Causes and cures for the social unrest; an appeal to the middle class

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Causes a cures for
social unrest.

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CAUSES AND CURES
FOR THE SOCIAL UNREST

An Appeal to the Middle Class

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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

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TORONTO

CAUSES AND CURES
FOR THE SOCIAL UNREST

An Appeal to the Middle Class

BY

ROSS L. FINNEY, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Educational Sociology
at the University of Minnesota

jReto gorfc

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922

All rights reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Copyright, 1922,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and printed. Published June, 1922.

Press of

J. J. Little & Iveg Company

New York, U. S. A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Introduction i

II. The Patriotism of the Mind ... 5

III. Individual Rights and Social Justice . 16

IV. The Genesis of the Social Unrest . . 29
f ^ V. The Modern Colossus 40

VI. Ricardo's Iron Law of Wages ... 51

VII. The Distribution of Wealth ... 65

VIII. Special Grievances of the Middle

Class 81

;/ IX. The Paradox of Middle Class Salva-
tion 109

X. The New Rights of the Public . . 129

XI. The Frontiers of Democracy . . . 142

XII. Some Necessary Economic Reforms . 160

XIII. The Middle Class as the Doctor . . 178

XIV. Spiritual versus Economic Determin-

ism 194

XV. The Old Fashioned, Middle Class

Ideals 211

XVI. The New Education 232

XVII. The Need for Social Science . . . 244

XVIII. Art and Recreatio 255

XIX. The New Religion 267

CAUSES AND CURES
FOR THE SOCIAL UNREST

An Appeal to the Middle Class

CAUSES AND CURES
FOR SOCIAL UNREST

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

NOT within the memory of living Americans, nor
scarcely within the entire history of the nation,
has such a wave of fear swept over the public
mind as occurred during the twelve or fifteen months
following the Armistice. The phenomenon was no
doubt partly psychological, being the natural and in-
evitable reaction from the inflated idealism of the war
and the unwarranted optimism that followed victory.
The outstanding fact, however, was the menace of
radicalism. That menace was real, not psychological.
Russian Bolshevism, to our surprise and dismay, did
not collapse, as we had expected it to do. And as a
lurid sky reflects the red light of a fire at night to great
distances beyond the horizon, so the thick clouds of
after-war suffering and despair reflected to the ends of
the earth the fearsome glare of the Russian revolution.
The Russian situation presented a new front almost
every month, always unexpected and surprising, but
never any less alarming. There was scarcely a time

2 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

when it did not carry the threat of a world-wide
upheaval.

Events outside of Russia have furnished no little
ground for apprehension. All central Europe has
remained in unstable equilibrium ever since the Armis-
tice. Budapest was terrorized ; an ugly, sullen temper
broods continually over the Ruhr valley : barricades
were from time to time thrown up in Berlin, riots
raged throughout Italy, and the Balkan states never
ceased to boil like a caldron. Even west of the Rhine
conditions have been disquieting, almost every west
European country having at times shown symptoms of
fever. Westminster has had its anxieties, and the
French government its fears. Meantime, reports from
all over the world — Japan, China, India, Syria, Egypt
— have shown the peoples everywhere seething with
social unrest.

As for America, the situation here has all along been
very far from reassuring. Organized labor, having
gained unprecedented recognition during the war, has
maintained an unusually aggressive attitude ever since,
the excuse being the high cost of living. Samuel
Gompers, the conservative leader of the American
Federation of Labor, had his conservative leadership
seriously disputed by the radical element. The Com-
munist Labor Party split off from the left wing of the
Socialist Party; and even the orthodox socialists
nominated for President of the United States a man
who had been convicted and was in prison during the
campaign for violation of the espionage act. The
I. W. W.'s, quiescent during the war, crawled out of
their holes again. Foreign agitators blew about like
dandelion seeds, presumably taking root anywhere and

INTRODUCTION 3

everywhere. As a result the country was swept with
a great alarm, almost hysterical at first. The reaction
against "Bolshevism" was vigorous and unequivocal.
At length the panic passed; but it left the American
public no less determined, and its concern no less deep-
seated, if less hysterical. For we came to realize that
the polarization of our society was due to influences
that could neither be imprisoned nor deported ; and
that the danger of a violent electrical discharge was
therefore all the more imminent.

The aspect of affairs has very greatly changed dur-
ing the last two years. During the summer of 1920
the entire available supply of labor was absorbed at
an unprecedented wage. As a result the attitude of
labor became insolent and aggressive. This attitude
revealed itself chiefly in its disposition to "soldier on
the job." The efficiency of labor became very mate-
rially reduced. The consequence of high wages and
reduced efficiency was to eliminate profits almost
entirely. The reaction of capital was to promote a
vigorous movement for the open shop. Then came
the business depression which social scientists had long
been expecting, whereupon the innings of labor were
over. During the winter of 1920-21 they collected
their forces and diligently extended their organizations.
Since then both sides have been digging in. The situa-
tion at present is like that in northern France during
the fall of 1 914, after the German onslaught to the
Marne and their subsequent retreat to the Hindenburg
line. The hysterical psychology of the earlier anti-
radicalism has blown over; but the alignment is none
the less tense and truculent for all that. Never, as now,
have capital and labor faced each other with such

4 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

obvious determination to fight it out to a finish. Who-
ever has eyes to see must realize that an irrepressible
conflict is on. It would be unsafe to predict just what
phase the social unrest will assume next ; but it is per-
fectly certain that there will be new phases, and that
they will be surprising and perhaps just as disquieting
as the experiences of the last four years.

There is an increasing tendency in the public mind
to interpret world events in their relation to this great
issue. As time goes by we see with increasing clear-
ness that the World War was something more than
a struggle between political autocracy and political
democracy. That it was, to be sure; but, over and
above that, it was also a great economic struggle. As
the months pass we realize more and more clearly that
Versailles also was a battle-ground of great economic
forces. Gradually our insight is penetrating the at-
mosphere of our times. The political struggle of the
past three centuries has passed its phase. It is an
economic struggle that is now on: Capitalism versus
Socialism, a battle to the death, and quarter neither
offered nor asked.

Unless we of the Middle Class, who belong on the
side neither of labor nor capital, can invent a third
alternative, a basis of compromise, a middle pathway
to justice and peace! Which it is the purpose of this
little book to point out.

CHAPTER II

THE PATRIOTISM OF THE MIND

IF any person finds himself hospitable to this idea
of a middle path of peace, and wishes to help
•find it, let him first of all develop an appropriate
frame of mind. If there is any basis of compromise,
only an unbiased mind can find it. The biased wish al-
ways takes sides; only the judicial temper can arbitrate.
If public opinion is to arbitrate the issues of our times
we must all contribute our bit to a public opinion that
is fundamentally and impartially just.

In times of peace about the most important duty
that the citizen owes to his country is straight thinking ;
especially if the times are critical, as our times are.
The reason for this is that in a democracy public
opinion corresponds to the sovereign in an absolute
monarchy; and if public opinion is mistaken the battles
of peace go against the republic. We are wont to re-
gard the law making bodies of the government as de-
ciders of our national destiny; but we forget that back
of law and courts is public opinion. Sometimes law
responds tardily to public opinion, but eventually it does
respond. Hence everything depends in the last analysis
upon the contents of the public mind. If public opinion
is overwhelmingly in favor of schools free from polit-
ical influence, or of government ownership of railroads,
or of the open shop, or of peace with Mexico, those

5

6 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

policies will be carried out. But if public opinion is
confused, muddled or uncertain, then selfish interests
will pretty surely manage to manipulate the policy
of government to suit themselves. The peace, pros-
perity and success of democracy depend, therefore,
upon public opinion being solidly united on policies that
are sound and safe.

But public opinion is only the organized consensus
of the opinions of each of us. If A, B, C and D all
hold divergent opinions, each of them more than half
mistaken, then, so far as these four citizens are con-
cerned, they contribute to the confusion of public
affairs and the miscarriage of democracy. But if
these four citizens all see alike because they all see
straight (and there is no other way to see alike!), they
each contribute to the general welfare. We hear a
great deal about the right of the citizen to express his
opinions both in speech and at the ballot box; but do
we not hear too little about the citizen's duty to have
opinions that are really worth expressing? Aside from
his duty to be honest and public spirited the citizen has
no more important duty than to be right instead of
mistaken in his thinking on public questions. If a
citizen is really honest and public spirited he will feel
this responsibility keenly, unless he is so lacking in
intelligence that he fails to realize its significance.

It has been said that skepticism is the beginning of
knowledge, and this is a pretty safe motto for any
person to adopt who wishes to think himself out of the
social muddle we are now in, and so help think his
country out. Too much of what the average citizen
knows about social, industrial and political problems
"would be so if it were only true." As a result there

THE PATRIOTISM OF THE MIND J

is lamentably little clear, sound thinking, and corre-
spondingly little prospect of a consensus of valid
opinion, but only a free-for-all clash of selfish and
divergent interests. Any patriotic person who really
wishes to contribute to the solution of the social prob-
lem will do well to begin by questioning the soundness
of his own opinions on social and economic questions.

It naturally stands to reason that a good share of the
popular beliefs about social and economic questions
would be fallacious and mistaken. They are really socio-
logical mythology. Mythology came into existence in
this way : Questions about natural phenomena arose
in everybody's mind long before science was ready to
answer them. But did anybody's mind suspend judg-
ment and wait for the answer of science ? Not at all.
The mind craves an answer more insistently than the
parched tongue craves water. And when no answer is
forthcoming it fabricates one out of the imagination.
In that way mythologies arise to explain thunder,
contagious disease, the rising and setting of the sun,
and what not. And presently the mythology acquires
the authority of tradition.

We have passed the stage of mythology in the field
of natural phenomena, but not entirely as yet in the field
of social phenomena. In that field the public mind is
still on the semi-mythological level. For most persons,
therefore, the beginning of knowledge in the social field
is sincere skepticism of what they think they think.

Perhaps the chief reason why so much thinking
on social, economic and political matters is wrong, is
because it really is not thinking at all, but only wishing.
Most of us think chiefly below our diaphragms. Our
interests predetermine our thinking, seldom does our

8 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

thinking select our interests. Thinking, just like
seeing or walking, is a servant in the house of our lives :
our needs and wants are master. We have needs be-
fore we see; and we use our eyes to help us get the
things we want; and to look at, we select so far as
possible the things we are interested in. We have
needs before we can walk; and we use our feet to get
the things we want. We have needs, wants, interests,
desires (all these words point to the same center) before
we think, and we use our intellects to secure the things
we desire. We build up our set of interests first; then
we build up around them our set of beliefs to secure
and protect our interests. And so the religious in-
terests to which a man has been brought up predeter-
mine his religious creed. Likewise a man's social inter-
ests predetermine his social creed. What he thinks he
thinks he ofttimes does not think at all; he simply
offers it as excuse to justify his wishes, interests and
desires.

Let us try to present this important fact to our imagi-
nations a little more concretely.

Imagine a group of highly successful business men,
gathered around a banquet table in a great metropolitan
hotel. These men are all prominently connected with
established and well known concerns. They all own
property, and have families, residences, and established
social connections. They are all cultured gentlemen,
schooled either in the colleges or in the conventionalities
of their social circumstances. Most of them have
hereditary connections which they hope to pass on to
their descendants.

Imagine, on the other hand, a camp of transient
harvest hands in a "jungle" on the bank of a small

THE PATRIOTISM OF THE MIND 9

stream in the wheat belt. These men have drifted in
the wake of the harvest; they intend to "bum their
way" back to the cities before snow flies. They are
homeless, wifeless, jobless. They belong nowhere in
particular. They have no legal residence, they own no
property whatever, they belong for the most part to
the unskilled class, they are barely able to read, some
are illiterate quite, they have the wanderlust and no
prospects for the future.

Now in one of these two groups you find the theory
that the distribution of wealth is due to social causes
entirely and the possession of it is a mere accident of
circumstance; that our government is a democracy
only in name, but in reality is a government of the
many, by and for the few; and that revolution is the
only hope of changing a bad social system. These the-
ories are held with rancor and bitterness. In the other
group one finds the theory held with quiet, confident
dignity that the amount of wealth a man possesses is
due to his own personal ability, that our laws and con-
stitution are entirely satisfactory instruments of justice,
and that self -constituted reformers are to be regarded
with apprehension. No reader will have to guess
which theory goes with which group : the point is that
neither of these theories is the plain unbiased truth, it
is only the intellectual color of the social chameleon.
Each theory rises only out of the interests of the group
that holds it ; it really throws little or no light for the
group that holds it on economic, social and political
causes ; it rather serves to shut out the light. The one
group could ill afford to admit that personal ability
determines wealth, because that would convict them of
being worthless incompetents; the other group could

IO CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

quite as ill afford to admit that social causes figure in
making some rich and others poor, because that would
impeach their own personal prowess. It is to the inter-
est of one group to foment revolution, because they
have everything to gain and nothing to lose ; it is to the
interest of the other group to oppose all change because
they have everything to lose and nothing to gain.
Neither of these groups is prepared to contribute any-
thing to the peaceful solution of our difficulties; so far
as they are concerned there is no way out except a
fight, into which all the rest of us are liable to be drawn,
unless we can arbitrate between them disinterestedly.

This sort of mental attitude is acquired early. It is
an extremely interesting experience to teach a college
class in Labor Problems or Modern Social Reforms.
The members of the class are likely to have their
prejudices pretty well set already when they begin
the course; and they are pretty sure to have the same
point of view at the end. One student is the son of
the owner of a successful daily paper in a city of thirty
thousand ; a young Irishman has worked two or three
seasons in a railroad construction gang in the far
northwest; another young man represents the third
generation of wealthy farmers whose land is now
worth three hundred dollars per acre ; a young Russian
Jew is paying expenses by working evenings on a street
car; a young woman is keeping herself in school part
of each year by holding a job alternately with her sister
in an overall factory, and two young ladies drive to
class in fine limousines. An aggregation like this is
not unusual ; such is the democracy of the American
university !

The question arises in such a class as to how a

THE PATRIOTISM OF THE MIND II

decided increase of wages would affect American in-
dustry in competition with the industry of other coun-
tries in the markets of the world. Part of the class
contends that the result would be to drive American
producers out of the world markets, on account of the
increased costs of production; but the rest argues
otherwise, on the ground that increased wages would
increase efficiency and decrease the per unit cost of
production. The reader will readily imagine which
side each of the seven students mentioned would take.
The teacher usually finds that nobody's mind is changed
by the discussion. High school teachers of civics have
the same experience ; even they do not get the students
young enough to anticipate the prejudices of their social
class and industrial status.

Politics furnishes the plainest illustration of the fact
that discussion is not always an attempt to find the
truth but quite as often an attempt to defend the side
to which one is committed. A Republican is a Repub-
lican; and Democrat is a Democrat, and their argu-
ments run round in a circle. "Our old cow, she crossed
the road, because she crossed the road, sir; and the
reason why she crossed the road, was because she
crossed the road, sir." Hurrah for our side ! Fortu-
nately, however, there is a constantly increasing number
of voters to whom this does not apply. Are not they,
rather than partisans, the ones upon whom we must
depend for constructive thought in the political field?

The fallacy of the biased wish is all the more subtle
and deceptive because of the prevalence of half truths.
Half truths are the most deceitful and dangerous lies
in the world. They are deceitful because the truth in
them makes it so easy to overlook the fallacy in them.

12 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

The true half makes the whole plausible. They are
dangerous just because they are deceitful; there is less
chance of correcting them, and they are therefore the
more liable to lead to a fight. And there seems to be
no field in which we are so liable to the deceit and
danger of half truths as in the field of our social and
economic problems. This is because most social situa-
tions present a double front, either one of which may
easily be mistaken for the only front.

For example, take the old heredity-environment de-
bate : Is one's personality due to heredity or to environ-
ment? The truth is that it is due to both. The two
influences are mixed together so that they can hardly
be distinguished. In some cases the one is the more
apparent, and in some cases the other; but both must
always be recognized. But how easy it is to ignore
one or the other, especially if one has a wish smuggled
away and forgotten somewhere in his subconscious
mind. Mr. John A. Smith adopts a boy and rears him,
but the boy turns out badly. Mr. Smith is naturally
quite sure that the boy's heredity is at fault. Unde-
niably heredity was bad in this boy's case. But the
neighbors are aware that Smith's training was unwise.
This is a disquieting fact which Mr. Smith is happier
to ignore. So he does ignore it, and attributes the
boy's failure wholly to heredity. One of Mr. Smith's
neighbors, on the other hand, who, by the way, has an
old grudge against Smith, insists that the boy's hered-
ity was entirely all right, and that the training was the
only thing at fault. Of course the real truth lies be-
tween : the heredity was at fault, and that makes plausi-
ble Mr. Smith's half truth that it was all at fault; the
training was also at fault, and that makes plausible the

THE PATRIOTISM OF THE MIND 1 3

half truth of Smith's enemy that it was all at fault.
But the whole truth is that both were at fault. Such is
the deceit of half truths.

Again: Why is Richard Roe rich and John Doe
poor? Is it due to differences in personal competence,
or to the pressure of social forces? Richard Roe, you
may be sure, is confident that it is due to differences in
personal capacity; while John Doe is almost certain to
believe that he is the victim, and the other the benefi-
ciary, of mere chance or social handicap. As a matter
of fact both causes operate together in all such cases;
but each sees only one, while refusing to see the other.
The half truth that each sees is undeniable, which
makes it all the easier for each to blind himself to the
existence of the other half that is not true. And the
half to which each pins his faith is the half that flatters
his vanity; after which neither is at all hospitable to
the balanced whole truth.

This is the situation with regard to almost every
social problem that confronts us. One man is a rabid
revolutionist. He wants fundamental changes, and
wants them immediately ; he has a rag of argument for
every hole in the boat which he wants us to put to sea
in, and he is willing to "blow 'em up" in order to get
the changes he wants. Another man is an equally
rabid reactionary. He wants nothing changed. He
has arguments for keeping everything as it is. He
finds economic law inviolable; and he is ready to "shoot
'em down" if necessary in order to preserve the status
quo. Obviously each man is a dangerous devotee of a
pernicious half truth; and the point for our present
purposes is that each has selected the half truth that
best suits his own selfish interests. "Don't imagine

14 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

you'll find a fish monger declaring his fish are not
sweet ; might as well think an oyster could crawl up a
tree, for that's where you'll make your mistake."
Which ought to be enough to create in any really hon-
est minded person a wholesome suspicion of his own
economic and social theories. Write down a statement
of your business interests and social standing, and any
social scientist will turn the paper over and write out
your beliefs about the social problem. Or vice versa.
The exceptions will be rare indeed. For the most part
our social creeds serve only to show which side our
bread is buttered on, and to estop constructive thinking
on our own parts.

The attitude of the biased wish is, of course, utterly
unscientific; for science seeks without prejudice to dis-
cover the facts, confident that the facts will make us
free. But scientific discovery has always had its oppo-
nents who feared their creeds would be undermined.
This attitude is unChristian, since the Christian spirit
desires above all things else to find the path of brotherly
justice. The historic defenders of selfish interests have
been enemies of Christianity, no matter what eccle-
siastical positions they may have held. The attitude
of blind, prejudiced selfishness is unpatriotic; and when
it becomes truculent and aggressive it is treasonable.
The slave holding aristocracy of the old South dragged
this country into the Civil War; and radical labor
agitators are threatening to do the same thing to-day.
This attitude is dishonorable, because refusal to seek
the truth is so near akin to refusal to tell the truth. It
is short-sighted madness, because one's descendants
are safest in a just world.

Unless, therefore, the reader is prepared to proceed

THE PATRIOTISM OF THE MIND 15

with a patriotic mind, even if it should mean to dis-
cover that his own hands are red with selfish injustice,
it is quite useless for him to proceed further with this
little book. Too many persons are unwilling.

The clergy of this country have for thirty years now
been preaching the application of Christian principles
to the industrial situation. And the laity have all
heartily acceded that Christianity ought to be applied.
That was easy, because each layman, for the reasons
just set forth, was never troubled with the least shadow
of suspicion that there might possibly be something un-
christian in the rules of his particular game. But
now that the test comes down to particular rules of
particular games, it looks as if all this preaching of the
last thirty years had been a waste of energy. Most
professed Christians, just like other people, refuse to
let the test be made. It seems to be a psychological
impossibility for them to submit their own personal
interests to the test of Jesus' teachings.

Consecration is the core of the Christian spirit. A
will submissive and obedient to righteousness is the
essence of Christian character. So far as the social
question is concerned the test of a Christian is the atti-
tude of his mind. Is he willing to learn the truth
about social institutions even if it convicts him? Just
as it is the test of patriotism, also.

CHAPTER III

INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

BEFORE coming to grips with the specific ques-
tions at issue between Socialism and Capitalism
it is necessary to establish a base of supplies for
our thinking. The reader has observed that travelers
abroad bring home whatever evidences they go to find.
When they get back they lecture us about what they
have learned in Europe : as a matter of fact we usually
learn what the prejudices were that they started with.
They have culled out whatever proves what they wanted
to prove, and they have done this almost unconsciously,
failing to notice the residue. So with the social ques-
tion : it is really the preconceptions stored away in the
backs of our heads, so to speak, that predetermine our
conclusions. Therefore, before we take up the social
question let us set in order some of the ideas which
ought to predetermine our opinions.

In the first place, what do we mean by rights?
Rights root down into needs, and needs are the bed-
rock, so far as living creatures are concerned. State
what are the needs of any given creature, and a child
can name the creature whose needs you have enu-
merated. Needs must be met, otherwise death ensues.
Needs make no apologies; they simply assert them-
selves. To say that a creature has a right to live is to
admit that he has a right to the things that he needs in
order to live. To say that he has certain needs that he

16

INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE 1 7

has no right to satisfy is to say that he has a right to a
fractional life only. If men have a right to live at all
it would seem that they have a "natural right" to what-
ever they need to live a full, complete, all-round, and
satisfying life, at least in so far as the things needed
are obtainable. To deny that right will never be con-
vincing to those in need.

The Freudian concepts and terminology would lend
themselves very happily to the exposition of this doc-
trine of natural rights and their relation to needs, as
those will discern who are especially interested in the
Freudian psychology.

The doctrine of natural rights is at the very basis of
democracy. "We hold these truths to be self evident,"
said our forefathers, "that all men are created free
and equal, and are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness." So said the great states-
men of a hundred years ago. The great philosophers
who preached democracy during the same period said
the same thing in other words. Rousseau declared that
every human being has a right to be happy. Kant as-
serted that every person has a right to be treated as an
end in himself, and not as a mere means. The doctrine of
natural rights is at the core of the Christian religion as
as well as of democracy. If God created men and gave
them needs we cannot doubt that He meant those needs
to be satisfied. Jesus taught that all men are sons of
God. He said : "Your Heavenly Father knoweth
that ye have need of all these things"; and "I am come
that ye might have life and have it more abundantly."
What can these teachings mean if not that he endorsed
the doctrine of natural rights?

l8 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

What now are the needs of men ? Among them cer-
tainly are plenty of good wholesome food, clothing and
shelter, sanitary and medical protection from disease,
work that gratifies the constructive impulse, normal
family life, reasonable leisure with opportunity for
recreation and contact with nature, moral insurance,
freedom of action and adventure, beauty, social rela-
tionships, intellectual activity and education in propor-
tion to their individual intelligences. To miss any of
these is to miss part of that which is needful to make
life really human. They are all natural rights, are
they not? Modern psychology teaches that to thwart
the elemental needs of human life generates a pent-up
energy that will inevitably explode in some direction.
Such is the psychological explanation of social unrest.
Social unrest is a symptom of thwarted needs, whether
in this age or in any other.

But rights and natural rights are two different
things. When we talk about rights, and say that a man
has a right to this, that or the other, we usually have
social rights in mind. We usually mean that society
recognizes such and such to be a man's rights, and that
society undertakes to guarantee him the enjoyment of
them. This idea of social rights is worth considering.
A man may have natural rights, but they will do him
little or no good unless they are social rights at the
same time. For neither child nor adult, slave nor free-
man, can protect his own rights. From the time he
begins to cry in the cradle till he lies down for his long
sleep, he is helpless unless society stands by him. The
guaranteeing of rights is a cooperative enterprise.

Now, from this standpoint it is evident that the aim
of all social progress and reform is to take up natural

INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE 19

rights, one after another, and make them social rights.
Slowly but surely the world grows better. That is
apparent from a bird's-eye view of history. It is even
more apparent when one gets a bird's-eye view not
merely of the six thousand years or so of recorded
history but also of the many thousands of years of
prehistoric social development of which the historic
period is but the last chapter. Indeed, progress has
become so rapid that even the unlearned can see it with
the naked eye in the short span of a single lifetime.
So much so in fact that progress has become a cult
with us, a sort'of religious faith. Now, translate our
faith in social progress into the language of human
rights. It means that new social rights are gradually
being evolved. The black slave had natural rights, to
be sure; but he had no rights that any man was bound
to respect; that is, he had no social rights. But the
abolition of slavery took up some of his natural rights
and made them social rights for him. And the strength
of the anti-slavery cause lay precisely in the fact that
men everywhere felt intuitively that freedom is a nat-
ural right of all men — nobody doubted it but the slave
owners. The strength of all reforms is in the instinctive
recognition of natural rights. Old needs once thwarted
are guaranteed by new social rights. Step by step the
rights of man correspond more and more nearly to the
needs of man. Thus the world grows better. It is the
task of each generation to add its little contribution to
the social rights of man, to make its little subtraction
from the list of thwarted needs. And somehow we
cannot doubt but that a way can and eventually will be
found to guarantee an ever larger proportion of human-
ity's natural rights. The sabbath was made for man,

20 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

not man for the sabbath; and so were the school, the
state, industry, property, and every other institution
under the sun. They must all be made to serve the
needs of man — the greatest good of the greatest
number.

We are now prepared to see why rights change. It
is social rights that change, not natural. Social rights
change for two reasons. First, society, as it becomes
more enlightened and moral, undertakes to guarantee
rights that it never before recognized. The new rights
of women are a good illustration.

Second, new social rights are invented that do all
that the old ones did, and more too ; then the old rights
are in the way, and cease- to be rights. This can be
illustrated by a comparison and by an example. The
old self -rake reaper was a very useful implement to our
grandfathers. But later the self-binder was invented;
it did all that the self-rake reaper had ever done, but it
did more; it not only cut the grain, it bound it also.
No sooner had the binder come into use than the reaper
went into the fence corner. Now imagine some well
meaning old granddad, back in the eighteen-eighties,
insisting on getting out into the harvest field with his
little old reaper to help out with the harvest. The poor
old fellow, instead of helping, would actually have been
in the way. His son and grandsons would have felt
scant patience with him.

But that is exactly what poor old William Hohen-
zollern did. The divine right of kings was a very use-
ful instrument in its day ; it kept monarchy going when
there was nothing else to maintain order. Without
kings there would then have been chaos. But after
democracy had been invented, it did all that monarchy

INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE 21

had ever done, and did it better. It also did more ; it
looked after the liberties of the masses. As soon as
democracy and the rights of the people came into the
field, monarchy and the divine right of kings went into
the fence corner. But the kings have always been pro-
verbially slow in finding it out.

We are now involved in the process of putting some
old, antiquated social rights into the fence corner, and
bringing new rights into the field. These will protect
all the natural rights that the old social rights pro-
tected, and more. That is what the social crisis is —
the struggle between rights and larger rights. In such
a case the good becomes the enemy of the better. The
right of freedom of contract, for example, useful in-
deed in its day, is now in the way of larger rights. By
appealing to this old right reforms have been estopped.
Laws prohibiting tenement sweat shops, compelling
regular payments, providing extra pay for over-
time, and many other good laws, have been scuttled
by the courts on the ground that the laws infringed
the worker's right to freedom of contract. But such
court decisions are now ancient history for the most
part. Law and court decisions both recognize now that
freedom of contract has its limitations. Legislatures
and judges are gradually pushing it into the fence
corner and new rights to take its place are being evolved
under our very eyes, almost as fast as Burbank could
produce a new type of fruit.

The bearing of all this on the social crisis must be
obvious. Can any one doubt that there are natural
rights of which the common people are still deprived?
Is the world yet perfect? We become so accustomed
to seeing the masses deprived that we scarcely stop to

22 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

think that things might be otherwise. It is almost
impossible for us to imagine them different. Indeed,
worse than that, we grow so inured to suffering and
deprivation that our very eyes are holden, so that we
do not see it as suffering and privation. We are accus-
tomed to seeing things social as they are, and, con-
fusing them with things natural, they appear to us like
the natural and predestined order of the universe.
This is the greatest hindrance to reform !

It is true that when we do stop to think we are puz-
zled to know how this suffering and deprivation could
possibly be done away; though that takes less imagi-
nation than to believe that science can discover substi-
tutes for kerosene and coal when they are exhausted.
But can we blame the deprived and suffering masses
for recollecting that democracy has virtually promised
them happiness? Or for trusting that their Heavenly
Father knoweth that they have need of all these things ?
Or have we too little faith to believe that rights are not
impossible ? Do we not know enough history to under-
stand at last that forward to the next new rights is the
only way out for the present social unrest ?

So much for the idea of rights. There is another
idea which it is equally important to have clearly in
mind, and that is the idea of social justice. For unless
a student of the social unrest has a very clear and defi-
nite idea corresponding to this term his thinking is sure
to go astray.

Justice between individuals most people understand ;
but not social justice. Social justice is the justice of
good institutions, as distinguished from the justice
of good individuals. The difference between individual
justice and social justice is quite like the difference

INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE 23

between hand-made products and machine-made prod-
ucts. Individual justice (or injustice) is made by hand.
It is handed, as one may say, from one person to
another. But social justice is machine-made; it is
ground out by the institutions in the midst of which
we live. For there are two sorts of entities, persons
and institutions; and institutions, no less than persons,
may be either just or unjust.

If John Smith strikes you with a club, or steals your
automobile, or alienates the affections of your wife, or
swindles you out of a piece of property, that is indi-
vidual injustice, and you are warranted in holding
John Smith personally responsible. But if a financial
panic causes your bank to fail, or if a war in Europe
robs you of your son, or if a constitutional amendment
puts you out of business, or if a rise in the general
price level cuts your income in two, or if the system
of theology you inherited makes you believe your dead
baby has gone to purgatory, that is social injustice.
Naturally you want to put your finger on the person
who is responsible for your trouble ; but you cannot do
it, for there is none to hold responsible, but an insti-
tution. Just as the turtle snaps the stick that punches
him, but cannot see as far as the bad boy at the other
end of the stick, so you may put a bomb under some-
body that stands out in front, but it is of no use. The
miscreant is not a person, but the togetherness of per-
sons. The institution is at fault : you are the victim of
a social, not individual, injustice.

The injustice of institutions is easy for us to discern
in the case of institutions that are distant from us in
time and space. We find no difficulty in seeing that
the Chinese women were the victims of the injustice,

24 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

not of any person in particular, but of the institution of
foot-binding; just as the Hindu women were the vic-
tims of the institution of the zenana. The French
peasants just prior to the French Revolution were not
so much mistreated by the individual noblemen, clergy-
men and kings as they were by the institution of which
all classes were parts. Few of the persons actually
involved in the struggles of that period could see that
fact clearly then; and so in their anger they lusted to
kill kings and nobles for revenge. But as we look back
upon it now we realize that it was not persons that
deserved to be killed so much as it was institutions that
needed to be reformed. The same is true of negro
slavery in America. It was not so much at the hands
of Mr. Shelby, Mr. St. Clare, and Simon Legree that
Uncle Tom suffered, as it was at the hands of the
institution. This is the very point Mrs. Stowe's novel
was written to make clear. The popular demand for
the Kaiser's execution gradually blew over because of
the realization, though only half articulate in the public
mind even yet, that it was the system, not the man, that
caused the holocaust.

It is very easy to enumerate a great many very good
illustrations of social injustice, and they would all be
very convincing so long as we stayed on the other side
of the Atlantic, or back in the eighteenth century. The
German people were the victims not so much of an
autocratic emperor as of an autocratic empire. Our
own Revolutionary War was brought on by a wrong
policy on the part of the British Empire, for which no
one in particular was to blame. The system of paying
the Revolutionary War debts made some rich and
others poor. No individuals could have been held

INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE 2$

responsible for the Spanish Inquisition. Spanish gold
in England in the sixteenth century, together with the
system of payment in cash instead of service, set the
English peasants free; while in Germany the system
of payments in service held the peasants in serfdom.
And so on without limit: the fortune or misfortune of
men is due quite as much to the justice or injustice of
institutions as to the justice or injustice of persons.
And yet we think so much with our eyes and ears, and
so little with our brains, that most people (until re-
cently) believed that the sun moved through the sky,
and (even yet) that bad men are the only agents of
contemporary injustice. However it is not the sun that
is traveling, but the earth itself that is turning over : it
is not always persons that are doing us wrong, but
quite as often it is customs, social creeds, and the rules
of the industrial game.

No doubt the reader has often watched a group of
boys of all sizes playing ball — the old-fashioned, every-
fellow-for-himself game of "scrub," in which each boy
works up from fielder to batter, and then bats until he
is put out. It is great fun, especially when the boys
are all about the same size. But when there are a few
big boys, they do practically all the batting, and the
little fellows do the chasing. That spoils the game for
the little fellows. But the big boys are not necessarily
mean fellows at all; it is the rules of the game that are
mean. What a reformation would be wrought by
changing the rules slightly when big and little boys are
playing together ; so as to set a limit to batting to, say,
three runs. And why not — except that it never was so.
Of course the big boys would object; but even they
would really get just as much fun out of a fair game as

26 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

out of imposing on the little fellows; and fun that
would be much better for them. For in the long run no
game is a good game for anybody unless it is a good
game for everybody, because eventually an unfair game
is pretty sure to break up in a row.

But it never occurs to the boys to suspect that there
is anything wrong with the rules of the game. In fact
it is almost impossible to perceive the injustice of insti-
tutions in the midst of which we live. One reason for
this is mental inertia. We get accustomed to the cus-
tomary, and take it as a matter of course, along with
the weather and the seasons. We thank God super-
stitiously, and suffer the one as reverently as the other.
Persons who take a constructively critical attitude
toward customary institutions are relatively few, even
in our own day. Blind conformists seem to be the
rule, perhaps because scarcely half the people are above
the average intelligence.

But especially to their beneficiaries are the injustices
of vested wrongs invisible — except as a "miracle of
grace." There are none so blind as those that won't see.
The big boys are surest that the rules are fair.

Hence it is that unjust institutions always secrete,
like a joint, a plausible philosophy to lubricate their
own friction. Every social injustice, however glaring,
has its beneficiaries. They it is, of course, who control,
maintain and perpetuate it. Ideas, theories, philoso-
phies constitute their most impregnable fortifications —
the more plausible because well mixed with half truths
always. Naturally the beneficiaries of social injustices
believe this "dope" with all their hearts; the strange
thing is that they succeed in getting so many other
people to believe it also. The slave-holding aristocracy

INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE 27

were able to prove quite to their own satisfaction from
the scripture that slavery was a divinely ordained insti-
tution. Slaves and poor whites believed it too. The
doctrine of divine right of kings did service for cen-
turies; the people as well as the kings believing it.
Men of the middle class in America worship the god
mammon according to an economic creed that is grad-
ually, as will be shown in Chapter VIII, grinding us to
powder between the upper and the nether mill-stones of
our industrial system; and yet we believe it with all
our hearts !

It would take a hardy optimist indeed to assert that
we have no social injustices left in our modern world.
That is impossible on the face of it ; for this is not yet
a perfect world. For centuries the world has been
growing better, but of course it has not yet reached its
goal. There are sickness, industrial accidents, pov-
erty, ignorance, premature death, and interminable
drudgery, all of which are preventable at least in part.
Life has been deprived of its joy for millions of men
and women, youths and children. Any reader, if his
eyes be not holden, can look out of the car at almost
any time and see faces and forms that betray the trag-
edies of their existence. And yet few of us suspect
that removable social injustices are the cause. We too,
like other peoples of other times and places, had been
"doped."

If there were no thwarted needs, no social injustices
in our social system, there would be no social unrest.
But there are : and the cure for the social unrest is to
cure the social injustices! There are natural rights
that our institutions, as they now stand, fail to guar-
antee. If we want social peace we must bring new

28 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

social rights into the field that are capable of cutting
the harvest of modern relations. Which seems per-
fectly self-evident; nevertheless there are those who see
no cure for the social unrest except to suppress the
protest. But radicalism, however unwarranted the ex-
treme forms in which it presents itself, is entirely mis-
conceived unless it is recognized as a symptom of social
injustices. When a man has a fever it indicates that
there is something wrong with his system somewhere ;
the thing for him to do is to diagnose the cause and
remove it ; otherwise it may remove him !

CHAPTER IV

THE GENESIS OF THE SOCIAL UNREST

OF course there are various theories current in
the public mind to explain the present eruption
of social discontent. At first some regarded it
as due to after-war reaction, and to the excitement of a
political campaign. Two years ago the hope was often
expressed that things would quiet down after the elec-
tion, especially if there should be a good crop in the fall.
Others thought it resulted from the influence of Euro-
pean disturbances. They believed that agitators from
Russia and other hotbeds of revolutionary propaganda
had been coming here in large numbers; and that the
thing to do was to get rid of those that were already
here, so far as possible, and to close our ports against
any more. A New York banker, writing in one of the
popular magazines, attributed it to the high prices.
Adjustment to the new price levels unavoidably pro-
duced a good deal of strain in nearly all families, he
pointed out, and the violent protest against existing
conditions he regarded as quite natural, however re-
grettable. He urged the necessity for all our people to
be as patient as possible until the storm had blown over.
Others, recollecting the fact that labor demonstrations
were held in abeyance during the war, and the demands
of labor encouraged by certain war time concessions
and post-war prices, believe that we are now having the
postponed and accumulated disturbances of the last five

29

30 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

or six years. Their remedy, if they are on the capitalis-
tic side of the controversy, is to restore normal business
conditions as soon as possible; if they are on the labor
side, it is to conserve at all cost the gains that have
been made; if they are neutral, it is to assert the rights
of the public. All of which, however, merely states
the situation, instead of explaining it, as the reader will
readily observe. Still others, who are historically
minded enough to take a bird's-eye view of the last
fifty or sixty years, have observed a steady, cumulative
growth during all that time of labor agitation and
socialistic philosophy. Such observers will regard the
present crisis as the coming-to-grips of an irrepres-
sible conflict between capital and labor, that has been
brewing ever since the Civil War.

These popular explanations are enumerated here — .
even the last — chiefly for the purpose of suggesting
that they are all somewhat fractional and superficial.
It is altogether possible, and not a little desirable, to
look somewhat deeper into the causes of the social un-
rest. The more profoundly and thoroughly we are
able to understand the problem, the more probability
there is of our being able to formulate a sound policy
on which to unite; and certainly we cannot expect to
stay united long except on a policy that is sound.

Mr. Henry Ford is reported to have remarked re-
cently that history is "bunk." Mr. Ford is a well
meaning and very useful American, but that remark
offended the historians. They believe that history has
practical uses, and that the public's ignorance of it is a
handicap to the general welfare. And that stands to
reason, for history is but the record of social experi-
ence ; and the more experience a man or a society has

THE GENESIS OF THE SOCIAL UNREST 31

the wiser its judgments are likely to be. You handle a
venerable old gentleman quite differently if you think
his petulance is due to the fact that he got overheated
in the garden yesterday from what you do if you know
that he has inherited senile dementia from three or
four generations back. Similarly, if we want to know
the cure for the social unrest we must know its causes,
and these lie back in history. Moreover, history is
prophecy. It not only explains things ; it often shows
what things are coming on and what things are passing
away. If we knew history better we should recognize
which customs, which social creeds and which rules of
the industrial game are getting old and feeble, and are
about to pass away ; and which, on the other hand, have
recently been born, are now in their strapping youth,
and are destined presently to become mature and take
over the running of this mundane institution.

The psychology of the deep-seated anxiety now cur-
rent reveals an intuitive awareness that the very foun-
dations of our social system are being called in question.
Its hysterical manifestations, however, betray a sad
failure to understand the causes of the danger, or what
to do about it. It is as if the social unrest had pounced
upon us, all of a sudden, as did the European war;
when, as a matter of fact, the wind has been full of
straws for generations, as we now know it was in the
case of the war. There is really no more reason to be
surprised by the recent wave of radicalism and unrest
than there was to have been surprised by the outbreak
of the war in 1914. It was our ignorance of history
that blinded us to the imminence of the war; it is our
ignorance of history and of social evolution that makes
us so blind to the trend of social events.

'32 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

The present social crisis is no mere local phenom-
enon, either; it is a great world movement. Nor is it
by any means a mere temporary incident ; it is part of a
vast, epoch-making readjustment. It grows out of the
democratic, industrial and scientific revolutions of the
past two centuries, with which we are all more or less
familiar, and of which we are all so proud. If the
medieval world had lasted we might have escaped the
modern unrest. But we had the rise of democracy, the
discoveries of science, the great new inventions, and
the wonderful development of industry; these are the
real, even if the remote, causes of the social unrest.

Said the Minneapolis Journal editorially under date
of March 6, 1921 :

"What is known as class struggle to-day was not cre-
ated to any great degree either by 'labor agitators' or
by 'capitalistic greed." It is an inevitable by-product of
machine industry. When production was transferred
from the home to the factory, it meant of necessity the
aggregation of numerous workers and the accumulation
of a large capital in equipment. A reasonable amount
of class struggle is as wholesome as a fair amount of
competition, but it tends to reach the point of diminish-
ing returns where it proves to be wasteful and disastrous."

This is the way Professor Ross, one of our leading
sociologists, had put it:

"The modern 'social' question has been created neither
by labor agitators nor by capitalist greed. It arose in-
evitably out of the development of machine industry.
About the middle of the eighteenth century began a
series of inventions which caused the textile industry to
be translated from the worker's home or shop to the

THE GENESIS OF THE SOCIAL UNREST 33

factory. Instead of owning his tools he worked the
machinery owned by others and became a wage-earner.
Since then the factory system has extended to branch
after branch of manufacturing, until the handicraft sys-
tem is dead and we are committed without reserve to
industrialism.

"Industrialism, child of the power-driven machine,
molds society with appalling power and causes its mem-
bers more and more to cluster at opposite poles of the
social spindle. The situation is grave, and no one can
tell how much graver it will become before an adjust-
ment will be found which will pull this thorn from
humanity's flesh."

This change from hand tools to power machines,
which began in the English textile industry about a
century and a half ago, and has since spread to all the
great industries in all parts of the civilized world, is
probably the most momentous change in human affairs
that has occurred since history began. We are too
close to it as yet to see its proportions in proper per-
spective. Uneducated persons, and especially those who
have neglected the study of history, are least aware of
the significance of The Industrial Revolution, as it is
called. Nevertheless, the present social unrest can be
understood only by understanding the far reaching
effects of this change from hand tools to power
machines.

The significance of The Industrial Revolution is best
understood by comparing it with an analogous change
that antedates the dawn of history. To this other
change, so long ago, the reader's attention is accord-
ingly invited, and it will bear somewhat extended study.

If the reader will give play to his imagination at this
point he will see an old fact in a new light, and that

34 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

new light will illuminate the present problem. The old
fact is the very simple one that civilized life is different
from savagery. But why is it different? Simply
because life must of necessity be different to farm than
to hunt. The domestication of plants and animals is
the pivot upon which the change hinged. That was
what changed men from hunters to farmers, lifted
them from savagery to civilization, and caused the
dawn of history. The domestication of plants and ani-
mals ! For one change led always to another. Domes-
ticated plants and animals necessitated a settled life, so
as to cultivate the same fields year after year. Property
rights in a field a family had cleared came to be sanc-
tioned by society — they had to be; hence arose the
institution of private property in land. Fixed abodes
favored the building of substantial houses, instead of
tents, lodges and wigwams. Naturally, substantial
houses were erected for the gods also ; and this in turn
changed the very gods that inhabited them. Moral
codes also were modified to meet new conditions. They
had to be. The same rules that governed hunting
would not apply to farming. The right to hunt any-
where had to give way to a man's rights in his fields.
The morality of killing any pig that a man might find
changed with the taming of the pigs. And while all
this happened so long ago that it sounds more romantic
than real, at the time it occasioned many a bitter fight,
and no little "social unrest." But the changes went
right on. Handicrafts and commerce thrived. Villages
grew to cities, cities to states, and states to empires.
The forms of government and the methods of war were
adjusted to the new conditions. Settled life favored
the accumulation of written records by which past

THE GENESIS OF THE SOCIAL UNREST 35

events could be remembered. It favored the keeping
of other treasures also, and so made possible the accu-
mulation of wealth. Literature and the arts resulted.
They in turn stimulated the intellectual life to ever new
achievements. In short, the domestication of plants
and animals resulted in lifting man out of naked sav-
agery, and placing him on a social terrace where writ-
ten records could be left behind; in other words, it
caused the dawn of history, by inaugurating the his-
toric type of civilization.

We western peoples, the most advanced in the world,
are now engaged in the act of climbing up another
terrace. An equally revolutionary change has recently
occurred : the domestication, so to speak, of steam,
electricity, bacteria, and the chemical affinities. Just
as the earlier domestication lifted man from the ter-
race of savagery to the terrace of civilization, so this
recent new domestication is lifting him from the ter-
race of civilization to the terrace of a new, super-
civilization. It has already resulted in changes in our
adaptation to nature by all odds more far-reaching than
anything else that has ever occurred since the domesti-
cation of plants and animals. As a result the institu-
tions of the agriculture-handicraft stage of industrial
society are becoming as unsuited to the machinofacture
regime as were the institutions of the hunting-fishing
stage to the agriculture-handicraft regime when it ap-
peared. Inevitably there must eventually follow exten-
sive social readjustments. Eventually every ideal and
institution of civilization will be modified: property,
the family, the moral code, government and religion.
There must be as much modification of laws as there
has been of vehicles; we can no more carry the new

2,6 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

THE GENESIS OF THE SOCIAL UNREST $7

machinofacture conditions on the old handicraft laws
than we could haul modern traffic on ox carts. There
must be as much change in the rules as in the tools of
the industrial game. Old customs, creeds and rights will
be altered; they will have to be! The new tools have
created new human relations, and the new relations
will require new rules. Indeed these modifications are
going on slowly under our very eyes. Let us hope that
they will continue to be slow, so as to give us time to
adjust ourselves; but in the long run their aggregate
accumulation will be immense and inevitable. We are
in the process of producing a new social arrangement
as different from historic civilization as the social ar-
rangement of historic civilization is different from that
of naked savagery. This is the meaning of the present
social crisis.

The chief difference between these two great changes
is the speed of their occurrence. The first came very
slowly. It was spread out over hundreds, indeed thou-
sands, of prehistoric years. The last is being crowded
into a swift century or two. And a few gifted seers
have foreseen for a century that the future, because of
this great industrial change, is pregnant with a new
and higher civilization. The change they foresaw is
now upon us. From the standpoint of social evolution
it is evident to those who have eyes to see that the great
war was the birth pangs of a new social regime. In its
more fundamental aspects the war was the last great
stand of the old handicraft order of things. Social
changes threaten to follow upon it with a sweep and a
rush that are appalling ! They are destined in the end
to assume proportions almost apocalyptic. We are in
great danger of losing control of them. It will be

38 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

safest to recognize that fact; for there is nothing to be
gained in time of danger by hiding our heads in the
sand like ostriches. The fact is, that the curtain is
rising on a new stage setting. To the student of the
age-long history of the race it is evident that we are at
the threshold of a new world as different from that of
Lincoln and Washington as theirs was different from
that of the O jib ways, the Hottentots and the Cro-
Magnons. That is the goal of the present social move-
ment. It is time for intelligent people frankly to aban-
don the blind and phlegmatic superstition that things
can be kept as they are. We shall achieve normalcy not
by returning but by proceeding. There will be stability
again in the modern world only as we can keep the
change moving in orderly fashion, and under intelli-
gent control, toward the predestined goal. Otherwise
the dam will break ; and the torrent, out of all control,
will sweep on destructively, just as it has so often done
in even lesser crises in other times and at other places.
In other words, can we not succeed in settling the
irrepressible issues of our times with brains instead of
with blood? It is a question of finding out what read-
justments are predestined, so to speak, and making
them as quietly and peaceably as possible. Can we by
reason and justice negotiate our social problems as
problems, before they degenerate into a violent clash of
interests? This is the dilemma now confronting the
American people ; and there is nothing to be gained by
evading it. Extensive social changes are predestined
by the new conditions we have already created ; but it is
by no means predestined that the new regime shall
come in without violence. It is of the most momentous
consequence whether it come as a gradual peaceful evo-

THE GENESIS OF THE SOCIAL UNREST 39

lution, or as a violent, destructive revolution. It is not
a question of preventing change, but a question of
orderly and directed, instead of violent, abortive
change. Which it will be depends wholly upon us ; and
that is why it is so necessary for us to understand the
situation, conform to the inevitable, and direct the
details accordingly. The great hope is that in mutual
reason and good will, we can keep things moving
steadily along toward the inevitable goal. If we can
succeed in doing that, the present crisis will pass into
history as one of the most fruitful, beneficent, and
withal, wonderful periods in the experience of the race.
But if we cannot succeed in doing that, the most tragic,
bitter and even violent clash of interests will be the sad
alternative. As the public so intuitively fears, con-
fusion and even anarchy are by no means impossible.
Which sounds rhetorical enough, to be sure ; but which
would cost our children and grandchildren their lives.
And after that there might ensue dark ages again
perhaps for a thousand years, during which time un-
imaginable millions of human beings would cross the
stage of life under the shadows of ignorance, misery
and despair. The danger is that we may let it come
to that.

CHAPTER V

THE MODERN COLOSSUS

IT is of course impossible for anybody to be blind
to the fact that great power machines have super-
seded hand tools in the great basic industries of
modern civilization. That machines have very greatly
increased the productivity of industry, everybody real-
izes, too. But surprisingly few middle class Americans
look much deeper than that into the revolutionary
social changes that have followed as a direct conse-
quence. Few persons realize what the new machines
have done to labor. Few middle class Americans
realize that the status of labor has been changed by the
advent of machines quite as fundamentally as has his
work.

It is important to get at the crux of the matter. Not
minor and irrelevant details, but the central issue, is
what we need to understand. What is it? The dis-
tinguishing difference between the new machinofac-
ture regime and the old handicraft regime is the very
much more extensive use of what the economist calls
capital goods.

In the handicraft age the tools of industry were
simple and inexpensive, the shop itself was small, in-
volving but little outlay, and the raw material was
needed in relatively small quantities. But in modern
machinofacture industry all that is changed. Instead

40

THE MODERN COLOSSUS 4 1

of hand tools there are enormous power-driven ma-
chines, housed in enormous plants, requiring enormous
quantities of raw material. All of which represents an
enormous investment in capital goods. And not only
have the small shops grown to large plants, but the
large plants themselves have been assembled and con-
solidated. The small unit is a vanishing institution in
most of the great basic industries except agriculture.
In most fields modern industry is large scale industry,
involving the use of vast aggregations of capital.

There is a very clear and definite reason why this is
so, namely the economies of combination. To the bar-
ber's trade this principle does not apply. Barber shops
are still small shops. The nature of the barber
business is such that a shave or a hair cut cannot be
produced and delivered any cheaper in a shop of a
thousand chairs than in a shop of five chairs. But then
there has not been much change in the tools of the
barber's trade ! But to transportation the principle does
apply. There was a time when in journeying from
Albany to Buffalo a man traveled over eleven separate
and distinct systems of railroad. But that soon passed
away. The advantages and economies of consolidating
small units into large systems soon became apparent.
To-day great railroad systems are the rule. The same
principle seems to apply in many other lines of modern
industry: mining, steel manufacturing, meat packing,
telegraphing, lumbering, flour milling, etc., etc., etc.
In each of these lines of work the simple tools and
small shops of an earlier period have given place to
ponderous machinery housed in colossal plants and in-
volving fabulous investments.

It is interesting to collect a list of names that repre-

42 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

sent medieval trades : Baker, Bailey, Barber, Brewer,
Butcher, Butler, Carpenter, Carter, Chandler, Collier,
Cook, Cooper, Cutler, Diver, Draper, Dyer, Farmer,
Fisher, Fowler, Gardner, Glazier, Hooper, Hunter,
Mason, Miller, Painter, Piper, Plummer, Potter, Por-
ter, Sailor, Scriver, Shephard, Shoemaker, Skinner,
Slater, Smith, Tanner, Taylor, Thatcher, Weaver,
Wheeler. A few of these trades remain as of old, un-
modified by the industrial revolution; some have been
broken up into unskilled piece work in the modern
division of labor, and others have been absorbed in the
great industries. The descendants of Mr. Carter have
become the truck drivers and the railroad employees,
almost the whole Smith family now work for the great
steel corporations, the Chandlers are lighting us with
gas and electricity, the Carpenters, and Masons, the
Slaters and the Thatchers all together could hardly put
up a steel skyscraper; lumbering, telegraphy, the mak-
ing of steel machinery, and the oil business are not
provided for at all in the list, while Mr. Scriver and all
his offspring would have their hands more than full
with the accounting and correspondence of our modern
corporations.

And now we come to the point : this change from
small hand tools in small shops to vast complicated
machinery in vast expensive factories, has rendered im-
practicable the ownership of tools and shops by the
workers. The shop is too big to stand in the worker's
back yard ; the tools too heavy to be carried home in his
kit. The plant and the equipment are too expensive to
be within the reach of the workers' savings. Fancy the
miners owning the mine in which they dig, the train-
men owning the rolling stock on which they work, or

THE MODERN COLOSSUS 43

the steel workers owning the plant in which they are
employed. In the olden days almost any apprentice
might hope, by industry and thrift, to get together the
tools, materials and shop to set up on his own account.
Under those circumstances owner and worker were the
same; capital and labor were united in one person.
But under modern machinofacture conditions that is
out of the question. Ownership and labor are quite
naturally and inevitably separated. And that, reader,
is the crux of the whole modern situation; that is the
fundamental cause of the modern social unrest.

The writer ran across two paragraphs recently that
express this principle tersely, clearly and authorita-
tively. They are from a new history of modern Europe
by Professor E. R. Turner, of the University of Michi-
gan. Speaking of the Industrial Revolution, in Eng-
land, toward the close of the eighteenth century, he
says:

"At first the new inventions made no great change.
Not every successful workman could afford to buy Har-
greaves's spinning- jenny, yet this machine was not very
cumbersome or costly. But the heavy power spinning
machines of Arkwright could be got only by the few
who had considerable capital to buy them and put up
buildings in which to install them. And when presently
power looms and spinning appliances were run by steam
engines, then only capitalists could buy them."

On a later page he adds :

"Formerly, life had been hard enough, and living very
meager, but many of the workers had been their own
masters. Now they worked very largely at the mercy
of employers who owned the indispensable machines, and

44 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

whose principal consideration was usually the getting
of wealth, not the employees' welfare. Generally there
were more laborers seeking work than were needed, so
that the employer had great, even cruel advantage."

And although the Industrial Revolution, during the
century and a third that has since elapsed, has spread
all over western Europe and the United States, has
begun in Russia, has become thoroughly established in
Japan, and is about to invade China and India, this
"great and even cruel advantage" has not been cor-
rected yet. Indeed, except in a few highly organized
trades, scarcely a beginning has yet been made toward
its correction. And fundamental as this new situation
is, and simple to understand, there is probably not one
middle class citizen in fifty that does understand it, or
is even aware that it exists at all. And yet it is the
very crux and core of the social unrest the world over.

Unless the reader sees this point and discerns its
revolutionary significance, it is useless for him to follow
the argument further. And for the typical middle
class reader this point — that in modern large scale
industry worker and ownership are inevitably divorced
— will be peculiarly difficult to perceive ; for the simple
reason that the typical middle class citizen has little
immediate experience with typical large scale modern
industry. As likely as not he is a farmer. But agri-
culture, for reasons peculiar to itself, is still on the
small unit basis, and pretty certain to continue so.
Some farmers, it appears, are aware that there is such
a thing as "big business," but it is quite as apparent
that they do not understand it. Or, perhaps, the typical
middle class reader is a retail merchant, another busi-
ness still mostly on the small scale basis. Or he is a

THE MODERN COLOSSUS 45

contractor, or a garage owner, or a village blacksmith,
or some one else who does not realize that his business
is only on the fringe of typical large scale modern in-
dustry, and that if all industries were small shop indus-
tries like his own there would be no modern social
problem at all. Or, as likely as not, the reader is a
clergyman, a doctor, a lawyer, or a teacher, the son of
some farmer, or merchant, or a blacksmith. Neither
these men — nor their wives — have much immediate
contact with large scale modern industry, and while, as
professional men, they are of course well posted on the
documentary hypothesis of the Pentateuch, or the tech-
nique of thyroidectomy, or the precedents involved in
the foreclosure of a mechanic's lien, or the method of
compiling an age-grade distribution table, not one in a
hundred of them knows the law of monopoly price nor
Ricardo's iron law of wages nor the industrial history
of the United States since the Civil War. Hence they
quite naturally interpret modern problems in terms of
the small scale industries with which they are familiar,
not realizing that these industries are a declining minor-
ity, and that the modern stage is really set by large
scale industries. They must learn that unless modern
problems are thought in terms of modern conditions
they are not thought at all.

With this caution we may proceed. "Quite nat-
urally and inevitably" ownership and labor are sepa-
rated. That needs explaining further.

But first let us illustrate. For which purpose we
may revert to that good, old-fashioned, every-fellow-
for-himself game of ball called scrub. Now suppose
that every time a player made a fair hit and a safe run
it automatically added ten per cent to his stature. A

46 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

few safe runs and the status of the players would be
fixed. The overgrown batters would be in batting for
keeps, the middle class would be on the bases for good
and all, and the small fry would chase flies in the field
till the crack of doom.

In modern large scale industry every safe run actu-
ally does add to the stature of the owner, because as
owner he has absolute control of the profits. Back into
the business these profits go — in large part at least —
increasing the size of the investor's investment. Hence
decade after decade property piles up in the hands of
the propertied class, while the propertyless remain as a
rule as propertyless as before.

Some statistics will illustrate : Professor Friday *
found, by a study of 251 corporations for a ten-year
period, 1 910- 191 9, that their total reinvested income
( wages and interest on investment having already been
taken out), amounted to $4,500,000,000, or 75 per cent
of their capital in 19 19. All corporations in the United
States reporting had a total net income of $6,700,000,-
000 in 191 9, of which $2,800,000,000 was promptly
reinvested. After the investor had had the current rate
of interest on his investment, and labor the current
wage for his work, $2,800,000,000, or 42 per cent of
the total product, was left over. This the investor
added to his investment without consulting his partner,
the worker. "In a very large part of American indus-
try, the capital investment of the decade preceding the
outbreak of the European war was equal to that which
had been made in all previous years. Since . . . 1896
we have invested as much capital in manufacturing,
railroads, public utilities and mines as we had invested
1 "Profits, Wages and Prices," pp. 62, 64, 78.

THE MODERN COLOSSUS 47

in those industries in all our previous history." This
is the stake of the modern game. And it has gone for
the most part to the batters, increasing their size and
tightening their grip on the bat.

But capital is increased not only by the addition of
reinvested profits but also by the mere increment in
valuation. Sometimes a property increases in value
because property has been added to it; but at other
times property increases in value merely because value
has been added to it.

The market value of a piece of property bears no
necessary relation to its original cost ; its earning power
is what counts. It is worth whatever amount it will
pay dividends on. If a piece of property can be de-
pended upon, one year with another, to yield the owner
a net income of $1,000 annually, the property is worth
approximately $17,000 (assuming that the current
interest rate is 6 per cent), because it pays interest on
that amount. But if the same property for any reason
develops the ability to yield a regular annual income of
$1,500 it becomes worth $25,000 on the market. Of
course the application of this rule is modified in prac-
tice by modifying conditions, but the general principle
is practically universal. This increment in the value of
property accrues of course to the owners of property.
If the earnings of a man's work increase by say six
hundred dollars a year, his resources are increased by
six hundred dollars a year. There the matter ends.
But if the earnings of a man's investment increase by
six hundred dollars a year, there the matter does not
end. The market value of the investment itself is
thereby automatically increased by approximately ten
thousand dollars. The six hundred dollars additional

48 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

income pays the current rate of interest on ten thou-
sand dollars additional investment; so the same prop-
erty becomes worth $10,000 more on the market than
it was worth before.

An incidental result, therefore, of the enormous
prosperity of modern industry has been to increase the
validation of property. It must inevitably have in-
creased. Take a bird's-eye view in imagination of the
lands and the forests and the mines and the water-
power and the mills and the railroads of this country.
The growth of population, by increasing the demand
for the products of these resources, would of itself
increase their earnings. But the growth of wants is
almost as important a factor as the growth of popula-
tion. But further, the improvement of the technique
and arts of industry is also a factor in prosperity. If
population were declining and industrial arts decaying,
the earnings of investment would be irresistibly on the
down grade; but with population growing, wants mul-
tiplying, and the arts improving, the earnings of invest-
ments are inevitably increasing, and the valuation of
property is thereby increased accordingly. Much of
the increased wealth of the country is therefore nothing
but the increased valuation of property. Obviously
whoever owns the property gets the increment. The
fortunes that are acquired in this way make the life-
time savings of a laboring-man look pitifully insignifi-
cant. The irony is complete when the small saver
invests his savings in securities that have been created
by increasing valuation. And the more property a man
owns the more increment he gets the benefit of, and the
easier it is for him to acquire more property. While
in all this the propertyless worker shares not at all.

THE MODERN COLOSSUS 49

To summarize : undivided profits accrue to the owner
and not to the worker. Increased valuation accrues to
the owner and not to the worker. The worker shares
neither in reinvested profits nor in the increment, be-
cause he is not owner. Under modern large scale
industry he cannot be owner, for reasons set forth in
part already, and to be explained more fully in the next
chapter. Hence the enormous increase of property has
accrued for the most part to the propertied class, the
propertyless classes remaining propertyless as before.
And as the decades pass the chasm widens and the con-
centration accumulates. To him that hath shall be
given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away
even that which he hath. This is the fundamental
cause of the modern social unrest.

An interesting and suggestive story appeared in one
of the magazines some years ago. A certain village
doctor, being an amateur scientist interested in certain
queer experiments, succeeded in concocting a secret
potion, which, when administered to the young of any
species, would cause them to grow rapidly to monstrous
proportions. He stealthily fed a little of this mysteri-
ous mixture to a brood of his neighbor's chicks. In a
few weeks they were stepping over the tops of the
fences, scratching the outbuildings out of their places,
and subsisting on a diet of calves and pigs swallowed
whole. A female rat got some of it and carried it home
to her family of young. Soon the region was infested
with rodents more terrible than tigers. The magazine
showed a picture of the doctor himself in his top buggy
being chased by one of them on a dark night. The
cockroaches carried off one of the doctor's twins.
Through childish curiosity and the maid's carelessness

50 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

the other twin got a dose. He grew too big to get
through the doors. He ate more than the doctor's
income could supply. The doctor went insane; he had
made a remarkable scientific discovery, it is true, but it
had generated serious social unrest.

Likewise in our modern industrial game the batters
have taken something mysterious, and behold, they do
bestride our narrow world like a Colossus. What they
have taken is not so very mysterious after all, it is a
dose of science applied to the invention of power ma-
chinery ,on a large scale. But the game will never be
the same kind of a game again. Nor will it ever be a
happy game again for the fielders until the old rules are
modified to meet the new conditions.

The name of the giant is Capitalism. The grievances
of the masses are real, not imaginary. To escape them
they are increasingly eager to plunge us all headlong
into the red experiment of socialism. If they do the
experiment will of course fail, and the bloody pendulum
will swing back and forth for generations, perhaps for
centuries, but eventually it will settle down to some
sound, just compromise between the two. All of which
may be prevented if we of the middle class can muster
the intelligence to invent and install that compromise
now, in time to forestall the experiment.

CHAPTER VI

RICARDO'S IRON LAW OF WAGES

THE separation of ownership and labor was not
sufficiently accounted for in the last chapter. It
is obvious that labor does not own to any appre-
ciable degree in modern large scale industry. But why
does he not? Why is it practically impossible for the
laboring class to so much as get a start ? That is to be
further explained.

First consider the conditions under which the worker
has to sell his labor. He has to sell it under conditions
of keen competition with other laborers. If A does not
take the job at the wage offered, B, C, or D will. So if
A wants the job he must be the first to answer the want
"ad." Many establishments carry long waiting lists,
and it is no uncommon thing for job hunters to have to
stand in line.

The reader must beware of drawing general conclu-
sions from the conditions of the last few years. For
perfectly obvious reasons there was an unusually strong
demand for labor from 1914 to 1920. But the fact is,
such conditions are unusual. The normal condition
that has prevailed usually, and that will continue to pre-
vail, except in abnormal times, is a scarcity of work, not
a scarcity of workers.

The recognition by scientific economists that the
supply of labor is normally in excess of the demand

51

52 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

has a long and interesting history. It goes back at
least to Malthus, a famous economist of a century and
a quarter ago. Malthus set forth the principle that
population tends to increase by geometric ratio (i. e.,
3X3X3X3X3, etc.), whereas food supply tends
to increase only by arithmetic ratio (i. e., 3 + 3 + 3
+ 3 + 3, etc.). Hence the population normally tends
to overtake the food supply. The cause for this is the
force of the reproductive impulse. This is really a
universal law of nature : all species tend to multiply
faster than their food supply will warrant. Hence the
struggle for existence. Man is no exception.

According to Malthus the "positive checks" upon the
growth of population are war, famine and disease. In
his earlier writings he implied that there is no escape
from these. Population growth is one of the reasons
why nations struggle for "a place in the sun" ; and as
for famine, China is the perennial example.

Americans have been disposed to make light of the
"Malthusian bugbear," on the supposition that science
can speed up production to almost any limit. The real
reason for our blind optimism was the abundance of
our new land. While the new land lasted we were too
shortsighted to foresee that it would eventually be occu-
pied by the rapidly growing population. We now
realize that the slack is practically all taken up, and that
we are beginning to face the problems of a dense popu-
lation, just as Europe has faced them for a century.
We now realize that permanent escape from the "Mal-
thusian bugbears" can never be achieved by speeding
up production alone, but only by also bringing the
birthrate under the control of foresight and prudence,
just as Malthus said. The men who have led the eco-

RICARDOS IRON LAW OF WAGES 53

nomic thinking in this country since 1880 have egregi-
ously underestimated the Malthusian theories. Ap-
parently they have been incapable of looking a century
or two into the future. But as Professor Ross re-
marks, Malthus is at par again.

In his later writings Malthus recognized "the pre-
ventive checks." As the standard of living rises the
birth rate declines. It is a matter of common comment
that Americans of the middle and upper classes have
smaller families than formerly. The same is true of
the west European peoples. But among the lower
classes the preventive checks do not operate to so great
a degree. Until they do the lower classes will suffer
the consequences of their excessive birth rate.

Ricardo, a later contemporary of Malthus, carried
the theory one step further. He formulated what has
since been known as Ricardo's iron law of wages.
This law states that wages normally tend to gravitate
to the subsistence level. What ever the standard of
living upon which the laboring class is accustomed to
subsist, down to that the wage scale is beaten. The
reason for this, Ricardo pointed out, is the oversupply
of the labor market, the fundamental cause of which
Malthus had made so clear. Wages cannot rise to a
higher level because some hungry out-of-work is always
at hand to underbid; and the lowest bidder naturally
sets the price for all.

Nor does the oversupply of labor state the case com-
pletely. Labor is not only in excess of the demand for
it, but it is also pushed on the market at forced sale as
a perishable product. If to-day's labor is not sold it
cannot be saved up like wheat and sold to-morrow, or
next spring. It is like over-ripe fruit on Saturday night,

54 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

which, if not sold, will be rotten by Monday. Any-
thing the fruiterer can get is better for him than not to
sell at all. But the laborer's case is even worse than
the fruiterer's, because if the laborer does not sell he
and his family will go hungry to bed.

Ricardo's iron law of wages is the reason why labor-
ing man and poor man have always been synonymous
terms. In ancient times laboring men were exploited
as slaves, because there were so many of them. The
pyramids of Egypt are monuments to Ricardo's iron
law of wages. In medieval times laboring men were
exploited as serfs, because there were so many of them.
In Europe farmers to this day are semi-medieval peas-
ants; only on the abundant acres of America, where
labor has been relatively scarce, have farmers arisen to
the level of free men. And in modern industry labor-
ing men are wont to regard their poverty as "wage
slavery," because there are so many of them. The
validity and importance of this Ricardian theory of
wages has been quite as much underestimated as the
Malthusian theory of which it is a corollary, and for
the same reasons. But it is central to any intelligent
comprehension of industrial relations to-day. Ricardo
as well as Malthus is coming back.

History occasionally throws up exceptional situa-
tions in which labor really becomes scarce for a time,
whereupon Ricardo's iron law of wages is negatively
illustrated. During the fourteenth century the Black
Death swept over England, carrying off, it is esti-
mated, approximately half the population. The labor-
ers immediately took advantage of the scarcity to de-
mand higher wages. Cheney x quotes a contemporary

1 "Industrial and Social History of England," pp. 99-m.

RICARDO'S IRON LAW OF WAGES 55

chronicler as saying that "laborers were so elated and
contentious that they did not pay any attention to the
command of the king, and if anybody wanted to hire
them he was bound to pay them what they asked, and
so he had his choice either to lose his harvest and crops
or give in to the proud and covetous desires of the
workmen." Laws were enacted punishing laborers by
imprisonment, branding, and confinement in the stocks
for refusing to work at the old wages. The fact that
Parliament represented only the employers served the
more to embitter the laboring class at these laws; and
though they were reenacted thirteen times wages did
not return to the old level. On the other hand the
influence of the Black Death upon the wage rate con-
stituted an important step in the evolution of English
civil liberty. But however effective the death of half
their number proved on that occasion as a means of
raising their wages above the Ricardian level, it has
nevertheless failed since of general acceptance by the
laboring class as a means to that end. They prefer to
put a limit to competition among themselves by arti-
ficial devices.

We have just passed through a somewhat similar
experience, though for wholly different causes. Pro-
fessor Friday ! has shown that commodities during
the war period, far from being scarce, were produced
in normal quantities. Business as usual was the slogan.
Production of ordinary commodities did not slow down.
We took on the manufacture of munitions for Europe
before 191 7, and all the work involved in our own
entrance into the war, as an extra effort. We speeded
up, we increased our efficiency, we worked overtime,

« "Wages, Profits and Prices," pp. 1, 235.

56 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

we drafted women and boys. In other words the war
increased the demand for labor out of all proportions
to the normal demand. There was the extra demand
for labor to build cantonments, ships, and equipment.
Four million men were drafted out of productive labor
into the army. But all this demand, Friday shows,
was extra demand. The usual peace time demand for
labor for the usual industries continued as usual. The
slack was taken up. Nearly everybody that wanted
a job had one. There were no tramps. Vagrancy
was reduced almost to zero. Gradually wages re-
sponded to the demand. Up to 19 19 the high prices
we of the middle class paid were due to profits, it is
true; but as the demand for labor increased, profits
were gradually transferred to wages. During 191 9
and 1920 the high prices we paid were going mostly to
the "proud and covetous workmen." Not only were
wages increased, but labor became so independent and
"contentious" that its efficiency was very considerably
reduced. This continued till the fall of 1920, by which
time profits were all being absorbed in wages, where-
upon the managers of industry began to curtail pro-
duction. We are now (1922) returning to normal,
that is, to a condition in which the supply of labor
exceeds the demand, and unemployment is sufficient to
maintain the "morale" of labor.

The point is that an oversupply of labor is the usual
condition. It is generally understood that about
2,000,000 is the usual number of unemployed in normal
times. Evidences of this condition have frequently been
demonstrated statistically. Streightoff x refers to an ex-
haustive statistical investigation made by the Bureau of
1 "The Standard of Living."

RICARDO S IRON LAW OF WAGES

57

Labor in New York state covering a period of eight
years, from 1902 to 1909 inclusive. The percentage of
unemployment among organized wage earners for every
month during that entire period was ascertained. The
table is inserted herewith. The average for the period
was between sixteen and seventeen per cent. In other
words, among organized wage earners the usual and
regular thing was for one out of every six to be out of
a job. It is safe to assume that unemployment was
even greater among unorganized, unskilled workers.
The daily hunt of these jobless for a job is what en-
forces Ricardo's iron law of wages. And these were
normal years, during which capital was accumulating
out of undivided profits at the rate described on
page 46.

Number and Proportion of Unemployed Wage-earners *

Per cent idle

Month

1909 1908 1907 1906 1905 1904 1903 1902

25.8

20.5

20.9

21.6

17.8

18.7

27.1

17.6

17-3

17.0

17-3

15-3

IS -9

20.2

14.0

I.V7

23.1

145

14.8

17.8

15-0

13-7

15-4

7.1

12.0

9.4

6.3

10.8

1 1.7

1 1.2

1 i.l

16.4

14-3

19.6

231

22.2

16.9

17-5

14.8

January-
February
March
April
May

June
uly
August

September 190
October 190
November 190
December 190

192
192
192
192
192
192
190
190

Mean for year

88,604
89.396
90,619
89.039
89,241
89,227
89-551
90,429
90,783
91,247
9i,977
91,162

25,964
23,727
20,836
18,042
15,228
15,503
12,459
10.799
13,171
12,468
12,206
18,791

29-3
26.5
23.0
20.3
17. 1
17.4
13-9
11.9
14-5
13-7
13-3
20.6
18.5

36.9
37-5
37-5
33-9
32.2
30.2
26.8
24.6
24.6

231

21.5
28.0
29.7

21.5
20.1
18.3
10. 1
10. s
8.1
8-5
12. 1
12.3
18.5
22.0
32.7
16.2

15.0

22.5

15-3

19.4

1 1.6

19.2

7-3

11.8

7.0

8.3

6.3

9.1

7.6

8.0

5-8

7-2

6.3

5-9

6.Q

5-6

7-6

6.1

1 5-4

11. 1

9-3

11. 2

1 Annual Reports, Bureau of Labor Statistics, New York, and Depart-
ment of Labor Bulletins.

The oversupply of labor is not a modern nor a new
condition. It is age-old and perennial. But it is a con-
dition that modern machinofacture has by no means

58 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

abolished. Ricardo's iron law of wages remains in
force as long as there are more workers than jobs. The
new feature is the vastness of the capital from sharing
in which labor is debarred. The capital involved in the
old handicraft industry was so small that small savings,
thriftily hoarded, eventually gave the worker a toe hold
in the investment. But in modern machinofacture in-
dustry the capital involved is so vast that the savings
of a lifetime are like the proverbial drop in the bucket.
The laborers' hope of acquiring a controlling voice in
the management by investing their savings is a nega-
tive quantity, their influence in the management is a
declining ratio. "And from him that hath not shall be
taken away even that which he hath !"

Not only do we have statistics showing that an
over supply of labor is a fact, but statistical research
has also shown over and over again that the resultant
wages of labor are exactly what the theory would lead
us to expect. Wages actually do tend to gravitate
to the subsistence level. A glance at the tables and
charts in the next chapter, with special attention to the
incomes of the poor, will reveal the facts in a general
way. Streightoff reports * that among the 25,440
families studied in 1901 by the U. S. Commissioner
of Labor, 99.28 per cent of the husbands were at work,
but only 35.74 per cent of the families lived upon his
earnings alone. In 1890 the U. S. Department of
Labor studied the family life of employees in the cotton,
woolen and glass industries, and found that the father
was. the sole bread winner in only 23.1 per cent of
families in the cotton, of 49.6 per cent in the woolen,
and of 64.1 per cent in the glass industry. This means,

1 "The Standard of Living," p. 59.

RICARDO S IRON LAW OF WAGES 59

of course, that the earnings of these men were below
the subsistence level for a family. It suggests that the
subsistence of an unmarried man is the level down to
which the Ricardian principle tends to depress wages.
Streightoff further says that according to the Census
of Manufactures * 4,244,538 men engaged in manu-
facturing in 1905 received an average income of
$533.93. At that time approximately $700 represented
the lowest level of physical necessities.

The following facts relative to the manufacturing
branch of the steel industry were brought out by the
studies of the Interchurch World Movement 2 in 19 19.
Competent authorities estimated that in that year
$2,024 was the "minimum of comfort" level, and
$1,575 was the "minimum of subsistence" level for a
family of five. But in that year 72,771 unskilled
workers in the manufacturing branch of the Steel Cor-
poration's business (i. e., 38.1 per cent of all) were
getting annual average earnings $109 below the "mini-
mum of subsistence" level, and $558 below the "mini-
mum of comfort" level. Thus it appears that Ricardo
will not down.

Dr. Hadley, until recently President of Yale Uni-
versity, published, in 1884, a since famous book on
"Railroad Transportation." He threw in parentheti-
cally a paragraph on the fundamental principles under-
lying labor organization. Doubtless the reader will be
interested in what a man of President Hadley's stand-
ing has to say on this important subject :

"There is another aspect of our subject, still more
serious than any we have yet treated, which we can do

1 "The Standard of Living," p. 59.
a"The Steel Strike of 1919," p. 93 ff.

6o CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

little more than touch upon — the competition and com-
bination of labor. Labor is in the market, like any
commodity; its price is largely determined by competi-
tion, and this too often takes the form of cut-throat
competition. A workman working for starvation
wages is like a factory or railroad running for opera-
ting expenses. In flush times the workman gets com-
paratively good wages ; he marries, and is able to sup-
port a family in reasonable comfort. This family
becomes a fixed charge upon him; and it is of the
utmost importance to society that he should be able to
meet his fixed charges in this respect. But a commer-
cial crisis comes, and the demand for labor diminishes.
Men who have no family to support come into direct
competition with him. He can better afford to work
for what will keep body and soul together than not to
work at all, even though his wages are brought so low
that his children perish for lack of the food which
should give them strength to resist disease. And so
wages are brought down to the starvation minimum,
only to rise above it after long years of waiting and
misery. The workman seeks relief in combination;
but combination is far harder for him than for the
capitalist. Where there are ten factories to combine,
there may be ten thousand workmen to be held to-
gether— not to speak of the almost unlimited floating
labor supply which may be brought in at any point.
The law will not help him. If the law regards the pool
with disfavor, it regards most of the manifestations of
trades-unionism with absolute hostility.1 No wonder
that our workmen try to change the law; no wonder

1 The attitude of legislatures and courts has materially changed
in this respect since 1884.

RICARDO'S IRON LAW OF WAGES 6l

they call for special statutes against labor importation ;
no wonder that they seek to limit the supply in the
market by a universal eight-hour law. Whether rightly
or wrongly, we do not here inquire; it is beyond our
purpose to discuss what general improvement is prac-
ticable in this field. We only call attention to the close
relation between the two problems of starvation wages
and bankrupt competition. If capitalists and working-
men can but see this analogy, it may help them to an
understanding of one another's position."

To summarize: It is Ricardo's iron law of wages
that explains why the laborer, particularly the unskilled
laborer, does not share in the ownership of modern
large scale property. Since his wages normally tend
to gravitate, because of the oversupply of labor, to the
subsistence level, the margin out of which he can save
is discouragingly insignificant. He is too near the
"poverty line." He has all he can do merely to hold his
job at a subsistence wage, to say nothing of contesting
undivided profits and ownership with the colossal cor-
poration that employs him. This, precisely this ! is his
handicap and the reason for his discontent.

The human mind is a marvellous instrument ; it has
a wonderful affinity for the old and familiar. As a
rule it offers quite successful resistance against infec-
tion by an idea that is new. It is the easiest thing in
the world to read a book with a new idea in it, and get
everything in the book except the new idea. But that
hurts the writer's feelings. Writers are sensitive souls.
If they go to the trouble to write a whole book for the
purpose of saying one or two things in particular,
they really do like to have those one or two things
taken particular notice of. If the two of us are to

62 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

profit by our quiet little session together it is really-
necessary, therefore, that the writer say one or two
things in such a way that the reader will take notice
of them. One thing in particular : there are not jobs
enough to go around. Let it be conceded that the
writer is red, green, yellow or any other color the
reader may wish. Quite apart from the writer's color,
here is a fact. F-a-c-t, fact ! There are more workers
than jobs ! Every investigation that has ever been
made shows that there is always a very considerable
amount of unemployment, approximately 2,000,000
usually.

Let the reader look this fact steadily in the face.
Whatever else may be said about it, let him note that
this fact is a cause. Every fact is a cause ; no fact can
escape being a cause. But this fact is a very significant
cause in our social and industrial situation. In the
writer's opinion there is no more significant causal
fact in the social field. The writer has built this book
chiefly to throw the spot light on this fact and its
implications, in the belief that most Americans fail to
discern the results it produces when it does business as
a cause.

The effects are in plain sight if any one will but
open his eyes. It causes the wages of labor, especially
unskilled labor, to gravitate to the subsistence level,
according to Ricardo's theory, and as all available
statistics verify. It prevents the laboring class from
saving to any effective extent. It prevents them from
becoming owners in modern large scale industry. It
excludes labor from any voice in the management. It
is producing the polarization of modern society. It is

RICARDO'S IRON LAW OF WAGES 63

the fundamental, underlying cause of the present, wide
spread social protest.

This protest is sometimes condensed into a sort of
slogan, to the effect that labor is not a commodity.
This is intended to mean that labor ought not to be
treated as such. To regard labor as a commodity is to
leave the regulation of wages entirely to the merciless
play of supply and demand, just as we think right in
the case of corn or coal. This is the way labor has
too often been thought of in the traditional economics.
The purpose for which Malthus at first put forth his
theories was to prove that poverty is inevitable. His
book was originally written to reassure reactionaries
in their belief that poverty and misery are unavoidable
■ — there was unrest in England, then, due to the first
introduction of machines and to the Napoleonic wars.
It was only in his later thinking that he discovered a
way out and a ground for optimism. But that phase
of his work was, for the most part, overlooked. For
two generations thereafter political economy was re-
ferred to as the dismal science. But the heart of
humanity rebelled; the faith of humanity refused to
believe that fundamental human rights are impossible
of achievement. This faith is summed up in the asser-
tion that labor is not a commodity ; which implies that,
regardless of supply and demand in the labor market,
every honest, capable worker has a right to living wage
and a decent American standard of living; that Ri-
cardo's iron law of wages can be nullified by human
reason and invention, just as the aeroplane nullifies
Newton's law of gravitation ; and that it is the bounden
duty of a democratic Christian civilization to discover

64 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

the solution to this problem. Which will not be easy,
will it, as long as there are more laborers than jobs, so
that laborers naturally beat one another's wages down
to the subsistence level by competition among them-
selves?

But Ricardo himself suggested a way out. There is
something strange, almost perverse, about the way re-
cent economists have missed the fundamental validity
and great significance of Malthus and Ricardo. Their
theories deserve to rank among the great generaliza-
tions of a great century. It was none other than
Malthus that suggested the secret of evolution to Dar-
win. And if social evolution is ever to shift to a new
gear, so that the horror will be removed from a ruth-
less struggle for existence, if the age-old miseries that
humanity has suffered from low wages, poverty,
famine, over-crowding, pestilence and war, are ever
to be finally escaped, it will not be by the nineteenth
century's fanatical faith in increasing production, but
through the preventive measures suggested by Malthus
and Ricardo. Ricardo's own means of escape from
the iron law of wages will be set forth in a later
chapter.

CHAPTER VII

THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH

IN the last two chapters causes have been set forth.
Let us now turn to results. The extreme differ-
ences of wealth and poverty are the result.
The facts relative to the distribution of wealth are
well known to sociologists and economists. A number
of very thorough statistical studies have been made
during the last twenty-five years, all of which point in
the same general direction. Of those now commonly
referred to in sociological literature, the earliest was
"The Present Distribution of Wealth in the United
States," by Spahr, published in 1896. "The Social
Unrest," by John Graham Brooks, appeared in 1903.
"Poverty," by Robert Hunter, was copyrighted in
1904. It produced a profound impression upon the
public mind. Streightoff published two books, one on
"The Standard of Living Among the Industrial People
of America," in 191 1, and another on "The Distribu-
tion of Incomes in the United States," in 1912. A
more recent book (191 5) on this general subject is that
by W. I. King, of the University of Wisconsin : "The
Wealth and Income of the People of the United States;"
its findings accord quite closely with all the earlier
studies. The latest contribution in this field is "The
Income in the United States" (1921), by Mitchell,
Macaulay, King and Knauth, a survey under the
auspices of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

65

66 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

The reader will be interested in some summarized
statements of the findings of this statistical research.
The following table is taken from Dr. Spahr's * book :

Aggregate Average
Wealth Wealth

The United States, 1890
Number

125,000 $33,000,000,000 $264,000

23,000,000,000 16,000

8,200,000,000

Estates
The Wealthy Classes, $50,000

and over

The Well-to-do Classes, $50,-

000 to $5,000 i,375,ooo

The Middle Classes, $5,000

to $500 5,500,000

The Poorer Classes, under

$500 5,500,000 800,000,000

1,500
150

$5,200

12,500,000 $65,000,000,000

He supplements the table with this comment: "The
conclusion reached, therefore, is as follows : Less than
half the families in America are propertyless ; never-
theless, seven-eighths of the families hold but one-
eighth of the national wealth, while one per cent of
the families hold more than the remaining ninety-nine."
The following, from Robert Hunter's "Poverty," 2
is significant as confirming the findings of earlier
investigators :

Distribution of Wealth in the United States

Class

Families

Per

Cent

Average
Wealth

Aggregate
Wealth

Per

Cent

Rich

Middle

Poor

Very poor.. . .

125,000
1,362,500
4,762,500
6,250,000

1.0

10.9

38.1

50.0

$263,040

14,180

i,639

$32,880,000,000

19,320,000,000

7,800,000,000

54-8
32.2
130

Total

12,500,000

1 00.0

$4,800

$60,000,000,000

1 00.0

1 See Spahr's "The Present Distribution of Wealth in the
United States," p. 69.
1 Pp. 44, 60.

THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH

67

Diagrams Showing, by Percentages, the Population and
Wealth Distribution in the United States

Population

Wealth

Middle, 10.9
Poor, 38.1

Rich, 54.8

Very Poor, 50.

yam

Middle,
Poor,

32.2
13.

Hunter adds : "Without committing ourselves im-
plicitly to them (i.e., these figures), we must acknowl-
edge that they indicate an inequality of wealth distri-
bution which should have before now received exhaus-
tive investigation by our official statisticians." . . .
"On the whole, it seems to me that the most conserva-
tive estimate that can fairly be made of the distress
existing in the industrial states is 14 per cent of the
total population; while in all probability no less than
20 per cent of the people in these states, in ordinarily
prosperous years, are in poverty." "This brings us
to the conclusion . . . that not less than 10,000,000
persons in the United States are in poverty." By
"poverty" Hunter means a financial condition in which
it is impossible, or only barely possible, to provide for
the most elemental physical needs, and which is at-
tended with misery.

68 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

King's estimates are indicated in the following table :

People
Wealth

■ People
S Income

65%
60%

55%
50%

45%
40%
35%
30%
25%
20%

15%

10%

5%

Distribution of Wealth

Distribution of Income

King's Findings Graphically Presented
He also adds : "The richest one per cent of the men
dying owned almost one-half of the value of all the
estates, while one-fourth of the entire property was in
the hands of one four-hundredth part of the people.
Population Wealth Owned Income Received

Richest 2% 60% 20%

Middle 33% 33% 4*%

Poorest 65% 6% 39%

This means that each of these men in the richest four-
hundredth part of the population possessed a hundred

THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 69

times the wealth of the average citizen." (King,
p. 82.)

According to the study of the National Bureau of
Economic Research of incomes in 191 8, 86 per cent of
those gainfully employed got incomes of less than $2000
(about $1000 on the 19 13 price level) or 40 per cent of
the national income. On the other hand only 1 per
cent of the people get 14 per cent of the total income,
and that includes all incomes of $8,000 or more. This
survey makes no report on the ownership of property,
but only on the receipt of income. The findings may
be presented as follows:

Of Population Of National Income Amount Received

Most prosperous 1% 14% $8000, or more

5% 26% 3200,

* 10% 35% 2300,

20% 47% 1700,

Least prosperous 86% 40% 2000 (less than)

The foregoing estimates have been quite generally
accepted by careful social scientists, and there seems
to be no reason for doubting their validity.

Moreover, the concentration of wealth has been
growing steadily ever since the Civil War. In the
quotation from Professor Ely, a few pages below, he
makes reference to this tendency, and points out some
of the causes. According to King's studies the con-
centration of wealth, and especially of income, very
perceptibly increased between 1896 and 19 10. He
says : "If all the estimates cited are correct, it indicates
that, since 1896, there has occurred a marked concen-
tration of income in the hands of the very rich ; that the
poor have, relatively, lost but little ; but that the middle
class has been the principal sufferer. This evidence of
increasing concentration would accord with the infer-

JO CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

ence drawn from the decreasing share of the product
going to wages, which was discussed in the early part
of this chapter." x In another place (p. 179) he dis-
tinctly states that "commodity wages" declined between
1896 and 1 91 5. According to King's study, 39 per
cent of the national income was received by 65 per cent
of the people; according to the later study of the Na-
tional Bureau of Research, it took 86 per cent to re-
ceive practically the same percentage (40 per cent) of
the national income.

There can be but little doubt that the recent war
period saw this tendency toward concentration of
wealth accelerated. The public imagination was pro-
foundly impressed with the high money wages of labor
during this period. Employers have made the most of
the facts for purposes of propaganda, but the public is
always liable to overlook the rise in prices of rent, food
and clothing. Labor, especially unskilled labor, was
not so prosperous as the public has been induced to
imagine. An article2 in The Journal of Political
Economy for January, 1920, discusses the available
data at some length, but without reaching definite con-
clusions ; but showing evidence that labor certainly had
not entered a new era of luxury : "Farm laborers," the
writer says, "seemed to have fared better than their
brethren in the city factories. For both groups the rate
of wages rose less rapidly than did the general price
level." As for teachers, ministers, civil service em-
ployees, and salaried employees in general, they "have
contributed the most heavily," having been employed

*See "The Wealth and Income of the People of the United
States," p. 231.
•By Jacob Viner, University of Chicago.

THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH

71

"at rates only slightly above the pre-war levels."
Edward T. Devine x has shown that the severest suf-
ferers from the high cost of living were that large class
who in normal times are barely able to maintain a
precarious self-support. The fundamental necessities
of life advanced in price far more than the wages this
class was able to earn. The advance in rents pinched
them even more than the advance in foods. It is prob-
ably safe to assume that organized skilled labor was
the only class of wage earners that were able to take
1 Survey, Sept. 15, 1920.

250
240
230
220
210
200
100
180
170
100
150
140
130
120
110
100
00

—

1

80
70
60
60

c
c
0

r :
) :

0 a

a t
t> c

3 -
> ;
b c

H c

= 1
» e

! ■
3 C
B S

3 -
-1 t
a c

■ k
> c
D c

3 0

3 e

i -

3 •'

2 e

B C

-

B .

5 :

3 T

b e

3 -

-" c
B S

>

a c

3 •

3 1

m 1

B ^

3 I

3 1

■ C
2 C

2 ;

B

-1 <

D H

B 03

THE TREND OF PRICES: INDEX NUMBERS AT THE LEFB

*J2. CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

any real advantage of the situation up to about the
middle of 1919.

To whom have the high prices been paid then ? This
question is partly answered by the following table:1

- c g

flj d <y y^

?v?.g

C o

u

O

u

^n^

V

<u >
bo O

E

£j_o

<u >
bo 0

jS D

0

3 rt c«

iS <u

O rt

c 52

-a >- c

c 52

§2

Sum

1— 1

coo

t— 1 a.ic

_4. !-. — 1

aj y ^

Burea

Whol<
Index

507

100

14-3

381

— 24.9

99

194

664

31.0

100

102.0

1,364

169.0

123

I4I-9

1,750

245-1

175

1 18.9

185

1913 $4,340

1914 3,711

1915 5,184

1916 8,766

1917 10,500

1918 9,500

The conclusion of Professor Viner's article ("Who
Paid for the War ?") is that there was an actual increase
(instead of decrease) in production during the war, due
to the increased utilization of the nation's capital and
labor resources, that the additional production "inured
in large part as profits to certain groups, and then
(was) turned over to the government as loans instead
of as taxes." This was the case, at least, up to the
summer of 191 9. After that, till the shut-down in
the fall of 1920, labor had its brief innings.2

"Congressmen Rainey of Illinois and Griffin of New
York spent some time during the closing days of the
session in discovering the number of new millionaires

Quoted by Viner from David Friday's "The War and the
Supply of Capital," in American Economic Review Supplement,
March, 1919, p. 89.

2 See page 56 above.

THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 73

the war brought us. A preliminary compilation of the
income tax returns, according to Congressman Rainey,
shows the following figures :

Number in class
Income range 1914 1919

Above $x,ooo,ooo 60 248

$500,000 to $1,000,000 114 405

$300,000 to $500,000 294 580

$200,000 to $300,000 363 1,100

$100,000 to $200,000 1,595 4,70O

Total above $100,000 2,426 7,033

"There is thus nearly a three-fold increase in the
number of those receiving big incomes and those in the
class in 1914 added vastly to their incomes during the
war. In 1919 one man reported an income of $34,-
000,000; two reported more than $16,000,000; and
five had more than $5,000,000 each. As will be noted
by the above table, 248 were receiving more than
$1,000,000 a year each." *

The percentages of distribution set forth in the chart
on page 68 would seem to be predetermined by the
sieves in our industrial machine. According to our
constitution only half a dozen men more or less can
be Presidents of the United States during a generation.
The rest may be ever so ambitious and capable, but
they have to be content with something less. There
are more chances for them to be school directors.
The organization of our institutions is such that we
utilize about 115,000 lawyers, 150,000 doctors, 120,000
clergymen, and 600,000 teachers. However ambitious
the average youth may be to get into these professions,
those in excess of the figures enumerated above will be
*From an unverified newspaper clipping.

74 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

disappointed, because our society is not organized to
place them. Of course, which persons are picked to
fill these positions and which are rejected depends partly
on the personality of the individuals; but the number
is fixed in advance. The same is true of distribution
of wealth. Our industrial institutions are so organized
that to the ownership of sixty per cent of our wealth
only two per cent of our people are admitted. Who
shall be picked for membership in that two per cent
depends partly upon the personality of the individuals
and partly upon the accident of birth; however ambi-
tious or capable the other 98 per cent may be they can-
not qualify. The number of successful candidates is
predetermined just as definitely as is the percentage of
men in any generation who may belong to the United
States Senate.

The facts and principles set forth in the two pre-
ceding chapters make it clear that this excessive con-
centration of wealth, on the one hand, and this vast
extent of poverty on the other, must be due, in part
at least, to the rules of the game. The rules of the
game assign management to owners and also permit
unlimited ownership. These two rules were the rules
of the old handicraft game. In the old game the old
rules worked fairly well — except in agriculture. But
the new machinofacture game is a different game en-
tirely. The new feature is that every time a batter
makes a fair hit and a safe run it automatically adds
a cubit to his stature. Hence in the new game the old
rules are a social injustice; they result in the industrial
disfranchisement of sixty-five per cent of the players
while two per cent do all the batting. Would it not
be a good idea to make some slight changes in the rules

THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 75

of the game, such as limiting the batters to, say, three
safe runs?

The injustice of the old rules can be observed dis-
interestedly from the outside by taking note of how
they worked out in agriculture, even in the old game;
that is, in Europe during the medieval and early modern
centuries. In European agriculture they always sepa-
rated ownership and labor. When the land barons once
got hold of the land there was scarcely any more oppor-
tunity for the peasants to acquire the ownership of it
than there was for them to acquire the ownership of
the moon. Hence there developed, almost all over
Europe, a landed aristocracy and an oppressed agrarian
peasantry. We escaped that in America chiefly because
of the unlimited supply of new land, but also because
of our policy of giving out our wild land to actual
settlers. But now that our new land is all taken up
there is danger that we may drift toward an agrarian
aristocracy of absentee landlords, even here in America,
as is suggested by the rise in the percentage of tenancy
in the last forty years. The point is, that in modern
capitalistic industry the old rules work quite as badly
as they always have worked in European agriculture.

But to the modern captains of industry the defects
of the rules are quite as invisible as they were to the
medieval land barons. They are satisfied to do the
batting, and they feel confident that they can do it
rather better than anybody else could. Such facts as
those set forth in the foregoing charts and tables they
do not regard as symptoms of social disease but as
dispensations of Providence. A prominent New York
banker, writing in the American Magazine for March
1920, expresses pained surprise, and mild concern, that

j6 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

people should be disquieted over such facts as those
revealed in King's book, inasmuch as the shares of
wealth and income are assigned by inviolable economic
law, and inasmuch as it would add barely a hundred
dollars or so to a poor man's income even if the shares
were all equal. It seems improbable, however, that his
view of the case should find very general acceptance
among laborers : it makes all the difference in the world
whose ox is gored ! Especially as these theorists are a
bit inconsistent. Sometimes they argue that inviolable
economic law is responsible for differences of wealth
and poverty ; sometimes they locate the cause in human
nature and individual differences. Wide apart as the
poles though these two explanations are, they are alike
in this : that they recognize no feasibility in undertak-
ing to make any material alterations in the general
situation. That seems to be the point of chief concern
with this type of mind. The moral they point, in either
theory, is for the masses to labor diligently and bear
the dispensations of Providence with patient, cheerful
resignation. This is the New York banker's cure for
the social unrest.

There is a kernel of truth in these theories, to be
sure ; but they overlook, indeed they deliberately persist
in ignoring, the fact that the rules of the game affect
the distribution of wealth. The extreme maldistribu-
tion of wealth is a social injustice, as our posterity will
be able to see very clearly. It is due to causes over
which an enlightened society has control, but to which
we are blind for reasons stated in Chapter II.

This fact is illustrated in an interesting quotation
from Professor Ely,1 written in 1899: "A still better

1Ely, "Monopolies and Trusts," p. 254.

THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH J7

illustration is afforded by the concentration of wealth
in England, which is traceable very largely to causes
that were in operation during the reign of George III.
During the past fifty years England has been trying
to remedy the evils which have resulted from mistakes
made during the preceding fifty years, but she has as
yet by no means succeeded. Similarly, a very brief
period, beginning with the Civil War — a period prob-
ably not exceeding twenty-five years — is very largely
responsible for the excessive centralization of wealth
in this country, and for many evils which it will take
more than one generation to overcome." . . . "The
author has in mind, among other things, the character
of taxation, the financial methods of railway construc-
tion and management, and the issues of depreciated
paper currency." These are the sieves in the industrial
threshing machine. They determine where the wheat
shall go, where the screenings, and where the chaff.
Of course, those who get the wheat can find reasons in
the dispensations of Providence why the others should
be patient.

Such concentration of wealth is (let us confess it!)
a horrid thing, however complacently the rich them-
selves may regard it. It means power in the hands of
a few, and the constant danger of plutocracy. And in
plutocracy there is hope neither of social justice nor
international peace. At the other extreme it means
misery, anxiety, privation, suffering, sickness, and
death. It breeds social degeneration. Hunter, after
having done charity work for years among paupers and
vagrants, and then, for another term of years, relief
work among the honest, hard-working, struggling poor,
came to the conclusion that society has its large army

78 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

of vagrants and paupers just because the struggle for
an honest living is so desperately hard and so pathet-
ically hopeless. Maldistribution of wealth also breeds
class hatred and social unrest. For, as has already
been shown, the chief causes of the extreme mal-
distribution of wealth and welfare are social injustices.
The rules of the game are wrong; and the masses know
it.

And social injustices are more intolerable than they
ever were before, because they are inimical to the ideals
of both Christianity and democracy. The masses have
not drunk the creed of liberty from their mother's milk
nor partaken of the bread and wine of Christian ideals
to no effect. They demand a Christian democracy in
which these ideals shall be realized. They insist upon
a world in which every individual shall be treated as
an end in himself, and no longer degraded to the cruel
level of mere means ; a world in which every child shall
be protected by cooperating institutions from the avoid-
able influences that now crush needlessly so many lives ;
a world in which every person shall be guaranteed a
satisfying share in the rich heritage which civilization
affords. The present social unrest is the articulate
desire of the masses for social justice, and God will
eventually grant the desire of their hearts. For the
extremes of wealth and poverty are preventable. Each
individual should have enough so as to assure him
satisfaction of the fundamental needs of human life.
No one should possess so much as to interfere with his
own or his children's full efficiency ; nor with the like
efficiency and happiness of others. It is an old prin-
ciple of economics that luxury should be enjoyed by
none till necessities have been provided for all.

THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH 79

An equitable circulation of wealth is what is wanted;
not an equal distribution. That is a very significant
distinction! Equality, even if it were possible, would
be no more just than the present extremes. The word
circulation (instead of distribution) suggests a process
instead of a status; and implies that each individual
must be constantly alert and efficient in order to secure
his share. Nor does a better circulation of wealth'
imply that the rich are to be slugged and robbed. It
does mean that the opportunities to amass immense
fortunes by hocus-pocus jugglery should be closed in
the future. It further means that large estates should
be subjected to a "kind but firm" pressure, of which
the owners would be quite as unconscious as a smoker
is unconscious of the indirect tax on tobacco. No
scientific economist has ever advocated schemes any
more painful than those suggested by Mr. Carnegie for
the redistribution of large fortunes.

Another thing : many poor people over-estimate what
they would get out of the redistribution of wealth. We
should not all be rich and ride in limousines ! Wishes
would not become horses. Only a small margin would
be added to the income of those now below the average.
Economy would be just as necessary as ever. There
is no magic by which everybody can be made rich.
But there is a magic word by which everybody can be
given an opportunity to earn a decent living, and live
a happy, useful life. That magic word is justice!
Nor is there any magic word by which capital can be
accumulated. During the past fifty years capital has
been accumulated, and in vast quantities, as was shown
in Chapter V. And that is a matter of major conse-
quence. It may even be that this achievement is worth

80 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

all the social costs involved. Perhaps in the long run
more people may be benefited by the capital that has
been accumulated than would have been benefited by
a fairer distribution of wealth. Certain it is that if,
in an attempt to redistribute wealth, we should dissi-
pate capital, we would do more harm than good. That
is what Bolshevism has done so far, and what Socialism
would be very liable to do wherever tried. A faulty
distribution of wealth, bad as it may be, is better than
failure to produce wealth. Unless the masses can be
taught to save and reinvest, individually and collec-
tively, we had better keep the old rules. But surely
the masses can be taught to conserve wealth, just as
they have been taught to conserve government. The
secret is education and moral regeneration. It is a
spiritual problem. Indeed, the whole social readjust-
ment is primarily a spiritual problem, as will be shown
in the last half of this book.

CHAPTER VIII

SPECIAL GRIEVANCES OF THE MIDDLE CLASS

IN the previous chapters we have been discussing
the maladjustments and social injustices of our
industrial organization as it now stands. Up to
this point we have gone on the assumption that it is
the laboring class, if anybody, that has a grievance.
We have tried, in other words, to examine the causes
of social unrest to ascertain whether the laboring classes
have any just ground for complaint. We have arrived
at the conclusion that they have.

We come now to a new phase of the subject.
Hitherto the question has been whether there is any-
body in the case whom we ought to sympathize with.
Now we raise the suggestion that it might be quite
proper for us of the middle class to sympathize a little
with ourselves. Or, to state the case declaratively :
We of the middle class are ourselves the chief victims
of things-as-they-are.

For a long time the radicals have been ridiculing us
for our blindness to the social forces that are handling
us, and to the trend of events. They call us "smug" ;
which implies that the pinch we feel is not the pinch of
poverty but the pinch of luxury, and that, well fed and
sure of our jobs, we are selfishly indifferent to the cry
of the oppressed. They laugh at us on the bases for
defending the rules so religiously in our confident

81

82 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

expectation that we are presently going to beat the
Colossus at its own game and get a chance ourselves
to bat. They cartoon us as a fat sloth hanging asleep
by one arm from a limb that is gradually breaking off.

Unfortunately the facts bear out their jibes! For
the facts are as follows:

It is unquestionably the middle class that were the
chief victims of the war-time high cost of living. Labor
was no worse off than it had been before; probably it
was somewhat better off, especially during the early part
of 1920; though there were great bodies of unskilled
laborers, like those in steel manufacturing,1 whose
earnings remained decidedly below the lowest possible
standard of living. As for the organized skilled trades,
they were relatively prosperous. Most business man-
agers were favored by the trend of prices, some were
made into profiteers, and some of the big corporations
realized fabulous profits. But the middle class suf-
fered. Salaries responded to the price curve more
slowly than wages, and much more slowly than profits.
Ministers perhaps suffered as badly as anybody. Thou-
sands of capable middle-aged men left the teaching
profession, discouraged and in many cases embittered.
A real crisis was thereby created in education — unless
something effective is done to remedy it our schools
will suffer for a generation to come. Civil service
employees had cause to worry, too ; in fact, all salaried
employees. Retired farmers, and small business men,
widows, orphans, and all others dependent on the in-
terest from small investments were pinched perhaps the
worst of all. And along with all these classes were the

1 See "The Interchurch World Mo^^ent Report on the Steel
Strike of 1919," pp. 85 ff.

SPECIAL GRIEVANCES OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 83

small professional men who serve them. The ten-
dencies of the last seven years are similar tendencies,
however, to those that have been operating for the
last sixty years, except that they have been accelerated
recently. They are exactly the same tendencies that
will continue throughout the lives of our children and
grandchildren unless we do something effective to check
them.

The middle class is being gradually eliminated by
the growing concentration of wealth. Our proportion
of the nation's wealth is a declining percentage. That
has been clearly shown by King.1 In a quotation from
him in a previous chapter (VII) we had this: "That
the poor have, relatively, lost but little (between 1896
and 1910), but that the middle class has been the
principal sufferer." In his tables King lists 65 per
cent as poor, 33 per cent as middle class, and 2 per
cent as rich. (See chart, p. 68.) The poor are
already considerably in the majority — nearly two
thirds. Only one third are listed as middle class.
King divides these into the upper and lower middle
class. Both are losing ground so far as their share
of the nation's wealth is concerned. His other tables
show that the disadvantage of the lower middle class
has been slightly greater than that of the upper middle
class.

The growth of farm tenancy is another straw in
the wind, and it shows the wind to be blowing in the
same general direction. The percentage of tenancy,
by farms, has increased from 23 per cent in 1880 to
38 per cent in 1920. The fact that it was 35 per cent
in 1900 seems to indicate that the increase has prac-
1 Page 81.

84 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

tically stopped. But this is deceptive, and optimism
based upon it, unwarranted. Statistics will be "re-
leased" in a few months showing that the percentage
of farm values operated by tenants in certain typical
sections of the corn belt is now as high as 60 per cent.
This indicates that farm property is persistently drift-
ing into the hands of absentee owners, and that farm
operators are persistently falling into the relatively
propertyless class. It means that, in the farming busi-
ness, to him that hath shall be given, and from him that
hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.
It indicates a gradual polarization of society so far as
the agricultural industry is concerned. It suggests
that in rural as well as industrial America the middle
class is disappearing.

Not only are our property holdings falling off rela-
tively, but our birth rate is declining also. We raise
smaller families than our great-grandfathers did, and
than do our back-door neighbors, the laboring class.
This is particularly true of the native white stock,
which may be thought of as the backbone of the middle
class. It is true not only of the old American stock
but also of the descendants of the old wave of immi-
gration from northwestern Europe. Says Professor
Ellwood * : "Apparently, therefore, we must conclude
that the birth rate of the native whites in the United
States is declining to such an extent that that element
in our population threatens to become extinct if present
tendencies continue." While the native white stock is
not exactly identical with the middle class, the terms
are so nearly synonymous that the quotation is relevant,
since the most important cause for the declining birth

1 "Sociology and Modern Social Problems," p. 191.

SPECIAL GRIEVANCES OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 85

rate is the pressure of our industrial system. "Eco-
nomic conditions," Ellwood continues, "are without
doubt mainly at the bottom of the decreasing birth rate
in the native white American population." This is
particularly significant, coming as it does from Pro-
fessor Ellwood ; for, among recognized American soci-
ologists, he is perhaps the most open and avowed
antagonist of socialistic theories. Among the reasons
for our declining birth rate is the pressure of immi-
grants upon us. They come with a lower standard of
living than we are accustomed to; we are, therefore,
unable to compete with them in the wage market ; ac-
cordingly we find relief by limiting the size of our
families. Again, the entrance of our women into
industry has postponed marriage, especially of middle-
class women, and so reduced the number of their off-
spring. And finally divorce and the instability of our
family life have had their effect. For all these reasons
the children of native white stock are being crowded
aside at the portals of life, by children of immigrants.
We of the "bourgeoisie" are committing race suicide,
while the "proletariat" are taking our place.

Such are the facts ; let us now turn to the interpre-
tation of them.

Marx, the father of modern socialism, predicted the
extinction of the middle class. According to his eco-
nomic philosophy the polarization of society was pre-
destined to continue until the few at one pole became
extremely rich, and the "bourgeoisie" were absorbed
into the "proletariat." As soon as this process had
been carried far enough the class war between capitalist
and "proletariat" would occur, whereupon the capi-
talistic system of industrial society would be over-

86 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

thrown, and the dictatorship of the "proletariat" set
up. This is the philosophy underlying the Bolshevik
revolution in Russia, and you can hear this doctrine
expounded in any I. W. W. jungle camp or meeting
place. It is the avowed policy and program of radical
socialism to accelerate class consciousness. The rad-
icals not only see but passionately approve a tendency
for the members of the middle class to drop down one
by one through the social sieve into the "proletariat."
This explains why dyed-in-the-wool socialists will not
unite with middle class progressives in trying to secure
remedial legislation. They believe that reforms de-
signed to tinker up the capitalistic system will only keep
it on its wheels just that much longer, and so postpone
the socialist revolution which they regard as the only
cure for the ills of modern society, and inevitable even-
tually, anyhow. Accordingly they desire to hasten the
time when the "proletariat" will, as a result of this
process, find itself in the overwhelming majority;
whereupon the revolution, which they so impatiently
await, will occur. This is the socialist theory.

The worst thing about this Marxian prediction is
that so far it appears to be coming true. Not only are
we of the middle class losing our share of the nation's
wealth, but our stock itself is losing out. The middle
class actually is declining at a rate that encourages the
Marxian socialists to hope for its eventual extinction.
The process, like the motion of the hour hand, is not
visible, or at least it has not been till just recently;
but its movement around the dial is no less sure for
all that ; and the tendency has been well recognized for
a long time by perfectly orthodox sociologists.

Two forces are rubbing us through the colander into

SPECIAL GRIEVANCES OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 87

the "proletariat." One is our false ideals and artificial
standards of living. This factor will be discussed in
the second half of the book on the spiritual aspects of
the social unrest. A second, and for our present pur-
poses the more significant, cause is the sins of the
Colossus. The Colossus is the aggressor; and we of
the middle class are his chief victims. Let us enumer-
ate some of our middle class grievances against the
Colossus.

"Our Financial Oligarchy." This is a chapter title
from a little book that every middle-class American
ought to read: "Other People's Money and How the
Bankers Use It," by Justice Louis D. Brandeis, of the
United States Supreme Court. The book is based on
the findings of the Pujo Committee appointed by
Congress in 1912 to investigate the so-called "money
trust." The Brandeis book was published in 1914; a
quotation or two from it will convey some slight sug-
gestion of the power a small group of financiers
exercised over American business. There is no reason
to believe that the conditions he cites have changed for
the better.

"Among the allies, two New York banks — the
National City and the First National — stand preemi-
nent. They constitute, with the Morgan firm, the
inner group of the Money Trust. ... In the National
City is James Stillman ; in the First National, George
F. Baker. . . .

"It may help to an appreciation of the allies' power
to name a few of the more prominent corporations in
which, for instance, Mr. Baker's influence is exerted
. . . visibly and directly ... as voting trustee, execu-
tive committee man, or simple director :

88 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

"i. Banks, Trusts, and Life Insurance Companies:
First National Bank of New York; National Bank of
Commerce ; Farmer's Loan and Trust Company ; Mu-
tual Life Insurance Company.

"2. Railroad Companies : New York Central Lines ;
New Haven; Reading; Erie; Lackawanna; Lehigh
Valley; Southern; Northern Pacific; Chicago, Bur-
lington and Quincy.

"3. Public Service Corporations: American Tele-
phone and Telegraph Company ; Adams Express Com-
pany.

"4. Industrial Corporations: United States Steel
Corporation ; Pullman Company.

"Mr. Stillman is director in only seven corporations,
with aggregate assets of $2,476,000,000; but the direc-
tors in the National City Bank, which he dominates,
are directors in at least 41 other corporations which,
with their subsidiaries, have an aggregate capitalization
or resources of $10,864,000,000.

"The members of the firm of J. P. Morgan and
Company, the acknowledged leaders of the allied forces,
hold 72 directorates in 47 of the largest corporations of
the country."

These paragraphs are typical, but they are too short
to convey any adequate idea of the vast extent of the
"oligarchy's" influence.

Brandeis specifies three "resultant evils," as follows:
first, "a heavy toll upon the whole community" ; second,
"suppressing competition," and, third, "the suppres-
sion of individual liberty."

Unfortunately space here is so limited that the far-
reaching effects of these "resultant evils" must be left
to the reader's imagination. But suffice to say that

SPECIAL GRIEVANCES OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 89

under the circumstances there seems to be very little
point to the debate as to whether the price of coal is
due to freight rates or to the price at the mines, or
whether the wheat growers' grievance is interest rates,
freight rates or commissions. In either case, it is
apparently the "oligarchy" to which we of the middle
class are paying tribute.

"The Cheat of Overcapitalization/* This is the
title of an article that appeared in Everybody's Maga-
zine for June, 1907. The period of ten years previous
to that date had seen most of the railroad and indus-
trial corporations "reorganized." The United States
Steel Corporation, for instance, had been capitalized at
about a billion and a quarter, approximately half of
which was common stock, which "represented the pros-
pective earnings" of the concern.1 The constituent
companies had previously been reorganized and wat-
ered. The following, from Stuart Daggett, in "Rail-
road Reorganization" (pp. 321ft), is a typical illustra-
tion of what was going on throughout the entire field
of finance:

"The following plan was put through. Instead of one
Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Company, the Moores
now proposed to have three companies, of which one was
to operate the railroad, one was to hold the stock of the
operating company, and one was to hold the stock of the
company which held the stock of the operating company.
This is to say, the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific
Railroad Company was left undisturbed, while in Iowa
a Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Company
was formed to hold the stock of the Railway Company,
and in New Jersey a Rock Island Company was organ-
ized to hold the stock of the Railroad Company. . . .

1 See Meade's "Trust Finance," pp. 191 ft".

go CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

The old Railway Company had a capital stock of
$75,000,000; the new Railroad Company issued stock to
the amount of $125,000,000 and 4 per cent bonds to the
amount of $75,000,000. The Rock Island Company is-
sued common stock to a total of $96,000,000 and pre-
ferred stock to a total of $54,000,000; and the aggregate,
excluding the undisturbed bonds of the Railway Com-
pany, footed up to $425,000,000 instead of to $74,000,000
as before. From this total must be deducted $200,000,000
which represented issues of stock by one company to
another, and $21,000,000 Rock Island Company Stock
and •$ 1,000,000 Railroad Company bonds reserved for
future extension, leaving a net increase from $75,000,000
to $202,500,000."

Now with all this water in the stock, more or
less of which may or may not have been "squeezed
out" in the last twenty years, how can the Interstate
Commerce Commission determine what the valuation is
upon which rates should justly be computed? The
overcapitalization that took place twenty years ago
in the railroad industry and in the public service cor-
porations of our cities is the unknown quantity in our
present problem of regulating prices in these fields.
This has been brought out very clearly by Delos F.
Wilcox in his recent book on "The Electric Railway
Problem." The rates we pay to-day are, in part at
least, our tribute to those clever jugglers who pocketed
the overcapitalization they had created during that
period of frenzied finance. The "water" is now "sewed
in," and the problem of rate regulation is well nigh
insoluble as a result. If competition determined prices,
overcapitalization would do no special harm ; other-
wise, overcapitalization screens a policy of charging
what the traffic will bear. Wherever government regu-

SPECIAL GRIEVANCES OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 91

lation, or even public opinion, has any influence upon
price making — as it is now the case in many basic in-
dustries— overcapitalization is a more or less successful
cheat. And the middle class consumer is the chief
victim.

Monopoly. The latest source of popular informa-
tion on the subject of monopoly is Eliot Jones's "The
Trust Problem in the United States," published in
December, 192 1. After discussing the early history
of the trust movement in America he devotes a chapter
each to several of the best known trusts : oil, sugar,
tobacco, shoe machinery, steel, and harvester. The
following quotations will interest the reader. "Both
history and general reasoning establish the tendency
of the trusts to increase prices" (p. 261). "Sugar
prices were low when competition was present, and
were advanced when competition was absent or brought
under control" (p. 263). "Trusts in the steel indus-
try seem also to have made for higher orices of steel
products" (p. 263). "That these prices were highly
profitable is proven by the enormous profits obtained
by the Corporation, enabling it within fifteen years
more or less to squeeze out the water from its stock,
which at the beginning had little behind it but the
hope of monopoly gains" (p. 265). "In the years
that followed (1898) control was made effective, and
prices (of plug tobacco) and profits increased" (p.
267). "The snuff branch is most highly monopolized,
while the cigar branch is the only one the trust has been
unable to dominate. The table on page 160 shows that
about 40 per cent of the price of snuff from 1 900-1 910
was profit, while only about 8 per cent of the price of
cigars was profit" (p. I59ff). "Data are not available

92 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

to determine what influence has been exerted on prices
by the harvester and shoe machinery trusts" (p. 267).
"Professor Jenks' conclusion (is) that the trust was
able to control the price of spirits rather effectively for
comparatively short periods after each reorganization"
(p. 268). "Generally speaking, the capitalization of
the trusts was twice as large as the value under com-
petitive conditions of the properties and business that
they acquired" (p. 269). "The protective tariff thus
promoted the trust movement by offering to the manu-
facturers prospects of large profits" (p. 273). "Whereas
competition provides a stimulus to the introduction of
improved methods, the tendency of monopoly is to-
ward stagnation. ... As Professor Clark puts it,
'monopoly makes no proper use of that invaluable agent
of progress, the junk heap' " (p. 535).

Monopoly is an extremely difficult subject on which
to secure concrete, up-to-date information. Professor
Jones's study brings us down only to 1910, so far as
concerns facts relative to actual monopoly power and
its effects. The present writer sent inquiries to some
twenty specialists in this field. The replies indicated
that the facts are not available. They are trade secrets
to which neither the public nor expert economists have
access. Nevertheless the outstanding impression was
that there is a considerable list of staple commodities
that are more or less subject to monopoly control. It
is clear that the snout of the vacuum cleaner is in the
pockets of the middle class.

Waste. Slowly our eyes are being opened to the
waste in modern industry as it is now organized. For
the last ten years we have heard a good deal about the
wastes of our timber resources and the need of refor-

SPECIAL GRIEVANCES OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 93

estation. The public has heard a little about wastes in
coal mining; but is still poorly informed about the
extent of those wastes.1 Advertising is of course neces-
sary to the competitive system, which is to say that the
competitive element in modern industry is responsible
for the wastes of advertising.

But the latest sensation is a new book just off the
press : "Waste in Industry," by the Committee on
Elimination of Waste in Industry of the Federated
American Engineering Societies, of which Mr. Her-
bert Hoover is the president. This is a piece of
thoroughly scientific statistical research. It finds that
the average waste 2 in men's clothing manufacturing is
64 per cent, in the building industries 53 per cent, in
printing 58 per cent, in boot and shoe manufacturing
41 per cent, in the metal trades 29 per cent, and in
textile manufacturing 49 per cent. The standard of
comparison is the most efficient plant in each industry.

The quantity of industrial waste is not summarized.
Its magnitude may be inferred from scattered state-
ments. "Standardization of the thickness of certain
walls might mean a saving of some $600 in the cost of
the average house." 3 "These variations (in width and
length of printed pages and columns) cost the public
not less than a hundred million dollars each year."
"In men's ready made clothing industry — it should be
relatively easy to save three quarters of a million dol-
lars a day." 3 "The total direct cost of industrial acci-
dents in the United States in 19 19, including medi-
cal aid and insurance overhead, was not less than

1 See the scries of articles in the Atlantic Monthly for 1921.
' See "Waste in Industry," p. 10.
'The same book, p. 11.

94 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

$1,014,000,000. . . . Experience indicates, and author-
ities agree, that 75 per cent of these losses could be
avoided . . ." x

The report states that "over 50 per cent of the re-
sponsibility for these wastes can be placed at the door
of management and less than 25 per cent at the door
of labor, while the amount chargeable to outside con-
tacts is least of all." 2

These facts suggest that we might not be taking
such an appalling risk as Mr. Gary fears in giving
labor a voice in the management of industry. Things
could hardly be worse, from the standpoint of effi-
ciency! 3 Of these wastes the consuming public is the
victim, and that includes the middle class !

Taxes: One can find it hinted at in almost any
standard treatise on taxation that it is always the gov-
erning class who control taxation. Visible property is
much more easily taxed than invisible property; but
those of us who manage to own a house and lot, an
automobile and a piano, or even a small farm with a
mortgage on it, are not very successful in hiding them.
Indirect taxes have always been popular with the tax-
making power. They shift the burden to the great
mass of consumers; they relieve the rich of their pro-
portionate share of the taxes. Until recently the fed-
eral government has used them almost exclusively.
Every middle class American should study diligently,
especially at this time, the system of indirect taxation
by which the Civil War debts were paid.4 Professor

1 See "Waste in Industry," pp. 22, 23.

2 The same book, p. 9.

sVeblen's "The Engineers and the Price System," pp. io8ff.
4 Coman's "Industrial History of the United States," pp. 283ft.
and Daniel's "Public Finance," pp. 130-180.

SPECIAL GRIEVANCES OF THE MIDDLE CLASS Q5

Ely declares1 that it hastened the concentration of
wealth. It was one of the mysterious drugs with
which our infant industries were stimulated to such
colossal growth. The excess profits and income taxes
of 1 91 7 are almost revolutionary in the way they tend
to put the tax burden where it belongs in a democracy.
Professor Friday makes it clear 2 that these taxes
came out of the profits fund that the war was creating.
They did not cause the high prices of that period ; they
reached into the pockets of the profiteer and turned
part of his gains over to the government. Otherwise
he would have kept them all. There is a vigorous
propaganda going on now to have these taxes repealed ;
and the public is much too ready to believe all they are
told about the alleged disadvantages of these taxes. It
is only sheep that before their shearers are dumb. But
a "Tax Payers' League" in Alabama, the governor
himself aptly dubbed "The Tax Dodgers' League";
and the Literary Digest for May 14, 1921, has the
suggestive caption: "Taxes to be Shifted, not Lifted."
If they are shifted it will be mainly to us of the middle
class.

War debts: War debts have never attracted the
thoughtful attention they deserve. History teaches that
they are mainly a phenomenon of very recent centuries.
In anything like their modern proportions they have
grown up along with the growth of modern capitalism.
In no small measure war debts are a creature of the
Colossus. They have now reached a pitch where they
threaten to bankrupt European governments; and such

1 See above, p. 76fF.

"'Profits. Wages and Prices," Chapter XII.

96 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

a collapse might disintegrate the whole fabric of mod-
ern industry. The policy of financing a war on bor-
rowed funds secretes a most plausible philosophy that
makes it appear quite impracticable to conscript wealth,
as we conscript young men. But the philosophy is
misleading; it tends to fatten the Colossus. Nothing
would go farther toward making future wars impos-
sible than a complete collapse of the present war credits.
If war debts should prove uncollectible the Colossus
would want no more wars. "We" is never so ambigu-
ous a word as when it is connected with war debts. It
scarcely occurs to us that we owe the war debts to our-
selves, much less to inquire precisely which of us owe
them, and which of us we owe them to. The fact is, a
war debt is a device by which the money lending class
spread the conscription of wealth out over a period
sufficiently long so that it can be conscripted from the
tax paying class. And that means chiefly us of the
middle class — unless we take charge of the tax making
by which war debts are paid off.

The spoiled attitude of labor. It was a matter of
common remark during the period of high wages that
labor was less efficient than formerly. Men tried to see
how little they could accomplish. Fathers formerly
taught their sons to deliver an honest day's work for the
wage agreed upon. That attitude seems to be relatively
rare to-day. By their policy of soldiering on the job
labor has largely forfeited the good will of the public.

The wage earners' loss of motive for diligent, honest
labor was one of the outstanding facts of the recent
situation. It is a disconcerting psychology that calls
for explanation; and much has been written about it.
The war stimulated the worker's motives so long as the

SPECIAL GRIEVANCES OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 97

patriotic impulse functioned. But after the armistice,
when labor became convinced that not the Cause but
the profiteers were benefiting by their work, they
slowed down; till by the fall of 1920 their high wages
and reduced efficiency had absorbed all profits — where-
upon the profit makers balked in turn.

It is easy to assume that the interests of employee
and employer are identical; and employers like to
preach that doctrine. But laborers, especially in the
large scale industries, are increasingly skeptical. It
would clarify the atmosphere if economists would
ascertain definitely just how much mutuality of interest
there is or is not in specific industries, and express the
same in a coefficient of correlation. That would fur-
nish a factual basis for the formulation of public
opinon.

The reason for the demoralization of labor may be
inferred from chapters on the modern Colossus, the
iron law of wages, and the distribution of wealth.
According to the principles set forth in those chapters
all that unorganized labor can hope to get out of mod-
ern industry is a bare subsistence, while the whole
surplus goes to the investor. Perhaps it is too much to
expect the typical middle class reader to understand
that, because there is (as normally) a labor over-supply
of a million and a half, constantly increased by organ-
ized and solicited immigration, all there is in industry
for common labor is a bare subsistence wage. But
common labor understands it. Labor knows, however
blind we of the middle class are to the facts, that the
dice are loaded against him. He is tired of grinding
out profits for the stock holders. Under modern large
scale industry the identity of interest between employer

98 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

and employee, that there used to be under the old small
shop regime, is normally conspicuous by its absence.

It is the Colossus that has demoralized our workers
for us. If all industries had remained small scale
industries, like the ones most of us are in, labor would
never have been demoralized, there would be no sol-
diering on the job, and fathers would still be teaching
their sons to render an honest day's work for their
wage. But since it is the big industries which we do
not run that have provoked the soldiering by system-
atically exploiting labor, we fail utterly to understand
it. Whenever we hire a washerwoman, a handy man
about the place, a harvest hand, or laborers in our small
scale businesses, they shirk on our jobs too, just as if
we were to blame ; and when we buy steel, coal, sugar,
lumber, or what not we pay the cost of their time-
killing in large scale industry itself. The attitude of
labor has been spoiled by modern capitalism ; and we of
the middle class are the victims.

The Balk. We need a new word in the English
language. Sabotage we have imported from the
French to name the balk of labor. Originally sabotage
meant the destruction of machinery by the workers;
but it has now come to mean that soldiering on the job
by which the workers slow down production to promote
their own advantage — real or imaginary. It was this
kind of sabotage by which labor so reduced its effi-
ciency between the armistice and midsummer 1920
that there were no profits left. But large scale capital
does exactly the same thing in principle.1 The coal
operators, for example, close down or run short shift
during the summer lest they supply the market too lib-

1 Veblen, "The Engineers and the Price System," pp. 127.

SPECIAL GRIEVANCES OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 99

erally with coal, and so lower the price. We now know
that their doing so during the summer of 1920 was
what the strike of that year was a protest against ; and
that such is their usual policy. The woolen manufac-
turers did likewise during the spring of 1920. Monop-
olies balk as a systematic policy. The tobacco growers
tried to balk during the 1921 season; but failed through
lack of organization. To furnish the consuming public
with an abundant supply of food materials next sum-
mer (1922) the farmers are now dreading as a calam-
ity; but they have no organization for balking together.
Housing construction has balked for several years past.
Industry as a whole balked in the fall of 1920, when no
further profits were forthcoming. The periodical busi-
ness depressions that have occurred with considerable
regularity for a century are really nothing more or
less than the balk of industry. They seem, like war
debts, to be a phenomenon characteristic of the ma-
chinofacture regime. For this balk of industry we have
no name as yet, because we regard it as part of the
necessary nature of things. Doubtless it is necessary
to the nature of things-as-they-are ; but it comes high
for us consumers of the middle class.

The Press. Every middle class American should
read the two books by the Interchurch World Move-
ment on the Steel Strike of 1919. These books will be
increasingly read for ten years. Eventually they will
modify public opinion fundamentally on the labor-
capital controversy. If the Movement never accom-
plished anything but the putting out of these two re-
ports it was worth all it cost. Seldom has the church
ever struck a sharper blow in behalf of humanity.

The second volume of this report devotes some sev-

100 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

enty-five pages to a factual presentation of the attitude
of the Pittsburgh newspapers.1 The following quota-
tions indicate the conclusions : "It is inconceivable
that the public which relied on the Pittsburgh news-
papers could . . . have understood the causes of the
strike or the significance of the incidents. . . . The
newspapers never questioned the impression that the
only 'moral' issue favored the side of the Steel Corpora-
tion. . . . The effect of the 'news' treatment of the
strike was to create the overwhelming impression and
prejudice that the strike came about through the pursuit
of unreasonable demands, inspired by revolutionary mo-
tive. The real issues of the strike were never printed.
. . . The Pittsburgh newspapers were simply a more
emphatic example of policies which convince labor that
the press is unfair to labor during a strike. The record
of the Pittsburgh papers was not such that critics could
point to most other papers of the country as a great
contrast."

It may well be conceded that Upton Sinclair has a
very unfortunate literary style. Not only does he
egregiously overwork the perpendicular pronoun, but
he loses his temper and gets red in the face whenever
he talks in public. These peculiarities furnish plausible
grounds for swamping him with ridicule. However,
his scent for facts is uncanny. In "The Brass Check,"
he charges the press with being the mouthpiece of the
Colossus. His charges are specific, definite, and de-
tailed, and he throws out challenge after challenge to
the journals which he attacks to prosecute him for
libel. The present writer does not know of the chal-
lenge ever having been accepted. Among men prac-

1 "Public Opinion and the Steel Strike of 1919," pp. 147 ff.

SPECIAL GRIEVANCES OF THE MIDDLE CLASS IOI

ticed in the technic of research the book gives the im-
pression of being factual.

Fifteen years ago the press used to protest vigorously
against the abuses of the growing plutocracy. It would
do almost any of us good to spend an afternoon in the
library looking over the files of old magazines.1 But
such literature is rare today except in journals that are
tabooed as "radical," "red" or "Bolshevistic," and
which it is hardly good form for members of polite
society to subscribe for. But this change in the tone of
the press is not because Herod has desisted from his
incest, but because John the Baptist has been cast into
prison. Perhaps the most venal of all the sins of the
Colossus is this prostitution of the press, because that
poisons public opinion at its source, and so threatens
the very existence of democracy itself. And we of the
middle class are easy dupes of this propaganda. As a
result we are staggering blindly into the abyss.

It is an old trick for the thief himself to raise the cry
of "Stop Thief," and that is exactly what has hap-
pened in the present stringency. The press has raised a
hue and cry on the trail of labor, and we of the middle
class have all joined in the chase. Nothing is more
usual than to hear the high cost of living blamed to
labor. But the facts qualify the indictment. Pro-
fessor Friday has shown 2 that the high prices went to

1 Here are some of the titles : Payne — "The Cheat of Over-
capitalization," in Everybody's for June, 1907; Edward Russell —
"Where did you get it, gentlemen," Everybody's, December, 1907 ;
Lincoln Steffens in McClurc's Magazine, Jan., March, July and
November, 1903, also his book, "The Shame of the Cities"; Ben
B. Lindsey, "The Beast and the Jungle," Everybody's, Oct. -Dec,
1909; and various articles by Ray Stannard Baker, in the files of
McClure's, from 1900-1904.

"'Profits, Wages, and Prices," Chapter VI.

102 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

profits, not to wages, up to about the middle of 191 9.
Only after that were they absorbed by labor. Even
then the innings of labor, certainly of unskilled labor,
was only for a little over a year. The Interchurch *
showed that in 191 9 unskilled workers in the manufac-
turing plants of the Steel Corporation were getting
$100 less than the minimum of absolute physical neces-
sities for a family of five ; and the semi-skilled less than
a "minimum of comfort" wage. During the spring of
192 1 thousands of coal miners were locked out and
were actually on the verge of starvation, and that in
the face of the prices we paid for coal during the two
winters of 1920-22. In August, 1921, the index number
for unskilled labor in the coal 2 industry was reported
as 136, and in the Steel Corporation 150, whereas the
index number for the cost of living was estimated at
165; which means that unskilled wages in these two
basic large-scale industries are declining faster than the
cost of living. It is commonly reported that farm
laborers are glad of a chance to work for their board.
The army of the unemployed is at least twice its usual
size. No, the press has deceived us, it is not labor of
which we are the victims ; it is the Colossus.

This is a sample of the damage that is done by mis-
leading the public. The jury will not soon cure the
social unrest so long as the culprit sits unsuspected
behind the judge's bench, and the victim is in the pris-
oner's box. And it may be added incidentally that we
have been quite as egregiously and disastrously misled
with regard to the international situation, and doubt-

1 "The Steel Strike of 1919," p. 94-

3 Literary Digests Nov. 26, 1921.

SPECIAL GRIEVANCES OF THE MIDDLE CLASS IO3

less by the same sinister influences behind the scenes,
in both cases.

War and Armaments. It falls outside the scope of
this book as originally planned to discuss the inter-
national situation and its bearing upon the social unrest,
however fractional such an omission necessarily might
leave the discussion, seeing there never can be social
peace till there is assured international peace. But it
may not be amiss to affirm that modern capitalism is
one of the chief menaces to international peace. This
is not a tenet of socialism merely ; the fact is recognized
by all competent orthodox students of economic affairs,
and to some extent by the general public. It was the
growing commercialism and the budding capitalism of
ancient Rome that provoked the Punic Wars and
finally "murdered" Carthage and Corinth. The same
motive has always figured in causing wars; and it is
active still, but organized on a vastly larger scale than
ever before. Ambitious modern capitalism inherits the
sinister function of the ambitious kings of earlier cen-
turies, of setting the common people to fighting one
another. Nationalistic chauvinism cooperated with
ambitious kings and ambitious capitalists in laying the
train for the late war.

Is there any reason to imagine that these selfish, re-
actionary and sinister influences were asleep during the
Versailles Conference? Why doubt that European
capitalism was an important factor in spoiling the
Versailles Treaty? As for the debate here in America
over the League, to the present writer it seems very
clear that there were at least five reasons why the great
American plutocracy nad no use for a League of
Nations :

104 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

1. International labor organizations were promised
too influential a seat ;

2. A protective tariff policy would be hard to main-
tain in the face of such an international federation —
quite as hard as interstate tariffs in the face of our
national federation;

3. The armament business * would be seriously
jeopardized ;

4. The Rio Grande would have to be respected as
an international frontier; and

5. A Republican was to be preferred to a Demo-
cratic administration so far as the much desired change
in the government's labor policy was concerned.

With the Colossus and its press opposing the League
Mr. Wilson's "mistakes" were of course fatal. As a
result, the jubilant, hopeful idealism that followed the
armistice gave place to the dull heartache of disappoint-
ment among the peoples of the world. The foot of the
Colossus is again upon our breasts, or more accu-
rately, over our eyes. But have not we of the middle
classes, in all civilized nations suffered enough at the
hands of the war makers? Are we not even yet dis-
illusioned as to who they are ?

Charity. The causes of poverty are various and
complicated. Among the rest there are mental defi-
ciencies and defects of personality. Also, low wages
and exploitation of labor by the Colossus are among
the rest. If exploitation of labor were abolished, there
would still have to be charity, to be sure, but not so
much. Certain radical laborites oppose all charity and

1 See the reference in the Literary Digest for Oct. 1, 1921, to
the report of the Viviani Commission of the League of Nations
on the Reduction of Armaments. It definitely charges armament
firms with fomenting war.

SPECIAL GRIEVANCES OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 105

make as much noise in public as they can to obstruct
the collections of the associated charities. They are
partly wrong in theory, and mostly wrong in policy.

But they are not alone. The following sentences are
quoted from the Atlantic Monthly (Sept., 192 1) : "The
status of the philanthropies during the war was a reve-
lation like that made by a dazzling streak of lightning.
During those momentous years there were high wages,
prohibition, and plenty of work for every one. The
demands on the charitable societies dropped fifty per
cent and more. The poor and the sick seemed to be no
more with us. The question forced itself upon us : Ts
it possible that the philanthropies have been on the
wrong tack, that fair wages and decent living condi-
tions are the bases of a sound civilization, and that the
philanthropists are but poulticing a surface sore?' "

Nor is the theory new in orthodox social science.
Practically the same principle is set forth in Warner's
"American Charities";1 and Warner is one of the
standard authorities in this field. In the same book
(p. 13) he points out that the English poor laws
prior to 1834 "must have had an extraordinary effect
in diminishing the rate of wages." 2 It is an interest-
ing and significant historical fact that the repeal of
the poor laws was but part of a reform movement
that wrote a bill of industrial rights for labor into
English law.

This aspect of charity is worthy of serious con-
sideration. The inference is not that we of the middle
class should withhold our contributions to charity. As

1 See pp. 191, 192 of the 1908 edition.

9 As per Ricardo's law. Whatever charity contributes to a bare
subsistence income may be subtracted from wages.

106 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

society is now organized our cheerful charities must
of course continue. But it is well for us to remind
ourselves that, as society is now organized, perhaps
half of whatever we give in charity may well be
regarded as a contribution, not to the poor, but indi-
rectly to the Colossus.

Materialism. Serious as are the grievances already
discussed, perhaps they are not the most grievous of
all. Worse than all else may well be the penetration
of our souls by the materialistic ideals of the Colossus.
We have an infectious disease here in America that
renders real democracy well nigh impossible. Only
two things are worse in their effects upon democracy,
one is ignorance and the other is dishonesty. The
disease is aristocratitis. How can we collectively be
a democracy when individually we are bent above all
things else upon outstripping our neighbors in ma-
terial achievement and the envious display of luxuri-
ous consumption. Democracies are made of different
relations; social progress, of achievement along other
lines. But the disease is due to a germ, bacillus aris-
tocraticus, of which the Colossus is the carrier. The
wrong ideals of the middle class, one of the causes
for their elimination, are themselves due in part at
least to the influence of our modern, soulless, large-
scale industry.

The materialism of the present age penetrates the
innermost depths of our spiritual lives, producing a
disastrous bewilderment in many minds as to what
the values of life really are. Very many persons are
seeking satisfaction in those interests which in the
very nature of the case can never satisfy; while the
really satisfying interests of life are often blindly

SPECIAL GRIEVANCES OF THE MIDDLE CLASS 107

ignored. The following hymn expresses this con-
fusion :

This age deceives us, Lord,1

And leads our lives astray;
Its lures of pelf and pride

Our restless hearts betray.
It scourges us with haste

To win an envious prize;
Contentment, love and peace

It bids us sacrifice.

The nations pity, Lord;

How furiously they rage
For markets in the sun —

The baubles of the age!
The rich exploit the poor,

With greed insatiate,
Till class contends with class

In envy, lust and hate.

Restore the joys, O Lord,

That deeply satisfy,
That sharing each with all

Can only multiply : —
A work of love and art,

A shaded plot of sod,
The kiss of childish lips,

And conscience right with God !

This bewilderment of aim is significantly illustrated
in one of the most popular pieces of recent fiction,
"Main Street," by Sinclair Lewis. The one thing this
book lacks is clear insight as to what the satisfying
experiences and interests of life really are. The
author's poisonous cynicism and negative ethical
philosophy caricatures middle class life in the typical
American village. In refreshing contrast is Dorothy
Canfield's "The Brimming Cup." With consummate
art she displays the real values of life. Her typical,
middle class characters glorify the common lot, because

1 This hymn may be sung to the tune Jewett, from Weber's
Freischiitz Overture. The melody is in the tenor.

IOS CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

there is no confusion in their minds as to what those
things are that make life really worth the living. This
is an unusually wholesome piece of fiction, containing
a message which middle class Americans very much
need to hear and take to heart.

The excessive materialism of the age is a spiritual
by-product of modern capitalism, which is short of
regular type for setting up the word "$u^e$$." But
the age cannot permanently serve both democracy and
the Colossus, for either it will love the one and hate
the other or else it will hold to the one and despise
the other. If we of the middle class are to be the salt
of the earth, we cannot serve two masters; for the
foundations of a new social order are spiritual.

These are the sins of the Colossus. They consti-
tute the grievances of the middle class. Taken to-
gether they are polarizing modern society. The time
when there will be no middle class in America will
not come in our day, nor in our children's, nor yet
perhaps in our grandchildren's. But come eventually
it surely will unless these tendencies are corrected.
The final grievance of the middle class will be extinc-
tion unless modern, large-scale, machinofacture capi-
talism is constrained to desist from its abuses.

CHAPTER IX

THE PARADOX OF THE MIDDLE CLASS SALVATION

NOT only are we — quite as much as labor — the
victims of modern capitalism, but, conversely,
such reforms as those outlined in Chapter X
would benefit us in the long run no less than they would
benefit labor itself. For, paradoxical as it may sound,
we shall save ourselves in the long run only by saving
the laboring class. No social class liveth unto itself
alone. If we can raise the status of the masses by
insisting that the great generals of modern industry
turn over to labor a sufficient share in the profits to
guarantee them a decent American standard of living
and reasonable access to the good things of the cultural
life, we shall thereby save room for ourselves upon the
earth. But if we permit the laboring class in America
to degenerate into a real "proletariat," we and our
descendants will go under with them. If we can help
labor to achieve a status satisfying to self-respecting
American citizens, our own future will be assured with
theirs, and the American type of middle class democ-
racy will survive. But not otherwise!

Our stake in the lower class -can be seen from many
points of view. For instance, what does this rush to
the high schools, colleges and universities mean? Fifty-
eight per cent of the students in the University of
Minnesota were supporting themselves in whole or in

109

IIO CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

large part last year. May this not mean, among other
things, that ambitious young men of the lower class
are trying as never before to crowd into our middle-
class professions? The growing capitalization of land
and the growth of capitalistic marketing are reducing
the opportunities in agriculture for young men of small
means. Chain stores, lines of elevators and lumber
yards, mail-order houses, and other like capitalistic
developments in the retail trade are hypothecating
the chances in small business. But there are the pro-
fessions and there are salaried positions with the meat
trust, the oil trust, the lumber trust, or what not, for
which educated men are preferred. And this may be
one reason why the sons of laboring men and of recent
immigrants are as never before crowding against the
elbows of our own sons in the high schools, colleges
and universities.

If labor were lifted to a new level — Farming has
been lifted to a new level by applying science to it and
utilizing machinery in it. The "man 'with the hoe"
now sits erect on a motor-drawn riding plow, and
applies physics, chemistry and biology to his work.
Many other — perhaps most — lines of work can be lifted
to a new level by applying science to them and utilizing
machinery in them, and furnishing appropriate educa-
tion in preparation for them. That would increase
both their dignity and their productivity. And then
if the trained worker were given a voice in the manage-
ment and a decent share in the profits he would feel
himself a fairly treated citizen of a real democracy.
Expand the laborers' world to a status commensurate
with the dignity and rights of typical American citi-

THE PARADOX OF THE MIDDLE CLASS SALVATION III

zens, and they will leave our middle class professions
to our sons and grandsons. The way for us to hold
a sphere open for our own sons is to open up an
entirely new sphere and status in labor itself for the
sons of labor.

Again: The world always has overlooked and still
does overlook the advantages to be gained by develop-
ing the purchasing power of the masses. We talk
about foreign markets, assuming that new and expand-
ing foreign markets must be found if our industries
are to expand to new and larger proportions. And to
gain those foreign markets we are willing to brew
international strife. But we blindly overlook the most
obvious and accessible new market : namely, the unde-
veloped purchasing power of the poor. If the millions
who now subsist on a bare subsistence level were sud-
denly to buy the additional goods and services that they
need for a decent American standard of living, their
new demands would stimulate American business like
the sudden war demands of 1 914. It cannot be done
suddenly, of course, but it can be done gradually ; and
for American trade gradually to develop that market
would perhaps create more business in the long run
than to develop a trade with Russia and with China
both. And it would come directly home to our middle
class occupations. Let almost any reader figure out
the probable increase of his own earnings as a result
of the laboring people with whom he deals enjoying
the kind of an income that he himself would consider
necessary. The doctor would make more money if the
poor he treats were comfortably well-to-do; the mer-
chant would sell more goods if the poor he sells to

112 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

could buy more and pay more promptly; the banker
could show larger dividends and surplus if his savings
accounts grew faster ; and so on throughout the list of
us middle class people who do business with the sixty-
live per cent whom King puts in the propertyless class.
Of course you cannot make something out of
nothing. It is not chiefly by a better distribution of
wealth, but by a better conservation, a more efficient
production and a wiser consumption, that the purchas-
ing power of the poor can be increased. By better
education of the masses, by improved vocational train-
ing, by increased technical skill, the productive power
of the masses can be very greatly increased. So can
it be increased also by a reorganization of industry
that will restore the motive for work. The increased
purchasing power of the poor need come out of no
others' share, therefore; certainly not out of ours.
Strange how the old superstition persists that the pros-
perity of some of us is dependent upon the poverty of
the rest of us! Sociologists are now coming to see
clearly that the exact opposite is true, namely : that no
class can be permanently prosperous unless all classes
are prosperous. How destitute we are of imagination;
and how hypnotized by things-as-they-are.

Once more : We have been exhorted a good deal of
late to raise larger families. But in much of this talk
about race suicide the cart has been put before the horse.
As a matter of fact, a lowered birth rate goes with a
higher civilization. If we of the native white stock
are a declining percentage of the population, it is not
because our birth rate is too low but because it is
relatively too low. The way to hold our own is not
to raise more children, but to induce the lower classes

THE PARADOX OF THE MIDDLE CLASS SALVATION II3

to raise fewer children.1 And the formula for that is
well known to all economists and sociologists, namely :
raise their standard of living. Restrict immigration,
and arbitrate labor disputes in favor of wages adequate
to decent, wholesome American living, and race suicide
will take care of itself. The birth rate of the laboring
class and of the foreign born will automatically decline,
and our ratio will be restored.

The fact is, we of the middle class have an entirely
false social creed in the backs of our heads. We
believe in a society in which everybody is faced in the
same direction, namely, toward the prizes at the top,
and in which everybody is trying to outdistance every-
body else and reach the prizes first. That is what
political and social philosophers call an individualistic
philosophy, and which they now recognize the nine-
teenth century to have badly overdone. It is what the
common run of us have had bred into the bone till we
suppose it to be the very inherent constitution of the
universe. We mouth it off as the last word of the
argument.

As a matter of fact it is the grand illusion of the
age. It squarely contradicts the plain teachings of
Jesus. And when one thinks about the ideals and
aspirations of democracy, and then thinks about this
individualistic philosophy with its implications (e. g.,
that a very considerable supply of cheap — i. e., igno-
rant, poverty-stricken — labor is necessary to the success
of industry), and then thinks about them both together,
he sees clearly that we must eventually abandon either

1 See "Controlled Fecundity," by Professor E. A. Ross, in The
New Republic for January 25, 1922. A paper read at the Pitts-
burgh, 1921, meeting of the American Sociological Society.

114 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

the one or the other. The ideals of democracy and
this individualistic philosophy are utterly contradictory
and incompatible. Unless we are ready to renounce
the hope of working out a just democracy, we must
have the courage frankly to abandon this every- fellow-
for-himself individualism that has dominated the
thought of the last century.

We need an entirely new notion of what a rational
society is. Not the prizes at the top but the welfare
at the bottom, is the criterion for a democracy. Not
chances for a few poor boys to rise out of their class,
but a chance for the whole class to rise bodily out of
its status of poverty and ignorance : that is the new
idea! A decent, wholesome standard of living for
every American family, and a satisfying share in the
cultural life; that is a reasonable society.

Pestalozzi, the Swiss educational reformer of a cen-
tury or more ago, set forth an extremely suggestive
parable that is both interesting and pertinent in this
connection. He said that once upon a time there was
a certain pond inhabited mostly by minnows. It was
ruled over, however, by a small school of pike, who
fed upon the minnows. Having endured their injus-
tices for a long time the minnows called a meeting of
protest. As a result of this meeting, a committee was
sent to the headquarters of the pike to demand a redress
of grievances. The old pike at the head of the small
school received the committee of minnows graciously,
listened to them courteously, and appointed a day in
the future when they should return to hear the decision
of the pike after due deliberation. Upon the appointed
day the committee returned and received the answer
of the pike as follows : that thereafter one minnow out

THE PARADOX OF THE MIDDLE CLASS SALVATION 1 1 5

of a thousand might himself become a pike! The
minnows gratefully accepted this wise and generous
offer.

The nineteenth century put its faith in increased
production as a sufficient means of economic and social
salvation. Increased and ever increasing production :
faith in this economic gospel amounted almost to a
fanatical obsession. But it is a one-sided gospel.
Taken alone it only postpones and aggravates the social
problem. It is high time that we supplemented it with
a new creed. Social salvation, like personal salvation,
is to be had through faith in a paradox : to raise the
standard of living of the lower class. That is the
objective which we must aim at directly. It sounds
like advising one to lift himself by his boot straps;
but self -contradictory as it sounds, it will work.

Let us consider some of the benefits that will accrue
from driving a wedge under the standards of wage
earners.

First : it is a necessary eugenic measure. The lower
the standard the higher the birthrate, and conversely.
The lower classes are breeding faster than the upper
classes. Assuming, as is safe, that the poor have a
larger percentage of poor brains, this means that the
poor stock is outbreeding the best stock. Where that
will lead to is plain enough. The way out is not to
scold the prosperous classes about race suicide. That
will have no effect. The way out is to reduce the
birthrate of the poor; and the only thing that will
accomplish that is to raise their standard of living for
them.

Second : part of a higher standard of living for the
poor is more education. Raise their standard of living

Il6 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

and they will stay longer in school. That will give
society a chance to train them for citizenships — teach
them civics. Without such training the masses will
foment and vote for wild-cat reforms of all sorts. The
salvation of political democracy depends upon an en-
lightened citizenry; but enlightenment is not for a
poverty stricken laboring class. We must raise their
standard of living for them.

Third: there can hardly be a wholesome we-feeling
between the very poor and the prosperous. If we are
to have social homogeneity — and have it we must, or
perish — we must raise the standards of the poor. Bol-
shevism breeds among the miserable.

Fourth : as has already been pointed out, the way to
expand American markets is to increase the purchasing
power of our own poor. It is amazing that business
men are so "hypnotized by the present reality" that
they have overlooked this "acre of diamonds."

Fifth: the real secret of increasing production is to
raise the standard of living of the poor. We have had
the motor on the trailer. Raise the incomes of the
poor first; then increased production will follow.
There are many reasons why this is so, but the chief
reason is that a high standard, once enjoyed, is the
greatest motive force in the world. It makes people
ambitious. This is not theory but history. People
with high standards get the vocational training and
equipment to maintain them. A technically trained
laboring class is a certainty, once their standards of
living have been raised. And a technically trained
laboring class means highly productive industries.

Sixth : there is a suspicion that the low standards of
the poor may be among the causes for our periodical

THE PARADOX OF THE MIDDLE CLASS SALVATION II7

business depressions. We are accustomed to say that
they are due to over production. Under consumption
means practically the same thing, does it not ? Econo-
mists tell us there is no limit to human wants. But
there is a very definite limit to what the poor can buy.
And there is just as definite a limit to what the rich do
buy. What is the range of their wants? Luxuries,
to be sure; but in limited amounts. Their want to
which there is no limit is the excitement, the success,
and the resultant power of the industrial game itself.
Hence their settled policy of turning as large a pro-
portion as possible of the products of industry back
into "production goods." There the surplus produces
more and more of what the market presently begins to
get glutted with. The culmination eventually is a
business depression. Peter Buyer has been robbed to
over pay Paul Producer ; his revenge is that he cannot
buy the product.

If there is any soundness in this line of reasoning
it follows that to consume a somewhat larger proportion
of the product of industry, and to turn a somewhat
smaller proportion back into the business, would render
business depressions less frequent. The obvious way
to do that is to raise the standard of living of the poor,
by spreading their consumption out over a wider arc of
their needs.

The combined effect of these six benefits would be
nothing short of revolutionary. In such a world as
they would make, the middle class would be safe and
happy.

The unappreciated greatness of Malthus and Ricardo
was referred to in a previous chapter. It lay chiefly
in the fact that they saw the truth just expounded, and

Il8 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

set it forth so early before an incredulous, visionless
age. The "foresight and prudence" in limiting the
size of their families, that comes to people with culture
and prosperity, was Malthus' "preventive check." "The
friends of humanity cannot but wish," wrote Ricardo,
"that in all countries the labouring classes should have
a taste for comforts and enjoyments, and that they
should be stimulated by all legal means in their exer-
tions to procure them. ... In those countries where the
labouring classes have the fewest wants, and are con-
tented with the cheapest food, the people are exposed
to the greatest vicissitudes and miseries."

These are the formulas by which humanity can
escape the perennial ruthlessness of the struggle for
existence ; but without their application there will never
be any escape, except temporarily during exceptional
periods like the nineteenth century. It is in this insight
that the greatness of these great thinkers inheres.

We need, therefore, a radically revolutionized pro-
gram for ourselves and for our sons; a program that
calls for quite as much cooperative attention to the
masses below us as individual attention to the prizes
above us. By such a program we shall not be dragged
down to the level of the masses, as we vaguely fear;
but the level of ourselves and of them will all be raised
together. To believe this and to act accordingly is
the supreme act of Christian faith. The class that
seeketh its own life shall lose it, but the class that giveth
its life to the cause of social justice for all, the same
shall find it. As soon as the middle class of this nation
becomes Christian enough to believe that, the social
unrest will be at an end. For pagans there is no peace !

It is quite surprising how generally we have inherited

THE PARADOX OF THE MIDDLE CLASS SALVATION I IO,

this every- fellow- for-himself philosophy without exam-
ining its teeth. In reality, it is quite as much out of
date as poor old Dobbin himself, and for similar
reasons. It applied well enough to the world of small
shops and plenty-of -land-out- west, before the Civil
War; but it does not apply to the world of colossal
industrial plants, and billion-dollar corporations. And
yet middle class gentlemen, who would be chagrined
to ride around in a top-buggy, are unashamed to ride
around in a social philosophy contemporaneous with
the deacon's wonderful "one-hoss" chaise.

But let us take a look at the facts. According to
King,1 the distribution of incomes in 1910 was as
follows :

38.92% of the families have incomes of less than

$700

5i.54% " " " " " " " "

800

75.96% " "

1,100

00.31% " " " " "

1,500

98.39% " "

4,000

To compare King's estimates, with estimates for
1918, let us take the figures given on page 69, select
the percentages most nearly corresponding to those just
above, and divide the incomes listed by two, since the
cost of living was approximately twice as high in 1918
as in 1 9 10, as will be seen by reference to any good
table of index numbers. We get the following:

19 18 19 10

(.Approxi-
mately)

86% of the people got incomes of less than $2000
90% of the people got incomes of less than 2400
99% of the people got incomes of less than 8000

$1000
1200
4000

* "Wealth and Income of Ahe People of the Un. _*d States," p.
228: cf. p. 68 above.

120 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

What now do these figures mean ? They mean that
fewer than two young men in a hundred can hope to
achieve an income of $4,000 (or the 1922 equivalent).
Not two girls in a hundred can hope to marry that sort
of an income. The other ninety-eight are foredoomed
to disappointment. And when one considers that the
two per cent who will actually enjoy the $4,000 incomes
will be chiefly those who inherit rather than achieve
them, it begins to appear how hopeless is the struggle
of the middle class to get into the upper two per cent.
We on the bases are not going to bat! At any rate,
not enough of us to make the struggle worth while.
We have been assuming that we were going to because
we have been accepting an old theory instead of exam-
ining the new facts. The plain facts suggest that this
every-fellow-for-himself game is not likely to get us
anywhere, after all.

There is a special group of middle class persons who
are the special victims of the illusion just discussed.
They are the spinsters. In the Atlantic Monthly for
February, 1922, one of this group frankly admits, with
tears in her voice, that she wants a husband, a kitchen
and children. She implies that nearly all would make
the same admission if they were equally frank. Let
us assume that they would; the fact is, nevertheless,
that most of them are doomed to disappointment.

But one never sees nor hears a hint that these women
ever look beneath the surface of individual circum-
stances, into the complex of economic forces, for the
cause of their heartache. Women can see that war
robs them of husbands and thwarts their instinctive
desire for babies; they recognize that intemperance
ruins their men and handicaps their children ; but they

THE PARADOX OF THE MIDDLE CLASS SALVATION 121

seem utterly incapable of discerning that involuntary
celibacy and childlessness are being forced upon them
by the ruthless exploitation of the Colossus.

These women are among the best of their class:
capable, independent and proud. Many are even fas-
tidious ! By their own earnings they easily maintain
themselves on a high, middle class standard of living.
Men in the 84 per cent are naturally somewhat over-
awed, and a little doubtful of their eligibility. As for
common laborers !

Unless a man is in the upper 5 per cent his income
is hardly a talking point.

There are men enough to go around ; but the wifeless
and homeless are notoriously jobless. Them, these
high-grade spinsters do not want, of course. But
even of them, not all by any means are biologically un-
fit. Many a woman has agonized to bring into the
world a perfectly promising man child, only to have
him spoiled before adulthood by the grip of the Colos-
sus. Whereupon some other woman's girl child goes
loveless, lonely and childless through life.

The Colossus has a preference for women as em-
ployees— they work cheaper than men! In 1910 there
were 23 per cent of women gainfully employed, as
against 14 per cent in 1890. The increasing competi-
tion of women must have some effect upon the wages
and unemployment of men. This new economic inde-
pendence which women are demanding, and which
modern, large scale industry is granting them with
such alacrity, what is it doing to them when they get it ?

The remedy is to push the 84 per cent down toward
50 per cent, encourage the organized, skilled trades in
their efforts to better themselves, and create a public

122 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

demand that common labor be accorded a decent Amer-
ican standard of living. Said Ibsen: "If I were God
I would have pity on the hearts of men." If there is to
be pity on the hearts of women in subsequent genera-
tions it will come only as women of this generation
work collectively for the emancipation of men from
industrial exploitation.

The facts are that this ambitious struggle of ours
to get somewhere is in reality a desperate and too often
a losing struggle merely to hold our own — "and the
devil take the hindermost." Nor must we forget that
the percentages in each class are fixed by the rules
of the game. The only way we can create extra room
for ourselves is by changing the rules. There is far
more probability that the brightest and most capable
in the class just below us will crowd us out, than that
we shall crowd out somebody higher up. This is the
meaning of the terrible strain of middle-class existence,
of which we are all so conscious, and which shows up
statistically in the declining percentage of middle class
wealth and of native white birth rate. And to the
strain of the fight is added the strain of camouflaging
our actual defeat. That is what "keeping up appear-
ances" really means : the expensive pretense of having
arrived where we expect to arrive presently, but in
reality never shall. The strain of this pretense is
squandering our resources and restricting our birth
rate.

We of the middle class have been deceiving ourselves
with regard to the whole program of success and the
probability of achieving the prizes at the top. We
look at the "captains of industry" on the upper rungs

THE PARADOX OF THE MIDDLE CLASS SALVATION I2J

of the ladder and imagine that by industry and brains
we can achieve like positions. But the dice are loaded
against us ! It can be demonstrated mathematically
that only one in fifty can be in the richest two per cent,
and they are not likely to be our sons but the sons
of those already there. Of the other forty-nine per
cent a considerable proportion are liable to be scattered
as wreckage along the road. That is predestined. If
we play our cards to be upper class or nothing, we
take a long chance that it will be nothing. That is one
way to express the disintegration of the middle class.
The trouble is that we regard those few big prizes as
legitimate prizes and the game as a legitimate game.
There is nothing legitimate about the prizes, nor the
game, either. Competitive prizes are being abandoned
in modern public education as poor pedagogy because
they fail to motivate the great majority. Only one can
get the prize, only a few have any prospect of getting
it, the fact is well understood by all the pupils from
the outset, the majority make no effort, and the winner
is liable to be made a prig. The principle applies out-
side of school as well. We do not want great American
Beauty1 roses that are matured only by snipping off
all the other buds. The buds mean our own sons.
We ought to have a game in which every normal
person, if he really tries, can be reasonably sure of
winning a worthy reward, instead of a game in which
the percentage of waste is bound to be so great. Many
of our own sons are the predestined victims of the game

1 The allusion is to a remark in John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s,
graduating oration at Brown University some twenty odd years
ago, against which, at the time, there was a storm of middle class
resentment.

124 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

as it is now played. We should quit holding up multi-
millionaires as objects of their hero worship, and set
ourselves to the business of making the world over so
that there can scarcely be any multi-millionaires at all,
and scarcely any class at all subsisting below a level of
decent comfort and wholesome culture commensurate
with their mentality. We ourselves in the long run
would be the chief beneficiaries of such a readjustment.
A Christian world is better for us than a pagan !

A word further about these individualistic theories
of the nineteenth century, and especially about some of
their implications. We are all as confident as phono-
graphs about many things that are only half true. We
believe that it is necessary and inevitable that laborers
be poor ; that need, or the hope of wealth, are the only
incentives that will induce men to work; that high
wages would ruin our industries in the competitive
markets of the world; that luxuries are inherently
proper for the rich, but anything more than bare neces-
sities inherently absurd for the laboring class ; that the
high cost of living is due chiefly to the unwarranted
demands of labor; that the poor are squalid because
they expend their incomes unwisely; that labor is
scarce, immigration necessary, and unemployment due
to unemployability ; that stock jugglery is legitimate
business; that making money is the same as produc-
tion; that "unearned increment" is really earned by
clever foresight; that great wealth is, fortunately for
the community, in the hands of demonstrated ability
to handle it; that merit finds its level; etc., etc., etc.
We contend for all these half-truths as valiantly as the
southern crackers fought for the slave system, as the
German peasants bled to win for their Junkers "a place

THE PARADOX OF THE MIDDLE CLASS SALVATION 125

in the sun," and as the French youth followed Napoleon
into Egypt and Russia. But we ourselves are the dupes
of the fallacies involved in these pernicious half truths
which our "Napoleons of finance" so sedulously pro-
mulgate.

That the middle class itself is the victim of un-
restrained capitalism, and of the individualistic theories
with which it drugs its victims, the socialists have
clearly seen for half a century. But they do not expect
us ever to open our eyes to the facts. They expect us
to grope on, as blind as we now are, till the crack of
doom, which, in their creed, is the dawn of their alleged
Utopia. But there is an easy way to disappoint them :
namely, to promote the economic reforms advocated in
Chapters XI and XII, supplemented by the spiritual
advances suggested in the remaining chapters of this
book. That will take the wind all out of the sails of
socialism, and save a generous place in the world for
our own grandsons and great-grandsons.

Let us conclude this chapter with a restatement, in
somewhat different form, of the proposition with which
we began it, namely : ultimate social salvation for us
of the middle class will be achieved by uniting with the
classes below us in achieving a mutual salvation in
which all may share. It has always been the device
of autocracy to divide the people and overwhelm the
factions one at a time, usually by an alliance with the
others. Read again the story of Metternich and the
collapse of democratic aspirations in central Europe
under the wheels of the Hapsburg-Hohenzollern-
Romanoff combination. The perennial strategy was
to keep popular factions divided. Always divided!
Always the people could see the cost of going into

126 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

an alliance, but seldom the cost of staying out. It
will be the same with us of the middle class and our
natural allies of the laboring class. In union there is
salvation for both ; not otherwise.

In this connection the following quotation (p. 19)
from "The Control of the Trusts," by the Clarks, is
quite suggestive:

"Some laborers are at times attached to trusts by mo-
mentary and precarious interests. They hope that, if
the companies exact high prices from the purchasing
public, they can be made to share benefits with their
workmen; and a really dangerous trust that has public
opinion strongly against it may form an alliance with
its workmen, against the public at large. 'Give us high
wages and charge them to the public with a profit for
yourselves,' is the demand made by these laborers. That
an alliance so made will last is not at all sure. While
the battle with the people is going on the corporations
do not want a fire in the rear ; but if they win the larger
conflict, it may not be necessary for the companies to
bid for laborers' support; and in that case employees of
the trust as well as the great remainder of the working
class will be injured by these considerations. The people
at large are and certainly will continue to be injured."

The reports of the Interchurch World Movement
show that the tactics of the steel trust are the converse
of this. The strateg> has been to crush labor first
under the weight of an adverse public opinion. This
is apparently the purpose of the vigorous anti-labor
propaganda that has been carried on through the press
during the last few years. And to date it has been
relatively successful; we have all joined in the hue and

THE PARADOX OF THE MIDDLE CLASS SALVATION 12J

cry against labor, like a crowd of easily gullible dupes.
While the battle with labor is going on the corporations
do not want a fire in the rear ; but if they win the lesser
conflict, it may not be necessary for the companies to
bid for the public's support; and in that case the con-
sumers of their products and the general public will be
injured by these considerations.

If the conclusions set forth in Chapter VIII are
sound — that the polarization of society is tending to
eliminate the middle class — then it follows that to an
alliance with labor we are predestined by the decrees
of fate, either voluntarily or by force of circumstances
over which we shall have lost control. If we of the
middle class volunteer promptly enough in an unselfish
but far-sighted effort to lift labor to a creditable
American level, then the alliance will be our alliance,
under our leadership, according to our program, and
beneath our flag. But if we wait until we have been
shaken through the sieve into the "proletariat," then
the flag will be red, the leaders radical, and the program
"Bolshevistic."

There is a certain type of mind that can count as
high as two, but a third alternative presents altogether
too complicated a situation for its imagination to grasp.
This type of mind brands everybody socialist with
violent emotion, who finds any faults with capitalism,
or else betakes itself to radical socialism as soon as it
begins to get a little inkling of the abuses of modern
capitalism. This type of mind is either rabid radical
or rank reactionary : orderly social progress, based on
scientific reforms and cultural advancement, is a third
alternative quite beyond its purview. But we of the
middle class must all learn to count three : plutocracy,

128 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

dictatorship of the "proletariat," or real, middle-class
American democracy — take your choice. But take it
quick or it may take you! For sixty -five per cent of
the voters are already "proletarian," except that for-
tunately they lack as yet the state of mind.

CHAPTER X

THE NEW RIGHTS OF THE PUBLIC

THERE is evidence that the middle class is
gradually becoming aware of the grievances of
which they are the innocent victims. Inco-
herent and inarticulate as their class consciousness
is as yet, there are indications, nevertheless, that such
a class consciousness is slowly crystalizing. These
evidences are found chiefly in the gradually developing
awareness on the part of the neutral public that it has
rights which are being invaded by the conflict between
capital and labor. These newly asserted rights of the
public are extremely significant to the present argument.
They show that the middle class — who make up the
major portion of the public — are spontaneously arous-
ing themselves to the very program to which they are
exhorted in this book, albeit too unintelligently to get
results.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of this new
awareness of rights is the new attitude of the public
toward the labor-capital controversy. As a result we
appear to be entering upon an entirely new phase of
that controversy. Hitherto it has been a struggle
between two factions of our people. The general
public, until recently, has played the part of neutral,
disinterested onlookers. The assumption back of the
public's attitude has been that the controversy was

129

I3O CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

unfortunate for the belligerents, and a disgrace to a
Christian civilization; but, farther than that, a matter
of practical indifference.

But that attitude is decidedly changing. We are
beginning to discover that the public is the victim. A
free-for-all fight cannot go on in the streets of a
crowded city without innocent bystanders getting hit
with brick-bats and bullets; and if a strike or a lockout
occurs in the industries of a complex society the con-
sumer is always sure to get the worst of it, no matter
which party wins. If there is a strike in the coal mines
the price of coal goes up or there is a coal famine;
if the factories of the wool trust are locked the price
of clothing stays up. The public always stands to lose.

The public is beginning to assert its right to self-
protection. This principle was brought forcibly to the
attention of the public in the fall of 19 19, when the
Boston policemen went on strike. The strike turned
the streets of Boston over to the criminal element,
lawlessness was unrestrained, and the public suffered.
The reaction of government and public opinion was
prompt, vigorous and decisive. The policemen were
discharged instanter, and order restored. The whole
country was electrified over the incident; Governor
Coolidge came out of it a national hero, and the prece-
dent was established for good and all that policemen
may not strike. Which means, of course, that the
public has rights that it does not propose to have
jeopardized by any policemen's quibble over wages.

For the past three or four years a very active, and
at times bitter, debate has been going on among public
school teachers over the question of teachers' unions.
A considerable element in the profession advocates

THE NEW RIGHTS OF THE PUBLIC I3I

unionizing under the American Federation of Labor.
They point to the low wages of teachers, insisting that
unionization is their only means of self-protection;
and they enumerate instances in which teachers, having
appealed patiently to public opinion without attracting
much attention, have got results immediately by the use
of an organized strike. But the leaders of the pro-
fession are, almost without exception, opposed to
teachers' unions. The reasons they give are not
always good ones; too often they are nothing more
than ignorant expressions of the popular prejudice
against organized labor. But back of the educators'
bad reasons is a perfectly sound intuition, namely : that
teachers are public servants, that their service is of
prime importance to the public welfare; and that teach-
ers have no more right to go on strike than policemen
have, and for similar reasons. The case, so far as
teachers are concerned, is really this: They, above all
others, are the public servants whose business it is to
give the rising generation the facts; the facts about
various things, including history and the present social
situation; the plain, unbiased facts! On the basis of
their knowledge of facts the rising generation will come
to maturity prepared to arbitrate issues and solve prob-
lems. Should the school fail to perform this vital
function for democracy, democracy itself will be im-
periled. But the moment teachers take sides on the
labor-capital controversy — the most vital struggle of
the age — that moment they lose their power to perform
their function. They lose the confidence of the public
and of the children, and they lose also their own ability
to seek the facts without bias. The plain, unbiased
facts of social science are the last things in the world,

132 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

it is true, that certain sinister influences want taught in
the schools. Those sinister interests are almost certain
to make a struggle for the control of public instruction,
and the public should be on the alert lest the freedom
of instruction be invaded by them. But meantime the
public owes its gratitude to the leaders of the teaching
profession for the firm stand they have just taken
against teachers' unions. The profession has wagered
its faith in public opinion ; public opinion should show
itself worthy of that faith.

The public has developed a tendency recently to re-
gard coal-mining also as a service to the public, like
teaching and police protection. The public cannot get
along without coal ; a coal famine in winter is intoler-
able ; nor is the public willing to submit to unreasonable
prices when they result from a strike. The general
public seemed heartily to approve the action of the
Attorney General, during the spring of 1920, in the use
of injunctions to break the coal strike. There are some
things to be said in criticism both of the public and the
Attorney General — they will be said later — but the
point here is that the public was quite unwilling to be
victimized by a coal strike; and took, through the
government, new and unprecedented measures to pro-
tect its rights.

It was in connection with a strike in the coal mines
that a new compulsory arbitration law was passed in
Kansas, which has since attracted national attention
and much bitter debate because of the new principle
involved in it. The thing to get clearly in mind is
the new principle, namely : the right of the middle class
public to be protected from the consequences of the
labor-capital controversy.

THE NEW RIGHTS OF THE PUBLIC I33

The same attitude on the part of the public is repre-
sented in the ruthlessness with which the steel strike
was suppressed in the fall of 191 9, and in the Cummins-
Esch law of the following February, which provides
for compulsory arbitration in the railroad business.
Apparently the public regards coal, steel and railroad
service quite as indispensable to the general welfare as
teaching and police protection.

It was illustrated in a way during the summer of
1920, when the wool trust shut down its mills so as
to curtail production. The public saw that capital as
well as labor can be guilty of sabotage ; and numerous
journals raised the question whether an industry has
the right to throw workers out of employment and
mulct the public with high prices by restricting pro-
duction. This was a new attitude on the part of the
public toward private business. In essence it was the
same as the public's attitude toward the striking police-
men.

Now let us observe that in all this new attitude
toward strikes and lockouts there is simply being
applied to labor disputes an old principle that has long
been recognized in law, namely : that there are certain
businesses that are "affected with a public interest."
The railroad business is the outstanding example.
Rebates and discriminations figured conspicuously in
the early history of the trust movement — Rockefeller
built up Standard Oil by securing rate discriminations
against his competitors. The Granger legislation of
the 'seventies and 'eighties grew out of the bitter feeling
of the farmers that freight rates were being juggled
to their disadvantage. Serious sectional animosities
were developed during the last quarter of the century

134 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

because cities and localities felt that they were being
discriminated against by the railroads. Finally it
became clear that there was an inherent difference
between the railroad business and most other lines of
business : the railroad is at the center, while all other
businesses are around the circumference; all businesses
have to use the railroads as they do not have to use
each other; the success of every business depends upon
the service it can get from the railroads; fair compe-
tition is impossible unless railroad service is impartial.
The railroads are "affected with a public interest"
As soon as this principle became clear the public,
through the state, took upon itself the responsibility
of regulating freight and passenger rates in the inter-
ests of the general public. The Interstate Commerce
Commission was created to perform this function.

Many other lines of business are "affected with a
public interest" also, and are therefore subject to regu-
lation by law. All. the public service utilities of our
cities are examples. "Innkeepers" are treated by the
courts as public servants, stock jugglery is being regu-
lated by law in many states, and an attempt was recently
made in Berkeley to have milk declared a public utility.

The "police power of the state" (which means the
authority of government to pass laws for the general
good) has been growing.1 Government control over
the nation's resources in land, timber, water-power and
mines, the Mann Act, the Food and Drug Act, prohi-
bition, the tendency toward government ownership not
only of public service utilities, etc., but of ferries,
theatres, markets, coal yards, etc., price fixing, all forms

1 See A. J. Todd's "The Scientific Spirit in Social Work," Chap-
ter II.

THE NEW RIGHTS OF THE PUBLIC I35

of labor legislation and social insurance, the public
supervision of sickness and disease — all these forms of
legislation, new during the last generation or two, and
sanctioned by the courts, indicate a growing tendency
on the part of the public to assert its rights, as opposed
to the special privileges of any special class.

This is really an ancient principle of the English
common law. "The ancient 'Year Books,' which con-
tain the earliest record of court decisions in England,
reveal to us that some centuries ago business was
generally regarded of public interest. The 'Common
farrier' must shoe any horse brought to him; the 'com-
mon mill' must grind everybody's grain, the 'common
shaver' must barber every one." x

We have just come through a century and a quarter
of extremely individualistic philosophy in the fields of
industry and government. Competition was supposed
to be the automatic regulator of almost everything.
The let-alone policy of government was regarded as the
sum of all wisdom. It was assumed that every normal
adult had more interest in his own welfare than any
"paternalistic" government could possibly have. The
best guarantee of happiness any government could give
a man was, therefore, to let him alone, so long as he
did not interfere with other people's rights. And so
it seemed to follow obviously that the happiest people
were those among whom everybody was looking out
for number one. But the fallacy of that theory is now
becoming apparent. We are beginning to recognize
the solidarity of society : that no man liveth unto him-
self, and that happiness is a cooperative enterprise. In
the field of industry we discovered that some businesses
*Sce Louis Bartlett in Atlantic Monthly, Sept., 1920.

I36 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

were "affected with a public interest" ; then we found
that other businesses were, too; presently we shall
realize that there are no businesses that are not. "Wat
has the government got wit' dat to do, anyhow?"
remarked the owner of a threshing rig in the wheat
belt, as he cast a hasty glance at the regulations tacked
on his machine at the opening of the season of 191 8.
That is the old attitude ; but it is passing away. The
truth is that the farms were made for the public, not
the public for the farms ; and what is true of the farms
is true of all the industries.

And now, without clearly reasoned insight, but with
vehement, outraged impulse, the public is applying the
same principle to industrial war. It, too, is "affected
with a public interest." Slowly, during a century and
a quarter, English and American labor has built up the
right to organize, and to use the strike as a means of
aggressive self defense. Now, all of a sudden, the
public seems about to reach out its hand and snatch that
weapon away. Apparently we have entered upon a
new stage of the labor movement in which the strike
is to be outlawed. It is really, if we only knew it, the
sudden coming to self consciousness of the great middle
class. Tired of the conflict between "proletariat" at
its left and capital at its right, the middle class is
commanding peace, and asserting its prerogative to
arbitrate.

But in so doing the middle class is assuming a very
grave and dangerous responsibility indeed, and is
assuming the risk of precipitating the very class war
which it is so impulsively undertaking to suppress.
For nothing is ever settled till it is settled right; and
unless the public is prepared to hand down an award

THE NEW RIGHTS OF THE PUBLIC 1 37

that is just, the fat will surely be in the fire. In its
new attitude toward strikes the public must do some-
thing far more than merely to indulge its blind impulse
for self defense; it is putting itself under bonds to mete
out justice as between the two contestants, capital and
labor. Mr. Gompers insists that the right to strike is
labor's only weapon, and to decree its use illegal — after
the hard won precedents of a century — is to drive the
whole laboring class into crime. Governor Allen, on
the other hand, insists that the rights of the whole
people supersede the rights of any part of the people.
Both are right : the fallacy of each is in failure to see
the other's point of view. Senator Cummins said, in
reporting his bill out of the committee : "In making the
strike unlawful it is obvious that there must be some-
thing given to the workers in exchange for it." If
labor's only weapon is to be snatched out of its hand,
then justice must be guaranteed in recompense. If
arbitration is to be compulsory, it must be just; other-
wise there is no exchange — only tyranny. So, in rec-
ognizing the fact that we are entering upon a new
stage in the labor-capital controversy, let us not for
a moment flatter ourselves into the assurance that it
is certain to be a better stage. It is just as likely to be
one stage nearer the deluge. For "if the power of
government is to be used to check the rising aspirations
of working men, if strikes for improved conditions are
to be treated like revolutions, the results must be ap-
parent to every thinking man. The hand of every
syndicalist and of every anarchist will be strengthened
by such a move. If political weapons are to be used
against industrial, just so surely will industrial weapons

I38 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

be used against political. The general strike for indus-
trial objectives has already made its appearance in this
country, to the alarm of the public and to the dismay
of (conservative) union leaders everywhere. The
general strike for political objectives would be revo-
lution." x

This prediction will undoubtedly come true unless
the public demonstrates its ability to arbitrate justly.
Everything depends upon the intelligence of the middle
class regarding the issues it is undertaking to arbitrate,
And the truth is that the middle class shows very little
evidence of intelligent comprehension of what is at
stake between the contestants. The whole question is
whether labor has a real or an imaginary grievance.
If the interpretation of the case set forth in previous
chapters is correct, then the labor movement "is not
the menacing thing that timid souls fear. ... It is a
vast surging forward of men and women with their
eyes fixed on a better day. ... It is a movement in
which the finest instincts of man are seeking expression
... in an effort, through hardship and struggle, to
establish a society where want and misery shall be no
more." 2 It is a struggle of the disfranchised masses
against vested privilege, for the elemental but as yet
unrecognized rights of man. Slowly it has been gain-
ing ground for a century. Its gains have been written
into English and American law, constitutions and court
decisions. Labor is engaged in a century-long struggle
for the justice that has never been as yet, and that

1John A. Fitch, in The American Labor Legislation Review,
March, 1920.

a See the same article as above, p. 67.

THE NEW RIGHTS OF THE PUBLIC I39

justice is nothing less than industrial enfranchisement
and a wholesome American standard of living. If the
public understands that and arbitrates accordingly, then
the Kansas principle will prove the solution of our
problem so far as labor disputes are concerned; but if
the public continues to believe that workers are and of
right ought to be poverty stricken, and that investors are
and of right ought to be permitted to "run their own
business," then the Kansas principle will only precipi-
tate industrial war.

If we are to judge by the attitude of public opinion
for a year after the Armistice, there is very little
ground for hope. Never since the tide of abolition
sentiment beat against the slave holding aristocracy of
the old South has there been such a display of truculent
intolerance. Scarcely ever has the middle class shown
its capacity for being deceived to greater discredit.
As soon after the Civil War as Grant's first adminis-
tration, a policy of reaction set in, which was managed
by and for the "infant industries" behind the scenes.
The public was not aware of the fact then, and only
penetrating students of our history are aware of it to
this day. There are abundant indications that a similar
policy, in the interests of the invisible plutocracy, may
characterize the present after-war reaction.

The public was diligently misled about labor condi-
tions in the steel and coal industries, and it believed the
misrepresentations.1 The steel trust still maintains its
twelve-hour shift in spite of the protest of the Fed-
erated Council of Churches,2 vigorously represses labor
organizations, and underpays unskilled labor. The

I See American Labor Legislation Review, March, 1920, p. 62.
See American Journal of Sociology, May, 1920, p. 769.

I40 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

Interchurch World Movement Survey 1 showed that
up. During the strike, and even before, the right of
assembly was rigorously repressed by mayors and
burgesses who were also officers of the steel companies.
As for the coal industry : "The government knew that
in coal mining there is not enough work to go around.
It knew that unemployment is so common and so pro-
tracted that the miners have great difficulty making a
living, even when the wage rate is high. If the govern-
ment did not know it the Geological Survey did, and
so did the Department of Labor." And yet public
sentiment was almost wholly against labor at the time
of the 1920 strike. This ignorance and gullibility of
the middle class is dangerous, and it is their bounden
duty to correct it, especially now that public opinion
and law are assuming the responsibility for arbitrating
labor disputes.

Who, with any vital faith in the ideals of democ-
racy and Christianity, can really doubt that man, having
conquered nature, will eventually find a way to adjust
business and the world's work to the real, inherent,
universal needs of human nature? As a matter of
fact, universal human welfare is inimical to nothing
except class privilege and exploitation. And if even-
tually, why not now? Simply because we think it
impossible; just as we thought prohibition impossible
a generation ago, and just as our forefathers a hundred
years ago would have thought free, universal public
education impossible and absurd. But if a single
generation of the American middle class could all have

1 Every church member in America ought to read the two
reports of the Interchurch World Movement on the steel strike
of 1919 and subsequent conditions in the steel industry. They
are published by Harcourt, Brace and Co., New York.

THE NEW RIGHTS OF THE PUBLIC I4I

faith to believe that a decent standard of living for
workers is both practicable and desirable, it would come
to pass within twenty-five years. Whereupon we should
have industrial peace. It is only as public opinion
sanctions these rights of the masses, that the public
will succeed in maintaining its own rights, for there
can be no peace for any of us except on the basis of
justice to all of us.

CHAPTER XI

THE FRONTIERS OF DEMOCRACY

IT would be agreed by practically all scientific stu-
dents of the labor problem that we do need a read-
justment of the relations between capital and labor,
especially in large-scale industry. In this connection
it is desirable to see clearly what the fundamental aims
of reform in this field are, because details are very
confusing unless they are understood in relation to the
main issue. What sense is there, for instance, in the
plumber refusing to connect the gas range; or what
justice is there in the musicians' union trying to break
up a famous symphony orchestra because the orchestra
must play occasionally for a municipality that employs
a non-union band. Lost among the trees of such
details, it is easy to lose sight of the woods as a whole,
and so fail utterly to grasp the fundamental issues of
the labor-capital controversy.

As we look back over the struggle for political
democracy during the last five hundred years, the
fundamental aims of that struggle stand out in relief
like the Rocky Mountains as one approaches them
across the plains of eastern Colorado. The common
people were seeking political enfranchisement. As the
struggle went on, outrages and injustices cluttered the
details on both sides, but on the whole the fundamental

142

THE FRONTIERS OF DEMOCRACY 143

demand of the people was just. Likewise the funda-
mental demand of labor for industrial enfranchisement
is undoubtedly just in the main, and should not be
obscured by the injustices or even outrages on both
sides that clutter the details of the situation. It is
possible to get so close to the foothills that one cannot
see the great peaks at all. If we could see the great
issues as clearly now as posterity will see them in
retrospect five hundred years hence, public opinion
would promptly hand down its verdict in favor of the
industrial enfranchisement of labor, and the quarrel
would soon be over.

The great central question is : Shall labor have a
potent voice in the management of large-scale industry?
Some of our greatest minds have seen clearly that labor
is justified in demanding that right, and that capital
is in the wrong in refusing it. Theodore Roosevelt
saw it. In "The Foes of Our Own Household"
(p. 105) he wrote:

"At present the mass of people engaged in industry can-
not become owners as individuals ; and to give this mass a
nominal ownership which does not imply control fails to
reach the heart of the matter, for control is the element
which implies equality between men. . . . Therefore, in-
stead of individual control of industry there must to-day be
some species of collective control of industry ; which means
that the tool users shall become the tool owners. ..."

"The more we condemn unadulterated Marxian So-
cialism, the stouter should be our insistence on thorough-
going social reforms." (p. 177.)

One of the most encouraging omens of the year
just past is the public espousal of this principle by

144 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. He declares * himself un-
equivocally in favor of "adequate representation of the
employees." He insists that the principle, wherever it
has been in operation for any considerable time, has
shown the following beneficial results:

"First, more continuous operation of the plants and
less interruption in the employment of workers, resulting
in larger returns for both capital and labor. Second,
improved working and living conditions. Third, fre-
quent and close contact between employees and officers.
Fourth, the elimination of grievances as disturbing
factors. Fifth, good-will developed to a high degree.
Sixth, the creation of a community spirit."

Summing up his own views Mr. Rockefeller says:

"The reign of autocracy has passed. Men are rapidly
coming to see that human life is of infinitely greater
value than material wealth; that the health, happiness
and well-being of the individual, however humble, is not
to be sacrificed to the selfish aggrandizement of the more
fortunate or more powerful. . . .

"What is the attitude of the leaders in industry as
they face this critical period of reconstruction? Is it
that of the standpatters who ignore the extraordinary
changes which have come over the face of the civilized
world and have taken place in the minds of men, who,
arming themselves to the teeth, attempt stubbornly to
resist the inevitable and invite open warfare with the
other parties in industry, and who say : 'What has been
and is, must continue to be; with our backs to the wall
we will fight it out along the old lines or go down to
defeat?'

"Or is their attitude one in which I myself profoundly

1 Published originally in the International Labor Review; re-
viewed in The Survey for August 16, 1921.

THE FRONTIERS OF DEMOCRACY I45

believe, which takes cognizance of the inherent right
and justice of the cooperative principle underlying the
new order, which recognizes that mighty changes are in-
evitable, many of them desirable, and which does not wait
until forced to adopt new methods, but takes the lead
in calling together the parties to industry for a round-
table conference to be held in a spirit of justice, fair play,
and brotherhood, with a view to working out some plan
of cooperation, which will ensure to all those concerned
adequate representation, will afford to labor a voice in
the forming of industrial policy, and an opportunity to
earn a fair wage under such conditions as shall leave
time, not alone for food and sleep, but also' for recrea-
tion and the development of the higher things of life?"

Elbert H. Gary, president of the United States Steel
Corporation, takes a different view of the matter, how-
ever. He says x : "The security holders must be rec-
ognized as rightfully in control. . . . They properly
may and ultimately will dictate the personnel, the
governing rules, the policies, sales and purchases, ex-
tensions and improvements, rates of compensation to
employees, including special compensation or bonus
appropriations for merit, terms and conditions of
employment, and all other matters pertaining to the
properties and business and management of the cor-
poration. After the honest fulfillment of all obliga-
tions to others, they are entitled not only to a fair and
reasonable return on their investments, but to all the
net proceeds of the business. . . .

"We do not endorse experimentation, especially con-

1 "Principles and Policies of the United States Steel Corpora-
tion" ; a statement by Elbert H. Gary, Chairman, at the Annual
Meeting of the Stockholders, April 18, 1921.

I46 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

cerning workmen, unless it seems practical and reason-
able. I venture the individual opinion that any plan
which seeks to deprive the investor of the control of
his property and business is inimical to the fundamental
ideas of our country and to the public welfare. Any
step in this direction is to be deplored. Any nation
which adopts it will fail to maintain a leading position
in industrial proficiency and progress. . . .

"It seems to me that the natural, if not the necessary,
result of the contemplated progress of labor unions, if
successful, would be to secure the control of shops, then
of the general management of business, then of capital,
and finally of government."

The Report of the Interchurch World Movement
shows what are the logical and inevitable consequences
of the Gary policy. In the manufacturing branch of
the steel industry, where it is in force, it meant that
approximately half the employees were subjected to a
twelve-hour day, and approximately one half of these
in turn to a seven-day week x ; that the annual earnings
of 72. per cent of the workers were below the lowest
standard that scientists are willing to term an American
standard of living, and 38 per cent of the workers
earned only three quarters of the sum needed for such
a standard2; that the system resulted in daily griev-
ances, for which there was no means of redress 3 ; that
an extremely provocative organization of private spies
and detectives was an integral part of the system4;
that the press was prostituted to the policy of deceiving

'"The Steel Strike of 1919," p. II.
'The same, p. 12.

"The same, p. 14. , , 0 , „ ., „

*The same, p. 14, and "Public Opinion and the Steel Strike,
pp. 1-86.

THE FRONTIERS OF DEMOCRACY I47

the public * ; that civil rights of free speech and assem-
bly were abrogated, and that personal rights were vio-
lated by community and state authorities who were
subservient to the corporation.2 Such conditions are
not "permanently satisfying to representative American
citizens." In view of the almost limitless possibilities
for harm that are involved in the Gary policy, one is
reminded of what used to be said about the Bourbon
autocrats — that they never learned anything and never
forgot anything.

If the reader demands positive demonstration that
management by investor and worker jointly will prove
efficient, it has to be admitted that the question is a
hard one. On the other hand, why insist so religiously
on the efficiency of investor management? As a
matter of fact, efficient is what it is not. Authorities 3
assert that monopoly is sufficiently developed in various
industries so that customary methods are entrenched,
and progressive innovations stifled. But the shameful
inefficiency of the present management has been most
mercilessly uncovered by the Federated American
Engineers. Their report has already been summarized
(p. 92 ff, above). Joint management could hardly be
worse; there are reasons to assume that it might be
much better. The cooperative societies of England and
Denmark have been managed by laboring people, and
they are among the largest and most successful enter-
prises in the world.

The stock argument against employees' participation
in management is the assertion that they cannot be

'"Public Opinion," etc., pp. 87-163.

2 "The Steel Strike," p. 15; "Public Opinion," etc., pp. 163-223.

3 Clark, "The Control of the Trusts," p. 83 f.; Jones, "The
Trust Problem in the United States," pp. 530 ff.

I48 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

trusted with so much managerial responsibility. A
crowd of ignorant laborers, utterly inexperienced in
management, would soon run production into the
ground. The most trenchant bit of literature bearing
on this question that has come to the writer's notice
is Veblen's "The Engineers and the Price System."
He diverts attention from the mass of unskilled labor-
ers to the small group of highly trained experts,
technicians and engineers. "Without them and their
constant attention the industrial equipment, the me-
chanical appliances of industry, would foot up to just
so much junk." "These expert men, technologists,
engineers, or whatever name may best suit them, make
up the indispensable General Staff of the industrial
system." These hired men actually are the managers
of industry, on the production side, even now. Veblen
asserts that the organized engineers, representing
labor, are entirely capable of managing industry with-
out the financial supervision of "absentee owners," rep-
resented by "syndicated investment bankers." Indeed,
he even goes so far as to contend that such supervision
is an actual hindrance to production by the engineers,
and therefore an expensive nuisance to the consuming
public. From the standpoint of the public interests,
he argues that our industries would be better managed
for us by the engineers than by the financiers. The
suggestion is novel, and worthy of consideration, to
say the least. The force of Veblen's argument can, of
course, be appreciated only by devoting a sitting to his
piquant and very witty little book. If his arguments
are sound, it is not production, but profiteering, that
would be run into the ground by industrial democracy ;
and that is the pith of the objection to it.

THE FRONTIERS OF DEMOCRACY I49

A great many firms are practicing arrangements
which they advertise as employees' participation in
management. Some of these — as, for example, the
Goodyear plan — have acquired a considerable reputation
for their success. From these ventures many middle
class business men have inferred that capital has already
met labor more than half way, and that joint manage-
ment is already an assured success. But such infer-
ences are too hasty. Without impeaching the sincerity
of the Goodyear or other similar plans, it may be well
to quote what Royal Meeker, the leading American
authority on this subject, said before the American
Economic Association1 in 1920:

"Of all the many hundreds of systems of 'industrial
democracy' which I have studied, very few give promise
of accomplishing much in the way of winning the
enthusiastic support of the workers, because little, if
any, additional authority over or responsibility for
methods and results is accorded them. In the great
majority of plans, the workers are permitted only to
participate in managing, under safeguards and direc-
tion or at least suggestion from above, matters of
safety, sanitation, benefit funds, and other 'welfare'
activities. No eager, enthusiastic response from the
workers can be expected from such ultra-conservative
adventures in industrial radicalism. I do not mean
that these plans are, in the great majority of cases,
insincere schemes intended to deceive the worker into
thinking he is being taken into partnership when he is
really only being 'taken in.' Nothing of the sort.
I think employers in general sincerely desire to make

1 See American Economic Review, Supplement, 1920, pp. 89 ff.

I50 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

concessions to labor. Of course, they want to concede
as little as is absolutely necessary to prevent the spread
of those radical things with the fearsome Russian
names. Perhaps as time goes by the workers will be
given the opportunity to demonstrate that they are
worthy of greater responsibilities and capable of more
constructive contributions to industrial management.
None of the shop committees and works councils has
been operating long enough to warrant generalizations
about future developments.

"As a worker and a student I feel that there is a
tremendous latent creative force in the workers of
to-day which is not being utilized at all. This force
may be likened to the force of the waves and the tides
of the ocean. No engineer has as yet been able to
devise a practical method for utilizing the giant strength
of the sea; but every industrial engineer with any
imagination whatsoever dreams of the day when this
giant will be harnessed and made to do the work of
the world. Perhaps it is not and never will be eco-
nomically feasible to harness the sea. It is likewise
possible that human nature is fundamentally so consti-
tuted that it never will be practicable to utilize the
good will, enthusiasm, and creative power of the
workers — to substitute leadership for drivership in
industry. It may be that industrial peace on earth is
unattainable, and that industrial war is the natural
state of man; but I do not believe it. Anyhow, it is
worth a thorough trial in order to find out whether the
workers, if given responsibility in industrial manage-
ment, will become so interested in their work that they
won't have time to be restless."

As this book goes through the proof reading an

THE FRONTIERS OF DEMOCRACY 151

article appears in the February, 1922, Atlantic, sub-
titled : "A Way Out for Labor and Capital." Accord-
ing to this writer the way out is voluntary fairness on
the part of the employer.

"The underlying principle of the relationship under
discussion is that the employer shall not take advantage
of the opportunity thus given to him. On the contrary,
it is based upon the fact that, at any time, for any com-
pany, there is a fair wage that can be paid. The condi-
tions in the company, in the industry, and general busi-
ness conditions, determine this. Sometimes it is higher,
sometimes lower ; but whatever it is, it is not to be deter-
mined by the amount at which men would rather work
than be out of employment. Likewise, this is equally true
of hours of labor and of other conditions of work. What
this wage is, what these hours are, what these conditions
of employment are — these are questions of fact, to be
determined as such."

It is stated that the question of what fair wages
and conditions actually are may be determined in vari-
ous ways. Several concerns in which this principle is
in use are described, but the Standard Oil Company of
New Jersey receives special attention. In this com-
pany

"All questions affecting wages, hours and working condi-
tions have been determined by conferences between rep-
resentatives of the company and representatives of the
employees. * * * The Board of Directors is the final
authority ; but in actual practice these matters are settled
in joint conference.

"It is by no means essential, however, that the method
be democratic. Just as sometimes in political life an able
and benevolent monarch furnishes a highly successful

152 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

government, so in industry the officers of a company can
actually determine from time to time what are fair wages,
hours, and working conditions, with no more than in-
formal contact with employees."

The writer claims various advantages for this adjust-
ment, among the rest that it greatly increases the effi-
ciency and productiveness of the workers. Its success
is demonstrated, he asserts, by the practice of numerous
firms which he enumerates and describes in some detail.

The prominence given to the Standard Oil Company
of New Jersey in this article suggests the pronounce-
ment by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., earlier in this chap-
ter. Let us accord absolute sincerity to Mr. Rocke-
feller's statement of his industrial creed, and to any
attempts to work it out in practice. As is stated in a
later chapter of this book, why may we not believe that
Christian ideals are at last actually to produce Christian
business men? Could a greater boon befall the twen-
tieth century than for a few of its leading generals of
industry actually to work out industrial justice volun-
tarily ?

Nevertheless, the experiences of history make it
excusable on our part if we are wary of carrying all
our eggs to market in that one basket. Benevolent
despotisms fall somewhat short of commanding our
entire confidence. The term unavoidably suggests its
most shining example in political history — the Hohen-
zollern dynasty ! The same succession that is blessed
with an Augustus or a Marcus Aurelius is too apt to
be cursed with a Nero or a Caligula. If the benevolent
despots of modern industry really do aspire to give us
a better world through their voluntary benevolence we
are willing, indeed gratefully anxious, for them to

THE FRONTIERS OF DEMOCRACY 1 53

demonstrate. But the earnest of their benevolence
which will bow our hearts in an ultimate act of faith
will be when they abdicate "the final authority of the
board of directors." But even to this we are willing
to accept a gradual preparation and approach, if only
we can be assured that an approach it really is, and
that it will be consummated eventually. Then we shall
be assured that they, like their avowed Master, are not
afraid to commit themselves to their own creed. Mean-
time, do we not well know that the cup of responsibility
which this fateful century is pressing to their Lillipu-
tian lips would be far too great for us to drink from
if it were pressed to ours instead.

So far in this discussion reference has been made
only to the suggestions of capital for solving the prob-
lem of industrial democracy. But labor has sugges-
tions also ; and is there any more inherent presumption
in their making suggestions than there is in capital's
doing so? The proposal of labor is collective bargain-
ing through the unions. For more than a century
they have been slowly building up their unions with
that single objective in view. And they are not likely
to abandon their aims.

There seem to be relatively few middle class citizens
who understand the fundamental principles of the labor
movement. Minor or quite irrelevant details get into
the focus of their attention, and central issues are lost
sight of altogether. One is reminded of a certain
patient who, according to the doctor's diagnosis, was
suffering from arteriosclerosis, pulmonary tuberculosis
and pediculosis capitis. Neither the patient nor his
family could be induced to take the slightest interest

154 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

in the arteriosclerosis nor the pulmonary tuberculosis;
but both he and they were violently concerned about
the pediculosis capitis. That was what itched ! Most
of us are similarly intelligent about the relative im-
portance of things in the labor movement.

A certain firm recently advertised for fifty men.
The next morning at the specified hour 2,000 were
crowded around the entrance to their plant. The com-
pany took a picture of the crowd and hung copies of
it about their shops. The disciplinary effect was
magical.

The case was typical, though somewhat exaggerated,
due to a business depression at the time. There is al-
ways a crowd of hungry out-of-works on the outside.
That hungry crowd of out-of-works is the most sig-
nificant causal fact in the whole situation. It is their
existence that strikes fear to the heart of the employed
worker inside. He is in constant danger of losing his
job to one of them. He dare not ask too high a
wage lest one of them underbid him and get his job
away. For him, as well as for themselves, that crowd
outside keeps wages down to the Ricardian level.

To the employer, on the other hand, their presence
outside is a bonanza, a justification for quiet sleep, and
a means of thick beefsteaks.

The dearest wish of the laborer on the inside is to
be rid of the menace of that crowd on the outside. If
he could only get them all into his union, and get their
pledge not to put in a bid for his job, he would make
almost any compromise with them. He would soldier
on his job so as to make two jobs grow where but one
had grown before, so that there would be jobs enough
for him and them, and at a price agreed upon by all

THE FRONTIERS OF DEMOCRACY 155

of them. That would be incomparably better, he
thinks, than for them to be bidding down the price
of both his job and theirs.

But he never gets them all into his union, so per-
versely blind are they to the mutuality of their inter-
ests and his.

But whenever his boss ventures to employ one of
them (except on terms approved by his union) he
makes the boss trouble if he dares. Often he goes
on strike to enforce "recognition of the union," which
means to compel his boss to have no dealings with
that crowd outside.

It is when he goes on strike that they worry him
the most, however, for then they are liable to sneak
in and take his job, and at any poor price. So he
stands around the gate and "pickets." If they persist
on going in to get his job, he, as likely as not, loses
his head and throws brickbats at them; which brick-
bats are in danger of going through the adjacent win-
dow, thus invading the rights of property. He may
even go so far as to call them "scabs." If he could
only keep them away — i. e., maintain a "closed shop" —
his employer would soon have to call him back on
terms of his own dictating; and then he, the laborer,
would have a voice in the management of the industry
and in the division of the profits. But, alas, he is
prevented by that hungry crowd of out-of-works
outside.

To the employer the right of that crowd outside to
sell their labor to whomever they please (that is to
him) is in his conscience like the apple of an eye. He
gets our country's militia called out to open the way
through the pickets so the crowd outside can come

I56 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

in where the jobs are to which they have a right.
Sometimes he boards the militia himself. Usually the
militia is instructed not to shoot unless it is necessary.
Or better still he gets the courts to declare picketing
illegal, or to reduce the number of legal pickets to one
per entrance. If the President calls him into confer-
ence with labor and the public over the issue, he bolts
the conference with the august ultimatum that it is a
principle for which he stands, namely, the right of that
crowd out there to sell their labor to anybody that will
buy it, at any price they can get.

The strength or weakness of collective bargaining
depends almost entirely upon the success or lack of it
with which the labor unions can maintain the closed
shop. A drive for the open shop is a drive at the very
heart of collective bargaining. Labor wants the closed
shop so as to enjoy industrial enfranchisement; capital
wants the open shop so as to perpetuate industrial dis-
franchisement. Collective bargaining is labor's pro-
posal for making industrial democracy real ; capital op-
poses it because reality is precisely what it will con-
tribute to industrial democracy.

Meantime we of the middle class sputter against
labor because a plumber declines to connect the gas
range, or a carpenter and his helper sit and wait while
an electrician and his helper screw in a dozen electric
light bulbs. And meantime also labor makes the ir-
reparable blunder of exasperating the prejudices and
flaunting the misunderstandings of the public.

Collective bargaining may not prove to be the solu-
tion of the problem ; but it is labor's insistent proposal
the world over; and certainly it is safe to say that the
time is now here when the public should form a more
intelligent judgment than ever before as to its merits.

THE FRONTIERS OF DEMOCRACY 1 57

As for us of the middle class, if we do not wish this
war over the principle of collective bargaining to con-
tinue we must devise and enforce some better method
of industrial democracy. But let us not deceive our-
selves into imagining that the industrial disfranchise-
ment of the workers can go unremedied. There are
too many of them, and they are too thoroughly in-
doctrinated with the ideals of democracy.

Industrial disfranchisement is an ugly word. Blown
upon by the hot breath of democratic ideals, can we
doubt that it will continue to give off the gray vapors
of social discontent? The industrial enfranchisement
of labor is the most fundamental of all the reforms
needed. It lies closest to the heart of the social unrest.
If the central word of this whole book is desired, we
are now ready to pronounce it. It is : Faith ! Faith
in the feasibility of industrial democracy. As an in-
ference from our faith in political democracy and the
Christian ideals of human life, Mr. Gary simply must
be wrong. If the reader has faith in democracy and
Christianity at all, how can he doubt that the nation
which is first to enfranchise its working people indus-
trially will assuredly gain a great initial advantage in
world competition, just as did those nations that were
first to enfranchise their common people politically.
Especially if industrial enfranchisement is promptly
accompanied with industrial education.

We often hear it remarked, with an air of absolute
finality, that there are always two sides to every ques-
tion. But in the perspective of history a shadow of
doubt falls upon this old saw. When the Children of
Israel, oppressed under the heel of Pharaoh, cried unto
Jehovah in their despair, and Moses led them out
across the Dead Sea and the wilderness, there were two

I58 CAUSES AND CURES EOR SOCIAL UNREST

sides to the question. When Spartacus with his gladi-
ators, in the days of Pompey, were hunted down like
beasts till 6,000 of their bodies, borne aloft on crosses,
lined the Appian Way, a warning to all other slaves
who should dare to strike for freedom, there were two
sides to the question. When the Paris mob, after a
century and a half of Bourbon autocracy, surged out
of Paris and stormed the Bastile, there were two sides
to the question. When, as a protest against political
disfranchisement, the Bostonians dumped the tea into
Boston Harbor, John Hancock and his associates risked
their signatures to the Declaration of Independence,
and Washington with his bleeding little army struggled
through from Valley Forge to Yorktown, there were
two sides to the question. There always are two sides
to every question! Are there not? But it is always
the contemporaries, unfortunately, who are least capable
of seeing which side is which. Strange how gener-
ously our sympathies go out to the poor and oppressed
in all periods of history, except, forsooth, the only
period in which there is the slightest chance to make
our sympathies count for anything.

Of course there really are faults on both sides, just
as there are in all wars. We are even now beginning
to realize that the policy of the German Imperial Gov-
ernment was not the only cause of the Great War.
There was also the policy of British capitalism ! We
are even beginning to wonder whether the "Huns"
were the only ones guilty of atrocities. The Civil
War has now receded far enough into the past so that
we are able to see that there were faults on each side,
both as to its causes and its conduct. And so there
are in this labor-capital controversy. Labor, on ac-
count of its guerrilla tactics and its inexcusable outrages

THE FRONTIERS OF DEMOCRACY 1 59

against certain fundamental moral principles, has
justly forfeited much of the good will of the public.
Nor has capital been innocent either.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that Germany was
wrong in her reversion to political autocracy, but the
Allies were right in their stand for democracy. To
make the world safe for democracy is what we really
were fighting for; as we should now realize if Ger-
many had won and we had lost our aims. The South
was wrong in her defense of slavery and state sover-
eignty, as its enlightened men and women now realize ;
and the North was right. It is fortunate for America
and the world that the right won. And so it is in the
war between capital and labor. Labor is right in its
demand for industrial enfranchisement; and capital is
wrong in opposing it. Compared with that nothing
else really counts to speak of. Posterity will see that
as clearly as the summer tourist at Colorado Springs
sees the snow-capped summit of Pike's Peak above
every other object in the region. If we could all see
it now, a public opinion would formulate itself that
would coerce a just and stable settlement without a
fight. That is what our fathers ought to have been
able to do in the case of the Civil War. Why are we
so perversely blind as to go on forever glorifying war
for settling issues that men ought to be able to settle
without war? When are we ever to begin using a
new method? Never, till we develop the insight to
discern the merits of an issue while we are still in the
midst of it. Therein is the folly and danger of this
owl-wise foolishness to the effect that "there are al-
ways two sides to every question." There often are :
the right side and the wrong side !

CHAPTER XII

SOME NECESSARY ECONOMIC REFORMS

THE central problem of the present crisis is that
of devising a mechanism for industrial democ-
racy. But many other reforms are necessary
also. Socialism proposes one single, great, and all-
inclusive reform as a panacea for the ills of the pres-
ent social crisis. The ear-mark of quackery is that
it is always strong in cure-alls. But science has no
faith in panaceas; it depends upon specifics instead.
Socialism appeals to ignorant persons for the same
reasons that patent medicines do : the formula is simple,
it sounds as if it would be pleasant to take, and it
promises to cure everything. But the social organism
is quite as intricate as the human body and subject to
as many different sorts of ills. At present it is suffer-
ing from a complication of disorders ; for which num-
erous specifics are needed. It is far outside the scope
of this book to make an exhaustive diagnosis of our
social disorders or to prescribe a complete course of
treatment. That would be only less presumptuous than
socialism. Only a few of the most obviously needed
reforms will be suggested here. For anything ap-
proaching completeness or finality we must wait upon
the advancement and popularization of social science.

1 60

SOME NECESSARY ECONOMIC REFORMS l6l

First: Taxes. There is scarcely any public prob-
lem that is causing more discussion at the present time
than taxation. It is almost universally agreed that our
tax system needs reforming. But no problem is more
difficult of solution in practice, for two reasons : it re-
quires the profoundest scientific insight to foresee what
the incidence of a specific tax measure will be; and,
second, selfishness is so rampant that a just solution is
almost too much to hope for.

But it is with respect to the fundamental aims of
taxation that we need to clarify our vision. In the
past the aim of taxation has been single — at least as
set forth in the treatises on the subject — namely, to
collect funds for the support of government. In view
of the enormous and anti-social concentration of wealth
that has developed since, and because of, the Industrial
Revolution, it would seem that we might add a second
purpose to taxation, namely: to restore a wholesome
equilibrium. Taxation can be used as a means of re-
diffusing the wealth of the community ; and why should
it not?

As a matter of fact taxation always has been a factor
in the distribution of wealth. In all periods of history
we see certain privileged patricians waxing fat as a
direct or indirect result of the tax system, while the
noses of the plebeian masses were being held ruthlessly
to the tax-gatherer's grindstone. Governments have
been undermined by this abuse. Our own federal tax
system, for a generation following the Civil War, is
recognized by authorities * in economics to have been
an important factor in the concentration of wealth in
1 See Ely, "Monopolies and Trusts," p. 254.

l62 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

the United States. This is a subject that merits very
curious and diligent study on the part of all middle
class tax payers. It is a much neglected chapter in
our national history. If we have got wealth piled up
too high in some spots for the general good, as a result
partly of taxation, why should we not correct the defect
by the same device?

Instances are rare in history of civilizations declining
because the richest two per cent were deprived of their
motive for productive enterprise by reason of an extra
heavy tax burden, the proceeds of which were used to
promote the health and education of the ignorant and
depraved masses at the bottom.

The reason why taxation has frequently concentrated
wealth sometimes appears incidentally between the lines
of the most authoritative and conservative writers.
Here is a quotation from Daniels' "Public Finance,"
the quotation within the quotation being from H. C.
Adams. It reads :

"Lastly, the universality of public credit must be reck-
oned among the noteworthy attributes of the financial
constitution of to-day. The significance of the late rise
of public credit and of its extension parallel with the
growth of the political power of the propertied classes
consists in the fact that 'when property owners lend to
the government they lend to a corporation controlled by
themselves.' Public debts are in reality mortgages upon
all the industries under the taxing power of the debtor
government. The interest on these debts ordinarily can
be paid only by taxation. Some substantial security
against repudiation is a condition necessarily precedent
to the employment of public credit; and this security
originated and consists in the political power of the

SOME NECESSARY ECONOMIC REFORMS 1 63

propertied classes. Hence the origin of this last char-
acteristic of modern public finance."

Why should not this quotation suggest to the middle
class that conditions are ripe for us to assume the
control of taxation?

For the purpose of lopping the tops off* from unduly
tall fortunes it would seem that the inheritance tax is
the most promising instrument. If a man has accu-
mulated an estate of some hundreds of millions, it is
not easy to see how his productive efficiency could be
discouraged by the prospect of bequeathing part of it
to the public instead of to his sons and sons-in-law ;
but it is easy to see how the young men's productive
efficiency might be increased by a rather severe dose
of such medicine. The danger of "killing the goose
that lays the golden Qgg" is least in the case of in-
heritance taxes. That phrase is a great favorite with
those whom Daniels calls "the propertied classes." But
it would seem proper for us of the middle classes to
become quite as much interested in cooking the eggs
that hatch the golden geese.

This may sound "radical" to some; and yet the plan
was proposed years ago by one of our "captains of
industry," Mr. Andrew Carnegie. He said:

"The growing disposition to tax more and more
heavily large estates left at death is a cheering indication
of the growth of a salutary change in public opinion.
. . . The budget presented in the British Parliament the
other day proposed to increase the death duties ; and,
most significant of all, the new tax is to be a graduated
one. Of all forms of taxation this seems the wisest.
Men who continue hoarding great sums all their lives,

164 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

the proper use of which for public ends would work
good to the community from which it chiefly came, should
be made to feel that the community, in the form of the
State, cannot thus be deprived of its proper share. By
taxing estates heavily at death the State marks its con-
demnation of the selfish millionaire's unworthy life."1

And again:

"By taxing estates heavily at death, the State marks
its condemnation of the selfish millionaire's unworthy
life. It is desirable that nations should go much farther
in this direction." 2

And still again:

"The Almighty Dollar bequeathed to children is an 'al-
mighty curse.' No man has a right to handicap his son
with such a burden as great wealth." 3

Inheritance is a right maintained by the state ; other-
wise it could not exist; the state may modify it for the
general good; in fact, is morally obligated to do so.
Inheritance taxes are not a hardship, because they can
be foreseen. No doubt society ought to be conserva-
tive and cautious about limiting the amount of property
a man may legally accumulate. There is some corre-
lation between making money and benefiting the com-
munity. But there is growing up a very considerable
intelligent sentiment in favor of limiting quite rigor-
ously the amount of wealth a man may bequeath.

The purpose of inheritance is to insure opportunity

'Quoted in H. E. Read's "Abolition of Inheritance," N. Y.,
1918, p. 173.
2 Andrew Carnegie in North American Review, Vol. 148, p. 659.
'Andrew Carnegie in "The Gospel of Wealth."

SOME NECESSARY ECONOMIC REFORMS 165

and protection to one's offspring. But it is entirely
conceivable that opportunity and protection can be bet-
ter secured in some other way than by private inher-
itance. Education is really a kind of inheritance; by
it the young come into possession of the accumulated
knowledge and culture of the past generation. That
kind of inheritance used to be left to the family, just
as property inheritance still is. In the olden days there
were no public schools; it was a private tutor or no
tutor at all, a private school or no school at all. But
now the government has taken over the responsibility
of educating the young and sees to it that the heritage
of knowledge and culture is passed on to all in pro-
portion to their ability to utilize it. The inheritance
of wealth is a means, not an end. Its object is not to
relieve young people of the necessity of being useful,
but to insure every young person a fair opportunity of
becoming useful. And for that purpose public in-
heritance may prove to be quite as equitable and effec-
tive as private inheritance. The purpose of material
inheritance, like cultural inheritance (i.e., education),
is to insure opportunity and protection to children.
In the olden days both were responsibilities of the
family. The nineteenth century saw the transference
of that responsibility, so far as cultural inheritance is
concerned, from the family to the state. The twentieth
century may see the same transference of responsibility
in the case of material inheritance. And the one might
conceivably be as great a gain as the other ; for is it not
better in a democracy to endow opportunity for the
many than to endow parasitism and luxury for a few ?
Enormous sums might thereby be made available for

l66 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

educational and other public welfare purposes. And
the gross inequalities of wealth that now constitute
such a serious social irritant could thus be systemat-
ically mitigated once every generation, with hardship
to nobody. It is the socially created handicaps and
advantages, for which no rational justification can be
offered, that generate the social unrest.

The case is not quite so clear for graduated income
taxes. There is more danger that they might put a
penalty on brains, and discourage industry. This is of
course a real danger, but it is least likely to be a social
menace when applied to the few excessively rich, espe-
cially when such incomes accrue chiefly from property.
At any rate we should hardly take too seriously the
present outcry against them. It may be repeated that
it is only sheep that before their shearers are dumb.

The enormous war debts under which the world is
now staggering make it critically important that the
middle class study taxation with a view to redistribu-
tion of wealth thereby. If concentration should again
be promoted by the methods of paying our present
super-enormous war debts, as it was by our methods
of paying the relatively small debts after the Civil
War, it is hard to see how there could be much real
democracy left. A great war debt is an unsafe thing
for a democracy!

Second: Monopoly. One of the pressing needs of
the present situation is the control of monopoly and
near monopoly. But it is also one of the unsolved
problems of economics. Professor Jones 1 concludes
(p. 493), "that the program of trust dissolution has by

1 "The Trust Problem in the United States."

SOME NECESSARY ECONOMIC REFORMS 1 67

no means been fully successful." Professor Ely pre-
dicted as much, twenty-odd years ago, as anyone might
have done who understood the principles underlying the
movement. The following sentences may be quoted
from Professor Jones's conclusion:

"If, then, the purposes of the anti-trust laws are to be
achieved, it is evident that unfair methods of competition
must be eliminated; the monopolization of natural re-
sources must be prevented, by socialization if necessary;
the patent laws must be revised ; trust dissolutions must
be made more effective ; and the tariff must be reformed"

(P- 563).

"The restoration of competitive conditions would be
greatly expedited by the reform of our corporation laws,
and in particular by the requirement that all corporations
engaged in interstate commerce be compelled to take out a
federal charter" (p. 563).

"If, however, the destruction of the trusts is not deemed
feasible, or even socially desirable, there are two alter-
natives : ( 1 ) The trusts may be permitted to continue as
privately owned monopolies, their potentialities for evil
being removed, so far as possible, through governmental
regulation of their prices, securities, and the like, following
the analogy of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
The difficulties that are likely to be encountered in carry-
ing out this program are impressive. (2) The other
alternative is the socialization of the monopolized indus-
tries. For this step the country is not yet ready, and
perhaps may never be" (p. 565).

Third: Immigration. The Minneapolis Journal
recently raised the question editorially whether a coun-
try might not have too much population. This is a
new point of view in the popular press. There are

1 68 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

reasons why growth of population has always been
regarded favorably. It was desirable for purposes of
defense as well as industry. The death rate was high;
so a high birth rate was necessary. In America the
vast new area to be occupied made a rapidly growing
population desirable. But we have now arrived at a
stage of our development when we must develop a new
point of view. The old superstition about the duty
of raising large families may have been valid in olden
times, but now it serves only as "dope" with which
employers like to doctor the labor market. From now
on the growth of population means Ricardo's iron law
of wages. It means cut-throat competition among
laborers. It means poverty, and poverty means social
unrest. And so far as breeding poverty and social
unrest is concerned, immigration from Europe is worse
than "immigration from heaven" — the steerage is
worse than the stork — because foreigners have such
low standards of living.

The public mind is badly muddled on the subject of
immigration, chiefly because it has been "doped." In
the first place we need to remember that the talk we
hear so constantly about scarcity of labor is not. true.
It simply is not true ! There is no more fundamental
idea for the public to get into its head than the fallacy
and deceit of this "dope" about scarcity of labor.
About 2,000,000 is the normal number of unemployed.
Except in exceptional times, like the stress of war or
reconstruction, there is an over-supply of labor. The
fear of unemployment is one of the most serious wor-
ries of the laboring man. Unrestricted immigration
makes it worse. There is an element of employers'
propaganda in the demand for imported labor. An

SOME NECESSARY ECONOMIC REFORMS 169

abundant supply of cheap labor is the purpose of the
big corporations in conniving with the steamship com-
panies to fill the steerage. The foreigner, because of
the low standard of living that he is accustomed to,
will accept a lower wage than the native worker; so
competition with the foreigner forces down the wages
of the natives. The chief effect of immigration is to
depress American wages; and that is why the public
is kept humbugged about it, and why it is so hard to
get it restricted by law.

This is the joker in the protective tariff. During
the entire period while the importation of the products
of foreign labor was restricted, the importation of
foreign labor itself was never restricted at all. Instead
of protecting American labor against cheap foreign
labor, the tariff made American labor pay a high price
for their employers' protected goods, while getting a
low price for their own unprotected labor. This is
why students of the subject are not at all surprised
when reactionary politicians advocate a return to the
protective tariff. War debts furnish a most admirable
excuse.

While the assimilation of immigrant population
keeps the labor market in constant congestion, it does
not, as the public naively supposes, increase the popu-
lation in the long run. It is generally assumed by
American economists that the immigration of the past
fifty years has not made our present population much
greater than what it would have been without immi-
gration. In the future it will probably increase our
population less than in the past. Immigration simply
substitutes the children of immigrants for the unborn
children of the native stock! Native workers, finding

170 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

themselves unable to compete with foreign workers
and maintain their standard of living, have recourse to
limiting the size of their families. Foreign workers
feel no such necessity. Immigration has been one of
the chief factors in reducing the birth rate of the
middle class. There is a consensus of opinion among
economists and sociologists that immigration should
be rigorously restricted. For if we allow ourselves,
generation after generation, to be swamped by an army
of cheap immigrants we can hardly hope to solve our
problem at all. A man might as well try to warm his
house and family in the winter with his doors standing
wide open, in the delusion that he is warming the people
in the street.

Fourth: Industrial Education. We need a thorough-
going reorganization of our educational system with a
view to adequate vocational training. Our present
secondary education, which requires boys and girls of
the teen-age to spend so much of their time sitting on
board seats and reading out of books is in direct
defiance of all the physical and mental tendencies of
adolescence. Nature demands that they be active, and
industrial participation is one of the most educative
experiences to which they could be subjected. The
halfway position that secondary education now occu-
pies between the old Latin-mathematics curriculum and
a really adequate provision for universal vocational
training, is, to admit the truth, a halfway station
between the old fashioned secondary education designed
only for aristocrats, and that really democratic educa-
tion for the masses which the future will eventually
bring forth.

SOME NECESSARY ECONOMIC REFORMS 17I

The application of science and the use of machinery
are capable of making undreamed-of changes in
numerous lines of work. This fact was mentioned
before, and agriculture was cited as an example.
Housekeeping is another example. Electricity is the
best maid. There is scarcely any art nor science that
a good home maker cannot make use of. Domestic
engineering is a coming profession, for which all girls
should be professionalized through the high school
curriculum. And what is true of these two types of
drudgery is true of nobody knows how many other
types.

And with an industrial education of the scope sug-
gested here the productivity of labor could be very
greatly increased. There are two ways of making two
blades of productive labor grow where but one had
grown before. One is to import an extra laborer from
Europe ; the other is to double the productive power of
the native laborer by giving him industrial education,
including a technical knowledge of the sciences and
mechanics involved in his work. The advantage of
the latter is that it adds to the food supply without
adding mouths to be fed. It ought, therefore, to be
universal. Such an educational innovation requires
some faith, however; and would involve some changes
in the industrial processes.

According to all competent sociological and educa-
tional opinion industrial education should be accom-
panied by liberal education. The two should not be
divorced; in fact, that can not be, as any one must
realize who stops to consider how essential science is
to all industrial processes. Such education, combining

172 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

industrial training and liberal culture, would qualify
the laboring class for the enfranchisement called for
in the first part of this chapter.

In Chapter VIII it was asserted * that the greatest
undeveloped market for American industry is the
potential purchasing power of the laboring class. It
was there pointed out that raising the standard of living
of the poor so as to produce this extra market, need
come out of the industrial shares of no one else. The
reason must now be apparent; by industrial education
their productive power can be increased, so that their
higher standard of living would only be their own
extra consumption of their own extra production.

Industrial education will be mentioned again in
Chapter XVI.

Fifth: Health. Three million people are on the sick
list all the time, afflicted either with tuberculosis, pneu-
monia, venereal diseases, typhoid, malaria, hookworm,
yellow fever, or industrial diseases. Two thirds of
the children of our public schools are handicapped by
malnutrition, defective teeth, diseased tonsils, adenoids,
enlarged glands, impaired vision or hearing, spinal
curvature, organic heart disease, nervous disorder or
other physical defects prejudicial to health. Nearly
half a million industrial accidents occur annually, fully
ten per cent of which are fatal. Infant mortality
accounts for one fourth the death rate. All this im-
poses an awful burden upon the people, especially upon
the poor. It reduces their earning power very materi-
ally indeed, as well as increasing their expenses. It
deprives families of their means of support, plunging
them into pauperism and depriving the rising genera-

*See Chapter VIII, p. 112.

SOME NECESSARY ECONOMIC REFORMS 1 73

tion of opportunity. It causes incalculable suffering
and grief. It perpetuates itself from generation to
generation.

Science has now advanced to the stage where most
of this is preventable. Health becomes accordingly a
natural right. The first step is a complete system of
medical inspection in schools, together with school
clinics and practical instruction in hygiene. This is
rapidly developing already, and is full of promise. The
Red Cross is not only promoting this health work in
schools but is extending it into the communities, and
carrying it to the homes. Sociologists have long
advocated "the socialization of the medical profession,"
which means that doctors, nurses and pharmacists
should be employees of the state, just as teachers now
are, and hospitals and clinics, public institutions like
the schools. The arguments against this are precisely
the same as those urged against the public school one
hundred years ago. Present developments, especially
health work in schools, and the work of the Red Cross,
indicate that the socialization of the medical profession
may not be so very far in the future.

Sixth: Miscellaneous Economic Reforms. The
foregoing are among the most fundamental of the
scientific measures for securing a larger measure of
social justice. They are some of the changes most
needed in the rules of the game. But there are many
others. To discuss them all would be to write a thick
book instead of a short chapter. A few others may be
mentioned.

Unemployment is a serious burden to labor; the
right to work would seem to be a natural right. "The
creation of a comprehensive, efficient and neutral

174 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

federal-state employment service, manned with a trained
and progressive personnel, inspired by sound ideals of
national service, and functioning for both economic and
social progress, is the immediate need of America." x
The government can guarantee employment by planning
public works to be done at slack seasons. The plan
would affect the labor market much as the federal re-
serve banking system affects the money market.

Industrial accident, sickness, and old age insurance
have already been somewhat developed; suitable legal
enactments should carry these types of social insurance
much farther. Child and woman labor, the conditions
of labor, housing and sanitation, should all be con-
trolled by law ; much has already been accomplished in
these lines. High finance, or the jugglery of corpora-
tion securities, has been one of the flagrant evils of
recent times. Too many large fortunes represent no
contribution whatever to industry, national wealth, nor
social welfare, but only the clever manipulation of
stocks and bonds. In its worst forms corporation
finance has been plain gambling and pure cheat. Such
wrongs must be made crimes against the law.

Seventh: International Comity. International trade,
outlet into the world markets, and dependable interna-
tional credits, are necessary to our national prosperity.
These are seriously hindered of course by unstable in-
ternational relations. The burden of taxation to pre-
pare against possible future wars is becoming insuffer-
able. Besides, actual war is always imminent, a
Moloch ever ready to destroy the children of each new
generation. The after war collapse of credit threatens

1 Don L. Loescher, in American Labor Legislation Review,
March, 1920, p. 59.

SOME NECESSARY ECONOMIC REFORMS 175

the collapse of international trade. But it takes more
than good will and pious wishes to assure international
peace and stability. There must be some machinery
which can enforce the adjustment of differences. Not
personal good will, but the courts of justice put an end
to private defense and vengeance. The German states
fought among themselves until a federal empire was
set up. The Greek states never achieved such a piece
of interstate machinery; instead they fought each other
to death. The aim of our Civil War was to preserve
our federal institution. And there will never be inter-
national peace till the world creates some international
machinery competent to enforce it.

But that machinery will cost something. The price
will be to limit the sovereignty of nations; just as the
price of matrimony is to limit the freedom of the
contracting parties. We individualistic middle class
Americans are discouragingly slow in seeing the neces-
sity for that. We can see the costs of an international
federation; but we cannot see the cost of getting along
without one. That cost is the next war !

The aggregate effect of all these reforms would be
very considerable indeed. They would prevent no com-
petent person from becoming rich; only from becom-
ing richer than is good for society. They would re-
move from nobody the incentive to do his best work;
instead they would furnish motives for work — oppor-
tunity, prospects and necessity — to millions who now
lack them. They would conserve the inherent rights
of all children to health, home, education and oppor-
tunity. They would impose neither unjust burdens

I76 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

nor unwise restrictions on anybody. Together they
would greatly increase the sum total of human happi-
ness, give democracy the appearance of a sincere at-
tempt to achieve social justice, and very greatly allay
the social unrest.

In this connection the reader will be interested in a
quotation from a magazine article by Thomas Nixon
Carver, the Harvard economist, one of the strictest and
most orthodox opponents of socialism in the academic
circles of this country. He wrote : *

"Socialism as a movement is quite distinct from so-
cialism as a theory of industrial organization, and it is
also to be distinguished from socialism as a program.
Socialism as a movement is merely a development of
class spirit among propertyless wage workers, and of
class antagonism against the owners of capital. This
movement does not depend in the least upon justice or
injustice, or upon economic soundness or unsoundness.
It is wholly a matter of class consciousness and class
antagonism. It will succeed, whether its views be just
or not, whenever its class consciousness becomes strong
enough, and its class antagonism bitter enough, to sweep
away the present social order. It will fail, whether its
views be sound or unsound, if this class consciousness
fails to include the majority of the people, or if their
class hatred does not become bitter enough to make them
revolutionists.

"More specifically, the day when fifty-one per cent of
the voters find themselves in the condition of propertyless
wage workers, with no reasonable hope of ever becoming
anything else, will be the last day of the present social
order, and the next day will be the first day of socialism.
Let us not imagine that we can avoid this cataclysm by
arguments, however sound, to show that the proposed

1 Independent, July 31, 1913.

SOME NECESSARY ECONOMIC REFORMS 1 77

new social order is economically unsound or imprac-
ticable. It does not need to be either practicable, sound
or just. It will come anyway whenever fifty-one per
cent of the voters see that they have nothing to gain by
preserving the present system. It may be that the change
will send us all to perdition; to perdition we shall go
whenever the conditions described above are reached."

The foregoing reforms — and others like them —
would drain the swamps and marshes of our social area
so that socialism could not grow in them. But for
capitalism to assume instead an uncompromising and
aggressive attitude of opposition to such reforms is
sheer suicidal madness. Nor is it any the less suicidal
imbecility for the middle classes to drift along in smug,
blind, ignorant indifference to what is happening to us
all, and how it can be prevented.

CHAPTER XIII

THE MIDDLE CLASS AS THE DOCTOR

SO far in this book three classes of American
society have been referred to, namely capital,
labor, and the middle class. If any cure for the
social unrest is to be effected each of these classes has
its own peculiar responsibility to perform. The rest-
less poor must be patient. They think they have been
patient long enough ; but they have not. Haste makes
waste; revolutions are always followed by reaction.
Nothing is to be gained by rash violence. There is
really good ground for patience. Rome was not built
in a single day. At the rate history is made, the
progress of social reform in the last generation is by no
means discouraging. Reform waits upon the molding
of public opinion; haste in advance of public opinion
only delays the final consummation. Hence advocates
of reform must resort less to radical agitation, and
more to sound discussion. They must put their trust
in free speech, and not in torch and bomb. Every
tendency on their part to resort to violence must be
restrained. If they understand their own interests,
they will restrain such tendencies voluntarily, and culti-
vate the age-tried individual virtues upon which civili-
zation always has depended, and always will. The
chief enemy of the man at the left is the man at the
more extreme left. And if the tendency to violence is

178

THE MIDDLE CLASS AS THE DOCTOR 1 79

not voluntarily restrained, it must be restrained by
compulsion. But in such a way as to interfere neither
with the constitutional right of free speech, nor with
representative government; for they, all classes must
unite in understanding, are the modern substitute for
violence.

The radical element in the laboring class are commit-
ting a fatal blunder by their doctrine of sabotage and
direct action. Sabotage is based on the assumption that
labor and capital have nothing whatever in common;
and that labor's best card, therefore, is to deliver the
least possible for its wage. This philosophy has per-
meated the vast majority of the workers, until an
honest day's work is becoming altogether too excep-
tional. The avowed aim of this theory and practice is
to bring about the collapse of the present system, by
obstructing production and promoting friction in every
possible way. The result has been to alienate the good
will and support of the public, that is, of the great
middle class. Ten years ago the cause of labor enjoyed
generous public sympathy. That was its greatest asset.
That asset labor has largely squandered; and the radi-
cal element is to blame. The public is willing to reform
the present system; and, if time enough is allowed for
the education of public opinion, to do it thoroughly.
But the American public will never permit . the over-
throw of the present system. The chaos of social revo-
lution they desperately fear and abhor. And they will
see the laboring class, with all their grievances, in the
deepest Hades for a thousand years to come, before
they will tolerate for one moment the "Bolshevik" pro-
gram of destruction. If that program is insisted upon
by the "reds," the middle class will line up in the coming

l8o CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

readjustment against the laboring class, and defend the
existing order to the last ditch. A policy of sabotage
and direct action is the worst possible damage the
laboring class can inflict upon their own cause. They
can never win in America without the support of the
middle class. Middle class social philosophy and ideals,
and middle class methods of reform are their only hope.
Any propaganda that undermines the middle class
philosophy of life and morals in the minds of the
workers is extremely dangerous therefore. It is also
futile; and will continue to be so until the condition of
the masses sinks very much lower indeed than it is in
America, or is ever likely to become. This is not
Russia! The facts are that in America the material
condition of the masses is relatively good ; educational
facilities are generous, and opportunities are sufficiently
open so that poor boys are constantly rising to posi-
tions of wealth. A far wiser propaganda for the work-
ers is one that will ally and amalgamate them with the
middle class. And such an alliance and amalgamation
should be forced upon the lower classes, whether their
agitators like it or not, by compulsory attendance laws
that will make high school graduation practically uni-
versal.

As for the very rich, they must make concessions.
Not in the form of charity, to be sure, but in the form
of such changes in the rules of the game as will bring
about social justice eventually. The concessions which
the rich must make cannot be bogus, fictitious nor frac-
tional concessions, like profit sharing, stock distribution
to employees, factory welfare work, and the like, valu-
able half -loaves as these sometimes are. Such devices
do not turn the main currents of wealth distribution

THE MIDDLE CLASS AS THE DOCTOR l8l

nor industrial control out of their customary channels.
A genuine redistribution of power and wealth is abso-
lutely indispensable to social peace; and the sooner
those in control realize this fact the better it will be for
all concerned. The unduly rich must frankly look for-
ward to a modified social status for their descendants,
and accept public measures calculated to render their
children and grandchildren only moderately rich; and
even that only upon condition of hard, efficient, useful
work.

Why can they not understand that this is to their
own interest in the long run? Can they not see that
the Stuarts, the Bourbons, the Hapsburgs, the Roman-
offs, and the Hohenzollerns might all have survived to
places, not only of affectionate regard, but of reverence
for their ancestral trees, had they made the appropriate
concessions at the opportune times ! During the early
stages of the French Revolution the privileged classes
stubbornly resisted all change. A little later they were
seized with a veritable mania for the voluntary surren-
der of their hereditary privileges; but it was too late!
The course of events had fallen into the hands of the
Paris mob. It is not the autocrats of government, but
the autocrats of industry and finance, against whom the
shafts of the present age are being leveled. Why can
they not learn the lessons of history ?

To make such concessions now is the best possible
provision they can make for the welfare of their de-
scendants. It is far better to bequeath to their children
a fair chance in a just world than to bequeath to them
the fat chances in an unjust world; for eventually the
fat will be in the fire. As Mr. Roosevelt so wisely,
indeed so prophetically, remarked, "We must become,

l82 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

to a real degree, our brother's keeper, especially for the
sake of our own children; for in the long run this
world will not be a pleasant living place for our children
unless it is also a reasonably comfortable living place
for our brother's children." 1 This kind of talk is not
pleasant, to be sure, for the excessively rich to listen to ;
but it is for their own good, and their children's, never-
theless. Nor is it intended in the least as a threat : but
rather as a solemn warning. The threat is in the unrest
of the times, and in the lessons of history.

This would be a fortunate democracy indeed if the
concessions referred to could only be made voluntarily.
The Christian worth and sincerity of rich men is not to
be determined by their conspicuous contributions to
good causes, nor by their participation in great ecclesi-
astical drives; but by the attitude they take toward
scientific movements for social justice, especially when
their own pecuniary interests are involved. Not bloody
hands but a bloody brow is the acceptable credentials
of Christ-like leadership for a better world. One
thousand rich men, associated together in a truly patri-
otic, Christian spirit of self sacrifice, could organize
and promote the voluntary readjustment here referred
to; and thereby benefit not only society in general and
their own immediate heirs in particular, but win the
lasting admiration and gratitude of posterity. A very
few men can do almost infinite damage. Probably the
slave owning aristocracy of the Old South, who pushed
this country into the Civil War, were not over five per
cent of the population. A very few men in Germany
touched the button that started the world conflagration
in 1 9 14. Why can not a few men in strategic positions

1 "The Foes of Our Own Household," p. 141.

THE MIDDLE CLASS AS THE DOCTOR 183

do as great an amount of good? One hundred of
America's richest men, yes, a dozen, if they were capa-
ble of sufficient insight to do it sincerely and intelli-
gently, are in a position to organize and promote the
reforms the age needs, and so set us safely across the
riffles into the smooth waters of the new era. Is it too
much to hope that two thousand years of Christianity
have generated the ideals and atmosphere that could
produce such a body of voluntary reformers? We
have a few rich men who have made themselves con-
spicuous by their labors in behalf of social justice;
enough of them to take the lead. It is not large charity
that is referred to here; but measures for social justice.
There are without doubt many others who would be
glad to consecrate themselves to this great cause. Let
rich men of this spirit search each other out, associate
themselves together, and formulate a program under
the guidance of specialists in social science. Such a
program, if it were sound and just, would be irresist-
ible. It would kill radicalism stone dead. Meantime
let every rich man hang on the walls of his house
Hoffman's picture of The Rich Young Ruler.

The largest responsibility, however, is with the great
middle class of American citizens, for it is with them
that our hope lies. However much we may wish for
voluntary restraint from the extreme left and voluntary
concessions from the extreme right, there is, as a mat-
ter of fact, little real expectation of either. Sound,
safe reform, if it is to come at all, will come chiefly at
the dictates of public opinion, growing out of the en-
lightened justice and common sense of the great body
of our people.

Of the momentous issue now impending, the great

184 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

middle class are the natural arbitrators, and, whether
by peace or strife, the predestined umpires. If the
struggle should ever come to blows (God grant that it
may not!) they would be the most tragic sufferers.
The plutocrats, of course, the gods would eventually
destroy. The "proletariat" would redden the streets
with their blood — but their stock would survive. The
sufferings of these two classes would be as logical as
tragic, for it is their issue. But the case would be
lamentably different for the middle class; for their
quarrel it is not. Nevertheless they would pay the
heaviest costs. For a class conflict would, like all such
issues, precipitate itself in such vague shape, confused
by so many subsidiary and irrelevant details, that mil-
lions would be unable to decide which part they ought
to espouse. But they would be conscripted by the
suction of cataclysmic circumstances. Both sides would
be reinforced by the sons of the middle class. The
deluge of a class conflict would be a deluge of their
blood, drawn brother by brother, in an issue utterly
alien to their natural interests. It has always been so
in every historic struggle between classes. Can we
never learn the lessons of history! Obviously, there-
fore, it is incumbent upon all middle class citizens, as a
matter of self-preservation, to see to it that some peace-
ful means of settling the class struggle be forced into
effective operation at once.

The principle around which a middle class program
of arbitration and reform can be built is strikingly
simple, it is to get everybody into the middle class!
Aristocrats at the right should be constrained to devote
their excess wealth to the general good, renounce their
imperial ambitions, and pool their interests with those

THE MIDDLE CLASS AS THE DOCTOR 185

of the middle class. The laboring class at the left
should be accorded legal protection against exploitation,
should be assured educational facilities that will provide
them with health, character, intelligence and industrial
competence, and accorded such changes in the rules of
the game as will motivate them to their best endeavor.
In short, they should be lifted up to the middle class
level. Not a "dead level," to be sure; what we want is
a homogeneous community in which there are only such
stimulating differences in wealth and status as can be
plausibly explained by the differences in ability and
achievement. Such reforms as those outlined in the
last two chapters are measures by which we of the
middle class can put our kindly arms around our fellow
countrymen on either side, and draw them into the
warm contacts of a closer brotherhood.

But drawing everybody into the middle class to-
gether involves something vastly more fundamental
than a mere economic readjustment. For economic
readjustments can never be permanently effective with-
out moral and intellectual readjustments along with
them. The human race has been trying for centuries
to evolve a political democracy, but the history of the
last century has taught those who have studied its
meaning that political democracy can never succeed
except on the basis of industrial democracy. And if
we ever achieve industrial democracy, that too will
disappoint us unless along with it we achieve a cultural
democracy as well. Intellect and conscience are the
only successful democratizers.

Now, membership in the middle class is essentially a
thing of the mind and heart. Middle class characteris-
tics are primarily ideals, and only secondarily a medi-

l86 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

ocre ownership of wealth. A man may possess great
wealth, and yet be essentially middle class by reason of
his attitudes ; or on the other hand he may be poor and
yet belong to the middle class on account of the con-
tents of his intellect and conscience. The true middle
class characteristics are spiritual.

The spiritual characteristics of the middle class must
be enriched and extended. We must ourselves be de-
voted to them with a richer faith; they must be ex-
tended to the souls of more people. That is the
program.

The first characteristic of middle class Americans is
faith in our institutions. The middle class citizen
believes that our institutions are on the whole the best
that social evolution has yet succeeded in producing,
and that they are in process of becoming still better.
The plutocrat does not want our institutions to grow
better, because better means to curtail his privileges in
the interest of the masses. The "proletariat" believes
that our institutions are hopeless, and he wishes to
overthrow them. We need to enrich this middle class
faith within ourselves by a more intelligent under-
standing of why it is so ; we need to extend it to those
who may have apostatized from it, and to their children.

To be middle class is to believe in honest work of
hand and brain, and to have a work that one performs
with pride and skill. That ideal needs to be enriched,
too, in the minds of those that have it, and extended to
those who have it not, whether they be rich or poor.
The responsibility for extending and enriching this
ideal devolves in part upon the school, in part upon the
church, and in part upon the law.

THE MIDDLE CLASS AS THE DOCTOR 187

To be middle class is to believe in frugality and the
simple life. This ideal needs to be reinforced in the
souls of whoever may be in danger of losing it, and
carefully inculcated in the extravagant and the im-
provident. To be middle class is to believe that
"knowledge is power" and to be eager to get it. This
faith in science and its uses needs also to be enriched
in each of us and extended to all of us. This is chiefly
the task of the school. To be middle class is to find
joy in domestic life, and motive in domestic responsi-
bilities. It is also to be conscientious and to have re-
ligious faith. Perhaps we must look chiefly to the
church to enrich and extend these virtues.

Such are the spiritual resources of the middle class.
They cause the middle class to be what it really is in
truth: the salt of the earth; the true elite — unless,
indeed, it should lose its faith! These resources are
the only kind of wealth that has ever made any nation
permanently great. And this is the wealth that must
be as evenly distributed as possible, if we are to be
fused together into a homogeneous, harmonious de-
mocracy.

The chief obstacle to effective middle class democ-
racy is that there are too many of us upon whom it has
never dawned that middle class is precisely what we
are. Numerous very common folks are ludicrously
trying to keep up the appearance of being aristocrats.
Having lost sight of the real values of life, and having
been hypnotized by the glitter of tinsel, their chief
obsession is the silly illusion that middle class they are
not. This chapter, in lecture form, elicited the remark
from a primping little high school prig, whose mother

l88 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

earns an honest living by keeping boarders, that she did
not relish the implied charge of being middle class,
since she regarded herself as an aristocrat.

In this connection let us quote from The Literary
Digest for May 7, 1921, under the caption : "Why the
Middle Class do not Count" :

"In the London Outlook Mr. E. T. Raymond ascribes
the failure, chiefly the political failure, of the middle
class, to a lack of unity that is caused by a 'special
proneness to illusion which the uncharitable call snobbish-
ness,' and he observes:

" 'May I suggest that anybody can sneer, with impunity,
at the middle class, and even win a laugh in so doing
from almost any member of the middle class, merely be-
cause hardly any man or women conceives of himself
as belonging to that class ? Are you dull and fairly well-
to-do, or rather in receipt of a fair annual income? Then
you persuade yourself that you belong to the upper order,
on the ground, among other things, that A, who was also
a solicitor like yourself, and a much less well-bred man,
is now a Peer of the Realm. Are you penniless but
relatively bright? Then you claim to be a free Bo-
hemian, to belong to no class, but to be superior to all,
your highest superiority being asserted vis-a-vis the mid-
dle class.'

"The surest way to the heart of the superior middle
class man, we are told, is to pretend that he is not middle
class. 'This fact is illustrated in the popularity of
Punch,'1 which 'aims straight at the heart of the better
kind of villa resident in town and country.'' But Punch
succeeds by 'assuming that he hunts every season with
the Pytchley, possesses his villa on the Mediterranean,
and has the run of every country-house, deer forest, and
grouse-moor in Britain.' Indeed —

" 'For Punch to admit cognizance of a race that has a

THE MIDDLE CLASS AS THE DOCTOR 189

use for the napkin-rings which so puzzled the late Duke
of Devonshire would be fatal to its power over the very-
classes that do use napkin-rings. For the statistics of
napkin-rings sold make it quite certain that vast numbers
of the middle classes must use the same napkins twice;
napkins are not used at all by the masses. Yet it is
pretty certain that a sneer at the expense of such highly
reasonable economy in laundry would win the loudest
laugh from a middle class man or woman. The boxes
might not see the joke, or think it stupid ; the dress circle
would roar its sides out. It is, I think, this singular
belief of middle class men (and especially of middle
class women) that they are not middle class that has
most to do with the failure and decline of a once great
institution.' "

The point which this writer illustrates by reference
to Punch might be illustrated by reference to American
advertising. The advertiser succeeds, just as does
Punch, by assuming that the solicited consumer regards
himself as an aristocrat. It would be an illuminating
experience for the reader to study the advertisements
with this in mind.

This absurd ambition to be an aristocrat is an inter-
esting phenomenon in social psychology. It has been
frequently observed by students of the social mind that
subordinated classes almost invariably concede the
superiority of those who lord it over and exploit them.
Their minds are overawed, they render abject obei-
sance, and they imitate. An exploited class can be kept
indefinitely docile and submissive by the simple device
of receiving an occasional son into the privileged class,
provided only the illusion can be kept alive that every
youngster has the chance, if only he will prove himself
worthy. This is the way men are managed in the mass ;

IQO CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

and nothing more clearly betrays the streak of fool in
human nature. We of the middle class "fall for it" in
our attempts to be aristocrats, and in our stupid parrot-
ing of capitalistic economic theories.

Scarcely a person but would fancy himself compli-
mented if told that he was a born aristocrat. But a
compliment is precisely what that is not, when you come
to think of it. For an aristocrat is a person who enjoys
more than his share of the good things of life, while,
and because, others go without their share. An aristo-
crat is successful selfishness personified. The ambition
to be an aristocrat is based, let us concede, upon a
laudable instinct, namely, the desire for personality.
But it is also based on an entirely mistaken notion of
how personality can best be expressed. Personality
cannot be expressed by such externals as feathers and
paint, nor by the forms of etiquette in vogue, nor by
giving orders to others. Only social conventionality or
office can be expressed in those ways ; and they are not
resources of one's personality; they are the appropri-
ated resources of the society in which one lives. One's
personality is expressed only by and through his own
personal achievements. One who affects aristocratic
conventionalities only succeeds in blinding himself to
the fact that personality is the very thing he does not
possess. As the world grows more democratic it be-
comes more noticeable that men and women of achieve-
ment are the very ones least concerned about posing as
aristocrats. "What!" exclaimed a visitor who found
Mr. Lincoln blacking his boots, "Blacking your own
boots, Mr. President?" "Whose boots should I be
blacking, then?" replied the great man. Jesus said
that the pagans of his times foolishly regarded those

THE MIDDLE CLASS AS THE DOCTOR IQI

who lorded it over them as their great men; but he
declared that among his followers those who should
achieve the most for their associates would eventually
come to be regarded as the greatest. And that seems
an unescapable inference from the hope we have in this
cooperative venture we are launched upon, which we
are pleased to call democracy.

For this ambition to be an aristocrat works exactly
at cross purposes with democracy. Democracy is a co-
operative effort to furnish everybody a sufficient share
of life's necessities, a fair participation in life's pleas-
ures, and a satisfying access to culture. In just so far
as one is an aristocrat at heart, he opposes, of course,
this aim, and refuses to cooperate. He wants to belong
to the exclusive set, and the exclusive set must be few
in numbers, otherwise it is not exclusive at all. Not
only does this state of mind and heart render one use-
less in the cooperative enterprise of working out a
juster world, but it also hastens the shaking- through-
the-sieve process for the would-be aristocrat himself,
because it precludes the virtues and sacrifices by which
alone common people can improve their economic
status.

Hence this foolish, wicked ambition is the most in-
sidious spiritual disease of democracy. It retards the
growth of a real brotherhood among us as nothing
else can. It is a relic of medievalism, when barons and
dukes strutted along the roads, and kings tyrannized
over peasants. It is a relic of paganism, when self
gratification was set up by cynical philosophers as the
chief good, and kindliness was openly ridiculed as
weakness. Obviously we shall never learn to live in
peace and happiness together until we rid our hearts of

192 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

it, and conceive personal aspirations that are more
Christian, more democratic, and more modern.

But the case is far from hopeless. Historically this
is a strictly middle class republic. Middle class men
and women have been its pioneers and builders. Snob-
bery and aristocracy have been openly repudiated at
every stage of its development. Our plain middle class
ideals are the stuff that American democracy is made
of. It is our kind of folks that have been the salt of
the earth here in America from the very beginning.
Diligence, self-reliance, frugality, simplicity, honesty,
self-restraint, reverence: these are the qualities by
which the old folks at home, and the grandparents be-
fore them, laid the foundations of Americanism, when
things were still sound at the core, and there was no
social unrest. And there are millions of us yet in whom
the good old ideals of the fathers still obtain. Millions
of us are still plain, middle class Americans; such we
intend to remain, and our children and grandchildren
with us. We are too thrifty to be shaken through the
sieve. We do not envy the rich : on that score our souls
are absolutely at peace. We furnish the substantial
common sense which will prevent any social revolution ;
and we know it.

The duty and responsibility of the middle class in the
present crisis requires emphasis. We need to come to
self-consciousness as a class. Class consciousness is
said to be the virus of American life. It is, if we mean
the class consciousness of the "proletariat," including
their passionate hatred of capital, and their irrespon-
sible plotting for revenge. But there is one kind of
class consciousness that needs to be sedulously culti-
vated; and that is the class consciousness of the middle

THE MIDDLE CLASS AS THE DOCTOR 1 93

class. Every one of us needs to know who's who in the
middle class, and what we stand for; which side our
bread is buttered on, and what to do about it. In other
words, we need to have class ideals and a class program.
That program should be, by economic reforms, by an
educational forward movement, and by a moral and
spiritual renascence, to strengthen the middle class and
draw everybody into it. That program needs to be
talked about in private conversations ; it should be the
topic of intelligent discussion in innumerable groups
organized for that express purpose; it ought to be
explained in print, preached from the pulpit, and taught
in the schools. In fact the time has come for us middle
class folks to take possession of all the agencies for
molding public opinion, and put on a definitely organ-
ized propaganda. Every American should be made
definitely aware of this middle class program. And we
ourselves of the middle class should feel a burning
loyalty to it, and draw brave confidence from the assur-
ance that we constitute an overwhelming majority of
the American people.

CHAPTER XIV

SPIRITUAL VERSUS ECONOMIC DETERMINISM

THE socialists pin their faith to a philosophical
fallacy quite similar to that which seduced the
Germans into their insane ambition for world
conquest. In order to make clear the socialistic fallacy
it may be worth while, for the sake of comparison, to
review the German fallacy.

The Germans lost their heads over the doctrine of
the survival of the fittest. The struggle for existence
and the survival of the fittest really do look like a uni-
versal law of nature. It is a ruthless struggle, a fight
for life in which the strong win and the weak are
weeded out. On this law the Germans proceeded,
having first made themselves, as they believed, the
strongest.

Their fallacy was in assuming that the fightest are
always the fittest. As one surveys the past, especially
the remote past, with its "monsters of the prime that
tear each other in their slime," the survival of the
fightest does look like universal law. But as one looks
forward to "that far off divine event toward which the
whole creation moves," it ceases to be law at all. In its
place looms the survival of the most cooperative. In
social evolution there seems to have been a shift in the
gear of nature ; fangs and fists are a vanishing advan-
tage, and mutual help is the new order. The Germans

194

SPIRITUAL VERSUS ECONOMIC DETERMINISM 195

undertook to force the machinery back into the old
gear, but it was too late. The peoples of the world
united in what they hoped was a war to put cooperation
firmly on its feet as an international policy. To be
sure the new cooperative order has not fully arrived
yet ; but it is clearly coming.

The philosophical fallacy of the socialists is similar,
indeed it is closely related to this fallacy of the Ger-
mans. They call their theory economic determinism.
Economic determinism means that industry is cause,
and practically everything else in human life and society
are effects. The economic determinist, in accounting
for negro slavery and the Civil War in America, rules
out the influence of ideals, and points instead to such
economic causes as the cotton gin and its effects upon
the growth of the cotton industry. Political theories,
theological creeds and .moral ideals he regards as the
by-products of the economic institution. In telling the
story of the Protestant Reformation the economic de-
terminist * dwells chiefly on such economic considera-
tions as the grievances of the German peasants. Theo-
logical issues he regards as effects rather than causes.
The economic determinist regards our public schools
and universities as the agents of our industrial system;
and teachers as "pale parasites" of the entrepreneurs.
The change in primitive times from the hunting-fishing
form of industry to the agriculture-handicraft form,
with its consequent effects on all other phases of the
social life,2 is the economic determinist's stock illus-
tration.

As economic determinist your Marxian socialist

^eabohn, "The Protestant Revolt."
3 Seabohn, "The Protestant Revolt."

I96 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

turns prophet. He predicts that the change from the
handicraft to the machinofacture type of industry is an
economic cause predestined to bring about revolution-
ary changes in all departments of our social life; but
he fails to see that spiritual forces can pilot the ship
through the rapids. Capitalism, which machinofacture
industry has produced, he predicts will cause concen-
tration of wealth and class stratification until the
propertyless class finds itself overwhelmingly in the
majority, whereupon it will quite naturally precipitate
a revolution and set up a dictatorship of the proletariat
as the socialistic Utopia. What he fails to see is that
by intelligent social engineering the disasters which
lurk behind his vain dreams can be prevented, and a
real Christian democracy evolved out of the present
crisis.

And it must be confessed that so long as one keeps
his face turned to the past the theory looks plausible.
Especially if one takes only a bird's-eye view of the
main outlines of history, or permits the economic deter-
minists themselves to interpret the details. As a mat-
ter of fact economic forces have, of course, figured
largely in social evolution; and they do underly the
contemporary readjustments in society.

But they have not been the only forces by any means ;
and as time goes on they are destined to be of declining
importance relatively. It is true that in the past
spiritual forces have been minor forces, frail begin-
nings, flickering promises, albeit growing gradually.
But civilization has now at last accumulated enormous
intellectual resources in natural science, social science,
education, art, ethical codes, religious faith and social
idealism. Out of these we can generate sufficient power,

SPIRITUAL VERSUS ECONOMIC DETERMINISM 197

if we will, to make the wheels go round. These spiritual
resources are predestined to be cooperatively utilized to
lift the race above the mere competitive struggle for
bread. Eventually spiritual determinants will control
and utilize economic determinants, as mind controls
and utilizes the power of steam. Has not the time
arrived to shift the gear ? The socialists think not !

Let us introduce a term from the technical vocabulary
of social science, for the sake of the idea it carries.
The term is telic. The nearest equivalent in ordinary
English is purposive. A telic society is a society in
which the people of one generation, through their in-
tellectual leaders, blue print the remodeled institutions
for the next generation, and then proceed to build them
according to the blue print. A telic society is one in
which the best brains and heart decide beforehand what
the course of social evolution ought to be, and then lead
it thither. Societies save enormous human waste and
suffering by being telic; but telic they have never been
as yet to any great degree, because they have never been
spiritually determined.

If our society is to become spiritually determined, we
must begin to predetermine it with our spirits. We
must do something more than vehemently to command
the tide of economic forces to retreat. Instead we must
set ourselves intelligently and resolutely to the task of
putting spiritual forces into control. We must study
social science diligently and induce everybody else to
study it, we must regenerate our morals and win
through to a new faith, we must quadruple the work
of our schools in the next twenty-five years, and we
must put art at the disposal of all for purposes of
recreation and inspiration. For spiritual forces can

I98 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

never turn the wheels of modern life so long as they
are out of gear.

Can you imagine what the effect would be if a re-
ligious awakening could sweep over the country, as
fervid as that which prompted the Crusades, but one
that would set up social justice and personal righteous-
ness as the Holy Sepulcher to be rescued? Can you
imagine what the effect would be if all high schools
were modernized to teach vocations, citizenship, and,
for girls, the art and science of home keeping, and if
90 per cent of our young people graduated from them ?
Can you imagine the result of making good music,
good movies, good dramas, good books and good
sports so easily accessible to all that degrading amuse-
ments could not compete with them ? Can you conjec-
ture the consequences of measurably solving the prob-
lem of moral education? Can you imagine what would
happen if we all knew enough about monopolies, taxa-
tion, immigration and a dozen other economic problems
so that a "kept press" could no longer humbug us at
will? Can you imagine combining all these spiritual
forces and getting them all set up together as a going
concern within a generation? If you can imagine all
that you will imagine a new world in which economic
determinants would be a declining factor.

And can we do it, middle class brothers? If we
can, there never will be any "Bolshevism" in America.
Otherwise there may be; in which tragic event our
grandsons would hold us morally responsible for not
preventing it !

But be warned, that increasing hordes of socialists
grin cynically at this appeal to the middle class; for
they are perfectly certain that we are too smug and

SPIRITUAL VERSUS ECONOMIC DETERMINISM 1 99

dense, to respond. And perhaps we are; who knows?
But certain it is that, being the heirs of all the ages, we
do have spiritual resources at our disposal which, if
utilized, would turn the current of history out of its
accustomed channel, and put to confusion all socialistic
expectations. If only the middle class can be awakened !
When we get to the very core of the social problem
in America it boils down to this, that nearly all of us
fall in with the socialists in the fundamental fallacy
underlying their theory of economic determinism. For,
as was pointed out in Chapter II, the heart, not the
head, is the ultimate source of social theories. The
fundamental heresy of the socialists is one of the
heart; it consists in putting one's faith in material
wealth rather than in spiritual weal. And is not that a
sin of which we are all equally guilty ? Do not socialists
at the left, and capitalists at the right, and we ourselves
in the middle, bow down before the golden calf? If
one's heart is set on material goods it only remains for
him to have them not, and he is a ready convert to
socialism. The Haves are against socialism not so
much because their hearts are nearer right than the
Have-nots; but because their pockets are fuller. In
their heart of hearts the Haves and the Have-nots have
both gone astray together. The essential heresy is the
worship of mammon, whether that spiritual disorder
shows up as rabid socialism, aggressive capitalistic
greed, or the smug selfishness and blind conservatism
of the middle class. The hearts of all of us are in the
wrong gear. We must return together to the insight
that, after one has enough of the elemental necessities,
life is then enriched not by more of them, but by the
mutual enjoyment of the cultural heritage. Every man

200 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

to whose soul this great truth does not appeal is himself
generating the divisive forces that threaten to disrupt
society.

When a traveler comes to a fork in the road, if his
destination is on the right fork he will never arrive by
keeping to the left. But that is exactly what the whole
modern world has done. We have gone wrong on the
dollar theory of life. Wealth, the production of wealth,
the distribution of wealth — these are the phrases we
mouth and reecho, as if they were the magic word.
But we are wrong, dead wrong. Every man seeks
happiness through ever more strenuous efforts to get
wealth; but the wealth seldom brings the happiness.
We seek our national destiny in "prosperity"; and
having piled up "prosperity" mountain high, we have
the social unrest for our pains. The nations race for
"a place in the sun" ; and the present world chaos is the
result. We did fight, it is true, to make the world safe
for political democracy; but would to God there were
no grain of truth in the socialists' challenge that it was
a war of capitalistic greed. It was even more true that
capitalistic greed (along with nationalistic chauvinism)
spoiled the Treaty of Versailles and thwarted the
League of Nations. We are on the wrong track; and
the reform of reforms is to find it out.

As health is a necessary foundation for happiness, so
wealth is only a "means" to the real ends of life. A
man's life consisteth not alone in the abundance of the
material things which he possesseth, and neither does a
nation's. The real goods of human life are spiritual.
They are represented not by the market, but by the
home, the church, the school, and the open spaces of
nature. They are not to be found in the possession of

SPIRITUAL VERSUS ECONOMIC DETERMINISM 201

money alone, but in the arts, the crafts, and the recrea-
tions. The true values of life are in friends, fireside,
faith, a clear conscience, peace of mind, wholesome
leisure, constructive work, justifiable pride in one's
sons and daughters, a place in the community life, and
rootage in the soil. These represent the welfare
which many are ruthlessly and needlessly denied, and
which many others blindly squander for that which is
of much less worth. These means of happiness must
be more evenly accessible to all ; and that is dependent,
not only upon a better circulation of wealth, but upon a
better distribution of the cultural goods of civilization
as well. Intelligence and morality are the ultimate de-
terminants of both the production and distribution of
wealth. The forms of liberty are not its vital features ;
true democracy is that of the mind and heart. If we
would make democracy safe for the world we must
concern ourselves about its spiritual foundations.

Food is absolutely necessary to the maintenance of
life. If food is hard to procure almost the entire
energy of life may well be devoted to procuring it.
But then, if easier times come, the food habit is liable
to be overdone. Having had food enough, would
more food take the place of clothing and shelter? If
one needs fresh air and exercise, a heavy meal would
hardly serve as a substitute. Especially would more
food fail to satisfy the vague cravings of the spirit.
If one has neither love nor faith, let him make up the
lack by feasting richly ! If one lacks the joy of creative
achievement or loyal service, let him stuff himself with
hearty food! If one is lonely, or over-worked, or
grief-stricken, or ignorant, il one feels some vague
sense of lack, or the dull pain of having missed the joy

202 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

of life, the remedy is to eat and eat and eat! Substi-
tute wealth for food in the above sentences and you
have the keystone fallacy of our social lives. It makes
all our institutions fat, and is the fundamental cause of
our periodical business depressions.

The "economic man" figured conspicuously in the
old economics. His interests were as single as a cor-
poration's; he had no other wants but wages, rent,
interest or profits. But he was only a fiction of the
imagination, the mere fraction of a human being.
Psychology, especially the Freudian psychology, is now
compelling the rewriting of economic theory. Eco-
nomics is now recognizing the real man, with his whole
cycle of needs, physical, mental, moral and spiritual, all
of which are insistent. If these elemental "wishes" of
human nature are normally satisfied, all is well; if they
are thwarted, they generate discontentment which, like
a pent-up gas, is bound sooner or later to explode with
disastrous social results. In this way strikes are ex-
plained ; they are the emotional discharge caused by an
industrial life that thwarts many of the essential needs
of human nature.

A posthumous book by Carleton Parker expounds
this theory very interestingly. But his remedy is very
unmatured : unlimited freedom for adventurous ex-
periment. This is an all too current fallacy. It is the
parlor "Bolshevism" of the half baked intellectual.
What the human spirit really needs is not so much to
experiment as to feed upon the culture that has been
produced by the cumulative experiments of a quarter
million years. It is to satisfy the varied needs of
human nature that civilization has been built up. Man-
soul has slowly woven itself a garment: not to let him

SPIRITUAL VERSUS ECONOMIC DETERMINISM 203

experiment with the garment, but to let him wear it, is
the cure for the industrial unrest.

Are there the beautiful fabrics of art, science and
faith? Permit the laboring man to clothe his spirit
with these ! Are there social gymnasia where his mind
may get industrial, political, social, domestic, artistic,
intellectual and religious exercises? Admit him to the
games ! Are there a thousand projects for his con-
structive impulses? Then do not expect him to be
satisfied as a mere cog in the machine, however lib-
erally waged. A beast lives mostly below the dia-
phragm; but a man lives mostly from the ears up.
Equip all men, therefore, to use, for a complete human
life, all the materials of culture, as they have been pro-
duced by social evolution, and are available in all the
spiritual wealth of civilization. The man of the new
super-civilization must be fed upon a balanced ration;
not on wealth-stuff alone. Not otherwise will there
ever be a new super-civilization at all. The founda-
tions of the new social order are spiritual. It is neces-
sary for us to make the sort of readjustments in our
industrial relations that have been suggested in the
foregoing portions of this book; but that in itself will
fail of the social results we desire unless we also culti-
vate our spiritual resources as suggested in the re-
mainder of the book.

The preachers have told us, time out of mind, that
man shall not live by bread alone; but we have never
taken the preachers seriously on this point. Neverthe-
less they are profoundly right about it; though they
often discount their advice by getting it so out of focus
as to imply that we can get along without bread alto-
gether. The poor are short of bread, beef, housing,

204 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

clothes and coal, it is true. These necessities of life
must be made up to them ; but there are other necessi-
ties also, such as those afforded by homes, churches,
schools, libraries, theaters, art galleries, parks, com-
munity centers, and other like public agencies; and
society should proceed at once to furnish these also in
abundance. The rich, aside from the necessities of
physical life, are often as bad off as the poor. They
spend their surplus in many instances for material lux-
uries far beyond the point of diminishing returns. The
difference between the cost of a Ford and a Pierce-
Arrow, for instance, yields less than proportionate
returns in the joys of life; and too much of what
additional returns it does yield are mere gratification
of the unwholesome instincts of rivalry. Why do we
not envy instead the neighbor who gets joy out of his
Bach, his Beethoven and his Brahms? A ten cent rose
bud on the breakfast table is as good as five dollars'
worth, unless what one really wants is to show off
how much he can afford to spend for cut flowers.
Envy is a dangerous thing in a democracy; the social
unrest is three-sevenths envy.

Have you pondered over the way your neighbor,
Mr. Smith, furnishes his living rooms, as contrasted
with the furniture of Mr. Jones? Mr. Smith has
bookcases filled with cheap but well-worn copies of the
best books both recent and standard. But the book-
cases are old. There is also an old, badly scarred
piano; but beside it is a home-made case full of old,
paper volumes of the great German music masters. On
the piano are a flute, a violin, and a cornet, while an old
'cello stands in the corner; every one of which instru-
ments is used by members of the family. The walls

SPIRITUAL VERSUS ECONOMIC DETERMINISM 205

are fairly crowded with inexpensive copies of master-
pieces, and with the faces of philosophers, artists,
writers and other great men. In the center of the
living room is an old-fashioned walnut dining table,
with a chenile cover; on this table lie two Bibles, the
Atlantic Monthly, the Scientific American, the Youth's
Companion, the Sunday School Journal, and a base-
ball mitt. There is an old cabinet full of Indian relics
and geological specimens. The carpets are rag rugs,
and the davenport evidently came from the manual
training department of the high school.

At Mr. Jones's things are different. There is a new
grand piano, a shiny piano seat, and a few pieces of
the latest popular music. The rugs are all Persian, and
the oak floor is polished. There is a mahogany book-
case filled with new, leather backed sets of Thackeray,
Dumas, Stoddard, and the "Best Orations," but evi-
dently never read. The picture frames are massive and
expensive, but the pictures themselves signify nothing.
On the heavy oak table there is a dainty little Persian
rug, and the colored supplement of the Sunday paper.
Through the dining room door one catches a glimpse of
sparkling glass and shining silver. There is one child
at Jones's, but at Smith's there are five. And yet it is
the Joneses we all envy; and that is the root of the
social unrest. For if we all wanted chiefly the things
the Smiths enjoy, we should want everybody to share
them ; whereas the Joneses' tastes are divisive.

Sociologists regard social homogeneity as a funda-
mental necessity. A community has common interests ;
if there is no community of interest there is no com-
munity. Where people differ sharply in race, creed,
language, industries, education, wealth, and ideals there

206 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

is social "splitteration," instead of social "stick-to-
gether-ation," to borrow a parody on Spencer. The
we- feeling depends upon ideas, sentiments and prac-
tices in common ; and hence it follows that the way to
blend us all together into a great all-inclusive, kindred-
minded middle class is to make us all participants to-
gether in the common treasures of the intellectual,
ethical and cultural heritage of the race.

Some of the most important means of happiness,
welfare and the joy of life that ought to be made easily
accessible to all the people are health, recreation, plenty
of good schooling, art, family life, morals and religion.
These are the real values of existence; the substances
out of which the we-feeling can weave a fabric. For
these interests are the only kind of interests upon which
there is any hope of our all uniting. Our work de-
mands division of labor and specialization. As for the
use of luxuries, there can be no kindred feeling there.
Luxuries are chiefly desired as badges of artificial dif-
ferences; moreover, they do not satisfy, and hence can
no more unite us than the half truths of creeds; and
besides there are not enough luxuries to go around.
But the really good things of the intellectual, esthetic
and moral life, when once attained, do satisfy; and
instinctively we want everybody else to enjoy them
with us, because their value to ourselves is thereby
enhanced. Where these interests are there is neither
Bohemian, Syrian, Wop or Hun, but we are all one in
a common culture.

In the matter of harmony, good will, and unity of
purpose a nation is not unlike a family, and the social
problem not unlike the boy problem. The Jenkins
family is a case in point. George was a typical high-

SPIRITUAL VERSUS ECONOMIC DETERMINISM 20J

school "Chollie-boy" of seventeen, and Mr. Jenkins a
typical, middle-aged, busy-man, with adipose tissue.
Between them there were strained relations. The
issues pertained to the family income, and George's use
of it; to the household schedule, and George's adjust-
ment to it; to George's own future, and his attitude
toward preparation for it; indeed, to George's very
life, whether or not it was to be wrecked on the rocks
of adolescence, and leave for himself and for his
parents in their old age nothing but the debris of what
might have been. Thus the issues between George and
his father, like the issues between capital and labor,
were vital, irreconcilable, matters of life and death.
And the points of view were diametrical, the situation
ominously and tragically contentious. A break was
imminent. "My dear," said Mrs. Jenkins, "you were
a successful father so long as George was a little boy;
but you are a failure now that he is adolescent."
Which cost Mr. Jenkins a night's sleep ! But the next
time George wanted seventeen cents for a movie his
father said, "Sure, I guess I'll go with you." George
survived the shock ! The following Saturday they saw
a league game together. The ball hit the bull. The
next week George and his father took a four-days'
fishing trip and fried the fish. For odd times in camp
Mr. Jenkins took along "Anna Karenina" and George
"Tom Sawyer." Each read both. Driving home they
discovered that they could sing nicely together, "Seeing
Nellie Home," "Ja-da" and "A Thousand Years My
Own Columbia." The next Sunday George responded
to his mother's invitation to accompany her and his
father to church. And so things went on at the Jen-
kinses'. Nor were the issues evaded: they actually

208 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

solved themselves! That was nine years ago, and the
firm name is now Jenkins & Son.

It might turn out that way with the classes and the
masses, if we all thought less about business, and set
our hearts together on the really satisfying ends of life,
as did the Jenkinses, father and son. There can be no
doubt, in short, that even in our attempt to solve the
social problem we devote an altogether disproportionate
amount of anxiety to the question of wealth and its
distribution. It is true that this is an absolutely essen-
tial element in our problem ; but it is by no means the
only element. The spiritual means of happiness and
social peace are quite as necessary as the material ; and
the masses can neither secure, maintain, nor put to
advantage a larger income unless their inner wants are
refined. Even fifteen dollars a day would not make
men out of some fellows. Our people, rich and poor,
are straining every nerve to produce wealth, and are
quarreling over its distribution; and in our failure to
be satisfied we strain our nerves the harder for more
wealth. What we need, in many cases, is not more
wealth, but more of the kinds of happiness that wealth
can never buy. We are like anemic school children,
fed chiefly on candy, pickles, coffee and summer sau-
sage. Malnutrition has perverted their appetites till
they crave only more and more of the false foods that
are slowly starving them. Except in the case of the
very poor the worth of many lives might well be doub-
led without an increase of income at all. The present
social unrest is essentially a spiritual unrest. The cause
is our failure to understand our own needs.

Civilization has been tragically slow in realizing that
its foundations are really spiritual. But they are! It

SPIRITUAL VERSUS ECONOMIC DETERMINISM 20O,

is increasingly recognized that the most important
thing about a people is their philosophy of life. The
economic theory of history is on the wane. We now
see that spiritual causes have been coordinate with
industrial causes in social evolution. The difference in
ideals, quite as much as the difference in climate, soil
and agriculture, made colonial Virginia slave and Mas-
sachusetts free. There is a newly awakening apprecia-
tion on the part of historians of the moral contributions
of the ancient Hebrews and the intellectual and esthetic
contributions of the ancient Greeks to the foundations
of modern civilization. The spiritual and intellectual
aspects of social evolution now interest sociologists no
less than the political and industrial. The enormous
dinosaurs and the huge mammals of bygone geological
ages gave way before smaller creatures with more finely
organized nervous systems. Not muscle but brain is
more and more becoming the determining factor in the
evolution not only of life but of society as well. In the
long run right makes might and knowledge is always
power. The thinker is, as Rodin has so forcibly sug-
gested, the most imposing personality; and the just and
cooperative are certain eventually to inherit the earth.
As evolution progresses mere physical forces recede
into the background, and the forces of the intellect and
conscience come to the fore. It will be far more so
than ever in the new super-civilization that we trust is
about to emerge. Intelligence and morality will have a
large place in the new democracy ; else there will be no
new democracy at all. Whether in Mexico, Russia,
the Philippines, or the United States, self-government
depends for its success upon the intelligence and moral-
ity of the people. The problems now confronting us

2IO CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

are at bottom spiritual problems. We need, it is true,
new laws defining the rights of labor, new regulations
for the control of capital, reforms in our system of
taxation; but these are all on the surface of things.
No reform or revolution can be either successful or
permanent unless it revolutionizes the thinking, reforms
the morals and regenerates the aims of the people
themselves. Our deepest need of all is for a new ideal
of life.

The ancient Hebrews produced a unique line of
spiritual geniuses, the last of whom was the greatest of
all. The western world has honored him by deifying
him. He uttered some epigrams of remarkable in-
sight. Said he in substance : a man shall not live by
wealth and power alone, but by discovering every pur-
pose and obeying every law that proceedeth out of the
thought of God; the worth of a man's life consisteth
not in the amount of property he owns; it profiteth a
man little or nothing to gain the whole world if he lose
the spiritual values out of his life. It is safe to assume
that these sayings are as true of a whole nation as of a
single man. The western world will do well to honor
this great spiritual genius by believing him! Not
otherwise may we hope to cure the social unrest. We,
the so-called Christian peoples of the western world,
are in trouble chiefly because at heart we are still
pagans and not yet Christians at all.

CHAPTER XV

THE OLD FASHIONED, MIDDLE CLASS IDEALS

IT is sometimes demanded of one to define the
middle class. The demand is usually made by
class conscious persons whose social philosophy
finds little or no place for a middle class. This socialis-
tic attitude of mind toward the middle class has already
been referred to; it is diametrically opposed to the plea
of this book, viz. : that there is no room in a democratic
society for anything but a middle class. It has been
pointed out that we in this country are in no little
danger of a class conflict. But obviously, if there were
no classes there could be no class conflict. Obviously,
also, if we could abolish sharp class distinctions, we
should abolish the danger. And this is not impossible !
The cure for the social unrest is therefore for every-
body, "proletariat" at the left, and "plutocrat" at the
right, to get into the middle class. But to a person of
socialistic prejudices no definition of the middle class
would be satisfactory which did not imply its eventual
disintegration and absorption into the other classes;
and such a definition would be unsatisfactory to the
persons whom this book is addressed to.

This book is addressed to persons who regard them-
selves as one hundred per cent American, and who look
back with pride and reverence to parents, grandparents
and a whole line of ancestry (it matters little when

211

212 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

they set foot on these shores) who cherished the plain,
old fashioned virtues that have always been the back-
bone of any stable orderly society, and that always will
be, if society is to have any backbone at all. These vir-
tues are the essential thing; it is in terms of them that
the middle class is to be defined.

In the flux and confusion of these transitional times
the fundamental virtues have become the objects of
flippant skepticism, doubt and disregard. Few minds
are capable of intelligent discrimination, especially in
the social field. There are so many things that need
changing that the people who want them changed be-
come obsessed with the idea of change, and talk about
change in the abstract as if they were in for changing
everything under the sun. On the other hand there are
so many things which ought not to be changed at all
that the people who have reasons of their own for
wanting nothing changed get the very things that need
no change into bad repute by hiding the things that
ought to be changed behind them. What an immense
amount of energy we waste in accusing each other of
wanting too much or too little chance. It is not a
question of quantity; it is a question of which, and
what, and why.

What are the things that need reform? The social
injustices that the new industrial conditions have cre-
ated— they have been plainly pointed out in previous
chapters. What are the things that it will do only
harm to change? The plain, old fashioned moral vir-
tues : reliability, the restraint of animalism, steadiness
of endeavor, and ordinary justice. These are the four
virtues essential to social orderliness.1 If, in the con-

1 See Hayes' "Sociology," pp. 588 ff.

THE OLD FASHIONED, MIDDLE CLASS IDEALS 213

fusion and uncertainty of the times, these are lost, all
will be lost. No reforms can compensate.

"Why be good?" bawl some radical socialists; to
which they bray out their own blatant infidelity, that
morality is only a cleverly devised system by which
"wage slaves" are kept subject to the exploitation of
the "capitalist class." They are like blinded Samson
pulling the temple down on the Philistines and him-
self together.

Nor is it in radical circles alone that this pernicious
skepticism of the time-tried moral standards is current.
The epidemic pervades all classes of society. It infects
pedagogy like a virus. Family discipline is breaking
down because of it. Even the clergy stutter. The
whole rising generation is at sea on this subject. It is
one of the ominous signs of the times.

An interesting series of articles ran in the Atlantic
Monthly during the summer of 1920. In the first one
a writer who signs himself "Mr. Grundy" complains of
the lax morals of the young folks. He rather over-
complains, in fact. In the second article the charge is
tacitly seconded, and a return to the traditional religion
set forth as the remedy. The third is a retort by one of
"those wild young people." This writer accuses the
older generation, through their "soft-headed folly," of
having "pretty well ruined this world before passing it
on to us, . . . knocked to pieces, leaky, red-hot and
threatening to blow up." He adds that the young peo-
ple are, as a result, extremely busy; that "what pleasure
they snatch must be . . . feverishly hurried" and that
they "haven't time for the noble procrastinations of
modesty." "We drink when we can and what we can,
we gamble and are extravagant — but we work, and

214 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

that's about all that we can be expected to do ; for, after
all, we have just discovered that we are all very near to
the Stone Age." Thus the young man evades the
question entirely. We are suffering, it is true, from
"the soft-headed folly" of the generation just past; but
their soft-headedness consisted in failure to understand
the new machinofacture situation. Their modesty,
their frugality, their honesty, their Presbyterian con-
scientiousness, were not soft-headed ! And if the young
people make their fathers' ignorance of the social prob-
lem an excuse for repudiating their fathers' morality,
they will pass on to their own children a worse mess
instead of a better. As was long since observed :
Easy is the redescent into the Stone Age; or words to
that effect.

Perhaps the most fundamental of all the moral dis-
eases of the present crisis, and the one most liable to
prove fatal, is the apostasy to a soft creed. Not a hard
life but a soft creed, says Professor Peabody, is at the
heart of the divorce evil. In magazine articles and
private discussions on this subject the happiness of the
contracting parties is the basis of judgment, not the
welfare of society. In pedagogical theory and educa-
tional practice, the doctrine of interest is, or was till
very recently, the fad of the hour, while the doctrine of
effort was in sad desuetude. The idea of teaching
pupils to hold their noses to the grindstone till they take
an edge, is largely a thing of the past. We are already
getting the result: a crop of young people who regard
the hard things of life as electives. The doctrine is
urged at mothers' meetings that fear ought to play no
part in the training of children. It is impossible to
convince such a group that fear has played a dominant

THE OLD FASHIONED, MIDDLE CLASS IDEALS 21$

role in the evolution of civilization ; and that by analogy
therefore it is unsafe to assume that sound individual
character can be evolved without it. In all fields theory
caters to self indulgence. The "wish" is the keynote of
the Freudian psychology. Control and coercion are
regarded as inconsistent in democracies; the role they
have played in social evolution is almost entirely
ignored. We are prone to imagine that a democracy is
a society in which everybody does as he pleases ! Well,
if everybody pleases to do right democracy will suc-
ceed; if everybody chooses easy self indulgence democ-
racy will take the primrose path to a welter of universal
Bolshevism. To expect the future to bring forth an
ideal democracy, while at the same moment we are
suffering a relapse of faith in the ideal of personal self
restraint, which is the very warp of civilization, is like
taking a month's holiday in harvest time or like sleep-
ing in the trenches at the enemy's zero hour. In the
present transition there is need for more self denial, not
less; much more! The self indulgence of the middle
class in America is wasting the nation's birthright.
Without the practice of a hard creed we can never cure
the social unrest, we can never evolve a new coopera-
tive society.

There is no warning of which the present age is more
in need than that expressed by Kipling in the following
poem:

THE GODS OF THE COPYBOOK MAXIMS

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place ;
Peering through reverent fingers, I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Maxims, I notice, outlast them
all.

2l6 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us

each in turn
That water would certainly wet us as Fire would certainly burn ;
But we found them lacking in uplift, vision and breadth of mind,
So we left them to teach Gorillas while we followed the March

of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind borne like the Gods of the Market

Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and usually word

would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its ice-field or Creation crashed

at Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out

of touch.
They denied that the Moon was Stilton, they denied she was

even Dutch.
They denied that Wishes were horses ; they denied that a Pig

had Wings.
So we worshiped the Gods of the Market who promised these

beautiful things.

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller

Life,
(Which started by loving our neighbor and ended by loving his

wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason

and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Maxims said: — "The Wages of

Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,

By robbing selective Peter to pay for collective Paul ;

And, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our

money would buy.
And the Gods of the Copybook Maxims said : — "If you don't

work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued

Wizards withdrew,
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe

it was true
That all is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four —
And the Gods of the Copybook Maxims limped up to explain it

once more.

As it will be in "The Future," it was at the birth of Man — i
There are only four things certain since the Larger Primates
began :

THE OLD FASHIONED, MIDDLE CLASS IDEALS 2lJ

That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her

Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the

fire.

And after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
Where all men insist on their merits and no one desists from

his sins,
As surely as water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Maxims with terms and slaughters

return.

Morality itself can be understood only from the
standpoint of society and social evolution. The moral
code is not a supernatural, arbitrary decree, to which
artificial punishments are attached. The moral code
prohibits the acts that age-long experience has demon-
strated to be destructive. Nor are the acts that destroy
the individual's own happiness the only ones that are
immoral: the moral law invades "personal liberty,"
whenever it is necessary, to prevent acts that interfere
with the welfare of others. This is all as elementary
in moral philosophy as the multiplication tables are in
mathematics; and yet it is often overlooked; possibly
because the evil consequences of immoral conduct are
sometimes just a little remote. The moral code is
essentially a method of living together. If all obey it
we live together harmoniously; if it is generally disre-
garded life together grows increasingly difficult and at
length impossible. The nations that have weakened,
decayed, and finally perished, have done so at least
partly because self indulgence usurped the place of
their early virtues. Social progress is partly material
achievement, but it is partly also the achievement of
new and better moral codes. The social reforms we
need now are essentially moral ; they consist in adding
new rights to the established moral code. If, while

2l8 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

establishing these new rights, we let go of the old
duties, we shall not get ahead. What does it advan-
tage a man to make a profit of a hundred dollars if in
the meantime he squanders his patrimony of a thou-
sand?

"In order to a clearer insight into the social conse-
quences of personal morality, consider the three vices:
licentiousness, gambling, and drunkenness. The imme-
diate effects of the first are diseased bodies, broken
homes, disgraced parents, outraged offspring, ruined
lives, and the mental anguish of shame and despair.
As for the second, think of the worthless, wasted lives
of young men, and of the fathers whose gray hairs
have been brought down in sorrow to the grave. In-
temperance has made us so familiar with its harvest of
horrors that we are calloused to them and contemplate
them with an almost fatalistic hopelessness and indif-
ference. The trail of poverty, suffering, heart break,
and death which this vice has left in its train is almost
equivalent to perpetual war.

"But these vices have not only their direct and imme-
diate social consequences, they have their indirect
effects as well. For in complex society like ours they
have assumed commercialized forms. Everywhere
they have organized to corrupt the officers of the law
in order to secure their own protection. One of the
most shameful chapters in the story of our cities' shame
is the complicity of law officers with the organized
interests of vice. Officers whose sworn duty it is to
protect the people from the underworld have often pro-
tected the underworld from the people. Not only so,
but by an alliance with public-service corporations they
and the vice interests together have been able abso-

THE OLD FASHIONED, MIDDLE CLASS IDEALS 2ig

lutely to control the governments of many of our Amer-
ican cities. Thus vice has often rendered municipal
democracy a failure, temporarily, at least, has prosti-
tuted popular government to its own uses, and raised
the question whether or not democracy can succeed in
America. Delos F. Wilcox asserts that vice is the
chief enemy of democracy.

"Imagine, now, a society in which these vices and
their consequences have been pushed to their logical
conclusion ; a society, in other words, in which they are
universal. A more veritable hell upon earth cannot be
imagined. On the other hand, conceive a society from
which these vices have been entirely eliminated (and
this, by the way, is as conceivable as a society in which
an equitable distribution of wealth has been attained),
and you have conceived a society that has made tremen-
dous strides toward the realization of the 'new free-
dom.'

"How evident it is, therefore, that the individual who
contributes to the prevalence of these vices in society is
a tearer-down, a destroyer, a veritable traitor to the
common good! How evident, too, that he whose life
is immune from these moral diseases is making a large
contribution to the welfare of society! How much
social service, how much of the work of the reformer
or philanthropist would it require, forsooth, to cancel
the damage that naturally and inevitably accrues from
a vicious life?" x

Why is the family so often referred to as the basic
institution? Partly because it is an arrangement for
taking physical care of each new generation during its

1 From the author's "Personal Religion and the Social Awaken-
ing, pp. 36-38.

220 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

helpless immaturity. But partly also because it is an
educational institution. And as an educational institu-
tion its function is now chiefly moral ; intellectual edu-
cation having been largely taken over by the school. It
instructs and practices children in the conduct necessary
to their membership in society. If the family performs
this work badly there will be an excess of vice, crime
and poverty. All these social diseases, sociologists
find rooting down into bad family conditions. Other
institutions will break down, and reform measures will
fail to work, for lack of dependable people; but if
every family produces only honest sons and daughters
there will be no graft in the government. The decline
of their domestic life is among the causes that are
eliminating the middle class. Those plain, old fash-
ioned virtues upon which good homes were built are
more important than additional increments of wealth.

"History also gives abundant testimony to the sa-
credness of this institution, for it shows us that, al-
though other forms of the family have existed at
various times and places, no other form has been able
to conserve as high a type of civilization as the monoga-
mous form, and in fact the struggle for existence has
all but eliminated these other forms. Moreover, history
has furnished repeated instances of the fact that when
the pure family life has been seriously broken down,
civilization has broken down with it. The case of
Rome is a no less serious warning in this respect
because reference to it has become so trite.

"Turning from history, we find science furnished
with abundant evidence that promiscuity causes steril-
ity, not only by reason of the diseases that it gives rise
to, but for other reasons perhaps not fully understood.

THE OLD FASHIONED, MIDDLE CLASS IDEALS 221

This fact makes it evident to those who have looked
closely into the matter that promiscuity must lead
ultimately to the elimination of the race that practices
it. As to the diseases just referred to, it is doubtful
whether there is any force at work among the Ameri-
can people that menaces more seriously their per-
petuity. . . .

"These facts give us a point of view for a clear
appreciation of the far reaching social destructiveness
of sexual vices and divorce. Together they mean the
perpetuation of the diseases they engender, with their
consequent poverty and crime. Their prevalence among
us would be an incontrovertible sign of decay if per-
mitted to continue and thrive. They would mean the
inevitable collapse of our civilization and the extinction
of our race. The seriousness of this menace as it
exists in America to-day has frequently been pointed
out, and it cannot be overestimated." 1

Saving is another old-fashioned middle class virtue
that seems to be going out of date ; waste and extrava-
gance appear to be increasing with prosperity. Living
beyond their means is undoubtedly one of the causes
that are eliminating the middle class.

There are three outstanding reasons for the decline
of this old ideal. Chief of the three is the modern
disease of extravagance. The display of luxuries has
turned our heads. We are infected as with a con-
tagion. It is not altogether that we want the auto-
mobiles and oriental rugs and fur coats to use; it is
more that we want them as evidences of success and
social prestige. Having apostatized from the ideals
of both Christianity and democracy (How contrary to
1 The same, pp. 50-52.

222 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

both is the ambition to be an aristocrat!), and having
bowed down to the Baal of mammon, we have come to
regard the display of luxury as of more worth than
the valid symbols of personality and real achievement.
The prime difficulty is not that we have lost the habit
of saving, but that the dollar has got to the very center
of our souls. It is the middle class philosophy of life
that we have lost.

This middle class craze for the artificial symbols of
success and social prestige is a serious matter. It is
partly to blame for the fact that we are being gradually
eliminated. The fault is not only with our stars but
with ourselves that we are gradually becoming under-
lings. We are falling through the sieve not only
because the mesh is too large, but because our own
souls are too small. We could perhaps hold our own
even against odds if it were not for our materialistic
ideals and false philosophy of life.

Sociology teaches that too high a standard of living
is quite as serious a eugenic menace as too low a
standard. Too low a standard of living means a high
birth rate among those who are willing to sink in the
scale ; too high a standard of living means a low birth
rate among those who are unwilling to sink in the scale.
The squalid poor breed fast because their standard of
living is too low ; the fastidious middle class barely hold
their own because their standard of living is too high.
The result is that the inferior tend to supplant the
superior types of our citizenry. This is why the native
white stock, the backbone of the middle class, is tending
toward racial extinction. The standard of living is
doing it.

But let us think clearly about the standard of living.

THE OLD FASHIONED, MIDDLE CLASS IDEALS 223

Low and high are deceptive terms; let us substitute
wholesome and unwholesome. Then it turns out that
rich and poor alike have unwholesome standards of
living; but not for like reasons. The standards of the
poor are unwholesome because they lack the means of
sanitation, health, moral soundness and industrial effi-
ciency. These things, which they really need, many of
the poor do not know enough to want; hence they
propagate without a struggle. They should have these
things furnished them until they acquire the want.
The standards of the proud and well-to-do are un-
wholesome because they are false. Their desire for
the artificial symbols of commercial success and social
standing is so intense that normal reproduction is
sacrificed thereto. They, too, do not know enough to
want the things they really need. The real fault is
with their ideals. They spend their money for that
which is not bread, and their labor for that which does
not satisfy; and as a result they are sinking into ob-
livion. They sacrifice life to luxuries, and existence to
appearance. The middle class must revert to the plain,
old fashioned, middle class ideals of life, and set their
hearts less on keeping up appearances but more on
keeping up the realities.

The second reason for the decline of saving as an
ideal is the real difficulty of securing a surplus under
the modern conditions of industrial organization de-
scribed in Chapters V and VI. There are large pro-
portions of the population whose failure to save is
explained by this cause. With us of the middle class,
however, especially the more prosperous of us, it is
the first, not the second, of these reasons that is
responsible.

224 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

In the third place, there is a sort of socialistic theory
abroad to the effect that the more one spends the more
one will earn. The more the "wage slaves" can be
induced to get along without, the cheaper they can be
hired — so the doctrine is bluntly put. Like so many
destructive fallacies there is a grain of truth in this;
but there are nine grains of fallacy, too. It is their
birthright that socialism is teaching the poor to let slip
between their fingers.

In view of the confusion of theory and practice about
saving, it might not be amiss in this connection to
examine the old fashioned theories on that subject.
These theories were both ethical and economic. From
the standpoint of morals it was held that the self
restraint involved in frugality and economy toughened
the fiber of a person's character. It was also held that
the accumulation and ownership of property, even in
small amounts, gave the owner a sense of responsibility
and a self confidence quite essential to normal person-
ality. This theory is sound; and quite as important
as ever. However, in order to get the full moral
benefits of economy it is necessary that saving be not
so difficult as to be practically impossible. So long as
the advantages and handicaps exist that were described
in Chapters V and VI discouragement and disgust are
too apt to sour the spirit.

The old economic theory was to the effect that capital
is accumulated by the voluntary self denial and saving
of individuals. Under modern conditions this, like so
many other traditional theories, recedes into the
shadows of half truth. In the first place, as Professor
Friday * has pointed out, almost exactly two thirds of
1 American Economic Review, March, 1919, Supplement, p. 79.

THE OLD FASHIONED, MIDDLE CLASS IDEALS 225

the total savings for the year 1918 (i.e., excess of
production over consumption) was the undivided profits
of business and agricultural enterprises. About one
third comes from all other sources, including savings
out of individual incomes. That is to say, in modern
industry new capital is one of the products of business;
at least two thirds of it accrues in this way * rather
than by private self denial.

In the second place, saving is and always has been
mostly enforced, rather than voluntary. This is the
joker in the old economic theory. The saving has
mostly been done by one set of persons, and the accu-
mulating by another. Uncle Tom did the going with-
out ; Shelby, St. Clare and Legree did the accumulating
— after having wasted whatever their fancies dictated.
Under present industrial conditions it is the employees
of industry and the consumers of monopoly products
that do the going without, while the owners and man-
agers of industry do the accumulating, after they have
wasted what their fancies dictate on poodles, palaces
and paraphernalia. And yet the fact remains that
something less than one third of the new capital does
accrue from private savings. And the fact remains
that individuals and families prosper if they save and
accumulate; but go under if they are wastrels and
spendthrifts. Notwithstanding the joker in the old
theory, there can be no salvation for a middle class that
is no longer frugal and saving. Only economical
families would profit permanently by social justice if
we had it.

The hope has been held out to the laboring class that
their salvation is to come through saving. It is urged

1 See p. 46, above.

226 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

that by investing their savings in corporation securities
they could themselves become owners of the corpora-
tions that employ them. In which case owner and
worker would be united again, as under the old small-
shop, hand-tool regime. But under present industrial
conditions this hope is ill grounded because of the
relatively small amount that employees could possibly
save. As has already been stated, two thirds of all
new capital is the undivided profits of business enter-
prise. The total savings of labor must be a rather
small part of the remaining third. This means that
laborers could never hope to gain anything but a
minority representation in industry by investing their
savings in the securities of the corporations that employ
them. Only a vanishing representation, to be more
accurate. That is the whole tendency of modern
industry, for the reasons pointed out in Chapters V
and VI. This proposal, that labor might turn capitalist
by saving, when thought through, only throws the
to-him-that-hath-shall-be-given aspect of modern in-
dustry into clearer relief.

In practice the case is even worse than that, because
when employees do invest in corporate securities it is
too often mere water that they buy. Suppose, for
example, that the prosperity of a given concern in-
creases the market value of its stocks by, say, $25,-
000,000. By a well-known device of stock jugglery
it is easy to let that appear in the face value of the
corporation's stocks instead of in the market value.
In other words, the corporation issues $25,000,000
new stock without adding anything to its material
equipment. This new stock is then offered to the
employees, in exchange for their savings. The ex-

THE OLD FASHIONED, MIDDLE CLASS IDEALS 227

panding value of capital thus sucks up the small savings
of labor like a vacuum. It is evident that labor's
attempt to enfranchise themselves by this method is
like a man's efforts to extricate himself from quick-
sand : the more he struggles the deeper he is mired.
If the workers are to become owners it is necessary,
first, that they be allotted a larger share of the profits
of industry, and, second, that stock jugglery be stopped
so that the small investor can buy securities with well-
grounded confidence.

Although the enfranchisement of laborers is not
likely to be accomplished through saving alone, never-
theless saving is a sound policy for them, and the
industrial future of society is not safe without it.
Enfranchisement and extravagance together would
mean industrial ruin eventually. In the past wealth
has been saved involuntarily, it is true ; but saved it has
been, and accumulated. Involuntary saving is like
autocratic control : better than none. Voluntary is
always a later word, whether in the growth of children
or of civilization; compulsory comes first. Civiliza-
tion would never have reached its present level without
slavery and absolute monarchy. If now we are to
have political freedom we must have self control; if
the laboring classes are to have industrial freedom they
must practice voluntary saving. Labor demands a
voice in the management of industry precisely in order
to command a larger share in the product. If, when
they get it, they waste it in extravagance there will
be no saving at all, either voluntary or involuntary,
individual or social. Our great corporations have been
great accumulators; if they are emasculated of that
power by the voice of irresponsible labor in their man-

228 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

agement, the result may be industrial disaster. The
luxury and waste of the privileged classes, present and
past, is the symbol of their failure, not of their success
— their failure to make good use of what society en-
trusted to their management. If the masses should be
given the means to imitate their waste, civilization could
hardly stand the strain for a century; unless with the
means the masses acquired also the character and self-
restraint to save instead of to waste. Nor would the
cooperative saving at the sources, of which socialism
boasts, avail if the individuals involved had the wastrel
attitude of mind. One hundred million spendthrifts
and wastrels will not total a saving nation even in a
socialistic Utopia. Political democracy gives you a
Russia or a Mexico if the individuals are either red or
yellow; nor is democracy a magic word in industry,
either.

Whatever may be said, therefore, of the industrial
maladjustments under which we suffer, the fact remains
that the good, old fashioned middle class doctrine of
saving is as valid as ever it was. We smile at the petty
economies of the old folks years ago, and sometimes
pity the meagerness and barrenness of their lives ; but
it was by that hard economy that they paid off the
mortgage. And without that same spirit, collectively
encouraged and individually practiced, we shall never
be able to pay off the social mortgage. The good,
old fashioned ideal of making good on one's own
account is valid still. No social regime will ever repeal
the ancient law that, without self denial and frugality,
individuals, families and nations go to the wall. Poor
Richard ought to be as popular to-day as in the days

THE OLD FASHIONED, MIDDLE CLASS IDEALS 220,

of old Ben Franklin. Without saving and the spiritual
ideals that go with it, there will be no cure for the
social unrest.

Plain, common honesty is another of the old
fashioned, middle class virtues without which society
cannot survive. Exploitation is, we trust, vanishing
into the past; cooperation looms ever larger on the
horizon of the future. Fraud and cheating belong with
war : they can have no place in a cooperative world.
Honesty, truth and dependability are the foundations
of a nation's business development; for business is a
cooperative enterprise, slow as the world has been to
find it out. Sabotage, contract breaking, killing time
on the job, are war measures. There can be no indus-
trial peace so long as they continue. "His word was
as good as his bond" is a tribute every reader is proud
to hear paid to his father ; even a grandfather worthy
of the phrase is not too remote to be a source of pride.
Unless the young men of the oncoming generation are
worthy of their fathers and grandfathers, their own
sons and grandsons will not be proud of them. Dis-
honesty is cowardice, and quite as treasonable to democ-
racy, for it loses the battles of the social crisis. Sturdy
conscientiousness is the only thing that will not let the
enemy pass.

A confident word may very properly be said for the
old fashioned middle class piety. "The religious life
is far more than a mere harmless diversion, a mere
plaything with which children can be amused, so as to
keep them out of mischief. It is positively socializing
in a score of different ways. This may be especially
and emphatically said of the Christian religion. For

23O CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

its uniqueness and grandeur consists precisely in this :
that it harnesses the religious activities and emotions to
social sentiments, ideals, and enterprises. It stimulates
instincts of sympathy and love, not only by its standards
but by the emotions that it generates. Thus men are
motivated to lives of spontaneous and positive good-
ness; they are bound together by mutual spiritual in-
terests of the most intimate and tender sort. Thus the
world's capitalgof love is immeasurably augmented, and
its liability to hatred immeasurably decreased.

"Again, the religious life, especially the Christian
life, renders the heart right as nothing else can possibly
do. It places its emphasis upon sincerity and good
intentions as the prime requisites. And here, again,
it stimulates these virtues with emotions that can not
be tabulated. It strengthens, moreover, the will by its
very access to those higher and invisible powers which
no man can explain. Thus it makes men over, and
from what has already been said of the social value
of individual morality, its social value must appear.

"Not only so, but — and this is most important of
all — religion always and everywhere has been charac-
terized by its power to seize upon ideals, enterprises,
and causes, and marshal thereto fervor and enthusiasm
that are incalculable. History is full of instances:
the pilgrimages of the Buddhists, the conquests of the
Mohammedans, the fanatical crusades against the Albi-
genses, and so on without limit. This fervor and
activity, often tremendous, though sometimes fanatical,
may be tamed and harnessed to the cause of social
welfare. It may be made to motivate the individual
moral regeneration of whole populations in behalf of

THE OLD FASHIONED, MIDDLE CLASS IDEALS 23 1

social ideals, and it may be utilized in behalf of social
justice." 1

Will the reader kindly turn to his "Cotter's Saturday
Night" ? Here Burns sets forth the joys and ideals of
middle class life in Scotland a century and a quarter
ago : industry, domestic harmony, frugality, self-denial,
virtue, and piety.

"The mother, wi' her needle and her shears
Gars auld claes look maist as weel's the new:
The father mixes a' wi' admonition due.

"Their masters' and their mistresses' command,
The younkers a' are warned to obey:
An' mind their labors wi' an eydent hand.

"The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face,
They round the ingle form a circle wide,
The sire turns a'er wi' patriarchial grace
The big ha' Bible, ance his father's pride.

"He wales a portion with judicious care:
And, 'Let us worship God !' he says, -with solemn air.

"From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs,
That make her loved at home, revered abroad :
Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,
'An honest man's the noblest work of God.' "

And from scenes that are the modern equivalent of
these America's grandeur in the new era will arise, if
it is to arise at all. To sneer at the homely virtues of
faith, sincerity, conscientiousness, honesty, diligence,
frugality, self-denial and modesty is to sneer at the
foundations of the earth; no social reforms can ever
prosper that are flippant toward them. Civilization,
much less a super-civilization, is utterly impossible
without them.

1 The author's "Personal Religion and the Social Awakening,"
pp. 91, 92.

CHAPTER XVI

THE NEW EDUCATION

EQUITABLE distribution of wealth is absolutely
necessary ; but that would pretty much take care
of itself if only knowledge were distributed
liberally enough. Ignorant persons are likely to be
poor; but education has a money value. Intelligence
is a weapon with which the masses can protect them-
selves from exploitation ; but without it they are help-
less. Not the common ownership of material wealth
but the universal possession of intelligence and culture
is the only safe socialism.

Bad institutions*— slavery, autocracy, polygamy —
must go; but the manner of their going is of no slight
moment. If the private ownership of land and capital
should ever be proven pernicious, as the socialists con-
tend it is, we should all be as anxious as they to discard
it; but we are all desperately concerned about the
method of deciding whether it be pernicious or not.
The getting rid of bad institutions, and the substituting
of better ones in their places, has usually been a bloody
business. Hitherto the partisans of competing insti-
tutions have usually locked in mortal combat. The
reason was pointed out in Chapter III. Such was the
case between autocracy and democracy but yesterday.
But that is a tragic, brutish method, frightfully waste-
ful of human values. Besides, nothing is ever settled

232

THE NEW EDUCATION 233

till it is settled right. If the bad institution wins, its
victims are sure, sooner or later, to contest the decision
again. Peace is never permanent until a basis is
reached on which natural rights and social justice are
assured.

Why not, therefore, put our institutions through the
sieve of reason and justice in the first place? Why not
use intelligence as the guide of social life? Why not
make reason the instrument of social selection? The
answer is all too obvious : there is not sufficient intel-
ligence extant. The ignorance of the masses was the
reason why the Utopian hopes of the sixteenth century
humanists were so long delayed — the ignorance of the
masses! Likewise we, if we are to pass peacefully
through the present social crisis, and bequeath to our
children's children the normally ripening fruits of
democracy, must make provision for vastly increasing
the stock of popular intelligence.

The task of social readjustment is, therefore, not so
much a task for the agitator, the social reformer, or
even the statesman, as it is a task for the educator;
because he is the power behind the scenes. In the long
fun it is he who creates public opinion. That is why
he must be free and unbiased.

The history of education teaches us to see the causal
relation between a civilization and its system of edu-
cation. Sparta had a civilization that was exclusively
militaristic, and a schooling that was equally so.
Athenian civilization was uniquely creative in the field
of the fine arts, and the unique feature of her schools
was the emphasis they put upon artistic initiative.
China worshiped the past, and her education consisted
in having her boys memorize the maxims that had come

234 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

down from the past. When a civilization changes its
education changes too. China has replaced her classics
with natural science in her curriculum. The Reforma-
tion started a new type of education in Protestant
countries. And the great changes of the last century,
expounded in Chapter IV, have been accompanied by
the greatest changes and expansions in the history of
education.
^/ The principle to be noted definitely is the causal
^function of education. What the schools teach to-day,
. ^that society will be to-morrow. If the civilization of
^to-morrow is like the civilization of yesterday, it is
largely because the schools of to-day teach the culture
X of yesterday to the rising generation. To-morrow will
be whatever the schools are to-day. If a civilization

f\ aspires therefore to become telic and predetermine its
to-morrow, it will do so through its schools. It will

1 anticipate what its to-morrow ought to be, and plan
to-day's curriculum accordingly. If a civilization
aspires to shape the institutions of its future — remake
family life, remodel the state, readjust industrial rela-
tions, it will mold its children into such shapes that
they will fall together socially into the institutions
desired. It follows that the school is the steering gear
of the republic. America's teachers are, therefore,
quite as much as any other class, the creators of her
future destiny. If civilization is to give place to a
super-civilization, we must remember that education
will first have to give place to a super-education; for
education is cause and civilization is result. If the
conclusion set forth in Chapter IV is sound, we must
at once lay out the foundations of a new education so
much more extensive than that of the past that our

THE NEW EDUCATION 235

sluggish imaginations grasp its proportions with un-
prophetic difficulty.

To start with, we must conceive a new educational
ideal. Whoever ponders over the implications of
democracy will realize that its ideals entitle every citizen
to an adequate opportunity for complete self-realization.
In order to achieve that right all citizens must be
guaranteed opportunity to share equally, at least to the
full extent of their mental capacities, in the benefits of
knowledge and culture. Literature, art, science, recrea-
tional devices, the moral code, the Christian ideals, the
social institutions, are all the products of the race's
cooperative endeavor; they are social capital, joint pos-
sessions ; and their use and enjoyment ought, therefore,
to be equally accessible to all. How utterly undemo-
cratic it is for acquaintance with classic literature to
serve as a badge of social exclusiveness ! If music,
sanitary science, wholesome sports, and all other good
things of civilized life are means of happiness, whom
should democracy select to deprive of their blessings?
Some one has said that the aim of the country life
movement is to render life on the farm "permanently
satisfying to representative American citizens." That
is also the aim of democracy, except that democracy
includes miners, garment makers, mill operatives, steel
workers, teamsters, and all, as well as farmers. Now
ignorance is the cause of most of the handicaps of these
classes; or at least most of their handicaps could be
removed by the right sort of education. Education is
the solution of the country life problem, for instance.
Agriculture can be greatly improved by science; rural
life can be enriched by art in various practical forms;
education can take care of the rural recreational prob-

236 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

lem ; and only by knowledge can farmers learn to pro-
tect themselves from industrial exploitation. Likewise
any other industrial group. And democracy is bound
by its own ideals to furnish all citizens with oppor-
tunity for permanently satisfying lives.

And not only is such a common sharing demanded
by the ideals of democracy ; it is demanded as well by
the fundamental laws of social self preservation. It is
necessary to the success of democracy; but most espe-
cially so in a changing age like this, when all things
are in flux, and permanent values are liable to be lost.
Social philosophy has demonstrated that common in-
terests are the fundamental requisites of social organ-
ization and order. Diversities of races, languages,
religions and social classes are the source of social
friction and discord. Social classes and castes can be
liquidated and fused only by putting the common
culture into the hands of all alike. And the more
complex civilization becomes, the larger must be the
culture that is common to all. This is the more neces-
sary in a democracy where force is not at hand to
preserve order, and the most necessary of all in an age
of change that tends to unsettle the familiar programs
of cooperation. Moreover, social progress depends
quite as much upon distribution as upon production of
knowledge. The more profoundly one understands the
forces and laws of social organization the more clearly
he recognizes the need of a wide and liberal distribution
of culture, and the more distinctly he discerns that the
surest way to wreck democracy, especially in the shoals
of a critical period like this, is to tolerate the present
partial and inadequate distribution of learning.

tWhile it is the essential social function of the ele-

THE NEW EDUCATION 237

mentary school to teach what must be common to all,
it is evident that our culture is now so extensive and
mature that the elementary school is unequal to the
task. The high school must come to the aid of the
elementary school. Only eleven per cent, approxi-
mately, of our young people graduate from the high
school. As a matter of fact, we do not have even an
elementary universal education. Some one recently
pointed out that we are a sixth-grade nation on the
average. Shockingly large numbers of our citizenry
have had no adequate opportunity to escape the handi-
caps even of illiteracy. The draft revealed 700,000
young men of draft age who could not read nor write
the English language. We were shocked to learn that,
because we realized intuitively that democracy can not
succeed on that basis.

At this point it is a little difficult to adapt the
rhetoric to the needs of the argument, since the ideal
we are pleading for is such a stranger to the average
mind — indeed, to the minds of too many educational
leaders. Universal secondary education must be
adopted as the American slogan. High school
graduation is the minimum essential for American
citizenship. Of course, this implies a high school
curriculum adapted to individual differences and to the
social needs of modern life. When we consider how
small a proportion of our children go beyond the
elementary school — scarcely thirty-five per cent — we
realize what an ambitious program this is. But noth-
ing short of this will serve the purpose. The half-
loaf, makeshift reforms of sociological near-sighted-
ness, are lamentably out of place in germinal times
like these.

238 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

This may suggest the magnitude of the educational
advance that we must set ourselves seriously to the
task of consummating immediately if we are to build
a school system commensurate with the new democracy
that is struggling to be born; a system that shall be
capable of performing the causal function that the
present crisis will impose upon it.

It is interesting to inquire somewhat in detail what
such a system will be.

In the first place, it must be equipped to conserve
the physical health of the nation's children. This will
require free medical and dental clinics for both diag-
nosis and treatment. It will require a reorganization
of the entire curriculum from the standpoint of physical

; o p education.

3 ' Universal industrial training is also an important
item in the new* educational program. The nation is
awakening to that fact. No prosperity for the masses

' /j can ever be built on any other basis than individual
efficiency. The person who develops efficiency in him-
self will succeed fairly well in spite of such social
injustices as do exist in America. On the other hand
a just society will do everything possible to insure the
economic efficiency of every citizen. Our educational
system, great as has been its progress, does not do that
as yet. Our curriculum is too academic, and not suffi-
ciently practical; our compulsory attendance laws are
inadequate as to age limit, and inadequately enforced;
and we offer too little assistance to the children of the
poor. We ought to keep practically all children in
school till approximately eighteen ; and their schooling
ought to include vocational education of a practical sort.
For the schools of a democracy can never afford to take

THE NEW EDUCATION 239

their cue from the social status of the poor; instead,\
they must throw the door of opportunity wide open to
all. The plea in behalf of those who are compelled^
to leave school early is as dangerous as it is plausible.
They must be compelled to not leave school early.
Whatever the cause of their leaving early, whether an
ill-devised curriculum or their own poverty, or tf^
ignorance of their parents, the cause must be overcome,
no matter how serious the difficulties nor how great
the cost. For the industries are made for the children, '
not the children for the industries. There are as yet
many unsolved problems in vocational education; but
none that are insoluble if educators, taxpayers and
public will cooperate. But some things are already
clear. Industrial training must not be divorced from
liberal education. To equip young adolescents with
merchantable skill, instead of general intelligence, is
to enslave them. Education, to insure real efficiency,
must produce not only skill but adaptability, intelligent
comprehension of the whole productive process, and
knowledge of economic law. Education can affect dis-
tribution, too, by molding wants, so that the rich will
not "waste their substance in riotous living" nor the
poor "spend their money for that which is not bread
and their labor for that which satisfieth not." This
implies cultural education of a new democratic type.

In Chapter XV the function of morality in the
reconstruction was discussed, and the responsibility of
religion will be pointed out in Chapter XIX. But
the sclig^ls als# have an immense responsibility in this
matter. To solve the problem of moral education in
the schools is therefore absolutely requisite to the task
of the age. And to date we are almost as far from

v>-

24O CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

the solution of that problem as we are from securing
universal high school graduation.

The situation requires a complete redirection of our
secondary schools. In fact, the entire educational
institution needs a thorough overhauling from bottom
to top. The curriculum needs remaking. Industry,
recreation, physical training and hygiene, homemaking,
art in various practicable forms, social science, etc.,
must find an adequate place in the curriculum; while
the grip of blind tradition must be broken. School-
room methods will have to be as radically modified as
school subjects themselves. The kindergarten must be
extended until, at least in cooperation with other insti-
tutions, it takes into its lap the babies of the poor so
tenderly as to prevent the 300,000 unnecessary deaths
each year. The compulsory attendance age must be
raised. Child labor must be outlawed; and instead
there must be developed some sound form of industrial
participation as part of the school program. The
medical profession must be so far socialized as to
provide at least for the free medical care of all children.
The children of the poor will have to be fed and clothed
in partfct least by the school, in order to keep them in
school and up to standard in efficiency. Recreation
must be' as well recognized in school equipment as
science now is. Commercialized amusements must be
superseded. There must be worked out an efficient
cooperation between home, church, school and civic
authorities, especially for moral safeguarding and
training. This, it will be ^served, is an ambitious
program. But this is an ambitious age. It aspires to
see the present muddle through promptly, and put foot
on the shores of a new world.

THE NEW EDUCATION 2.\\

The new education will mean well equipped, all-
modern schools ; it will mean highly educated teachers,
and it will mean vastly extended facilities. Such an
educational program will not come cheap; but it will
equip the laboring class with individual efficiency, and
make both them and the nation prosperous. To this
end the authority of the Federal government should be
greatly extended. The Bureau of Education should be
elevated to a department, and the commissioner given
a portfolio in the President's cabinet. State, and espe-
cially Federal, aid must be very greatly extended in
order to equalize educational facilities in different
localities. Unprecedented resources need to be put at
the disposal of the schools. The tax reform described
in Chapter XII will make that possible. The schools in
turn would then be in a position to generate efficiency,
guarantee opportunity and insure self-realization in
like undreamed of proportions to all citizens. Nothing
less will fulfill the promises of democracy. In the
reaction against war-time expenses and high taxes now
sweeping over the country there is grave danger that
the great forward move in education so much needed
may be side-tracked. There could scarcely be a costlier
economy at this critical time. Educational expansion
is an absolutely necessary item in the campaign against
radicalism in America.

In conclusion, and for the sake of emphasis, the vital
points of this chapter may be set forth again in two
short paragraphs.

First: The higher the civilization the higher the
education necessary. Savages have no schools at all.
Throughout the historic period, while the handicraft
method jjjr industry and the monarchical form of gov-

242 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

ernment prevailed, private schools for the few, and
illiteracy for the masses, was the system of education
that prevailed everywhere; the amount and kind of
private schooling depending on the amount and kind
of civilization. But now we are entering a new super-
civilization, in which the power-machine method of
industry, the democratic form of government, and the
scientific method of thinking, are to prevail. For that
new super-civilization a new system of free, universal,
public education is coming into existence. It has been
growing for a century; and very rapidly for the past
twenty-five or thirty years. But it is not half grown
yet. The only educational system that will fit the new
super-civilization is one that makes a good, practical,
all-round, high school education free and compulsory
to all, and higher education freely accessible to all who
have brains enough to profit by it. The generation
now living must see the growth of the new education
completed.

Seconcffijphe mind is the most important instrument
in human life. It is more potent than muscle, for it
substitutes steam and electricity for muscle. It is
better than fleetness of foot or wing, for it invents the
means of far greater speed than these. It is more
important than natural wealth, for without intelligence
no good use can be made of wealth. Without intel-
ligence political democracy is a vain hope, for an igno-
rant people can never make a democracy succeed. If
workers are to nave control of industry they must
acquire the intelligence, experience, knowledge and
judgment necessary thereto. Knowledge is power;
intelligence is the master key that unlocks all sorts of
opportunities. To be educated is therefore tjae right of

U*

THE NEW EDUCATION 243

rights. If democracy is to give all men their rights
it must give every person all the education he can take.
There can be no social justice where part of the people
are deprived of education. We deceive ourselves unless
we understand that enlightenment is the most important
thing to be shared by all. Put the master key into
every citizen's hand and the social unrest will dis-
appear. While the masses are clamoring for a just
distribution of wealth the friends of real democracy
must see to it that they are given a just distribution of
intelligence and culture also.

Perhaps it may not be out of place to close this chap-
ter with the challenge of the socialists. Their stock
reply to the argument of this chapter is that such an
educational advance can not be secured under the
present management of society. They usually admit
that it would head off socialism. But they confidently
assert that socialism never will be headed off by educa-
tion because the necessary education will be headed off
by capitalism. It is for us of the middle class to see
that the lie is put to this challenge. One of the vital
needs of the present crisis is to make all the people
understand the fundamental importance of expanding
public education.

H. G. Wells has coined a ringing phrase which con-
denses the argument of this chapter into an epigram,
and which we may well adopt as a slogan. This is the
phrase: "The race between education and catas-
trophe" ! That is the present situation in a nut shell.

CHAPTER XVII

THE NEED FOR SOCIAL SCIENCE

DEMOCRACY, as we have said, is confronted
by a most bewildering array of social and eco-
nomic problems. An almost interminable list
suggest themselves : land tenure, urban congestion,
credit, periodical unemployment, absentee landlordism,
financial panics, monopoly, tariff, immigration, tenancy,
over-capitalization, labor and capital, Americanization,
unearned increment, business depressions, I. W. W.-
ism, corporation piracy, the closed shop, socialism,
divorce, taxation, political corruption, stock jugglery,
strikes, vagrancy, industrial accidents, crime, distribu-
tion of labor, pauperism, railroad regulation, wealth
concentration, labor unionism, preventable disease, etc.,
etc., etc. Taken together, they constitute the social
problem, and are the occasion of the social unrest.
For a little meditation on each of these problems shows
that almost every one resolves itself into an argument
between the haves and the have-nots. Reduced to a
common denominator, they become the problems of
distribution versus concentration of wealth. And since
the state is the agency through which decisions are
reached and enforced, the fundamental struggle is for
the control of the state. Boiled down, therefore, the
issue is democracy versus plutocracy. Upon the wise
and just solution of these issues the success and per-

244

THE NEED FOR SOCIAL SCIENCE 245

manency of the republic depends; and the crisis of the
times is going to crowd them on to the docket fast.
What we might have taken two or three generations
to think out at leisure the turbulence of the present
crisis may compel us to decide in a few years.

How can these problems be solved and the com-
plications they threaten averted? The question is
half answered when it is restated: Who is going to
solve our social problems ? Then the answer is antici-
pated : The People ! In a government like ours the
people must settle the issues of state if they are solved
at all. But the people can not be expected to solve
problems that they know little or nothing about.

Even our statesmen have been densely ignorant of
the forces they were trying to manipulate. Jackson's
hobby was banks, and his administration was charac-
terized chiefly by banking legislation. Yet it is difficult
to imagine how any person could be more ignorant of
the principles of banking than Jackson was. He was
actuated instead by economic superstition and local
prejudice. Yet the masses blindly followed their blind
guide as a popular hero. The railroad regulations with
which our legislatures and congress busied themselves
between 1870 and 1900 were based on the erroneous
supposition that competition is an automatic regulator
of rates. In the very midst of this period — in 1884 —
Hadley pointed out their error ; but his technical advice
was ignored for twenty years ; meantime the people and
the railroads were both the victims of their own and
their legislators' ignorance. In 1899 Ely expounded
the scientific principles governing monopoly; but states-
men, in spite of the fact that he predicted its futility,
have insisted on enacting trust-busting laws to this very

246 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

day, and all to no avail. Similar illustrations could be
enumerated almost without limit. In fact, economic
legislation has almost invariably bungled. President
Wilson was the first prominent statesman who has fully
understood the importance of consulting scientific
experts instead of politicians in the legislative solution
of economic problems.

But even yet the people are densely ignorant of social
science. Such economic principles as have percolated
into the lay mind are usually a century out of date, and
are therefore utterly inapplicable to the modern
machinofacture regime. Popular misconceptions of
monopoly, labor, corporation finance, taxation, credit,
tariff, immigration, etc., are as ludicrous as the eigh-
teenth century New England custom of applying a
powder made of charred toads for the cure of skin
diseases. For nearly two generations we tried to settle
the tariff question by wager of political battle, as if
we were still in the middle ages ; and it remains to be
seen whether or not we shall resume the farce. Even
the social point of view is absent, and the old indi-
vidualistic philosophy still dominates the popular mind.
This is illustrated by the failure of the public to under-
stand the term social justice. The individualistic point
of view makes them try to attribute the results of social
injustice to individual incompetence. The we-fallacy
is all but universal, and prosperity is shibboleth. Per-
sons who lack the social point of view seldom stop to
inquire whether it is we or us that are prosperous.
And this sociological ignorance is especially charac-
teristic of the middle class, who enjoy the prestige of
prosperity, social standing, and education.

The will of the people, an English writer says, must

THE NEED FOR SOCIAL SCIENCE 247

be "reasonably organized." There is food for thought
in that phrase. "Organized" : unless the people are
agreed as to how to get what they want they can never
accomplish it. For lack of such agreement popular
movements often fail. Truly, as this writer quotes
Hegel, "the people is that part of the state that does
not really know what it wants." But vested interests
are never disorganized. "Reasonably organized." Un-
less their program is sound, obviously it can not long
be agreed upon because it will fail to get results. It
must not only be sound ; its promoters must know it to
be sound, and why. Otherwise there is a fatal loss of
motion. But economic ignorance and superstition can
never furnish such a program ; only science ! The will
to understand is the first item on the prescription for
the cure of the social unrest. Until the people under-
stand the social problem there can be no solution to it.1
So far as managing the great economic machine is
concerned, the American people are like babes in the
woods. They have learned that nature is complex and
intricate; and that, to manipulate it, the complex and
intricate sciences, involving a knowledge of nature,
must be thoroughly mastered. We have passed the
stage where we let ignorant old women tamper with
the lives of sick children, or put any common-sense
jack-of-all-trades in control of a great electric power
plant. But the great economic and social forces that
play about us, and upon which our happiness and very
existence depend, we are ludicrously ignorant of. Even

1 Two recent pieces of high-grade fiction have apparently been
written for the express purpose of arousing the American public
to the importance of informing themselves on economic, social,
political and international problems. They are "In a Far Coun-
try," by Winston Churchill, and "Blind," by Ernest Poole.

248 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

our educated men are ignorant, being educated only in
other lines. We are too ignorant even to know that
we are ignorant. For example, how utterly helpless
we are in the grip of the high cost of living! We are
capable of nothing more effective than excitement and
anger. Our intelligence regarding it is on the level
of our ancestors' when they had the scourge of witch-
craft to contend with. We have wasted the rich
natural resources of a new land, like a herd of cattle
trampling1 curiously around a new pasture of tall
clover; we have "run the government" for sixty years
by programs that were our boast, but which, as a matter
of fact, were precipitating and aggravating the condi-
tions by which we are at present so hysterically alarmed.
What a mess, indeed, the older generation have be-
queathed us, with their ignorant, conceited blundering!
And now we have this "red" unrest sweeping over us
like an epidemic; before which we are as helpless as
Englishmen were before the Black Death in the thir-
teenth century. What they needed then was sanitary
science, if there had only been such a thing! What
we need now is social science, if only we know that
there is such a thing! We can never cure radicalism
with incantations and executions. We can only cure
it with knowledge. We must understand the law of
monopoly price, Ricardo's "iron law of wages," why
immigration scarcely increases the population at all,
Gresham's law of cheap money, whether or not sun
spots cause financial panics, and why the right of
"freedom of contract" has become a bulwark of tyr-
rany. You can't get honey-producing insects that will
work all night by crossing lightning bugs and honey
bees; it's contrary to nature; and if you want to help

THE NEED FOR SOCIAL SCIENCE 249

solve the social problem, get a good standard book on
economics or sociology and begin studying it diligently
and humbly. Perhaps you may be one of those to
understand something about natural law in the social
world.

The "reds" are studying economics! They know
their Carl Marx as your grandmother knew her Bible.
The socialists are the best-read group of unlettered
people in America to-day, so far as economics is con-
cerned; and they are as ready with their answers to
the orthodox economics, as they call it, as the hard-
shelled Baptists were to meet arguments against im-
mersion. But as for the opponents of radicalism, they
are capable as a rule of nothing but a dazed and out-
raged silence, or else a pointless, inarticulate vehemence.
This is the kind of argument that ends, not in con-
viction, but in fisticuffs.

An appeal to social science is absolutely necessary.
We proudly claim that this is an age of science. The
achievements of the nineteenth century were due chiefly
to the advancement and application of natural science.
Are not the American people now prepared to realize
that we have like advantages to gain by the application
of social science? Or do they still fail to realize that
there is such a thing as social science? To distribute
what social science we now possess among the people,
where it may be put to use, is one of our urgent needs.
For it is not only necessary that we should have leaders
who know; it is necessary, in a democracy governed
like ours, that the masses of the people also should
know ; at least that they should know enough to know
whom to follow. It is an axiom of social science that
in a democracy public opinion makes history, and that

25O CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

public opinion depends, not upon the leadership of the
intellectual aristocracy only, but also upon the general
diffusion of knowledge among the masses of the people.
It is necessary, therefore, that there be a generous
sprinkling among us of those who really know some-
thing scientific about our social problems and their
solutions, experts to whom we may turn for leadership.
But it is equally necessary, and at present a more press-
ing and urgent need, that there be many citizens in
every community who are sufficiently well informed
along these lines to mold the sentiment of the com-
munity in which they live, so that scientific principles,
rather than partisan superstition, may be woven into
the fabric of public opinion.

It would be interesting to inquire the causes of our
popular ignorance of social science. There are no
doubt numerous reasons ; but the fault lies chiefly with
our educational system. What little civics we have
taught in our elementary schools has been formal, at
least until very recently. We spend more time teach-
ing the boys and girls how the globe was circumnavi-
gated in 1 5 19 than how the anti-trust law has been
circumvented since 1890. And our high schools teach
algebra, geometry, ancient history, and Latin, but
almost no economics. Education is designed to adjust
us to our environment ; apparently our educators do not
yet discern what our environment is : not savages, but
profiteers; not triangles, but corners; not Catiline and
Ariovistus, but Haywood and Gary. To date our
public schools have been well nigh failures so far as
concerns training for the complex duties of citizenship.

The colleges and universities alone cannot solve this
problem, for the simple reason that the leaders alone,

THE NEED FOR SOCIAL SCIENCE 25 1

whom the colleges are supposed to train, cannot enact
reforms without popular support. The people them-
selves must know. It is a task for distributive scholar-
ship. Therefore we intuitively turn to the high schools.
The high schools must frankly take up the task of
teaching economics and sociology, lots of them, and in a
form adapted to the intellects and emotions of adoles-
cence. Social science ought to be the core of the high
school curriculum. Every student with sufficient men-
tality to understand it should get at least four years
of it. And let us say frankly that other subjects ought
to give way to make at least that much room for it.
What an absurdity, in this blessed year of our Lord,
1 92 1, to be spending the valuable time of our high
school adolescents on quadratic equations and the third
declension, when they will be called upon in less than
ten years to exercise intelligent judgment on the tariff
question, immigration, the single tax, and a score of
other problems that democracy must solve on pain of
death. The public high school is the institution, and
the only available institution, that we can look to for
the successful performance of this great task. Only
by systematic instruction of our youth in social science
during the course of their high school career can the
knowledge be diffused which is necessary to the solu-
tion of the social problems of the times.

And does it not seem as if the high school had been
providentially raised up for the performance of this
very service ? Think how it has grown during the past
fifty years to its present proportions! In i860 there
were only forty public high schools. In 1870 there
were one hundred and sixty; in 1880, eight hundred;
in 1890, twenty-five hundred; in 1900, six thousand,

252 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

and, in 1910, twelve thousand with an attendance of a
little over one million students. To-day there are
more than 15,000 high schools; and there is every in-
dication that the rural school consolidation movement
will double that number in a few years more. And
as for the high school itself, this function suggests
a solution to the greatest difficulty that confronts it.
It has not yet found itself ! It does not understand its
own vocation. It hesitates confusedly between the
cultural aim of its education and the industrial aim,
blind to the fact that the aim for which the God of
democracy has called it into being is to prepare our
citizenry for the responsibilities of citizenship in a
complicated social environment like ours. The central
business of the high school is to teach economics,
sociology, civics and history, so as to train a citizenry
that is intelligently informed on public questions. All
the other aims of high school teaching should be
grouped around the civic aim. As soon as high school
principals see that clearly the high school will become
articulate, and the rapidity with which this change is
coming is one of the most encouraging signs of the
times.

But that is not enough. The social crisis may not
wait for a generation of high-school graduates to be
trained. More rapid means of disseminating the truth
must be devised. In the present emergency sociologists
and economists should devote themselves diligently, for
the time being at least, to distributive scholarship.
Every student of social science, whether professional or
amateur, should do what he can, and do it now. Those
who teach should direct their teaching more explicitly
toward preparedness for the social readjustment.

THE NEED FOR SOCIAL SCIENCE 253

Those who can write should offer to the popular press
such compositions as they think will be available and
useful. Occasions for public addresses should be im-
proved, or even solicited, for spreading the sacred
knowledge abroad. Ministers should be urged, in
private conversation, in their assemblies, and through
their denominational papers, to study social science and
preach applied Christianity. Social study classes should
be organized in connection with Sunday schools, home
missionary societies, women's clubs, and all sorts of
social organizations. Community centers ought to be
organized and utilized for the discussion of civic ques-
tions. Extension agencies, chautauquas, lyceums, etc.,
should be induced to retail social science in popular
form. All sorts of labor, professional and other clubs
should study and discuss economic and social problems.
It might even be possible to convince some of the
women that a mind well stored with social sciences
will be worth as much to Uncle Sam in time of peace
as a pair of socks was in time of war. Even the
Gideons might be induced to put little text-books in
economics into hotel bedrooms so that guests might
read economics while they wait. Let the preachers
deliver series of sermons on The Wastes of Fashion,
The Function of the Family, The Spiritual Unrest,
The Rights of Childhood, Hospitality to Immigrants,
and the like. Let us organize community centers and
have debates. Let each of us buy a good book on
economics, read it carefully, mark it, and then pass it
on to a neighbor. If there was ever occasion for a
fad there is occasion now for a popular fad of studying
scientific sociology and economics.

But if this sort of service is to be effectively rendered

254 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

the enterprise should be organized. Such work can
not be done by isolated individuals; it must be given
the prestige of some dignified and appropriate auspices,
and the efficiency of a comprehensive program. There
ought to be an effective national organization back of
this propaganda. To organize and carry out such a
propaganda is the American social scientists' oppor-
tunity to serve their country.

The twentieth century, if it is to be a century of
achievement at all, must be a century of achievement
in the social field. We have no lack of conveniences,
luxuries, goods and resources. If we are not happy
it is because we do not know how to live with our-
selves and with each other. It is our world of social
relations of which we are not masters. We know
how to handle that no better than our grandparents
knew how to handle contagious diseases ; social forces
are as unharnessed for us as natural forces were for
the ancients. Epidemics of social unrest and famines
of social peace sweep over us helpless. All our mate-
rial achievements will serve only to distract and in the
end to destroy us unless we can solve our social prob-
lems. Nor is their solution a matter of luck, hocus-
pocus, incantations or pious faith. It is a matter of
science and the application thereof : social science ! The
monopoly problem will not be solved by bleeding the
patient; nor radicalism by applying a mustard plaster.
We must use the specifics. Scientific surgery, thera-
peutics and sanitation must be applied, each in its place,
or there will be no recovery. Without social science,
and a wide popular knowledge of it, there can be no
cure for the social unrest.

CHAPTER XVIII

ART AND RECREATION

ART is destined to become one of the most fruitful
means of happiness and harmony that civiliza-
tion has at its disposal ; but no people has ever
yet arrived at a stage of civilization high enough to
utilize it to any very great advantage. Cultivation of
beauty and appreciation of the beautiful is one of the
great undeveloped resources of democracy; but very
few persons realize that fact as yet. It is a thankless
task to plead for popular art as a cure for radicalism,
for only by exceptional sociologists, philosophers and
educators has the social function of art been adequately
discerned. Nevertheless, a free, self -directing people,
with leisure and wealth at their disposal, will never find
happiness and harmony till they make very much larger
use of art than has ever been dreamed of before. It
will come to its own in the new super-civilization of
the future.

In the first place we have the wrong idea of what
the word art signifies. Mostly it suggests oil paint-
ings, marble statuary, and big public buildings to house
them in. It also connotes, in a vague but insistent
way, a sort of exclusive, high-browed snobbery. People
pretend to like art because it is supposed to be a high-
toned taste to affect. But if you go to an ordinary art
gallery of a Sunday afternoon what do you see? The

255

256 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

place is thronged with some nineteen or twenty sight-
seers, mostly from out of town, while the people are
at the movies. Much of the statuary is hideous old
stuff from China or the middle ages that really has
little but historic or anthropological significance. Many
of the old paintings have no charm but the name of
the artist and the marvel that he could do as well as
he did, considering the technique of the times in which
he lived. Take Rembrandt's "Adulteress" for ex-
ample. The expressions of form, pose and features
do not begin to compare in life-likeness to what one
can see on the advertising pages of any good magazine.
As a whole the picture gives a very tame interpretation
of the situation it depicts. The coloring is rich but
dull. But it is a Rembrandt, don't you know ; and one
must say "Oh !" and "Ah !" The plain truth is that
photography, printing, and the modern technique of
picture-making have carried us as much beyond what
the best picture-makers could do in the seventeenth
century, as we have improved over that century in most
other lines. Without discounting in the least the true
art of good painting, nor the first-class contribution
the early masters made to its development, the fact
remains that many modern paintings even are nothing
but indistinguishable jumbles of lights, shapes and
exaggerated color that certainly "never were on land
nor sea." And then if they have glass over them,
about all one can see is himself. And yet we pretend
to like all this stuff because it is supposed to be "Aht."
The same sort of remarks may be made about grand
opera. You pay $1 .65 to stand up for two hours where
you can look at the broad expanse of some fat woman's
naked back; and you study the parallel columns of your

ART AND RECREATION 257

libretto in a bad light so as to try to get some idea of
what it's all about. But then you are conscious of
contributing your part, for there has to be an eager
mass of the hoi polloi standing up around the edges so
as to make a background for the "beauty and the
chivalry" of the subscribers in the seven-dollar seats.
It takes the "rail birds" to set off the snobs. It is true
that the music, the properties, and sometimes the acting
are beautiful ; but the plain truth is that grand opera as
now conducted is attractive chiefly because it is an
exclusive style show. The style show interferes with
the art show. The foreign languages are used because
America has not yet developed self-assertion enough
to stand on her own feet artistically. The whole thing
is ridiculously, disgustingly undemocratic, and tends
by its exclusiveness to discourage, rather than to en-
courage, the artistic development of persons by the
name of Smith, Jones or O'Brien, whom nature has
given superbly beautiful voices. Aristocratic grand
opera ought to be laughed at till it takes out naturaliza-
tion papers and democratizes itself.

All of which is a round-about way of saying that we
ordinarily use the word art with altogether too narrow
a significance. Art really includes all forms of ex-
pressing the values of life, however homely, and all
devices for beautifying our surroundings, however
commonplace. Art includes literature, of course, and
literature not only includes the great classics, but also
wholesome, well-written fiction, and sweet, charming
bed-time stories for children. Music, in any but
"suggestive" forms, is included in art. Art includes
the elegant and pleasing use of one's mother tongue
in common conversation, the attractive arrangement of

258 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

well selected, even if inexpensive, house furnishings,
and the beautifying of door-yard, front and back, with
plants and paint. Art, in the sense in which the
masses would profit most by it, includes even coaxing
the dainty song wrens, and exterminating the English
sparrows, with their hideous, everlasting rasp. Art,
like everything else, needs to be democratized. And
when it is democratized art will take its place with
religion as one of the great ennobling influences of life.

The function of great art is to present to the imagi-
nation, and to motivate in the souls of the people, the
great dominating ideals of the age. For this purpose
we have no better means than art. Those great ideals
are the unattained goals of aspiration and endeavor.
They are as vast and vague as the geography of an
unexplored continent. They cannot be described, for
they are only longed for, not experienced. Only art
can symbolize them to the imagination. Besides, they
must be emotionalized. That, also, can be done only
by art.

For example, the solidarity of his tribe was sym-
bolized by the Alaskan's totem pole. The dream of
world empire — the prototype of universal brotherhood
— was symbolized, presented and vitalized by the archi-
tecture and mural decorations of the Assyrians, Baby-
lonians and Romans. The infinite, invisible world and
its authoritative control over human affairs was sym-
bolized by the great cathedrals of the middle ages.
The joys of beauty, grace and action were symbolized
by the various forms of Greek art.

And now the world is just conceiving new ideals:
the limitless perfectibility of the human personality,

ART AND RECREATION 259

and the limitless perfectibility of human society. »What
might not our lives be worth to ourselves and others
if all the best that is latent within them could be
brought to self-realization ! What a world this might
become if we could only solve our social maladjust-
ments and perfect social justice! Such a life and such
a world are the dominant ideals of the age, vaguely
discerned though they may be as yet by many minds.
It follows, therefore, that creative art might be a
very important factor in the work of social readjust-
ment which the western world is now forced to under-
take. Already the social ideals and aspirations of the
present age are being set forth in art. A considerable
list of fiction, and a few great dramas might be
enumerated. Numerous short poems and occasional
hymns have appeared ; also some paintings, and espe-
cially some noble sculpture. It is a pity that this art
is not more generally known, so that it might the
better perform its function. And we need much more
of it. Especially do we need some one who will set
the people to singing the hopes of the social awakening.
But is not the time ripe for first-class art : great music,
great epic, and dramatic poetry? Never were there
world movements more worthy to inspire first-class
creations. And how powerfully they would motivate
the age ! Plant the ideals of the age, therefore, in the
minds of your young men and your maidens; who
knows which of them may see the visions and dream
the dreams of consummate genius? There never was
a greater call for the work of artists, in all fields of
art, than now, when the world is struggling toward
great new ideals as yet vaguely discerned by many;

26o CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

never a deeper need for art participation and art appre-
ciation on the part of the masses than now, when we
are agitated by the social crisis.

The function of major art is to inculcate the great
ideals of the age. But art also has numerous minor
functions in social life, and for the performance of
these also it ought to be diligently cultivated by the
promoters of the new society. In the first place, art
serves as a safeguard against temptation. The vices,
such as drunkenness, licentiousness, gambling, together
with sheer laziness and shiftlessness, are among the
greatest handicaps to civilization. The instincts of
youth render them susceptible to these vices ; and every-
where these vices have their cleverly baited traps set out
to catch the young. There is no better protection to a
young person than the ability and opportunity to have
a wholesome good time at home, or in some other safe
environment, with music, good books, the drama, etc.
It helps immensely in the rearing of a family if the
children can be taught to enjoy good reading and good
music. The good reading should begin with bed-time
stories told by mother, grow up through the various
stages of juvenile literature, and culminate in the best
periodicals and classics. Such tastes, and the habit of
gratifying them, provide for innumerable hours of
happiness, that might otherwise be filled with temp-
tation.

And good music is only second to good reading.
For example, two brothers in their early 'teens play,
the one a violin and the other a 'cello. They like to
play as a duet : "Where is My Wandering Boy To-
night?" their mother accompanying them on the piano.
Well, that mother's boys are safe and happy at home,

ART AND RECREATION 261

and safe because they are happy. Some other mother's
boy may be wandering away into the snares of vice,
but not hers. Their music is their moral insurance.

Now, what is good for one family is good for all
the families of a nation. The difference between a
family (or a nation) of young people who have ac-
quired such tastes, and another that have not, is likely
to be the difference between hoodlumism and true cul-
ture. What one mother does with music, every family,
every school, every church, every municipal govern-
ment, ought to be doing for its young people. And not
only with music, but with dramatization and other
forms of art. "Bolshevism" has no great affinity for
good community music and dramatics. To furnish all
these things at public expense would be an experiment
in socialism involving no great risk, but full of promise
for a new generation of happy, moral young people.

In the second place, art inculcates and enforces the
custom-tried ideals and the traditional virtues. Every-
body understands how poetry, fiction, song, pictures,
statuary, etc., are utilized to teach morality. Teachers
of morals always have made use of such materials, and
no doubt always will. Very much more use might be
made of them for this purpose. The reason that art
is a positive moral force is because it furnishes means
of expressing the best and most ennobling emotions of
human life. Essentially that is what art is: a means
of expressing values. Not stating, nor describing, nor
explaining, but expressing. Causing the mind ad-
dressed actually to feel the value expressed. Art that
does not express real value, and stimulate the corre-
sponding feeling in response, is not art at all; it is
merely showing off. But whatever we express, in this

262 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

vital sense of the word, becomes part of our characters.
When art gives to the masses a means of expressing
noble feelings, it tends to lift them to the level of the
feelings expressed. To sing a noble hymn tends to
make one reverent and pious ; to recite a noble poem or
oration plants its noble sentiments in the soul ; to con-
template long and intelligently Rodin's "The Hand of
God" makes the observer himself in some degree a
factor in the evolution of an ideal society.

Another function of art is to soothe the nerves of
the people and make them happy. To this end it should
be used to beautify the surroundings of the common
people. If the reader has imagination enough to
realize the effect it has upon one's nerves to live in a
neighborhood decorated chiefly with cinders, tin cans,
bare brick walls and smoke, as compared with living in
a neighborhood beautified with green lawns, vine-clad
walls, dainty gardens and native song birds, he can
build up some notion of what the artistic impulse might
do for a people among whom it was stimulated and
gratified instead of outraged and stifled.

It is extremely difficult to prevent this line of argu-
ment from degenerating into anticlimax. The reader's
imagination fails him; the thing is so remote! The
masses are so destitute of refining art. The home
surroundings of millions of workers who live in city
slums, in mill cities and mining villages, on compost-
littered farms, and in the typical little country town,
are almost universally hideous. Rag-time music,
screeching phonographs, and bawdy songs are the rule.
Beauty is a stranger to their lives, and loveliness is
alien. It seems well-nigh impossible even to imagine a
world in which the really good things in music, pic-

ART AND RECREATION 263

tures, literature, drama, are accessible to all, and in
which domestic art in its several forms brings forth its
perfect work. But in such a world Bastiles would be
stormed with votes instead of with pikes and cannon !

The machinofacture regime has produced hideous-
ness by wholesale. Nature covers up her confusion,
waste and debris, half the year with greenery and the
other half with snow. As long as man was closely in
touch with nature his craving for the beautiful was gen-
erously provided for. But now we have "industrial
areas," "slum sections," "railroad districts," "the
smoke nuisance," "the noise of traffic," "bill boards,"
"mining villages," "mill towns," "oil regions" and "cut-
over districts." And as a result we have harassed
minds and discontentment. Eventually we shall learn
how to beautify all these scars on the face of nature.
Then once more we shall have beauty instead of ugli-
ness, peace of mind instead of restlessness, social tran-
quillity instead of social unrest. The new age is very
greatly in need of that.

Still another use of art is to furnish wholesome
recreation. By this use it may be made to add im-
mensely to the sum total of happiness ; and it is of the
utmost importance to the peace and welfare of demo-
cratic society that all its citizens be happy together.
Moreover, it furnishes a source of happiness that in-
creases in proportion to the number who share it. The
sharing of happiness strengthens the "we- feeling" and
fosters harmony among individuals and between social
classes. In this way the popular arts contribute to the
social effectiveness of the family and other fundamental
social institutions. The above illustration serves. The
boys are not only safe, but their heartstrings are being

264 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

fastened to their home. A boy's or a man's home
ought, for the profoundest sociological reasons, to be
the most attractive place in the world for him. Music
and good books and the ability to enjoy them, beautiful
surroundings in rooms and yard, all help to make it so.

And not only the family, but the local community
and the play groups of children and young people.
These are what Cooley calls the primary social groups.
They are primary in several senses, but among the rest
because the health and welfare of society depends upon
their functioning normally. If the people of a com-
munity, and the natural groups of young people, have
a happy, good time together in perfectly wholesome
ways society is sound and healthy. The use of art for
purposes of recreation creates a common happiness and
binds people together in the bonds of good feeling as
few other common interests can. In the new democ-
racy all classes will share together in the use of art for
purposes of wholesome entertainment. That is one of
the ways that our descendants will enjoy social peace,
where we now suffer social discord and unrest because
we envy each other's ability to display luxuries that
satisfy nobody.

It is unfortunate that artists do not take a more
social view of their art. As a rule their conception of
its aim is individualistic. They are as much in need of a
social awakening as the ministers and teachers; and it
is scarcely less important to the republic. All artists
should be students of sociology, so as to get a vision of
the service they might render. But their service in a
democracy is not in catering to the few who can pay
high prices to come in evening dress and hear a vir-
tuoso; it is rather to the masses. They must be mis-

ART AND RECREATION 265

sionaries to the multitude, and prophets of the new-
age that is dawning. A musician could do as much
good in an ordinary community as a minister, if he had
the social point of view and the Christian spirit of
service. For like reasons the elements of instrumental
music should be taught in all the schools. So should a
love for good literature and the habit of patronizing
the public library. Domestic art in its various forms,
the elements of landscape gardening as applied to the
ordinary home, should win a larger place in the public
school curriculum. And by all other means besides
public education the popular use of art should be pro-
moted. For its social possibilities are almost limitless,
provided the latent talent of the people is developed as
it might be, and artists themselves have social vision.

The use of good art to furnish entertainment relates
it closely to all other sorts of wholesome recreation.
The war work of the Y. M. C. A. gave the public a
new insight. What recreation did for the morale of
the army it can do for the morale of the masses. If
the laboring classes are to have more leisure they must
have more opportunities for wholesome play. The
abolition of the saloon creates a wide-open opportunity
for something to take its place as a poor man's club.
Sociologists and others are beginning to draft the blue-
prints of a public system of recreation. In it art as
well as sport will function largely. There are numerous
types of recreational activities available. The moving
picture theater should not be on the basis of a private
commercial enterprise, but on the basis of a public
educational institution. There should be more parks
and playgrounds, more community centers and Y. M.
C. A.'s. The Boy Scouts should be extended. Schools

266 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

and churches should expand their recreational and
social activities. Special care should be taken not to
neglect the most needy neighborhoods. This is a most
promising field for philanthropy. Community Service
Incorporated, the Y. M. C. A., the Red Cross, and
other social agencies are pushing into this field, and
they deserve every encouragement. There is nothing
like good wholesome play to keep people out of mis-
chief and make them happy. Recreation ought to be
as well organized an institution in our social life as
instruction now is. It ought not to remain a private
business enterprise, because there is too much tempta-
ion to demoralize it. Money comes out of people's
pockets when their more imperious instincts are ap-
pealed to; they need their higher instincts solicited
instead. There is nearly as much reason for public
ownership of the recreation business as of the education
business. They are closely related. The problem of
discipline disappears from a troubled school when play
is properly equipped, organized and supervised. It
would work much the same in a troubled republic. The
populace better be singing together, improvising dramas
or playing ball than to be incubating wild schemes of
ill-considered reforms; especially in a time when the
current of change is too swift at best, and wise, impar-
tial arbitrators are too little consulted. Let us fight
"Bolshevism" with music and baseball!

CHAPTER XIX

THE NEW RELIGION

THE new world that is emerging will have to be a
cooperative world, otherwise it will not emerge
at all.
The keynote of the old regime was self-interest.
Self-interest was frankly set forth in economic and
political theory as the driving force in industry and
the prime motive of all human action. The greatest
good of the greatest number was supposed to be as-
sured if government let each citizen alone to look after
his own interests. But laissez faire has broken down
in practice and been abandoned in theory. It made the
weak helpless victims of the strong. The injustices of
the old regime were inherent in the very nature of the
regime itself, which was organized and licensed selfish-
ness. As Professor Bobbitt says : "dividedness was
the malefactor." Under it things went from bad to
worse, until they are now recognized as intolerable.
The world is thoroughly tired of the every- fellow- for-
himself regime ; and the reaction has already set in. Co-
operation has already made considerable development
in both ideals and practice. Indeed, togetherness is
about to assert its ascendancy over dividedness. Every
institution of society is being put on a more coopera-
tive basis. The transition is in process. The family is
being transferred to a democratic basis. Education is

267

268 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

rapidly undergoing a similar change. Political democ-
racy is manifestly an attempt to put government on a
cooperative footing. And as cooperative government
succeeds on a small scale it tends to widen its scope and
include ever larger units. Now the time has come
when all the nations must be united in a federation of
the world.

It is in the field of property that the cooperative
arrangement is being most stubbornly resisted. Indeed,
here is the crux of the present crisis. There are those
who insist that democracy can succeed in no institution
unless it is applied to industry, too ; that undemocratic
industry will thwart democracy everywhere else. Cer-
tain it is that democratic ideals cry out insistently
against the monstrous maladjustments brought forth
by the self-interest, every-fellow-for-himself organiza-
tion of society in general, and of industry in particular.
Some readjustment is necessary. Even here coopera-
tion is inevitable.

Apparently the evolution of society is like the cooling
and freezing of water. It is a law of nature that heat
expands and cold contracts. Similarly the ruthless
struggle for existence, resulting in the extermination of
the weak and the survival of the strong, is a universal
law of nature. But just before the freezing point is
reached an apparent reversal of the law occurs; in
reality the molecules crystallize in a new relation to one
another, so that as water changes to ice it expands.
Otherwise ice would sink, and the world would become
a frozen lump. Likewise, when social evolution reaches
a certain stage cooperation supersedes competition, and
human units assume an entirely different relation to
one another, namely that of cooperation and mutual

THE NEW RELIGION 269

help. Otherwise all the achievements of civilization
would be turned to mutual destruction, and the race
would eventually destroy itself. It was the tragedy of
Germany to apotheosize the struggle- for-existence
theory at precisely the time when social evolution was
preparing to discard it in practice. Physicists say that
in freezing crystallization occurs, during which the
molecules assume new and different relations to one
another. The crystallization of society is taking place.
The human molecules are shifting from the competi-
tive, coercive, to the voluntary, cooperative relation to
one another. This is the social crisis !

The change we are now passing through has
been compared with the change brought about long,
long ago by the domestication of plants and animals —
the change from the hunting-fishing to the agriculture-
handicraft stage of social evolution. Social and ethical
philosophers point out that this produced a change in
human nature itself. The hunter was spasmodic. Ex-
citement held him to the chase. But not so the farmer ;
he had to be capable of holding himself steadily to long
and tedious tasks. The American Indians' incapacity
for making this adaptation illustrates the point. In
that early readjustment those whose temperaments pre-
cluded their learning to "hold their noses to the grind-
stone" were eliminated. The civilized earth is the heri-
tage of those who could learn the lesson. And every
influence of religion, education, and industry has de-
veloped to the utmost all the latent powers of applica-
tion that the farmer-craftsman breed possessed.

And now, by a like analogy, human nature must rise
to a new type — the cooperative. The utterly unco-
operative will eliminate themselves by their selfishness.

27O CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

The middle class in America are doing so even now
with a very visible rapidity by selfishly refusing to bear
and rear offspring. And as for the cooperativeness
latent in human nature, it must be stimulated and culti-
vated to the utmost. For if we are to have a more co-
operative social order we must have a more cooperative
human nature. The crucial argument urged against all
socialistic schemes is that they won't work ! And it is
true, they will not work, at least, not without a radical
change in human nature. The larger their scope and
the greater their reliance upon voluntary cooperation,
the greater the risk involved in the experiment. The
current of socialistic schemes, setting in upon the cross
current of individualistic human nature, portends a
social cyclone. To build cooperative institutions out of
uncooperative folks, is to invite the collapse of the in-
stitutions. The old order is inevitably breaking down ;
some new experiment is pressing itself irresistibly upon
us. The problem of the age is, therefore, to remake
human nature. Except the race be born again it can
not see the kingdom of God.

The more one ponders over the industrial reforms
and the better democracy now being advocated, the
more one becomes appalled by the obvious fact that
precisely what we lack to make them successful is a
radical regeneration of personal character. Leisure is
a curse to any person who misuses it. So are more
wages. If laborers use their increased resources to
propagate irresponsibly they will soon crowd their own
ranks to such a degree that by sheer weight of numbers
they will sink the raft of their prosperity. But repro-
ductive responsibility involves character. All mutual-
benefit, cooperative enterprises are hard to operate per-

THE NEW RELIGION 2JI

manently. They wreck on the recalcitrancy of a few
individuals. The enfranchisement of labor will be a
farce and a failure unless labor can develop a high de-
gree of intelligence and moral responsibility. There is
no formula by which wishes can be turned into horses !
(or should we now say limousines?) Every great civ-
ilization has been built on a pain economy; and when-
ever it has achieved a pleasure economy it has, for lack
of self-restraint, promptly begun its ascent to Avernus.
Utopias can never be even so much as approximated,
not to say maintained, except by regenerated human
nature. A new type of man must be evolved if we are
to evolve a new type of society. Social justice can
never be achieved except by just individuals.

But the hope is not in vain. The sure promise of the
ideal world that is to be is in the latent resources of the
human spirit. Hitherto the best in human nature has
been tragically repressed. If a parent brings up his
child on fear and corporal punishment, it will be evi-
dent to that parent that his child has no sensitive gentle-
ness nor loving comradeship in his makeup. Which
only means that the parent has blinded himself to the
potentialities which he himself has stifled in his child.
Similarly, social organization has stimulated and habit-
uated chiefly the egoistic impulses, but has thwarted
and atrophied the altruistic. Militarism, for example,
has seized sympathetic, companionable youths and set
them to the business of killing each other. Slums,
ignorance, unemployment, and commercialized tempta-
tions have pushed promising boys into crime, and
thereby put them on the defensive against society. At
the most idealistic period of their young lives our sons
are drawn into the game of competitive business, where

272 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

the golden rule is a handicap. The old philosophies of
economics and ethics, with their self-interest theories,
have tacitly sanctioned the hardening process.

Even the old theology — not the teaching of Jesus, to
be sure, but the theology taught by most of the priests
and theologians through the centuries — stimulated the
egoistic instincts. Its overt and direct appeal has always
been to the instincts of self-preservation. The driving
motives in religion as in business have been self-
interest. To save one's own soul, to escape the pains of
hell and win the bliss of heaven, was the objective.
Faith or good works, whichever the given age empha-
sized, were always means of salvation, never ends in
themselves. Thus Christian theology has evolved on
egocentric lines, homologous to the egocentric society
in which it was destined to function. The teachings of
Jesus have almost always been emasculated in the inter-
pretation, and regarded as ideal but impracticable.
Dawning upon a world that sat in darkness, the divine
ideal was grossly distorted and caricatured by the
struggle- for-existence atmosphere through which its
rays were refracted. Hence, if one were to be a real
disciple of Jesus one too often had to be such in spite
not only of the social order but of organized Christian-
ity itself. Hence the contradictions, compromises, in-
consistencies, subterfuges and hypocrisies with which
historic Christianity has always abounded. Hence it
was also that the religion of Christendom has usually
repressed nearly as much altruism as it has stimulated,
and whatever altruism it has succeeded in producing it
has produced as a sort of by-product.

Never but once has a worthy faith in human nature
been voiced, and that was by Jesus, who taught that all

THE NEW RELIGION 273

men are sons of God. He must have had access to the
Creator's blueprint of the soul's innate potentialities.
Psychologists talk about several billions of neurones in
the human brain, only a fraction of which ever func-
tion. Those dormant neurons are pregnant with the
unborn social brotherhood. We used to sing about
cords that were broken vibrating once more. The soul
is an instrument of perfectly good strings that never
have vibrated at all. It is like a fine piano upon which
only a few simple tunes have ever been played, and they
upon its middle register. It wants but the sweep of a
master hand to bring forth celestial harmonies of
almost infinite variety and scope.

The human organism is exceedingly plastic; the
social instincts have been easily crusted over with
selfish habits so that human nature often appears as if
they did not exist in it at all. But one catches glimpses
at times of the group-preserving instincts, and what
they are capable of producing. What men will do and
suffer "in the interest of science," "for art's sake," "to
give the children a start," "to solve the social problem,"
"for the heathen world," "to make the world safe for
democracy," "for the cause of God" — and all with
never a thought of reward — might well suggest a whole
system of new theology. The fact is that whether in
economics, ethics or religion, egocentric theories of
human action are wrong. They are half truths that
distort and caricature the whole truth. Human nature
is not a circle with one center, it is an ellipse with two
foci; and the range, scope and power of the group-
preserving instincts are far greater than is realized in
current theories.

Moreover, the group-preserving instincts go as

274 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

directly to their mark as the self -preserving. Unselfish
actions do not have to be accounted for in terms of self-
interest; they are themselves elemental and instinctive.
There is no self -calculation when a mother serves or
protects her child ; there is only child-calculation on her
part. The hero, acting in behalf of others, the martyr
dying for his cause, the soldier perishing at his post,
has not first reasoned it out that by so doing he will
conserve his own welfare. They act because a situation
is presented that sets off the sensory-motor mechanism ;
and the discharge is just as spontaneous and direct
when sympathy or some other social instinct sets us off
as when hunger does. Upon this psychology the new
religion must be based.

Accordingly, what the world needs to-day, if it is to
develop a human nature of the new, cooperative type, is
a new religion that frankly abandons the primary ap-
peal to self-preservation, but appeals instead, directly
and overtly, to the other-regarding, group-preserving
instincts. The splendid image of that ideal world
which is to be, must be held before the convert's gaze
until his face is radiant with reflected light. The good
of mankind must be made to shine at the focus of his
attention until his own personal good blurs off into the
penumbra. Religion must set up, as the main business
of life, the enterprise of helping to make this a better
world to live in. Looking out for number one here and
hereafter, must be definitely subordinated. The un-
speakable tragedy of millions of mankind stumbling
along, generation after generation, through- a belated
darkness that might have been dawn, must wring the
heart of the new-type Christian like the pains of
damnation. The ceremonies, penances and services of

THE NEW RELIGION 275

that new religion must consist in removing the causes
of poverty, crime, misery and despair, increasing the
opportunities for achievement and self-realization, and
making two blades of human happiness grow where but
one had grown before. Such a religion will emphasize
the responsibilities of democracy more and its privileges
less. A religion that sets up the social good as its prime
objective will, according to the psychology expounded
above, stimulate to action the latent cooperativeness
now dormant in human nature, and so produce the co-
operative society it sets up as its goal. Such a religion
will be a new thing under the sun.

The social power of such a religion should be obvious
to those who understand the nature of religion itself.
Religion is the latent spirit bursting the restraint of
objective limitations imposed upon it, and coming forth
to self -completion with an irresistible urge. Civiliza-
tion at any stage of social evolution satisfies only a
fraction of human nature: religion is the gasping of
the smothered residue for the breath of life. Religion
is what man naturally aspires to be, but is not yet
because the social world is crude and young, struggling
to achieve itself. The objectives of religious faith are
the soul's latent possibilities reflected back to it in the
mirror of instinctive aspiration. Therefore the power
of religion is analogous to the lifting power of a grow-
ing plant. By historians, sociologists and psychologists
it is recognized as a well-nigh irresistible force. Like
the fire under the boiler of a steam engine, it generates
tremendous motive power. It motivates men to what
they would otherwise regard as impossible. The most
imperious instincts yield to it. Attach religious sig-
nificance to an enterprise or ideal and men will go

276 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

through blood and fire to attain it. Fortunate, there-
fore, the civilization that holds worthy ideals as objects
of religious faith. If the objects of religious hope and
aspiration distort and caricature what man is really
destined to become, then the energy of striving to
attain them is largely wasted. But if they are veri-
similitudes of what he really is to be, his strivings will
carry him straight to the goal with incalculable force
and momentum. For making human nature brotherly,
therefore, nothing can be so effective as a perfectly
clear assurance that a glorious brotherhood upon the
earth is nothing less than the predestined will of God.
And the motive force in that ideal is precisely in its
direct appeal to the brotherliness latent in human
nature. This is the crux of the religious revolution.

And is it not providential, now that a new coopera-
tive religion is coming to be a felt need, that the old
egoistic religion should already have faded away of its
own accord? As the industrial and scientific revolutions
came gradually, so the revolution in religion has long
been under way already. The old motives have largely
ceased to function. The fires have gone out in the fur-
naces of hell, the caldrons have crusted over, and the
whole plant has cooled off and aired out. We have
nothing left of it now but the metaphorical symbol of a
hypothetical condition, which cannot be pictured to the
imagination, and which frightens nobody. The revival
sermons of seventy-five years ago would be listened to
by intelligent people nowadays with ill-concealed merri-
ment. It is only self-deception and camouflage to blink
the fact that the whole framework of the old theology
has fallen apart. The field is cleared, ready for the
edifice of a new faith.

THE NEW RELIGION 277

Moreover, the timbers are already hewn and the
stones already quarried for that new edifice. The at-
mosphere of the age is charged with social purpose.
The social motive actuates innumerable men and
women, although many of them do not yet recognize it
as religious. There are a hundred fields into which
young persons are being attracted for their life work
because of the good they think they can do there:
nobody has told them it is the Kingdom of God they
are seeking an opportunity to serve. A few great
leaders of the churches, like Rauschenbusch and Glad-
den, have pioneered the social mission for a generation,
and multitudes of the younger clergy have caught the
vision. But the great body of the laity remain incapable
of the new point of view; while the intellectual class
and the labor group hold themselves aloof from the
church because it cannot, or because they think it can-
not, utilize their social idealism. And on the part of the
clergy, prophecy is discordant, to say the least. Eccle-
siastical officialdom is mostly gray-headed, fossiliferous
and stone blind. Many ministers are being whirled
round and round in the eddies between the two cur-
rents, the new and the old, until they are so dizzy they
cannot tell forward from backward.

At this point the argument will fall short of its pur-
pose unless the contention stands prominently forth
that what society really needs is a revolution of the first
magnitude in theology.

Imagine Jesus urging apprenticeship in husbandry
or in fishing for the Galilean priests and Levites, so as
to put them into more sympathetic contact with the
provincial peasantry; or organizing at Jerusalem an
every-member canvass for tithes, so as to enlarge the

278 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

temple or educate more Sadducees and Pharisees. In-
stead he had the insight to discern that new wine could
not be put into old bottles. Imagine Martin Luther
mailing out questionnaires for a religious survey of
Germany, or inaugurating Sunday evening forums on
German unity or the menace of democracy in the Swiss
cantons. Instead he cast the doctrine of Justification
by Faith, like a bomb, into the trenches of things-as-
they-were. The case is not otherwise again. The great
ecclesiastical movements recently staged, though un-
doubtedly sincere, revealed a tragic lack of prophetic
insight; and that is why they have collapsed. Great
historic revivals have not come by means of centralized
ecclesiastical organization, prearranged propaganda,
and semi-coercive financial drives. They have oftener
come as protests against them. As for the Jeremiah,
the Paul, the Augustine, the Luther, the Calvin, the
Knox or the Wesley of the present situation, the
church's lack of prophecy still provokes his challenge,
and the masses dumbly await his evangel, as yet in
vain.

For a long time it has been customary to belittle and
disparage creeds. That was because the only creeds in
sight had ceased to function. A creed is no longer a
creed after it has ceased to be credible. But, as a
matter of fact, nothing is more necessary than a living
creed, one that sets forth a program of life, and ex-
pounds convincingly the reasons for it; not reasons
that we have been taught to believe that we believe, but
reasons that really do carry absolute, unqualified con-
viction.

The fact is that the people are lost in the labyrinth of
modern life. With regard to all the great funda-

THE NEW RELIGION 279

mentals they do not know what to believe. They do
not so much as possess settled convictions as to what
the fundamentals are. Indeed, to one who penetrates
beneath the surface of things, the present social unrest
is not so much a social unrest as it is a spiritual be-
wilderment. Aside from the almighty dollar, and the
food, clothes, luxuries and leisure the dollar will pro-
cure, there is no consensus of opinion as to what the
real values of life are. In the last analysis this is the
disease of the age. What must the age believe in to be
saved? If the Church has creative prophecy within
her, let her answer that question ; but the dead formu-
las of yesterday this age will have none of.

The late Borden P. Bowne used sometimes to remark
facetiously: "We do not need a philosopher very often,
but when we do need one we need him desperately."
Now is one of those times; we need a new philosophy
of life, call it theology, creed, or what you like, and we
need it desperately. It must be expressed in the vocab-
ulary of contemporaneous biology, psychology and
social philosophy ; otherwise it will not be credible. It
must appropriate the dominant aspirations of the age
and elevate them to the level of religious faith; other-
wise it will not motivate. It must contribute dignity,
worth and peace of mind to individual lives, and settle
the social disorder; otherwise it will be a failure, for
nothing less is its function. But to do that the new
religion must make its appeal directly and overtly to
the group-preserving, other-regarding instincts. The
Kingdom of God upon earth, and the Kingdom of God
in the heavens, must frankly change places so far as
their relative importance is concerned. The vital tenet
of the new creed must be the limitless perfectibility

280 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

both of the human spirit and of the social order; and
all the arts must contribute to glorify that vision.

To be sure, even revolutions build upon the past.
The American constitution was pieced together out of
English precedents and experience. Similarly the new
social religion was implicit in the old individualistic
religion. The theology of Paul, Augustine, Luther,
and Calvin all contained a core of gospel truth. There
was real kernel in the husk. The difference between
the old and the new will be the difference betwen bud
and flower. All the old doctrines either contained a
solution of altruistic idealism or symbolized the social
vision. The means of salvation were always tinctured
with the love of fellow man, however dilute at times.
Among the by-products of historic ecclesiasticism were
always more or less altruism and social idealism in the
souls of its devotees. But by-products they were,
nevertheless, and too often the amount was negligible.
What we need now is to make them the prime products,
and reduce personal salvation to the status of by-
product. Theology needs a decided shift of its weight
from the egoistic to the social instincts.

The writer is by profession an educator. His spe-
cialty is the sociological theory of education. What
can education do for democracy? The answer seems
to be very plain : Democracy can do nothing without
universal liberal education! But the -conviction becomes
more and more clear with the passing years that the
public school can never take over the function of the
church. Religion is the great motive power for human
good, and quite as much as democracy needs a new
educational ideal does it also need a great religious
reawakening. And one of the depressing signs of the

THE NEW RELIGION 28 1

times is the small proportion of ecclesiastical leaders
who really see this need. But far more discouraging is
the almost negligible proportion of well-to-do laymen
who are willing to tolerate prophetic utterance from the
pulpits they support. It is for this reason that one
hesitates about suggesting the ministry as a life work
for really viable young men — the critical attitude
toward ecclesiastical things-as-they-are is an almost
insurmountable obstacle to peace of mind and profes-
sional success ; vital prophecy in every age has too often
had to be preached from its father's tombstone outside
the church doors. Nevertheless, a sufficient proportion
of such young men to really dominate the situation is
no doubt the church's crying need. The ranks of the
clergy are far from destitute of such souls ; they ought
to clarify their vision, renew their courage, but, most
of all, seek out and enhearten one another; assured, in
spite of intolerant disparagement, that they are indeed
the salt of the earth.

The function of the church in the present social
crisis is to generate the new cooperative type of human
nature that is necessary to make the new cooperative
social order work. To do this it must formulate and
expound a new, socio-centric theology that will stimu-
late the social instincts, as few historic religions have
ever succeeded in doing. It may be worth while to sub-
divide this function into certain subsidiary tasks that
can be more concretely stated. For the sake of rhetori-
cal emphasis we may specify the duty of the church
toward each of three classes, the public, the capitalists
and the laboring class.

The church must educate the public to adopt the
social point of view. Christians must be induced to

282 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

inquire habitually: What is for the general good?
instead of: What is for my private interest? So far
as concerns one's attitude toward the social question
the test of a Christian is whether or not he is willing to
examine his prejudices critically, to admit the truth
when it conflicts with his interests, and to advocate
just reforms in face of personal loss. To consecrate
one's life unselfishly to the general good always has
been the keynote of true Christlikeness ; and such insti-
tutions as autocracy, slavery, the saloon and — whatever
the unjust institution is to-day — can be reformed only
by a fight, or else by a body of public opinion that loves
truth and justice more than anything else. All of
which sounds platitudinous enough, to be sure; but if
the church can achieve the result in our generation she
will achieve one of the greatest miracles in her history.
For the proportion of men is not large who, in the
choice and pursuit of their vocation, in their expendi-
tures, and in their attitudes on public questions, seek
first the general welfare and its equities. To impart
this point of view and motivate it is a miracle of grace
indeed.

A second responsibility toward the public is to show
the social significance of the traditional virtues. Social
reasons must acquire an authority quite as categorical
and imperious as the old supernatural sanctions.

One of the symptoms of the present chaotic state of
things spiritual is that vast numbers of people are with-
out convictions as to why they should be good. Why
keep the Sabbath? Apparently the majority think
there is no reason. Why tell the truth ? Many intelli-
gent persons contend that the truth is frequently a
gratuitous nuisance. Why bear hard burdens when

THE NEW RELIGION 283

they can be shifted? Why be steadfast in conjugal re-
lations? Why practice self-denial? Our fathers could
answer these questions and many others unequivocally,
and quote their authority, chapter and verse. How-
ever, that was yesterday ! For our children these vir-
tues must be related to the social good, the saving of
democracy, and the coming of the Kingdom of God.
Christians must be shown how social solidarity ruth-
lessly loads pain, misery, disaster and even death upon
the sinner's innocent associates and successors. People
must understand that Christianity begins at home. Any
minister may well preach ten sermons (if he knows
enough sociology) on the social functions of the famiiy,
the virtues necessary to successful family life, and the
consequences to society of domestic failure. If he is a
real prophet of the new religion he will send his hearers
home shuddering under their responsibilities and fail-
ures, as church-goers have not shuddered since the days
when they were "hair hung and breeze shaken over
hell." Self-denial, mysticism, thrift, reverence, obedi-
ence, chastity, honesty, self-control, and the other
homely old virtues, all derive significance chiefly from
their social consequences. Their effect upon others is
far more important than their effect on the individual
himself. To set those social consequences forth makes
these virtues religious once more, since the Kingdom
of God is the new religious objective. Moreover it
appeals to the group-preserving, altruistic instincts;
which appeal is the keynote of the new religion. This
task of expounding the social function of the old morals
and the old piety is a very important subsidiary func-
tion of religion in the social crisis. There is scarcely
anything else that the rank and file of ministers could

284 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

do that would contribute as much to stabilize the situa-
tion just now when it so much needs stabilizing.

The church's responsibility toward the capitalist
class is to point out clearly the injustices in the present
industrial order, and to demand reform insistently.
This will not be pleasant listening for them, because
they are the beneficiaries of the vested wrongs that need
righting. The ministry that performs this task will
have its martyrdoms — few wealthy city churches will
tolerate that kind of preaching. But to shirk this re-
sponsibility is to crucify the Lord afresh, a sin which
historic ecclesiasticism has too often committed. The
past is full of instances. The church of the Old South
upheld slavery, the German clergy were the servile
apologists of pan-Germanism and f rightfulness ; the
French church before the Revolution defended the old
regime. In such cases the authorized moral guides
could see no injustice in slavery, no horror in brutal,
selfish conquest, and no wrong in the cruel oppression
of the French peasantry. Thus the ministers of Chris-
tianity hindered the cause of Christ because they could
not distinguish right from wrong in the social systems
of which they were themselves a part. Hence they
disgraced the church for all time, and threw such sus-
picion upon it that millions even now fear and hate it
as the bulwark of existing social injustices. If the
church is to vindicate herself in the present crisis our
religious leaders must sift the present situation with
unerring moral judgment. Concrete social sins must
be branded. The slavery, autocracy, and feudalism in
our industrial regime must be located as definitely as a
surgeon locates a tumor, and the influence of the church
brought unequivocally to bear upon the side of right

THE NEW RELIGION 285

and justice, and against specific wrongs. The church
must demand the repentance and regeneration of unjust
social institutions quite as insistently as she has de-
manded the conversion of ungodly individuals. The
whole weight of the church must be brought to bear in
favor of the reforms the age justly demands.

Contemporaneous religion has produced a few
prophets who do distinguish social justice from social
injustice as clearly as Amos did, and who dare to speak
their minds as fearlessly as Jeremiah. Men of this
type should absolutely dominate the situation, the whole
people must be educated and inspired to see through
their eyes, and the Hohenzollerns of industrial autoc-
racy shamed into repentance. The vested social wrongs
described in chapters five, six and seven could hardly
last a single generation if the voice of the clergy were
clear, united and insistent against them.

As for the masses, the church must do for them
what the Wesleyan revival did for the masses in Eng-
land; namely, regenerate their lives. For unless their
ideals are spiritualized and their habits purged, neither
industrial democracy nor a redistribution of wealth will
do them any lasting good. But if the church would
save the masses she must first demonstrate that she is
not a hired priestess of the vested wrongs from which
they suffer. The exploited masses will listen only to a
church that they are convinced is the aggressive and
efficient advocate of social justice. This is an impor-
tant truth that few ecclesiastical leaders have discerned.

From the foregoing it must be obvious that the
social function of religion is often too narrowly con-
ceived. True, it is the local church's function to pro-
vide amusement for the young people, and foster a

286 CAUSES AND CURES FOR SOCIAL UNREST

wholesome sociability for the community; but this is
not what the church exists for primarily. Neither does
the church exist primarily to rehabilitate decadent rural
communities, nor to maintain employment bureaus and
day nurseries in the cities; though it is sometimes de-
sirable for her to render these services. It is not even
her prime function to arbitrate between capital and
labor, though she can by no means escape responsibility
in this important issue. These matters are all sub-
sidiary. The social function of the church is to formu-
late and motivate the ideals upon which the vitality of
all institutions depends, and without which the lives of
the people are futile. The age that lacks vitalizing ideals
is decadent, depressed with ennui, "Weltschmerz" and
a growing sense of despair. Democracy is certain to
fail in such an atmosphere. But no crisis is appalling
to a society that is transfigured by a glorious vision.

As seldom before in history the world is ripe for a
great religious awakening. The aspirations and yearn-
ings of democracy, including and combining all that
has ever been wished for in all the past, have gradually
been taking possession of the great heart of the race,
raising the hopes of mankind to heights never ventured
before. Institutions are emerging from their ancient
cocoons, and stretching out the folds of their new wings
as if they would presently fly. The people have suf-
fered deeply for their sins and the sins of their social
system. The world waits but for the voice of a prophet
to sound the keynote forth: "It is the will of God!"
and lo, the mountains and hills will break forth to-
gether into singing. With but the infusion of a great
religious faith in the Kingdom of God, the passion to
serve it will burst forth in every soul like a sudden

THE NEW RELIGION 287

flame, and the new democracy will thereby spring into
being and permanent success. Such is the social func-
tion of the church in the present crisis. May God
grant her leadership and inspiration commensurate to
that great task.

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