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. СНАР. We Study Phenomena to Direct in Order or Control Them Social Evolution Slow and СНАР. Marriage course of things. One of the oldest controls of human relations One can hardly imagine a bolder interference with private matters - yet few wish to abandon it and leave individual men and women to assume to one another such relaControl of tions as they choose. an Ancient and Suc cessful Human Where Laissez faire Would Land Us The Results of Change in 66 The laissez-faire social philosophy, which expects the state to protect individuals in their rights but not to suppress noxious social phenomena, would require us to allow the lottery to return, to cease from interfering with the circulation of salacious books and pictures, to give up the suppression of Mormon polygamy, to let the Spanish bull-fight acclimatize itself among us, and to fold our hands while saloon and bawdy house, animated by boundless greed, do their utmost to break down the good habits which home and school and church have been at endless pains to build up. Convincing proof that the human will is not impotent to deflect the current of social life is afforded by the outcome of successful foreign Christian missions. After investigation on the spot ten years ago, I wrote: 1 "What of the young men leaving the mission colleges unconverted, yet imbued with Christian ideals? What of the bracing effect on the government schools of competition with the well-managed and efficient mission schools? What of the government schools for girls, which would never have been provided if the missionaries had not created a demand for female education and shown how to teach girls? What of the native philanthropies which have sprung up in emulation of the mission care for the blind, the insane, and the leper? What of the untraceable influence of the Western books of inspiration and learning which, but for the missionary translations, would not yet be accessible to the Chinese mind? Among Chinese who neither know nor care for the 'Jesus religion,' the changes of attitude toward opium-smoking, foot-binding, concubinage, slavery, 'squeeze,' torture, and the subjection of women, betray currents of opinion set in motion largely by the labors of missionaries. "In other words, the running of so many heathen into our 1 See Ross, "The Changing Chinese," pp. 245-6. religious molds is not the chief accomplishment. Over and above. the proselytes won are the beneficient transformations, intellectual and moral, wrought in great numbers of people who do not affiliate with the Church. Then, over and above such transformations of individuals are the transformations wrought in the society and government of the Middle Kingdom-better treatment of slaves, of prisoners, of orphans, of wives, of commoners. In this the missionaries have a great part, though no man can say how much. Finally, over and above the transformations of society are the transformations wrought in the Chinese civilization." СНАР. XLV Genesis of the faire Laissez-faire was the philosophy wrought out by honest European thinkers, wishful of social progress, who thought nothing Laissez. would help so much as the removal of such barriers and hin- Doctrine drances to the operation of beneficent, social forces as imprisonment for debt, the established church, laws against the combination of workmen, protective tariffs, restraints on trade, and the poor laws. Class Interest Gets Behind Doctrine However, it chimed with the policy of the propertied to insist that their success came to them in a "natural" order and owed nothing to laws and institutions. Possessing the legal rights the which most suited their pecuniary interests, it was good tactics for them to dissuade from the use of appropriate remedies on behalf of the unpropertied, to cry down laws, to insist on their futility and impotency as against "natural" law, and to make. much of the failure of badly-drawn laws, unworkable laws, and laws which were never enforced, to produce the results hoped for. THE DISCREDITING OF LAISSEZ-FAIRE The laissez-faire social philosophy reached the zenith of its ascendancy in the third quarter of the last century. Then its power over minds began to be broken down, partly by the success and extension of such bold enterprises of social reconstruction as the German workingmen's insurance legislation, partly by the criticisms of Lester F. Ward, the great champion of developing the science of society for the purpose of giving society control over its own future. Laissez-faire is now in utter discredit by reason of the number CHAP. of successes which stand to the account of the interventionist XLV Success of Interventionist Policies Their Spread over the World No Signs of Race tion under These Policies policy. Among these are 1. Universal education at the public expense. 3. The provision of public libraries. 4. Public provision of facilities for recreation. 5. Restriction of the industrial labor of children. 6. Reformative treatment of juvenile and first offenders. It may be that the ultimate effect of these policies will belie the effects which have so far disclosed themselves. It is certain, however, that societies which have adopted these policies show no sign of turning back, but rather move onward in the same path. Continually they perfect and extend them while other societies, after looking into their results, adopt them. If these are not proofs of success, it would be hard to know what should constitute such proof. There are other controls of social phenomena which are too recent to be regarded as fixed and settled, but which give strong indications of permanence. Among these are: 1. The suppression of alcoholism, gaming, and prostitution. 3. The control of immigration. 4. The legal minimum wage. 5. Public employment bureaus. 6. Instruction of the young in sex. 7. Interference with the reproduction of the unfit. These bold experiments in the scientific shaping of social destiny Deteriora have, to say the least, not proven disastrous. The peoples which have ventured on these measures have added to their longevity and lessened their sickness, mortality and loss of infant life to a degree before unknown. The comparison of the heights, weights and intellectual performance of school children shows that those peoples have the brightest outlook for the next generation which have been the most enterprising in applying intelligence to the removal of social ills. CANONS OF SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION While such facts encourage us to remould society nearer to our heart's desire, there is little prospect of success in such an undertaking unless certain precautions are observed: СНАР. ILV Human Not Be Left Out of the 1. Reforms must not do violence to human nature. Proposals Nature for having women in common, which have cropped up among Utopists ever since Plato proposed it, ignore the existence of male sexual jealousy. Of the more than three score communities which have been launched in the United States all failed save those on a religious basis, because not sufficient allowance had been made for the greed and self-assertion of the ordinary unsanctified and unchastened human being. Attempts to live in one big building, the Fourier phalanstery, collided with the general craving for domestic privacy. Proposals for the state guardianship of children have failed to meet with favor because they outraged the parental instinct. The solitary confinement of prisoners had to be given up because it violated the social side of human nature.. Social reformers like Fourier and Robert Owen assumed that God made man good and that his faults came from living in a bad social system. If the surroundings were made right, man's inborn bent for harmony with his fellows would insure the success of a communistic order. Since Darwin traced the descent of man, however, we are not at liberty to view human nature in such a rosy light. Man's disposition was evolved long ago as a part of his equipment for survival and includes some instincts. which are at odds with social harmony. Accordingly communism is a defunct ideal and the one powerful protest of our time is not against competition but against private capitalism. 2. Reforms must square with essential realities, if they are to succeed. The anarchism of Kropotkin and Tolstoi was drawn from observation of the process of spontaneous human adjustment in the Russian rural village and is unsuited to the expanded economic society of to-day. Cooperative production has disappointed expectations because business management is more difficult than it was supposed to be. The settlement of city families upon the land fails, not from inherent difficulty, but because not enough guidance and credit have been provided for the inexperienced settler. The Russian Bolsheviki at first quite under Communism Goes against Grain Our Native Reforms Must Be Suited to the Nature of Things |