the better life of the world. Men who fervently sing "For such a worm as I" and "This world's wilderness of woe, this world is not my home" do not discover new continents, invent printing and the steam engine, and erect world-wide industrial systems. Unlike Greeks and Romans with us the idea of the worthwhileness of life has carried with it the idea of the dignity of manual toil, which has furnished an adequate foundation upon which to build an industrial culture.

Fourth, our culture is in a very high degree a pecuniary culture. More than by any one thing our economic conduct is actuated by the desire for pecuniary profit. We go into those occupations promising the highest pecuniary returns. Our capital breaks over national barriers when the rate of interest abroad mounts higher. Even back in the Middle Ages, penance, a sacrament of the church, was put on a pecuniary basis. Escape from the consequences of certain actions was allowed to those who had accumulated wealth. Thus the accumulation of wealth and the stratification of society upon a pecuniary basis was encouraged. Today in the court, in the church, in the press, in social circles, the man of wealth is treated with greater consideration because of his wealth. The three characteristics mentioned above, fluidity, humanism, and the dominance of the pecuniary motive have made our culture a highly industrial culture, for it is in industry that these motives find their fullest expression.

Fifth, our culture places the value of human actions and institutions in some end or institution over and beyond themselves. The justification of individual activity is not to be found in personal good. The actions of individuals are found worthy of praise only because of a larger and a greater "society," toward which they are as means to an end. Laissez-faire is defended not as a means to self-aggrandizement, but as a theory of social welfare. "Big business" talks in terms of "pay envelopes," "full dinner pails," and "general prosperity." But the end from which the value comes is even less immediate than present society. The justification of the present is in the future. Back in the Middle Ages one's conduct was regulated by one's desire for his "soul's salvation." As men little by little ceased to have souls, and “life's fulness" came more and more to be recognized as life's end, the emphasis formerly attached to the other world associated itself with an ideal society which was striving for realization in the church. Even today, obscured as it may seem, an ideal future society is the potent force in evaluating conduct, individual and social. How potent is this idea of the future a few statements will show. We use "roundabout" processes of production. In legislation we seek to conserve the interests of capital, future goods, rather than give our attention to conserving immediate income. We speak in terms of

progress and evolution. We condemn, as never before, industry and politics because of its "shortsightedness." We give serious consideration to such a radical program of industrial reform as socialism. The value of the present thing is in large part a value derived from a future ideal. Thus a spirit of idealism, seeing a realization of its purposes in a less immediate society, is a very vital factor in determining the course of industrial development.

These several characteristics, material and emotional as all of them are, are vital because they underlie our culture, condition our growth, and must be clearly recognized in any program of political, social, and industrial reform.

2. The Current Stage in Social Development2

It is in the economic world of here and now that we are interested. Amid its complex of activities, institutions, conventions, ideals, standards, and modes of thought we order our lives. Its multifarious and baffling problems are our problems-ours to "muddle" or to "solve." How we handle them will determine quite largely what the economic world of tomorrow is to be like. For these problems are aspects of our industrial system; they are incidents in the development of our economic society. They emerge, or assume new forms, as the larger whole develops. With its onward sweep severally they pass into oblivion, lose themselves in new problems, assume unfamiliar forms, or otherwise manage to get "solved." They are not distinct things; they cannot be detached from the larger scheme of affairs to which they belong. They cannot be disposed of in isolation, as if the universe were one thing and each of them another. They are intimately associated with each other, with the economic system to which they belong, and with the larger world, which includes the legal, political, ethical, social, and all other aspects of life, economic and non-economic. To understand them aright we must know something of this larger whole in its current manifestations.

In its rapid development our society is approaching the end of what, in no invidious sense, we may call the exploitative period. Our development in the nineteenth century was dominated by our stores of natural wealth and by the use of an expanding and developing machine technique. The century witnessed the conquest of a continent, seemingly possessed of never-failing resources. The gifts of forest, waterfall, stream, soil, and mine, by the magic touch of modern technique, were transformed into a golden stream of wealth. The expanding system absorbed larger and larger volumes of capital

2An editorial (1915, 1919).

and increment after increment of alien labor. Its object and end was prosperity.

This process of getting rich absorbed quite largely our attention and our energy. Our thought was for virgin fields for machine effort. Our impatience was at the slowness of our very rapid industrial development. Our powers of control, so far as they were consciously used, were aimed at speeding up. We made no inquisitive search into our legal arrangements, our fundamental institutions, or our ethical standards. We did not perceive that development in one aspect of life leaves incompatibilities that need attention. It did not readily occur to us that improvement should occur elsewhere than in the technique of production, the growth of business organization, and the expansion of the pecuniary system. In short, we neither tried to discover, nor succeeded in discovering, society. We had problems, of course many more than we had need for. But they were concerned with removing the barriers that opposed the establishment of a pecuniary system on a nation-wide plan.

This neglect of the non-industrial side of life expressed itself most conspicuously in a formidable and overgrown individualism. Since we were growing wealthy, all was well We rarely thought of attributing responsibility for what we did not like to society, institutions, conditions, or environment. Quite as rarely did we attribute prosperity to the abundance of our natural resources. We firmly believed that each individual "was master of his fate"; that "opportunity knocks once at every gate"; that "there is plenty of room at the top"; and that successful men are "self-made.”

This habit of thought worked its way into the whole range of our institutions. A fundamental assumption of individualism was that all men were equal. A resulting principle of action was that the state should give “equal rights to all, and special privileges to none.” Equality suggested the attainment of political wisdom by calculation. Accordingly the object of legislation was "the greatest good to the greatest number." Since each person possessed one, and only one, vote, it was evident that our government was a democracy. In ethics our conduct was measured by individualistic standards. In education, by setting up the system of free electives, we made the individual student the best judge of the training that was good for him. In economics our attention was given very largely to the market; the distribution of wealth and proposals of social reform were alike treated as if they were mere questions of value theory; and we elaborated and generally accepted the doctrine that one "gets what he produces." Even our religious systems were characterized by an intense and dogmatic individualism.

It was, perhaps, inevitable that we should not escape looking at things too narrowly. We manifested a contempt for philosophy and general theory. We encouraged specialization, but overlooked the broad and general training which should underlie it. We investigated particular subjects without knowing the general fields to which they belonged. We attempted to resolve phenomena into general schemes without understanding the laws which govern the phenomena. We formulated, analyzed, and attempted to solve our problems as if they were so many distinct entities. We saw the whole only as an aggregation of parts, and society only as a collection of individuals.

Closely associated was a notion of social change in mechanical terms. When we became impatient with this or that, we demanded. an immediate remedy. We turned to the state as the obvious agent, one which we professed to distrust, and demanded legislation. If our attention was not distracted by some new "abuse," we usually turned out the party in power if immediate results were not forthcoming. Even our reformers usually gave us panaceas for all social ills, or demanded a reconstruction of the whole scheme of life.

Many of our highest social values are associated with individualism. Its note must be retained to keep the system from being resolved into an orderly, mechanical, prosaic, and dull scheme of things. Without it, it is hard to see how society can most fully utilize its capacity for development. In the America of the nineteenth century it helped to solve the problems of a young society as perhaps nothing else could have done. The individual pluck, energy, and initiative which it called forth were just the qualities necessary to the gigantic and crude stage of development through which the country was passing. It remains in the present, however, in a very dominant form, thoroughly ingrained in our institutions and in the social philosophy of classes which occupy quite important positions in society.

But for some time we have been conscious that we are approaching the end of this exploitative period. We have by no means reached the end of our resources; but we have come to see that they are no longer boundless. It is evident that there is real danger of wasting our patrimony. Opportunities for sudden wealth are no longer plentiful. We have awakened to the necessity of economy, of giving long and careful thought to our social arrangements. We are beginning to find out, too, that our prosperity has entailed its costs. We gave conscious thought to securing a well-developed machine-system, a large population, and a large measure of individual liberty, believing that these would bless us with wealth. We succeeded in securing. these things. But we neglected to take thought for the cultural incidence of the industrial system. As a result we have acquired a

number of things for which we did not ask, that may well be considered the costs of our material progress. Our urban life has its full complement of slums, overcrowding, vice and poverty. There is clearly evident a tendency toward a stratification of society on a pecuniary basis, with a funded-income class at the top and a proletariat of alien blood at the bottom. There is growing a spirit of protest based upon a philosophy quite foreign to that which underlies our cherished institutions. Our vast pecuniary system is making the lot of labor, and capital, too, for that matter, extremely insecure. Moreover, we are beginning to see that our prosperity is imposing its costs upon the next generation, in conditions and institutions which we did not will, in problems which we helped to raise but cannot solve, and in depleted resources with which to work out its social salvation.

As we realize these things, there grows up among us a reaction against the extreme individualism of the nineteenth century. We are imposing limitations upon what we conceive individual initiative. and energy to be capable of accomplishing; we doubt if the ladder. which leads to the top has its full number of rungs; all successful men are no longer "self-made." We occasionally even make excuses for the man who fails. We have discovered "environment," and speak quite frequently of "exceptional opportunities," "social conditions," and the "favor of fortune." We are beginning to associate those things which we do not like with an "overdeveloped individualism," and to see "grave dangers" in unrestricted liberty.

This change is manifesting itself in a changed attitude toward our institutions. Quite frequently we use the word "privilege" in connection with the activities of government. Seemingly forgetful of our former boasts, we are today demanding reforms which will make our government "democratic." We are not distrustful of the fundamental soundness of our legal institutions, such as property, contract, equality before the law, etc., but we are beginning to suspect that they bear too many signs of having been forged to meet the needs of frontier and craft societies; that they are more consonant with the plow and the spinning-wheel than with the powerloom and the locomotive. We are qualifying ethical standards which we regard as valid with the adjective social. In education the elective system is giving way to a flexible curriculum adapted to the newer society. A spirit of group and class welfare is expressing itself in such voluntary associations as the trade and craft unions, and is beginning to permeate legislation. We are beginning to trust the state, and are no longer affrighted by the cry of paternalism. In economics we use the term "social value"; we have begun to insist that economic theory is not confined to value theory; and we are more clearly recognizing that distribution of wealth and projects of