CHAPTER XLII OSSIFICATION CHAP. The Power of Social Habit Ex IN hilly New England the settlers discovered that the best way to build a barn is to set the foundation in a hillside, keep the animals in the basement, and drive the hay wagons from the uphill side into the second floor on a level. When their descendants migrated to the flat prairies of Illinois, they continued to build barns in the only way they knew. Having no hillsides, they built the barn first, built a plank hillside running up into Barnthe barn, and then got stalled trying to haul loads of hay up this superfluous hill! emplified building School In olden days the American common schools remained closed The during the growing season in order that the farmers might have Vacation the help of their children. Thus originated the long summer vacation, and as the cities established their school systems they adopted it without question. There are many ways in which school buildings and grounds may be used during the summer to keep children happy and usefully occupied. But no. Altho half of us are urban, every June we close the schools of our cities and turn millions of children into the street to hoe corn and "bug" potatoes! In an early day in the level West the practice struck root of laying out roads on the section lines. Later the gridiron plan was adhered to even in rough country where it would be more economical to lay out the roads according to the contour, so that they would follow the water courses or the water partings. Today millions of loads are needlessly hauled over hill after hill on their way to market and thousands of hillside roads are washed away every season because men blindly follow precedent. OSSIFICATION In general, after a social practice or institution has existed for a generation or two, it is off its original basis of sound reason and will be retained even in a situation so changed that it has no jus Stupid Adherence to the Plan in Gridiron Laying Out Roads CHAP. Speedy Loss of Adaptability We Are Too Lazy to Rethink Our Task Very Few Are Put Them selves to Inconvenience for the Sake of Social Progress tification whatever. The first users scanning with a cold and critical eye will modify or abandon it if it does not suit their purpose. But after it has been taken over and worked by a later generation which has feelings about it, it loses its plasticity, turns to bone, as it were. The process, then, by which social institutions and arrangements lose adaptability and harden into rigid forms may be called ossification. CAUSES OF OSSIFICATION Most of us are mentally lazy. We are loath to put our minds to a stretch, to concentrate our powers upon an intricate matter. Little problems involving only a few factors may challenge and stimulate us like the situations in a game of chess, but we shun complex problems which call for sustained thinking. Hence, we shrink from recognizing a changed situation, from re-thinking our task. Indolently we roll along in the rut of habit and precedent until a stone in the rut or an obstacle in the road twists us out of it. Absorbed in their daily round, few pause to ask themselves: "Is this thing of any use?" "Am I doing any real good?" The ability to see one's activity in a true perspective is a rare gift. There has been for a generation such a furore about social Willing to progress that one might suppose it to be an object of universal thought and desire. In truth very few care enough for social progress to embrace it in their plans or to make sacrifices for it. They are glad to have it, if they can have it at somebody else's expense. The true attitude of these shouters for progress is revealed when one proposes a concrete change affecting their religion, politics or customs. From their shocked resistance one will perceive that all the time they have been conservatives without realizing it. Control in the Hands tation Even the strong minds, the highly educated men, tend to abide in their earlier judgments and to retain the emotional attitudes of lays Adap- their youth. If, then, the control of affairs is in the hands of the old, the effete thing will longer escape notice and be longer tolerated than if young men are at the helm. If education falls out of step with life, if knowledge grows beyond the creeds, if laws fail to keep up with the development of social relations, the unprejudiced young will realize it first and will demand changes which the old see no reason for. СНАР. Men Make At my suggestion Dr. E. B. Gowin now professor in New York XLII University reviewed modern history in order to compare epochs Only of reform and epochs of quiet with respect to the age of their Young leaders. He found that in ten historical periods of reform or Revolu. revolution the average age of the dozen leading men in each tions varied from 32 to 46 years. On the other hand, the average age of their chief opponents or of the leaders in quiet periods varied from 54 to 66 years. In general, the champions of change have been from 15 to 20 years younger than the champions of opposition to change.1 The long-established becomes an Ark of the Covenant which we fear to lay hand on lest we meet the fate of Uzzah. Perhaps our forefathers fought and bled for it. It has inspired heroic deeds, noble poetry and eloquence. We cannot imagine that a thing so cherished has become a stumbling-block or a nuisance. In the face of the imperative need of church union the faithful cling to their denominational peculiarities because of the sacrifices these doctrines once cost. The monastic ideal, the Monroe Doctrine, the policy of avoiding "entangling alliances," the uniformity of taxation, the "open door," laissez-faire, inspire passionate devotion long after their value has become doubtful. The American Constitution has gathered such prestige that scholars who demonstrate the part selfish interests took in its shaping are vilified. Owing to the bloody struggles which have raged about it the Bible has come to be for many a kind of fetich. Its texts are relied on to resolve every doubt life presents and the "higher critics" who call in question the traditional date, authorship or meaning of the Scriptures bring a tempest upon their heads. The assumption that what once worked well will continue to work well implies a static notion of society. People generally imagine that society keeps to its track until some large sensible force a war, a revolution, a law, a religious movement or a great invention - gives it a new direction. The fact is society can never be stable while its base shifts and its base may be shifted by the cumulative effect of numerous small imperceptible changes new methods of tillage, a gain of manufacturing on agriculture, cheaper carriage, the opening of new channels of trade, immigration, population increase, the unequal growth of sections and classes, the disappearance of the frontier, the rush to 1" The Executive and His Control of Men," pp. 264-270. Because We Vene rate the tablished Regard It with a Long-Es We Cannot Critical Eye Preva lence of Static As sumptions about Society СНАР. Worthy Interests become Involved with an Institution All Pro the cities, the access of women to industry, etc. Silently these lowly unnoticed processes make society into something else than we imagine it to be, so that some of the wisdom of the past turns to folly and perhaps some of its folly becomes wisdom. Hence, each generation ought to review all the institutions they inherit and consider of each whether it is still at its peak of fitness. But they will never do this until they recognize the dynamic character of society. Private interests become dependent on an institution and therefore resist proposals to abandon or alter it. The teachers of Latin and Greek protest against reforming in a modern spirit the traditional courses of study for youth. For thirty years religious and Resist leaders have urged that economics and sociology be a part of the training for the Christian ministry. With rare exceptions, however, the theological seminaries have done nothing owing to the vested interest of the professors of the traditional subjects. As a result the clergy are steadily losing influence because of their ignorance of the burning moral issues of the time. posals to Change It The Following of Precedent Is a Snare Guild self-interest is, then, an obstacle to adaptive change. Certain persons have specialized in good faith and lo, they are in danger of losing their occupation. It is indeed hard. One cannot well expect them to capitulate to anything less than a mathematical demonstration of their superfluousness, and this is impossible outside the field of material production. They are like players who protest against the nature of the game being changed to their detriment while they are playing it. In the field of law ossification is an outcome of the Common Law doctrine that precedents are binding. This maxim of stare in decisis in turn reflects the popular demand that the law be clear and certain. How can we know what is lawful and what is unlawful for us to do unless we are sure that the judge who reviews our conduct will follow past decisions? Who wants to play a risky game unless the rules appear to be settled? The logic is so irresistible that even equity, "the judicial modification or supplementing of existing rules of law by reference to current morality,” accepted the doctrine that precedents bind. As a result it presently lost its discretionary character and became merely a competing system of law. Says Dean Pound, "Well might Falstaff say to an Elizabethan audience, 'there's no equity stirring' when precedents were beginning to be cited in the Court of СНАР. XLII The Dominant Social Class May Be Inter Chancery." Thus, in meeting the demand that the law be certain, justice has ceased to be either flexible or progressive. The dominant social class may preserve the outworn because it is to its interest to do so. In America the commercial class has long played upon a popular suspicion and jealousy of government inherited from the eighteenth century when government was an alien arbitrary agency over which the commonalty had no effec- the Effete tive control. Now that government has been made responsive to the popular will such distrust is unwarranted. Yet the business interests which fear state interference or regulation fan continually these dying embers. ested in Retaining "'Long Ballot As departments of government multiply to keep pace with the The complexity of modern life, the practice of electing all public officials becomes pernicious. The "long ballot " betrays democracy by giving the real selection of such officials into the hands of party machines" and "bosses." It would have disappeared long ago but for the fight put up on its behalf by the politicians. The "Fellow Servant'' Defence County Govern ment in the South The long retention of the " fellow servant" defence in suits for indemnity brought by injured employees exemplifies the power of the employing class over courts and legislatures. Its injustice had been conceded by all a generation before it was discarded. The persistence of the county form of local government in the South after the victory of democratic principles there can be accounted for only by the self-interest of a dominant class. A century ago Thomas Jefferson recognized in the New England township system of government the very foundation stone of democracy. In 1816, he wrote, "The article nearest my heart is the subdivision of the counties into wards (townships)." He realized that if the county was to be the smallest unit of government a few aristocrats or a few bosses would control. It was, indeed, the wealthy class which brought his efforts to nought and prevented the establishment of the township system in the South. While the dominant class thus causes society to appear at times more stupid than it actually is, there are matters in which it lends society a deceptive air of ready adaptiveness. When this class puts its weight behind a logical change, reform may be effected Change with startling suddenness. Good roads, the gold standard, banking reform, the acquisition of dependencies, could never have crashed so irresistibly through the dense underbrush of American. prejudices but for the driving power of the business interests. But Some- times the Class |