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SOCIETY
ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT
BY
HENRY KALLOCH ROWE, Ph.D.
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND SOCIOLOGY IN NEWTON
THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTION
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
PREFACE
In studying biology it is convenient to make cross-sections of
laboratory specimens in order to determine structure, and to watch
plants and animals grow in order to determine function. There seems to
be no good reason why social life should not be studied in the same
way. To take a child in the home and watch it grow in the midst of the
life of the family, the community, and the larger world, and to cut
across group life so as to see its characteristics, its interests, and
its organization, is to study sociology in the most natural way and to
obtain the necessary data for generalization. To attempt to study
sociological principles without this preliminary investigation is to
confuse the student and leave him in a sea of vague abstractions.
It is not because of a lack of appreciation of the abstract that the
emphasis of this book is on the concrete. It is written as an
introduction to the study of the principles of sociology, and it may
well be used as a prelude to the various social sciences. It is
natural that trained sociologists should prefer to discuss the
profound problems of their science, and should plunge their pupils
into material for study where they are soon beyond their depth; much
of current life seems so obvious and so simple that it is easy to
forget that the college man or woman has never looked upon it with a
discriminating eye or with any attempt to understand its meaning. If
this is true of the college student, it is unquestionably true of the
men and women of the world. The writer believes that there is need of
a simple, untechnical treatment of human society, and offers this book
as a contribution to the practical side of social science. He writes
with the undergraduate continually in mind, trying to see through his
eyes and to think with his mind, and the references are to books that
will best meet his needs and that are most readily accessible. It is
expected that the pupil will read widely, and that the instructor will
show how principles and laws are formulated from the multitude of
observations of social phenomena. The last section of the book sums up
briefly some of the scientific conclusions that are drawn from the
concrete data, and prepares the way for a more detailed and technical
study.
If sociology is to have its rightful place in the world it must become
a science for the people. It must not be permitted to remain the
possession of an aristocracy of intellect. The heart of thousands of
social workers who are trying to reform society and cure its ills is
throbbing with sympathy and hope, but there is much waste of energy
and misdirection of zeal because of a lack of understanding of the
social life that they try to cure. They and the people to whom they
minister need an interpretation of life in social terms that they can
understand. Professional persons of all kinds need it. A world that is
on the verge of despair because of the breakdown of harmonious human
relations needs it to reassure itself of the value and the possibility
of normal human relations. Doubtless the presentation of the subject
is imperfect, but if it meets the need of those who find difficulty in
using more technical discussions and opens up a new field of interest
to many who hitherto have not known the difference between sociology
and socialism, the effort at interpretation will have been worth
while.
HENRY K. ROWE
NEWTON CENTRE, MASSACHUSETTS.
CONTENTS
PART ONE--INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER PAGE
I. CHARACTERISTICS OF SOCIAL LIFE 1
II. UNORGANIZED GROUP LIFE 16
PART TWO--LIFE IN THE FAMILY GROUP
III. FOUNDATIONS OF THE FAMILY 24
IV. THE HISTORY OF THE FAMILY 29
V. THE MAKING OF THE HOME 37
VI. CHILDREN IN THE HOME 42
VII. WORK, PLAY, AND EDUCATION 51
VIII. HOME ECONOMICS 60
IX. CHANGES IN THE FAMILY 67
X. DIVORCE 74
XI. THE SOCIAL EVIL 81
XII. CHARACTERISTICS AND PRINCIPLES 88
PART THREE--SOCIAL LIFE IN THE RURAL COMMUNITY
XIII. THE COMMUNITY AND ITS HISTORY 91
XIV. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 99
XV. OCCUPATIONS 104
XVI. RECREATION 108
XVII. RURAL INSTITUTIONS 115
XVIII. RURAL EDUCATION 120
XIX. THE NEW RURAL SCHOOL 127
XX. RURAL GOVERNMENT 136
XXI. HEALTH AND BEAUTY 144
XXII. MORALS IN THE RURAL COMMUNITY 151
XXIII. THE RURAL CHURCH 156
XXIV. A NEW TYPE OF RURAL INSTITUTION 162
PART FOUR--SOCIAL LIFE IN THE CITY
XXV. FROM COUNTRY TO CITY 169
XXVI. THE MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISE 180
XXVII. THE INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM 186
XXVIII. EXCHANGE AND TRANSPORTATION 201
XXIX. THE PEOPLE WHO WORK 212
XXX. THE IMMIGRANT 221
XXXI. HOW THE WORKING PEOPLE LIVE 230
XXXII. THE DIVERSIONS OF THE WORKING PEOPLE 238
XXXIII. CRIME AND ITS CURE 248
XXXIV. AGENCIES OF CONTROL 256
XXXV. DIFFICULTIES OF THE PEOPLE WHO WORK 263
XXXVI. CHARITY AND THE SETTLEMENTS 271
XXXVII. EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES 280
XXXVIII. THE CHURCH 287
XXXIX. THE CITY IN THE MAKING 294
PART FIVE--SOCIAL LIFE IN THE NATION
XL. THE BUILDING OF A NATION 300
XLI. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE PEOPLE AS
A NATION 305
XLII. THE STATE 313
XLIII. PROBLEMS OF THE NATION 324
XLIV. INTERNATIONALISM 333
PART SIX--SOCIAL ANALYSIS
XLV. PHYSICAL AND PERSONAL FACTORS IN THE LIFE OF
SOCIETY 340
XLVI. SOCIAL PSYCHIC FACTORS 348
XLVII. SOCIAL THEORIES 357
XLVIII. THE SCIENCE OF SOCIOLOGY 364
INDEX 373
SOCIETY: ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT
PART I--INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER I
CHARACTERISTICS OF SOCIAL LIFE
1. =Man and His Social Relations.=--A study of society starts with the
obvious fact that human beings live together. The hermit is abnormal.
However far back we go in the process of human evolution we find the
existence of social relations, and sociability seems a quality
ingrained in human nature. Every individual has his own personality
that belongs to him apart from every other individual, but the
perpetuation and development of that personality is dependent on
relations with other personalities and with the physical environment
which limits his activity.
As an individual his primary interest is in self, but he finds by
experience that he cannot be independent of others. His impulses, his
feelings, and his ideas are due to the relations that he has with that
which is outside of himself. He may exercise choice, but it is within
the limits set by these outside relations. He may make use of what
they can do for him or he may antagonize them, at least he cannot
ignore them. Experience determines how the individual may best adapt
himself to his environment and adapt the environment to his own needs,
and he thus establishes certain definite relationships. Any group of
individuals, who have thus consciously established relationships with
one another and with their social environment is a society. The
relations through whose channels the interplay of social forces is
constantly going on make up the social organization. The
readjustments of these relations for the better adaptation of one
individual to another, or of either to their environment, make up the
process of social development. A society which remains in equilibrium
is termed static, that which is changing is called dynamic.
2. =The Field and the Purpose of Sociology.=--Life in society is the
subject matter of sociological study. Sociology is concerned with the
origin and development of that life, with its present forms and
activities, and with their future development. It finds its material
in the every-day experiences of men, women, and children in whatever
stage of progress they may be; but for practical purposes its chief
interest is in the normal life of civilized communities, together with
the past developments and future prospects of that life. The purpose
of sociological study is to discover the active workings and
controlling principles of life, its essential meaning, and its
ultimate goal; then to apply the principles, laws, and ideals
discovered to the imperfect social process that is now going on in the
hope of social betterment.
3. =Source Material for Study.=--The source material of social life
lies all about us. For its past history we must explore the primitive
conduct of human beings as we learn it from anthropology and
archaeology, or as we infer it from the lowest human races or from
animal groups that bear the nearest physical and mental resemblance to
mankind. For present phenomena we have only to look about us, and
having seen to attempt their interpretation. Life is mirrored in the
daily press. Pick up any newspaper and examine its contents. It
reveals social characteristics both local and wide-spread.
4. =Social Characteristics--Activity.=--The first fact that stands out
clearly as a characteristic of social life is _activity_. Everybody
seems to be doing something. There are a few among the population,
like vagrants and the idle rich, who are parasites, but even they
sustain relations to others that require a certain sort of effort.
Activity seems fundamental. It needs but a hasty survey to show how
general it is. Farmers are cultivating their broad acres, woodsmen are
chopping and hewing in the forest, miners are drilling in underground
chambers, and the products of farm, forest, and mine are finding their
way by river, road, and rail to the great distributing centres. In the
town the machinery of mill and factory keeps busy thousands of
operatives, and turns out manufactured products to compete with the
products of the soil for right of way to the cities of the New World
and the Old. Busiest of all are the throngs that thread the streets of
the great centres, and pour in and out of stores and offices. Men rush
from one person to another, and interview one after another the
business houses with which they maintain connection; women swarm about
the counters of the department stores and find at the same time social
satisfaction and pecuniary reward; children in hundreds pour into the
intellectual hopper of the schoolroom and from there to the
playground. Everybody is busy, and everybody is seeking personal
profit and satisfaction.
5. =Mental Activity.=--There is another kind of activity of which
these economic and social phases are only the outward expression, an
activity of the mind which is busy continually adjusting the needs of
the individual or social organism and the environment to each other.
Some acts are so instinctive or habitual that they do not require
conscious mental effort; others are the result of reasoning as to this
or that course of action. The impulse of the farmer may be to remain
inactive, or the schoolboy may feel like going fishing; the call of
nature stimulates the desire; but reason reaches out and takes control
and directs outward activity into proper channels. On the other hand,
reason fortifies worthy inclinations. The youth feels an inclination
to stretch his muscles or to use his brains, and reason re-enforces
feeling. The physical need of food, clothing, and shelter acts as a
goad to drive a man to work, and reason sanctions his natural
response. This mental activity guides not only individual human
conduct but also that of the group. Instinct impels the man to defend
his family from hardship or his clan from defeat, and reason confirms
the impulse. His sociable disposition urges him to co-operate in
industry, and reason sanctions his inclination. The history of society
reveals an increasing influence of the intellect in thus directing
instinct and feeling. It is a law of social activity that it tends to
become more rational with the increase of education and experience.
But it is never possible to determine the quantitative influence of
the various factors that enter into a decision, or to estimate the
relative pressure of the forces that urge to activity. Alike in mental
and in physical activity there is a union of all the causative
factors. In an act of the will impulse, feeling, and reflection all
have their part; in physical activity it is difficult to determine how
compelling is any one of the various forces, such as heredity and
environment, that enter into the decision.
6. =The Valuation of Social Activities.=--The importance to society of
all these activities is not to be measured by their scope or by their
vigor or volume, but by the efficiency with which they perform their
function, and the value of the end they serve. Domestic activities,
such as the care of children, may be restricted to the home, and a
woman's career may seem to be blighted thereby, but no more important
work can be accomplished than the proper training of the child.
Political activity may be national in scope, but if it is vitiated by
corrupt practices its value is greatly diminished. Certain activities
carry with them no important results, because they have no definite
function, but are sporadic and temporary, like the coming together of
groups in the city streets, mingling in momentary excitement and
dissolving as quickly.
The true valuation of activities is to be determined by their social
utility. The employment of working men in the brewing of beer or the
manufacture of chewing-gum may give large returns to an individual or
a corporation, but the social utility of such activity is small.
Business enterprise is naturally self-centred; the first interest of
every individual or group is self-preservation, and business must pay
for itself and produce a surplus for its owner or it is not worth
continuing from the economic standpoint; but a business enterprise
has no right selfishly to disregard the interests of its employees and
of the public. Its social value must be reckoned as small or great,
not by the amount of business carried on, but by its contribution to
human welfare.
Take a department store as an illustration. It may be highly
profitable to its owners, giving large returns on the investment,
while distributing cheap and defective goods and paying its employees
less than a decent living wage. Its value is to be determined as small
because its social utility is of little worth. When the value of
activity is estimated on this basis, it will be seen that among the
noblest activities are those of the philanthropist who gives his time
and interest without stint to the welfare of other folk; of the
minister who lends himself to spiritual ministry, and the physician
who gives up his own comfort and sometimes his own life to save those
who are physically ill; of the housewife who bears and rears children
and keeps the home as her willing contribution to the life of the
world; and of the nurses, companions, and teachers who are mothers,
sisters, and wives to those who need their help.
7. =Results of Activity.=--The product of activity is achievement. The
workers of the world are continually transforming energy into material
products. To clear away a forest, to raise a thousand bushels of
grain, to market a herd of cattle or a car-load of shoes, to build a
sky-scraper or an ocean liner, is an achievement. But it is a greater
achievement to take a child mind and educate it until it learns how to
cultivate the soil profitably, how to make a machine or a building of
practical value, and how to save and enrich life.
The history of human folk shows that achievement has been gradual, and
much of it without conscious planning, but the great inventors, the
great architects, the great statesmen have been men of vision, and
definite purpose is sure to fill a larger place in the story of
achievement. Purposive progress rather than unconscious, telic rather
than genetic, is the order of the evolution of society.
The highest achievement of the race is its moral uplift. The man or
woman who has a noble or kindly thought, who has consecrated life to
unselfish ends and has spent constructive effort for the common good,
is the true prince among men. He may be a leader upon whom the common
people rely in time of stress, or only a private in the ranks--he is a
hero, for his achievement is spiritual, and his mastery of the inner
life is his supreme victory.
8. =Association.=--A second characteristic of social life is that
activity is not the activity of isolated individuals, but it is
_activity in association_. Human beings work together, play together,
talk together, worship together, fight together. If they happen to act
alone, they are still closely related to one another. Examine the
daily newspaper record and see how few items have to do with
individuals acting in isolation. Even if a person sits down alone to
think, his mind is working along the line on which it received the
push of another mind shortly before. A large part of the work of the
world is done in concert. The ship and the train have their crew, the
factory its hands, the city police and fire departments their force.
Men shout together on the ball field, and sing folk-songs in chorus.
As an audience they listen to the play or the sermon, as a mob they
rush the jail to lynch a prisoner, or as a crowd they riot in high
carnival on Mardi Gras. The normal individual belongs to a family, a
community, a political party, a nation; he may belong, besides, to a
church, a few learned societies, a trade-union, or any number of clubs
or fraternities.
Human beings associate because they possess common interests and means
of intercourse. They are affected by the same needs. They have the
power to think in the same grooves and to feel a common sympathy.
Members of the same race or community have a common fund of custom or
tradition; they are conscious of like-mindedness in morals and
religion; they are subject to the same kind of mental suggestion; they
have their own peculiar language and literature. As communication
between different parts of the world improves and ability to speak in
different languages increases, there comes a better understanding
among the world's peoples and an increase of mutual sympathy.
Experience has taught the value of association. By it the individual
makes friends, gains in knowledge, enlarges interests. Knowing this,
he seeks acquaintances, friends, and companions. He finds the world
richer because of family, community, and national life, and if
necessary he is willing to sacrifice something of his own comfort and
peace for the advantages that these associations will bring.
9. =Causes of Association.=--It is the nature of human beings to enjoy
company, to be curious about what they see and hear, to talk together,
and to imitate one another. These traits appear in savages and even in
animals, and they are not outgrown with advance in civilization. These
inborn instincts are modified or re-enforced by the conscious workings
of the mind, and are aided or restricted by external circumstances. It
is a natural instinct for men to seek associates. They feel a liking
for one and a dislike for another, and select their friends
accordingly. But the choice of most men is within a restricted field,
for their acquaintance is narrow. College men are thrown with a
certain set or join a certain fraternity. They play on the same team
or belong to the same class. They may have chosen their college, but
within that institution their environment is limited. It is similar in
the world at large. Individuals do not choose the environment in which
at first they find themselves, and the majority cannot readily change
their environment. Within its natural limits and the barriers which
caste or custom have fixed, children form their play groups according
to their liking for each other, and adults organize their societies
according to their mutual interests or common beliefs. With increasing
acquaintance and ease of communication and transportation there comes
a wider range of choice, and environment is less controlling. The will
of the individual becomes freer to choose friends and associates
wherever he finds them. He may have widely scattered business and
political connections. He may be a member of an international
association. He may even take a wife from another city or a distant
nation. Mental interaction flows in international channels.
10. =Forms of Association.=--It is possible to classify all forms of
association in two groups as natural, like a gang of boys, or
artificial, like a political party. Or it is possible to arrange them
according to the interests they serve, as economic, scientific, and
the like. Again they may be classified according to thoroughness of
organization, ranging from the crowd to the closely knit corporation.
But whatever the form may be, the value of the association is to be
judged according to the degree of social worth, as in the case of
activities. On that basis a company of gladiators or a pugilist's club
ranks below a village improvement society; that in turn yields in
importance to a learned association of physicians discussing the best
means of relieving human suffering. In the slow process of social
evolution those forms that do not contribute to the welfare of the
race will lose their place in society.
11. =Results of Association.=--The results of association are among
the permanent assets of the race. Man has become what he is because of
his social relations, and further progress is dependent upon them. The
arts that distinguish man from his inferiors are the products of
inter-communication and co-operation. The art of conversation and the
accompanying interchange of ideas and thought stimulus are to be
numbered among the benefits. The art of conciliation that calms
ruffled tempers and softens conflict belongs here. The art of
co-operation, that great engine of achievement, depends on learning
through social contact how to think and feel sympathetically. Finally,
there is the product of social organization. Chance meetings and
temporary assemblies are of small value, though they must be noted as
phenomena of association. More important are the fixed institutions
that have grown out of relations continually tested by experience
until they have become sanctioned by society as indispensable. Such
are the organized forms of business, education, government, and
religion. But all groups require organization of a sort. The gang has
its recognized leader, the club its officers and by-laws. Even such
antisocial persons as outlaws frequently move in bands and have their
chiefs. Organization goes far to determine success in war or
politics, in work or play. Like achievement, organization is the
result of a gradual growth in collective experience, and must be
continually adapted to the changing requirements of successive periods
by the wisdom of master minds. It must also gradually include larger
groups within its scope until, like the International Young Men's
Christian Association or the Universal Postal Union, it reaches out to
the ends of the earth.
12. =Control.=--The public mirror of the press reveals a third
characteristic of social life. Activity and association are both under
_control_. Activity would result in exploitation of the weak by the
strong, and finally in anarchy, if there were no exercise of control.
Under control activities are co-ordinated, individuals and classes are
brought to work in co-operation and not in antagonism, and under an
enlightened and sanctioned authority life becomes richer, fuller, and
more truly free.
Social control begins in the individual mind. Instincts and feelings
are held in the leash of rational thought. Intelligence is the guide
to action. Control is exerted externally upon the individual from
early childhood. Parental authority checks the independence of the
child and compels conformity to the will of his elders. Family
tradition makes its power felt in many homes, and family pride is a
compelling reason for moral rectitude. Every member of the family is
restrained by the rights of the others, and often yields his own
preferences for the common good. When the child goes out from the home
he is still under restraint, and rigid regulations become even more
pronounced. The rules of the schoolroom permit little freedom. The
teacher's authority is absolute during the hours when school is in
session. In the city when school hours are over there are municipal
regulations enforced by watchful police that restrict the activity of
a boy in the streets, and if he visits the playground he is still
under the reign of law. Similarly the adult is hedged about by social
control. Custom decrees that he must dress appropriately for the
street, that he must pass to the right when he meets another person,
and that he must raise his hat to an acquaintance of the opposite sex.
The college youth finds it necessary to acquaint himself with the
customs and traditions that have been handed down from class to class,
and these must be observed under pain of ostracism. Faculty and
trustees stand in the way of his unlimited enjoyment. His moral
standards are affected by the atmosphere of the chapter house, the
athletic field, and the examination hall. In business and civil
relations men find themselves compelled to recognize laws that have
been formulated for the public good. State and national governments
have been able to assert successfully their right to control corporate
action, however large and powerful the corporation might be. But
government itself is subject to the will of the people in a democratic
nation, and public opinion sways officials and determines local and
national policies. Religious beliefs have the force of law upon whole
peoples like the Mohammedans.
Social control is exercised in large measure without the mailed fist.
Moral suasion tends to supersede the birch stick and the policeman's
billy. Within limits there is freedom of action, and the tacit appeal
of society is to a man's self-control. But the newspaper with its
sensation and police-court gossip never lets us forget that back of
self-control is the court of judicial authority and the bar of public
opinion.
The result of the constant exercise of control is the existence of
order. The normal individual becomes accustomed to restraint from his
earliest years, and it is only the few who are disorderly in the
schoolroom, on the streets, or in the broader relations of life.
Criminals make up a small part of the population; anarchy never has
appealed to many as a social philosophy; unconventional people are
rare enough to attract special attention.
13. =Change.=--A fourth characteristic of social life is _change_.
Control tends to keep society static, but there are powerful dynamic
forces that are continually upsetting the equilibrium. In spite of the
natural conservatism of institutions and agencies of control, group
life is as continually changing as the physical elements in nature.
Continued observation recorded over a considerable period of time
reveals changing habits, changing occupations, changing interests,
even changing laws and governments. Inside the group individuals are
continually readjusting their modes of thought and activity to one
another, and between groups there is a similar adjustment of social
habits. Without such change there can be no progress. War or other
catastrophe suddenly alters wide human relations. External influences
are constantly making their impression upon us, stimulating us to
higher attainment or dragging us down to individual and group
degeneration.
14. =Causes of Change.=--The factors that enter into social life to
produce change are numerous. Conflict of ideas among individuals and
groups compels frequent readjustment of thought. The free expression
of opinion in public debate and through the press is a powerful
factor. Travel alters modes of conduct, and wholesale migration
changes the characteristics of large groups of population. Family
habits change with accumulation of wealth or removal from the farm to
the city. The introduction of the telephone and the free mail delivery
with its magazines and daily newspapers has altered currents of
thought in the country. Summer visitors have introduced country and
city to each other; the automobile has enlarged the horizon of
thousands. New modes of agriculture have been adopted through the
influence of a state agricultural college, new methods of education
through a normal school, new methods of church work through a
theological seminary. Whole peoples, as in China and Turkey, have been
profoundly affected by forces that compelled change. Growth in
population beyond comfortable means of subsistence has set tribes in
motion; the need of wider markets has compelled nations to try
forcible expansion into disputed areas. The desire for larger
opportunities has sent millions of emigrants from Europe to America,
and has been changing rapidly the complexion of the crowds that walk
the city streets and enter the polling booths. Certain outstanding
personalities have moulded life and thought through the centuries,
and have profoundly changed whole regions of country. Mohammed and
Confucius put their personal stamp upon the Orient; Caesar and Napoleon
made and remade western Europe; Adam Smith and Darwin swayed economic
and scientific England; Washington and Lincoln were makers of America.
Through such social processes as these--through unconscious
suggestion, through communication and discussion that mould public
opinion, through changes in environment and the influence of new
leaders of thought and action--the evolution of folk life has carried
whole races, sometimes to oblivion, but generally out of savagery and
barbarism into a material and cultural civilization.
15. =Results of the Process.=--The results of the process of social
change are so far-reaching as to be almost incalculable. Particularly
marked are the changes of the last hundred years. The best way to
appreciate them is by a comparison of periods. Take college life in
America as an example. Scores of colleges now large and prosperous
were not then in existence, and even in the older colleges conditions
were far inferior to what they are in the newer and smaller colleges
to-day. There were few preparatory schools, and the young man--of
course there were no college women--fitted himself as best he could by
private instruction. To reach the college it was necessary to drive by
stage or private conveyance to the college town, to find rooms in an
ill-equipped dormitory or private house, to be content with plain food
for the body and a narrow course of study for the mind. The method of
instruction was tedious and uninspiring; text-books were unattractive
and dull. There were no libraries worthy of the name, no laboratories
or observatories for research. Scientific instruction was conspicuous
by its absence; the social sciences were unknown. Gymnasiums had not
been evolved from the college wood-pile; intercollegiate sports were
unknown. Glee clubs, dramatic societies, college journalism, and the
other arts and pastimes that give color and variety to modern
university life were unknown.
In the same period modes of thinking have changed. Scientific
discoveries and the principles that have been based on them have
wrought a revolution. Evolution has become a word to conjure with.
Scholars think in terms of process. Biological investigation has opened
wide the whole realm of life and emphasized the place of development in
the physical organism. Psychological study has changed the basis of
philosophy. Sociology has come with new interpretations of human life.
Rapid changes are taking place at the present time in education, in
religion, and in social adjustments. The rate of progress varies in
different parts of the world; there are handicaps in the form of race
conservatism, local and individual self-satisfaction and independence,
maladjustments and isolation; sometimes the process leads along a
downward path. On the whole, however, the history is a story of
progress.
16. =Weaknesses.=--In the thinking of not a few persons the handicaps
that lie in the path of social development bulk larger than the
engines of progress. They are pessimistic over the _weaknesses_ that
constitute a fifth characteristic of social life. These are certainly
not to be overlooked, but they are an inevitable result of incomplete
adaptations during a constant process of change. There are numerous
illustrations of weakness. Social activity is not always wisely
directed. Association frequently develops antagonism instead of
co-operation. In trade and industry individuals do not "play fair."
Corporations are sometimes unjust. Politics are liable to become
corrupt. In the various associations of home and community life
indifference, cruelty, unchastity, and crime add to the burdens of
poverty, disease, and wretchedness. A yellow press mirrors a
scandalous amount of intrigue, immorality, and misdemeanor. Government
abuses its power; public opinion is intolerant and unjust; fashion is
tyrannical; law is uncompromising. In times like our own economic
interests frequently overshadow cultural interests. In college
estimation athletics appear to bulk larger than the curriculum. In the
public mind prejudice and hasty judgments take precedence over
carefully weighed opinions and judicial decisions. Conservatism blocks
the wheels of progress, or radicalism, in its unbalanced enthusiasm,
destroys by injudiciousness the good that has been gradually
accumulating. The social machinery gets out of gear, or proves
inefficient for the new burdens that frequently are imposed upon it.
The social order is not perfect and needs occasional amendment.
17. =Resultant Problems.=--These weaknesses precipitate specific
social problems. Some of them are bound up in the family
relationships, like the better regulation of marriage and divorce, the
prevention of desertion, and the rights of women and children. Others
are questions that relate to industry, such as the rights of employees
with reference to wages and hours of labor, or the unhealthy
conditions in which working people live and toil. Certain matters are
issues in every community. It is not easy to decide what shall be done
with the poor, the unfortunate, and the weak-willed members of
society. Some problems are peculiar to the country, the city, or the
nation, like the need of rural co-operation, the improvement of
municipal efficiency, or the regulation of immigration. A few are
international, like the scourge of war. Besides such specific problems
there are always general issues demanding the attention of social
thinkers and reformers, such as the adjustment of individual rights to
social duties, and the improvement of moral and religious efficiency.
18. =The Social Groups.=--A broad survey of the current life of
society leads naturally to the questions: How is this social life
organized? and How did it come to be? The answers to these questions
appear in certain social groupings, each of which has a history and
life of its own, but is only a segment of the whole circle of active
association. These groupings include the family, the rural community,
the city, and the nation. In the natural environment of the home
social life finds its apprenticeship. When the child has become in a
measure socialized, he enters into the larger relations of the
neighborhood. Half the people of the United States live in country
communities, but an increasing proportion of the population is found
in the midst of the associations and activities of the larger civic
community. All are citizens or wards of the nation, and have a part
in the social life of America. Consciously or not they have still
wider relations in a world life that is continually growing in social
content. Each of these groups reveals the same fundamental
characteristics, but each has its peculiar forms and its dominant
energies; each has its perplexing problems and each its possibilities
of greater good. Through the environment the forces of the mind are
moulding a life that is gradually becoming more nearly like the social
ideal.
READING REFERENCES
GIDDINGS: _Principles of Sociology_, pages 363-399.
SMALL AND VINCENT: _Introduction to the Study of Society_, pages
237-240.
DEALEY: _Sociology_, pages 58-73.
ROSS: _Social Control_, pages 49-61.
ROSS: _Foundations of Sociology_, pages 182-255.
BLACKMAR AND GILLIN: _Outlines of Sociology_, pages 271-282.
CHAPTER II
UNORGANIZED GROUP LIFE
19. =Temporary Groups.=--A study of the organization and development
of social life is mainly a study of the mental and physical activities
of individuals associated in permanent groups. Conditions change and
there is a continual shifting of contacts as in a kaleidoscope, but
the group is a fixed institution in the life of society. But besides
the permanent groups there are temporary unorganized associations that
have a place in social life too important to be overlooked. They vary
in size from a chance meeting of two or three friends who stop on the
street corner and separate after a few minutes of conversation, to the
great mass-meeting, that is called for a special purpose and interests
a whole neighborhood, but adjourns _sine die_. Such groups are subject
to the same physical and psychic forces that affect the family, the
community, and the nation, but they tend to act more on impulse,
because there is no habitual subordination to an established rule or
order. A simple illustration will show the influences that work to
produce these temporary groupings and that govern conduct.
20. =How the Group Forms.=--Imagine a working man on the morning of a
holiday. Without a fixed purpose how he will spend the day, his mind
works along the line of least resistance, inviting physical or mental
stimulus, and sensitive to respond. He is not accustomed to remain at
home, nor does he wish to be alone. He is used to the companionship of
the factory, and instinctively he longs for the association of his
kind. He is most likely to meet his acquaintances on the street, and
he feels the pull of the out-of-doors. The influences of instinct and
habit impel him to activity, and he makes a definite choice to leave
the house. Once on the street he feels the zest of motion and the
anticipation of the pleasure that he will find in the companionship
of his fellows. Reason assures him from past experience that he has
made a good choice, and on general principles asserts that exercise is
good for him, whatever may be the social result of his stroll. Thus
the various factors that produce individual activity are at work in
him. They are similarly at work in others of his kind. Presently these
factors will bring them together.
Unconsciously the working man and his friend are moving toward each
other. The attention and discrimination of each man is brought into
play with every person that he meets, but there is no recognition of
acquaintance until each comes within the range of vision of the other.
They greet each other with a hail of good-fellowship and a cordial
hand-shake and stop for conversation. An analysis of the psychological
elements that enter into such an incident would make plain the part of
sense-perception and memory, of feeling and volition in the act of
each, but the significant fact in the incident is that these mental
factors are set to work because of the contact of one mind upon the
other. It is the mental interaction arising from the moment's
association that produces the social phenomenon. What are the social
phenomena of this particular occasion? They are the acts that have
taken place because of association. The individual would not greet
himself or shake hands with himself, or stop to talk with himself.
They are dependent upon the presence of more than one person; they are
phenomena of the group. Why do they shake hands and talk? First,
because they feel alike and think alike, and sympathy and
like-mindedness seek expression in gesture and language, and,
secondly, because their mode of action is under the control of a
social custom that directs specific acts. If the meeting was on the
continent of Europe the men might embrace, if it was in the jungle of
Africa they might raise a yell at sight of each other, but American
custom limits the greeting to a hand-clasp, supplemented on occasion
by a slap on the shoulder. In Italy the language used is peculiar to
the race and is helped out by many gestures; in New England of the
Puritans the language used would be of a type peculiar to itself, and
would hardly have the assistance of a changing facial expression.
To-day two men have formed a temporary group, group action has taken
place, and the action, while impulsive, is under the constraint of
present custom. What happens next?
21. =The Working of the Social Mind.=--Conversation in the group
develops a common purpose. The two men are conscious of common desires
and interests, or through a conflict of ideas the will of one
subordinates the will of the other, and under the control of the joint
purpose, which is now the social mind, they move toward one goal. This
goal soon appears to be the objective point of a larger social mind,
for other men and boys are converging in the same direction. At the
corner of another street the two companions meet other friends, and
after a mutual greeting the augmented party finds its way to the
entrance of a ball park. The same instincts and habits and the same
feelings and thoughts have stirred in every member of the group; they
have felt the pull of the same desires and interests; they have put
themselves in motion toward the same goal; they have greeted one
another in similar fashion, and they find satisfaction in talking
together on a common topic; but they do not constitute a permanent or
organized group, and once separated they may never repeat this chance
meeting.
22. =The Impulse of the Crowd.=--Once within the ball park and seated
on the long benches they are part of a far larger group of like-minded
human beings, and they feel a common thrill in anticipation of the
pleasure of the sport. They feel the stimulus that comes from
obedience to a common impulse. A shout or a joke arouses a sympathetic
outburst from hundreds. When they came together at first most of them
were strangers, but common interests and emotions have produced a
group consciousness. The game is called, and hundreds in unison fix
their attention on the men in action. A hit is made, in breathless
suspense the crowd watches to see the result, and with a common
impulse cries out simultaneously in approbation or disgust over the
play. As the game proceeds primitive passions play over the crowd and
emotions find free expression in the language that habit and custom
provide. The crowd is in a state of high suggestibility; it responds
to the stimulus of a chance remark, the misplay of a player, or the
misjudgment of an umpire; one moment it is thrown into panic by the
prospect of defeat, and the next into paroxysms of delight as the tide
of victory turns. On sufficient provocation the crowd gets into
motion, impelled by a common excitement to unreasoning action; it
pours upon the field, and, unless prevented, wreaks its anger upon
team or umpire that has aroused it to fury, but met with superior
force the crowd melts away, dissolving into its smaller groups and
then into its individual elements. A crowd of the sort described
constitutes one type of the incomplete group. It is a chance assembly,
moved by a common purpose but coalescing only temporarily, guided by
elemental impulses, and readily breaking up without permanent
achievement other than obtaining the recreation sought.
23. =The Mass-Meeting.=--Another and more orderly type appears in a
meeting of American residents in a foreign city to protest against an
outrage to their flag or an injustice to one of their number. Those
who assemble are not members of a definite organization with a regular
machinery for action. They are, however, moved by common emotion and
purpose, because they are conscious of a permanent bond that creates
mutual sympathy. They are citizens of the same country. They are
mindful of a national history that is their common heritage. They are
proud of the position of eminence that belongs to the Western
republic. There is a peculiar quality to the patriotism that they all
feel and that calls out a unanimous expression. Their minds work
alike, and they come together to give expression to their feelings and
convictions. They are under the direction of a presiding officer and
the procedure of the meeting is according to the parliamentary rules
that guide civilized assemblies. However urgent of purpose, the
speakers hold themselves in leash, and the listeners content
themselves with conventional applause when their enthusiasm is
aroused. After a reasonable amount of discussion has taken place, the
assembly crystallizes its opinions in the form of resolutions couched
in earnest but dignified language and disperses to await the action of
those in authority.
24. =International Association.=--Still another type is the incomplete
group that is composed of men and women of similar moral or religious
convictions who never assemble in one place, but constitute a certain
kind of association. Kipling could sing,
"The East is East and the West is West
And never the twain shall meet,"
yet through missionary efforts people of very different races and
habits of living and thinking have been brought to cherish the same
beliefs and to adopt similar customs. Thousands of such people in all
parts of the world constitute a unified group because of their mental
interaction, though they may never meet and are not organized in
common. The only medium through which one section has influenced
another may be a single missionary or book, but the electric current
of sympathy passes from one to another as effectively as the wireless
carries a message across leagues of space. In the same way sentiment
and opinion spread and reproduce themselves, even through long periods
of time. Before the middle of the nineteenth century Chinese sentiment
was so strong against the importation of opium from India that war
broke out with England, with the result that the curse was fastened
upon the Orient. The evil increased, spreading through many countries.
Meantime international fortunes brought the United States to the
Philippines and trade carried opium to the United States. Foreigners
in China combated the evil. The nation took a determined stand, and
finally, through international agreement under American leadership,
the trade and the consumption of opium were checked. Similarly slavery
was put under the opprobrium of Christendom, public opinion in one
nation after another was formed against it, laws were passed
condemning it, and at last it received an international ban. At the
present time, through agitation and conference, a world sentiment
against war is increasing, and pacifists in every land constitute an
expanding group of like-minded men and women who are determined that
wars shall cease in the future. These are all examples of unorganized
associations or incomplete groups.
25. =Experiments in Association.=--In the history of human kind
numerous experiments in association have been made; those which have
served well in the competition between groups have survived, and have
tended to become permanent types of association, receiving the
sanction of society, and so to be reckoned as social institutions;
others have been thrown on the rubbish heap as worthless. It is
generally believed, for example, that many related families in
primitive times associated in a loosely connected horde, but the horde
could not compete successfully with an organized state and gave way
before it. The local community in New England once carried on its
affairs satisfactorily in yearly mass-meeting, where every citizen had
an equal privilege of speaking and voting directly upon a proposed
measure, but there proved to be a limit to the efficiency of such
government when the population increased, so that a meeting of all the
citizens was impossible, and a constitutional assembly of
representative citizens was devised. Similarly national governments
have been organized for greater efficiency and machinery is being
invented frequently to increase their value.
26. =Kinds of Unorganized Groups.=--Unorganized groups are of three
kinds: There are first the normal groups that are continually being
formed and dissolved, but that perform a useful function while they
exist. Such are the chance meetings and conversations of friends in
all walks of life, and the crowds that gather occasionally to help
forward a good cause. They promote general intelligence, provide a
free exchange of ideas, and help to form a body of public opinion for
social guidance. There is often an open-mindedness among the common
people that is not vitiated by the grip of vested interests upon their
unwarped judgments, and the people can be trusted in the long run to
make good. Democracy is based upon the reliability of public opinion.
The second kind of unorganized group is one that is on the way to
becoming a permanent group sanctioned by society. A group of this type
is the boy's gang. By most persons the spontaneous association of a
dozen boys who live near together and range over a certain district
has been condemned as a social evil; recently it has become recognized
as a normal group, forming naturally at a certain period of boy life
and falling to pieces of its own accord a few years later. The
tendency of boy leaders is not only to give it recognition as
legitimate, but to use the gang instinct to promote definite
organizations of greater value to their members and to the community.
Another group of the same type is a so-called "movement," composed of
a few individuals who associate themselves in a loose way to further a
definite purpose, like the promotion of temperance, hold
mass-meetings, and create public opinion, but do not at once proceed
to a permanent organization. Eventually, when the movement has
gathered sufficient headway or has shown that it is permanently
valuable, a fixed organization may be accomplished.
The third kind of unorganized group is an abnormality in the midst of
civilization, a relic of the primitive days when impulse rather than
reason swayed the mind of a group. Such is the crowd that gathers in a
moment of excitement and yields to a momentary passion to lynch a
prisoner, or a revolutionary mob that loots and burns out of a sheer
desire for destruction. Such a group has not even the value of a
safety-valve, for its passion gathers momentum as it goes, and, like a
conflagration, it cannot be stopped until it has burned itself out or
met a solid wall of military authority.
27. =The Popular Crowd vs. the Organized Group.=--In the routine life
of a disciplined society there is always to be found at least one of
these types. Even the abnormal type of the passionate crowd is not
unusual in its milder form. Any unusual event like a fire or a circus
will draw scores and hundreds together, and the crowd is always liable
to fall into disorder unless officers of the law are in attendance.
This is so well understood that the police are always in evidence
where there are large congregations of people at church or theatre,
where a prominent man is to be seen or a procession is to pass. But
the popular mass is a volatile thing, and in proportion to its size it
expends little useful energy. It is never to be reckoned as equal in
importance to the organized company, however small it may be, that has
a definite purpose guiding its regular action, and that persists in
its purpose for years together. It is the fixed group, the social
institution, that does the work of the world and carries society
forward from lower to higher levels of civilization. Social efficiency
belongs to the organized type.
READING REFERENCES
COOLEY: _Social Organization_, pages 149-156.
GIDDINGS: _Elements of Sociology_, pages 129-140.
ROSS: _Foundations of Sociology_, pages 120-138.
ROSS: _Social Psychology_, pages 43-82.
MUeNSTERBERG: _Psychology, General and Applied_, pages 269-273.
DAVENPORT: _Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals_, pages 25-31.
PART II--LIFE IN THE FAMILY GROUP
CHAPTER III
FOUNDATIONS OF THE FAMILY
28. =The Fundamental Importance of the Family.=--Social life can be
understood best by taking the simplest organized group of human beings
and analyzing its activities, its organization, and its development.
The family is such a group and is, therefore, a natural basis for
study. It illustrates most of the phases of social activity, it is
simple in its organization, its history goes back to primitive times,
and it is rapidly changing in the present. Family life is made up of
the interactions of individual life, and, therefore, the individual in
his social relations and not the family is the unit of sociological
investigation, but until recent years the family group has been
regarded as of greater importance than the individual, and in the
Orient the family still occupies the place of importance. Out of the
family have developed such institutions as property, law, and
government, and on the maintenance of the family rests the future
welfare of society. It has been claimed that "the study of the single
family on its homestead would yield richer scientific knowledge and
more practical results in the great social sciences than almost any
other single object in the social world. Pursued historically, the
student would find himself at the roots of property, separate
ownership of land, inheritance, taxation, free trade and tariff, and
discover the germs of international law and the state. The great
questions of the day, as we call them, are little more than incidents
to the working out of the great social institutions, and these are the
expansions and modified forms of the family amid its unceasing support
and activity."
29. =The Family on the Farm.=--The best environment in which to study
the family is the farm. There the relations and activities of the
larger world appear in miniature, but with a greater simplicity and
unity than elsewhere. There the family gets closer to the soil, and
its members feel their relation to nature and the restrictions that
nature imposes upon human activity. There appear the occupations of
the successive stages of history--hunting, the care of domesticated
animals, agriculture, and manufacturing; there are the activities of
production, distribution, and consumption of economic goods. There a
consciousness of mutual dependence is developed, and the value of
co-operation is illustrated. There the mind ranges less fettered than
in the town, yet is less inclined toward radical changes. There the
family preserves and hands down from one generation to another the
heritage of the past, and stimulates its members to further progress.
In the family on the farm children learn how to live in association
with their kin and with hired employees; there much of the mental,
moral, and religious training is begun; and there is found most of the
sympathy and encouragement that nerves the boy to go out from home for
the struggle of life in the larger community and the world.
30. =Physical Conditions of Farm Life.=--Every group, like every
individual, is dependent in a measure on its physical environment. The
prosperity of the family on the farm and the daily activities of its
members wait often upon the quality of climate and soil and the temper
of the weather. The rocky hillsides of mountain lands like Switzerland
breed a hardy, self-reliant people, who make the most of small
opportunities for agriculture. A well-watered, rolling country pours
its riches into the lap of the husbandman; in such surroundings he is
likely to be more cheerful but less gritty than the Scottish
highlander. The pioneer settlers of America, in their trek into the
ulterior, faced the forest and its terrors, and every member of the
family who was old enough added his ounce of effort to the struggle to
subdue it. Their descendants enjoy the fruits of the earlier victory.
The well-trimmed woodland and fertile field are attractive to him;
nature in varying moods interests him. Even on the edge of the Western
desert the farmer is the master of a process of dry farming or
irrigation, so that he can smile at nature's effort to drive him out.
Science and education have helped to make man more independent of
natural forces and natural moods, but still it is nature that provides
the raw materials, that supplies the energy of wind and water and
sunshine, and that hastens prosperity if man learns to co-operate with
it. Success in the economic struggle of the family has always been
conditioned upon the physical environment, and it will always remain
one of the factors that shape human destiny.
31. =Inheritance of Family Traits.=--Another factor that enters into
family life is the physical nature of its members, the quality of the
stock from which the family is descended. Heredity is as important in
sociological study as environment. It is well known that a child
inherits racial and family traits from his ancestors, and these he
cannot shake off altogether as he grows older. Families have their
peculiarities that continue from one generation to another. The family
endowment is often the foundation of individual success. Without
physical sturdiness the man and woman on the farm are seriously
handicapped and are liable to succumb in the struggle for existence;
without mental ability and moral stamina members of the family fail to
make a broad mark on the community, and the family influence declines.
Mere acquisition or transmission of wealth does not constitute good
fortune. This fact of heredity must therefore be reckoned with in all
the activities of the family, and cannot be overlooked in a study of
the psychic factors which are the real social forces.
32. =The Domestic Function of the Family.=--The farm family for the
purpose of study may be thought of as composed of husband and wife,
children and servants, but the makers of the family are of first
importance for its understanding. The family has a long history, but
it exists, not because it is a long-established institution, but
because it satisfies present human needs, as all institutions must if
they are to survive. The family serves many ends, but as the primary
social instincts are to mate and to eat, so the principal functions of
the family are the _domestic_ and the _economic_. The normal adult
desires to mate, to have and rear children, and to make a home. To
this his sexual and parental instincts impel him; they are nature's
provision for the perpetuation of the race. The sex instinct attracts
the man and the woman to each other, and marriage is the sanction of
society to their union; the parental instinct gives birth to children
and leads the father and mother to protect the child through the long
years of dependence. Marriage and parenthood are twin obligations that
the individual owes to the race. Celibacy makes no contribution to the
perpetuation of the race, and unregulated sexual intercourse is a
blight upon society. Marriage lays the foundation of the home and
makes possible the values that belong to that institution. Children
hold the family together; separation and divorce are most common in
childless homes. Personal service and sacrifice are engendered in the
care of children; therefore it is that the family without children is
not a perfect family, but an abnormality as a social institution. For
these reasons custom and law protect the home, and religion declares
marriage a sacred bond and reproduction a sacred function.
It is the long experience of the race that has made plain the
fundamental importance of the marriage relation, and history shows how
step by step man and woman have struggled toward higher standards of
mutual appreciation and co-operation. From past history and present
tendencies it is possible to determine values and weaknesses and to
point out dangers and possibilities. As the family group is
fundamental to an understanding of the community, so the relation of
man and woman are essential to a comprehension of the complete family,
and investigation of their relations must precede a study of the
social development of the child in the home, or of the economic
relations of the farmer and his assistants. Nothing more clearly
illustrates the factors that enter into all human relations than the
story of how the family came to be.
READING REFERENCES
HENDERSON: _Social Elements_, pages 62-70.
ELLWOOD: _Sociology and Modern Social Problems_, 1913 edition,
pages 74-82.
BOSANQUET: _The Family_, pages 241-259.
DEALEY: _The Family in Its Sociological Aspects_, pages 1-11.
BUTTERFIELD: "Rural Life and the Family," _American Journal of
Sociology_, vol. 14, pages 721-725.
HENDERSON: "Are Modern Industry and City Life Unfavorable to the
Family?" _American Journal of Sociology_, vol. 14, pages
668-675.
CHAPTER IV
THE HISTORY OF THE FAMILY
33. =How the Family Came to Be.=--The modern family among civilized
peoples is based almost universally on the union of one man and one
woman. There is good reason to believe that this practice of monogamy
was in vogue among primitive human beings, but marriage was unstable
and it was only through long experimentation that monogamy proved
itself best fitted to survive. At first conjugal affection, which has
become intelligent and moral, was merely a sexual desire that led the
man to seek a mate and the maid to choose among her suitors. Unbound
by long-continued custom or legal and ceremonial restriction, the
primitive couple were free to separate if they pleased, but the
instinctive feeling that they belonged to each other, the habits of
association, adaptation, and co-operation, and jealousy at any
attention shown by another tended to preserve the relationship. The
presence of offspring sealed the bond as long as the children were
dependent, and strengthened the sense of mutual responsibility. The
children were peculiarly the mother's children since she gave them
birth, but the father instinctively protected the family that was
growing up around him, and procured food and shelter for its members,
though it is doubtful if he had any realization of his part in giving
life to a new generation.
During this period of social development, when the mother's presence
constituted the home and the children were regarded as belonging
primarily to her, descent was reckoned in the female line, the
children were attached to the maternal clan of blood relatives, and
such relatives began to move in bands, for the same reason that
animals move in packs and herds. Some writers speak of it as a
matriarchal period, but it does not appear that women governed; it is
more proper to speak of the family as metronymic, for the children
bore the mother's name and maternity outweighed paternity in social
estimate.
34. =The Patriarchal Household.=--When population increased and food
consequently became more difficult to obtain, the domestication of
animals was achieved, and nomadic habits carried the family from
pasture to pasture; rival clans wanted the same regions, wars broke
out, and physical superiority asserted its claims. The man supplanted
the woman as the important member of the household, reduced the others
to submission, added to his wives and servants by capture or purchase,
and established the patriarchal system. Descent henceforth was
reckoned in the paternal line, and society had become patronymic
instead of metronymic. It must not be supposed that this change
occurred very suddenly. It may have taken many centuries to bring it
about, but as the man learned his part in procreation and his power in
society, he delighted in his self-importance to lord it over the woman
and her children. The marriage relation ceased to be free and
reciprocal. The wife no longer had a choice in marriage. Bought or
captured, she was no longer wooed for a companion, but was valued
according to her economic worth. As population pressed, the
domestication of plants followed the taming of animals, but the
agricultural settlement of the family only made the woman's lot
harder, for she was the burden bearer on the farm.
35. =Polygyny.=--a better term than polygamy--was the inevitable
result of the patriarchal system. Man made the law and the law
recognized no restraint upon his sexual and parental instincts.
Improvements in living added to the resources of the family and made
it possible to maintain large households of wives, children, and
slaves. Polygyny had some social utility, because it increased the
number of children, and this gave added prestige and power to the
family, as slavery had utility because it provided a labor force; but
both were weaknesses in ancient society, because they did not tend in
the long run to human welfare. Polygyny brutalized men, degraded
women, and destroyed that affection and comradeship between parents
and their offspring that are the proper heritage of children. Wherever
it has survived as a system, polygyny has hindered progress, and
wherever it exists in the midst of monogamy it tends to break down
civilization.
Another variety of marriage that has been less common than polygyny is
polyandry. It is a term that signifies the marriage of one woman to
several husbands, and seems to have occurred, as in the interior of
Asia, only where subsistence was especially difficult or women
comparatively few. Neither polygyny nor polyandry were universal, even
where they were a frequent practice. Only the few could afford the
indulgence, much the largest percentage of the people remained
monogamous.
36. =Conflict and Social Selection.=--The supreme business of the
social group is to adapt itself to the conditions that affect its
life. It must learn to get on with its physical environment and with
other social groups with which it comes into relation. The methods of
adaptation are conflict and co-operation. The primitive savage and his
wife learned to work together, and his family and hers very likely
kept the peace, until through the increase of population they felt the
pinch of hunger when the supply did not equal the demand. Then came
conflict. Conflict is an essential element in all progress. There is
conflict between the lower and higher impulses in the human mind,
conflict between selfish ambition and the welfare of the group,
conflict among individuals and races for a place in the sun. It is
conceivable that the baser impulses that provoke much social conflict
may give way to more rational and altruistic purpose, but it is
difficult to see how all friction can be avoided in social relations.
It is certainly to be reckoned with in the history of group life.
The story of human progress shows that in the social conflict those
groups survive which have become best adapted to life conditions and
so are fitted to cope with their enemies. In the story of the family
male leadership proved most useful and was perpetuated, but the
practice of polygyny and polyandry proved in the long run to be
hurtful to success in the sturdy struggle for existence.
37. =Ancestor-Worship.=--When a practice or institution is seen to
work well it soon becomes indorsed by social custom, law, or religion.
The patriarchal system became fortified by ancestor-worship, which
helped to keep the family subordinate to its male head. Even the dead
hand of the patriarch ruled. The paternal ancestors of the family were
believed to have the power to bless or curse their descendants, and
they were faithfully placated with gifts and veneration, as has
continued to be the custom in China. Among the Romans the household
gods were cherished at the hearth long before Jupiter became king of
heaven; AEneas must save his ancestral-images if he lost all else in
the fall of Troy. At Rome the worship of a common ancestor was the
strongest family bond. The marriage ceremony consisted of a solemn
transfer of the bride from her duties to her own ancestors over to the
adoption of her husband's gods. This transfer of allegiance helped to
perpetuate the patriarchal system, and the sanction of religion
greatly strengthened the wedded relation, so that divorce and polygyny
were unknown in the old Roman period. But the absolute patriarchal
control of wife and children made the man selfish and arbitrary and
weakened the bond of affection and mutual interests, while Roman
political conquest strengthened the pride and power of the imperial
masters. Religion lost its prestige and the family bond loosened,
until from being one of the purest of social institutions in the early
days of the republic, the Roman family became one of the most
degenerate. This boded ill for the future of the race and empire.
38. =The Mediaeval Family.=--The Roman family seemed in danger of
disintegrating, for the matron claimed rights that ran counter to the
rights of the man, when two new forces entered Roman society and
checked this tendency toward disintegration. The first was
Christianity, the second was Teutonic conquest. Christianity taught
consideration for women and children, but it taught submission to the
man in the home, and so was a constructive force in the conservation
of the family. Teutonic custom was similar to the early Roman. When
Teutonic enterprise pushed a new race over the goal of race conflict
and took in charge the administration of affairs in Roman society,
there was a restoration of the rule of force and so of masculine
supremacy. In the lord's castle and the peasant's hut the authority of
the man continued unquestioned through the Middle Ages, and the church
made monogamous marriage a binding sacrament; but sexual infidelity
was common, especially of the husband, and divorce was not unknown. In
the civilized lands of Christendom monogamy was the only form of
marriage recognized by civil law, and with the slow growth toward
higher standards of civilization the harshness of patriarchal custom
has become softened and the rights of women and children have been
increased by law, though not without endangering the solidarity of the
family. Similarly, the standards of sex conduct have improved.
39. =Advantages of Monogamy.=--The advantages of monogamy are so many
that in spite of the present restiveness under restraint it seems
certain to become the permanent and universal type as reason asserts
its right and controls impulse. Nature seems to have predetermined it
by maintaining approximately an equal number of the sexes, and nature
frowns upon promiscuity by penalizing it with sterility and neglect of
the few children that are born, so that in the struggle for existence
the fittest survive by a process of natural selection. A study of
biology and anthropology gives added evidence that nature favors
monogamy, for in the highest grade of animals below man the monogamic
relation holds almost without exception, and low-grade human races
follow the same practice.
There are moral advantages in monogamy that alone are sufficient to
insure its permanence. It is to the advantage of society that
altruistic and kindly feelings should outweigh jealousy, anger, and
selfishness. Monogamy encourages affection and mutual consideration,
and in that atmosphere children learn the graces and virtues that make
social life wholesome and attractive. Welcomed in the home, they
receive the care and instruction of both parents and become socialized
for the larger and later responsibilities of the social order. In the
altruism thus developed lie the roots of morals and religion. It is
well agreed that the essence of each is the right motive to conduct.
Love to men and to God is an accepted definition of religion, and
ethics is grounded on that principle. Love is the ruling principle of
the monogamic family; from the narrower domestic circle it extends to
the community and to all mankind.
40. =Marriage Laws.=--In spite of the general practice of monogamy as
a form of marriage and the noble principles that underlie the
monogamic type of family, sex relations need the restraint of law.
Human desires are selfish and ideals too often give way before them
unless there is some kind of external control. There have been times
when the church had such control, and in certain countries individual
rulers have determined the law; but since the eighteenth century there
has been a steady trend in the direction of popular control of all
social relations. This tendency has been carried farthest in the
United States, where public opinion voices its convictions and compels
legislative action. It is natural that the people of certain States
should be more progressive or radical than others, and therefore in
the absence of a national law, there is considerable variety in the
marriage and divorce laws, but no other country has higher ideals of
the married relation and at the same time as large a measure of
freedom.
At present marriage laws in the United States agree generally on the
following provisions:
(1) Every marriage must be licensed by the State and the act of
marriage must be reported to the State and registered.
(2) Marriage is not legal below a certain age, and consent of parents
must be obtained usually until the man is twenty-one and the woman
eighteen.
(3) Certain persons are forbidden marriage because of near
relationship or personal defect. Such marriage if performed may be
annulled.
(4) Remarriage may take place after the death of husband or wife,
after disappearance for a period varying from three to seven years, or
a certain time after divorce.
In the twenty-year period between 1886 and 1906 covered by the United
States Census of Marriage and Divorce slow improvements were made in
legislation, but a number of States are far behind others in the
enactment of suitable laws, and most of the States do not make the
provisions that are desirable for law enforcement. Yet there is a
limit of strictness beyond which marriage laws cannot safely go,
because they hinder marriage and provoke illicit relations. That limit
is fixed by the sanction of public opinion. After all, there is less
need of better regulation than of the education of public opinion to
the sacredness of marriage and to its importance for human welfare.
Without the restraints put upon impulse by the education of the
understanding and the will, young people often assume family
obligations thoughtlessly and even flippantly, when they are ill-mated
and often unacquainted with each other's characteristic qualities.
Such marriages usually bring distress and divorce instead of growing
affection and unity. Without education in the obligation of marriage
many well-qualified persons delay it or avoid it altogether, because
they are unwilling to bear the burdens of family support,
childbearing, and housekeeping. Society suffers loss in both cases.
41. =Reforms and Ideals.=--Because of all these deficiencies several
remedies have been proposed and certain of them adopted. Because of
the economic difficulties, it is urged that as far as possible by
legislation, illegitimate ways of heaping up wealth for the few at the
expense of the many should be checked, and that by vocational training
boys should be fitted for a trade and girls prepared for housekeeping.
To meet other difficulties it is proposed that popular instruction be
given from press and pulpit, in order that the moral and spiritual
plane of married life may be uplifted. The marriage ideal is a
well-mated pair, physically and intellectually qualified, who through
affection are attracted to marriage and through mutual consideration
are ready unselfishly to seek each other's welfare, and who recognize
in marriage a divinely ordered provision for human happiness and for
the perpetuation of the race. Such a marriage does not plant the seeds
of discord and neighborly scandal or compel a speedy resort to the
divorce court.
READING REFERENCES
DEALEY: _The Family in Its Sociological Aspects_, pages 12-84.
HOWARD: _History of Matrimonial Institutions_, II, pages 388-497.
GOODSELL: _The Family as a Social and Educational Institution_,
pages 5-47.
BOSANQUET: _The Family_, part I. "Report on Marriage and Divorce,
1906," _Bureau of the Census_, I, pages 224-226.
BLISS: _Encyclopedia of Social Reform_, art. "Family."
CHAPTER V
THE MAKING OF THE HOME
42. =The Story of the Home.=--Marriage is the gateway of the home; the
home is the shelter of the family. It is the cradle of children, the
nursery of mutual affection, and the training-school for citizenship
in the community. The physical comfort of its inmates depends upon the
house and its furnishings, but fondness for the home develops only in
an atmosphere of good-will and kindness.
The home has a story of its own, as has the family. In primitive days
there was little necessity of a dwelling-place, except as a nest for
young or a cache for provisions. A cave or a rough shelter of boughs
was a makeshift for a home. Thither the hunter brought the game that
he had killed, and there slept the glutton's sleep or went supperless
to bed. When the hunter became a herdsman and shepherd and moved from
place to place in search of pasture, he found it convenient to fashion
a tent for his home, as the Hebrew patriarchs did when they roamed
over Canaan and as the Bedouin of the desert does still.
A settled life with a measure of civilization demanded a better and a
stationary home, the degree of comfort varying with the desire and
ambition of the householder and the amount of his wealth. To thousands
home was little more than a place to sleep. Even in imperial Rome the
proletariat occupied tall, ramshackle tenements, like the submerged
poor who exist in the slums of modern cities. In mediaeval Europe the
peasant lived in a one-room hovel, clustered with others in a squalid
hamlet upon the estate of a great landowner. The hut was poorly built,
often of no better material than wattled sticks, cemented with mud,
covered over with turf or thatch, usually without chimneys or even
windows. The place was absolutely without conveniences. Summer and
winter the family huddled together in the single room of the hut,
faring forth to work in the morning, sleeping at night on bundles of
straw, each person in the single garment that he wore through the day,
and at convenient intervals breaking fast on black bread, salt meat,
and home-brewed beer. There was no inducement for a landless serf to
spend care or labor upon houses or surroundings; pigs and babies were
permitted to tumble about both indiscriminately.
Peasant homes in the Orient are little if any better now than European
homes in the Middle Ages. The houses are rude structures and ill-kept.
In the villages of India it is not unusual to occupy one house until
it becomes so unsanitary as to be uninhabitable, and then to move
elsewhere. Even royal courts in mediaeval Europe moved from palace to
palace for the same reason. It is a mistake to suppose that the
squalid conditions found in the slums are peculiar to them; they are
survivals of a lower stage of human existence found in all parts of
the world, due to psychical, social, and economic conditions that are
not easily changed, but conspicuous in the midst of modern progress.
43. =The Ancestral Type.=--In ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome only the
higher classes enjoyed any degree of comfort. Accustomed to
inconveniences, few even among them knew such luxuries as are common
to middle-class Americans. The castle and manor-house of the mediaeval
lord were still more comfortless. In America the colonial log cabin
and the sod house of the prairie pioneer were primitively incomplete.
The struggle for existence and the difficulty of manufacture and
transportation allowed few comforts. American homes, even a hundred
years ago, knew nothing of furnaces and safety-matches, refrigerators
and electric fans, bathtubs and sanitary accommodations,
carpet-sweepers and vacuum cleaners, screen doors and double windows,
hammocks and verandas. Neither law nor social custom required a good
water or drainage system. A healthful or attractive location for the
house received little thought; outbuildings were in close proximity to
the house, if not attached to it. The furnishings of the house lacked
comfort and beauty. Interior decorations of harmonious design were
absent. Instruments of music were rare; statuary and paintings were
beyond the reach of any but the richest purse.
44. =Social Values.=--On the other hand, there was in many a dwelling
a home atmosphere that made up for the lack of conveniences. There was
a bond of unity that was felt by every member of the family, and a
spirit of mutual affection and self-sacrifice that stood a hard strain
through poverty, sickness, and ill fortune of every sort. Father and
mother, boys and girls were not afraid to work, and when the time came
for relaxation there was little to attract away from the home circle.
People had less to enjoy, but they were better contented with what
they had. They had little money to spend, but their frugal tastes and
habits of thrift fortified them against want, and there was little
need of public or private charity.
The home was frequently a school of moral and religious education.
Selfishness in all its forms was discountenanced. There was no room
for the idler, no time for laziness. Social hygiene and domestic
science were not taught as such, but young people learned their
responsibilities and grew up equipped to establish homes of their own.
Parents were faithful instructors in the homely virtues of
truthfulness, honesty, faithfulness, kindness, and love. Religion in
the family was by no means universal, but in hundreds of homes
religion was recognized as having legitimate demands upon the
individual; religious exercises were observed at the mother's knee,
the table, and the family altar; all the family attended church
together, and were expected to take upon themselves the
responsibilities of church membership.
45. =Gains and Losses.=--In the making of a modern home there have
been both addition and subtraction. Life has gained immeasurably in
comfort and convenience for the well-to-do, but the comfortless
quarters of the poor drive the man to the saloon and the child to the
streets. For the fortunate the home has become enriched with music,
art, and literature, but it has lost much of the earlier simplicity,
economic thrift, moral sturdiness, and religious principle and
practice. For the poor life is so hard that the good qualities, if
they ever existed, have tended to disappear without any compensation
in culture.
It is well understood that the home environment has most to do with
shaping individual character. If the homely virtues are not cultivated
there, society will suffer; if cold and cheerlessness are
characteristic of its atmosphere, there will be little warmth in the
disposition of its inmates toward society. Every home of the right
sort is an asset to the community. It is an experiment station for
social progress. Every married couple that sets up housekeeping starts
a new centre of group life. If they diffuse a helpful atmosphere
social virtues will develop and social efficiency increase. On the
other hand, many homes are a menace to the community, because an
ill-mated pair, poorly equipped for the struggle of existence, create
a centre of group life in which the individual is handicapped
physically and morally and too often becomes a curse to society at
large. When it is remembered that the home is at the same time the
power-house that generates the forces that push society forward, and
the channel through which are transmitted the ideas and achievements
of all the past, it will seem to be the supremely important
institution that human experience has devised and sanctioned.
46. =The Ideal Home.=--The ideal home toward which the average home
will be gradually approximating will be housed in a well-built
dwelling of approved architecture; erected in a healthy location with
room enough around it to give air space, and a bit of out-of-doors to
enjoy; tastefully furnished and decorated inside, but without
ostentation or extravagance; occupied by a healthy, happy family of
parents and children who care more for each other and for their
neighbors than for selfish pleasure and display, and who are learning
how to play a worthy part in the folk life of their community and
nation, and how to appreciate the highest and finest qualities that
mind and spirit can develop in themselves or others. If for economic
or social reasons any of this is impossible, there is a weakness in
society that calls for prompt repair.
READING REFERENCES
STARR: _First Steps in Human Progress_, pages 149-158.
JESSOPP: _The Coming of the Friars_, pages 87-104.
GILLETTE: _Constructive Rural Sociology_, pages 170-178.
CARNEY: _Country Life and the Country School_, pages 18-38.
RICHARDS: "The Farm Home," art. in _Cyclopedia of Agriculture_,
IV, pages 280-284.
CHAPTER VI
CHILDREN IN THE HOME
47. =Children Complete the Home.=--If the legend of the Pied Piper of
Hameln should come true and all the children should run away from
home, or if by some strange stroke of fortune no children should be
born in a village or town for ten years or more, the tragedy of the
childless home would be realized. There are localities and even
nations where the birth-rate is so small that population is little
more than stationary. In the United States the native birth-rate tends
to decline, while the rate of immigrant foreigners greatly exceeds it.
The higher the degree of comfort and luxury in the home the smaller
the birth-rate seems to be a principle of social experience. There are
selfish people who shirk the responsibilities and troubles of
parenthood, and there are social diseases that tend to sterility, but
the childless home is always an incomplete home. Children are the
crown of marriage, the enrichment of the home, the hope of society in
the future. The needs of the children stimulate parents to unselfish
endeavor. Children are the comfort of the poor and distressed. The
wedded life of a human pair may be ideal in every other respect, but
one of the main functions of marriage is unaccomplished when the
family remains incomplete.
48. =The Right to be Well-Born.=--The child comes into the home in
obedience to the same primary instinct that draws the parents to each
other. He calls out the affections of the parents and their
intellectual resources, for he is dependent upon them, and often taxes
their best judgment in coping with the difficulties that beset child
life. But they often fail to realize that the child has certain
inalienable rights as an individual and a potential member of society
that demand their best gifts.
There is first the right to be well-born. There is so much to contend
with when once ushered into the world, that a child needs the best
possible bodily inheritance. He needs to be rid of every encumbrance
of physical unfitness if he is to live long and become a blessing and
not a burden to society. Handicapped at the start, he cannot hope to
achieve a high level of attainment. It is little short of criminal for
a child to be condemned to lifelong weakness or suffering, because his
parents were not fit to give him birth. Yet large numbers of parents
make the thought of child welfare subordinate to their own desires. A
man's primary concern in choosing a wife is his own personal
satisfaction, not the birth and mothering of his children. Many young
women regard the attractiveness, social position, or wealth of a young
man as of greater consequence than his physical or moral fitness to
become the father of her children. There are thousands of persons who
are mentally deficient or unmoral, who nevertheless are unrestrained
by society from association and even marriage. It is a social
misfortune that the unfit should be taken care of by the tender
mercies of philanthropists and even permitted to propagate their kind,
while no special encouragement is given to those who are supremely fit
to give their best to the upbuilding of the race. The principle of
brotherly kindness requires that the weak and unfortunate be taken
care of, but they should not be permitted to increase. It is a
principle of social welfare that those who are incapable of exercising
self-control should be placed under the control of the larger group.
49. =Eugenics in Legislation.=--It is the conviction that the right to
be well-born is a valid one, that has given rise to the science of
eugenics. As a science it was first discussed by Francis Gallon, and
it has interested writers, investigators, and legislators in all
progressive countries. Various specific proposals have been made in
the interest of posterity, and agitation has resulted in certain
experiments in legislation. It is not proposed that any should be
required to marry, but it is thought possible to encourage the well
qualified and to discourage and restrain the incapable. Some of these
proposals, such as the offering of a premium by the State for healthy
children, or endowing mothers as public functionaries, are not widely
approved, but Great Britain in a National Insurance Act in 1911
included the provision of maternity benefits in recognition of the
mother's contribution to the citizenship of the nation. Restrictive
laws have been passed by certain of the States in America, which are
eugenic experiments. Feeble-mindedness, in so many ways a social evil,
is readily reproduced, and the weak-minded are easily controlled by
the sex instinct. To prevent this certain State legislatures have
forbidden the marriage of any feeble-minded or epileptic woman under
the age of forty-five. It is well known that insanity is a family
trait, and that criminal insanity is liable to recur if those who are
afflicted are permitted to indulge in parenthood. Certain States
accordingly annul the marriage of insane persons. Venereal disease is
easily transmitted; there has been a beginning of legislation
prohibiting persons thus tainted to marry. It is well established that
very many persons, while not actually tainted with such diseases as
tuberculosis and alcoholism, are predisposed to yield to their attack.
For this reason the scope of eugenic legislation is likely to be
extended. Some States have gone so far as to sterilize the unfit, that
they may not by any chance exercise the powers of parenthood; it is
urged in many quarters that clergymen require a medical certificate of
good health before sanctioning marriage.
50. =Family Degeneracy.=--Several impressive illustrations have been
published of degenerate families that show the far-reaching effects of
heredity. In contrast to these pictures, has been set the life story
of families who have won renown in successive generations because of
unusual ability. Nothing so effective is presented by any argument as
that of concrete cases. Perhaps the best known of these stories is
that of the Jukes family. About the middle of the eighteenth century a
normal man with a coarse, lazy vein in his nature built himself a hut
in the woods of central New York. In five generations he had several
hundred descendants. A study of twelve hundred persons who belonged
to the family by kinship or marriage was made carefully, with the
following findings. Nearly all of the family were lazy, ignorant, and
coarse. Four hundred were physically diseased by their own fault. Two
hundred were criminals; seven of them murderers. Fifty of the women
were notoriously immoral. Three hundred of the children died from
inherited weakness or neglect. More than three hundred members of the
family were chronic paupers. It is estimated that they cost the State
a thousand dollars apiece for pauperism and crime.
Another family called the Kallikak family, which has been made the
subject of investigation, is a still better example of heredity. The
family was descended from a Revolutionary soldier, who had an
illegitimate feeble-minded son by an imbecile young woman. The line
continued by feeble-minded descent and marriage until four hundred and
eighty descendants have been traced. Of these one hundred and
forty-three were positively defective, thirty-six were illegitimate,
thirty-three sexually immoral, mostly prostitutes, eight kept houses
of ill repute, three were criminal, twenty-four were confirmed
drunkards, and eighty-two died in infancy.
On the other hand, there are striking examples of what good birth and
breeding can do. It happened that the ancestor of the Kallikak family,
after he had sown his wild oats, married well and had about five
hundred descendants. All of them were normal, only two were alcoholic,
and one sexually loose. The family has been prominent socially and in
every way creditable in its history. In contrast to the Jukes family,
the history of the Edwards family has been written. Its members
married well, were well-bred, and gave much attention to education.
Out of fourteen hundred individuals more than one hundred and twenty
were Yale graduates, and one hundred and sixty-five more completed
their education at other colleges; thirteen were college presidents,
and more than a hundred college professors; they were founders of
schools of all grades; more than one hundred were clergymen,
missionaries, and theological professors; seventy-five were officers
in the army and navy; more than eighty have been elected to public
office; more than one hundred were lawyers, thirty judges, sixty
physicians, and sixty prominent in literature. Not a few of them have
been active in philanthropy, and many have been successful in
business. It is impossible to escape from the conviction that whatever
may be the physical and social environment, heredity perpetuates
physical and mental worth or defectiveness and tends to produce social
good or evil, and that the right to a worthy parentage belongs with
the other rights to which individuals lay claim. It is as important as
the right to a living, to an education, to a good home, or to the
franchise. Without it society is incalculably poorer and the ultimate
effects of failure are startling to consider.
51. =Marriage and Education.=--Some enthusiasts have demanded that to
make sure of a good bodily inheritance, individuals be permitted to
produce children without the trammels of marriage if they are well
fitted for parenthood, but such persons seem ignorant or forgetful
that free love has never proved otherwise than disastrous in the
history of the race, and that physical perfection is not the sole good
with which the child needs to be endowed, but that it must be
supplemented with moral, mental, and spiritual endowment, and with the
permanent affection and care of both parents in the home. Galton
himself acknowledges marriage as a prerequisite in eugenics by saying:
"Marriage, as now sanctified by religion and safeguarded by law in the
more highly civilized nations, may not be ideally perfect, nor may it
be universally accepted in future times, but it is the best that has
hitherto been devised for the parties primarily concerned, for their
children, for home life, and for society."
The greatest hope of eugenics lies in social education. Sex hygiene
must in some way become a part of the child's stock of information,
but knowledge alone does not fortify action. More important is it to
deal with the springs of action, to teach the equal standard of purity
for men and women, and the moral responsibility of parenthood to
adolescent youth, and at the same time to impress upon the whole
community its responsibility of oversight of morals for the good of
the next generation. Conviction of personal and social responsibility
as superior to individual preferences is the only safety of society in
all its relations, from eugenics through economics to ethics and
religion.
52. =Euthenics.=--Euthenics is the science of controlled environment,
as eugenics is the science of controlled heredity. The health and good
fortune of the child depend on his surroundings as well as on his
inheritance, and the gift of a perfect physique may be vitiated by an
unwholesome environment. Environment acts directly upon the physical
system of the individual through climate, home conditions, and
occupation; it acts indirectly by affecting the personal desires,
idiosyncrasies, and possible conduct. When the child of an early
settler was carried away from home on an Indian raid, and brought up
in the wigwam of the savage, he forgot his civilized heritage, and
love for his foster-parents sometimes proved stronger than his natural
affections. The child of the Russian Jew in Europe has little ambition
and rises to no high level, but in America he gains distinction in
school and success in business. A natural environment of forest or
plain may determine the occupation of a whole community; a fickle
climate vitally affects its prosperity. Whole races have entered upon
a new future by migration.
It is necessary to be cautious and not to ascribe to environment, as
some do, the sole influence. Every individual is the creature of
heredity plus environment plus his own will. But it is not possible to
overlook environment as some do, and expect by a miracle to make or
preserve character in the midst of conditions of spiritual
asphyxiation. If social life is to be pure and strong, communities and
families, through the official care of overseers of health and
industry and through the loving care of parents in the homes, must see
that children grow up with the advantages of nourishing food, pure
air, proper clothing, and means for cleanliness; that at the proper
age they be given mental and moral instruction and fitted for a worthy
vocation; that wholesome social relations be established by means of
playgrounds, clubs, and societies; that industrial conditions be
properly supervised, and young people be able to earn not alone a
living but a marriageable wage; and that some means of social
insurance be provided sufficient to prevent suffering and want in
sickness and old age. In such an environment there is opportunity to
realize the value that will accrue from a good inheritance, and there
is incentive to make the most of life's possibilities as they come and
go.
Ever since the importance of environment was made plain in the
nineteenth century, social physicians have been trying all sorts of
experiments in community therapeutics. Many of the remedies will be
discussed in various connections. It is enough to remark here that
social education, social regulation, and social idealism are all
necessary, and that a social Utopia cannot be obtained in a day.
53. =The Right to Proper Care.=--Granted the right of the child to be
well-born and the right to a favorable environment, there follows the
right to be taken care of. This may be involved in the subject of a
proper environment, but it deserves consideration by itself. There is
more danger to the race from neglect than from race suicide. It is
better that a child should not be born at all, than that he should be
condemned to the hard knocks of a loveless home or a callous
neighborhood. There is first the case of the child born out of
wedlock, often a foundling with parentage unacknowledged. Then there
is the child who is legitimately born as far as the law is concerned,
but whose parents had no legitimate right to bring him into the world,
because they had no reasonable expectation that they could provide
properly for his wants. The wretched pauper recks nothing of the
future of his offspring. Since the family group can never remain
independent of the community, it may well be debated whether society
is not under obligation to interfere and either by prohibition of
excessive parenthood or by social provision for the care of such
children, to secure to the young this right of proper care.
Cruelty is a twin evil of neglect. The history of childhood deserves
careful study side by side with the history of womanhood. In primitive
times not even the right to existence was recognized. Abortion and
infanticide, especially in the case of females, were practices used at
will to dispose of unwelcome children, and these practices persisted
among the backward peoples of Asia and Africa, until they were
compelled to recognize the law of the white master when he extended
his dominion over them. In the patriarchal household of classic lands,
the child was under the absolute control of his father. Religious
regulations might demand that he be instructed in the history and
obligations of the race, as in the case of the Hebrew child, or the
interests of the state might require physical training for its own
defense, as in the case of Sparta, but there was no consideration of
child rights in the home. Until the eighteenth century European
children shared the hardships of poverty and discomfort common to the
age, and often the cruelty of brutal and degraded parents; they were
often condemned to long hours of industry in factories after the new
industrial order caught them in its toils. In the mine and the mill
and on the farm children have been bound down to labor for long and
weary hours, until modern legislation has interfered.
There are a number of reasons why child labor has been common.
Hereditary custom has decreed it. Children have been looked upon by
many races as a care and a burden rather than a responsibility and a
blessing. Their economic value was their one claim to be regarded as a
family asset. Even the religious teaching of Jews and Christians about
the value and responsibility of children has not been influential
enough to compel a recognition of their worth, though their innocence
and purity, their faith and optimism are qualities indispensable to
the race of mankind if social relations are to approach the ideal.
54. =The Value of Work.=--Labor is a social blessing rather than a
curse. There can be no doubt that habits of industry are desirable for
the child as well as for the adult. Idleness is the forerunner of
ignorance, laziness, and general incapacity. It is no kindness to a
child to permit him to spend all his time out of school in play. It
gives him skill, a new respect for labor, and a new conception of the
value of money, if he has a paper route, mows a lawn, shovels snow, or
hoes potatoes. Especially is it desirable that a boy should have some
sort of an occupation for a few hours a day during the long summer
vacation. The child on the farm has no lack of opportunity, but for
the boy of the city streets there is little that is practicable,
outside of selling papers or serving as messenger boy or bootblack;
for the girl there is little but housework or department-store
service. Both need steady employment out of doors, and he who devises
a method by which boys and girls can be taught such an occupation as
gardening on vacant lots or in the city outskirts, and at the same
time can be given a love for work and for the growing things of the
country, will help to solve the problem of child labor and,
incidentally, may contribute to the solution of poverty, incipient
crime, and even of the rural problem and the high cost of living.
READING REFERENCES
BOSANQUET: _The Family_, pages 299-314.
GODDARD: _The Kallikak Family._
EAMES: _Principles of Eugenics._
SALEEBY: _Parenthood and Race Culture_, pages 213-236.
MCKEEVER: _Farm Boys and Girls_, pages 171-196.
GALTON: _Inquiries into Human Faculty._
CHAPTER VII
WORK, PLAY AND EDUCATION.
55. =Child Labor and Its Effects.=--Excessive child labor away from
home is one of the evils that has called for reform more than the lack
of employment. The child has a right to the home life. It is injurious
for him to be kept at a monotonous task under physical or mental
strain for long hours in a manufacturing establishment, or to be
deprived of time to study and to play. Yet there are nearly two
million children in the United States under sixteen years of age who
are denied the rights of childhood through excessive labor.
This evil began with the adoption of the factory system in modern
industry. The introduction of light machinery into the textile mills
of England made it possible to employ children at low wages, and it
was profitable for the keepers of almshouses to apprentice pauper
children to the manufacturers. Some of them were not more than five or
six years old, but were kept in bondage more than twelve hours a day.
Children were compelled to hard labor in the coal-mines, and to the
dirty work of chimney sweeping. In the United States factory labor for
children did not begin so soon, but by 1880 children eight years old
were being employed in Massachusetts for more than twelve hours a day,
and in parts of the country children are still employed at long hours
in such occupations as the manufacture of cotton, glass, silk, and
candy, in coal-mines and canning factories. Besides these are the
newsboys, bootblacks, and messengers of the cities, children in
domestic and personal service, and the child laborers on the farms.
The causes of child labor lie in the poverty and greed of parents, the
demands of employers, and often the desire of the children to escape
from school and earn money. In spite of agitation and legislation, the
indifference of the public permits it to continue and in some
sections to increase.
The harmful effects of child employment are numerous. It is true that
two-thirds of the boys and nearly one-half of the girls employed in
the United States are occupied with agriculture, most of them with
their own parents, an occupation that is much healthier than indoor
labor, yet agriculture demands long hours and wearisome toil. In the
cities there is much night-work and employment in dangerous or
unhealthy occupations. The sweating system has carried its bad effects
into the homes of the very poor, for the younger members of the family
can help to manufacture clothing, paper boxes, embroidery, and
artificial flowers, and in spite of the law, such labor goes on far
into the night in congested, ill-ventilated tenements. Children cannot
work in this way day after day for long hours without serious physical
deterioration. Some of them drop by the way and die as victims of an
economic system and the social neglect that permits it. Others lose
the opportunity of an education, and so are mentally less trained than
the normal American child, and ultimately prove less efficient as
industrial units. For the time they may add to the family income, but
they react upon adult labor by lowering the wage of the head of the
family, and they make it impossible for the child when grown to earn a
high wage, because of inefficiency. The associations and influences of
the street are morally degrading, and in the associations of the
workroom and the factory yard the whole tone of the life of
individuals is frequently lowered.
56. =Child-Labor Legislation.=--Friends of the children have tried to
stop abuses. Trade-unions, consumers' leagues, and State bureaus have
taken the initiative. Voluntary organizations, like the National Child
Labor Committee, make the regulation of child labor their special
object. They have succeeded in the establishment of a Federal
Children's Bureau in Washington, and have encouraged State and
national legislation. Most of the States forbid the employment of
children under a certain age, usually twelve or fourteen years, and
require attention to healthful conditions and moderate hours. They
insist also that children shall not be deprived of education, but
there is often inadequate provision made for inspection and proper
enforcement of laws.
The friends of the children are desirous of a uniform child-labor law
which, if adopted and enforced by competent inspectors, would prevent
factory work for all under fourteen years of age, and for weak
children under sixteen would prescribe a limited number of hours and
allow no night-work, would require certain certificates of age and
health before employment is given, and would compel school attendance
and the attainment of a limited education before permission is granted
to go into the factory. Without doubt, it is a hardship to families in
poverty that strong, growing children should not be permitted to go to
work and help support those in need, but it is better for the social
body to take care of its weak members in some other way, and for its
own sake, as well as for the sake of the child, to make sure that he
is physically and mentally equipped before he takes a regular place in
the ranks of the wage-earners.
57. =The Right to Play.=--The play group is the first social
training-ground for the child outside of the home, and it continues to
be a desirable form of association, even into adult life, but it is
only in recent years that adults have recognized the legitimacy of
such a claim as the right to play. It was thought desirable that a boy
should work off his restlessness, but the wood-pile provided the usual
safety-valve for surplus energy. Play was a waste of time. Now it is
more clearly understood that play has a distinct value. It is
physically beneficial, expanding the lungs, strengthening muscle and
nerve, and giving poise and elasticity to the whole body. It is
mentally educational in developing qualities of quickness, skill, and
leadership. It is socially valuable, for it requires honesty, fair
play, mutual consideration, and self-control. Co-operation of effort
is developed as well in team-play as in team-work, and the child
becomes accustomed to act with thought of the group. The play group is
a temporary form of association, varying in size and content as the
whim of the child or the attraction of the moment moves its members.
It is an example of primitive groupings swayed by instinctive
impulses. Children turn quickly from one game to another, but for the
time are absorbed in the particular play that is going on. No
achievement results from the activity, no organization from the
association. The rapid shifting of the scenes and the frequent
disputes that arise indicate lack of control. Yet it is out of such
association that the social mind develops and organized action becomes
possible.
If these are the advantages of play, the right to play may properly
demand an opportunity for games and sports in the home and the yard,
and the necessary equipment of gymnasium and field. It may call for
freedom f |
