CHAP. Investiga- Unexpected Results of Intervention Step by Is Best rated the rôle of managers and technical experts in production and were eventually obliged to lure them back into the factories by high pay and the promise of a free hand. 3. Intervention should be preceded by a close study of the situation it is proposed to control. The aspiration to create a science" of society has had the effect of importing into the study of social conditions the methods of exact observation in the field, counting, measurement, induction, and verification, all of which had been worked out in the older sciences. As a result, contemporary society intervenes not on the basis of brilliant dreams and guesses, but on the basis of comprehensive, thorough and impartial investigation. Whether it be a legislature creating a system of vocational education, a religious denomination contemplating the resuscitation of the country church, a philanthropic association forging a program on behalf of the rural young people, a wealthy foundation confronting the problem of promoting public health, or a great industrial concern under the necessity of gaining the good will of its employees, policy waits upon the results of a survey of the situation by experts. Some of the great modern pieces of social legislation prepared by commissions after elaborate inquiry and deliberation are veritable monuments of scientific law-making. Sociology is, however, not an exact science. Even our most intelligent intervention may have consequences quite unforeseen. Laws restricting the labor of children, by raising the age limit and cutting down the hours of work as well as enforcing school attendance, have converted the workman's children from an asset into a burden. It is not surprising then, that in England there has been a marked decline in the birth rate of the women in the manufacturing towns. Workingmen's compensation was originally urged in this country as a remedial measure, and only experience showed its efficacy in directing the employer's mind to the prevention of industrial accidents. By prompting employers to cause their employees to be physically examined at the time of hiring, it has proven itself an important health measure. 4. If possible a reform should be tried out on a small scale before being adopted on a large scale. It is fortunate that the large number of commonwealths in the American Union permits one state to experiment for the other forty-seven. One state or an other makes a new departure in the way of a minimum wage for women, abolition of private employment bureaus, "mothers' pensions," the "social evil," probation of adult first offenders, the juvenile court, municipal ownership, factory sanitation, the surgical sterilization of degenerates. Other states watch eagerly the results of the experiment and follow suit if the results are encouraging. It is significant that reforms which have had the support of the leaders in social work have not failed at their try-out, but have been adopted, with some modification perhaps, by other states. 5. Every fundamental social reform should be the outcome of a social movement. The most egregious failures have been reforms introduced from above without that preliminary process of agitation and education by which understanding and sympathy for the reform are created. The cause of education is not advanced merely by multiplying schools. Usually there is need of a campaign which shall plant belief in and desire for education in young people and their parents. Public health interference with the habits of a people is usually futile unless at least two-thirds of the people understand why the habits are objectionable. The legal suppression of the liquor traffic would be impossible but for the vast public agitation which has been carried on for a generation. The creating of playgrounds is by no means the principal part of the recreation movement. The main thing is the spread of the gospel of play. It is because the people have been taken. into the confidence of the reformers that so many modern reforms have produced the hoped-for results. ing Social to the Task of tering a Law It may even be possible to harness up the social movement for Harnessthe work of administering the reform. Take the method devised Movements in Wisconsin for administering the labor law. Formerly the officials enforced a labor law on the employers of the state against their will and better judgment. In recent years, however, the Industrial Commission, a body of three experts, cooperates with an advisory committee composed equally of representatives of employees and employers. It has wide powers to issue administrative orders but is bound to submit such orders for consideration by the proper advisory committee. Having had a hand in framing the new order the members of this committee act as volunteer popularizers and enforcers of it among their respective CHAP. Short-Cuts to Social Change Are Not organizations. Thus two antagonistic social movements among employers and among employees are made to pull in harness to help carry out the will of organized society. 6. Under a popular government reform should never be sought save by legal and constitutional methods. Often, no doubt, the Profitable adoption of a reform which is actively opposed by an influential social class is delayed long past the time when it is due. Perhaps a whole generation is defrauded of its just remedy. Why then, should not an intelligent, coherent minority, conscious of the disinterestedness of its aims, seize power by a quick stroke and put through its beneficent program? True, the majority of the people, divided and duped, perhaps, by a church and a press secretly subservient to the intrenched class, by political parties cunningly manipulated to keep the people amused by sham battles over trifles, are not with the reformers; but they will be, once they have sampled the good things in store for them. The Puritans were a minority which dared to go ahead when the bulk of the English people were quite below the threshold of political consciousness. The Jacobins saved the French Revolution because they did not stand in awe of a politically inert majority. The independence of the Spanish colonies in America was achieved by an energetic element which did not wait for the support of the ignorant and dispirited masses. Indeed, have not the greatest new departures in history been the work of a determined, consecrated group which, unlike the indifferent and nerveless majority, were ready to risk their lives for their ideas? The Flare-back from Violent Revolution The answer to such reasoning lies in the effects upon society of catastrophic change. In the words of Professor Ellwood, who has reached valuable generalizations about revolutions: The revolutionary party is rarely united upon a constructive social program. Hence, a period of social confusion and uncertainty, which is intensified if the overthrow of the old order has been sudden or by violent means. This may result in a general breakdown in the habits of social order in a large proportion of the population. . . . Now, there is always a tendency in an individual to reversion to simple animal-like activities following the complete breakdown of a habit. This tendency becomes more pronounced if the breakdown of the old habit is accompanied by violence. So in the social life, if the breakdown of old habits and institutions is accompanied by a struggle between classes, there is apt to be a re version of the whole social life to a barbarous or even animal level; for fighting, as one of the most primitive activities, greatly stimulates all the lower centers of action. Hence, revolutionary periods give opportunity for the brute and savage in man to reassert themselves and to dominate many phases of the social life. The methods of attaining ends in revolutions are, therefore, often characteristic of much lower stages of culture. They are apt to be unreflective, extremely direct and crude. The resort to brute force is constant, and when attempts are made at psychical control it is usually through terrorism. "The violent seizure of power by one class, to accomplish its ends, can rarely take place without bloody conflicts between classes. This releases, as we have already seen, the primitive instincts of man which civilization with such difficulty controls. Violence, therefore, can rarely be successfully employed in the higher stages of civilization without defeating the very ends for which it is employed. Its employment starts a process of rebarbarization which is absolutely destructive of those higher social values which civilization has so painfully built up, and by which men have slowly learned to regulate their conduct. If long continued, then, violence must result in the total destruction of anything worthy to be called civilization. The method of social change through revolution must be regarded, therefore, as involving too grave risks to be tolerated by an intelligent people, if it is avoidable." 2 CHAP. XLV Bloody Internal Strife De civilizes War the Furthermore, it should be borne in mind that cheap carriage Social is creating an economic organism ever more sensitive to the dis- Wrecks turbances which nearly always attend a social revolution. Terri- Economic torial specialization has advanced so far that civil strife, which Organism paralyzes first the organization for communication and transport, would cause unspeakable suffering. Without regular transportation the people of certain Michigan counties would have to live. chiefly upon their staple product, celery. Southern Wisconsin would have to subsist upon butter and cheese; Southern California on oranges; Eastern Pennsylvania on anthracite; certain districts in the South on cotton or tobacco. Without access to the coal fields half the population of the Northwest would perish in a hard winter. More and more the distribution of the people over the country and the economic specialization in each locality are predicated upon cheap and uninterrupted transportation. Russia is an economic organism far less developed than 2 "Introduction to Social Psychology," ch. VIII. СНАР. In a Free and Popular Government There Is No Valu able Re- Come by The Suppression of Free Agitation Invites the Resort to Force the United States. Yet the effect of cutting off the central region from the oil of Baku, the coal and iron of the Donetz basin, the food stuffs of Western Siberia and the cotton of Turkestan has been most calamitous. The conclusion is irresistible that violent social change is a desperate policy which has no place where speech is free and elections are honest. Any good thing which might be established by the arms of a minority will, within a few years, be voted in by the majority, if only its friends will keep agitating. Therefore the unpardonable sin in a would-be reformer is impatience. To defy the verdict of the count, when that count is the only thing which commands general reverence, is to invite chaos. The principle that the duly ascertained will of the majority should prevail and that if a certain minority has the right idea it will be able to make itself the majority is the only safe principle to follow. In the end society will get on faster on this principle than on any other. The true reformer gets out into the arena and battles stubbornly for his ideas, takes political defeat submissively and good-naturedly, comes up smiling for the next bout and perseveres until he has won over the majority or sees that he has been in the wrong. But the boot is on the other foot if a dominant social class lays rude hands upon the mechanism by which social readjustments are peacefully accomplished. Serious and persistent interference with public criticism, free discussion, the spontaneous formation of public opinion, association for political ends, the free selection of policies and leaders, leaves force as the sole means of bringing to pass needed social change. It is now the foes of reform, rather than its friends, who are in the wrong. By violating the conditions on the strength of which we bid reformers to abjure all thought of hastening their reforms by violence, they have put themselves outside the social pact. Morally they have not a leg to stand on and deserve to be treated as any other band of stranglers. |