should be confined to a producing group. The equalizing process may take
place even though men do not actually abandon one occupation and enter
another; for there exists, in the generation of young men not yet
committed to any occupation, a disposable fund of labor which will
gravitate naturally to the occupations that pay the largest wages. It is
not necessary that blacksmiths should ever become shoemakers, or vice
versa, but only that the children of both classes of artisans should be
free to enter the trade that is best rewarded.
Professor Cairnes does not claim that his classification is exhaustive,
nor that the demarcation is absolute:
No doubt the various ranks and classes fade into each other by
imperceptible gradations, and individuals from all classes are
constantly passing up or dropping down; but while this is so,
it is nevertheless true that the average workman, from whatever
rank he be taken, finds his power of competition limited for
practical purposes to a certain range of occupations, so that,
however high the rates of remuneration in those which lie
beyond may rise, he is excluded from sharing them. We are thus
compelled to recognize the existence of non-competing
industrial groups as a feature of our social economy.
It will be seen that the competition which is here under discussion is
of an extraordinary kind; and the fact that the general term is applied
to it without explanation is a proof of the vagueness of the conceptions
of competition with which acute writers have contented themselves.
Actual competition consists invariably in an effort to undersell a rival
producer. A carpenter competes with a carpenter because he creates a
similar utility and offers it in the market. In the theory of Professor
Cairnes the carpenter is the competitor of the blacksmith, because his
children may enter the blacksmith's calling. In the actual practice of
his own trade, the one artisan in no wise affects the other. It is
potential competition rather than actual that is here under discussion;
and even this depends for its effectiveness on the action of the rising
generation.
Modern methods of production have obliterated Professor Cairnes's
dividing lines. Potential competition extends to every part of the
industrial field in which men work in organized companies. Throwing out
of account the professions, a few trades of the highest sort, and the
class of labor which is performed by employers themselves and their
salaried assistants, it is practically true that labor is in a universal
ebb and flow; it passes freely to occupations which are, for the time
being, highly paid, and reduces their rewards to the general level.
This objection to the proposed grouping is not theoretical. The question
is one of fact; it is the development of actual industry that has
invalidated the theory which, in the seventies, expressed an important
truth concerning economic relations in England. Moreover, the author of
the theory anticipated one change which would somewhat lessen its
applicability to future conditions. He recorded his belief that
education would prove a leveler, and that it would merge to some extent
the strata of industrial society. The children of hod-carriers might
become machinists, accountants, or lawyers when they could acquire the
needed education. He admitted also that new countries afford conditions
in which the lines of demarcation are faint. He was not in a position to
appreciate the chief leveling agency, namely, the machine method of
production as now extended and perfected. Education makes the laborer
capable of things relatively difficult, and machines render the
processes which he needs to master relatively easy. The so-called
unskilled workmen stand on a higher personal level than those of former
times; and the new methods of manufacturing are reducing class after
class to that level. Mechanical labor is resolving itself into processes
so simple that anyone may learn them. An old-time shoemaker could not
become a watchmaker, and even his children would have found difficulties
in their way had they attempted to master the higher trade; but a laster
in a Lynn shoe factory can, if he will, learn one of the minute trades
that are involved in the making of a Waltham watch. His children may do
so without difficulty; and this is all that is necessary for maintaining
the normal balance between the trades.
The largest surviving differences between workmen are moral. Bodily
strength still counts for something, and mental strength for more; but
the consideration which chiefly determines the value of a workman to the
employer who intrusts to him costly materials and a delicate machine is
the question of fidelity. Character is not monopolized by any social
class; it is of universal growth, and tends by the prominent part which
it plays in modern industry, to reduce to their lowest terms the class
differences of the former era.
The rewards of professional life are gauged primarily by character and
native endowment, and are, to this extent, open to the children of
workmen. New barriers, however, arise here in the ampler education
which, as time advances, is demanded of persons in these pursuits; and
these barriers give to a part of the fourth and highest class in the
scheme that we are criticising a permanent basis of existence. Another
variety of labor retains a pre-eminence based on native adaptations and
special opportunities. It is the work of the employer himself. It is an
organizing and directing function, and in large industries is performed
only in part by the owners. A portion of this work is committed to hired
assistants. Strictly speaking, the entrepreneur, or employer, of a great
establishment is not one man, but many, who work in a collective
capacity, and who receive a reward that, taken in the aggregate,
constitutes the "wages of superintendence." To some members of this
administrative body the returns come in the form of salaries, while to
others they come partly in the form of dividends; but if we regard their
work in its entirety, and consider their wages in a single sum, we must
class it with entrepreneur's profits rather than with ordinary wages. It
is a different part of the product from the sum distributed among day
laborers; and this fact separates the administrative group from the
class considered in our present inquiry. Positions of the higher sort
are usually gained either through the possession of capital or through
relations to persons who possess it. Though clerkships of the lower
grade demand no attainments which the children of workmen cannot gain,
and though promotion to the higher grades is still open, the tendency of
the time is to make the transition from the ranks of labor to those of
administration more and more difficult. The true laboring class is
merging its subdivisions, while it is separating more sharply from the
class whose interests, in test questions, place them on the side of
capital.
2. Competition and the Natural Harmony of Individual Interests[193]
The general industry of the society never can exceed what the capital of
the society can employ. As the number of workmen that can be kept in
employment by any particular person must bear a certain proportion to
his capital, so the number of those that can be continually employed by
all the members of a great society must bear a certain proportion to the
whole capital of that society and never can exceed that proportion. No
regulation of commerce can increase the quantity of industry in any
society beyond what its capital can maintain. It can only divert a part
of it into a direction into which it might not otherwise have gone; and
it is by no means certain that this artificial direction is likely to be
more advantageous to the society than that into which it would have gone
of its own accord.
Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most
advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his
own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in
view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather
necessarily, leads him to prefer that employment which is most
advantageous to the society.
As every individual, therefore, endeavors as much as he can both to
employ his capital in the support of domestic industry and so to direct
that industry that its product may be of the greatest value; every
individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of the
society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to
promote the public interest nor knows how much he is promoting it. By
preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he
intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a
manner that its product may be of the greatest value, he intends only
his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an
invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor
is it always worse for the society that it was no part of it. By
pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society
more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never
known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very
few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.
What is the species of domestic industry which his capital can employ,
and of which the product is likely to be of the greatest value, every
individual, it is evident, can, in his local situation, judge much
better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him. The statesman who
should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to
employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most
unnecessary attention but assume an authority which could safely be
trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate
whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a
man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to
exercise it.
3. Competition and Freedom[194]
What, after all, is competition? Is it something that exists and acts of
itself, like the cholera? No, competition is simply the absence of
oppression. In reference to the matters that interest me, I _prefer_ to
choose for myself and I do not want anyone else to choose for me against
my will; that's all. And if anyone undertakes to substitute his judgment
for mine in matters that concern me I shall demand the privilege of
substituting my wishes for his in matters which concern him. What
guaranty is there that this arrangement will improve matters? It is
evident that competition is liberty. To destroy liberty of action is to
destroy the possibility and consequently the faculty of choosing,
judging, comparing; it is to kill intelligence, to kill thought, to kill
man himself. Whatever the point of departure, there is where modern
reforms always end; in order to improve society it is necessary to
annihilate the individual, upon the assumption that the individual is
the source of all evil, and as if the individual was not likewise the
source of all good.
4. Money and Freedom[195]
Money not only makes the relation of individuals to the group a more
independent one, but the content of the special forms of associations
and the relations of the participants to these associations is subject
to an entirely new process of differentiation.
The medieval corporations included in themselves all the human
interests. A guild of cloth-makers was not an association of individuals
which cultivated the interests of cloth-making exclusively. It was a
community in a vocational, personal, religious, political sense and in
many other respects. And however technical the interests that might be
grouped together in such an association, they had an immediate and
lively interest for all members. Members were wholly bound up in the
association.
In contrast to this form of organization the capitalistic system has
made possible innumerable associations which either require from their
members merely money contributions or are directed toward mere money
interests. In the case of the business corporation, especially, the
basis of organization of members is exclusively an interest in the
dividends, so exclusively that it is a matter of entire indifference to
the individual what the society (enterprise) actually produces.
The independence of the person of the concrete objects, in which he has
a mere money interest, is reflected, likewise, in his independence, in
his personal relations, of the other individuals with whom he is
connected by an exclusive money interest. This has produced one of the
most effective cultural formations--one which makes it possible for
individuals to take part in an association whose objective aim it will
promote, use, and enjoy without this association bringing with it any
further personal connection or imposing any further obligation. Money
has brought it about that one individual may unite himself with others
without being compelled to surrender any of his personal freedom or
reserve. That is the fundamental and unspeakably significant difference
between the medieval form of organization which made no difference
between the association of men as men and the association of men as
members of an organization. The medieval form or organization united
equally in one circle the entire business, religious, political, and
friendly interests of the individuals who composed it.
III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS
1. Biological Competition
The conception of competition has had a twofold origin: in the notions
(a) of the struggle for existence and (b) of the struggle for
livelihood. Naturally, then, the concept of competition has had a
parallel development in biology and in economics. The growth of the
notion in these two fields of thought, although parallel, is not
independent. Indeed, the fruitful process of interaction between the
differing formulations of the concept in biology and economics is a
significant illustration of the cross-fertilization of the sciences.
Although Malthus was a political economist, his principle of population
is essentially biological rather than economic. He is concerned with the
struggle for existence rather than for livelihood. Reacting against the
theories of Condorcet and of Godwin concerning the natural equality,
perfectability, and inevitable progress of man, Malthus in 1798 stated
the dismal law that population tends to increase in geometrical
progression and subsistence in arithmetical progression. In the preface
to the second edition of his _Essay on the Principle of Population_
Malthus acknowledged his indebtedness to "Hume, Wallace, Dr. Adam Smith
and Dr. Price." Adam Smith no doubt anticipated and perhaps suggested to
Malthus his thesis in such passages in the _Wealth of Nations_ as,
"Every species of animals naturally multiplies in proportion to the
means of their subsistence," "The demand for men necessarily regulates
the production of men." These statements of the relation of population
to food supply, however, are incidental to Smith's general theories of
economics; the contribution of Malthus lay in taking this principle out
of its limited context, giving it the character of scientific
generalization, and applying it to current theories and programs of
social reform.
The debt of biology to Malthus is acknowledged both by Darwin and by
Wallace. Fifteen months after Darwin had commenced his inquiry a chance
reading of Malthus' _Essay on the Principle of Population_ gave him the
clue to the explanation of the origin of species through the struggle
for existence. During an attack of intermittent fever Wallace recalled
Malthus' theory which he had read twelve years before and in it found
the solution of the problem of biological evolution.
Although the phrase "the struggle for existence" was actually used by
Malthus: Darwin, Wallace, and their followers first gave it a general
application to all forms of life. Darwin in his _The Origin of Species_,
published in 1859, analyzed with a wealth of detail the struggle for
existence, the nature and forms of competition, natural selection, the
survival of the fittest, the segregation and consequent specialization
of species.
Biological research in recent years has directed attention away from the
theory of evolution to field study of plant and animal communities.
Warming, Adams, Wheeler, and others have described, in their plant and
animal ecologies, the processes of competition and segregation by which
communities are formed. Clements in two studies, _Plant Succession_ and
_Plant Indicators_, has described in detail the life-histories of some
of these communities. His analysis of the succession of plant
communities within the same geographical area and of the relations of
competitive co-operation of the different species of which these
communities are composed might well serve as a model for similar studies
in human ecology.
2. Economic Competition
Research upon competition in economics falls under two heads: (a) the
natural history of competition, and (b) the history of theories of
competition.
a) Competition on the economic level, i.e., of struggle for
livelihood, had its origins in the market place. Sir Henry Maine, on the
basis of his study of village communities, states in effect that the
beginnings of economic behavior are first to be seen in neutral meeting
places of strangers and foes.
In order to understand what a market originally was, you must
try to picture to yourselves a territory occupied by
village-communities, self-acting and as yet autonomous, each
cultivating its arable land in the middle of its waste, and
each, I fear I must add, at perpetual war with its neighbour.
But at several points, points probably where the domains of two
or three villages converged, there appear to have been spaces
of what we should now call neutral ground. These were the
Markets. They were probably the only places at which the
members of the different primitive groups met for any purpose
except warfare, and the persons who came to them were doubtless
at first persons especially empowered to exchange the produce
and manufactures of one little village-community for those of
another. But, besides the notion of neutrality, another idea
was anciently associated with markets. This was the idea of
sharp practice and hard bargaining.
What is the real origin of the feeling that it is not
creditable to drive a hard bargain with a near relative or
friend? It can hardly be that there is any rule of morality to
forbid it. The feeling seems to me to bear the traces of the
old notion that men united in natural groups do not deal with
one another on principles of trade. The only natural group in
which men are now joined is the family; and the only bond of
union resembling that of the family is that which men create
for themselves by friendship.
The general proposition which is the basis of Political
Economy, made its first approach to truth under the only
circumstances which admitted of men meeting at arm's length,
not as members of the same group, but as strangers. Gradually
the assumption of the right to get the best price has
penetrated into the interior of these groups, but it is never
completely received so long as the bond of connection between
man and man is assumed to be that of family or clan connection.
The rule only triumphs when the primitive community is in
ruins. What are the causes which have generalized a Rule of the
Market until it has been supposed to express an original and
fundamental tendency of human nature, it is impossible to state
fully, so multifarious have they been. Everything which has
helped to convert a society into a collection of individuals
from being an assemblage of families has helped to add to the
truth of the assertion made of human nature by the Political
Economists.[196]
The extension of the relations of the market place to practically all
aspects of life having to do with livelihood has been the outcome of the
industrial revolution and the growth of Great Society. Standardization
of commodities, of prices, and of wages, the impersonal nature of
business relations, the "cash-nexus" and the credit basis of all human
relations has greatly extended the external competitive forms of
interaction. Money, with its abstract standards of value, is not only a
medium of exchange, but at the same time symbol par excellence of the
economic nature of modern competitive society.
The literature describing change from the familial communism, typical of
primitive society, to the competitive economy of modern capitalistic
society is indicated in the bibliography.
b) The history of competition as a concept in political economy goes
back to the Physiocrats. This French school of economists, laying stress
upon the food supply as the basis and the measure of the wealth of the
nation, demanded the abolition of restrictions upon agricultural
production and commerce. The Physiocrats based their theories upon the
natural rights of individuals to liberty.
The miserable state of the nation seemed to demand a _volte
face_. Taxes were many and indirect. Let them be single and
direct. Liberty of enterprise was shackled. Let it be free.
State-regulation was excessive. _Laissez-faire!_ Their economic
plea for liberty is buttressed by an appeal to Nature, greater
than kings or ministers, and by an assertion of the natural,
inherent rights of man to be unimpeded in his freedom except so
far as he infringes upon that of others.[197]
While the Physiocrats emphasized the beneficent effects of freedom in
industry to which the individual has a natural right, Adam Smith, in his
book _The Wealth of Nations_, emphasized the advantages of competition.
To him competition was a protection against monopoly. "It [competition]
can never hurt either the consumer or the producer; on the contrary it
must tend to make the retailers both sell cheaper and buy dearer than if
the whole trade was monopolized by one or two persons!"[198] It was at
the same time of benefit to both producer and consumer. "Monopoly is a
great enemy to good management which can never be universally
established but in consequence of that free and universal competition
which forces everybody to have recourse to it for the sake of
self-defence."[199]
Before Darwin, competition had been conceived in terms of freedom and of
the natural harmony of interests. His use of the term introduced into
competition the notion of struggle for existence and the survival of the
fittest. This new conception, in which competition appears as a
fundamental process in all life, has been a powerful prop to the laissez
faire policy and has led to its continuance regardless of the misery and
destitution which, if it did not create, it certainly did not remedy.
The works of Herbert Spencer, the greatest expounder of the doctrine of
evolution, contain a powerful massing of evidence in favor of laissez
faire as a conclusion to be drawn from a scientific study of human
behavior. "Nothing but the slow modifications of human nature by the
discipline of social life," he said, "can produce permanently
advantageous changes. A fundamental error pervading the thinking of
nearly all parties, political and social, is that evils admit of
immediate and radical remedies."[200]
With the growth of large-scale production with the tendency to the
formation of combinations and monopolies, as a result of freedom of
competition, works began to appear on the subject of unrestricted
competition. The expressions "unfair" and "cut-throat" competition,
which occur frequently in recent literature, suggest the new point of
view. Another euphemism under which other and more far-reaching
proposals for the limitation of competition and laissez faire have been
proposed is "social justice." In the meantime the trend of legislation
in England for a hundred years, as Mr. A. V. Dicey[201] has pointed out,
has been, in spite of Herbert Spencer, away from the individualistic and
in the direction of a collectivistic social order. This means more
legislation, more control, and less individual liberty.
The full meaning of this change in law and opinion can only be fully
understood, however, when it is considered in connection with the growth
of communication, economic organization, and cities, all of which have
so increased the mutual interdependence of all members of society as to
render illusory and unreal the old freedoms and liberties which the
system of laissez faire was supposed to guarantee.
3. Competition and Human Ecology
The ecological conception of society is that of a society created by
competitive co-operation. Adam Smith's _Wealth of Nations_ was a
description of society in so far as it is a product of economic
competition. David Ricardo, in his _Principles of Political Economy_,
defined the process of competition more abstractly and states its
consequences with more ruthless precision and consistency. "His theory,"
says Kolthamer in his introduction, "seems to be an everlasting
justification of the _status quo_. As such at least it was used."
But Ricardo's doctrines were both "a prop and a menace to the middle
classes," and the errors which they canonized have been the
presuppositions of most of the radical and revolutionary programs since
that time.
The socialists, adopting his theories of value and wages,
interpreted Ricardo's crude expressions to their own advantage.
To alter the Ricardian conclusions, they said, alter the social
conditions upon which they depend: to improve upon subsistence
wage, deprive capital of what it steals from labour--the value
which labour creates. The land-taxers similarly used the
Ricardian theory of rent: rent is a surplus for the existence
of which no single individual is responsible--take it therefore
for the benefit of all, whose presence creates it.[202]
The anarchistic, socialistic, and communistic doctrines, to which
reference is made in the bibliography, are to be regarded as themselves
sociological phenomena, without reference to their value as programs.
They are based on ecological and economic conceptions of society in
which competition is the fundamental fact and, from the point of view of
these doctrines, the fundamental evil of society. What is sociologically
important in these doctrines is the wishes that they express. They
exhibit among other things, at any rate, the character which the hopes
and the wishes of men take in this vast, new, restless world, the Great
Society, in which men find themselves but in which they are not yet, and
perhaps never will be, at home.
4. Competition and the "Inner Enemies": the Defectives, the Dependents,
and the Delinquents
Georg Simmel, referring, in his essay on "The Stranger," to the poor and
the criminal, bestowed upon them the suggestive title of "The Inner
Enemies." The criminal has at all times been regarded as a rebel against
society, but only recently has the existence of the dependent and the
defective been recognized as inimical to the social order.[203]
Modern society, so far as it is free, has been organized on the basis of
competition. Since the status of the poor, the criminal, and the
dependent, has been largely determined by their ability or willingness
to compete, the literature upon defectiveness, dependency, and
delinquency may be surveyed in its relation to the process of
competition. For the purposes of this survey the dependent may be
defined as one who is unable to compete; the defective as the person who
is, if not unable, at least handicapped, in his efforts to compete. The
criminal, on the other hand, is one who is perhaps unable, but at any
rate refuses, to compete according to the rules which society lays down.
Malthus' _Essay on the Principle of Population_ first called attention
to the pathological effects of the struggle for existence in modern
society and emphasized the necessity of control, not merely in the
interest of the defeated and rejected members of society, but in the
interest of society itself. Malthus sought a mitigation, if not a
remedy, for the evils of overpopulation by what he called "moral
restraint," that is, "a restraint from marriage, from prudential
motives, with a conduct strictly moral during the period of restraint."
The alternatives were war, famine, and pestilence. These latter have, in
fact, been up to very recent times the effective means through which the
problem of overpopulation has been solved.
The Neo-Malthusian movement, under the leadership of Francis Place,
Richard Carlile, and Robert Dale Owen in the decade of 1820-30 and of
Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant in the decade of 1870-80, advocated
the artificial restriction of the family. The differential decline in
the birth-rate, that is, the greater decrease in the number of children
in the well-to-do and educated classes as compared with the poor and
uneducated masses, was disclosed through investigations by the Galton
Eugenics Laboratory in England and characterized as a national menace.
In the words of David Heron, a study of districts in London showed that
"one-fourth of the married population was producing one-half of the next
generation." In United States less exhaustive investigation showed the
same tendency at work and the alarm which the facts created found a
popular expression in the term "race-suicide."
It is under these circumstances and as a result of investigations and
agitations of the eugenists, that the poor, the defective, and the
delinquent have come to be regarded as "inner enemies" in a sense that
would scarcely have been understood a hundred years ago.
Poverty and dependency in modern society have a totally different
significance from that which they have had in societies in the past. The
literature descriptive of primitive communities indicated that in the
economic communism of a society based on kinship, famines were frequent
but poverty was unknown. In ancient and medieval societies the
dependency, where it was not professional, as in the case of the
mendicant religious orders, was intimate and personal. In this respect
it differed widely from the organized, official, and supervised
philanthropy of our modern cities.
With the abolition of serfdom, the break-up of the medieval guilds, and
the inauguration of a period of individual freedom and relatively
unrestricted competition (laissez faire) which ushered in the modern
industrial order, the struggle for existence ceased to be communal, and
became individual. The new order based on individual freedom, as
contrasted with the old order based on control, has been described as a
system in which every individual was permitted to "go to hell in his own
individual way." "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully
exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will,"
said Mill, "is to prevent harm to others. His own good either physical
or moral is not a sufficient warranty." Only when the individual became
a criminal or a pauper did the state or organized society attempt to
control or assist him in the competitive struggle for existence.[204]
Since competitive industry has its beginnings in England, the study of
the English poor laws is instructive. Under the influence of Malthus
and of the classical economists the early writers upon poverty regarded
it as an inevitable and natural consequence of the operation of the
"iron laws" of political economy. For example, when Harriet Martineau
was forced to admit, by the evidence collected by the Factory
Commissioners in 1833, that "the case of these wretched factory children
seems desperate," she goes on to add "the only hope seems to be that the
race will die out in two or three generations."
Karl Marx, accepting the Ricardian economics, emphasized the misery and
destitution resulting from the competitive process, and demanded the
abolition of competition and the substitution therefor of the absolute
control of a socialistic state.
Recent studies treat poverty and dependency as a disease and look to its
prevention and cure. Trade unions, trade associations, and social
insurance are movements designed to safeguard industry and the worker
against the now generally recognized consequences of unlimited
competition. The conceptions of industrial democracy and citizenship in
industry have led to interesting and promising experiments.
In this connection, the efforts of employers to protect themselves as
well as the community from accidents and occupational diseases may be
properly considered. During and since the Great War efforts have been
made on a grand scale to rehabilitate, re-educate, and restore to
usefulness the war's wounded soldiers. This interest in the former
soldiers and the success of the efforts already made has led to an
increased interest in all classes of the industrially handicapped. A
number of surveys have been made, in different parts of the country, of
the crippled, and efforts are in progress to discover occupations and
professions in which the deaf, the blind, and otherwise industrially
handicapped can be employed and thus restored to usefulness and relative
independence.
The wide extension of the police power in recent times in the interest
of public health, sanitation, and general public welfare represents the
effort of the government, in an individualistic society in which the
older sanctions and securities no longer exist, to protect the
individual as well as the community from the effects of unrestricted
competition.
The literature of criminology has sought an answer to the enigma of the
criminal. The writings of the European criminologists run the gamut of
explanation from Lombroso, who explained crime as an inborn tendency of
the criminal, to Tarde, who defines the criminal as a purely social
product.
W. A. Bonger,[205] a socialist, has sought to show that criminality is a
direct product of the modern economic system. Without accepting either
the evidence or the conclusions of Bonger, it cannot be gainsaid that
the modern offender must be studied from the standpoint of his failure
to participate in a wholesome and normal way in our competitive,
secondary society which rests upon the institution of private property
and individual competition.
The failure of the delinquent to conform to the social code may be
studied from two standpoints: (a) that of the individual as an
organization of original mental and temperamental traits, and (b) that
of a person with a status and a rôle in the social group. The book _The
Individual Delinquent_, by William Healy, placed the study of the
offender as an individual upon a sound scientific basis. That the person
can and should be regarded as part and parcel of his social milieu has
been strikingly illustrated by T. M. Osborne in two books, _Within
Prison Walls_ and _Society and Prisons_. The fact seems to be that the
problem of crime is essentially like that of the other major problems of
our social order, and its solution involves three elements, namely:
(a) the analysis of the aptitudes of the individual and the wishes of
the person; (b) the analysis of the activities of our society with its
specialization and division of labor; and (c) the accommodation or
adjustment of the individual to the social and economic environment.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. BIOLOGICAL COMPETITION
(1) Crile, George W. _Man an Adaptive Mechanism._ New York, 1901.
(2) Darwin, Charles. _The Origin of Species._ London, 1859.
(3) Wallace, Alfred Russel. _Studies Scientific and Social._ 2 vols. New
York, 1900.
(4) ----. _Darwinism._ An exposition of the theory of natural selection
with some of its applications. Chap. iv, "The Struggle for Existence,"
pp. 14-40; chap. v, "Natural Selection by Variation and Survival of the
Fittest," pp. 102-25. 3d ed. London, 1901.
(5) Weismann, August. _On Germinal Selection as a Source of Definite
Variation._ Translated from the German. Chicago, 1896.
(6) Malthus, T. R. _An Essay on the Principle of Population._ Or a view
of its past and present effects on human happiness, with an inquiry into
our prospects respecting the future removal or mitigation of the evils
which it occasions. 2d ed. London, 1803. [1st ed., 1798.]
(7) Knapp, G. F. "Darwin und Socialwissenschaften," _Jahrbücher für
Nationalökonomie und Statistik_. Erste Folge, XVIII (1872), 233-47.
(8) Thomson, J. Arthur. _Darwinism and Human Life._ New York, 1918.
II. ECONOMIC COMPETITION
(1) Wagner, Adolf. _Grundlegung der politischen Ökonomie._ Pp. 794-828.
[The modern private industrial system of free competition.] Pp. 71-137.
[The industrial nature of men.] Leipzig, 1892-94.
(2) Effertz, Otto. _Arbeit und Boden._ System der politischen Ökonomie.
Vol. II, chaps, xix, xx, xxi, xxiii, xxiv, pp. 237-320. Berlin, 1897.
(3) Marshall, Alfred. _Principles of Economics._ Appendix A, "The Growth
of Free Industry and Enterprise," pp. 723-54. London, 1910.
(4) Seligman, E. R. A. _Principles of Economics._ Chap, x, pp. 139-53.
New York, 1905.
(5) Schatz, Albert. _L'Individualisme économique et social, ses
origines, son évolution, ses formes contemporaines._ Paris, 1907.
(6) Cunningham, William. _An Essay on Western Civilization in Its
Economic Aspects._ Medieval and modern times. Cambridge, 1913.
III. FREEDOM AND LAISSEZ FAIRE
(1) Simmel, Georg. _Philosophie des Geldes._ Chap. iv, "Die individuelle
Freiheit," pp. 279-364. Leipzig, 1900.
(2) Bagehot, Walter. _Postulates of English Political Economics._ With a
preface by Alfred Marshall. New York and London, 1885.
(3) Oncken, August. _Die Maxime Laissez Faire et Laissez Passer, ihr
Ursprung, ihr Werden._ Bern, 1886.
(4) Bastiat, Frédéric. _Harmonies économiques._ 9th ed. Paris, 1884.
(5) Cunningham, William. _The Growth of English Industry and Commerce in
Modern Times._ Vol. III, "Laissez Faire." 3 vols. 3d ed. Cambridge,
1903.
(6) Ingram, John K. _A History of Political Economy._ Chap. v, "Third
Modern Phase; System of Natural Liberty." 2d ed. New York, 1908.
(7) Hall, W. P. "Certain Early Reactions against Laissez Faire," _Annual
Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1913._ I,
127-38. Washington, 1915.
(8) Adams, Henry C. "Relation of the State to Industrial Action,"
_Publications of the American Economic Association_, I (1887), 471-549.
IV. THE MARKETS
(1) Walker, Francis A. _Political Economy._ Chap. ii, pp. 97-102. 3d ed.
New York, 1887. [Market defined.]
(2) Grierson, P. J. H. _The Silent Trade._ A contribution to the early
history of human intercourse. Edinburgh, 1903. [Bibliography.]
(3) Maine, Henry S. _Village Communities in the East and West._ Lecture
VI, "The Early History of Price and Rent," pp. 175-203. New York, 1885.
(4) Walford, Cornelius. _Fairs, Past and Present._ A chapter in the
history of commerce. London, 1883.
(5) Bourne, H. R. F. _English Merchants._ Memoirs in illustration of the
progress of British commerce. New ed. London, 1898.
(6) Webb, Sidney and Beatrice. _Industrial Democracy._ Part III, chap.
ii, "The Higgling of the Market," pp. 654-702. New ed. London, 1902.
(7) Bagehot, Walter. _Lombard Street._ A description of the money
market. New York, 1876.
V. COMPETITION AND INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION
(1) Crowell, John F. _Trusts and Competition._ Chicago, 1915.
[Bibliography.]
(2) Macrosty, Henry W. _Trusts and the State._ A sketch of competition.
London, 1901.
(3) Carter, George R. _The Tendency toward Industrial Combination._ A
study of the modern movement toward industrial combination in some
spheres of British industry; its forms and developments, their causes,
and their determinant circumstances. London, 1913.
(4) Levy, Hermann. _Monopoly and Competition._ A study in English
industrial organization. London, 1911.
(5) Haney, Lewis H. _Business Organization and Combination._ An analysis
of the evolution and nature of business organization in the United
States and a tentative solution of the corporation and trust problems.
New York, 1914.
(6) Van Hise, Charles R. _Concentration and Control._ A solution of the
trust problem in the United States. New York, 1912.
(7) Kohler, Josef. _Der unlautere Wettbewerb._ Darstellung des
Wettbewerbsrechts. Berlin und Leipzig, 1914.
(8) Nims, Harry D. _The Law of Unfair Business Competition._ Including
chapters on trade secrets and confidential business relations; unfair
interference with contracts; libel and slander of articles of
merchandise, trade names and business credit and reputation. New York,
1909.
(9) Stevens, W. H. S. _Unfair Competition._ A study of certain practices
with some reference to the trust problem in the United States of
America. Chicago, 1917.
(10) Eddy, Arthur J. _The New Competition._ An examination of the
conditions underlying the radical change that is taking place in the
commercial and industrial world; the change from a competitive to a
co-operative basis. New York, 1912.
(11) Willoughby, W. W. _Social Justice._ A critical essay. Chap. ix,
"The Ethics of the Competitive Process," pp. 269-315. New York, 1900.
(12) Rogers, Edward S. _Good Will, Trade-Marks and Unfair Trading._
Chicago, 1914.
VI. SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM
(1) Stirner, Max. (Kaspar Schmidt). _The Ego and His Own._ Translated
from the German by S. T. Byington. New York, 1918.
(2) Godwin, William. _An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its
Influence on General Virtue and Happiness._ Book V, chap. xxiv. London,
1793.
(3) Proudhon, Pierre Joseph. _What Is Property?_ An inquiry into the
principle of right and of government. Translated from the French by B.
R. Tucker. New York, 189-?
(4) Zenker, E. V. _Anarchism._ A criticism and history of the anarchist
theory. Translated from the German. New York, 1897. [With
bibliographical references.]
(5) Bailie, William. _Josiah Warren, the First American Anarchist._ A
sociological study. Boston, 1906.
(6) Russell, B. A. W. _Proposed Roads to Freedom._ Socialism, anarchism,
and syndicalism. New York, 1919.
(7) Mackay, Thomas, editor. _A Plea for Liberty._ An argument against
socialism and socialistic legislation. New York, 1891.
(8) Spencer, Herbert. "The Man _versus_ the State," Appendix to _Social
Statics_. New York, 1897.
(9) Marx, Karl, and Engels, Frederick. _Manifesto of the Communist
Party._ Authorized English translation edited and annotated by Frederick
Engels. London, 1888.
(10) Stein, L. _Der Socialismus und Communismus des heutigen
Frankreichs._ Ein Beitrag zur Zeitgeschichte. Leipzig, 1848.
(11) Guyot, Édouard. _Le Socialisme et l'évolution de l'Angleterre
contemporaine_ (1880-1911). Paris, 1913.
(12) Flint, Robert. _Socialism._ 2d ed. London, 1908.
(13) Beer, M. _A History of British Socialism._ Vol. I, "From the Days
of the Schoolmen to the Birth of Chartism." Vol. II, "From Chartism to
1920." London, 1919-21.
(14) Levine, Louis. _Syndicalism in France._ 2d ed. New York, 1914.
(15) Brissenden, Paul F. _The I. W. W._ A study of American syndicalism.
New York, 1919. [Bibliography.]
(16) Brooks, John Graham. _American Syndicalism._ New York, 1913.
(17) ----. _Labor's Challenge to the Social Order._ Democracy its own
critic and educator. New York, 1920.
VII. COMPETITION AND "THE INNER ENEMIES"
A. _The Struggle for Existence and Its Social Consequences_
(1) Henderson, Charles R. _Introduction to the Study of the Dependent,
Defective, and Delinquent Classes, and of Their Social Treatment._ 2d
ed. Boston, 1908.
(2) Grotjahn, Alfred. _Soziale Pathologie._ Versuch einer Lehre von den
sozialen Beziehungen der menschlichen Krankheiten als Grundlage der
sozialen Medizin und der sozialen Hygiene. Berlin, 1912.
(3) Lilienfeld, Paul de. _La Pathologie sociale._ Avec une préface de
René Worms. Paris, 1896.
(4) Thompson, Warren S. _Population._ A study in Malthusianism. New
York, 1915.
(5) Field, James A. "The Early Propagandist Movement in English
Population Theory," _American Economic Association Bulletin_, 4th Ser.,
I (1911), 207-36.
(6) Heron, David. _On the Relation of Fertility in Man to Social
Status._ And on the changes in this relation that have taken place
during the last fifty years. London, 1906.
(7) Elderton, Ethel M. "Report on the English Birthrate." University of
London, Francis Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics. _Eugenics
Laboratory Memoirs_, XIX-XX. London, 1914.
(8) D'Ambrosio, Manlio A. _Passività Economica._ Primi principi di una
teoria sociologica della popolazione economicamente passiva. Napoli,
1909.
(9) Ellwood, Charles A. _Sociology and Modern Social Problems._ Rev. ed.
New York, 1913.
B. _Poverty, Labor, and the Proletariat_
(1) Woods, Robert A., Elsing, W. T., and others. _The Poor in Great
Cities._ Their problems and what is being done to solve them. New York,
1895.
(2) Rowntree, B. Seebohm. _Poverty, a Study of Town Life._ London, 1901.
(3) Devine, Edward T. _Misery and Its Causes._ New York, 1909.
(4) Marx, Karl. _Capital._ A critical analysis of capitalist production.
Chap. xv, "Machinery and Modern Industry." Translated from the third
German edition by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, and edited by
Frederick Engels. London, 1908.
(5) Hobson, John A. _Problems of Poverty._ An inquiry into the
industrial condition of the poor. London, 1891.
(6) Kydd, Samuel [Alfred, pseud.] _The History of the Factory Movement._
From the year 1802 to the enactment of the ten hours' bill in 1847. 2
vols. London, 1857.
(7) Rowntree, B. S., and Lasker, Bruno. _Unemployment, a Social Study._
London, 1911.
(8) Beveridge, William Henry. _Unemployment._ A problem of industry. 3d
ed. London, 1912.
(9) Parmelee, Maurice. _Poverty and Social Progress._ New York, 1916.
(10) Gillin, John L. _Poverty and Dependency._ Their relief and
prevention. New York, 1921.
(11) Sombart, Werner. _Das Proletariat; Bilder und Studien._ Frankfurt
am Main, 1906.
(12) Riis, Jacob A. _How the Other Half Lives._ Studies among the
tenements of New York. New York, 1890.
(13) Nevinson, Margaret W. _Workhouse Characters and Other Sketches of
the Life of the Poor._ London, 1918.
(14) Sims, George R. _How the Poor Live; and Horrible London._ London,
1898.
C. _The Industrially Handicapped_
(1) Best, Harry. _The Deaf._ Their position in society and the provision
for their education in the United States. New York, 1914.
(2) ----. _The Blind._ Their condition and the work being done for them
in the United States. New York, 1919.
(3) United States Bureau of the Census. _The Blind and the Deaf, 1900._
Washington, 1906.
(4) ----. _Deaf-Mutes in the United States._ Analysis of the census of
1910 with summary of state laws relating to the deaf as of January 1,
1918. Washington, 1918.
(5) ----. _The Blind in the United States 1910._ Washington, 1917.
(6) Niceforo, Alfredo. _Les Classes pauvres._ Recherches
anthropologiques et sociales. Paris, 1905.
(7) Goddard, Henry H. _Feeble-mindedness, Its Causes and Consequences._
Chap. i, "Social Problems," pp. 1-20. New York, 1914.
(8) Popenoe, Paul B., and Johnson, Roswell H. _Applied Eugenics._ Chap.
ix, "The Dysgenic Classes," pp. 176-83. New York, 1918.
(9) Pintner, Rudolph, and Toops, Herbert A. "Mental Test of Unemployed
Men," _Journal of Applied Psychology_, I (1917), 325-41; II (1918),
15-25.
(10) Oliver, Thomas. _Dangerous Trades._ The historical, social, and
legal aspects of industrial occupations affecting health, by a number of
experts. New York, 1902.
(11) Jarrett, Mary C. "The Psychopathic Employee: a Problem of
Industry," _Bulletin of the Massachusetts Commission on Mental
Diseases_, I (1917-18), Nos. 3-4, 223-38. Boston, 1918.
(12) Thompson, W. Gilman. _The Occupational Diseases._ Their causation,
treatment, and prevention. New York, 1914.
(13) Kober, George M., and Hanson, William C., editors. _Diseases of
Occupation and Vocational Hygiene._ Philadelphia, 1916.
(14) Great Britain. Ministry of Munitions. _Health of Munition Workers
Committee._ Hours, fatigue, and health in British munition factories.
Reprints of the memoranda of the British Health of Munition Workers
Committee, April, 1917. Washington, 1917.
(15) Great Britain Home Department. _Report of the Committee on
Compensation for Industrial Diseases._ London, 1907.
(16) McMurtrie, Douglas C. _The Disabled Soldier._ With an introduction
by Jeremiah Milbank. New York, 1919.
(17) Rubinow, I. M. "A Statistical Consideration of the Number of Men
Crippled in War and Disabled in Industry," _Publication of Red Cross
Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men_. Series I, No. 4, Feb. 14,
1918.
(18) Love, Albert G., and Davenport, C. B. _Defects Found in Drafted
Men._ Statistical information compiled from the draft records showing
the physical condition of the men registered and examined in pursuance
of the requirements of the selective-service act. War Department, U.S.
Surgeon General's Office, Washington, 1920.
D. _Alcoholism and Drug Addiction_
(1) Partridge, George E. _Studies in the Psychology of Intemperance._
New York, 1912.
(2) Kelynack, T. N. _The Drink Problem of Today in Its
Medicosociological Aspects._ New York, 1916.
(3) Kerr, Norman S. _Inebriety or Narcomania._ Its etiology, pathology,
treatment, and jurisprudence. 3d ed. London, 1894.
(4) Elderton, Ethel M. "A First Study of the Influence of Parental
Alcoholism on the Physique and Ability of the Offspring." _Eugenics
Laboratory Memoirs_, University of London, Francis Galton Laboratory for
National Eugenics. London, 1910.
(5) Koren, John. _Economic Aspects of the Liquor Problem._ An
investigation made for the Committee of Fifty under the direction of
Henry W. Farnam. Boston, 1899.
(6) Towns, Charles B. _Habits that Handicap._ The menace of opium,
alcohol, and tobacco, and the remedy. New York, 1916.
(7) Wilbert, Martin I. "The Number and Kind of Drug Addicts," _U.S.
Public Health Reprint_, No. 294. Washington, 1915.
(8) Rowntree, B. Seebohm. _Land and Labour: Lessons from Belgium._ Chap.
xxvi, "The Drink Problem." London, 1910.
(9) McIver, J., and Price, G. F. "Drug Addiction," _Journal of the
American Medical Association_, LXVI (1915), 476-80. [A study of 147
cases.]
(10) Stanley, L. L. "Drug Addictions," _Journal of the American
Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology_, X (1919), 62-70. [Four case
studies.]
E. _Crime and Competition_
(1) Parmelee, Maurice. _Criminology._ Chap. vi, pp. 67-91. New York,
1918.
(2) Bonger, William A. _Criminality and Economic Conditions._ Translated
from the French by H. P. Horton, with editorial preface by Edward
Lindsey and with an introduction by Frank H. Norcross. Boston, 1916.
(3) Tarde, G. "La Criminalité et les phénomènes économiques," _Archives
d'anthropologie criminelle_, XVI (1901), 565-75.
(4) Van Kan, J. _Les Causes économiques de la criminalité._ Étude
historique et critique d'étiologie criminelle. Lyon, 1903.
(5) Fornasári di Verce, E. _La Criminalità e le vicende economiche
d'Italia, dal 1873 al 1890, con prefazione di Ces. Lombroso._ Torino,
1894.
(6) Devon, J. _The Criminal and the Community._ London and New York,
1912.
(7) Breckinridge, Sophonisba, and Abbott, Edith. _The Delinquent Child
and the Home._ Chap. iv, "The Poor Child: The Problem of Poverty," pp.
70-89. New York, 1912.
(8) Donovan, Frances. _The Woman Who Waits._ Boston, 1920.
(9) Fernald, Mabel R., Hayes, Mary H. S., and Dawley, Almena. _A Study
of Women Delinquents in New York State._ With statistical chapter by
Beardsley Ruml; preface by Katharine Bement Davis. Chap. xi,
"Occupational History and Economic Efficiency," pp. 304-79. New York,
1920.
(10) Miner, Maude. _The Slavery of Prostitution._ A plea for
emancipation. Chap. iii, "Social Factors Leading to Prostitution," pp.
53-88. New York, 1916.
(11) Ryckère, Raymond de. _La Servante criminelle._ Étude de
criminologie professionelle. Paris, 1908.
TOPICS FOR WRITTEN THEMES
1. The Struggle for Existence and the Survival of the Fittest.
2. Economic Competition and the Economic Equilibrium.
3. "Unfair" Competition and Social Control.
4. Competition versus Sentiment.
5. The History of the Market, the Exchange, the Board of Trade.
6. The Natural History of the Laissez-Faire Theory in Economics and
Politics.
7. Competition, Money, and Freedom.
8. Competition and Segregation in Industry and in Society.
9. The Neo-Malthusian Movement and Race Suicide.
10. The Economic Order of Competition and "the Inner Enemies."
11. The History of the English Poor Law.
12. Unemployment and Poverty in a Competitive, Secondary Society.
13. Modern Economy and the Psychology of Intemperance.
14. Modern Industry, the Physically Handicapped and Programs of
Rehabilitation.
15. Crime in Relation to Economic Conditions.
16. Methods of Social Amelioration: Philanthropy, Welfare Work in
Industry, Social Insurance, etc.
17. Experiments in the Limitation of Competition: Collective Bargaining,
Trade Associations, Trade Boards, etc.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. In what fields did the popular conceptions of competition originate?
2. In what way does competition as a form of interaction differ from
conflict, accommodation, and assimilation?
3. What do you understand to be the difference between struggle,
conflict, competition, and rivalry?
4. What are the different forms of the struggle for existence?
5. In what different meanings do you understand Darwin to use the term
"the struggle for existence"? How many of these are applicable to human
society?
6. What do you understand Darwin to mean when he says: "The structure of
every organic being is related, in the most essential yet often hidden
manner, to that of all the other organic beings with which it comes into
competition for food or residence, or from which it has to escape, or on
which it preys"? Does his principle, in your opinion, also apply to the
structure of social groups?
7. What examples of competition occur to you in human or social
relations? In what respects are they (a) alike, (b) different, from
competition in plant communities?
8. To what extent is biological competition present in modern human
society?
9. Does competition always lead to increased specialization and higher
organization?
10. What evidences are there in society of the effect of competition
upon specialization and organization?
11. What do you understand Crile to mean by the sentence: "In every case
the fate of each creature seems to have been staked upon one mechanism"?
What is this mechanism with man?
12. Do you think that Crile has given an adequate explanation of the
evolution of mind?
13. Is there a difference in the character of the struggle for existence
of animals and of man?
14. What is the difference in competition within a community based on
likenesses and one based on diversities?
15. Compare the ecological concept "reaction" with the sociological
conception "control."
16. What do you understand by the expression "the reaction of a
community is usually more than the sum of the reaction of the component
species and individuals"? Explain.
17. How far can the terms migration, ecesis, and competition, as used by
Clements in his analysis of the invasion of one plant community by
another, be used in the analysis of the process by which immigrants
"invade" this country, i.e., migrate, settle, and are assimilated,
"Americanized"?
18. What are the social forces involved in (a) internal, (b)
foreign, migrations?
19. What do you understand by the term segregation? To what extent are
the social forces making for segregation (a) economic, (b)
sentimental? Illustrate.
20. In what ways has immigration to the United States resulted in
segregation?
21. Does the segregation of the immigrant in our American cities make
for or against (a) competition, (b) conflict, (c) social control,
(d) accommodation, and (e) assimilation?
22. What are the factors producing internal migration in the United
States?
23. In what sense is the drift to the cities a result of competition?
24. What is Ripley's conclusion in regard to urban selection and the
ethnic composition of cities?
25. What are the outstanding results of demographic segregation and
social selection in the United States?
26. What, in your judgment, are the chief characteristics of
inter-racial competition?
27. To what extent do you agree with Walker's analysis of the social
forces involved in race suicide in the United States?
28. In what specific ways is competition now a factor in race suicide?
29. What will be the future effects of inter-racial competition upon the
ethnic stock of the American people?
30. "There is a sense in which much of the orthodox system of political
economy is eternally true." Explain.
31. To what extent and in what sense is economic competition
unconscious?
32. What differences other than innate mental ability enter into
competition between different social groups and different persons?
33. Who are your competitors?
34. Of the existence (as identified persons) of what proportion of these
competitors are you unconscious?
35. What is meant by competitive co-operation? Illustrate. (See pp. 508,
558.)
36. What do you understand by the term "economic equilibrium"?
37. Is "economic equilibrium" identical with "social solidarity"? What
is the relation, if any, between the two concepts?
38. To what extent does competition make for a natural harmony of
individual interests?
39. What did Adam Smith mean by "an invisible hand"?
40. "Civilization is the resultant not of conscious co-operation but of
the unconscious competition of individuals." Do you agree or disagree
with this statement?
41. "By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the
society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it."
What is the argument for and against this position?
42. Why has the laissez-faire theory in economics been largely
abandoned?
43. What do you understand by the term "freedom"? How far may freedom be
identified with freedom of competition?
44. Do you accept the conception of Bastiat that "competition is
liberty"?
45. How does money make for freedom? Does it make for or against
co-operation? Are co-operation and competition mutually antagonistic
terms?
46. Under what circumstances do you have competition between individuals
and competition between groups?
47. What do you understand by the statement that anarchism, socialism,
and communism are based upon the ecological conceptions of society?
48. What is the difference between an opinion or a doctrine taken (a)
as a datum, and (b) as a value?
49. From what point of view may the dependent, the delinquent, and the
defective be regarded as "inner enemies"? Is this notion
individualistic, socialistic, or how would you characterize it?
FOOTNOTES:
[180] Bastiat, Frédéric, _Oeuvres complètes_, tome VI, "Harmonies
économiques," 9e édition, p. 381. (Paris, 1884.)
[181] Walker, Francis A., _Political Economy_, p. 92. (New York, 1887.)
[182] See chap. i, pp. 51-54.
[183] The introduction of the rabbit into Australia, where predatory
competitors are absent, has resulted in so great a multiplication of the
members of this species that their numbers have become an economic
menace. The appearance of the boll weevil, an insect which attacks the
cotton boll, has materially changed the character of agriculture in
areas of cotton culture in the South. Scientists are now looking for
some insect enemy of the boll weevil that will restore the equilibrium.
[184] Adapted from J. Arthur Thomson, _Darwinism and Human Life_, pp.
72-75. (Henry Holt & Co., 1910.)
[185] Adapted from Charles Darwin, _The Origin of Species_, pp. 50-61.
(D. Appleton & Co., 1878.)
[186] Adapted from Charles Darwin, _The Origin of Species_, pp. 97-100.
(D. Appleton & Co., 1878.)
[187] Adapted from George W. Crile, _Man: An Adaptive Mechanism_, pp.
17-39. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1916. Reprinted by permission.)
[188] Adapted from F. E. Clements, _Plant Succession_. An analysis of
the development of vegetation, pp. 75-79. (Carnegie Institution of
Washington, 1916.)
[189] Adapted from Carl Bücher, _Industrial Evolution_, pp. 345-69.
(Henry Holt & Co., 1907.)
[190] From William Z. Ripley, _The Races of Europe_, pp. 537-59. (D.
Appleton & Co., 1899.)
[191] Adapted from Francis A. Walker, _Economics and Statistics_, II,
421-26. (Henry Holt & Co., 1899.)
[192] Adapted from John B. Clark, "The Limits of Competition," in Clark
and Giddings, _The Modern Distributive Process_, pp. 2-8. (Ginn & Co.,
1888.)
[193] Adapted from Adam Smith, _An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of
the Wealth of Nations_, I (1904), 419, 421. (By kind permission of
Messrs. Methuen & Co., Ltd.)
[194] Translated from Frédéric Bastiat, _Oeuvres complètes_, tome VI,
"Harmonies économiques," 9e édition, p. 350. (Paris, 1884.)
[195] Translated from Georg Simmel, _Philosophie des Geldes_, pp.
351-52. (Duncker und Humblot, 1900.)
[196] Henry S. Maine, _Village-Communities in the East and West_, pp.
192-97. (New York, 1889.)
[197] Henry Higgs, _The Physiocrats_, p. 142. (London, 1897.)
[198] Adam Smith, _Wealth of Nations_ (Cannan's edition), I, 342.
London, 1904.
[199] _Ibid._ I, 148.
[200] Thomas Mackay, _A Plea for Liberty_. An argument against socialism
and socialistic legislation, consisting of an introduction by Herbert
Spencer and essays by various writers, p. 24. (New York, 1891.)
[201] _Lectures on the Relation between Law and Opinion in England,
during the Nineteenth Century._ 2d ed. (London, 1914).
[202] _The Principles of Taxation._ Everyman's Library. Preface by F. W.
Kolthamer, p. xii.
[203] _Soziologie_, p. 686. (Leipzig, 1908.)
[204] John Stuart Mill, _On Liberty_. (London, 1859.)
[205] _Criminality and Economic Conditions._ (Boston, 1916.)
CHAPTER IX
CONFLICT
I. INTRODUCTION
1. The Concept of Conflict
The distinction between competition and conflict has already been
indicated. Both are forms of interaction, but competition is a struggle
between individuals, or groups of individuals, who are not necessarily
in contact and communication; while conflict is a contest in which
contact is an indispensable condition. Competition, unqualified and
uncontrolled as with plants, and in the great impersonal life-struggle
of man with his kind and with all animate nature, is unconscious.
Conflict is always conscious, indeed, it evokes the deepest emotions and
strongest passions and enlists the greatest concentration of attention
and of effort. Both competition and conflict are forms of struggle.
Competition, however, is continuous and impersonal, conflict is
intermittent and personal.
Competition is a struggle for position in an economic order. The
distribution of populations in the world-economy, the industrial
organization in the national economy, and the vocation of the individual
in the division of labor--all these are determined, in the long run, by
competition. The status of the individual, or a group of individuals, in
the social order, on the other hand, is determined by rivalry; by war,
or by subtler forms of conflict.
"Two is company, three is a crowd" suggests how easily the social
equilibrium is disturbed by the entrance of a new factor in a social
situation. The delicate nuances and grades of attention given to
different individuals moving in the same social circle are the
superficial reflections of rivalries and conflicts beneath the smooth
and decorous surfaces of polite society.
In general, we may say that competition determines the position of the
individual in the community; conflict fixes his place in society.
Location, position, ecological interdependence--these are the
characteristics of the community. Status, subordination and
superordination, control--these are the distinctive marks of a society.
The notion of conflict, like the fact, has its roots deep in human
interest. Mars has always held a high rank in the hierarchy of the gods.
Whenever and wherever struggle has taken the form of conflict, whether
of races, of nations, or of individual men, it has invariably captured
and held the attention of spectators. And these spectators, when they
did not take part in the fight, always took sides. It was this conflict
of the non-combatants that made public opinion, and public opinion has
always played an important rôle in the struggles of men. It is this that
has raised war from a mere play of physical forces and given it the
tragic significance of a moral struggle, a conflict of good and evil.
The result is that war tends to assume the character of litigation, a
judicial procedure, in which custom determines the method of procedure,
and the issue of the struggle is accepted as a judgment in the case.
The duello, as distinguished from the wager of battle, although it never
had the character of a judicial procedure, developed a strict code which
made it morally binding upon the individual to seek redress for wrongs,
and determined in advance the methods of procedure by which such redress
could and should be obtained. The penalty was a loss of status in the
particular group of which the individual was a member.
It was the presence of the public, the ceremonial character of the
proceedings, and the conviction that the invisible powers were on the
side of truth and justice that gave the trial by ordeal and the trial by
battle a significance that neither the duello nor any other form of
private vengeance ever had.
It is interesting in this connection, also, that political and judicial
forms of procedure are conducted on a conflict pattern. An election is a
contest in which we count noses when we do not break heads. A trial by
jury is a contest in which the parties are represented by champions, as
in the judicial duels of an earlier time.
In general, then, one may say competition becomes conscious and personal
in conflict. In the process of transition competitors are transformed
into rivals and enemies. In its higher forms, however, conflict becomes
impersonal--a struggle to establish and maintain rules of justice and a
moral order. In this case the welfare not merely of individual men but
of the community is involved. Such are the struggles of political
parties and religious sects. Here the issues are not determined by the
force and weight of the contestants immediately involved, but to a
greater or less extent, by the force and weight of public opinion of the
community, and eventually by the judgment of mankind.
2. Classification of the Materials
The materials on conflict have been organized in the readings under four
heads: (a) conflict as conscious competition; (b) war, instincts,
and ideals; (c) rivalry, cultural conflicts, and social organization;
and (d) race conflicts.
a) _Conscious competition._--Self-consciousness in the individual
arises in the contacts and conflicts of the person with other persons.
It manifests itself variously in pride and in humility, vanity and
self-respect, modesty and arrogance, pity and disdain, as well as in
race prejudice, chauvinism, class and caste distinctions, and in every
other social device by which the social distances are maintained.
It is in these various responses called forth by social contacts and
intercourse that the personality of the individual is developed and his
status defined. It is in the effort to maintain this status or improve
it; to defend this personality, enlarge its possessions, extend its
privileges, and maintain its prestige that conflicts arise. This applies
to all conflicts, whether they are personal and party squabbles,
sectarian differences, or national and patriotic wars, for the
personality of the individual is invariably so bound up with the
interests and order of his group and clan, that, in a struggle, he makes
the group cause his own.
Much has been said and written about the economic causes of war, but
whatever may be the ultimate sources of our sentiments, it is probably
true that men never go to war for economic reasons merely. It is because
wealth and possessions are bound up with prestige, honor, and position
in the world, that men and nations fight about them.
b) _War, instincts, and ideals._--War is the outstanding and the
typical example of conflict. In war, where hostility prevails over
every interest of sentiment or utility which would otherwise unite the
contending parties or groups, the motives and the rôle of conflict in
social life present themselves in their clearest outline. There is,
moreover, a practical reason for fixing upon war as an illustration of
conflict. The tremendous interest in all times manifested in war, the
amazing energies and resources released in peoples organized for
military aggression or defense, the colossal losses and sacrifices
endured for the glory, the honor, or the security of the fatherland have
made wars memorable. Of no other of the larger aspects of collective
life have we such adequate records.
The problem of the relation of war to human instincts, on the one hand,
and to human ideals, on the other, is the issue about which most recent
observation and discussion has centered. It seems idle to assert that
hostility has no roots in man's original nature. The concrete materials
given in this chapter show beyond question how readily the wishes and
the instincts of the person may take the form of the fighting pattern.
On the other hand, the notion that tradition, culture, and collective
representations have no part in determining the attitudes of nations
toward war seems equally untenable. The significant sociological inquiry
is to determine just in what ways a conjunction of the tendencies in
original nature, the forces of tradition and culture, and the exigencies
of the situation determine the organization of the fighting pattern. We
have historical examples of warlike peoples becoming peaceful and of
pacific nations militaristic. An understanding of the mechanism of the
process is a first condition to any exercise of control.
c) _Rivalry, cultural conflicts, and social organization._--Rivalry is
a sublimated form of conflict where the struggle of individuals is
subordinated to the welfare of the group. In the rivalry of groups,
likewise, conflict or competition is subordinated to the interests of an
inclusive group. Rivalry may then be defined as conflict controlled by
the group in its interest. A survey of the phenomena of rivalry brings
out its rôle as an organizing force in group life.
In the study of conflict groups it is not always easy to apply with
certainty the distinction between rivalry and conflict made here. The
sect is a conflict group. In its struggle for survival and success with
other groups, its aim is the highest welfare of the inclusive society.
Actually, however, sectarian warfare may be against the moral, social,
and religious interests of the community. The denomination, which is an
accommodation group, strives through rivalry and competition, not only
to promote the welfare of the inclusive society, but also of its other
component groups.
In cultural and political conflict the function of conflict in social
life becomes understandable and reasonable. The rôle of mental conflicts
in the life of the individual is for the purpose of making adjustments
to changing situations and of assimilating new experiences. It is
through this process of conflict of divergent impulses to act that the
individual arrives at decisions--as we say, "makes up his mind." Only
where there is conflict is behavior conscious and self-conscious; only
here are the conditions for rational conduct.
d) _Race conflicts._--Nowhere do social contacts so readily provoke
conflicts as in the relations between the races, particularly when
racial differences are re-enforced, not merely by differences of
culture, but of color. Nowhere, it might be added, are the responses to
social contact so obvious and, at the same time, so difficult to analyze
and define.
Race prejudice, as we call the sentiments that support the racial
taboos, is not, in America at least, an obscure phenomenon. But no one
has yet succeeded in making it wholly intelligible. It is evident that
there is in race prejudice, as distinguished from class and caste
prejudice, an instinctive factor based on the fear of the unfamiliar and
the uncomprehended. Color, or any other racial mark that emphasizes
physical differences, becomes the symbol of moral divergences which
perhaps do not exist. We at once fear and are fascinated by the
stranger, and an individual of a different race always seems more of a
stranger to us than one of our own. This naïve prejudice, unless it is
re-enforced by other factors, is easily modified, as the intimate
relations of the Negroes and white man in slavery show.
A more positive factor in racial antagonism is the conflict of cultures:
the unwillingness of one race to enter into personal competition with a
race of a different or inferior culture. This turns out, in the long
run, to be the unwillingness of a people or a class occupying a superior
status to compete on equal terms with a people of a lower status. Race
conflicts like wars are fundamentally the struggles of racial groups for
status. In this sense and from this point of view the struggles of the
European nationalities and the so-called "subject peoples" for
independence and self-determination are actually struggles for status in
the family of nations.
Under the conditions of this struggle, racial or national consciousness
as it manifests itself, for example, in Irish nationalism, Jewish
Zionism, and Negro race consciousness, is the natural and obvious
response to a conflict situation. The nationalistic movements in Europe,
in India, and in Egypt are, like war, rivalry and more personal forms of
conflict, mainly struggles for recognition--that is, honor, glory, and
prestige.
II. MATERIALS
A. CONFLICT AS CONSCIOUS COMPETITION
1. The Natural History of Conflict[206]
All classes of society, and the two sexes to about the same degree, are
deeply interested in all forms of contest involving skill and chance,
especially where the danger or risk is great. Everybody will stop to
watch a street fight, and the same persons would show an equal interest
in a prize fight or a bull fight, if certain scruples did not stand in
the way of their looking on. Our socially developed sympathy and pity
may recoil from witnessing a scene where physical hurt is the object of
the game, but the depth of our interest in the conflict type of activity
is attested by the fascination which such a game as football has for the
masses, where our instinctive emotional reaction to a conflict situation
is gratified to an intense degree by a scene of the conflict pattern.
If we examine, in fact, our pleasures and pains, our moments of elation
and depression, we find that they go back for the most part to instincts
developed in the struggle for food and rivalry for mates. The structure
of the organism has been built up gradually through the survival of the
most efficient structures. Corresponding with a structure mechanically
adapted to successful movements, there is developed on the psychic side
an interest in the conflict situation as complete and perfect as is the
structure itself. The emotional states are, indeed, organic preparations
for action, corresponding broadly with a tendency to advance or
retreat; and a connection has even been made out between pleasurable
states and the extensor muscles, and painful states and the flexor
muscles. We can have no adequate idea of the time consumed and the
experiments made in nature before the development of these types of
structure and interest of the conflict pattern, but we know from the
geological records that the time and experiments were long and many, and
the competition so sharp that finally, not in man alone, but in all the
higher classes of animals, body and mind, structure and interest, were
working perfectly in motor actions of the violent type involved in a
life of conflict, competition, and rivalry. There could not have been
developed an organism depending on offensive and defensive movements for
food and life without an interest in what we call a dangerous or
precarious situation. A type without this interest would have been
defective, and would have dropped out in the course of development.
The fact that our interests and enthusiasms are called out in situations
of the conflict type is shown by a glance at the situations which arouse
them most readily. War is simply an organized form of fight, and as such
is most attractive, or, to say the least, arouses the interests
powerfully. With the accumulation of property and the growth of
sensibility and intelligence it becomes apparent that war is a wasteful
and unsafe process, and public and personal interests lead us to avoid
it as much as possible. But, however genuinely war may be deprecated, it
is certainly an exciting game. The Rough Riders in this country
recently, and more recently the young men of the aristocracy of England,
went to war from motives of patriotism, no doubt, but there are
unmistakable evidences that they also regarded it as the greatest sport
they were likely to have a chance at in a lifetime. And there is
evidence in plenty that the emotional attitude of women toward war is no
less intense. Grey relates that half a dozen old women among the
Australians will drive the men to war with a neighboring tribe over a
fancied injury. The Jewish maidens went out with music and dancing and
sang that Saul had slain his thousands, but David his ten thousands. The
young women of Havana are alleged, during the late Spanish War, to have
sent pieces of their wardrobe to young men of their acquaintance who
hesitated to join the rebellion, with the suggestion that they wear
these until they went to the war.
The feud is another mode of reaction of the violent, instinctive, and
attractive type. The feud was originally of defensive value to the
individual and to the tribe, since in the absence of criminal law the
feeling that retaliation would follow was a deterrent from acts of
aggression. But it was an expensive method of obtaining order in early
society, since response to stimulus reinstated the stimulus, and every
death called for another death; so, finally, after many experiments and
devices, the state has forbidden the individual to take justice into his
own hands. In out-of-the-way places, however, where governmental control
is weak, men still settle their disputes personally, and one who is
familiar with the course of a feud cannot avoid the conclusion that this
practice is kept up, not because there is no law to resort to, but
because the older mode is more immediate and fascinating. I mean simply
that the emotional possibilities and actual emotional reactions in the
feud are far more powerful than in due legal process.
Gladiatorial shows, bear baiting, bull fighting, dog and cock fighting,
and prize fighting afford an opportunity to gratify the interest in
conflict. The spectator has by suggestion emotional reactions analogous
to those of the combatant, but without personal danger; and vicarious
contests between slaves, captives, and animals, whose blood and life are
cheap, are a pleasure which the race allowed itself until a higher stage
of morality was reached. Pugilism is the modification of the fight in a
slightly different way. The combatants are members of society, not
slaves or captives, but the conflict is so qualified as to safeguard
their lives, though injury is possible and is actually planned. The
intention to do hurt is the point to which society and the law object.
But the prize fight is a fight as far as it goes, and the difficulties
which men will surmount to "pull off" and to witness these contests are
sufficient proof of their fascination. A football game is also a fight,
with the additional qualification that no injury is planned, and with an
advantage over the prize fight in the fact that it is not a
single-handed conflict, but an organized mêlée--a battle where the
action is more massive and complex and the strategic opportunities are
multiplied. It is a fact of interest in this connection that, unless
appearances are deceptive, altogether the larger number of visitors to a
university during the year are visitors to the football field. It is the
only phase of university life which appeals directly and powerfully to
the instincts, and it is consequently the only phase of university life
which appeals equally to the man of culture, the artist, the business
man, the man about town, the all-round sport, and, in fact, to all the
world.
The instincts of man are congenital; the arts and industries are
acquired by the race and must be learned by the individual after birth.
We have seen why the instinctive activities are pleasurable and the
acquired habits irksome. The gambler represents a class of men who have
not been weaned from their instincts. There are in every species
biological "sports" and reversions, and there are individuals of this
kind among sporting men who are not reached by ordinary social
suggestion and stimuli. But granting that what we may call the
instinctive interests are disproportionately strong in the sporting
class, as compared with, say, the merchant class, yet these instincts
are also strongly marked in what may roughly be called the artist class
and in spite of a marked psychic disposition for stimuli of the
emotional type; and precisely because of this disposition, the artist
class has a very high social value. Art products are, indeed, perhaps
more highly esteemed than any other products whatever. The artist class
is not, therefore, socially unmanageable because of its instinctive
interest, though perhaps we may say that some of its members are saved
from social vagabondage only because their emotional predisposition has
found an expression in emotional activities to which some social value
can be attached.
2. Conflict as a Type of Social Interaction[207]
That conflict has sociological significance inasmuch as it either
produces or modifies communities of interest, unifications,
organizations, is in principle never contested. On the other hand, it
must appear paradoxical to the ordinary mode of thinking to ask whether
conflict itself, without reference to its consequences or its
accompaniments, is not a form of socialization. This seems, at first
glance, to be merely a verbal question. If every reaction among men is a
socialization, of course conflict must count as such, since it is one of
the most intense reactions and is logically impossible if restricted to
a single element. The actually dissociating elements are the causes of
the conflict--hatred and envy, want and desire. If, however, from these
impulses conflict has once broken out, it is in reality the way to
remove the dualism and to arrive at some form of unity, even if through
annihilation of one of the parties. The case is, in a way, illustrated
by the most violent symptoms of disease. They frequently represent the
efforts of the organism to free itself from disorders and injuries. This
is by no means equivalent merely to the triviality, _si vis pacem para
bellum_, but it is the wide generalization of which that special case is
a particular. Conflict itself is the resolution of the tension between
the contraries. That it eventuates in peace is only a single, specially
obvious and evident, expression of the fact that it is a conjunction of
elements.
As the individual achieves the unity of his personality, not in such
fashion that its contents invariably harmonize according to logical or
material, religious or ethical, standards, but rather as contradiction
and strife not merely precede that unity but are operative in it at
every moment of life; so it is hardly to be expected that there should
be any social unity in which the converging tendencies of the elements
are not incessantly shot through with elements of divergence. A group
which was entirely centripetal and harmonious--that is, "unification"
merely--is not only impossible empirically, but it would also display no
essential life-process and no stable structure. As the cosmos requires
_Liebe und Hass_, attraction and repulsion, in order to have a form,
society likewise requires some quantitative relation of harmony and
disharmony, association and dissociation, liking and disliking, in order
to attain to a definite formation. Society, as it is given in fact, is
the result of both categories of reactions, and in so far both act in a
completely positive way. The misconception that the one factor tears
down what the other builds up, and that what at last remains is the
result of subtracting the one from the other (while in reality it is
much rather to be regarded as the addition of one to the other),
doubtless springs from the equivocal sense of the concept of unity.
We describe as unity the agreement and the conjunction of social
elements in contrast with their disjunctions, separations, disharmonies.
We also use the term unity, however, for the total synthesis of the
persons, energies, and forms in a group, in which the final wholeness
is made up, not merely of those factors which are unifying in the
narrower sense, but also of those which are, in the narrower sense,
dualistic. We associate a corresponding double meaning with disunity or
opposition. Since the latter displays its nullifying or destructive
sense _between the individual elements_, the conclusion is hastily drawn
that it must work in the same manner upon the _total relationship_. In
reality, however, it by no means follows that the factor which is
something negative and diminutive in its action between individuals,
considered in a given direction and separately, has the same working
throughout the totality of its relationships. In this larger circle of
relationships the perspective may be quite different. That which was
negative and dualistic may, after deduction of its destructive action in
particular relationships, on the whole, play an entirely positive rôle.
This visibly appears especially in those instances where the social
structure is characterized by exactness and carefully conserved purity
of social divisions and gradations.
The social system of India rests not only upon the hierarchy of the
castes but also directly upon the reciprocal repulsion. Enmities not
merely prevent gradual disappearance of the boundaries within the
society--and for this reason these enmities may be consciously promoted,
as guaranty of the existing social constitution--but more than this, the
enmities are directly productive sociologically. They give classes and
personalities their position toward each other, which they would not
have found if these objective causes of hostility had been present and
effective in precisely the same way but had not been accompanied by the
feeling of enmity. It is by no means certain that a secure and complete
community life would always result if these energies should disappear
which, looked at in detail, seem repulsive and destructive, just as a
qualitatively unchanged and richer property results when unproductive
elements disappear; but there would ensue rather a condition as changed,
and often as unrealizable, as after the elimination of the forces of
co-operation--sympathy, assistance, harmony of interests.
The opposition of one individual element to another in the same
association is by no means merely a negative social factor, but it is in
many ways the only means through which coexistence with individuals
intolerable in themselves could be possible. If we had not power and
right to oppose tyranny and obstinacy, caprice and tactlessness, we
could not endure relations with people who betray such characteristics.
We should be driven to deeds of desperation which would put the
relationships to an end. This follows not alone for the self-evident
reason--which, however, is not here essential--that such disagreeable
circumstances tend to become intensified if they are endured quietly and
without protest; but, more than this, opposition affords us a subjective
satisfaction, diversion, relief, just as under other psychological
conditions, whose variations need not here be discussed, the same
results are brought about by humility and patience. Our opposition gives
us the feeling that we are not completely crushed in the relationship.
It permits us to preserve a consciousness of energy, and thus lends a
vitality and a reciprocity to relationships from which, without this
corrective, we should have extricated ourselves at any price. In case
the relationships are purely external, and consequently do not reach
deeply into the practical, the latent form of conflict discharges this
service, i.e., aversion, the feeling of reciprocal alienation and
repulsion, which in the moment of a more intimate contact of any sort is
at once transformed into positive hatred and conflict. Without this
aversion life in a great city, which daily brings each into contact with
countless others, would have no thinkable form. The activity of our
minds responds to almost every impression received from other people in
some sort of a definite feeling, all the unconsciousness, transience,
and variability of which seem to remain only in the form of a certain
indifference. In fact, this latter would be as unnatural for us as it
would be intolerable to be swamped under a multitude of suggestions
among which we have no choice. Antipathy protects us against these two
typical dangers of the great city. It is the initial stage of practical
antagonism. It produces the distances and the buffers without which this
kind of life could not be led at all. The mass and the mixtures of this
life, the forms in which it is carried on, the rhythm of its rise and
fall--these unite with the unifying motives, in the narrower sense, to
give to a great city the character of an indissoluble whole. Whatever in
this whole seems to be an element of division is thus in reality only
one of its elementary forms of socialization.
A struggle for struggle's sake seems to have its natural basis in a
certain formal impulse of hostility, which forces itself sometimes upon
psychological observation, and in various forms. In the first place, it
appears as that natural enmity between man and man which is often
emphasized by skeptical moralists. The argument is: Since there is
something not wholly displeasing to us in the misfortune of our best
friends, and, since the presupposition excludes, in this instance,
conflict of material interests, the phenomenon must be traced back to an
a priori hostility, to that _homo homini lupus_, as the frequently
veiled, but perhaps never inoperative, basis of all our relationships.
3. Types of Conflict Situations[208]
a) _War._--The reciprocal relationship of primitive groups is
notoriously, and for reasons frequently discussed almost invariably, one
of hostility. The decisive illustration is furnished perhaps by the
American Indians, among whom every tribe on general principles was
supposed to be on a war footing toward every other tribe with which it
had no express treaty of peace. It is, however, not to be forgotten that
in early stages of culture war constitutes almost the only form in which
contact with an alien group occurs. So long as inter-territorial trade
was undeveloped, individual tourneys unknown, and intellectual community
did not extend beyond the group boundaries, there was, outside of war,
no sociological relationship whatever between the various groups. In
this case the relationship of the elements of the group to each other
and that of the primitive groups to each other present completely
contrasted forms. Within the closed circle hostility signifies, as a
rule, the severing of relationships, voluntary isolation, and the
avoidance of contact. Along with these negative phenomena there will
also appear the phenomena of the passionate reaction of open struggle.
On the other hand, the group as a whole remains indifferently side by
side with similar groups so long as peace exists. The consequence is
that these groups become significant for each other only when war breaks
out. That the attitude of hostility, considered likewise from this point
of view, may arise independently in the soul is the less to be doubted
since it represents here, as in many another easily observable
situation, the embodiment of an impulse which is in the first place
quite general, but which also occurs in quite peculiar forms, namely,
_the impulse to act in relationships with others_.
In spite of this spontaneity and independence, which we may thus
attribute to the antagonistic impulse, there still remains the question
whether it suffices to account for the total phenomena of hostility.
This question must be answered in the negative. In the first place, the
spontaneous impulse does not exercise itself upon every object but only
upon those that are in some way promising. Hunger, for example, springs
from the subject. It does not have its origin in the object.
Nevertheless, it will not attempt to satisfy itself with wood or stone
but it will select only edible objects. In the same way, love and
hatred, however little their impulses may depend upon external stimuli,
will yet need some sort of opposing object, and only with such
co-operation will the complete phenomena appear. On the other hand, it
seems to me probable that the hostile impulse, on account of its formal
character, in general intervenes, only as a reinforcement of conflicts
stimulated by material interest, and at the same time furnishes a
foundation for the conflict. And where a struggle springs up from sheer
formal love of fighting, which is also entirely impersonal and
indifferent both to the material at issue and to the personal opponent,
hatred and fury against the opponent as a person unavoidably increase in
the course of the conflict, and probably also the interest in the stake
at issue, because these affections stimulate and feed the psychical
energy of the struggle. It is advantageous to hate the opponent with
whom one is for any reason struggling, as it is useful to love him with
whom one's lot is united and with whom one must co-operate. The
reciprocal attitude of men is often intelligible only on the basis of
the perception that actual adaptation to a situation teaches us those
feelings which are appropriate to it; feelings which are the most
appropriate to the employment or the overcoming of the circumstances of
the situation; feelings which bring us, through psychical association,
the energies necessary for discharging the momentary task and for
defeating the opposing impulses.
Accordingly, no serious struggle can long continue without being
supported by a complex of psychic impulses. These may, to be sure,
gradually develop into effectiveness in the course of the struggle. The
purity of conflict merely for conflict's sake, accordingly, undergoes
adulteration, partly through the admixture of objective interests,
partly by the introduction of impulses which may be satisfied otherwise
than by struggle, and which, in practice, form a bridge between struggle
and other forms of reciprocal relationship. I know in fact only a single
case in which the stimulus of struggle and of victory in itself
constitutes the exclusive motive, namely, the war game, and only in the
case that no further gain is to arise than is included in the outcome of
the game itself. In this case the pure sociological attraction of
self-assertion and predominance over another in a struggle of skill is
combined with purely individual pleasure in the exercise of purposeful
and successful activity, together with the excitement of taking risks
with the hazard of fortune which stimulates us with a sense of mystic
harmony of relationship to powers beyond the individual, as well as the
social occurrences. At all events, the war game, _in its sociological
motivation_, contains absolutely nothing but struggle itself. The
worthless markers, for the sake of which men often play with the same
earnestness with which they play for gold pieces, indicate the formalism
of this impulse which, even in the play for gold pieces, often far
outweighs the material interest. The thing to be noticed, however, is
that, in order that the foregoing situations may occur, certain
sociological forms--in the narrower sense, unifications--are
presupposed. There must be agreement in order to struggle, and the
struggle occurs under reciprocal recognition of norms and rules. In the
motivation of the whole procedure these unifications, as said above, do
not appear, but the whole transaction shapes itself under the forms
which these explicit or implicit agreements furnish. They create the
technique. Without this, such a conflict, excluding all heterogeneous or
objective factors, would not be possible. Indeed, the conduct of the war
game is often so rigorous, so impersonal, and observed on both sides
with such nice sense of honor that unities of a corporate order can
seldom in these respects compare with it.
b) _Feud and faction._--The occasion for separate discussion of the
feud is that here, instead of the consciousness of difference, an
entirely new motive emerges--the peculiar phenomenon of social hatred,
that is, of hatred toward a member of a group, not from personal
motives, but because he threatens the existence of the group. In so far
as such a danger threatens through feud within the group, the one party
hates the other, not alone on the material ground which instigated the
quarrel, but also on the sociological ground, namely, that we hate the
enemy of the group as such; that is, the one from whom danger to its
unity threatens. Inasmuch as this is a reciprocal matter, and each
attributes the fault of endangering the whole to the other, the
antagonism acquires a severity which does not occur when membership in a
group-unity is not a factor in the situation. Most characteristic in
this connection are the cases in which an actual dismemberment of the
group has not yet occurred. If this dismemberment has already taken
place, it signifies a certain termination of the conflict. The
individual difference has found its sociological termination, and the
stimulus to constantly renewed friction is removed. To this result the
tension between antagonism and still persisting unity must directly
work. As it is fearful to be at enmity with a person to whom one is
nevertheless bound, from whom one cannot be freed, whether externally or
subjectively, even if one will, so there is increased bitterness if one
will not detach himself from the community because he is not willing to
give up the value of membership in the containing unity, or because he
feels this unity as an objective good, the threatening of which deserves
conflict and hatred. From such a correlation as this springs the
embittering with which, for example, quarrels are fought out within a
political faction or a trade union or a family.
The individual soul offers an analogy. The feeling that a conflict
between sensuous and ascetic feelings, or selfish and moral impulses, or
practical and intellectual ambitions, within us not merely lowers the
claims of one or both parties and permits neither to come to quite free
self-realization but also threatens the unity, the equilibrium, and the
total energy of the soul as a whole--this feeling may in many cases
repress conflict from the beginning. In case the feeling cannot avail to
that extent, it, on the contrary, impresses upon the conflict a
character of bitterness and desperation, an emphasis as though a
struggle were really taking place for something much more essential than
the immediate issue of the controversy. The energy with which each of
these tendencies seeks to subdue the others is nourished not only by
their egoistic interest but by the interest which goes much farther than
that and attaches itself to the unity of the ego, for which this
struggle means dismemberment and destruction if it does not end with a
victory for unity. Accordingly, struggle within a closely integrated
group often enough grows beyond the measure which its object and its
immediate interest for the parties could justify. The feeling
accumulates that this struggle is an affair not merely of the party but
of the group as a whole; that each party must hate in its opponent, not
an opponent merely, but at the same time the enemy of its higher
sociological unity.
c) _Litigation._--Moreover, what we are accustomed to call the joy and
passion of conflict in the case of a legal process is probably, in most
cases, something quite different, namely, the energetic sense of
justice, the impossibility of tolerating an actual or supposed invasion
of the sphere of right with which the ego feels a sense of solidarity.
The whole obstinacy and uncompromising persistence with which parties in
such struggles often maintain the controversy to their own hurt has,
even in the case of the aggressive party, scarcely the character of an
attack in the proper sense, but rather of a defense in a deeper
significance. The point at issue is the self-preservation of the
personality which so identifies itself with its possessions and its
rights that any invasion of them seems to be a destruction of the
personality; and the struggle to protect them at the risk of the whole
existence is thoroughly consistent. This individualistic impulse, and
not the sociological motive of struggle, will consequently characterize
such cases.
With respect to the form of the struggle itself, however, judicial
conflict is, to be sure, of an absolute sort; that is, the reciprocal
claims are asserted with a relentless objectivity and with employment of
all available means, without being diverted or modified by personal or
other extraneous considerations. The judicial conflict is, therefore,
absolute conflict in so far as nothing enters the whole action which
does not properly belong in the conflict and which does not serve the
ends of conflict; whereas, otherwise, even in the most savage struggles,
something subjective, some pure freak of fortune, some sort of
interposition from a third side, is at least possible. In the legal
struggle everything of the kind is excluded by the matter-of-factness
with which the contention, and absolutely nothing outside the
contention, is kept in view. This exclusion from the judicial
controversy of everything which is not material to the conflict may, to
be sure, lead to a formalism of the struggle which may come to have an
independent character in contrast with the content itself. This occurs,
on the one hand, when real elements are not weighed against each other
at all but only quite abstract notions maintain controversy with each
other. On the other hand, the controversy is often shifted to elements
which have no relation whatever to the subject which is to be decided by
the struggle. Where legal controversies, accordingly, in higher
civilizations are fought out by attorneys, the device serves to abstract
the controversy from all personal associations which are essentially
irrelevant. If, on the other hand, Otto the Great ordains that a legal
controversy shall be settled by judicial duel between professional
fighters, there remains of the whole struggle of interests only the bare
form, namely, that there shall be struggle and victory.
This latter case portrays, in the exaggeration of caricature, the
reduction of the judicial conflict to the mere struggle element. But
precisely through its pure objectivity because it stands quite beyond
the subjective antitheses of pity and cruelty, this unpitying type of
struggle, as a whole, rests on the presupposition of a unity and a
community of the parties never elsewhere so severely and constantly
maintained. The common subordination to the law, the reciprocal
recognition that the decision can be made only according to the
objective weight of the evidence, the observance of forms which are held
to be inviolable by both parties, the consciousness throughout the whole
procedure of being encompassed by a social power and order which are the
means of giving to the procedure its significance and security--all this
makes the legal controversy rest upon a broad basis of community and
consensus between the opponents. It is really a unity of a lesser degree
which is constituted by the parties to a compact or to a commercial
transaction, a presupposition of which is the recognition, along with
the antithesis of interests, that they are subject to certain common,
constraining, and obligatory rules. The common presuppositions, which
exclude everything that is merely personal from the legal controversy,
have that character of pure objectivity to which, on its side, the
sharpness, the inexorableness, and the absoluteness of the species of
struggle correspond. The reciprocity between the dualism and the unity
of the sociological relationship is accordingly shown by the judicial
struggle not less than by the war game. Precisely the most extreme and
unlimited phases of struggle occur in both cases, since the struggle is
surrounded and maintained by the severe unity of common norms and
limitations.
d) _The conflict of impersonal ideals._--Finally, there is the
situation in which the parties are moved by an objective interest; that
is, where the interest of the struggle, and consequently the struggle
itself, is differentiated from the personality. The consciousness of
being merely the representative of superindividual claims--that is, of
fighting not for self but only for the thing itself--may lend to the
struggle a radicalism and mercilessness which have their analogy in the
total conduct of many very unselfish and high-minded men. Because they
grant themselves no consideration, they likewise have none for others
and hold themselves entirely justified in sacrificing everybody else to
the idea to which they are themselves a sacrifice. Such a struggle, into
which all the powers of the person are thrown, while victory accrues
only to the cause, carries the character of respectability, for the
reputable man is the wholly personal, who, however, understands how to
hold his personality entirely in check. Hence objectivity operates as
_noblesse_. When, however, this differentiation is accomplished, and
struggle is objectified, it is not subjected to a further reserve, which
would be quite inconsistent; indeed, that would be a sin against the
content of the interest itself upon which the struggle had been
localized. On the basis of this common element between the
parties--namely, that each defends merely the issue and its right, and
excludes from consideration everything selfishly personal--the struggle
is fought out without the sharpness, but also without the mollifyings,
which come from intermingling of the personal element. Merely the
immanent logic of the situation is obeyed with absolute precision. This
form of antithesis between unity and antagonism intensifies conflict
perhaps most perceptibly in cases where both parties actually pursue one
and the same purpose; for example, in the case of scientific
controversies, in which the issue is the establishment of the truth. In
such a case, every concession, every polite consent to stop short of
exposing the errors of the opponent in the most unpitying fashion, every
conclusion of peace previous to decisive victory, would be treason
against that reality for the sake of which the personal element is
excluded from the conflict.
With endless varieties otherwise, the social struggles since Marx have
developed themselves in the above form. Since it is recognized that the
situation of laborers is determined by the objective organization and
formulas of the productive system, independent of the will and power of
individual persons, the personal embitterment incident to the struggle
in general and to local conflicts exemplifying the general conflict
necessarily diminishes. The entrepreneur is no longer, as such, a
blood-sucker and damnable egotist; the laborer is no longer universally
assumed to act from sinful greed; both parties begin, at least, to
abandon the program of charging the other with demands and tactics
inspired by personal malevolence. This literalizing of the conflict has
come about in Germany rather along the lines of theory; in England,
through the operation of the trade unions, in the course of which the
individually personal element of the antagonism has been overcome. In
Germany this was effected largely through the more abstract
generalization of the historical and class movement. In England it came
about through the severe superindividual unity in the actions of the
unions and of the combinations of employers. The intensity of the
struggle, however, has not on that account diminished. On the contrary,
it has become much more conscious of its purpose, more concentrated, and
at the same time more aggressive, through the consciousness of the
individual that he is struggling not merely, and often not at all, for
himself but rather for a vast superpersonal end.
A most interesting symptom of this correlation was presented by the
boycotting of the Berlin breweries by the labor body in the year 1894.
This was one of the most intense local struggles of the last decade. It
was carried on by both sides with extraordinary energy, yet without any
personal offensiveness on either side toward the other, although the
stimulus was close at hand. Indeed, two of the party leaders, in the
midst of the struggle, published their opinions about it in the same
journal. They agreed in their formulation of the objective facts, and
disagreed in a partisan spirit only in the practical conclusions drawn
from the facts. Inasmuch as the struggle eliminated everything
irrelevantly personal, and thereby restricted antagonism quantitatively,
facilitating an understanding about everything personal, producing a
recognition of being impelled on both sides by historical necessities,
this common basis did not reduce but rather increased, the intensity,
the irreconcilability, and the obstinate consistency of the struggle.
B. WAR, INSTINCTS, AND IDEALS
1. War and Human Nature[209]
What can be said of the causes of war--not its political and economic
causes, nor yet the causes that are put forth by the nations engaged in
the conflict, but its psychological causes?
The fact that war to no small extent removes cultural repressions and
allows the instincts to come to expression in full force is undoubtedly
a considerable factor. In his unconscious man really takes pleasure in
throwing aside restraints and permitting himself the luxury of the
untrammeled expression of his primitive animal tendencies. The social
conventions, the customs, the forms, and institutions which he has built
up in the path of his cultural progress represent so much energy in the
service of repression. Repression represents continuous effort, while a
state of war permits a relaxation of this effort and therefore relief.
We are familiar, in other fields, with the phenomena of the unconscious,
instinctive tendencies breaking through the bounds imposed upon them by
repression. The phenomena of crime and of so-called "insanity" represent
such examples, while drunkenness is one instance familiar to all. _In
vino veritas_ expresses the state of the drunken man when his real, that
is, his primitive, self frees itself from restraint and runs riot. The
psychology of the crowd shows this mechanism at work, particularly in
such sinister instances as lynching, while every crowd of college
students marching yelling and howling down the main street of the town
after a successful cane rush exhibits the joy of unbottling the emotions
in ways that no individual would for a moment think of availing himself.
In addition to these active demonstrations of the unconscious there are
those of a more passive sort. Not a few men are only too glad to step
aside from the burden of responsibilities which they are forced to carry
and seek refuge in a situation in which they no longer have to take the
initiative but must only do as they are directed by a superior
authority. The government in some of its agencies takes over certain of
their obligations, such as the support of wife and children, and they
clear out, free from the whole sordid problem of poverty, into a
situation filled with dramatic interest. Then, too, if anything goes
wrong at home they are not to blame, they have done their best, and what
they have done meets with public approval. Is it any wonder that an
inhabitant of the slums should be glad to exchange poverty and dirt, a
sick wife and half-starved children, for glorious freedom, especially
when he is urged by every sort of appeal to patriotism and duty to do
so?
But all these are individual factors that enter into the causes of war.
They represent some of the reasons why men like to fight, for it is
difficult not to believe that if no one wanted to fight war would be
possible at all. They too represent the darker side of the picture. War
as already indicated offers, on the positive side, the greatest
opportunities for the altruistic tendencies; it offers the most glorious
occasion for service and returns for such acts the greatest possible
premium in social esteem. But it seems to me that the causes of war lie
much deeper, that they involve primarily the problems of the herd rather
than the individual, and I think there are good biological analogies
which make this highly probable.
The mechanism of integration explains how the development of the group
was dependent upon the subordination of the parts to the whole. This
process of integration tends to solve more and more effectively the
problems of adjustment, particularly in some aspects, in the direction
of ever-increasing stability. It is the process of the structuralization
of function. This increase in stability, however, while it has the
advantage of greater certainty of reaction, has the disadvantage of a
lessened capacity for variation, and so is dependent for its efficiency
upon a stable environment. As long as nothing unusual is asked of such a
mechanism it works admirably, but as soon as the unusual arises it tends
to break down completely. Life, however, is not stable; it is fluid, in
a continuous state of flux, so, while the development of structure to
meet certain demands of adaptation is highly desirable and necessary, it
of necessity has limits which must sooner or later be reached in every
instance. The most typical example of this is the process of growing
old. The child is highly adjustable and for that reason not to be
depended upon; the adult is more dependable but less adjustable; the old
man has become stereotyped in his reactions. Nature's solution of this
_impasse_ is death. Death insures the continual removal of the no longer
adjustable, and the places of those who die are filled by new material
capable of the new demands. But it is the means that nature takes to
secure the renewal of material still capable of adjustment that is of
significance. From each adult sometime during the course of his life
nature provides that a small bit shall be detached which, in the higher
animals, in union with a similar detached bit of another individual will
develop into a child and ultimately be ready to replace the adult when
he becomes senile and dies. Life is thus maintained by a continuous
stream of germ plasm and is not periodically interrupted in its course,
as it seems to be, by death.
The characteristics of this detached bit of germ plasm are interesting.
It does not manifest any of that complicated structure which we meet
with in the other parts of the body. The several parts of the body are
highly differentiated, each for a specific function. Gland cells are
developed to secrete, muscle cells to contract, bone cells to withstand
mechanical stresses, etc. Manifestly development along any one of these
lines would not produce an individual possessing, in its several parts,
all of these qualities. Development has to go back of the point of
origin of these several variations in order to include them all. In
other words, regeneration has to start with relatively undifferentiated
material. This is excellently illustrated by many of the lower,
particularly the unicellular, animals, in which reproduction is not yet
sexual, but by the simple method of division. A cell comes to rest,
divides into two, and each half then leads an independent existence.
Before such a division and while the cell is quiescent--in the resting
stage, as it is called--the differentiations of structure which it had
acquired in its lifetime disappear; it becomes undifferentiated,
relatively simple in structure. This process has been called
dedifferentiation. When all the differentiations which had been acquired
have been eliminated, then division--rejuvenescence--takes place.
From this point of view we may see in war the preliminary process of
rejuvenescence. International adjustments and compromises are made until
they can be made no longer; a condition is brought about which in Europe
has been termed the balance of power, until the situation becomes so
complicated that each new adjustment has such wide ramifications that it
threatens the whole structure. Finally, as the result of the accumulated
structure of diplomatic relations and precedents, a situation arises to
which adjustment, with the machinery that has been developed, is
impossible and the whole house of cards collapses. The collapse is a
process of dedifferentiation during which the old structures are
destroyed, precedents are disavowed, new situations occur with
bewildering rapidity, for dealing with which there is no recognized
machinery available. Society reverts from a state in which a high grade
of individual initiative and development was possible to a relatively
communistic and paternalistic state, the slate is wiped clear, and a
start can be made anew along lines of progress mapped out by the new
conditions--rejuvenescence is possible.
War, from this point of view, is a precondition for development along
new lines of necessity, and the dedifferentiation is the first stage of
a constructive process. Old institutions have to be torn down before the
bricks with which they were built can be made available for new
structures. This accounts for the periodicity of war, which thus is the
outward and evident aspect of the progress of the life-force which in
human societies, as elsewhere, advances in cycles. It is only by such
means that an _impasse_ can be overcome.
War is an example of ambivalency on the grandest scale. That is, it is
at once potent for the greatest good and the greatest evil: in the very
midst of death it calls for the most intense living; in the face of the
greatest renunciation it offers the greatest premium; for the maximum of
freedom it demands the utmost giving of one's self; in order to live at
one's best it demands the giving of life itself. "No man has reached his
ethical majority who would not die if the real interests of the
community could thus be furthered. What would the world be without the
values that have been bought at the price of death?" In this sense the
great creative force, love, and the supreme negation, death, become one.
That the larger life of the race should go forward to greater things,
the smaller life of the individual must perish. In order that man shall
be born again, he must first die.
Does all this necessarily mean that war, from time to time, in the
process of readjustment, is essential? I think no one can doubt that it
has been necessary in the past. Whether it will be in the future depends
upon whether some sublimated form of procedure can adequately be
substituted. We have succeeded to a large extent in dealing with our
combative instincts by developing sports and the competition of
business, and we have largely sublimated our hate instinct in dealing
with various forms of anti-social conduct as exhibited in the so-called
"criminal." It remains to be seen whether nations can unite to a similar
end and perhaps, by the establishment of an international court, and by
other means, deal in a similar way with infractions of international
law.
2. War as a Form of Relaxation[210]
The fact is that it does not take a very careful reader of the human
mind to see that all the utopias and all the socialistic schemes are
based on a mistaken notion of the nature of this mind.
It is by no means sure that what man wants is peace and quiet and
tranquillity. That is too close to ennui, which is his greatest dread.
What man wants is not peace but a battle. He must pit his force against
someone or something. Every language is most rich in synonyms for
battle, war, contest, conflict, quarrel, combat, fight. German children
play all day long with their toy soldiers. Our sports take the form of
contests in football, baseball, and hundreds of others. Prize fights,
dog fights, cock fights, have pleased in all ages. When Rome for a
season was not engaged in real war, Claudius staged a sea fight for the
delectation of an immense concourse, in which 19,000 gladiators were
compelled to take a tragic part, so that the ships were broken to pieces
and the waters of the lake were red with blood.
You may perhaps recall Professor James's astonishing picture of his
visit to a Chautauqua. Here he found modern culture at its best, no
poverty, no drunkenness, no zymotic diseases, no crime, no police, only
polite and refined and harmless people. Here was a middle-class
paradise, kindergarten and model schools, lectures and classes and
music, bicycling and swimming, and culture and kindness and elysian
peace. But at the end of a week he came out into the real world, and he
said:
Ouf! What a relief! Now for something primordial and savage,
even though it were as bad as an Armenian massacre, to set the
balance straight again. This order is too tame, this culture
too second-rate, this goodness too uninspiring. This human
drama, without a villain or a pang; this community so refined
that ice-cream soda-water is the utmost offering it can make to
the brute animal in man; this city simmering in the tepid
lakeside sun; this atrocious harmlessness of all things--I
cannot abide with them.
What men want, he says, is something more precipitous, something with
more zest in it, with more adventure. Nearly all the Utopias paint the
life of the future as a kind of giant Chautauqua, in which every man and
woman is at work, all are well fed, satisfied, and cultivated. But as
man is now constituted he would probably find such a life flat, stale,
and unprofitable.
Man is not originally a working animal. Civilization has imposed work
upon man, and if you work him too hard he will quit work and go to war.
Nietzsche says man wants two things--danger and play. War represents
danger.
It follows that all our social utopias are wrongly conceived. They are
all based on a theory of pleasure economy. But history and evolution
show that man has come up from the lower animals through a pain economy.
He has struggled up--fought his way up through never-ceasing pain and
effort and struggle and battle. The utopias picture a society in which
man has ceased to struggle. He works his eight hours a day--everybody
works--and he sleeps and enjoys himself the other hours. But man is not
a working animal, he is a fighting animal. The utopias are ideal--but
they are not psychological. The citizens for such an ideal social order
are lacking. Human beings will not serve.
Our present society tends more and more in its outward form in time of
peace toward the Chautauqua plan, but meanwhile striving and passion
burn in the brain of the human units, till the time comes when they find
this insipid life unendurable. They resort to amusement crazes, to
narcotic drugs, to political strife, to epidemics of crime, and finally
to war. The alcohol question well illustrates the tendencies we are
pointing out. Science and hygiene have at last shown beyond all
question that alcohol, whether in large or smaller doses, exerts a
damaging effect upon both mind and body. It lessens physical and mental
efficiency, shortens life, and encourages social disorder. In spite of
this fact and, what is still more amazing, in spite of the colossal
effort now being put forth to suppress by legislative means the traffic
in liquor, the per capita consumption of alcoholic drinks in the United
States increases from year to year. From a per capita consumption of
four gallons in 1850, it has steadily risen to nearly twenty-five
gallons in 1913.
Narcotic drugs, such as alcohol and tobacco, relieve in an artificial
way the tension upon the brain by slightly paralyzing temporarily the
higher and more recently developed brain centers. The increase in the
use of these drugs is therefore both an index of the tension of modern
life and at the same time a means of relieving it to some extent. Were
the use of these drugs suddenly checked, no student of psychology or of
history could doubt that there would be an immediate increase of social
irritability, tending to social instability and social upheavals.
Psychology, therefore, forces upon us this conclusion. Neither war nor
alcohol can be banished from the world by summary means nor direct
suppressions. The mind of man must be made over. As the mind of man is
constituted, he will never be content to be a mere laborer, a producer
and a consumer. He loves adventure, self-sacrifice, heroism, relaxation.