dustrial capital rather than on the profits of commercial capital or the rent of land; from b and c. e. Immense displacements of population by voluntary migration; from 2, 5, and 6. f. Intermingling of dissimilar races and discordant cultures; from 2 and e. g. Rise in the plane of popular intelligence; from 2, 5, and 6. h. A higher standard of living; from 1, 2, a, and g. i. Weakening of the authority of religion; from 7, 8, and g. j. The voluntary limitation of the size of the family; from 4, g, h, and i. k. Acquisition of political power by the popular classes; from g, h, and i. CHAP. XLIV Accelerated mation With so many ferments at work it is not surprising that for our race the world has changed more in the last hundred years than in Transforthe previous thousand years. Nay, one can go farther. One can safely aver that since the outbreak of the Chino-Japanese war, a quarter of a century ago, the situation of the white race with respect to other races has changed more than in the three centuries preceding. Thanks to overseas commerce and colonial exploitation, races which lived in ignorance of one another's existence have been jostled together and have to make up their minds whether it is to be peace or war. Ideas, standards, and policies are quite as real entities as howitzers and motor trucks, for they determine men's actions. Unfortunately, it is not so easy to perceive when an idea, standard or policy is out of date and deserves to be scrapped as it is to perceive when a machine or technique is out of date and deserves to be scrapped. Consequently the great majority of men are holding to ideas, standards and policies which they learned from their parents or adopted in their youth, but which are unsuited to the changed situation." In half a life time, so headlong 17 To illustrate: the idea of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man might render supreme service in this era of race intermingling. But see how it is compromised by the diction of war and monarchy. The common appellations of Jesus are "Lord," "Lord of Hosts," "King," "Prince," "Master." The Christian life is represented as a warfare, or as the orderly working of a great royal household with "servants," "stewards," "messengers," "soldiers." Among our favorite hymns are Onward, Christian Soldiers," "Fight the Good Fight," "Hold the Fort." Says Fairchild: "As embodied in the formulated sects of to-day, the 66 Willed Change hind Un willed Change CHAP. Business Should Be a New Light has been our rate of movement, much which appeared to be wisdom has become foolishness. For example, now that the necessaries of life are in the channels of trade, the merchant should not expect to be left as free from regulation as he was in the days when trade was chiefly in the superfluities of life. More and more a concern engaged in supplying the public with a necessary will be looked upon as a public instrumentality and will be obliged to accept certain responsibilities. Those who insist that it is merely a private venture can only make trouble for themselves and for others. A generation ago the courts began to recognize that certain businesses are "affected with a public interest." In the eyes of the sociologist all considerable enterprises supplying us with essential goods or services are "affected with a public interest," and may properly be restrained from arbitrarily discriminating among their customers and from extorting a profit out of proportion to the value of the services they render. Now that handworkers can read and write, have votes, unions, Viewed in rising standards of living, and ambitions for their children, employers should not expect to make, according to their own good pleasure, decisions affecting the safety, health, and income of their employees. Industrial autocracy is as out-of-date as a hauberk. The time is ripe for limited constitutional monarchy in the factory. Yet owners who inherit their ideas of property from the handicraft stage imagine that their autocratic control rests on Divine right and they may resist too long the workers' demand for a voice in industrial government. Absolute Date Concept In these days of close-knit economic inter-dependence among nations and universal publicity, for a nation to cultivate the naïve ego-centrism which prevailed in the stage of national self-sufficiency indicates that it does not realize what kind of a world it is living in. In a time when, owing to economic interlacement, war spreads like a forest fire, the statesman who contends for the ancient unqualified right of sovereign states to fight out their disputes Christian religion is essentially pastoral, patriarchal, militaristic, despotic and feudalistic, and therefore fails to appeal to the citizen of an industrial democracy as a vital and practical thing. All the paraphernalia of thrones, diadems, armor, and blood-red banners arouse no response in the mind or heart of the day laborer, the clerk, or the mechanic - they are symbols without significance." 'Applied Sociology," p. 321. without hindrance shows that he has not adjusted his ideas to the contemporary situation. Likewise, the claim of a single power to rule the seas is bound to prove inadmissible now that the industrial people which does not have equal access with its rivals to the world's food stuffs and raw materials must starve. With ocean carriage as vital as air to a diver, neither insular position nor far-flung empire can justify such control of one nation over the economic existence of the rest. If there must be a "mistress of the seas," let it be a league of nations. CHAP. XLIV European Asia The means of destruction have been developed far beyond the means of self-protection. Yet the race, nation, or class tion in which is, for the time being, stronger ignores this fact and Doomed confidently indulges in a high-handed domination engendering an ill-will that may later prove devastating. For example, no one who knows the Asiatic peoples believes that the present subjection of Asiatics to Europeans can endure. Machine industry, science, schools, newspapers, and agitation will rouse these longcivilized peoples as they have roused the upstart-peoples of Europe. Before the end of this century, probably every vestige of European eminent-domain in Asia will have vanished. But whether it will be relinquished peaceably or will go down in blood and flame depends on whether European power-holders can adjust their ideas to the realities of to-day and to-morrow. In the closing two decades of the last century, anti-imperialist prophets went about beseeching the governing classes of Europe to consider what they were doing. They were laughed at and a tension was allowed to develop which resulted in the cataclysm of the World War. It remains to be seen whether the foretellers of other coming stresses will be heeded as little. The prospect ahead is dazzling. Science and invention have put mankind in possession of the means of ridding themselves forever of plague, famine, penury, overpopulation, ignorance, superstition, priestcraft, fanaticism, despotism, slavery, and caste. They have only to do everywhere what is now being done with success somewhere. But men's ideas of human relations are those of an earlier and simpler time. In many ways their traditions inhibit their seizing the opportunities for good will, peace, enlightenment, and social progress which beckon them. Their conduct and policies have not been accommodated to the rapidlydeveloping social situation, so that at many points we perceive Danger Ahead СНАР. class animosity, national antagonism, or race antipathy growing up. Explosives are being heaped up just as they were heaped up in Europe during the thirty years before 1914. To come into the promised land humanity has to negotiate a perilous "knifeedge" and humanity may fail! A CHAPTER XLV RE-SHAPING RE we limited to such improvements and ameliorations of society as occur in the ways just described or may the human will intervene to bring about or hasten desired changes? One object in the study of living forms is to discover ways of improving the useful species of plant and animal. We search for the laws of physical forces in order, by means of machinery, to harness them to the service of man. With microscope and tube and stain we probe the life history of micro-organisms in the hope of devising means of protecting our race against these invisible enemies. Why, then, is it not legitimate to sound social phenomena in the hope of discovering how they may be controlled to suit our wishes? Should we study society as we study the stars, the courses of which we cannot influence, or as we study the human body, in sickness and in health, in order to know what to do and what not to do? We vanquish small pox, typhus, diphtheria, the bubonic plague - why should we not endeavor to banish such social maladies as pauperism, prostitution, juvenile delinquency, child exploitation, trampery, mob violence, family disintegration, religious antipathy and race antagonism? Indeed, attack upon the maladjustments among men is an inevitable consequence of the development of social science. What is the use of working out causes and effects, of discovering how things hang together in society, if we are to do nothing with this knowledge? In this time of social self-consciousness and quick and easy dissemination of ideas are we to content ourselves with the tardy and uncertain improvements brought about by blind social evolution? There is, in fact, no alternative but to leave society in self-ignorance or to acquiesce in its reconstruction by the intelligent collective will. Let no one suppose this is new and untried doctrine. It is a long time since the social will began to interfere with the natural |