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СНАР. XXXIII

Economic
Opposi-

of such moment that the true statesman will bestir himself to counteract estranging tendencies whenever they appear. In general, since there is no trouble in locating the sore spot, the oppositions of interest created by economic development are the easier to deal with. Sometimes what is needed is to extend government Firm authority into a neglected field. The deadly struggle in frontier Regulation society between "moderators" and "regulators," after the latter

tions Can be Over

come by Just and

Outcry or

Rioting on the Part of Decent

Folk is a

of Maladjustment

have become infested by rogues who take private vengeance under the guise of lynch law, ceases with the establishment of regular courts. If cowboys and shepherds of the Far West fight over the use of the natural pastures in the public domain, a leasing system is called for. The conflicts between cattlemen, who without warrant had fenced great tracts of government land, and settlers asserting their rights under the homestead law ended when President Roosevelt made the fences come down. Gun law among the salmon-canners on Alaskan rivers is ended by devising wise rules enforced by government agents on the spot. Hostilities between workingmen and mine guards ought to cease with the advent of a well-managed state police. Sniping between the oyster tongers of Chesapeake Bay calls for a system of leasing of bay bottom for oyster-growing. Bad blood between employers and wage-earners is a challenge to the lawmaker to remedy such glaring evils as the long work day, seven-day labor, preventable industrial accidents and diseases, underpayment, and unemploy

ment.

A lasting sense of grievance in any worthy element respecting an established policy raises like a fester in the flesh the presumption that something is wrong. The useful classes do not riot over Symptom nothing; so relying upon bayonets to restore social peace is usually a confession of bankruptcy of statesmanship. This is not to say that every aggrieved interest can be given the particular redress it demands. It may ask for the wrong remedy, or it may have flung itself directly across the path of the advancing general interest. But ordinarily a persistent outcry is a symptom of maladHave to be justment. Change has gone on unheeded until some law or institution has ceased to fit. Finer adjustment, greater elasticity, or special treatment is called for. The complaint of timber-owners that the annual taxation of their trees compels premature cutting points to a tax collected only when the timber is harvested. The manufacturers' cry for "free" raw materials in order to

Law and
Policy

Differen

tiated in Order to Accommo

date Differentiated Interests

build up a foreign trade suggests a revision of the tariff. Labor's protest against the importation of shiploads of aliens for strikebreaking purposes justifies the exclusion of alien contract la

Such legal distinctions as those between Quakers and others in respect to bearing arms and taking oaths, between taxpaying women and other women as regards the exercise of the iranchise, between "labor" and "commodity," between ordinary businesses and those "affected with a public interest," and between "reasonable" and "unreasonable" restraint of trade illustrate how the law has been differentiated for the sake of social good feeling.

The

Whenever laws and policies do not admit of being made flexible enough to suit growing regional and local peculiarities, the time has come for a devolution of certain powers of government. unitary state should become federal. Colonies and distinct geographic provinces should be conceded a sphere of "home rule," while local preferences respecting schools, poor-relief, taxing system, and liquor regulation may justify the grant of county option or local option. The centralized state, by affording a leverage for the élite and the expert, can do most to accelerate social advance; but for a motley people decentralized government is more conducive to the preservation of the social peace. Here is the solution. for the poly-ethnic masses of Eastern Europe.

How society may avoid the animosities which opposition of beliefs or ideals engenders is a difficult question. Long ago statesmen came to value like-mindedness and sought to conserve it by certain policies which experience has shown to be futile or even pernicious. Withdrawal from foreign influence by excluding the alien, restraining travel abroad, and avoiding foreign intercourse succeeded for a time in ancient Sparta and in Japan, but much good was missed and, when the inevitable adjustment came, it was the more violent from having been delayed. The suppression of free inquiry protects religious unity only by chaining the mind and impeding intellectual progress. An established state religion, secure in its endowments, is likely to lose much of that appealing warmth and life which make it a social bond. The relentless persecution of heresy foments internal strife and weakens the race by extirpating the more daring and original minds.

It seems a paradox to urge total separation of church and state, religious liberty, and freedom of communication as preservative

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CHAP.

XXXIII

Why Re

versity Stirs up Less Illfeeling than the

of social good feeling. But, in truth, the variety of opinion which springs up under freedom begets a minimum of hostility. Disligious Di- agreements irritate little so long as the bigot is not allowed to climb into the saddle. No privileged orthodox may glower upon another as a heretic. None is embittered by being discriminated against or persecuted. No one is galled by being forced to contribute to the propagation of a creed he does not believe. Contradictions are softened by a spirit of tolerance, so that, after all, mental heterogeneity proves to be a nettle that stings least the hand that grasps it brusquely.

Union of Church and State

The Multiplication of Religious

Sects Produces Encysted

erating

Groups

But while diversity of opinion does not of necessity engender strife, it is likely to interfere with social team work. Sectaries are often clannish, slow to mingle socially with outsiders or to join with their neighbors in the furtherance of such common interNon-Coop- ests as public health, community development, education, or the advancement of secular knowledge. In the American population there have been thousands of local groups sewed up in separatist dogmas and dead to most of the feelings which thrill the rest of society. The spirit of cooperation has, no doubt, been weakened by the formation of numerous "peculiar" religious sects, each cut off from the general population by its fancied possession of a special prophet or revelation and its assurance of being the exclusive object of Divine favor.

The Diffusion of

Secular
Knowl-

edge and

the Train

Leaders

Are the

dotes to

ing

A self-conscious society will therefore endeavor to limit sectforming by providing for the widest possible diffusion of secular knowledge. An unlettered and ignorant people, if it escapes the ing up of guidance of ancestral churches and trained ministers, is likely to be endlessly divided and redivided by futile variations of creed Best Anti- and worship. On the other hand, the general enlightenment reSect-form- sulting from a system of universal education narrows the power of the fanatic or the false prophet to gain a following. The public university, moreover, rears up a type of leader who will draw men together with unifying thoughts, instead of dividing them, as does the sect-founder, with his private imaginings and personal notions. The great contrast between the period before the Civil War and the period since in respect to sect-forming is. no doubt, owing chiefly to the lessening of superstitiousness and credulity among the American people through the influence of popular education and the leadership of educated men.

CHAPTER XXXIV

SOCIAL CONTROL 1

NLESS he has arrived at moral conceptions of his own, the socialized member of a group willingly conforms his conduct to the ideas of individual rights and duties accepted by his fellow members, so that the maintenance of order presents no difficulties so far as he is concerned. Unfortunately society is by no means composed wholly of socialized persons. People may be neighbors or work-mates, or have interests in common, long before they are sufficiently socialized with reference to one another to live at peace or to act together for the protection of their common interests. Even if most of them have good will toward one another, there will be selfish or malicious individuals who will cause trouble if they are not in some way intimidated or influenced.

Although a rudimentary order may arise spontaneously, the far-sighted members of the community perceive that a better order and a smoother team work may be had if only certain troublesome varieties of conduct can be suppressed while other helpful varieties are called forth. Often the means for such suppression lie at hand in the shape of central organs which may have been created for the purpose of military cooperation, but which can be used for instituting a régime of law. Then, too, religious ideas may be present which lend themselves to the construction of a system of control sanctioned by supernatural rewards and punishments.

Thus, in one way or another, society develops an apparatus of control designed to repress undesired conduct and to encourage desired conduct. How far this apparatus shall be elaborated and how much collective will shall be put behind it depend on the felt need of controlling the behavior of the individual.

1 Seeing that some years ago I made my bow to the public with a sizable book entitled "Social Control," I shall here do little more than bring out the fundamentals and certain new points.

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CHAP. XXXIV

Social

Control is

Called for

by Com

plex Co

THE NEED OF SOCIAL CONT

Cooperation in vital matters for the benefit of the group as a whole gives occasion for the exercise of social control. On the American frontier the earliest sign of it is community pressure to operation, make shirkers do their part in curbing the Indians, fighting prairie fires or maintaining levees to protect the river bottoms. When cooperation is complex, even willing cooperators need an authority over them which will regulate the times, places, and amounts of their individual performances. This is why warfare, in which good team work may be a matter of life and death, is the mother of obedience. Even self-willed barbarians may be intelligent enough to submit themselves to iron discipline while on the war path.

by High Organiza

tion,

by Ex

treme Inequalities

of Possession,

by Residence in Cities,

by the Accumulation of Capital

All high organization - - military, governmental, industrial, commercial, educational- calls for a regulative system. In its absence the leakage and waste on the one hand, the friction from the checks and safeguards required to prevent such loss on the other hand, neutralize the advantages of high organization and make it unprofitable to set up any kind of complicated social machinery.

The institutions of private property, contract and inheritance consecrate inequalities of possession which affront the we-feeling, and which mere good will will not protect. Such contrasts can be upheld and perpetuated only in a more or less artificial social order. It is property institutions — or rather their more eccentric results which call into being detailed codes of law, strong courts and an elaborate penal system.

City residence necessitates stricter social control. Many practices which are harmless in the country become intolerable in the city. In the disposal of his kitchen refuse, in the care of his sick, in the making of unnecessary noise, in the burning of soft coal, in the doing of work at home or in the keeping of domestic animals in his domicile, the city dweller is not free to anything like the extent one is in the country.

The accumulation of the means of production, i.e., capital, calls into being agencies strong enough to insure order and security. The historian Ferrero shows that the imperial authority would 2 McClure's Magazine, Vol. 33, p. 95.

2

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