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CHAP. IV whose sex instincts are needlessly thwarted or perverted. Con

To Many the Machine Technique Denies

Gratifica

tion of the

sider, too, the massing of unmarried immigrant men into tenement rooms and the condemning of some millions of migratory workers to a wifeless existence.

Less and less is the instinct of workmanship stimulated as the minute subdivision of tasks makes labor a monotonous repetition. Handicraft gives way to machine-tending, which is so little absorbing that, it is said, mental deficients make the best machine Instinct of tenders! Small zest can workers feel who do not understand the relation of their own product to the finished article. Finally comes scientific management which takes all planning away from the ordinary worker, leaving him a meaningless mechanical job at which no craftsmanship can be exercised and from which, therefore, no joy can be derived.

Workman

ship

Industrial
Autocracy

Baffles the
Instinct of

Workers'

Self-asser

tion

Exclusive capitalist control of industry thwarts the workers' impulse to self-assertion stirred as it is by the democratic ideas of our time. This autocratic determination of conditions which vitally affect the lives of the workers, as well as the experience of being spied upon and dismissed for any endeavor to organize, makes for an unrest which no concessions as to wages and hours can allay. Behind the movement for a more democratic control of industry lies something more than agitation, viz., a suppressed demand of human nature. This is why the President's Mediation Commission urges the captains of industry to "aim for the release of normal feelings by enabling labor to take its place as a cooperator in industrial enterprise."

CHAPTER V

THE DERIVATIVE SOCIAL FORCES

THERE are certain great complexes which

contribute to CHAP. V

Interests

Among them are The
Each of them

satisfy a number of our innate cravings. Wealth, Government, Religion, and Knowledge. peals to so many sides of human nature that for most men it becomes an object of abiding concern and desire. These derived. cial forces may be called interests. They so mightily determine the attitudes and exertions of men that the interests of a people or an age give it its distinctive stamp. The forces which a ter from time to time the comparative strength of interests are anong the veritable makers of history.

THE ROOTS OF THE ECONOMIC INTEREST

Interest

The wealth (or economic) interest has its tap root in the pangs Building f hunger and cold, which incite man to acquire material goods. Wealth ime, however, all sorts of cravings, native and acquired, put requisitions for such goods and thus whet greed to a keener e. When personal emulation takes the form of "conspicuwaste," the instinct of rivalry prompts to acquisition. When ma lens' eyes gold "gilds the straitened forehead of the fool," will be prized as a means of winning the coveted mate. then entertainment is expensive, money is sought in order to fy one's sociable needs. When it is believed that the gods rich presents, men will seek the wherewithal for costly fces and sanctuaries. When wealth gives lordship over , the ambitious will rowel hard in the pursuit of fortune. en the artist works for the highest bidder, the lover of beauty turn his hand to money-making. When Dives is more hond stands better with God, is a more formidable suitor and bigger meshes in the law than the better man with the lighter , many streams of desire pour into the wealth-wanting chanand avarice will swell to monstrous proportions.

СНАР. У

We can
Measure

the Value
of Wealth

of the

Things Against

Which It Is Balanced

FLUCTUATIONS IN THE VALUE OF WEALTH

In general, the itch for wealth varies directly with its capacity to promote the satisfaction of one's desires. Since this capacity varies from place to place and from age to age, it follows that the value of wealth is subject to rise and fall, not, of course, in terms of any kind of material good, but in terms of the things against which wealth may be balanced.

For there are markets in which such balancing occurs. There are streets where woman's virtue is sold for money, communities in Terms where there is a ruling price for votes. From the pay scale of occupations which differ in respect to independence, safety, and good repute, one can compute the amount of money which will overcome the love of independence, of safety, and of good repute. We see individuals sacrificing health or leisure, or mating, or offspring, or friends, or liberty, or truth, for gain. The relative volume of such spiritual goods Mammon can lure into his market at a given time and place, measures the power of money. By the choices men make in such cases and by the judgment others pass upon such choices, we can arrive at the current social estimate of wealth. When gold cannot shake the nobleman's pride of caste, the statesman's patriotism, the soldier's honor, the wife's fidelity, the servant's loyalty, the scholar's veracity, the official's sense of duty, the artist's devotion to his ideal, wealth is cheap. But when maidens wed senile money bags, youths swarm about the homely heiress, judges take bribes, experts sell their opinions to the highest bidder and genius champions the course it does not believe in, wealth is held dear.

Wealth
Fluctuates
in Value
Rather

pared with

Such fluctuations in the market where wealth is balanced against other kinds of goods might originate on either side. Some insist that it is the latter which vary, arguing that wealth derives its priIt Is Com- mary esteem from its relation to our bodily wants, which are as stable as the organism itself. Probably, however, it is wealth that changes in value rather than the satisfaction of the sex instinct, the parental instinct, the instinct for liberty or self-assertion, or workmanship; rather than built-up values such as honor, caste pride, and moral standards. The reason is that, since wealth. is means not end, its importance is bound to fluctuate owing to changes in the power of material goods to gratify desire.

CHAP. V

WHAT MAKES WEALTH APPRECIATE

The Advance of

Technique stantly to

Adds Con

the Cate

gories of

Goods

The advance of technique constantly augments this power. Th Thus the introduction of perfumes and spices gave new sensuous gratifications, spirituous liquors provided a short-cut to social pleasure, armor opened a way to safety in battle, the coming in cf cattle enabled heads of kine to be trophies as well as scalp Material locks and captives. The discovery of medicaments gave new weapons against disease. The art of embalming met in a way the longing for immortality. The origination of art products provided new embodiments of beauty. Since by exchange any material good may be converted into any other, each of these changes added to the desirability of wealth in general.

When in China one marks how much more the treaty port misnary gets from his little income laid out on the products of Western knowledge and skill than the rich mandarin from his wealth of Chinese products, one realizes how invention has mullied the categories of material goods. In his medicine case, e-glasses, microscope, field glass, camera, talking machine, mocycle, swivel chair, vacuum cleaner, fruit orchard, driven well, etc., the missionary has values all the money in China cannot procure from native skill.

Shiftings of custom and opinion affect the importance of materal goods sometimes favorably, sometimes adversely.

At various times the power of wealth and consequently the raving for it have been augmented by the custom of wife-purtase, the system of wergeld or money compensation for crimes, The acceptance of damages as a salve for injury, the passing of Prestige from trophies of personal prowess-such as heads, Cs, and bear's claws to herds, acres, and bonds, the relie upon clothing instead of tattooing as a means of charming theposite sex, the belief that burnt-offerings win the favor of The gods or that masses deliver the soul from purgatory, the

ng of political power from the Elders or the Fighters to the thy, the decay of the distinction between "noble" and men" employments, the yielding of patrician ranks to the re are of the new-rich, the lapsing of birth as a ground of ca superiority, the gaining of "conspicuous consumption"

conspicuous leisure" as a means of good repute, the enlist

Certain and Cus

Opinions

toms Add

to the

Power of

Wealth

CHAP. V

Modern

Reforms which

Redeem

of Indi

vidual or

from Mam

monism

ment of the artist in the service of Croesus instead of the service of temple or church.

WHAT MAKES WEALTH DEPRECIATE

On the other hand, there are movements which have shorn lucre of some of its power. Woman's resumption of free disStretches posal of herself, the rise of romantic love, the custom of courtship, and the dispensing with the "marriage portion," have nearly Social Life freed Cupid from Mammon! "Justification by faith," the suppression of masses, pilgrimages and indulgences, the dispensing with altar and image, the open Bible, the lay chalice and the unadorned "meeting house" have well-nigh separated the favor of God from the payment of money. The protection of the law is no longer exclusively for those who can pay for it. Public hospitals and free dispensaries socialize the healing art. The printing press and the free library have popularized the sweets of literature. The abolition of hireling armies, of imprisonment for debt, of child labor and of property qualifications for the suffrage are so many dykes reclaiming smiling stretches from dreary

commercialism.

The
Tap-root
of the

Religious
Interest

ROOTS OF THE RELIGIOUS INTEREST

A primary factor in the religious interest has been the desire to experience ecstasy. Primitive peoples know and highly value this enlargement of consciousness and no one who has seen persons "getting happy” at a camp meeting will doubt the reality or the seductiveness of such states. Then the wonder aroused by the more arresting phenomena of nature sets up speculations as to their causation which gratify the impulse of curiosity. Moreover, man's sense of helplessness before the personal powers he conceives as causes of fear-inspiring natural events excites in him the instinct of submission and throws him into the attitude of self-abasement. Intimidated he seeks by acts and gestures of propitiation to assure his safety. In time he conceives Its Numer the idea of utilizing these imagined personal powers. He covenants with them that in return for regular praise and sacrifice they shall grant increase and prosperity. Thus the gods acquire economic importance. Becoming more fully domesticated they are approached with confidence and worship is prompted by love and gratitude as well as by fear, or expectation of benefits.

ous Side

Roots

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