CHAP.
LVII

It Puts
Barriers
between
People

Leisure

class Follies and Futilities

with the hounds. There is no society but the joint enjoyment of the expensive, no marriage save a church wedding, no rest save at a watering-place hotel. Thus foppish standards, begot ten of spenders' rivalry, leach out through society and corrupt sound homebred notions of what is fit, or decent, or worth while People come to scorn the joys at their elbow and pine for luxuries out of their reach. Ungratified worldliness gnaws at the heart of multitudes, while greed is whetted till even decent men turn to monopoly, extortion, chicane, and acquisitive crime.

When the new-rich force their way into high society with a torrent of expenditure no social barriers can withstand, the effect on public morals is yet more disastrous. The spectacle of ther baronial estates, princely houses, liveried lackeys, and Sybaritic luxury contaminates even hard-headed persons with wealth wor ship. People fall apart into as many exclusive social groups as there are styles of living and forget how to meet their fellowmen on the level. You are snob to those below and toady to those above you, so that the higher are cankered with pride, the lower with envy. If the working millions accept these values they cease to respect themselves and will in the end let themselves be governed by the wealthy.

The influence of the leisure class fortifies the cultural studies in the schools against the demand for vocational studies and helps letters hold their place in the curriculum against the pressure from science. In adult recreation it belittles play in favor of sports involving skill. It is responsible for the feeling that conservatism is dignified, while radicalism is "vulgar" and "bad form" As we saw from the example of the English in Flanders, it leads to war being conducted by amateurs as a sport instead of by professionals as a lethal industry. While in earlier stages of social development the leisure class contributed many valuable elements to the culture of the people, it now performs no useful functions which cannot be better rendered by paid public servants at a tithe of the cost. In view of the sapping effect of its standards and examples upon the basic virtues of the self-supporting, organized society would be justified in so taxing great incomes as to make a hereditary leisure class impossible.

Other divisions of the influential- such as the writers and artists, the physicians, the educators, the newspaper men, the technical men are more or less subject to some special bias;

but since in no case has the social mind been dominated by any one of these groups, we are not called upon to set forth here the nature of such bias.

СНАР.

LVII

LEADERS AND LED

Have the ple Any

Plain Peo

thing to do

Not only should leaders of one bias be balanced by leaders of another bias, but a just balance should be preserved between leaders and led. Let us designate as "intellectuals" those from but whom leadership would naturally be expected, while the to-be-led Follow? may be called "the plain people." Now, it will be bad for society if at every fork in the road the intellectuals stride ahead along what they think is the right road, while the plain people follow them with a childlike trust. The matter is by no means so simple. The intellectuals should be willing to give reasons, while the plain people should keep their eyes open and use their

common sense.

In American experience we find certain matters in which the intellectuals saw the truth before the plain people, and the latter learned to see through their eyes. Such are the upholding of the public credit, the conservation of natural resources, the promotion of scientific research, civil service reform, appreciation of the expert in the public service, efficiency in government, the isolation of contagious diseases, public-health protection, compulsory vaccination, scientific charity, and eugenics. Vision in such matters calls for a fuller knowledge or a wider range of observation than the average uneducated person possesses.

Truths the

Intellect

als Grasp

First

Matters

People do

Not Need
Led

to be

There is another group of matters on which the plain people in which take a stand without needing the initiative of intellectuals. Such the Plain are what are termed "moral questions," i.e., questions which are answered out of one's moral perceptions rather than out of special knowledge. Of this type are the abolition of slavery and peonage, the suppression of prostitution and the liquor traffic, the humanization of punishments, the suppression of Mormon polygamy, the protection of the home, religious toleration, and international peace. Here the role of leaders has been to direct attention rather than to persuade.

In certain other matters the plain people took a stand long before the intellectuals were heard from. Thus the government regulation of railroads was an article of faith among farmers in the seventies of the last century, while it received the late and

Truths

which the

Plain Peo

ple See

First

LVII

CHAP. grudging acquiescence of professional and business men not earlier than the nineties. The prevention of industrial accidents, the prohibition of child labor, and the protection of working women were in the program of the American labor unions for twenty years before it became respectable to support them. So has it been with homestead laws, rural credit, postal savings banks, the graduated income tax, the fight on the "Pinkerton" plague. The reason is that on these questions the farmers or the wage-earners drew upon an experience which the intellectuals utterly lacked. They knew where the shoe pinched, for they had to wear it. Moreover, the economic self-interest of the intellectuals, or of the classes they affiliate with, has in some cases been squarely against reform. If, then, the plain people had waited for the intellectuals to take notice of their grievances and to guide them to redress, they would have waited till the crack of doom.

Cases in which the Intellectuals were in Error

There are even cases in which intellectuals and plain people disagreed and the event proved the plain people to be right. The English working-class sympathy with the cause of the North during the American Civil War, in spite of the pro-Southern spirit of the aristocracy, is now recognized by the English themselves as political sagacity. The opposition of the plain people of the Pacific Slope to Chinese coolie immigration, although our men of light and leading almost unanimously condemned such opposition, has since been justified by sociology. In these instances the instincts of the masses proved a more trustworthy guide than the half-baked cosmopolitanism of the intellectuals.

The balance to be struck between the educated and the people depends on a number of things: on the nature of the questions that come up, on the plane of popular intelligence, on the familiarity of the people with methods of public discussion and debate, on their experience in following argument, on their skill in detecting the demagogue, on the fulness of the control they exercise over their government, on the complexity of society, and on the nature of the education, the intellectual habits, and the disinterestedness of the elements that would lead the people.

CONCLUSION

In the piloting of society no valuable element should have either too little influence or too much influence. When a ganglion of gray matter is not left free to do well its proper work

or when it cannot get a fair hearing for its good ideas and hence is not making to the intelligent guidance of the whole that contribution which it is capable of making, it has too little influence. When, on the other hand, it is so ascendent as to make all the rest the victim of its special psychology, it has too much influence. Thus we arrive at the principle of balance, which may be formulated as follows: In the guidance of society each social element should share according to the intelligence and public spirit of its members AND NONE SHOULD DOMINATE.

THE END