CHAPTER XLVIII GROUPS СНАР. XLVIII OFTEN human groups are among the end-products of social processes. Domination calls into being large aggregates, Many Processes such as empires. Exploitation binds exploiters and exploited to- Social gether in certain permanent relations. Opposition between sects, Generate parties, classes, and nations causes those on the same side to stand Groups together both from sympathy and from the practical motive of mutual support. When two elements of a population engage in struggle, the blows of each pound the other into a coherent mass. Warfare, the extreme phase of opposition, has long been recognized as the arch-consolidator. Adaptation smooths away the obstacles to the formation of groups or makes men more harmonious and cooperative if they are already in the same group. Stratification extends the we-feeling among those of the same social condition. Socialization makes people ready to cohere into a group when an occasion for union presents itself. Professionalization necessitates a union of those within the same profession to formulate its standards and to expose, punish or cast out practitioners who ignore these standards. Nevertheless, social processes are not the only creators of groups. What is necessary in order that men should feel themselves to be one and therefore stand together is that they should be aware of essential common traits distinguishing them from others, or of a momentous common interest which can be protected and advanced only by collective effort. Therefore, whatever marks off certain persons from others or establishes among them a community of interest is a group-maker. LOCAL GROUPING For various reasons, the ancient natural grouping by propinquity is giving way to selective association. Inequality of culture may hold neighbors apart, as we see in the aloofness of the artist colony or writer colony from the farmers of a picturesque New СНАР. XLVIII The Place Longer and Ex- England valley or the fishermen of the Maine coast. Class lines divide so that, as in rural England or Russia of the Tsars, one Bond is no lives in his class rather than in his neighborhood. Reading, giving the companionship of historical or imaginary characters, lessens social dependence upon neighbors. Correspondence and travel admit one to other circles than that of the vicinage. Once parish was coextensive with local community and neighbors were co-worshippers; but now, thanks to sectarianism, half a dozen starveling churches will struggle to exist in a community which might furnish a single fair-sized congregation. Less and Less does Оссираtion Divide It is significant, too, that gifted persons who for the sake of their personal development have had to break hampering ties of kinship, of neighborhood, of religious fellowship- have produced most of the literature which furnishes cultivated people with ideals. Their eloquent individualism stirs youth to rebel against inherited ties of every sort and implants a yearning for independence which unfits them to share in the neighborhood life. And yet without such sharing they cannot remain happy or, indeed, quite sane. Unwittingly the strong-winged geniuses tempt the less gifted to pitiful little flights from the home ledge which too often end only in disappointment and loneliness. LIKENESS GROUPING Groupings according to color and other external race characters are, of course, natural formations rather than social products. But groupings on the basis of dress, speech and social habits are, indeed, product of association. However, as I have shown in the chapters immediately preceding, the extension of planes of uniformity as well as the dissemination of conventional standards continually raze barriers of this sort. As sunderers of men extrinsic differences are on the wane. It is a question to what extent the social population of the future will be cloven by occupational differences. In frontier society industrial specialization is slight and the useful callings are not sharply graded in social prestige. As society develops, specialization grows and occupation counts for more in rating men. At the same time a number of branches of business become professions, while even the skilled trades, taught in a systematic way, gain something of the dignity of the professions. Then, too, the latter-day tendency to see in the useful callings so many forms of social service forbids us to despise the socially necessary coal-heaver or street-sweeper because of the repulsiveness of his work. There seems little likelihood that in the future vocations will be distinguished as "noble" and "base," as they were in olden times, or that occupation will ever again sunder people into castes such as we see still in India. Diversity in knowledge, culture and taste will continue to segregate men, but in an epoch of universal education it is impossible that they should rear such barriers as the past knew. When all but the mental deficients have the equivalent of a high school education as may well be the case among us within forty years - there will be no "bumpkins," "boors," "clodhoppers or "chawbacons" for the educated to look down upon. INTEREST GROUPING Grouping dictated by interest will, no doubt, last until the end of time. Men will not cease to struggle groupwise, until they have no closer community of interest with some of their fellows than with all. Nevertheless, the typical interest groups of today are not life-and death affairs as groups were in the days of yore. The extension of the régime of law and justice does away with the necessity for such little compact sovereign groups as the clan, the kindred, the mark, the guild, the vigilance committee. The general acceptance of the same ideas of right and the widening of the scope of operations of the machinery for realizing these ideas relieve one of the necessity of belonging to a strong group in order to get justice. Just as the spread of the "King's peace" has taken much of the life out of the groupings of kindred or neighbors, so justice for strangers on the same terms as for nationals will take much of the life out of the nation. Just as in history tribes have merged into peoples, and communities and provinces have merged into nations, so nations are bound to be merged into something still larger. Whether this more comprehensive organization will be coextensive with civilization, Christendom, the White Race, the Free Nations, or some other grouping, is not yet clear. Just as those who dreamed of One People were looked upon as bad tribesmen until the dream became reality; just as those who dreamed of One Nation were looked upon as bad citizens until the dream became reality; so CHAP. XLVIII L The Jus tice Group is More and More compre hensive СНАР. XLVIII The Ma chine as Arrayer of Men The Con quest of Disease Will Rear Immigration Barriers those who dream of a super-national society will be deemed bad patriots until the dream becomes reality. INVENTION AND DISCOVERY CONDITION INTEREST GROUPING Often it is the inventor who fires the train which breaks up an old order and leads to new groupings. For example, the incessant development of machine technique gathers workers into ever-larger production groups. As this goes on, in order not to be at a fatal disadvantage in bargaining with their employers, the workers form unions for the purpose of substituting collective bargaining for an individual bargain which has become onesided and oppressive. Furthermore, in order to re-enforce their holding-out power, all of the same craft in a given field of industry unite in one organization, so that approved strikers in one factory may be sustained by contributions from their brothers at work in other factories. Thus the organization of labor, with all that this implies in the way of solidarity, loyalty, and self-sacrifice for the common good, is really a by-product of large-scale industry, which is, in turn, a by-product of the machine. The immense expansion of sea-borne commerce in consequence of the perfecting of the marine engine, the iron ship and the ice machine, sharpens the interest of all trading nations in the maintenance of international peace and the security of the seas. Very likely this new common interest will eventually beget certain forms of joint action among them. Again, the invention of such weapons as the torpedo, poison gas, the aeroplane, the dirigible, and the aerial bomb obliges the nations to enter into some more comprehensive organization for the restraint of disturbers of the peace if they do not wish to be blotted out one by another in some future war. Quite unconsciously the finders of the germs of disease and the concocters of antiseptics and serums are moulding with giant hands the near political future of the human race. The recent marvellous progress of the art of saving life-the blessings of which will soon be extended to all mankind—will for a time divide humanity into prolific peoples, producing constantly a surplus which must emigrate or starve, and self-controlled peoples, which curb their fecundity, raise their standards of living, and disallow mass immigration. This situation will cause the National State to be cherished until birth control has so spread over the earth that a man's right to remove from one land to another will be as freely conceded as now his right to shift his residence within his home land. EFFECT OF DEVELOPMENTS IN THE ART OF WAR CHAP. XLVIII Con Associa tion with the Ascend From time to time martial invention has bent the stream of strained history by altering the relative strength of Attack and Defense. Walls, moats, drawbridges, casemates, mines, abattis, wire entanglements, trenches and anti-aircraft guns exemplify the development of Defense. Battering rams, mortars, siege guns, armorpiercing shells, poison gas, hand grenades, torpedoes and sub- Defense marines have told chiefly on the side of Attack. The distinction between Attack and Defense counts for most in land fighting, less in sea fighting, and least in air combat. Now, when Defense has little advantage over Attack, numbers count, conquest is easy, the little peoples cringe before the big peoples or band themselves together, empires become formidable in proportion as they gain size, and the nations are in unstable equilibrium. When, on the other hand, smokeless powder, highpower fire-arms, machine guns, steel turrets and land mines enable a thousand to hold off ten thousand, a strong state finds itself weak invading the territory of another. Small peoples alongside powerful neighbors maintain their independence. The bullying empire is foiled by some handful of brave mountaineers and the nations are likely to remain each in its own place. ancy of Attack Over Freedom Depends on the State of the Art of Defense Lovers of human freedom should rejoice when martial inven- National tion aids Defense and should grieve when it allows Attack to overtake Defense. Nevertheless, no one would wish Defense to be so strong as to guarantee the success of every revolt and hence make large states impossible. The battering ram was the answer to the mud walls of Babylonian towns, but to the thick stone walls of the Dark Ages there was no answer until gunpowder made it possible to blow them up or breach them with cannon balls. When count or baron or bishop could flout the authority of any king not strong enough to beleaguer him and starve him into submission, the state was too decentralized to fulfill its higher mission and private war knew no check. To-day, however, we should wish the art of war to take such a tack as to make aggression more costly and dangerous. |