are likely to stimulate intellectual progress, still harder is it to estimate their influence on the standard of moral excellence. What is Moral Progress? The ancient philosophers would have described its aim as being Harmony with Nature, that is, with those tendencies in man which lead him to his highest good by raising him above sense temptations. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas would have placed it in conformity to God's will to which all thoughts and passions should be attuned. Neither of these ideals had any relation to material progress, and saints would probably have thought such progress hurtful rather than helpful to the soul.

To estimate the degree in which some sins or vices have declined and others have developed, the extent to which some virtues have grown more common and others more rare; to calculate the respective ethical values of the qualities in which there has been an improvement and a decline; and to strike a general balance after appraising the worth of all these assets-this is a task on which few would care to enter. No analysis and no synthesis could make much of data so uncertain in quantity and so disputable in quality. Different virtues rise and fall, bloom and wither, as they inspire joy or command admiration.

It may, however, be suggested that there is one thing whose relation to material progress must somehow be the ultimate test of every kind of advance. It is Happiness. But what is Happiness? Is it Pleasure? Are pleasures to be measured by a qualitative as well as a quantitative analysis? Shall we measure them by the intensity by which they are felt or by the fineness and elevation of the feeling to which they appeal? Is the satisfaction which Pericles felt in watching the performance of a drama of Sophocles greater or less than the satisfaction which one of his slaves felt in draining. a jar of wine?

The comparison of our own age with preceding ages does not solve the problem. Most of us probably rejoice that we did not live in the fifth or even the seventeenth century. But can we be sure that the individual man in these centuries had a worse time than the average man now has? He was in many points less sensitive to suffering than we are, and he may have enjoyed some things more intensely. True, the fear of torment brooded like a black cloud over the minds of past generations. Yet we know that many persons look back to the Ages of Faith as ages when man's mind was far more full of peace and hope than at present.

Happiness is largely a matter of temperament, and temperament largely depends upon physiological conditions, and the physiological

conditions of life are much affected by economic and social conditions. How can we then determine whether the excitement and variety of modern life make for happiness?

We may seem to be better equipped for prophecy than we were, because we have come to know all the surface of the earth, and its resources, and the races that dwell thereon, and their respective gifts and capacities. But how these elements will combine and work together is a problem apparently as inscrutable as ever. The bark that carries Man and his fortunes traverses an ocean where the winds are variable and the currents unknown.

B. THE CONTROL OF ECONOMIC ACTIVITY

38. The Agencies of Social Control

BY ELIZABETH HUGHES

The prominence attached to government interference with industrial enterprise has caused the other ways in which society orders, directs, and defines the efforts of individuals to be overlooked. Social control, it must be remembered, has many channels through which to spread and need confine itself at no time to the single course of overt legislation.

Group will operates most persistently and potently through the great unwritten rules and restrictions imposed by custom, which through their very familiarity often escape observation. A glance at Eastern, then at Western, civilization may serve to show by contrast how far-reaching and permeating is custom's influence upon industrial life. In Eastern countries custom decrees that trades shall be hereditary; that the tools and methods used by ancestors. shall continue to be used by present-day workers; and that human labor shall not be supplanted in any marked degree by machine effort, but only supplemented somewhat by it. Western civilization, on the contrary, adopts as its fetish the new rather than the old, favors development rather than stagnation-in a word, tends to make change itself customary and normal. In production machinery is extensively used, and a child may follow quite another trade than his father's, or, if he adopts his parent's calling, need not execute it in precisely the same manner. But though Western society is not stereotyped to the degree to which the social groups of the Orient are, it nevertheless shows more than traces of conservatism. Millowners, for example, through custom cling to child labor; merchants determine selling prices by adding customary percentages of profit, differing greatly in different trades; the standardization of woman's

dress makes little headway against the custom of frequent and radical changes in style; spring millinery is marketed in January in spite of untoward weather; extra clerks are hired at Christmas to meet the demands of those whom no society for the suppression of useless giving can deter from eleventh-hour activity in buying. It is custom which leads people to continue patronizing the dealer and the brand of goods they have formerly found satisfactory-or unsatisfactory— instead of accepting the "just-as-good" substitutes. Without the power of custom "good will" could not be capitalized as an asset, and trademarks would not be desirable. Custom, then, does actively and potently aid in regulating industry.

The various institutions of society epitomize forms of social control. Schools with their industrial departments in a measure supplant the older system of apprenticeship and by their vocational guidance bureaus attempt to place children in fitting occupations. The press, the pulpit, and the platform are agents for the dissemination of ideas; and, by the impression of group ideas and standards upon individuals, foster the establishment of social solidarity. Through these a society's codes of ethics find expression: exploitation of workmen, for example, is frowned upon; an opportunity for everyone is coming to be regarded as a matter of right; and it is insisted that competition shall be free and not "cut-throat."

In addition to the general ethical codes of society are the particular codes of the different professions. For instance the code of the medical profession exercises a restraining and compelling influence over many activities of its members. It is responsible alike for the custom of non-advertisement of medical services, a large amount of charity work, and a system of class prices that frequently becomes "charging what the traffic will bear." The medical man's code rules out many of the things which law permits, and stands in sharp contrast to the principles of the business man who still holds to the "eye-for-an-eye" doctrine and looks upon shrewdness and sagacity as cardinal virtues, honesty as a matter of policy, and good will as desirable private capital. He is, however, unlike the medical man, constrained to charge rich and poor a single price for his wares, thus more adequately protecting "the consumer's surplus" of the well-todo classes than it is protected from the medical fraternity. On the contrary there is no gratuitous gift to the ne'er-do-well.

Lawyers, ministers, and teachers-each in turn have their codes. The tyranny of social custom shows itself especially in the standard of living which each of the professional classes is expected to maintain. Salaries and fees must be high enough in the aggregate to make a given standard attainable with circumspect expenditure.

A man in choosing his profession adopts along with his choice an obligation to obey the ethical code society and the particular group he has joined expects him to follow. If medicine, he must live up to the ethics of the medical profession; if law, he must obey its behests under penalty of debarment; if certain particular lines of business, he must rise or stoop to the plane of competition maintained in these lines, since nonconformity automatically excludes through business disaster those who do not conform.

He may subject himself still further to voluntary compulsion by joining a club or an association; for clubs and associations, of whatever sort they be, have in common the exercise of general control over members. The trade unionist, for example, may not "scab❞ even if he is unemployed because of a strike he did not vote for; nor may he speed up even though he can easily increase his earnings. through piece-work; nor work overtime without extra pay; nor buy anything without a union label; nor print anything except on a union press. Just so the employer who has allied himself with an employers' association must uphold in relation to his laborers those principles and stipulations upon which the association has agreed. He must conduct his business less in accord with his individual will and more as the group has deemed best. Again there is the Consumers' League, whose members pledge themselves to patronize only those manufacturers who measure up to a standard set by the League and attain thereby unto an honored place on its white list and win the right to use the Consumers' label.

Enough has been said to show that government regulation is only one form of social control. In fact, it would seem as if, in a democratic society, legislation is only resorted to when there is conflict in control exerted by different groups within society at large. The more satisfactory the control by the smaller group, the less the economic or social oppression of one by another, the less the interference of society at large through law and governmental control.

39. The Family as an Agency of Control

The importance of social control lies in its performance of two functions. The first is the organization of industrial society; the second, the direction of social activities to ends that constitute progress. These results require for their accomplishment the use of a variety of institutions. So prevalent has become the habit of expressing this problem in terms of the Individual and the State, that we are prone to overlook the less obvious, but extremely important, agencies of control. The influences of some of these, both in holding society together and in directing its development, are far more ex

tensive and their sanctions far more compelling than even state authority. In fact such is their power that one of the principal functions of the state has come to be forcing upon a small minority. modes of action which have been developed through other agencies and which have already come to exercise a compelling influence over the majority. A single example, that of the Family, will serve to show the nature and efficiency of these usually neglected agencies.

The industrial system is in general manned by adults; so we are too prone to overlook the industrial importance of children. The latter constitute an incipient industrial force; to them the management and operation of the industrial system will in course of time be intrusted. How this task is performed depends to a large extent upon influences brought to bear upon them while they are still unincumbered with active industrial duties. The system demands personal efficiency; it must have workers who are capable of sustained effort. This is an acquired characteristic. The savage does not possess it; improper home influences may prevent the civilized child from acquiring it. Its acquisition is very closely associated with the habits of home discipline. The common ethical standards. to be applied to business dealings are also quite dependent upon the same influences. The home develops individual norms; these grow into class and social norms, which exercise over the individual vital control of actions through all-compelling imperatives and inhibitions.

Industrial efficiency likewise depends upon the proper distribution of workers among the different occupations. The decisions affecting this distribution are not always made by the heads of families, but all of them are surrounded by many and varied family influences. The preparation for entering the chosen occupations is usually made under the same influences. Since the organization of society as well as its development is contingent upon a proper distribution into occupational groups, the importance of this cannot very well be underestimated. The freedom which an individual possesses to choose and change his own occupation usually does not come to him until a time when an exercise of this freedom would be attended by losses too great to permit it.

Both the immediate welfare and the progress of society vitally depend upon the proportions between the three factors of production-land, labor, and capital. The family, more than any other institution, controls the increase in the two factors subject to increase, capital and labor. The origin of capital, as we know, is in savings. Savings are what is left of the family income when the family expenses have been met. Since the expenditure depends very largely upon family habits, the dependence of capital upon this institution is clearly seen. Family influences, too, are quite potent in