Africa was little visited by Europeans until the supply of ivory drew them, and that mainly to furnish the means of playing the games of chess and billiards. The demand for billiard balls had much to do with the addi- tion of Africa to the practically known world. The dis- covery of gold in Australia and California suddenly peopled those hitherto neglected regions. These are ex- ceptionally striking illustrations of the general rule that nat- ural resources, as well as natural pathways, determine so- cial distribution. The Sociological Importance of Greog^raphic Conditions. The importance of studying the geographic conditions of social activities is due largely to two considerations : First, they afford a part of the demonstration that social activities are' not to be explained merely by reference to subjective jnotives or to the arbitrary decrees .of man's will, but tha.t 38 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY the specific desires and volitions of men are themselves to be explained by reference to conditioning environment, so that, like other realities, human activities belong to that network af cause and effect which is the order of nature. Second, '.he geographic conditions afford a very considerable part of the general explanation of thft course of social evolution, 'especially in its earlier stages and in the rise of indigenous cultures. What great historic movement or epoch can be accounted for adequately without reference to geographic conditions? If for example, we seek an explanation of the efflorescence of Greece in the age of Pericles, must we not take account of the third, fifth, sixth, eighth and ninth of the principles of geographic causation above enumerated? We must observe how the Ionian Islands stretched out like eager fingers for contact with other 'peoples, how the ships of Phoenicia, and later of Athens, brought strange goods and strange ideas, till there arose one of those rare eras in which the crust of custom was thinned and broken, and men instead of hating and dread- ing change or innovation were eager to hear "some new thing" ; how the commerce resulting from the peninsular and insular position did away with agrarian monopoly of place and power and aided in establishing an oligarchy of the well- to-do which though more or less allied with ancient rank, and more or less perpetuating its form by a fiction of identity between the rich and the well-born was nevertheless a type of democracy, and how the mythology, the esthetic tastes, and the inspiration of Greek life had all a geographic back- ground. A knowledge of the influence of geographic environment on social activities has a bearing not only upon the explana- tion of present situations and historic movements, but also upon the judgment of proposed plans for the future. Such knowledge is suggestive of lines of profitable enterprise in opening canals, dredging harbors, and otherwise providing conditions similar to those which nature has in places be- stowed. And this knowledge has special application to projects of migration and colonization. GEOGRAPHIC CAUSES 39 Limitations on the Importance of Geographic Conditions. Three considerations, however, set limits to the importance of geographic conditions of social phenomena : i. This is, after all, only one out of four sets of deter- mining conditions. The geographic conditions set negative limits to the possible forms of social activity and play an important part in positively occasioning their rise and charac- ter, yet they no more suffice for their complete explanation than one substance, which the chemist mixes with others in a retort to secure a complex reaction, explains the total effect. Various writers have been disposed to seize upon some one factor in sociological explanation and to treat it as if by itself it afforded complete solution. Thus some, of whom Buckle is the most famous, have exaggerated the relative importance of geographic conditions. Buckle writes as if he came near to thinking that they afford the complete explana- tion of the life of societies. Others, of whom Karl Marx is the most famous, teach that the economic activities by which people get a living determine their moral standards, their forms of government, their scientific progress, and their entire life. Tarde would find well nigh the whole explanation in social relations, especially in imitation. An activity becomes a social phenomenon, he says, when it has spread by means of imitation till many participate in it. Spreading waves of imitation meet and modify each other, and combine into cus- toms and institutions, and to understand how they do so is, according to him, to comprehend the life and development of society. De Greef finds the essential social reality, and the chief factor in sociological explanation in the motives which associates furnish each other, by which their associa- tion becomes a sort of exchange, or implicit contractualism. Giddings bases his explanations- primarily upon the fact of social and psychophysical similarities, which lead certain groups to similarity of response to stimulus, "consciousness of kind," and sympathetic and practical likemindedness. Simmel finds the universal social reality and the essential clue to ex- planation in the fact of leadership and of superiority and subordination. Ross gives chief emphasis not to the leader- 40 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY ship of the dominant individual, but to the molding of indi- viduals by the gradually developed activities of the mass. Ward finds the "social forces" in the inborn traits of human nature. Gumplowicz shows how largely social organization results from the conflicts between groups. Such writers are correct in emphasizing the factors in explanation to which they have given particular study, but wrong in so far as they slight other tfuths, and these examples show the com- plexity of complete sociological explanation which must in- clude them all. Though Greece has kept her geography she has lost her Periclean grandeur; for geographic causes are far from being the only ones that affect society. 2. It is in the earlier stages of evolution that geographic conditions are most dominant, and after the conquest of nature has been carried far, especially when transportation, intercommunication, and migration have played their part, activities are practiced in regions where for geographic reasons they would never have originated, as the plants that fill our fields and gardens are carried and fostered far from their natural habitats. Thus the relative importance of geographic causes diminishes as civilization advances, while the technic and social factors steadily increase in importance. Modifica- tions of this truth are found in the facts: (i) that advanc- ing arts create new uses for geographic resources, for coal, petroleum, waterfalls and harbors; (2) that as the relative importance of geographic factocs diminishes their absolute importance increases, because they condition an ever richer and more complex life of society; and (3) that not all the consequences of man's dependence upon external physical nature are felt until population has passed "the point of diminishing returns," later to be explained. But the very fact that man has reached the limits of nature's generosity -increases his dependence upon the productivity of the arts. 3. Geographic conditions are laid down by nature, antf there is no practical problem for man in determining what they shall be, except as he determines his geographic environ- ment by travel, migration, and colonization. On the other Jhajjd the remaining conditions of social life are largely prod- GEOGRAPHIC CAUSES 41 ucts of man's own activities. Indeed the social and technic conditions are activities of man and the direct result of man's activities and, being shaped by man, present to man the prac- tical problem of so shaping them that they will result in securing the prevalence of desirable and not of undesirable social consequences. The negative importance of geographic conditions as setting limits to possible social activity is in- creased by the fact that they are so little subject to human control, but their positive importance as conditions of the ever differentiating and evolving activity of society is greatly dimin- ished by this rigidity. Stupendous practical importance at- taches to the study of those conditions of social realities which are not laid down by nature, but are subject to human control. II. TECHNIC CAUSES THAT AFFECT THE LIFE OF SOCIETY CHAPTER IV RURAL CONDITIONS We now pass to the second class of conditions affecting society, namely, the technic. It was stated in the introduc- tion that the two main forms of technic conditions are : ( i ) the numbers and spatial distribution of population, and (2) the amount, forms, and distribution of wealth. The effects of the numbers and distribution of population have not yet been adequately studied by sociologists. How- ever a few points are reasonably clear. Formation of Population. The lowest savages live in small huddles or hordes. Those bands cannot attain great numbers because they have not the means of obtaining sufficient food. The necessity of seeking food compels a band to divide and separate if it increases beyond the number who can share the supplies of food that they come upon in their wanderings. At a later stage, when the same people have become expert hunters or herdsmen and so can live in larger companies, the groups tend to recombine, partly through the conquest and absorption of weaker groups by stronger ones, and partly through the sense of blood kinship uniting clans that have separated from one original stock. Thus, separate bands become unified more or less closely by conquest into a com- pound group, or by kinship into a "tribe" or "nation" com- posed of clans. Two compound groups may be united into a doubly compound unit when one conquers the other or two tribes may unite to repel a common foe. Thus several pastoral tribes of plainsmen may unite to repel the hunters from the 49 RURAL CONDITIONS 43 mountains, or agriculturists may forget their rivalries and unite to repel the pastoral nomads; or pastoral nomads like the Israelites or the Huns may unite to conquer agriculturists. The population of every great natipn is supposed to be thus doubly and trebly and manifoldly compounded. Populations are formed by three processes : ( I ) com- pounding, as just described; (2) natural increase, i.e., excess of births over deaths; (3) immigration, which differs from compounding in that it is not the union of whole peoples but the addition of individuals and small parties to a population. A population area is any inhabited portion of the earth's surface which for some reason it is convenient to treat as a unit and to describe with reference to its population. Thus, we may describe as a population area any geographic region, as a continent, a mountain valley, or a river basin. We do, in fact, most frequently take for description population areas that correspond with political boundaries. Population may increase in numbers too rapidly. The economic law of diminishing returns is this: An area may have too few inhabitants to utilize its natural resources, so that an increase of population, by adding to the labor force, in- creases production not merely enough to enable the larger pop- ulation to live as well, but enough to enable the increased pop- ulation to live even better than the smaller one had been able to do. This, however, cannot continue indefinitely. There comes a time when added inhabitants, though they add to the labor force, and to some degree increase the amounts of prod- ucts, yet cannot wrest from the resources of the area owned enough to increase the amount of goods produced to such a point that when divided among the increased population each will have as large a share as was upon the average enjoyed by each of those who inhabited the same area before the last increment of population was received. The point at which that increment of population was received was the point of diminishing returns for the given area. If the population is to increase further, without falling off in its standard of living, it must either take up more land, or else adopt new methods of productkm. 44 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY It has this alternative, for not only does a given area have a point of diminishing returns, but so also does a given stage of industrial progress. A population of hunt- ers may reach the point, of diminishing returns at one indi- vidual to the square mile, where agriculturists may live as well at ten to the square mile or a people with diversified trades at twenty to one square mile; and the introduction of a new piece of agricultural or manufacturing machinery may still further push forward the point of diminishing returns. Therefore the point of .diminishing returns, that is, the point at which further increase of population means a lowered standard of living, may be postponed either (i) by taking up new land or discovering new resources within the land already occupied, or (2) by using more or better capital, such as improved tools, ma- chinery, and livestock, or improved methods of produc- tion. For an increasing population to maintain its standard of living unimpaired means not only that each shall have as much to eat as formerly, but also that houses shall be as sanitary, spacious, and dignified, fittings as convenient and beautiful, the sick as well cared for, the aged as comfortable, books and music and travel as fully enjoyed, and sons and daughters as well educated. A given territory at a given stage of industrial progress can maintain at a given level a given number of people. Its population may be less than the number who could be thus maintained, but when that number has been reached then further increase of population must be accompanied by a pro- portional increase of skill in producing, or of wisdom in con- suming economic goods, or else by a decline in the popular standard of living. A few rich may go on living more and more expensively, but the living of the ordinary family must decline. The wise ambition for a people is to maintain its life at a higher physical and psychic level rather than to increase the number of its members at the expense of degrading their life below an accepted standard. The fact that a people increases RURAL CONDITIONS 45 but slowly in numbers may be an evidence not of degeneracy but of enlightenment and prudence. 1 Since the recent great improvement and cheapening of means of transportation, and the opening to Europeans of the great areas of North and South America and Africa, emigra- tion has offered a way of escape from the law of diminishing returns, but this way of escape cannot remain open forever. It must not be thought that when population increases be- yond the point of diminishing returns agriculturalists are the only ones affected. When multiplication of the agricultural population has carried it far past the point of diminishing returns it ceases to buy enough manufactured goods to profit- ably employ similarly increasing numbers engaged in non- agricultural pursuits. Practically all other industries must use at least a little land. They must use increasing amounts of land if they are to employ increasing numbers of laborers with undiminished productivity, and the cost of this land is in- creased by population pressure. All manufacture depends upon extractive industry for the quantity and price of its raw materials. And all classes must be fed from the land, and scarcity of the agricultural products relative to the number of mouths to be fed, results in scanty (or costly) rations, not only for farmers, but for all. For such reasons, the law of diminishing returns affects all branches of productive in- dustry. This law, coupled with the tendency of population to in- crease by reproduction "beyond any assignable limits" has given ground for baleful prophecies of inevitable progressive degradation for man. The point of diminishing returns can- not be indefinitely pushed forward, either by emigration or by 1 Professor Alfred Marshall in his "Principles of Economics," Macmillan, 1898 (Fifth ed. : Vol. I, page 182), says: "There are many parts of Europe even now in which custom, exercising the force of law, prevents more than one son in each family from marrying; he is generally the oldest, but in some. places, the youngest; if any other son marries he must leave the village. When great material prosperity and the absence of all extreme poverty are found in old-fashioned corners of the Old World, the explanation generally lies in some such custom as this with all its evils and hardships." 46 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY progress in the arts. To the most favored spot must come a time when the only remaining way of escape from progressive poverty and degradation will be the limitation of the natural increase of population. It used to be believed that the power of the reproductive instinct was such that any discovery of new lands, or any improvement in the arts of production would simply lead to an increased birth rate, so that the only progress possible would be an increase of numbers, and that although a few, by taking more than their share, might live in luxury, the masses could by no means be raised above the level of mere subsist- ence. If we take the reproductive instinct and the law of diminishing returns as the only factors it is impossible to escape from this conclusion. This conclusion is mainly re- sponsible for the name which Carlyle and many since have given to political economy "the dismal science." But these two are not the only factors. The standard of living is a third factor. A standard of living is a set of desires strong enough to induce men to postpone or forego marriage, or to limit the number of children after marriage. It induces men before they marry to spend a considerable part of their most fertile years in prolonged training and competitive struggle in order to attain a degree of economic independence that will enable them to maintain a family in comfort and culture. 1 The beasts have no standard of living. It is a social product. It is a psy- chic reality. But it is strong enough to override imperious instinct. If we study only the effects of material conditions geographic, technic, and psychophysical upon social life, we shall be led, unless we blink the implications of the facts, to a pessimistic conclusion. It is only when we study also the con- trol that may be exercised by elements of the fourth class the psychic that we have reasonable ground for hopeful cour- age. It is a part of the business of general sociology, as sup- 1 If M and all his descendants marry at 22, while N and all his descendants marry at 33, in 300 years the proportion of Mature M's to N's will be as 26 to I, according to the calculation of Francis Galton in Hereditary Genius, Appleton, 1871, pages 353-356; referred to by A. G. Keller: Societal Evolution. Macmillan, 1915, page 185. RURAL CONDITIONS 47 plemental (or fundamental) to the special social sciences, to bring all the elements in the social situation into one perspec- tive. Prevalent ambitions, personal ideals, and standards of social morality are as real determinants of social phenomena as the limitations of natural resources or the physiological instincts. Agrarian Aristocracy and Population Pressure. The agri- cultural sections of America have in general by no means reached that balance between population and resources which tends ultimately to establish itself. They are in a period of transition. The coming changes will offer opportunity for great improvements, but they will bring with them on& great danger, namely, that of too rigid social stratification. At first sight such stratification seems inevitable. Omitting qualifications, this tendency may be thus stated : When land becomes worth hundreds of dollars per acre, as it already has in certain sections, the landless youth can seldom, if ever, suc- ceed in buying a farm, and if he remains in the country, must be a tenant or a hired laborer. On the other hand those who own land will be in a position to buy more. 1 Thus the owner- ship of land may be expected to concentrate and the number of landless dwellers in the country to increase. This tendency will be strongest where land is most productive and most val- uable, and therefore hardest for the landless to purchase, and at the same time requiring the employment of a large num- ber of hands to tend its heavy crops. The application of scientific methods to agriculture which will be necessary to make the best lands pay a return for their cost requires cap- ital, and this will put an additional obstacle in the way of the landless youth and add to the tendency created by the high cost of the land to develop a small body of wealthy agrarian 1 The tendency is at present increased by the purchase of lands by city investors. Agricultural land is an attractive investment where the rent equals the interest on bonds plus a margin sufficient to pay for the supervision necessary to secure the occupancy and cultivation of the land. It is especially attractive investment even at a lower rental than this so long as there is a rapid rise, in value incident to population growth. The farm land of central Illinois has fully doubled in value during the decade 1900-1910. 48 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY aristocrats with a large body of tenants or paid farm laborers. There are, however, three counteracting tendencies re- ferred to above as omitted qualifications. First, the more in- tensive the agriculture, the smaller the number of acres which the landless youth must buy in order to become independent and to support a family. The increased price of good land and the demand for fine fruits, vegetables, and meats may be ex- pected to force a more intensive cultivation, which makes fewer acres suffice for the maintenance of a household. So long as wasteful, extensive modes of cultivation prevail the growth of cities clamoring for food and raw materials power- fully fends to increase both "the cost of living" and the monop- oly of land. But intensive agriculture tends both to reduce the cost of living and to combat monopoly of land. It is true that intensive agriculture by increasing the productivity of land tends to increase its price. But in intensive agriculture the proportional part played by labor is greater and the pro- portional part played by land is less, so that land values do not increase as rapidly as does product, and there is a gain in position to those who contribute the labor required for pro- duction. 1 Whether the rural population is made up of independent farmers or of tenants and hired laborers, increase in the num- ber of those who can dwell in the country and maintain a high standard of living there, is dependent flpon the increase of manufacturing cities, either of the same nation or abroad, to 1 Suppose land worth $200.00 per acre now rents at $8.00 per acre and with the expenditure of $6.00 worth of labor and $4.50 for ma- chinery, teams and seed, yields on the average $18.00 per acre. If by trebling the labor and doubling the other costs of produc- tion the yield per acre should be doubled the result would be: Land value Crop Rent Capital Labor Extensive $200 18 $8.00 $4.50 $6.00 Intensive 225 36 9.00 9.00 18.00 If this could be realized, labor could have more money and only about half as much land need be bought, the price per acre being but 12^2 per cent, greater than now. Besides, the greater amount of labor means greater cost of superintendence to a landlord and consequent further reduction of the tendency to concentration. RURAL CONDITIONS 49 absorb their product of food and raw materials. Thus the high rate of urban increase is favorable to intensive agricul- ture, and to the increase of rural population in numbers and prosperity. A second and more important qualification of the tendency to form an agrarian aristocracy and proletariat is found in the absence of laws of primogeniture and the wish of parents, as testators, to divide their holdings among their children. A third counteracting tendency is in the fact that in the long run farming land is worth more to the man who cultivates it than to anyone else, because it gives him a steady job, inde- pendent of the will of any employer. The price of farming land contains at least three elements: first, a sum which if invested at interest would yield annually an amount equal to the rental of the land; second, a price paid for the expected unearned increment; third, a sum paid by the purchaser for the opportunity of independent self-employment. In time the second element will dwindle, for there will no longer be so great an expectation of unearned increment, indeed that ex- pectation might be largely extinguished by taxation, as the next paragraph will show. Then, unless land be valued as a basis of social prestige, or for some other extraneous consider- ation, the third element will tend to become the decisive factor in its ownership, for it will raise the price of the land above the capitalized value of its rental, and only he who values it as an opportunity for independent self-employment can afford to pay this third element in the price of land. An artificial barrier to the concentration of land in large holdings would be the heavy taxing of unearned increments. The motive for land purchases by the wealthy who do not farm is largely the hope of enjoying the unearned increment which is resulting from population increase, improvements in transportation and general progress. Deeds might be required to state the true price paid, and proof of fraud in the state- ment of the price might invalidate the deed. The purchasers would then have two strong motives for having the price cor- rectly recorded, first, in order to get a valid title, and second, because whenever in the future the purchaser became a seller, 50 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY it would be advantageous to him to have had the full price recorded, since it would be the only amount which he could receive untaxed. On the other hand, he would not overstate the price lest he invalidate his title,' and the seller would not allow it to be overstated, if there had been an increment since the previous transfer, because the seller is taxed on that incre- ment. If the actual price at successive sales were recorded the unearned increment could readily be taxed. To cheapen land by taxing the unearned increment, and rendering it unattractive to speculators would tend to make it more valuable to the man who would labor on it than to anyone else, and so to distribute it among independent farmers in holdings no larger than they could properly cul- tivate. Density and Communication. Density as directly affecting social life is practically equivalent to facility of transportation and communication. An improvement in the character of roads and means of transportation and communication may improve society as much and in much the same way as would doubling the number of inhabitants without such mechanical improvements. If railroads are the arteries of society, high- ways are the capillaries, and unless the capillary circulation is good both business and social life may be expected to languish. Trolley, telephone, rural free delivery of mail, the parcels post, the automobile, the school omnibus, horses, the bicycle, and, above all, because essential to the effectiveness of most of the others, good roads are a technic equipment which can go far to redeem rural solitude and render it feasible to maintain such a social life as to make the country the home, by choice and not by hard necessity, of a due proportion of those who are well-to-do and competent. At the same time the density of the city, in so far as it brings with it social as distinguished from bodily effects, is a technic condition created in part by great numbers in small area, and in part by excellent streets, rapid street transportation, telephones, and the railroad and tele- graph, which makes the city a throbbing ganglion of world life. From this it follows that degrees of density cannot be / properly defined by reference to the number of inhabitants RURAL CONDITIONS 51 alone. We may roughly distinguish several degrees of num- ber and density, and may observe that each has its own social effects, and calls for appropriate adjustments. 1. Rural Solitude. Most people would say that rural soli- tude exists wherever the country is a degree more lonesome than they are accustomed to. In fact, the condition which I propose to designate as rural solitude exists not only in the vast areas of the far western United States, but also in a large part of the Middle West, and is not unknown in New England. Most of our richest prairie soil is now yielding far less per acre than some of our comparatively poor land, because the prairie is devoted to crops that are adapted to an extensive mode of cultivation, that is, one requiring the expenditure of but little labor per acre. Two men spending all their labor on eighty acres of prairie soil might make it yield more than is now secured on the average from one hundred and sixty acres. The effects of rural solitude are mainly negative. The ministrations of nature may be glorious, but those of man are comparatively lacking. With reference to density, it is a state of lack and disadvantage. 2. Rural Community. The line between rural solitude and what we will call "rural community" is passed when it becomes possible to maintain a satisfactory standard of school, church, and neighborhood life. The transition from the first to the second degree of density usually depends on increasing the number of inhabitants, preferably at the same time dimin- ishing the size of land holdings, but it may be greatly hastened by improving the roads and means of communication, or both. 3. Hamlet. The hamlet can be better described than de- fined and is too familiar to require detailed description. It often forfeits many of the advantages of the open country without securing those of the village or city, being a spot where man has deposited upon the landscape an accumulation of ugliness, the rival of the city slum. It is a merciful provision of nature that we can get used to almost anything, but it is an anesthetic. Not in the hamlet only, but in societies of every sort, we become chloroformed to familiar evils. The dreadful hideousness of many a hamlet, 52 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY bearable only because human beings can get used to almost anything, could be redeemed by a well kept highway, well kept dooryards, paint or vines over houses and out-houses, and properly placed shrubbery and flowers. Trees come more slowly but are a glory to hamlet and village. The hamlet may not only surpass the city slum in ugliness ; it may also rival it in its insanitary condition, due largely to shallow wells, 1 open vaults, lack of proper refuse disposal and swarming flies that breed in offal and then enter the houses laden with germs conditions which modern and inex- pensive scientific devices have made unnecessary even for the country. It may rival the slum also in tendencies to vice, drunkenness, and demoralizing as well as petty pleasures, because of lack of the dignity and elevation that go with beauty and fitness of surroundings, and dearth of elevating pleasures, a dearth often most pitiful and degrading, which may readily be removed by the traveling or local library arid the periodical press, the literary circle, debating club, musical society, association for scientific farming, arts and crafts guild, and reconstructed school and church. If community life throughout the countryside surround- ing the hamlet were properly developed, then among the res/- dents of the hamlet would normally be included a teacher and also a minister, each living with his family and each of such character and intelligence as could reasonably be ex- pected only on condition that the income of each fully equaled that of a prosperous farmer, including the value of all that is consumed upon the farm. By their example and leader- ship, the minister, the teacher, and the physician, with other progressive and intelligent citizens, each sensible of responsi- bility for the community life, could insure to the rural com- munity and the hamlet a life of beauty, joy and worth, the 1 Dug wells are in general a fit source of water for human con- sumption only when surrounded by a water-tight curb high enough to keep out surface water, and continuing downward as a lining to the well for a number of feet, so that water which passes under it from the surface in wet times will be adequately filtered. How many feet this will be depends on the character of the soil and the sources of pollution to which the soil is exposed. RURAL CONDITIONS 53 description of which would enrich our literature as the living of it would enrich themselves. The fulfillment of social possibilities in city or country depends upon the somewhat general realization that a profes- sion or trade arid the influence it brings constitute a public function. No legitimate calling, from the pastorate to manag- ing a moving picture show, or shoeing horses, can properly be carried on merely as a means of making money, but rather also as a man's work in creating a social situation. This it is which gives dignity and zest to work and this is the truest single test of morality. There are young men in America who are preparing to engage in professional work in rural as well as in urban communities in full consciousness of this principle of social responsibility and opportunity, the ignoring of which is the main reason for non-realization of social possibilities. Another reason why teachers, ministers and others have not more usually afforded the necessary social leadership is that they themselves have not been ripe representatives of modern civilization and culture, and this is because we have not in our country a sufficient number of thoroughly educated men, the products of cultured homes and of liberal schooling, to fill the positions for which thorough training should be an essential qualification. For this reason the standards of edu- cational requirements for schoolteachers, which are enforced in some parts of the old world, are as yet impracticable here. The American school system is exceedingly admirable as an organization. We have the best elementary-school textbooks in the world, which is both fortunate and necessary in view of the limited preparation of many rural teachers. But the supreme element in the success of a school system is still largely lacking, namely, adequate qualifications of the teachers themselves. Yet another reason for the comparative poverty of life in rural districts is the subdivision of schools and churches which occasions a lack of dignity and power to inspire and lead on the part of these great social institutions. Where people are few the necessity of concentration is most urgent. 4 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY In the case of the school this need is being met in many places by "consolidation." By this plan numerous tiny and often disreputable schoolhouses are replaced by one central building of good architecture, attended by pupils numerous enough to be properly graded and classified and to have zest and interstimulation in work and in pfay. Since funds are conserved, instead of scattered, apparatus and libraries can be afforded. A few competent teachers replace a larger number of less competent ones. Group solidarity and democracy among the people of all sections of the region are promoted by the early friendship of the rising generation. Consolidated schools imply fairly good roads, and a bus and driver for each of the routes converging at the school center. Since a bus and driver cost less than a school and teacher the consolidated school may cost less than the numerous district schools which it replaces. But the great argument for the consolidated school is not that it requires less money, but that it makes people willing to spend more money on their schools and secures better education. Corresponding advantages are to some degree secured to the church by the movement for church federation, or by "interdenominational commissions." In several states such commissions have already shown that it is possible to estab- lish comity by which each important Protestant sect will refrain from establishing new churches, missions or Sunday- schools without the approval of a central council composed of representatives from each of the cooperating denomina- tions, and by which tiny struggling congregations leave it to the council to decide which can best survive in a given com- munity and then allow that one to absorb the rest in a single united organization. This is possible where one sect has more members, and a stronger hold upon the community than the others, and what a denomination yields in one locality it is likely to gain in another where it has strength to be the rallying center. In other cases a federated church is formed, each sect electing a clerk and treasurer preserving the continuity of its records and forwarding missionary and benevolent contributions to its own denominational board but RURAL CONDITIONS 55 all acting as one body in local matters. These valuable ex- pedients should be utilized until Protestantism adopts a yet more rational mode of organization. All rural progress, like progress everywhere, depends upon awakening popular desire for the objects that are of real importance and value, a desire strong enough to lead to the expenditure of such money as is available. Every thoroughly enlightened farmer will escape from that form of insanity which regards it as the object of labor "to raise more corn, to feed more hogs, to buy more land to raise more corn, to feed more hogs, and so on" and will realize that life is no mere toilsome game with a score reckoned in acres or dol- lars or hogs or corn, but that life is conscious experience, that money is only a means to life, and that life is wasted if the means are obtained but the ends not reached. Such a farmer regards money as something to be obtained in order that it may be used in maintaining the agencies of life, and these for the farmer are almost summed up in the home, the school, the church, supposing the home to include all the private agencies of happiness and culture, and the church and the school to perform the functions appropriate to them. Not money in a stocking or in a bank, but the home, the school, the church, should represent the goal of his labor. THe parsimoniousness of the farmer is not to be blamed when it is due to unescapable poverty. Many a farmer is over- burdened with rentals or mortgages. 4. Village. Any settlement which in size is between the mere hamlet of a dozen or a score of dwellings and the city is popularly called a village. Between the village that is scarcely more than a hamlet and the village that is scarcely less than a city there are many gradations in numbers each of which would doubtless be found by adequate study to have characteristic effects upon the life of the group. In the United States many communities that in numbers are as yet no more than villages are allowed to take the name and political organization of a city. A good village improves with time. By the time it is shaded with full-grown, high-arching trees that never have 56 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY been "topped" a village should have acquired a sort of ripe collective personality, rich in sentiment. For good or ill, the character of a village depends largely upon the example and activity of its leaders. Fortunate is that village in which the standard of ambition, taste, sentiment, and custom are early set by intelligent and highminded founders who leave behind a heritage of tradition that molds the lives of their successors for many a generation and causes the sons and daughters of the village to seek education and careers of service. Young villages should plan for the future. Streets newly laid out should be wide enough to serve the purposes of a city if time so determines. Permanent trees should at once be set out at such distances as not to overcrowd each other generations later, while between each pair of permanent and slow-growing trees, may be set a tree of rapid growth, to be removed in time. The village council should at once see to it that grade lines are established, not only for streets but also for building lots, with reference both to beauty and drainage. And they should prescribe a building line, requiring that houses should be set at a uniform distance from the street, and also for a form of curved embankment or slope (not an angular terrace) wherever lots are above the level of the street. A standard cornice line should be established for buildings on the business street. The architecture of the church and other public buildings of a village and also of the homes is a matter of no slight importance. It may determine whether people of taste make the village a summering place or permanent home. People like this place or that often without knowing why. The cause is frequently in that which appeals to the eye. Beauty is a silent and often unrecognized, but potent, element in the worth of life. Children growing up and men and women tend insensibly to live up or down to their surroundings. Beauty alone will seldom redeem men as it is said to have redeemed Goethe, but it is one agency of redemption. And it is of value not only as a means of moral uplift, but for its own sake. Beauty is like cheerful weather. The architect RURAL CONDITIONS 57 and- the artist do man's work in the world and deserve the appreciation, honor, and fame which are accorded them by the folk-sense of old communities that have long enjoyed the experience of beauty. When the designs are once drawn, it is no more expensive to build in beautiful lines than in ugly ones. No community should allow a hideous work of man to be needlessly thrust upon its gaze, to stand like an affront to the eyes for decades or generations. They would not allow every man who would to establish a perpetual bad smell. Should they refuse to protect the higher sense of sight? Every moderately large community should employ the services of a consulting architect who need not be a resident, or of a commission which would pass upon the design for every permanent building erected upon a public thoroughfare. Whenever a plan was refused reasons should be given and suggestions for the removal of unsatisfactory features would be in order. How large a community must be, before availing itself of such services, each village or city must decide for itself. It is far easier to prevent ugly, and otherwise objec- tionable, architecture than to remove it after it has been built. The small population was at a disadvantage in the earlier stages of social evolution in that the chance that progressive ideas would be originated was less under these conditions than where many minds were congregated. This was a seri- ous matter in the old times of little communication between different communities, but that disadvantage has largely dis- appeared in our time of efficient communication through travel, post, conventions, and institutes for farmers and teachers and clergy, and, above all, through the press. In a small village group there is also less stimulation from very eminent representatives of the arts and professions. This disadvantage might be largely offset if doctors, lawyers, teach- ers, and ministers were trained to feel the responsibility and practice the arts of social leadership. Leadership consists largely in putting the proper ideas into the minds of the in- dividuals 'who are in a position to give them effect and still more in supplying the necessary courage. Most things really 58 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY worth doing have at first looked impracticable to the ave/age person. But when there appears an individual having not only sufficient imagination and enlightenment to see what should be done, but also sufficient courage to believe that it can be done, the probability of the achievement has begun. The question of possibility or impossibility with reference to social improvements is largely one of psychic attitude of the people. The question with respect to most desirable social changes is not, could people bring them about if they would, but will they will to do so ? Such changes are thought impos- sible and for the time being are so, because men do not believe that their neighbors will do their duty. The man who first says, "I for one will, and we together can," who breaks down the hypnotism of the present reality, who ex- hibits confidence in his fellows, who makes individuals begin to think "my neighbors will do their duty and therefore it is worth while for me to do mine," thereby creates new social possibilities. A village population, dense but small, derives particular advantages from these two technic charac- teristics, in the comparative ease with which its best mem- bers can influence the situation. One of the attractions of the small community for the rightminded citizen is that he may reasonably expect to make his influence count, to be a significant factor in constructive community life, while he could hardly hope to produce any. very definite and recog- nizable influence upon the vast and complex situation pre- sented by a great city. The pressure of public opinion upon the individual is likely to be strongest, other things being equal, in a small, dense community like a village. Personal conduct is not easily concealed; the social reaction of increased or diminished cor- diality and respect is powerfully and promptly felt. For the average individual personal relations tend to constitute a larger part of life's interest and value than in the city, and these relations are permanent, and not to be shaken off by changing one's boarding-place. This may be carried to an irksome excess and may be an evil if social standards are low, but it is a tremendous power and on the whole a power RURAL CONDITIONS 59 for good, and that increasingly, provided social standards are progressively wise and social intercourse instinct with sym- pathy and courtesy. In the village individuality is not ob- literated by a steam roller of social pressure. Quite the con- trary. This pressure is heavy upon indecencies, improprie- ties, and such breaches of the group conscience code as licen- tiousness, thriftlessness, dishonesty, or cruelty. On the other hand, interesting diversification of the social current of thought, speech, and action are encouraged. It is in country or village that we hear the phrases, "As Tom says," and "As Aunt Mary would say." Piquancies are appreciated in a group where individuals are thoroughly known and furnish to each other permanent sources of human interest. Local reputation is easily achieved and small talents that in the city would be lost to view are called out and often are discovered to be real accessions to the stock of social wealth. Sympathetic bonds unite the population of the village far more than that of the city. Sympathy, being an emotion, depends on vividness of perception. Hence the poor and unfortunate of a village can generally depend upon a per- sonal and friendly aid, while those of a city known to the more fortunate indirectly, by the medium of print, may receive only a remote and general interest on the part of those able to assist. Individual cases of suffering of every kind may go unheard of by any who could render aid, and if discovered it will be by the police or by the professional agent of a charitable organization who administers, it may be wisely and kindly, the funds supplied by benefactors who never see the suffering that they alleviate. CHAPTER Y THE CITY 1 Nine Characteristics of the City. The city when consid- ered sociologically instead of politically is seen as a large aggregation of population having a high degree of density and facility of intercommunication. How citified a group becomes does not depend exclusively upon its numbers. Many small groups in this country are organized politically as cities, so also there are not a few communities (in Massachusetts alone there are thirty-eight such communities), having over eight thousand population, that decline so to organize, that are not called cities and that conduct their political affairs by "town meeting," that is, by annual general assembly of all legal voters and by a standing executive commission of "selectmen." Following, in general, the practice of the United States census, we may speak of any incorporated place having 2,500 to 4,000 inhabitants as semiurban, one with 4,000 to 8,000 as a city of the fourth class, one with 8,000 to 25,000 as a city of the third class, one with 25,000 to 100,000 as a city of the second class, and one with 100,000 or more as a city of the first class. Among the characteristics of urban groups the following may be mentioned : 1. The city is the home of industries in which labor and capital, and not land, are the predominant factors. 2. A great many young people who have just completed their schooling or have just reached maturity go from country and village homes to seek employment in cities. Hence the population of cities contains a larger proportion of youth and of persons in the most vigorous years than do other groups. This helps to increase the atmosphere of hope, enterprise, pro- 1 Housing, city planning and municipal conveniences are treated on p. 87 and following. 60 THE CITY 61 gressiveness and radicalism, to quicken the pace and intensify the energy and the passion of city life. 3. In these crowded groups there is a comparative lack of domesticity. Home ties have been left behind by many of those who go to live in cities, and new ones are not so likely to be formed as among those who move into villages or rural communities. Multitudes live in boarding-houses, at clubs, or at hotels. Space, indoors and out, immunity from contaminating influences and opportunity for developing home occupations are not easily provided for children. Agriculture makes the home its center. The men are too few and scat- tered to make boarding-houses profitable, and there is little opportunity for women to find employment except about homes. In the city, women as well as men can readily find other work and betake themselves to boarding-house existence. And even girls living with their parents do not find their interests centering so predominantly in home activities, but all the members of the household may scatter after break- fast to work with other groups in quarters of the city remote from each other. Neither are the homes so predominant as in country or village as the centers of life's pleasures and values. The theater, the park, the gay and brilliant street, the saloon, the club, contend with the homes of the people for their money and affections. And it is harder and more costly to make the home a place of individuality and beauty when it is a set of pigeon-holes in an apartment house, than when it has its own trees and flowers and yard and is uninvaded by the dirt and noise, not to say the smells, of the crowded city. The city-dweller moves from one tenement to another while the farm-dweller strikes deep roots in a homestead. 4. In the city .the artificial predominates over nature. The brooks are in the sewers ; the forests are felled ; the only trees were set out by hand of man ; many a boy never had a stick that had not been through a saw-mill; the factory laborer is mostly engaged in making artificial products more artificial still, and he works not with nature but with a great building full of machinery and an army of his fellowmen. 62 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY Man tends to feel himself a match for nature; only sick- ness, death, and the weather defy his powers. The multi- tude of men seems the mightiest agency within his observa- tion, and the crowd tends to become his god. 5. The city is a place of tremendous stimulation. Sights, sounds and the activities of thousands bombard the senses and the mind. No other class of realities is so stimulating to man as the activities of his fellowmen. The city street with its show windows and its throngs is a perpetual world's fair. 6. The city is a place of extremes and of the most glaring contrasts in human life. Here are the heaped Andes of pluto- cratic fortune, and here are the morasses of sodden poverty; here are the men of genius, great preachers, great lawyers, great scientists, great artists, great musicians, great captains of industry; and here are the incompetent who need a boss over them if they are to work and who can hardly hold a job; here are prophets and leaders of philanthropy, benevo- lence and reform, and here are the professionals of crime. It is often said that the brightest and best trained youths go to the city. It is equally true that the incompetent who cannot work except under a boss, the degenerate and depraved, and those who are ashamed before their neighbors, go to the city. The city seems to draw all extremes, the freaks and sports of nature, and it is the typical who are the breeding strength of a race. From the overstimulation and the extremes of city life there follows a tendency, but not a necessity, for the common individual to live on the surface of his mind, distracted first by one stimulation and then by another, never reflecting deeply upon anything, and being far less intelligent for all his knowl- edge of the latest song, the latest style, and the latest news- paper sensation, than the better type of villager or farmer. From the same causes there follows a second closely related tendency for the common person to be overwhelmed by the massiveness of his social environment so that he never acquires a well developed personality of his own, being unable to assert himself against the pressure of that mass of influence and example by which he is surrounded. THE CITY 63 These two tendencies, reen forced and played upon by the tremendous facility of superficial communication with great numbers of persons, operate toward giving to urban popula- tion a degree of "mobmindedness." Surface notions, catch- words and passing sentiments easily spread; each knows that thousands of others are reading the same headlines and moved by the same ideas and emotions. To-morrow or next week this sensation will have been replaced by another. The mob is fickle, now generous, now mean, now audacious, now pan- icky, to-day overpraising and to-morrow stoning with epi- thets the same man or measure. On the other hand the diversities and contrasts of economic station and interest of religion, race, and even of language tend to stem this tide of mob influence. Furthermore, the extremes and glaring contrasts of the city make the difference between good and evil impressive to the discerning mind while the shamelessness of evil ensnares many. To be sure, familiarity with evil may obscure its character to the careless and youthful, and where the Devil walks at large with his hoofs and horns concealed, as far as he can conceal them, he captures many ; yet sturdy souls are brought to clear moral choices. Again the extremes in every direction of human achievement enable the gifted and aspir- ing to find models, aids, opportunities, and stimulating ex- ample and fellowship. Thus in the city the rare man is likely to come to the completest fulfillment of his possibilities. A great university may create similarly favorable conditions for the exceptional individual in a comparatively rural community. 7. In the great city there is so much of a given variety of humanity, and given varieties so tend to aggregate and integrate that we have the phenomenon of "quarters" the quarter of the rich and of the poor, the Ghetto, Chinatown, little Italy, th6 red-light district, the wholesale district, and the financial district with its banks and brokers' offices, and others more. This facilitates certain activities, intensifies certain traits, and hinders the spread of common sympathy, under- standing, and social assimilation. 8. City life is characterized by an anonymity. In the city 64 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY next-door neighbors may not know each other by name. Not one in a thousand that meets John Doe in public places may know him by name, especially if he is out of his own "quarter." Families may reside in the same apartment house and ride up and down in the same elevator but never speak. The offices of successful men practicing the same profession are sometimes opposite each other, across the street, when the men may never even have heard of each other. Thus are lacking the repression of tendencies toward personal vices, as well as the elicitation of personal excellencies and values which depend upon the more personal group life implied by the word "neighborhood." A highly developed police system may attempt to keep track of individual citizens and record the birth, schooling, occupation, dwelling-place, arrests, sicknesses and death of each. Old-world cities have gone much further than we in gathering such data. Records of such important facts would in the aggregate furnish a mass of statistical data, that would be exceedingly valuable for social guidance. However they are not a substitute for personal acquaintance. It is to be hoped that a degree of neighborhood organiza- tion in the city may some time be achieved by developing recreational, cultural and religious activities in a parochial or district system. It may be that the neighborhood should rank next after the family as a means of developing personal and social values. 9. Urban life is characterized by a heightened dependence of each individual and household upon communal activities. In the country the farmer's own lamp in the house and lantern on the road furnish light; his own well or cistern supplies water; his own care defends him and his family against fire, tramp, and microbes, and his own conveyance transports them. But in the city rapid intramural transportation, light, water, sewerage, garbage disposal, fire and 'police protection, sup- pression of contagious diseases, inspection of food and milk, even clean air and a space in which the children may gather and play, all depend upon communal action. The individual is dependent for daily necessaries, conveniences, comfort, and THE CITY 65 health upon activities which he alone cannot maintain, and which rest upon the general intelligence, fidelity and public spirit, or in an autocratic community, upon the presence of these qualities in the officials set over him. Probably a hundred thousand deaths might be saved an- nually in American cities, and a million or two cases of illness prevented, if the best sanitary administration anywhere prac- ticed should be made universal. In New York City the death rate has declined in successive ten-year periods from 27.17 per thousand to 25.27 to 23.26 to 19.17 to 15.51 to 14.13, a total decline of 47.9 per cent. In Chicago seven successive decades have seen progressive decline in the death rate from 37.06 to 14.56, a total decline of 60.7 per cent. A decline of i per thousand in the death rate of New York City means that 4,766 persons live through the year who otherwise would have died. The general death rate of all places in the regis- tration area of the United States having a population of 2,500 or more was 15 per thousand in 1913. Montclair, New Jersey, a city of 26,000, has a death rate of 9.37. This city spends 46 cents per capita or nearly $12,000 per year on its health department. Many cities of that size do not spend 5 per cent, of that sum. It is evident that much improvement remains to be made. A change in the government of a city some- times means a rise in the death rate involving the death of hundreds of citizens per year. The study of vital statistics throws a faint reflected light upon that which might be revealed if other phases of wel- fare which depend upon social activity could be statistically measured. In the city not health alone, but also convenience, pros- perity, pleasures, and character itself, are largely dependent on communal cooperation. This last statement is so important that it would justify a volume to expand it. 1 The Growth, of Cities. The growth of cities, and especially the increase in the proportion of the entire population living 1 There are a number of volumes that do expand it. See, for ex- ample, F. C. Howe : The Modern City and Its Problems. Scribners, 1915, 66 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY in cities, has been enormous during the last decades. In the judgment of some observers it is "the most remarkable social phenomenon" of our time. At the beginning of the last cen- tury New York had a population of only 60,489. The site of Chicago was a windswept swamp. Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, Boston, Charleston, and Salem, these six, were the only cities in this country having as many as 8,000 in- habitants. At the end of that century, instead of only six cities with a population as numerous as 8,000, there were 545 such cities. During that century "the urban population of the United States multiplied 87-fold, while that of the country as a whole, including the cities, increased only 12-fold." * In 1790 only 3.35 per cent, of the people of the United States lived in cities. By 1900 a majority of the population in fifteen states was urban and over two-thirds of the population of eight states. By 1910 the United States had 228 cities of over 25,000 inhabitants, 50 cities of over 100,000, 19 cities of over a quarter of a million, 5 cities of over half a million, 3 cities of over a million, and one city of nearly five millions. By that date over 28,500,000 people in the United States were living in cities of 25,000 or more. The cities of this country of 100,000 or over grew in aggregate population during the twenty years ending 1910 from 11,470,364 to 20,302,138. The rate of increase was greater during the second than dur- ing the first of these two decades and the 178 cities of between 25- and 100,000 showed an even higher percentage of increase. Those of over 100,000 and about one-third of all cities of both classes showed an increase of over 50 per cent, each in the ten years between 1900 and 1910. There is no reason to doubt that the cities of this country will continue for a time to grow in some such tremendous proportion as hitherto. The recent growth of cities, and especially the more rapid growth of cities than of rural population, is not a phenomenon peculiar to the United States. "London is probably two thou- sand years old, and yet four-fifths of its growth was added during the past century. From 1850 to 1890 Berlin grew *A. F. Weber: Growth of Cities. Columbia University, 1898; P. 23. THE CITY 67 more rapidly than New York. Paris is now five times as large as it was in 1800. Rome has increased 50 per cent, since 1890. St. Petersburg has increased fivefold in a hundred years. Odessa is a thousand years old, but nineteen-twentieths of its population were added during the nineteenth century. Bombay grew from 150,000 to 821,000 from 1800 to 1890. Tokio increased nearly 800,000 during the last twenty years of the century; while Osaka was nearly four times as large in 1903 as 1872, and Cairo has more than doubled since 1850. Thus in Europe, Asia, and Africa, we find that a redistribution of population is taking place. The movement from country to city is a world phenomenon." 1 The Causes of Increasing Urbanization. The more rapid growth of urban than of rural population is mainly attrib- utable to two great causes which are of worldwide operation. i. Recent technic achievements have made it more prac- ticable for people to live together in large numbers, and people being sociable, gregarious, stimulated and pleased by the presence and activities of numerous associates, take advan- tage of the newly developed practicability of congregating in cities. Only great achievements in transportation make it pos- sible to gather for city-dwellers daily supplies of fresh food, sweet milk from a radius of half a thousand miles, fresh fish from across the continent, and delicious fruits from 1 alien zones. Only great advancement in sanitary engineering makes it possible for the massed millions of a metropolis to live together upon a tiny area that remains sweet and clean. Until recent times no city could maintain itself without the influx of population from the healthier rural areas, but we now know how to make the city almost as wholesome as the country. We know how, though we have not yet generally accomplished it. If it is still true, as some good authorities think, that the great city cannot maintain itself without the influx of fresh blood from the country, it is not for lack of technic control, but for lack of social control, for lack of the 'Josiah Strong: The Challenge of the City. New York, 19x17, 68 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY citizenship that would secure adequate administration of our technic resources, and because of sterilizing vices, postpone- ment of marriage, limitation of offspring, and other social causes of an excess of deaths over births. , 2. The second cause of the excess of urban over rural growth has lain in the fact that men must live where they can find employment, and the recent developments of manu- facture and commerce have occasioned an immense expan- sion in the demand for workers in the industries that are mostly carried on in cities, but no such expansion in the demand for agricultural workers. In fact, the application of the new machinery to agriculture and of scientific methods to crop production greatly diminishes the number of men that otherwise would be required in agriculture. It has been estimated that four men can now produce the food that for- merly required the labor of fourteen. The other ten with their families must go to the city to find employment unless some other change takes place. It is true that scientific methods of production in manufacture also increase the amount of goods produced by each laborer, but there is this difference the amount of food men can consume is limited, but the quantity of manufactured articles that they can con- sume is almost limitless, and the variety of manufactured goods that they can use is as little limited. The demand for agricultural products is therefore far less expansive than the demand for manufactured goods. With our improved agri- culture we can feed an increasing population, and with our improved manufacture and commerce we can find employment for the added numbers in cities. For the present and the near future it is useless to try to stem the disproportionate growth of cities. It is possible however to diminish it somewhat, especially in so far as it is due to the fact that since it has become technically possible for them to do so, men prefer to live in cities. The city has improved faster than the country; there is much room for improvement in rural life and good prospect that it will im- prove. We may believe on this account that in so far as the selection of urban or rural residence is a matter of choice THE CITY 69 and not of economic necessity, a larger number will prefer the peace, independence, nearness to nature, and personal ties of the country to the excitements of city crowds and sights. Moreover, the attractions of the city and yet more the ig- norance of throngs of immigrants who are deposited at our ports and terminals, concerning the opportunities of the coun- try has carried the excess of urbanization somewhat beyond the point of greatest economic advantage. The production of food has increased far less rapidly than the number to be fed, and the high prices of agricultural products and demand for agricultural labor and oversupply of labor in cities call for a slight increase of the proportion of country-dwellers. But most of the disproportionate growth of cities is due to the present character of the demand for labor and in so far as this disproportionate growth is due to the fact that men must go where they can find employment, it is useless to cry out, "Back to the land." A more general demand for a varied table, for fruits, poultry, and vegetables, will call for a larger amount of intensive and diversified agriculture, raising valuable crops on a small acreage. This will some- what increase the number who find employment on the land. An important modification of the tendency to concentrate opportunities for employment in the great centers lies in the more and more frequent location of manufacturing indus- tries in villages and small towns. The Interstate Commerce Commission has interfered with the discrimination in freight rates which once almost forced business to gather about the great terminals, and allows it to spread to towns included in districts of equal tariffs. Distribution of power by electricity should have some influence in scattering industrial plants. Labor troubles are less in the smaller localities where work- men and overseers are not separated into different urban quarters, but live as neighbors, attend the same church, and send their children to the same schools. Some of the most intelligent and cultured among the manufacturers prefer to live and to rear their families in the village or small city rather than in the metropolitan center. For a long time, JO INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY however, these things will only modify, and not end, the present trend toward increasing urbanization. The disproportionately rapid growth of cities in this coun- try is not so largely due, as many think, to removals from the country regions of our own states. It is true that in some of the older states the descendants of the native stock have, to a considerable extent, moved to town and their' places in the country are being taken by immigrants. It must, how- ever, be remembered that a large portion of those who have left the rural districts of our older states have gone not to cities but to Western farms. There is a world movement from country to city, and the movement to our cities is largely from the country districts of the old world. It has been roughly estimated that between 35 and 40 per cent, of the increase in urban population is drawn from the rural districts of our own country; that 35 to 40 per cent, of it :s made up of immigrants from other countries, the great majority of whom settle in cities, and that over 20 per cent, of it is due to natural increase, for notwithstanding the diminished domesticity and small families of the descendants of native Americans who live in cities and the somewhat higher death rate in cities, the families of immigrants who live in cities are large enough to bring the increase by excess. of births over deaths to about that figure. 1 What Makes Americans Out of Europeans? Before turning from the national distribution of population to the study of smaller and more temporary groups we must observe that the character of American social life, and the distinctive traits of the American people have resulted very largely from the fact that the population has been small relatively to the expanse of available territory. If an English or German farmer of eighty years ago had four sons and the oldest son inherited the ancestral acres, the second was apprenticed to a trade in Sheffield or Erfurt 1 The balance is from incorporation of suburban areas. Compare J. M. Gillette, Constructive Rural Sociology, Sturgis and Walton (Re- vised), 1916, page 85; also Quarterly Publications of American Statis- tical Association, Vol. XIV, page 649 and page 671. THE CITY 7f but the two youngest emigrated to the United States, then after forty years 1 the two emigrants had probably become quite different men from their two brothers who remained in their native land. The oldest brother used a hoe, scythe, and cart which were heavy and awkward, while the tools of the American farmer were light and nicely balanced, and among them were some implements that the elder brother had never possessed, for example, a gang plow, and a reaper and binder. The emigrant to America who engaged in me- chanical industry* was required to learn time-saving devices which in some cases fully doubled efficiency as compared with that of men engaged in corresponding labor in the old world. The old-world brothers were custom- and tradition-bound while the Americans were eagerly looking for innovations, and confidently expecting them to be worthy of adoption. The American mechanic, if employed by a great industrial con- cern, did not, like his European brother mechanic, confine his interest and attention to the faithful discharge of -petty de- tails committed to him, but took an interest in the business as a whole in its various processes and its commercial relation- ships. The two Americans, unlike the elder brothers, did not assume a servile manner and mode of address in the presence of boss, or owner, nor of clergyman or mayor, but looked on all faces with level glances. The American mechanic was far less strictly dependent upon instructions than his old- world brother ; instead he did what seemed requisite to make the process of work go forward, if necessary, without in- structions, and sometimes in disregard of instructions which had not met the requirements of new conditions. The Ameri- can not only felt himself equal to the demands of his daily work, though unguided by a foreman's directions, and even equal to comprehending the business as a whole, but also felt himself equal to serving as representative to the legis- lature, and believed that after a little experience in the state 1 1 date this description forty years back because, the differences noted were greater then than now, as the peculiarity of American con- ditions to which "American" traits are due has already considerably diminished. ?2 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY assembly he would be quite capable to take a hand in making laws for the nation. He had even a greater confidence than this, the faith, namely, that in spite of the blundering and the rascality of men inferior to himself, who had gone into politics, everything would come out well enough in the end and nothing could stay the march of the nation's progress. These American traits were due to the rich natural re- sources, the sparseness of population, and the comparative lack of opportunity for special training in America. These are not the only causes peculiarly affecting American society; the social past and inborn traits of our early settlers, and the great diversity of our later immigration have also been power- ful and peculiar determinants. But the traits just discussed are practically due to the geographic and technic conditions just named, and to the social lack of opportunities for special training. Our new agricultural machinery and swift industrial methods have not been due to a mysterious genius for inven- tion but to prairies to be tilled, and cities to be built, with but few hands for the work. There is no reason for thinking that the mechanic who emigrated to America had different inventive talents from that of his brother who remained in Europe. But in this new and sparsely settled land labor must be economized by machinery and technique because it was scarce and if ill paid would' desert wage-paid industry and "take up" free land. And where necessity and opportunity pressed on millions, among those millions some were found to respond with the necessary inventions. Moreover, the rapid invention and the swift changes invited or compelled by new and untried but bountiful conditions broke the bonds of custom and tradition and substituted the confident expectation of successful innovation. Furthermore, in the old world spe- cial training was largely the privilege of the fortunate, but where nearly all men lacked special training a' natural equality was established; and since there were not enough trained men for positions where older civilizations demanded train- ing, untrained but able and forceful men rose from the ranks to every sort of position of command. Since it was the rule THE CITY 73 that men rose from the ranks to every level, therefore men of all ranks felt themselves potentially and essentially equals. Men who did not feel themselves condemned to eternal drudg- ery at a petty task, but regarded themselves as candidates for positions of management, lifted their eyes from their benches and understood the 'plant and the industry, and on occasion acted as their own foremen. And if they had little respect for authorities and much admiration for smartness, it was partly because untrained natural ability and bluffing and blind assumption actually succeeded*. And if they suc- ceeded it was because most of the problems to be met were simple and because with few people in a vast rich land with new forests, new mines, new oil wells, new prairie lands, there was elbow-room for enormous blundering, and the blun- dering brought no disaster so long as "Uncle Sam was rich enough to give us all a farm." And the daring and optimism of the hopeful appropriators of this wealth knew no bounds. The free land is now almost gone. There are few mines, forests, oil lands, water rights, and railroad prospects to be seized upon. Special privilege is compactly organized. The keenness of competition, where competition is not stifled by such organization, and the complexity and evident difficulty of public problems and the higher level of intelligent public demands call for training as well as ability in positions of command. We have by no means forgotten the lessons of our past nor lost the triumphant audacity of our first easy successes, but if we keep them we must combine the teachings of our past with other lessons. CHAPTER VI PERSONAL GROUPS AND CROWDS Personal Groups. Not only large groups but also smail ones, like the family and the circle of intimates, have in the aggregate an incalculably great and important effect in con- ditioning the character, activities, and happiness of individuals and of the societies into which individuals unite. Even tem- porary groups, such as are constantly forming and dissolving in parlors and saloons, on playgrounds and street corners, keep up a constant shifting of causal impacts like the stirring in of materials in a process of chemical manufacture. In this chapter we are postponing consideration of the effects which depend on the quality of the speech and con- duct of those who associate, and are recognizing the causal significance of mere juxtaposition in space and time of a given number of individuals, for in this grouping in space and time we see one of the technic conditions by which the life of society is to be explained. When a group is so small that the personality and per- sonal experience of each is known to all, we have a personal group, quite in contrast with the impersonality and anonymity of the city and the larger public of state and nation. Personal grouping has two marked effects upon the activities of those so associated. The first is an effect upon the individuality of the members of such a group, which has already been noted in contrasting the effects of the great groups of cities with those of the small groups of villages and rural communities. This individual effect was shown to be itself twofold, (a) It results in powerfully repressing conduct which is disapproved by the personal group. In a great population the individual who is disposed to commit acts of vice and crime can find 74 PERSONAL GROUPS AND CROWDS 75 and join personal groups that show no disapproval and may even applaud his evil deeds, while to the social whole which would disapprove, the individual is lost to view; but if the social whole is a personal group there is no such escape from its contempt and retribution, (b) It results in eliciting those achievements and attainments which the personal group ap- proves, and applauds or demands. The second effect of groupings small enough to be per- sonal in the sense defined, is not upon the individuality of those associated but upon their social conduct in so far as individuality and social conduct are distinguishable from each other. That such a distinction may properly be drawn is proved by the fact that very frequently the same person exhibits one kind of conduct in a personal group and an opposite kind of conduct in impersonal relations. The social instincts operate most effectively only in personal groups. Thus sympathy can largely be depended upon to restrain evil conduct among those who personally know each other. The swindler is often honest and generous in dealing with per- sonal acquaintances. The plundering, corrupt, and corrupt- ing political boss may be a loyal good fellow to his gang. Society suffers from the vast mischief wrought at long range by good-hearted sinners. Instinctive goodness, pre- cious as it is in personal groups, does not meet the re- quirements of a developed civilization. Even cruel and mur- derous savages live in kindly and sociable good nature among themselves. But in groups so large as to be impersonal we cannot depend upon the social instincts to secure conduct which is social, and to repress that which is anti-social, and we must rely either upon control, through law or other agency, or else upon a developed rational righteousness, which mere instinctive good nature does not supply. 1 It is well to introduce a caution at this point against con- fusing the effect of the sentiment of blood-kinship, especially of a social tradition of the sacredness of kinship and clannish- ness, with the effect purely attributable to smallness of num- 1 E. A. Ross: Sin and Society. Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1907; and Social Control, part i. Macmillan, 1901. 76 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY bers; and to avoid confusing the effects of heterogeneity of interests and character with those purely attributable to large- ness of numbers. The opportunity to Jekyll and Hyde be- tween the respectable and vicious classes of a community and the difficulties that divergent interests and diversities of station place in the way of communism or of proportioned justice depend partly upon other factors than the mere num- ber of associates. But after making all due allowance for complications, the mere technic fact of difference in the size of groups has the causal significance just attributed to it. While instinctive cohesion is stronger in small groups, so also is personal friction greater, and the members of a small group much in spatial proximity, must have more in common in order to render their union permanent and strong, than is required to bind together larger populations. It is true that small dense groups are almost sure to have much in common, and if, as in the case of a savage horde in a howling wilderness, no other associates are available, the sociable in- stinct as well as practical necessity will keep them united; but such a group in the midst of a larger society will very soon either develop a strong and probably many-stranded bond of common sentiment or interest, or else fly apart. A great group can hardly have so multifold a bond of union, and it does not require it in order to endure for a long period. Custom, which plays so tremendous a role in society and social evolution, is largely a matter of personal pressure and influence. Certain customs radiate afar in a democratic country, and an age in which the technique of transportation and communication produce the results that earlier depend on spatial proximity. Yet the characteristic range of custom is narrow, not the great nation, but the province or the canton and the social rank or class. Even when a custom has spread afar it is mainly the personal group that enforces it upon the individual. The Group of Two. The group of two takes on a peculiar character, a character which is changed if more associates PERSONAL GROUPS AND CROWDS 77 are added. The addition of only one more impairs or destroys that peculiar character. Says Simmel: "How differently a common lot, an undertaking, an agreement, a shared secret, binds each of two sharers, from the case when even only three participate !" * As the difference between solitude and the presence of a companion is immeasurably great, so the next greatest social change is the difference between relation with a single individual and relation with a collectivity. In the former case the subtler communion of moods is possible. In that case, also, for one to leave is to destroy the group, for one to fail the other is to ruin the relationship to the cost of both and loyalty and the sense of responsibility are enlisted to the utmost, and the sense of reliance of each upon the other is strong. The Federal Character of Large Groups. If we admit to our discussion the heterogeneity which great numbers almost always imply and which they partly cause, then we must observe that great aggregates which have any social unity at all are almost sure to have a federal character; that is, they are a union of smaller groups which are comparatively dissimilar from each other and each of which is integrated by the very traits that differentiate it from other parts of the same great whole. And the bond which unites each part may be comparatively solid while the bond which unites the fed- eral whole may be comparatively tenuous. Such great aggre- gates contain the possibility of secession, disintegration and recombination. Herein lies a clue to national politics with its shifting of majorities as interest groups change allegiance from one party to another, and with its succession of platform issues, as each party seeks to rally to itself those who, often unconsciously, are united by the different interests to which platforms appeal. Herein also lies the main obstacle to the various social Utopias, which require a subordination not only of individual interests, but also of class interests, to com- mon principles to which the instinctive morality developed by 1 On the present subject compare Georg Simmel: Soziologie, Chapter II. Bunker & Humboldt, Leipzig, 1908; and the same author in the American Journal of Sociology, viii, i. 78 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY personal groups is not only inadequate, but to which it is often antagonistic. Progress in morality consists chiefly in the due subordination of particularistic interests to interests affecting larger social circles. The instinctive morality native to personal groups may suffice to establish and maintain the tradition of communism in a little horde -of savages or in a Russian mir, but it does not suffice to establish any form of social justice among the great federations of interest groups which are characteristic of civilized society. Crowds. The mere assembling of a large number of people at the same time and place creates a situation comparable to the heaping up of materials that invite spontaneous com- bustion. 1. Crowds are characterized by great facility of com- munication, with respect to all ideas and emotions that can be communicated by gestures, glances, cries, bodily tensions, brief utterances, but with no corresponding facility of com- munication with reference to thoughts that would balance or inhibit those superficial feelings and notions. Explanation, argument, reasoning, with their ponderous tread, cannot over- take the swift suggestion that runs through the crowd like the wind over a field of wheat, bending every head. More- over, even if they could be expressed in the signal code of crowd intercourse, the deepest thoughts are often hidden. Especially among the young, sacred ideals and cherished pur- poses shrink from such disclosure, even in the presence of a few boon companions, while the vagrant impulse is freely uttered and bandied from tongue to tongue. The funda- mental social characteristic of the crowd is great facility of communication with reference to percepts and emotions, with- out corresponding facility in communication of ideals, and arguments. 2. The suggestion which emanates from the member of the crowd who is demonstrative enough to catch the general eye or ear, caught up by others, is presently reflected by many faces or many voices or many gestures, and so beats upon the consciousness of every member of the crowd from many sources, like echoes in a whispering gallery that converts 79 the lightest sound into a clamor, or like the sound of the cir- culating of blood in the ear which the sea shell converts into the roar of the sea. When one is aware that what he feels is felt by all those around him, then he feels it ten times more. A single person has more or less power to make a second person think the thoughts and feel the impulses which the first expresses ; two who agree have a still greater power to influence a third, and the response which one or two could but faintly arouse, a crowd echoing from one to another and from all to each can multiply. The crowd not only commu- nicates the lighter elements in consciousness with great facility, but also tremendously emphasizes and intensifies them. 3. This intensification of certain elements in conscious- ness tends to create a partial dissociation of personality, a partial or complete absentmindedness concerning all else. If certain ideas or feelings entirely absorb the attention then they determine speech and conduct, even though they are diametrically opposed to the intentions or principles of con- duct which have been adopted in our balanced moments and which usually govern us, but which for the moment are forgotten. 4. The crowd is fickle, partly because crowd excite- ment is exhausting and short-lived, partly because of the dissociative character of crowd action just explained. That is, crowd excitement stimulates now one, now another, of the instincts, acts now upon this idea, now upon that, incongruous with the former, while the personality as a whole of each member of the crowd, including those deposits left by past experience and reflection by which in saner moments he judges his thoughts and actions and correlates them into a con- sistent unity, is as if it were not, because the single thought or sentiment that is intensified by crowd excitement for the iime so nearly absorbs his whole attention. Hence, the crowd now displays frenzied courage and now is panic-stricken; is now capable of heroic sacrifice and now of hideous cruelty. To-day it raises its idol to the skies and to-morrow rolls him in the gutter, as chance may determine. 8o INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 5. The individual in the crowd tends to lose his sense of responsibility and to accept the way of the crowd as suffi- ciently authorized by the numbers who back it, when it may be that the sober judgment, the total personality of no. single member of the crowd, approves of the crowd action. Thus the crowd commits crimes abhorrent to the conscience of the individual members of the crowd. Corporations, it is said, can sometimes act as if the whole group had not -among its members materials enough to make a single soul. And partly for the same reason the morality of a nation in war and diplomacy lags far behind the morality of individuals. Not only does increase of the number included in a group diminish both the sense of responsibility of the members of the group toward each other, and still more their sense of responsibility and obligation toward outsiders, but quite obvi- ously it makes it difficult to fix responsibility and inflict penalty or assign rewards for the conduct of the group. The ruth- less visiting of the whole penalty upon each individual of the group, which characterizes savage vengeance, is probably the only effective method, but civilized society does not tolerate that. Hence in our world, the famous saying of Napoleon has much truth : "Collective crimes involve nobody." * Where deeds are required, a single person should, if pos- sible, be made responsible; and one functionary can be in a high degree responsible for activities that transcend the power of a single actor, provided he is given the right to select his own coadjutors and to dismiss those who do not satisfy him. Yet there remains truth in the Scriptural proverb : "In the multitude of counsellors there is safety." There is a difference in this respect between counsel and action, between plans and their execution, and this difference is the ground of our political distinction between executive and legislative functions. The numbers in a legislative assembly should be sufficient to represent adequately the different interests that may be affected by the actions decided upon. 1 Cf. Scipio Sighele: La Foule Criminelle. Felix Alcan, 1901,. pages 120 seq. PERSONAL GROUPS AND CROWDS 8t Councils are of at least two sorts: First, those adapted to decide what end shall be sought in action; these councils must be representative wherever the probability of conflicting interests is involved. Second, those adapted to decide the method by which the desired ends shall be sought ; these coun- cils must have adequate knowledge about the conditions of success in the particular field in which the action will apply. The latter is the function of the commission of experts, an agency which with the increase of public intelligence will be increasingly employed. These considerations apply not only to political councils and executives, but, like all that is here said, to homogeneous groups engaged in activity of every sort. 6. The fraction of the personalities of its members which the excitement of the crowd cuts loose must be one that they have -in common, as well as one that can be expressed by the signal-code of crowd interstimulation. Hence the instincts and instinctive emotions that are common to all men, such as fear, anger, vengefulness, and pity, or else ideas that are ingrained in the minds of the mass, such as the notions upon which fanaticism plays, or party watchwords, orgr'oup ideals, are the subjects of crowd action. Hence, also, it follows that a homogeneous population is more susceptible to crowd fury and "mobmindedness" than one whose members have different shibboleths and fixed ideas. This is one of the penalties of that form of social strength. In their heterogeneity cities have a safeguard against this peril, a peril to which they are otherwise specially exposed. Safeguards against Crowd Perils. In this day when there is so powerful and increasing a tendency to put faith in the multitude, it behooves us to study the sociological characteris- tics of crowds. We are told that we are witnessing the birth of new dogmas 1 which "will soon have the force of old dogmas; that is to say, the tyrannical sovereign force of being above discussion. The divine right of the masses is about to replace the divine right of kings." We are told that "civilizations as yet have only been created and directed 1 Gustave LeBon: The Crowd. Unwin, 1903, pp. 6, 17, 19. - %2 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY by a small intellectual aristocracy, never by crowds. Their rule is always tantamount to a barbarous phase." We are assured of "the extreme mental inferiority of crowds, picked assemblies included," and fhat this assurance, if somewhat too strong and unqualified, is still by no means without reason, the foregoing analysis plainly shows. Moreover, the characteristics of crowds are not entirely confined to masses in actual physical proximity, but appear wherever there exists among large numbers great facility of communication (such as that now afforded by the press), provided that communication, necessarily or in fact, dissemi- nates superficial, fragmentary, emotional states of mind more readily than sober, balanced, and reasoned views. But the public in which modern democracy puts its trust is after all not the samt as a crowd. In the first place 1 "in the throng the means of expressing feeling are much more effective than the facilities for expressing thought, but in the dispersed group both are confined to the same vehicle the printed word (and picture) and so ideas and opinions may run as rapidly through the public as emotions." In the second place dif- ferent newspapers, each with its own public, secure simul- taneous hearing for opposing views, among portions of the population, and it is even possible for the same individual to see both sides of a question in an impartial journal or in the pages of several publications. In the third place, access to the printed page depends upo.n the assent of the editor or owner, who, if known, is a more or less responsible person. In fact, the role of crowds is to-day even less proportion- ately than formerly being repl-aced by the power of "publics." However, in spite of all this, it still remains true that our business, our politics and our international relationships are subject to constant peril from booms, panics, fads and crazes, all of which are exhibitions of the mobmindedness that is likely to appear when among great numbers there is great facility of communication, in which there is exhibited a degree of intelligence and deliberate reason far inferior to that of the leaders of society, and often inferior to that of the average *E. A. Ross: Social Psychology. Macmillan, Chaps. IV. and V, PERSONAL GROUPS AND CROWDS 83 of society, because of the crowd reverberation of ideas and emotions which are easily communicated and the relative failure to communicate the solider elements of thought. It is a wise law which requires the ownership of a period- ical to be plainly indicated upon every issue. It would be well for our people to depend more upon the statement of fact and comment provided by the best class of weeklies and less upon the necessarily hurried and frequently distorted representations of dailies. The custom of presenting opposite views from the pens of able men representative of opposing factions in the same issue of the same journal should grow in response to a public demand. Above all, journalism should be a profession animated by the highest ethical standards' and the utmost sense of public responsibility. The press is not merely a private business run for profit. It is the public utility above all other public utilities. A great protection against mobmindedness on the part of the public is the presence of a few clear maxims or prin- ciples, fruit of both experience and reflection, established in the common-sense of the mass. Another is the presence of one or more leaders, thoroughly loyal to the general welfare, highly intelligent, able to make themselves heard, and loved and trusted by the mass. Finally, intelligence and moral principle on the part of the individual citizens is a great safe- guard. Yet the intelligence of the individuals who compose a mob does not make the mob intelligent if once they become a mob, but such intelligence is the greatest safeguard against their being converted into a mob. CHAPTER VII SOCIAL EFFECTS OF THE AMOUNT, FORMS, AND DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH Effects of the Forms of Wealth. Natural resources have already been considered in the chapter on Geographic Causes and Their Social Effects. Here we are discussing technic con- ditions and have reference only to those material conditions which are the results of human activity. The material environment into which we are born is very different from that which nature supplied to primitive man. Where once stood the dark forest trodden by prowling beasts or quaking miasmic bogs traversed by winding streams, homes for the duck and bittern, now the city stands. The forest has been felled, the marsh drained, the landscape obliterated. Paved thoroughfares, towering structures, temples of com- merce, of religion, and of art, subways, conduits for streams and sewers and for gas and steam and electric wires, tram- ways and radiating lines of rails and wires that unite this center with the homes of well nigh all mankind have re- placed the -isolated wilderness which nature placed here. Nature gave us no great speed of foot or wing. Yet we sweep across lands and seas, surpassing the deer in speed ; nature gave us no vast strength, yet we bear burdens as we fly that a hundred elephants could not stir. In the service of every civilized man strength equal to that of many horses is employed through harnessed waterfall,, steam, and elec- tricity. We have separated continents and joined the oceans. We have denuded the mountainsides of forests, shrunken the streams, made deserts here, and there by irrigation have made the desert garden. By our houses, our fires, and our woolens we have made the temperate zohe, which half the year is 84 AMOUNT, 'FORMS, DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 85 frozen, the most habitable of all, so that civilization, starting in the favored spots that were dry of atmosphere and fertile and warm, has tended northward to regions where it could not have originated. We have brought into being new varie- ties of cereals and fruits and animals to serve our purposes. . The first great American economist and sociologist, who had seen the process of reducing a virgin continent to the uses of man, the making of roads and fields in trackless for- ests, went so far as .to say that "land. as we are concerned with it in industrial life, is really an instrument of production which has been formed as such by man, and that its value is due to the labor expended upon it in the past." * So great is the significance of the forms of wealth that the stages of social evolution have most commonly been designated by reference to them, as the stone age, the bronze age, and the iron age, or, as the primitive age of hunting, the pastoral age of domesticated animals, the agricultural age of cultivated crops, and the age of manufacture. Again and again a newly invented commodity has proved to be the condition making possible whole reaches of further social advance. For example, the dish makes possible housekeeping, home-making, saving, thrift, economy, bathing in private, journeys requiring supplies of food and water. The wheel is so essential that we cannot conceive a high advancement of social evolution without it. Gunpowder did away with walled cities, iron-clad soldiers, and the tyranny of brute force, equalized serf and noble in personal combat, and opened the way to the new democracy. As gunpowder democratized the force of arms, the printing-press democratized the power of knowledge, enabled millions to have one organized public mind, so making possible the great modern democracies, and further rendered it possible for great masses of men not only to guide and govern their common life, but also to enter into a common heritage as heirs of the intellectual treasures of the race. Textile machinery gathered men into factories and 1 J. K. Ingram : History of Political Economy, Macmillan, 1901, page 173, writing of the Principles of Social Science by H. C. Carey, who lived 1793-1879 and published the work referred to in 1859. 86 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY factory towns, changed the independent hand worker into the factory operative and brought on the Industrial Revolution. It has been said that in a geographic environment that afforded no domesticable beasts of burden, mankind could not rise above barbarism : the steam-engine is a technic condition quite as essential to yet further advance. If the present age were to be distinguished, as each preceding period has been, by a technic symbol, it should be named the age of power ma- chinery. The practical importance of understanding the social effects of technic conditions is indefinitely increased by the fact that those conditions are subject to human control and can be adapted to secure the results desired. Transportation. Of all the forms of wealth there are two upon which social progress appears now to depend more than upon any others : (a) means of transportation and communica- tion and (b) housing. Among the technic means of trans- portation the steam and electric railway and the steamship are at present supreme. Nearly all industry is dependent upon* them. By them the farmer in North Dakota markets his crops which find their way to Minneapolis, Chicago, Liver- pool, Odessa. By them the manufacturer assembles his raw materials, machinery, and fuel, and by them he distributes his products. The material of which a rubber button is made was im- ported to New York, then transported by train to the button factory. To the button factory other trains brought coal and oil. In constructing the button factory, building materials were used in the assembling of which many railroads participated, and in the production of those materials very many other trains took part and still other trains had brought to the button factory machinery of various kinds. Each machine used in making the buttons was itself made in a factory to which many trains had brought building materials, fuel, raw materials, and machinery. Each bar of brass or steel that was brought to one of the factories in which button- making machinery was made or in which materials for any of the numerous factories involved were made, had a history AMOUNT, FORMS, DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 87 in which the railroad many times participated. The raw ore of which each of hundreds of bars of brass and steel were made, had been brought to the smelters, to which also fuel and machinery had been brought; pigs of metal had been taken from the smelters to the rolling mills at each of which other sets of machinery had been assembled. So simple a thing as this rubber button could not have been made as it was without the running of hundreds and probably not with- out thousands of trips by trains of cars. A rise in freight rates all around might easily wipe out the profits of the manu^ facturer. Discrimination in freight rates between different localities can make one of them a great city, while leaving the other, possessing equal natural resources and equally enter- prising inhabitants, to decline. Private convenience is as truly dependent upon public means of transportation as is manufacture. Not one of us could have had the breakfast he had this day without the aid of the railroad. The oranges came from California or Florida, the corn for the muffins was grown in Illinois, the steak was from a steer bred in Texas, fattened in Kansas, and slaughtered in Chicago. The table, dishes, linen, glass, and silverware were assembled from far and near. The common conveniences of every home are rendered possible to us by modern transportation. The rail- roads are the arteries of economic life ; they are to the nation what streets are to the city. It is as indefensible for one to be subject to uncontrolled private ownership as for the other. A modified private ownership may be allowed, but only under distinct provisions for adequate public regulation. Housing. Housing provides conditions favorable or un- favorable to health, morality, domestic content, and the dignity and joy of life. The most successful rival to the saloon and vicious resorts and pleasures is the home; but where home isi barren, cheerless, repulsive, the glittering street, the "hang- out," and the "dive," claim old and young. None can reason- ably be expected to spend evenings, holidays or Sundays in such habitations as those which multitudes of Americans call home. Only the presence of the good can exclude the bad ; and the home is the natural center of life's values and 88 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY life's virtues. It should be the most joyous of all places to children and youth, the most satisfying to middle age, and the most peaceful to declining years. But dignity, self- respect, and the normal gladness which is the natural antidote for moral contagion are effectively fostered or as effectually prevented by material surroundings. They do not gain by extravagance and ostentation, but by comfort and comeliness. In many a tenement sleep in hot summer weather is impos- sible till late at night, and little children roam the sidewalks or doze in parks. Thousands of rooms are ventilated only from other rooms, from hallways or from narrow airshafts, and are never reached by the rays of the sun. Here the seeds of contagion long survive and the air itself is a poison. Whole families live in two small rooms and there wash, cook, sleep, bathe, and accommodate lodgers and boarders. An in- vestigation made some time ago covering six blocks in the city of Chicago found that 43 per cent, of the inhabitants of that area were living with an average of three persons to the room. A study of 1,600 families comprising 6,800 persons, or 4.5 to the family, found that the average floor space occu- pied per family was less than 12 by 24 feet. Investigations in several cities indicate that, as a rule, families that live in a single room have a death rate eight times as great as that of the population in general, those in two rooms four times as great and those in three rooms twice as great. The mur- derous death rate among the poor is not due exclusively to bad housing, but to that and its natural accompaniments. The tenements that surround the suburban factory or mine are likely to be ugly, unshaded, set in patches of weeds and bare ground, without proper sanitation or conveniences. La- borers in an industrial suburb which is near to a city and connected to it by street cars are likely to live in the city tenements, while on the other hand the well-to-do who are engaged in business in the city reside in the suburbs. This is because with money and taste the suburban home becomes charming within and without but the suburban tenement is likely to be more cheerless than the city slum, because howr ever dismal the lodgings, the brightness and entertainment of AMOUNT, FORMS, DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 89 the city street are free. Even in the country there is a hous- ing problem. In the newer parts of America farmers live mainly in cheap buildings that were erected before the land was paid for. Our rural communities are mainly new. We can hardly be said to have developed an acceptable type of rural architecture, still less the level of taste that is ultimately to go far toward making country life attractive to the well- to-do and the country the permanent breeding-ground for well endowed and well reared citizens. Instead we have half- forgotten the simple and dignified colonial farm house, which with widened verandas and modern conveniences and few expensive moldings should be revived. In multitudes of cases the wretchedly housed pay enough to entitle them to better quarters. It is often said that the worst tenements are the most profitable. Left to unregu- lated competition the homes of laborers are bound in many cases to be unfit for human habitation. There are two remedies for this: First, the spirit of human brotherhood leads some investors to be content with a profit of from four to six per cent., when all the rent that their tenants can afford to pay might be collected from in- ferior property, representing one-third of the amount which they have invested in providing fit human habitations. In fact less benevolent landlords collect nearly equal rentals from property upon which little actual outlay has been made for many years, unless for inserting partitions to divide larger rooms into smaller ones. By holding for rental old rookeries instead of constructing new sanitary and cheerful tenements they secure from the amount of their investment double or triple the rate of return with which a few better-minded landlords prefer to becontent. It may almost be set down as a general principle that experiments in social amelioration must be made by private agencies. After the method has been worked out and its practicability and usefulness demonstrated by voluntary activ- ity, then state or city may take up the work. This has been the history of nearly all advance movements in social science that have ultimately received governmental support. It is 90 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY too much to hope that an adequate supply of fit abodes will, in the near future, be supplied by such voluntary activity of real-estate owners. We are therefore forced to the second remedy, government action. Competent and reliable building inspectors enforcing intelligent legislation must condemn hopelessly unsanitary buildings and enforce their improvement or demolition. As much depends on the training, trustworthi- ness and social spirit of the inspectors as upon the laws; indeed without the proper officials the laws will be of little avail. New buildings must be required to conform to regu- lations more exacting than can now be enforced upon struc- tures already reared, so that as the old are gradually replaced the standard will be raised. The ordinances of great cities relating to health and decency must create building zones such as are already created by the law relating to fire protec- tion, so that conditions that must inevitably be permitted in the most congested areas will not be introduced in newer and more fortunate districts. Smaller villages and ' cities must not borrow their standards from cities where real-estate values are exorbitant, but instead must defend the advan- tages made possible by greater spaciousness. Another form of government action with reference to the housing problem, or of cooperation between governmental and private action, is the loaning of public funds, for example, to associations that build for rental tenements which meet stipulated requirements, and the rental of which shall not exceed a specified figure, while the dividends of the asso- ciation are never to exceed a certain percentage. 1 Cooperative societies independent of governmental assistance have in some instances purchased suburban tracts and converted them into "garden cities" of ideal homes, for then; members. Educating the Public on the Subject of Housing. Volun- tary and compulsory improvement of housing conditions may reenforce each other. Housing or city-planning societies founded by those proprietors who take a proper view of their 1 The plan of making government loans has been in operation for years in Great Britain and Germany, and is at present advocated for the city of Washington, D. C. 91 obligations can affect the character of housing laws and, through their example and the proof which they afford of the practicability of better things, may arouse and enlighten public opinion which brings a useful pressure to bear upon other landlords. One of the serious abuses that depress the home condi- tions of the poor, is the tendency of city governments to tolerate inferior paving, grading, walks, lighting and street- cleaning in neighborhoods inhabited by those who can provide least for themselves. This need not be attributed to neartlessness but rather to heedlessness. It is psycholog- ically natural, just as it is natural to beautify the parlor and tolerate ugly things' in the garret and cellar, but it is indefensible. An attempt may be made to defend it on the ground that the poor pay little in taxes and that those who pay most should receive most from the public treasury. But a mile of vile tenements may pay more taxes, and owing to the great rental they yield, may be more valuable than a mile of good residences. And 'the huddled poor pay these taxes every cent, not directly indeed, but the final incidence is upon their shoulders. Moreover, they receive something less than their due share in the proceeds of industry, and the business of government is not to render worse the inequali- ties of distribution by taking from the poor to give to the rich, but instead it should do something toward restoring the just balance in its application of that portion of the social income which it exacts in taxes. The expediency of equal public education is accepted, and the example of good "munici- pal housekeeping," of clean and well paved and well lighted streets and alleys, and of proper parks and breathing spaces in those sections inhabited by people having the lowest stand- ard of living, who are mainly immigrants, is an important educational agency. And good sanitation in those sections of the city from which disease is most likely to emanate is demanded by common-sense. Bad housing conditions are not wholly to be attributed to the negligence or greed of the landlord ; there is also fault to be found with the tenant. Many are accustomed to a, 92 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY low standard of living, and if placed in a model tenement would soon make it unsightly, unsanitary, and dilapidated. Good housing requires the active cooperation of the occu- pants. This can be secured only as a result of education. Some builders of "model tenements" have offered prizes for good housekeeping, for example, the stipulation that every apartment maintained at a given standard should be redec- orated throughout at stated intervals. Some have organized their tenants into a society which has officers and regula- tions, and made proper housekeeping a matter of group in- terest and group pride. Certain employers have sought to raise the technic standard of their industrial settlement by offering prizes for the best backyard, or the finest flowers, have secured seeds for those who entered the contest, and even provided lectures by a landscape gardener, and this has in some cases had gratifying'results. In such undertakings the independence of the laborers should be jespected and pre- served. It is far better to work through the leading members of their number so that they appoint a committee to secure seeds, raise funds, conduct their competition, and all the rest, rather than to have the employer or his representative do any good thing that the men can be stimulated to do themselves. Education in home-making is eminently a matter of neigh- borhood influence. The household that has a good standard can perpetuate it by its own traditions, but to communicate good standards to those who lack them, including masses of immigrants who are for the first time becoming financially able to maintain them, we depend mainly upon the formative power of the neighborhood. Landlords and employers are not the only leaders who have endeavored to develop within the neighborhood a sentiment for better home-making. Mothers' clubs associated with public schools have, in some instances, proved effective in this direction. And the social settlement is a home of cultivated people, who choose to live in a neglected neighborhood in order, by their example, and by the development of various neighborhood activities, to afford suggestion, encouragement, and helpful influences, cal- . AMOUNT, FORMS, DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 93 culated to foster tastes, ideals and ambitions of the sort that lead toward the attainment of life's values. Great as are the existing evils of bad housing, Albert Shaw declares that with the knowledge and experience now acquired, it is as possible to wipe out the slum with its de- plorable physical and moral effects, as to drain the swamp and be' rid of its miasmas. It would be still less difficult to "head off the slum" for the benefit of the city-dwellers who -soon will double our present urban population. City Planning. With the urban population of this country doubling in a generation the problem of city planning be- comes one of intense practical interest. Shall the evils of bad housing, inconvenience and ugliness go on doubling, or shall we "head off the slum"? (i) The location of factory sites, railroad terminals and sidings, zones of costlier and less costly dwellings, public parks and playgrounds, public build- ings, and lines of intramural transportation, can be made to follow a well laid plan for the promotion of prosperity, con- venience, and social welfare, rather than the temporary pri- vate interests of promoters who wish to affect the values of their holdings of real estate, or the more or less accidental selections of private industry. (2) Some of the suburban areas soon to be built up might be purchased by the munici- palities, as is done in Germany, provided the municipality has sufficient public spirit and social intelligence to secure by democratic methods such good administration as is more easily obtained under oligarchical control. Then the sale of land by the municipality would socialize the unearned incre- ment, diminish tax rates, and furnish a fund for municipal improvements in the newly urbanized additions. Even if the German method of city planning and municipal ownership of real estate is not followed, the city plans can be developed and owners who open suburban tracts can be compelled to conform to intelligent requirements before their streets will be accepted or connected with the municipal sewer, water and lighting system, or even before the deeds they give will be legally recorded and defended. The application of city planning to areas already built 94 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY up is more costly and necessarily limited in results, yet it is by no means to be neglected. The essential matters are,- first, that the designs be expert, both in the practical and the esthetic features, and second, that public opinion be suffi- ciently enlisted in their realization. Ever so good a blue- print is only the smaller part of the undertaking; the social problem of instructing opinion, arousing sentiment, and organ- izing activity is the greater factor in the enterprise of improv- ing a village or city. Municipal Conveniences. Streets, sewers, waterworks and lighting systems are forms of wealth which affect social welfare so vitally that they are usually provided *by public agency. There are numerous other material conveniences which are highly important to the general welfare, and likely to be inadequately supplied or subject to special abuses it left to private enterprise, which have been successfully furnished by municipalities. Municipal laundries are established in many European cities, and help to relieve the bad housing conditions of the poor. In a tiny cramped tenement the washings are serious obstacles to home life. A public laundry, where for a few cents scientific machinery for washing, drying, and ironing can be used, is a boon to the tenement-dwellers. Public bathhouses promote health, comfort and decency. Municipal markets promote convenience, economy and health. Municipal slaughterhouses benefit the farmer and the con- sumer, reduce the needless freighting and storing of cattle and of meats with their cruelties and losses, and prevent the control of prices by a central trust. Various forms of municipalized wealth are implied in the discharge of municipal services. Some cities provide municipal crematories and even municipal undertaking, which are de- signed to economize land, promote sanitation, and prevent exploitation ; also municipal pawnshops as a cure for the loan- shark evil ; also municipal employment agencies ; and municipal theaters as part of the educational as well as recreational sys- tem. Municipal dance-halls have been successfully introduced in this country. AMOUNT, FORMS, DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 95 In order that the municipal corporation may fulfill its possibilities of usefulness it is necessary to divorce municipal affairs from state and party politics. Municipal elections separate from state elections, "citizens tickets," "the short ballot" in city elections, the "commission form of govern- ment" and "the municipal business manager" are measures intended to secure this separation, and to concentrate respon- sibility. In Germany when a city wants a mayor, it advertises far and wide for the best man obtainable who has passed the necessary state examination for mayors. 1 Relation of the Distribution of Wealth to Sociological Prob- lems. The causes that affect the distribution of wealth are studied by economics. But the social effects that flow from the distribution of wealth it is a task of sociology to trace. Mor& over, as we shall later see, "economic laws" only partly stati; the causes of distribution. Not only are "value, wages and interest essentially social phenomena," 2 but such social reali- ties as custom and law supplement and modify the operation of economic causes in determining the distribution of wealth. 1 The training school for municipal service at Cologne during the winter semester of 1912-13 offered the following courses : 1. Civics 17. Fire Insurance 2. Law 18. Hygiene 3. Administrative Law 19. City Planning 4. Local Ordinances 20. Schools (2 Courses) 5. Civil Processes 21. Ecology and Topography 6. Political Economy 22. Chemical Industries 7. Credit Exchange 23. Iron Machine Industry 8. Taxation 24. Coal and Mining 9. Finance 25. Electro-Technique 10. Statistics 26. Agricultural Management 11. Inspection Methods 27. Rhenish and Westphalian Eco- 12. Labor Legislation nomic Development 13. Labor Unions and Societies 28. Art and History of the Rhine- 14. Social Insurance Land 15. Welfare Work 29. Paris and Her Romance 16. Social Questions 2 J. B. Clark : The Distribution of Wealth. Macmillan, 1899, p. 40. 96 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY We have seen that material "goods" are only relative or secondary goods, that is, means by which to secure or pro- mote human experiences, which are the only real and ultimate goods. But since material means are employed in the service of every kind of human aim therefore the distribution of wealth affects the distribution of the real goods of life of whatever kind. It does not follow that the more wealth one has the more of good experiences one will have, for good experience does not depend on wealth alone, but on other conditions also, such as health, morality, culture, and friends, in the absence of which wealth may increase without the in- crease of life's real values. Moreover, the amount of wealth required for the highest realization of life's values is limited, and it may be increased to the point of being a cause of evil and not a means of good. Yet a certain amount of material means is necessary to life itself and to every kind of good in life, so that within the limits suggested .the distribution of wealth directly affects the distribution of life's real values among the people composing a society. This we must observe in some detail. Effects of Distribution of Wealth upon the Health of the People. Health, or desirable physical experience, which is both an end in itself and also a necessary means of all other good ends, depends upon the possession of a certain moderate amount of wealth. 1 (i) The poor usually live in sunless, or ill ventilated or overcrowded, or otherwise unsanitary tenements and neigh- borhoods. (2) They use the less digestible and less nutritious foods, including impure and ill-kept milk for their babies. (3) They often lack waterproof shoes and clothing for wet weather, and warm clothing for cold weather; they suffer excessively from colds. (4) They do not, promptly upon the appearance of need, employ first-rate medical attendance. 1 Here as everywhere else we are using the word wealth not in its popular sense, to denote great possessions, but in its scientific sense to denote any salable material commodities adapted to human uses in whatever amount. AMOUNT, FORMS, DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 97 (5) They are employed in monotonous indoor occupations before they have attained their growth. (6) They are de- prived of adequate mothering, because mothers can employ no household help, and the mothers themselves are very fre- quently employed, both immediately before the birth of their children, to the injury of the latter, and afterwards. (7) By reason of impaired vitality, monotonous and uninteresting labor, and dreary abodes, they lack natural cheer, and crave the artificial counterfeit of cheer afforded by stimulants. (8) For the same reasons and because wholesome joys are but little within their reach, while from childhood they live where they are forced to become acquainted with every form of vice, and are continually exposed to the solicitations of commercialized vicious pleasures, they are subject to the ravages of vice, though they are far from having any monopoly of its evils. (9) They frequently labor amid chemical fumes or in air laden with dust or under conditions otherwise ex- ceedingly unsanitary. Nature as a rule does not indefinitely continue a futile protest, and 1 so men can "get used" to con- ditions so bad that those who labor under such conditions are foredoomed to physical deterioration. (10) They are maimed and killed by accidents in mines, on railroads, and among the machinery of factories. Industrial accidents in this country are said to reach half a million annually, a number exceeding the annual number of casualties in both armies of the great war between North and South, added to those of the Russo-Japanese War. These accidents are largely preventable. As insurance rates and losses by fire can be diminished one- half by proper precautions against fire, so also might be diminished the number of industrial accidents, and the poverty and physical and moral ruin of laborers' families consequent upon such accidents. 1 1 J. T. Arlidge: Diseases of Occupations. Percival, London, 1892. Thomas Oliver: Diseases of Occupations. Methuen, London, 1908. Massachusetts State Board of Health Reports 1905, 1907. A. G. Warner: American Charities. Revised edition, r>owell, 1908, chap, iv. 98 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY From such causes as these it results that the death rate among the poor is approximately doubled as compared with that among the well-to-do, and the death rate among the children of the poor under five years of age more than doubled. 1 The death rate among adult unskilled laborers is about double that among the professional classes. Perhaps worse yet is the fact that the number of days of sickness in pro- portion to the number of days of health is between fifty and one hundred per cent, greater among the laboring than among the professional class. It is estimated that there are at all times about 3,000,000 persons seriously ill in the United Robert Hunter: Poverty. Macmillan, 1904, chap. iv. Scott Nearing: Social Adjustment. Macmillan, 1911, chaps, iv and x-xiv. Irving Fisher: National Vitality Its Wastes and Conservation. U. S. Govt. Printing Office, 1910. x This subject calls for governmental investigation. Our knowledge is inexact, but is sufficient to show the presence of an unthinkable waste of human life. Emma Duke, in .a report on Infant Mortality in Johns- town, Pa., published for the United States Children's Bureau by the Government Printing Office, page 45, makes statements based upon a study of 1,463 babies, of whom 196 died within the first year, to the effect that of all live babies born in wedlock there die within the first year a proportion equal 130.7 to every thousand ; of live babies born to fathers showing no evidence of actual poverty the proportion dying in the first year is equal only to 84 per thousand ; while of live babies born to fathers earning less than $520 per year, or $10 per week for 52 weeks, the proportion dying within the first year is equal to 255.7 per thousand. See also W. B. Bailey: Modern Social Conditions, Century Co., 1906, pp. 246-254 > and John Spargo: The Bitter Cry of the Children. Macmillan, 1906, p. 7 seq. He says : "As we ascend the social scale the span .of life lengthens and the death rate gradually diminishes, the death rate of the poorest class of workers being three and one-half times [I have said approximately double] as great as that of the well-to-do. Arthur Newsholme (Vital Statistics. Swan Sonnershein, 1899, p. 163, quoted by Irving Fisher: National Vitality. Government Printing Office, 1910, p. 644) states that in Glasgow in 1885 the death rate of occupants of one- and two-room cottages was 27.7, and among occupants of houses having five or more rooms it was 11.2 per thousand. Lavasseur is quoted by Fisher as giv- ing a death rate of 13.4 to 16,2 for the rich quarters of Paris and 31.3 AMOUNT, FORMS, DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 99 States. At the same time sickness for the poor is even more dreadful than for the well-to-do. Daily great numbers of the sick poor drag themselves to tasks beyond their strength, preventing the chance of recovery. They often labor till within a few days of death, for they have no resources upon which to retire from work, and in the last extremity they and theirs in great numbers become dependent upon charity. And sickness in the tenements is not like sickness in a quiet, sunny, flower-cheered room, with skillful attendance, and with dainties to sustain the strength and to coax the capri- cious appetite. The enhancing of distress in all the junc- tures of greatest physical pain that befall men or women or children among the poor is pathetic and horrible. Charity beds in hospitals, free dispensaries, visiting nurses and fresh air charities for children, relieve this distress only to a degree. Not only does poverty cause sickness, but sickness causes poverty. The livelihood of the poor is pitifully dependent upon the precarious health of their breadwinners. The occur- f or the quarter of Menilmontant. See additional figures in Fisher : loc. cit. Richmond Mayo-Smith : Sociology and Statistics, Macmillan, 1896, pp. 164-165; and Amos G. Warner (American Charities, revised, Crowell, 1908, p. 127) reproduce the figures of Dr. Ogle, showing that the death rates for different occupations vary from a rate represented by 100 for clergymen to 308 for street sellers, 331 for Cornish miners, 397 for inn servants. B. S. Rowntree (Poverty, a Study in Town Life, Macmillan, 1902, p. 198 seq.) states that in the poorest section of the city of York, England, having a population of 6,803, of whom 69.3 per cent, were in poverty, the death rate was 27.78 per thousand, the death rate of children under five years of age was 13.96 per thousand of total population, and the mortality of children under one year amounted to 247 out of every thousand children born. In the section inhabited by middle-class laborers, having a population of 9,945, in which 37 per cent, of the residents were in poverty, the death rate was 20.71. The death rate among children under five years of age 10.50, and the proportion born who died within the first twelve months 184. In the section inhab- ited by the best class of laborers the general death rate was 13.49, the death rate of the children under five years 6, and the proportion of chil- dren dying within the first twelve months 173, while among the ser- vant-keeping class in York the proportion of infants dying in their first year was 94 per thousand. too INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY rence of sickness or of maiming accident plunges them into economic distress. Loss of health is the most constant of all the causes of extreme poverty and is directly responsible for something like a fifth or a quarter of that miserable poverty which becomes dependent upon charity and which suffers the distress that follows when the customary standard of living, however low, can no longer be maintained. The physical disability of old age is probably the only direct cause of poverty which exceeds it. Poverty Is Effective in Preventing the Attainment of the Ethical and Cultural Values of Life. The child whose mother answers the factory whistle at dawn, whose frontyard is the street, whose backyard is the alley, and whose home is two or three crowded rooms up the stairway of a tenement inhab- ited by honest laborers, striving for decency, and by deb- auchees and prostitutes, is in a poor way to attain the finest traits or realize the most elevating joys of life. The ambi- tion and energy of such a boy may be the measure of his misconduct and of the swiftness of his destruction. As one has wisely and wittily expressed it, the very same motives that cause the son of more fortunate birth to imitate his father and George Washington cause this child to imitate his father and Blinkey Morgan. It has been said that many a boy in America grows up where he has no more chance of de- veloping a normal conscience than he has of learning the Chinese language. ' At a tender age the child has learned the language of his environment whether it be the refined instru- ment of culture, or rude, coarse, and unclean, the vehicle of degradation. And by the time he has learned his language he has largely acquired the approvals, admirations, and detesta- tions that will shape his conduct, and has failed to acquire those that in another environment might have shaped it. The swaggering tough, the sybarite, the safe-blower, the ward boss, can be as genuinely admired and ardently emulated as other types of success. It is by no means the very poor alone nor the denizens of the city slums, but also the moderately poor and the residents of village and hamlet who commonly lack a thor- AMOUNT, FORMS, DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 101 oughly civilizing environment. Fathers and mothers are likely to be too busy and hard worked ; they themselves have not learned from their own parents the ideals of child-rearing and of home atmosphere which are the truest tests of civiliza- tion; their fireside is not attractive enough to compete success- fully with the street, the livery stable, the rendezvous. Boys and girls who are properly provided with juvenile literature, and who live in an atmosphere of courtesy and of home pleas- ures, where work and conversation alike objectify generous ideals, these have a heritage of moral and cultural health, while many grow up in an atmosphere of moral and cultural miasma. The poor man has not money enough to properly equip and maintain home life, but hands on to his offspring the lack of culture and the low ethical standards which the poverty of his own parents bequeathed to him. This must not be taken to mean that every poor man is coarse or bad. On the contrary, personal excellence is often maintained under unfavorable conditions. But it does mean that the moral and cultural handicap of poverty is heavy and thousands cannot bear up against it. The poor cannot freely choose their home surroundings. It is true that vice often sinks into poverty, and from this it results that those who are poor for other causes are compelled to associate with those made poor by vice ; and the children of the poor, whatever. the cause of the poverty of their parents, are early familiarized with moral degradation. It may be said that the school must furnish the elements of personal education. But the school cannot replace the home, nor adequately offset demoralizing influences surround- ing the hours of play. Moreover the children of the very poor go to school but too little. According to the last report of the Commissioner of Edu- cation * the number of pupils receiving education in the first eight grades during the year 1914 was 19,057,948, and the num- ber in the second eight grades, that is, in the high schools, col- leges and professional schools during the same year was only 1,718,876. In 1910, 20,000 permits to quit school for labor 1 Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education for 1914, pp. 2-8. 102 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY were issued to children in Chicago. Of these 2,918 are known to have joined the ranks of labor on the first day after attaining the legal age of fourteen, and 2,413 had not reached the fifth grade. Labor laws that prescribe any educa- tional standard to be met by children before they can leave school for work generally require only that they be able to read simple printed matter, and write, though incorrectly, simple sentences. A large proportion of the very poor do not go beyond the fourth or fifth grade. This is not necessarily due to lack of natural ability. It is largely due to lack of the backing which the family, by its influence, can give to the schools and which many poor families do give. And it is largely due to the fact that the children of the very poor are frequently in no physical condition to profit fully by the meager schooling received. Hundreds of them go to school either with no breakfast, or a breakfast of baker's bread and coffee. For lack of proper medical attention, eyes, teeth, hearing and breathing apparatus are often so defective as to handicap their work. In one school in Chicago 55 per cent, of the pupils in the fifth grade are already working and earn an average weekly wage of $1.18; 35 per cent, of those in the fourth grade are working, and earn an average weekly wage of 85 cents. Fif- teen per cent, of those in the second grade are working for an average weekly wage of 43 cents, and 12 per cent, of those in the first grade are devoting a portion of their leisure to industry from which they derive an average weekly income of 36 cents. Besides spending the regular twenty-five hours a week in school one of those boys works over fifty hours a week, four over forty hours a week, seven over thirty hours a week, and eighteen over twenty hours a week. 1 These children are frequently employed in demoralizing as well as health-destroying occupations. The street trades are a curse of the childhood .of the poor. Little girls peddle gum on the streets until midnight. Boys serving as messengers are some- times sent to the most abhorrent resorts of vice and become 1 Chicago Child Welfare Exhibit of 1911. AMOUNT, FORMS, DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 103 familiarized with the post-graduate degrees of debauchery and degradation. The poor are obliged largely to forego life's normal pleas- ures. These cannot be provided by the average laborer who attempts to support a family upon his wages. The pleasures accessible and attractive to the uneducated laborer, young or old, are not only meager but likely to be demoralizing. There are no statistics that reveal the death rate of the souls of the poor, but there is no doubt that thousands upon thousands go down in blight and ruin who in another environment would have come to blossoming and worth. Not that any human soul is without some spark of nobleness, not that the most disinher- ited life is without gleams of cheer, not but that there can be found many who amid adverse conditions have come in contact with some ennobling influence or responded with native inspira- tion to life's hard demands, but that among the tens of thou- sands who become debased or who live lives of wretchedness and misery, among the sixty or a hundred thousand tramps who roam our land, and the women and children they have deserted, and among the three hundred thousand more or less who are in prisons, jails, and lockups in the United States, among the four million who it is estimated apply for some form of charity each year, many of whom are so thriftless, devitalized, broken in body, and unformed in character that we are tempted to brand them "the unworthy poor," and among that multitude who fre- quent the tawdry and dirty haunts of vice -or lie in crowded, uncheered sickrooms, there are a vast number, who, so far as hereditary capacity is concerned, are just as good as we. Neither is it true at the other extreme that all the rich are cultured and virtuous. Actual Distribution of Wealth, in the United States. No one knows exactly how the wealth of any nation is distrib- uted. On this subject only estimates are available and they must be regarded with great caution. One of the most intelligent estimates that has been made for the United States was published by Dr. Charles B. Spahr in 1896. According to that estimate "seven-eighths of the families hold but one- eighth of the national wealth, while one per cent, of the fam- 104 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY ilies hold more than the remaining ninety-nine." * And while "the general distribution of incomes in the United States is wider and better than in most of the countries of western Europe . . . one-eighth of the families in America receive more than half of the aggregate income, and the richest one per cent, receives a larger income than the poorest fifty per cent. In fact, this small class of wealthy property owners receives from property alone as large an income as half our people receive from property and labor." 2 Mulhall in England watched for a series of years the transfer of estates through probating of wills, and concluded that four-fifths of the property of England was held by one-sixty-seventh of the adult population of England. The most recent estimate on this subject is that of Dr. W. I. King. He states 3 that 65 per cent, of the people of the United States are poor, in the sense that they possess no property beyond a little furniture, clothing and personal effects ; fifteen per cent, belong to the lower middle class having a little property, perhaps on the average a thousand dollars' worth ; eighteen per cent, compose the upper middle class, or well-to-do, having property worth from $2,000 to $40,000; while two per cent, are rich. These two per cent, own about three-fifths of the property. It appears that in 1900 there was no marked difference in the distribution of wealth in France, Prussia, Massachusetts and Wisconsin. But in England, under the law of primogeni- ture, the concentration of wealth is exaggerated. This, Dr. King regards as an illustration of the fact that differences in laws result in differences in the distribution of wealth, and that "a modification of the laws of a nation might bring -into being a division of riches of a radically different nature." 4 The distribution of income is always less unequal than the distribution of accumulated wealth. The laborer may be 1 C. B. Spahr : The Present Distribution of Wealth in the United States. Crowell & Co., 1896, p. 69. 3 Ibid., p. 129. * The Wealth and Income of the People of the United States, Macmillan, 1915, pp. 78 to 82. * Ibid., p. 92. AMOUNT, FORMS, DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 105 without property, but his wages are an income. However, the inequalities of income are great and of tremendous social significance. Dr. King states that the fraction of the total income of the United States "going to labor has, of recent years, been falling off despite the efforts of labor unions and combinations," 1 and that the concentration of wealth is now somewhat greater than Dr. Spahr estimated it to be in 1896. According to the estimates of Dr. King, "since 1896, there has occurred a marked concentration of income in the hands of the very rich ; the poor have, relatively, lost but little ; but the mid- dle class has been the principal sufferer." 2 These conclusions are no longer so surprising when we compare the rate of accumulation among different classes. The pyramid of Cheops is popularly said to have been built about twenty-five hundred years before Christ. If a man had earned ten thousand dollars a year from that time until the birth of Christ, and continued to do so every year of the briefer period that has elapsed since the beginning of the Christian era, and had saved every cent of it, his earnings, without interest, would now amount to forty-five millions of dollars. Andrew Carnegie is said to have retired with three hundred and seventy-five millions, or more than eight times that amount. According to statements brought out in the course of a legal trial, the fortune of Mr. Rockefeller amounted to $900,0x30,000 in 1912. He began a poor man but acquired a large measure of control over a great industry and a great natural resource. To accumulate such a sum at the rate of 'Ibid., p. 163. 2 Ibid., p. 231. Adams and Sumner: Labor Problems. Macmillan, 1905. Chap, xiii on "The Material Progress of the Wage Earning Classes," summarizes the evidence that although their relative position as compared with that of a very rich man has declined, yet the laborers are not without some share in the fruits of progress. See the last part of that chapter, section on "The Concentration of Wealth," p. 532 and following, especially p. 536 and following and conclusion of the same p. 544 and following. Compare also R. T. Ely: Evolution of Indus- trial Society. Macmillan Co., 1903, pp. 255-270; 'Anna Youngman: Growth of Large Fortunes. The Bankers' Publishers Co., 1909; Geo. P. Watkins : "Economic Causes of Large Fortunes" in Proceedings of American Economic Association, viii, No. 4. 106 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY $10,000 a year would require 90,000 years or 20 times the. ages that have elapsed since 2500 B. c. A person having a hundred millions of dollars yielding five per cent., or five millions a year, would have an annual income equal to the accumulation of five centuries at ten thousand dollars a year, and if he were to spend a thousand dollars an hour ten hours a day every day of the year including Sundays and holidays, at the end of the year $1,350,000 of that year's income would remain unspent. On the other hand, the average earnings of all American wage-earners in 1900 was about $400 per year. This includes laboring women and children, but one-half the adult male population engaged in manufacturing in 1900 received less than $480 each, and at least one-half of the adult male wage-earners of the United States, in all industries, earned less than $436 each in the year 1900. Both wages and the prices of the nec- essaries of life have advanced since the census on which these figures are based. However, according to the best available information only 45 per cent, of laborers in the United States now receive as much as $600 per year. And it is probably true now as then that more than half the wage- earning men in this country receive an income that will not support a family, according to any tolerable standard of living. 1 Hundreds of thousands of such families are suffering in physi- cal health and stamina, largely missing life's normal joys, bearing an undue proportion of suffering in every form, and unable properly to rear their children. Their poverty is espe- cially deplorable at two periods, viz., while the children are too small to contribute much to the family income, and when the mother can go to labor only at the greatest cost to her- self and to them; and again when the children have grown to have families of their own to support, and the parents must face old age with early diminished earning power and great difficulty in securing employment. There is one period when the unskilled laborer is comparatively flush with money, namely, when he has just come into his full earning power and no longer contributes to the support of his father's family, 1 Average wages at present are slightly above $500. AMOUNT, FORMS, DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 107 and as yet has no children of his own, the very time when he is in greatest danger of sowing wild oats. The statistics of wages of American laborers in a measure prepare us to realize not only that a very considerable propor- tion of American families normally and in good times live in poverty too great to permit full physical and moral efficiency, but also that in bad times, in sickness and old age and in the cases .of physical or moral inefficiency, a multitude become dependent upon charity. Charles Booth, in the first great scientific investigation of its kind, found that 30.7 per cent, of the people of London were in poverty too great to allow the maintenance of full physical efficiency. Rowntree found that the proportion similarly poor in the city of York was 27.84. Jacob Riis estimated that during the eight years pre- vious to 1890 the actual recipients of charity in New York City had equaled in number about one-third of the popula- tion of that city. Robert Hunter, whose estimate has been somewhat exclaimed against but not invalidated, believes that 18 or 19 per cent, of the people of the whole rich state of New York were in distress at the time of his study. A map of a part of New York City prepared for the Tenement House Commission in 1900 shows a dot wherever, during the five years preceding the preparation of the map, five families from one house have applied for charity, either to the Charity Organization Society or the United Hebrew Charities. "There was hardly one tenement house in the entire city that did not contain a number of these dots, and many contained as many as fifteen of them" representing fifteen times five, or seventy- five, families. As a result of his investigations and his ex- perience as settlement worker and charity worker, Robert Hunter would not be surprised if the number in poverty 1 in our large cities and industrial centers rarely fell below 25 per cent, of all the people. For our country at large both 1 Mr. Hunter explains that by the number in poverty he means the number of those who "are not able to obtain those necessaries which will permit them to maintain a state of physical efficiency." (Page 5.) They subsist, but their efficiency is gradually impaired by lack of such things as sanitary abodes, adequate food, and suitable clothing. io8 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY urban and rural, the estimate indicated in the popular phrase "the submerged tenth" is probably no exaggeration ; and when we consider how many millions are included in a tenth of the population of our nation, and how many individual cases of misery, blight, and ruin are included in a million of the economically submerged we have a sufficient contrast with the aggregated millions of our rich. 1 The extreme poverty of the submerged tenth is usually due, at least in part, to unavoidable or avoidable personal causes, like sickness, old age, large families, or vice, shiftlessness and incompetence. But the comparative poverty of the mass of normal laborers is due largely to industrial and social condi- tions. Thousands of normal laborers and their families live always too anxiously near the line of submergence. And although so much of the cost, waste, suffering, vice and crime that afflict society are due to the presence of a submerged tenth, yet their elevation might not add so much to the net worth of human life as would the securing of social justice to the far larger number who are not submerged, but who lack the means to fulfill their possibilities of happiness, service and personal development, and who by sickness or other misfortune may at any moment be forced below the line of economic independ- ence. *A charity organization was formed in a university community of about 20,000 in Illinois. It was an unusually prosperous and wealthy community, having little manufacture, almost no immigrant popula- tion, and, as some said, no poverty. In the last twelve months this organization, after careful investigation of each case, ministered to 354 resident families said to include 1,272 persons, besides receiving appli- cations from 1078 transients. The well-to-do do not frequent the un- paved streets and the outskirts of our towns, and when they pass that way they little realize the struggle that goes on when the breadwinner falls by the way or a man earning $1.50 per day has five or six children and a sick wife. CHAPTER VIII THE INADEQUACY OF ECONOMIC LAW TO EXPLAIN OR CONTROL JUSTLY THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH AND THE NECESSITY OF SOCIAL CONTROL Why Do We Have So Much Poverty in Our Rich Land I- Our wealth is increasing as wealth has increased at no other time and place in the history of the world. A distinguished economist declares, nevertheless, that only one-fourth of our population is benefited by this vast increase. 1 Adam Smith, and other economists, have taught that the rate of wages depends upon "dispute," "contract," "custom," in one phrase, social adjustment. On the other hand, in the theory that "labor is the residual claimant," advanced by Francis A. Walker, but set aside by more recent economists, and in the theory of "specific productivity" now generally held, an effort has been made to show that economic law does determine wages as completely as rent or interest. 2 To the question, why does not the increase of wealth correspondingly diminish poverty, we reply: because there is nothing in the operation of economic laws to secure a just, reasonable, or tolerable distribution of wealth. To begin with, labor is not a commodity ; it is a man work- ing. We refer to labor as a commodity only by a figure of speech. It is a convenient figure of speech to which we are so accustomed that we tend to think of labor as being literally a commodity, which it is far from being. A saleable com- modity is a material thing that can be alienated from its possessor and be.come the property of another. Not so work; 1 This is a serious exaggeration. Even factory workers and other semi-skilled and unskilled laborers have benefited somewhat, though less than justly, by our increase in wealth. 8 The latter theory is referred to on pages 122 seq. 109 I io INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY that cannot be separated from the worker. When a com modity, say a pig of iron, has been sold, it makes no difference to its former owner how or where it is used; it may be used in making sewer-pipe or watch-springs without injury or advantage to the man who sold it. Not so labor; it makes a difference to the laborer whether he is employed in a sewer or not. As labor is the laborer at work, the laborer is di- rectly interested in the conditions of his work. But there is nothing in economic laws or forces to insure to him tolerable conditions of labor; that depends upon social adjustments through public opinion, custom, morality, and law. Labor Bought at Forced Sale. And now as to the price of his labor. Labor resembles a commodity in only one respect, namely, that it commands a price. But the price, or more accurately the wage, of labor is not fixed by the operation of the causes that fix normal prices for commodities. The first peculiarity of labor, in this respect, is one that it shares with some commodities, namely, those that must be disposed of at forced sale. In the case of such a commodity there is not time for the economic laws to operate and secure a "normal price." A man obliged to sell his house within a week would very often fail to find a buyer who would give its real value, and he would be obliged to sell to someone who took it just because it could be had for less than its worth. Half an hour before the stores close on Saturday night strawberries often sell for half or a third of their real value, because they must be sold at once or be lost entirely. Similarly each day's labor must be sold that very day, for when night falls it is gone forever ; its owner cannot store it in bins, as the farmer stores his grain, to wait for the price. Even if the laborer at the cost of sacrificing his labor should refuse to work till a fair price was offered, hoping to gain in the remaining days enough to make up for the loss of waiting, then as a rule he and those dependent on him would be plunged in suffering by the sacrifice. Moreover, it would prove an un- availing sacrifice, for in practice there would almost always be another laborer ready to take the place at the price which the first had declined, unless indeed a general agreement among THE NECESSITY OF SOCIAL CONTROL in laborers had been reached by which all declined it together, and that would be a strike. That last expedient might suc- ceed. Labor, as before remarked, resembles a commodity in just one thing, that it is paid for; the employer must have it to continue industry. The strike takes advantage of this one point of analogy between labor and a commodity, but only in a more or less abnormal way, namely, by creating a monopoly, for a strike is the demand of a monopoly. To the employer labor is like a commodity for which he has an economic demand, and he objects if he must buy it at a monopoly price. To the laborer it is not a commodity; it is his participation in industry, the basis of a claim in equity with the other participants, the employer and the investor, to a share in the proceeds of industry. This difference in point of view is the ground of endless misunderstanding. Labor Not Protected by Cost oi Production. The second peculiarity of labor which excludes it from the operation of the economic laws that fix normal prices for commodi- ties is that its production is not similarly regulated by cost. It is the cost of production that prevents the prices of com- modities from falling permanently below the normal level. If for a time the price offered for any commodity is too low to pay for producing it, then its production is curtailed or the product is withheld from market, equally limiting supply until the very scarcity, if nothing else, restores the price. If the demand permanently declines, as it may in the case of a puzzle or fashion, so that the price does not rise again to a point covering the cost of production, then production of that commodity ceases permanently. A normal price level for commodities, especially staple commodities, is thus main- tained because the supply offered for sale falls off and scarcity sets in if prices go below the cost of production. For labor there is no such thing as a normal price fixed by this law,, since in the case of labor the law does not operate, for the supply of labor offered for sale is not reduced when prices fall. Labor cannot be stored to wait for a better price, nor can its production be suddenly curtailed; the supply is renewed with each returning day, and there is nothing that its "seller" ii2 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY could do to limit the production but to commit suicide. In fact when the demand for labor is poor, the supply, seeking a market instead of diminishing, as would be the case with any commodity, actually increases. The laborers discharged at such a time become applicants for jobs and thus the amount of labor put on the market is not less but greater, when the demand for labor is least. It is true that when times are slack some laborers emigrate, some men retire to their little farms, and some women to their homes and when such adjustments have done all they can, the birth rate may decrease, and so the supply of labor diminish. But that is too remote a result to secure for us a normal rate of wages, nor will it ultimately secure it, for if suffering continues long enough the standard of living de- clines. It is those with an exacting and hopeful standard of living who rationally limifrthe number of their offspring and those who are miserable still propagate, not at the most rapid rate, but at a rate quite sufficient to maintain their numbers and keep up the supply of labor. It is therefore the quality and not the quantity of labor that will fall off. And while by that means skilled labor might ultimately become scarce and expensive, the number of applicants for the worst paid jobs, and the mass of misery at the bottom of society would be increased if the unfolding of events were left to the opera- tion of economic laws alone. We are in fact at present ex- periencing this result. We are having more of the under- vitalized, nerveless, stimulant-craving, untrained, incompetent laborers and a smaller proportion of capable and efficient ones than we should have reason to expect if the laborers could maintain a proper standard of living. 1 The Differential. Labor as we have seen is not a com- modity, nor is any normal price for labor fixed by economic laws. Labor is instead man's exertion, and the basis of a 1 America may have more than her share of such incompetents, in part because although a high standard of living is "the fulcrum of progress," yet the constant spectacle of an inaccessible "pleasure econ- omy" drives some away from the patient grind to dissipation and the hobo's life. THE NECESSITY OF SOCIAL CONTROL 113 claim to share with managers and investors in the proceeds of industry upon some equitable basis. The investor is sure of his return if the industry prospers and no fraud is perpe- trated upon him. Some people think that interest is wrong and call it usury, but if there were no interest on capital a large part of it would be withdrawn and consumed. 1 It is necessary not only to induce owners to refrain from with- drawing and consuming their capital, but also to draw into productive investment enough new capital to cover losses and to provide for the extension of business, and the employ- ment of the added population. The larger the amount of well-invested capital the more openings for labor and the greater the productivity of labor. The withdrawal of cap- ital would paralyze industry. Industry cannot go on without the use of land and capital, and their owners can command a return for their use at a normal rate, which is approxi- mately fixed by economic causes, as the studies of the econo- mist in rent and interest have shown. Hence in cutting the cake of proceeds from an industry, off comes inevitably a pretty definite slice for the investor. There is also a neces- sary return to the manager without which adequate ability, application, and care could not be secured for the discharge 1 According to Professor J. B. Clark, the existing stock of capital, unless lost by misfortune or bad management, or withdrawn and con- sumed, renews itself perpetually out of its own earnings. Its earnings include the renewal fund plus interest. The investor, unless he with- draws his capital, never gets it back for purposes of consumption, but gets only a permanent flow of interest. "To everyone who has a larger income than is necessary to sustain life, is presented the option of taking, as part of his income, something that will give pleasure for a time and then utterly perish or, on the other hand, of taking some- thing that will never in itself give any pleasure, but that to the end of time will create, every year, a quantity of other things that will do so." (Clark: The Distribution of Wealth, p. 135.) But capital "produces" only when associated with labor, and its permanence de- pends on good management and social order. If, as Professor Clark believes, capital in general renews itself perpetually, then the Social- ists have ground for the claim that if once society, and not indi- viduals, owned the great bodies of capital, interest might become obso- lete, re-investment of surplus earnings, aided by the enforced "absti- nence" of taxation being depended on for extension of capital, H4 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY of his important task, and as sufficient training, steadiness of effort, and ability are more or less exceptional, their scarcity may secure for him a just reward, though the paid manager who is not an owner depends largely upon the necessity of continuity in the business, his knowledge of the particular industry and its secrets, personal relationship with owners, ct p .Investors Share c e d f Managers Share Necessary Wages 9 h Differential i i and custom, to secure for him a liberal share in the proceeds. There is also a necessary cost of labor, for without some wage labor is not to be had, though there is no guarantee that necessary wages will constitute a normal or equitable return for the laborer's participation in production. Now after catting off from the cake that was to be sliced the vari- ous portions demanded by economic requirements, namely, the necessary share of investors and the necessary cost of man- THE NECESSITY OF SOCIAL CONTROL 115 agement and necessary wages, in the case of the most prosper- ous industries a differential will remain. This differential is. the bone of contention. Who is to be its possessor? It may be consumed by inefficient methods or by wasteful competition. But when those establishments that produce at a disadvantage have been mostly eliminated by competition, and competition itself has been limited by con- solidation of industry, most business carried on in a pros- perous country, may show in all good years a differential. 1 And if the economists are correct in teaching that the normal return for land and capital invested in the industry is deter- mined by economic causes, then the differential properly re- mains 2 to be divided among the people who cooperate in producing the output : that is, between managers and laborers. No Share in Primary Distribution. Here the laborer is at a tremendous disadvantage because the whole of the differen- tial goes first into the hands of the management, and the laborers have the problem of getting their share of it out of his hands. 3 Herein lies the third obstacle to the just deter- mination of wages. When the output of an industry, say a shoe factory, is sold it is all sold by the management. No laborer can sell a single shoe. The entire returns of all the country's industries are thus first distributed among the man- agers of the industries. This is called primary distribution. Then the managers pay what they must to the investors and laborers who have cooperated with them. This is called secondary distribution. We have seen that the normal return to labor is not secured by the operation of economic causes, for the laborer is not the seller or renter or lender of a com- *On the necessity and justice of retention by employers, in good years, of an offset for the losses of bad years, see page 126. * Economists do not teach that interest, rent, wages and profits are each determined by economic laws, independently of each other, for changes in one of them may affect the amounts of all the others. But after all these effects have worked themselves out, the "differential" remains as above stated. 3 On the proposition that the differential , is created by managers and remains inevitably in their possession, as a quasi-rent upon agerial ability, see pages 122, 127, 128, and especially 137. ii6 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY modity for which a normal price is automatically maintained. Instead he is a man cooperating with other men, each of whom bases upon the fact of his cooperation a claim in equity to a share in the common product. A portion of the laborer's claim must be paid him as "necessary wages," but the balance of it is adjudicated, not by a disinterested outsider, but by one of the claimants who has the whole proceeds of the in- dustry in his possession. Organization. Additional reason why equity can be de- feated and enormous concentration of wealth take place, lies in the extent to which industrial and financial organization has been carried. A high degree of organization is essential to efficiency. But wherever there is centralized power there is peril and if the power is great the social control must be ade- quate. As organization proceeds and thousands are concen- trated in one industry and different industries unite into sys- tems it becomes possible and in the present condition of cus- tom, morality, and law, it is natural for the men who stand at the nucleus of the system to take toll upon the labor of an army of their fellows. This occurs not only in the relation between laborer and employer but also at the financial end. In great industries the entrepreneurs often contribute little to the technical management which secures productivity, and devote themselves largely to financiering. Great portions of the social income are deducted in the form of profit on stock- gambling and on the sale of watered stock, and "bonuses" for promotion and underwriting. Corrupt dealing in worthless mining and industrial stocks and in fraudulent land specula- tions also abstract vast sums from the incomes of the common people. Of the abuses of financiering more can best be said later in connection with the discussion of remedies. Finally, as consumers we are all exploited enormously, and that in part by organization and in part by the disorganiza- tion of wasteful competition in merchandizing. The aspects of the present situation which have now been described are the main causes of the inequity in the distribution of wealth. The interests of managers and laborers are identical in this, that both desire the differential dividend THE NECESSITY OF SOCIAL CONTROL 117 to be as large as possible. Their interests are opposite when it comes to dividing it. It would be foolish to minimize the work of the manager. The effectiveness of all the labor em- ployed depends upon the efficiency of management, and the necessary cost of management, high as it may be, must be paid out of the proceeds of industry. Likewise the necessary inducement in the form of rent, interest, or dividends, must be held out to the investors of the indispensable capital and land. But the differential still remaining whenever there is such a differential will not be justly divided by force of economic causes. Its division is not an economic problem but a social one, for it depends upon public opinion which may be mis- guided and supine, custom which may be all wrong, morality which may be only embryonic at any given point, contract and law which obey custom and public opinion. Though. Present Distribution Is Indefensible, Equality of Incomes Is Neither Expedient, Just, nor Feasible. In forming our ideal of what constitutes a just and proper distribution of wealth we must be careful to admit that there are great differences in the powers of men in the direction of any given kind of achievement; that it is important to have men of great organizing power in the positions of business control ; and that such men may properly receive incomes far greater than those of the average laborer. They should receive as much as men of equal powers and equally arduous labors in any other walk of life. But when they receive ten or a hundred times as much as their equals in other walks of life, justice has no sanction for such inequality. The differences of income are carried to an absurd extreme when the busi- ness organizer is given too much power in deciding the amount of his own share, and when he is led to measure his success by the amount of the social income which he appropriates to himself. The stupendous difference in the rewards of labor is not proportioned to the differences between the quali- ties of men, great as these doubtless sometimes are. And as to the latter it would be absurd to think that the man who acquires wealth is always superior to those who do not n8 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY acquire it. Abilities that can be equaled by one man in every twenty normal men, coupled with intense concentra- tion upon the desire for wealth, may suffice for the acquisi- tion of vast possessions. Concentration upon a purpose is one evidence of ability, but it is also true that concentration Upon the pursuit of wealth may evince poverty of nature or of breeding. Many of the ablest men devote themselves to pursuits in which there is little or no opportunity to acquire great wealth. No one is likely to deny that in many instances the comparatively poor man has far greater ability of intellect, will, and sensibility than his rich fellow-citizen. And among laborers there appear to be some who surpass in these respects some of those who acquire great fortunes. The books drawn from public library stations in the poorer quarters of cities, the conversation, and even the writings of laborers, the devo- tion and the determination shown in pursuit of fixed aims under baffling conditions that try the courage and the will more severely than any progress along the pathway of success, demonstrate the frequency of high-class normality in the human breed in spite of poverty. Caste is mainly a social illusion fostered by the differences of appearance permitted by wealth, including the differences of speech, manner, and culture due to differences of nurture. Since the "wish is father to the thought," and "belief the off- spring of desire," the fortunate often believe in the native su- periority of their class. This class creed has in it just enough of truth to make it a dangerous falsehood. It is especially groundless in this country where most of the poor have not enjoyed the opportunities of a free country long enough to prove their capacity, and where we have so often seen the chil- dren of European peasants rise to places of wealth and in- fluence. What of the Rank and File? The way of escape from injustice is not in exhorting the laborer to rise from his class. If all men were capable of becoming captains of industry not all men could be such. The army of industry must have an enormous rank and file. All but a small minority must by the necessity of *he case march all their lives in the ranks. THE NECESSITY OF SOCIAL CONTROL 119 Democracy is a failure unless it can make the values of life accessible to the normal men in the ranks, instead of concen- trating the proceeds of industry in the possession of a few. From each pair of industrious hands there flows a little rill of plenty to water their owner's garden, but these rills flow through the race-way of primary distribution, and the gardens of the many are left arid while these rills are gathered into Amazons to inundate the few. The captain of an industry is only a man "for a' that," and the laborer is also a man. And even if the manager be one man in a thousand, yet is he not a thousand times a man. If he receives a thousand times as much as certain other normal men engaged in regular work in the same industry, it is because equity is defeated through the power given the employer by his position in the economic organization. Do We Need Plutocrats? It is sometimes objected that unless we have a very rich class, life will be robbed of beauty, and great benefactions to education and philanthropy will be impossible. But the palaces of art can better be provided by public funds and devoted to general use. And education and social progress can be systematically promoted by public agencies, rather than by the donations of the rich. They should be enjoyed as of right by a self-respecting citizenship, and not accepted as charity. And sweet charity should issue in the gifts gathered from the prosperous many rather than from the largess of the overwealthy. The truth of all this may be recognized without forgetting that for the present many useful purposes depend for realization upon the liberal cooperation of the rich, and human nature at its best partly overcomes the evils of a bad system when great wealth is held as a trust by its possessors. Wealth as Success. Another objection to the more equi- table distribution of wealth is that we must allow great for- tunes if we are to attract great men and spur them on to the efforts necessary for the efficient leadership of industry. But is it true that if great men are to do their utmost they must be offered millions on millions? -Has the best work of the greatest men been done for money ? Is money the only motive 120 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY that appeals to the great? Far from it. They strive even more for the respect and admiration of their fellowmen, for the sense of power and worth. Those who have powers find their joy in the exercise of those powers. And even when money is the chief motive must millions be offered, or will one who is working for fifteen hundred a year do his utmost to earn fifteen thousand? Do the greatest business men ever work harder than when they are seeking their first hundred thousand and uncertain whether they will attain it? It is true that the captains of industry must be allowed to receive large incomes. They may be double or treble or tenfold the income of the ordinary man but when they rise to a hundred times the income of the mass of normal men, it is absurdity. There are many grades of business success popularly measured by wealth. The business man struggles to reach the highest grade attainable. If that were measured by an income of fifty thousand a year, and only the rarest success attained that sum and no one had more he would struggle for that. After all it is the distinction, the success, the achievement, thai: great business men strive for. They do not need the millions save as the evidence and measure of their success and power. Such vast financial rewards are not only unnecessary as motives; they are perversive. To make the differences in money so conspicuous obscures the difference in real achieve- ment, makes men think themselves successful, and causes them to be regarded by others as successful, when they have achieved nothing worthy, rendered no service in the leadership of industry, but only managed through deals in margins or manipulation of stocks or otherwise to appropriate a large amount from the social income. By the glitter of mountains of gold men are hindered from perceiving that captains of industry are social functionaries; and so men now run mills to make money rather than to make shoes or machinery. They have too little ambition to organize the factors of in- dustry so as to yield the most effective production, too little pride and satisfaction in doing so. And they may forget altogether that they have undertaken to captain the industrial THE NECESSITY OF SOCIAL CONTROL 121 lives of the men whom they employ, and that the efficiency of their leadership may be measured by the prosperity of the men they employ, of the whole detachment of the industrial army which they lead, as well as by the size of their own fortunes. Moreover, society as a whole forgets these things and admires the money-getter rather than the man of social achievement. As soon as society revises its perverted judg- ment on this point men of ambition will revise the direction of their endeavor. The desire for success is a motive entirely distinguishable from the desire for material possessions; and success is defined by social judgment. If at a given time and place success as such coincides with material wealth it is because society at that time and place so defines success. The obsession extends beyond business life, and other forms of achievement in science, art, literature, and social leadership, that evince the highest human powers and yield th^ greatest social benefits but do not make much money, are undervalued. This is important not so much because it is unjust to those who achieve as because fewer do achieve on this account, for the powers with which the people of a society are endowed go out in those directions which the popular judgment affirms to be most admirable. Incorruptible statesmen, great adminis- trators managing the affairs of cities, creators -in the arts, discoverers in the sciences, master minds engaged in leading social cooperation, can be had by the society that adequately appreciates and respects these forms of achievement. A per- version of the popular judgment of success is the most radical form of social degeneracy or crudity. No society has yet properly adjusted its appreciations and detestations, and a shifting of emphasis in the judgment of success is the most fundamental of all reforms. Finally, it is objected that because the distribution of wealth has always been inequitable, it always must be glaringly so. This deserves the same amount of consideration as did the arguments by which men once proved that slavery was ren- dered inevitable by the traits of human nature, or those by which they once disproved the feasibility of railroads. Competition as a Cure-All. To all the foregoing considera- 122 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY tion some reply that the only thing necessary in order tc secure to labor all that it produces and to abolish abnormal profits of employers is to restore free competition. They say that when there is free competition there is no such dif- ferential as we have described, because under free competi- tion an industry which yielded such a differential would attract so many entrepreneurs that the product would become so plentiful as to lower prices and wipe out these differential profits. There would indeed be a difference between the income of the abler and the less competent managers, but they say that this differential being created by the good manager, we can no more take it from him than we can refuse to pay the rental which economic law inevitably assigns to a superior piece of land. They add that the increased production by many employers would mean the employment of more labor- ers ;' that in fact each employer in a profit-yielding industry would continue to employ more laborers till the point was reached where another laborer would produce nothing above the wages paid ; that this last laborer would therefore get all that he produced except just enough margin to induce an employer to engage him, and that when this becomes true of the last laborer it would be true of all similar laborers, for the laborers who. have been employed on equal terms are interchangeable units. Thus it is claimed that if we only had free competition in any industry there could be no ab- normal prices in that industry, since abnormal prices would attract new competitors and stimulate more plentiful produc- tion till the public had as much of the product of that industry as it would buy at a normal price, till all the labor needed to produce such an abundant supply was employed at a rate practically equal to the value of labor's product, and no dif- ferential profits would remain to employers save the "rent" of superior management. 1 If all this is true, the fact remains that the operation of "economic forces" does not secure the free competition on 1 For an elaborate presentation of this position see Professor Clark's work on The Distribution of Wealth, Macmillan, 1908, particu- larly pp. 4, 9, 83, 94, 105, 106, 116, 180, 321, 332, 400, 411, 418, 419. THE NECESSITY OF SOCIAL CONTROL 123 which this economic millenium is founded, and if free com- petition is secured and maintained it must be done by the exercise of social control. The economic interest of the most forceful managers of industry drives them toward combina- tion and the utilization of all the "elements of monopoly" which they find available. '"The prime importance of monop- oly privileges in the distribution of wealth is shown by Pro- fessor Commons in his work on "The Distribution of Wealth," of which page 252 is quoted in Ely's "Principles of Econom- ics," page 342. According to those authorities about 78 per cent, of the 4,047 millionaire fortunes referred to as having been investigated "were derived from permanent monopoly privileges." And "there can be no question" that if the re- maining 21.4 per cent, "were fully analyzed, it would appear that they were not due solely to personal abilities unaided by these permanent monopoly privileges." "It will be found that perhaps 95 per cent, of the total values represented by these millionaire fortunes is due to those investments classed as land values and natural monopolies and to competitive industries aided by such monopolies." In fact the economic tendency in the direction of monopoly is so strong that all the efforts at social control by which we have thus far striven to combat it have proved largely futile. If those who are on the inside of the management of *a great industry have a powerful com- mon interest in combining, how are we to prevent them from doing so? We may forbid this or that legal form, we may punish the grosser methods of intimidating possible competi- tors or exterminating those who have actually commenced competition. In such ways we shall do what we may to keep alive free competition. But unless we succeed in doing so, we must also invoke other methods of securing the distribu- tion of at least a part of the present differential. In some of the greatest and most important industries unlimited com- petition will never be restored ; in some the attempt to restore it would inevitably be wasteful as well as futile. Chief among these are the railways and other public utilities that are natural monopolies. In these and in all the other great industries in which free competition cannot be or has not been secured, INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY we must control the combinations that we do not succeed in preventing. Even where free competition exists or might exist, it does not suffice to secure economic justice to the laborer. The argument of Professor Clark and others, by which they at- tempt to show that under free competition each factor in industry tends, without the exercise of social control, to receive practically what it produces, is fallacious. They tell us that because any manager will hire another laborer whenever an- other laborer would .produce any more than the wages paid him, therefore every manager will be led by his own interest to continue adding to his labor force until the last laborer employed produces only barely enough more than his wages to make an inducement to engage him ; and that in so far as laborers are interchangeable units, what is true in this respect of the last laborer is true of every laborer working in the same labor market, namely, each receives practically what he produces. The fallacy lies in assuming that the last laborer employed produces only barely more than his wages. One engineer on a railway train may be paid five dollars a day but render a service for which the company would pay a hundred dollars a day if they could not get it for less. At the same time another engineer would only be in the way. The number of laborers employed is not limited by the productivity of the "marginal" laborer in their sense of that expression, but by the necessities of organization. As many will be engaged as fit into the organization, and the number that fit in is fixed, not by the productivity of the last laborer, but by the amount and kind of land, capital, and managerial ability. The man- ager with highly specialized machinery can employ only as ( many laborers as his machinery calls for, although those employed may produce far more than their wages. It may be truly said that under free competition the amount of machinery and of every factor in production will tend to be as great as is justified by the demand for the product of the industry. Even then the last laborer employed may pro- duce far more than his wages. And after as many laborers THE NECESSITY OF SOCIAL CONTROL 125 are employed in the industry as are required to complete the organization of that industry, if there remain other laborers who would gladly do the work but are left unemployed, then they will underbid the laborers who are receiving a just wage. If the time ever came when there were no surplus laborers, economic conditions would tend to secure to every man at least a marginal wage. But since laborers must work or starve, and entrepreneurs receive the whole product of primary distri- bution, economic conditions, even then, would not insure thaf any laborer received the whole, or approximately the whole, product of his labor, if there were any man engaged in less productive labor who was a satisfactory candidate for the more productive job. In other words, wages for any given task would tend to sink toward the point where they barely surpassed the wages of the least profitably employed laborer who could perform the given task. And unless social control intervene, the point at which the reduction of wages will stop would still depend, as now, on the relative bargaining power of laborers and employers. Should the Manager Retain All That His Activity at Pres- ent Conditions? The conception of profits under free compe- tition as "rent" of superior managerial ability leads many to conclude that there would be no justice in taking any part of his gains from the manager because he has "created" all the value that he now retains. Perhaps we could very well afford to let managers retain all that they could as pure rent of the abilities productively applied under free competition. But as the question has been raised in the assumption that they could still retain large differentials, and in the name of pure justice, let us consider it on that basis. 1 It must always be borne in mind that we approve and advocate a large income for the entrepreneur. The only question is whether justice requires that all the gains conditioned by his activity should remain in his possession in case such gains prove to be enormous. 1 The question whether any part of the present differential can be taken from the entrepreneur, or whether such part of it as he can- not retain will cease to be produced, is treated on p. 137 seq. 126 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY Gains from Chance and from Foresight. The differential remaining in the hands of the employer may be said to contain three elements: (i) the gains of foresight and risk-taking; (2) the gains of organization; (3) the gains of bargaining. Capital "tied up" in an industry is paid back by the in- dustry only after the lapse of considerable time during which there may be reduction in demand for the product which the investment helps to make, perhaps by the discovery of a better substitute for that product. And there may be invented better machinery for making the product before the machinery in which the investment has been sunk has been worn out or has paid for itself. Raw material must be selected and paid for and wages must be paid some time before it is pos- sible to know exactly the price for which the product can be sold. Goods must be produced and put into stock in antici- pation of the fashion and demand of the coming season. For such reasons as these, the "entrepreneur must exercise fore- sight and must take some chances against which no foresight can guard him. As a result some employers are ruined, while those who remain in business in general and in the long run receive some gains which are due in part to foresight exer- cised in specific instances, and in part to the general caution which leads those who invest large sums in the hope of a mere margin of profit to allow for unforeseen contingencies. It is well for the entrepreneur to take these risks, for such risks cannot be avoided, and the entrepreneur, more than any other, has the knowledge of all the conditions in- volved that is necessary to the exercise of the required fore- sight. Since he takes these risks investors and wage-earners are in part relieved of them, and their incomes are rendered steadier; besides society is thus assured of a steady flow of goods ready in anticipation of need. We may, therefore, grant that a part of the large income of the entrepreneur which justice and expediency require and which we have approved, should be regarded as reward for risk-taking or insurance against the unavoidable chances of business. While some grow rich others lose all. It seems just as well as ex- pedient that the entrepreneur be allowed to profit by chance THE NECESSITY OF SOCIAL CONTROL 127 gains since he is obliged to bear chance losses. Both rates of profit and rates of interest include an element of insurance. Gains of Organization. Land, labor, and capital must be brought together; the various forms of capital goods and the various types of labor must be correlated ; buying and selling relations must be established. This organizing is the charac- teristic function of the employer. The productiveness of labor is as truly dependent upon organization as upon tools and machinery. If, all other conditions being equal, given amounts of investment and of labor under one manager pro- duce $100,000 while under another manager equal amounts of investment and labor produce $200,000, the better manager may be said to "produce or create" the extra $100,000 by his superior ability and exertion. This $100,000 may all be re- garded as wages of management. It must be so regarded if it is necessary to allow the manager to retain the whole of it in order to induce him to exercise those abilities without which it would not have been produced. But if we have been right in holding that it is possible to secure the best exertions of the best managers without paying them so much more than is paid for equal exertion and equal ability in other callings, it remains for us to consider whether it is just to advocate ethical ideals or to pass laws that will make it impos- sible for managers to retain the whole of that wealth, the production of which is dependent upon the exercise of their abilities. Before we admit that the labor of the manager "creates or produces" all of the additional $100,000 we ought to notice that there is a difference between producing and con- ditioning. An express train stopped because a nut had been lost from the machinery of its engine. Yet that nut did not produce the motion of the train. A great factory stops be- cause a bar of steel has broken in the wheel pit. Does that imply that before it broke that bar of steel was creating all the values that ceased to be produced when the bar broke? No. Those values were produced by five thousand men using a million dollars' worth of capital goods of which the bar of steel was a minute part. Every necessary part of a pro- 128 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY ducing organization derives importance and productivity from all the other parts. It cannot be said to "create" or "produce" all the values which it may condition. If the broken bar of steel be replaced by another which is of better shape, not only than the one that broke, but better than the correspond- ing part in the machinery of a rival factory, it may add greatly to the former productiveness of the five thousand laborers and the million dollars' worth of machinery that work together with that bar of steel. But we cannot say that the whole of the added output of the five thousand laborers and of the other machinery is produced by the improvement in the bar of steel. We should say instead that the added pro- ductivity of this factory and of these laborers is conditioned by the improved bar of steel. There is no reasonableness in the claim that we should pay for each element in an organization all that would cease to be produced if that ele- ment in the organization were removed. That would often require the payment of amounts equal to several times the total output. The very nature of efficient organization is that each factor not only produces but also conditions added productivity in all the other factors. Therefore there is no justice in the claim that all the "gains of organization" should go to any one factor in the organization, even though the factor selected be the organizer. The present power of the entrepreneur to retain the "gains of organization" is due to his bargaining power. Grains of Bargaining Power. The third element in em- ployers' profits is gained from bargaining power. When no social control limits the operation of purely economic causes, it is chiefly bargaining power, and not justice, that deter- mines how much of the product of industry shall be retained by the employer in his capacity as the agent of secondary distribution. The relative value assigned by economic causes to the part played in organized industry by management and other labor depends largely upon their relative scarcity. Bargain- ing power is with the seller of that which is scarce and the buyer of that which is plentiful. The services of the man- THE NECESSITY OF SOCIAL CONTROL 129 ager who made a factory and its laborers (himself included) produce $200,000 instead of $100,000 are rare, while those of laborers are plentiful. If laborers were few enough so that this manager had been obliged to bid against other man- agers in the same and other industries in order to get work- men, he might have been unable to keep all of the extra $100,000, for he might have been compelled to pay more to laborers or else go without the labor necessary to the production of the extra $100,000. Thus we see that the manager's ability to retain this great sum is due to the fact that common labor is plentiful, while his services are a scarce commodity. Economic value depends as much on scarcity as upon utility. 1 To define utility, as is sometimes done, in such a way as to make it inseparable from scarcity, 2 and especially to define the utility of a man's service in such a way as to confuse utility with market value which depends upon scarcity is to beg the whole question at issue. By such a definition of utility the total utility of the heat and light of the sun is less than that of tallow candles, and the total utility of the atmosphere is less than that of smell- ing salts. The air has no economic value though its utility is boundless, while a diamond as big as the end of a man's thumb is worth a great fortune ; for air is even more plentiful than the labor of common men, while such diamonds are scarcer than good managers. We may heartily grant that the work of the manager should be paid for in proportion tajts utility and still deny that justice requires that it be paid for in proportion to its scarcity. We may go further, for it may turn out that if the 1 "Limitation upon the supply of goods relatively to the need gives value." H. J. Davenport : Value and Distribution. University of Chi- cago Press, 1908, p. 569; and economists in general. 2 If that definition of the word "utility" answers the purpose of economic discussion it is only because economic discussion deliberately excludes the ethical considerations, which are our chief concern. We have the word "value" to designate the utility which depends on scarcity, and we. do not need the word "utility" also to convey that meaning half so much as we need it to convey its full and original significance. 130 work of managers is paid for according to its scarcity the work of laborers cannot be paid for according to its utility. The scarcity of his services, which gives the employer power to retain so large a share of the increase in produc- tion which results from organization, is far from being en- tirely a difference between his natural endowment and that of other men. In the first place other interests than those of industry and money-making draw to themselves a large proportion of the finest ability; this is socially desirable and likely to be increasingly the case in our country. In the second place, although men of first-class business ability often make or discover opportunity where others would find none, yet in a large proportion of the commoner cases the question who shall be employer and who shall be employed is settled by education, business openings due to fortunate connec- tions, credit acquired by virtue of social connections or by success in filling positions that were inaccessible to others, or the inheritance of capital. As American society grows older these artificial differences tend increasingly to be de- termining factors. However many have the native powers and however widely we distribute opportunity to develop inborn powers, relatively few can exercise them in inde- pendent economic management. Even in the freest country the advantages possessed by tolerably large-scale industry set a natural limit upon the number of managerial positions. Managers of established industries have often added to this natural limitation upon managerial opportunities an artificial and sometimes dastardly opposition to incipient competition. But in the nature of things the "scarcity" which gives to management the power to retain so great a differential is not wholly a scarcity of ability nor even of ability accom- panied by training, credit, and capital; it is partly a scarcity of positions, which bears a more or less definite ratio to the degree to which organization has been perfected. Moreover, we could not admit the automatic justice of the claims of bargaining power based on scarcity even if it were purely scarcity of natural ability. To admit that would be to admit that might is right, and to adopt as our maxim THE NECESSITY OF SOCIAL CONTROL 131 of justice, "Let him keep who can." We must recognize that when the Fates give to one man a special privilege which they deny to others, that special privilege is accom- panied by a special responsibility, a responsibility which the operation of economic law does not enforce, which may occasionally be enforced by conscience but which generally must be enforced by social control. To summarize, then: (i) The natural operation of eco- nomic tendency is not to maintain but to destroy freedom of competition. In those industries where it is practicable and desirable to restore or maintain free competition we must depend for this not on the operation of economic tend- ency, but upon the exercise of social control. (2) It is erroneous to assume that even in those indus- tries in which it is desirable and practicable to maintain free competition, such competition will secure justice to the labor- er. The laborer's share, if left to the operation of economic causes, depends upon bargaining power which has no neces- sary relation to utility of the service rendered or to any other standard of justice. (3) The excessive bargaining power of the employer is based upon (a) the scarcity of managerial positions or, in other words, the plenti fulness of common labor and the concentration of management in few hands, the number and identity of the managers being largely determined by the necessities of large-scale organization, and by adventitious advantages. This power; whatever the ground on which it is held, is never divorced from corresponding responsibility, (b) This bargaining power is further based upon the facts that labor must be disposed of at forced sale; (c) that its price is not upheld by price of production, and slack demand does not lessen the supply; and (d) that the laborer receives his share only through secondary distribution out of the hands of the employer who first receives the whole proceeds of industry. Conclusion. In conclusion, the problem of distribution will never be settled by the operation of economic laws. The chief thing that the study of economics has accomplished 132 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY in this connection is to demonstrate that impossibility and so to clear the grounds for the activities of social control. We are already more or less familiar with the fact that tenure of land, water rights, and the rights of widows and children as heirs, 1 and the application of the taxing power are not defined or secured by anything in nature, but are regulated in this way or that according to some adopted standard and by some adopted method of social procedure. Distribution as such is a problem in social equity and social organization. The necessary judgments of equity in their main outlines must be formed in public opinion and en- forced by custom, morality, and law. The social sciences and the public opinion which they have molded are hitherto chre- matistic 2 and not humanistic. Economics as such has often frankly declared itself to be non-ethical; it need not continue to be so. Sociology cannot be non-ethical without being un- scientific. Private property has been sacred but general wel- fare has not. This must be reversed. Not indeed that we should have less respect for law, including the laws that define property rights, as laws must always do, but rather that laws should be made more respectable. Law itself is sacred and when changed it must be changed by legal methods but par- ticular laws are fallible and changeable, and law is not greater than society that makes it, or than the good or evil for the sake of which it exists. A chrematistic system of law may possibly have been justifiable during the period in which the greatest problem was that of developing methods of production, but it has be- come intolerable and indefensible, now that the problem of discovering a system of distribution has surpassed in impor- tance that of further promoting methods of production. The problem now pressing can be successfully approached only from the ethical or humanistic point of view. Society must develop for itself a new system of .legislation wrought out with an eye single to the values realized in human experience. 1 The law of primogeniture is an exceedingly glaring instance of distribution by social convention. * That is, money-making, materialistic. CHAPTER IX HOW MAY SOCIETY REGULATE THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH? Public Opinion and Law. If we adopt the view that it will be necessary to depend upon some form of social control in order to modify our intolerable state of economic injus- tice, which the natural operation of "economic laws" is power- less to correct, the momentous question before us is: What kind of social control will accomplish this end? Two kinds of social control can be considered. First, is the gradual development of a public opinion and sentiment which will both mold the character of our citizens so that their own ambitions and consciences will secure from many the con- duct that is adapted to the requirements of modern industrial and social conditions, and which also, with or without enact- ment into law, will exert a tremendous social pressure upon those who might otherwise continue to transgress those re- quirements. We must not forget that this molding of indi- viduality into fatness for membership in an advanced social regime, together with the pressure exercised by public opinion and sentiment, constitute the most fundamental form of social control and are more important even for this task of economic transformation than legislation can be. It is more important than legislation by virtue of its own direct results together with the fact that it alone will insure the passage and enforce- ment of the necessary legislation. No one need expect legis- lation to accomplish wonders in promoting democratic justice unless legislative progress is part and parcel in a moral prog- ress of the people, a progress, that is, in judgments and senti- ments in reference to their own conduct a,s well as the con- duct of others. 1 Such progress is to be wrought by all the 1 The following passage from President Hadley makes him seem to undervalue the function of pure self-defense, and of the righteous- 133 134 agencies of investigation and enlightenment, by methods that will grow more intelligible as we proceed with the study of the evolution of morality and social control. At the same time we must experiment cautiously and courageously in the framing of laws in order that legislation may advance as steadily as public opinion justifies, remembering also that the relation between public opinion and legislation is in a measure reciprocal, for while effective legislation must be an expres- ness of the untempted. Nevertheless, the establishment of social justice does depend upon the presence of a group whose disinterested justice can shame the Devil, and who can wield the balance of power between selfish contestants. "Most people object to trusts. Why? Largely because they do not own them. If a man really believes that a trust is a bad thing and would refuse to countenance its pursuits if he were given a majority Jnterest in its stock, he can fairly dignify his spirit of opposition to trusts by the title of public sentiment. And it may be added 'that if things are done by trusts or by any other forms of economic organiza- tion which arouse this sort of disinterested opposition, they speedily work their own cure. If a considerable number of influential men [not all the culprits, of course] see the pernicious effects of a business prac- tice sufficiently to condemn it in themselves as well as in others, they can speedily restrict, if they cannot wholly prevent, its continuance. Most of the effective control of combinations of capital has been, in fact, brought about by intelligent public opinion slowly acting in this way. If, however, the critic is doing on a small scale what the trust is practising on a large scale; if, in short, he simply complains of the practices of the trusts because he is at the wrong end of certain impor- tant transactions, and becomes their victim instead of their beneficiary, then his words count for nothing. No matter how many thousands of men there may be in his position, their aggregate work is not likely to reach farther than the passage of a certain amount of ill-considered r.nd inoperative legislation. It cannot be too often repeated that those opinions which a man is prepared to maintain at another's cost, but not at his own, count for little in forming the general sentiment of a com- munity, or in producing any effective public movement. They are man- ifestations of boastfulness, or envy, or selfishness, rather than of that public spirit which is an essential constituent in all true public opinion. "There are some moralists who would deny the possibility of any such public opinion which should be independent of selfishness, and which should rise above personal interests. But they have the facts of history against them." President A. I. Hadley: Education of the American Citizen, Yale University Press, 1913, p. 25. SOCIAL REGULATION OF DISTRIBUTION 135 sion of public opinion, it is also one of the agencies, though only one, in the formation of public opinion. "Trust-Busting." It would be an empty pretense to claim that our distorted distribution of wealth conforms to any principle of merit or justice. Its right is might. Its might is due to the differences necessitated by organization. Should we attempt to destroy this might, or can we compel it to be just? The talk about "busting the trusts" of which so much has been heard is probably folly. The unscrupulous among the magnates may even have fostered such discussion as a means of throwing dust in people's eyes and obscuring real issues. What we want first of all is efficient production, then just distribution of the product. We have secured the efficiency of production by means of a high degree of organi- zation. What we now need is not to destroy the efficient producer because he keeps an undue share of the product, but to retain the efficiency and add to efficiency in produc- tion justice in distribution. We- should not desire to go back to the wasteful war of universal competition. The elimination of the small producer in so far as it means get- ting the whole supply of any staple from the factories that are most favorably located with reference to raw materials and markets, most effectively correlated with the whole sys- tem of allied industries, most efficiently managed and most completely rid of the wastes of small-scale production and possessing the advantages of large-scale production and com- prehensive organization, is to that degree a survival of the fittest, a saving of the national resources, and an increase of the product to be divided. The trusts have often lowered prices and raised wages notwithstanding they have kept for themselves vast profits; and the very fact of the vast profits is the ground for hope that more may ultimately be secured for labor. Let m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w designate eleven fac- tories engaged in the manufacture of the same product. Sup- pose the first five to possess the advantages of favorable location, abundant capital, comprehensive business relations, 136 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY valuable patent rights and highly efficient management, the next three, designated r, s, t, to be prosperous in a more modest way, and u, v, w to be marginal producers. In the figure below let the verticals terminating in the irregular line cd represent the necessary cost of producing a given amount of output in each of these factories,, and these verticals pro- longed to ab represent the price for which that product will sell. Then the dotted lines between cd and ab will rep- resent the differentials between cost of production and price for these factories. It is plain that if the price level should permanently fall but very slightly factories u, v, w must cease business, for their cost of production, including necessary wages of superintendence, almost exactry equals price, so i t ^^_ 1 r~ , h ? ^ ^ that these factories produce no appreciable differential. If the price level should fall to a'b', factories r, s, t must also go out of business, and the industry would then be monopo- lized by factories m, n, o, p, q which probably would com- bine their management to avoid a war of extermination among giants. They may shut down q, the plant that has least advantages. The remaining factories still have a differential, represented by the dotted lines below a'b' which might be used in increasing wages. These great concerns may now put up the price again, but not too much lest they should invite new and powerful competitors into the field, or cause the demand for their output to fall off too much. The public should desire, not to break up these great concerns but, first, to prevent them from raising prices and, second, to compel them to share the differential with their laborers. SOCIAL REGULATION OF DISTRIBUTION 137 Will the Amount That Now Forms the Differential Be Pro- duced if Part of It Is Diverted to Labor? Is it possible to compel the captains of industry to share the differential with the laborers? We are at once confronted with the objection that if the differential is to be turned over to the laborers it will not be produced. This objection is met if the increased share of labor can be added to the necessary cost of production so that it a ManooerS Share Necessary Wages Pifferent/d! h' must be paid before any differential can be retained by the employer. In that case the line cd (page 136) would be raised to c'd' and that part of the former differential which lies between cd and c'd' would go to labor, and in our former diagram gh would be forced down to g'h' giving labor a 138 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY thicker slice and diminishing the amount of that differential which escapes from secondary distribution. This can be accomplished by a combination of measures. We must avoid overestimating the change in the condi- tion of laborers that would result from a fair division of the differential. According to Professor Ely, 1 "we do not know whether, if the national income were equally distrib- uted, a family of five persons would have $800 or $1,600 to spend." Dr. King in his more recent work, issued under the editorship of Professor Ely, estimates that we produce an annual income "of some $332 per capita, or about $1,500 per family." 2 This income cannot be divided equally. Average profits of entrepreneurs are only a little more than half again as large as average wages. 3 But in this statement all the millions of farmers, shop-keepers, inn-keepers and the like, including the one-mule negro farmers of the South, are included as entrepreneurs, and an average that includes such men with the United States Steel Corporation and the Stand- ard Oil Company is meaningless. Yet, even on that basis, if one-fourth of all profits were transferred to the necessary cost of production and used in the interest of labor it would be equivalent to an addition of almost fifteen per cent, to wages and salaries. 4 Manufacturers have far larger average profits than "all entrepreneurs." According to the census of 1910, manufacturing establishments had an average differential profit of about $8,350. This would be reduced if depreciation of plant (minus appreciation of land) were deducted. The result after that deduction would be pure differential profit. In the case of the great corporations, some addition to the reported profits may be concealed in the item reported as salaries. Such statements of the average profits of manufacturers, however, 1 Ely : Outlines of Economics, Macmillan, 1914, p. 104. 8 Wealth and Income of the People of the United States, page 248. * Average wages according to King are $507, average profits $899. * It would add a considerably larger per cent, to the income of labor if the highly salaried managers did not share in the benefit. According to King, 46.9 per cent, of the national income goes to wages and salaries, 27.5 per cent, to profits. One-fourth of the latter is almost fifteen per cent, of the former. SOCIAL REGULATION OF DISTRIBUTION 139 have only a little more significance than the statement of aver- age profits for all entrepreneurs, for it places in one class the hugest establishments together with great numbers of tiny shops where, for example, a cigar maker works beside his one employee. Such an average conceals the amount of profits in great establishments. We do not know the size of the differ- ential that ought to be shared with labor. But we know that there are great sums that ought to be divided, and that a mod- erate percentage of present wages added to the income of a family as a margin of increase makes a comparatively great difference in their status; and that many families and indi- viduals sink below the poverty line, and many others miss opportunities of life they might have entered, for lack of the margin of income. 1. Factory Legislation. This should require reasonable hours of labor for men 1 and should especially limit the labor of women and children. It should require the safe- guarding of machinery and dangerous processes, and in cer- tain places the provision of first aid for the injured. It should require sanitary conditions in places of labor, preventing so far as practicable dangerous degrees of temperature and humidity and providing for removal of dust and fumes by ( suction pipes, etc. Such legislation does not directly put money into the laborer's pocket, but it does compel the employer to expend money for the benefit of the laborer and to forego a part t>f the excessive income derived from labor, and secures highly needful results which could not be attained by paying the money directly to the workmen. In the past such legislation has been opposed by employers, and at some points is still resisted. But it is a justice to the best employers, for it forces competitors who are less well disposed, to live up to a standard to which the best of employers now willingly con- form. 2 1 What is constitutional, in the end, will be what public opinion holds to be required by the general welfare. 2 Miss Tarbell regards the new model factory as the most inter- esting architectural development in this country. "Welfare arrange- 140 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 2. Tenement Laws and City Planning. These diminish the gains of real-estate holders but secure far more than com- pensating advantages to tenants, and to society as a whole. 1 3. Employers' Liability, Compensation and Industrial In- surance Laws. According to the common law an employer was excused from legal requirement to compensate an em- ployee or the surviving family of an employee injured in his works, on either of the following grounds, the application of which has been limited by statutory enactment in some states and should be in all. 1. The Fellow Servant Doctrine. If the injury were due to the fact that a fellow employee did something which caused the accident, or neglected to do something which would have prevented it, the employer was excused from making com- pensation. This was reasonable when a few men worked in a little shop where all were under the superintendence of each, but it is absurd now that thousands are employed by the same factory or railroad, and the lives of men are hourly dependent upon the faithfulness of fellow employees whom they cannot see and may never have seen. Effective superin- tendence can now be maintained only by the management and for such superintendence the management must be held responsible. 2. The Doctrine of Assumption of Risk. The employer was excused from responsibility if it could be shown that ments of all kinds," she says, "are becoming as much a concern of architects and builders of industrial establishments as foundations and lights." She could give personal stories of great numbers, "who by their changed conditions of work have been transformed ; of girls transfigured from slatterns to clean and tidy decency; of women whose bitter revolt at work performed in ugly and filthy disorder has been changed to cheerful interest ; of men who have given up the saloon. "It is hardly too much to say that these new industrial ideas are producing an entirely new type of employer; one who is almost as much of an educator as he is a maker of things; almost as much a friend of men as he is a 'boss.' He has discovered that no man or woman can reach and keep the point of efficiency which scientific business requires unless he is healthy, content, and growing. How to keep men and women well and happy is part of his business." 1 Compare sections on pp. 87 and 93. SOCIAL REGULATION OF DISTRIBUTION 141 the injured man was aware of the particular risk he ran. The more glaring the neglect to provide for safety, the more obvious the defect in machinery, the clearer the defense of the employer against the responsibility for injuries. The theory was that the workman is free to accept or reject the employ- ment with all its dangers, and if he accepts or continues in such employment when knowing its danger to himself then he alone is responsible for his injury. This theory is con- trary to the facts. There is other compulsion than legal compulsion, enforced by other penalties than fine and im- prisonment. The laborer is compelled to accept such em- ployment as he can get and is powerless to remove dangers which he may see and deplore. 3. The Doctrine of Implied Risk. The employer was not responsible for injuries that resulted from the nature of the industry. Here the doctrine of the assumption of risks applied not to an occasional danger but to an ever-present peril. The Modern View. 1 The modern view is that if maiming and death are a part of the cost of carrying on an industry, then out of the proceeds of that industry some recompense must be made to the injured laborer or to his survivors. Experience and statistics show that the prosecution of cer- tain industries requires not only the constant effort of labor- ers that is, work but also the actual destruction of a per- centage of the working power by accident and untoward con- ditions. Unless such an industry by means of pensions or indemnities can restore the income-yielding capacity which it thus destroys, its output is not paying for the cost of pro- duction. In so far as it yields an income to the employer at the cost of terminating income to the laborers there is no net gain, but only transference of income from the injured to another, which is somewhat like robbing the murdered or the maimed and is socially intolerable. A part of the raw material required by industry is human flesh and it must be paid for if the proceeds of the industry are to cover the cost of their production, not indeed paid for as a living 1 Compare statutes of Massachusetts and New York. 142 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY substance the destruction of which costs pain and bereave- ment, but paid for merely as an income yielding asset. This payment is not made by the employer out of his personal income as a participant in the industry, but it is a disbursement made by him as the agent of secondary distri- bution, and it is difficult to see how he has any more ethical right to withhold it than he has to withhold payment of the price of raw material or the interest on capital. If he can- not make his industry yield these sums his industry is failing to pay for what it consumes. It may be objected that' if this were granted then a great accident might at any moment bring a ruinous unforeseen expense upon any small employer. The reply to this is that such a requirement could not be made upon the occasional employer of labor, but only upon the regular employer of labor, and if it were enforced upon every considerable regular employer of labor, then it would become a part of the normal cost of production to carry insur- ance against the losses of working power as well as against losses by fire. It may also be objected that dangerous labor is highly paid, and ought to insure itself against accidents, for by the high wages the employer has discharged his responsibility. Here a question of fact is involved; in so far as wages are advanced for this cause there is justice in the objection. Implied risks of a tragic and startling character often raise wages to some degree; those of an insidious character that gradually undermine the health as a rule do not raise wages. In fact compulsory industrial insurance was applied to the breaking of health before it was extended to accident. 1 An important incidental result of adequate compensation and insurance laws is diminution in the number- of accidents among laborers. When employers must insure against the 1 The benefits of insurance against illness are even greater than those of insurance against accident. No good thing invented by man is free from all dangers or abuses ; under compulsory insurance a certain amount of malingering may be ' practiced, and carelessness as to very minor accidents may be some- what increase^ SOCIAL REGULATION OF DISTRIBUTION 143 loss of earning power due to these causes they take measures to prevent such loss quite as effective as those which they adopt to diminish danger from fire. Experience has shown that this means of enforcing proper labor conditions in these respects is often more effective than the system of direct legislation and inspection devised for that end. An effective compensation law must specify the condi- tions of payment so definitely that there will ordinarily be no more occasion for an injured laborer or his family to sue for indemnity than there is for the beneficiary of an insurance company to do so. The payment must become mandatory without suit upon establishment of the specified facts. Otherwise the insurance taken out by employers is largely used up in fighting against the payment of compensa- tion, and while great sums are expended, little goes to the injured, especially where statutes do not limit or abolish the application of the old common law defenses against employers' liability. The net result is largely litigation or acceptance of pittances by the injured to avoid undertaking the expense of litigation which the injured laborer or his widow is ill prepared to bear, and embitterment of relations between the laboring and employing classes. A compensation law adequate in its provisions and result- ing in practically universal insurance of large employers against losses by destruction of labor power through indus- trial accident is a near approach to "compulsory labor in- surance," though the statute may make no mention of "insur- ance." Insurance of all laborers employed in industries men- tioned by statute is directly required by law in most of the advanced industrial nations except the United States. 1 Com- pensation laws 2 refer only to losses by accident. While this 1 See W. F. Willoughby : Workingmen's Insurance, New York, 1898; C. R. Henderson: Industrial Insurance in the United States, Chicago, 1909; and American Labor Legislation Review, Vol. Ill, No. 2, New York, 1913. 3 Several states have recently passed laws of this kind ; that of Illinois may be studied as one of the best examples. Claims under the Illinois laws are settled by a state industrial accident board. Any employer in the class to which the law applies may relieve himself of, 144 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY cause of loss is so sensational as first to draw public atten- tion, yet the losses and suffering from this cause are far less than those from sickness, and there is greater need of labor insurance against sickness, unemployment and old age. The principle of compulsory insurance of workingmen was adopted by Germany in 1883. It first provided for sick benefits including free medical attendance, which insures a skillful effort to restore the earning power and prevent pro- longation or permanence of disability, together with a weekly cash allowance, and a special addition in case death super- venes. A little later two laws were passed providing for accident insurance, the income of which commences after the period during which sick benefits are allowed has ex- pired, and which provides, in case of death, besides the regular funeral allowance, a pension to dependent relatives up to 60 per cent, of the daily wages of the deceased. In 1889 pensions for old age and permanent disability were added to the German system of laborers' insurance. The premiums for the support of these various forms of compulsory insurance should be exacted from three sources. A part, especially for sick benefits, should be collected from the laborers in the form of a slight percentage deducted be- fore the wages are paid ; a part, especially for accident in- surance, should be collected from the employers; and a part, especially for pensions, may properly be contributed by the state. This is just, since the public, the employers, and all the laborers benefit by the maintenance of the industry, while the heaviest physical cost of the industry falls at any given its operation by sending the board written notice of his decision not to abide by it, but he is then debarred from defending himself against suit for damages on the ground of assumed risk, contributory negli- gence, or negligence of a fellow servant. Although the awards of the board to injured laborers and their families have been liberal, only about one-eighth of the employers in dangerous trades have with- drawn from the operation of the law, while an equal number of em- ployers whose works do not fall in the class to which the law applies, including the largest employers in the state, have availed themselves of the privilege of placing their industry voluntarily under its pro- visions. SOCIAL REGULATION OF DISTRIBUTION 145 time upon a few of the laborers who with their families are crushed by the burden unless it is in a measure distributed over a larger number of those for whom the industry exists and who benefit by having the 1 risks of the industry incurred. The advantage to the laborers resulting from compulsory insurance is far greater than would result from adding the amount of the premiums to current wages. It is "compul- sory," as Professor Henderson remarks, only in the sense in which our common schools are "compulsory"; it is an act of social cooperation on the part of the entire community. At the outset there was antagonism in Germany against compulsory industrial insurance, but after nearly a genera- tion of experience all political parties favor it. It has dimin- ished poverty, largely substituted justice for "charity," and contributed to the great prosperity which the empire has experienced during recent years. Following Germany, the principle of legally required insurance has now been adopted by Austria Hungary, Italy, .Belgium, France, Norway, Den- mark, Finland, Holland, Luxemburg and Great Britain. 4. The Socialization of Wealth by Taxation. The people through their governmental agencies haVe the power to take possession of the wealth of individual citizens and expend it in the interest of the many. This is the most essential function of sovereignty. It may be abused ; the majority may become the greatest of robbers ; they may exercise the taxing power in such a way as to discourage industry and so dry up the sources from which wealth is derived, reducing the whole land to poverty. Taxation is a great agency in the distribution of wealth, and when the distribution resulting from the natural play of primary and secondary distribution is unsatisfactory an extensive redistribution of wealth by taxation would be entirely possible. The masses of the people have never understood the subject of taxation and taxation has generally operated in such a way as to make the injustice in the distribution of wealth greater instead of making it less as it readily might do. There are two chief questions in respect to the taxing policy of a nation: first, how much shall be raised; second, 146 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY from whom shall it be collected? In the United States very much more might be taken by taxation and applied to public uses, such as schools, libraries, museums, art galleries, con- certs, lectures, the drama, parks, playgrounds and recreation centers, city planning and housing, hospitals, convalescent homes, rural roads, scientific research, etc. The successful expenditure of vaster sums of public money ' would depend upon the development of sufficiently honest and able adminis- tration. The other pressing question is who shall pay the money secured by taxation. It is a great mistake to think that the poor upon whom no assessor calls pays no taxes. Most of our taxes are now indirect, that is, they are finally paid not by the person upon whom they are assessed but by someone else to whom the nominal payer shifts the burden. Thus the tenant pays the taxes on his tenement, and the price paid by the consumer for every commodity on which there has been an import duty or an internal revenue tax includes the tax ; and large quantities of goods have their prices raised as if they had paid an import tax and the extra price goes to a producer in this country, and this results from the character of our existing tax laws. Duties and internal revenue taxes go to the treasury of the national government; the income of state and local governments is mainly derivable from real estate and "personal property." Real estate cannot evade taxation. Personal property can. Under existing laws the owner of a home in village or city cannot escape the payment of an unjust proportion of the public revenues, while the owner of personal property can escape. Personal property consists (i) of consumption goods (or goods that yield no money income, but only the satisfaction derived from their use, such as furniture, pianos, jewelry and the like) 5(2) similar goods held for sale or rental; (3) buildings, machin- ery, tools or animals employed in industry; (4) money, and (5) securities, that is, stocks, bonds, notes and mortgages. The vast accumulations of the rich which escape taxation are mainly in the form of securities, especially the stocks and bonds of corporations. As a rule no one can know how SOCIAL REGULATION OF DISTRIBUTION 147 many stocks and bonds another private individual has in his safety-deposit box unless the information is voluntarily given. For this reason a just tax on such property cannot be forced ; a tax is essentially a forced payment ; therefore such property in the hands of the private individual is not taxable and the attempt to tax it is a farce. It is worse than a farce. The owner of securities is forced to choose between a lie and an 'injustice. If he makes the statement required by the assessor a true one he does himself an injustice, for justice in taxation is proportionate uniformity, and if he discloses his possessions he pays disproportionately so long as the majority of similar possessions escape taxation. As a rule he prefers the lie and receives the premium which the law places upon falsehood. Thereafter he has in his sub- consciousness the admission that there are times when a lie is excusable, and in the pinch of occasion the weakness thus produced in his veracity is likely to show itself. This law is a robbery and a blow at the fundamental honesty of the American people. Taxes upon all corporations should be levied against the corporation as such and paid by the corporation treasurer; and no attempt should be made to tax their securities in the hands of their individual purchasers. In fact the cor- poration treasuries are taxed in various ways, so that the levy on their securities is merely an abortive attempt at double taxation and a deterrent to the honest investor. Corpora- tions might be so taxed as to socialize the excessive income derived from monopolistic power or to discourage the use of such power in extorting excessive income. A tax on the amount of business, however, or what amounts to the same thing, a tax on each unit of business, often would tend to raise prices and to encourage the supply of a reduced output at an advanced figure, so that the tax should be on net income, if that is ascertainable, not on each passenger or ton-mile or unit of product; and in some respects better still is a fixed charge upon the property of the company, or on its out- standing securities, to be met before any differential can be accumulated. 148 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY A tax on great inheritances would afford a particularly favorable method of socializing a portion of massed wealth. Wealth shows itself when it comes to probate in the transfer from testator to legatee. Its new possessor has a slender ethical claim upon it ; his claim is a legal one and can properly be limited by law. Unless close of kin to the testator he is not yet accustomed to a standard of living dependent on the new wealth, and a proper tax upon great inheritances would cause little or no hardship except to the mind of the greedy. A tax on inheritances has all the qualities of a good tax; it is easy and inexpensive to collect, causes little hardship, is just, and is highly productive of revenue. Such a tax should be progressive; that is, the rate of taxation should be higher the greater the inheritance. Small estates might bear no tax. If industrial organization makes it easy for the managers of business to accumulate an unreasonable share of the proceeds there is no moral reason why this per- nicious congestion of wealth should be allowed to remain undisturbed for succeeding generations. 'An attempt would be made to evade an inheritance tax by deeding away property and accepting in return a contract for a life annuity. Such deeds might probably be made illegal. The Unearned Increment. The followers of Henry George argue that no man made the land and no man has any but a merely legal claim to it, which society is at liberty to alter and regulate for the general good. They add that the present rental value of land, especially of the enormously valuable city land, has mostly been produced neither by the owner nor even by nature, but by society, and that society alone is entitled to collect such rental ; that this rental value is largely due to the expenditure of money raised by taxation, in building and maintaining streets, waterworks, parks, schools, fire and police systems; that in other words the people tax themselves to create rental values which they donate to the holders of the land ; that whatever society does by taxation, by building churches, developing industries, and by its other activities, to make it desirable to live arid do business in a given locality creates a privilege for the enjoy- SOCIAL REGULATION OF DISTRIBUTION 149 ment of which private individuals collect the annual rental. They tell us that by actual computation for specific localities, some of which may be more or less typical, a tax on rental values of land alone would yield as much as is now raised for state and local purposes, and that while the taxes of some individuals would be raised, the taxes of an equal number of persons would be lowered. They point out that under their system men could no longer afford to hold the most con- venient land idle for speculative purposes and that building would increase and rents fall, both because the best lots could not be profitably kept unoccupied and because buildings would be untaxed. Objectors to the single tax reply that to make the tax on land equal to its rental value is to confiscate all that its present owner paid for it. The single-taxers answer that ownership of vast quantities of American soil was acquired by free gift of the government or by inheritance at no cost to the possessor, or even, especially in the case of railroads, by the bribery of legislators, and that the legislatures having given away the patrimony of the people, the people have a right to claim its rental value. But it remains true that multitudes of owners have paid for their land in honest, hard- earned cash, and it is hard to see how the rental value of such land can be confiscated with any sort of decency. However, the principle of heavily taxing unearned incre- ments in land value is now established in several states and nations. The unearned, socially created increments in land value will in the future be enormous in this country ; expendi- ture of the people's money in public works, growth of in- dustry, and the increasing needs of a multiplying population will create incalculable rental values; and society ought to adopt and announce the policy of keeping for its own uses the values that will be so created in the future, instead of allowing them to accumulate as a terrific taxing power in the hands of those who will chance to inherit our lands. The ancient Jewish law which provided that at the end of every fifty years all land should revert to the heirs of its original owners, suggests the possibility of a law providing that fifty ISO INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY years after the passage of the law all land shall permanently revert to the state, except that land which at the expiration of that period is in the possession of the person who owned it at the time the law was passed, shall not revert to the state until the death of the owner. The person in possession of a parcel of land at the expiration of fifty years should have the right to retain its use by payment of rental and the right to sell that privilege to another. The selling value of land would diminish throughout the fifty years till at the end it was no greater than the right of tenancy which remained. Every landholder would enjoy till his death the full title to his property unless he chose to sell it. Landed property and inherited property are held more by a merely legal, or conventional, title than property which the owner may have produced, or for which he has given an equivalent. Neither one of these peculiarities by itself might justify confiscation, but both together might justify the social confiscation of property that is at the same time, in land, and inherited, especially if long notice were given for the adjust- ment of plans and expectations. 1 , 1 Nothing short of an amendment to the constitution could inau- gurate such a policy. If public opinion were educated up to the point of adopting such an amendment there is little doubt that the policy would be persisted in. CHAPTER X FURTHER PROPOSALS FOR THE SOCIAL REGULATION OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 5. Minimum Wage Boards. It would be unwise to pass a law that no man shall be employed at less than a specified wage, for unless the wage specified were so low as to render the law of little or no use, it would exclude from all em- ployment the lowest class of laborers who are far better off to earn what they now can, than to be condemned to idle pauperism, and whom no one could afford to employ at the wages proper for competent, normal men. Minimum wages can properly be fixed only for particular industries, and then subject to change with changing conditions. Thus a minimum wage for teachers of a certain grade within a cer- tain area can be fixed with perfect propriety. So also can minimum rates for each of the labor processes involved in a given manufacture. But to do this with justice and with- out danger of crippling the industry and so injuring all en- gaged in it as managers or investors or laborers, would require an authority possessed of first-rate business judg- ment and having access to all the pertinent facts relating to the industry affected. This would require hearings open to both sides and the power to subpoena witnesses. The minimum fixed should be subject at proper intervals to peti- tion for reconsideration from either employers or laborers. This involves the establishment of minimum wage boards, an experiment now being tried by certain states, and which may find far-reaching and beneficent application. 1 1 Nine of the states of this republic now have minimum wage laws (1914). Australia has extended the application of such laws from six trades in 1896 to 141 trades in 1915. England passed a Minimum Wage Board Act in 1909, covering four industries. The industries most 152 Minimum wage legislation may do more harm than good unless its provisions apply to minors or unless it is accom- panied by such child labor legislation as will prevent the discharge of those whose wages it would affect in order to replace them with children. A fevorite way of circumventing minimum wage laws, if permitted, will be apprenticeship laws that will allow the employer to get his cheap work done by a continuous succession of rather long-term appren- tices who are exempted from the decisions of the minimum wage board. 6. Collective Bargaining. The instrumentality which has thus far done most toward securing for labor a share in the differential returns of industry is collective bargaining. "It is usually a matter of small importance to the employer whether or not he secures a particular laborer, while the securing of a particular employment is often a matter of the very greatest importance to the laborer. Under these con- ditions wages are apt to be fixed much closer to the minimum which i the laborer will take than to the maximum which the employer will pay." x One laborer out of the hundreds em- ployed in a factory is in no position to bargain with the employer, especially when other applicants for work are wait- ing at the gates. But the whole body of laborers in the factory, if united, are in a position to bargain with the em- ployer on terms of equality and justice. "The laws of supply and demand, even where they operate far more perfectly than they do with reference to labor, do not give to sellers needing such treatment in the United States are retail stores, tenement industries, and cotton manufacture. Whatever the people in general sufficiently want will become con- stitutional. All who believe in seriously attempting to make govern- ment an agency of democracy in an age of machine industry will help to liberalize the constitution. Modern means of transportation and com- munication and large-scale industry make the nation an industrial unit. All who resist economic justice and wish to perpetuate existing abuses, as well as many others among the naturally conservative will take refuge behind the written constitution. 1 R. T. Ely : Outlines of Economics. Revised Ed. Macmillan Co., 1914, p. 382, SOCIAL REGULATION OF DISTRIBUTION 153 normal prices, but only create a situation in which the sellers can successfully demand a normal price if they' are suf- ficiently awake to their opportunity to refuse to sell for less." Collective bargaining has special advantages in that it is in harmony with the spirit of our free institutions ; by it the laborers help themselves without relying unnecessarily upon the intervention of government, and it develops among them economic intelligence, devotion, and leadership. It is true, however, that the labor unions have at times been foolishly and even wickedly led, or misled, and hav then developed a spirit of hatred and of tolerance for violent and illegal meas- ures. Bargaining implies a certain fairness and readiness to abide by reasonable conclusions, and each side has too often lacked this spirit and has been inclined to rely upon its power to compel the other party to yield to its demands, rather than upon justice, which as a rule requires mutual concessions from opposing interests. Nevertheless there is no room for doubt that collective bargaining has come to stay probably as long as the wage system lasts, and the sooner all parties accept it as a normal and necessary basis for relations be- tween hired labor and employers the better for all concerned. In fact many of the most successful and intelligent employ- ers in this country and abroad have so accepted it, and regard it as for their own interest to have fixed agreements for specified periods with the whole body of their employees. It is a shortsighted error for employers to oppose the organiza- tion of labor. Especially employers are inviting the worst dis- orders and abuses when, in order to make organization diffi- cult, they prefer ignorant laborers unable, because of differ- ences of language, race, and religion, to understand each other. 1 The best labor force is intelligent, well organized and responsible. 2 Collective bargaining implies that the labor 1 This has been illustrated by the recent social and industrial dis. turbances in Colorado. * "There can be no doubt that in the struggle among nations, which, at least in the immediate future, is likely to become more intense than formerly, the people that first brings its social organization into har- 154 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY I union as well as the present corporation is, in some sense at least, a social person with rights and responsibilities. To say that the unions should have powers is equivalent to saying that they should also have responsibilities, for the two can- not be divorced. The great difficulty in this connection has been in enforcing responsibility by any legal means against hundreds or thousands of nearly propertyless individuals even though organized. They ought to be incorporated and to have valuable charter rights. The best way to make them legally responsible is to give them something valuable that can be forfeited by misconduct. As soon as legal privileges, like those of appearing before boards of conciliation and arbi- tration and wage boards, are granted, and as soon as good standing before the bar of public opinion is justly valued by the unions, there is some means of enforcing responsibility upon them by denying legal privileges as a penalty for vio- lating legal obligations and by public approval and disap- proval. Moreover, since the unions now handle large funds there is some opportunity for legal control by pecuniary sanc- tions. The difficulty of enforcing obligation upon the unions has been the serious obstacle to the success of compulsory arbitration. A board of conciliation may have practically all the good results of compulsory arbitration if law requires adequate notice of a proposed strike or lockout, and enables and requires the board to ascertain and publish the facts which reveal the merits of the dispute before the strike can legally be called. A single body of officials might combine 1;he duties of board of conciliation and minimum wage board. 7. Profit-sharing and Cooperation. These are not com- pulsory but voluntary measures, the former depending . on mony with the new conditions will have an immense advantage. The country that can first raise its working population to an intelligent and enthusiastic solidarity of feeling and interest, a compact nation of free, instructed men, would in the scientific (industrial) warfare of to-day have an exceptionally strong position against a government of capitalists dragging after them an unwilling, demoralized, and igno- rant host of proletarians." Thomas Kirkup. SOCIAL REGULATION OF DISTRIBUTION 155 the initiative of the employers, the latter on that of the laborers. In profit-sharing, because he regards it as good business to bind the laborer to him by such means, or because he admits the justice of the laborer's claim to a share in the differential, or for both reasons, the employer pays the laborers a dividend in addition to wages. The amount of the dividend in the case of each individual laborer is usually based upon the amount of regular wages paid him, that is, upon the value of the laborer's investment of work. Sometimes it is based in part on the length of the laborer's service. This is ob- jected to because it puts a penalty on striking; and the right to quit and seek a new employer or better terms is the car- dinal difference between the free laborer and the slave. Profit- sharing is not general but sporadic and promises no general relief unless in response to a far more pressing demand of public opinion. In cooperative industry the workers are themselves the stockholders in the company and elect their own managers. Cooperative stores, cooperative building and loan companies and other cooperative credit associations, cooperative eleva- tor companies and fruitgrowers associations, and cooperative "garden cities" have proved successful. But in these (unless in an exceptional case), the majority of the stockholders are not employed by the company. On the other hand, cooperative industry, in which the cooperators have been their own employees, has rarely proved successful. There is great danger that the cooperators will not be willing to pay wages of superintendence enough greater than the wages of ordinary labor to retain competent management, that they will not refrain from jealousy and cross purposes as a result of ques- tions of preferment, and that they will not submit to proper discipline in the works. One of the main principles of cooperation is "one man, one vote." In an ordinary corporation a man who owns more than half the stock can outvote all the other stockholders. The principle of "one-man vote" is probably safer even in non-cooperative corporations than the principle of "voting the 156 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY shares," for normally the stockholders all are interested In the prosperity of the business, and it is not so certain that the holders of a majority of the stock will be just to a scattered multitude who may own the minority of the stock. The interests of a business may be sacrificed by a few wealthy stockholders who are interested, for example, not in the legitimate productivity of the stock, but in causing the value of the stock to fluctuate so that they may profit on the stock exchange by their foreknowledge of its fluctuations. The objection to the one-man, one- vote plan is that a competitor may cheaply buy a share in the management. Cooperative companies survive this danger. 8. Bipartite Cooperation. The articles of agreement un- der which business is done by a concern might provide that the company should be composed of two classes of mem- bers: (a) those who invest capital; (b) those who invest labor. Just as anyone may now become a member of a company by purchasing stock, so anyone might become a member of Class B by being accepted as a laborer. The members of each class would elect a board of directors. The directors of Class A would have charge of matters in which there is no conflict of interest between the two classes of members, including all buying, selling, general promo- tion of productivity and profit, including all handling of capital. The directors of Class B would devise methods for promoting the welfare of their class so far as there was no conflict with the interests of Class A. Whenever it was neces- sary to secure the consent of Class A to any plan for the benefit of the laborers, or whenever there was a question involving a conflict of interests between Class A and Class B, the matter would be referred to a council composed of four, including two representatives chosen by each board of directors. If the council failed to reach a majority decision the question would be referred to a joint meeting of the boards of direc- tors. This body would have at its command all the facts of the case, would fully represent all interests, and should be able to promote good understanding. In case the joint meet- ing of the two boards could not reach a majority decision SOCIAL REGULATION OF DISTRIBUTION 157 (a majority of nine to five might be required if the joint directorate numbered fourteen), the question should be re- ferred to three arbitrators, one representing each class of members, and the third a disinterested outsider. The third arbitrator should be named at the time of organization and not after some difference has occurred. All members of both classes should bind themselves to abide by the decisions of the council of four, the joint directorate, or the arbitra- tors, and not to interrupt the continuance of the business under existing conditions because of any pending differ- ence. 1 The principle must be accepted that those who invest labor as well as those who invest capital' are entitled to a share in the management of industry, and that it is intolerable for the former to be without voice or representation in decid- ing questions in which there is a clear division of interest between the laborers and the managers. 9. Prevent Stock-Watering and Limit Stock Gambling. Stock-watering is the issuance of securities having a par value greater than the actual property of the company. Ostensibly a stock certificate is an evidence of ownership of property, but evidences of ownership of five million dollars' worth of property may be issued and sold, where only one million dollars' worth of property exists. Suppose a promoter sees opportunity to consolidate the four chief concerns engaged in a given industry and so establish a monopoly. These con- cerns having plants worth, say, a million dollars each ($4,000,- ooo in all) agree to turn them over to the new company for stock having a par value of three million dollars each ($12,- 000,000 in all). The underwriter who floats this stock, that is, buys the whole lot and sells it out as he can, receives a bonus of stock having a par value' of, say, two millions, and the promoter who devised the plan and secured the coopera- tion of the four original companies and of the underwriting bank or syndicate, receives an equal bonus. This brings the 1 The strike of the Hart Schaffner and Marx workers in 1914 was terminated by an agreement resembling that here outlined, as was also the previous strike of the New York Garment Workers. 158 * INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY total issue of stock up to $16,000,000 on a material basis of $4,000,000. The excessive issuance of stock by great cor- porations is the rule and not the exception, and a dispro- portion of four to one as in our illustration is sometimes much exceeded. The buyers of such stock are cheated. A vast supply of stocks and bonds is provided to be speculatively bought and sold, not seldom at "manipulated" values. In order to keep these securities afloat in the market, the indus- try must be made to pay dividends not only upon the capital actually invested in it, but also upon the money paid by purchasers of the securities and pocketed by the promoters of the organization. To make an industry pay dividends upon several times the capital really invested in it, managers are forced to depress wages and to employ every monopolistic expedient to exalt prices. The change in the method of taxing corporations above proposed would itself tend to discourage stock-watering if the amount of the stock issued were made the basis of the amount of the tax; but a more direct method of preventing the watering of stock is available. The actual property of each corporation should be subject to government inspection and a statement of the amount of its property should be open to all investors and such a statement should accompany every public announcement of stock offered for sale by the company together with a statement of the bonded indebted- ness of the company. The experience of Germany, Austria, and France taken together shows that with proper legisla- tion, stock-watering is an unnecessary evil. An additional abuse has frequently arisen when two or more corporations of this sort have united through the agency of a "holding company." A holding company could establish its control by tmying half of the stock of the corporations so united. An individual or group of individuals could control the holding company and so the concerns which it had united, by owning half of the stock of the holding com- pany, equal in par value to one-fourth of the stock of the companies consolidated and controlled. Indeed they need not own as much as one-fourth, for besides issuing bonds, which SOCIAL REGULATION OF DISTRIBUTION 159 carry no right to vote, such corporations usually fcave more than one class of stock, only one of which may have the voting right, and to control the whole mass of "securities" it is only necessary to own half of the voting stock. 1 Dealing in futures on margin is buying and selling com- modities or securities, through a broker, at an unknown future price, without paying the price for what is purchased, but only depositing a "margin" with the broker sufficient to protect the latter from loss on account of fluctuations in the prices of that which he is ordered to buy or sell, the person commissioning the broker thereby standing to lose the margin deposited, and standing to gain if the future prices prove to be higher when selling orders go into effect than when buying orders go into effect. This is very largely a type of gambling and is responsible, like other gambling, for much fleecing of lambs; and like other gambling it is likely to be played as a "sure thing game" by the insiders. Much wealth amassed and shifted from hand to hand by this agency is wrongfully taken from its possessors. It is difficult to see why anyone should be allowed to buy stocks "on credit." This can hardly be regarded as investment. It is an ab- surdity to claim that we need in this way to swell the volume of speculation "in order to determine the true value of securities." And it seems probable that dealing in futures on 1 Congressional Record, June 20, 1914, p. 10762. Senator Owen said : "Three groups of men having their headquarters in New York have been shown, through interlocking directorates and interlocking control, to have the direction of approximately $22,000,000,000 of prop- erty, and practically to have the control over nearly every railroad in the country, and every one of the great industrials. Those men can forbid the railroads to buy rails, to buy steel cars, to buy railroad frogs and switches, to buy lumber and to buy cross ties; those men can put out of employment thousands and tens of thousands of men; those men can constrict credits in the districts of representatives who are to be elected in the fall, and in the states of senators who are to be elected in the fall; they can by their power make hard times in districts where they want to have a change, and where they want to defeat those in sympathy with a correction of those condi- tions, whether these candidates be Democrats or Progressive Repub- licans." 160 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY margin will in time be regarded as an abuse, 1 no longer to be tolerated by public opinion or by law. 10. A Commission for Corporations. The great concerns may be expected to employ the monopolistic power, which they naturally tend to acquire, in raising prices to the point at which the differential remaining in their possession will be as great as possible. Their effort to do this will not be decreased by encroaching upon the differential in the ways above outlined, which increase the cost of production in order to thicken the slice of labor. On the contrary their motive for raising prices will be increased by these measures. It is possible that the prices now paid by bargain-hunting con- sumers for certain, products is not sufficient to allow the pay- ment of proper wages to laborers. If so, adoption of these reforms will imply a rise of prices. Great manufacturing concerns have in general raised prices to the point at which they are checked by natural causes. The natural checks on monopolistic prices are the fear of calling into competition in any specially profitable industry new and powerful combina- tions of capital, and more effectual still the fact that with excessive rise of price the demand for any given commodity falls off, so that there is a point at which further rise of prices would diminish income instead of increasing it. It is not true that a monopoly can get for its output any price it chooses to ask. It is one thing to ask a price and quite another to get it. A monopoly aims to ask the highest price that people will pay for a sufficient quantity of its output to make the net returns greater than they would be if a larger quantity were sold at a lower price. Raising prices and limiting output are correlative. But the consumer is not contented with the limitation upon prices that is set by the causes just stated. If by producing and selling a given quantity of goods at a given price the monopoly secures the same net income that would result from producing double the quantity of goods and selling them at a price so reduced that the public would buy the doubled output, it might be a 'matter of indifference to the monopoly whether the larger *This refers to securities, not to commodities. SOCIAL REGULATION OF DISTRIBUTION 161 or the smaller quantity were produced. But it could not be a matter of indifference to the public, for not to mention the in- creased opportunity afforded to labor in case of the larger production, the placing of a larger quantity of goods within the reach of the public purchasing power, the greater abun- dance of desirable commodities, and lowered price, are exactly the results most to be desired from the point of view of the consumers. The problem is : how are we to prevent monopo- lies and near-monopolies from limiting their output to the quantities saleable at high prices which yield them the largest possible net returns? If they could not arbitrarily raise the price then the chief way for them to increase their income would be to increase the quantity of the output of a given kind and quality up to the point where the public demand was satisfied; that is, the point at which the public ceased to buy at a price covering the cost of production, including, of course, the wages of superintendence. Now if in any important industry monopoly has the power arbitrarily to raise the prices and to limit output, it is desirable that it, be confronted by a power that can arbitrarily limit the rise of. prices. There is no power ade- quate to accomplish this but the power of government. But that power must be exercised with great circumspection. Changing the price on each article by a small percentage may suffice to wipe out a great profit and substitute a deficit. To cripple industry by limiting the price of its product would be like the folly of the woman who killed the 'goose that laid the golden eggs. Arbitrary power to limit prices may be necessary to confront the arbitrary power to raise them, but if so it must be exercised by carefully chosen men of character, training, and intelligence, who have access to the facts relating to each industry over which they have power, and their decisions should be subject to. appeal for modifica- tion at reasonable intervals. To attempt to regulate prices by general legislation rather than by specific action case by case, would be impracticable. This calls for the institution of a special court or commission for this purpose. To secure \\\ necessary promptness and flexibility and authority, th$ 162 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY commission must be able to make rules within the limits of its legally defined authority and to apply those rules to specific cases without the intervention of any other court. Legisla- tion of this sort, if undertaken, should proceed tentatively at first to a few fundamental industries. We have already learned some lessons of experience by price regulation through a commission in an exceedingly difficult field, that of inter- state transportation. The question of constitutionality need not be raised. The existence of such a commission having power to ascertain the necessary facts and in the light of those facts to regulate prices, might very possibly render it unnecessary to exercise power over prices, save in rare instances and as a last resort. Such an agency with power to make public facts concerning the management of corporations in respect to certain topics including the issuance of stock, payment of wages, the cost of production, and the fixing of prices, would bring to bear the force of public opinion in such a way as to accomplish important results without resort to any legal compulsion beyond that necessary to ascertain these facts. The topics with reference to which the commission could publish information should be limited by law so as to guard legitimate trade secrets. But no corporation, creature as it is of the public will, has any right to refuse to the public information that is necessary for guidance of the public or its agents in protecting the general interests. Otherwise the corporation may become an afrit, a Frankenstein, able to defy and rule and rob its maker. Before going so far as to empower a commission to regulate prices by decree it is well to try the effect of pub- licity alone. The Federal Trade Commission, which has been established by Congress since the foregoing paragraph was written, has power to secure all necessary information con- cerning great corporations and, at its discretion, to publish such information. On discovery of unlawful practices, it is authorized to recommend to the courts the steps by which to terminate such practices, by the application of existing laws, and to report to Congress any facts which may call f is dispenser and the other recipient of ideas and influences. The superiority may alternate from one to the other, as the communication changes from a sub- ject in which one associate reveals in his speech or conduct the greater clearness of ideas or positiveness of intention or depth of feeling to a subject in respect to which the other associate has the preeminence. For these reasons Simmel says that the universal social fact is superiority and subordi- nation, that wherever there is society such "superiority and subordination" exist. Though there is truth in this, it is far from being the whole truth and probably Simmel would not have selected this designation for the inclusive social re- lation if he had lived in a more democratic country where superiority and subordination is a less conspicuous reality than it is in Germany. There it seems to be more or less vividly present to consciousness in nearly all social contacts, while here it seems to be practically absent from consciousness in much if not in most social intercourse, and an interesting phase or incident of social relation rather than the essence of it. Accordingly we adopt the name association as the desig- nation for the universal social relation, the relation of which we can say that it is always present wherever there is society ; or we may describe that relation figuratively by the phrase social osmosis. Association Depends on Communication and Is Always a Causal Relation. Association or social osmosis exists only when one is aware of the activity of his associate; therefore if not absolutely identical with communication association at least implies communication, not necessarily, however, inten- tional or even conscious communication, but only the fact that knowledge of another's activity is received, as it may be re- SOCIETY FROM WITHIN 305 ceived by an eavesdropper, or by an observer using a spy- glass. Two men who are aware of each other's activities are in communication and association whether they are convers- ing or sawing wood. Whether there be any intention to communicate or not, the fact that the activities of associates are known to each other establishes the relation of associa- tion. The clearest difference between the common use of the words "association" and "communication" is that we prefer to use the word "communication" when an associate inten- tionally imparts a knowledge of his activities to another, usu- ally by speaking or writing, but we use the word "association" with complete indifference to whether the relation is inten- tional or not. Yet even the word "communicate" we do not always confine to intentional communication ; for example, we say that a crowd owes its peculiar character largely to the readiness with which its members communicate their emotions, though they may have no intention so to communicate. Two deaf and dumb men sawing wood together are in communica- tion, and likely to work far more happily and efficiently than if alone. Not only will their communication satisfy the in- stinct of sociability, they will get suggestions from each other, will encourage and stimulate each other, or depress each other, will desire to command each other's respect as sawyers, and are likely to engage in half or wholly conscious emulation. Either of the two words "association" and "communication" implies the probability of mutuality or reciprocity in the re- lation. Possibly the word "association" carries that sugges- tion more distinctly and somewhat more suggests the fact of far-reaching consequences. Everyone who gives a place in his attention to the activity of another is practically sure to be in some way influenced by that fact. The highest is affected by the humblest and the wisest by the stupidest, if it be only to despise his humble colleague and to exalt his own pride, to avoid resemblances and to exaggerate the differences between the two. This tendency of human beings to be influenced by each other is a universal, social fact; it is for sociology what affinity is to chemistry. Like gravity, it can be resisted and the effects of 306 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY one social influence may be offset by another external tug or internal propulsion, but it is always there, one of the moments entering into the resultant. Social Suggestion. This universal social relation which we have termed association, or social osmosis, appears in various forms, which may be distinguished according to the nature of the particular activities that issue from the causal contact. The elements that enter into the life of society and of the in- dividuals who compose society are of three kinds, namely, ideas, sentiments, and overt practices; therefore, the causal relationships that exist between the activities of associates may be of at least three main sorts: (i) those relations in which the idea of one associate becomes known to another, which we call social suggestion; (2) that in which the sen- timent of one associate is felt by another, which we shall call sympathetic radiation; and (3) that in which the overt prac- tice of one associate is practiced by another, which we shall call imitation. When B has an idea because A first had it the causal rela- tion between the conditioning activity and the resultant activity we call suggestion. 1 It is not at all necessary that A should tell B his idea. In- stead B may infer it from the practices of A. Thus the ap- prentice gets his idea of trade processes mainly by watching the skilled workman. Thus children learn the ideas of their parents and youths learn the ideas of business men and poli- ticians. Sometimes we say we "wonder what he means," re- ferring not to his words but to his conduct ; and in general we infer the ideas of our associates from their overt practices, as well as receive them directly in what they say. Whether the idea of A is told to B, or is inferred by B, it is a case of suggestion. Two important statements may be added about suggestion. First: there is nothing logical about suggestion; that is to say, we get the ideas that our associates have, or seem to have, without regard to whether they are true ideas or false ones. 1 We do not need to discuss the psychology of suggestion, but only to observe the causal relationship between ideas of associates. SOCIETY FROM WITHIN 307 We are not using the word "suggestion," as some writers do to mean adoption of an idea, so that it is believed and acted on, in the absence of logical grounds, but "suggestion" as we use the term has nothing to do with the presence or absence of logical grounds for the adoption of the idea. After we get ideas from our associates we may test them, but we get them, false and true alike. The relation between the ideas of our associates and the ideas that we get from them is a purely casual one up to that point. This has vast consequences in the building up and perpetuation of systems of social be- lief, firmly held, but often superstitious and every way erro- neous. We cannot test suggested ideas unless we have some data by which to test them. A child who grows up among associates whose religious and political and moral ideas are superstitious and distorted gets those false ideas. Later he may test many of them and replace some of them with- better ones, but unless better ones come from some other social source there is but little chance of his doing so. Doubt and Thought. This section is inserted as a paren- thesis, and as a comment upon the statement just made that there is nothing logical about suggestion. I invite you to doubt everything that you read in this book. Doubt is the thought you give to an idea before you accept it as true, or reject it as false. Doubting is thinking about an idea without either affirming or denying the idea. When one says, "I believe that," then he has ceased to doubt ; and when he says, "I do not believe that," then also he has ceased to doubt, or more probably he has never doubted in either case. Many ideas are so clear and simple that as soon as stated they must be believed. Two and two are four one cannot doubt about that. Of other ideas one can be sure just as easily and promptly that they are false. Two and two are five one cannot doubt about that ; you know at once that it is not so. The more intellectual power and experience in thinking or doubting one has had, the larger the number of ideas about which he can decide at once that they are either true or false. And it is equally true that the greater one's in- tellectual power and experience in thinking, the larger the 308 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY number of questions he can comprehend as problems but can- not answer ; the higher one climbs the wider the dim horizon of uncertainty. And the greater one's intellectual develop- ment, the more he will be able, whenever the question is too complex or deep to be answered offhand, to suspend judg- ment and continue thinking until he has a rational belief. If you find that you cajinot solve a problem do not be distressed about it, but put it aside and let it lie upon the shelf. Go back to it later, after you have learned and grown more, and try your strength upon it. Sometimes you may find that a problem that once baffled you yields readily to solution ; other problems will forever transcend our powers. The person with little power of thought and experience in thinking an- swers deep questions with mere snap judgments: "Oh, I do not believe that," or, "Yes, I believe that." He condemns the book that was not written from his own point of view and shuts himself up in his own limitations. Most of what people believe, they believe just because the notion has been presented to them when they were not old enough or not instructed enough or not thoughtful enough to see any reason for doubting it. So we take on the ideas that are current in our family and neighborhood without ever hav- ing doubted them and acquire a stock of beliefs that have stuck to us as burrs stick to clothing in an autumn walk through the fields. They are really no part of us. And most of what people disbelieve they disbelieve without ever having doubted it. They simply rejected it. When an idea is pre- sented, even to the mind of an older and more instructed person, it may be eagerly welcomed or instantly refused with- out one doubt. It may be welcomed because it harmonizes with the cherished beliefs which we have already adopted ; or because it is creditable to ourselves or our friends or our party of whom we are glad to think well ; or because it excuses us from doing disagreeable things ; or because if true it is a reason for doing what we like to do, or because it is an idea that we like to have prevail because of its effect on the con- duct of others. Or it may be rejected because it disagrees with the cherished beliefs which we have already adopted ; or SOCIETY FROM WITHIN 309 because it is not creditable to ourselves or our family or our party of whom we are unwilling to think ill; or because if true it summons us to do that which is disagreeable or for- bids us to do that which is agreeable; or because we fear its effect on the conduct of others. Most of the ideas and be- liefs upon debatable questions which furnish the minds of 'men are held for such causes as these, having been first adopted during childhood and youth. And after being once adopted, arguments for retaining these beliefs can be seen and appre- ciated far more easily than arguments for changing them. Thus it is that many people have eyes for facts and consid- erations that are favorable to their own sect or party, but none for those favorable to opposing sects or parties. One element in the "point of view" which at the outset was said to be essential to the study of sociology was riddance, so far as this is possible, from sectarian, partisan, sectional, racial, and every other bias. The first thing to do, and the hardest, if we wish to see the world as it is, is to get rid of our colored spectacles and be just as ready to see truth that calls in ques- tion our established beliefs and prejudices and is out of har- mony with our personal and party interests as we are to see truth that reenforces our cherished beliefs, established preju- dices, and favored interests -to be impartial and disinterested judges of truth. This is "the supreme intellectual virtu Especially if all, or nearly all, of those to whom he looks up in his habitual social contacts have the same conscience code, he thinks that all properly constituted men are born, having within them that set of moral sanctions which he himself has felt from before his earliest recollection. The conscience code is not imparted to the young merely or even mainly by precept. To state the idea that others approve or disapprove such and such actions does not insure that the child shall feel approval and disapproval for those acts. Rather he acquires by sympathetic radiation the feel- ings of approval and disapproval that, are not merely stated but actually felt and manifested by those about him. Not moral precepts but the common table talk, the daily conduct, words spoken of neighbors behind their backs, the ordinary course of life, these manifest the standards of ambition and self- judgment that are actually felt and that are communicated to the young. Sympathetic radiation secures the prevalence and perma- nence not only of tastes, ambitions and approvals. but also of such sentiments as prejudices, hatreds, and loyalties the sen- timents which attach to the name Republican or Demo- crat, to Columbia, the flag, and the hymns we have sung in great congregations, enmities between Bulgarians and Turks lasting for centuries, and the like. Of these principal social realities some may be so grounded in nature and circumstances that, if by magic they could be wiped out, they would spring 320 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY up anew in many breasts ; yet even these spread by sympathetic radiation to thousands in whom they would not have taken independent rise, and they not only spread but are intensified by their radiation to each from many. Sentiments survive by sympathetic radiation long after they have ceased to be grounded in any justification, and have become a bar to progress. Imitation. Imitation is less fundamental than suggestion, indeed both imitation and radiation imply the presence of some degree of suggestion. But suggestion may exist with- out imitation, and in many instances the suggestion is incon- spicuous while the imitation is impressive. In the last chapter we treated suggestion and imitation as functions of the same predisposition and set aside as erroneous the teaching of Lloyd Morgan and others that there is an "in- stinct of imitation." We do not need to suppose an instinct in order to account for the fact of imitation; we only need to remember that an idea suggested tends to realize itself in action. The acts of associates are constantly suggesting the ideas of actions. Ac- tion, not resistance, is pleasurable, and especially actions of members of our own species are congenial to us ; besides to act as they do brings us into sociable relations with them. There are two varieties of imitation, namely, ideomotor imitation and rational imitation. The simple and often un- recognized imitation which is due merely to the fact that an idea moves us to corresponding action is called ideomotor; but purposeful imitation, like that by which the apprentice copies his master, is rational. Imitation as a factor in building up and perpetuating prev- alent social activities may be illustrated by the fact that a Northerner going South or a Southerner going North to reside, in time and without any purpose to do so, assimilates his pro- nunciation to that of his neighbors. It was by the same method that those born into that society caught the pronunciation of their section with their earliest speech. An American who has resided for years in France is likely to accompany his French speech with French gestures. Perhaps all peoples raise the SOCIETY FROM WITHIN 321 eyebrows and open the mouth when astonished. Esquimaux, Tlinkits, Andamanese and Brazilian Indians accompany this play of feature by a slap on the hips ; the Ainus and the Shin- Wans give themselves a light tap on the nose or mouth, while the Thibetans pinch their cheek; the Bantus move the hand before the mouth, while the Australian and Western Negroes protrude the lips. 1 The modes of salutation with which students greet each other in the halls of German universities differ widely from those exchanged by the American students. While the salutations practiced by savage and barbarous peo- ples present curious variations between groups, and estab- lished uniformities within the groups, Polynesians, Malays, Burmese, Mongols, Esquimaux and others sniff each other or "rub noses," while the kiss is unknown over half the world. The gaits, manner of carrying the elbows, and postures of ladies change with the fashions. Table manners, as well as other forms of etiquette, are matters of imitation. Some of the peoples that do not use chairs sit crosslegged, others squat without crossing the legs. But each people is likely to have a way of sitting which for them is the way. Similarly games like baseball or tennis or boxing develop a "form" which for the time being is accepted and prevails, though any champion who has an idiosyncrasy may start a new wave of imitation. Fighting also has its "forms." The peoples of northern Europe are smashers, pounders, the swinging blow is their fighting form, and the hammer of Thor, the club, the mace and the battle-axe their characteristic weapons, and when they adopt the sword they make it a saber, falchion, or broad-sword, and swing it as if it were a club. With the peoples of southern Europe the piercing stab is the fighting form. The Romans conquered the world thrusting, and the characteristic sword of their descendants is not the saber or broad-sword, but the rapier. We wonder that the Japa- nese who can make so exquisite a blade give it so awkward a shape and hang and handle. It is awkward for a swinging; blow but not so for a slicing- push, which is the fighting form of the Japanese. Barbarous and savage peoples have each 1 J, Deniker: The Races of Man. Scribners, 1904, p. iiPi 322 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY their fighting form. Fighting form may be somewhat influ- enced by build and temperament as well as by imitation. Peoples have also their characteristic working form. The Chinese pull the saw and plane, while we push them. The ap- prentice learning to plaster a wall, or the practitioner of any craft or art learns his style and method by imitation. Imitation is a causal relation between an overt action and the antecedent action of an associate. <* xJUA*''/ CHAPTER XVIII PRESTIGE AND ACCOMMODATION Prestige. There is one point of verisimilitude in the myth which attributes the custom of creasing trousers to the ex- ample of an English lord, who being unable to get his trunks out of the custom-house in time to dress for the social en- gagements that waited upon his arrival in New York, pur- chased a pair of readymade trousers and wore them with the creases they had acquired from lying in a pile in the store. A million ordinary immigrants might have done the same without affecting the fashions of New York society. An opinion or a sentiment uttered by Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Roosevelt at the time of their greatest influence might become at once an important element in the life of the nation ; it might initiate a reform or precipitate a war. Ten thousand com- mon men might form and express the same opinion or sen- timent with no greater effect than the momentary interest of the immediate hearers. As in the topography of a continent, a farm, or a dooryard there are high points from which the water flows to the lower lying portions, so in the surface of society, whether that society be a nation, a neighborhood, or a household, there are points of comparative elevation from which social influence flows out. The comparison is not perfect because water will not flow uphill, and social influence does flow in some degree in both directions. Yet the comparison and the foregoing illustra- tions suffice to bring to mind a fact of social relationship of universal presence and immeasurable import to which we give the name of "prestige." * Every socius has some degree {Q . -\ All of which depend for 2. Sympathetic . ,. . ^mam effectiveness upon radiation T ., .. prestige. 3. Imitation \J s 323 324 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY of causal efficiency, as a modifier of the activities of his as- sociates. Whatever heightens the causal efficiency of an in- dividual or of a class so as to make that individual or class more effective as the source of social suggestion, radiation, and imitation is said to give prestige. Kinds of Prestige. Professor Ross classifies the forms of prestige thus : 1. The prestige of numbers 2. The prestige of age, or of the elders 3. The prestige of prowess, such as is enjoyed by ath- letes or military leaders 4. The prestige of sanctity, or of the priestly class 5. The prestige of inspiration, or of the prophets 6. The prestige of place, or of the official class 7. The prestige of money, or of the rich 8. The prestige of the ideas, or of the elite 9. The prestige of learning, or of the mandarins 1 To these may be added (10) prestige of birth or of family, which in origin is a prolongation of other forms of prestige. The comparative influence of these forms of prestige in society goes far to determine the character of that society. For example, preeminence of the prestige of numbers tends to make a society impulsive rather than reasonable, because feelings easily become the common property of the mass, while reasons for moderating impulse and for adopting well-con- sidered plans are less easily popularized. It is by no means impossible for a mass of people to act reasonably; but if they do, it is because wise leaders enjoy prestige and have means of ready communication with the multitude. Mass prestige may be combated by other forms of prestige, but of itself it tends to produce an impulsive, as distinguished from a reasonable, people. Impulsiveness often displays itself as fickleness, but often too it displays itself as stubbornness and resistance to change, whatever the prevalent feeling prompts. The prestige of the elders played a leading role among primitive men and still does so among savages. In civilized 1 Social Control, p. 79. PRESTIGE AND ACCOMMODATION 325 society the prestige of elders has a tremendous significance in shaping each rising generation. Among the civilized it has its chief, but by no means its only, sphere of influence in the family. The prestige of elders tends to make society conserva- tive, to resist new-fangled notions, and to maintain the vener- able traditions. It is a bulwark of order and stability. It is possible for an advanced society to get its character from predominance of the prestige of elders. Prevalence of an- cestor worship heightens this form of prestige. Regard for the venerable members of society and the conservative effect of this form of prestige as a basis of social organization has been made familiar by the rigidity of Chinese traditions which for centuries almost ossified that great society. A manifestation of the prestige of prowess is seen in the athletic heroes who gratify the instinctive impulses of group combat as they are aroused by intercollegiate athletics. 1 The social dominance of the military class enables that class to impose upon society, tastes, moral standards, customs, and social stratifications. The original discussion of the broad general contrast between a society formed by military prestige and one formed by industrial aims and ideals is that of Her- bert Spencer. 2 This contrast largely explains the differences between the civilization of the sixteenth and that of the nine- teenth century, and between the social life of nineteenth-cen- tury Prussia and of nineteenth-century America. One of the numerous characteristics of a society dominated by military prestige is the punctilious insistence upon rank and station. In Prussia to this day two gentlemen on the sidewalk are quite 1 Athletic sports are among the priceless possessions of our society. In college we ought to convert a large proportion of the "rooters" into active participants in athletic games. Intercollegiate athletics, because they have advertising value, have been allowed to receive disproportion- ate emphasis as an element of college and university life, in some re- spects to the detriment of sport that enlists the participation of larger numbers and that develops other leadership than that of the hired coach, as well as to the detriment of intellectual competitions that appeal more to reason but less to instinct. 2 Spencer : Principles of Sociology. Appleton, 1901. See index to volumes i and iii for many references under "Militancy" and "Indus- trialism." 326 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY aware of judging which is entitled to walk on the other's right, and in Austria even the wife of the chimney-sweep is vividly conscious who are her social inferiors and expects them to address her as "Mrs. Master Chimney-Sweep." It must be understood that the military class do not impose their man- ners, tastes, moral standards, or opinions upon society by the exercise of force, but that society voluntarily and as a matter of course adopts the ideas, sentiments, and practices of those of its members who have the greatest prestige. The prestige of sanctity, or of the priests, powerful as it has been in the past, and still is in many places, has nearly faded away among American Protestants, among whom the "minister" must win his influence, as a man, and not as the official of a Heavenly Court. In modern society the prestige of the official class is con- siderable and among us it tends to increase with the elevation of politics, and with the extension of governmental activi- ties. The prestige of birth has been most influential in molding societies and very often has so outranked the prestige of wealth that the chief of the clan though in rags commanded implicit imitation as well as obedience. Where the prestige of birth and of military prowess prevails, society is so strati- fied that it is in general hopeless for one to seem to belong to any other class than that to which he is assigned. Then the serving girl may wear her hood or a kerchief, declining, as absurd, to wear a bonnet like that of her mistress even if it were given her. The prestige of wealth is the first and crudest of the de- mocratizing standards. It is democratizing because wealth is not permanent; the rich may sink into poverty and the poor may rise to wealth, so that rank according to wealth is not like rank by birth hopelessly fixed. Yet social estimation based on wealth is only one step above that based on prowess, and on birth from men of prowess, and in the ages to come ought to yield the chief place to prestige of the elite and pres- tige of achievement. In an intelligent democracy even prestige of place is a nobler standard than prestige of mere wealth. In PRESTIGE AND ACCOMMODATION 327 an advancing democracy the prestige of wealth is as conserva- tive as the prestige of the aged. It resists change, it "stands pat" and does what it can to make the advocacy of progressive change "bad form." This form of prestige is at its height with us and molds our manners, social customs, and our ambitions. How much it influences us we can learn only by comparing ourselves with a society less influenced by this form of pres- tige. We have so thoroughly adopted money standards that we find it difficult to imagine a state of society in which men do not commonly rate themselves and each other by their scale of income and in which people do not commonly try to appear to have spent more money than they can really afford. Yet such societies have existed and will exist again when other forms of prestige sufficiently outrank the prestige of wealth. The prestige of wealth is not the same as prestige of economic achievement. Economic achievement as an evidence of per- sonal power and economic production as distinguished from mere acquisition is a socially admirable exercise of power. The elite should not be defined exclusively in terms of in- tellect, but also in terms of morality. It is not enough that the elite have "ideas," they must also have the social spirit; those who follow them must be justified in believing that they think and act with sincere interest in the general good. With the increase of public intelligence, and of experience in democ- racy, the public does increasingly insist upon devotion to the general good as a characteristic of its leaders. Doubtless there is still great room for progress in the attitude of the public on this point. Yet we have learned to be suspicious of self-seeking in public places. And disinterested devotion to public aims, and honesty and courage in the pursuit of them, already powerfully command the following of the masses. That is a wise society in which the masses know how to pick their leaders. No society has ever been thoroughly wise in this respect, but there is progress. The prestige of the learned, or of the "mandarins," tends to be conservative in a conservative age, and progressive in a progressive age. Mere learning, as distinguished from the in- tellectual quality ascribed to the elite, does not originate, but it 328 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY represents acquaintance with the intricacies of authorized knowledge and opinion. It is the equipment of the specialist. The prestige of the specialists is rapidly increasing in Ameri- can society. That is because science has an ever-accumulating treasure of knowledge applicable to practical themes, and still more because technic, industrial, political, and social problems are ever increasing in complexity; as the native re- sources of the continent are appropriated, -congestion of popu- lation increases, heterogeneity of population grows more men- acing, the disparities in the distribution of wealth and oppor- tunity become more glaring, class antagonisms grow fiercer, and perhaps most of all because the partial or total failure of half -instructed experiments reveals the necessity of greater intelligence in the guidance of endeavor. Nature and Grounds of Prestige. The elements that enter into prestige and form the bases of its effectiveness may be classified as logical, quasi-logical and non-logical. These names refer 'to the attitude of those who are influenced and led : Do they or do they not have a logical ground for ac- cepting the leadership which they follow? Sometimes it is enough to set down a given individual leader or a group which exercises leadership as an instance of a particular form of prestige, but quite as often it \vill be necessary to make an analysis and observe that while the lead- ership of the group or individual rests primarily on some one ground it is also bolstered up by several other elements of prestige. I. Logical prestige is based upon a rational judgment that the opinions, sentiments, or acts of an individual or class of individuals can be accepted as true, right, or beneficent. Such is the prestige of the family physician in matters of health, of the successful man in the concerns in which he has suc- ceeded. Of this type are: (a) The prestige of the specialist, (b) The prestige of achievement and (c) The prestige of the elite, that is those who have given convincing evidence of originality and social spirit. After all that has been said of the non-logical character of PRESTIGE AND ACCOMMODATION 329 social suggestion it would not be surprising if the reader had determined not to be influenced by any kind of prestige, but to lead an independent life. But that is as impracticable as it would be to live without eating. It is impossible for an individ- ual to lead an independent life ; by that process one would never become an individual in any significant sense. We should all be naked savages if we did not borrow from society. It is only by becoming "heirs of all the ages" that we develop a life that is worth while. Our only room for choice is in selecting which of all the models and teachers presented we will follow; it is as if we could choose our parents with a view to inheriting their qualities and their estates. 2. Quasi-logical prestige is apparently justified by a mental process which, while seemingly logical is fallacious, by a conscious or subconscious inference which is not justified by the facts. As illustration of quasi-logical prestige may be noted : (a) The prestige of antiquity. This form of .prestige is, no doubt, partly sentimental and non-logical. Yet it is largely based upon the conscious or subconscious reasoning that what has stood the test of time and long experience must be true, right, and beneficent. But as a matter of fact it is not unlikely that the ancient is the antiquated, the superseded. (b) The prestige of modernness. In an age that has wit- nessed the discovery of many new truths and the introduction of many useful inventions, it is natural to infer that prestige belongs to whatever is most modern on the ground that it presumably embodies the results of all progress "up to date." But among the innovations there are not a few futile specula- tions, revivals of ancient errors, new superstitions, and untried experiments, destined for to-morrow's scrap-heap. (c) The prestige of numbers is largely due to the more or less conscious inference that what "everybody" does or believes must be good or true. It would be at least as justifiable to say that despised and persecuted minorities are always right. The history of science and of religion has led some to say that heretics are always right. Those who differ from the mass and bear the cost of non-confcrmity are likely to have some 330 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY reason for doing so. The new beliefs and practices which create progress necessarily start with minorities. (d) Transferred prestige is that which is based upon rea- soning like this : "He is a great man and therefore ought to be followed," when the facts only justify such reasoning as this : "He is competent in certain matters and therefore in respect to those, he may safely be followed." That is to say, the prestige which is justly ascribed to one in reference to certain matters is transferred to other matters also. Thus the specialist on bridge-building or etymology may have un- due influence in matters of religion, and the football player may set the standard of neckties. The rich are thus allowed unduly to influence manners, morals, tastes, and opinions. And the "prestige of the metropolis" leads the young minister erroneously to imagine that a city congregation will certainly be more intelligent and responsive to his best efforts than a village parish and leads the small town to borrow from the great cities building ordinances which import evils that are unavoidable where congestion of population is greatest, but absurdly unjustified in the country. 3. Non-logical prestige includes the following elements : (a) Physical prestige. This is the power to hold atten- tion and charge suggestion with power, that comes to the man on the platform, the man on horseback, the man in uniform, the man with a loud voice, the tall man, the strikingly homely man, the man with long hair or a tall hat, or to the big head- line. Physical prestige belongs also to the person who as- sumes the confident and expansive bearing expressive of an aroused instinct of dominance. (b) The prestige of contrast. The mere fact of being un- usual or "different" excites notice, quickens interest and to a degree gives prestige. This is the principle of notoriety. It is also the principle of "news." This accounts for the fact that the daily papers find it worth while to print anything, however insignificant or revolting, if it be only unusual, and for the fact that the news of the daily press gives a highly distorted view of the life of society, omitting the regular, nor- mal, and usual, and seizing on the abnormal and unusual. The PRESTIGE AND ACCOMMODATION 331 unusual is so likely to be inferior to the normal and regular that the prestige which is based upon it is more likely than other forms of prestige to be counteracted by an emotional or logical antidote. (c) Esthetic prestige. Beauty of every kind attracts and holds willing attention and gives prestige. (d) Emotional prestige. All other grounds of prestige are likely to awaken emotion so that emotion pervades and supports prestige in nearly all its forms. Whatever excites strong feeling rivets attention, and attention is the beginning of thought and action. This is true even of the emotion of fear. Men are like the birds fascinated by the snake ; and what we fear we are likely also to admire. The same is true of envy. And it is preeminently true of liking and affection. Partisanship exalts the influence of leaders within the sect, party, or other "we-group." And there is, moreover, a specific predisposition toward eager and loyal subordination to leaders. (e) The prestige of desire. Society must have leaders. This is one of the fundamental human needs, and when leaders are not great enough to satisfy the demand, men magnify their leaders by their own sentiment and imagination. The loyalty of masses to particular leaders is often to no small degree based upon a foundation of popular sentiment and imagina- tion built by desire. Little boys choose one of their number to pitch on their ball team, and then attribute to him won- derful speed and mythical curves, till they are disillusioned by the facility with which their opponents hit the ball. A nation going to war needs a great general, and attributes greatness to the general it has. McClellan is a second Napo- leon until his failure. Parties similarly magnify their can- didates. Moreover, one of the desires of society is for glory and this leads society to magnify to the utmost the glory of its conspicuous representatives. The glory of the dead heroes of a people waxes thus, unhindered by the jealousy of the liv- ing, and in a credulous age the results are marvelous. Even in a skeptical age and with respect to living heroes, the de,- 332 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY sire of the multitude heightens the prestige of representative citizens for the mere love*of glory, as well as when the station occupied is one where men feel that for practical reasons they need a great man. But the prestige of desire plays its chief role in the way indicated at the opening of this section; that is, when men comfort themselves with the belief that their leaders are equal to the practical demands upon them, and pay greatest heed to those for whose success they feel the greatest need. If riots break out in Paris, says Tarde, everybody knows the Prefect of Police, and his ideas and sentiments have publicity and influence, though before the riots nobody knew the name of that official or thought of his existence. Professor Tarde devotes one of his books 1 mainly to elaborating and illustrat- ing the thesis that the seat of power in any society rests with the class which discharges the most desired function and shifts with changes in popular desire or conscious need, as for example to the military class when protection or glory is the dominant desire, to the priestly class when fear of the un- seen gives rise to the most urgent sense of need, to the captain of industry when material wants are uppermost, to the special- ist when the need of guidance is realized. And with the shift- ing of the chief seat of power in a society the general char- acter of that society alters. 2 But many of the elements of prestige working together, go to determine the character of every society, and which of these elements is predominant may depend upon all of the types of causes which we have recognized as playing their role in the molding of social realities. Like everything else the alterations of prestige in a given society are both effects and causes. 1 Les Transformations Du Pouvoir. * An interesting study of the rise and fall of scholarship averages of fraternities at the University of Illinois culminates in the conclusion that "in most cases high or low averages are not dependent so much upon the presence in the chapter of a number of exceptionally high- or low-grade men as upon the presence or absence of a masterful leader. Transformations in the character of society at large accom- pany the shifting of prestige from one type of achievement and leadership to another, PRESTIGE AND ACCOMMODATION 333 Accommodation. 1 When a pebble falls into a pool of still water, circles of wavelets begin to spread across the surface. Similarly whenever there is an innovation in society it tends to spread in widening circles of prevalence. ' New ideas spread by suggestion; new sentiments, tastes, wants, ambitions, ap- provals, and disapprovals spread by sympathetic radiation ; new practices spread by imitation. If two pebbles are thrown into the pool the widening circles sooner or later meet and interfere. Similarly the circles of spreading social suggestion, sympathetic radiation and imitation meet and interfere, and they may either reen force and heighten each other or impede and even obliterate each other. For example the idea that man was created by a very simple mechanical process on the last of six creative days of four-and-twenty hours each was passing in regular pulsations from generation to generation, when suddenly new rings of suggestion emanated from the laboratories of certain scientists, bearing ideas of a far di- viner mode of creation, and these new emanations began to disturb, and finally to break and smooth away the ideas borne by earlier suggestions. But socially suggested ideas cor- roborate each other quite as often as they conflict. Thus suc- cessive scientific discoveries, such as those relating to 'embry- ology and the finding of prehistoric human remains of far greater antiquity than had been ascribed to man, corroborated each other and raised higher and spread faster the widening circles of belief in evolution. Specific suggestions are often borne on upon the waves of some general belief already cur- rent. Thus the general belief in witchcraft or in miracles made it easy to credit many tales that to-day would make little headway in our society. Rumors about a man or an institution spread or die out according to their relation to existing opinion in relation to the man or institution con- cerned. Thus ideas corroborate or undermine other ideas. New scientific and historical ideas have corroborated each 1 The discussion of this topic may be supplemented by reading Tarde : The Laws of Imitation, Tr. Henry Holt & Co., 1903, p. 23 ff. ; and Cooley : Social Organization a Study of the Larger Mind, Scrib- ners, 1909, chap. xii. 334 INTRODUCTION fO SOCIOLOGY other till their common strength has become irresistible. At the same time these scientific ideas have obliterated many superstitions and erroneous pre-scientific views concerning the subjects to which they apply, and have even had power to recast traditional theology. As ideas corroborate or contradict each other, so. senti- ments reenforce or weaken and even nullify other sentiments. For example, patriotic and partisan loyalty heightens admira- tion for the qualities of our own heroes. Practical selfish desires may deaden moral sentiments of which the classic example for Americans is the disappearance of anti-slavery sentiment in the South after the invention of the cotton gin. A large portion of private, business, and political life illus- trates this principle. Not only may ideas corroborate or undermine ideas, senti- ments heighten or nullify sentiments and imitations combine into systems of conduct or replace each other, but also an element of any one of these three kinds may either heighten or diminish the strength and prevalence of elements of either of the other kinds. Thus an idea may heighten or impede the spread of overt activity or contract the prevalence of an activity already widespread. For example, ideas concerning the effects of alcohol and sentiments of disapproval in regard to it have greatly contracted its use in society. Ideas tend to heighten or suppress sentiments, and sentiments often have as much power as arguments to promote belief or disbelief in ideas. People find great difficulty in entertaining beliefs that are too radically opposed to their desires and other sen- timents, but have great facility in adopting beliefs that coin- cide with their sentiments. Thus belief in the divine right of kings appealed to philosophers and common people alike when society was emerging from the disorders of the Middle Ages and the hope of peace and prosperity seemed to lie in developing an irresistible sovereignty: but when the power of central government had grown oppressive, then men no longer thought that the right of kings to rule was divine, but that it depended on "the consent of the governed"; they no longer thought that in a state of ungoverned nature "man is a wolf PRESTIGE AND ACCOMMODATION 335 to man," but rather they believed that nature makes men free and happy so that the way to welfare is by removal of re- straints and "return to nature." The people of silver-produc- ing states were convinced by the free silver arguments ; not so those of the commercial states. Because of the same principle different social classes hold different economic and political creeds. The effects of ideas and sentiments upon each other within the individual mind the psychologist studies, but the sociologist takes this knowledge from psychology and from common ex- perience as a datum. By "accommodation," the sociologist means that the partially conscious, but largely unconscious process by which individuals "change their minds," or corre- late their ideas and sentiments into an established individuality, works on a grand scale in society, molded by suggestion, radiation, imitation and the conditioning material environment, so that the prevalent social activities change in character, or correlate into a solid social constitution. By this process of accommodation the activities of a society, its practices, beliefs, and sentiments adapt themselves into a correlated and organic unity into which disturbing elements make way with difficulty. Yet they do make way, partly by their own power to move the minds and hearts of men, but partly also by virtue of changes in the conditions. And when a new idea, sentiment, or practice has made its way it tends to become part of a new establishment of a balance of power among social activities a natural social order. 1 We have now passed in review the four kinds of condi- tions which are the causal antecedents out of which social realities issue and by the modification of which social realities are' modified, namely: (i) the natural physical environment; (2) the technic environment, including (a) population groups in varying degrees of density and (b) wealth in diverse amounts, forms, and states of ownership; (3) the psycho- physical conditions, or tendencies and capacities of the human 1 EXERCISE: Give an instance of accommodation. What is the nature of each of the elements involved idea, sentiment, or practice,^ and what the effect of the collision on each? 336 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY organisms composing the population, both hereditary and ac- quired; and finally (4) the social conditions, or causal rela- tions between the activities, similar or diverse, which are included in the social process, or life of society. 1 The relative importance of these different factors has been variously estimated. Indeed each student who has devoted his attention to tracing the consequences of any of these four seems to have been so impressed with the importance of that one as to be inclined to regard it as the most important of all. One of the services of sociology is to afford a stand- point from which the importance of all four can be per- ceived. 1 The analysis of social conditioning, and its place in the gentral system of causes affecting society may now be thus presented in out- line: i. Geographic conditions a. Technic conditions / P P^ation grouping L Amount, forms and distribution of wealth 3. Psychophysical conditions J [Acquired ILogicaH Compli- Quasi- cated logical > by Non- Accommo- logical J dation PART II NATURE AND ANALYSIS OF THE LIFE OF SOCIETY CHAPTER XIX THE NATURE OF THE LIFE OF SOCIETY Life of Society.; We have now provided ourselves with the clues that must be used in explaining social realities, and it is time for us to fix attention upon those realities them- selves which we wish to explain. What kind of realities out there in the real world are the objects to be explained by this particular study? What is it that we see when we look across the world of social reality ? We see people working and striving or amusing them- selves ; pursuing aims base and noble by methods well or ill devised ; a number of scientists deployed over the face of the earth seeking to understand nature; politicians and statesmen striving for power and its prerequisites with greater or less regard for the interests of their fellowmen; business men competing for the success which they measure by wealth; laborers toiling for a modicum of the material means of com- fort; mothers engaged mainly in domestic pursuits, and other women engaged mainly in the various pursuits of amusement, including the game of competitive ostentation; artists body- ing forth their souls and catering to the tastes of pleasure- seekers ; professional sportsmen also catering to pleasure- seekers, and professional sports seeking to amuse themselves and fleecing the lambs for the means thereto ; criminals devis- ing and executing the plots by which they prey upon their kind ; church people endeavoring to maintain and extend their several zions, nourish their own souls, and save as many as they can reach; philanthropists within and without the church en- deavoring, some as their chief occupation and others with such energies as the demands of other callings permit, to promote the welfare of their kind ; many pursuing useful call- ings less usefully than they should, or even harmfully because 339 340 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY so selfishly, and spreading moral contagion by their presence; others pursuing their callings with the aim to do their work as part of the cooperative fulfillment of good human possi- bilities, and by their presence keeping alive man's faith in men and in the worth of noble endeavor and its fruits. What we see is a vast streaming of diversified and mutually condi- tioning activities. Whatever else we see that is sociologically important are the changes, conditions, consequences and rela- tions of these activities. The In and Out of Conscious Life. All these activities of society are of course carried on by the individuals who com- e society, and as the activities of individuals are made up of psychological elements, so the activities of society as a whole must be made up of psychological elements. For an understanding of the minute parts of which the vast stream of social activity is composed, sociology must fall back upon psychology, much as physiology must rely upon chemistry for an understanding of those minute processes which are included in physical life. A custom or an institution is made .up of psychic elements, as a tree or an animal is made up of chemical elements. Consciousness grows out of the necessity of making one's conduct fit one's situation. We feel the pain of fire in order that we may escape it ; we see the path in order that we may follow it. The acts that go forth from us must be guided by the impressions that come in upon us from the external world. Speaking schematically, 1 therefore, we may say that the con- scious life of man, whether regarded as an individual or as a member of society, is an in-and-out process. The ray of light from a red apple comes in through a child's eye, and out 1 As only this short paragraph is devoted to recalling the teachings of psychology, its crass schematism will not be severely judged by any just critic. Especially there is no intention to minimize the "spon- taneous" activities of the organism, which are as out of proportion to the momentary stimulus as the burning of Chicago to the overturning of a stable lantern, because memory and propensity are wakened and set to work, and each inner activity that is aroused arouses others still. THE NATURE OF THE LIFE OF SOCIETY 341 flashes the impulse that carries his hand to the apple. The incoming sensation of light combines with remembered sen- sations of touch, taste, weight, and smell to form a concep- tion of an apple, for the previous income of the mind has been saved up in memory to be used in interpreting whatever may come in later. As new sensations combine with remembered sensations to form perceptions, so also new perceptions com- bine with memories of former perceptions to yield more com- plex ideas and inferences. All the perceptions, ideas, and. irt- ferences thus compounded out of incoming sensations, new and remembered, constitute the subject matter of intellectual life. This is the mind's income. The outgo is of two sorts. Whenever an incoming sensa^ tion arrives and sets the interpreting ideas trouping out of memory into consciousness a twofold outgo also takes place. S = sensation M = memory centers I = income O = outgo and branches into M' = motor outgo and E = emotional outgo. First, out go the propulsions that incite the muscles to grasp the apple or to seize or repel or manipulate the object, what- ever it is, or to speak, to write, to smile or to shout. This is the part of the process which can be observed by the bystander. We each observe this form of outgo in all those 342 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY who surround us, and this is the part of the whole process which first gets the name of "activity," although it is no more intensely active than the income or the emotional outgo. Besides this outgo to the muscles which are adapted to doing definite things and to affecting the external world, there is also an indefinite, vague, and diffused outgo to the whole body which may be strong enough to cause the sinking or bounding of the heart, the flushing or the blanching of the cheek, and which for consciousness is feeling o emotion. So our conscious life may be said to be composed of intellectual income and motor-emotional outgo. Experience-Activity. This brief discussion of the in-and- out of conscious life, it may be hoped, will help to rid us of the common feeling that only muscular movement can be properly called "activity." Muscular movement is indeed what we see going on about us as a manifestation of the activity of our associates, but the moment we begin to think what activity is as we carry it on in our own experience, when we realize the inner quality of our own activity, as we can only infer that of other people, we perceive that we can be most intensely active without moving a muscle. The student at his task, the scientist pondering his hard problem, is active. The captain of industry buried in plans is more intensely active than any shoveler. It is not muscular exertion but psychic activity, which may or may not be accompanied by any move- ment of muscle, which oftenest brings on prostration of the physical powers. Of some things we are conscious; of others we are only aware. We are aware of material objects, such as a tree, our clothes, a hammer or saw, and our own muscular move- ments. We become awa're of these by the medium of sense perception (sensation and inference) ; but we are conscious of our own ideas and feelings directly and immediately. Our own ideas and feelings are the only phenomena of which we can be conscious. A man may be aware of the movement of his muscles as he may be aware of the movements of his clothes or his tools but he is never conscious of such move- THE NATURE OF THE LIFE OF SOCIETY 343 ments. He is conscious only of the psychic income; but the physiological outgo, both the outgo to the muscles, and that to the visceral system, is promptly reported back as sense of our own activity and as emotion; and these become part of* the mind's income and help to determine the next outgo. These psychic elements are man's activities as they exist for his own consciousness. For his own consciousness the activity of any worker, say a carpenter successfully engaged in building a table, is a set o ideas defining that which he will make and the methods he will use together with a liking for the design of the table, desire for its fulfillment, and the confident expectation of its gradual realization as a result of his own activity; then also a series of muscle and joint sensations reporting how the physiological outgo from these neuroses is being carried on, and as a result of these muscular movements, he also per- ceives the table taking shape and the outgo from this per- ception is felt as emotional approval, that is, satisfaction. Muscular movements of our associates reveal to us their psy- chic activities but the muscular movements are not psychic activities but physical, physiological, mechanical. The con- scious life is made up of the in-and-out of ideas and feelings 1 which combine in each concrete state of consciousness, each "experience." Therefore, the compound word experience- activities is descriptive and helpful as a designation for the concrete psychic activities, the only activities which one owns in the sense that they are parts of his stream of conscious- ness, his conscious life, as distinguished from the vegetative and the muscular physical activities of which one is never conscious but only more or less aware by aid of sensation, as we are aware of our tools and our clothes. Social activities as well as individual activities for the consciousness of the actors are not visible muscular movements but inner move- ments of the mind. This fact gives rise to such expressions 1 Some would add "volitions" but I agree with those who teach that what we call volition can be analyzed into feelings and ideas, and are not a separate kind of psychological element. Volition is the net resultant of our ideas and feelings. &V \JL*Vi- Ufry*ti tf 1 ** 1 ^ 344 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY as "public opinion," "public sentiment," and "the will of the majority." 1 The Essential Social Phenomena Are Psychic. The essen- tial social phenomena are the ^spiritual heritage of a people, A Robinson Crusoe cast naked upon an uninhabited island would take' with him his individual share of the social pos- sessions of the group to which he belonged, religion, language, practical arts, and all. They never could have been developed by a man in isolation; some of them cannot be much used by a man in isolation, but in so far as a lone man can have them he needs no baggage to take them along, but takes his share in the social realities wherever he takes his conscious life. For example, he has taken the practical arts and will begin to make use of them so far as the raw materials of his island permits. It is often said that the Pilgrims in the May- flower brought over to these shores their English institutions. They did ; but where did they bring them ? Were they packed in a cedar chest? Were they stored in the hold of the May- flower? No, they were in the minds of the Pilgrims. Their religion and their institutions were their main freight, but these were wholly immaterial psychic or spiritual possessions. If when visiting a strange town you point to a large build- ing and ask, "What is that institution ?" the true answer would be, "It is not an institution at all, it is no more an institu- tion than a chest of tools is a carpenter, it is a piece of apparatus employed by an institution and so by met6n peoples, different social classes, and different epochs (as com- ' parative anatomy compares homologous but different biological structures) in order (4) to study their causation and evolu- - tion, by noting not only differences and resemblances between ** * social activities, but also differences and resemblances between ^i. the internal and external conditions out of which they arise, so as to discover the correspondence which exists between changes in conditions and changes in the resulting social activ- ities, and thus to identify those tendencies, or methods in causation, which if stated with sufficient precision are scien- tific laws; and also (5) to evaluate the social activities accord- * ing to their quality as experiences, and according to the effects \b which they are observed to have upon further social activities. The phenomena to be described, evaluated and accounted ^- T are, throughout, prevalent socially conditioned experience- activities. The word "tendency" is preferable to the word "law." Simmel, author of "Philosophic des Geldes," says he knows of no economic law, and the claims for sociology must be at least as modest in this respect as those of economics. Even in biology 346 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY there is hardly a law that can be stated with the mathematical definiteness of the laws of inorganic phenomena. But knowl- edge of a tendency may be of the greatest scientific and practi- cal importance. For example, it is not necessary to know the number of typhoid bacilli in a given well, nor the mathematical relation between the number of ingested bacilli and of leu- cocytes that is the threshold between immunity and liability to disease; nor even to suppose that there is a fixed relation be- tween them that can be so regarded ; it is of incalculable value merely to have identified the microbe and the medium by which it is borne. Without that knowledge men rely upon nostrums and die ; with it they close the well and live. The like is true of tendencies that result in the prevalence or decline of good and evil forms of social activity. Between that knowledge which is so complete that we can reduce it to mathematical expression, and metaphysics at the other end of the scale, lies the vast body of our knowledge, including nearly all of our knowledge about life, vegetable, animal or social, which largely guides our practical conduct and the extension of which, though we never reduce it to quantitative expression, is of im- measurable concern. ^imilarly the practical problem of applied sociology is to secure the prevalence of the jlesjred experience-activities. There is no other kind of realities in the direct causation of which the study of sociology can make men expert. There is no other kind of reality upon the improvement of which the progress of social welfare from this time on so directly and so preponderantly depends. As already observed, we have measurably solved the problems of production in agri- culture, transportation, and manufacture; we have developed architecture and sanitary engineering, but in order that the millions may be sufficiently well fed and clothed and housed, to say nothing of their enjoyment of higher goods of life, it is necessary that we now proceed to secure the prevalence of right methods of cooperative endeavor, right standards of suc- cess and objects of ambition, right pressures of social con- demnation and of .social approval. We can manipulate ma- terial things, we must now learn, in so far as we can, to modify THE NATURE OF THE LIFE OF SOCIETY 347 the facts of conscious life as they prevail in society. They are highly modifiable, no other realities more so. However, they are not dead and inert, but living ; they cannot be shaped by force like wood and iron, but modified as the stock- breeder modifies his charges or as the husbandman transforms a field of weeds into a garden. The Sociophysical Phenomena. When one rises in the morning and looks out of the window he can see houses, streets, and passing vehicles, but he cannot see the admiration of wealth as a standard of success, the taste for ragtime music, or for automobiles, or the anti-trust movement, or the Bull Moose movement, or patriotism, or the jury system, or Methodism, yet they are out there, and they together with other realities equally invisible make up the social life of the American people. If one reads the newspapers, listens to the talk at the club and in the offices, attends the concert halls, examines the shop-windows and the attire and conduct of the throng in the street, and is present at political rallies, he will see and hear in the speech and writing and conduct of people and in the things they buy and use continual manifestations of their ideas and tastes and ambitions. These material acts and things manifest the invisible psychic activities that make up their life.* Physical manifestations of social activity are the sociophysi- cal phenomena. -?The psychologist calls the speech and other overt actions of an individual "psychophysical phenomena"; now a muscular activity or material product which expresses some activity which is not peculiar to a single individual but which is a social activity, may be called a sociophysical phenom- enon. This does not correspond exactly to the psychologist's use of the word psychophysical, for he uses that word to include the functioning of the nervous system which in a sense lies behind the conscious act, as well as to denote the muscular deed which expresses or manifests the conscious act, while our word sociophysical includes no reference to the functioning of the nervous system, which we leave to the psychologist, but only to the outward manifestation, that is, the muscular deeds, and the products of muscular deeds, which are the 348 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY overt expression of social activities. The psychologist's word psychophysical may be symbolized by n c o, in which n = neu- rosis, c = the accompanying state of consciousness, and o = resulting overt act. To symbolize the sociologist's word socio- physical we strike out the n and the c and add t thus getting o t, in which o the overt activity and t = the thing, if any, which that activity produces. For example, roads and cities and libraries are sociophys- ical phenomena. In a great ethnological museum we can see here a section devoted to the weapons, tools, playthings, re- ligious and ceremonial paraphernalia of the Zulus; there an- other section devoted to a similar exhibit from the Esquimaux. Passing from section to section we see material embodiments and manifestations of the social activities of one people after another. A total stranger to the activities of these people would need someone to interpret and would often say, "What does that object mean?'-' Perhaps the answer in one case would be, "That is a rattle used in the rain-making ceremony, and means that a people believed that their magicians could cause it to rain by rites and incantations." One must already be somewhat acquainted with the activities of people in their stage of development in order to understand the reve- lation made by their material products, just as one must know its language in order to read a book ; but a book and an ethno- logical exhibit are equally material revelations of psychic activ- ity. A World's Fair tells us more than many volumes of description about the activities of our fellowmen. If there could have been. such a thing as a World's Fair held in the second century and its exhibits had been preserved to us how it would have enlightened us concerning the social activ- ities of that age! Social activities as we have seen are psychic phenomena. These psychic phenomena are the ultimate realities which sociology is to describe and explain. But the sociophysical phenomena are the immediate consequences of the social ac- tivities; they reveal the presence and the nature of those activities and render them accessible to scientific observation. The in-and-out of conscious life is revealed in the material ^^fr^JL****^^ THE NATURE OF THE LIFE OF SOCIETY 341, results of its motor outgo. Furthermore, these material con- sequences are explained only by explaining the psychic activi- ties which lie back of them, as the rattle was explained by explaining the rain-making belief, and as the Roman Coliseum is explained by explaining the amusement customs of the Romans. Spoken and written language, pictures, mechanical prod- ucts, houses, and railroads stand intermediate between mere material things like unopened mines, untrodden forests, rivers, and woods, .on the one hand, and the psychic activities of men on the other, for they are material things as are the rivers and the woods but they give expression to the activities of men. The material works of man jiave significance for sociology in_ twcTwavjT: nfst, irTthe same way and for the same reasons that the works of nature have significance for him, that is, aspart of the physical environment wJbich cDrjdjtip_ng_the progress of human activitieV; second, since they have forms and characters imparted to them by the activities of man, they reveal the activities of man which sociology seeks to explain and are themselves Explained by the explanation of _ these activities. The life of society is made up of prevalent > and socially conditioned experience-activities, which are re- vealed and bodied forth in the sociophysical phenomena. The *& experience-activities could not become known to any observer if they were not thus bodied forth in speech, writing, tools, weapons, clothes, buildings, and the other material works that express the activities prevalent in society. DeGreef says that these material expressions of social activity are as much a part of society as the shell is part of the turtle. The psychologists say that the individual's thought of himself commonly in- cludes the idea of his clothes and his work and that the lady feels herself assaulted when her dress is torn and the mechanic feels himself harmed when his work is damaged. The socio- physical phenomena are a part of the life of society only in the same sense that the product of the mechanic's skill is a part of his life. We must not lose sight of the fact that in their essence \ff 350 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY social phenomena are spiritual realities. Streets of sky- scrapers, factories crowded with machinery, libraries of books, crowded city populations, legislative assemblies, might all be wiped out of existence but if. there remained in the minds of the survivors all those ideas and sentiments of which these material realities are the expression, the life of society, ham- pered for lack of tools, but undestroyed, would soon replace them. But should the spiritual wealth of the world developed through the age-long cooperation of many minds, be wiped out of existence and man be set back naked-souled at % the starting- point of social evolution, he could not read a book, nor run a factory nor understand the wants to which all these things minister. The social realities would then have been destroyed. /" The social phenomena are psychic, but not all psychic phe- / nomena are social phenomena. Those psychic phenomena V which are social are distinguished by three clear character- istics. The First Characteristic of Social Activities. The first characteristic of social activities is that they are prevalent. A social activity is not the unique possession of any single mind. Methodism, for example, is not the peculiar property of any single Methodist but it is a definite set of activities (beliefs, sentiments and practices) which are common to many minds. Or, the Republicanism of any one Republican is like the Republicanism of thousands more. A belief in the desirability of free and unlimited coinage of silver dollars at the ratio of sixteen to one a few years ago became a signifi- cant social phenomenon widely prevalent, that is, common to multitudes of minds. Long ago the belief in witchcraft and insistence upon the punishment of witches came over New England like a visitation of locusts. Every fashion, custom, or institution, every prevalent sentiment, belief, or moral standard is a social reality partly by virtue of the fact that the same activity exists in many minds. To this it may be objected that the activities of no two individuals are ever precisely alike, that the Methodism or the Republicanism of no two individuals is identical. This is probably true. It is also said that no two leaves in all June 351 are quite alike. The botanist who collects different specimens of the same variety never finds two specimens that are iden- tical. This, however, does not prevent the existence of botany nor the identification of botanical varieties; no more does the variation between specimens of a given social activity pre- vent them from being recognized as belonging to the same sociological species. Your Methodism, or other experience- activity, is one specimen of a prevalent variety of social phe- nomena, just as one daisy is a specimen of a prevalent botan- ical variety. The Second Characteristic of Social Activities. Social ac- tivities are manifested by sociophysical embodiment in speech, writing, conduct, or works. Logicians call any phenomena "public" which, although they may be observed by no one or by only a few, yet are of such a kind that they can be known by any competent observer who may pass that way. In this sense the "flower born to blush unseen" is public for it is a reality of such a kind that it can be observed. They add that only those objects which are public in this sense are open to scientific investigation. Social phenomena, being imma- terial or psychic realities, are not open to direct observation. The consciousness of each individual is known directly to him alone. But psychic realities have physical consequences so direct and so manifold and so exquisitely adapted to dis- close the character of the psychic realities themselves, that prevalent psychic realities manifest their presence, character, extent, and changes in a way that makes possible their de- scription and explanation. This would not be true, in a degree that is adequate to the purposes of science, if each of us did not have in his own consciousness a fine collection of speci- mens of the very same kind of psychic realities. It is true not every specimen of a social reality is manifested. John may have a social idea or sentiment which he never reveals to anyone, although the social reality of which John's idea or sentiment is a specimen is well known. It is also true that many a botanical specimen is never seen by man though its species is known. Of course our knowledge might be com- pleter if we could examine every specimen or at least knew 352 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY their number. But we do not know the number of oaks or pine-trees, to say nothing of buttercups, or grass, or microbes, and need not observe or even know the existence of every instance of social activity. An activity which occurred in the experience of but one individual would lack the first char- acteristic of being a social reality; it would not be prevalent. An activity which though it recurred many times was so per- fectly concealed that no one could suspect its existence in the experience of anyone besides himself would lack the second characteristic of a social reality. It would not be manifest. There has been a little objection to regarding sociology as an objective science on the ground that social realities, being psychic in nature, are not observable, or "public" in the logi- cian's sense. But this objection never received much heed and appears to have died out. 1 Our whole social life is built upon the fact that we do become aware of the activities, opin- ions, and sentiments of our associates. In this way social activities constitute our effective environment. The social ac- tivities which we observe about us mold our childhood and elicit and direct the endeavors of our mature life in general far more effectively than even the material realities by which we are surrounded. They constitute an ever-present, alluring, intimidating, and tremendous environment. Not only do our associates take pains tc show many specimens of their social activity, but even when they try to conceal them they do not always succeed in doing so. And they testify ' continually, by accepting our replies and responses, that we have correctly apprehended their states of consciousness. The Third Characteristic of Social Activities. The third characteristic of social activities is that they are the result of antecedent social activities. They are socially caused. Let the reader pause to see whether he can think of one single activity of his which he performs, one belief which he holds, one definite desire, ambition, or judgment which he cherishes, aside from the mere functioning of his animal organism, which would have been his if he had been the first man or if he^had 1 See article by present writer in American Journal of Sociology, xi, 623. THE NATURE OF THE LIFE OF SOCIETY 353 lived in such isolation as to be unaware of the antecedent activity of any associate. He would have eaten but not with knife, fork, and spoon, not from dishes, and not the cooked viands of which he now partakes. He would have performed the physical functions; he would have slept and yawned and sneezed, but beyond the functioning of his physical organism scarcely one element in the current of activity which now con- stitutes his "life" would have been possible to him. He would have ideas but scarcely any idea that he now holds save merely the presentations of sense perception which he has in common with the animals. One's life is not his own, but is his share in the inheritance which comes down from a long social past, in turn to be transmitted, improved or degraded, to his successors. Each* social activity is not only prevalent and public, but it is also made possible to each of those among whom it prevails by an antecedent social evolution; it is socially caused. An apparent exception to the last statement is the original idea or sentiment, and if it were necessary we. could afford to modify that statement so as to say that each prevalent activity is socially caused in the case of each individual who performs it except its originator. Even with that modification it would remain true that the activity does not begin to be a prevalent, that is, a social activity, except by the agency of social causation. But we scarcely need make even that modi- fication, for in the mind of its originator the new idea or sentiment as a rule is simply the last step in the path of thought along which evolution has been moving, or a reac- tion upon a social situation, so that generally speaking the new activity is as truly socially caused in the mind in which it first arises as is its subsequent adoption in the minds of others. The inventor adds a new element to that which the social process brought him, but only by what the social process brought him was his new contribution made possible. The most primitive inventions of savages may have been purely individual reactions of one mind upon the natural physical environment, but such an invention at our stage of develop- ment would be of the utmost rarity. . The very wants t9 354 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY which inventions minister are for the most part social reali- ties. The third characteristic of social activities then, is that their prevalence is socially caused; that is, it requires the previous activities of associates to make a social activity pos- sible to any of those among whom it prevails, except perhaps its originator, and even to him also, as a rule with negligible exceptions, it would have been impossible but for the previous activities of others. Relation Between Sociology and Psychology. 1 The fore- going recognition of the psychic character of the elements of which social realities are composed creates the necessity of stating what is the relation between sociology and psychology. The relation between sociology and psychology may be compared to that between biology and chemistry. We have already seen that as all biological specimens are made up of chemical elements, and all biological life of chemicophysical action and reaction, so all social realities are made up of psychic elements, and the life of any society is composed of psychic activities. The difference between sociology and psy- chology can be brought out under two heads: 1. Notwithstanding what ultimate analysis would reveal as to the elements of which they are composed, we do not think of plants and animals as chemical phenomena or of social realities, like a language, a religion, or a political sys- tem as psychological phenomena. The truth is that the con- crete compounds into which chemical or psychic elements combine differ enormously from the elements as such. Biology and sociology study not elements in their abstractness, but highly complex compounds in their concreteness. Psychology studies certain elemental abstractions from life, a knowledge of which is essential to the understanding of life, but which remain abstractions. Sociology studies life itself. 2. As the chemical elements of living tissue as well as the processes of physiological chemistry are everywhere prac- tically the same, yet flora and fauna vary from place to place, so also psychic phenomena : perception, memory, feeling, atten- *A fuller discussion of this topic by the present writer may be found in the American Journal of Sociology, xiv, 371. THE NATURE OF THE LIFE OF SOCIETY 355 tion, etc., the abstract elements of life, as well as the processes of neurocerebral functioning, are the same in the twentieth cen- tury as in the seventeenth, and the same in Boston as in Bom- bay, but social phenomena vary enormously from age to age and from place to place, as flora and fauna do. This gives to sociology problems of quite different sort from those of psy- chology, the problems of describing and explaining these different and changing realities. One way to state the scope of sociology would be to say that sociology aims to describe the differences between the activities of different groups and individuals, to discover the methods of causation by which these differences can be accounted for, to evaluate these dif- ferences, and to point out how those differences which, accord- ) ing to the adopted standard, are desirable, can be promoted, 1 and how those which are undesirable can be diminished. This L^, involves investigation .which combines into a synthesis of explanation, effects upon human activity of the differing geo- graphic conditions of different countries, of the differing psy- chophysical conditions, hereditary or acquired, pertaining to different populations and different social classes, and of the differing technic conditions of different peoples and ages, objects of investigation with which the researches of psy- chology have little or nothing to do. It involves also the ethical problems, which psychology does not handle. Finally it involves the problem of causal relationship between social activities, in which there is an overlapping between psychology and sociology analogous to that between chemistry and biology. There are no gulfs nor even line fences between the sci- ences, because there are none in the order of nature which science investigates. The nearest approximation to such a line is between material phenomena and the facts of conscious experience. On each side of that more or less imaginary line lies a group of sciences. One of these groups of sciences contains physics, chemistry, biology, etc., which deal with material phenomena. These sciences are clearly different from each other and their centers of interest are quite wide apart, but at their boundaries they shade into each other so 356 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY that there are, for example, certain problems that might with equal propriety be assigned either to chemistry or to physics, and others that might with equal propriety be assigned either to chemistry or to physiology. On the other side of that line are the sciences that deal with conscious life of which the fundamental ones are psychology and sociology. These also are clearly distinct and have their centers of interest apart, but like the sciences that deal with material phenomena they shade into each other at the boundaries. On the practical side sociology is related to economics, politics and education, but on the theoretical side the closest kinship of sociology is with psychology and philosophy ; with psychology because it carries forward the application of psychological principles as an essen- tial part of the completely synthesized explanation of human life; with philosophy because the best approach to the most inclusive inductive synthesis is the explanation of tho'se phe- nomena .which have the most complex causation, namely the social phenomena, and also because sociology includes the transfer of ethics from the realm of metaphysical speculation to inductive investigation of the rise and spread of valuations, and of the conditions which actually promote or destroy values. CHAPTER XX THE ANALYSIS AND CLASSIFICATION OF SOCIAL ACTIVITIES i Tarde, Giddings, DeGreef and Small. According to Tarde the social life is entirely made up of two kinds of elements; namely, beliefs and desires. He uses these two words in a somewhat peculiar sense. His word beliefs does not refer alone to religious tenets, political creeds, and the like, but to all of the ideas which are held in common by the members of a society. Thus according to Tarde's formula the vocabu- lary and grammar of a language are sets of beliefs as to the way in which to express one's self, and the methods of the carpenter in making joints and the cobbler in lasting shoes, are beliefs as to the way in which to accomplish the desired results. To recall the mode of expression used in an earlier para- graph, by "beliefs" he means the entire psychological income of society while by "desires" he means the psychological outgo, as it is felt by the individual experiencing it. The phase of the psychological outgo which is witnessed by the bystanders is, of course, that which goes to move the muscles in speech and conduct but the phase of it which is felt by the actors is represented by desire. The psychic outgo is like a shield, one side of which is presented to the world the other side of which rests against our hearts. Tarde names it from the inside and so calls it "desire." According to Tarde simple social activities (beliefs and desires) unite to form compound social activities, such as customs and institutions. These massive social realities are of six kinds as follows : 1 Compare an article by the present writer in the American Jow~ nal of Sociology, xvii, p. 90. 357 358 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY I Language - II Religion *" III Government*-^ IV Legislation ^ ^ V Economic Usages and Wants*-" VI Morals and Arts x ^ ProfessorGiddings^ designates the simple social activities by the words ^hou^ht" and "action" instead of Tarde's words "belief" and "desire." "Thought" instead of "belief" is his designation of the income half of social activity; and as he names the social outgo from the external side of the shield he uses the word "action" instead of Tarde's word "desire." Professor Giddings' classification is as follows: I Cultural 1. Cultural Thought (or "income," correspond- ing to Tarde's "beliefs") a. Linguistic b. Esthetic c. Religious d. Scientific 2. Cultural Activity (or "outgo," corresponding to Tarde's "desire") a. Ceremonial : of manners, dress, and fes- tivities b. Games and amusements c. Fine arts d. Religious exercises e. Exploration and research II Economic ' 1. Economic thought 2. Economic activity III Moral and juristic i. Moral and juristic thought, including ideas of private revenge, notions of rights of 1 Exercise : Enumerate the "beliefs" and "desirgs" included in the composition of Methodism and Republicanism, ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 359 property and of marriage, belief in the sacredness and binding force of cus- tom, ideas as to methods of trial, duties of judges, etc. 2. Moral and juristic activity, such as approba- tion and disapprobation, private re- venge, lynching, and tribal trial and execution, and the work of formal courts. IV Political 1. Political thought upon matters of policy and method 2. Political activity According to DeGreef the classification of social activities, proceeding from the most fundamental and universal to the most ultimate and controlling, should be : I Economic II Genetic, relating to love, marriage and the family III Artistic IV Beliefs : religions, metaphysics and sciences V Morals and manners VI Juridical VII Political \ Professor Small offers a suggestive basis for classification in his doctrine of the six interests. The attempt may be made to classify social activities according to the interest they serve. The interests which Professor Small describes are: I The health interest, meaning that which prompts all seeking of bodily gratifications II The wealth interest III The knowledge interest IV The beauty interest V The sociability interest, including all the desires which are met by relations with our fellows VI The Tightness interest. 360 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY A Further Classification. The foregoing sketch of the classifications of Tarde and Giddings, together with that which has been said concerning the "in-and-out" of conscious life, illustrates how different observers studying the same reality arrive at similar results, differing in terminology enough to show that they have worked independently, yet agreeing so far as to corroborate each other. It also illustrates how by combining the results of independent workers, nearer and nearer approach to a complete view of reality may be pro- moted. In dealing with the massive compound social realities, like customs and institutions, it will be convenient to use a fourfold or sixfold or' even sevenfold classification, like those just quoted. At the same time, for purposes of scientific investigation, we must also come at the matter more analyti- cally, from the side of the simpler social realities. The first half of scientific investigation, as Wundt teaches, is adequate analysis. The most fundamental division between those sim- pler and more elementary social activities which are revealed by ultimate analysis is between activities in which the elements of psychic income predominate and activities in which the elements of psychic outgo predominate. But since the outgo is of two sorts, motor and emotional, it is possible to intro- duce another division, and so to recognize all the facts that have influenced either Tarde or Giddings. Thus we have: (i) the social activities that are composed predominantly of elements of psychic income, the "thoughts" of Giddings and the "beliefs" of Tarde; (2) those in which emotional outgo predominates, the "desires" of Tarde; (3) those in which s motor outgo predominates, the "activities" of Giddings. It is thus that we shall now attempt to classify the social activities as first, the sciences and creeds, the "thoughts" and "beliefs," the intellectual income of society; second,' social seiitimcntf. or more accurately the social activities in which feeling or emotional outgo predominates ; and third, social practices, the arts of life, the objective outgo, the application of the first, that is, of the ideas included in the sciences and creeds to the satisfaction of the demands of the second, that is, of the desires. This form of statement brings out the fact that there ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 361 is a certain general correspondence between sociological classi- fication and the psychological analysis, but the correspondence is only rough and general, and not precise. Psychological analysis and sociological analysis cannot be made precisely^ ^to correspond^ecause even simple and elementary social activ ities are not psychological abstractions, but from the psycholo- gist's point of view are concrete and composite, for they are not composed exclusively of any one kind of psychic elements. Thought, feeling, and volition are abstractions which can be thought of apart but which hardly ever exist apart from each other. Sociology studies concrete activities as they really exist, and so more than one kind of psychological element is pretty certain to be present in a single prevalent social activity of the simplest kind, just as more than one chemical element is present in a speck of protoplasm. Thus every "social senti- ment" implies and includes the presence of an idea, and all "social practices" imply and give expression to ideas and sen- timents. It is the predominance of feeling or of overt action over the other psychic elements contained in a social activity that causes it to be classified as a sentiment or as a practice. If there were coincidence between psychological and socio- logical elements then possibly instead of proposing a tripartite classification we might adhere to the twofold division between, first, the income of sensations, perceptions, memories of the same, and their derivatives and combinations which compose the intellectual life ; and second, the outgo which is witnessed by observers as muscular activity, but is experienced by the actors as feeling, emotion, desire, and satisfaction. As it is we see that even the simpler social activities are of three classes : practical arts which are compounds of ideas and their motor-emotional outgo; tastes, distastes, approvals, and disapprovals which are compounds of desires and ideas, in which the desires predominate ; and sciences and creeds which are the social activities that come nearest to being composed of one variety of psychological elements. When we take as units the very great and complex social realities like Methodism, Republicanism, and the courts, it is impossible to fit them into even a tripartite classification, for 362 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY each one of them is itself a whole bundle of social activities. For these massive social realities we employ a fourfold clas- sification like that of Professor Giddings, or the more exten- sive ones of Tarde, DeGreef or Small. Only when we analyze them into the constituent activities which they include do we get units which will fit into either of the classifications last discussed. I. Creeds and Sciences, or Social Ideas. 1 No absolute di- vision can be made between creeds and sciences. It is a dif- ference of degree, the word "science" implying relatively ade- quate observation, or relatively clear and logical inference from observed facts, and the word "creed" implying less of observation and logical inference and a more subjective or conceptual origin. Every hypothesis is at first nothing more than a creed. And the most competent scientists hold their teachings in general as "working hypotheses" always subject to the test of further observation. Guessing and speculation give creeds which observation "either dispels or else corrob- orates and so converts into science. On subjects that lie en- tirely beyond the range of observation only creeds are pos- sible. On all other subjects men have creeds long before they have sciences. Therefore as here used the word "creed" does not refer to religious beliefs alone, but also to all of those ideas about things in general which serve the purpose of science before the advent of science. An Australian black fellow on a journey, finding that night is approaching while he is still far from his destination, takes a stone or a clod and puts it up as high as he can reach in the fork of a tree to trig the sun. It is not a religious act, it is simply a piece of applied science, or rather manifesta- tion of one of those ideas which precede science, and which serves the purpose of satisfying curiosity or guiding conduct before science comes. The theory that stars are the camp- 1 The following notation is used in this classification : I. II. III., main divisions; I. 2. 3., subdivisions ; (a) (b) (c), sections of subdivisions; '(i) (2) (3), sections of sections. ANALYSIS OF" SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 363 fires of departed ancestors is a bit of prescientific astronomy. Even little children ask hosts of hard questions and if there is no one to answer them truly they invent answers to as many as they can. A population composed entirely of chil- dren would in this way gradually accumulate many ideas. All known peoples, including savages, have curiosity or a de- sire to know, and have also the need of ideas by which to guide and motivate their conduct and they formulate sets of ideas which satisfy these needs. These are what, for want of a better name, I am calling creeds. No people has achieved scientific answers to all of the hard questions about which it desires knowledge, but even the most civilized mingle creeds and sciences, though with respect to many subjects they are gradually replacing the creeds that served them as their first temporary working hypotheses, with more scientific ideas. Creeds, of course, differ in their degrees of rationality, and different objects of interest differ widely in their degrees of accessibility to scientific observation or inference; some must remain permanently in the fringe of inference. There are: 1. CREEDS AND SCIENCES RELATING TO MATERIAL PHE- NOMENA. 2. CREEDS AND SCIENCES RELATING TO PSYCHIC INCLUD- ING SOCIAL PHENOMENA. 3. CREEDS AND SCIENCES RELATING TO THAT WHICH is BELIEVED TO EXIST BEYOND THE SPHERE OF OBSERVATION. "We live in a little island of sense and fact in the midst of an ocean of the unknown." Our finite faculties do not take in the whole of things, but enable us to see what We need to see, as one walking in a mist sees the next step, but not the distant landscape, or as one standing on the beach looks out to sea, and his gaze loses 1 itself in the distance. It may do us good to gaze out to sea. Our knowledge extends a little beyond the sphere of observation by means of inference. We infer the existence of power and intelligence adequate to the origination and continuous causation of such a universe as this. Among savages, and in all thoe stages of thought that remotely precede the scientific, the . explanations of material things He, in large part, beyond the limited range of observa- 364 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY tion, so that thought about material things quickly runs into thought about that which is believed to exist beyond the sphere of observation. This is what Comte called the religious stage of explanation, which he might perhaps better have called the mythological stage. At this stage the explanation of most material phenomena is largely beyond the sphere of the observations that have as yet been made. Hence, creeds of the first, second, and third class tend to coalesce. Thus, the idea of storms at sea as caused by an act of Neptune appears to fall under the head I-i ; but the idea of Neptune as ruler of the waters appears to fall under the head 1-3. Similar difficulty of classification is found in low stages of biological evolution, but differentiation becomes clearer as evolution advances. II. Social Sentiments. Prevalent Activities in Which. Feel- ing Predominates. i. TASTES OR LIKES AND DISLIKES. The fact that tastes are social products is exhibited by their enor- mous variation from place to place and age to age, and by the swift changes of fashion. (a) Economic wants. Social phenomena of this class are exemplified by the Esquimaux's demand for furs and sleds, and blubber, and by the American's demand for silks, auto- mobiles and china table-service. The description of contrast- ing societies must include the enumeration of their diverse economic wants, and the economic progress of society con- sists largely in the rise and transformation of such wants. (b) Artistic tastes. The artistic tastes of the Greeks were innovation's which have become permanent possessions of the western civilization. They were grafted upon tastes that had been developed by antecedent cultures. The tastes of the Egyptians, 'the Arabs, the Japanese, the Parisians, and no less those of barbarians and savages which are gratified by objects which to us seem flaunting and grotesque, are essential elements in the description of those societies. Their con- trariety illustrates the fact that tastes are social products and not instinctive to man as man. (c) Likings for plays and recreation. Examples are the Chinese craze for gambling, the society woman's taste for ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 365 bridge, and the small boy's springtime longing for marbles. Play may be defined as an activity which is enjoyable enough to be continued with no ulterior aim, and which, if it be mere play, has no ulterior aim beyond the satisfaction found in the activity itself. Many kinds of work may become play; thus hunting, fishing, gardening, carpentry and scientific research" are often carried on by persons who are forced to them by no economic necessity, and frequently as a diversion from other employments. The play of children is often an imitation of work. The division between the activity of slaves and that of freemen once made work seem despicable and painful, a curse. For ages the free have shunned work as a sign of inferior social station. But free work is not a curse. Work that is play may be more enjoyable than long continuance in any mere play, because it is enjoyed both for the satisfaction found in the activity and for the hope of its result, as well as for the satisfaction which it yields to the demands of self- respect. On the other hand, work may be painful and not a pleasurable activity, arid then it is mere drudgery and toil, un- less redeemed by the hope of result either to the worker or to some other for whom he cares, or by the satisfaction of self-respect-; these may redeem even toil and pain and make them zestful and joyous, as in the case of the soldier, the mother, the pioneer, and at times in the careers of nearly all who consistently follow a purpose to its accomplishment. We must distinguish between mere play, work that is at the same time play, and mere work. Under the rigors of a "pain economy" and before the development of efficient tech- nology, the majority of adults had less opportunity for play than they now enjoy, and play was peculiarly the affair of children. This still is true to a degree, especially of mere play, not because adults cannot play but because children can- not work as adults can. Adults also play. The play of chil- dren is simple but that of adults is the free play of developed powers. Every free activity that contains in itself a satisfac- tion sufficient to constitute a motive for its continuance is play. It seems impossible to draw any other valid distinction between play and mere work. 366 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY With the definition of play in mind, the enjoyment of art is seen to be a kind of play. Play is not any particular kind of activity, but it is the free play of any or all of our powers ; it is by no means confined to muscular activity but includes the activity of emotion, imagination, intellect, and of all our being. The enjoyment of art, literature, science, or sociability, is an emotional or intellectual activity which is largely inde- pendent of any motor activity on the part of the person enjoy- ing the pleasure. There is a universal tendency among all men and the higher animals to find pleasure in the activity of their powers. This is usually but erroneously spoken of as "the play instinct." Far from being a particular, specific instinct, the tendency to play is simply the tendency for live things to act and to take pleasure in action. Stimulated by their environment they begin to function not in any specific way, but in any and all of the ways in which they are adapted to function, and when they begin and continue to act just for the pleasure of action, it is play, whether it be the frisking of lambs, the playing house and store and tag of children, or the golf, fishing, music or reading of grown men or women. The liking for an art or play is a social element distinct from the technique or practice of it. The technique may easily become dissociated from the taste so as to become no longer play but mere work. Thus a professional player of a game, say baseball or billiards, may have a great mastery of its technique but have thoroughly tired of it, continuing only for the pay or the winnings. The game is then his work, and may be mere work. Again the taste for an art or a game may be dying out though the method of it is still well known, or conversely, the knowledge of an art may be introduced to people who regard it as a curiosity and perhaps an ab- surdity, having acquired no liking for it, as Americans know the Chinese theater with its frightful orchestral accompani- ment, but the taste for it remains a social possession in ^rhich they have little or no share. The chief sociological impor- tance of distinguishing between the liking for an art and the practice of it appears in the fact that the taste for an art ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 367 may be made the common possession of masses of the people, even though its technique necessarily remains the possession of the_artist class alone. Each of these four sets of likes and dislikes is of immense importance in the description of the life of peoples. (d) Taste in etiquette and ceremony. 2. STANDARDS OF SUCCESS AND APPROVAL, OR THE SOCIAL SENTIMENTS THAT ARE FELT TOWARD PERSONS, OR THE TRAITS AND CONDUCT OF PERSONS. Standards of success and approval are ideas denning those objects of desire by the at- tainment of which the individual measures his own worth and wins the admiration and respect of other members of his group. In nothing do different societies show more characteristic contrasts than in their standards of success. One society ac- claims the member who c.an drink the most beer, another the member who can write the best poetry, one the member who can boot a pigskin with greatest force and accuracy, another the member who can devise the most brilliant mathematical demonstration. Nations differ widely in the relative value which they attach to the various forms of success. A nation may measure success in skulls, like the head-hunting Malays, in scalps, like the Indians, in flocks like the pastoral nomads, or in dollars, like the more vulgar of Americans. A great society as well as a little one may be on the wrong track as to what constitutes the aim of life. Possibly- no other basis of comparison between different peoples is so significant of their character and stage of advancement as a comparison of their standards of success and approval, and no other reform so fundamental as the shifting of the emphasis placed upon the different standards of success in the regard of a people. In his heart of hearts each individual judges himself by standards derived from the groups large or small, in which he has been a member. He may be proud of his success as a safe-blower or as an incorruptible cashier. Each normal person is impelled by these inner promptings, and by a desire for the respect, esteem, and favor of his fellowmen. Each 368 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY tends to turn the social judgments which he shares inward upon himself, so that they become his conscience as well as his ambition. For these reasons society can get men, of the type that it really admires, in almost any number and almost any degree of development mighty money grabbers and powerful bosses, or serviceable statesmen, and creative scientists. Progress, not only in the moral character of a people, but also in the direction in which their efforts are exerted, is progress in the prevalent approvals. And the ap- provals of a people are decidedly changeable. Seventy-five years ago a minister was obliged to resist the hospitality of his parishioners if he wished to return from a round of pastoral visits sober. Another century may witness a similar advance in the conversation and conduct of men in relation to sexual decency. Not only does progress have a main root, if not the tap-root, in changes with respect to social approvals, but so even more especially does degen- eracy. Ideas and arts once discovered are not likely to be lost, but standards of approval more easily decay. Among the common standards of success are : (a) Physical prowess. Social groups differ in the esti- mate which they place upon the manifestation of physical prowess. Among savages it may rank highest of all the forms of success, and it has never been, and one may prophesy that it never will be, lightly estimated by Anglo-Saxons. The ap- proved forms of its manifestation vary from group to group, as our own prize-fighting and football, and as Spanish bull- fighting illustrate. (b) Gratification of Appetite and Taste. The man who is able to gratify his appetites and tastes may have not only that gratification, but with it the gratification of being admired by his associates. In that case he is likely to partake of his gratification publicly and ostentatiously, whereas, if he were a member of a different society which refused to give its ad- miration upon this ground, or even turned an ascetic condem- nation against such gratifications, he would be likely to conceal them and would not have the social satisfaction by which in the former case they were accompanied. New and un- ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 369 usual forms of pleasure are often sought not so much for their own sake as to excite the. admiration of those to whom such pleasures are inaccessible, and some men are proud even of the marks of dissipation because they asso- ciate with a group which regards them as evidences of success. (c) Wealth. Just as pleasure may be desired not alone for its own sake but also for the social approval which it secures, so too wealth is desired not alone that it may be used but also that it may be displayed. The multimillionaire who continues the eager pursuit of business as a rule does not do so in order that he may have more economic goods to enjoy but in order that he may have a greater success. The tally of life's success is counted by him in dollars, and he will run up as high a score as he can. For this reason we spend a great deal of our money in order to show that we have it. New inventions spread first not alone because people desire to make use of them, for at first they may not feel the need for a commodity to which they are not yet habituated, but also because people de- sire to be classed among those who can afford them. This is one element in the immense demand for automobiles; men like to be classed among those who own them. Certain natives of Central Africa, having scarcely any other way of showing wealth save by a rude abundance of food, fatten their wives until they become such monsters of obesity that they can scarcely rise; thus they display their plenty. Next to lavish expenditure, or "conspicuous waste," * as a means of displaying wealth has been "conspicuous idleness." The slave, the serf, and the poor man must work, but the rich man in most mammon-worshiping societies has taken pains to make it plain that he did not have to work. With us, although we worship mammon no less, this second form of wealth display has largely gone out of vogue in the case of men, but not in the case of women. This is because of increasing respect for achievement, by men. However, the 1 T. Veblen : Theory pf the Leisure Class. Macmillan, 1899, phaps. ii and Hi, 370 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY type of achievement most admired, is probably the specious one of economic acquisitiveness, admiration of which, as dis- tinguished from economic productiveness, is only one step higher than admiration of sybaritic self-gratification, and as a chief standard of social approval marks a relatively low level of social judgment. (d) Power Over Men. Power over men is acquired and exercised in many ways, and it is enjoyed as a proof of suc- cess apart from the results which it may achieve. The tend- ency for society to admire power over men is so great that it is with difficulty overcome even when the exercise of the power is injurious to society. Conquerors and tyrants are admired, and the exploited admire those by whom they are victimized in some instances more than they do those who attempt to offer them aid. One of the subtler forms of power is personal charm which is exercised by both men and women in every walk of life. (e) Sanctity. This word is here used to designate con- formity to religious as distinguished from moral require- ments. In the higher manifestations of religion its require- ments tend to coalesce with those of morality, but in many, if not most, human societies admiration, respect, and influence have been commanded by strict observance of mere ritualistic requirements. The Hindoo fakir and the medieval saint are examples. (f) Achievement. Happily the forms of achievement are numerous; among others they include the following: (i) domestic efficiency, home-making and child-rearing, have been the form of achievement most open to half the members of the human race. (2) Economic productivity in general is a form of achievement deserving high esteem. There is a distinction between economic productivity, which increases the supply of utilities, and mere "business" which appropriates utilities to an individual owner. Most business, though not all, is more or less productive, but even in productive business success is popularly measured not by its productivity but by its appropriativeness. Admiration and respect for economic achievement in the true sense of productivity is a widely dif- ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 371^ ferent thing from admiration of economic acquisitiveness or the accumulation of wealth. A society that pays little honor to the organizer or to the inventor as such may honor the successful exploiter of inventions and of the organizing ability of others as the exponent of its chosen form of success. Such a people will admire the man who accumulates wealth by such financial manipulations as could with difficulty be shown to have any productive value, and which expropriate producers of their earnings, while it may not occur to them that im- provement in the quantity or quality of useful commodities placed upon the market is in itself an object for ambition or a form of success. This is an abominable social perversion. The true dignity of labor rests upon its value as achievement. It is a great loss for any productive laborer to value his work solely for the wages or profits that it brings. It is his part in the social team play, his work in the world. If horses should cease to be well shod agriculture and traffic would be hampered, and the whole system of civilized life largely dis- organized. Carpenters and all those working at "the building trades" make a perfectly inestimable contribution to the main- tenance of civilization. Each craftsman and even the ma- chine-tending factory operative administers the product of an age-long evolution, and is an important social functionary. The world needs relatively few "distinguished servants," but it requires millions reliably discharging the vital functions of society. The fidelity and the joy with which work is per- formed, largely depends upon the worker's attitude toward his task. (3) Scientific and professional achievement. (4) Political achievement. (5) Achievement in literature and art. (6) Military achievement. (g) Goodness. Standards of success are also negatively standards of failure, and standards of disapproval. Good- ness is the standard by which moral approval and disapproval are applied. Goodness differs from other standards of success in that society allows the individual to choose between other forms of success, which he will aspire to and which he will neglect, but lays the claims of goodness upon all, and measures all by that standard. Goodness, like other forms of success, 372 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY is in part a matter of natural endowment, but its achievement requires continuous and protracted endeavor. One is good, the whole outgo of whose life, both the overt outgo which may be called conduct and also the emotional outgo which may be inferred from conduct, corresponds to a personal ideal. A personal ideal is necessarily a complex concept. It is in reality a combination of numerous appreciated traits in their due proportion, none omitted, and each subordinated to the whole. The personal ideals, being social products, vary from one society to another exceedingly, and such group ideals develop gradually. They appear as sentiments of admiration of, and disgust at, personal traits and conduct. What conduct and dis- position shall appeal to the sentiments of a group as admi- rable depends in part upon experience and reason, for the ethical leaders of a people select for approval such traits and such conduct as have been shown by experience to promote individual and social welfarCj and mark for con- demnation such traits and conduct as tend to undermine individual and social welfare. Individuals differ both in the rational perception of the consequences of conduct, and in the strength of their sentiments of admiration and repugnance for human qualities, The mass of men have a more or less vague sense of the dangerousness of the conduct which they recognize as evil and the promise of good in the conduct which they approve, and more or less strength of sentiment in admiration or detestation of moral qualities. The moral genius is one who is endowed with exceptional strength of these perceptions and sentiments, as the esthetic genius is endowed with exceptional discernment and enthusiasm for beauty, and repugnance for the hideous. The moral genius is endowed not only with strength of sentiment, but also with rational in- sight into the consequences of conduct which enables him to see what to approve and what to condemn. The growing moral ideal of a society is little by little revealed to it by the folk sense and by the leadership of its moral geniuses. It becomes effective in the social consciousness only as it is embodied in the personality of admired individuals. This embodiment is commonly fractional, not all elements in the ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 373 ideal being embodied with equal clearness in any single indi- vidual. Moral approvals are as truly social elements socially caused, as tastes, beliefs, or any other type of activity. This is illus- trated by the fact that the moral approvals which grow up in the course of social evolution in different societies and which characterize different stages of evolution in the same society, vary so widely. Prevalent sentiment has approved slavery, polygamy, infanticide, human sacrifice, cannibalism, wife-lend- ing as a duty of hospitality, and it would be hard to imagine any act of greater enormity than has been sanctioned by some relatively advanced society. As a rule the moral approvals of each individual are those that have been radiated by the social contacts to which he has been exposed. Of course, when, one has been exposed to contradictory radiations an "accom- modation" results (modification or displacement of some ap- provals by others). The approvals which one has as a mem- ber of society are those which he turns in upon himself and which become his conscience. There never has been a society which did not tolerate or approve some conduct that was bad for it. Our own does, particularly in connection with certain amusements. There has been great progress in moral approvals and disapprovals, at the same time there probably is no other point at which change is so likely to be degeneration. This danger results from the fact that approvals, like tastes, are sentiments, and therefore are not bound to the path of progress, as ideas should be, by logical consistency; and though they have a basis in reason, this basis is the rational appeal of results which though great are largely diffused, obscure, and remote, as against the appeal of pleasures that are obvious and immediate. III. The Arts of Life, Social Practices. i. THE ARTS AND CRAFTS FOR THE ACQUISITION AND MANIPULATION OF MATE- RIAL THINGS. (a) Extraction (b) Transformation (c) Transportation (d) Personal service 374 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY (e) Personal aggression. Crimes and the arts of crim- inals must be included among socially prevalent activities. (f) Exchange . (g) Theft J (h) Exaction. By exaction is meant the forcible taking of material goods or services when recognized as morally jus- tified. The exactions of parents upon children, and all taxa- tion of individuals by the state fall here. (i) Giving. Bequests fall under this head, so that all durable property changes hands by this method once in every generation. Aside from bequests, the sums transferred by gifts in this country amount to hundreds of millions annually, mainly support the institutions of religion, largely those of charity, education, and scientific research, and powerfully affect the social welfare. 2. IN THE ACQUISITION AND MANIPULATION OF PSYCHIC POSSESSIONS : (a) Methods of Thought and Proof. 1 (i) Mythology. This earliest stage of intellectual development characterizes all primitive peoples, and also the children of the most ad- vanced peoples. The children of an advanced people are not allowed to remain in this stage because they are taught by adults who have passed beyond it. The principal character- istic of this stage is the inability to reject clear ideas. The tendency of the child is to believe every idea that is clearly formed in the mind. This is not because he is dull but be- cause he knows no conflicting facts which disprove the clear idea. It is not due to stupidity but to lack of data. Heraclitus and Empedocles, with all their intellectual ability naively ac- cepted ideas which to us seem absurd because they had not the necessary knowledge with which to test them. Previous knowledge is the touchstone for new ideas and their naive acceptance is due to lack of the touchstone. The second characteristic of the mythical method is that it proceeds by analogy. The savage and the child ask many 1 For the sake of putting all the "practical arts'' in one class, we must modify at this point our criterion of "predominance of the overt." Here the outgo is from brain-center to brain-center. 375 hard questions. For the savage there is no one to answer. He has not sufficient data for his problem to enable him to infer the answer from observations which pertain to the matter in hand, and so the mind, restless without some answer, frames one by analogy with those matters concerning which he does have some knowledge. Thus proceeding by analogy he says, for example, that the stars are the campfires of his departed ancestors, and having no knowledge about the actual nature of the stars which is incongruous with this idea and as -the idea satisfies the hunger for a reply to the inquiry and is in harmony with the most analogous realities with which he is acquainted, it is not merely adopted by its inventor but also with still greater readiness and certainty by the less inventive minds of his associates. The mythological method of thought is not an art. It is artlessness. At this stage there does not prevail a social conception and approval of the method employed. The method is not an additional social reality besides the employment of the method. There might, therefore, be question whether it ought to be included here. This primitive method of thought is, however, a distinct and definitely describable fact in the life of the peoples among whom it prevails. (2) Authority. After a society has answered its hard questions by the mythological method and so has established a traditional body of doctrine, and after it has developed con- siderable skill in detecting logical inconsistency, it no longer naively welcomes new suggestions if they are at variance with the established creeds. Thus it is that the second stage in the development of human thought follows upon the first as a natural and undesigned consequence. This second stage of thought comes to be recognized, approved, and insisted upon and is therefore practiced as the adopted method of procedure. It is the method of deducing ideas from some previously ac- cepted body of teachings which is chosen as the major premise of reasoning, and that not merely by a choice of the indi- vidual thinkers but by an established social judgment from which the individual can hardly escape. The prevalence of this method of thought and proof is illustrated by the He- 376 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY brews at the time of Christ with their law and tradition, their Torah and Talmud, 1 by Europe during its age of scholasticism, by early protestantism with its "proof-text method," and by China until the present time. (3) System. The third stage in the development of the art of thinking arrives when the crust of authority has been broken up, but when there is not sufficient knowledge of the objective world to serve as data and tests of thought. The mind is, therefore, set free to speculate. It is equipped with ideas from previous stages of development and with the numer- ous suggestions of present speculation, and sets out to test which of all those ideas shall be retained and which rejected. The test applied is the demand that ideas shall be congruous with one another. This stage was exemplified by Greek phi- losophy. Among the Greeks logic became not merely a prac- tical art but also a fascinating game. The defender of an idea was successful in argument provided he could avoid the admission of any idea incongruous with his thesis. By this method, elaborate systems of philosophy or, as Steinmetz says, "philosophic poems" have been built up. The process was to seize upon some fundamental doctrine as a main clue, one that was sufficiently vague to escape collision with known facts, and sufficiently ingenious so that it might conceivably serve as the explanation of problems ; then to supplement this main doctrine, when necessary, with other concepts not inconsistent with it nor with each other, which if true would help out the explanation of the problems presented. In this way it was possible to piece together a structure of speculative philosophic explanations more systematic and complete than could be at- tained, at any rate in that day, by the patient and halting method of science. (4) Science. The methods of science differ from the pre- vious methods in their greater objectivity, in keeping closer to observable realities, in looking longer and more painstak- ingly before making a guess and then looking again and again 1 The words "Mishna" and "Gemara," which are the names of the two parts of the Talmud, each mean "a deducing" and indicate the method of drawing out teachings from the previous sacred scriptures. ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 377 to test the guess. In this stage the search for descriptions and explanations which are transcripts of objective reality is car- ried on by the consciously adopted method of detailed observa- tion, inference, and objective test; that is, by the painstaking accumulation of objective data, until they suffice to yield an inference which can be tested by reference to additional ob- jective realities, of such a sort as to confirm the inference if true and to contradict or modify it if erroneous. Science in its earlier stages is unsystematic. It consists of beginnings made at many points of least resistance. But if all realities could be successfully subjected to the scientific method then all the apparent inconsistencies between our fragmentary beginnings of knowledge would be reconciled, for we should at last see all the realities together as they exist together, and they cannot contradict each other. Then all our sciences would have be- come one science, and that science would be philosophy; not the easy system constructed by speculation, but the positive synthetic philosophy sought by Comte and Spencer. They sought in vain, for the older sciences were far too incomplete, and the last science which investigates the most complex phe- nomena, the consummation of natural causation, was barely born with them, its phenomena but vaguely conceived by them and by most of their contemporaries even regarded as falling outside the realm of natural causation and so excluded from the system of science. The complete synthetic philosophy will probably always be a dream unrealized, for the circle within which we observe and infer and test bur inferences does not bound the universe. But the social facts are within the circle of our observation and are as proper objects of scientific in- vestigation as any facts. Creeds give way to science first with reference to material things, next with reference to psychic and social realities, and in the realm that lies beyond observation never, save in so far as inference from facts can be built out cantilever-wise into the unknown. Since science is dependent upon observation to suggest and then to test our hypotheses, it naturally comes first where inference is easiest because observation is most facile and abundant, and where the testing of inferences is easiest 378 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY because there is readiest resort to experiment or compari- son. In all these particulars, material phenomena are more accessible to the method of science than are the social and psychic. Social realities are indeed open to indirect observation, but there is comparatively great difficulty in testing theory by experiment. Instead of experiment social science must rely mainly upon comparison which requires acquaintance with long stretches of time, or with many widely different specimens of social evolutions. The latter, that is, comparison between contrasting social types, is by far the greatest aid to objectivity and the best antidote to bigotry and doctrinalism upon social problems. Social science as such must rely chiefly upon the comparative method. The most advanced societies are scientific in their treat- ment of material phenomena, predominantly in the stage of authority and precedent in the social sciences, and system- atizers in religion. Sociology is an intellectual movement resulting from the insistence of the mind that the methods of science shall be carried out in the realm of human activities. Any of the social sciences may become sociological by applying the com- parative method with sufficient breadth and thoroughness, in the effort to discover and to test general hypotheses as to the methods of causation which underlie all social life, just as- botany or zoology or any division of them becomes biology by discovering, exemplifying and testing hypotheses concern- ing the general principles which underlie equally all forms of organic life. (b) Arts of Communication, (i) Language. Language is a typical social activity, the invention of no individual but the product of social causation and the common possession of entire societies. (2) Literary and rhetorical arts. (3) The arts of secrecy and of deception. The arts of secrecy and deception are not commonly per- haps not elsewhere included in such an enumeration as this, but they are social realities and these arts, and the practice ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 379 of them, are not to be omitted from any complete and truthful analysis of the social situation. (4) Arts of communicating across distances; signaling, post, telegraph, telephone. (5) Arts for communicating to large numbers, or arts of publicity, the maintenance and utilization of convo- cations, pulpit, platform, press, exposition, museum, and library. (6) Pedagogic arts and practices, parental instruction, the school, arts of self-culture. (c) Fine arts and play, the activities of: (i) Music; (2) painting; (3) sculpture; (4) architecture; (5) art-crafts; (6) ceremony and etiquette; (7) theater and exhibitions; (8) amateur athletics; (9) games of mind, or mind and chance; (10) outdoor locomotion, as play; (u) primitive industries, as play; (12) gambling; (3) drinking and other drugging; (14) feasting; (15) dancing; (16) social reunion; (17) sex indul- gence. (d) Arts of organisation and administration. To elicit diverse activities adapted to specific ends and correlate them into effective systems in which the interrelation of the activi- ties multiplies their effectiveness is among the finest of the practical arts. There are five spheres of activity in which special arts of organization have been developed, adapted to the special requirements of each : (1) Domestic organization. (2) Political organization. (3) Economic organization. In times of feudalism, serf- dom, and such slavery as that of Sparta, economic and po- litical organization are largely identical. Subsequently, the differentiation between political and economic organization has gone far ; now, however, there is a movement toward increasing their interrelationship. The enforcement of contracts, the collection of debts, the definition of hours and conditions of labor, and the enforcement of the liabilities of employers, illustrate the relation between economics and government, so also do the definition of weights and measures, the coinage of money, and the inspection of banking, insurance, and trans- 3 8o INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY portation. Every corporation is to a considerable degree a public organization. Organization as an art of manipulating human activities, plays nearly or quite as important a part in economic achieve- ment as do the technic arts and crafts which manipulate ma- terial things. This'is illustrated in manufacture, transporta- tion, and nearly all modes of economic activity. It is only in the simplest forms of economic activity, particularly in the elementary forms of extractive industry, such as farming and trapping, that the organization of cooperating human activities occupies a place distinctly subordinate to the technic crafts. The facts of nature almost defy logical classification ; in this the facts of sociology do not differ from others. But if the results of classification are uncertain and a makeshift con- venience, the process of classifying is one of the greatest aids to exact observation. It is not easy to determine whether con- venience and understanding are best served by classifying ex- change among the arts for manipulating material things or among the arts of economic organization. If one adopts, as we do, the purpose served as the basis of classification, the arrangement already given is correct. One who tried to base his classification on the nature of the technique of an art would put exchange among the arts of organization and could claim that exchange is an adjustment of psychic realities. The sales- man, as truly as the teacher or preacher, is seeking to induce mental states. He wishes to have men make up their minds to accept what he has to offer and to relinquish what they have to give. Is not exchange then a correlation between activities of the parties, and is not promotion of exchanges an act of organization, a manipulation of psychic realities as the method of obtaining possession of material goods ? The truth is that the practice of every art includes both psychic and material elements; even language involves the use of vocal organs and air waves, and the telephone employs poles, wires, and batteries. It would seem more scientific to classify with reference to the predominant character of the art itself, rather than with reference to the purpose which it serves, but that wpuld require a classification far less obvious, and far less irj ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 381 accord with popular usage; it would put the telephone and other arts for communicating across distances among the arts with a technique of material manipulation and it would put exchange among the arts of organization. (4) Religious organization. (5) Organization of public opinion. Professor Cooley, in his valuable book entitled "Social Or- ganization, a Study of the Larger Mind," showed that what we call public opinion is a correlation or organization of the ideas and sentiments of great numbers of people. The organization of public opinion might be termed the art of organization par excellence. It is true, however, that the shaping of public opinion has been largely an artless and undesigned product of natural causes. But in all developed societies the artful manip- ulation of it is attempted on a considerable scale. And the art of organizing public opinion would be the consummate application of the science of sociology. 1 The Fourth. Kingdom of Kealities. This bare enumeration of the different kinds of social activities is enough to make us realize that their extent and variety are tremendous. They constitute a fourth great kingdom of natural phenomena which is neither animal, vegetable, nor mineral. A single concrete prevalent social activity, like a language, a science, a religion, slavery, or polygamy, is an objective phenomenon as real and imposing as a mountain range or as a biological, species. A single feature in an institution, like trial by jury as a feature of court procedure, or a single item in the political policy of 1 EXERCISE : Name a specimen of each variety of social activity mentioned in the preceding classification. When possible select speci- mens that are to be found in the community where you are, prefer- ably such as differentiate that community from the surrounding so- ciety. Go about it as a class in botany goes about gathering and classify- ing the botanical varieties to be found within walking distance of the University. The classification is largely based on quantitative marks ; that is, the question of predominance of sentiment over the idea that evokes it, or overt practice over the sentiment or idea that guides it. This is unavoidable, since all the elements are usually present in a social activity, and it is concrete social activities and not psychological abstractions that we must classify. 382 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY a great people, like the separation of church and state, or the protective system as it long existed in this country, is a reality out there in the world with which we have to do, which has had a long and interesting evolution; and to remove such a reality is a feat like tunneling the Alps, although unlike the Alps it is a living thing, a part of the life of the people, and though it may endure for centuries, and while in full vigor stubbornly resists change, yet it is not petrified but at the proper conjunction of conditions will show that it possesses the ca- pacity for change which is characteristic of life. Few have formed the habit of thinking about these invisible but mo- mentous realities, and for lack of the habit most persons find some difficulty in the first attempt. Yet these realities are as truly capable of description and explanation as are the dif- ferent species of animals or of plants. The ideas that we may form concerning them are perfectly definite and clear, if not simple, and the difficulty of thinking clearly about them rapidly diminishes with familiarity. CHAPTER XXI MODES OF VARIATION IN SOCIAL ACTIVITIES The next step in describing the social realities is to dis- tinguish the modes of variation to which they are subject. We are not speaking of variation from place to place and from one society to another, such as the contrasts between the social activities of Zulus and Esquimaux, but of variations in the activities of the same people or of their children and children's children, and of variations in the same activity of the same people at different stages of development, save as the activity ceases to be the same by the very fact of variation. We are using the word "variation" as the biologist uses that term, to mean, not differences between unrelated or remotely related "speciespBut those nhated changes in a species by which a new variety of the species is formed and a new stage ~6f evolution is reached. A study of these "modes of variation is of the highest scien- tific importance since these modes of variation may be called the terms in the evolution of social realities. It is of the highest practical importance, for the practical application of any science of life (biology, psychology, or sociology) consists mainly in securing desired and preventing undesired variations in realities the modification of which can be controlled only by understanding the natural tendencies that effect them. The principal modes of variation in social phenomena are five, of which the fifth has several important subdivisions. 1. Social Phenomena Vary in Prevalence. Expansions and contractions in the prevalence of social activities are per- haps the simplest form of their variation. The method of this expansion and contraction is the chief subject treated by Professor Tarde in his great book on the "Laws of Imita- tion." Generally speaking, each new element introduced into a 383 384 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY social activity is originated by an individual, and from the originator the innovation spreads. It is indeed possible that a simple and obvious innovation, or one to which previous devel- opment had led up so that it is naturally the next step, may occur independently to several minds. In that case we have an instance of multiple origination. But even then the only de- parture from the ordinary is in the fact that social suggestion, radiation or imitation issues from several centers instead of from one. Multiple origin frequently accounts for the origina- tion of similar activities in independent communities, but it seldom, if ever, suffices to account for any considerable preva- lence of an activity in a community. In securing the preva- lence of social activities the overwhelmingly predominant fac- tors are social suggestion, sympathetic radiation and imitation. The conditions that limit expansion of prevalence or actually cause its contraction and even bring about the extinction of activities once widely prevalent, are found chiefly in the inter- ference of prevalent activities with each other, which is one of the phases of "accommodation" already discussed, by help of comparison with the interference of spreading circles in the water where stones have fallen. 2. Social Phenomena Vary in Strength. (a) An idea may be held merely as a fancy, or as a plausible conjecture, or as a working hypothesis, or as an unshaken conviction. Ideas that have been held as convictions may be questioned, fall into doubt, become weakened so as to lose their power to hold a prominent place in attention or to express themselves in overt deeds. An individual may either lose his power or be transformed from weakness into strength by the weakening or strengthening of his dominant convictions ; and an age or a people may be full of power because of a general assurance of conviction, or their strength may be dissolved in doubt, or in some departments of their life they may be confident and strong and at the same time in other departments of life be in the uncertainty of transition. This does not depend upon the degree of truth in their ideas, but in the degree of strength with which the ideas are held. Erroneous ideas may be strongly held and may give power to a man or to a society, VARIATION IN SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 385 as religious and political history abundantly illustrate. Errone- ous ideas are mischievous and destructive in the long run if they relate to matters of practical experience, but not neces- sarily so at first, because they may impel in the direction of needed progress and cannot be carried to their full logical ex- pression. Society is prone to err in one direction and then to secure reform by advocating the opposite error or exaggera- tion. Thus under a despotism, society may profit by the doc- trine of anarchism that human nature would blossom into every excellence if all restraints were removed, and in a time of violence and disorder, society may profit by the doctrine of the divine rights and unlimited prerogatives of rulers. Fur- thermore, ideas that afford consolation and inspiration may be speculatively held concerning matters that are beyond the sphere of observation and experience and have no direct prac- tical consequences save in the minds of the believers. Thus men have been prone freely to draw inspiration from the unknown. But as the advancing boundary of knowledge compels the abandonment of one and another of the beliefs thus speculatively adopted, we are more and more compelled to seek our sustaining and guiding principles from the facts of life which we are at length trying to study with scientific care. If it turns out that we cannot live in the clouds we may build habitations upon the solid rock; if we cannot have the moon and the stars we may gather flowers and fruits and even discover diamonds in the dust. (b) A popular taste or sentiment may vary in all degrees from the zero of absolute indifference to the boiling-point of enthusiasm. For illustrations recall the rise and passing of the "bicycle craze" or the "tulip craze" that made a bulb as precious as a diamond, the increase of musical, interest in cer- tain American cities, the decay of the power of the ideals of chivalry or of the prestige of "noble" birth, and the immensely increased respect for business success in recent times, the occa- sional effervescences of patriotic fervor which mark the his- tory of peoples and the alternating periods of widespread re- ligious coldness and of revivalistic fervor which have acterized the religious history of our country. 386 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY It is important to distinguish clearly between the two forms of variation thus far mentioned. Variation in strength is by no means to be confused with variation in prevalence. It is true that when all our associates hold a given belief or feel a given sentiment, we tend to hold that belief with firmer con- viction or to feel that sentiment with greater zeal. Never- theless the first disciples of a new belief or sentiment may hold it with far greater strength than the thousands who later become converted to if. And it may hold its own in the num- ber of adherents or even go on extending in prevalence after its strength has greatly declined. Consequently, to measure the social power of a belief or sentiment by the number of professed adherents may be utterly misleading; variations in strength must be recognized as distinct from variations in prevalence. 3. Compound Social Activities Vary in Uniformity. Just as there is organic variation between the specimens of the same species of animals or plants, so that no two specimens are alike, similarly between prevalent activities of the same kind there is variation. Customs, institutions, and all the more massive prevalent social activities are compounded of various elements of belief, emotion, and expression. 1 Variation in 1 Thus Republicanism has long included a strong sentiment of loy- alty to the party name, pride in the names of great leaders from Lin- coln to Elaine, and in historic traditions of the sixties, belief in nation- alism as against state sovereignty, in the policy o^ protection versus free trade, in the gold standard for money, in the inviolability of the "rights of private property," in a strong navy and colonial expansion, and in representative government as against direct legislation. Re- cently there has been much diminution of uniformity with reference to the last of these ten items. On the other hand, many other senti- ments or ideas have, from time to time, entered into the make-up of Republicanism, either increasing its uniformity and solidity, or diminishing it; for example, belief in the Panama Canal Project, in the civil service merit system, in publicity of campaign funds, in reci- procity, in postal savings-banks, and parcels post; and in the con- servation of natural resources, etc. Methodism, when its uniformity was greatest, included emphasis of the "spirit" versus formalism, in theory, sentiment, and practice, belief in 'free will versus predestination, in the possibility of falling from grace versus the perseverance of the saints, in a supernatural VARIATION IN SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 387 some of the included elements may take place without de- stroying the identity of the activity as a whole. The political ideas and sentiments of two men need not be identical in every respect, in order for the political activity of each, taken as a whole, to be truly identified as Republicanism. Thus the Republicanism of men in Maine, with its desire for a tariff on lumber, is not identical with the Republicanism of men in Missouri. Neither need the religious ideas and sentiments of two men be identical for both to be Methodists. A given kind of activity may at one time be comparatively free from variations and at another time it may vary quite widely and tend to break up into subvarieties. For example, Republi- canism in the time of Grant, while by no means without varia- tions, was comparatively uniform, mingled with various moral principles and private interests no doubt, yet the Republicanism itself not only a widely prevalent and strong, but also a highly regular and uniform social activity, as compared with the Republicanism of' to-day. Democracy during the same interval has also lost in uniformity, though it has recently gained in prevalence and strength. Methodism, what with the introduc- tion of radical ' changes in the interpretation of the Bible in the minds of some, while others refuse to accommodate the creed of their forefathers to the progress of knowledge, may have diminished in uniformity at least as much as either Re- publicanism or Democracy. At the same time we are wit- nessing the spread and solidification of certain political ideas not the possession of either great party, and of certain religious and moral ideas not the possession of any denomination, which may soon lead to a reorganization of parties with or without change of names and to a progressive amalgamation of re- ligious sects. 1 change of heart, in baptism by immersion or sprinkling according to the conscience of the candidate, the class meeting, the episcopacy, the probation of members, the ban upon "worldly amusements," hell fire, the personal devil, the Trinity, the physical second coming of Christ, the inerrancy of the Scriptures and pride in and loyalty to the sect. 1 EXERCISE: i. Analyze great social realities besides Methodism and Republicanism into their component activities. 2. Which components are social ideas, which social sentimen'.s, and which social practices? 388 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 4. Compound Social Activities Vary in Content. Varia- tion in content is the disappearance of some element that has been included in a composite social activity, or the addition of some element not previously included. Each complex social activity is in reality a system of ideas, sentiments and prac- tices, and therefore can suffer the loss of some of its elements or the addition of a new one without losing its identity as a whole. Sometimes the use of and attachment to a given name is the one element in an old system of activity which persists. Variation in content ordinarily comes gradually and so involves a variation in uniformity till the loss of the disap- pearing element is complete or till the acceptance of the new element is unanimous. But while variation in content almost necessarily implies variation in degree of uniformity, variation in uniformity by no means implies variation in content. At the end of a period of great variation in uniformity analysis of a complex social reality may find it to include the same elements as at the beginning, there being only a variation in the strength and prevalence of the separate elements with no addition to or subtraction from their number. Let each line represent a belief, sentiment, a practice in- cluded in a composite social activity; some lines break off to indicate that certain elements in this composite activity do not prevail in all sections of the party, sect, or class that carries on the composite activity as a whole. Some of the lines are a part of the way heavy and a part of the way faint to indicate that certain elements in the composite activity vary in strength in different sections of the party or sect or class. These breaks and shadings indicate variations in uniformity. But the entire disappearance of an included activity indicated by VARIATION IN SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 389 one of these lines, or the addition of a new line would repre- sent a variation in content. If the obliterated idea or senti- ment had prevailed throughout the party, sect, or class or the new one came to prevail throughout the party, sect, or class, then the variation in content would bring with it no variation in uniformity. In applying the statistical method it is highly important to take heed of variations in strength, uniformity, and content and not merely of variations in the prevalence of complex activities, for the' units of complex activity tabulated by the statistician, while remaining the same in their general charac- ter, may vary so greatly in these subtler ways as to require significant modification or even a reversal of the conclusion based on statistical results. 5. Compound Social Activities Vary in Phase. Social ac- tivities exist in several phases, and it is possible for the same activity to pass through all the principal phases. Thus a fashion may in time become a custom and a mere custom may become an institution. The principal phases of social activity- are custom, fashion, rational acceptance, institution, and organization. Custom, fashion, rational acceptance, and institution are due to the addition of certain elements to the content of a compound social activity, which leave the dom- inant elements in the activity undestroyed but give it a new character, as overtones make the "do" of an organ and of a violin different in character from each other though each is "do." For example, the cremation of the dead in India is mingled with elements of sentiment which make it a custom; but the cremation of the dead for sanitary and economic rea- sons in an American city has not these overtones and therefore is not a custom and without them could not be a custom how- ever prevalent it might become. Instead it has mingled with it other elements which make it a case of rational acceptance. It is essentially the same act, as middle C is "do" on the organ or on the violin, but it appears in quite different phases because of these different included elements. (a) CUSTOM. If we take human history as a whole and include in our view the life of savage and barbarous ages 390 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY and of the savage and barbarous peoples of the present, we shall see that custom has been the overwhelmingly predom- inant phase of social activity. The word "custom" applies most obviously to overt practice, yet in a sense all beliefs and sen- timents as well as practices may become customary. And there is no custom that does not contain ideas and sentiments. The definition of custom includes at least three parts. The first is an idea, propagated by mass suggestion ; the idea of what one has usually or always seen others do, think, and feel upon given occasions is powerfully thrust upon the mind upon the appearance of the appropriate occasion. The second is group expectation. The group has learned to expect that each member upon the appropriate occasion will respond in the cus- tomary way, and any other response causes a shock of surprise. The member shares this expectation, consciously or subcon- sciously, and would be surprised to find himself acting in any other way, and is quite aware that he would surprise his neigh- bors. The third is the emotional preference due to familiarity. The group, surprised by uncustomary behavior on the part of one of its members, and the member himself assailed by the mere thought of behavior which violates custom, feels a shock not only of surprise but also of displeasure or disgust. We be- come psychologically adapted to that with which we are fa- miliar. One who leaves home for the first time suffers from homesickness, not because the new surroundings are inferior; they may be vastly superior and the homesickness be all the greater, for it is due not to the inferiority of the new, but to the mere fact of difference from that which is familiar. Like- wise the unsophisticated traveler in a foreign country is likely to look with pity and contempt upon what is different from his own land, notwithstanding it may be superior. This predilection for the customary modes of activity due to preference for the familiar and repugnance to the strange, is ordinarily reenforced by group pride, and by vague fear of the unknown and its possible consequences. The preference for the familiar says, "That is not the way what a way that is!" Group pride says, "That is not our way, and our way is best, you would not find one of us doing so!" And fear VARIATION IN SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 391 of the unknown says, "Nobody can tell what may come of it." Custom we see is capable of as precise definition as that of a biological order or class. A jaistoinjs the idea 1 of an ac- tivity, propagated by suggestion from the already established prevalence of the activity, together with group expectation that the given activity will be enacted upon every appropriate occasion, and emotional preference 2 for the customary activity rather than any substitute for it> due to familiarity, together with the activities which upon occasion give renewed expres- sion to the idea. Custom-bound epochs. The emotional preference for the familiar and the feeling of shock and disgust at the unfamiliar and unexpected have at most times and in most places had a degree of strength that we little conceive; for we live in an age of innovation and have become accustomed to change, as a tame moor hen can become accustomed to her master's dog from which it is her nature to fly in an agony of terror. The power of custom is by no means obsolete even with us in this most innovating time and country. Does the American man consciously decide whether he shall wear trousers or flowing oriental robes or a Roman toga ? No ; custom decides that for him; group expectation would be shocked, and established emotional preference outraged by "men in skirts." At most times and places custom has similarly decided nearly all prac- tices, ideas, and sentiments. Established custom makes depart- ure from the customary more or less preposterous. Among savage and barbarous peoples its weight has so com- 1 We in this assembled class have our marriage customs, although there is no wedding in progress; that is to say we have the idea of how a wedding would be conducted if there were occasion to celebrate one. 'These are the "overtones." A figure may serve to visualize the idea. Let the heavy line represent the idea of an activity radiated by mass suggestion, and let the thin lines represent the overtones : O H = group ex- pectation incremation. 1/1 = preference for the familiar 392 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY pletely held down individual choice or invention in the types of activity that individuals have had little more to do with deciding for themselves the character of their beliefs, prefer- ences, ambitions, moral approvals, or practical arts, than a daisy or buttercup has in deciding the shape of its leaves or the color of its flowers. Some men among barbarous peoples wax mighty and dominant as some plants grow tall and strong, while others remain stunted, but all according to the customary mode of exercising power. Some men among them have innovated slightly as plants show universal organic vari- ation and occasional sports. But in general the reign of nat- ural causation, through mass suggestion, radiation, and imita- tion, in the case of savage and barbarous men, has been as little affected by the freedom of individuals as the reign of heredity in plant and animal life is interfered with by muta- tion. An explanation of the evolution of customary beliefs and activities is a problem of natural science. The social protoplasm. It may excite some surprise that among the five phases in which social activities appear, cus- tom is the first to be mentioned. Custom is a somewhat ripened phase of social activity. But all of the most primitive peoples that we know are already thoroughly imbedded in custom; and it is from this stage that the earliest visible social progress sets out. Custom has been teTrned^he^social^ pro^gpLisjnj" because from it morality, law, and religion have been differen- tiated. A passing remark must suffice us here, as the process of their differentiation will later be traced. Morality is in origin that which the mores prescribe. It is that approved course of action, any departure from which is strange and abhorrent to the common feeling of the group and feared for its possible consequences. The portions of the requirements of mere custom which become differentiated as -morality are those which group judgment based upon expe- rience and reflection combines with mere group emotion to enforce. Laws existed long before there were legislatures ; they were the customs of the group as enforced by chieftains or other judges. Even now statutory or enacted law is only one por- VARIATION IN SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 393 tion of the law. The "common law" is simply the custom of courts which is treated as being as truly law as statutory enactments. Religion begins as the customary etiquette and ceremony of dealing with the unseen powers who must be constantly propitiated. It is sometimes said that the whole life of the savage becomes a ritual, because he is always acting as in the presence of powers that must not be offended, but propitiated, and there is a proper way for doing everything so as to keep their favor and all other ways incur their wrath. Tlie latent power of custom. Custom is present and power- ful even when no one is performing the customary act or exhibiting or consciously experiencing the customary thought or emotion. We have our marriage customs, not alone when there is a wedding in progress. Custom is always ready and waiting for the occasion to call it forth, into the foreground of consciousness. Thus all social activities can exist stored and latent in memory, as well as in active consciousness. Cus- tom may even exist on the part of individuals who never in their lives actually fulfill the custom. It is not alone those who have themselves been married who possess, or are pos- sessed, by our marriage customs. This illustrates the mean- ing of that part of our definition which states that custom is "the idea" of an action. The customs and institutions of a government or religion may exist unimpaired in the minds of the masses even though the functionaries of government or religion are active in violation of the customs; and at such a time custom is likely to be not merely latent in memory, but aroused and active, and that in the -minds of those who never have occasion to carry the customary activity into execution, and it will condemn the violation of it and demand the return of obedience to it on the part of its proper executors. Yet custom could never have become custom unless conformity to it on the part ojf those to whom the occasion for such action was presented had been the rule, and departure from it the glaring exception. These facts show how superficial and erroneous is *the ordinary idea that custom is simply prevalent activity in the 394 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY sense of overt muscular activity. There are a great many prevalent activities which are not customs, and a custom can exist in the entire absence of any overt manifestation of the customary activity. What is the nature of this tremendous thing that throughout ages has held mankind like living beings imprisoned in an atmosphere but slightly 'elastic, the power of which remains latent and ready during the intervals when there is no occasion for the customary act, and which when occasion for execution of the customary act presents itself to one member of society, springs into insistence in the minds of all the rest? It is an idea of a certain action, and the idea can exist in the absence of the action ; it is an idea radiated by suggestion from the previous prevalence of the given action ; it is expectation that the given action will be carried out when the occasion for it arises, and this expectation can exist in the absence of the action; it is an emotional preference for the familiar activity, and repugnance to any departure from it, and the repugnance felt when the custom is not fulfilled is even stronger than the feeling of fitness and satisfaction when it is fulfilled ; and it includes as one element the overt activities which upon occasion give expression to the idea, gratify the preference, and meet the expectation. Custom and habit. Custom is often called social habit, but this is only a figure of speech. The definitions of custom and of habit show them to be totally different things. The essential thing in habit is a modification of the physical organi- zation of the individual due to the repetition of a given activity. Custom involves nothing of the sort. We have marriage cus- toms but no one of us has a habit of being married in any particular way. However, a custom may lead to the prevalence of a habit. Thus drinking 'habits are largely due to social customs. More- over, if we may speak of habits of thought and feeling, then customs in general may establish corresponding habits, the cus- toms of a society thus intrenching themselves in the physical organisms of its members as established cerebroneural tenden- cies' that sometimes seem as strong as inborn instincts and may even be mistaken for instincts. VARIATION IN SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 395 (b) FASHION. Fashion is in some particulars the opposite of custom. Like custom it is characterized by emotional atti- tudes (particular overtones) toward a more or less prevalent activity, but they are the opposite emotional attitudes. The central element in custom is preference for the familiar; the central element in fashion is preference for the novel. It is odd but true that opposites may excite similar emotions, and among the most far-reaching tendencies of human nature are the principle of familiarity and the principle of novelty as grounds of preference. Only old activities can be customary, only new or renewed activities can be fashionable. Custom requires that that which is already old shall continue. Fashion demands that each innovation shall soon be succeeded by another novelty. Customs continue long but do not spread afar. So long as custom reigns each province has its own costume, dialect, and modes of conduct. Fashion, on the other hand, continues only a brief time but diffuses itself abroad. The fashions of Paris and London are seen in North Dakota, and the latest song of Broadway is presently sung, and the latest slang of the Bowery talked in San Francisco. Thus^- customs are long and narrow but fashions short and* wide. Or to change the figure : custom has long .roots in the p_ast, and, as custom, cannot be transplanted but endures^long in its native place, while fashion has but shallow roots and can be transplanted with ease but very soon withers away. "IF is not only the pleasure of novelty which prompts the rapid changes of fashion. With reference to a changeable fashion people of the same society at the same time will differ and such differences will afford a superficial mark of classifica- tion. Hence a class that desires easy distinction will adopt change for the sake of the distinction secured. And if this class actually has prestige and if other classes are not restrained from imitation, the change adopted will be imitated till the distinction is obliterated or obscured, and the same motive will then prompt the adoption of a new change. Hence fashions must rapidly succeed each other if the fashionable are to keep ahead of. their imitators. Doubtless this succession is, ' ~ " ' 396 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY helped on by business people who profit by the resulting de- mand for new goods. While custom includes an "overtone" of expectation and desire of conformity, fashion with the originators and leaders of fashion contains an "overtone" of desire for distinction. The tardy followers of fashion would in time convert it into custom, if the fashion-leaders would leave it undisturbed. Sumptuary laws which prescribe modes of dress and the like, were due to the desire of upper classes to preserve class distinction, and were peculiarly hateful to the spirit of democ- racy. The tendency to make fashions as expensive as pos- sible is largely due to the desire to make it difficult for the masses to imitate them, and so to render them more service- able as marks of distinction. That tendency is also due to the desire to display wealth. This is especially the case in an age and country like ours at the present period of its develop- ment, in which success is largely measured by wealth. De- sire to have things look expensive may pervert esthetic taste. 1 Real beauty is most often found in simple lines. One redeeming feature of a society that is stratified into castes is the relief from pretense and from the struggle to seem to belong to a class above one's own. Struggle to rise is good provided the standard of success is reasonable, but evil if the standards of success are trivial or false. There has been an immense decline in the extravagance of fashions in the dress of men since the era of ruff and puff and slashings and toes turned up towards the knees. It is not merely because of the abolition of sumptuary laws and the spread of the spirit of democracy. To what then is it due? It is due in part to the diffusion of wealth and the ability even of laborers to wear something better than a smock frock. When the butcher can dress in velvet the lord dresses in tweed and golfing-cap. After that why should the butcher continue to buy velvet? It is due much more to the fact that it has become the custom for men to work, and the business suit is a universal style, while formerly the aristocrat must every- 1 Compare Veblen : Theory of the Leisure Class, chap. yi. VARIATION IN SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 397 where display by his attire the fact that he did not have to work. 1 Why have not the extravagances of fashion in the dress of women similarly abated ? Such extravagance is as natural to the cock as to the hen. Men were not always outdone by women in this form of folly. It seems to be largely because well-to-do women are still an idle class. Frequently they do not even care for their own children 1 , if they have any. They are without any occupation that is worthy of them, and pre- sent a pathetic spectacle and a terrific waste of good human powers, their lives worn out with care of servants, social trifling, and hypochondria. And they set the fashions for poorer women. When women fully discover and apply them- selves to the real interests and services to which life specially invites them we may see less, not of beauty, but of rapid change and fantastic extravagance, in their dress. There will be more of beauty because fashion is forced more or less to disregard both beauty and comfort in the effort to secure , "distinction." It is driven to fantastic extremes in order to make the fact of being in fashion sufficiently noticeable. An- other reason why less fashion would mean more beauty is that relative permanence of tastes in dress among a culture-people would allow time for the development and diffusion of real esthetic excellence. The economic wastes of fashion at pres-' ent are enormous. Fashion holds sway not only in matters of dress and speech and manners and amusements, that is, in externalities and mat- ters of taste and whim, but also, though less characteristically, in matters of creed, opinion, and conduct. Whenever those who enjoy social prestige adopt any new belief or practice it is likely to be imitated as fashion in dress and speech are imitated, without any rational judgment of the intrinsic worth or reasonableness, of the model. Such imitation directly con- trasts with that to be discussed under the next head. 1 Veblen : Theory of the Leisure Class, chap. iii. CHAPTER XXII MODES OF VARIATION IN SOCIAL ACTIVITIES RATION- ALIZED SOCIAL ACTIVITIES Rational Acceptance. Customs and fashions do not owe their prevalence to reasoned approval by the individuals among whom they prevail. On the other hand a prevalent activity has entered upon the phase of rational acceptance when its preva- lence is due not, as is the case with fashion, to liking for nov- elty or desire for class distinction nor, as is the case with custom, to emotional preference for the familiar and to social suggestion, which as we have seen operates without any re- gard to the logical quality of the ideas suggested, but when its prevalence is, due to recognition of intrinsic excellence of the activity. Certain activities that have prevailed as mere fashions or customs may stand the test of experience and reflection and pass into the phase of rational acceptance. Groups with in- jurious customs tend to die out or lose prestige, and those with beneficial customs tend to survive, increase, and gain in pres- tige, so that there is a natural selection among customs which secures for them a degree of fitness without necessarily in- volving any rationality in their acceptance by those among whom they prevail. The fact that a customjs_bejieficial does not prove that it has passed into the stage of rational accept- ance any more than the_harrnf ul custom which survives beside jt Tarde called all acceptance of new activity "fashion-imita- tion," and wrote as if fashion and custom were the only phases of social activity. In this respect the most famous discussion of this theme is in error. The rational adoption of a new activity because of its intrinsic excellence is quite a different thing from "fashion-imitation." This first error led Tarde to 398 RATIONALIZED SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 399 the second error of announcing it as "an extra-logical law of imitation" that "imitation proceeds from within outward." This means that doctrines are imitated before rites ; ideas are imitated before words, phrases, or mannerisms ; practical aims are imitated before the mere forms of conduct by which aims are sought and admiration precedes envy. 1 - That is to say, borrowers seize upon the solid inner worth of what can be borrowed, instead of copying external expressions and man- nerisms. This is exactly the reverse of the common idea that imitation is the monkeyish copying of externalities. The fact is that neither the common idea nor that of- Tarde is a whole truth; imitation may be either ideomotor and monkeyish, jjj: v r_atiojial > Tarde's "law of imitation" is not true of all imita- tion. It is true of rational acceptance. Most of Tarde's illus- trations of his principle that "imitation proceeds from within outward," are cases of inter-group borrowing, not of borrow- ing from leaders within the same group. Some inter-group borrowing, like the styles that issue from Paris and London, are cases of mere fashion-imitation, but the more impressive cases of this sort are not fashion-imitation but rational accept- ance. The fact that elements of solid worth in the activities of a people have power to set up new currents of inter-group imitation is not an "extra-logical" or "non : logical" law, but the contrary. Instead of a non-logical law of fashion-imitation we have here the fact of rational acceptance. It is the recog- nition, however reluctant, of intrinsic superiority in the activi- ties of another group that has power to crack the crust of. custom and to let in models derived from another population. We must recognize both in inter-group imitation and in intra- group imitation, in addition to fashion and custom, a third phase, namely, logical or rational acceptance. The facts adducecTBy Tarde are real, though the universal- ity and extra-logical character of his "law" are unreal. Ra- tional acceptance of new models is followed by fashion-imita- tion of the same models, provided the first imitators enjoy such prestige in their own group that an innovation which they in- 1 Gabriel Tarde : Laws of Imitation, translated by Parsons, Holt, 1903, pp. 199 seq. fa 400 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY troduce for that reason becomes the fashion. When the king and court or the rich and traveled rationally imitate a foreign model, that 'model may be expected to become the fashion. After leaders capable of recognizing real excellence have ac- cepted the inner essence of foreign models, "in the spirit of admiration and not of envy," later the rabble may imitate the superficial externals of the same model in the spirit of mere fashion. Affinity of Certain Kinds of Activity for Certain Phases. Social activities may be divided into three classes, which in general contrast with each other in respect to the phase into which they most readily fall : ( i ) tastes and distastes or likes and dislikes are the characteristic field of fashion; (2) sciences and the practical arts for the manipulation of material things are most amenable to logical variation and rational acceptance ; and (3) social arts, religious creeds, and standards of ambition and conduct with difficulty escape from the bonds of custom. The non-logical innovations of fashion are easiest in those activities which we have denominated likes and dislikes includ- ing economic wants, artistic tastes, likings for play and recrea- tion, and tastes for etiquette and ceremony because in these, feeling is the chief element, and they are regarded as less fundamentally important than the other division of activities in which feeling predominates, namely, the standards of suc- cess and approval. The latter, though they are largely matters of feeling, are not willingly allowed to be matters of caprice or easy alteration, because they are the springs of conduct and there is dread of the harm that might result from change. Even in matters of taste, however, the liking for novelty is not given free rein, though the age be an innovating one, but changes in ceremony, amusements, and dress are often dreaded and repressed. And in a custom-bound age there is little tolerance for innovation in any activities. The activities which most readily find rational acceptance are the material arts and the sciences. Rational acceptance comes first of all in those practical arts which deal with ma- terial things, because those activities are subject to the direct test of success or failure. For this reason their choice is more RATIONALIZED SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 401 a matter of judgment and less a matter of mere emotional preference either for the old or for the new. Even successful practical arts may for a time be refused by the power of custom, but new practical arts are more -likely than any other form of activity to be the first to break down the power of cus- tom, because their superiority to the old can be demonstrated by immediate results. If many new practical arts are rapidly introduced then a general preference for the new may be estab- lished as a competitor with the general preference for the customary. We then get an age of innovation in which men expect to find excellence in the "up to date," "the latest." But .it must be borne in mind that an innovating age is a great rarity in human history. Western civilization by reason of the sudden triumphs of applied science has found itself in such an age. Perhaps it is only in the modern Western world that the crust of custom has been broken up by innovations and dis- coveries rising from within a society. Custom as a rule has been able to hold down the initiative of a people. It is the inventions of foreigners demonstrating their superiority in war or commerce or literary intercourse that has usually wrought the change in those rare and temporary intervals of progress when custom has given way to innovation. And the pro- gressiveness of our own civilization is due not alone to eman- cipated and emancipating sciences and their practical applica- tions, but also in part to the universal travel and communica- tion which tends to make all the world one society, brings all ideas into competition, and in the sweeping current of world life refuses to let the provincial stagnation of custom settle down. The awakening of the Orient illustrates the more usual method of the liberation of a people from the incrusta- tion of custom; Japan and now China, convinced by the ships and tools and other products of the West, enter upon an inno- vating age. In the earlier stages of progress, before science was able by its wonders to convince stubborn custom of the superiority of the new, the periods of progress which alternated with far longer eras of relative stagnation resulted mainly from the collision of groups. 402 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY Science is to be classed with practical arts for the control of material things as constituting the characteristic area of logical innovation. This is because science is the exercise of the logical faculties and the fruits of their exercise, and especially because its teachings can usually be subjected to the test of experiment. Rational acceptance comes earlier in the material sciences than in the social sciences, because in the former, hypotheses can more often be tested by experiment (social science relies largely on comparison of instances to replace experiment), and because in the material sciences prejudice and interest are less opposed to progress than in the social sciences. Last of all to advance to the stage of rational acceptance or rejection and so to yield to innovation are the other prov- inces of belief, the ethical sentiments and the arts of social organization and control, especially law and religion together with all the subsidiary beliefs, standards of judgment, and arts upon which they are thought most directly to rest. With activities of this class societies dare not experiment rashly, and with respect to them above all others, change is the most stubbornly resisted. By these society controls the conduct of its members; their power to control men rests largely upon the veneration with which they are regarded, and veneration is weakened by changeableness and increased by permanence. Moreover, the control of conduct is society's most vital and most difficult practical problem, with which rash experiment is therefore most dreaded. To tamper with the achieved order is like digging at the dikes. The resistance to change in these props of social order may be thought to be in a sense rational, but it takes the form of resistance to rational test and com- parison and insistence that what is established shall be kept, however irrational it may be, merely because it is established. This resistance to change is in fact caution or fear dreading to take a step, and often resembles the child with shut eyes standing on a stone in the brook and refusing to look to see how near the shore is for dread of taking the stride. We may note one apparent exception to the general rule just stated that practical arts and science are first to yield tQ RATIONALIZED SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 403 rational change and prepare the way for a general acceptance of innovation. Sometimes it has been literature that first broke over the barriers of custom, either because there was great superiority of one people over another in literature at a time when there was no such great advancement in science or in economic arts as to command foreign imitation; or because literature appealed to a class that had prestige enough to intro- duce innovations while the higher strata of society took little heed of technic arts; or else because books are easily trans- ported across the boundaries that separate peoples; or for a combination of these reasons. Such an instance occurred at the time of the renaissance in the fifteenth century when the poetry of Italy invaded other European lands, and again when in the sixteenth century the literature of Spain invaded France, and once more when in' the seventeenth century, through the agency of Frederick the Great and his court, the literature of France opened the way for French fashions in Germany. 1 Literature gives guarantees of its own superiority which indeed are far less convincing to the minds of the masses than those which secure the acceptance of a successful practical art, but which convince with sufficient certainty those who are pre- pared to appreciate the excellencies of literature. And when it is the king and the court who adopt foreign literature and foreign ways, their prestige suffices to secure the adoption of the same by humble folk. Thus aristocracies, though con- servative in political, religious, and economic matters, have repeatedly served the cause of progress by the introduction of cultural reforms. Culture Peoples and Nature Peoples. A society, the activi- ties of which as a whole have reached the' phase of rational acceptance, maybe designated a culture people. According~to Professor Vierkandr^the distinction between "nature people" and "culture people" is more fundamental and important than the common division between the savage, the barbarous and the civilized. Nature peoples, says that writer, are those among whom the development and permanence of customs is a matter of natural causation very little compli- 1 Tarde : Laws of Imitation, loc. cit. /J <-, * 404 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY cated by any element of design. Each rising generation adopts the prevailing beliefs, sentiments, and practices as a matter of course. Even after the process of social evolution, by natural reac- tions between human organisms and their environment, has developed a complex civilization, it is possible for the indi- vidual to be a nature man in the sense defined, wearing such clothes, speaking such language, pursuing such a calling, hold- ing such religious, political, and ethical ideas and sentiments as his social contacts have afforded him and as he has uncritically imbibed. The familiar figure who is a Republican because his father was, and a Presbyterian because his mother was, and whose whole equipment of prejudices has been acquired as a result of social causes and not of intelligent choice, Professor Vierkandt would call a nature man, that is, a product of natural causation. Culture peoples, the same authority says, are those who, haying become acquainted with a number of models, select their ideas, sentiments and practices as a result of the exer- cise of free, critical intelligence. Nature peoples adopt their ideas, sentiments and practices because of causes ; culture peo- ples adopt theirs by reason of reasons. Being affected by causes is widely different from being influenced by reasons. -^" Among a culture people not only do individuals become individuals indeed by the emancipation of their activities from non-logical social domination, but also the general current of social progress is in some degree understood and guided by the general intelligence, and in this resembles more the growth of cultivated fields where civilized men reap harvests, and less the wilcjs in which savages gather roots and berries. The process is no less natural than before, but the individual fac- tors have become so evolved that they as well as the mass factors are causally significant, the idea of individual freedom has been grasped and approved, and the social activities have become so differentiated that variety of combination in indi- vidual consciousness is invited and new structures of mass activity are no longer impracticable. Peoples acquire their cultural freedom first with reference RATIONALIZED SOCIAL ACTIVITIES 405 to economic arts, and next with reference to material sciences in the order already discussed. The advanced nations of to-day Vierkandt describes as half-culture peonies, the great majority of BieTr~population being still nature men with reference to these activities in which rational acceptance is more tardily developed. They may have escaped entirely from the mytho- logical method but on psychological, social, and religious sub- jects they still alternate between the authoritative, and the systematizing method. Although there is as yet no great society in which the population as a whole and with reference to their activities as a whole can be said to have reached the stage of rational eclecticism and to have become a "culture people," yet there is an increasing number of individuals whose lives are thus guided. ^ Institutions. An institution is the idea of a set of overt activities together with a twofold judgment lodged in the popular mind; namely, a judgment that the result which the institutionalized activities attain is necessary or greatly to be desired and that the given activities are so well adapted to securing that result that they should be prized, defended, per- petuated and, if need be, enforced. Of course the overt practice of the institutional activities upon proper occasions is implied in this definition ; however, the institution does not cease to exist in the intervals between the occasions of its overt exercise. Briefly and with perhaps sufficient accuracy for most purposes, an institution is a set of activities which a society adopts as its deliberately accepted method of attaining *' a deliberately approved end. Often institutionalized activities require a special personnel for their execution, and most writ- ers would include this in their definition. The inclusion or exclusion of this element in the definition may be left to the reader. We must call to mind such institutions as the institu- tion of private property and of monogamous marriage which prescribe modes of activity in which any member of society may engage, only insisting that if he does engage in them he should follow the institutionalized methods. If there were any fear that not enough would engage in them of their own 4 o6 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY accord society might appoint a special personnel for the execu- tion of any set of institutionalized activities. Institutions are cornpound social activities which contain a rational erement, as customs as such clo not. 1 Yet a people may have institutions long before i! reaches the stage of rational eclecticism; that is, it may have institutions without having rationally chosen its institutions from among a variety of conflicting suggestions. The "age of discussion" may not have dawned. Institutions have most often and most typically developed from customs. The customs were formed without rational judgment having been passed upon them by the mass of those who practiced them. But at length the mass had an intellectual reaction upon their customs which converted some of those customs into institutions. 2 An institution shows its difference from a mere custom, in that variation from an institution is opposed not merely because of emotional preference for the familiar and resent- ment against the strange, but because of a practical judgment of the utility of the cherished practice. In fact while custom insists on conformity for the sake of conformity and resists 1 Developing the figure that was used to illustrate custom we have : AN INSTI- TU- < TION m Rational approval of the effects of the activities 'Group expectation I Idea of specific activities radi- ated by mass suggestion ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Preference for the familiar Rational approval of the spe- ^ ^ m cial fitness of the activities to secure the approved results All these elements must exist, not merely in the minds of a few, but in the minds of the many. ' Professor Sumner calls mere Qustoms "folkways," .ajid customs