THE BOOK WAS
DRENCHED
CO
u< OU_1 68355 >m
CO
Encyclopaedia
of the
SOCIAL
SCIENCES
EDITOR- IN -CHIEF
EDWINR.A.SEUGMAN
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
ALVIN JOHNSON
VOLUME EIGHT
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
LABOR TURNOVER
MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
MCMXXXII LONDON
EDITORIAL STAFF
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
EDWIN R.A.SELIGMAN
McVickar Professor Emeritus of Political Economy in Residence, Columbia University;
LL.B , Ph D. and LL.D ; Hon. D., University of Paris and Heidelberg University; Cor-
responding Member of the Institut de France; Member of the Accadetnia del Lincei, of
the Russian Academy of Science, of the Norwegian Academy of Science, of the
Cuban Academy of Political and Social Science and of the Accademia dell* Scienze
Morah e Politiche; Laureat of the Belgian Academy of Science, Foreign Correspondent
of the Royal Economic Society; Ex-President of the American Economic Association,
of the National Tax Association and of the American Association of University Professor*
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
ALVIN JOHNSON, PH. D.
Director of the New School for Social Research
ASSISTANT EDITORS
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IDA CRAVEN
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EDWIN MIMS, JR.
FLORENCE MISHNUN
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Lay
JOHN J. RASKOB
ROBERT E. SIMON
JESSE I. STRAUS
SILAS H. STRAWN
OWEN D. YOUNG
CONTRIBUTORS TO VOLUME EIGHT
Albright, W. F.
Johns Hopkins University
Auburtin, Jean
Paris
Ayres, Kdith
New York University
Babinger, Franz
University of Berlin
Barnes, Harry E.
. New York City
Baron, Salo
Columbia University
Bates, M. Searle
University of Nanking
Baynes, Norman II.
University of London
Beard, Mary R.
New Mi If or d, Connecticut
Becker, Carl
Cornell University
Bernaldo de Quiros, C.
Madrid
Bernard, L. L.
Washington University
Bleuler, Eugen
Zollikon, Switzerland
Boehm, Max Hildebert
Institut fur Grenz- und Ausland-
studien, Berlin
Bogen, Jules I.
New York University
Bonn, Moritz Julius
Handels-Hochschule, Berlin
Borchard, Edwin M.
Yale University
Brailsford, H. N.
London
Braucr, Thcodor
University of Cologne
Braun, Robert
Budapest
Breckinridge, S. P.
University of Chicago
Briefs, G.
Technische Hochschule,
Berlin
Brinkmann, Carl
University of Heidelberg
Brinton, Crane
Harvard University
Brissenden, Paul F.
Columbia University
Brunschvicg, Leon
University of Paris
Buck, Solon J.
Western Pennsylvania Historical
Survey , Pit tsb urgh
Buell, Raymond Leslie
Foreign Policy Association,
New York City
Bujak, Franciszek
University of Lwow
Buonaiuti, Ernesto
University of Rome
Burns, Arthur Robert
Columbia University
Burns, E. M.
Columbia University
Carlylc, A. J.
University of Oxford
Carrier, E. H.
London
Cassirer, Ernst
University of Hamburg
Chafee, Zcchariah, Jr.
Harvard University
Chalupny, Emmanuel
Svobodna Skola Politickych Nauk,
Prague
Chamberlain, J. P.
Columbia University
Chandler, Lester V.
New Haven, Connecticut
Chubinsky, M.
University of Subotica, Jugoslavia
Clarkson, Jesse Dunsmore
Brooklyn College
Clayton, Joseph
Bilhngshurst, Sussex, England
Coats, R. H.
Dominion Bureau of Statistics ,
Canada
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
Cobban, Alfred
University of Durham at Newcastle"
upon-Tyne
Cole, G. D. H.
University of Oxford
Collinet, Paul
University of Paris
Commons, John R.
University of Wisconsin
Corey, Lewis
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
Corwin, Edward S.
Princeton University
Coupland, R.
University of Oxford
Curti, Merle E.
Smith College
Daszynska-Golinska, Zofia
Free University of Warsaw
Davis, Horace B.
New York City
Diehl, Charles
University of Paris
Diehl, Karl
University of Freiburg i. Br.
Douglas, Paul H.
University of Chicago
Dub now, Simon
^Berlin
Edie, Lionel D.
New York City
Elbogen, Ismar
Hochschule fur die Wissenschaft des
Judentums, Berlin
Emin, Ahmet
Istanbul
Eulenberg, Franz
Handels-Hochschule, Berlin
Fay, Sidney B.
Harvard University
Fellner, FredeVic de
University of Budapest
Fitch, John A.
New York School of Social Work
Flexner, Jean Atherton
Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
Ford, Grace
Southampton, England
Ford, Percy
University College , Southampton
Foster, Roger S.
Yale University
Frankfurter, Felix
Harvard University
Fraser, Lindley M.
University of Oxford
Freund, Paul A.
Cambridge^ Massachusetts
Fritzsche, Hans
University of Zurich
Fuchs, Ralph F.
Washington University
Galitzi, Christine
Scripps College
Galloway, George B.
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Gamio, Manuel
Mexico City
Gehrig, Hans
Technische Hochschule \ Dresden
Gelesnoff, V.
Moscow
Ghoshal, U. N.
Calcutta University
Gillespie, Frances E.
University of Chicago
Giusti, Roberto
Buenos Aires
Givens, Meredith
Social Science Research Council ,
New York City
Glueck, Sheldon
Harvard University
Goetz, Walter
University of Leipsic
Greene, Nathan
Harvard University
Groethuysen, Bernhard
University of Berlin
Grotkopp, Wilhelm
Berlin
Gurian, Waldemar
Bonn
Gurvitch, Georges
Paris
Gutmann, Franz
University of Gottingen
Hale, Robert L.
Columbia University
Hamilton, Walton H.
Yak University
Hanbury, H. G.
University of Oxford
Handman, Max Sylvius
University of Michigan
Contributors to Volume Eight
XI
Hardman, J. B. S.
Neto York City
Haring, Clarence H.
Harvard University
Hauser, Henri
University of Paris
Heaton, Herbert
University of Minnesota
Hedemann, J. Wilhelm
University of Jena
Heller, Hermann
University of Berlin
Himes, Norman E.
Somerville, Massachusetts
Hippel, Ernst von
University of Kdnigsberg
Hocart, A. M.
London
Hofmeyr, Jan H.
Pretoria, South Africa
HruSevsky, M.
Academic des Sciences d* Ukraine,
Kiev
Hu Shih
National University of Peking
Hudson, Manley O.
Harvard University
Hugelmann, Karl Gottfried
University of Vienna
Hummel, Arthur W.
Library of Congress
Jackh, Ernst
Deutsche Hochschule fur Politik,
Berlin
Jacob, E. F.
University of Manchester
Jdszi, Oscar
Oberlin College
Jenks, Leland H.
Wellesley College
Jevons, H. Stanley
London
Jokl, Norbert
University of Vienna
Jones, Eliot
Stanford University
Jones, J. D. Rheinallt
South African Institute of Race
Relations, Johannesburg
Kallen, Horace M.
New School for Social Research
Kanellopoulos, Panajotis
University of Athens
Kaplan, A. D. H.
University of Denver
Kawakami, Kiyoshi K.
Washington, D. C.
Kehr, Eckart
Deutsche Hochschule fiir Politik,
Berlin
Kiese wetter, A. A.
Russian Faculty of Law, Prague
Kirkaldy, A. W.
University College, Nottingham
Knight, Frank H.
University of Chicago
Kocharovsky, K.
Belgrade
Kohn, Hans
Jerusalem
Koht, Halvdan
University of Oslo
Kosters, J.
Hooge Road, Netherlands
Krzywicki, Ludwik
University of Warsaw
Kumaniecki, Kazimierz W.
University of Cracow
Kurkjian, V. M.
New York City
Kuznets, Solomon
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
Langer, William L.
Harvard University
Laski, Harold J.
London School of Economics and
Political Science
Laslowski, Ernst
Beuthen, Germany
Laur, Ernst
Eidgenossische Technische Hoch-
schule, Zurich
Lederer, Emil
University of Heidelberg
Lescure, Jean
University of Paris
Lowie, Robert H.
University of California
Lundberg, George A.
Columbia University
Lybyer, Albert H.
University of Illinois
MacDonald, William
New York City
Maclver, R. M.
Columbia University
Xll
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
McPhee, E. T.
Hobart, Tasmania
Manes, Alfred
University of Berlin
Marsh, Margaret Alexander
Smith College
Matl, Josef
University of Graz
Mayer, Gustav
University of Berlin
Means, Gardiner C.
Columbia University
Meeker, Royal
New Haven
Meyers, Norman L.
Federal Power Commission
Michels, Roberto
University of Perugia
Millar, Robert W.
Northwestern University
Miller, Nathan
Carnegie Institute of Technology ,
Pittsburgh
Miliukov, Paul
Paris
Mishnun, Florence
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
Mondolfo, Rodolfo
University of Bologna
Montgomery, J. A.
University of Pennsylvania
Mowbray, A. H.
University of California
Munro, William B.
Pasadena, California
Murray, Robert H.
Persh ore , Worcestershire ,
England
Neff, Wanda Fraiken
New York City
Nevins, Allan
Columbia University
Nixon, H. C.
Tulane University
Olmstead, A. T.
University of Chicago
Opie, Redvers
University of Oxford
Otto, M. C.
University of Wisconsin
Palm, Franklin C.
University of California
Patterson, Edwin W.
Columbia University
Peardon, Thomas P.
Columbia University
Perlman, Selig
University of Wisconsin
Person, II . S.
Taylor Society, New York City
Peters, Hans
University of Berlin
Pirou, Gae"tan
University of Parts
Plummer, W. C.
University of Pennsylvania
Popovic, Dusan J.
University of Belgrade
Postgate, R. W.
London
Potter, Pitman B.
University of Wisconsin
Pound, Roscoe
Harvard University
Power, Eileen
London School of Economics and
Political Science
Pribram, Karl
University of Frankfort
Price, Frank Wilson
Nanking Theological Seminary
Procopovicz, S.
Prague
Pugliese, Salvatore
Milan
Radin, Max
University of California
Rappoport, Charles
Paris
Rawidowicz, S.
Berlin
Rees, J. F.
University College of South Wales
and Monmouthshire
Robinson, Leland Rex
New York City
Rogers, James Harvey
Yale University
Rogers, Lindsay
Columbia University
Rose, William J.
Dartmouth College
Rosenberg, Vladimir
Prague
Roth, Cecil
London
Contributors to Volume Eight
xm
Sadler, Michael E.
University of Oxford
Salin, Edgar
University of Basel
Sanborn, Frederic Rockwell
New York City
Schacht, Joseph
University of Konigsberg
Schapera, I.
University of Cape Town
Schiller, A. Arthur
Columbia University
Schnabel, Franz
Technische Jlochschule,
Karhruhe
Scholz, Richard
* University of Leipsic
Schuman, Frederick L.
University of Chicago
Seagle, William
Encyclopaedia of the Social
Sciences
See, Henri
University of Rennes
Sentnria, Joseph J.
Encyi lopacdia of the Social
Sciences
Sharfman, I. L.
University of Michigan
Shatzky, Jacob
, Yiddisher Vissenshaftlicher
Institut, American
Section, New York
City
Shultz, William J.
New York City
Sisic, Ferdo
University of Zagreb
Skalkowski, A. M.
University of Poznan
Smend, Rudolf
University of Berlin
Smith, Chester H.
University of Arizona
Smurlo, E.
Societe Historique Russe,
Prague
Sommer, Franz
Munich
Sommer, Ixxiise
University of Geneva
Spektorski, E.
University of Ljubljana
Stadelmann, Rudolf
University of Freiburg i. Br.
Steenhoff, Frida
Stockholm
Steinen, Wolfram von den
University of Basel
Stern, Bernhard J.
Encyclopaedia of tlie Social
Sciences
Sternberg, Theodor
Tsujido, Japan
Sudhoff, Karl
University of Leipsic
Surdnyi-Unger, Theo
Francis Joseph University ,
Szeged, Hungary
Szel, Theodore
Budapest
Taranovsky, Theodor
University of Belgrade
Taylor, A. Wellington
New York University
Tippett, Tom
Brookwood I^bor College
Tsunoda, Ryusaku
Columbia University
Valters, M.
Riga
Vdmbery, Rusztem
Budapest
Van Buren, George H.
New York City
Van Waters, Miriam
Juvenile Court, Los Angeles
Vasiliev, A. A.
University of Wisconsin
Vesey- Fitzgerald, Seymour
University of London
Viner, Jacob
University of Chicago
Vogel, Walther
University of Berlin
Warne, Colston E.
Amherst College
Watjen, Hermann
University of Munster
Weill, Georges
University of Caen
Wendel, Hermann
Frankfort
Wesley, Charles H.
Howard University
Wiese, Helmut
Hamburg
xiv Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
Wiest, Edward Wooddy, Carroll H.
University of Kentucky University of Chicago
Wilson, Francis G. Wright, Helen R.
University of Washington University of Chicago
Winfield, Percy H.
University of Cambridge Young, George
Witte, Edwin E. Cookham t Berkshire,
Legislative Reference Division, England
Madison
Wohlhaupter, Eugen Zulueta, F. de
University of Munich University of Oxford
CONTENTS
Contributors to Volume Eight
Articles
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM
INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD
INDUSTRIALISM
INFANT MORTALITY
INFANTICIDE
INFECTIOUS DISEASES, CONTROL OF
INFLATION AND DEFLATION
INGENIEROS, JOSE
INGERSOLL, ROBERT GREEN
INGRAM, JOHN KELLS
INHERITANCE
INHERITANCE TAXATION
INITIATION
INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM
INJUNCTION
INLAND WATERWAYS
INNOCENT III
INNOVATION
INQUISITION
INSANITYCRIMINAL LAW
CIVIL LAW
INSPECTION
INSTALMENT SELLING
INSTINCT
INSTITUTION
INSTITUTIONS, PUBLIC
INSURANCE
PRINCIPLES AND HISTORY
INDUSTRY
LAW AND REGULATION
INSURGENCY, POLITICAL
INSURRECTION
INTEGRATION, INDUSTRIAL
INTELLECTUALS
INTELLIGENCE
INTENT, CRIMINAL
INTERALLIED DEBTS
INTEREST
IX
Herbert Heaton
See TRADE UNIONS
Paul F. Brissenden
G. D. H. Cole
See CHILD, section on CHILD
MORTALITY
A.M.Hocart
See COMMUNICABLE DISEASES,
CONTROL OF
James Harvey Rogers and
Lester V. Chandler
C. Bernaldo de Quiros
Harry E. Barnes
Lindley M. Fraser
G. D. H. Cole
William J. Shultz
Nathan Miller
William B. Munro
Zechariah Chafee, Jr.
See WATERWAYS, INLAND
E.F.Jacob
Horace M. Kallen
E.F.Jacob
Sheldon Glueck
Edwin W. Patterson
Edith Ayres
W. C. Plummer
L.L. Bernard
Walton H. Hamilton
S. P. Breckinridge
Alfred Manes
A . H. Mowbray
Edwin W. Patterson
Lindsay Rogers
Frederick L. Schuman
See COMBINATIONS, INDUSTRIAL
Roberto Michels
See MENTAL TESTS
Max Radin
See LOANS, INTERGOVERNMENTAL;
REPARATIONS
Frank H. Knight
XVI
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
INTERESTS
INTERGOVERNMENTAL LOANS
INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATES
INTERMARRIAGE
INTERMEDIATE CREDIT BANKS
INTERNAL REVENUE TAXES
INTERNATIONAL ADVISERS
INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS
INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION
INTERNATIONAL, COMMUNIST
INTERNATIONAL FINANCE
INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION
INTERNATIONAL LAW
INTERNATIONAL LEGISLATION
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION
INTERNATIONAL PAYMENTS, BALANCE OF
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
INTERNATIONAL, SOCIALIST
INTERNATIONAL TRADE INSTITUTIONAL
FRAMFWORK
THEORY
INTERNATIONAL WATERWAYS
INTERNATIONALISM
INTERNMENT
INTERPELLATION
INTERSTATE COMMERCE UNITED STATES
OTHER FEDERAL STATES
INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION
INTERSTATE COMPACTS
INTERVENTION
INTESTACY
INTIMIDATION
INTOLERANCE
INTRANSIGENCE
INVALIDITY INSURANCE
INVENTION
INVESTIGATIONS, GOVERNMENTAL
INVESTITURE CONFLICT
INVESTMENT
INVESTMENT BANKING
INVESTMENT TRUSTS
IONESCU, TAKE
IRISH QUESTION
IRNERIUS
IRON AND STEEL INDUSTRY
GENERAL
LABOR CONDITIONS
United States
Other Countries
R. M. Maclver
See LOANS, INTERGOVERNMENTAL
Gardiner C. Means
BernhardJ. Stern
See FARM LOAN SYSTEM, FEDERAL
See EXCISE
Raymond Leslie Buett
See AGREEMENTS, INTERNATIONAL
See ARBITRATION, INTERNATIONAL
See COMMUNIST PARTIES
Moritz Julius Bonn
Francis G. Wilson
Edwin M. Borchard
Manlcy O. Hudson
Pitman B. Potter
See BALANCE OF TRADE; INTER-
NATIONAL FINANCE
George Young
See SOCIALISM; LABOR MOVEMENT
Franz Eulenberg
Jacob Viner
J. P. Chamberlain
II . N. Bradford
See ENEMY ALIKN; NEUTRALITY
Lindsay Rogers
Felix Frankfurter and Paul
A. Freund
Jowph J. Senluria
I. L. Sharfman
See COMPACTS, INTERSTATE
Percy If. Wmfield
See INHHUTANCE; SUCCESSION,
LAWS OF
J. B. S. Hardman
M. C. Otto
Horace M. Kallen
See HEALTH INSURANCE; OLD AGE
Carl Brinkmann
George B. Galloway
A.J.Carlyle
Lionel D. Edie
Jules I. Bogen
Leland Rex Robinson
Christine Galitzi
Jesse Dunsmore Clarkson
A. Arthur Schiller
Meredith Givens
Colston E. Warm
Horace B. Davis
IRREDENTISM
Max Hildebert Boehm
Contents
IRRIGATION
ISABELLA OF CASTILE
ISELIN, ISAAK
ISIDORE OF SEVILLE
ISLAM
ISLAMIC LAW
ISMAIL KEMAL BEY
ISMAY, THOMAS HENRY
ISOLATION
ISOLATION, DIPLOMATIC
ITAGAKI, COUNT TAISUKE
ITO, PRINCE HIROBUMI
IVAN IV
IVO OF CHARTRES
IXTLILXOCHITL, FERNANDO DE ALVA
IZVOLSKY, ALEXANDER PETROVICH
JABAVU, JOHN TENGO
J ACINI, STEFANO FRANCESCO
JACKSON, ANDREW
JACOBINISM
JACOBS, JOSEPH
JACOBUS
JACOBY, JOHANN
JAHN, FRIEDRICH LUDWIG
JAKOB; LUDWIG HEINRICH VON
JAKSIC, VLADIMIR
JAMAL U'D DIN AL-AFGHANI
JAMES I
JAMES OF VITERBO
JAMES, WILLIAM
JAMESON, ANNA BROWNELL
JANET, PAUL
JANNET, CLAUDIO
JANSENISM
JANSSEN, JOHANNES
JAPANESE IMMIGRATION
JAR VIS, EDWARD
JASTROW, MORRIS
JAURES, JEAN
JAVID, MAHMAD
JAWORSKI/WLADYSLAW LEOPOLD
JAY, JOHN
JEFFERSON, THOMAS
JEKELFALUSSY, JOZSEF
JELACIC, COUNT JOSIP
JELLINEK, GEORG
JENKIN, HENRY CHARLES FLEEMING
JENKINS, SIR LEOLINE
JENKINSON, CHARLES
JENNER, EDWARD
JESSEL, SIR GEORGE
JESUITS
JEVONS, WILLIAM STANLEY
JEWISH AUTONOMY
XV11
E. H. Carrier
See FERDINAND V AND ISABELLA
Louise Sommer
Joseph Clayton
Joseph Schacht
Joseph Schacht
Norbertjokl
A. W. Kirkaldy
Max Hildebert Boehm
William L. Longer
Ryusaku Tsunoda
Kiyoshi K. Kawakami
A. A. Kiesewetter
See YVES OF CHARTRES
Manuel Gamio
Sidney B. Fay
J. D. Rheinallt Jones
Salvatore Pugliese
William MacDonald
Crane Brinton
Cecil Roth
See FOUR DOCTORS
Gustav Mayer
Franz Schnabel
V. Gelesnoff
Josef Mail
Hans Kohn
Harold J. Laski
Richard Scholz
Horace M. Kallen
Wanda Fraiken Neff
Ldon Brunschvicg
Jean Auburtin
Bernfiard Groethuysen
Ernst Laslowski
See ORIENTAL IMMIGRATION
George A. Lundberg
J. A. Montgomery
Charles Rappoport
Albert H. Lybyer
Kazimierz W. Kumaniecki
William MacDonald
Carl Becker
Frederic de Fellner
Dusan J. Popovic
Hermann Heller
Redvers Opie
Frederic Rockwell Sanborn
See LIVERPOOL, FIRST EARL OF
Bernhard J. Stern
H. G. Hanbury
Walter Goetz
H. Stanley Jevons
Simon Dubnow
XVU1
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
JEWISH EMANCIPATION
JEX-BLAKE, SOPHIA
JHERING, RUDOLF VON
JIHAD
JIMUTAVAHANA
JINGOISM
JIRECEK, JOSEF KONSTANTIN
JITTA, DANIEL JOSEPHUS
JOACHIM OF FLORA
JOHANN MORITZ
JOHN DUNS SCOTUS
JOHN QUIDORT OF PARIS
JOHN OF SALISBURY
JOHNSON, GEORGE
JOHNSON, JOSEPH FRENCH
JOHNSON, SAMUEL
JOHNSON, TOM LOFTIN
JOHNSTON, SIR HARRY HAMILTON
JOINT COST
JOINT STOCK COMPANY
JOLY, CLAUDE
JONES, ABSALOM
JONES, ERNEST CHARLES
JONES, LLOYD
JONES, MARY
JONES, RICHARD
JONESCU, TAKE
JORDAN, DAVID STARR
JORG, JOSEPH EDMUND
JOSEPH II
JOSEPHUS, FLAVIUS
JOST, ISAAC MARCUS
JOURDAN, ALFRED
JOURNALISM
JOURNEYMEN'S SOCIETIES
JOVELLANOS, CASPAR MELCHOR DE
JOWETT, BENJAMIN
JUAREZ, BENITO PABLO
JUBAINVILLE, HENRI D'ARBOIS DE
JUDAISM
JUDD, ORANGE
JUDGMENTS
JUDICIAL INTERROGATION
JUDICIAL PROCESS
JUDICIAL REVIEW
JUDICIARY
JUGLAR, CLEMENT
JULIANUS, FLAVIUS CLAUDIUS
JULIANUS, SALVIUS
JURIEU, PIERRE
JURISDICTION
JURISDICTIONAL DISPUTES
JURISPRUDENCE
JURY ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES
OTHER COUNTRIES
Salo Baron
Grace Ford
J. Wilhelm Hedemann
Franz Babinger
Seymour Vesey-Fitzgerald
See CHAUVINISM
Josef Mail
J. Kosters
Ernesto Buonaiuti
Hermann Wdtjen
See DUNS SCOTUS, JOHN
Richard Scholz
E. F. Jacob
R. H. Coats
A. Wellington Taylor
Alfred Cobban
Carroll H. Wooddy
LelandH.Jenks
See COST; OVERHEAD COSTS
Arthur Robert Burns
Henri See
Charles H. Wesley
Frances E. Gillespie
Percy Ford
Tom Tippett
E. M. Burns
See IONESCU, TAKE
Merle E. Curti
Waldemar Gurian
Rudolf Stadelmann
Simon Dubnow
Jacob Shatzky
Gaetan Pirou
Allan Nevins
Henri Hauser
C. Bernaldo de Quiros
Michael E. Sadler
Clarence H. Haring
Paul Collinet
Ismar Elbogen
H. C. Nixon
Robert W. Millar
Florence Mishnun
Walton H. Hamilton
Edward S. Corwin
Harold J.Laski
Jean Lescure
Norman H. Baynes
F. de Zulueta
Franklin C. Palm
Roger S. Foster
See DUAL UNIONISM
Roscoe Pound
Roscoe Pound
William S eagle
Contents
JUS GENTIUM
JUS NATURALE
JUST PRICE
JUSTI, HERMAN
JUSTI, JOHANNES HEINRICH GOTTLOB VON
JUSTICE
JUSTICE, ADMINISTRATION OF
JUSTICE OF THE PEACE
JUSTINIAN I
JUSTO, JUAN BAUTISTA
JUVENILE COURTS
JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AND JUVENILE
COURTS
KABLUKOV, NIKOLAY ALEKSEYEVICH
KADLEC, KAREL
KAGWA, APOLO
KAHL, WILHELM
KALLAY, BENI
KAMAL MAHMAD NAMUK
KAMIENSKli HENRYK MICHAL
K'ANG YU-WEI
KANKRIN, COUNT EGOR FRANZEVICH
KANT, IMMANUEL
KARADZIC, VUK STEVANOVIC
KARAGEORGE, PETROVIC
KARAMZIN, NIKOLAY MIKHAYLOVICH
KARAVELOFF, LUBEN
KAREYEV, NIKOLAY IVANOVICH
KARISHEV, NIKOLAY ALEXANDROVICH
KARL FRIEDRICH
KARMAN, MOR
KARO, JOSEPH BEN EPHRAIM
KASIM AMIN
KASKEL, WALTER
KATKOV, MIKHAIL NIKIFOROVICH
KAUFMAN, ALEXANDR ARKADIEVICH
KAUTILYA
KAUTZ, GYULA
KAVELIN, KONSTANTIN DMITRIEVICH
KAY-SHUTTLEWORTH, SIR JAMES
KEARNEY, DENIS
KEITH, MINOR COOPER
KELETI, KAROLY
KELLER, FRIEDRICH LUDWIG
KELLEY, FLORENCE
KELLEY, OLIVER HUDSON
KELLEY, WILLIAM DARRAH
KELLOGG, EDWARD
KELLY, EDMOND
KEMAL MEHMED NAMtJK
KEMBLE, JOHN MITCHELL
KEMPER, JERONIMO DE BOSCH
KENT, JAMES
XIX
Max Rodin
See NATURAL LAW
Edgar Salin
John R. Commons
Louise Sommer
Georges Gurvitch
William Seagle
Chester H. Smith
Charles Diehl
Roberto Giusti
See JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AND
JUVENILE COURTS
Miriam Van Waters
S. Procopovicz
Theodor Taranovsky
I. Schapera
Rudolf Smend
Robert Broun
Ahmet Emin
Franciszek Bujak
HuShih
Solomon Kuznets
Ernst Cassirer
Hermann Wendel
Ferdo Sisic
Paul Miliukov
Josef Mail
Paul Miliukov
K. Kocharovsky
Louise Sommer
Helmut Wiese
Salo Baron
George Young
Hans Peters
Paul Miliukov
K. Kocharovsky
U. N. Ghoshal
Theo Surdnyi-Unger
Solomon Kuznets
Michael E. Sadler
Selig Perlman
Margaret Alexander Marsh
Theodore Sztl
Hans Fritzsche
Helen R. Wright
Solon J. Buck
A. D. H. Kaplan
John R. Commons
Lewis Corey
See KAMAL MAHMAD NAMUK
Thomas P. Peardon
See BOSCH KEMPER, JERONIMO DE
Norman L. Meyers
XX
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
KETTELER, BARON WILHELM EMMANUEL VON
KEUFER, AUGUSTS
KEY, ELLEN
KEYSER, RUDOLF JAKOB
KHAMA
KHMELNITSKY, BOHDAN
KHOMYAKOV, ALEXEY STEPANOVICH
KHRIMIAN, MUGURDICH
KIDD, BENJAMIN
KIDERLEN-WACHTER, ALFRED VON
KIDO, TAKAYOSHI
KINDERGARTEN
KING, GREGORY
KING, LEONARD WILLIAM
KING, WILLIAM
KING, WILLIAM ALEXANDER
KINGSHIP
KINGSLEY, CHARLES
KINGSTON, CHARLES CAMERON
KINSHIP
KIRBY, JOHN, JR.
KIRCHMANN, JULIUS HERMANN VON
KIREYEVSKY, IVAN VASILYEVICH
KIRK, SIR JOHN
KISELEV, COUNT PAVEL DMITRIEVICH
KISTYAKOVSKY, ALEXANDER FEDOROVICH
KISTYAKOVSKY, BOGDAN ALEXANDROVICH
KIUPRILI FAMILY
KJELLEN, RUDOLF
KLEIN, FRANZ
KLUCHEVSKY, VASILYI OSSIPOVICH
KNAPP, GEORG FRIEDRICH
KNAPP, MARTIN AUGUSTINE
KNAPP, SEAMAN ASAHEL
KNIBBS, SIR GEORGE HANDLEY
KNIES, KARL GUSTAV ADOLF
KNIGHTS OF LABOR
KNIGHTS OF ST. CRISPIN
KNOW NOTHING PARTY
KNOWLES, LILIAN CHARLOTTE ANNE
KNOWLTON, CHARLES
KNOX, JOHN
KOCH, ROBERT
KOGALNICEANU, MICHAIL
KOHLER, JOSEPH
KOLLAR, JAN
KOLL&TAJ, HUGO
KOLPING, ADOLPH
KONARSKI, STANISLAW
KOPRULU FAMILY
KOPS, JACOB LEONARD DE BRUIJN
KORAES, ADAMANTIOS
G. Briefs
Georges Weill
Frida Steenhoff
Halvdan Koht
I. Schapera
M. Hrusevsky
Solomon Kuznets
V. M. Kurkjian
Harry E. Barnes
Ernst Jdckh
Kiyoshi K. Kawakami
See PRESCHOOL EDUCATION
J. F. Rees
A. T. Olmstead
R. W. Postgate
George H. Van Buren
See MONARCHY
G. D. H. Cole
Herbert Heaton
Robert H. Lowie
Jean Atherton Flexner
Theodor Sternberg
Solomon Kuznets
R. Coupland
A. A. Kiesewetter
M. Chubinsky
Georges Gurvitch
See KOPRULU FAMILY
Walther Vogel
Karl Gottfried Hugelmann
Paul Miliukov
Franz Gutmann
/. L, Sharfman
Edward Wiest
E. T. McPhee
Hans Gehrig
Mary R. Beard
See LABOR MOVEMENT; LEATHER
INDUSTRY
See PARTIES, POLITICAL, section on
UNITED STATES
Eileen Power
Norman E. Himes
Robert H. Murray
Karl Sudhoff
Christine Galitzi
William Seagle
Emmanuel Chalupny
Zofia Daszynska-Golinska
Theodor Brauer
William J. Rose
Albert H. Lybyer
See BRUIJN KOPS, JACOB LEONARD
DE
Panajotis Kanelhpoulos
Contents
KORAN
KORKUNOV, NIKOLAY MIKHAYLOVICH
KOROLENKO, VLADIMIR GALAKTIONOVICH
KOROSY DE SZANTO, JOZSEF
KOSCIUSZKO, TADEUSZ ANDRZEI
KOSSUTH, LAJOS
KOSTOMAROV, NIKOLAY IVANOVICH
KOVACS, GABOR
KOVALEVSKY, MAKSIM MAKSIMOVICH
KRAEMER, ADOLF
KRAEPELIN, EMIL
KRAUS, CHRISTIAN JACOB
KRAUS, FRANZ XAVER
KRAUZ-KELLES, BARON KAZIMIERZ
KREITTMAYR, BARON VON
KREK, JANEZ
KREMER, BARON ALFRED VON
KREUGER, IVAR
KRIZANIC, JURIJ
KROCHMAL, NACHMAN
KRONVALDS, ATTIS
KROPOTK1N, PRINCE PETR ALEXEYEVICH
KRUEGER, PAUL
KRUGER, STEPHANUS JOHANNES PAULUS
KRUMBACHER, KARL
KRUPP, ALFRED
KRUTTSCIINITT, JULIUS
KU KLUX KLAN
KU YEN-WU
KUENEN, ABRAHAM
KULIZHNY, ANDREY EVMENEVICH
KULTURKREIS
KUNFI, ZSIGMOND
KUOMINTANG
LABAND, PAUL
LA BOETIE, ETIENNE DE
LABOR
LABOR BANKING
LABOR BLACKLIST
LABOR-CAPITAL COOPERATION
LABOR COLLEGES
LABOR CONTRACT
LABOR DISPUTES
LABOR EXCHANGE BANKS
LABOR EXCHANGES
LABOR, GOVERNMENT SERVICES FOR
LABOR INJUNCTION
LABOR LEGISLATION AND LAW
LABOR LEGISLATION
LABOR LAW
Anglo-American
Continental
XXI
See SACRED BOOKS
Georges Gurvitch
Vladimir Rosenberg
Theodore Sze'l
A. M. Skalkowski
Oscar Jdszi
M. Hrusevsky
Rusztem Vdmbery
E. Spektorski
Ernst Laur
Eugen Bleuler
Karl Pribram
Wolfram von den Steinen
Ludwik Krzywicki
Eugen Wohlhaupter
Hermann Wendel
Franz Babinger
Wilhelm Grotkopp
E. Smurlo
S. Rawidowicz
M. Valters
Rodolfo Mondolfo
Franz Sommer
Jan H. Hofmeyr
A. A. Vasiliev
Eckart Kehr
Eliot Jones
Max Sylvius Handman
Arthur W. Hummel
W. F. Albright
S. Procopovicz
See DIFFUSION ISM
Oscar Jdszi
M. Searle Bates and Frank
Wilson Price
Ernst von Hippel
Oscar Jdszi
Emil Lederer
J. B. S. Hardman
See BLACKLIST, LABOR
J. B, S. Hardman
See WORKERS' EDUCATION
Ralph F. Fuchs
John A . Fitch
Karl Diehl
See EMPLOYMENT EXCHANGES
Royal Meeker
Felix Frankfurter and Nathan
Greene
Edwin E. Witte
Robert L. Hale
William Seagle
xxii Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
LABOR, METHODS OF REMUNERATION FOR H. S. Person
LABOR MOVEMENT John R. Commons
LABOR PARTIES
GENERAL J. B. S. Hardman
GREAT BRITAIN H. N. Brailsford
BRITISH DOMINIONS Herbert Heaton
UNITED STATES J. B. S. Hardman
LABOR TAX See FORCED LABOR
LABOR TURNOVER Paul H. Douglas
Encyclopaedk
of the
SOCIAL
SCIENCES
Encyclopaedia of the
Social Sciences
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION is the name
given to those economic and technological de-
velopments which gathering strength and speed
during the eighteenth century produced modern
industrialism.
As a label it is admittedly unsatisfactory. One
writer calls it "an unhappily chosen epithet for
a singularly constructive epoch" (Beales); an-
other doubts whether the term, "though useful
enough when it was first adopted, has not by
this.time served its turn" (Unwin); Lipson occa-
sionally puts it in inverted commas. The chief
objection is to the word revolution. Yet that
use goes back to the period to which it is ap-
plied. Yarn making machines, coke smelted iron,
Watt's engine and Wedgwood's ceramic tri-
umphs were described by contemporaries as
"great and extraordinary," "most wonderful";
their effects must be "beyond the power of cal-
culation." The steam engine would "produce
great changes in the appearance of the civilized
world"; and "a revolution is making," said Ar-
thur Young in 1788 when he saw the textile
machines spread from the cotton to the woolen
industry. Frenchmen after 1789 naturally used
the word even more freely in reference to
changes in technique, organization and commer-
cial policy; and it became part of the socialistic
vocabulary. Blanqui in 1837 declared that by the
revolution industrial conditions in England had
been more profoundly transformed than at any
period since the beginnings of social life. Engcls
used the word in 1845, and the Marxian thesis
was that the technological revolution had trans-
formed the economic and social structure and
would do the same to political and intellectual
life. Toynbee knew Marx' Capital, had studied
the German socialist movement and was un-
doubtedly influenced thereby in his use and
understanding of the term he put into academic
circulation. Mill and Jevons also spoke of revo-
lution; and in 1852 Michael Angelo Garvey, an
English barrister, published a little volume called
The Silent Revolution, which dealt with the ef-
fects of steam transportation and the telegraph
on "the condition of mankind."
To Toynbee the use of the word seemed en-
tirely justified. He envisaged a peaceful eve fol-
lowed by a stormy dawn. Prior to 1760 the "old
industrial system obtained"; industry was in the
hands of small independent master manufac-
turers who combined farming and industry, em-
ployed a journeyman or two and trained an ap-
prentice. Between master and man was a "warm
attachment"; the employee was the "cherished
dependent." The class of capitalist employers
was "as yet in its infancy"; there was some put-
ting out of materials by merchants to be worked
up in the operative's home, and a few large fac-
tories were in existence. But small scale organi-
zation predominated, and the gulf between em-
ployer and wage earner was narrow. Over this
"quiet world" of "scarcely perceptible move-
ment," this "slowly dissolving framework of
medieval industrial life," hung the comprehen-
sive code of state regulation of production, trade
and distribution. Internal free trade had come
in Great Britain, but foreign and colonial trade
were fettered and free movement or enterprise
was checked.
This old order "was suddenly broken in pieces
by the mighty blows of the steam engine and the
power loom," the spinning machines, the im-
proved roads, the expansion of domestic and
foreign trade and the Wealth of Nations. The
"two men who did most to bring [the revolution]
about were Adam Smith and James Watt";
aided by the other inventors, they "destroyed
the old world and built a new one." A period of
"economic revolution and anarchy" resulted, in
which productive methods changed, economic
beliefs were revolutionized and the state swung
over from regulation to laissez faire. Population
was "torn up by the roots" and, like industry,
was dragged "from cottages in distant valleys
into factories and cities," there to become a col-
lection of hands, "the living tool, of whom the
employer knew less than he did of his steam
engine." Population grew rapidly in numbers,
but the number engaged in agriculture declined
both relatively and absolutely; the factory system
became the "all-prominent fact" in industry;
overproduction and depressions "a phenom-
enon quite unknown before" became normal
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
parts of business life; landlords and manufac-
turers waxed rich, but the wage earner fared
badly. True, he now had personal freedom, but
war prices and the "innumerable evils which
prevailed in this age of confusion" made his
sufferings acute and long. Eventually his lot
improved, thanks to organized self-help, the re-
peal of the corn laws, and factory acts; but mean-
while he had been in the track of a social tor-
nado, which had torn him from his old moorings
and left him damaged in status and living
standards.
Toynbee put the industrial revolution into the
series of historical phases. Henceforth it was
apparent that for any understanding of the nine-
teenth century one must take account of English
economics as well as of French politics. The
term became popular, and at least two recent
writers have described post-war efforts toward
rationalization and the changes resulting from
the coming of electric power and new chemical
processes as "the New Industrial Revolution"
(Meakin) and "the Second Industrial Revolu-
tion" (Jevons). But economic historians use the
phrase with increasing hesitation and many
mental reservations. They dislike the suggestion
that revolutions in any generally acceptable
sense of that term happen in economic affairs.
"Sudden catastrophic change is inconsistent
with the slow gradual process of economic evo-
lution," says Birnie; "On the vast stage of eco-
nomic history no sudden shift of scene takes
place," says Se"e; while Lipson emerges from
a study of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies with the conclusion that there is "no hiatus
in economic development, but always a constant
tide of progress and change, in which the old is
blended almost imperceptibly with the new."
The modern view springs from a fuller knowl-
edge of the periods both before and after 1760
than was possible in Toynbee *s day. It is now
known that the revolution did not "break" on an
almost unchanging world of small scale non-
capitalistic units, that the speed of transforma-
tion was far from rapid, that the ground was not
quickly captured and that a picture of the social
and economic evils of the period from 1760 to
1850 is far from filling the whole canvas. In the
first place, the notion of an "eve" is blurred, if
not blotted out, when it is discovered that the
revolution had in 1760 "been in preparation for
two centuries" (Unwin); that large scale enter-
prise under capitalistic conditions existed from
at least the sixteenth century; that the changes in
technique were "the completion of tendencies
which had been significantly evident since Leo-
nardo da Vinci" (Usher); and that the develop-
ments between 1760 and 1830 "did but carry
further, though on a far greater scale and with
far greater rapidity, changes which had been
proceeding long before" (Ashley). In the second
place, the changes in productive methods de-
pended on far more than a handful of inventions
in Lancashire and Glasgow and with one or two
exceptions took decades to work themselves out.
The machines and engines raised as many prob-
lems as they solved problems of metal supply,
machine design, mechanical engineering, power
transmission and so on. Machine production
could improve only as quickly as did the pro-
duction of machines and the invention of refine-
ments to make their operation more efficient.
The nature of some processes or materials was
such that change was long delayed; wool cosnb-
ing refused to yield to machinery until about
1850, and wool yarn was so frail that even in
1860 the power loom in a woolen mill could
work no more quickly than did the hand loom.
In some industries change resulted from chemi-
cal discoveries rather than mechanical invention;
in others, such as pottery, advance depended
upon the discovery, by countless experiments,
of new bodies, glazes, methods of decoration,
better understanding and control of kiln tem-
peratures as well as upon easier access by road
and canal to raw materials and markets. Mining
had no revolution; its story was one of "better
methods, . . . slowly forged from the painful ex-
perience of common men, and only gradually
did a new idea or a new device spread from pit
to pit or from one coalfield to another" (Ash-
ton). Building, one of the biggest fields of em-
ployment, suffered no revolution in methods
until cheap steel and concrete were available.
Thus with the one exception of spinning and its
preliminary processes there was no sudden
breaking of old methods or organization by
"mighty blows." Professor Clapham's survey of
British industry between 1820 and 1850 is a
study in slow motion. He finds that "no single
British industry had passed through a complete
technical revolution before 1830" and reminds
us that while the revolution had cut deep into
the cotton industry by that date the Lancashire
cotton operative was not the representative work-
man of the day. Even the typical town operative
was "very far indeed from being a person who
performed for a self-made employer, in steaming
air, with the aid of recently devised mechanism,
operations which would have made his grand-
Industrial Revolution
father gape." Thus it is not until well into the
nineteenth century that one finds the economic
transformation approaching a stage that can be
described as complete. A revolution which con-
tinued for 150 years and had been in preparation
for at least another 150 years may well seem to
need a new label.
Yet despite all hesitation the term stands and
no better one has been devised. For there is in
the period which began about 1750 something
different in tempo and temper from that of any
earlier epoch. The long inventive effort comes
to a head in increased productive power, capital
increases its power and resourcefulness, eco-
nomic freedom is gained, domestic and foreign
trade expand, the nature of the soil begins to be
understood, goods can be moved more rapidly
in greater bulk at lower cost for longer distances,
anc? there is at least a "partial introduction of
the methods of exact science in economic af-
fairs" (Clapham). Any one of these things would
have made a deep mark on the economic life of
Europe; but when they came contemporane-
ously they interacted on one another and pro-
duced results which were far reaching and fun-
damental. From this "unprecedented social and
economic development" (Unwin) the material
appearance of England was changed "more pro-
foundly than at any other time since the epoch
of the last geological changes" (Tawney).-^
The familiar question, "Why did the changes
come when and where they did?" is now best
answered if the changes are regarded as the out-
come of developments which had been under
way since at least 1600. Those developments
included a great expansion in the volume of
domestic, colonial and foreign trade; an im-
provement in commercial and financial struc-
ture; some growth of large scale organization and
production; some advances in industrial equip-
ment; and some scientific discoveries capable of
industrial application. British trade grew fitfully
but substantially during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries: the European demand ex-
panded; the American colonists provided a grow-
ing market for textiles and hardware; the door
into the Spanish possessions was forced wider
open; while Africa, the West Indies and the
Orient provided good markets and profitable
materials for carriage to Europe. Such statistics
as exist show that exports from Great Britain
doubled between 1720 and 1760 and again by
1795. Meanwhile the British population grew
rapidly after, at latest, 1730, thanks chiefly to a
declining death rate. It lived on the largest free
trade area in Europe; the wealth which flowed
in from oversea trade gave its people a larger
spending power and fund of capital; and some
of the goods it imported stimulated natives to
find ways of making these articles at home, e.g.
cottons and pottery. The French story is some-
what similar. Export trade grew almost fivefold
between 1715 and 1789 and was probably larger
than that of Great Britain in the latter year.
Shipowners and merchants flourished, and capi-
tal accumulated. Holland and Scandinavia also
shared in the general trade expansion.
Economic organization improved during the
seventeenth century. Banking and exchange fa-
cilities became more abundant and satisfactory,
and joint stock companies were established for a
large variety of purposes. Industries which
served large or distant markets (textiles), which
needed large sums of capital for equipment
(mining, finishing trades), which worked on
costly raw material (silk, precious metals) or
which supplied customers who demanded long
credit and were slow in paying their bills (Lon-
don high class tailoring, coach building) were
passing into the hands of large entrepreneurs.
Sometimes these men were big industrialists
who had risen from small beginnings; but often
they were merchants who established control
over the production of the wares they sold. The
merchant had capital or knew where to get it;
he could afford to buy raw materials in bulk; he
knew the needs of the market and he could allow
long credit. He therefore sometimes gave orders
to independent master manufacturers instead of
buying what was offered in the open market; he
supplied working capital to the mines from
which he obtained his coal; but in some indus-
tries he took control. He bought raw materials
and put them out to be processed by domestic
workers; he supplied patterns and specifications
and possibly the tools and equipment as well;
while the final processes whether of finishing or
assembling might be done in his own workshop.
Independent master manufacturers still existed,
who worked aided by the members of their
family, journeymen and apprentices and sold
their wares in fairs or local markets; such men
could be found in the urban handicrafts catering
for purely local needs and in the woolen dis-
tricts of Yorkshire. But in the great staple indus-
tries especially textiles of France, the Low
Countries and England the merchant was gain-
ing control and sometimes counted his depend-
ents by the hundred or even the thousand. At
times the economies of supervision, discipline
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
and time saving were realized by gathering many
of these workers under one roof; while in mining,
brewing, soap making, smelting, shipbuilding,
tanning and the finishing trades large groups of
men had to work together by reason of the very
nature of their work or of the equipment they
used. Sometimes these groups worked under full
factory conditions at machinery driven by power.
Polhem's factory set up in Sweden about 1700
was remarkable for its use of machinery, water
power, division of labor and mass production
methods.
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries also
witnessed some advance in industrial equipment
and scientific knowledge. Leonardo da Vinci's
notebooks contain sketches of a spinning ma-
chine, a power loom, roller bearings, universal
joints, gears, lathes, drills, rollers for shaping
iron, coin presses, turbines, steam cannon and
other things, but no one can tell how far they
depict contemporary equipment or are the prod-
uct of his fertile imagination. The stocking
frame, invented about 1589, was said to contain
over two thousand parts; and cloth finishing
machines caused much controversy in the same
century. Glassmaking, tinning, gold and silver
refining, were all improved after 1600; makers
of clocks, jewelry and instruments of precision
obtained better equipment; a ribbon loom capa-
ble of weaving a dozen or more widths at once
appeared in Danzig, then in Holland and finally
in England; the Dutch developed the wind saw-
mill and other devices for speedy production of
ships; the French experimented with the "draw
loom," by which patterned cloths could more
easily be woven; Polhem's factory was full of
power driven metal shears, slitting mills, rollers
and hammers; and a silk throwing machine
which had been known in Italy before 1300 was
copied north of the Alps and reached England
in 1718. The harnessing of water, wind and ani-
mal power became more efficient, as did the use
of gears, while the use of treadles seems to have
spread. The work of the growing body of sci-
entists on atmospheric pressure had by 1700 laid
a foundation on which the steam engine could
be built. True, the seventeenth century saw
more technical problems than it was able to solve
but it was far from being devoid of inventive
inquisitive minds.
The motives which led to the technical prog-
ress of the eighteenth century were many and
varied. Steam engines and coke fuel came as aids
to men who were fighting a losing battle. Shallow
deposits of coal, tin and copper were being ex-
hausted, yet existing pumps could not cope with
the water which seeped into the lower levels;
ruin was inevitable unless the pumping problem
could be solved. Ironmasters were faced with
vanishing charcoal supplies as the forests near
iron deposits were cut down; they must find a
new fuel or abandon their furnaces. Many in-
ventions aimed at saving labor, at making pos-
sible the use of children for processes formerly
done by adults and at overcoming a scarcity of
skilled labor. The whole textile industry was
hampered in its growth by the fact that a large
number of workers was needed to prepare yarn
for one weaver; a cotton loom used the yarn
made by four or five spinners; a woolen weaver
kept nine or ten people busy; while in the sail-
cloth industry Arthur Young found twenty yarn
makers to each weaver. Since much of the spin-
ning was done by country dwellers, weavers
were often idle in summer when the spinners
went to gather the harvest. In making patterned
cloths the silk weaver needed the aid of three
women to raise or lower the warp threads prior
to the passage of the shuttle. In the metal indus-
tries the cutting of cogwheels for watches and
other implements was slow and unsatisfactory
until a machine was designed which "reduced
the expense of workmanship to a trifle in com-
parison to what it was before and [brought] the
work to such an exactness that no hand can
imitate it" (Campbell). Watt, Roebuck and
Wedgwood all had great difficulty in finding
tools and men capable of making goods exact in
measurement: there was an error of three eighths
of an inch in a cylinder made for Watt. Wilkin-
son's boring machine was designed to make pos-
sible the production of cannon and cylinders
which would be uniform in diameter.
Inventive ingenuity was also stimulated by
the hope of monetary reward. Leonardo da Vinci
had planned a needle polishing machine which
was to bring him the income of a Medici, and
eighteenth century opinion grew more tolerant
toward the inventor's claim to compensation.
Even when patent rights were challenged, it was
agreed that the inventor should be rewarded by
some gift from the state or from some organiza-
tion set up to encourage invention. Kings and
parliaments protected or rewarded innovators,
and such bodies as the Society for the Encour-
agement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce,
established in London in 1754, offered premi-
ums, medals and prizes.
The spearheads of the technological advance
in the eighteenth century were iron, cotton and
Industrial Revolution
pottery, and it is no mere accident that this
should be so. For these industries were virtually
new to England and were free from vested inter-
ests and government control. More important
still, they had two markets, one to be captured,
the other to be created. They strove to capture
existing demands which were already met by
supplies from the continent or the Orient; but
in addition they saw the vast demand which
would spring into being if they could offer cheap
cottons, crockery or iron. Wedgwood showed
his grasp of the situation when he established a
Useful Branch as well as an Ornamental Branch.
In the latter he won a luxury market once served
by Dutch, French, German and Oriental pot-
ters; in the former he created a new demand
atfiong all sections from the middle class to the
poor. Lancashire cotton goods ousted oriental
produce from the European, African and plan-
tation markets and eventually invaded the Orient
itself; they stole some ground from the linen and
woolen producers; but the total was insignificant
when compared with the new demand for more
clothing and for domestic decoration which the
cheap fabrics created. The story is not one of
insistent demand compelling changes in produc-
tive methods; it is rather one in which changed
methods and lower production costs resulted in
a commodity which created a new big demand.
These many stimuli to industrial change were
at work in both France and Britain all through
the eighteenth century. In each country inven-
tion and imitation were active, and the search
for new ideas was made abroad as well as at
home. England had welcomed the Huguenots
after 1685; Lombe had copied the silk machine
from Italy in 1718 and become a big factory
owner; London paper makers strove eagerly to
learn the secret of French, Dutch and Italian
superiority; London calico printers imitated the
methods practised m Hamburg; while tin plate
makers set up rolling mills of Swedish design.
The English countryside was sprinkled with
methods, rotations, crops and implements picked
up by English gentlemen during their "grand
tour"; and such publications as the Annual Reg-
ister and the Gentleman's Magazine gave space
to descriptions of industrial and agricultural
innovations. If one dare talk of "the spirit of
the Age," that spirit in the mid-century was
certainly a powerful stimulant to interest in and
search for new and better methods. Of that
spirit nearly all sections of society were drinking.
Of the outcome of this enthusiasm no detailed
account can be given here. The great inventors
and discoverers whose names are known often
built on foundations kid by scores of obscure
men; their work was frequently an improvement
or refinement upon that of others and in turn
needed still further improvement before it be-
came really satisfactory. Crompton's mule was,
as its name suggests, at least a crossbred and
did not do its best work until it was made self-
acting nearly fifty years later. Watt's engine was
originally only an improvement on that designed
by Newcomcn sixty years before, and until it
obtained a crank action was little more than a
somewhat more economical pump than its pred-
ecessor. Some men went searching on wrong
tracks, and their chief contribution was that of
warning others not to seek solutions in those di-
rections. Cart Wright's loom, for instance, seems
to have been almost worthless. In the gallery of
inventors some canvases are too large, some
should not be there at all and many deserving
ones have not yet been painted, much less hung.
By 1789 it was becoming apparent on both
sides of the English Channel that Britain was
pulling ahead of its nearest rival in industrial
and agricultural technique. Young boasted that
France had no counterparts to Arkwright, Wedg-
wood, Darby, Wilkinson or Boulton and those
Frenchmen who opposed the Anglo-French
commercial treaty of 1786 pointed to the advan-
tages Britain enjoyed through its lead in equip-
ment; its comparative freedom from state inter-
ference; its supplies of iron, coal, china clay
and water power; its access to raw materials; its
abundant supplies of capital in London, Liver-
pool and Glasgow; and the power which its in-
dustrialists and merchants wielded in political
life. These assets did much to make Britain the
workshop of the world during the next fifty years;
the Napoleonic wars strengthened its grip on the
seas and weakened France's access to raw mate-
rials and markets, while the demands of these
wars strengthened the demand for mass produc-
tion of many commodities, a demand which the
British inventions were particularly fitted to
meet. Meanwhile France, which had been ea-
gerly copying the British cotton and iron equip-
ment before 1789, fell back; and although there
was some development in the production of cot-
ton, iron and sugar during the revolution and
war it ended that period economically weaker,
with foreign trade crippled, capital scarce, trans-
port facilities disorganized and many skilled
workers killed. Not until about 1830 did French
economic effort begin seriously the task of mod-
ernization, and even in 1850 there was little that
Encyclopaedk of the Social Sciences
8
deserved to be called an industrial revolution.
Fuel and raw materials were insufficient; capital
was scarce; facilities for industrial investment
were scanty; and the Frenchman was wedded to
individualism, agriculture and small scale enter-
prise. Alsace-Lorraine was lost before ways were
found of turning its ore into steel. Hence nine-
teenth century France fell behind its traditional
rival; Holland had no resources on which to
build up the new kind of industry; and of the
two countries which were best fitted to follow
the English lead only Belgium moved quickly;
Germany remained almost stationary until 1850,
if not later. It had to wait until the Zollverein and
railroads overcame the obstacles to easy move-
ment of persons and goods. In Italy industriali-
zation was retarded by political disunity and
later by lack of raw materials.
Great Britain was therefore left almost alone
in developing the new technique and organiza-
tion. France did contribute something to the
common stock of invention and discovery silk
throwing machines, the Jacquard loom, the tu-
bular boiler, the water turbine, chemical bleach-
ing, a sewing machine and other things. Ger-
many gave attention to the relations between
science and production; Justus von Liebig put
agricultural chemistry on its feet in 1 840; nearly
a century before that date Margraaf had found
there was sugar in beetroot; while in 1802 the
Silesian Achard found a way of extracting it
on a commercial scale and thus gave Europe a
new industry. After 1800 the North American
contribution began to be important, and by 1850
American machine tools and machine products
were entering the European market. The key-
note of the American development was mass
production of standardized articles, each part of
which was made by machinery designed for one
task. Skilled labor was scarce; the frontier con-
sumer wanted goods which were cheap, service-
able or labor saving rather than polished, well
finished and long of life. The designing of spe-
cial machines which could be attended and fed
by unskilled workers therefore became the first
manifestation of "Yankee ingenuity"; these ma-
chines produced parts which were of standard
sizes and which could therefore be assembled
quickly by the same kind of labor. From the
making of muskets and revolvers this method of
production spread to that of clocks, woodwork,
sewing machines, harvesters, locks and the like.
English observers in the 1850*8 marveled at the
"fearless and masterly manner" in which "cor-
rect principles" were applied by American engi-
neers. Still the crucial developments which led
to production by power driven machines did
take place chiefly on British soil; it was there
that the new factories, metallurgical plants, big
coal mines, engineering shops, railroad and
steamship were worked out and the resulting
social problems had first to be faced.
The workshop of the world exported indus-
trial products to all parts; but soon its customers
wished to import industrialism instead, and the
encouragement of that importation has figured
largely in the politics of most countries. The
motive of this state fostering of industrialization
was the belief that it was derogatory, disgraceful
and dangerous to remain a nation of farmers and
handicraftsmen: dangerous because the handi-
crafts would be destroyed by the competition
of imported machine products, because there
would be no openings for those whose inclina-
tions and talents were not rural and because the
nation could not make its own war equipment;
derogatory because the standards of the nine-
teenth century seemed to place the townsman
on a higher plane than the rustic and the man
who lived near a factory chimney above the
hewer of wood, the shepherd or the cultivator;
disgraceful because it was shameful to depend
on other nations for the goods that one could
and should make for oneself. If China, Japan
and India were to count in the eyes of the west-
ern world they must westernize their industrial
equipment as well as their judicial and educa-
tional systems; if Canada, Australia and even the
United States were to emerge from colonial
status or stature they must cut the ties that
bound them to the factories of Lancashire, York-
shire and the Black Country; if new or reborn
nations, such as Germany or Italy, were to make
their unity or freedom real they must translate
nationalism into factories, mines, banks and sta-
tistics of industrial output; and if Russian com-
munists wished to justify their faith and place
in a hostile capitalistic world they must teach a
nation of peasants how to make electricity,
tractors, cloth, electric lamps and cheap matches.
Hence the political thought of nearly every na-
tion has been obsessed with problems of protec-
tion and self-sufficiency and of nurturing indus-
trial growth in face of the competition of more
highly industrialized countries. Only the crack
of doom will end the debate concerning the
extent to which success, where it has come, has
been the result of governmental action in grant-
ing tariffs, bounties and the like or has sprung
from such other causes as abundant natural
Industrial Revolution
resources, improved transportation facilities,
large home markets and the inventive ability,
organizing capacity and industrious habits of the
population.
In the New World there was some industrial
revolution, but many industries came so late that
they were able to begin operations on the mod-
ern plan. In the United States and to a slight
degree in Australia and Canada there was some
small scale and domestic industry to be de-
stroyed or superseded. Colonial America had its
frontier household manufacture of cloth, clothes,
furniture and implements, its farmhouse proc-
essing of land and animal products, its charcoal
smelting of bog iron, its nail shops, town handi-
craftsmen; distilleries, potash plants and ship-
yifrds. It had some putting out and some artisans
who rambled round the countryside or worked
in their own shops on materials belonging to
their customers; and its flour, fulling or sawmills
often treated customers' grain, cloth or lumber.
But frontier conditions usually decided that the
settler should rely on others only for those goods
which he could not make for himself. Gradually
most of these occupations passed into factories
and workshops; there was a steady shedding of
by-occupations by the farmer and a correspond-
ing concentration on his main task. Improved
roads, canals and finally the railroad brought a
wider area within reach of factory products and
spinning wheel, churn and candle mold became
antiques. The interruption of Anglo- American
relations during the revolution stimulated do-
mestic production, while the period from 1807
to 1814 saw some adoption of machinery and
factory organization; tariffs after 1815 helped the
textile and iron industries over some of their
difficulties with foreign competitors; the west-
ward flow of population called for the produc-
tion of settlers' effects at such inland points as
Pittsburgh; the Erie Canal made it possible to
process farm products at such centers as Buffalo
and Rochester and to send them to eastern mar-
kets; the scarcity of labor stimulated the produc-
tion of labor saving farm implements and indus-
trial machinery; while engines had to be designed
and built suitable to American railroad condi-
tions. But agriculture and commerce remained
the chief interests until the Civil War; capital
and enterprise found their richest rewards in the
unoccupied areas of the west, in the production
of staples for the seaboard or the European
market, in land speculation, in supplying the
stream of settlers and in shipping. The really
serious industrialization of the country did not
set in until after 1860; by that time the methods
and organization which seemed most suitable
had already been worked out in New or old
England and only needed to be adapted when
adopted. The extension of industrialization to
the south of the United States, slowly since 1890,
with increasing rapidity since 1914, has again
involved the imposition of known industrial
techniques on an agricultural economic organi-
zation. Australia and Canada had little of the
old order to sweep away; their industries could
begin on the modern pattern. The South Ameri-
can countries are still predominantly agricul-
tural, the only important traces of industrializa-
tion being the penetration of modern methods
of finance, large scale plantation organization
and the spreading use of machinery in the ex-
tractive industries.
In the Near and Far East the machine tech-
nique has met a social organization far older and
more stable than that which it superseded either
in the countries of the New World or in Europe;
but here too changes which may be called indus-
trial revolutions have occurred or are in prog-
ress. The first of the oriental countries to feel
the impact of industrialism was India. Conquest,
railways and foreign goods introduced the sys-
tem. The dissolution of the old princedoms and
their courts, followed by the rapid introduction
of improved methods of transportation, and the
prohibition of the importation of Indian cottons
and silks into England had gone far toward de-
stroying the highly developed urban and village
industries of India even before the products of
English machines appeared upon the Indian
market. Loss of older means of livelihood drove
increasing numbers of artisans back upon agri-
culture, and meanwhile the relentless growth of
population continued. By 1880 there were many
observers who felt that the one solution of In-
dia's economic difficulties was the development
of modern industries. The factory system ap-
peared first in the i85o's with the building of
cotton and jute mills. While the jute industry
was developed almost entirely by English capi-
tal, the cotton mills were started by native Bom-
bay merchants and the industry has remained
largely in native hands. The growth of the cotton
textile industry was slow until about 1880, when
it began to expand rapidly. As has been true in
most countries, machine spinning was at first far
more important than weaving, large quantities
of machine spun yarn being used by Indian hand
loom weavers; even larger quantities were ex-
ported to China and for a time to Japan. This
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
10
Chinese market was eventually lost to Japan,
and after the World War Japan became a for-
midable competitor in the Indian market itself.
Until 1914 India depended entirely upon im-
ports for her machinery and industrial equip-
ment. Early attempts to establish an iron and
steel industry failed; and though the stimulus of
war demands caused a rapid development of
that industry after 1914, it is still unable to
supply the country's needs. The war led also to
some development of chemical industries, oil
and water power. India has today over a million
factory workers, and the Calcutta jute mills are
large scale units. But industrialism has touched
scarcely more than the fringe of Indian life as
yet; banking and finance are little developed,
and the factory worker is often a villager who
has come to town for a few weeks or months in
order to earn money to supplement the inade-
quate income of the farm.
The same is true of China. Attempts at fac-
tory spinning of cotton were made as early as
1860 and were successful after 1880. These early
mills were owned by Chinese masters, who gath-
ered in their kinsfolk and thus retained some-
thing of the family unit. After China's defeat by
Japan foreign capital was invested in cotton
mills, and a large spinning industry half Japa-
nese, partly Chinese and slightly British grew
up in the Shanghai area. In that region about
250 factories now exist making textiles and a
wide range of other consumer goods, including
even fountain pens and gramaphones; but else-
where there has been little industrialization, ex-
cept in Manchuria under Japanese influence.
The rapidity of the modernization of Japan
seems to make the phrase industrial revolution
particularly applicable in its case; but it is sig-
nificant that the commercial and financial trans-
formations have been more far reaching than
the strictly industrial. Even before 1868 impor-
tant changes in economic organization had been
taking place in Japan; throughout the eight-
eenth and the early nineteenth century the feudal
system was gradually being transformed by the
development of a money economy, including a
wage system. Under the modern government of
the Meiji era industrialization became one of the
first objectives of economic policy. Government
subsidies secured by borrowings abroad made
possible the construction of railroads and later
of public utilities, gas and electric power works.
The government established model factories and
schools for the training of workers. Neverthe-
less, the progress of industrialization was slow;
not until after the Sino-Japanese and Russo-
Japanese wars did Japan's factory industries de-
velop on any large scale. The World War caused
an enormous expansion of all industries and
offered an opportunity for Japan to capture the
markets of the Orient; but the troubled economic
and political conditions of post-war years forced
a considerable recession. In 1927 Japan had
49,000 factories employing 1,700,000 workers.
The most important factory industries are silk
reeling and cotton spinning; but the weaving of
cotton is still preponderantly a domestic indus-
try, while silk weaving is negligible. Raw silk
remains Japan's principal export and the major-
ity of the population is still agricultural or rural,
engaging in handicraft industries as a subsidiary
occupation. Japan is already experiencing diffi-
culties in finding an outlet for its cotton yarns
or textile goods in India or China, and the de-
velopment of the heavy metallurgical industries
is costly because of its lack of raw materials.
In one sense the vast changes in progress in
Soviet Russia do not constitute an industrial
revolution, since they do not represent the sub-
stitution of one form of industrial organization
for another. But this industrialization of an agri-
cultural country is in another sense completely
revolutionary. It could occur of course only after
the methods and instruments of industrialism
had been fully worked out in other countries.
The logic of large scale production, the factory
system and the machine technique are being
adopted more completely in Russia, through
their extension to agriculture, than anywhere
else. The pattern of industrialization, which has
been much the same for most countries, is com-
pletely changed in Russia. The heavy industries
are being developed first rather than last; indus-
trialization, while depending on foreign aid and
the exports necessary to pay for it, is not based
on a foreign market for consumers' goods. The
social consequences of the industrial revolution
in Russia are also vastly different; great as the
hardships involved may be they fall most heavily
on such classes as the kulaks and the merchants,
not on the factory worker. Russia possesses all
the natural resources necessary for a most com-
plete development of the machine industries; a
labor force is in process of creation. It is easy to
overestimate the rapidity of progress, but these
changes do have a spectacular quality which the
first industrial revolution never possessed even
in retrospect.
* In all lands where it came to displace an es-
tablished industrial structure the industrial rev-
Industrial Revolution
olution ran a roughly similar course. The textile
industry was usually the first to be affected, then
the making of clothes, metal articles and food-
stuffs; the large scale manufacture of iron and
of steel represented often a distinct step
forward but one not easy to take, while the
manufacture of machines and producers' goods
generally was a hazardous venture. Indeed it is
this final step toward complete industrialization
which has been most difficult for more recently
industrialized countries. In lands coming late to
industrialism the easiest success has been won
in industries which process the natural or farm
products, which produce simple wares such as
blankets or plain cotton pieces or which enjoy
the natural protection of distance from possible
competitors.
Migration of industry from manual domes-
tic or shop conditions to the factory varied in
speed from industry to industry. Spinning went
quickly; weaving, knitting and some metal trades
passed through a transitional workshop period,
in which workers were gathered under one roof
but continued to use the old equipment. In the
clothing industries the sewing machine could
be used in the home, and many women clung
to the putting out system but had to submit to
sweated conditions. The shoemaker and hand
loom weaver put up a long fight, and the victory
of the laundry and bakery is still far from com-
plete in Europe.
Dependence on coal and water power led to
industrial concentration on the coal fields, river
valleys and such belts as the fall line in America.
Water power had only a limited effect in causing
concentration, for it strung the factories all along
the banks of rapidly flowing rivers, and for cer-
tain textile washing processes an ample supply
of water was almost as important as a supply of
fuel or power. Where water and coal were found
together, as in the Pennine valleys and eastern
Belgium, industry was spread over the whole
region in villages or towns. For the metal indus-
tries location was determined by the coal supply,
since it was easier to bring the metal to the coal
than vice versa; but this involved the construc-
tion of adequate transport facilities, such as the
railroad between Lorraine and the Ruhr.
The movement of population to the industrial
areas still needs further study. But for England
it is now evident that there was no simple mass
transfer of people from the south and east to
the north and west. The industrial towns grew
by drawing workers in from the hinterland, and
the void thus made was filled by people from
II
slightly further afield. Journeys were generally
short, except in the case of the Irish who
swarmed across the Irish Sea to Lancashire,
Glasgow and Yorkshire. Only later, when the
railroads made longer journeys easier, was there
any serious long distance migration. In newer
countries, such as the United States, native pop-
ulation was for long streaming away from the
eastern industrial centers and a continual inflow
of immigrants was necessary to insure an ade-
quate labor supply.
Problems of urban health and housing were
probably most acute in those towns which were
the homes of the early spinning factories. In
looking at them it should be remembered that
until 1835 many British manufacturing centers
had no adequate municipal government, that
knowledge about the essentials of public health
was scanty, that cheap production of pipes,
bricks and woodwork did not come until about
1840, that house building depended on the will-
ingness of someone to sink capital in dwellings
and that the rate of interest current or the profits
to be made in industry might be more tempting
than the return on house property. A glance at
the housing of the poor in non-industrial towns
of the eighteenth century and at the difficulties
which have surrounded the provision of working
class dwellings since 1914 should provoke a more
merciful judgment of the "jerry builder" of the
early nineteenth century. In the United States
living conditions in the early textile towns of
New England were very good; only with the
coming of wave after wave of foreign laborers
did the worst slum conditions appear.
Of labor conditions no easy generalization is
possible. Long hours, child labor, employment
of women, insanitary conditions, payment in
truck, unemployment, low wages, capitalistic
tyranny, labor unrest, industrial fatigue, occu-
pational diseases and the "cash nexus" were not
inventions of industrial factory capitalism. Night
work was a new thing in the textile industries;
but the only novelty about child labor was that
children now worked in large groups, were sub-
ject to factory rather than parental discipline,
discharged more responsible tasks, had to leave
the hearth to work and were kept rigorously at
their day or night tasks. It should be noted,
however, that child labor was universally re-
garded as natural and that the children's earn-
ings were larger in the factory than they had
been at home. When child labor was forbidden,
something else education had to be devel-
oped to fill the waking hours of the young. The
12
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
hazards to life and limb might perhaps have
been prevented before they were attacked by
legislation but they had first to be recognized as
such, and the apathy toward them was as marked
among the operatives as among employers. Such
conditions and attitudes repeated themselves in
most countries or regions where the factory sys-
tem was introduced.
As to wages and employment light and shade
alternate. In the early stages the new industries,
especially cotton and pottery, seem to have paid
much higher wages than were prevalent in the
older industries, and the demand for hand loom
weavers to cope with the flood of machine made
yarn raised the rates paid for weaving. In Eng-
land the long war with France lifted many nomi-
nal wages and some real ones, but the slump
after Waterloo lowered levels in industry and
agriculture alike. The hand loom weaver and
some other manual workers suffered when they
stuck to their benches in face of the machine;
but elsewhere conditions seem to have improved
because of rising wages and falling prices after
about 1820 or 1830. Some occupations passed
from male to female hands, but new occupations
were opened up and old ones expanded metal-
lurgy, mechanical engineering, the construction
and operation of railroads, shipbuilding, mining,
building and the opportunities for skilled well
paid work multiplied accordingly.
In short, the industrial revolution increased
rather than decreased the material welfare of the
mass of the population; but some sections suf-
fered from the transition, war and business fluc-
tuations disturbed wages and prices and the
dangers latent in the employee's lot became
apparent. Unfortunately much of our view of
the social aspects of the revolution is drawn from
reports of official investigations, which in their
very nature are full of complaints and griev-
ances. From them one can paint the industrial
revolution as "an orgy of soulless cupidity"
(Tawney) and assume that to be the whole pic-
ture. But quantitative studies such as that by
Clapham; detailed business studies of Oldknow,
Owen, Wedgwood, Boulton, Gott, Krupp and
others; and a more detailed knowledge of pre-
revolutionary conditions tone down the picture
and make at least some of the industrial leaders
appear more like human beings and less like
incarnations of ruthless self-interest. Moreover
it is still far from certain how much the revolu-
tion was "a triumph of the spirit of enterprise"
(Tawney). Enterprise there was but not always
triumph, and the industrial field was strewn
with the wreckage of men who failed. The trou-
ble with machinery that broke down, with work-
men who refused to use it, with customers who
demanded long credit yet refused to pay their
debts, with booms that burst, with banks that
refused any more loans, with wars that closed
markets, all made the road stony. Inadequate
supplies of working capital wrecked many a ven-
ture, and when a successful period came the
profits had to be plowed back into the business.
The industrial revolution has not yet been stud-
ied through the records of bankruptcy, but
enough is known to show on what a treacherous
sea the entrepreneur of the early machine age
launched his boat.
HERBERT HEATON
See: INDUSTRIALISM; FACTORY SYSTEM; ORGANIZA-
TION, ECONOMIC; GUILDS; PUTTING OUT SYSTEM;
CAPITALISM; SCIFNCE; INVENTION; MACHINES AND
TOOLS; TECHNOLOGY; POWER, INDUSTRIAL; LOCALIZA-
TION OF INDUSTRY, LARGE SCALE PRODUCTION; RAIL-
ROADS; TEXTILE INDUSTRY; IRON AND Si ELL INDUSTRY;
METALS; BANKING, COMMERCIAL; CREDIT; CORPORA-
TION; MARKETING; IMPERIALISM; LABOR; HOURS OF
LABOR; WOMEN IN INDUS IRY; LABOR MOVEMENT;
URBANIZATION.
Consult: FOR GENERAL DISCUSSION- Se"e, Henri, Les
origines du capitalisme nwderne (Paris 1926), tr. by
II. B. Vanderblue and G. F. Donot (London 1928);
Sombart, Werner, Der nwderne Kapttalismus, 3 vols.
(3rd ed. Munich 1928); Hobson, J., The Evolution of
Modern Capitalism (London 1926); Kuhscher, J. M.,
Allgemeine Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Mittelalters und
der Neuzeit, 2 vols. (Munich 1928-29) vol. n; Clap-
ham, J. II., "Economic Change" in Cambridge Modern
History, vol. x (Cambridge, Eng. 1907) ch. xxin;
Bezanson, A., "Early Use of the Term 'Industrial
Revolution' " in Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol.
xxxvi (1921-22) 343-49; Usher, A. P., History of
Mechanical Inventions (New York 1929). See also the
series, Handbuch der Wirtschaftsgeschichte, published
since 1918 under the editorship ot G. Brodmtz.
FOR GREAT BRITAIN: Williams, J. B., Guide to the
Printed Materials for English Social and Economic His-
tory, 1750-1850, 2 vols. (New York 1926); Power,
Eileen, The Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850, Eco-
nomic History Society Bibliographies, no. i (Ixmdon
1927); Toynbee, Arnold, Lectures on the Industrial
Revolution (new ed. London 1908); Mantoux, Paul,
La revolution industrielle au XV ill" siecle (Paris 1906),
tr. by M. Vernon (rev. ed. London 1928); Knowles,
L. C. A., The Industrial and Commercial Revolutions
in Great Britain during the Nineteenth Century (4th ed.
London 1926); Clapham, J. H , An Economic History
of Modern Britain (and ed Cambridge, Eng. 1930);
Hammond, J. L. and B., The Rise of Modern Industry
(3rd ed. London 1927), and The Skilled Labourer,
1760-1832 (2nd ed. London 1920); Lipson, E., An
Introduction to the Economic History of England, 3 vols.
(4th ed. London 1926-31) vols. ii-iii; Bowden, Witt,
Industrial Society in England towards the End of the
Eighteenth Century (New York 1925); Lord, John,
Industrial Revolution Industrial Workers of the World 13
Capital and Steam Power 1750-1800 (London 1923);
Wadsworth, A. P., and Mann, J. de L., The Cotton
Trade and Industrial Lancashire, 1600-1780 (Man-
chester 1931); Ashton, T. S., Iron and Steel in the
Industrial Revolution, University of Manchester, Eco-
nomic History series, no. li (Manchester 1924); Smart,
W., Economic Annals of the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols.
(London 1910-17); Page, William, Commerce and In-
dustry, 1813-1014, 2 vols. (London 1919), Levi,
Leone, History of British Commerce . . . 17631870
(London 1872); Buer, M. C., Health, Wealth and Pop-
ulation in the Early Days of the Industrial Revolution
(London 1926); Bowley, A. L., Wages in the United
Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Eng.
1900); Redford, Arthur, Labour Migration in England,
1800-1850 (Manchester 1926), Webb, S. and B., His-
tory of Trade Umomsrn (rev. ed. London 1920).
FOR FRANCE AND GERMANY: Clapham, J. II. , Eco-
nomic Development of France and Germany, 18151014
(3rd ed. Cambridge, Eng. 1928), Dawson, W. H.,
The Evolution of Modern Germany (rev. ed. London
1919); Se"e, Henri, La vie economique de la France sous
la monarchic censitaire, 1815-1848 (Pans 1927); Mar-
tin, Germain, Histoire economique et financiere (Pans
1927), and La grande Industrie sous le regne de Louis
Xiv (Paris 1899); Ballot, C., L' introduction du machi-
msme dans I' Industrie franfaise, ed. by Claude GeVel
(Pans 1923); Levasseur, Emile, Histoire des classes
ouvneres en France depuis i78Qjusqu'a nos jours,, 2 vols.
(2nd ed. Paris 1903-04); Sartorius von Waltershausen,
A., Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 1815-101 f (Jena
1920); Sombart, W., Die deutsche Volkszvirtschaft im
neunzehnten Jahrhundert (rev. ed. Berlin 1919), Pohle,
Ludwig, Die Entwicklung des deutschen Wirtschafts-
lebcn irn letzten Jahrhundert (sth ed. Leipsic 1923);
Veblen, Thorstem, Imperial Germany and the Indus-
trial Revolution (New York 1915).
FOR THE UNITED STATES: Clark, V. S., History of
Manufactures in the United States (New York 1929),
Wright, Carroll D., The Industrial Evolution of the
United States (New York 1895), Tryon, R. M , House-
hold Manufactures in the United States, 1640-1860
(Chicago 1917); Copeland, M. T., The Cotton Manu-
facturing Industry in the United States (Cambridge,
Mass. 1912), Ware, Caroline F., The Early New Eng-
land Cotton Manufacture (Boston 1931), Cole, A. II.,
The American Wool Manufacture, z vols. (Cambridge,
Mass. 1926), Swank, J. M., History of the Manufac-
ture of Iron in All Ages, and Particularly in the United
States from Colonial Times to l8cji (2nd ed. Philadel-
phia 1892); Mitchell, Broadus and G. S., The Indus-
trial Revolution in the South (Baltimore 1930); Bogart,
E. L., Economic History of the American People (New
York 1930), Bowden, Witt, The Industrial History of
the United States (New York 1930); Commons, John
R., History of Labour in the United States, 2 vols.
(New York 1918).
FOR THE ORIENT: Gadgil, D. R., The Industrial
Evolution of India in Recent Times (London 1924),
Jather, G. B., and Beri, S. G., Indian Economics, 2
vols. (2nd ed. Oxford 1930); Anstey, Vera, The Eco-
nomic Development of India (London 1929), Brough-
ton, G. M., Labour in Indian Industries (Oxford 1924);
Orchard, John E. and D ]., Japan's Economic Position
(New York 1930); Moulton, Harold G., and Ko,
Junichi, Japan, an Economic and Financial Appraisal
(Washington 1931); Lieu, D. K., China's Industries
and Finance (Peking 1927); Tso Chou, La revolution
Economique dans la Chine contemporaine (1840-1929)
(Pans 1930); "China" in American Academy of Politi-
cal and Social Science, Annals, vol. clii (1930) pt. iii;
Bain, H. Foster, Ores and Industry in the Far East
(New York 1927).
INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM. See TRADE
UNIONS.
INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE
WORLD. The Industrial Workers of the World,
a revolutionary industrial union, was organized
in 1905; its object is to organize the working class
industrially not only for the everyday struggles
against employers hut for the final overthrow of
capitalism. It was originally a socialist organiza-
tion but since 1908 it has combined the indige-
nous American doctrine of industrial unionism
with the ideology and practises of syndicalism.
The emergence of the I. W. W. was the result
of the convergence of two forces: the frustration
in the east of the socialists who wished to com-
mit the American Federation of Labor and the
Knights of Labor to socialist programs and the
sharp differences beyond the Mississippi be-
tween the socialist Western Federation of Miners
and the conservative, opportunist American
Federation of Labor. In the early nineties Daniel
De Leon and his followers in the Socialist Labor
party were aggressively working in the east to
convert to socialism the two chief national labor
bodies of the country the declining Knights of
Labor and their vigorous competitor the A. F.
of L. These efforts failed and the De Leonites,
insisting that the conservative unions hampered
the emancipation of labor, organized in 1895 the
Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, which was
avowedly socialist and revolutionary. The alli-
ance created considerable agitation but was not
a success; dissatisfaction with these manoeuvres
of the De Leonites, which were linked up with
fundamental differences involving revolutionary
and opportunist conceptions of socialism, led
the opportunist faction to bolt the Socialist La-
bor party and at the turn of the century to set
up the Socialist party, which opposed organiza-
tion of dual unions and advocated "boring from
within" the A. F. of L. Soon after its organiza-
tion in 1893 the Western Federation had affili-
ated with the A. F. of L. but broke away in 1897;
it waged ten great strikes during the period 1893
to 1903. In 1898, three years after the launching
of the alliance, the Western Federation set up
the Western Labor Union (after 1902 the Amer-
ican Labor Union), of which the federation itself
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
14
was the chief constituent. The American Labor
Union was an industrial union, class conscious
and strongly socialist; it proposed industrial
unionism and independent political action "of
all wage workers" as "the only method" of
working class emancipation in essentials the
program subsequently adopted by the I. W. W.
By 1904 both the alliance and the American
Labor Union were extremely weak the one a
purely propagandist body, the other important
only as the expression of the Western Federation
of Miners. Meanwhile new and aggressive labor
struggles provided an opportunity for the agita-
tion of revolutionary unionism. The defeat of
the steel workers' strike in 1901 glaringly re-
vealed the limitations of craft unionism; the
victory of the coal miners one year later stirred
labor everywhere. There was an increasing dis-
cussion of the need for a new labor organization,
as the result of which a constitutional conven-
tion met in 1905 and organized the Industrial
Workers of the World. The most important
organization represented in the convention was
the Western Federation of Miners; other organi-
zations were the alliance, the American Labor
Union, the United Metal Workers' Industrial
Union and a few disaffected locals of the A. F.
of L. There were also a number of individual
delegates from both the Socialist Labor party
and the Socialist party. The proceedings were
dominated by De Leon, William D. Haywood,
Eugene V. Debs, William E. Trautmann and
Vincent St. John.
The I. W. W. arose primarily out of dissatis-
faction with the craft unionism and conservative
policies of the A. F. of L. The latter had repudi-
ated the Knights of Labor policy of organizing
all the workers, skilled and unskilled; its con-
stituent unions were composed overwhelmingly
of skilled workers among whom craftsmanship
was still an important factor, and these unions
refused to organize the unskilled workers (e.g.
in the iron and steel industry). The I. W. W. on
the contrary proposed to organize all wage work-
ers, regardless of craft distinctions; it proposed
moreover to organize them into industrial unions
which would embrace all the workers in a par-
ticular plant, enterprise and industry. The I. W.
W. thesis was: machinery is rapidly eliminating
the craftsman's skill; the unskilled workers are
becoming preponderant and it is necessary to
organize them; without the organization of these
workers into industrial unions, an integrated
unionism paralleling the integrated structure of
modern industry, it is impossible to wage effec-
tive war on the great combinations of capital.
The craft structure of the A. F. of L., insisted
the I. W. W., is not only incapable of organizing
all the workers but develops the conservative
policy of defense of exclusive craft interests (fre-
quently at the expense of the unorganized work-
ers) instead of the revolutionary policy of the
overthrow of capitalism.
Although the I. W. W , including its prede-
cessor the American Labor Union, was strongly
influenced by the traditions of earlier experi-
ments in radical unionism, it made important
departures. The I. W. W. accepted the Knights
of Labor idea of organizing all workers including
the unskilled but it repudiated the K. of L.
leaders' middle class ideology and adopted a
definitely socialist policy. The L W. W. agreed
with the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance that
unions should organize for the overthrow of
capitalism, but it substituted industrial unionism
for the craft unionism of the alliance. This in-
dustrial unionism was an essentially indigenous
product and constitutes an American contribu-
tion to revolutionary labor theory and practise;
it grew primarily out of the rapidly increasing
concentration of American industry. This con-
centration, in socialist theory, represented the
socialization of production upon which sociali-
zation of industry and socialism depend; the
I. W. W. accepted that conclusion but added a
new concept the industrial unions, paralleling
the integration of industry, would become the
basis of the future socialist society (whence the
theory of "forming the structure of the new
society within the shell of the old"). This con-
ception was given its most brilliant formulation
by De Leon, who considered it the fulfilment of
Engels' theory that the government of socialist
society would be an "administration of things";
Lenin accepted the conception as an adumbra-
tion of the Soviet system and as the ultimate
form of government in communist society.
Within one year a split took place in the
I. W. W., which led to the secession of the
Western Federation of Miners, depriving the
new organization of nearly one half of its 60,000
members. The split involved issues of revolu-
tionary or moderate tactics and left control in
the hands of the more revolutionary elements
under De Leon, Trautmann, St. John and Hay-
wood.
The secession did not, however, end internal
controversy; a new struggle developed between
the advocates and opponents of political action.
Although in theory the I. W. W. was a product
Industrial Workers of the World
of modern concentrated industry it drew its
strength from casual labor in the west and immi-
grant workers in the east, men who by the
nature of their work and social position had no
stake in voting and who developed an antistate
complex. This complex was emphasized by the
frontier traditions of "direct action" which in-
fluenced western workers. In consequence a
strong antipolitical tendency developed, aggra-
vated by the struggle for party influence within
the I. W. W. between representatives of the
Socialist Labor party and the Socialist party.
De Leon opposed the antipolitical tendency,
emphasizing the Marxist conclusion that "every
class struggle is a political struggle." The con-
tro^versy over political action came to a head at
the 1908 convention. The De Leon delegates
were expelled and thereupon set up a rival
I. W. W. with headquarters in Detroit, but it
was never more than a propagandist group. It
declined with the general decline of the Socialist
Labor party, changed its name in 1915 to the
Workers' International Industrial Union and
struggled on to formal dissolution in 1925. The
majority I . W. W., sometimes called the anarcho-
syndicalist group, espoused revolutionary indus-
trial unionism without affiliation or cooperation
with any political party. The antipolitical bias of
the groups now dominant in the I. W. W. was
reenforced by syndicalist theory. But there were
important differences between syndicalism and
the I. W. W. The I. W. W. was an industrial
union, while the European syndicalist groups
were essentially craft organizations; moreover,
where syndicalism envisaged the future society
in terms of autonomous, loosely federated pro-
ducers' groups, the I. W. W. proposed a more
integrated economic organization of soeicty and
more highly centralized social control the fun-
damental difference between the anarchist and
the socialist conceptions.
In the midst of controversy and secession the
I. W. W. was becoming a militant expression of
class war in the United States. It made its appeal
to all wage workers regardless of occupation,
creed, color or sex, attempting to link up the
immediate struggle with the necessity for the
overthrow of capitalism. It opposed the inter-
vention of intermediate agencies, such as the
state, in labor's struggles with the employers and
emphasized direct action in the form of strikes,
boycotts and so on but not collective bargaining,
which it considered an interference with labor's
only weapon, the strike. Unlike the A. F. of L.,
which considered time agreements necessary
15
and sacred, the I. W. W. rejected them because
such contracts make it more difficult to declare
strikes at moments most embarrassing to the
employers. The I. W. W. avoided violence and
sabotage in spite of the emphasis on direct action;
it talked much of those tactics but did almost
nothing to apply them. Its tactics included inter-
mittent strikes and strikes "on the job." In the
course of its history the I. W. W. directed or
participated in not fewer than 150 strikes, the
most important of which were the Goldfield,
Nevada, miners' strike of 1906-07; the Law-
rence, Massachusetts, textile workers' strike of
1912; a lumber workers' strike in Louisiana in
the same year, in which many Negro workers
participated; the Paterson, New Jersey, silk
workers' strike of 1913; and the iron miners'
strike on the Mesabi Range, Minnesota, in 1916.
The period from 1905 to 1914 was one of rising
prices and stationary real wages, of aggravated
labor discontent; these conditions provided an
opportunity for I. W. W. militancy, and its
activities were considered a serious revolution-
ary threat. Most of the I. W. W. strikes were
marked by severe repression on the part of the
public authorities; and along with their strikes
the I. W. W. waged numerous "free speech"
fights when their attempts to organize were in-
terfered with. Arrests and convictions were
numerous. The strikes were marked by tempo-
rary accessions to the I. W. W. ranks, the
frequent w inning of some or all of their demands
and, at the end, abandonment of the battlefield
without any serious attempt to build up a stable
organization. This defect in I. W. W. tactics
was aggravated by the difficulty of organizing
unskilled workers, particularly when they were
foreign born and spoke many languages.
During the World War the I. W. W. took an
antimilitarist position, opposed the participation
of the United States in the war and continued
to organize strikes in spite of the truce pro-
claimed by the A. F. of L. The government
acted swiftly and drastically; 166 of the I. W. W.
leaders were indicted, 113 arraigned and tried
and 93, including Haywood, convicted; they all
received severe sentences, twenty years' impris-
onment in the case of the more important leaders.
The post-war years were marked by further
prosecutions of the I. W. W. under the criminal
syndicalism statutes of various states. In Wash-
ington agitation and strikes among the lumber
workers aroused considerable tension; on Armi-
stice Day, 1919, a group of American Legion
men in Centralia attacked the I. W. W. hall
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
16
and met forcible resistance. In the struggle four
legionaires were killed and a number of I. W.
W.'s arrested; seven were sent to prison for from
twenty-five to forty years; and although seven
jurymen have since repudiated their verdict and
there is a general demand for their release, the
I. W. W.'s are still in prison. Wholesale prose-
cutions effectively broke the strength of the
organization for a period of years perhaps per-
manently. They forced it to concentrate what
strength it had upon legal defense and cam-
paigns for amnesty. Its energy was further
sapped by bitter internal controversy over the
conditions on which its members should accept
amnesty. The I. W. W. played no part in the
great strike movement during the period 1919
to 1922.
This decline was sharpened by I. W. W.
losses to the communists. The communist revo-
lution in Russia profoundly influenced the I. W.
W., some of whose former members were active
in the Bolshevik party. At first the I. W. W. was
sympathetic to the Bolshevik Revolution; but as
communist theory and practise with their em-
phasis on a political party and the capture of the
state were better understood, a violent contro-
versy over communism broke out. The contro-
versy was aggravated by the organization of an
American Communist party which struggled for
hegemony over the revolutionary movement. An
appeal issued in 1920 by Gregory Zinoviev in
the name of the Communist International rec-
ognized the "long and heroic service of the
I. W. W. in the class war" and urged it to join
the International; the appeal said that the exist-
ing revolutionary situation did not permit of
waiting until "the new society is built within the
shell of the old," that the struggle of the workers
must be a struggle for political power and that
the I. W. W. theory of the general strike is in-
complete unless it includes the final necessity of
armed insurrection. The appeal was rejected;
the I. W. W. emphasized its syndicalist orienta-
tion and became increasingly hostile to com-
munism and the Soviet system. The Commu-
nists, however, were aided in the struggle by the
fact that their program included fundamental
elements of the I. W. W. program (as well as
that of the Socialist Labor party); on the whole
the I. W. W.'s have been Bolshevik and anti-
syndicalist in their concepts of industrial union-
ism and the structure of the new society and
syndicalist and anti- Bolshevik in their rejection
of political action. The essential theoretical dif-
ferences are: the I. W. W. believes in the gradual
acquisition of control of industry by economic
action "on the job" and has no clear idea of
how the final overthrow of capitalism is to be
accomplished; the Communists accept indus-
trial unionism but insist that it is necessary to
overthrow the capitalist state and organize a
dictatorship of the proletariat in order to build
up the new society. These differences were at
first a matter of discussion, and the Communists
tried to win over the I. W. W.; in recent years
the differences have become practical and have
assumed the form of an open struggle for leader-
ship over the revolutionary labor union move-
ment. The Communist organization, the Trade
Union Unity League, is opposed to the I. W. W.
as well as the A. F. of L. In this struggle for
leadership the I. W. W. has rapidly lost ground
to the Communists. Left wing strikes which in
pre-war days would have been led by the P. W.
W. are now led by Communists. Many promi-
nent I. W. W. leaders, such as Hay wood and
William Z. Foster, joined the Communist party,
and an appreciable proportion of this party's
membership is composed of former members of
the I. W. W.
In 1924 the I. W. W. suffered a serious split
over the question of centralization of power
within the organization. Still smoldering differ-
ences regarding amnesty were also involved. The
so-called Emergency Program, or E. P., faction,
supported especially by western groups, favored
the loose federation of highly autonomous locals.
The eastern, or Administration, group favored
continuance as an amalgamation of local units
subordinated to a highly centralized national
organization. The decentralizers were defeated
but set up a Reorganized Faction with head-
quarters in Portland, Oregon, and formulated
an emergency program calling for the abolition
of certain national offices and the per capita tax
to the general administration. In July, 1925, the
E. P., or Reorganized Faction, adopted a new
constitution which provided for the decentrali-
zation of the industrial divisions of the organi-
zation, called industrial unions, into job branches
having local autonomy. Although this faction is
still in existence it has even less influence than
the dominant administration group. In Los An-
geles it publishes a monthly paper, the New
Unionist, which is extremely syndicalist in its
theory and strike tactics.
The enrolled membership of the I. W. W. has
never been large and has always been of a shift-
ing, unstable character. The organization prob-
ably reached the peak of its popukrity and
Industrial Workers of the World
prestige at the time of the textile workers' strike
in 1912, when it may have had 100,000 mem-
bers. During the post-war period its member-
ship and influence have been low and steadily
declining. In 1930 it probably numbered less
than 10,000 members.
Few skilled workers have been attracted by
the I. W. W. Its strength has always lain in its
effective appeal to the casual and migratory
worker in particular and the unskilled worker in
general. These groups, which the A. F. of L.
has largely ignored and failed to reach, the
I. W. W. has successfully recruited. Its more im-
portant branches are made up of such workers in
lumbering, construction, agriculture, longshore
work and marine transport. It has been strong-
est on the Pacific coast and in the wheat belt
but has succeeded temporarily in the textile
milk of Massachusetts and New Jersey, in the
lumbering industry in Louisiana, in the coal
mines of Colorado and in the oil fields of Okla-
homa. Its chief centers of influence in 1930 were
the wheat belt, the northwest woods and the
docks of the chief port cities. It attracts most
strongly the immigrants and the native Ameri-
cans who drift into migratory work. Its leaders
have for the most part been Americans, although
some foreigners, especially Italians, have played
active roles in its affairs. The activities and influ-
ence of the I. W. W. have been confined almost
entirely to the United States and Canada, al-
though there have been set up "foreign admin-
istrations," which simply reflect the propaganda
activity of seagoing I. W. W.'s. The organization
has no other international affiliation.
Of crucial significance is the practical result
of the I. W. W.'s inability to combine effectively
the struggle for immediate improvements with
the struggle for final working class emancipa-
tion, a defect aggravated by its guerilla strike
tactics and lack of organizational solidity. The
result is that the I. W. W. has been far less
successful as a disciplined labor union than as
an organization of propaganda and protest. Un-
less immediate benefits can be offered and
won workers do not stay in unions. This is
why, although the I. W. W.'s have staged nu-
merous strikes and free speech fights, these dra-
matic activities have borne little or no fruit so
far as permanent, stabilized organization is con-
cerned.
Although there have been among the I. W.
W.'s not a few "two-card" men, holding union
cards in some A. F. of L. union as well as in the
I. W. W., the relations between the I. W. W.
and the federation have been for the most part
bitterly hostile. The I. W. W. was conceived in
hostility to the federation and since 1905 has
been a most persistent critic of that organization
and its policies. The federation, which is op-
posed to both syndicalism and communism, is
highly conservative and represents primarily the
interests of the skilled craftsman; the I. W. W.
is radical and represents the unskilled worker,
who is ignored by the A. F. of L. and whose
interests demand more aggressive action. The
two organizations typify sharply contrasted
points of view on doctrine, on tactics, on form
of organization as well as sharply contrasted
groups of workers to whom they appeal. Many
clashes have occurred between the I. W. W. and
the A. F. of L ; the two organizations have de-
nounced each other consistently and interfered
in each other's strikes. During I. W. W. strikes
the A. F. of L. unions of skilled workers would
refuse to come out and were in consequence
accused of "organized scabbery." These antag-
onisms are not simply a product of theoretical
differences; they express the conflict of interests
between the skilled and unskilled workers, the
organized and unorganized, which constitutes
an important aspect of the American labor
movement.
The I. W. W. has been a significant influence
in the American labor movement. Unquestion-
ably it galvanized the A. F. of L. into taking
more interest in the organization of unskilled
labor; amalgamation proposals in the A. F. of L.
are one result of the I. W. W. propaganda for
industrial unionism. The industrial structure of
some of the newer unions, like the Amalgamated
Food Workers and several unions organized by
Communists, such as the Needle Trades Indus-
trial Union, is to be traced in part to the I. W.
W.; indeed industrial unionism is an accepted
idea of American communism. The I. W. W.
has been responsible indirectly for state legis-
lation more adequately to control private labor
exchanges. It improved conditions among many
groups of workers, especially in the lumber
camps, and it has made it easier for Negro
workers to organize into unions; in fact the
I. W. W. was the first labor organization which
actively organized the Negro. There is, finally,
the influence of the I. W. W. upon the com-
munist movement. The I. W. W. was an Ameri-
can expression of the revolt against moderate
socialism which developed in all sections of the
international socialist movement. In the pre-war
days the I. W. W. stimulated the development
i8
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
of a strong left wing group in the Socialist
party; the struggle between revolutionary and
opportunist was waged over the issue of indus-
trial unionism. During the war the new left
wing, which led directly to organization of the
Communist party, was influenced, although in
minor degree, by I. W. W.'s, while the Com-
munist party now claims the revolutionary her-
itage of the I. W. W.
PAUL F. BRISSENDEN
See: LABOR MOVEMENT, DUAL UNIONISM; SYNDIC AL-
ISM; CRIMINM. SYNUICAI ISM; Diutci ACTION, VIO-
LENCE, SMJOTAGE.
Consult: Bnssendcn, P F., History of the I. W. W.: A
Study of American Syndicalism (2nd ed. New York
1920); Industrial Workers of the World, Proceedings
of the First Annual Convention (New York 1905); St.
John, V., The I. W. W , Its History, Structure and
Methods (rev. ed. Chicago 1917), Ebert, J., The I.
W. W. in Theory and Practice (2nd ed Chicago 1922),
and The Trial of a New Society (Cleveland 1913),
Haywood, W. D , Bill Haytvood's Book (New York
1929), Brooks, J. G , American Syndicalism: the I. W.
W. (New York 1913), Parker, C. H , The Casual
Laborer (New York 1020); Trautmann, W. E., Indus-
trial Union Methods (Chicago 1912), De Leon, Daniel,
The Preamble of the I. W. W. (New York 1905, new
ed. with title The Socialist Reconstruction of So<iety,
New York 1918), and Industrial Unionism (New York
1920), George, Harrison, The L W. \V. Trial (n p ,
n.d. [1918)), Frama, L. C , The I W W. Trial (Chi-
cago 1918), American Cuil Liberties Union, The
Truth about the L Ti . W , Facts in Relation to the Tnal
at Chicago, by Competent Industrial Iwestigators and
Economists (New York 1918), and The Issues in the
Centraha Murder Tnal (New York 1920), Todes,
Charlotte, Labor and Lumber (New York 1931) chs.
vui-x; Hutchms, Grace, Labor and Silk (New York
1929); Industrial Workers of the World, /. W. W.
Songs (zzd ed. Chicago 1926), Saposs, D. V., Left
Winq Unionism (New York 1926) chs. ix-\i, Foster,
W. Z , "Old Unions and New Unions" in Communist,
vol. vn (1928) 399-405; Gambs, J. S., Tfie Decline of
the I. W, W , Columbia University, Studies in His-
tory, Economics and Public Law, whole no. 361 (New
York 1932). See also the I. W. W. organs, Industrial
Solidarity, published weekly in Chicago since 1909,
and Industrial Worker, published weekly m Seattle
since 1916.
INDUSTRIALISM. Every age and every peo-
ple has a character stamped upon it by the way
it gets its bread. This is true not only of the
modern era, which has been called the age of
industrialism, but of all eras from the beginning
of man's time on earth. It is as true of prehistoric
peoples or of the ancient world as of modern
Britain or the United States. Modern indus-
trialism did not create man's dependence on his
means of living or first cause society to take a
shape governed by the nature of his economic
activities. It only sets a new shape in place of
the old and causes societies to organize them-
selves in different ways.
Industrialism represents essentially a particu-
lar stage in human knowledge and in man's
command over nature a stage at which man
has learned the arts of machine production and
the use of mechanical power on a large scale but
has not yet become so much the master of these
new arts as to bring them to full maturity or
under fully satisfactory control. It is a phase in
material progress, but only a phase, destined to
be superseded when its development has become
sufficiently complete.
The point has not yet been reached when the
world will have so thoroughly solved the prob-
lem of producing material wealth that it will
cease to be a problem at all and men will be left
free to turn their attention to the satisfaction of
other needs and desires. Nor can one expect
such a point lo be reached over the world as a
whole for a long time. Indeed in many countries
poverty due to the underdevelopmcnt of pro-
ductive power is still by far the most pressing
economic problem. The masses in China and
India are still desperately poor, not from unem-
ployment or misdirection of productive energy
but from sheer inability to produce enough to
provide a reasonable standard of living. Their
great problem is still to increase production in
order to raise their own power to consume.
But in the great industrial countries of Europe
and America the sitiwtion is rather different.
Not that enough is being produced to give all
the citizens even of these countries a satisfactory
standard of life but in their case the further
increase of actual production seems to be held
back far less by a failure of productive power
than by an inability to find means of distributing
the increased real wealth which they are in a
position to produce. Their problems are pri-
marily unemployment, unremunerative prices,
lack of proper balance between the output of
different kinds of goods, dislocation of regular
trading relationships between countries and a
creaking of the financial mechanism by which
the exchange of goods has to be carried on.
They could produce far more with their existing
resources than they are producing at present;
but they cannot do this because there is some-
thing seriously wrong with their methods of
distributing and exchanging wealth. And there
seems little chance that their powers of produc-
tion will be allowed to develop as they could
until these fatal defects in the structure of Indus-
Industrial Workers of the World Industrialism 19
trial society have been somehow remedied.
Meanwhile production and the standard of life
advance only by fits and starts; and progress is
again and again interrupted by crises which
cause the industrial nations deliberately to re-
strict their output of goods in an endeavor to
create scarcity in place of a plenty which they
have not learned to control.
How does such a situation arise? Obviously
the power to create more real wealth ought to
be the means to a higher standard of living for
the community as a whole. Obviously on the
whole and in the long run it has hitherto been
so witness the great advance in the real in-
comes of all classes in industrial countries during
the past century. But it is no less obvious that
this advance is less than it might be if the exist-
ing powers of production were being used to the
full, and that even so it is made precarious by
the liability of the economic system to recurrent
crises and business depressions.
Industrialism is fundamentally an affair of
productive technique. It is based upon the dis-
covery and exploitation of improved methods
of producing wealth, primarily in the processes
of manufacture but also to an increasing extent
in agriculture and in the extractive industries
yielding primary products. It is closely associ-
ated with an increase in the scale of production,
with the development of capitalistic methods in
both manufacture and marketing and with the
employment of wage labor. Its secondary effects
have included hitherto a concentration of the
population in densely inhabited urban areas, a
very rapid increase in the volume of international
trade, much lending of capital for development
by the more advanced countries to those less
advanced and a very rapid increase in the num-
bers and social importance of the middle classes,
including those engaged in the professions as
well as in the administration and supervision of
industry and commerce.
At the basis of industrialism is the machine.
Both capitalism and wage employment are much
older than industrialism in the sense in which
the term is used in this article; and there were
many factories before there was a factory system
based on mechanical power. But industrialism
can be said to have begun when machinery
driven by a central supply of mechanical power
became the typical method of manufacturing
production. For from that point industry re-
placed commerce as the directing force of eco-
nomic life, and the scale of production and the
forms of business organization came to be deter-
mined by the growth and character of mechani-
cal power.
Thus in England, where the industrial revo-
lution proceeded a stage ahead of its develop-
ment elsewhere, the industrial employer step by
step ousted the merchant from his previous
predominance. The typical rich men of the sev-
enteenth and the early eighteenth century were
merchants and financiers engaged in buying and
selling goods gathered together from a host of
small scale producers. The few big employers
who did exist were not typical. The rich clothier
whose memory is kept alive by his monuments
and benefactions in countless English churches
was not primarily an employer of labor but a
merchant, although the position of the small
producers who supplied him with the goods he
distributed may often have differed little in
effect from that of wage workers. The bourgeois
class to which the aristocrats of England and
France before the great changes of the eight-
eenth century were compelled to pay some atten-
tion was above all a class of merchants.
The industrial revolution, based upon a great
series of mechanical inventions and above all
else on the economic utilization of steam power,
radically changed the situation. It substituted
for a relatively static system of production an
essentially self-expanding technique. The mer-
chant of the seventeenth or eighteenth century
had indeed an incentive to expand his sales as a
means to additional profits. But there was for
him as a rule no economy in buying on a large
scale or in larger total amount, since the small
producers who supplied him could not produce
more cheaply merely because they were asked
to produce more. It is a commonplace among
economists that handicraft production tends to
obey a law of "constant cost" and indeed that,
if additional workers have to be pressed rapidly
into the service in order to meet an expansion
of demand, costs will tend to increase on account
of both the greater demand for labor and the
less skill of the new labor attracted into the trade.
This was undoubtedly the position in hand loom
weaving in the eighteenth century, in the "golden
age" of the hand loom weavers that preceded
the introduction of the power loom. The desire
of the eighteenth century merchant to purchase
more goods from the small producers was there-
fore conditional on his ability to sell more with-
out reducing the price or even while increasing
it; and this, owing to the rapid expansion of
trade with both America and the East, he was
in fact often able to do.
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
20
But as fast as machine production based on
mechanical power superseded handicraft, the
situation was radically altered. Until then the
pace of production had been set by the orders
of the merchants, to whom the producers were
for the most part merely subservient. But now
under the new factory system the industrial
employer himself had not only an incentive to
get as large orders as he could but also a means
of stimulating the merchant's demand. For in
most cases he could produce more cheaply by
increasing his output; and he was therefore, un-
like the handicraftsman, in a position to offer
the merchant goods at lower prices if only the
merchant would increase his purchases. This
enabled the merchant in his turn to take new
steps in stimulating demand by offering goods
at lower prices to the consumer both at home
and abroad, and the increased orders given by
merchants under these conditions reacted upon
industry. But the initiative in the new system
passed more and more into the hands of the
industrial employer, whose offers of more goods
at lower prices became the driving force of
material progress. From this point of view the
coming of industrialism was in manufacturing
industry the transition from a condition of con-
stant to one of decreasing costs.
The industrial employer, who thus became
the pivot of the new economic system, found
himself urged on to new conquests by the pres-
sure of the machine itself. He had to be abreast
of his competitors in reducing prices; and this
was a perpetual incentive to him both to increase
his scale of production and to avail himself of
the improved machines that were constantly
being produced. There was doubtless, even when
the industrial revolution was at its height, an
optimum size for any given business beyond
which it could not grow without loss of pro-
ductive efficiency. But as the optimum was
growing larger with very great rapidity, the great
majority of businesses were probably well below
it and racing to catch up. Accordingly machine
technique gave the employer the greatest pos-
sible stimulus to increase his scale and quantity
of production in order to cut his prices and thus
enabled the merchant to take full advantage of
the elasticity of demand, especially in oversea
markets.
This last qualification is necessary because
the strong competitive pressure on employers to
reduce costs and prices, while it was a powerful
stimulus to improved productive technique, re-
acted unfavorably upon the level of wages and
therefore upon the consuming power of the
domestic market. The employer could cut his
costs not only by improving the efficiency of
production but also by reducing wages or taking
a firm stand against their increase; and this
course appealed strongly to the less efficient
employers, who were threatened otherwise with
extinction. Relatively few employers could be
brought to believe in Robert Owen's doctrine
of the economy of good wages and conditions;
and perhaps relatively few were efficient enough
to make it true in their own case. The rapidly
falling costs of the new industrialism were based
on low wages as well as on a rapidly improving
technique of production.
There was a second and no less powerful
reason why wages and consuming power in the
home market remained low in the period follow-
ing the advent of industrialism. The new em-
ployers under a constant necessity of improving
their machinery and expanding their scale of
production were avid for fresh supplies of capital
which they could apply to these purposes. But
capital was hard to find in the days before the
recognition of limited liability and the working
out of the modern solution of joint stock com-
panies and corporations based on widely diffused
and easily transferable shares. The employer was
therefore compelled to expand his business out
of his own resources as far as possible, living
frugally himself and putting back his profits as
capital. Under this pressure he was disposed fo
resist demands for increased wages as sheer
waste, the devotion to useless expenditure of
resources badly needed for the expansion of
output.
It is true that money thus saved was spent on
buildings and machinery. But the constructional
trades, powerfully stimulated as they were by
these new conditions, did not quickly respond
to the new technique or pass over from handi-
craft conditions of constant cost to conditions
of decreasing cost. Building remained and re-
mains in part even today a handicraft industry
in which prices tend to rise rather than fall with
any quick expansion of demand. And machine
making continued for a long time to be a highly
skilled job, demanding the services of highly
skilled craftsmen who were limited in number
and incapable of being reorganized on a basis of
mass production. Not until the methods of pro-
ducing iron and steel and of forging and casting
had been revolutionized in the latter half of the
nineteenth century did the engineering trades
become at all generally subject to the conditions
of decreasing cost which had come to prevail
in the cotton trade more than fifty years earlier.
Consequently spending on building and ma-
chinery did not expand production in the same
degree as spending on consumers' goods, which
were on the whole more easily mass produced.
This helps to explain the intense concentration
of the new industrialism on the development of
exports and the constant search for new markets
abroad.
Industrialism grew then at first chiefly in the
textile trades, making Manchester the effective
capital of the new industrial world. It was no
accident that the economists who based their
doctrines upon industrialism in this first phase
came to be called the Manchester school or that
their outstanding dogma was a supreme faith
in laissez faire. For their own experience seemed
plainly to demonstrate the self-expansive nature
of the new industrial system, its capacity con-
stantly to increase the supply of goods while
lowering their cost, and the value of competition
in weeding out the inefficient producers and
compelling the survivors always to adopt the
latest advances in technique on penalty of being
left behind in the race. What could be better
than a self-acting system which at once benefited
the consumer by lowering prices, rewarded the
efficient with the high profits of the pioneer and
weeded out the inefficient who misused the re-
sources of production? It was not clearly seen
at this stage how far those results depended on
the superior efficiency of Great Britain over
other countries, of whose markets she was there-
fore able to take her pick, or how low wages
must retard the growth of consuming power in
the home market. These difficulties came later;
and before they had been fully realized the char-
acter of industrialism had been greatly changed.
For in time the new technique was extended
from industry to industry until it came to em-
brace the industries producing capital as well as
consumers' goods. The development of railways
played a dominant part in this transformation,
not only because the railway enabled the interior
of countries and continents to be opened up for
economic exploitation but also because the de-
mand for railway material gave an enormous
stimulus to the metal trades and compelled them
to devise and resort to mass production methods.
The new steel making processes of Bessemer,
Siemens, and Gilchrist and Thomas gave the
metal using industries for the first time a reliable
and durable raw material to which methods of
standardized production could be applied and
Industrialism 21
thus made possible the development of large
scale enterprise in the engineering and kindred
trades as well as in the translation of shipbuild-
ing from wood to metal. The same causes revo-
lutionized the coal industry, greatly expanded
already in the earlier phases of industrialism,
and created a new and powerful grouping of
"heavy industries" to balance the older textile
trades. With the coming of these new forces the
authority of Manchester began to wane; and
industrialism, no longer so fully wedded to
laissez faire and competition, entered on a new
phase which led on before long to the growth of
trusts and combines, the recrudescence of tariffs
and in general to a renewed attempt at regu-
lating just those processes of production and
sale which the Manchester school held should
be left severely alone.
The explanation of this difference is not hard
to find. In the first phase of industrialism the
maximum expansion of wealth could be secured
by concentrating as far as possible on those
forms of production which most clearly showed
their obedience to a law of decreasing costs in
other words, primarily upon textiles. This could
be done as long as there was adequate scope for
the expansion of the sales of industrialized coun-
tries in markets where native producers were
well behind in efficiency. But in time it became
clear that this expansion could not continue
unabated unless steps were taken to develop the
complementary powers of production of these
less industrialized countries so as to increase
their supply of goods which they could give in
exchange for the mass produced manufactures
of industrialism. The railway was the great in-
strument of this development, opening up in
the less industrialized countries vast new sources
for the supply of raw materials and foodstuffs.
Incidentally this expansion helped greatly to
raise wages in the industrialized countries, both
because it enabled export to go forward at a
greater pace and because it secured an abundant
supply of cheap foodstuffs. In the fourth quarter
of the nineteenth century there was a rise in
both money wages and the purchasing power of
money with the result that a great stimulus was
given to consumption in the home markets of
the industrialized countries.
In building railways and in supplying railway
material and later in the supply of machinery
produced on a large scale the industrialized
countries advanced to a new type of export trade
vitally different from the old. The sale of cotton
textiles or woolen goods was essentially a cash
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
22
transaction to be balanced at once by an equiva-
lent purchase of goods. But the sale of railway
material and other classes of capital goods could
not be conducted on these terms, for the pur-
chase price could be paid by the buyers only if
and when the railway or the factory became
productive. Payment for such exports had to
await the economic development of the coun-
tries to which they were sent and had then to
be made in the products which their use had
caused to be created. Consequently this second
phase of industrialism was marked by a great
increase in the export of capital that is, in the
loan of capital in order to make possible the
export of capital goods from the industrialized
to the less developed parts of the world. Great
Britain especially exported huge masses of capi-
tal to all parts of the world and above all to its
own dominions and India, to the United States
and to the South American republics. Capital
was exported also to the continent but was
as a rule more speedily repaid and railways and
factories built with British money were bought
back by native investors.
It would be far beyond the scope of this essay
to describe the reactions of this growth of foreign
investment on world politics and international
rivalries and on the development of economic
imperialism; here only its effects on industrial-
ism in a narrower sense can be considered. It
made possible a very rapid growth of the indus-
tries producing capital goods and speeded up in
them the development of an intensified tech-
nique of mass production. Whereas in the first
half of the nineteenth century the typical in-
stance of large scale production was a cotton
mill, by its close the types of large scale enter-
prise were to be found above all in the heavy
industries in the great steel making plants of
Bethlehem or Middlesbrough, the great arma-
ment factories, the shipyards and the great coal
mines already closely linked with steel. In the
heavy industries there was already a growing
tendency for combination to replace competition
and for the size of the business unit far to
transcend that of the single manufacturing plant.
Even before this period technical development
had begun to influence business structure. As
has been noted, the earlier industrialists were
sorely hampered by shortage of capital. There
was no investing public in the modern sense and
broadly speaking no one could invest money in
industrial development unless he either lent it
to a business man on his personal security or
became a partner in the business without the
protection of limited liability and therefore at
the hazard of his entire fortune. The gradually
extended recognition by law of joint stock organ-
ization and limited liability removed this diffi-
culty and opened the door to industrial invest-
ment by all who had savings or resources to
spare.
Joint stock and limited liability not only in-
creased immensely the total resources available
for business expansion but also removed the
limits to the size of the capitalist concern. Before
this the entrepreneur's difficulty had lain in
gathering together enough capital to equip and
run a plant large enough to take full advantage
of the economies of large scale production. But
now he was able not only to do this but readily
to expand the scale of business organization So
as to bring a number of separate plants under a
unified control. While the scale of business or-
ganization was still expanding under the inherent
necessities of improving industrial technique, it
was now able not only to reach these limits but
also to pass beyond them. Indeed, as the larger
concerns were often at an advantage both in rais-
ing fresh resources in the capital market and in
getting credit from bankers and others, to some
extent a premium was put on a scale of business
organization considerably larger than that made
necessary by the technique of production itself.
In the early days of the trust movement there
was a marked tendency for the increase in the
size of the business unit to be dictated by finan-
cial rather than technological considerations, and
this tendency was strongly manifested again in
the troubled years after the World War in the
gigantic mergers and concerns organized by
Hugo Stinnes in Germany and in the unwieldy
aggregations of businesses gathered under one
control by Vickers or Lord Leverhulme in Great
Britain.
There was also, however, a new technological
tendency leading toward an expansion of the
business unit on a scale very much larger than
that even of the largest single plant. Under the
earlier conditions of industrialism the plant was
the essential technical unit and each plant could
face its own technical problems independently
of the rest. But the modern development of
industrial technology is making the separate
plants growingly interdependent in a variety of
ways. In the first place, it is often essential, if
the maximum economy in production is to be
secured, to group together in very close relation
and under unified control plants engaged in
complementary industrial processes in order,
Industrialism
2 3
for example, to save intermediate transport costs
on bulky half finished goods or in order to
utilize a waste product, such as blast furnace
gas, in a subsequent manufacturing process.
Secondly, it is often advantageous from the
standpoint of economic production to reduce
and simplify the varieties of a particular com-
modity placed on the market and for that pur-
pose to secure at least as much unity of control
as is necessary. Thirdly, the maximum economy
is likely to be realized in many trades if each
plant instead of producing a wide variety of
goods in competition with the rest is in some
degree specialized to the manufacture of a lim-
ited range of products and thus enabled to pro-
duce within this range upon a larger scale.
l^he first of these technological requirements
leads to a growth of vertical combination; that
is, tht linking up of successive stages of produc-
tion under a common control. The second leads
to fairly loose horizontal agreements between
firms at the same stage of manufacture but need
not disturb the independence of each distinct
business. The third leads to much closer hori-
zontal integration, as it is found in such busi-
nesses as Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd., or
the English Steel Corporation, Ltd., or the
Vereinigte Stahlwerke, A.-G., in Germany.
Karl Marx, whose analysis of the industrialism
of the first half of the nineteenth century re-
mains the most penetrating study of capitalist
development, has often been arraigned as a false
prophet because he predicted a growing con-
centration of capital and an increasing polariza-
tion of the two rival economic classes of capi-
talists and laborers. It is indeed the case that
there is in modern industrialism no sign of the
disappearance of the small employer and that
the growth of joint stock organization has in-
creased immensely the number of small part
proprietors of capitalist business. But, on the
other hand, the small employer has become in-
creasingly an agent or subcontractor or a hanger
on of large scale business; and the great body of
shareholders in modern industry has literally
no say at all in its conduct or control. There has
been a tremendous concentration if not of the
ownership at any rate of the control of capital.
The old personal nexus between employer and
worker has been snapped; and the real struggle
for power today is to an ever increasing extent
between the few controllers of large scale indus-
try and finance and the organized force of the
labor movement, with the middle classes and the
small investors largely passive spectators of the
conflict. Even the growing body of industrial
technicians, who should, one would suppose,
occupy a key position in the modern world, have
been able to assert themselves but little as an
independent force. They have been in the main
merely the executive servants of large scale capi-
talism, although in many cases their personal
sympathies might range them rather on the side
of labor.
It has been pointed out how industrialism in
its first phase concerned itself mainly with the
sale of cheap consumers' goods in the markets
of the less developed countries and how in its
second phase it supplemented this form of trade
with the sale of capital goods fostered by the
lending of capital and credit overseas. The sec-
ond of these processes like the first cannot be
expanded indefinitely without check. The first
fails when it reaches the limits of the power of
the less developed countries to offer more goods
in exchange until their own productive resources
have been more fully developed. This check
leads on to the second phase; and this in turn
fails when the burden of external debts upon the
less developed countries becomes so large as to
check further loans. Moreover as more and more
countries pass under industrialism their rivalry
in selling goods and lending capital to the less
developed areas fills up the available markets
more swiftly. The advanced countries find grow-
ing difficulty in selling their goods and lending
their capital overseas on favorable terms. They
scramble for openings and concessions; and, as
Marx foresaw, international rivalries are inten-
sified and cries of "overproduction" raised.
All this time the technological revolution
knows no pause. It is always impelling indus-
trialists to produce on a larger and larger scale
and to create plants, based on heavier and
heavier capital expenditure, which can be oper-
ated at a profit over and above the interest
charges involved in their construction only if
they are able to work full time and to find buyers
constantly for theif full output. Post-war Ger-
many, for example, when it rationalized many
of its industries with borrowed American capi-
tal, created a productive machine capable of
producing very cheaply while it was fully em-
ployed, but only at high unit cost if the volume
of output had to be cut down through a failure
of markets. The same conditions apply to many
types of business in the United States and Great
Britain and in every advanced industrial country.
It is therefore plain that the technical condi-
tions of modern industry imperatively demand
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
24
from the world of today an increase and a sta-
bilization of consuming power. In default of this
many of the greatest technical improvements are
apt to mean not low costs but high because of
the heavy expense of the capital equipment on.
which interest has to be paid. These high costs
serve further to restrict demand both because
they result in high prices, often artificially main-
tained, and because they throw potential con-
sumers out of employment and so cut down their
purchasing power.
But the increase of consuming power up to
the expanding limits of productive capacity is a
matter that industrialism under present condi-
tions finds very hard to arrange. Herein lies the
chief importance for the world of the gigantic
experiment in socialist industrialism that is now
proceeding in Soviet Russia. The Russians have
set themselves not only to bring their industries
up to the very last point of modern technological
development largely with the aid of American
engineers but also to industrialize in their vast
country with its millions of peasant proprietors
the technique of agricultural production. The
socialized factories of Russia are of far less po-
tential significance for the future of the world
than its socialized farms.
But the importance of the Russian experiment
does not lie mainly in the mere fact that the
Russians are forcing on industrialization at a
hitherto unprecedented pace but rather in the
fact that they are doing this under conditions
which insure an outlet in consumption for
everything that they are able to produce. With
the entire control of production and distribution
centralized those in control are able to order what
things shall be produced and in what relative
quantities and also to distribute enough pur-
chasing power among consumers to insure a sale
for all that can be produced. All this of course
can be done only within certain margins of error
and subject to the export of enough goods to
pay for what must be imported. But with the
export trade in the hands of the state exports
are not restricted to those that can be sold at a
money profit. Foreign trade is in essence barter,
and the state can put on imports prices calcu-
lated to represent the value of the exports needed
to pay for them. Under these conditions Russia
appears to be immune from the fears of over-
production or underconsumption which beset
the rest of the industrial world. To whatever
other objections its economic system may be
open, it seems to have solved the problem of
balancing production and consumption and thus
have set itself free to make the fullest use of
every technical improvement in the arts of pro-
duction.
This example of Russia raises a fundamental
issue. How far are industrialism and capitalism
the same thing viewed from two different as-
pects? Or how far are they two different and
separate things connected only at a particular
stage of the world's evolution? Historically the
connection is close, but they can by no means
be identified. For, as has been pointed out, capi-
talism existed long before industrialism and took
at first a mercantile rather than an industrial
form. It is arguable that as capitalism preceded
industrialism and was modified by its coming
so industrialism is destined to outlive capitalism,
taking on a new shape, as in Russia, untier
socialist control.
For manifestly socialism, the child of indus-
trialism, will not speedily take up arms against
its parent. Industrialism bred socialism because
it required the concentration of the workers into
factories, their subjection to a common disci-
pline of monotonous labor and an opposition
between their demand for higher wages and the
demand of the owners of the instruments of
production for interest and profits. But socialism
is not hostile to industrialism; basing itself on
the demand for a higher standard of life for all,
it therefore cannot afford to dispense with the
fullest possible use of every technical deyice
which will serve to increase production and
lighten the burden of labor. It is true that the
workers today may sometimes oppose the intro-
duction of labor saving devices or other instru-
ments of higher production through fear of
unemployment or out of hostility to the capitalist
controllers of industry. But if under a socialist
system they get the instruments of production
into their own hands, as they have done in
Russia, they are bound to be on the side of
changes designed to increase output or to lighten
labor. Possibly at a later stage of the world's
history, when the problem of producing enough
to afford to all a satisfactory standard of material
living has been fully solved, the mass of the
people may declare against industrialism and
express in deeds its preference for some other
system; but assuredly that time is not yet. The
advent of socialism would intensify and not re-
tard the progress of industrialization.
This remains true despite the common indict-
ment of industrialism that it condemns the great
mass of the workers to a life of dull, monotonous
and even irksome toil. It is easy to contrast the
Industrialism
skilled, varied and interesting labor of the handi-
craftsman with the deadening monotony of
purely repetitive machine minding. But before
industrialism arose what part of the whole pop-
ulation consisted of skilled handicraftsmen? Was
it ever as large proportionately as the number of
persons, including those in supervisory and pro-
fessional work, to whom the modern economic
system affords interesting and colorful employ-
ment? If the modern machine minder is to be
contrasted with the guildsman of the Middle
Ages, he should be contrasted with the medi-
aeval peasant as well. And if one is to stress the
effects of machinery in destroying craftsman-
ship, it should not be forgotten what effects it
has had and the far greater effects it might
haVe under proper control in eliminating hard,
disagreeable, unskilled and brutalizing labor.
The modern world cannot yet afford to re-
strict its use of machinery, both because there
is much drudgery still to be eliminated and be-
cause the growth of working class power means
an ever more insistent demand for a high and
rising standard of life. If therefore capitalism
gives place to socialism, the first phase of social-
ism will be more intensely industrialist than
capitalism has ever been, because for the first
time the whole community will be pulling to-
gether toward higher production over the whole
field of industry and agriculture as well as in the
management of domestic affairs to remove the
burden of the drudgery of housekeeping now
laid on half the human race.
It does not follow that industrialism need in
its later phases preserve certain of the features
most prominently associated with it up to the
present time. Urbanization is still proceeding
unchecked in the industrial countries, but its
causes are now social quite as much as economic.
The development of cheap road transport and
of widely diffused electrical power is removing
the technological reasons for close urban con-
centration of industry and preparing the way for
a rediffusion which will enable it to be carried
on under far healthier conditions. Little advan-
tage has yet been taken of these opportunities,
because no less essential to business than acces-
sible power and cheap transport is an available
supply of labor with sufficient housing and kin-
dred accommodation. The business that wants
to set up in the country has to attract its labor
and often to house it and help provide it with
the amenities of life. It cannot readily take on
fresh workers to meet a rush or discharge work-
ers when times are bad for fear of losing them
altogether. Accordingly only businesses catering
for a stable demand are able to move out of the
towns, and even such businesses are often de-
terred by the difficulties and initial capital costs.
Nor is this the only factor. Urban life has for
the worker many attractions: its cheap amuse-
ments, varied society, the hurry and bustle of
life and a sense of nearness to the center of
things. It increases his freedom to change his
job and his independence of his employer, whose
eye cannot always be on him out of working
hours. Men and women leave the country for
the town from preference as well as from neces-
sity, and business tends to stay near the sources
of labor supply.
But here again a socialist system might make
a great difference. For with the power of coor-
dinated planning of industry in its hands it
would have also the power of town and regional
planning. It would be able, as the Russians are
endeavoring, to create new small towns in the
country areas and to equip them with the means
of a varied and satisfying life, as only a few
capitalists here and there have tried to do with
garden villages and the like. Even so the socialist
state would not succeed in decentralizing and
de-urbanizing industry if the preference of the
great mass of men was for living close together
in great towns; but at least the other obstacles
in the way of decentralization could be removed.
If under a socialist system industrialism
should be intensified in order to provide a higher
standard of life, there would nevertheless arise
also a keener demand for leisure. The necessity
of reconciling these two demands would only
increase the pressure to nuke the most pro-
ductive use of labor, to push rationalization to
the furthest possible point and to eliminate all
preventible waste of human energy. Hours of
labor would doubtless be reduced; but the tend-
ency would be to put more labor into each hour
and then to aim at reducing the burden of this
labor by increased mechanization of processes.
If mechanization were applied with the con-
scious object of making labor less hard and
intense as well as more productive, a great deal
that is barely attempted as yet could be readily
accomplished. The demands for more leisure and
for more production do limit each other in some
degree, but they are by no means incompatible.
Industrialism then does not connote capital-
ism, although it is historically connected with it.
The essence of industrialism lies in certain tech-
nical forms of productive activity which are
capable of being directed to various economic
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
26
ends and by radically different forms of eco-
nomic organization. It may be, as Marx insisted,
that capitalism has played an indispensable his-
toric role in the development of industrialism,
because only under the control of the autocratic
individual entrepreneur could the new technical
forces have found free play. Certainly it needed
a strong directing authority to break up and
replace the mercantile capitalism of the pre-
industrialist era, to destroy the domestic system
of small scale production and concentrate the
workers in factories and towns, to accumulate
capital at the expense of the immediate standard
of living and to force upon the state an attitude
toward industry consistent with the free growth
of the new powers of production. Certainly the
state itself, based on the aristocratic power of
the landed classes, was at the time of the tech-
nical revolution quite unfitted to assume this
directing role; and certainly the working class
was equally unfitted, for it learned cohesion and
became a force only as a result of its experience
of concentration and discipline under the new
industrial system. Capitalism was therefore for
the countries that led the way into industrialism
an indispensable stage; but it does not follow
that industrialism once created depends on the
survival of capitalism for its effective operation.
Indeed, to use again a Marxian phrase, there
are signs today that capitalism has become a
fetter upon the limbs of the industrial giant,
holding back industrial development and check-
ing the increase of production for fear of glutting
the market. For the capitalist system of pro-
ductive organization is based essentially on the
incentive of private profit. The capitalist entre-
preneur will not and cannot go on producing
goods unless he can make a profit by their sale.
His market is therefore limited not by the needs
of the consumers but by their willingness and
ability to pay him a remunerative price. As the
prices he can get tend to fall as the supply of
goods on the market is increased, the entrepre-
neur is disposed to retaliate by restricting pro-
duction in order to keep them up to a remunera-
tive level. But this reacts on his costs, which
tend to decrease with larger and to increase with
smaller output. Everywhere in the world today
frantic efforts are being made to hold stocks of
goods off the market, to buy up "redundant"
factories in order to close them down and to
maintain prices by valorization schemes at the
cost of limiting demand. These are surely signs
of something amiss with the capitalist world.
Some say that all would be well if capitalists
would but abandon their attempts to control the
market and go back to competition and laissez
faire. But there is no chance of their doing this,
because so many of the factors of production
that they have to use are now under external
control. The state limits their authority by legis-
lation, and trade unions are too strong both
economically and politically to allow wages to
be governed by the mere higgling of the market.
Moreover, even if all these obstacles could be
removed, where could world capitalism hope to
sell the vast mass of goods industrialism is capa-
ble of producing unless it were prepared to let
wages rise to a point fully corresponding to the
growth of productive capacity? And that would
ruin the capitalists of any one country unless
that country were isolated from the rest of the
world or unless all other leading countries did
the same.
A return to laissez faire is impossible. The
concentration of capital needed for the full ex-
ploitation of modern productive resources is too
great to be left uncontrolled by the state; for
those who have this concentrated capital in their
hands will assuredly control the state unless it
controls them. The attempts of capitalist com-
bines to control production and prices are apt
to defeat themselves, creating artificial scarcity,
depression and unemployment in place of the
plenty which man's technical command over
nature is making possible. Is not the truth tfyen
that partial controls set up by groups of entre-
preneurs for the maintenance of profits will have
to be gathered up into a wider unified control of
industry based on maximum production bal-
anced by an equivalent emission of consuming
power? There is nothing in this idea inconsistent
with the development of industrialism. On the
contrary, it seems that industrialism has now
reached a stage at which its fuller development
requires above all else coherent planning and
unified control from the standpoint of consump-
tion as well as of productive technique.
G. D. H. COLE
See: INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION; ORGANIZATION, ECO-
NOMIC; MACHINES AND TOOLS; TECHNOLOGY; FACTORY
SYSTEM; LABOR; POWER, INDUSTRIAL; LARGE SCALE
PRODUCTION; MARKETING; CAPITALISM; CORPORATION;
COMBINAIIONS, INDUSTRIAL; RATIONALIZATION; LAIS-
SFZ FAIRE, GOVERNMENT REGULATION OF INDUSTRY;
SOCIALISM; GOSPLAN; LABOR MOVEMENT; FOREIGN
INVESTMENT; IMPERIALISM; URBANIZATION; REGIONAL
PLANNING; LEISURE.
INFANT MORTALITY. See CHILD, section
on CHILD MORTALITY.
Industrialism Infanticide
INFANTICIDE is the murder of a newborn
child committed by the parents or with their
consent a practise that stands apart both as to
its origin and its associations from the killing of
another man's child, which is simple murder.
In some cultures parents are allowed to decide
whether the newborn child shall be reared; if
their decision is positive they will not thereafter
under normal circumstances kill it. Older chil-
dren are sometimes killed in times of famine
such cases have been known in Europe during
sieges but far from being customary these acts
have been regarded as a breach of the moral law.
Likewise if a mother, like Medea, kills her chil-
dren as an act of spite against her husband, her
deed is regarded as a crime and is remembered
with horror.
Judging from its wide distribution, infanticide
is probably extremely ancient. Destruction of
human progeny is universal whether in the form
of infanticide, abortion or contraceptive meas-
ures. Infanticide is the most primitive, since
prenatal destruction involves anatomical and
physiological knowledge. Even with this knowl-
edge abortion is hazardous and consequently has
never been as prevalent as infanticide, except
where the latter is treated as murder.
The primary cause of infanticide is the diffi-
culty of obtaining sufficient food, whether be-
cause the population has reached a saturation
point or because of some temporary shortage.
Almong peoples such as the Africans and South
Sea islanders, who suckle their children for as
long as two years, a child born before the pre-
ceding child is weaned is sometimes killed. In
communities such as those of the Australian
aborigines, where women are indispensable for
the food supply, no discrimination in infanticide
is made between the sexes. In Rome, Greece,
Arabia, India and China women of the upper
classes, relieved by the males of the harder tasks
both as an effort to keep them young and as a
sign of rank, became an economic burden; and
consequently infanticide fell mainly on the fe-
males. The necessity of finding a dowry for
daughters contributed to a selection of female
children for infanticide in China and India. An-
cestor cults of Greece, Rome, India and China,
which could be transmitted only through the
males, also resulted in the destruction of girl
infants. When a sorcerer or astrologer was con-
sulted before deciding the fate of the infant, it
was usually killed if the omens were interpreted
as indicating that it would bring ill luck or ca-
lamity a motive for infanticide familiar in
myths, such as that of Oedipus. The Roman
Twelve Tables forbade the rearing of deformed
children; in Sparta the newborn child was sub-
mitted to the elders, who exposed deformed in-
fants to death. Athens did not enforce such
infanticide, but Plato and Aristotle advocated
the practise. In ancient Greece exposure often
proceeded from affection for the previous chil-
dren, from a desire to procure for them a stand-
ard of living which numbers would have made
impossible. Illegitimate birth, which has been a
common cause of infanticide, has remained prac-
tically the only cause in modern Europe, where
infanticide has declined with the spread of con-
traceptives.
The decision as to whether to rear or kill a
child is usually made at birth, probably because
the parents become attached to the child if it is
allowed to live for some time. In some countries
there is a ritual reason: as long as the child has
not gone through some sacrament it is not ac-
counted a full human being or a member of the
tribe. In Athens the decision was made prior to
the amphidromia, a ceremony at which the child
was carried round the hearth and so associated
with the cult of the ancestors. The Frisian father
could destroy the child only before the child had
taken food and by this act had entered into
communion.
The usual method of infanticide is by suffo-
cation, by choking or by drowning; the infant's
blood is rarely shed. The child may be exposed
to starve, to die of cold or to be eaten by dogs
sometimes for the purpose of insuring death but
more frequently in order to give it every chance
of being picked up and reared by a stranger.
Foundling hospitals have been established in
China and in modern Europe to provide for
infants so exposed. Conflict between parental
affection and necessity also betrays itself in the
rationalizations offered for the practise, such as
the one found among the Chinese that female
children by being killed are given a chance to be
reborn as males.
In China edicts have frequently been issued
against infanticide. In Europe the church in 305
decreed excommunication for life as the punish-
ment for women guilty of the double crime of
adultery and consequent infanticide; this sen-
tence was reduced in 314 to ten years, in 524 to
seven. The Council of Toledo in 589 directed
clerics and civil judges to unite in their efforts
to prevent infanticide due to poverty, which
proves that the Theodosian code, which pre-
scribed death, had remained ineffective. Infan-
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
28
ticide is condemned in the Koran (xvn: 38).
Modern English and Scottish laws treat infan-
ticide as murder English law defines infanti-
cide as the killing of the child after the entnc
body is brought from the womb alive; Scottish
law from the time the child has breathed,
whether or not it is completely out of the womb.
The crown has usually exercised its right of
mercy when defendants have been found guilty
of this charge. French law also treats infanticide
as murder; in practise juries find extenuating
circumstances and acquittals are common. The
penalty for infanticide in the German code is
from three years' penal servitude to death. The
Italian code reduces the penalty from between
eighteen and twenty years to between three and
twelve if the child is killed before being entered
in the civil register, not more than five days after
birth.
Child sacrifice is distinct from infanticide, for
it is not a family arrangement but a public func-
tion usually ordered by persons other than the
parents; it bears equally on males and females,
particularly on first born, instead of last born;
it knows no age limit; and rather than being per-
formed for the purpose of keeping down num-
bers it is often resorted to in order to insure
further progeny.
A. M. Hoc ART
See: ABORTION; BIRTH CONTROI ; POPULATION; ILLE-
GITIMACY.
Consult: Lallemand, Le"on, Hittoire des enfants aban-
donnes et delaisses (Pans 1885), Westermarck, E , The
Origin and Development of the Moral Idea*, 2 vols.
(znd ed. London 1912-17) vol. i, p. 393-413, Apte-
kar, Herbert, Anjea (New York 1931) ch vu, Carr-
Saunders, A. M., The Population Problem (London
1922) p. 214-22, 257-62; Cave-Broune, John, Indian
Infanticide (London 1857), Royal Asiatic Society,
North China Branch, "The Prevalence of Infanticide
in China" in Journal, vol. xx (1885) 25-50, Humbert,
G., "Expositio" in Dictionnaire des antiquites gretques
et romaines, ed. by C. Daremberg and E. Sagho, \ol.
11 (Pans 1892) pt. i, p. 930-39, Hefele, C. J., Con-
cihengeschtchte, 9 vols. (Freiburg i. Br. 185590), tr.
by W. R. Clark and E. H. Plumptre, 5 \ols. (Edin-
burgh 187196) vol 11, p 167, Tagiacarne, Gughelmo,
"Infanticidio, abbandono d'infante e procurato aborto
nella vita sociale" in Giornale deglt econormsti e rcvista
di statistica, vol. Ixvi (1925) 401-42, Hartmann, Fritz,
"Andichtung von Kmdesmord," and Amschl, Alfred,
"Das Verbrechen des Kmdesmordes nach osterrei-
chischen Recht" m Archivfur Krimmal-Anthropnlogie
und Knminalistik, vol. xxi (1905) 49-67, and vol xxx
(1908) 71-117; New York Public Library, List of
Works Relating to Criminology (New York 1911).
INFECTIOUS DISEASES, CONTROL OF.
See COMMUNICABLE DISEASES, CONTROL OF.
INFLATION AND DEFLATION. Although
employed earlier, the terms inflation and de-
flation did not come into general use until the
World War. Only with the severe currency dis-
turbances initiated at that time was anything
approaching a technical sense applied to them;
and even now the meaning which an economist
associates with them is apt to vary in accord-
ance with his general views regarding the money-
credit-price mechanism.
Some use the terms inflation and deflation in
connection with expansions and contractions of
currency only; others, with a better knowledge
of money and banking phenomena, expand them
to include primarily credit movements; still
others limit their application to currency and
credit disturbances connected with price move-
ments more or less general and violent. In con-
trast, many associate inflation and deflation
above all with the movements of foreign exchange
rates and consequently are inclined to ridicule
the idea of a gold inflation, however great the
accompanying credit, currency and price expan-
sions. Finally, there is in the United States a
small group who insist on basing the definitions
largely on the liquidity of banking assets, infla-
tion increasing as liquidity declines.
Perhaps the most generally accepted definition
of inflation is that it is the issue of too much
money; deflation is commonly taken to mean the
opposite of inflation the issue of less than
the right amount of money. The question is thus
raised as to the standards or norms, the devia-
tion of the circulating medium from which is
considered to be either inflation or deflation.
One group vaguely measures the extent of infla-
tion or deflation by the deviation of the cir-
culating medium from "the legitimate needs of
trade." Sometimes inflation is defined equally
vaguely as the multiplication of money in rela-
tion to goods, sometimes as the increase in the
volume of purchasing power in relation to the
total volume of transactions. A few refine
slightly their definitions so as to make infla-
tion or deflation mean an increase or decrease
in the circulating medium in relation to "the
legitimate needs of trade" at some given price
level. Most of those using the above definitions
are proponents of the quantity theory or of
some modification of it; hence such deviations
are expected to lead to or to support changes
in the price level. Whether or not price changes
largely supported by changes in the velocity of
circulation would be considered as inflation or
deflation is generally not clear.
Infanticide Inflation and Deflation
29
Some writers go even further and make price
change the sole criterion of inflation or de-
flation. Cassel, who has given perhaps the best
although a far from exact statement of this
position, maintains: "If no scarcity in commodi-
ties exists . . . the rise in prices is to be ac-
counted for as a result of the more plentiful
supply of currency in other words as a result
of inflation. The general level of prices, on
this hypothesis, is a measure of the extent of
inflation. If a scarcity of commodities sets
in, ... the rise in prices is thereby intensified.
But even this further rise in prices may be
regarded as a result of a too plentiful supply
of currency and consequently of inflation. . . .
In both cases the essential point of inflation
iS a too plentiful supply of currency. In the
former case we estimate this excess only from
the standard which prevailed before; in the
latter case we also take into consideration the
excess in the supply of currency which arises
through the former standard being retained even
after the supply of commodities has diminished"
(p. 61-62).
Keynes too makes price change the criterion
of inflation or deflation; but he distinguishes
between two types, which affect the economic
equilibrium quite differently. Changes in the
price of output as a whole, which measure the
extent of inflation or deflation, may be re-
flected in changes either in the cost of production
per unit (or income per unit) or in profit
per unit (profit being the difference between
sales price and cost of production including the
normal remuneration of entrepreneurs) . A price
change reflected in income inflation gives entre-
preneurs no incentive to expand the scope of
their operations, but a price change reflected
in profit inflation leads them to attempt ex-
pansion and results in a tendency toward a boom.
Thus a stable price level would not necessarily
maintain business equilibrium. If as a result
of marked improvements in technique and organ-
ization the cost of production per unit fell
while prices were kept stable, profit would ab-
sorb the difference, at least temporarily, and
business expansion might result. If, on the
other hand, prices were kept stable in face of
higher costs of production, entrepreneurs would
suffer negative profits and business contraction
might result.
An altogether different criterion of inflation
is advanced by a small group of writers who
tend to identify inflation with extension of
bank credit on the basis of unliquid assets.
According to Laughlin, one of the leaders of
this school, only price changes resulting from
monetary factors are to be considered inflation
or deflation, since price changes caused by a
scarcity or abundance of goods are only the nat-
ural and desirable result of such a condition.
Further no expansion of credit based on liquid
goods can lead to a rise in prices, as the newly
created credit is exactly counterbalanced by the
goods on which it is based. It is only when
credit is granted on assets which cannot be
liquidated without loss to repay the loan at
maturity that credit is depreciated in terms of
goods and inflation exists. Robertson and others
pointed out that this coining of even liquid
goods into money may lead to rising prices as
the resulting deposits circulate from hand to
hand. It might be argued further that since the
liquidity of assets is usually high in periods
of rising prices and low in periods of falling
prices, inflation of credit, as Laughlin uses
the term, would be most conspicuous in a period
of declining prices; inflation as generally
understood is of course usually associated with
rising prices.
The writers prefer to define inflation (none
too exactly) as an increase in the general level
of prices growing out of an increase in expendi-
tures while goods available for purchase are
not correspondingly increased in amount. Like-
wise deflation is defined as a decrease in the
general level of prices growing out of a de-
crease in expenditures while goods available for
purchase are not correspondingly decreased in
amount. Unfortunately in the present state of
knowledge the relative importance of different
factors in price change cannot be ascertained.
It cannot even be said that all price changes
have the same significance; some may lead to
economic disequilibrium while others may be
necessary to maintain equilibrium. Keynes has
attempted, although not yet entirely success-
fully, to distinguish these changes.
In the past, major instances of inflation seem
always to have been associated with government
finance. An increase in government expenditures
even if unusually large does not of itself lead
to inflation provided the government finances
itself by taxation. Under such conditions the
increased demand for goods and services on the
part of the government is approximately counter-
balanced by decreased means of purchase on the
part of its citizens. A rise of prices is not, how-
ever, excluded: it is possible that citizens will
secure additional credit to avoid too large a
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
30
reduction in their expenditures. Yet inflation
initiated by governments with balanced budgets
is rare. In a period of war, when military re-
quirements necessitate huge and sudden in-
creases in government expenditures, it has usually
been found inexpedient on economic as well as
on political grounds to raise more than a small
portion of the newly needed revenues through
taxation. In such cases resort may be had to
loans from private investors or banks or even to
the direct issue of government paper money.
If loans from private citizens are relied
upon, the effect may or may not be inflationary,
according to the conditions of the borrowing. If
each individual who lends to the government
curtails his own expenditures by an amount ex-
actly equal to the sum lent, total expenditures
will not thereby be increased. The chief result
will be a redistribution of the demand for goods.
Whether or not price indices change would
depend upon the articles included in the index
and the extent of individual price changes
resulting from the redistribution of demand.
In most instances, however, individuals do not
decrease their expenditures by amounts equal to
the sums lent to the government. The unwilling-
ness suddenly to change spending habits, the
need of expanding production to satisfy in-
creased demand by the military, the possession
of highly acceptable collateral in the form of
government securities and the usual liberal dis-
count policy at the banks lead government credi-
tors to restore the funds at their disposal at
least partially by borrowing from the banks on
the basis of the purchased government securi-
ties. If these bank loans are not offset by de-
creased loans of other types, the result is a
net addition to bank credit likely to be used to
demand goods.
The World War finances of the United States
government furnish an excellent example of this
type of inflation. Individuals were encouraged
to "borrow and buy" government securities. To
the extent that banks loaned on these securities
without reducing their other earning assets the
effect was much the same as it would have been
had they loaned the same amount directly to the
government. Gold exports were forbidden ex-
cept under special permit. Reserve requirements
of member banks were lowered and all reserves
were required to be held at the Federal Reserve
Banks; thus most of the reserve money of the
country was concentrated in the central banks
and the basis of credit expansion was much en-
larged. At the same time rediscount rates were
kept low and member banks were encouraged to
borrow on government security collateral at a
preferential rate of interest.
If a government decides to finance its opera-
tions either wholly or partially by an expansion
of bank credit or by increased paper money
issues or by both, the sums it must raise will
depend partly on the volume of goods and serv-
ices needed and partly on price movements. If
the prices of the goods which it purchases move
slightly or not at all, the government will be
able to balance its budget with relatively smaller
issues. If these prices rise in direct proportion
to the increase in the circulating media, the
new funds required to purchase the same
physical volume of goods will increase corre-
spondingly. If, however, as is frequently thts
case, prices increase faster than the circulat-
ing media, the treasury may find that every
inflationary attempt to balance its budget tends
to create a greater deficit.
Major instances of inflation show that al-
though the movements of circulation and prices
are in general in the same direction, wide fluc-
tuations in one may occur with only retarded
and disproportionate or even dissimilar changes
in the other. Perhaps more surprising is the
fact that during such inflations the movements
of prices tend to be far more correlated with the
movements of foreign exchange rates than
with circulation. The relationship between
prices, circulation and foreign exchanges may b*e
illustrated by the history of the World War and
post-war inflations in France and Germany.
Soon after the outbreak of the war the French
government, unable to raise sufficient funds by
taxation and private loans, was forced to make
up the difference by borrowing from the Bank of
France. Throughout the inflation period these
loans increased almost continually and by large
amounts as receipts from other sources became
more and more inadequate. Commercial loans
instead of falling off to balance the increase of
treasury loans rose as the lag of production
costs behind prices increased commercial prof-
its. At the very beginning of the inflation the
increase of circulation may conceivably have
preceded the rise of prices, but soon thereafter
prices began to rise earlier and faster; it was
only in 1926 during the last stages of the in-
flation that circulation did not lag perceptibly.
Although prices probably moved slightly ahead
of foreign exchange rates from 1919 to 1923 and
exchange rates slightly ahead of prices from
1923 to 1926 during much of the period they
Inflation and Deflation
moved approximately simultaneously, with a
slight tendency for exchange to precede. The
lag of circulation behind both prices and ex-
change rates led to an insistence on the part
of the French that the increase in circulation
did not cause the rise in prices but was itself
caused by the price rise as the existing circu-
lation became inadequate to meet the needs of
government and industry. In fact the increase
in government purchases led to increased busi-
ness activity and to price rises and these in
turn to currency expansion as fast as the gov-
ernment warrants were cashed into notes of the
Bank of France.
The German war and post-war inflation paral-
leled in many respects that of France. Shortly
after the outbreak of the war the Reichsbank
was allowed to suspend specie payments and to
substitute discounted treasury bills for com-
mercial bills as non-cash cover for its notes.
Although the government had borrowed large
sums from the Reichsbank and the latter's notes
had increased considerably, the extent of infla-
tion at the end of the war was not greater than
that in several other of the belligerent countries.
In the post-war period, however, large repara-
tions payments and other heavy expenses made
impossible politically if not economically
the balancing of the budget, thus necessitating
heavy inflationary borrowing from the Reichs-
bank. Even more than in France the movements
of prices seem to have preceded in time and ex-
ceeded in extent the movements of circulation.
As a contributing factor to the price rise the ve-
locity of circulation showed a great increase,
especially in the period of most rapid inflation.
Evidently people were attempting quickly to ex-
change their money for goods in order to escape
further loss of purchasing power. Although as in
France the correlation between their movements
was high, during most of the period prices
showed a noticeable lag behind foreign exchange
rates. With this tendency of prices to follow ex-
change and to increase more rapidly than circu-
lation the government was forced to borrow in
progressively larger amounts in order to get
needed supplies. From industry too came the in-
sistence that there was a shortage of credit and
money and that instead of causing the price rise
the increased volume of notes was itself made
necessary by previous price advances.
The fact that during inflations the rise of
prices tends to exceed the increase in currency
is directly connected with the increase in the
velocities of circulation of all types of cur-
rency: people attempt to reduce to the minimum
the amount of funds on hand in order to escape
the loss due to depreciation. Another explana-
tion suggested by the fairly steady lag of cir-
culation behind prices is the fact that prices of
goods purchased on credit or manufactured
to order are recorded two or three months before
currency is needed to close the transaction.
In countries where deposit currency is used in
all business transactions of any magnitude the
lead of the general index of wholesale prices
over the issue of banknotes and paper money for
hand to hand circulation may correspond roughly
to the lead of wholesale prices over retail
prices and wages.
One explanation of the close relationship be-
tween prices and foreign exchange rates is
offered by the purchasing power parity theory
championed in recent years by Cassel. Since,
according to him, a monetary unit as such, that
is, apart from its value as a commodity, has
no utility other than its power to command goods
in exchange, the demand for currency of country
A in exchange for currency of country B is sim-
ply an offer to exchange purchasing power in one
of the countries for that in the other. There-
fore the valuation of one currency in terms of
the other will depend upon the relative purchas-
ing power of the two currencies in their own
countries. Following this line of reasoning
Cassel contends that apart from slight fluctua-
tions the exchange rate between the currencies
of two countries will remain unaltered so long
as no variations take place in the purchasing
power of either currency and no obstacles
are placed in the way of trade. Should inflation
occur in country A and the purchasing power of
its currency be consequently reduced, the value
of currency A in country B will necessarily fall
in like proportion. If at the same time currency
B has undergone inflation, the valuation of cur-
rency A in terms of currency B will as a conse-
quence rise in corresponding degree. Cassel
arrives thus at the following rule: "When two
currencies have undergone inflation, the normal
rate of exchange will be equal to the old rate
multiplied by the quotient of the degree of in-
flation in the one country and in the other" (p.
140). He recognized that underlying his rule
is the assumption that the prices of articles
for export move in the same degree as the gen-
eral price index. If the prices of exports rise
more than the general price index, the country's
money will buy correspondingly less of the for-
eign currency; but if the prices of a country's
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
32
exports rise less than internal prices, its money
will buy correspondingly more of the foreign
currency.
This theory has been subjected to severe criti-
cism on several points. Kcyncs states that it
is only a truism to say that the relative value
of two currencies can be derived by finding
their relative purchasing power over goods en-
tering into trade between the nations involved,
but he would deny validity to the assertion that
rates of exchange can be found by comparing
comprehensive indices of internal purchasing
power. The observed similarity between actual
exchange rates and theoretical purchasing power
parities arrived at by comparing wholesale price
indices he would explain largely by the fact that
those indices as at present constructed are domi-
nated by articles enjoyingan international market.
Nogaro points out that as goods purchased in
international trade can often be produced at
home only at prohibitive or very high costs,
Cassel's contention that merchants will refuse
to purchase a currency quoted above its purchas-
ing power parity is too strict to be tenable. He
prefers the older, less strict and in his opinion
more nearly tenable theory that if foreign
exchange rates rise faster than prices, exports
will be encouraged and imports discouraged,
thus tending to restore the balance of payments
and to reduce the disparity between price and
exchange movements. Further he denies the
existence of a purchasing power parity, from
which any deviation will set into operation in-
fluences tending to restore the norm. Internal
prices are not fixed by factors independent of
exchange rates. If foreign exchange rates rise
faster than prices, the cost of imports in terms
of home currency rises. At the same time the
high price obtainable for bills of foreign ex-
change raises the price of exportable goods in
the home market. Certain psychological effects
may also ensue. Considering the rise in foreign
exchange as evidence of probable future price
increases, consumers may hasten to exchange
their money for goods. Sellers instead of basing
sales prices on actual cost or on cost of replace-
ment may base them on prevailing or even ex-
pected future exchange rates a practise com-
mon in Germany during the period of most rapid
inflation. Thus a rise of exchange rates above
the purchasing power parity resulting from ex-
change speculation or from any other factor in
the balance of payments may serve to draw in-
ternal prices with it and thereby establish a new
purchasing power parity. Nogaro also points out
that this tendency of internal prices to move with
exchange rates prevents the automatic adjust-
ment of the balance of payments which would
result from the encouragement of exports and
from the discouragement of imports and hence
to that extent fails to stabilize exchange.
Of the evils of rapid inflation there can be
little doubt. Although for some time the rise of
selling prices above costs increases profits and
stimulates production, when inflation becomes
extremely rapid entrepreneurs often hesitate
to enter into contracts drawn in money and
production becomes deranged. Long term credi-
tors find their claims virtually wiped out, and the
amount of new capital offered for long term in-
vestment soon declines. The banks do a rushing
business in extending short term loans despite
the rise in interest rates. During progressive in-
flation, however, the rise of the market rate of
interest compensates but slightly for the depre-
ciation of the principal; business enterprises
are thus not only largely relieved of their
bonded indebtedness but are tendered a con-
tinuous subsidy by the banking system of the
country. The victims of inflation are those
whose money incomes do not rise as fast as
prices; creditors, salaried workers and wage
earners find their real incomes reduced as the
monetary unit loses purchasing power.
The end of inflation is usually marked by
credit stringency and numerous bankruptcies.
The ensuing scramble for liquidity intensifies
the liquidation of both business and banks, until
in turn the volume of credit and prices are re-
duced far below their otherwise normal levels.
Only by drastic measures, which are rarely ap-
plied except by accident, has the downward
movement been speedily checked. With the de-
cline of prices come decreased production and a
shift in distribution. Recipients of fixed incomes,
wage earners, salaried workers and creditors find
that their money incomes have greater purchasing
power than before. This gain may be more than
balanced, however, by loss of employment and
defaults in payments. Entrepreneurs and debtors,
on the other hand, find their incomes greatly de-
creased and their obligations harder to pay.
While major inflations receive their impetus
from treasury needs and are later fostered by
business expansion, minor inflations commonly
occur during the upswing of the business cycle.
Although inflations characteristic of recurring
periods of prosperity never attain the heights
reached during inflations fostered by govern-
ments they follow a similar course. Some occur-
Inflation and Deflation Ingersoll
rence or group of occurrences leads to actual
or prospective profits. Expansion of operations
and of borrowing ensues, which gradually be-
comes more general and further increases prof-
its. With new and increased loans made to prof-
itable and expanding business a rise in prices is
sure soon to follow. Inflation has thus made its
appearance through normal business processes.
As in the major cases, the end is frequently set
by the limitation of credit either at home or
abroad; liquidation and usually deflation ensue.
JAMFS HARVKY ROGIRS
LESTER V. CHANDLLR
See MONEY; COINAGF; PAPFR MONLY, CURRENCY;
BANKING, COMMERCIAL; FOREIGN EXCHANGF, WAR
FINANCE; BUSINESS CYCLI-S, Diur, SIAUII I/AFION,
BUTINLSS; PRICE SIAHILIZATION; CI-NIRAL BANKING;
MONETARY STABILIZATION.
Consult: Cassel, Gustav, Money and Foreign E\ihange
after 1914 (London 1922), Pigou, A C , "Inflation"
in Economic Journal, vol. xxvn (1917) 486-94, Rohert-
son, D. H , Money (new ed London 1928), Keynes,
J. M., Monetary Reform (New York 1924), and A
Treatise on Money, 2 vols (London 1930) vol i, ch xi,
Laughhn, J. Laurence, Money ami Pntes (New York
1919) ch v, and Ctedit of the Nations (New York
1918), Palyi, M., "Das Wesen der Inflation" mllaupt-
probleme der Soziologu" Ennnerungtgahe fur Max
Weber, ed. by M Palyi, 2 vols (Munich 1923) vol.
ii, p. 341-52; Nogaro, B., La monnaie et Ics pheno-
menes monetaires contemporaries (Pans 1924), tr. as
Modern Monetary Systems (London 1927), Aftahon,
A., Monnaie, pnx et change (Pans 1927) pt n; I law-
trey, R. G , Trade and Credit (London 1928) ch iv,
and Currency and Credit (3rd ed London 1928);
Academy of Political Science, "Inflation and High
Prices," Proceedings, vol. ix, no. i (New York 1920);
Elster, Karl, Von der Mark zur Rnchvnark (Jena
1928); Graham, Frank D , Exchange, Prices and Pro-
duction in Hyper-inflation: Germany, 1 9201 Q2J
(Princeton 1930); Eulenburg, Fran/, "Die sozialen
Wirkungen der Wahrungsverhdltmsbe" mjahrhucher
fur Nationalokononne und Statistik, 3rd ser., vol Ixvii
(1924) 748-94, Rogers, James Harvey, The Ptoceis of
Inflation in France, 1914-1927 (New York 1929);
Dulles, E. L, The French Franc, 1911-1928 (New
York 1929); Frayssmet, Pierre, La politique monetaire
de la France (1914-1928) (Pans 1928).
INGENIEROS, JOSE (1877-1925), Argen-
tinian psychiatrist and sociologist. Ingenieros,
who holds a commanding position in Latin
American thought, elaborated the economic in-
terpretation of history traditional in Argentina
by ultimately explaining economic behavior in
terms of biological processes. From this point of
view he wrote on the living and working condi-
tions of the proletariat and on the history and
thought of Argentina. In his approach to the
problems of psychology and philosophy he was
33
neopositivist. He condemned mediocrity but
recognized the part played by the average man
in preserving and transmitting the variations
useful for the continuity of the social group. In
criminology, which was his earliest sociological
interest, he is best known for his classification of
delinquents, which categorized criminals ac-
cording to whether their delinquency was asso-
ciated with the intellect, the feeling or the will.
He was critical of the value of Spanish culture in
South America, opposed Pan-Americanism as an
instrument of imperialism and led a group which
turned its intellectual sympathies from France
to Soviet Russia. The Union Latino-Americana,
established in 1925, was a result of a campaign
which he initiated. In addition to his many
stimulating and widely read books in all fields of
the social sciences he founded and edited the
Archivos de psiquiatria y criminologia, medicina
legal (12 vols., Buenos Aires 1902-13) and the
Rcvhta de filosofia (1915- ), which is still pub-
lished.
C. BERNALDO DE QUIROS
Important zvorks: Simulation de la locura ante la cri-
minologta (Buenos Aires 1903, 8th ed. 1918); Lasimula-
cion en la lucha por la vida (Buenos Aires 1903, i2th
ed. 1920), La cnnnnologia (Buenos Aires 1911, 7th ed.
1919), El dcterminnmo economic o en la evolution amen-
cana (Buenos Aires 1901; 7th ed. with title Sociologia
argcntina, 1918), Pnmiptos de psicologla biologica
(Buenos Aires 1911), El hombre mediocre (Madrid
I 9 I 3> 3 r( l ed. Buenos Aires 1917); Hacia una moral sin
dogmas (Buenos Aires 1917, 2nd ed. 1919), Ciencia y
filowfia ((Madrid 1917), Proposiciones relativas al
porremr de la filosofia (Buenos Aires 1918); La n'olu-
ci6n de las ideas atgentinas, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires 1918-
20); Los t tempos nuevos (Madrid 1921, 2nd ed Buenos
Aires 1925), Lasfuerzas morales (Buenos Aires 1925,
2nd ed. 1926).
Consult. Nosotros, vol. li (1925) 421702; "Jos
Ingenieros su vida y su ohra" in Revista de filosofia,
vol. xxiu (1926) 1-231; Mouchet, E., and Palcos, Al-
berto, "La obra psicologica de Jos6 Ingenieros," and
Moreau, G S , "Las ideas sociales de Ingenieros" in
Humamdades, vol \u (1926) 157-85, 187-229; Endara,
Julio, Jose Ingenieros y el porremr de la filosofia (2nd
ed. Buenos Aires 1921); Veyga, Francisco de, In-
genieros, Jos, Mouchet, Enrique, and Palcos, Al-
berto, articles in Inter-America . . . English, vol ix
(1925-26) 37I-9L
INGERSOLL, ROBERT GREEN (1833-99),
American lawyer and lecturer on agnosticism.
Born at Dresden, New York, the son of a Con-
gregational minister, Ingersoll spent his boyhood
in small town parsonages in his native state and
in Ohio and Illinois. He was admitted to the bar
in 1854, entered Illinois local politics as a Demo-
crat and saw brief service in the Civil War as
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
34
colonel of the Eleventh Illinois Cavalry (Volun-
teers). In 1863, having resigned from the army
following his capture and parole, Ingersoll re-
sumed the practise of law and joined the Repub-
lican party. He immediately attained fame as a
lawyer and was especially noted for his ability in
rapidly assimilating a brief and for his skill in
gracious but devastating examination of wit-
nesses. As leading counsel for the defendants in
the notorious "Star Route" trials he performed
one of the outstanding legal feats of the second
half of the nineteenth century by securing their
acquittal in 1883.
For a whole generation because of his great
oratorical gifts and his enthusiastic acceptance of
the tenets of Republicanism Ingersoll was one of
the chief adornments of his party. At the
nominating convention of 1876 his designation
of Elaine as a "plumed knight" almost saved the
day for his candidate. He campaigned for Gar-
field. His violent attacks on the leveling doc-
trines of Bryan in 1896, his defense of the war
with Spain and his acceptance of McKinley 's ex-
pansionist program put the stamp of approval,
for many, on the newly developed capitalistic-
imperialistic policies of the Republican party.
Ingersoll might well have attained high public
office had it not been for his radical religious
beliefs; his conservative views on political
and economic questions made his social accepta-
bility assured.
It was as a foe of religious orthodoxy that In-
gersoll was best known. For thirty years, us-
ing the lecture platform largely as his medium
and talking before great assemblages, he ex-
pounded with great force and eloquence a
simple agnostic creed the chief articles of which
were a protest against the doctrine of eternal
punishment, a denial of the certainty of the
existence of God and a rejection of the inspired
character of the Old Testament. These orations
were singularly effective and succeeded in shak-
ing the faith of thousands. Not an original
scholar, he had an alert and absorptive mind and
was familiar with the popular scientific writings
of his day, particularly those of Huxley, and with
the higher Biblical criticism. He selected as his
own guiding principles those of "observation,
reason and experience." On the other hand, he
did not concern himself with the part played by
organized religion in the support of dominant
economic and political groups. Among Inger-
soll's more notable lectures were "Some Mistakes
ofMoses,""TheGods,""TheGhosts,""Super-
stition," "The Truth," "Some Reasons Why,"
"The Foundations of Faith," "What Is Reli-
gion?" "The Liberty of Man, Woman and
Child."
HARRY E. BARNES
Works: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, 12 vols. (New
York 1900).
Consult: Kittredge, Herman E., Ingersoll: a Biograph-
ical Appreciation (New York 1911); Rogers, Cameron,
Colonel Bob Ingersoll (New York 1927); Baker, Isaac
Newton, An Intimate View of Robert G. Ingersoll (New
York 1920); Smith, Edward Garstin, The Life and
Reminiscences of Robert G. Ingersoll (New York 1904);
Dibble, R. F., "The Devil's Advocate" in American
Mercury, vol. iii (1924) 6470.
INGRAM, JOHN KELLS (1823-1907), Irish
scholar and sociologist. For the major part of his
life Ingram was connected with Trinity College,
Dublin, where he was successively scholar, fel-
low, professor of oratory and English literature,
professor of Greek, librarian and senior fellow.
He wrote on mathematical, statistical, philolog-
ical and literary subjects and also published a
volume of poems. But he is chiefly important as
an economist and sociologist. After studying the
writings of Comte he became at the age of
twenty-eight a convinced positivist. His main
works in this field are devoted to an exposition of
positivist views on ethics and religion in their
relation to society. They include Outlines of the
History of Religion (London 1900), Human Na-
ture and Morals According to Auguste Comte
(London 1 90 1), Practical Morals (London 1904),
The Final Transition (London 1905) as well as
Passages from the Letters of Auguste Comte (Lon-
don 1901).
Ingram's conception of economics was largely
determined by his positivist sympathies. He con-
sidered orthodox political economy as repre-
sented, for example, by Cairnes to be at fault
in that it tried to study wealth in isolation from
other social phenomena, was abstract and in-
humane, deductive and unhistorical. In his view
economics should be treated as merely a part of
"sociology" the empirical study of the evolu-
tion of social life and institutions in general. In
opposition to the German historical school he
held that such a study need not be confined to
description; it could formulate laws, not indeed
of static equilibrium but of changing develop-
ment. This thesis he first enunciated in his ad-
dress to the British Association in 1878, pub-
lished the same year as Present Position and
Prospects of Political Economy (London 1878). It
is implied throughout his History of Political
Economy (Edinburgh 1888, republished from
Ingersoll Inheritance
his article in the ninth edition of the Encyclopae-
dia Britannica, vol. xix, 1885; new ed. with sup-
plementary chapter by W. A. Scott and intro-
duction by Richard T. Ely, London 1915), which
constituted the first comprehensive and authori-
tative history of economic doctrine in English.
These two works, although exaggerating the
interdependence of the social sciences, were
nevertheless influential along with the writings
of Ingrain's fellow countryman Cliffe Leslie in
broadening the basis of economic studies
throughout the world. In the United States they
provided one of the chief sources of inspiration
for Richard T. Ely and the "new school of eco-
nomics." Ingram also wrote a History of Slavery
and Serfdom (London 1895).
LINDLEY M. FRASER
Works: A complete bibliography of Ingram 's writings
has been published by T. W. Lyster (Dublin 1909).
Consult: Falkmer, C L., "A Memoir of the Late John
Kells Ingram" in Statistical and Social Inquiry Soci-
ety of Ireland, Journal, vol. xn (1906-12) 105-24;
Keynes, J. N , Scope and Method of Political Economy
(4th ed. London 1917).
INHERITANCE is the entry of living persons
into the possession of dead persons' property
and exists in some form wherever the institution
of private property is recogni/ed as the basis of
the social and economic system. But the actual
forms of inheritance and the laws and customs
governing it differ very greatly from country to
country and from time to time. There is no
"natural" law or principle of inheritance, which
is essentially a changing thing, based on the
changing forms of economic and social organiza-
tion; for the special laws and customs governing
inheritance are always and everywhere part and
parcel of the general structure of property rela-
tionships. Changed ways of owning and using
property will always bring with them in the long
run alterations in the laws and practises relating
to the inheritance of wealth.
Unless there is private property, owned or
possessed by individuals, the question of in-
heritance hardly arises. For whereas an indi-
vidual dies and his property, if he has any, has
to be disposed of in one way or another, a group,
such as a clan or tribe or family, does not die.
Members die and are replaced by new members
in the common enjoyment of the property of the
group. The property itself, however, never
changes hands or needs to be disposed of.
Under such conditions there is no inheritance,
in the sense in which the word is used in this
article, because the group is conceived of as the
35
repository of the right of possession. This is one
reason why inheritance plays a very small part
in the life or laws of most primitive societies.
The group holds in common and is tenacious of
its rights. The individual does not hold but only
shares in the use; and accordingly, when he dies,
there is nothing for anyone else to inherit.
Even when there is in primitive societies in-
dividual property of a sort it can seldom be in-
herited. For where most property is group
property, what is recognized as a man's own is
usually limited to things so personal to himself
that it would appear impious to hand them over
to another at his death. His weapons, his simple
tools and utensils are thought of as extensions of
his own personality, as in modern times Hegel
and other philosophers have thought of property
over a far wider field. As part of his personality
they are often to be burned or buried with him;
and this tendency is the stronger because it is
commonly believed that the dead will have need
of them in another world. The deceased must
take his means of creation and expression of his
personality with him to the other world; and
consequently no one else may inherit them in
this. The very idea of inheritance in any shape
or form is slow to develop in societies where
private property scarcely exists.
But as fast as private property develops, and
especially as soon as it touches the means of
production beyond mere tools of a craftsman's
trade, inheritance comes with it. Indeed property
in the sense of ownership is not essential; it is
enough that there should be private possession
and use, for rights over things can be passed
from the dead to the living as well as things
themselves. There is a right to succeed to a
tenancy as well as to the ownership of a farm;
and many forms of inheritance are in effect suc-
cessions to rights and sometimes to duties rather
than to things. This is obviously true of heredi-
tary titles and offices as well as of many forms of
feudal and similar tenure. Indeed in one sense
all inheritance is of rights or duties; and these
rights and duties are only sometimes embodied
in material things.
The inheritance laws and customs of societies
are apt to be most complicated where they are
still based, in part at least, on a lingering sense of
group possession or ownership. Complete free-
dom to bequeath property or to give it away
during a man's lifetime can develop only under
social and economic conditions based on highly
individualistic notions about property. A thing
must be absolutely a man's own in a most indi-
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
vidual sense for him to have a full right to give
or bequeath it to whom he will. Indeed only
among English speaking peoples, where in
general only dower or similar rights created by
statute limit free disposal by the testator, does
full freedom of bequest exist today or has it ever
existed; and even in their case it is fairly modern,
a product of an increasingly individualistic eco-
nomic system. It does not exist in Scotland even
now or wholly in the United States; and there is
no continental country in Europe that even ap-
proaches it. Everywhere except in England and
in countries which have borrowed their legal in-
stitutions largely from England property still re-
tains something of a group character. It is not
purely personal, and it has functions apart from
the purposes of its possessor for the time.
This is most clearly seen in such institutions
as the legitim, the legally enforceable claim of
widows and children to at least a part of a dead
husband's or father's estate. The legitim takes
many different forms but it exists in some form
and degree in the great majority of countries, in-
cluding South American and important Euro-
pean states, exclusive of Russia, and Louisiana in
the United States. Nor is it reasonable to regard
it simply as a restriction on the right of bequest;
for that would imply free disposal of property by
will or gift to be the natural and obvious thing.
It is so far from being natural or obvious, how-
ever, that it has never occurred to the great
majority of mankind that it ought to be the main
way of disposing of property. On the contrary,
in all peasant countries there is still a strong
tendency to think of real property at least as
belonging to the family rather than the indi-
vidual. It is the family's means of life, from
which no member can be shut out except for
positive misconduct. Property is no longer com-
mon to the family, as it used to be to the clan or
tribe; but neither is it purely the personal prop-
erty of the head of the family.
Naturally the notion of a group right or claim
clings most tenaciously to forms of property
which the group actually uses as instruments of
production. The more property ceases to have
this character and takes the form of money or
shares in undertakings which are not purely
family affairs, the less the group feeling remains
attached to it. The family's claim to money or to
shares in a joint stock concern is far less deeply
rooted in tradition and seems far less compelling
than its claim upon the family estate as a means
of life. Townsmen in India often exist on pit-
tances derived from the family land, which is
regarded as charged with the maintenance of all
the members. Even where property takes a
money form or that of paper claims on the earn-
ings of businesses outside the family's control,
the notion of the estate as a group possession
usually dies hard. It is not dead even in England
or the United States; there it asserts itself not
only in the laws governing intestacy but also
even more powerfully in social custom, in-
fluencing the wills men actually make, even
when they have full legal freedom to make what
wills they like.
Modern forms of economic organization are
very powerful solvents of the group notion of
property, for they tend to make the claims to in-
come arising out of property divisible without
the need for dividing the property itself. Tihe
chief argument against the legitim in most of its
forms is that it tends to a more and more minute
subdivision of property. Where landed property
is the chief form of wealth, this may have very
serious results not only in the breaking up of
large estates but also in the subdivision of
peasant holdings to a point which makes agricul-
tural improvements impossible and reduces
holdings to a size too small to admit of a toler-
able standard of life. The institution of primo-
geniture has been upheld mainly on the ground
that it keeps estates and agricultural holdings
together, thereby making possible their more
efficient development for the production of
wealth. When, however, property comes* to
consist largely of stocks and shares, the argu-
ments against division have far less force. In
public companies and corporations the parceling
out of the shares among a larger number of
holders has little effect upon management; even
in the case of family businesses charges can be
made on the net earnings for different members
of the family, and where such a business is
turned, as now often occurs, into a private com-
pany, actual shares can be issued and the busi-
ness still carried on without change of policy. It
can be urged that the setting up of charges on
the business or the diffusion of the ownership of
shares makes the accumulation of capital out of
reserved profits harder than it would be if the
whole business were inherited by a single
owner. But this is only one aspect of the wider
argument that great inequalities of wealth and
income are necessary for the adequate accumu-
lation of capital in modern societies. In general
there is no doubt that the institution of share-
holding in joint stock concerns as the outstand-
ing form of property ownership has made far
Inheritance
37
easier and less open to economic objection the
diffusion of estates at their owners' deaths.
This diffusion tends to a more individualistic
conception of property rights; for, save in the
special case of businesses which retain their
family character, the divided property loses all
unity and becomes simply part of the separate
estates of the various inheritors. It may still be
regarded as the duty of the richer members of
the family to help maintain the poorer; but this
becomes a purely social duty, unconnected with
the conception of a family estate charged with
the maintenance of all the members. Only in
the case of landed estates does this notion retain
any force in developed industrial societies and
even there it has been greatly undermined. In
peasant societies, on the other hand, the idea of
the family holding as charged with the family
maintenance still retains great force. Often most
of the family are driven or impelled to go away
and work elsewhere, as factory hands or laborers
or in a higher stratum of society as doctors, civil
servants or lawyers. But even when they have
left the family property, the notion of its re-
sponsibility for helping them in adversity sur-
vives with almost undiminished force.
In modern industrialized societies, where the
conception of property has become highly indi-
vidual and the family survives as a social rather
than an economic institution, the tendency has
ben to leave inheritance as free as possible from
regulation by the state and therefore to extend
continuously the right of unfettered bequest.
The state has still to postulate what is to happen
in cases of intestacy, but with the increase of the
will making habit, fostered both by the growth
of education and by the enlarged freedom of
bequest, intestacy becomes of less practical im-
portance. Most people with anything consider-
able to leave do dispose of their property by will,
and in most English speaking countries they are
left a very wide discretion practically complete
freedom to carry out their wishes.
In the early nineteenth century, in England at
any rate, freedom of bequest came to be widely
regarded as an integral part of laissez faire. The
classical economists, especially McCulloch,
argued strongly against the legitim and in favor
of primogeniture as a social institution, on the
double ground that division of property operated
against its efficient exploitation and that the dis-
inheriting of younger children gave them the
maximum incentive to make their own way in
the world. A secure competence they regarded
as disastrous both for society and for the indi-
vidual who enjoyed it; and they urged that men
would be spurred on to make the best use of
their powers only by need and by emulation of
the rich. Inequality was defended as a means to
the accumulation of capital and primogeniture
favored on the ground that although it might be
bad for the heir by making him lazy it was good
for the younger children and the community.
According to McCulloch it was a positive privi-
lege to be disinherited; but it never entered his
head that the best thing would be to disinherit
everybody.
Although primogeniture was favored, there
was no desire to enforce it by law; for freedom of
disposition by will was regarded as a necessary
incentive to the accumulation of capital and it
was intended that the father should be able to
leave his property away from his children, thus
having the whip hand over them while he lived
and the authority to induce in them virtuous and
industrious habits. The object was to give men
the greatest possible incentive not only to make
but also to save money; and this would be best
secured by putting what they made and saved
absolutely at their free disposal. Despite Jeremy
Bentham's pleas for limitation of inheritance the
nineteenth century doctrine of property and in-
heritance developed in England on purely indi-
vidual lines in strict keeping with the philosophy
of laissez faire. In this field as in many others it
was left for John Stuart Mill to go back on the
classical tradition and to propose in addition to
some restrictions on the right of bequest a severe
limitation of the sum which any one individual
would be allowed to inherit from any source.
Mill is hesitant, for he is impressed with the un-
desirabihty of doing anything to check capital
accumulation. But he also dislikes and desires to
reduce inequality and his wish is at several
points the forerunner of modern doctrines deal-
ing with taxes on inheritance.
Before Mill the question of inheritance was
considered, except by the socialists, almost
solely in relation to the accumulation of capital
and the efficient use of productive resources and
hardly at all as a problem of social justice. In
Mill the two points of view are in conflict; and
from his time the question has always to be con-
sidered from both standpoints. On the one hand,
inheritance and freedom of bequest are de-
fended as necessary incentives to saving and as
means to the more effective use of capital; for,
given freedom of bequest, it is held that men
will tend to leave their capital in such ways as to
promote its effective use. On the other hand, in-
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
hcritance is attacked as one of the greatest
sources of social and economic inequality and
proposals arc made to limit or even to abolish it
in order to secure a better distribution of income.
Abolition of inheritance, however, can hardly
be urged as a self-contained and sufficient re-
form, for if property is to lapse to the state at its
owner's death, and that is what abolition in-
volves, the state will have either to make use of it
for production under collective control or to let
it out to the individuals who seem best qualified
to use it. The former is the socialist solution; the
latter has been urged by various small groups
from time to time and is urged today by the fol-
lowers of Rudolf Stcincr. In cither case the
abolition of inheritance involves a radical change
in the economic as well as the social system and
especially new methods both of accumulating
and of using capital. It would also involve, at
any rate in the first generation, some restrictions
on gifts inter vivos, such as a real enforcement of
the legitim also demands; but whether such re-
strictions would remain necessary after the first
generation would depend on the opportunities
for fresh capital accumulation still left to the
individual.
There can be no doubt that under any socialist
system, even if it fell far short of communist
thoroughness, the right of inheritance would be
in practise very severely restricted, for with the
instruments of production in the hands of the
state the chief means and therewith also the
need of private accumulation would be gone.
The accumulation of capital would clearly be-
come a collective function of society. Incomes
would be distributed after subtracting the
amounts needed for the provision of new capital
equipment; and they would be meant for spend-
ing, not for saving. Inheritance would thus be
restricted at most to things of use and could not
include instruments of production, except dur-
ing a period of transition. Probably even within
these limits it would be further restricted by law,
at any rate as long as any considerable inequali-
ties of income existed; for with the development
of social services the argument that a man
needs to provide for his children would be pro-
gressively undermined. Probably the bequest of
personal possessions up to a limited amount
would be allowed; but inheritance in excess of
this would be likely to disappear, not so much
because it would have been deliberately stamped
out, though this might be the case, as because
the need and opportunity for it would alike have
gone.
There has been a good deal of dispute among
economists about the extent to which the in-
heritance of wealth is in modern societies the
principal cause of inequality. Its influence is
likely to be greater in older settled countries
than in new countries still largely at a pioneering
stage, since the older countries have already
much larger masses of inherited wealth and
usually greater opportunities for investing it
securely so as to perpetuate its existence. In-
vested money, from which the owner simply
draws a revenue without venturing it in risky
undertakings, is in old settled countries largely
self-perpetuating. There are losses of course and
men do sink from class to class on occasion, but
under ordinary conditions in such countries
reasonable prudence secures the perpetuation of
wealth once acquired.
In older countries also there are usually fewer
opportunities for the rapid acquisition of wealth
by those who start life without it. There are some
of course, and there are plenty of chances for the
rich to become richer. But the older and the
more settled in its economic habits a country is,
the more likely wealth is to go to those who have
some already and the smaller is the proportion
of men likely to rise from nothing to great
fortunes.
There can then be no doubt that in the older
settled societies inheritance is a very big factor
indeed in causing economic inequality, although
the whole question of the relation of inheritance
to economic inequality demands a more thor-
ough investigation than has as yet been made.
It counts for a good deal not only in perpetuating
large fortunes but also in giving those who in-
herit even quite small fortunes a very long eco-
nomic start over those who do not.
In the newer countries the influence of in-
heritance is probably less decisive, both because
the current accumulation of new capital bears a
higher proportion to the amount of inherited
wealth and because, conditions being less
settled, there are more opportunities for a man
to rise cither by accumulating capital for himself
out of profits or by being placed at the head of a
big business on the score of ability alone. Such
countries, however, as they grow in wealth
rapidly accumulate heritable property and begin
to develop a propertied class distinct in some
degree from the class of successful business
men. The United States has already a large class
of this type, although inherited wealth still
probably counts relatively for less in America
than in either Great Britain or France.
Inheritance
39
In nearly all countries the proportion of those
dying who have anything substantial to leave
is very small indeed. In England and Wales, ac-
cording to estimates made by Professor Henry
Clay, before the World War only 156 percent of
all persons possessing incomes of their own had a
total capital wealth of over jioo and only 6.8
percent had more than 500. Even in 1920-21,
when prices were very high, only 24.6 percent
had 100 or over and less than 12 3 percent
500. In Prussia, according to Dr. King, only
14 percent had over 6000 marks in 1908.
Inheritance in any economically significant
form is thus confined to a comparatively small
section of the population. Nor can there be any
doubt that in the main those who die leave most
of thcir money to persons of the same social
class as themselves. There are of course many
small legacies to poor relatives, servants and
employees, but apart from charitable bequests
the bulk of property tends to pass to relatives
occupying a similar social status to those from
whom they inherit. This causes inheritance even
on a basis of freedom of bequest to act as a
powerful force in perpetuating inequalities in the
distribution of wealth and income. Gifts and be-
quests to charities have indeed an opposite
tendency, for they usually result in the distribu-
tion of increased incomes or services to the
poorer sections of the population. But in no
country, not even in the United States, is the
amount of gifts and bequests for education and
charity large enough seriously to affect the dis-
tribution of wealth in society as a whole. Com-
prehensive figures are unavailable on this point
but, according to Wedgewood, less than i percent
of the estates o French persons were bequeathed
to public and charitable institutions in 1912 and
1913. In Great Britain the proportion is prob-
ably somewhat higher. It is fairly certain that in
the United States a much larger percentage of
the wealthy man's property goes through gifts
inter vivos or bequests to philanthropic institu-
tions than in England or on the continent, al-
though in the United States such bequests now
seem to be declining.
The inheritance of wealth lies then at the
very roots of the class structure of modern com-
munities. Class divisions would not necessarily
disappear if it were abolished; for if the change
stood alone, differences of wealth and income
arising within the lifetime of the individual
would still be enough to lead to wide differences
in education and in equipment for money mak-
ing. The rich parent could still give his children
a preferential start in life by expensive profes-
sional training or by setting them up in business
for themselves. It is, however, inconceivable that
the abolition of inheritance should stand alone.
If it came about it would certainly be accompan-
ied by increased public provision for higher
education, which would undermine class mo-
nopolies in the professions, and by a restriction of
opportunities for the application of private
capital to business enterprise. Inheritance is by
no means the only source of class divisions and
great economic inequalities, but it is difficult to
imagine their persistence in anything like their
present forms without it. This is the case, how-
ever, primarily because of the other social
changes which the abolition of inheritance con-
notes and only secondarily because of the direct
effects of its abolition.
Short of abolition the rights of bequest and in-
heritance can of course be drastically restricted
without the immediate necessity for any com-
plete change of economic system. Mill's pro-
posal to limit the amount that can be inherited
instead of the amount that can be bequeathed
has nowhere been acted upon; but one state after
another has introduced some form of inheritance
taxation and thus confiscated to the public purse
some part of the fortunes of those who die with
any considerable property. Such taxation has
many forms in different countries; but it usually
involves some degree of graduation according to
the total value of the estate and also some dis-
crimination according as the property is left to
nearer or remoter relatives or to strangers. Al-
though inheritance taxes are not chiefly a method
of influencing freedom of bequest but rather a
method of taxing big accumulations of wealth,
they are not nearly considerable enough to have
noticeable effects in reducing inequalities of
wealth or income.
It is sometimes suggested that this failure to
reduce inequality by taxation of inheritance is in
itself a sign that most big fortunes are made
rather than inherited and that inheritance is not
so powerful a factor as has been supposed in
causing inequality of income. But this suggestion
ignores the great power of large fortunes to at-
tract more money. If it were not for death duties,
the distribution of income in Great Britain
would be still more unequal than it actually is.
What is left of such fortunes after taxation,
however, is ample enough to serve as a prefer-
ential basis for the accumulation of further
wealth. It is not denied that in Great Britain,
unlike the United States, economic inequality
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
40
has been somewhat diminished of late years; but
this is a result far more of the heavier taxes on
incomes than of the taxation of inheritance.
It is in effect impossible to divide the wealth
of the richer classes into two parts, the one in-
herited or the result of those gifts inter vivos
which are really a form of inheritance, and the
other acquired by the owners' personal exertions;
for this is to ignore the truth that money breeds
money and that it is far easier for a man who in-
herits money both to make more and to save out
of his income than it is for one who starts with
nothing. Fresh capital accumulations are in part
the result of saving out of inherited fortunes, and
the invested capital on which large profits are
made is in part inherited money. What a man
makes in his own lifetime may be fully as much
a result of his inheritance as of his personal skill,
luck or exertion. It is therefore a sheer impossi-
bility to isolate in any quantitative sense the
results of inheritance, but it is fully possible to
say that income and property would be very dif-
ferently distributed if everyone started with an
equal supply of capital.
However great the social and economic influ-
ence of inheritance is admitted to be, the institu-
tion will not lack defenders as long as it is con-
sidered necessary for the accumulation of capi-
tal. It is true that the growing tendency for in-
dustries to finance their own expansion out of
reserved profits has led to some substitution of
group for individual saving and has thus to some
extent lessened the need for private accumula-
tion out of incomes; and it may be that this
method of group saving foreshadows a time
when industry will be wholly self-financed or, at
any rate, when the calls for capital out of indi-
vidual savings will be much reduced. But for the
present individual investment continues to play
a large part in financing production and it is
therefore deemed necessary to keep up the rate
of saving. Some economists, notably J. A. Hob-
son, have suggested that in prosperous times
capitalist societies attempt to save and invest too
large a proportion of their incomes, which re-
sults in a deficiency in the demand for consum-
ers' goods. There is much to be said for this
view, which would provide an economic justifi-
cation for measures tending to reduce the volume
of saving in prosperous times, including the
higher taxation of inheritance at such times and
the appropriation of the proceeds as revenue and
not as capital. It cannot be held, however, that
this tendency to oversaving exists, in the same
degree at any rate, when times are bad; while it
is precisely at such times that the state, hard
pressed for revenue, is likeliest to use capital
taxes for meeting current expenditure.
In any case the need for private accumulation
of capital does still exist in a considerable degree
in modern societies and inheritance will continue
to find defenders on the ground that it promotes
this end. It will indeed be defended not so much
in spite of its tendency to aggravate inequalities
of wealth and income as because of this tend-
ency; for there is a school of economists that
maintains that the richer the rich are, the richer
will the poor be also, because the highest pro-
duction and the highest wages will be secured
when profits are highest and profits will tend to
be highest where the accumulation of capital has
been pushed to the furthest point. This view
has of course some plausibility; admittedly in-
equalities of wealth and income are greatest in
the richest societies and these have also the
highest real wages. But it does not follow that
the high productivity on which this wealth is
based is the product of economic inequality or
that unrestricted inheritance is necessary to its
maintenance.
Admitted, however, that any severe restriction
on the right of inheritance would, unless the
state used the proceeds as capital, reduce the
rate of capital accumulation; the question is how
far severer taxation of inheritance would react
on the individual's will to accumulate.
That high inheritance taxation stimulatcs*gifts
inter vivos is evident enough. That it does not
have this effect in a far greater measure is a clear
sign of the tenacity with which the aging tend
to cling to their money. Most of them remain un-
willing to surrender ownership or control to
their children, except on a small scale, despite
the possibility of avoiding a good deal of taxation.
This bears out the point that in general the
psychological incidence of taxation is upon the
inheritor and not on the testator.
If this is so, it seems reasonable to suppose
that taxes on inheritance will not much affect the
will to save. It is moreover highly relevant to
point out that among the richest members of a
community saving is largely automatic in that it
represents surplus income beyond the desire to
spend. Clearly saving of this sort will not be
affected by taxation except to the extent to
which gifts inter vivos and charitable donations
may be stimulated. Graduated taxes on large in-
comes by reducing automatic saving react far
more decisively on the volume of accumulation
than do death duties.
Inheritance
4 1
In the case of small fortunes taxes on in-
heritance where they exist at all are usually at a
low rate and unlikely to affect saving, although
they may to some extent direct it to forms of sav-
ing that are exempt from the tax, such as life in-
surance policies.
If a state should, however, merely hy gradually
increasing its taxes on inheritance seek to
abolish inheritance altogether, it would reach a
point, far short of actual abolition, at which the
taxation would react sharply on the volume of
saving. Accordingly any state pursuing such a
policy would have to take steps in the course of it
to bring into being alternative methods of capi-
tal accumulation on a collective basis and would
have to apply the product of its inheritance taxes
as capital and not as income.
Plans for the abolition of inheritance are nec-
essarily anticapitalistic; for they involve either
direct collective operation of capital resources or
collective control and rationing of their use.
They are not necessarily socialist but they do
imply the supersession of capitalism as an eco-
nomic system. It is not possible to advocate the
abolition of inheritance on purely ethical
grounds without being prepared to suggest al-
ternative methods for the accumulation of capi-
tal; and to this difficulty socialism presents the
most obvious answer. Moreover if inheritance is
abolished or even if taxation of it is pushed very
far, it.becomes inevitable for the state as the tax-
ing authority to take over actual assets, since
beyond a certain point the proceeds of inherit-
ance taxes could not possibly be collected in
money. The state then would become in effect
the heir and it would be difficult to avoid the
conclusion that the state should administer the
assets acquired by way of taxation.
The economic and the ethical aspects of the
question are thus closely intertwined. Many
persons who are not prepared to defend inherit-
ance directly on ethical grounds nevertheless
uphold its economic desirability, because they
mistrust the effects on production of an approach
to socialism, and are ready to advocate the taxa-
tion of inheritance up to the point at which they
think it will interfere with the private accumu-
lation of capital. This was in essence Bentham's
position and it has still powerful upholders in
the world today.
To others the ethical arguments, which are
directed partly against inequality in general and
partly against inequalities resulting from in-
heritance and not from a man's own exertions,
constitute a strong inducement to consider
favorably any economic system which will make
these inequalities unnecessary. The case for
socialism, which is based on a mingling of eco-
nomic and ethical considerations, gains here a
powerful reenforcement; for it can be pointed
out that what the legatee in fact inherits is not
a sum of money but essentially a claim on the
productive capacity of society. This capacity, the
result of centuries of development, is in reality a
social product, the common heritage of civiliza-
tion, in which it would seem that all are entitled
to share. In other words, when a man saves
under present conditions, the result is to secure
to him much more than he saves because he ac-
quires a preferential share in the social heritage.
It seems unfair that a man should be able to pass
on this preferential claim to his successors with-
out limit. Most states have passed legislation to
prevent "perpetuities" and to limit testators'
rights to prescribe for generations ahead how
their money is to be used or to order that it shall
accumulate at compound interest for a long
period. But in spite of these restrictions there is
nothing to prevent the claim itself from being
perpetual; this seems to many people to be mani-
festly unjust.
It is true that capital does not in. most cases
survive forever in an unbroken line of succes-
sion. Physical instruments of production, except
land, wear out; and even where the capital they
represent is perpetuated by the provision of ade-
quate allowance for depreciation, there are
hazards which do in the long run bring the
life of most forms of business enterprise to an
end. Even states though they cannot go bank-
rupt do sometimes repudiate their debts and so
confiscate the property of their bondholders;
and apart from the wasting of the assets them-
selves there is likely at some point m a long suc-
cession of heirs to arise a wastrel who will dissi-
pate his patrimony. But with the growth of trust
companies and the corporate organization of
business this becomes increasingly a less im-
portant factor. It is indeed often stated that the
life of most inherited fortunes is not long except
in the case of landed estates; and this is probably
true if it is meant that large fortunes are seldom
kept together for many lives in the hands of a
succession of sole heirs. There is a trend toward
division of fortunes as well as to wastage; and
this tends to become more pronounced as
property can be more and more easily divided
through the operation of the joint stock system.
But property rights are not any the less perpet-
uated because they are divided up; the division
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
4 2
does not make strongly for greater equality, be-
cause the property even if it is divided is usually
left in the main to persons of the same social
class.
It is possible to imagine a form of socialism or,
at any rate, collectivism that would perpetuate
inheritance much in its present form. If the state
carried on industry, borrowing the money from
its citizens as it borrows now in the case of
nationalized or municipalized undertakings, in-
heritance could continue, the inherited property
taking the form of perpetual state bonds or
stocks. It is, however, difficult to imagine such a
system being of long continuance, for it would
clearly render the private owners of the capital
completely functionlcss, mere receivers of inter-
est or dividends with no claim to income based
even on a show of service. Under such conditions
they would certainly before long suffer ex-
propriation, for no economic or social institu-
tion can survive permanently if it has lost the
function which it came into being to perform.
Socialism of this type would end, although it had
not begun, in the abolition of inheritance or in its
restriction to things other than claims arising
out of loans to the state.
Belief or disbelief in the institution of in-
heritance is therefore very closely linked up with
belief or disbelief in the private ownership and
operation of the instruments of production. The
abolition of inheritance or its limitation to per-
sonal possessions of use is in practise if not
necessarily in theory a socialist doctrine. Peculiar
interest therefore attaches to the handling of the
problem in Soviet Russia, where almost the first
step of the new government in 1918 was to de-
cree the abolition of inheritance of all property
above 10,000 rubles except for provision for
meeting claims of relatives based on proved
need. This attitude has since been modified and
under a decree of 1922, the civil code (1923) and
a decree of 1926 the limitation on the value of the
property which can be inherited is removed;
direct descendants, dependents and surviving
spouses are entitled to share; and furniture and
household effects go to the housemates of the
deceased. Wills can be made so as to vary the
disposal of property among the legal heirs but
not so as to leave it to others; and in the absence
of testamentary provision distribution among
those entitled to benefit is equal.
The new provisions mean far less than appears
on the surface since they are indeed rather the
result of the Communists' success in destroying
private property than any token of a reversal of
ideas or policy. The Soviet government can now
afford to permit inheritance because it does not
permit the accumulation of wealth in private
hands and because, when accumulation does ex-
ceptionally still occur, it has plenty of other
methods besides the prevention of inheritance
of breaking it up. The private trader or the
kulak (rich peasant) who succeeds in amassing
property has no security at all of being able to
retain it for his own lifetime; and the question
of his right to pass it on to his descendants there-
fore loses most of its importance. The one form
of private property which has hitherto remained
in being is now on the road to destruction by the
placing of agriculture on a collective basis; and
when that has been completed, the citizens of
the Soviet Union will have only personal po&es-
sions to leave, except for the continuance for the
time being of a small quantity of state bonds.
For the Soviet Union does still to a small extent
supplement the collective supply of capital by
borrowing from its citizens.
This shows that, when a transition from capi-
talism to socialism is made abruptly and is ac-
companied by a general confiscation of existing
wealth, the question of inheritance ceases at once
to possess much economic importance; for both
the existing capital and the power of fresh pri-
vate accumulation are taken away at a blow.
Moreover while private accumulation may sur-
vive for a tune it is more likely to be attacked by
the direct confiscation of property from living
owners than by the removal of the right of be-
quest or inheritance.
Inheritance as a contemporary problem is
therefore essentially a problem of capitalist so-
ciety; and it cannot be abolished or restricted
within narrow limits so as still to leave capitalist
society intact. If private persons are not to in-
herit, the state must; and state inheritance means
state control of the use of capital. Propaganda for
the abolition of inheritance is in most cases in
effect propaganda for socialism; and the question
of inheritance, as distinct fiom taxation of it
within limits that will not destroy its essential
character, thus merges in the wider question of a
socialist versus a capitalist framework of society.
This is why there has never been any important
social or economic movement making the aboli-
tion of inheritance its main objective.
If it is impossible to abolish inheritance with-
out altering profoundly the economic structure
of society, it is no less out of the question to re-
tain inheritance in anything like its present form
if that structure is radically altered in a socialist
Inheritance Inheritance Taxation
43
sense. For inheritance is bound up with the di-
vision of society into distinct social and eco-
nomic classes and influences this division the
more profoundly because in advanced communi-
ties the better o classes tend to have lower
birth rates than the poorer sections of the people
and therefore to keep their wealth within a nar-
row range. The institution of inheritance helps
indeed to foster this control of numbers among
the well to do, since they are conscious of the
need for limitation as a means of preserving
their class status. Even where primogeniture re-
mains the custom this limiting influence holds
good; for the disinherited younger children are
likely to be provided for during the testator's life
by expenditure on education and training, by
enabling them to start in business or by marrying
daughters off with at least some "portion" of
their own. It is true that the growth of feminism
has tended to cause further diffusion of property,
for daughters are now more often than before
treated on an equality with sons. But this may
even accentuate the tendency toward family
limitation among the middle class.
The future of inheritance then appears to de-
pend, on the one hand, on the growth in modern
communities of collective methods of capital ac-
cumulation and of the control of business re-
sources and, on the other, on the pressure of the
popular movement toward a less unequal distri-
butiqn of incomes; for this movement, ethical as
well as economic in its driving force, results in
forms of taxation which limit saving and impinge
on profits and thus leads to the necessity of al-
ternative methods of saving and of insuring ade-
quate production. The two influences thus meet
and mingle; and it is not easy to see how the in-
stitution of inheritance, save in a greatly modi-
fied form, can indefinitely stand out against
them, despite the fact that it is for the moment
strong.
To the extent to which it is restricted there is
a return from the individualistic notion of prop-
erty to a communal notion, based now on a unit
wider not only than the family but also than the
clan or tribe, since property comes to be re-
garded as part of the social heritage of the mod-
ern community, legitimately charged with the
maintenance of all its members. This notion
may further undermine, as it has already under-
mined in Soviet Russia, what remains in indus-
trial societies of the conception of family solidar-
ity. It will inevitably affect the institution of
marriage and the relations between parents and
children. But even in capitalist society the family
has largely lost its economic significance and
become, save in respect of inheritance, mainly a
social unit whose bonds have grown far looser
even within living memory. If inheritance goes,
the last economic bond will be snapped, at any
rate beyond the period of the children's upbring-
ing; and that too is likely to become increasingly
a social function.
G. D. H. COLE
See: PROPERTY; WEALTH; FORTUNLS, PRIVATE; ACCU-
MULATION; PLUTOCRACY, CLASS, EQUALITY; INHERIT-
ANCE TAXATION; SOCIALISM, SUCCESSION, LAWS OF
PRIMOGENIIURE, MARITAL PROPER1Y.
Consult: Beaglehole, E , Property (London 1931)
p. 215-16, and table IV, p. 244-47, Lowie, Robert
II, Primitive Society (New York 1920) p 243-55;
Wedgewoocl, Josiah, The Economics* of Inheritance
(London 1929), Dilton, Hugh, Some Aspects of the
Inequality of Incomes in Modern Communities (Lon-
don 1920) p. 281-343; Stamp, Josiah C , Some P'co-
nonnc Factors in Modern Life (London 1929) ch. n;
Clay, H , Property and Inheritance (London 1923);
Gabain, K. E von, Das Erbrecht in Souyetrussland
(Berne 1929), Ta^er, Paul, "Lc regime successoral
dans le droit sovieiique envisag^ dans son (Solution
histonque" in Societ<5 de Legislation Comparee,
Bulletin, vol. Iv (1926) 531-58.
INHERITANCE TAXATION. The inheri-
tance tax is a levy made on the occasion of the
transfer of property at or in connection with the
death of the owner. It may take the form of a tax
on the estate as a whole, on the respective shares
of the beneficiaries or on both. The tax is vari-
ously held to be a direct tax upon property (of
testator or recipient) or an indirect tax upon the
act of the transfer or receipt of property at the
death of the owner. In modern times the in-
heritance tax has been incorporated into the tax
system of every important country.
Transfers of property at the death of the
owner were subject to the property transfer taxes
of ancient Egypt and Greece. The element of
death, however, was purely incidental in these
taxes. The first true inheritance tax was the
Roman mcesima hcreditatium instituted in 6
A.D., a 5 percent tax on collateral inheritance and
bequest. With various modifications this tax per-
sisted for several centuries.
During the Middle Ages there were certain
feudal dues the relief, the Erbkauf and the
heriot which resembled inheritance taxes; in
several countries the royal relief evolved into a
rudimentary national inheritance tax. By the end
of the fourteenth century several forms of death
tax had been established in the Italian and Ger-
man commercial cities. The seventeenth century
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
44
saw the enactment of inheritance taxes in the
Dutch provinces and in a number of German
principalities. By the end of the seventeenth
century there were inheritance taxes in the four
national states, England, France, Spain and
Portugal.
The substantial development of the European
inheritance tax occurred during the nineteenth
century. From a disorganized set of minor
probate duties the English tax expanded into a
full fledged estate duty; it was extended from
personalty to real property; its rate schedule, at
first regressive, became proportional and then
progressive. The present English estate duty is
supplemented by the legacy duty on movable
property and the succession duty on immovable
property; both taxes, levied on the shares re-
ceived by the individual beneficiaries, are
graduated according to the degree of the bene-
ficiary's relationship to the deceased. The
French inheritance tax, established in 1796, had
rates graduated according to the relationship of
the beneficiary or heir to the deceased and dis-
criminated between realty and personalty; dur-
ing the nineteenth century the discrimination
according to the character of the property was
eliminated and the relationship graduation was
augmented; in 1901 the rates of the tax were
made progressive. Italy in 1862 adopted an in-
heritance tax modeled on the French law; its
rates were made progressive in 1902. The Prus-
sian collateral inheritance tax of 1873 was fol-
lowed by similar taxes in the other German
states; growing agitation for an imperial inheri-
tance tax resulted in 1906 in a national inheri-
tance tax with relationship discrimination and
progressive rates.
The general character of European inheritance
taxes has undergone no radical change during
the past twenty-five years. During the World
War and the post-war years because of the pres-
sure of increasing fiscal burdens and the growing
political power of propertyless groups rates in-
creased and progression wassharpened; since 1921
in France combined maximum rates of estate
and inheritance taxes would call for a rate of 98
percent, were not the maximum limited by law
to 80 percent. Various discriminations have been
experimented with to bring these heavy taxes
more in line with various concepts of fiscal jus-
tice. During recent years inheritance taxes have
yielded over 10 percent of the national tax rev-
enue in England, over 5 percent in France and
less than i percent in Germany.
A dozen American states attempted the levy of
inheritance taxes during the first three quarters
of the nineteenth century, but their statutes were
badly drawn and poorly administered and most
of these early state taxes were repealed within a
few years of their levy. Effective use of the in-
heritance tax did not occur in the United States
until the New York inheritance tax law of 1885,
carefully drawn and well administered, proved a
success. Other states were encouraged to experi-
ment with this form of taxation, and by 1902
twenty-six states levied inheritance taxes of one
sort or another. The taxes of this period were all
proportional, usually embodied relationship
graduation and were generally limited to col-
lateral inheritance and bequest. In 1892 New
York led the way to extending the tax to direct
heirs. Wisconsin in 1903 enacted a progressive
inheritance tax which soon became the model for
other states.
In the years 1797 to 1802 the federal govern-
ment collected a stamp tax on successions by in-
heritance to personal property. A federal in-
heritance tax was also levied during the Civil
War decade. The inheritance tax embodied in
the federal income tax act of 1894 was aban-
doned when that income tax was declared un-
constitutional. Four years later a short lived pro-
gressive tax was levied as part of the Spanish
War tax program. Not until 1916 did the federal
government make an inheritance tax a perma-
nent part of its tax system. The tax levied in
this year was an estate duty applying to estates
in excess of $50,000 with a progressive rate
schedule rising to a maximum of 10 percent on
the excess of an estate over $5,000,000. Subse-
quent revenue acts increased the rates of this
tax until in 1924 the rate on the excess of an
estate over $10,000,000 was 40 percent. The
maximum rate was reduced to 20 percent in 1926,
but was raised to 45 in the revenue act of 1932.
A feature of the 1924 federal estate duty was
the allowance of a credit to taxed estates to cover
state inheritance taxes charged against them; the
maximum credit allowance was 25 percent.
When the rates of the federal tax were lowered
in 1926, this credit was increased so that it
ranged from 15 to 75 percent; this credit sched-
ule was maintained in 1932 when the estate duty
was raised. The effect of this credit was to
eliminate the burden of state taxes on estates
where the rates of the state taxes did not exceed
the credit allowed under the federal tax. State
inheritance taxes were thus deprived of their
effect of driving rich individuals to adopt resi-
dences in states levying no or low inheritance
Inheritance Taxation
45
taxes. The consequence of this federal estate tax
credit was an increase in the number of states
levying death taxes; in 1932 only Nevada was
without an inheritance tax. The rates of the state
taxes were generally increased so as to take full
advantage of the credit; in the process many
states changed the form of their taxes from in-
heritance taxes levied on the shares received by
the beneficiaries to estate taxes levied on the full
estate left by the decedent, so as to obtain an
exact adjustment of the rates of their inheritance
taxes to the credit allowed under the federal
estate duty.
Because of the large initial exemption of
$100,000 and the generous credit allowance to
cover state inheritance taxes the federal govern-
ment received little revenue from its estate
duty in 1926-32. For fiscal year 1929-30 its re-
ceipts from this source were $64,842,725, less
than 2 percent of its total tax revenue. State
governments during their 1929 fiscal years de-
rived $148,591 ,827, about 9 percent of their total
tax revenue, from their inheritance taxes.
There has been much dispute both in Europe
and in America as to the legal character of the
inheritance tax. One school of nineteenth cen-
tury thought, stemming from Bentham, held
that the inheritance tax can be viewed as an
exercise of the state's inherent right to regulate
inheritance and bequest. Another, developed by
Munzinger and championed by Bluntschli,
Wagner and Ely, held that the state as feudal
overlord of the individual was coheir in every
estate and took its share in the form of an in-
heritance tax. These two theories never gained
wide acceptance, and the inheritance tax is now
universally viewed simply as a tax levied under
the state's taxing power.
, Distributive justification of the inheritance
tax has been based on many theories of tax
justice. Moderate transfer fees have been de-
fended as a recompense to the state for its super-
vision of the ownership of the property of a de-
ceased person. Heavier inheritance taxes have
been justified as a recompense for the protection
accorded to property during the lifetime of its
owner. The quid pro quo doctrines of tax jus-
tice, however, afford little encouragement for in-
heritance taxation, and appeal to them is gen-
erally made by the opponents rather than the
supporters of inheritance taxation. The ability
and sacrifice doctrines have been heavily drawn
upon in defense of inheritance taxation, par-
ticularly of progressive inheritance taxes. The
deceased, it is argued, has no further use for his
property, while to the heirs and beneficiaries it
is an unearned windfall whose reduction by a tax
involves no sacrifice whatsoever. Several writers,
like Graziani and Adams, have chosen to view in-
heritances or bequests as simple increments of
income received by the beneficiary and so sub-
ject to all the ability and sacrifice doctrines ap-
plying to income. Schgman justifies the inheri-
tance tax both as a tax on accidental income and
as a payment for the privilege of inheritance con-
ferred by the state.
Several unusual distributive justifications for
inheritance taxes are to be noted. A scattered
group of writers have defended this tax on the
ground that it constitutes a lump sum payment
of taxes evaded by the deceased and his estate
during the lifetime of the deceased or a lump
sum payment of periodic taxes, such as the in-
come tax, not conveniently levied in their true
form. Certain American writers have viewed the
state as a silent partner in the accumulation of
individual fortunes and have described the in-
heritance tax as a method employed by the state
to realize on its partnership share. Individual
radical writers have urged inheritance taxes as a
method of breaking down large family fortunes
and so reducing inequality in the distribution of
wealth, although the socialist school of writers
have generally ignored the inheritance tax, view-
ing it as merely an undesirable palliative of the
evils they are attacking.
The levy of inheritance taxes has raised many
practical issues which have not yet achieved final
solution. There still exists open disagreement as
to the respective advantages of the inheritance
tax levied on the shares of an estate received by
individual beneficiaries and heirs and of the
estate tax levied on the entire estate left by the
deceased. The latter is the form of the English
estate duty and of the American federal estate
tax, while the former is employed on the conti-
nent and was until recently the characteristic
form of American state inheritance taxes. The
great advantage of the estate tax is the simplicity
of its determination: only one calculation is in-
volved for each estate and there are no complica-
tions caused by life estates, remainders and con-
tingencies. Furthermore a progressive estate
duty with a given schedule of rates has a higher
yield than an inheritance tax with the same
schedule of rates; the fractions of an estate re-
ceived by the individual beneficiaries and heirs
rarely involve the application of the same high
bracket rates to which the undivided estate
would be subject. The disadvantage of the estate
46
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
tax is its maladaptation to the ability and sacri-
fice doctrines of tax justice. Only by strained
reasoning can the ability and sacrifice theories
be made to support the use of progressive rate
schedules in an estate tax. Furthermore an estate
tax is not adapted to relationship graduation;
where such graduation is effected in an estate tax,
as in the Canadian provincial death duties, it is
at the cost of simplicity and facility of adminis-
tration.
Relationship discrimination is itself an open
issue in inheritance taxation. Its strongest theo-
retical foundation is the family sense, the feeling
that the direct heirs of a deceased person have a
greater claim on his property than collateral or
unrelated beneficiaries, that the former are but
realizing a latent property right in the estate
while to the latter their shares are pure wind-
falls. Some writers, like Schccl and Puviani, have
attempted to make out a case for relationship
graduation on the basis of the sacrifice doctrine
of taxation; they argue that the value of the
property coming to direct heirs is lessened by
their grief over the death of the decedent, that
this diminution of the value of an inheritance
decreases with the distance of the relationship
between beneficiary and deceased and that the
relationship graduation of an inheritance tax off-
sets this "grief sacrifice." In the Latin countries,
where the sense of family remains strong, rela-
tionship graduation in death taxation is carried
out to minute detail. In the English speaking
countries, on the contrary, the trend seems
strongly against such graduation, except for
generous rate and exemption allowances to the
widow and children of the deceased, who in
gaining an inheritance have lost their bread-
winner.
Progressive inheritance taxes, as previously in-
dicated, do not derive much support from the
ability doctrines of taxation. If the tax be viewed
as one on the property owned by the decedent,
it is difficult to see wherein the ability doctrines
can apply to a dead man. If the tax is considered
a levy on the recipients of the estate, their tax-
paying ability is determined not only by the
shares of the estate received by them but also by
the property owned by them; surely a rich man
receiving a small inheritance has a greater tax-
paying ability than a poor man receiving a large
inheritance. These considerations prompted
several German writers to advocate the gradua-
tion of the tax rates on the basis of prior wealth
of the heir plus his inheritance. The German
and Italian inheritance taxes of 1919 made pro-
vision for supplementary graduation of the tax
rates according to the prior wealth of the heir.
Effective determination of such prior wealth
proved administratively impracticable, however,
and in both Germany and Italy this provision
was abolished in 1923.
Beginning with Adam Smith fiscal economists
have pointed out an important discrimination in
the inheritance tax; namely, that it bears un-
equally upon the property of families according
to whether deaths in the family follow each other
at short intervals or are widely spaced. With the
heavy rates now in effect in some countries a
rapid succession of deaths in a family could
easily wipe out a large family property. Various
proposals that the tax on an estate be propor-
tioned to the number of years it had been en-
joyed by the deceased have never been embodied
in legislation. Instead, beginning with the
Chilean inheritance tax of 1878, many taxes
have included a provision for a rebate of the tax
on any part of an estate which has paid an in-
heritance tax within a period of preceding years,
usually five. Such a provision is found in the
American federal estate tax and in the inherit-
ance taxes of fifteen states.
Several of the European inheritance taxes in-
volve a rate discrimination intended to favor
decedents or beneficiaries with large families. In
France the inheritance tax of 1917 allowed a
beneficiary a lo-percent reduction in his t?x for
each child above the number of three. At the
same time a progressive estate duty called the
taxe successorale was levied on the estates of de-
cedents who died leaving fewer than four chil-
dren; besides progression based on the size of the
estate the rate schedule of this tax was graduated
in accordance with the number of the children
left by the deceased; the rates on the estate of a
deceased leaving three children ranged from
\ percent to 3 percent, while those on the estate
of a childless decedent ranged from 2 percent to
24 percent. The Belgian tax of 1919 provided for
a 2-percent reduction of the tax on a beneficiary
for each of his children. It is doubtful whether
such fiscal discriminations can have any effect on
the birth rate of a country. Rather they provide
an excuse for the levy of tax rates higher than
might otherwise be acceptable to the popular
temper of the times. The favoring of a beneficiary
or heir with a large family finds ample justifica-
tion under the ability doctrines of taxation, since
it can logically be argued that the expense of
maintaining his large family definitely reduces
his taxpaying ability; the levy of special rates on
Inheritance Taxation
47
the estates of decedents with few or no children,
as under the taxe successorale, does not enjoy
such support in ethical theory.
Soldiers and sailors who die while in the na-
tional service are sometimes favored under in-
heritance taxes. The English death duties have
accorded full or partial exemption to such de-
cedents since 1694. Exemption to the estates of
officers and men who fell in the World War was
introduced into the French and American death
taxes.
Certain minor discriminations found in earlier
inheritance taxes are no longer common. The
seventeenth century inheritance taxes of the
Dutch provinces and some of the inheritance
tax$s of the Canadian provinces and of the
American states levied discriminatory rates on
bequests to or inheritance by alien heirs. The
only defense for such discriminations is a rather
narrow nationalism, and in most cases they have
been rendered inoperative by international
treaties of fiscal reciprocity. Another outworn
mode of discrimination is the levy of special high
rates on the transfer of property by intestate
succession. Such discrimination was found in
the early death duties of England, Sweden,
Uruguay and Brazil. It probably represented a
belated aftermath of the mediaeval ecclesiastical
prejudice against intestacy and it no longer has a
place in inheritance tax legislation. A third
spedal discrimination peculiar to the inheritance
taxes of the American states was the levy of penal
rates on such part of an estate as had evaded other
state taxes during the lifetime of the deceased.
Such a provision appeared in the Wisconsin tax
of 1899, the Louisiana tax of 1904, the New York
tax of 1917 and the Connecticut tax of 1918. In
every case the penal tax proved administratively
impracticable and was soon dropped.
A unique proposal by the Italian economist
Rignano has recently received much favorable
attention. His suggestion was to levy a supple-
mentary estate tax on such part of an estate as
had been received by the deceased as gift, in-
heritance or bequest during his lifetime, that is,
on the property which had not been accumulated
by him through his own efforts. Rignano 's
underlying idea was frankly socio-ethical rather
than fiscal. His proposed tax would result in
breaking down large fortunes by striking at their
root the transfer intact from generation to
generation of large family properties; levied with
the high rates advocated by Rignano, such a tax
would provide a "painless transition to social-
ism." In the more moderate form suggested by
its American and English proponents it would
be less of a weapon of social revolution and more
of a fiscal expedient. To date no inheritance tax
law has embodied the proposal.
The history of death tax legislation shows a
steady broadening of the scope of the statutes to
block possibilities of evading the tax. Fictitious
debts created in favor of beneficiaries, joint
estates passing by survivorship, testamentary
trusts, provision for excessive remuneration to
executor beneficiaries, deathbed donations and
gifts made prior to and in anticipation of death
have all been brought within the scope of death
tax statutes. Only the last named class of trans-
fers still presents a problem to the death tax
administrator. The federal and state inheritance
tax laws in the United States have sought to cir-
cumvent this form of evasion by providing that
gifts made "in contemplation of death" shall be
taxed as part of the estate transferred at death.
At first the statutes set specific periods, ranging
from six months to six years prior to death,
within which time gifts made by a property
owner would be deemed attempts to avoid the in-
heritance tax and should therefore be taxable as
part of the estate. The American courts have
shattered this arbitrary attack, and at present the
most that tax administrators can claim with re-
gard to such gifts is the presumption that they
were made in anticipation of death. A more di-
rect approach to this problem is the levy of a
gift tax as a supplement to an inheritance tax.
All gifts except deathbed donations are subject
to such a gift tax irrespective of whether they
are made to avoid the inheritance tax or are
innocent of ulterior motive. Gift taxes of this
nature are common in Europe. The American
federal government levied such a tax in 1924,
abolished it two years later and enacted another
gift tax in 1932, with a rate schedule ranging
from | percent to 33^ percent.
Outright evasion of an inheritance tax is diffi-
cult if the tax is administered with reasonable
effectiveness. Administration of the early Ameri-
can state inheritance taxes was usually left to the
probate courts, charged with supervision of the
administration of estates. The indifference of the
officers of these courts to the fiscal duties arbi-
trarily imposed upon them led to the failure of
these early state inheritance taxes. When admin-
istration of the tax was transferred to central
state agencies, evasion of the tax was readily
checked. Administration of inheritance taxes in
the United States and England is facilitated by
the circumstance that the executor or adminis-
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
trator of an estate who is charged with payment
of the tax is an officer of the probate court which
appoints him and is accountable to the court for
his actions. The opportunities for successful
evasion of the tax are so slight and the penalties
which would be incurred by such abuse of the
executor's or administrator's official obligations
are so heavy that there is little incentive to tax
evasion. In the continental countries, where
control over the administration of estates is not
so effective, the fiscal authorities rely to a greater
extent on minute and inquisitorial examination
into the lifetime transactions of the deceased.
It is generally accepted that the inheritance
tax is not shifted. It reduces the shares of
estates received by beneficiaries and heirs, and it
is beyond their power to pass their tax burden to
other economic classes.
It is frequently argued that an inheritance tax
is injurious to economic development because it
destroys capital, diverts it from productive uses
and discourages the incentive for saving, thus
acting as a deterrent to accumulation of capital.
The first argument, sponsored by Ricardo, is
based on the assumption that a tax "measured"
by capital is necessarily paid out of capital
property. This, however, is not the case. Fixed
capital remains unimpaired regardless of the tax
on it at the death of the owner. It is true that the
payment of a high inheritance tax which is in the
nature of a sudden liability may result in forced
liquidation and consequent depreciation of as-
sets. But the loss here is purely individual. What
is lost by the seller is gained by the buyer. From
the social aspect the economic significance of the
property remains unimpaired. Furthermore the
various provisions for the distribution of the tax
over a number of years, in England as many as
eight, and the growing practise of providing for
the payment of the tax through insurance obviate
the necessity for forced and hasty liquidation.
With regard to the effect of inheritance on the
volume of liquid capital available for investment
it must first be determined whether the high tax
rates on inheritance are offset by reductions in
other taxes and if so whether the reductions
apply to that portion of wealth which is likely to
be saved, that is, turned into capital, or to the
part of wealth which is likely to be diverted to
the purchase of consumers' goods. In the former
case the loss in the volume of saving occasioned
by the payment of the inheritance tax will be off-
set by the greater saving capacity of other tax-
payers. In the latter case, which is more frequent
in democratic countries, where the reductions
will apply to taxes of wide incidence, the amounts
so remitted will be applied to current consump-
tion and the payment of the inheritance tax will
undoubtedly constitute a net reduction in the
volume of capital available for private invest-
ment. The final judgment in this instance hinges
on the broader problem of the relative merits of
public expenditure and private investment;
moreover in view of the increasing participation
of governments in productive enterprises the
distinction loses in importance.
The argument concerning the adverse effect
of high inheritance taxes on saving and accumu-
lation is theoretical and devoid of any factual
verification. A priori it can be argued with equal
plausibility that the existence of high tax rates
will stimulate the affectionate parent to greater
accumulation in order to offset the loss which
his estate will sustain from the tax.
At present the inheritance tax may be con-
sidered to have completed the experimental form-
ative stage of its evolution. By scholars and
legislators alike it is accepted as a valid source of
an appreciable quota of tax revenue. Attempts at
intricate graduation and discrimination to effect
non-fiscal designs have been for the most part
abandoned, and the trend of recent years would
seem to be toward ever greater simplicity and
uniformity. The major inheritance tax problem
facing legislators today is that of overlapping tax
jurisdictions and double taxation as between
states and between nations; interstate and in-
ternational reciprocity agreements together
with court decisions in federal countries like
the United States have gone far toward eliminat-
ing the worst features of this abuse.
WILLIAM J. SHULTZ
See: TAXATION; PUBLIC FINANCE; INHERITANCE; SUC-
CESSION, LAWS OF; FORTUNES, PRIVAIE; ACCUMULA-
TION; DOUBLE TAXATION; AUBAINE, DROIT DE.
Consult. Shultz, W. J., The Taxation of Inheritance
(Boston 1926), and American Public Finance and
Taxation (New York 1931) ch. xxxi; Soward, Alfred
W., and William, W. E., The Taxation of Capital
(London 1919); Buchner, R., "Erbschafts- und
Schenkungssteuern" in Handbuch der Finanzwissen-
schaft, ed. by W. Gerloff and F. Meisel, vols. i-iii
(Tubingen 1926-29) vol. ii, p. 310-23; Schanz, G.,
"Erbschaftsstcucr" in Handworterbuch der Staats-
unssensdiaften, 8 vols. (4th ed. Jena 1923-28) vol. lii,
p. 794836, containing a complete bibliography of all
works on death taxation through 1925; Seligman, E.
R. A., "The Inheritance Tax" in Essays in Taxation
(loth ed. New York 1925) ch. v; Schanz, G., "Studien
zur Geschichte und Theorie der Erbschaftssteuer" in
Finanz-Archw, Zeitschnft fur das gesamte Finanz-
tvesen, vol. xvii (1900) 1-62, and vol. xviii (1901) 553-
695; Johnson, Alvin S., "Public Capitalization of the
Inheritance Taxation Initiation
49
Inheritance Tax" in Journal of Political Economy, vol.
xxu (1914) 160-80; Rignano, E., Per una riforma
socialtsta del dintto successono (Bologna 1920), tr. by
W. J. Shultz as The Social Significance of the Inherit-
ance Tax (New York 1924); National Conference on
Inheritance and Estate Taxation, Proceedings, nos i-ii
(New York 1925); Schmeber, Herbert, Die Bcsteue-
rung der Erbschaften in den Einzelstaaten der nord-
amerikanischen Union, Finanzwissenschafthche und
volkswirtschafthche Studien, vol. ix (Jena 1927);
Guggenheim, Paul, L'imposition des successions en
droit international et le probleme de la double imposition
(Geneva 1928). See also bibliography following IN-
HERITANCE.
INITIATION. A systematic ceremonial induc-
tion of adolescent youths into the full participa-
tion,in social life is a practically universal trait of
the peoples of simpler culture. Such practises
represent efforts to rivet the youth securely to
the regnant social order and are devices for the
development of social cohesion. The initiation
rites are prosecuted with special vigor when the
exclusive, personal interests of the group or class
are threatened by exigencies, such as initial con-
tact with alien peoples, migration, depopulation,
threat of complete extinction or absorption into
outside cultures, or the Heimweh provoked by a
novel environment. The ciders under these
stresses try to maintain group consciousness and
custom largely through the extensive emotional
and mental schooling of the manhood ceremo-
nies 'because only in this way can the social herit-
age be perpetuated as a living thing. Thus in
Nyasaland the rite is at present being performed
at an earlier age than formerly so that the youths
can receive tribal instruction before they come
under mission influence.
At puberty physical and emotional changes in
the child become evident, and with this sexual
maturity comes a critical juncture in the social
position of the individual in view of the potential
disturbances which may be effected in the social
order. The threat to the perpetuation of things
as they are produces the need for endowing the
youth with knowledge of his mores and with
sympathy for them and with an understanding of
the responsibilities and rights accompanying
sexual maturity. The initiation signifies not
simply physical but full social adulthood, and the
two do not necessarily converge. Considerations
of a purely cultural nature may determine the
age of initiation, as, for example, in the New
Hebrides and Australia, where the requirement
of an entrance fee results in old men being
initiated along with youths.
The prestige associated with passage through
the manhood ceremonies is such that the person
uninitiated is invested with complete social
obloquy. A child is also in an ignominious posi-
tion until this event. Although socialization is
fundamentally a gradual, cumulative affair, the
accession to social maturity in primitive society
is conceived as climactic and abrupt. The past of
the individual is considered to be cut off and
during the course of initiation an exceptional,
marginal environment is staged in which he is
outside the normal life. In this period, called rite
de passage (to use van Gennep's term), the ordi-
nary cement of society crumbles license, theft,
arson, violence are often allowed. Promiscuous
sexual intercourse is allowed the novices among
the Papuans; even the conversation of the Kaffir
boys may be of a dubious nature to show that
shame no longer exists; moreover they are al-
lowed to rob gardens and kill cattle with impu-
nity. Among the Nandi of East Africa the novices
are given purges and have their heads shaved;
among the Indians of Virginia it was the custom
to give them emetics "whereby remembrance of
the past is obliterated." Among the Xosa of
South Africa clothes, which are a social asset,
are discarded and ordinary speech inverted.
These measures heighten the sense of a break
from the past, which is often reenforced by tak-
ing the neophytes by simulated violence from
the company of the women. A strict regime of
secrecy surrounds the rites, and as the candidate
emerges it is believed that a rebirth has occurred.
In the sociological sense this designation is justi-
fied, since with new costume (including such
tribal mutilations as circumcision) and a new
name the objective evidences of the new person-
ality indicate a complete severance with the fu-
tility of childhood.
Most abiding in the metamorphosis wrought
on the initiate is the strenuous inculcation of the
pattern of sentiments and behavior which, it is
thought, best promotes tribal solidarity and
prosperity. The initiation thus serves as the chief
vehicle to link generations in the transmission of
the culture complex. The individual is now an
active contributor to the food supply, a family
head and a cult participant; he is in intimate as-
sociation with the ancestral glories of his tribe
a complete and full fledged tribesfellow. Of these
various duties food getting is the prime concern.
The series of abstentions, fasts and privations
ceremonially undergone, as, for example, in the
Adaman Islands, is intended to develop the real-
ization that not only the power to obtain food
but also the right to use it without danger is
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
something that one owes to society and that its
bestowal involves acceptance of the correspond-
ing obligation to share the catch or yield with
one's fellows. Other customary outward marks of
affiliation, such as dress, are assumed for the first
time; and the right to other pleasurable activi-
ties, such as smoking and drinking, are conferred.
Usually the primitive educational system is cli-
maxed in the didactic tactics of the initiation:
law, morality, tradition, hygiene and cult hocus
pocus in a varying degree of agglomeration com-
pose the curriculum offered in the initiation bush
or hut.
Through all initiation exercises there is set up
an atmosphere of continuous excitement, novel-
ty and tumult that is intended to enlist the fer-
vent interest of the youth. Put on edge through
ingenious torments, sleeplessness and nerve
racking frights, the candidate becomes keenly
sensitive to the power of his preceptors and
indelible, life long impressions are made. The
technique is illustrated among the Bechuanas,
where the boys in a state of nudity engage in a
dance during which the men of the village pum-
mel them with long, supple wands while asking
them questions such as "Will you guard the
chief well?" "Will you herd the cattle well?" In
this way is enforced the sentiment that success
rests in conformity and power in the hands of
the elders. Those who wince or demur or who
cannot pay the necessary fee are killed or de-
classed for life.
Initiation rites in the more complex, historical
cultures are generally assumed to be functions of
specific institutions or subgroups rather than of
the folk as a unit, largely since the employment
of written language makes possible the use of
more consecutive pedagogical devices of less
spectacular nature. To custodians of the cult
and to professionalized religious groups par-
ticularly pass the functions designed as means
for the transmission of the general power of
social bonds a mystification or abstraction of
the cohesion required to maintain the existing
social order. Active participation in the organ-
ized religions requires passage through the cere-
mony of Communion or confirmation in Chris-
tian churches and that of the bar-mitzvah in tra-
ditional Judaism, ceremonies which have ab-
sorbed much of the solemnity and ritual of pagan
rites. With the greater economic potency of pri-
vate property, chattels, slavery and the like there
arise the invidious interests of the aged, the men
and the professional groups, which can be en-
forced or shared only through the medium of
surrounding entrance rites with an aura of se-
crecy. Thus investiture with the trade and pro-
fessional secrets in the guilds of the Middle Ages
took on the proportions of esoteric ceremony
akin to the magical regeneration crisis occurring
when the neophytes were admitted into the
Greek mystery cults. Many religious and trade
groups adopted the esoteric tradition of puberty
as a protection against penetration or for survival,
since the sacralia are revealed only on this occa-
sion to the initiated. In recent and contemporary
society initiation and entrance ceremonies often
acquire the air of incongruity or buffoonery as
anachronisms in their use by fraternal societies,
clubs, universities, subversive political move-
ments and the like. Yet the common thread es-
sentially characteristic of all types of initiation
lies in the integrative and subordinating tend-
ency of a social group to draw its members into
a workable unity a unity continually threat-
ened by youth or alien.
NATHAN MILLER
See: SOCIAL ORGANIZATION; ADOLESCENCE; EDUCA-
TION, PRIMITIVE; CEREMONY, RITUAL; FASIING;
DANCE, TABU, SECRET SOCILIILS.
Consult. Miller, Nathan, The Cluld in Primitive Sod-
ety (London 1928) ch. x; Goblet d'Alviella, E. F. A.,
"L'initiation, institution sociale, masque et religi-
euse"m Revuede Vhi^toitedcs re!tt>ion<: t vol. lxxxi( 1920)
125; Webster, Hutton, Primitive Secret Societies
(New York 1908), Loeb, E. M., Tribal Initiations and
Secret Societies, Umveisity of California, Publications
in American Archeology and Ethnology, vol xxv, no.
3 (Berkeley 1929), Speiser, Felix, "Uber Initiationen
in Austiahen und Neu-Guinea" in Naturforschende
Gesellschaft, Basel, Verhandlungen, vol xl (1929) 53-
258; Willoughby, II R , Pagan Regeneration (Chicago
1929) chs. vn, x, Hall, G. S , "Initiations into Adoles-
cence" in American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings,
n.s , vol xn (1897-98) 367-400, Reik, T., "Die
Pubertatsriten der Wilden" in Imago, vol. iv (1915
16) 125-44, 189-222.
INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM. The
initiative is a device by which any person or
group of persons may draft a proposed ordi-
nance, law or constitutional amendment and by
securing in its behalf a designated number of
signatures may require that such proposal be
submitted to the voters for their acceptance or
rejection. The referendum, on the other hand, is
an arrangement whereby any measure which has
been passed by a city council or state legislature
may under certain circumstances be withheld
from going into force until the voters have had
an opportunity to render their decision upon it.
Thus the initiative and referendum logically go
together and supplement each other. They were
Initiation Initiative and Referendum
grouped with the recall (q.v.) of public officials
in the movement in the early part of the twen-
tieth century for "more democracy to cure the
ills of democracy. "
The initiative and referendum are by no
means new features in the mechanism of popular
government. All ancient democracy was direct
democracy. In the Greek city-states all legisla-
tion was initiated by the people and authorized
by direct popular vote without the intervention
of representatives. In the cantons of the Swiss
republic the initiative and referendum have had
a virtually continuous history from earliest times
down to the present day. Even in the United
States the initiative and referendum are among
the oldest of native institutions. The initiative,
for example, was given recognition in 1777 in
the first constitution of the state of Georgia,
which bestowed upon the people the exclusive
right to propose constitutional changes. The
referendum was brought into use before the
adoption of the earliest American state constitu-
tions and has been compulsory in the process of
constitutional amendment in practically all states
ever since.
But the use of the initiative and referendum in
the process of ordinary law making is a relatively
modern development in the United States, al-
though sporadic examples may be found in
various states during the latter half of the nine-
teenth century. More particularly the referen-
dum was used as a means of expressing the
direct voice of the people in certain localities on
such matters as bond issues and the sale of in-
toxicating liquors. Not infrequently moreover
state legislatures and city councils referred to
the people some other controversial matters
upon which they could not themselves agree.
Not until the closing years of the nineteenth
century, however, did any American state au-
thorize the use of the initiative and referendum
as regular instruments for the making of ordi-
nary laws. This first step was taken in South
Dakota in 1898; Utah followed in 1900, Oregon
in 1902 and seventeen other states during the
ensuing three decades. Two other states have
adopted the referendum but not the initiative.
The chief reason for the spread of direct legis-
lation in the United States is to be found in the
impatience of the people with the work of their
state legislatures. By reason of the lack of author-
itative leadership, the persistent lobbying on the
part of special interests and the intermittent con-
trol of legislative bodies by political bosses a
great deal of dissatisfaction with the work of
these legislatures developed during the closing
years of the nineteenth century. People came to
the conclusion that by their own direct action
they could hardly do worse and might do better.
Consequently they took into their own hands the
power to make and to reject laws not as a pro-
cedure for everyday use, but merely as a method
to be used when the desired results could not be
had in any other way.
The first step in the exercise of the popular
initiative is the framing of a proposed ordinance,
law or constitutional amendment. This is usually
undertaken by some organization. Then it be-
comes necessary to secure a designated number
of signatures in support of the proposal. From 5
to 8 percent of the qualified voters is the usual
requirement. The petition is then submitted to
some designated public official, who checks the
names and if he finds them sufficient makes out a
certificate to that effect. After this the measure is
placed on the ballot, usually in abbreviated form
or by title, and the voters record their decision
upon it at the next regular election or at a special
election called for the purpose. When a measure
has been adopted by the people in this way it can-
not ordinarily be amended or repealed by any
action of the legislature. Generally speaking, the
referendum follows the same general lines, ex-
cept that the petition merely demands that a par-
ticular measure passed by the legislative body be
submitted to the whole electorate before being
put into effect.
Both initiative and referendum have been
widely used by municipalities and by states,
especially in the western part of the country,
during the past thirty years. Sometimes as many
as thirty questions have been placed on the bal-
lot for decision by the voters at a regular state
election. These proposals have been of every
type, ranging from matters of fundamental pol-
icy to altogether trivial issues, from the levying of
a state income tax down to the length of the
luncheon hour in a city's fire department.
This submission is usually accompanied by a
flood of propaganda on the part of the interested
groups. It was anticipated that individual voters
would study the various questions, make up
their minds and cast their votes accordingly. To
some extent the voters do this, especially when
only a few questions are submitted; but with
twenty or thirty questions on the ballot the great
mass of the voters either follow the advice of
some organization or are influenced by the ad-
vertising campaign. It has been demonstrated
that a sufficiently vigorous publicity campaign
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
52
can usually encompass the adoption or defeat of
any measure in which the people do not feel that
they have a definite interest.
In practise moreover direct legislation has
proved to be lawmaking by a minority. On the
average not more than 80 percent of those regis-
tered vote on election day, and the proportion is
usually much smaller. Moreover many of those
who vote give all their attention to candidates
and do not concern themselves with the questions
on the ballot. Hence measures are sometimes
adopted or defeated at the polls by only 25 or
30 percent of the whole electorate.
The adoption of the initiative and referendum
was urged a quarter of a century ago by the
progressive elements, who took for granted that
if the people were allowed to legislate directly
they would give their assent to progressive meas-
ures. On this basis the conservatives fought the
movement in its early stages, while liberals wel-
comed the initiative and referendum as weapons
with which to curtail the political power of the
vested interests. But direct legislation has not
proved to be revolutionary; on the contrary, it
has been at least of equal value as a bulwark of
conservatism. Voters in American cities and
states have not hesitated to reject proposals for
adopting the single tax or undertaking municipal
ownership of public utilities, for giving pensions
to city employees or imposing progressive in-
come taxes. The use of the initiative and refer-
endum appears to be slowly but steadily lessen-
ing in the United States. This may be a symp-
tom of declining faith in political democracy and
of increasing interest in some form of pluralism.
A part of the same progressive movement and
closely related to the referendum was the demand
for the recall of judicial decisions advocated by
Roosevelt in his campaign of 1912 and adopted
by Colorado in the same year. Under this pro-
posal judicial decisions declaring invalid laws
passed by the state legislature would be sub-
jected to popular vote under conditions similar
to those set forth for the legislative referendum.
If a majority of those voting upheld the law, it
would become valid despite the decision of the
court. The movement made no headway and the
Colorado provision was never invoked.
Outside of the United States the initiative and
referendum have been used most frequently and
effectively in Switzerland. There too, however,
the response of the voters has almost uniformly
been less than in the choice of parliamentary
representatives. The average vote at initiative
and referendum elections has been slightly less
than three fourths of the average vote at elections
for the National Council, although it has on one
occasion gone above the latter average. As in the
United States, the effect of direct legislation has
been slightly conservative.
Direct legislation was accorded a great deal of
favor in the democratic post-war constitutions of
European countries. Germany adopted the ini-
tiative and the referendum for the country as a
whole, the largest political unit to attempt their
use; they were also adopted by the German
Lander. The adoption of direct legislation in the
post-war constitutions was characterized by a
number of innovations. Most interesting of these
were the powers given the president and one
third of the lower house in connection with the
referendum; the use of the referendum to decide
deadlocks between the two houses; the automatic
dissolution of the Estonian Seimas following a
popular vote contrary to the vote of the Seimas
on a particular measure; and the German provi-
sion that an absolute majority of the qualified
voters is needed to carry a referendum proposal
involving constitutional questions and that a
majority of the qualified voters must vote in any
referendum in order to make its results valid.
The complications resulting from these varia-
tions have militated against the practical utility
of the initiative and the referendum. In actual
practise they have been employed to a very slight
extent in these countries, even less than in the
United States.
WILLIAM B. MUNRO
See: DEMOCRACY; LEGISLATION; REPRESENTATION;
LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLIES; MACHINE, POLITICAL; PUB-
LIC OPINION; PROPAGANDA; RECALL; PLEBISCITE.
Consult: For a full list of earlier books, Munro, W. B.,
A Bibliography of Municipal Government in the U rated
States, Harvard University, Publications of the Bu-
reau for Research in Municipal Government, vol. ii
(Cambridge, Mass. 1915) p. 48-56, and New York,
State Library, Legislative Reference Bureau, Bibliog-
raphy of Books and Articles on Initiative, Referendum
and Recall 1912-1924 (Albany 1924); Lowell, A. L.,
Public Opinion and Popular Government (new ed. New
York 1926) chs. xi-xv; Schmitt, Carl, Volksentscheid
und Volksbegehren, Institut fur auslandisches fiffent-
liches Recht und Volkerrecht, Beitrdge, vol. ii (Berlin
1927); Hall, Arnold B., Popular Government (New
York 1921) chs. vi and viii; Bonjour, Felix, La demo-
cratie suisse (Lausanne 1919), tr. by C. L. Leese as
Real Democracy in Operation: the Example of Switzer-
land (London 1920) chs. iv-vn; Brooks, R. C., Civic
Training in Switzerland (Chicago 1930) p. 107-18;
Headlam-Morley, Agnes, The New Democratic Con-
stitutions of Europe (London 1928) ch. viii; Thoma,
Richard, "Referendum in Germany" in Society of
Comparative Legislation and International Law^our-
nal t 3rd sen, vol. x (1928) 55-73.
INJUNCTION. This very effective judicial
order usually commands a party to a suit and if
necessary commands his associates to refrain
from action which the court considers to be
wrongful or a hindrance to the attainment of
justice. Less frequently it commands the per-
formance of acts conducive to justice. Disobedi-
ence to the injunction is contempt of court,
punishable by imprisonment or other severe
penalties. With rare exceptions all questions as to
the issue of the injunction and disobedience
thereof are decided by a court without a jury.
Injunctions originated in the English Court
of Chancery. Requests for them by litigants indi-
cate that they were granted as early as 1400.
Several injunctions are recorded during the
fifteenth century, but the first of which the text
is extant dates from 1483 (i Cal. Ch. cxiii).
The sources from which the chancellor de-
rived the injunction are obscure. Although
several writers have emphasized the resemblance
of its language to the Roman law interdict, the
methods of enforcing the latter were very dif-
ferent and much feebler. Any direct imitation
of the interdict by the chancellors is unproved
and improbable, but the interdict had a remote
influence through its long development in the
canon law. The ecclesiastical interdict forbid-
ding religious services in a particular place offers
a much closer analogy to the injunction. The
canon law recognized other forms of orders for-
bidding specified acts, and since the chancellors
were almost invariably churchmen until the
sixteenth century they would very naturally ap-
ply in civil litigation a type of remedy which had
been found effective in ecclesiastical controver-
sies. A second probable source was the proce-
dure of the common law courts. For nearly two
centuries before the earliest indication of in-
junctions in Chancery the writ of prohibition
had issued against waste injuries to land by
tenants. This writ sometimes differed from the
injunction in that the order was directed not to
the defendant but to the sheriff, who could take
a posse comitatus and stop the waste. Many other
types of wrongs were subject to prohibitions
and subsequently, like waste, to injunctions. A
third probable source lay in other proceedings in
Chancery itself. For instance, subpoenas issued
at the start of an equity suit commanded the de-
fendant under a penalty to appear and answer
the bill. It was only a step to impose a penalty
for failure to obey some other command of the
chancellor during the course of the suit. It is
significant that injunctions apparently began
Injunction 53
about thirty years after the earliest subpoenas.
The early chancellors were bound to no rigid
and settled procedure. They were looking about
for any remedy that might prove effective. This
experimental attitude is illustrated by a Chan-
cery suit about 1400 (Selden Society Publica-
tions, vol. x, Sel. Cas. in Ch., no. 70) asking for
a writ directed to the sheriff and justices of the
peace commanding them to order the defend-
ants to allow the plaintiff to occupy his land
without disturbance a counterpart of the com-
mon law writ of prohibition. In another suit the
chancellor might dispense with the officials as
intermediaries and address the writ to the de-
fendants themselves a true injunction. This
makes it even clearer that the injunction was a
natural development of methods of enforcing
obedience which were in use in England in the
fourteenth century.
The subsequent history of the injunction is
bound up with the general history of equity. As
the equitable jurisdiction of Chancery spread
over new fields, the scope of the injunction cor-
respondingly widened, for it was one of the most
powerful weapons for carrying out the chancel-
lor's determination of rights. Resort to the in-
junction was also stimulated by the gradual dis-
appearance of prohibitions and other preventive
common law remedies which proved unsuited to
the mechanism of trial by jury. Until 1700 in-
junctions were likely to be used for two main
purposes. First, they protected interests in land,
then the chief form of property, although some
cases involved chattels like title deeds, jewelry
and heirlooms. Secondly, legal proceedings or
judgments founded on unjust grounds were fre-
quently enjoined by the chancellor, who thus
corrected the defects of the common law courts,
a practise which aroused the resentment of the
law judges and culminated in the famous contro-
versy between Coke and Ellesmere. Thenceforth
if the rules of equity conflicted with those of the
common law, the injunction enabled the rules of
equity to prevail. The growth of business in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries led to new
types of private wrongs for which the injunction
was needed. It was also employed against public
nuisances as urban congestion rendered these
more numerous and more injurious. With the
disappearance of separate courts of equity in
England and most of the United States and the
consolidation of legal and equitable powers in
the same courts, all trial judges (except those in
petty courts) acquired the power to grant in-
junctions. But the constitutional guaranty of a
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
54
jury trial does not apply to injunction proceed-
ings, for it was not customary in equity courts
when the constitutions were adopted.
Injunctions are classified chronologically into
ex parte restraining orders, temporary injunc-
tions and permanent injunctions. These may be
conveniently discussed in reverse order. Perma-
nent injunctions are granted at the end of a suit
after both sides have fully presented their evi-
dence and the case has been decided on the
merits. Temporary (or interlocutory) injunctions
are granted during the course of the suit and
framed to prevent acts which might prejudice its
final results. Sometimes such injunctions are said
to preserve the status quo, but this does not
necessarily mean the maintenance of the existing
situation without change. The phrase merely de-
scribes the situation which the court thinks it
just to maintain until the merits have been de-
cided. Temporary injunctions are issued after
notice to the defendant and a brief opportunity
for both sides to present evidence and argu-
ments, but without the fulness required for
permanent injunctions. They may also be dis-
solved before the final decree if the defendant
shows that they were improperly issued or have
become undesirable. The plantiff is frequently
required as a condition of temporary relief to
give bond. Ex parte restraining orders resemble
temporary injunctions and are frequently called
by the same name; but they are issued at the out-
set of a suit on the basis of proof presented by the
plantiff alone in the form of affidavits or oral
testimony, without any chance for the defendant
to be heard or to cross examine. This drastic
remedy should be given only on a showing of
great urgency, and the defendant should be af-
forded an early opportunity to attempt to vacate
or modify the order.
Injunctions are also classified according to
their form, as prohibitory (negative) and manda-
tory (affirmative). Since the very numerous
simple affirmative orders to sign deeds, pay
money and the like are not called injunctions,
the term mandatory injunction is applied only
to orders for the performance of more complex
or unusual acts, and such orders are much less
frequent than prohibitory injunctions. A cen-
tury ago mandatory injunctions were theoreti-
cally regarded as improper, although they had
been granted in several early cases. Defendants,
however, were in effect required to perform af-
firmative acts through the ingenious but not in-
genuous method of negative language forbidding
them to allow the existing situation to continue.
Thus if a defendant had wrongfully cut a door-
way in the plaintiff's brick wall, the court would
enjoin him from permitting the opening to re-
main. The English judges have now repudiated
these roundabout methods. During the nine-
teenth century courts were especially hostile to
mandatory injunctions ordering the construction
of a building, the operation of a railroad and
other detailed or prolonged activities, but they
are now increasingly ready to regard such ob-
jections as merely a factor to be weighed against
the hardship upon the plaintiff if left to his ac-
tion for damages. As Judge Hough has said,
"The tendency of the times is to 'take on' harder
and longer jobs" [Kearns-Gorsuch Bottle Co. v.
Hartford-Fairmont Co., i Fed. ,2nd, 3 18(1921)].
Mandatory injunctions are usually permartent,
because it would be harsh in most cases to make
a defendant perform elaborate and expensive
acts to which the plaintiff may prove in the end
not to be entitled.
The definiteness of injunctions varies greatly
with different judges. Some use general terms,
such as forbidding any acts which operate "to
the injury of the plaintiff" or "render his
premises unfit for use and enjoyment as a resi-
dence by reasonable and normal persons." The
defendant is thus left to ascertain for himself
"how near he may with safety drive to the edge
of the precipice, and whether it be not better for
him to keep as far from it as possible" [Charles
E. Hires Co. v. Consumers' Co., 100 Fed. 809
(1900)] . A preferable view is that an injunction is
analogous to a criminal statute and ought to be
equally definite and clear in its terms; when
practicable it should discriminate carefully be-
tween the acts which are lawful for the defend-
ant and those which are unlawful [Collins v.
Wayne Iron Works, 227 Pa. 326 (1910)]. An un-
learned man should be able to understand it
without employing counsel. Flexible decrees
may also be framed directing the use of remedial
devices with the hope that they will end the in-
jury and at the same time avoid the necessity of
closing down the defendant's business until he
has had an opportunity for installing and testing
such devices. Meanwhile the case can be kept
open for further action after the results of ex-
perimentation have been ascertained. Unlike a
judgment for damages, which is necessarily
simple and final, an injunction can contain many
qualifications adapted to the facts and can be
modified from time to time if changes are made
desirable by new evidence or new conditions.
This flexibility renders the injunction an ad-
mirable instrument for judicial handling of the
complexities of modern life.
Injunctions are applied in a great variety of
well settled situations. In connection with the
specific performance (q v.) of contracts both
mandatory and prohibitory injunctions may be
issued. The commonest use is against torts in-
juring real and personal property and various in-
tangible business rights. A threatened or existing
wrong will ordinarily be enjoined if the legal
remedy (an action for damages) is inadequate.
For instance, the defendant threatens to destroy
a grove of oaks, which no money damages could
replace. The prevention of "irreparable injury"
is sometimes stated to be an indispensable requi-
site for injunctions, but this is true only if the
phrase is understood in a loose sense to include
situations where the legal remedy is inadequate
for other reasons besides the impossibility of
physical replacement. Thus an injunction may
be granted when the defendant is insolvent, so
that a judgment at law would be worthless; or
when the extent of the prospective injury to the
plaintiff's business could not be accurately meas-
ured by a jury; or when the defendant threatens
a long series of wrongs which would lead to a
vexatious multiplicity of suits. Likewise in
many cases not involving torts the injunction
may be used to obtain joinder of causes of action
growing out of the same transaction.
Cfther acts enjoined include breaches of trust,
improper foreclosures and judicial sales, the
exercise of eminent domain powers before com-
pensation to the owner is paid or secured and (in
some states) the enforcement of illegal taxes.
Partners can enjoin improper uses of the firm
property; stockholders sometimes have a similar
remedy against waste of the corporate assets and
other wrongful acts by officers and directors;
taxpayers can prevent the unlawful expenditure
of public money.
The frequent assertion that injunctions will
not issue to protect interests of personality, like
reputation or freedom from bodily restraints and
mental annoyances, rests on no principle of jus-
tice. Indeed the injunction is much better
adapted than the jury action for damages to deal
satisfactorily with some subtle injuries, such as a
series of insulting letters persistently sent to a
nervous person. Recent courts have been in-
creasingly willing to enjoin wrongs to personality.
Each type of such injuries, however, presents
special considerations which ought to make a
judge cautious in granting relief. For instance, it
is doubtful whether an injunction can practically
Injunction 55
succeed in terminating the illicit association of a
plaintiff's wife or daughter with her paramour.
Again, improper expulsions of members of
clubs, churches and other associations injure the
member's personal enjoyment and standing in
the community; but indiscriminate judicial in-
terference by injunction or mandamus (q-v.)
with the internal affairs of these associations
may cause objectionable results.
The desirability of the injunction for dealing
with numerous civil wrongs is generally recog-
nized, but serious doubts have been aroused by
its rapidly extending use in the United States
for two other purposes checking activities
which might be prosecuted criminally and up-
setting administrative orders and decisions.
Since the 1890*8 the injunction has been in-
creasingly employed in the United States as a
substitute for criminal proceedings. The situa-
tion recalls the Wars of the Roses, when crim-
inals were brought to justice in Chancery be-
cause the law courts were helpless to cope with
the widespread disorders of the time and judges
and juries were cowed or corrupted by powerful
offenders. But since 1500 crimes as such have
had to be established in the criminal courts,
where the accused has a right to trial by jury.
However, additional factors of an equitable na-
ture might bring some criminal acts within the
scope of injunctive relief. For example, a
threatened criminal act might also be a private
wrong which would cause irreparable injury to
property; then the owner could enjoin the act
regardless of its criminal aspects. This principle,
occasionally used for centuries, has become very
important within the last few decades, because
upon it rests the frequent issue of labor injunc-
tions (q.v.\
Another long established principle allowed the
attorney general or other official to enjoin as well
as prosecute public nuisances, like a highway ob-
struction, a chemical factory spreading poison-
ous fumes and other structures which consti-
tuted a source of continuing injury to the public
health and convenience. This power has like-
wise been much enlarged of late through legisla-
tion or judicial decisions bringing many addi-
tional crimes under the head of public nuisances.
Prosecutors have used the injunction to break up
prize fights, gambling dens, red light districts
and illegal saloons. The Volstead Act and other
statutes against liquor selling authorize "pad-
lock injunctions." Many vice and liquor laws
allow these injunctions to be obtained by a group
of neighboring taxpayers when the district at-
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
torney takes no action because he is too busy or
lazy or he is too tolerant or friendly to the
lawbreakers.
How far can criminal acts be removed from
the constitutional guaranty of a jury trial by the
simple process of labeling them publ ic nuisances ?
Conservative judges and writers would limit the
extension to crimes which roughly resemble the
older types of such nuisances and they insist
that the so-called nuisance must possess a local
habitation of some permanence, from which dis-
orders and public annoyances radiate and which
can serve as the focus of the attack by the in-
junction. A more radical view dispenses with
these requisites and allows the public prosecu-
tor to enjoin unlocalized groups of persons from
continuing alleged illegal activities, such as
large strikes or criminal syndicalism. An occa-
sional syndicalism statute, as in New Hamp-
shire, expressly authorizes such injunctions; but
Kansas and California judges have endeavored
to break up the Industrial Workers of the World
by blanket injunctions without any legislative
sanction other than the statutory creation of this
new crime.
This resort by public officials to the injunction
to stop illegal establishments and revolutionary
organizations is defended on several grounds.
Public safety is then much more surely and
rapidly maintained than by criminal proceedings.
The police will not arrest for some of these of-
fenses, and juries will not convict. In any case a
jury trial means delay, and the grand jury where
still required adds another burden. In a criminal
trial the defendant's guilt must be proved be-
yond a reasonable doubt, while a padlock in-
junction or a jail sentence for contempt can be
obtained on a bare preponderance of the evi-
dence. Furthermore a prosecution cannot be
brought until a crime has been committed, while
an injunction can often forestall the offense and
thus prevent any injury to the public. Finally, an
injunction is sometimes more humane to de-
fendants. If successfully prosecuted they will be
punished for acts which perhaps they thought
legal, whereas an injunction gets rid of the ob-
jectionable establishment without punishing in-
dividuals, so long as they obey the court order.
An injunction tells the defendant exactly what
he must not do and so serves as a much fairer
warning than a general criminal statute, which
men sometimes disobey without knowing it.
This partial absence of the punitive element
avoids the vindictive atmosphere surrounding a
criminal trial and makes it easier to obtain a de-
cision in the state's favor. In short, injunctions
are much more efficient than prosecutions.
These frequent public injunctions, however,
against acts which were formerly prosecuted
criminally raise grave objections. The accused is
deprived of trial by jury and of all the normal
safeguards of the criminal law. Even if the de-
fendants are in fact lawbreakers, the community
may gain less from the increased efficiency of the
injunction than it loses from the resentment
caused. The responsibility in criminal prosecu-
tions is shared by the jury, but in these injunc-
tion suits it falls entirely upon the judge. The
turning of equity judges into superpolicemen
creates the risk of arousing a hostility which may
eventually lead to drastic restrictions upon t}ieir
powers, even over matters where equitable relief
is badly needed for the accomplishment of jus-
tice. The breakdown of the criminal law in the
United States is the real reason for the increasing
use of the injunction against criminal activities.
It would certainly be better to reorganize the ad-
ministration of criminal justice than to continue
to rely upon this substitute.
The injunction is also much used in the
United States against the administrative acts of
public officials, such as the collection of taxes,
the regulation of business and the fixing of rates
by public utility commissions. This injunctive
relief is especially important when the constitu-
tionality of the statutes under which the officials
are acting is questioned. Although the plaintiff
must allege the existence of some normal ground
for equitable jurisdiction, such as multiplicity of
suits or the probability of irreparable injury, the
courts do not scrutinize these grounds closely.
The real purpose of the injunction is to obtain a
judicial review of the administrative order; and
in some jurisdictions for instance, the federal
courts it has become the regular method of ac-
complishing this result, which may be attained
elsewhere by an entirely different procedure, like
certiorari in New York. The injunction has the
advantage of raising questions of the validity of
administrative action at an early date, but it is
absurd for one branch of the government to be
trying to do something while another branch is
exerting itself to prevent it. The process is like
putting on the brake while the accelerator is
pressed down. Additional objections arise when
lower federal courts block state administrative
bodies by this summary method, which although
desired by plaintiffs may not be the wisest way of
adjusting delicate conflicts between different
parts of the federal system. Because of the readi-
Injunction Innocent III
ness with which single United States judges en-
joined orders of the Interstate Commerce Com-
mission or state commissions on constitutional
grounds, a series of acts of Congress required
three federal judges to participate in such action
and imposed other restrictions (U. S. Code, tit.
28, sects. 47, 380). Perhaps a more straightfor-
ward method than the injunction for the judicial
review of administrative decisions would be de-
sirable in both state and federal courts.
The modern law of continental Europe has no
precise counterpart to the injunction. Its work is
performed by several different remedies. Un-
lawful acts are prevented by administrative
orders and police action more than in the United
Stages. The civil tribunals, which recognize no
distinction between law and equity, enforce
their judgments whenever possible by execution
in natura, by which through the aid of officers
comparable to sheriffs the plaintiff gets the very
thing to which he is legally entitled instead of
a money substitute, as in Anglo-American actions
at law. A similar remedy in Anglo-American
courts would often render injunctions needless.
Interlocutory relief is less common than in
Anglo-American law but can be obtained
through attachment and other forms of sum-
mary procedure when speed is necessary. Since
administrative decisions cannot be reviewed in
the civil courts but only in administrative courts,
anyrfiing resembling the injunction against of-
ficial acts is naturally impossible.
ZECHARIAH CHAFEE, JR.
See: EQUITY; LABOR INJUNCTION; WRITS, LEGAL;
CONTEMPT OF COURT; JURY SYSTFM; CRIMINAL LAW;
PROCEDURE, LEGAL; DAMAGES; SPECIFIC PERI-ORMANCI-;
NUISANCES; MANDAMUS.
Consult: Select Cases in Chancery A.D. 1364 to 1471,
ed. by W. P. Baildon, Selden Society Publications,
vol. x (London 1896), Great Britain, Record Com-
mission, Calendars of the Proceedings in Chancery, 3
vols. (London 1827-32) vol. i; High, J. L., A Treatise
on the Law of Injunctions, 2 vols. (4th ed. Chicago
1905); Spelling, T. C., A Treatise on Injunctions and
Other Extraordinary Remedies, 2 vols. (2nd ed. Boston
1901); Pomeroy, J. N., A Treatise on Equity Jurispru-
dence, 6 vols. (4th ed. by J. N. Pomeroy, Jr., San
Francisco 1918-19) vols. iv-v; Martin, W. A., "In-
junctions" in Corpus juris, vol. xxxii (New York 1923)
1-51; "Injunctions" in Ruling Case Law, vol. xiv
(1916) 298-489; Klein, Jacob, "Mandatory Injunc-
tions" in Harvard Law Review, vol. xii (1898-99) 95-
1 1 8; Durfee, E. N., "Nebulous Injunctions" m Michi-
gan Law Review, vol. xix (1920-21) 83-86, and vol.
xxiii (1924-25) 53-56; Chafee, Zechariah, Jr., Cases
on Equitable Relief against Torts (Cambridge, Mass.
1924), The Inquiring Mind (New York 1928), and
"The Internal Affairs of Associations Not for Profit"
in Harvard Law Review, vol. xliii (1929-30) 993-1029;
57
Pound, Roscoe, Cases on Equitable Relief against Defa-
mation and Injuries to Personality (2nd ed. Cambridge,
Mass. 1930), and "Equitable Relief against Defama-
tion and Injuries to Personality" in Harvard Law
Review, vol. xxix (1915-16) 640-82, Caldwell, Har-
mon, "Injunctions against Crime" in Illinois Law
Review, vol. xxvi (1931-32) 250-81; Freund, Ernst,
Administrative Powers over Persons and Property (Chi-
cago 1928); Isseks, S. S., "Jurisdiction of the Lower
Federal Courts to Enjoin Unauthorized Action of
State Officials" in Harvard Law Review, vol. xl (1926-
27) 969-88; Pogue, Welch, "State Determination of
State Law and the Judicial Code" in Harvard Law
Review, vol. xh (1927-28) 623-42; "The Three Judge
Rule" in Yale Law Journal, vol. xxxviii (1928-29)
955-65; Lockwood, John E , and others, "The Use
of the Federal Injunction m Constitutional Litiga-
tion" in Harvard Law Review, vol. xhu (1929-30)
426-57. For continental law, see Neitzel, Walter,
'Specific Performance, Injunctions, and Damages in
the German Law" in Harvard Law Review, vol. xxii
(1908-09) i6r-8i, Huston, C. A., The Enforcement of
Decrees in Equity (Cambridge, Mass. 1915) ch. in,
and latest editions of continental books cited therein.
See also the bibliography following the article EQUITY.
INLAND WATERWAYS. See WATERWAYS,
INLAND.
INNOCENTIII(LothardeiConti)(n6i-i2i6),
pope from 1198. Innocent's activities as pope
were largely concerned with the two problems of
reviving and propagating the orthodox faith and
firmly establishing the political power of the
papacy. In connection with the first, his pontifi-
cate is famous for the Albigensian crusade, which
he finally launched in 1207 as a last resort to ex-
tinguish that heresy; and for the fourth crusade
to the East, which, after he had failed to divert it
from Zara and Constantinople, brought him the
glory as well as the responsibility of establishing
the Latin rite in the western portion of the
Eastern Empire. His management of the second
problem marks one of the high points of papal
influence over secular powers. The death of the
Holy Roman emperor Henry vi in 1 197 and the
reaction against Henry's lieutenants in Italy
allowed Innocent to assume shortly after his
elevation a commanding position both in Ger-
many, where the recognition of the future em-
peror depended upon his support, and in south-
ern Italy and Sicily, where Henry's wife, Con-
stance, became his vassal in order to secure pro-
tection for her son, the future Frederick n. In
the matter of the vacant empire Innocent decided
for reasons ultimately dictated by fear of the
Hohenstaufens to support the Guelph candidate,
Otto iv, against the two Hohenstaufens Philip
of Swabia and Frederick. The reasons for his
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
decision he gave in his famous Deliberatio upon
the courses open to him. In so intervening he
provided the first legal basis for the papal right
to confirm imperial elections, founding this right
on the original transference of the empire by the
papacy from the Greeks to the Germans. At the
same time the eviction of the German governors
from central Italy and Otto's oath never to unite
central Italy with Sicily enabled Innocent to ex-
tend the Papal States to their widest boundaries.
After 1204 he was complete master of Rome. lie
exercised feudal sovereignty over Portugal, over
Aragon and, after he had broken down John's
opposition, over England. He attached the Bul-
garo-Wallachian kingdom to the Holy See. He
intervened drastically in the aft'airs of the Scandi-
navian kingdom to support the local church re-
formers against King Sverre. With Philip
Augustus of France he was never fully successful.
In the face of the pope's exhortations and fulmi-
nations Philip refused for years to enter into con-
jugal relations with his lawful wife, Ingeborg.
His great triumph came when the perfidy of the
Guelph Otto iv forced Innocent to admit the
correctness of Philip's view that Guelph domi-
nation in Germany was dangerous. Innocent had
to excommunicate Otto and to secure his deposi-
tion by the princes and the election of the young
Frederick as emperor. To end the trouble he had
to organize Europe against the party which he
had originally supported and to form a coalition
with the Hohenstaufens and the French, which
defeated Otto and his ally, King John, at
Bouvines in 1214.
In the realm of political ideas Innocent in
with his high yet cautious claims stands midway
between Gregory vn and Boniface vin. Chris-
tendom, he maintained, was not only a moral
unity but a visible, concrete world state under
clerical guidance; although it was governed by
territorial rulers, yet each part and the whole
must recognize the supremacy of the Roman See
and the plenitude of power held by Peter's suc-
cessor, the representative of Christ. But when
he came to intervene in temporal matters Inno-
cent cautiously limited himself to moral issues.
He declared that he had no intention to pass
judgment in matters of feudal custom (judicare
defeodo) but only to decide cases of moral guilt
(decernere de peccato), since it was his duty to
snatch every Christian soul from mortal sin.
His views on the relations between the civil and
religious powers he further expressed in his de-
cretal letter Per venerabilem, addressed to the
Count of Montpellier. No mediaeval pope has
had so strong a sense of responsibility for the
moral welfare of Christendom. As a canonist he
is of vital importance for his definition and classi-
fication of existing rules. His court formed a
school of instruction for Christendom. In mat-
ters of detail his chief concern was for the purity
of elections; for the integrity, discipline and edu-
cational standards of the clergy; for the conser-
vation of church property; and for the unity of
the faith on the basis of a dogma at once flexible
and cautious. These matters were definitely pro-
vided for by the Latcran Council of 1 2 1 5 . As an
administrator Innocent made important contri-
butions to the organization of the papal chancery
and to the development of the cursus. He also
laid down rules for the detection of forgery. His
pontificate saw a prodigious increase of the judi-
cial and administrative business that came to the
Holy See. He maintained touch with the various
parts of Christendom through the system of
legates so largely employed by Gregory vn. In
contrast with the latter pontiff Innocent ranks as
a diplomat and a business man rather than as a
saint. But like the greatest administrators he
never set the means before the goal. The asser-
tion of the plenitude of power was for him an
avenue to the salvation of souls an end with
which, as his letters and sermons show, he was
constantly preoccupied.
E. F. JACOB
Works: Opera onima in J. P. Migne's Patrologta latina,
vols. ccxiv-ccxvii (Pans 1855).
Consult: Binns, I,. E, Innocent in (London 1931);
Jacob, E. F , "Innocent in," and Poolc, A L , "Philip
of Swabia and Otto iv" in Cambridge Medieval His-
tory, vol. vi (Cambridge, Eng. 1929) chs. i-n;
Luchaire, Achille, Innocent in, 6 vols. (Pans 1906-
08), Serafim, A , Innocenzo me la rcforma religiosa
aglt imzi del secolo xm (Rome 1917); Meyer, E. W ,
Staatstheonen Papst Jnnocenz in., Jenaer histonsche
Arbeiten, vol. ix (Bonn 1919), Hauck, A., Dcr Gedanke
der papsthchen Weltherrschaft bis auf Bomfaz vm.
(Leipsic 1904); Ilaller, Johannes, "Innoccnz ill. und
Otto iv." m Papsttum und Kaisertum, ed. by Albert
Brackmann (Munich 1926) p. 475-507; Gutschow,
Else, Innozenz m. und England, Histonsche Biblio-
thek, vol. xvin (Munich 1904), Poole, R. L., Lectures
on the History of the Papal Chancery (Cambridge, Eng.
1915), Tangl, M , "Die Dehberatio Innocenz m." in
Akademie dcr Wissenschaften, Sitsungsberichte (1919)
p. 1012-28; Mohtor, Wilhelm, Die Decretale Per
Venerabilem von Innocenz in. (Munster 1876); Car-
lyle, R. W. and A. J., A History of Mediaeval Political
Theory in the West, vol. v (Edinburgh 1928) pt. ii,
chs. iii.
INNOVATION. The changes or novelties of
rites, techniques, customs, manners and mores
which constitute innovation are usually thought
Innocent III Innovation
59
of as purposive. The actualities of the social
process, however, do not validate this connota-
tion. The attribution of intent is always retro-
spective. But the causes of innovation are too
complex to be covered by merely personal intent.
In so far as human existence is a process and not
sheer repetition, the rise, the forms, the life
cycles and the influence of innovations arc the
vital theme of history and the social sciences.
Innovation includes in its range the transforma-
tions in food, clothing, shelter, defense against
enemies and disease, tools and technologies of
production and consumption, forms of play and
sport, rituals and liturgies of religion, precedents
of law, inventions in science and thought, styles
and attitudes in literature and the arts. Every so-
cial institution is a field of innovation, no matter
how conservative its intent and how standardized
its techniques and procedures. The limit to in-
novation comes only at the point where the iden-
tity of an establishment itself is menaced.
Within this limit innovations may be numer-
ous and rapid: the very individuality of the insti-
tution may consist in them. This is the case
among the various divisions of science. The es-
sential of each of these is the process of deliber-
ate innovation which goes by the name of scien-
tific method. Scientific method is simply another
name for the gathering, testing and applying of
innovations. How these innovations arc reached
is iiKlifferent. Every innovation involves a certain
contingency, a dimension of chance and luck;
every innovation also begins as focal to some
particular individual or very small group. Once
a "scientific" mind has become aware of it, it is
developed formally and tested experimentally,
given its chance to succeed or fail. The work of
breeders of animals, legumes, fruits; the inven-
tion and elaboration of machines; the transfor-
mations of the art of medicine in the last fifty
years, in so far as these have anything deliberate
in them, all rest on the presumption and use of
scientific method. This is postulated wherever
innovation is both deliberate and follows the
gradients of social change. Where innovation is
incongruous with those it must either struggle
for its survival, establishing itself by means of a
process of give and take with its environment, or
be imposed by force majeure, as when after a
revolution or a war the victor imposes upon the
defeated a new way of doing or thinking.
Innovation may be slow or rapid, manifold or
simple, but it is ineluctable. In a sense the mere
lapse of time is innovating. Aging takes place in
institutions and societies no less than in woods
and wines. This autogenous transformation
through invariant repetition seems, however,
never to occur in isolation. It is crossed and
modified by other processes which add novelties
a priori. Such are inventions, wars, crises and
catastrophes, migrations, exhaustion of ma-
terials, exhaustion of interest (i.e. boredom).
Boredom is a psychic force of innovation which
deserves more attention than it has received. The
revulsion which it generates and the subsequent
searching and seeking are no small part of the
dynamics of fashion, gaming, sport, crusades,
exploration, scientific investigations and the like.
All these involve contacts with changing en-
vironments, natural and human, osmosis or more
violent impacts of cultures and consequent in-
novations.
The optimal conditions for innovation are a
certain flexibility and readiness in the organic
pattern of a society itself. These develop as a rule
more easily in new societies, where a fresh start
is being made; they develop also during a crisis
such as a war, a profound business depression, a
natural catastrophe or a revolution. At such times
playing upon a ground of fear and uncertainty
there is a feeling of the significance of the social
adventure. Novelties are invited, projected and
perhaps installed and domesticated; experiments
arc made and change may become a standard of
public policy. Such was the case in Athens from
the Persian wars through the Pcloponnesian War
and in the United States while the frontier
lasted; it is now the case in Soviet Russia. Where
custom coheres too firmly and authority is un-
shaken, the situation is reversed. In primitive
societies the new way must be assimilated to the
ways of the fathers before it can be accepted.
Theocracies require that it shall confirm before
it can be confirmed by the divine authority
which they wield. Military or bureaucratic es-
tablishments reject it if it does not conform to
the customary patterns and rituals of conduct.
So does the institution of the law. In all these
cases the variant is seen as a disorderly interrup-
tion of set routine and therefore a priori a heresy,
a sedition and a danger. If its import is acknowl-
edged and it is adopted it is usually denatured of
all qualities inharmonious with the established
procedure. Apparently only a crisis, the feeling
of danger at hand, can transform this habitual
inertia into a readiness to try new tools and ways.
Thus the range and degree of international co-
operation between the Allies during the World
War, especially during 1917-18, have never
been reached since and are being denounced in
6o
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
peace by the very innovators who developed
this cooperation during the war. Now in 1932
the whole world suffers because of the absence
of this cooperation, which inherently would be
far more competent in peace than in war. But
now that the war crisis is over, the "elder states-
men" have relapsed into the elder ways. The
peace crisis is insufficient to raise them out; and
international cooperation, which goes inevitably
with the diffusion of the industrial economy, is
being held back by traditionalists in power
anxious about the status quo of their rights and
privileges. Should the crisis become profound
enough, the innovation will be sped and facili-
tated.
Innovators are not necessarily rebels and the
temper of innovation is not by any means the
temper of revolt. Novelties, spontaneous devia-
tions of the same energy, continually pour from
the main stream of custom and convention.
Thus the industrial revolution in England, the
growth and diffusion of the factory system in the
United States, in Germany and in Japan, took
place mainly in the context of the old mores and
on the initiative and by the effort of persons who
were on the whole champions of those mores.
Now the mores are being transformed and dis-
placed by what they allowed. Again, the impact
of photography and the theory of color vision on
the painter's art constituted a fecundation of
method and a diversion of ideals. The impres-
sionists began by affirming the novelty and were
forced into a defensive denying of the tradition.
So-called modern movements are innovations
only because of reaction against the innovation
which photography itself represented. The intent
of the post-impressionist schools was conserva-
tive; their achievements were innovations.
Nevertheless, innovators are forced into a
combative position. For their novelties enter a
social organization most of whose establishments
are going concerns, and enter as competitors and
deprecators of one or another. If they succeed in
establishing themselves they become embodied
in the organic flow of the mores. They cause that
flow to deviate to a slightly different gradient de-
finable by what they represent. This is what the
city life of the Renaissance did to Christian so-
ciety in Europe, what the fusion of the scientific
with the technological attitude did to the eight-
eenth century mind and what the industrial sys-
tem is doing to contemporary civilization. Of
course there are programs of innovation whose
dynamic is a reaction against the established
order. Such programs sometimes function as
precipitates of deep lying emotions which are
not disturbing enough to change the social order
but do nourish a formulated opposition to it.
The opposition becomes organized into cults and
movements whose rituals and programs then
identify it as a sort of antibody in the social
organism. So Methodism grew to maturity in the
Episcopal milieu of England. The single tax
movement in the United States is such a devel-
opment, and such also are cults of diet (like
vegetarianism), of dress (like nudism), of health
and of other goods of life. They arise as variants
and survive as orderly antagonists within the
nexus of the social process.
Since all innovations animate readjustments
in the distribution and organization of social
forces they automatically evoke the antagonism
of those who are disturbed. If the antagonism is
pervasive and deep, the innovation perforce
lapses. If, however, it satisfies a want or nullifies
an annoyance, however illusorily, it gathers a
following. If the following comes from any top
stratum of the community, from the prestige
carriers, the innovation may win a great deal of
superficial favor without modifying the basic
social processes. It may become fashionable, like
Christmas trees among Jews; like the consump-
tion of yeast, liver, tomato juice and other diet-
ary nostrums; like the recession of the corset and
the spread of nudism; like the cult of patriotism
and militarism among women claiming descent
from revolutionary fathers. The scope and dura-
tion of the fashion vary with the amount of ef-
fort that the adoption of the novelty is likely to
cost; the effort must not be very great in any
event. If the innovation is relevant to deep lying
discontents or to feelings of insecurity, then it
may change the direction of an institutional
process and break the fashional cycle altogether.
Thus emulative realization of western attitudes
and standards has the effect of displacing hara-
kiri as a social procedure in Japan and face sav-
ing suicide in China; it has unveiled the women
of Turkey and unbound Chinese ladies' feet; it
has created the nationalisms of the Asiatic
peoples and is profoundly transforming the pat-
tern and goal of their civilizations.
Innovations are mostly resisted out of motives
of self-interest and fear. The new is quite usually
synonymous with the unreasonable, the danger-
ous, the impossible. As William James pointed
out long ago, rationality is a sentiment in which
the feeling of familiarity is fused with that of
congruity with our fundamental hopes and de-
sires. Sometimes mere familiarity may become
Innovation Inquisition
identical with this congruity. Thus people resist
changing their dietary habits in spite of the fact
that this change is required by health, the social
setting or religion; there are freethinking Jews
who get indigestion at the very thought of pork
and "liberated" Hindus who arc upset by the
idea of meat. Between love of food and love of
God or country the difference is in degree, not
in kind. All involve clinging to the habitual, fa-
miliar and secure. When that is felt to be men-
aced, the opposition to innovation becomes
fanatical, as may be observed in the attitude of
so-called patriotic societies in the United States
toward "socialism" and "Bolshevism." One of
the most curious of phenomena is met when the
proponents of an innovation that has reached the
point of toleration turn upon those who propose
a more extreme innovation in the same direction,
as is often the case with the socialists and the
communists. All these attitudes rest funda-
mentally on a sentiment combining fear and in-
security. But they become rationalized as "loy-
alty to the principles of the fathers," "rugged
individualism," "you can't change human na-
ture," and the rationalizations are elaborated
into philosophic systems demonstrating the fore-
gone conclusion. Such are the various philoso-
phies of racial supremacy, cultural superiority
and the like. Where innovations have finally
established themselves and compel recognition
they are assimilated to the old order or the old
order is assimilated to them by means of some
formula. Thus in the United States "trusts"
were feared at their origin and laws were passed
to constrain them. But they developed into the
dominant controls of the economic process; the
established order has to count with them and
acquiesce in them. The Supreme Court of the
United States celebrated this necessity by the
well known decision concerning "the rule of
reason" [Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 221
U. S. i (1911)], which has resulted in the virtual
nullification of the original intent to control the
trusts rigorously.
In the light of the foregoing the social position
of an innovator is determined, other things being
equal, by the success of his innovation. Persons
like Edison, Einstein and Marconi have by no
means entirely overcome the resistance to their
respective innovations. But they are honored at
home and abroad. If Jesus of Nazareth can be
called an innovator, the same thing holds of Him.
For His status in Europe changed with the com-
ing to economic and political power of the priests
of His cult. The same thing is true of Lenin both
in Russia and abroad and would be of Henry
George if his program could be imposed at least
as those of Christ and Lenin have been. If, how-
ever, an innovation fails to establish itself, its
projector may be thrown into jail, like Roger
Bacon, or live a despised outcast all his days.
Social position for the innovator, as for every-
body else, is a function of proved and acknowl-
edged power.
HORACE M. KALLEN
See: INVFNTION; CHANGE, SOCIAL; SOCIAL PROCESS;
PROGRFSS; CONSLRV YTISM; TRADIIION; CONVENTIONS,
SOCIAL; CUSIOM; FASHION; FICTIONS.
Consult: Wallas, Graham, The Great Society (New
York 1914) pt. n; Robinson, J. H , The Mind in the
Making (New York 1921), Bagehot, Walter, Physics
and Politics, International Scientific Series, vol. ii
(London 1872) ch. in; Ogburn, W. ., Social Change
(New York 1922); Mclver, R. M , Society: Its Struc-
ture and Changes (New York 1931); Tarde, G. de, Les
lots de 1'imitation (3rd ed. Paris 1900), tr. from 2nd
French ed. by E. C. Parsons (New York 1903), James,
William, "The Sentiment of Rationality" in his The
Will to Believe (New York 1897) p. 63-1 10; Emerson,
R. W., "The Conservative" m his Nature, Addresses,
and Lectures, vol. i of the Complete Works (new ed.
Boston 1903) p. 293-326, Dewey, John, The Public
and Its Problems (New York 1927) p 57-62; Kallen,
H. M , Culture and Democracy in the United States
(New York 1924) ch iv, and Indecency and the Seven
Arts (New York 1930), Ayres, C. E , Science, the False
Messiah (Indianapolis 1927) ch. iv, Cardozo, Benjamin
N , The Nature of the Judicial Process, Yale University,
Storrs Lectures (New Haven 1921), especially lecture
in; Stern, B. J , Social Factors in Medical Progress,
Columbia University, Studies in History, Economics
and Public Law, no. 287 (New York 1927).
INQUISITION. The Inquisition was the of-
fice of the mediaeval church for inquiry into
heresy, which was commonly interpreted as ob-
stinate adherence to opinions arbitrarily chosen
in defiance of accepted ecclesiastical teaching and
interpretation. It was an office not primarily of
punishment but of examination and of instruc-
tion, and it attempted to secure the abjuration of
their errors by the heretics whom it discovered.
To a logical churchman of the time it repre-
sented the natural and merciful method of pre-
venting the spread of doctrines which endan-
gered the souls of all who heard as well as of all
who communicated them.
In the eleventh and twelfth centuries popular
frenzy against those who professed unorthodox
opinions resulted in indiscriminate burnings of
the suspected; their protection as well as their
proper examination became necessary. In the
absence of clear understandings as to the re-
spective parts which the secular and ecclesiastical
62
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
authorities might play in the punishment of
heretics the arrangements prevalent throughout
Christendom were often the result of local agree-
ments between the bishops and the king. In 1 184
Lucius in and Frederick Barbarossa had ar-
ranged that the bishops should make the inquiry
for heresies and excommunicate the heretics and
that the secular arm should enforce the imperial
ban of exile and undertake the destruction of sus-
pected houses.
Decrees such as these were only spasmodically
carried out, for as Catharism grew the problem
became too general to be solved along local lines.
The initial failure of Innocent in to convince the
Albigensians by means of special missionaries,
together with the crusade which in consequence
he felt bound to undertake, made it clear that
some more permanent prophylaxis was needed.
This the normal canonical method of diocesan
inquiry through the bishop was not strong
enough to provide, since the bishop was a man of
many duties and the task of discovering and
examining heresy demanded both expert theo-
logical knowledge and an organized system of
delation through trustworthy informers. The
latter was to a certain extent constructed by the
decrees of the Council of Verona, 1184, which
directed that bishops in making periodical cir-
cuits of the dioceses for inquiries into heresy
should compel trustworthy persons to denounce
those who were diffamati for not living as good
Catholics. The problem was how to secure the
regular and effective body of witness of error,
and for this task the ordinary church courts were
just as inadequate as the special delegates sent
by the papacy into disaffected areas.
Gregory ix organized these spasmodic efforts
into a regular system. Permanent judges delegate
were instituted to cooperate with the bishops in
their inquiries. They were given power in 1233
to take action without appeal against all sus-
pected persons and to call upon the secular arm
to aid in their capture. The personnel of these
judges came to be selected from the two mendi-
cant orders . The preaching friars , or Dominicans ,
through the location of their early settlements
and the personal character of their founder took
the leading place in the new organization, but
they divided their duties on a geographical
basis with the Franciscans. Scandinavia was
exempt from their activities and England, as will
be shown, had no inquisitors other than the
archbishops and their suffragans. Portugal did
not receive the system till 1531.
The most threatening fourteenth century her-
esies prior to the spread of the doctrines of Wyc-
liffe and Huss were the remains of Catharism in
the south of France and the theories of the
Waldensians, Beguines and pseudo-Apostles in
northern Italy. In addition, the church was
called upon to stamp out sorcery and witchcraft
of various kinds and belief, such as that of Joan
of Arc, in interior revelation from or communi-
cation or understanding with supernatural
powers. The later Middle Ages witnessed the
growth of heresy in two main directions: doc-
trines of internal illumination and extreme re-
ligious subjectivism, which are frequently the
product of mystical enthusiasm; and the kindred
notions, that of the absolute poverty of Christ
associated with the "spiritual" Franciscan^
and that of clerical possessions as depending for
their justification on the personal goodness of
the possessor. The latter notion was the applica-
tion to the clergy, particularly the religious
orders, of Wycliffe's doctrine that lordship is
founded upon grace. To this the English Lol-
lards and a large section of the unorthodox
Bohemians added erroneous opinions on the
sacrament of the Eucharist. But although sacra-
mental heresy was serious it was not so dangerous
as a false ecclcsiology, the main error which the
later mediaeval church had to combat.
The method of procedure for inquisitors has
been described by the Dominican Bernard Gui
in the fifth part of his Practica inqmsttionis here-
ticae pravitatiS) written in the early fourteenth
century. The citation of the suspected person was
made in his own house through the parish priest
in the presence of witnesses and again on a
Sunday or in certain cases on three consecutive
Sundays or festivals. If the suspected person did
not come within a year, the citation having been
repeated, he was pronounced excommunicate.
The alternative method of citation was the more
stringent one of summary capture upon clerical
request by the secular power. The inquisitor
then interrogated the prisoner in the presence of
two religious and a notary who took minutes of
the questions and replies. There was no Itbellus
presented as in ordinary canonical procedure.
The inquisitor was instructed to make his in-
quiry simply and directly (de piano) and his
powers were not subject to the territorial limits
laid down in the thirty-seventh canon of the
Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. No exemptions
or appeals were permitted. Culpability was de-
termined either by the confession of the victim
under examination or by the evidence of wit-
nesses, who for this purpose need not necessarily
Inquisition
be persons of unblemished character. Their dep-
ositions were communicated to the accused, but
their names were kept secret and he was never
confronted with them. Generally the inquisitor
aimed at securing a personal confession, which
might be effected by persuasion, accompanied
where necessary by judiciously prolonged deten-
tion in prison.
In certain more obstinate cases the confession
might be elicited by torture, as sanctioned by the
bull Ad exstirpanda of Innocent iv. The period
when torture seems to have been most employed
is the fifteenth century in the great campaigns
against witchcraft undertaken in southern Ger-
many and in the district of Arras. The bull of
Innocent vin Summis desider antes (1484) shows
thai a reaction had been taking place in the upper
Rhineland against the rigorous method of the
inquisitors. In 1522 the humanist J. L. Vives in
his edition of the De civitate Dei, when com-
menting upon the ninth book, speaks of the
evils of torture, which men preferred to death.
The sentence required the cooperation of the
ecclesiastical ordinary and was generally given.
in an assembly of secular and religious clergy
reenforced by lawyers. It could always be re-
voked or modified except where the accused was
left to the secular arm for death by burning; and
even here repentance in extremis, provided that
the accused was prepared to abjure sincerely and
denounce his errors and former accomplices,
would justify the lay court in returning him to
the inquisitor, in which case his punishment
would be perpetual imprisonment. The penalty
of the stake could not, however, be mitigated in
the case of a relapsed heretic, although he was
allowed to receive the sacraments of penance and
the Eucharist if he was converted at the end.
In the case of others the penalty might be im-
prisonment either in more or less open confines
(murus largu*) or else in rigorous and solitary im-
prisonment (murus strictus)\ the wearing of a
distinct mark upon the dress to indicate the
brand of heresy; or pilgrimages to the greater or
smaller shrines of Christendom. In the last
case annual visits were often prescribed and the
penitent was enjoined to hear mass and sermon
in the church which he was compelled to visit
and to offer a candle to the celebrating priest, by
whom he was solemnly fustigated before pro-
claiming his offenses aloud to the assembled
congregation. In other instances pecuniary pen-
alties were inflicted. In Languedoc severe cases
frequently involved confiscation of goods and the
destruction of the heretic's dwelling. Of the
property so confiscated part went to the ruler,
part to the church. These confiscations consti-
tuted one reason why the pursuit of heresy was
to the advantage of the state; but in any case the
secular authority never scrupled to put the
heretic to death. The use of the stake was made
general throughout the Germanic empire by
Frederick n in 1238; it became customary in
France under St. Louis.
Although there was no inquisitor appointed by
papal authority in England, the procedure, rest-
ing in the first instance in the hands of the
bishops, followed not dissimilar lines. The prac-
tise as it developed after the papal condemnation
of Wycliffe's heresy was that the bishop made
inquiries and with the help of the secular arm, if
necessary, seized and examined the suspected
persons. Abjuration was made in the first in-
stance before the bishop, who prescribed the
penalty, frequently that of imprisonment. Par-
ticularly bad cases, where the accused persons
continued their errors after abjuration or where
they were condemned for disseminating Lollard
opinions by means of books and writings, might
be referred to convocation. About 1400 and
thereafter, probably as a result of the deter-
mined influence of Archbishop Arundel, all the
leading heretics were brought by their diocesans
to the provincial synod. According to the proce-
dure governing such cases articles were first
"objected" to the defendant and his replies
noted; after this there followed an examination
conducted by a tribunal consisting of the arch-
bishop and members of each of the mendicant
orders representing theological interests and of
trained lawyers representing legal interests; at
the end there was rehearsal of the points es-
tablished and an exhortation by the archbishop
to the accused person to abjure. In the event of
abjuration the penalty was fixed by the arch-
bishop in convocation and generally took the
form of a public recantation of error and of im-
prisonment until the heretic could find sufficient
security for his good behavior. In cases of obsti-
nate persistence convocation relinquished the
accused to the secular arm. The state bound it-
self to assist the church in its pursuit of Lollardry
both by putting the heretic to death (statute De
hcretico comburcndo of 1401) and by cooperating
through its local officials in the inquiry for
heretics (statute of Leicester, 1414) In a serious
case involving a man of high standing, like Sir
John Oldcastle, the king himself tried to exercise
his influence.
The sinister reputation acquired by the Holy
6 4
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
Office was probably due to the great powers given
to the inquisitor, by the subtle distinctions em-
ployed in grading the suspected person and by
the actual horror of the burnings. But it must be
remembered that the inquisitor was frequently
assisted by viri periti, lawyers who could keep a
watch upon proceedings and who would cer-
tainly prevent serious injustice being done.
Furthermore there is reason to believe that the
number of relaxations to the secular arm was not
great. The destruction of the suspect was by no
means the purpose of the tribunal. The church
did not desire the death of the sinner, and the
inquisitor's object was to instruct and convince
those in error of the truth of its doctrines. Less
favorable interpretations derive largely from the
rigorous conduct of individual inquisitors, like
Conrad of Marburg and Conrad Tors in Ger-
many or Torquemada and Lucero in Spain. In
sixteenth century Italy the Inquisition became
notorious for the examinations to which it sub-
jected a number of illustrious men of science and
letters. By this time, however, its main work in
the suppression of heresy was done.
The adaptability of inquisition procedure to
political ends was first revealed in the program of
Philippe le Bel and his shrewd legist, Guillaume
de Nogaret, in fourteenth century France, and
later by the popes in their attempts to consoli-
date their temporal power in Italy. This adapta-
tion was effected most thoroughly in Renais-
sance Spain, where the Inquisition was organ-
ized in close cooperation with the Spanish
monarchy as a piece of state machinery, de-
signed to exterminate antimonarchical groups,
primarily Jews and Moors, and to establish both
in Spain and throughout the Spanish empire in
the New World a homogeneous population with
a unified nationalistic outlook. The fact that
these methods tended to contribute instead to
the subsequent decline of Spanish enterprise
may be attributed in part to the extreme severity
with which they were applied at home and in the
colonies.
E. F. JACOB
See: CHRISTIANITY; APOSTASY AND HERESY; INTOLER-
ANCE; PERSECUTION; EXCOMMUNICAIION; PILGRIM-
AGES.
Consult. Gui, Bernard, Practica inquisttionis hereticae
pravitatis, ed. by C. Douais (Pans 1886), pt. v ed.
with a French translation by G. Mollat and G. Drioux
as Manuel de I'inquisiteur, 2 vols. (Pans 1926-27);
Lea, H. C., A History of the Inquisition of the Middle
Ages, 3 vols. (New York 1887-88), A History of the
Inquisition of Spain, 4 vols. (New York 1906-07), and
A History of the Inquisition in the Spanish Depend-
encies (New York 1908), Corpus documentorum inqui-
sitionis hereticae pravitatis neerlandicae, ed. by P.
Fre"de>icq, 5 vols. (Ghent 1889-1906); Tanon, L.,
Histoire des tribunaux de V inquisition en France (Paris
1893); Hansen, J., Zauberwahn, Inquisition undHexen-
prozess im Mittelalter (Munich 1900); Langlois, C. V.,
"L'mquisition" in Grand revue, vol. iii (1901) 57391,
and vol. iv (1901) 68-89 and 42854; Douais, C ,
L' inquisition: ses orttftnes, sa procedure (Paris 1901);
Schmidt, Richard, Komgsrecht, Kirchenrecht und
Stadtrecht beim Aufbau des Inquisitionsprosesses (Mu-
nich 1915); Guiraud, Jean, L'inquisition medievale
(Paris 1928), tr. by E. C. Messenger (London 1929);
Coulton, G. G M The Inquisition (New York 1929);
Verrill, A. II., The Inquisition (London 1931).
INSANITY
CRIMINAL LAW. In criminal cases the problem
of insanity must be considered in three respects:
first, as to the capacity of an accused person to be
tried; second, as to the sanity of an accused per-
son at the time of his offense; third, as to the
procedure following acquittal on the ground of
insanity.
The legal problem of insanity before or during
trial does not involve the issue of responsibility
or irresponsibility, which is based on the condi-
tion of the accused at the time of the offense, but
so-called present insanity, i.e. mental incapacity
for trial. Under early English law as in modern
Anglo-American a man who becomes insane be-
fore arraignment or during trial is not obliged to
plead to the offense or to stand trial provided he
meets certain criteria, such as that he has, not
such "mind and discretion" as would enable him
to appreciate the charge against him and the pro-
ceedings thereon or that he is not sane enough to
recall the events of his life and to present to
counsel the facts which ought to be stated to the
jury. At common law the question of capacity to
be tried was customarily settled by a separate
jury, occasionally by personal inspection by the
judge. Today the method for determining the
condition of the accused before or after indict-
ment or during trial varies. In some American
states the court has discretion as to the means of
inquiry, in others lunacy proceedings in chan-
cery must be instituted; in some a jury trial is
necessary, in others there is inquiry by two or
more qualified physicians or by a commission of
doctors and lawyers.
The chief weaknesses of these provisions are
that since the initiation of the proceedings is left
to persons untrained in psychiatry it becomes
largely a matter of chance whether the defend-
ant will be examined mentally before or during
trial, unless his symptoms are striking, and that
when an examination does take place it is not
Inquisition Insanity
always made by skilled experts. In Massachu-
setts under a unique provision of a law of 1921
(as variously amended in minor details) this
situation has been remedied. A psychiatric ex-
amination by experts of the Department of
Mental Diseases is a routine provision for all
persons indicted for a felony who have been
previously convicted of a felony or indicted for
any other offense more than once. The objects
of the examination are to determine the mental
condition of the accused at the time of the
examination and "the existence of any mental
disease or defect which would affect . . . criminal
responsibility." The report of such examination
is not admissible as evidence in a case that goes
to trial, and each side may still call its own ex-
pef ts; but in practise the neutral nature of the
examination is relied upon to a considerable ex-
tent by courts, prosecutors and defense counsel,
and "battles of experts," which so often mar the
procedure in other jurisdictions, have in Massa-
chusetts become practically unknown.
The most important aspect of the law of
criminal insanity relates to the conditions under
which the mentally ill are exempt from criminal
responsibility. Some attempts to define these
conditions were made as far back as the time of
the Roman law as a result of the influence of the
Greek physicians. A rescript cited in the Digest
of Justinian (Dig. i, 18, 14) dealt with the prob-
lem. The rescript states that the insane are irre-
sponsible because they have been punished
enough through their infirmity, that persons who
are mentally ill may have "lucid intervals," that
lack of knowledge of what one is doing may be a
criterion of irresponsible insanity. Even the
Germanic law sources of the Middle Ages, as is
apparent from the various mirrors, town laws and
custumals, recognized the criminal irresponsibil-
ity of the insane. The Romanistic writers re-
introduced the idea of the lucid interval, but
Farinacius states that the majority of them in-
dulged a presumption that the offense was com-
mitted during the ordinary state of insanity.
Among English legal commentators Bracton,
Fitzherbert, Staunderforde, Coke, Hale and
Hawkins attempted in various ways to evolve
precise tests of irresponsibility. These, however,
hardly amount to more than scraps of opinion.
The Roman influence is particularly marked in
Bracton. In Rex*;. Arnold (16 How. St.Tr., 695),
decided in 1724, a remark of Bracton's that an
insane person is non multum distat a brutis
turned up as the "wild beast test"; in Hadfield's
Case (27 How. St. Tr., 1281), decided in 1800,
the brilliant advocate Erskine disposed of the
views of Coke and Hale in insisting that "delu-
sion, where there is no frenzy or raving madness,
is the true character of insanity."
The modern English law rests upon the fa-
mous M'Naghten Case (10 Clark & Fin., 200),
decided in 1843, in which the rules of responsi-
bility were crystallized in the well known answers
of the judges of England to certain questions
propounded by the House of Lords as the result
of an unpopular acquittal of M'Naghten, a
paranoiac who killed Sir Robert Peel's secre-
tary. The judges said that "to establish a defence
on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly
proved that, at the time of the committing of the
act, the party accused was labouring under such
a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as
not to know the nature and quality of the act he
was doing, or, if he did know it, that he did not
know he was doing what was wrong." This
simple sounding "test" has in practise led to
great confusion and difficulty of application; al-
most every phrase in the classic judicial utterance
has been subjected to criticism from both a legal
and a psychiatric point of view. The same is true
of the further opinion of the judges in this case
that a person who suffered from delusion might
be liable to punishment if he knew that he was
acting contrary to law.
Most American courts refuse to consider any
criterion of the irresponsibility of the insane
other than some local variation of the "nature-
and-quality" or "right-and-wrong" test. In a
number of jurisdictions, however, under the
influence of both legal theory and medical at-
tacks it has been held that irresponsibility may
under certain conditions result from the pres-
ence of an "insane, irresistible impulse" even
though knowledge of the nature and quality and
wrongfulness of an act exists. The tests have
been further complicated by the introduction in
some American decisions of the element of de-
lusion and its effect upon responsibility. The
New Hampshire law expresses the doctrine that
the question of irresponsibility by reason of in-
sanity is altogether one of fact for the jury, since
there is in truth no particular legal test which
they must observe. Reviewing all the "symp-
toms, phases, or manifestations, of mental dis-
ease as legal tests of capacity to entertain a
criminal intent," Judge Ladd in a well known
case [State v. Jones, 50 N. H., 369, 398, 399
(1871)] concluded that "they are all clearly
matters of evidence, to be weighed by the
jury "
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
66
In criticizing the tests of insanity it must be
remembered that it has never been held that the
mere existence of mental disease or defect in it-
self constitutes an exemption from criminal re-
sponsibility. One reason for this view is, as
Kenny has said, that "lunatics are usually ca-
pable of being influenced by ordinary motives,
such as the prospect of punishment; hence they
usually plan their crimes with care, and take
means to avoid detection" (Outlines of Criminal
Law, p. 52). Nevertheless, a historical review of
the subject indicates that the tests themselves,
while remaining unchanged theoretically, have
in practise gradually undergone modification not
only to meet changing attitudes toward the ob-
jectives of punishment but to take account of re-
finements in medical knowledge.
The standard tests today proceed more or less
upon the following assumptions, which are from
the viewpoint of psychiatry questionable: first,
that lack of knowledge of the "nature or quality"
of an act (assuming the meaning of such terms
to be clearly defined in the minds of juries and in
judicial opinions), or incapacity to know right
from wrong, is the sole or even the most im-
portant symptom of mental disorder; second,
that such knowledge is the sole instigator and
guide of conduct or at least the most important
element therein and consequently should be the
only criterion of responsibility when insanity is
involved; and, third, that the capacity of know-
ing right from wrong can be completely intact
and functioning perfectly even though a defend-
ant is otherwise demonstrably of disordered
mind.
The irresistible impulse test supplies in a
measure the deficiencies of the knowledge tests;
for it takes into account disturbances in the voli-
tional inhibitory mode of mental life. It recog-
nizes that although the disorder in the cognitive
sphere may not be such as to prevent a defendant
from having had some conception of the dif-
ference between right and wrong, he may never-
theless have been suffering from a deep seated
mental disturbance which markedly affected his
conduct. Emphasis of delusion as a test may be
criticized in that it represents a singling out
of but one symptom from a general disease pat-
tern in the delusional mental disorders, a
symptom which is not necessarily more impor-
tant than the others.
All three concepts knowledge, irresistible
impulse and delusion are subject to criticism
as tests of irresponsibility because their employ-
ment neglects the fundamental theory of the
interdependence and interrelationship of mental
processes; a disturbance in the cognitive, voli-
tional or emotional sphere can hardly occur
without affecting the personality as a whole and
the conduct that flows from the personality. It
could readily be shown that these outworn pre-
suppositions may work injustice to offenders of
various types of mental disorder, particularly
those suffering from pronounced psychoneu-
roses, in whom unconscious motivation of con-
duct is believed to play a predominant role.
Several attempts have been made to remedy
the situation. A distinguished legal and medical
committee of the American Institute of Criminal
Law and Criminology recommended in 1913 a
test that was not really a test at all, for it was to
the effect that no one should be held liable f6r a
criminal act if his state of mind was such that he
could not have had the necessary criminal intent
a proposition that is not of much practical
value to a judge in charging a jury. A better at-
tempt to overcome the dilemmas inherent in
existing tests of irresponsibility was the earlier
proposal of a committee of the New York State
Bar Association, which in 1910 moved to abolish
insanity as a defense to a charge of crime. This
endeavor to eliminate the technicalities of the
tests of irresponsibility at one stroke was ac-
companied by a provision that the court, if it
believed the prisoner was insane or mentally de-
fective at the time of the offense, might have an
inquiry made and as the result thereof either
impose the regular penalty or sentence him
to confinement in an asylum for a term of years
or life. Thus the effort was made to have the
question of mental disorder considered, as cer-
tain criminologists feel it should be, not as a
matter for the jury in its deliberations as to guilt
or innocence but as a matter for the court aided
by impartial experts in its deliberations as to
sentence; this was essentially the principle be-
hind a Washington statute which, not without
room for doubt, was declared unconstitutional in
Strasburg v. State [60 Washington, 106 (1910)]
and a somewhat similar provision more recently
invalidated in Mississippi [Sinclair v. State, 132
So., 581 (1931)].
While not much progress has been made with
tests of insanity, it must be remembered that the
consequences of conviction or acquittal on the
ground of irresponsibility have in recent years
been considerably modified in many jursi dic-
tions. On the one hand, conviction today is not
always or even often followed by the death pen-
alty; on the other hand, acquittal frequently re-
Insanity
suits in the defendant's commitment to a hospi-
tal for mental diseases instead of his release.
In the earliest English law insanity seerns not
to have operated as an acquittal, at least in
murder, but to have resulted in a special verdict
entitling the accused to a pardon. Subsequently
in England and in a number of American juris-
dictions if the accused was found irresponsible
because of insanity he was not only acquitted but
apparently no special order looking to his safety
or to that of society was made. Under the English
Criminal Lunatics Act of 1 800 such a defendant
was detained "during his Majesty's pleasure."
In 1883 the Trial of Lunatics Act provided that
upon an acquittal on the ground of insanity the
jur^ should return a special verdict of "guilty,
but insane," under which the acquitted person
could be legally controlled by the home secre-
tary. Under the Criminal Appeal Act of 1907 the
Court of Criminal Appeal was empowered to
quash the sentence of an appellant found guilty
who was, however, in its opinion insane and to
order the appellant to be confined as a "lunatic,"
as if a special verdict had been found under the
1883 act. The defendant is not released until the
home secretary so decides.
In America practise varies. In one group of
states the jury that acquits the defendant because
of insane irresponsibility must state in one way
or another whether it still regards him as insane;
in other jurisdictions the jury must state whether
it finds the defendant to be still dangerous; in
several states the mental condition of the de-
fendant at time of acquittal is determined by
separate machinery.
The consequences of such findings vary. In a
few states if the jury finds the defendant no
longer insane or dangerous he is allowed to go
free; in others when a jury acquits a person on
the ground of insanity the statutes allow the trial
court no discretion but to provide for his com-
mitment with or without separate lunacy pro-
ceedings; in many states the court may, if it
deems such a defendant dangerous, commit him
to a hospital; in Massachusetts the court must
order a defendant acquitted of murder or man-
slaughter because of insanity to be committed to
a mental hospital "during his natural life."
A frequent remedy for release of persons in-
carcerated on the ground of irresponsibility is
habeas corpus. The writ is used for this purpose
in about a fourth of the states, while in the re-
mainder special machinery for release is also
provided. Whether the hearing on the return of
the writ shall be with or without a jury also
varies from state to state; in some this matter is
within the judge's discretion, in others within
the petitioner's. In various states discharge from
the hospital is within the discretion of the super-
intendent, commissioners of insanity, depart-
ment of correction, trustees, special commission
or a justice of the supreme court. In addition
there exist of course the general provisions for
commutation and pardon.
In recent years there has been an increasing
demand for radical reorganization of the ma-
chinery of criminal justice. A plan has been
frequently urged sharply to differentiate and
specialize the two major processes of criminal
justice ascertainment of guilt and imposition of
sentence. The decision as to the sentence, that is,
the treatment of the offender found guilty,
would in such a scheme be made by a tribunal
specially qualified in the interpretation and
evaluation of psychiatric, psychologic and
sociologic data. The treatment originally im-
posed would be modifiable from time to time in
the light of scientific reports of progress or retro-
gression of the offender. Certain procedural safe-
guards would protect him from possible arbi-
trary action on the part of the tribunal. A com-
pletely indeterminate sentence law, or at least
one giving the tribunal wide administrative dis-
cretion as to the duration of the sentence, is an
indispensable adjunct to such a system, as is also
a scientifically manned clearing house and
laboratory where offenders awaiting sentence
would be given thorough observation and study.
Finally, for the system to operate efficiently a
thorough overhauling of existing treatment
practises probation, various forms of imprison-
ment, parole would be necessary and there
would have to be continuous experiments with
new correctional and educative instruments.
The result of this outlined system would be
practically to eliminate the need of the cumber-
some and unscientific defense of insanity, since
the offender would as a matter of routine pro-
cedure be assured appropriate treatment regard-
less of whether or not the defense was resorted
to. The clumsy device built up by the law for
taking mental pathology into account in the de-
termination of criminal responsibility would
gradually become atrophied.
The continental law and practise with regard
to criminal insanity are not significantly differ-
ent from the Anglo-American. According to the
German criminal code of 1871, "there is no
punishable act, if at the time of its commission
the actor was in a state of unconsciousness or of
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
68
marked disturbance of the mental faculties which
excluded the free determination of his will."
The French penal code of 1810 stipulates that
"there is neither crime nor offense if the accused
was in a state of mental alienation at the time of
doing the act, or if he was constrained by a
force which he could not resist." Generally
the European codes take account of both the
cognitive and the volitional elements in be-
havior and are broad enough to allow the trier of
fact considerable scope for introducing "the
human element in justice" in cases in which
popular sympathy is with the accused. While the
continental tests are subject to some of the same
criticisms as Anglo-American tests, it should be
noticed that the business of securing expert
testimony is generally managed more rationally
in European courts. Some European codes pro-
vide for "partial responsibility" and correspond-
ing mitigation of punishment, but this is not
true of the German or the French code. It is
doubtless, however, possible for partial respon-
sibility to be taken into account as an "extenuat-
ing circumstance." Most European codes also
provide for measures of security against a person
acquitted on the ground of insanity, but the
provisions vary considerably.
SHELDON GLUECK
CIVIL LAW. In the civil law as in the criminal
law mental incompetency of an individual
leads to the extinction or diminution of his
legal capacity to act and of his legal responsi-
bility for his acts. The protection given the men-
tally incompetent in modern systems of law is
limited by the protection accorded innocent per-
sons who deal with him, hence the emphasis is
placed upon preventive measures such as guard-
ianship. The primitive superstition that the in-
sane person was accursed by the gods or seized
by evil spirits left no trace upon Roman private
law, which as early as the Twelve Tables desig-
nated a familial curator for thefuriosus, a lunatic
who might or might not have lucid intervals, and
an officially appointed guardian for other mental
incompetents (mente capti^ insani). The Roman
law system has been adapted in modern Euro-
pean codes to a wider range of mental incompe-
tency. Thus Germany and Switzerland have ex-
tended guardianship not only to prodigality,
which was recognized in Roman law, but also
to dipsomania and mental weakness, and the
French civil code authorizes in case of prodigality
or mental weakness the appointment of a judi-
cial counselor whose consent is necessary to the
validity of certain types of transactions. A simi-
lar expansion of the concept of civil insanity as a
ground for the appointment of a guardian has oc-
curred in many Anglo-American jurisdictions,
which by statute or judicial construction author-
ize the appointment of a guardian for a spend-
thrift, a habitual drunkard or even for a person
likely to be imposed upon. Drug addicts are also
frequently included. California and England are
among the jurisdictions which have apparently
gone furthest in this respect, while New York
adheres more nearly to the narrower conception
of early English law. In the latter system the
king's prerogative of acting as guardian of the
person and property of the mentally incompe-
tent, however mercenary in its origin, came to
be based upon the humanitarian conception that
the king was parens patriae. To the lord chan-
cellor was delegated at an early date the royal
power to appoint guardians, and this function
thus became a part of the jurisdiction of the
Court of Chancery. In the United States courts
of equity jurisdiction, adapting the powers of the
English court, have ordinarily taken over this
function, although by statute it has sometimes
been conferred upon probate courts which have
jurisdiction of decedents' estates.
While English and American judicial reports
deal with many varieties of mental abnormality,
legal tests of sanity do not conform to standards
recognized by abnormal psychologists with
educational or clinical objectives in view. The
law has striven to establish flexible standards of
incompetency. To deprive a man of his civil
capacity or to relieve him of his civil responsibil-
ity to others calls for a more pronounced degree
of mental abnormality (to say nothing of differ-
ences in type) than is requisite where the deci-
sion involves only specialized educational or
clinical treatment. Other factors which have
tended to maintain a relatively low legal stand-
ard of sanity are the emphasis upon freedom of
alienation, judicial acceptance of the theory that
mental faculties operate independently of one
another and trial by jury. The frequency with
which decisions of lower courts are reversed on
appeal indicates the uncertainty of the legal
standard.
Legal proceedings involving a determination
of mental incompetency may be grouped into
two main classes: preventive and restitutive. In
the first group the issue is the competency of the
individual for future conduct; in the second it is
competency for a particular act already consum-
mated, such as a conveyance, contract, will or
Insanity
tort. In the former belongs the statutory pro-
ceeding to commit an insane person to a public
or private institution for treatment and for con-
finement in the interests of the individual as well
as of his relatives and the public. Although it
resembles a criminal prosecution it is usually
denominated a civil proceeding.
No person may be permanently restrained
against his will except by due process of law.
The safeguards of ordinary contentious litiga-
tion, designed for mentally competent litigants,
are here inadequate; hence other safeguards are
provided. The class of persons who may petition
for commitment is restricted to near relatives or
a public official, and in many jurisdictions the
petition must be accompanied by the certificates
of two qualified physicians. Notice must be giv-
en to the person alleged to be insane or to his
near relatives, and a hearing is required. While
trial by jury is not constitutionally requisite, in
some states it may be demanded as of right and
in others it is discretionary. Since propensity to
do injury is the test in such proceedings, com-
mitment does not preclude a finding that the in-
dividual remains competent for business trans-
actions.
The other type of preventive proceeding is the
appointment of a guardian (also called a commit-
tee, conservator or the like) of the property and
person of an insane person. The test of sanity as
.usuaHy formulated is a person's competency to
manage himself or his affairs. The law thus
emphasizes the intellectual process rather than
the emotional basis of conduct. Yet in some
jurisdictions the concept of incompetency is
broad enough to include the emotional instability
of old age and extreme susceptibility to imposi-
tion in business dealings. Lack of ordinary busi-
ness judgment is not incompetency. The courts
have felt that the denial of contractual freedom to
a large portion of the adult population would
seriously hamper economic intercourse. While
guardianship of the person alone is still permis-
sible, the proceeding is seldom resorted to
where no property is at stake. The procedural
safeguards in proceedings for the appointment
of a guardian are much the same as in commit-
ment proceedings, save that a jury trial is more
commonly required. Unlike the Roman law,
which effaced the juristic personality of an in-
competent under guardianship (save during a
lucid interval), American law limits the in-
capacity created by a judicial determination of
insanity. The older doctrine that the contracts,
conveyances and transactions of an incompetent
under guardianship were absolutely void has
been shaken by more recent decisions holding
that the appointment of a guardian merely raises
a presumption of insanity, which may be re-
butted by proving restoration of sanity and prac-
tical cessation of the guardianship. Notice of the
guardianship is imputed to all persons dealing
with the lunatic on the theory that the proceed-
ing is one in rem.
The validity of a contract, conveyance, gift or
other transaction may be questioned in a suit or
by way of defense by the incompetent or his
guardian or after his death by his heirs or repre-
sentatives to set aside the transaction and obtain
restitution of the status quo. Such a suit or de-
fense may be maintained even though no prior
adjudication of insanity has taken place. The
test of competency is ability to understand the
nature and consequences of the particular trans-
action at the time when it took place. The resti-
tutive adjudication may seriously impair the in-
terests of third parties, and the reported deci-
sions show a tendency to apply a lower standard
than would be applied in a guardianship inquisi-
tion. The policy of maintaining freedom of
alienation excludes in most jurisdictions the
mental weakness of old age and delusions on sub-
jects not connected with the particular transac-
tion. Transactions during a lucid interval are
upheld, even though the individual has been
confined to an asylum or has been suffering from
delusions on unrelated subjects. Some courts,
however, have set aside transfers of property be-
cause motivated by insane delusions, such as de-
lusions of persecution [Riggs v. American Tract
Society, 95 N. Y. 503 (1884)], thus shifting the
emphasis from the intellectual to the emotional
basis.
In most American jurisdictions transactions of
insane persons are treated as "voidable" rather
than "void." The legal consequences of this
doctrine are that restitution of benefits received
by the lunatic (or at least of those retained by
him) is a prerequisite of his regaining that which
he parted with, that innocent purchasers from
the donee or the vendee are fully protected, that
ratification after restoration to sanity validates
the transaction and that the suit to regain land is
tried in a juryless equity court. While very few
American courts have gone as far as the more
recent English decisions in enforcing the trans-
actions of an incompetent in favor of a person
who deals directly with him in actual ignorance
of the insanity, the requirement of restitution
often attains the same result by indirection. The
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
70
low standard of competency, excluding mental
weakness or old age, is eked out by the Anglo-
American doctrine of "undue influence," which
permits cancellation of a conveyance or gift by a
weak minded person to a domineering relative or
confidant who by deception, threat or insistent
suggestion knowingly took advantage of the
other's weakness. Many of the undue influence
cases involve controversies over the effects of
senile dementia [McGregor v. Keun, 330 111.
106, 161 N. E. 99 (1928)].
Competency to execute a will may be deter-
mined in a contest over the probate of the will,
in which trial by jury is the rule. The standard
of competency is even lower than in transactions
inter vivos because of the policy of upholding
testamentary dispositions, especially where
those persons are favored whom the court or
jury regards as the natural objects of the testa-
tor's bounty. Some courts avowedly test the
rationality of the testator partly by reference to
the rationality of his testament. The mores of a
testator's duties to his relatives thus exert influ-
ence under this guise.
An insane person, even one previously adjudi-
cated to be incompetent, is civilly liable for his
tortious injuries to the person or property of
others. Although English law balks at imposing
liability on one who did not understand the na-
ture of his act, American courts award compen-
sation to the injured person, partly in order to
induce the lunatic's relatives to confine him
and partly in order to discourage simulation.
The ancient contention that the lunatic has no
will ("Furiosi . . . nulla voluntas est," Dig.
L, 17, 40) has not sufficed to protect him from
liability for some wilful torts, such as assault and
battery or defamation (on which authorities are
divided), but has precluded liability for malicious
prosecution and for punitive damages in any
event. An insane person although not bound by
his contracts is liable in quasi-contract to pay
the reasonable value of necessaries furnished
him, for without the ability to obtain credit he
would be left destitute.
Two standards of mental incompetency have
struggled for recognition in the Anglo-American
law of marriage. A marriage has been treated as
the making of a civil bargain which can be an-
nulled only upon proof that one of the parties
was then incapable of understanding the imme-
diate incidents of the relation; hence such ail-
ments as feeblemindedness, epilepsy, klepto-
mania and delusions are generally not grounds
for annulment. Yet the eugenic standard of com-
petency has steadily gained recognition through
legislation prohibiting the marriage of epileptics
and others who though capable of understand-
ing the legal consequences of a marriage are un-
fitted for its biological and social functions. The
new standard is also recognized in judicial deci-
sions [Gould v. Gould, 78 Conn. 242 (1905)]
decreeing annulment or divorce on the authority
of these statutes, although many of them are so
loosely drafted as to be ineffective. Supervening
insanity prolonged and incurable is a ground for
divorce in a growing minority of American
states: Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho,
Kansas, Minnesota, Nevada, North Dakota,
Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont and
Washington. Mental incompetency is also a dis-
qualification for the acquisition of citizenship,
for voting, for jury service and for holding public
office.
EDWIN W. PATTERSON
See: CRIMINAL LAW; CRIMINOLOGY; PRISON REFORM;
HOMICIDE; INTENT, CRIMINAL; PUNISHMENT; GUARD-
IANSHIP; ALIENIST; EXPERT TESTIMONY; PSYCHIATRY;
MENTAL DISEASES.
Consult: FOR CRIMINAL LAW: Stephen, J. F , A History
of the Criminal Law of England, 3 voh (London 1883)
vol ii, ch. xix, Oppenheimer, II., The Criminal Re-
sponsibility of Lunatics (London 1909); Kenny, C. S.,
Outlines of Criminal Law (i3th ed Cambridge, Eng.
1929) p. 51-60; Glueck, S., Mental Disorder and the
Criminal Law (Boston 1925), "Psychiatric Examina-
tion of Persons Accused of Crime" in Yalv Law*
Journal, vol. xxxvi (1926-27) 632-48, "A Tentative
Program of Cooperation between Psychiatrists and
Lawyers" m Mental Hygiene, vol. ix (1925) 686-98,
"Principles of a Rational Penal Code" in Harvard Law
Review, vol. xli (1927-28) 453-82, and "Significant
Transformations in the Administration of Criminal
Justice" in Mental Hygiene, vol. xiv (1930) 280-306;
Cardozo, Benjamin, "What Medicine Can Do for
Law" in New York Academy of Medicine, Bulletin,
vol. v (1929) 581-607; New York State, Crime Com-
mission, Special Report on Psychiatric and Expert
Testimony in Criminal Cases (Albany 1930); Over-
holser, W., "The R61e of Psychiatry in the Adminis-
tration of Criminal Justice" m Journal of the American
Medical Association, vol. xciii (1929) 830-34, and
"The Place of Psychiatry in the Administration of
Criminal Law" in New England Journal of Medicine,
vol. cci (1929) 479-84; Garraud, R., Precis de droit
criminel (i4th ed. Paris 1926) p. 245-65; Mezger,
Edmund, Strafrecht (Munich 1931) sects. 35-40;
Kahl, Wilhelm, "Geminderte ZurechnungsfrihiKkeit"
and Aschaffenburg, G., "Die Behandlung gemeinge-
fahrlicher Geisteskranker und verbrecherischer Ge-
wohnheitstrinker" in Vergleichende Darstellung des
deutschen und auslandischen Strafrechts, Allgememer
Teil, vol. i (Berlin 1908) p. 1-78.
FOR CIVIL LAW: Singer, H. D., and Krohn, W. O.,
Insanity and Law (Philadelphia 1924); Theobald, H.
S., The Law Relating to Lunacy (London 1924); Black,
Insanity Inspection
H. C., A Treatise on the Rescission of Contracts and
Cancellation of Written Instruments, ed. by J. M. Lee,
3 vols. (and ed. Kansas City, Mo. 1929) vol. ii; Cook,
W. G. H., Insanity and Mental Deficiency in Relation to
Legal Responsibility (London 1921); Girard, P. F.,
Manuel elementaire de droit romatn, ed. by Fe'hx Senn
(8th ed. Paris 1929).
INSPECTION. Inspection of commodities,
buildings, industrial processes, trade practises
and other phases of modern civilization by spe-
cial employees of the government is merely one
phase of law enforcement, conspicuous because
governmental activity has penetrated into fields
where common knowledge and chance report no
longer furnish adequate information. In the col-
lection of revenues, in which governments are al-
ways vitally interested, inspectors of a sort have
been employed for as many centuries as customs,
tolls, tributes and taxes have been exacted. In-
spection and other aspects of enforcement are
not in fact separable, for although in some in-
stances inspectors merely publish their findings
and the publicity itself acts as a corrective to il-
legal or undesirable practises, in others they are
charged with the double duty of reporting in-
fractions of the law and of bringing offenders to
justice.
Supervision of commodities and of market
practises by civil authorities is as ancient as the
records. It was undertaken in Egypt, China,
Greece and Rome. Mediaeval town authorities
and later the wardens of craft guilds made par-
ticularly notable efforts to establish and uphold
standards of quality, price and weight. The
character of the supervision inquiry into the
accuracy of weights and measures or insistence
that the producer place his mark upon the wares
as well as the severe punishments meted out
to bakers whose bread was short in weight, to
farmers who filled sacks with poor grain and
sprinkled a little good grain at the top, to metal
workers who used debased material in their
wares, indicates the gravity of the offense of
cheating. These regulations, like those of mod-
ern chambers of commerce and better business
bureaus, protected not only the consumer but
the business of more reputable interests against
encroachment from less reputable. And although
this supervision may often have been thought of
as a desirable restriction of trade, it is clear that
it must sometimes have been considered con-
structive promotion. Towns became important
as trading centers; town officials would therefore
wish to encourage legitimate trade. And as the
records suggest that in proportion to the number
71
of sales cheating was extremely common, the
mediaeval authorities met the situation by build-
ing up a body of specific regulations. Only when
makers and sellers discovered that greater satis-
faction of consumers' wants meant increased
business did the early supervision and inspec-
tion by local authorities tend to become un-
necessary and even troublesome. The growth in
the volume of trade made the national govern-
ments which emerged in the following centuries
increasingly aware of their dependence upon a
sound economic life. In both England and
France there were movements to nationalize the
regulations protecting the quality of commodi-
ties, although the machinery for inspection re-
mained local, exercised by wardens of crafts,
clerks of the markets or special inspectors ap-
pointed by local justices. In France, where
failure to develop large shipping interests made
for greater dependence upon small but stable
markets, high standards of production were in-
sisted upon much longer than in England, where
constant access to new markets opened up by
explorers and traders soon shifted the emphasis
from quality to quantity. The laissez faire move-
ment matured there as a protest against the mass
of restrictions and regulations which penalized
producers and traders and impeded the expan-
sion of competition based on rapidly changing
methods of production. In country after country
government supervision, which was by tradition
specific and hence in a changing society restric-
tive, became less noticeably part of the economic
life. But inspection was of course never com-
pletely abandoned. Even in America, where
production took its own course more freely than
elsewhere, certain standards were always in-
sisted upon. The Journal of the New York state
assembly for 1828, for instance, contains annual
reports (submitted in accordance with statute)
from inspectors in the cities of New York and
Albany of fish, flour, sole leather, staves and
heading, liver oil, potash and pearlash and
lumber. Four standard grades of pine boards are
listed in the report.
Now that quantity production has given rise
to world wide competition for markets, uniform
quality to insure liquidity has again become
vital for the producing interests. Goods must be
equally salable in Europe or South America, in
six months' time or on twenty-four hours' no-
tice. To a very great extent private interests in
industry and commerce have brought about
such uniformity as now exists the machine
technology is indeed responsible for much of
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
it but here as elsewhere government has been
pressed into service to control situations which
private interest could not or would not supervise
itself. Thus today there exist official inspection
and grading of a wide variety of commodities for
the domestic market or for export grains,
fruits, vegetables, dairy products, meat, ice, silk
and so on through a long list. In recent years
governments have somewhat increased their
supervision over the conditions of fair competi-
tion through such organizations as the Federal
Trade Commission in the United States. The
use of unfair (substandard) marketing methods
is discouraged not by systematic inspection but
by special investigation of particular abuses in
behalf of honest competitors, and legal proceed-
ings are dropped against offenders who agree to
desist.
The increasing complications of industrial so-
ciety have led to governmental regulation of less
tangible commodities. National banks are sub-
ject to inspection as part of the currency system;
state banks and trust companies on the ground
that they are of basic importance to the whole
economic life. The extension of state activity to
protect the savings of low income groups through
supervision of savings bank investments, through
regulation of building and loan associations and
insurance companies and through the adminis-
tration of blue sky laws is more definitely a
limitation of private enterprise in the interest of
certain classes of consumers. In the case of
public utilities regulation of rates and services
and of financial structure is justified on the legal
ground that these industries are affected with a
public interest. Supervision is accomplished by
the requirement of standard accounting prac-
tises and similar devices for minimizing the
work of inspectors rather than by positive con-
trol of operations. Logically, however, the sup-
pression of fraud, the elimination of undue risk,
the prohibition of undesirable trade practises
and even such things as the age old supervision
of weights and measures are simply necessary
stages in the promotion of good business through
the promotion of confidence.
Police power in its broadest sense that is to
say, the power of a state to act in the interests of
the whole public and including, for example, the
commerce power of the federal government of
the United States provides in theory the neces-
sary authority for many types of regulation. But
the most conspicuous exercise of police power in
the modern state has come about through activi-
ties in behalf of public health, morals and safety.
The suppression of crime and the use of special
officers of inspection for that purpose need no
specific mention. Supervision of public health
and safety is more characteristic of the modern
age. A series of government functions were in-
itiated by the humanitarian protestants against
the abuses of the industrial revolution. Limita-
tions on child labor in factories began in England
early in the century; the act of 1833 (3 and 4
Will, iv, c. 103) stands out as the first factory
legislation in any country to provide for national
inspectors. On the continent governments inter-
ested themselves first in conditions of work, in
special industrial hazards presented by the use
of machinery and steam boilers and in safety ap-
pliances and only later in hours and wages of
labor. Compulsory education and official interest
in tenement house problems followed. Some
pressure for housing reform in England came
from overseers of the poor, but in regard to
working conditions public opinion was only
aroused to legislative action when strikes and
drafts had called attention to the potential threat
of poverty to the health and decency of the
whole public.
Health services and regulations have grown
most rapidly since the turn of the present cen-
tury. The ancient standards of sanitation and
building construction had disappeared in the
dark ages. And even before scientists knew how
diseases could be transmitted through polluted
water supplies, communities again became aware
of the need for pure water and were active in
supplying it. When fires swept away towns,
building and safety regulations were instituted.
Other reforms followed. Meat, milk, food and
drug, seed and fertilizer inspection; plant
quarantines; periodic water analysis; smoke and
light tests; sanitary inspection of bakeries, food
factories, beauty parlors, dwelling houses and
industrial plants; supervision of the manufacture
of biological preparations; health examinations
of school children and immigrants; enforcement
of minimum standards of light and air in schools,
homes and places of work; regulation of the use
of fire apparatus and safety devices; inspection of
elevators, ships, motor vehicles, airplanes and
other dangerous inventions, these are only a few
of the services instituted by governments, central
or local, in the interest of public health or public
safety. No adequate explanation can be offered
of why the complete list of government inspec-
tion services includes the particular items which
it does. Long as it is, it could obviously be much
longer. The need for assistance in behalf of pub-
lie safety is felt more acutely than other needs,
perhaps because dangerous technological inven-
tions are more visible than changes in the distri-
bution of industrial and financial power. Yet
even here it would be difficult to say whether
supervision had kept pace with the increase of
danger. Regulation in behalf of consumers may
have been retarded because of opposition by
special business interests, or because public
opinion has been so steeped in the doctrine that
the promotion of good business is the promotion
of the general good that it has not thought to
notice how the people were faring. A great
variety of influences have been at work and no
single formula can describe them.
Growing up piecemeal, the administration of
inspection services shows even more diversity
than do the codes which they enforce. In every
modern country there is some conflict of juris-
diction between local and central authorities.
Inspection services traditionally in the hands of
local authorities sometimes remain there after
state or national laws are passed. In Germany
the standards created by factory acts are national
but factory inspection is left to the states. In the
United States the health and safety standards
themselves differ from state to state. Convenience
of administration is sometimes sacrificed to
tradition in these matters. In certain fields, how-
ever, as in building, the problem of control is es-
sentially local, and city building and sanitary
codes 'and inspection services frequently super-
sede the less rigid state requirements. As inspec-
tion grows more technical, division along func-
tional lines is often made. Factory boiler inspec-
tors cannot be charged with enforcement of the
sanitary code, nor inspectors of electrical equip-
ment with concern over the ages of child work-
ers. Where inspection requires sampling and
laboratory analysis, the field work may be in the
hands of one group, technical work in those of
another, while a third set of people concern them-
selves with the legal processes involved in en-
forcement. Different departments of a govern-
ment may supervise precisely similar processes.
The inspection in the United States of manufac-
turing establishments preparing biological medi-
cal materials for human consumption is the
concern of the Public Health Service in the
Treasury Department, and the inspection of
such establishments preparing equivalent ma-
terials for use in animal diseases is the concern of
the Department of Agriculture. Factory inspec-
tion in England is separate from mine inspection
and from department store inspection, although
Inspection 73
hours of labor and working conditions are the
concern of each.
In effectiveness inspection services differ con-
siderably. Even where statutes are relatively
simple and specific and their enforcement some-
what removed from political and commercial
pressure, there may still be difficulty in securing
adequate personnel. Civil servants in Europe
enjoy a prestige which is largely lacking in the
United States and in consequence European
factory inspection has been of higher grade than
American. On the other hand, European trade
unions maintain that their interests would be
better served if workers received some of the
higher appointments now reserved for experts.
Inspection can rarely be either continuous or
complete. Accordingly it will be most effective
when enforcing such codes as building regula-
tions, where one visit can certify lasting com-
pliance with the laws, or when applied to such
commodities as grain, where the smallest
sampling will be representative of the whole. It
will be least effective where conditions are so
fluid that they can be altered or concealed while
inspection takes place, a factor which for a long
time made industrial inspection powerless and
which still impedes banking and utility supervi-
sion. But even the most effective inspection may
prove impotent when penalties for violation are
incommensurate with the pecuniary gain.
The problem of administrative standards is
fundamental. A striking difference between
contemporary state regulations and those of post-
mediaeval days is the large measure of adminis-
trative discretion now needed. Swift advances in
knowledge of what constitutes purity in food or
water or safety in transportation or construction
make a large degree of elasticity in enforcement
imperative. Furthermore modern legislators can
seldom sift expert evidence sufficiently to be able
to draft effective laws of the more specific type.
Where standards are largely lacking, as, for
example, in the case of biologicals, the govern-
ment has been obliged to experiment in order to
standardize materials. Safety standards in the
United States are developed and assisted in
operation by the Bureau of Mines, the Interstate
Commerce Commission, the Bureau of Stand-
ards and the Public Health Service, by the various
departments in all the separate states and by an
almost indefinite number of trade associations,
engineering societies and other private organiza-
tions exercising some degree of authority or
control. The policing of standards already es-
tablished may in such cases become less impor-
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
74
tant than activities leading to the formulation of
new standards, and this has been the aim of
European factory inspection. Even in the United
States, where there is a strict theoretical separa-
tion of legislative, executive and judicial func-
tions, it may conceivably happen that inspection
activities, undertaken originally for purposes of
enforcement, will furnish the necessary data for
important and unheralded reforms. The wide-
spread banking failures occurring in spite of
supervision illustrate the weakness of a purely
negative policy.
Inspection by the government in so far as it
merely supplements the work of private interests
is thus undertaken in a somewhat accidental
number of unrelated fields as an aid to business
and as a protection to the public. Essentially the
same function is performed almost universally
by industry itself. Every producer has his
products "inspected" at some stage of the
process, although the standards for acceptance
or rejection may be extremely variable. Even
public health and public safety are protected to a
degree by inspections conducted by insurance
companies, whose standards may be higher than
the government minima. Whether or not govern-
ment inspection services continue to increase in
importance and elaborateness depends primarily
upon how far the movement toward commercial
standardization can go. Industries may succeed
in imposing standards upon themselves without
government intervention, as the cooperative
marketing associations have already done. And,
conversely, if all industry should be conducted
by government, inspection as a separate and
conspicuous phenomenon might disappear. Or
the general enforcement of standards might even
become a function of supreme control, as it has
in Soviet Russia, where the Workers' and
Peasants' Inspection checks the activities of other
branches of the government.
EDITH AYRES
See: GOVERNMENT REGULATION OF INDUSTRY; BUSI-
NESS, GOVERNMENT SERVICES FOR; CONSUMER PROTEC-
TION; FOOD AND DRUG REGULATION; ADULTERATION;
LABOR LEGISLATION AND LAW; BUILDING REGULA-
TIONS; PUBLIC HEALIH; SANITATION; LICENSING;
GRADING; STANDARDIZATION; LAW ENFORCEMENT.
Consult: Freund, E., Administrative Powers over Per-
sons and Property (Chicago 1928); International La-
bour Office, Geneva, Factory Inspection: Historical
Development and Present Organisation in Certain
Countries (Geneva 1923); Witte, Edwin E., "Revenues
Derived under State Labor Laws" in Monthly Labor
Review, vol. xxxiu (1931) 52-59; Bureau of Municipal
Research, New York, Tenement House Administration
(New York 1909); Tobey, J. A., The National Govern-
ment and Public Health, Institute for Government
Research, Studies in Administration (Washington
1926); Mezger, O., Uber die Entwicklung der Lebens-
mittelkontrolle in den versihiedenen Kulturstaaten
(Stuttgart 1913); Weber, G. A , The Food, Drug and
Insecticide Administration, and The Plant Quarantine
and Control Administration, Institute for Government
Research, Service Monographs, nos. 50 and 59
(Washington 1928-30); United States, Department of
Agriculture, "National Standards for Farm Products,"
by L. S. Tenny, Circular, no. 8 (rev. ed. 1930); Cleve-
land, F. A., "The Financial Reports of National
Banks as a Means of Public Control" in American
Academy of Political and Social Science, Annals, vol.
xxiv (1904) 43-66.
INSTALMENT SELLING. An instalment
sale, aside from a cash or down payment, is
simply a credit or deferred payment transaction
in contrast with a cash payment and does not
differ in its nature from any other credit trans-
action. Instalment credit provides for the pay-
ment of goods in fixed instalments at stated in-
tervals and in this respect it is a sort of funded
debt in contrast with a demand obligation, which
is payable at the request of the creditor, or the
old fashioned book credit, which was payable in
whole or in parts at the convenience of the
debtor. It also stands in contrast with the kind of
debt which runs for a stated period and which is
to be paid in a lump sum at the end of the period.
Instalment credit is protected by the commodity
sold and is on the whole limited to goods with a
resale value. The sales are usually conditional;
the goods are delivered to the buyer, but the
seller retains control over them; either the title
remains in the seller and does not pass to the
buyer until all the instalments are paid or the
title passes immediately to the buyer and a
chattel mortgage is given on the goods as security
for the balance due. Default in payment usually
gives the seller the right to repossess the goods;
it also quite frequently forfeits all previously
paid instalments.
Instalment buying is an old practise; it existed
in ancient Rome, where houses were sold on
time payments. But the practise did not assume
importance until the period of capitalist produc-
tion for widespread markets; it developed real
significance only in industrialized countries dur-
ing the nineteenth century and came increasingly
into use in spite of a measure of disrepute at-
taching to it. As early as 125 years ago a furni-
ture house in New York City was selling goods
on time payments. Building and loan associa-
tions, which provide for the buying of houses on
this plan, have been in existence for more than
seventy-five years. The Singer Sewing Machine
Inspection Instalment Selling
Company has been doing a very profitable in-
stalment business since 1856. There are also
numerous piano and other musical instrument
houses that have been selling in this way for the
same length of time. McCormick reapers and
binders have been sold on instalments almost
from the beginning of their use. Books have
probably been sold on time for a longer period
than any of the commodities mentioned; all en-
cyclopaedias, beginning with Chambers' s En-
cyclopaedia, which appeared about 1750, have
been sold on instalments. An extensive indirect
form of instalment selling was the "credit check"
system. The customer bought from organiza-
tions carrying on this kind of business a credit
check for which he made a down payment and
agrttd to pay the balance at stated periods; the
check was then used to buy goods (except food)
at specified stores. The credit check system still
prevails in England and Germany; in Australia
the system, known as cash orders, nourishes
alongside instalment selling.
Even though instalment selling similar to that
which exists at the present time has been a com-
mon practise for the past fifty years or more, the
growth of the system was not great until the last
fifteen years, when it experienced an enormous
expansion in both volume of sales and number of
industries affected. About 1915 instalment sell-
ing was introduced into the automobile business
in the United States, where it had a somewhat
gradual growth for several years; after 1919 it
suddenly expanded, reaching great volumes
within a few years' time. In the industrial de-
pression of 1920-21 the system spread to other
lines of business and grew rapidly to large
proportions.
Exclusive of houses, which are widely sold on
instalments, it is variously estimated that from
five to seven billion dollars' worth of goods were
being thus sold at retail annually prior to the
beginning of the depression in 1929. According
to the Department of Commerce retail sales in
the United States in 1929 amounted to $50,000,-
000,000. On the basis of an estimate of $6,000,-
000,000, instalment sales composed 12 percent
of retail sales. It is commonly estimated that the
amount of instalment debt outstanding at a given
time was from $2,225, 000,000 to $2,500,000,000,
which is a more significant figure than the total
of instalment sales over a period of one year's
time. More than half the instalment debt out-
standing is for automobiles; the next most im-
portant items are furniture, radios, clothing and
sewing machines. It is estimated that 70 percent
75
of automobiles with respect to value is sold on
instalments; 70 percent of household furniture;
80 percent of pianos; 80 percent of phonographs;
75 percent of radio sets; 90 percent of washing
machines; 85 percent of vacuum cleaners; 90
percent of sewing machines; 70 percent of gas
stoves; 90 percent of mechanical refrigerators;
and 25 percent of jewelry. In 1927 approximately
27 percent of tractors and other farm machinery
was sold on instalments (approximately $100,-
000,000). In recent years there has been a con-
siderable increase in instalment sales of clothing
and jewelry. Instalment selling has been used in
the sale of stocks and bonds, but apparently not
with any great success.
Instalment selling in the United States is
overwhelmingly in the form of conditional sales.
Legal regulation of these sales varies from state
to state; in a number of states the seller cannot
retain title to goods sold on time and such con-
ditional sales are not recognized as valid legally
against third parties. There is agitation for the
enactment of similar laws in other states. In the
event the buyer defaults his payments the seller
generally has three recourses: he may sue to re-
cover the purchase price, he may foreclose the
mortgage or he may repossess the commodity.
Definite regulations are provided for in the Uni-
form Conditional Sale Act adopted in many
states; the seller, for instance, may repossess but
he must give the buyer at least twenty days'
notice, if the buyer docs not meet his obligations,
the commodity is repossessed and sold at public
auction. Efforts are being nude to secure uni-
form laws governing instalment sales; meanwhile
the National Association of Finance Companies
is trying to standardize selling practises.
Instalment buying in England is known as
"hire purchase" and has been in use for many
years in various branches of the furniture trade.
In this form of sale the owner agrees to rent the
article to the hirer or lessee (in reality the pur-
chaser) for a stated period and stipulates a cer-
tain number of instalments for rent; after the last
one the lessee has the option of purchasing the
article for a nominal sum, possibly no additional
sum at all. The hire purchase system has made
great strides since 1922, stimulated by over-
production in certain lines of trade and by the
business slump. According to the Hire Traders'
Protective Association instalment sales in 1927
accounted for 50 to 80 percent of the sales of
automobiles; 70 percent of sewing machines,
phonographs and pianos; 50 percent of furni-
ture; and 10 percent of jewelry. Considerable
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
concentration prevails; a few large London firms
with stores in various provincial towns do most
of the business in instalment furniture.
French law recognizes a form of conditional
sale, known as vente a temperament, in which the
title passes to the buyer. The seller cannot retain
title to the article sold nor can he repossess it if
the buyer defaults payment; the seller must sue
in the courts. This legal restriction compels the
instalment seller to be unusually careful in
granting credit and eliminates much high pres-
sure selling. Yet instalment selling is widespread
in France; from 50 to 75 percent of motor cars
are sold on time.
In Germany instalment selling under which
title to the property remains vested with the
vender has become increasingly popular in re-
cent years. It almost disappeared during the in-
flation period but has since acquired a volume
approaching in relative magnitude that of the
United States. Approximately 75 percent of
automobiles and furniture is sold on instalments.
A considerable quantity of agricultural machin-
ery is sold on time, one finance company devot-
ing itself exclusively to that field. Banks partici-
pate directly in the capital and management of
many instalment finance companies.
Instalment selling is found in almost all other
countries; it has recently made considerable
progress in the Balkans, Latin America and
Japan. In all of these countries the articles sold
on instalments consist mainly of furniture, auto-
mobiles, sewing machines, bicycles and musical
instruments; they do not include, owing to dif-
ferent standards of living, some of the articles
most commonly bought on instalments in the
United States, such as electric washers, vacuum
cleaners and electric refrigerators; nor are cloth-
ing and jewelry included to any large extent.
Instalment selling in Europe and Latin America
has been greatly stimulated by the sale of Amer-
ican automobiles abroad, a large proportion of
which are sold on terms similar to those used in
the United States. In Europe the proportion of
automobiles sold on time payments averaged 61
percent in 1927-28, ranging from 15 percent in
Spain to 80 percent in Denmark.
The recent expansion of instalment selling in
the United States originated in developments in
the automobile business. In the beginning of the
industry manufacturers sold all cars at wholesale
strictly for cash and urged retailers also to sell
for cash. In time, however, through a desire to
increase sales (emphasized by a great increase in
plant capacity) the manufacturers changed their
attitude in regard to the granting of credit by the
retailer to the consumer. The easy terms which
were finally granted to the consumer increased
sales and output; this coincided with an im-
mense increase in productive efficiency, and the
combination of these factors produced lower
prices. These in turn increased sales and output,
bringing about a still further expansion of plant
and equipment. This expansion of plant capacity
exceeded the capacity of available markets to ab-
sorb new cars, leading to an increase of both
competition and instalment selling. Thus the
automobile business developed the instalment
system to a degree that made its former eifbrts
seem comparatively insignificant. By 1923, how-
ever, the increase in automobile instalment sales
slowed down considerably; and the finance com-
panies sought new business in other fields,
thereby becoming an important factor in the
spread of instalment selling.
Other fields of business were prepared for in-
stalment selling by poor sales and excess pro-
ductive capacity during the depression of 1920-
21. In the years just prior to 1920 plant and
equipment had been expanded in the hope of
great profits which were possible in the period of
rapidly rising prices; and when the depression
came some of these industries burdened with
large overhead costs profited by the experience
of the automobile industry and resorted to easy
terms to the consumer as a means of increasing
sales. The upsurge of prosperity in 1923 "again
increased plant capacity and competition; instal-
ment selling spread. Following this period new
products such as radios and electric refrigerators
were seldom sold for cash; while instalment sales
slackened in the case of automobiles and were
stationary in the case of pianos they increased
over 200 percent in the case of radios.
Competition among those selling the same
kind of goods is a causal factor in the growth of
instalment sales. If partial payment selling in a
certain line of business stimulates sales and is
otherwise successful, the manufacturer or re-
tailer who refuses to use this device suffers.
Under a regime of competitive business what-
ever is generally advantageous becomes a neces-
sity for all competitors. Competition first forced
the granting of instalment credit and then the
offering of easier credit conditions in smaller
down payments and a longer time in which to
pay the balance. The tendency in some instances
to depart from standard conservative terms may
also be attributed to competition among retailers
engaged in the same kind of business, among
Instalment Selling
manufacturers producing the same commodity
and among finance companies and banks for
business in lending funds to finance instalment
sales.
Another factor in the spread of instalment sell-
ing is the competition between different kinds of
goods, the type of competition which was inten-
sified in the period from 1922 to 1929. It is be-
lieved generally that the public would purchase
fewer radios, automobiles, mechanical refrigera-
tors and the like if it were obliged to pay for
them in a lump sum; and that consequently the
purchasing power now expended on these com-
modities would, unless it were saved, be di-
verted to the purchase and consumption of other
commodities. If the individual pledges his future
income for automobiles, pianos and vacuum
cleaners he will buy less clothing, food or the
like than he would otherwise unless he is able to
increase his income under the stimulus of instal-
ment debts. In the opinion of many observers
this latter condition is possible only in isolated
cases and within narrow limits; consequently
one of the effects of the increase in instalment
selling has been a diversion of purchasing power
from one group of goods to another. Instalment
selling tends to slow down the sales of goods
which cannot be sold on time payments; at the
same time, however, it tends to induce consum-
ers to purchase durable rather than ephemeral
goods-
Modern methods of advertising and high
pressure salesmanship produced by the intensi-
fication of competition have been partly respon-
sible for the extension of instalment selling. In-
stalment goods are among the most heavily ad-
vertised, and this advertising is an important
factor in the diversion of purchasing power facil-
itated by instalment selling. Advertising and in-
stalment selling combine to determine wants by
increasing the prestige and popularity of certain
wants as against others.
When considered from the side of the demand
for goods on instalment terms a very real factor
in the instalment movement is to be found in the
increase of the income of the wage earning and
salaried groups. In recent years the middle class
has increased in both numbers and income to a
greater extent than any other section of the
population; real wages have increased over 25
percent in comparison with pre-war wages and
there has been a similar increase in the salaries
of clerical employees. The larger part of these
gains in income were secured during the period
from 1920 to 1925, the very time in which instal-
77
mcnt buying assumed large proportions. The
increased income meant that people could buy,
pay for and consume more than formerly on any
terms of sale and undoubtedly helped to stimu-
late the growth of instalment selling. Other
forms of merchandising, however, such as mail
order and cash and carry purchases, also greatly
increased during the years of rapid growth of in-
stalment selling. Credit facilities hitherto un-
available were offered to consumers through the
development of finance companies, and the in-
creased real income of the consumers gave them
more than sufficient purchasing power to meet
all their instalment obligations as they came due.
Before the recent expansion of the system buy-
ing on the instalment plan, except in the case of
houses, was practised almost entirely by the poor
and by the unstable groups in the community.
Losses to the dealers were great, and conse-
quently the price charged for the credit was so
high that only those who could not possibly make
other arrangements bought on instalments. Up
until about fifteen years ago there was strong
social disapproval of the practise and there is
still a certain stigma attached to some types of
instalment buying. It is only within the last ten
years that the practise has become generally
respectable.
At the present time instalment buying is not
confined to the poorer classes. All economic
groups except the very rich practise it exten-
sively. Stores with a high class clientele sell
furniture on instalments. Seven or eight years
ago higher priced automobiles were sold on time
payments only very quietly, but for the last few
years they have been sold in the same manner
and under the same conditions as cheaper cars.
Electric refrigerators, too expensive to be bought
by the poor, are sold largely on an instalment
basis. While the largest number of instalment
buyers is still to be found among the lower in-
come groups, the total value of their purchases is
probably less than that of the other groups; in
fact, the great sources of instalment buying are
probably among the middle class and upper lay-
ers of skilled workers. Nor is instalment selling
confined to any particular section or sections of
the country; it is well established everywhere, in
both urban and rural districts.
One of the effects of instalment buying has
been the creation of a new middleman, the fi-
nance company, the business of which has grown
to great size within a few years' time. The selling
of automobiles on the partial payment plan
created a demand for some special agency to
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
finance the sales; the finance companies which
were organized to supply this need made pos-
sible the growth of instalment buying by provid-
ing the necessary credit facilities for the exten-
sion of the system. Each new increase in instal-
ment buying resulted in a still greater demand
for the services of the finance companies, which
rapidly increased in size and number. In func-
tion these companies are in certain respects like
commercial banks, although very few of them
are incorporated under the banking laws and
subject to regular examination by the state bank-
ing departments. It is one of their functions to
supply funds with which dealers can buy and
carry a stock of goods. This activity is sometimes
referred to as wholesale financing. They also ex-
tend credit on a large scale to individual pur-
chasers of goods bought on the instalment plan.
This is sometimes called retail financing. The
one service helps the dealer to buy goods, the
other helps him to sell them on the instalment
plan. In the final analysis instalment financing is
accomplished by borrowing from commercial
banks; the major finance companies borrow to
the extent of five times their capital resources,
with a smaller ratio among the smaller com-
panies.
The practises of finance companies in extend-
ing credit to individual purchasers of goods
bought on the instalment plan are so varied that
it is impossible to generalize as to their methods.
In the case of the automobile business, however,
considerable uniformity exists. When an indi-
vidual buys an automobile on the instalment
plan he is usually required to pay in cash one
third of the purchase price and to give a note
which provides for a schedule of equal monthly
payments to be made over periods of time rang-
ing from three to twelve or more months. The
dealer if he is able to do so sells these notes out-
right to a finance company and thus receives cash
for the goods sold on the instalment plan. When
the dealer is able to sell the notes in this manner
his legal responsibility ends. In most cases,
however, he is required to endorse his custom-
er's paper and assume the responsibility for its
payment. Some of the finance companies dis-
count the instalment notes in the regular way
with banks located in the territory in which the
notes originate. Others place their receivables in
trust with some trust company and issue short
term debentures against the trusteed notes,
which are sold to banks. Sometimes collateral
trust bonds running for a period of about ten
years are sold. In any case the finance company
secures additional funds with which to finance
more instalment sales.
Finance companies were at first organized by
men not connected with the producing enter-
prises, but later automobile companies formed
their own finance companies (for example, the
General Motors Acceptance Corporation organ-
ized in 1919). Some important finance compa-
nies are subsidiaries of commercial banks; gen-
erally, even when affiliated with a particular in-
dustry, the companies do a diversified business.
There has recently been a tendency for finance
companies to combine; this has been influenced
not only by problems peculiar to the financing
field but by the general tendency of American
business. Concentration and centralization of
control are accompanied by localized martage-
ment; some of the finance companies have sub-
sidiaries in foreign countries. In June, 1930, four
finance companies had instalment paper out-
standing amounting to $525,040,000, or ap-
proximately one quarter of the total. The busi-
ness is profitable , losses are small and failures are
few. One of the larger finance companies, the
Commercial Credit Corporation of Baltimore,
with assets of $171,000,000 in 1930 paid over a
period of nine years 85 percent in stock dividends
in addition to substantial cash dividends. The
General Motors Acceptance Corporation with a
capital of $50,000,000 and assets of $381 ,000,000
has an excellent dividend record; it paid 8. per-
cent in 1923, 1924 and 1925 and 12 percent from
1926 to 193 1 in addition to extras of 3 percent in
1926, 5, 7, and 8 percent in 1927, 1928 and 1929
respectively and 16 percent in 1930.
The development of the finance company has
had the economic effect of making possible more
steady production in an industry where demand
for the product is seasonal. The volume of sales
of automobiles in the beginning of the industry
was subject to extreme seasonal fluctuations;
they became more moderate with the improve-
ment of roads and the increased use of closed
cars, but demand still varies considerably
through the year. The industry has therefore
been confronted with the difficult problem of
how to secure steady production to meet a sea-
sonal demand. The manufacturer's own capital as
well as what he could borrow was needed for
manufacturing purposes; this and other factors
made it impossible for him to carry his entire
output over the winter months. He did not have
adequate storage space; even if he could have
provided it, the problem would not have been
solved, for cars must be distributed geographi-
Instalment Selling
cally before the spring demand arises. The dealer
could not take the cars off the manufacturer's
hands because he did not have funds of his own
and could not secure them from the regular
banks for this purpose. The development of the
finance company solved the problem. It extended
credit to the dealer permitting him to lay in his
stock as it was finished at the factory. The manu-
facturer was paid in cash. Production was con-
tinuous. Transportation was more easily effected
as it was spread over a longer time and the spring
rush was lessened. The dealer was able to show
his stock on his sales floor and have it ready for
immediate delivery in order to meet the seasonal
demand.
Finance companies and retailers are able to
extend credit to individual instalment buyers be-
cause they in turn are able to borrow from banks.
Some large retailers who have well organized
credit departments carry on their instalment
business without the service of finance com-
panies and borrow directly from the banks to
finance their instalment sales. Thus one of the
costs to the finance company or the retailer is the
interest that must be paid on borrowed funds.
A second element of cost is that of a sum suffi-
cient to cover losses in the case of individual
buyers who default in payment. While complete
statistical information is lacking, it is reported
that the losses sustained by finance companies
as a .whole average 0.5 percent; in automobile
paper the loss is small, as low as o 2 percent on
aggregate new and used car paper. It should be
observed that the finance company's rate of loss
does not show the loss sustained by the dealer.
Some of the paper was "recourse" paper, that is,
paper carrying the dealer's endorsement and for
which the dealer stood the losses; in such cases
the finance company lost nothing except in the
event of the dealer's default. In reference to the
losses sustained by dealers the statistics com-
piled by the United States Department of Com-
merce, based on a study of 10,992 representative
retail establishments located in all sections of the
country and representing all the principal lines
of retail trade , show that the average bad debt
loss on instalment sales in 1929 was 1.2 percent.
These losses ranged from an average of 0.2 per-
cent for those selling coal, wood, lumber and
building material to an average of 7.9 percent for
general clothing stores. A third cost is that of
making the preliminary credit investigations
which are necessary if the credit is extended
wisely. A fourth expense is incurred in the pro-
vision of the necessary facilities for making col-
79
lections on many small notes from numerous
customers. There are other costs, particularly
those in the nature of overhead expenses, such as
the maintenance of places of business and the
salaries of officers and general managers.
The cost of instalment credit to the consumer
as evidenced by the difference between the cash
and credit prices of goods vanes greatly, ranging
from nothing (where the cash and credit prices
are the same) to as much as 80 percent, depend-
ing upon the individual transaction. Extensive
inquiry among retailers of all kinds as to the cash
and credit prices of various commodities and
examination of the rate schedules of a number of
finance companies indicate that the usual cost of
instalment credit ranges from 10 to 40 percent.
Nominal interest rates are of course lower, but
the real cost to the borrower becomes larger be-
cause of the fact that the debt is repaid in instal-
ments. In many cases the dealer increases the
cash price of articles so that the spread between
the cash and instalment price shall not appear
excessive.
Reasoning a priori individuals in both the
United States and Europe have come to widely
different conclusions in regard to the effect of
instalment buying on saving. Business men have
frequently advised their employees to go into
debt for homes on the ground that it will give
them a stake in the community and their job and
will make them work harder and save more in
order to meet their financial obligations. It is also
set forth as a reasonable supposition that if the
individual is not paying for furniture, vacuum
cleaners and washing machines he is apt to spend
his odd dollars in the theater or for other ephem-
eral luxuries. It is also a fact that if the life of the
commodity purchased is longer than the period
of payment a saving has taken place. If, for ex-
ample, the automobile has been paid for before
it is worn out, the purchaser has made a saving
provided he has not taken the money out of his
savings account or mortgaged his house to com-
plete the payments on the automobile. On the
other hand, it is stated that instalment selling
causes people to buy and consume luxuries
which they would not buy if they were required
to pay cash. It is argued that the instalment buyer
soon acquires the luxury habit by being able to
possess these articles, and that the luxury habit
thus acquired leads to spending and consuming
rather than to saving. Those who think that in-
stalment buying is not conducive to saving men-
tion frequently the demoralizing effect of too
much debt on the individual. Against this view it
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
80
may be argued that instalment buying substi-
tutes a plan or orderly method of payment for
arrangements which sometimes have had little
system in them, and consequently has a distinct
disciplinary value.
Instalment buying in its present volume has
existed for a comparatively few years, and experi-
ence with it has been too brief to prove anything
conclusive in regard to its effect upon savings.
The goods bought and paid for on the instalment
plan between 1920 and 1929 were apparently not
paid for out of savings; while large quantities of
goods were being bought and paid for and per-
haps only partly consumed, the savings of all in-
come groups were apparently increasing at an
unusual rate. The statistics on savings are not
conclusive, but they do seem to indicate that
savings are at least not declining because of in-
stalment selling. It is true that the $2,500,000,-
ooo of outstanding instalment debt is a liability
of the instalment buying group. But it is also
true that this liability is perhaps more than
covered by assets in the form of more or less
durable goods. Finally, there is a growing belief
that savings have been overstressed in the past
and that spending is as important a factor as
saving in promoting economic progress and sta-
bility. The danger is that the individual unpro-
tected by a comprehensive system of social in-
surance may ignore the needs of illness and old
age in his urge to spend.
When first introduced instalment sales create
new consumer purchasing power. The instal-
ment debt outstanding at any given moment rep-
resents goods which would not otherwise have
been sold or produced. Since instalment selling
is necessarily limited to particular kinds of
goods, there are limits to its expansion. When
that limit is reached and stabilization sets in, in-
stalment selling becomes an ordinary institu-
tional factor in the business mechanism and
ceases to be an additional stimulus to increasing
production. This may have a disturbing effect on
an industry keyed up to unusually rapid expan-
sion, an effect which becomes still more disturb-
ing if instalment sales decline.
Instalment selling also exerts a decided influ-
ence on the character and structure of industry.
Most of the goods sold on time are of the more
durable variety; in 1928 the instalment sales of
automobiles, radios, washing machines, mechan-
ical refrigerators and similar goods accounted for
approximately 70 percent of all instalment sales.
Instalment selling therefore stimulates the ex-
pansion of mass production industries with high
fixed charges industries which are characteris-
tic of modern large scale production.
During the period of greatest growth in in-
stalment selling, between 1920 and 1925, it was
frequently predicted that the next period of
business depression would destroy the instal-
ment system if not the entire retail credit struc-
ture. It was pointed out that because of the
widespread unemployment which would result
consumers would not be able to meet their
obligations; there would therefore be a flood of
repossessions, enormous credit losses and frozen
accounts receivable, all of which would subject
the credit structure to unbearable strain. Instal-
ment risks, however, are highly diversified,
spread over many classes of people. In a depres-
sion only a part of the population become* un-
employed, and the portion of the population sub-
ject to the unemployment hazard includes only a
fraction of those who have instalment payments
to make. Moreover the instalment buyer usually
strains all resources to make his payments and
thus prevent repossession. It is not to be over-
looked that a certain period of time elapses be-
tween the outset of the crisis and the point at
which unemployment becomes really acute, an
interval sufficiently long for a considerable pro-
portion of the outstanding debts to be repaid.
Finally, instalment buying is not confined to
wage earners and salaried employees. The in-
come of other groups of instalment buyers is not
so seriously affected by the depression as to en-
danger repayment; while the purchasing power
of the fixed income groups is in fact increased by
the fall in prices.
This view is apparently confirmed by the ex-
perience of the depression year 1930. Statistics
gathered by the retail credit survey of the United
States Department of Commerce show that
changes in 1930 in comparison with 1929 were
not of a serious nature. True, repossessions, past
due payments, losses and management expenses
increased and the earnings of finance companies
declined, although lower interest rates in bor-
rowed money constituted a favorable factor for
the companies. Numerous individual dealers and
purchasers had trouble with their accounts; the
strain on many instalment buyers, forced to re-
strict expenditures or borrow money to meet
their payments, was severe. But considering the
fact that 1929 was on the whole a year of unusual
business activity the changes were small. There
were no disturbing increases or decreases in
credit sales in relation to cash sales. Current
obligations in the form of instalment accounts
Instalment Selling Instinct
for the first fourteen months after the crisis
were paid in an orderly manner and new goods
bought on these terms in the same proportion to
cash sales as formerly, both showing approxi-
mately the same relative decline. Taking the sys-
tem as a whole, instalment credit stood the test
of business recession in a manner that may be
considered satisfactory.
While instalment payments are met and the
system satisfactorily withstands depression, an
undoubted decrease in immediate consumer
purchasing power takes place. Persons whose in-
comes decline make their instalment payments,
but they are paying for goods previously bought
and to that extent are unable to buy new goods.
This is offset by the creation of new purchasing
power when instalment sales are increasing, but
that is not true in periods of depression when
instalment sales decline. They declined sharply
in 1930-31, years of depression; in the first
nine months of 1931, for example, instalment
sales of automobiles declined $472,000,000, a
drop of 20.4 percent over 1930. Precisely as in-
stalment selling tends to increase prosperity it
tends also to deepen and prolong depression;
when, however, instalment selling begins once
more to increase and create new purchasing
power it becomes a contributing factor in busi-
ness recovery.
Instalment selling according to all indications
is hec to stay; it has assumed a definite place in
the institutional arrangements of business enter-
prise. The system, however, will probably show
no unusual expansion in the future as it did in
the recent past; instalment selling will depend
more closely on the general rate of economic
progress or regression.
W. C. PLUMMER
See: MARKETING; LOANS, PERSONAL; MERCANTILE
CREDIT; SMALL LOANS; MORTGAGE.
Consult. Sehgman, E. R. A., The Economics of Instal-
ment Selling, 2 vols. (New York 1927); Plummer, W.
C., "Social and Economic Consequences of Buying on
the Instalment Plan" in American Academy of Polit-
ical and Social Science, Annals, vol. cxxix (1927) sup-
plement; Crick, W. F., The Economics of Instalment
Trading and Hire-purchase (London 1929), Danielian,
N. R., "The Theory of Consumers' Credit" in Ameri-
can Economic Review, vol. xix (1929) 393-411; Acad-
emy of Political Science, "Problems of Prosperity" in
Proceedings, vol. xn (1926-28) no. 11; "Where Instal-
ment Buying Breaks" m New Republic, vol. xlvi (1926)
18687; Johnson, Alvin, "No Danger in Instalment
Buying" in New Republic, vol. xlvi (1926) 305-06;
Merrick, R. G., The Modern Credit Company (Balti-
more 1922); Wright, H. E., The Financing of Automo-
bile Installment Sales (Chicago 1927); Grimes, W. A ,
Financing Automobile Sales by the Time-payment Plan
8i
(Chicago 1926); Griffin, B. W., Installment Sales and
Collections (New York 1922); Comer, H D., The Ten-
payment-plan of Retailing Men's Clothing, Ohio State
University, Bureau of Business Research Monographs,
no. v (Columbus 1926); Cordell, H. W., Instalment
Credit in the Retail Furniture Trade, Ohio State Uni-
versity, Bureau of Business Research, Monographs,
no. xiv (Columbus 1930), Copeland, M. T , "Market-
ing" in Conference on Unemployment (1921), Recent
Economic Changes in the United State*, 2 vols. (New
York 1929) vol. i, ch v, Estrich, W. A., The Law of In-
stalment Sales of Goods (Rochester, N. Y. 1926);
Earengey, W. G., The Law of Hire Purchase (London
193). United States, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic
Commerce, "Installment Selling of Motor Vehicles in
Europe," Trade Information Bulletin, no. 550 (1928);
Sprague, J B., "Panics and Time Payments" in
Harper's Magazine, vol clxn (193031) 612-21; "In-
stallment Selling Tested by Depression" m Literary
Digest, vol cvn, no. 3 (1930) 48-50, United States,
Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, "Retail
Credit Survey," Domestic Commerce Series, since 1930;
United States, Census Bureau, Census of Distribution,
1930, Preliminary Reports, United States Summary of
Retail Distribution (1931); Hobson, J. A , "Instalment
Selling" in Contemporary Reinew, vol. cxxxm (1928)
326-32; Whitelock, W. II , "The Industrial Credit
System and Imprisonment for Debt" in Economic
Journal, vol. xxiv (1914) 33-40; Kammermann, R ,
"Konsum-Fmanzierung" in Sihweizensche Zeitschnft
fur Volkswirtschaft und Sozialpohtik, vol. xxxin, pt. li
(1927) 129-45; Steucr, Wilh, Konsum- und Abtatz-
finanzierung in Deutschland (Berlin 1930), Buhn,
Hermann, Die Konsumfinanzierung (Werthcim 1930);
Rupp, Werner, Die Konsumfinanzierung im Lichte
theoretischer Kntik (Osterode in the Harz 1927).
INSTINCT. The concept of instinct goes back,
in a vague way at least, to Plato and Aristotle;
it lacked specific definition among the Greeks
because they did not distinguish clearly between
inherited and acquired traits. With the revival of
Greek philosophy in the Middle Ages the con-
cept of instinct again appeared, especially in St.
Thomas Aquinas, where it was identified more
or less clearly with the idea of natural law work-
ing through the individual to produce responses
that are inherent in his spiritual endowment.
These spiritual endowments derived from nat-
ural law were fairly similar to the Aristotelian
theological categories of the virtues and the vices.
By the eighteenth century they had evolved into
the definiteness of conscience, benevolence,
sympathy and other moral sentiments and were
basic to the philosophy of the English and Scotch
ethicists of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies, whose intellectual tradition harked back
through Calvinistic predestination to natural
law. The term instinct came into use with espe-
cial frequency in the writings of the eighteenth
century and was made to refer not only to the
82
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
moral sentiments but also to the natural mental
endowment. Specific instincts were rarely men-
tioned by name, and the concept remained for
the most part general until well into the nine-
teenth century.
The growth of biological analysis in the mid-
dle of the nineteenth century and the rise of
physiological psychology immediately thereafter
as well as the great prestige of the biological
approach to the study of man in that century
stimulated the detailed analysis of mental hered-
ity and the resultant classification of the in-
stincts. This work was practically all speculative
and a priori rather than experimental because
of the difficulty of developing objective methods
of analyzing the genetic aspects of behavior.
The Germans, particularly Prcyer, a disciple of
Darwin, following the more general emphasis of
the Scotch and English cthicists as well as the
new biology, developed lists of specific instincts
and attempted to apply these to the analysis of
child and adult behavior. In the United States
William James followed the newer German lead
and developed some fifty separate instincts, but
he in turn was surpassed in the matter of quan-
tity by later psychologists, notably by Thorn-
dike and Wood worth. In Great Britain the same
tendency to particularize instincts developed a
little later under the leadership of McDougall.
The groups working in education and social
psychology, which increased rapidly after 1900,
took over the trend and developed a large vari-
ety of classifications.
As late as 1918 or even 1920 the active or
passive support of the instinct hypothesis in the
United States by psychologists, sociologists and
educationists appeared to be almost unanimous;
and the economists, political scientists and his-
torians were beginning to develop an interest
in the concept of instinct along with their ex-
pansion in the direction of a psychological ori-
entation of their disciplines. As late as 1917
Dewey, for example, emphasized the importance
of the instinct interpretation for social psychol-
ogy. By 1922 he had shifted to a basic emphasis
upon the importance of habit in character inte-
gration. Between 1921 and 192^ an acrimonious
controversy arose over the question of instinct,
and after the smoke and confusion were dissi-
pated it seemed quite evident that the anti-
instinctivists held the best positions on the field.
The pro-instinctivists began to rearrange their
broken legions in the form of redefinition and
of substitute categories, such as drives, desires,
wishes, hormic urges and prepotent reflexes;
others retreated and took up position with the
endocrinologists, psychoanalysts, gestaltists and
other diverse schools. In Great Britain the criti-
cism of the instinct usage and hypothesis is only
now beginning in earnest, while on the conti-
nent, where the instinctivist interpretation never
became much of a scientific fad, the mild and
relatively passive emphasis upon a general in-
stinct interpretation continues.
Many conceptions of instinct have obtained
since the term came into use. It can scarcely be
said that there was any definite basis for a care-
ful discrimination between inherited and ac-
quired elements in so-called instinctive behavior
until the critical work of Wcismann and Mendel
became generally available. The old metaphysi-
cal concept of natural law as the source of human
behavior and character did not contain a theory
of biological inheritance, although it leaned
toward one in its later phases and thus favored
the biological interpretation of instinct without
eliminating entirely the environmentalist inter-
pretation. The Lamarckian theory, which in the
nineteenth century made the transition from the
natural law to the scientific or analytic explana-
tion of the origin and integration of human
traits, combined in true eclectic fashion the con-
cepts of environmental and hereditary factors
without analyzing either concept in detail. The
forced abandonment of the Lamarckian eclec-
ticism brought about by the experimental work
of Mendel, Weismann and others ultimately
forced the analysis of the concept of instinct in
purely biological terms. This analysis was finally
performed by the present writer, thus forcing
the issue of the controversy in terms of inherited
biological structure and acquired or conditioned
behavior patterns. It became evident that most
of the so-called instincts were not inherited
mechanisms but either acquired patterns of be-
havior or even conceptual language categories
embracing large fields of functionally (not struc-
turally) similar behavior. The new criticism on
the basis of structural (including endocrine) bio-
logical analysis also forced the abandonment of
the widespread practise of defining and classify-
ing so-called instincts in terms of their adjust-
ment functions instead of in terms of their gene-
sis. More popular uses of the term instinct,
making it equivalent to unconscious, unpremed-
itated, habitual or automatic activity, are being
eliminated from writings in the field of the men-
tal and social sciences, although they still freely
persist among litterateurs and publicists, who
usually come in contact with scientific criticism
Instinct
only indirectly and frequently a generation or
more after it has been made.
The definition of instinct most widely ac-
cepted has been essentially biological and has
varied but little, if at all, in its general concep-
tion since the middle of the last century, al-
though it has been subjected to greater precision
of detail as biological knowledge has itself be-
come more precise. In its simplest precise form
this definition of an instinct may be stated as a
specific and definite inherited or unlearned re-
sponse which follows or accompanies a specific
and definite sensory stimulus or organic condi-
tion that serves as a release to the inherited
mechanism. This definition of instinct bars both
the conception of acquired instincts and the
related conception, not infrequent in German
and continental philosophic literature, that in-
stincts are inherited behavior patterns which
were at one period of the history of the race the
result of rational adaptation.
Among the most significant results for the
social sciences of this stabilization of the instinct
concept has been the revised outlook upon hu-
man society and social control made possible
to the social scientist, the educator, the legis-
lator and the administrator. The social scientists
are confronted with the problem of distinguish-
ing inherited forms of behavior from those
which are acquired. The narrowing of the scope
of inherited behavior patterns as thus analyzed
must frequently turn the educator, legislator and
administrator, in the face of some difficult per-
sonality or social situation, from the barren
statement that "You can't argue with an in-
stinct" or "You can't change human nature"
to an intelligently constructive social program
which will remove the obstructing or perverting
conditioning factors and stimuli and lead them
to substitute new environing pressures more
favorable to the production of the desired ad-
justment. The effect of the more critical study
of instinct upon the subject matter and orien-
tation of the social sciences themselves has been
even more marked. The most immediate and
thoroughgoing response to this analysis was
from sociology and the branch of social psychol-
ogy which works from the standpoint of soci-
ology; these disciplines were somewhat distantly
and haltingly followed by social work, which is
considerably under the influence of the psycho-
analytic theories regarding instinct. The uncriti-
cal use of the term instinct by a branch of the
institutional school of economics under the lead-
ership of Veblen, who misapplied the erroneous
concept in an otherwise brilliant analysis of soci-
ety, has been turned into a more fruitful envi-
ronmental and cultural analysis of traditional
and conventional factors conditioning economic
behavior. Political psychology, which at first
responded to an instinct interpretation under the
leadership of Graham Wallas, is now recover-
ing its balance through environmental and per-
sonality analysis. Psychology, which has closely
trailed biology during recent decades, was slow-
est to respond generally to the new critical
findings regarding instinct; but very recently the
biologists themselves have begun not only tacitly
but also openly to accept the environmental
analysis and interpretation of the factors which
are responsible for the cultural elements in
human behavior.
L. L. BERNARD
See: PSYCHOLOGY; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; EDUCATIONAL
PSYCHOLOGY; PSYCHOANALYSIS; HAIHT; HUMAN NA-
TURE; HhKtDiiY; BEHAVIORISM; ENVIRONMENTALISM;
BIOLOGY.
Consult: Hancock, Thomas, Essay on Instinct, and
Its Physical and Moral Relations (London 1824);
Brougham, H. P., Dialogues on Instinct; with Analyti-
cal View of the Researches on Fossil Osteology (London
1844), Preycr, W., Die Seele dcs Kindes (gth ed. Leip-
sic 1923), tr. by H W. Brown, International Edu-
cation series, vols. vn and ix (New York 1888-89),
and Die geistige Enticickelung in der ersten Kindheit
(Stuttgart 1893), tr. by H W. Brown as Mental De-
velopment in the Child (New York 1893); James,
William, The Principles of Psychology, 2 vols. (New
York 1890); McDougall, William, An Introduction to
Social Psychology (rev ed. Boston 1926), Breed, F. S.,
The Development of Certain Instincts and Habits in
Chicks (New York 1911), Veblen, Thorstein, The
Instinct of Workmanship (new ed. New York 1918);
Dcwcy, John, "The Need for Social Psychology" in
Psychological Review, vol. xxiv (1917) 266-77; Wat-
son, John B., "A Schematic Outline of the Emotions"
in Psychological Review, vol xxvi (1919) 165-96; Dun-
lap, Knight, "Are There Any Instincts?" in Journal
of Abnormal Psychology and Social Psychology, vol.
xiv (1919-20) 307-11, Bernard, L. L , "The Misuse
of Instinct in the Social Sciences" in Psychological
Retnezv, vol. xxvui (1921) 96-119; Fans, Ellsworth,
"Are Instincts Data or Hypotheses?" in American
Journal of Sociology, vol. xxvn (1921-22) 184-96;
Zing Yang Kuo, "Giving up Instincts in Psychology"
in Journal of Philosophy, vol xvni (1921) 645-64;
Josey, C. C., The Social Philosophy of Instinct (New
York 1922); Dewey, John, Human Nature and Con-
duct (New York 1922); McDougall, William, "Can
Sociology and Social Psychology Dispense with In-
stincts?" and discussion by L. L. Bernard in American
Journal of Sociology, vol. xxix (1923-24) 657-73; Ber-
nard, L. L., Instinct- a Study in Social Psychology
(New York 1924); Mitchell, T. W , Problems in Psy-
chopathology (London 1927) p. 97-117; Ginsberg,
Morris, "The Place of Instinct in Social Theory" in
Econornica, vol. xi (1931) 25-44.
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
INSTITUTION is a verbal symbol which for
want of a better describes a cluster of social
usages. It connotes a way of thought or action of
some prevalence and permanence, which is em-
bedded in the habits of a group or the customs of a
people. In ordinary speech it is another word for
procedure, convention or arrangement; in the
language of books it is the singular of which the
mores or the folkways are the plural. Institutions
fix the confines of and impose form upon the
activities of human beings. The world of use and
wont, to which imperfectly we accommodate our
lives, is a tangled and unbroken web of institu-
tions.
The range of institutions is as wide as the in-
terests of mankind. Any simple thing we observe
a coin, a time table, a canceled check, a base-
ball score, a phonograph record has little sig-
nificance in itself; the meaning it imparts comes
from the ideas, values and habits established
about it. Any informal body of usage the com-
mon law, athletics, the higher learning, literary
criticism, the moral code is an institution in
that it lends sanctions, imposes tabus and lords
it over some human concern. Any formal organi-
zation the government, the church, the uni-
versity, the corporation, the trade union im-
poses commands, assesses penalties and exercises
authority over its members. Arrangements as
diverse as the money economy, classical educa-
tion, the chain store, fundamentalism and de-
mocracy are institutions. They may be rigid or
flexible in their structures, exacting or lenient in
their demands; but alike they constitute stand-
ards of conformity from which an individual may
depart only at his peril. About every urge of
mankind an institution grows up; the expression
of every taste and capacity is crowded into an
institutional mold.
Our culture is a synthesis or at least an ag-
gregation of institutions, each of which has its
own domain and its distinctive office. The func-
tion of each is to set a pattern of behavior and to
fix a zone of tolerance for an activity or a comple-
ment of activities. Etiquette decrees the rituals
which must be observed in all polite intercourse.
Education provides the civilizing exposures
through which the potential capacities of indi-
viduals are developed into the abilities for per-
formance, appreciation and enjoyment which
are personality. Marriage gives propriety to the
sex union, bestows regularity upon procreation,
establishes the structure of the family and ef-
fects such a mediation as may be between per-
sonal ambition and social stability. A number of
institutions may combine and compete to im-
press character upon and give direction to the
mass of human endeavor. The state claims pri-
mary obedience and imposes a crude order upon
the doings of mankind; the law by punishing of-
fenses and settling disputes determines the out-
most limits of acceptable actions; morality with
neater distinctions and more meticulous stand-
ards distinguishes respectable from unconven-
tional conduct. The community is made up of
such overlapping provinces of social government.
It is the institution in its role of organizer which
makes of this a social and not a monadic world.
It is impossible to discover for such an organic
complex of usages as an institution a legitimate
origin. Its nucleus may lie in an accidental, an
arbitrary or a conscious action. A man savage
or civilized strikes a spark from flint, upturns
the sod, makes an image of mud, brews a con-
coction, mumbles a rigmarole, decides a quarrel
or helps himself to what he may require. The act
is repeated, then multiplied; ideas, formulae,
sanctions and habits from the impinging culture
get attached; and gradually there develops a
ritual of fire, a hoe and spade agronomy, a cere-
monial for appeasing the gods, a cult of healing,
a spell for casting out devils, a due process of
law or a sound business policy. Even if it is
deliberately established an institution has neither
a definite beginning nor an uncompromised
identity. A religious creed or a legislative statute
is compounded of beliefs and ideas which bear
the mark of age and of wear; a paper charter and
a document engrossed upon parchment are not
insulated against the novelties in usage which
attend the going corporation and the living con-
stitution. It is impossible even in the most rudi-
mentary culture to find folkways which are
simple and direct answers to social necessities.
In all societies, however forward or backward,
the roots of the most elementary of arrange-
ments barter, burial, worship, the dietary, the
work life, the sex union run far back into the
unknown past and embody the knowledge and
ignorance, the hopes and fears, of a people.
In fact as an aspect of a continuous social
process an institution has no origin apart from
its development. It emerges from the impact of
novel circumstances upon ancient custom; it is
transformed into a different group of usages by
cultural change. In institutional growth the
usual may give way to the unusual so gradually
as to be almost unnoticed. At any moment the
familiar seems the obvious; the unfamiliar ap-
pears but a little revealed an implication in a
Institution
convention which is itself taken for granted, a
potentiality slowly quickening into life. So it is
that the corporation is still a person, the work of
the machine is manufacture, the labor contract
concerns masters and servants and industrial ac-
cidents are personal wrongs. It often happens
that new arrangements spring up under the
cloak of an established organization. Thus the
empire of the Caesars emerged behind the forms
of the republic, the holy Catholic church is
nominally the episcopal see of Rome and the
British Commonwealth does its business in the
name of His Majesty. In like manner in the
domain of ideas the novelty in doctrine usually
appears as a gloss upon the ancient text; systems
of theology are commentaries upon the words of
Scripture; Coke and Cooley set down their own
understanding of the law upon the authority of
Littleton and Blackstone. Thus too so intangible
a thing as a social theory or a public policy may
emerge from the practical commitments of the
moment. A mere expediency, such as the aboli-
tion of the corn laws, is abstracted from cause
and occasion and becomes a generalized policy of
free trade; or a comprehensive scheme of railway
regulation, such as obtains in the United States,
appears as a by-product of the empirical elimi-
nation of specific abuses. In the course of events
the fact arrives before the word and new wine
must be put up in old bottles. Novelties win a
tacit acceptance before their strangeness is no-
ticed and compel before their actuality is ap-
preciated. In institutional life current realities
are usually to be found behind ancient forms.
As an institution develops within a culture it
responds to changes in prevailing sense and
reason. A history of the interpretation of Aris-
totle or St. Paul or Kant at various periods indi-
cates how easily a document lends itself to suc-
cessive systems of ideas. The public regulation
of business has consistently even if belatedly re-
flected the prevailing winds of doctrine upon the
relation of the state to industry. The pages of the
law reports reveal the ingenuity with which, in
spite of professions that the law remains the
same, old rules and standards are remade to
serve changing notions of social necessity. An
institution which has enjoyed long life has man-
aged to make itself at home in many systems of
thought. The classic example is the Christian
Gospel. The simple story of the man Jesus pres-
ently became a body of Pauline philosophy; the
Middle Ages converted it into an intricate theo-
logical system and the rationalization of a power-
ful ecclesiastical empire; at the individualistic
touch of the Reformation it became a doctrine of
the personal relationship between man and his
maker; it is today patching up a truce with
Darwinism, the scientific attitude, relativity and
even religious skepticism. In this continuous
process of the adaptation of usage and arrange-
ment to intellectual environment an active role
is assumed by that body of ideas taken for granted
which is called common sense. Because it deter-
mines the climate of opinion within which all
others must live it is the dominant institution in
a society.
In an even broader way an institution is ac-
commodated to the folkways of a culture. As
circumstances impel and changing ideas permit,
a usage in high esteem, like piracy, may fall from
grace; while another under tabu, such as birth
control, may first win tolerance and in time
general acceptance. As one social system passes
into another and the manner of living and the
values of life are transformed, one institution
gives way to another better adapted to the times.
It required a number of changes in use and
wont to convert the ordeal by combat into the
trial by law; the prestige of the family tie, of
blood vengeance, of the magical ritual and of
might made right had to decline and a conscious-
ness of the waste and injustice which attended
legalized conflict had to become prevalent. An
institution that survives, such as matrimony, re-
sponds surely even if stubbornly to cultural
change. While the basis of Christian marriage is
no more than the primitive custom of monogamy,
the rigid lines of the institution bear the marks
of the mediaeval order. It gave support to a caste
system resting upon landed property, elevated
the social values of family above the individual
values of love, was blessed with the ascetic ideal
of otherworldliness and became a sacrament.
Companionate marriage is emerging from a dif-
ferent world of fact, appreciation, habit and be-
lief. It reduces to usage an attempt to escape the
rigors of matrimony without resort to casual
relationships; it reflects the condition of an
urban society where blood is no longer blue, life
is impersonal, children are a luxury and women
must earn their own livings. In a culture which
develops slowly enough to allow a graceful ac-
commodation folkways may be drawn together
into rich and intricate institutional patterns. In
the Middle Ages the usages of the church the
trinity, the creed, the litany, the ecclesiastical
empire were all fused into a single conventional
whole, to which unity was given by the idea of
the death of the god as a vicarious atonement. In
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
86
the late eighteenth century politics, law, econom-
ics, ethics and theology in separate domains alike
attempted to superimpose a symmetrical system
of mechanical principles upon the mass of hu-
man behavior; the common element was an
analogue horrowed from physical science. In the
social process the life of an institution depends
upon its capacity for adaptation. But always amid
the whirl of change elements of disorder are
present; and long before a harmony is achieved
between unlike conventions disintegration has
set in.
Nor is an institution introduced from an alien
society immune to this process of development.
The act of borrowing merely gives the oppor-
tunity for its transformation. The nucleus is
liberated from its cultural matrix and takes on
the character of the usages among which it is set
down. In their native habitat the books of the
Old Testament were the literature of a people; in
the strange world of the mediaeval schoolmen
they became a collection of verses inviting
dialectical exposition. In England "the higher
law" was invoked to justify a popular revolution
against an irresponsible monarchy; in America it
has become the sanction for a judicial review of
legislative acts. In appropriating the machine
process Russia stripped away the enveloping
business arrangements and made of it an instru-
ment to serve a national social economy. The act
of transplantation may at first retard but even-
tually is likely to promote growth. It introduces
into a culture an unknown usage but allows it to
emerge as an indigenous institution.
Its very flexibility makes an institution a
creature of social stress and strain. In a stable or
slowly changing society it fits rather neatly into
the cultural pattern; amid the disorder which
change brings its office may be compromised by
the inflexibility of its structure. As necessity
changes, tradition and inertia may stand in the
way of the performance of new duties. A group
of usages, for all the new demands upon it, may
never quite escape slavery to its past. The shadow
of ordeal by combat still hangs heavy over trial
by law; the jury decides the contest, the judge is
the umpire, the procedures are the rules of the
game, the witnesses are clansmen armed with
oaths and the attorneys are the champions; an
appeal court orders a new trial not primarily for
want of justice but because of error in the con-
duct of the ordeal. The United States Supreme
Court has come to be the official interpreter of
the constitution; yet by tradition its function is
judicial, and it is only as an issue is germane to
the disposition of a case that it can declare the
meaning of the higher law. Almost every insti-
tution from the superfluous buttons on the
sleeve of a coat to the ceremonial electors in a
presidential contest bears the vestigial mark of
a usage which is gone.
But its elements of stability may be powerless
to prevent the conversion of an institution to a
service for which it was never intended. Its
existence and repute give it value; it may ad-
ventitiously or by design assume a new character
and play a new role in the social order. Equity,
once an informal method of doing justice, now
possesses all the appurtenances of a system of
law. The principle of "no liability without fault"
was once the basis of an individualistic law of
torts; in our times the rules of recovery are biting
socialized, as, for example, in workmen's com-
pensation, by a mere extension of "fault" to acts
involving no personal blame. An institution may
even fall into the hands of the enemy and be used
to defeat its reputed purpose. Thus a community
of ascetics develops into a wealthy monastic es-
tablishment; a theory of social contract invented
as a justification of monarchy is converted into a
sanction for its overthrow; a party dedicated to
personal freedom becomes the champion of
vested wealth; and a philosophy contrived to
liberate thought rerruiins to enslave it. As time
and chance present their problems, men meet
them with expediencies as best they can; but
those who contrive rules and formulae cannot
control the uses to which they are put. The
proneness of an institution, like a lost sheep, to
go astray, has been caught in the sentence:
"Saint Francis of Assisi set out to bring people
to sweetness and light, and left in his wake a
plague of gray friars." The folkways are marked
by a disposition of event to belie intent.
In the course of time the function of an insti-
tution may be compromised by or perhaps even
be lost in its establishment. The spirit may be-
come the letter, and the vision may be lost in a
ritual of conformity. In time a way of intellectual
inquiry may become a mere keeping of the faith;
a nice propriety in social relations may decay
into a code of etiquette; or a morality intended
to point the way toward the good life may come
to impose the duty of doing right. Thus cere-
monial replaces purposive action and claims a
vicarious obedience. The existence of an informal
institution gets buttressed about by prevailing
opinion and by personal interest. In legislative
"deliberation" statesmen cherish their stock in
trade of tune honored argument and resent the
Institution
appearance of unfamiliar issues; scholars of re-
pute defend the established ways of inquiry and
the accepted verities; and social lights conserving
the older proprieties against feminism "en-
trench themselves behind their tea-cups and de-
fend their frontiers to the last calling-card."
The persons immediately concerned have their
stakes in arrangements as they are and do not
wish to have personal position, comfort of mind
or social prestige disturbed. As it crystallizes
into reputable usages an institution creates in its
defense vested interest, vested habit and vested
ideas and claims allegiance in its own right.
If an institution becomes formal, an even
greater hazard to its integrity is to be found in its
organization and its personnel. A need for order
finds expression in a government or the demand
for justice in a legal system or the desire for wor-
ship in a church; and various groups become
interested in its structure and offices, its proce-
dures and emoluments, its ceremonials and con-
solations. A host of officials great and small
comes into being, who are as solicitous about
the maintenance of the establishment to which
they are committed. They possess preferences
and prejudices, are not immune to considera-
tions of prestige and place and are able to ration-
alize their own interests. As the scheme of ar-
rangements grows rigid, "the good of the na-
tion" or the church or the party or the lodge or
whirtever it is tends to become dominant. The
lines of activity may be frozen into rigidity and
ecclcsiasticism, legalism, constitutionalism and
ritualism remain as fetishes to be served. An in-
stitution when once accepted represents the
answer to a social problem. In the maze of ad-
vantage, accommodation, sense and reason which
grows up about it lies a barrier to the considera-
tion of alternatives. Its successor for better or for
worse is likely to prevail only through revolu-
tion or by stealth.
In its ideal likeness an institution usually
creates its apology. As long as it remains vital,
men accommodate their actions to its detailed
arrangements with little bother about its in-
herent nature or cosmic purpose. As it begins to
give way or is seriously challenged, compelling
arguments for its existence are set forth. The
picture-as-it-is-painted is likely to be rather a
work of art than a representation of fact, a prod-
uct rather of rationalization than of reason; and,
however adventitious its growth, disorderly its
structure or confused its function, the lines of
its defense lack nothing of trimness and purpose.
The feudal regime was an empirical sort of an
affair; men of iron lorded it over underlings as
they could, yielded to their betters as they were
compelled and maintained such law and order as
the times allowed; but with its passing its sprawl-
ing arrangements and befuddled functions were
turned into office and estate ordained of God. In
the days of the Tudors kings were kings without
any dialectical to-do about it; the overneat state-
ment of the theory of divine right had to await
the decadent monarchy of the Stuarts. The
tangled thing called capitalism was never created
by design or cut to a blue print; but now that it is
here, contemporary schoolmen have intellectual-
ized it into a purposive and self-regulating in-
strument of general welfare. If it is to be re-
placed by a "functional society," the new order
will emerge blunderingly enough; but acquisi-
tion of a clean cut structure and clearly defined
purpose will have to wait upon its rationalizers.
An assumption of uniformity underlies all
apologies; invariably they impose simple, ab-
stract names, such as monarchy, democracy,
competition and socialism, upon a mass of di-
vergent arrangements.
In this endowment with neatness and purpose
an institution is fitted out with the sanctions and
trappings of ancient usage. Republican govern-
ment harks back to Greece and Rome; the
"liberties" for which seventeenth century Eng-
lishmen fought were the ancient rights of man.
Magna Carta, a feudal document, was remade to
serve the cause of Parliament against king; a
primitive folk government was discovered in the
dim twilight of the German forests to give to
English democracy a fountainhead which was
neither French nor American; and "the spirit of
'76" grew up long after the event to serve the
patriotism of another century. In the courts it is
a poor rule which cannot find a good reason in
former decisions and fit itself out with an ancient
lineage. But law does not invoke the sanction of
precedent more often than other institutions; the
openness of its written records merely makes
more evident the essential process. A succession
of usages stretching from Aristotle to Calhoun
has been justified as expressions of the natural
order. Even or above all in the church the
prevailing dogma is set down as interpretations
of the creed of the apostles; and Christian mar-
riage "was instituted by God in the time of man's
innocency." As tradition leaves its impress upon
fact, fact helps to remake tradition. The thing
that is is the thing that always was.
It is only as stability gives way to change that
the lines of an institution stand out in sharp re-
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
lief. So long as a people is able to do as its
fathers did it manifests little curiosity about the
arrangements under which it lives and works;
the folk of the South Sea Islands can administer
justice after their ways, but they can neither
give answers to hypothetical cases nor tell in
abstract terms what they do. So long as the pro-
cedure of a group or a school is unquestioned it
is little aware of the conventions and values
which give character even to outstanding achieve-
ment: Scott had little conscious appreciation of
the distinctive qualities of the English novel;
Jowett could never have put in terms the pecu-
liar features of Oxford education; and Kant
might not have been able to place his own phi-
losophy in time and opinion. But the break of
usage from usage within a culture and the re-
sulting maladjustment lead to a discovery of
the detail which makes up an institution. A num-
ber of crises were required to reveal the customs
which are the British constitution; it took a Civil
War to make clear the nature of the union be-
tween the American states. The appearance of
social unrest was essential to an appreciation of
the difference between competition and laissez
faire and between industry and business. An
aesthetic revolt marked by a riding into almost
all the winds that blow was requisite to a realiza-
tion of the distinctive modes and values in
classical music and in Gothic architecture and to
an appreciation of the molds imposed by ac-
ceptable form upon creative effort. For such
casual glimpses of the intricacies of social institu-
tions as men are permitted to see they are in-
debted to the stress and strain of transition.
It follows almost of course that institutional
development drives a fault line between current
fact and prevailing opinion. Men see with their
ideas as well as with their eyes and crowd the
novel life about them into outmoded concepts.
They meet events with the wisdom they already
possess, and that wisdom belongs to the past and
is a product of a by-gone experience. As new
institutions gradually emerge from the old, men
persist in dealing with the unfamiliar as if it
were the familiar. A national legislature by the
enactment of antitrust laws tries to superimpose
the competitive pattern upon the turbulent forces
of a rising industrialism; a trade union uses the
traditional device of a strike to advance wages
in an industry in which the unorganized plants
can easily supply the total output; a group of
elder statesmen approaches the problems of war
debts and reparations with the old formula of
protection versus free trade. At a time when a
depression bears witness to economic disorder
the institution of business is discussed in the
outgrown vocabulary of private property, liberty
of contract, equality of opportunity and free
enterprise; and rugged American individualism
is invoked as a way of order for a system which
has somehow become an uncontrolled and un-
acknowledged collectivism. Even the Protestants
as often as not turn belief into denial; and heresy
shackled to an inherited ideology is merely a re-
verse orthodoxy. In the flux of modern life the
various usages which with their conflicting
values converge upon the individual create diffi-
cult problems that demand judgment; and in the
course of very human events it is the fate alike of
individual, group and society to have to meet
emerging fact with obsolescing idea.
Thus an institution like the living thing it is
has a tangled identity. It cannot be shown in per-
spective or revealed in detail by the logical
method of inclusion and exclusion. It holds with-
in its actuality the vestiges of design and acci-
dent, the stuff of idea and custom, from many
ages, societies, civilizations and climates of
opinion. In any important group of institutions,
such as marriage, property, the market or the
law, there are to be discovered as inseparable
aspects of an organic whole notions, procedures,
sanctions and values hailing from cultural points
far apart. Each holds within its being elements
in idea and in form drawn from the contempo-
rary era of relativity, the rational universe of the
eighteenth century, the mediaeval world of abso-
lutes and verities and the folkways of some dim
far off era. An institution is an aspect of all that
it has met, a potential part of all that it will en-
counter. It holds many unknown possibilities
which a suitable occasion may kindle into life.
It may continue to hold sanctions which we
think have departed; it may already have come
to possess compulsions of which we are still un-
mindful. The discovery of its meaning demands
an inquiry into its life history; but even the
genetic method will tell much less than we should
like to know of how a thing which cannot for
long abide came to be.
Moreover the way of knowledge is itself an
institution. The physical world, natural re-
sources and human nature may be elementary
things; but we can learn about them only in
terms of and to the extent allowed by our pre-
vailing methods of inquiry. The little we under-
stand of the universe is a function of the size of
the telescope, the sensitiveness of the photo-
graphic plate and the bundle of intellectual
Institution
usages called astronomy. Our national resources
are a product of technology, and their cata-
logues at different times reflect the contempo-
rary states of the industrial arts. It was the steam
engine and the machine which made of coal and
iron potential wealth; it was not until Faraday
and Edison had done their work that electricity
became potential energy. The little we under-
stand or think we understand about human na-
ture is an institutional product. The inquiries
called physiology, anatomy and neurology each
of them a bundle of intellectual usages reveal
no more than the raw material of personal char-
acter; the stuff has ripened into individuality
within the matrix of the prevailing folkways.
Man and woman arc so much creatures of cus-
tom and belief that the word innate is most
treacherously applied to masculine and feminine
traits. In various societies the stages upon which
peoples must play their parts are set so differently
by social heritage that we can as yet speak with
little certainty about racial characteristics. The
physical world and the human nature we know
are aspects of the prevailing state of culture. In
matter and in the chromosome may lie limitless
possibilities; the actualities which appear are
creatures of social institutions.
Among the ways of knowing is "the institu-
tional approach." Institutes as the ordained
principles of a realm of learning or of life have
long .existed; they are known to theology, law,
education and all subjects ruled over by dialec-
tic. About the turn of the last century a genetic
study of the folkways began to win academic re-
spectability. It could make little headway so long
as the Newtonian concept was dominant; in-
quirers went in search of laws and uniformities,
explanations were set down in mechanical for-
mulae and the end of the quest was an articulate
and symmetrical body of truths. The institu-
tional method had to wait until the idea of de-
velopment was incorporated into academic
thought and the mind of the inquirer became re-
signed to the inconsistency which attends growth .
The analogy with a biological organism had to be
renounced and a basis in ideology had to be dis-
covered before it could become a fruitful
method of study in economics, history, philos-
ophy, law and politics. The practical impulse
toward its use came with a change in public
opinion; so long as laissez faire dominated our
minds, dialectic served well enough to turn out
explanatory apologies for the existing social
arrangements; when we began to demand that
order and direction be imposed upon an unruly
society, a genetic study of how its constituent
usages had grown up into an empirical organi-
zation seemed proper. An inquiry into institu-
tions may supply the analytical knowledge
essential to a program of social control or it may
do no more than set adventures for idlecuriosity.
In either event the study of institutions rests it-
self upon an institution.
Accordingly an institution is an imperfect
agent of order and of purpose in a developing
culture. Intent and chance alike share in its
creation; it imposes its pattern of conduct upon
the activities of men and its compulsion upon
the course of unanticipated events. Its identity
through the impact of idea upon circumstance
and the rebound of circumstance upon idea is
forever being remade. It performs in the social
economy a none too clearly defined office a
performance compromised by the maintenance
of its own existence, by the interests of its per-
sonnel, by the diversion to alien purpose which
the adventitious march of time brings. It may
like any creation of man be taken into bondage
by the power it was designed to control. It is a
folkway, always new yet ever old, directive and
responsive, a spur to and a check upon change, a
creature of means and a master of ends. It is in
social organization an instrument, a challenge
and a hazard; in its wake come order and dis-
order, fulfilment, aimlessness and frustration.
The arrangements of community life alike set
the stage for and take up the shock of what man
does and what he leaves undone. Institutions
and human actions, complements and antitheses,
are forever remaking each other in the endless
drama of the social process.
WALTON H. HAMILTON
See: CULTURE; SOCIAL PROCESS; CHANCE, SOCIAL;
HUMAN NATURE; CUSTOM, FOLKWAYS; FASHION; ASSO-
CIATION; COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR; FUNCTIONALISM;
ECONOMICS, section on INSTITUTIONAL ECONOMICS.
Consult: Lowie, R. II., Primitive Society (New York
1920); Sumner, W. G., Folkways (Boston 1906);
Sumner, W. G., and Keller, A. G , Science of Society,
4 vols. (New Haven 1927-28); Veblen, Thorstem,
The Theory of the Leisure Clats: an Economic Study of
Institutions (new ed. New York 1918), The Theory of
Business Enterprise (New York 1904), and Absentee
Ozunership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times
(New York 1923); Cooley, C. H., Human Nature and
the Social Order (rev. ed. New York 1922), and Social
Process (New York 1918), especially pt. vi; Maclver,
R. M., Community (3rd ed. London 1924) bk. n, ch.
iv; Hobhouse, L. T., Social Development (London
1924) ch. xi; Cole, G. D. H , Social Theory (London
1920) p. 41-44 and ch. xiii; Wallas, Graham, Our
Social Heritage (New Haven 1921); Dewey, John,
Human Nature and Conduct (New York 1922).
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
90
INSTITUTIONS, PUBLIC. Public institu-
tions care for individuals who are in need of aid
or treatment and whose disadvantages of condi-
tion or personality have been accepted as a public
responsibility. For the destitute, the mentally
disturbed or incapable, the physically handi-
capped, the aged, delinquent and dependent
children, persons accused or found guilty of
crime, institutional care may seem desirable or
necessary.
Institutional care for all these groups, except
prisoners, owes its rise almost wholly to the
Christian church. Although it is true that the
literature of early peoples, notably the Hebrews,
contains frequent admonitions relative to the
care of the poor and needy, such provision was
purely an individual responsibility devolving
upon the family and friends of the afflicted. In
the case of the Greeks and Romans provision by
the state for its destitute took the form of the
distribution of public largess. Particularly in
time of famine corn, oil and other commodities
were given out to the poor, a practise which was
the precursor of modern "outdoor" relief.
Nowhere in antiquity, however, is there evi-
dence of the establishment of large scale institu-
tions for the sick and the destitute, a develop-
ment which characterized the Christian church
from its inception. Xcnodochia, or houses of
refuge for the accommodation of pilgrims, grew
up under religious auspices in the East and in
Italy, and they were followed soon afterward by
hospitals. The latter, ministering to the aged,
the widowed and orphaned as well as to the sick
and disabled, gave rise to the almshouse, the
most familiar mediaeval institution of charity.
To the church likewise belongs the credit for the
first orphan and foundling homes, hospitals for
lepers and incurables and asylums for the insane.
In addition to the various ecclesiastical organi-
zations there were institutions developed by the
merchant and craft guilds for the relief of distress
among their own members.
Out of this religious and secular beneficence
grew municipal and state care of the poor and
destitute. Partly because of abuses by the mon-
asteries and ecclesiastical organizations in the
exercise of their charitable prerogatives and
partly because of a desire to share in the revenues
devoted to philanthropic activities the various
states in Europe manifested an increasing desire
during the late Middle Ages to gain control of
hospitals and almshouses. By the time of the
Reformation the groundwork of public welfare
in Europe had been recast, the towns and cities
having assumed what had always been the func-
tion of church and guild.
The notion of government responsibility for
the problems of poverty, dependence and delin-
quency has gained especially wide acceptance in
the Scandinavian nations, where public welfare
has been the business of the state from the very
first and where private institutional charity is
almost non-existent. In Germany after the
Reformation the parish became a civil unit for
the purpose of administering relief. At the pres-
ent time institutional care is extensive and di-
verse and remains under the administration of
the government, except for certain ecclesiastical
institutions, which are, however, subject to state
supervision. In France the trend from private or
ecclesiastical to public control of welfare institu-
tions gained momentum with the advent of the
revolution when the National Assembly de-
clared all hospitals and almshouses public prop-
erty and took over their administration. The
central commission of bienfaisance created by
these administrators, although it was but mea-
gerly effective during most of the nineteenth
century, was a work destined to last and it fur-
nishes the impetus for the present system of in-
stitutional as well as outdoor relief in Paris. In
all these countries as a rule public institutions
for charity or correction institutions for the
criminal, insane and pauper are under the di-
rection of a central bureau or governing bqard.
In Soviet Russia relief is based on the prin-
ciple of state responsibility and of the right of
all workers to receive assistance from the state
during illness, infirmity, unemployment, old
age or any other form of distress. Under the
auspices of the People's Commissariat of Social
Relief and the Institute for the Protection of
Women and Children, sanitoria for the mentally
and physically handicapped, homes for de-
serted children and orphans, creches, maternity
homes and hostels for unmarried or destitute
mothers and numerous other public institutions
have been established. Public health occupies a
central place in the government welfare program
and all hospitals, clinics and sanitoria have
been nationalized. These institutions, together
with the health resorts, spas, rest and vaca-
tion homes maintained for the benefit of work-
ers, are administered by the People's Commis-
sariat of Public Health. The state, however,
places primary emphasis on pensions and in-
surance and on the various rehabilitation schemes
whereby those in need of care are not only
provided with temporary institutional relief
Institutions, Public
but are given treatment and education through
which they are enabled to resume their normal
status in society. This prophylactic effort is
especially apparent in the case of criminals and
delinquents who, even though they are confined
in prisons or houses of correction, are given
every encouragement to mitigate their stay and
to reestablish themselves as citizens.
In England as on the continent in the early
days relief of the poor and dependent was in
charge of ecclesiastical authorities. With the dis-
solution of the monasteries by Henry vin, how-
ever, it became necessary for the state to assume
the responsibility. Efforts to cope with the
alarming increase of mendicancy during this
period culminated in the Poor Law of 1601,
whifih with its later modifications and revisions
forms the basis for most public welfare work to-
day in the United States as well as in England.
Provision of institutional care for public
charges in the United States was at first an en-
tirely local function. It was performed through
the almshouse, which was established on the
same principles as the English workhouse. Like
its English prototype, the almshouse was used
for all varieties of public charges, except crimi-
nals, without regard to sex, age, health or habit.
It harbored paupers and vagabonds, dependent
children and epileptics, the insane, blind, deaf,
crippled, diseased and aged. It was a town or
county institution, almost everywhere mis-
managed or neglected. Provision for the deten-
tion and custody of persons accused or found
guilty of crime was also local and characterized
by the weaknesses of local administration. Early
in the nineteenth century, however, as the evils
of the almshouse system came to be recognized,
special groups began to be segregated and cared
for in special state institutions. The sick poor,
the insane, orphan or deserted children, persons
charged with crime or already found guilty, came
increasingly to be considered as state charges
and as groups with special and varied needs.
The first state hospital for the insane was that
authorized by the Virginia legislature in 1769
and opened in 1773. The principle of state care
for insane persons whatever their pecuniary
status has now been adopted in all the states. In
1798 Kentucky included in a statute containing
many of the reforms in the criminal law urged
for thirty years by the great English law reform-
ers the provision for a state prison, to which
persons convicted of felonious offenses anywhere
in the state should be sentenced. Today every
state has its prison. Early in the nineteenth cen-
91
tury private benevolence provided institutions
for the education of the deaf in Hartford, Con-
necticut (1817), and in Danville, Kentucky
(1824); anc * tn eir national significance was held
to be so great that Congress voted them grants of
public land to be sold for funds. In the late
1820*3 and early 1830*3 Samuel Gridley Howe,
the philanthropist and educator, led the way
toward provision for the education of the blind
in Massachusetts and later of the mentally sub-
normal. His undertakings, like those at Hartford
and at Danville, were cooperative and public
funds were paid to private organizations for
definite services. State institutions for the educa-
tion of deaf and blind children were soon opened
elsewhere and today they are found in nearly
every state. In the west, however, most of them
have been public from the first.
It is still a question whether for certain types
of needy the treatment should be given by the
local unit or by the state. In Massachusetts state
as distinguished from local responsibility was
early recognised in the care of the "unsettled
poor," and three state almshouses were opened
in 1854. Also for the group of juvenile offenders,
or delinquent children as they would be charac-
terized today, Massachusetts, departing from
the program of the prison reform group in Eng-
land, established state institutions, one for boys
in 1847 and one for girls in 1854. In nearly all
states, however, the care of the destitute and the
detention of petty offenders have continued in
the hands of local authorities; and the almshouse
and jail remain today as unsolved problems and
sources of humiliation to local public welfare
administrations.
The administrative organization of state insti-
tutions has shown a certain degree of uniformity
but also within limits a great diversity. For the
institutions caring for the mentally and physically
handicapped, insane, feebleminded, deaf, blind
or delinquent the pattern in the beginning was
generally a separate unsalaried board of trustees
or directors, appointed by the governor or by the
governor and senate for overlapping terms; the
board was thus supposed never to be entirely
renewed at once and was supposed to be assured
continuity of policy and freedom from partisan
interference. The members were expected to
represent the interests of the entire state. Often
the board was given the power to appoint the
superintendent and the staff of the institution,
but sometimes, as in the case of the Massachu-
setts state almshouses, this power together with
that of appointing the board itself was vested in
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
92
the governor. Although in recent years the value
of these boards has been widely questioned, no
adequate basis of judgment as to their service-
ability has been supplied. The problem is so
complicated, the records kept are so diverse and
so lacking in comparability that contradictory
conclusions are urged by equally able and well
meaning students of the public service.
The existence of a number of state insti-
tutions, which operated independently of each
other, and of variouslocal authorities, whichoften
overlapped in function, caused inevitably a good
deal of confusion. In Massachusetts, for example,
in addition to the local institutions for the relief
of the destitute and the local law enforcing agen-
cies there were by 1860 nine state institutions,
each, as reported by a special joint committee of
the house and senate in 1859, "created without
especial reference to others, and in no degree
as a part of a uniform system," and four others
that received grants from the legislature. Because
of the varieties and anomalies in organization
and the rapid increase in public expenditures for
state charities, which in Massachusetts had al-
most quadrupled in twenty years and more than
doubled in ten years, the establishment of a
central state board of charities was recommended,
to which should be given power of visitation, in-
spection, transfer of patients and general super-
vision; by the exercise of this power it was hoped
that some unity, uniformity and economy might
result. As a result of this recommendation Mas-
sachusetts created the Board of State Charities in
1863, thus marking the first state attempt at cen-
tral supervision. Similar authorities were estab-
lished in 1867 by Ohio and New York; in 1869
by Illinois, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and
Rhode Island; in 1871 by Wisconsin and Michi-
gan; and in 1873 by Kansas and Connecticut.
From that time the administration of public
institutions has been inextricably bound up with
the problem of the organization of centralized
state welfare authorities. These authorities in the
early years were with few exceptions supervisory
boards, which were generally composed of un-
salaried members appointed for overlapping
terms, as in the case of the local boards of trus-
tees. They were given wide powers of visitation
and inspection and were called upon to make
researches into the causes of pauperism and
crime and to take action leading to greater uni-
formity of practise as well as to the possible
adoption of preventive measures and programs;
but they usually had no direct control in ad-
ministration, the separate boards of trustees re-
taining the actual management. In some states,
however, the boards of trustees were soon re-
jected. Wisconsin, for example, after a period of
"supervision" of state institutions by a state
Board of Charities and Reform, abolished the
separate boards of trustees in 1881 and trans-
ferred the administration of those institutions to
a state administrative board, a plan that was
later widely followed in other states. In general
the administrative boards are composed of sala-
ried members with direct control over the man-
agement of state institutions. In 1909-1 1 a care-
ful study was made of the administration of state
institutions in New York, where there was
"partial centralization" under three different
commissions of supervision and control. For
purposes of comparison the investigator studied
also the systems in Indiana, where the state cen-
tral authority merely supervised the boards of
trustees, and in Iowa, where there had been from
the time the central authority was set up the
greatest possible measure of central administra-
tion. The results seemed to indicate that an in-
stitution of four hundred or over could be served
under the Indiana system at least as well as and
possibly better than under the Iowa system. The
report recommended state supervision and par-
tial control and an organization which included
institutional management by the separate boards
of trustees (Wright, II. C., Report of an Investi-
gation of the Methods of Fiscal ControJ. of
State Institutions in New York, New York 1911).
In 1917 there was undertaken in Illinois a
system of one-man supervision and control
which has had great influence. The entire ad-
ministration of the state was reorganized and its
functions were divided among nine (later eleven)
departments at the head of each of which there
was a director appointed by the governor. Most
of the duties and responsibilities connected with
the administration of the whole system of
charitable, penal and reformatory institutions
were assigned to the Department of Public Wel-
fare. The purchase of supplies and equipment
and the power to erect or repair buildings were
vested in the Department of Public Works and
Buildings, and to the Department of Finance
were given broad powers of financial and
budgetary control in all departments.
Since that time the authorities have been re-
organized in many states. The administrative
arrangements for state charitable and correc-
tional institutions, as they were in 1927, could
be roughly grouped into five principal types of
programs: public welfare departments resem-
Institutions, Public
bling that of Illinois in the attempt to depart-
mentalize (California, Colorado, Idaho, Massa-
chusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, New
Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wash-
ington); single authorities in the form of super-
visory boards (Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Lou-
isiana, Maine, Maryland, Montana, New Hamp-
shire, North Carolina); administrative boards,
either unpaid or ex officio (Connecticut, Florida,
Kentucky, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Caro-
lina, Vermont, Virginia, Wyoming); salaried
boards of control (Alabama, Arizona, Iowa, Kan-
sas, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota,
Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin); two or more
separate authorities (Arkansas, Minnesota, Mis-
souri, Tennessee). Three states (Mississippi, Ne-
vada and Utah) have never created any central
authority.
Although the movement toward centralization
has been widespread it has been limited to the
governmental arrangements of the states, and
there has been no effective approach toward
greater uniformity and cooperation between or
among states or between the central and local
jurisdictions in the states. There is as yet no
national system. Such organizations as the Na-
tional Conference of Social Work, the American
Prison Association, the National Committee for
Mental Hygiene, the American Association of
Public Welfare Officials, have done valuable edu-
cational work and helped to achieve a unanimity
of view, promoted national conferences and
stimulated interest on the part of officials and
of members of the legislatures, but the results
are still far short of what could be desired.
As a consequence of this lack of unified direc-
tion there remain a number of important ques-
tions awaiting further agreement. Whether all
the administrative institutions, penal and chari-
table, should be centralized in one department, as
was done in Illinois and later in New Jersey; or
whether there should be, as in Massachusetts
and New York, separate departments of mental
diseases, of corrections and of charities or public
welfare caring for the destitute separately from
the other groups, are subjects on which discus-
sion is by no means closed. All these services
have certain problems in common, such as the
provision of shelter, food, clothing and hygienic
and decent living conditions, and they all need
similar provision for the investigation and diag-
nosis of individual requirements. It may well
be desirable to have a degree of flexibility in
the use of the different types of institutions.
It is, nevertheless, equally clear that their spe-
93
cfalized tasks vary greatly and call for the serv-
ices of persons professionally equipped in dif-
ferent fields: the mental expert, the physician,
the nurse, the teacher, the prison administrator,
the dietitian and nutrition worker, the occupa-
tional therapist and so forth. Another problem
on which agreement does not exist is the degree
to which the separate institutions should serve
the agencies in the local units or should be the
instrumentalities through which the central au-
thority secures such treatment as its diagnosis
would suggest. This is perhaps a wider question
than that of institutional organization. Shall the
county authorities commit an insane person to an
institution or to the department? Shall the
juvenile court commit a delinquent child to an
institution or to the department? Shall the
criminal court sentence a guilty defendant to an
institution or commit him to an authority? The
relationship of institutions for the education of
blind and deaf youth to the central authority in-
volves another problem of jurisdiction. The
origin of these in the provision for young persons
from lower income levels and the fact that relief
in the form of transportation and clothing is
provided by public money have led to their being
included in the general welfare structure. The
teachers in these institutions, however, have
frequently urged that they be universally re-
garded as part of the educational organization.
Concerning these questions much greater una-
nimity may be expected in the future.
At a time when neither domestic nor institu-
tional management had been placed on a pro-
fessional basis, when cost accounting had not
yet been developed, when the budget had yet to
be accepted as a necessary device and central
purchasing was an untried experiment, the rapid
increase in the number of public positions and
in the amounts of public money to be expended
resulted in great waste in the use of public re-
sources and great temptations to the corrupt and
selfish. The situation was brilliantly and com-
prehensively summed up by Samuel Gridley
Howe in 1866 in his first report as chairman of
the Massachusetts Board of State Charities.
Since that time the adoption of a budget and
provision for some form or degree of coopera-
tion, if not centralized purchasing, have charac-
terized the development of institutional care in
all the states. With regard to personnel the use
of competitive examinations after the pattern set
by the United States Civil Service Act of 1883
has been followed in ten states (California,
Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Massa-
Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences
94
chusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Wis-
consin). Other states resort to classification
and to statutory descriptions of required qualifi-
cations for selected positions.
The Bureau of the Census has prepared sev-
eral special reports which provide some illumi-
nating figures concerning the number of inmates
and the cost of their care in state institutions.
Between 1910 and 1923 the number of hospitals
for mental patients in the United States in-
creased from 366 to 526. In the former year
there were 143 state hospitals caring for 159,096
patients; in the latter, 165 caring for 229,837.
Of the patients in these hospitals 34.2 percent,
or more than one third, had passed ten years or
more in such an institution, and 13 percent
twenty years or more. In 1922 with an average
daily patient population of 225,685 the per capita
cost for maintenance in 153 mental hospitals was
$282.13 a year. The corresponding figures for
1928 for 159 hospitals were an average daily
patient population of 264,484 and a per capita
cost for maintenance of about $309. If the costs
for the services of the 23,788 nurses and attend-
ants, 1223 physicians, 670 occupational thera-
pists and 153 social workers be included, the
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