THE CITIZEN’S LIBRARY
OF
ECONOMICS, POLITICS, AND
SOCIOLOGY
EDITED BY
RICHARD T. ELY, PH.D., LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY,
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN
NEWER IDEALS OF
PEACE
THE CITIZEN’S LIBRARY OF ECONOMICS, POLITICS, AND SOCIOLOGY
_12mo._ _Half Leather_ _$1.25 net, each_
=MONOPOLIES AND TRUSTS.= By RICHARD T. ELY, PH.D., LL.D.
=THE ECONOMICS OF DISTRIBUTION.= By JOHN A. HOBSON.
=WORLD POLITICS.= By PAUL S. REINSCH, PH.D., LL.B.
=ECONOMIC CRISES.= By EDWARD D. JONES, PH.D.
=OUTLINES OF ECONOMICS.= By RICHARD T. ELY.
=GOVERNMENT IN SWITZERLAND.= BY JOHN MARTIN VINCENT, PH.D.
=ESSAYS ON THE MONETARY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.= By CHARLES J.
BULLOCK, PH.D.
=SOCIAL CONTROL.= By EDWARD A. ROSS, PH.D.
=HISTORY OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE UNITED STATES.= By JESSE MACY,
LL.D.
=MUNICIPAL ENGINEERING AND SANITATION.= By M. N. BAKER, PH.B.
=DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL ETHICS.= By JANE ADDAMS, LL.D.
=COLONIAL GOVERNMENT.= By PAUL S. REINSCH, PH.D., LL.B.
=AMERICAN MUNICIPAL PROGRESS.= By CHARLES ZUEBLIN, B.D.
=IRRIGATION INSTITUTIONS.= By ELWOOD MEAD, C.E., M.S.
=RAILWAY LEGISLATION IN THE UNITED STATES.= By BALTHASAR H. MEYER,
PH.D.
=STUDIES IN THE EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY.= By RICHARD T. ELY,
PH.D., LL.D.
=THE AMERICAN CITY.= By DELOS F. WILCOX, PH.D.
=MONEY.= By DAVID KINLEY, PH.D.
=THE FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY.= By EDWARD A. ROSS.
=THE ELEMENTS OF SOCIOLOGY.= By FRANK W. BLACKMAR, PH.D.
=COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION.= By PAUL S. REINSCH, PH.D., LL.B.
=AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS.= By HENRY C.
TAYLOR, M.S.AGR., PH.D.
=SOME ETHICAL GAINS THROUGH LEGISLATION.= By FLORENCE KELLEY.
=INTRODUCTION TO BUSINESS ORGANIZATION.= By SAMUEL E. SPARLING, PH.D.
=THE NEWER IDEALS OF PEACE.= By JANE ADDAMS, LL.D.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64-66 FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK
_THE CITIZEN’S LIBRARY_
Newer Ideals of Peace
BY
JANE ADDAMS
HULL-HOUSE, CHICAGO, AUTHOR OF “DEMOCRACY
AND SOCIAL ETHICS,” ETC.
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1906
_All rights reserved_
Copyrighted 1906
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up, electrotyped. Printed December, 1906
THE MASON-HENRY PRESS
SYRACUSE, NEW YORK
TO
Hull-House
AND
its Neighbors
PREFATORY NOTE
These studies in the gradual development of the moral substitutes for
war have been made in the industrial quarter of a cosmopolitan city
where the morality exhibits marked social and international aspects.
Parts of two chapters have been published before in the form of
addresses, and two others as articles in the _North American Review_
and in the _American Journal of Sociology_. All of them however are
held together by a conviction that has been maturing through many years.
Hull-House,
Chicago.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Newer ideals of peace are dynamic; if made operative
will do away with war as a natural process 3
Of the older ideals the appeal to pity is dogmatic 4
The appeal to the sense of prudence also dogmatic
and at this moment seems impotent 5
Outlook for universal peace by international arbitration 6
Primitive and profound impulses operate against impulse
to war 8
Appeal to pity and prudence unnecessary if the cosmopolitan
interest in human affairs is utilized 9
Social morality originates in social affections 11
Emotion determines social relations in the poorer
quarters of a cosmopolitan city 13
New immigrants develop phenomenal powers of association 14
Their ideal of government includes kindliness as
well as protection 15
Crowded city quarters the focal point of governmental
progress 16
Life at these points must shape itself with reference
to the demands of social justice 17
Simple foundations laid there for an international
order 18
Ideals formed “in the depth of anonymous life” make
for realization 20
Impulses toward compassionate conduct imperative 21
The internationalism of good will foreseen by the
philosopher 23
A quickening concern for human welfare; international
aspects illustrated by world-wide efforts
to eradicate tuberculosis, first signs of the substitution
of nurture for warfare 25
This substitution will be a natural process 26
Our very hope for it, a surrender to the ideals of the
humble 27
Accounting must be taken between survivals of militarism
and manifestations of newer humanitarianism 28
Tendency to idealization marked eighteenth-century
humanitarian 29
Newer ideals of this century sustained only by
knowledge and companionship 30
CHAPTER II
SURVIVALS OF MILITARISM IN CITY GOVERNMENT
American Republic founded under the influence of
doctrinaire eighteenth-century ideals. Failure in
municipal administration largely due to their inadequacy 31
Modern substitutes of the evolutionary conception of
progress for eighteenth-century idealism 32
Failure of adjustment between the old form of government
and present condition results in reversion
to military and legal type 34
National governmental machinery provides no vehicle
for organized expression of popular will 35
Historic governments dependent upon force of arms 36
Founders placed too exclusive a value upon the
principles defended by the War of the Revolution.
Example of the overestimation of the
spoils of war 37
Immigration problem an illustration of the failure
to treat our growing Republic in a spirit of progressive
and developing democracy 39
Present immigration due partly to the philosophic
dogmas of the eighteenth-century. Theory of
naturalization still rests upon those dogmas 40
No adequate formulization of newer philosophy although
immigration situation has become much
more industrial than political 42
Exploitation of immigrants carried on under guise of
preparation for citizenship 46
Failure to develop a government fitted to varied
peoples 48
Attitude of contempt for immigrant survival of a
spirit of conqueror toward inferior people 49
Contempt reflected by children toward immigrant
parents 50
Universal franchise implies a recognition of social
needs and ideals 52
Difficulties of administering repressive government in
a democracy 54
The attempt inevitably develops the corrupt politician
as a friend of the vicious 56
He must be followed by successive reformers who
represent the righteous and protect tax interests 57
Illustration from the point of view of humble people 58
Dramatic see-saw must continue until we attain the
ideals of an evolutionary democracy 59
Community divided into repressive and repressed,
representing conqueror and conquered 60
CHAPTER III
FAILURE TO UTILIZE IMMIGRANTS IN CITY GOVERNMENT
Democratic governments must reckon with the unsuccessful
if only because they represent majority
of citizens 62
To demand protection from unsuccessful is to fail
in self-government 63
Study of immigrants might develop result in revived
enthusiasm for human possibilities reacting upon
ideals of government 64
Social resources of immigrants wasted through want
of recognition of old habits 65
Illustrated by South Italians’ ability to combine community
life with agricultural occupations, which
is disregarded 66
Anglo-Saxon distrust of experiments with land tenure
and taxation illustrated by Doukhobors 67
Immigrant’s contribution to city life 69
Military ideals blind statesmen to connection between
social life and government 70
Corrupt politician who sees the connection often first
friend of immigrant 71
Real statesmen would work out scheme of naturalization
founded upon social needs 72
Intelligent co-operation of immigrants necessary for
advancing social legislation 74
Daily experience of immigrants not to be ignored as
basis of patriotism 75
Lack of cosmopolitan standard widens gulf between
immigrant parents and children 78
Government is developing most rapidly in its relation
to the young criminal and to the poor and dependent 79
Denver Juvenile Court is significant in its attitude
toward repressive government 81
Good education in reform schools indicates compunction
on the part of the State 83
Government functions extended to care of defectives
and dependents 84
Ignores normal needs of every citizen 85
Socialists would meet the needs of workingmen by
socialized legislation, but refuse to deal with the
present state 86
At present radical changes must come from forces
outside life of the people 87
Imperial governments are now concerning themselves
with primitive essential needs of workingmen 88
Republics restrict functions of the government 90
Is America, in clinging to eighteenth-century traditions,
losing its belief in the average man? 91
CHAPTER IV
MILITARISM AND INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION
American cities slow to consider immigration in relation
to industry 93
Workingmen alone must regard them in relation
to industrial situations 94
Assimilation of immigrants by workingman due both
to economic pressure and to idealism 95
Illustrated by Stock Yards Strike 96
And by the strike in Anthracite Coal Fields 97
In the latter aroused public opinion forced Federal
Government to deal with industrial conditions 98
In complicated modern society not always easy to
see where social order lies 101
Chicago Stock Yards Strike illustrates such a situation 104
Government should have gained the enthusiasm immigrants
gave to union 107
War element an essential part of strike 109
Appeal to loyalty the nearest approach to a moral
appeal 110
Reluctance of United States Government to recognize
matters of industry as germane to government 112
Resulting neglect of civic duty 113
The workingman’s attitude toward war as expressed
by his international organization 114
Commerce the modern representative of conquest 116
Standard of life should be the test of a nation’s prosperity,
so recognized by workingmen 117
Social amelioration undertaken by those in closest
contact with social maladjustments 118
Present difficulties in social reform will continue
until class interests are subordinated to a broader
conception of social progress 119
If self-government were inaugurated by advanced
thinkers now, they would make research into
early forms of industrial governments 121
Autocratic European governments have recognized
workingman’s need of protection 122
Has Democracy a right to refuse this protection? 123
CHAPTER V
GROUP MORALITY IN THE LABOR MOVEMENT
Industrial changes which belong to the community
as a whole have unfortunately divided it into
two camps 124
These are typified by Employers’ Associations and
Trades Unions each developing a group morality 125
Trade Unions at present illustrate the eternal compromise
between the inner concept and the outer
act 127
Present moment one of crisis in Trades Union development 128
Newly organized unions in war state of development
responsible for serious mistakes 130
Tacit admission that a strike is war made during the
Teamsters’ Strike in Chicago in 1905 132
Temporary loss of belief in industrial arbitration 134
Teamsters’ Strike not adjudicated in court threw the
entire city into state of warfare 136
New organizations of employers exhibit traits
of militant youth 138
Public although powerless to intervene, sees grave
social consequences 140
Division of community into classes; increase of race
animosity; spirit of materialism 141
Class prejudice created among children still another
social consequence 142
Disastrous effect of prolonged warfare upon the
labor movement itself 144
Real effort of trades unions at present is for recognition
of the principle of collective bargaining 145
Trades unions are forced to correct industrial ills
inherent in the factory system itself 146
Illustration from limitation of output 147
Illustration from attitude towards improved machinery 148
Disregard of the machine as a social product makes
for group morality on the part of the owner and
employees 149
Contempt resulting from group morality justifies
method of warfare 150
CHAPTER VI
PROTECTION OF CHILDREN FOR INDUSTRIAL EFFICIENCY
Deficiency in protective legislation 151
Contempt for immigrant because of his economic
standing 152
National indifference to condition of working children 154
Temptation to use child labor peculiar to this industrial
epoch 155
Our sensibilities deadened by familiarity 155
Protection of the young the concern of government 156
Effect of premature labor on the child 158
Effect of child labor on the family 161
Effect on the industrial product 162
Effect on civilization 163
Intelligent labor the most valuable asset of our industrial
prosperity 164
Results of England’s foreign commercial policy 165
Lack of consistency in the relation of the state to the
child in the United States 166
Failure of public school system to connect with
present industrial development 167
Correlation of new education with industrial situation 168
Child labor legislation will secure to child its proper
play period 169
Power of association developed through play 171
Co-operation, not coercion, the ideal factory discipline 173
Actual factory system divorced from the instinct of
workmanship 174
The activity of youth should be valuable assets for
citizenship as well as industry 175
Military survivals in city government destroys this
asset 176
The gang a training school for group morality 177
Concern of modern government in the development
of its citizens 179
CHAPTER VII
UTILIZATION OF WOMEN IN CITY GOVERNMENT
The modern city founded upon military ideals 180
Early franchise justly given to grown men on basis
of military duty 181
This early test no longer fitted to the modern city
whose problems are internal 182
Women’s experience in household details valuable to
civic housekeeping. No method of making it
available 184
Municipal suffrage to be regarded not as a right or a
privilege, but as a piece of governmental machinery 187
Franchise not only valuable as exercised by educated
women, matters to be decided upon too basic
to be influenced by modern education 188
Census of 1900 shows greater increase of workingwomen
than of men and increasing youth of
working women 189
Concerted action of women necessary to bring about
industrial protection 191
Women can control surroundings of their work only
by means of franchise 192
Unfair to put task of industrial protection upon
women’s trades unions as it often confuses issues 194
Closer connection between industry and government
would result if working women were enfranchised 196
Failure to educate women to industrial life disastrous
to industry itself and to women as employers 197
Situation must be viewed in relation to recent immigration
and in connection with present stage
of factory system in America 199
NEWER IDEALS OF PEACE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The following pages present the claims of the newer, more aggressive
ideals of peace, as over against the older dovelike ideal. These newer
ideals are active and dynamic, and it is believed that if their forces
were made really operative upon society, they would, in the end, quite
as a natural process, do away with war. The older ideals have required
fostering and recruiting, and have been held and promulgated on the
basis of a creed. Their propaganda has been carried forward during the
last century in nearly all civilized countries by a small body of men
who have never ceased to cry out against war and its iniquities and who
have preached the doctrines of peace along two great lines. The first
has been the appeal to the higher imaginative pity, as it is found in
the modern, moralized man. This line has been most effectively followed
by two Russians, Count Tolstoy in his earlier writings and Verestchagin
in his paintings. With his relentless power of reducing all life to
personal experience Count Tolstoy drags us through the campaign of
the common soldier in its sordidness and meanness and constant sense
of perplexity. We see nothing of the glories we have associated with
warfare, but learn of it as it appears to the untutored peasant who
goes forth at the mandate of his superior to suffer hunger, cold, and
death for issues which he does not understand, which, indeed, can have
no moral significance to him. Verestchagin covers his canvas with
thousands of wretched wounded and neglected dead, with the waste,
cruelty, and squalor of war, until he forces us to question whether a
moral issue can ever be subserved by such brutal methods.
High and searching as is the preaching of these two great Russians who
hold their art of no account save as it serves moral ends, it is still
the appeal of dogma, and may be reduced to a command to cease from
evil. And when this same line of appeal is presented by less gifted
men, it often results in mere sentimentality, totally unenforced by a
call to righteousness.
The second line followed by the advocates of peace in all countries has
been the appeal to the sense of prudence, and this again has found its
ablest exponent in a Russian subject, the economist and banker, Jean de
Bloch. He sets forth the cost of warfare with pitiless accuracy, and
demonstrates that even the present armed peace is so costly that the
burdens of it threaten social revolution in almost every country in
Europe. Long before the reader comes to the end of de Bloch’s elaborate
computation he is ready to cry out on the inanity of the proposition
that the only way to secure eternal peace is to waste so much valuable
energy and treasure in preparing for war that war becomes impossible.
Certainly no theory could be devised which is more cumbersome, more
roundabout, more extravagant, than the _reductio ad absurdum_ of
the peace-secured-by-the-preparation-for-war theory. This appeal to
prudence was constantly emphasized at the first Hague Conference and
was shortly afterward demonstrated by Great Britain when she went to
war in South Africa, where she was fined one hundred million pounds
and lost ten thousand lives. The fact that Russia also, and the very
Czar who invited the Conference, disregarded the conclusions of the
Hague Tribunal makes this line of appeal at least for the moment seem
impotent to influence empires which command enormous resources and
which lodge the power of expenditure in officials who have nothing to
do with accumulating the treasure they vote to expend.
It would, however, be the height of folly for responsible statesmen
to ignore the sane methods of international discussion and concession
which have been evolved largely as a result of these appeals. The
Interparliamentary Union for International Arbitration and the
Institute of International Law represent the untiring efforts of the
advocates of peace through many years. Nevertheless universal peace,
viewed from the point of the World’s Sovereignty or of the Counsel of
Nations, is discouraging even when stated by the most ardent promoters
of the peace society. Here it is quite possible that the mistake is
being repeated which the old annalists of history made when they
never failed to chronicle the wars and calamities which harassed
their contemporaries, although, while the few indulged in fighting,
the mass of them peacefully prosecuted their daily toil and followed
their own conceptions of kindliness and equity. An English writer[1]
has recently bidden us to look at the actual state of affairs existing
at the present moment. He says, “Universal and permanent peace may be
a vision; but the gradual change whereby war, as a normal state of
international relations, has given place to peace as the normal state,
is no vision, but an actual process of history palpably forwarded in
our own day by the development of international law and of morals,
and voluntary arbitration based thereon.” He insists that it is the
function of international lawyers merely to give coherent expression
to the best principles which the common moral sense of civilized
Governments recognizes; in other words, that international law should
be like primitive law within the nation, a formal expression of custom
resting on the sense of a reciprocal restraint which has been found to
be necessary for the common good.
Assuming that the two lines of appeal--the one to sensibility and the
other to prudence--will persist, and that the international lawyers, in
spite of the fact that they have no court before which to plead and no
executive to enforce their findings, will continue to formulate into
codes the growing moral sense of the nations, the following pages hope
not only to make clear the contention that these forces within society
are so dynamic and vigorous that the impulses to war seem by comparison
cumbersome and mechanical, but also to point out the development of
those newer social forces which it is believed will at last prove a
“sovereign intervention” by extinguishing the possibility of battle at
its very source.
It is difficult to formulate the newer dynamic peace, embodying the
later humanism, as over against the old dogmatic peace. The word
“non-resistance” is misleading, because it is much too feeble and
inadequate. It suggests passivity, the goody-goody attitude of
ineffectiveness. The words “overcoming,” “substituting,” “re-creating,”
“readjusting moral values,” “forming new centres of spiritual energy”
carry much more of the meaning implied. For it is not merely the desire
for a conscience at rest, for a sense of justice no longer outraged,
that would pull us into new paths where there would be no more war nor
preparations for war. There are still more strenuous forces at work
reaching down to impulses and experiences as primitive and profound
as are those of struggle itself. That “ancient kindliness which sat
beside the cradle of the race,” and which is ever ready to assert
itself against ambition and greed and the desire for achievement, is
manifesting itself now with unusual force, and for the first time
presents international aspects.
Moralists agree that it is not so much by the teaching of moral
theorems that virtue is to be promoted as by the direct expression of
social sentiments and by the cultivation of practical habits; that in
the progress of society sentiments and opinions have come first, then
habits of action and lastly moral codes and institutions. Little is
gained by creating the latter prematurely, but much may be accomplished
to the utilization of human interests and affections. The Advocates
of Peace would find the appeal both to Pity and Prudence totally
unnecessary, could they utilize the cosmopolitan interest in human
affairs with the resultant social sympathy that at the present moment
is developing among all the nations of the earth.
By way of illustration, I may be permitted to cite the London showman
who used to exhibit two skulls of Shakespeare--one when he was a youth
and went poaching, another when he was a man and wrote plays. There
was such a striking difference between the roystering boy indulging in
illicit sport and the mature man who peopled the London stage with all
the world, that the showman grew confused and considered two separate
acts of creation less improbable than that such an amazing change
should have taken place. We can easily imagine the gifted youth in the
little group of rustics at Stratford-on-Avon finding no adequate outlet
for his powers save in a series of break-neck adventures. His only
alternative was to sit by the fire with the village cronies, drinking
ale so long as his shillings held out. But if we follow him up to
London, through all the charm and wonder of the stage which represented
his unfolding mind, if we can imagine his delight as he gradually
gained the freedom, not only of that big town, but of the human city
as well, we can easily see that illicit sport could no longer attract
him. To have told the great dramatist the night Hamlet first stepped
upon the boards that it was a wicked thing to poach, to have cautioned
him that he must consider the cost of preserving the forest and of
raising the deer, or to have made an appeal to his pity on behalf of
the wounded creatures, would have been the height of folly, because
totally unnecessary. All desire, almost all memory of those days, had
dropped from him, through his absorption in the great and exciting
drama of life. His effort to understand it, to portray it, had utilized
and drained his every power. It is equally true of our contemporaries,
as it was of the great play-wright, that the attainment of this
all-absorbing passion for multiform life, with the desire to understand
its mysteries and to free its capacities, is gradually displacing the
juvenile propensities to warfare.
From this standpoint the advocates of the newer Ideals of Peace would
have little to do but to insist that the social point of view be kept
paramount, realizing at the same time that the social sentiments are as
blind as the egoistic sentiments and must be enlightened, disciplined
and directed by the fullest knowledge. The modern students of human
morality have told us that primitive man, by the very necessities of
his hard struggle for life, came at last to identify his own existence
with that of his tribe. Tribal life then made room within itself for
the development of that compassion which is the first step towards
sensibility and higher moral sentiment. If we accept this statement
then we must assume that the new social morality, which we so sadly
need, will of necessity have its origin in the social affections--we
must search in the dim borderland between compassion and morality for
the beginnings of that cosmopolitan affection, as it is prematurely
called.
The life of the tribal man inevitably divided into two sets of actions,
which appeared under two different ethical aspects: the relation within
the tribe and the relation with outsiders, the double conception of
morality maintaining itself until now. But the tribal law differed no
more widely from inter-tribal law than our common law does from our
international law. Until society manages to combine the two we shall
make no headway toward the Newer Ideals of Peace.
If we would institute an intelligent search for the social conditions
which make possible this combination we should naturally seek for
them in the poorer quarters of a cosmopolitan city where we have, as
nowhere else, the conditions for breaking into this double development;
for making a fresh start, as it were, toward a synthesis upon a higher
moral line which shall include both. There is every opportunity and
necessity for compassion and kindliness such as the tribe itself
afforded, and there is in addition, because of the many nationalities
which are gathered there from all parts of the world, the opportunity
and necessity for breaking through the tribal bond. Early associations
and affections were not based so much on ties of blood as upon that
necessity for defense against the hostile world outside which made the
life of every man in a tribe valuable to every other man. The fact
of blood was, so to speak, an accident. The moral code grew out of
solidarity of emotion and action essential to the life of all.
In the midst of the modern city which, at moments, seems to stand
only for the triumph of the strongest, the successful exploitation
of the weak, the ruthlessness and hidden crime which follow in the
wake of the struggle for existence on its lowest terms, there come
daily--at least to American cities--accretions of simple people, who
carry in their hearts a desire for mere goodness. They regularly
deplete their scanty livelihood in response to a primitive pity, and,
independent of the religions they have professed, of the wrongs they
have suffered, and of the fixed morality they have been taught, have
an unquenchable desire that charity and simple justice shall regulate
men’s relations. It seems sometimes, to one who knows them, as if they
continually sought for an outlet for more kindliness, and that they are
not only willing and eager to do a favor for a friend, but that their
kindheartedness lies in ambush, as it were, for a chance to incorporate
itself in our larger relations, that they persistently expect that
it shall be given some form of governmental expression. This is
doubtless due partly to the fact that emotional pity and kindness are
always found in greatest degree among the unsuccessful. We are told
that unsuccessful struggle breeds emotion, not strength; that the
hard-pressed races are the emotional races; and that wherever struggle
has long prevailed emotion becomes the dominant force in fixing social
relations. Is it surprising, therefore, that among this huge mass of
the unsuccessful, to be found in certain quarters of the modern city,
we should have the “medium,” in which the first growth of the new
compassion is taking place?
In addition to this compassion always found among the unsuccessful,
emotional sentiment runs high among the newly arrived immigrants
as a result of the emotional experiences of parting from home and
kindred, to which he has been so recently subjected. An unusual mental
alertness and power of perception also results from the upheaval. The
multitudes of immigrants flooding the American cities have many times
sundered social habits cherished through a hundred generations, and
have renounced customs that may be traced to the habits of primitive
man. These old habits and customs have a much more powerful hold than
have mere racial or national ties. In seeking companionship in the new
world, all the immigrants are reduced to the fundamental equalities and
universal necessities of human life itself, and they inevitably develop
the power of association which comes from daily contact with those who
are unlike each other in all save the universal characteristics of man.
When looked at too closely, this nascent morality disappears, and one
can count over only a thousand kindly acts and neighborly offices. But
when meditated upon in the whole, there at once emerge again those vast
and dominant suggestions of a new peace and holiness. It would seem as
if our final help and healing were about to issue forth from broken
human nature itself, out of the pathetic striving of ordinary men, who
make up the common substance of life: from those who have been driven
by economic pressure or governmental oppression out of a score of
nations.
These various peoples who are gathered together in the immigrant
quarters of a cosmopolitan city worship goodness for its own value,
and do not associate it with success any more than they associate
success with themselves; they literally “serve God for nought.”
If we would adduce evidence that we are emerging from a period of
industrialism into a period of humanitarianism, it is to such quarters
that we must betake ourselves. These are the places in which it is
easiest to study the newer manifestations of government, in which
personal welfare is considered a legitimate object; for a new history
of government begins with an attempt to make life possible and human
in large cities, in those crowded quarters which exhibit such an
undoubted tendency to barbarism and degeneracy when the better human
qualities are not nourished. Public baths and gymnasiums, parks and
libraries, are provided first for those who are without the security
for bare subsistence, and it does not seem strange to them that it
should be so. Such a community is made up of men who will continue to
dream of Utopian Governments until the democratic government about
them expresses kindliness with protection. Such men will continue to
rely upon neighborly friendliness until organized charity is able
to identify impulsive pity with well-considered relief. They will
naïvely long for an education for their children that will fit them to
earn money until public education shall come to consider industrial
efficiency. As their hopes and dreams are a prophecy of the future
development in city government, in charity, in education, so their
daily lives are a forecast of coming international relations. Our
attention has lately been drawn to the fact that it is logical that
the most vigorous efforts in governmental reform, as well as the most
generous experiments in ministering to social needs, have come from the
larger cities and that it is inevitable that they should be to-day “the
centers of radicalism,” as they have been traditionally the “cradles of
liberty.”[2]
If we once admit the human dynamic character of progress, then it is
easy to understand why the crowded city quarters become focal points of
that progress.
A deeper and more thorough-going unity is required in a community
made up of highly differentiated peoples than in a more settled and
stratified one, and it may be logical that we should find in this
commingling of many peoples a certain balance and concord of opposing
and contending forces; a gravitation toward the universal. Because of
their difference in all external matters, in all of the non-essentials
of life, the people in a cosmopolitan city are forced to found their
community of interests upon the basic and essential likenesses of their
common human nature; for, after all, the things that make men alike
are stronger and more primitive than the things that separate them. It
is natural that this synthesis of the varying nations should be made
first at the points of the greatest congestion, quite as we find that
selfishness is first curbed and social feeling created at the points
where the conflict of individual interests is sharpest. One dares not
grow too certain as to the wells of moral healing which lie under the
surface of the sullen work-driven life which the industrial quarters
of the modern city present. They fascinate us by their mere size and
diversity, as does the city itself; but certain it is, that these
quarters continually confound us by their manifestations of altruism.
It may be that we are surprised simply because we fail to comprehend
that the individual, under such pressure, must shape his life with
some reference to the demands of social justice, not only to avoid
crushing the little folk about him, but in order to save himself from
death by crushing. It is an instance of the irresistible coalescing
of the altruistic and egoistic impulse which is the strength of social
morality. We are often told that men under this pressure of life become
calloused and cynical, whereas anyone who lives with them knows that
they are sentimental and compassionate.
It is possible that we shall be saved from warfare by the “fighting
rabble” itself, by the “quarrelsome mob” turned into kindly citizens
of the world through the pressure of a cosmopolitan neighborhood. It
is not that they are shouting for peace--on the contrary, if they
shout at all, they will continue to shout for war--but that they are
really attaining cosmopolitan relations through daily experience.
They will probably believe for a long time that war is noble and
necessary both to engender and cherish patriotism; and yet all of the
time, below their shouting, they are living in the kingdom of human
kindness. They are laying the simple and inevitable foundations for an
international order as the foundations of tribal and national morality
have already been laid. They are developing the only sort of patriotism
consistent with the intermingling of the nations; for the citizens of a
cosmopolitan quarter find an insuperable difficulty when they attempt
to hem in their conception of patriotism either to the “old country”
or to their adopted one. There arises the hope that when this newer
patriotism becomes large enough, it will overcome arbitrary boundaries
and soak up the notion of nationalism. We may then give up war, because
we shall find it as difficult to make war upon a nation at the other
side of the globe as upon our next-door neighbor.
These humble harbingers of the Newer Ideals of Peace, venturing
themselves upon a larger relationship, are most touching; and while
the success of their efforts can never be guaranteed or spoken of too
confidently, they stir us with a strange hope, as if new vistas of life
were opening before us--vistas not illuminated with the glare of war,
but with a mellowed glow of their own. These paths are seen distinctly
only as we ascend to a more enveloping point of view and obtain a
larger and bulkier sense of the growing sentiment which rejects the old
and negative bonds of discipline and coercion and insists upon vital
and fraternal relationship, subordinating the lower to the higher.
To make this hope valid and intelligible, is indeed the task before
these humble brethren of ours and of those who would help them. They
encourage us to hope for the discovery of a new vital relation--that
of the individual to the race--which may lay the foundation for a new
religious bond adequate to the modern situation; and we almost come
to believe that such a foundation is, in fact, being laid now--not in
speculation, but in action.
That which secured for the early Hebrew shepherd his health, his peace
of mind, and his sense of connection with the Unseen, became the
basis for the most wonderful and widespread religion the world has
ever known. Perhaps, at this moment, we need to find that which will
secure the health, the peace of mind, and the opportunity for normal
occupation and spiritual growth to the humblest industrial worker, as
the foundation for a rational conduct of life adapted to an industrial
and cosmopolitan era.
Even now we only dimly comprehend the strength and irresistible power
of those “universal and imperious ideals which are formed in the
depths of anonymous life,” and which the people insist shall come to
realization, not because they have been tested by logic or history,
but because the mass of men are eager that they should be tried as
a living experience. According to our different methods of viewing
society, we express this newer ideal which is after all so old as to
have been engendered in the tribe itself. He who makes the study of
society a mere corollary of biology, speaks of the “theory of the
unspecialized,” that the simple cell develops much more rapidly when
new tissue is needed than the more highly developed one; he who views
society from the economic standpoint and finds hope only in a changed
industrial order, talks of the “man at the bottom of society,” of the
proletarian who shall eventually come into his own; he who believes
that a wiser and a saner education will cure our social ill, speaks
ever and again of “the wisdom of the little child” and of the necessity
to reveal and explore his capacity; while he who keeps close to the
historic deductions upon which the study of society is chiefly founded,
uses the old religious phrase, “the counsel of imperfection,” and bids
us concern ourselves with “the least of these.”
The French have a phrase _l’imperieuse bonté_ by which they designate
those impulses towards compassionate conduct which will not be denied,
because they are as imperative in their demand for expression as is
the impulse to make music or to soften life by poesy and decoration.
According to this definition, St. Francis was a genius in exactly the
same sense as was Dante or Raphael, and he revealed quite as they did,
possibilities and reaches of the human soul hitherto unsuspected. This
genius for goodness has in the past largely expressed itself through
individuals and groups, but it may be that we are approaching a period
which shall give it collective expression, and shall unite into one
all those private and parochial efforts. It would be no more strange
than was that marvelous coming together of the artists and the people
in the thirteenth century which resulted in the building of the Gothic
cathedrals. We may be waiting for a religious enthusiasm, for a divine
fire to fuse together the partial and feeble efforts at “doing good”
into a transfigured whole which shall take on international proportions
as naturally as the cathedrals towered into unheard-of heights.
The Gothic cathedrals were glorious beyond the dreams of artists,
notwithstanding that they were built by unknown men, or rather by so
many men that it was a matter of indifference to record their names.
Could we compare the present humanitarian efforts to the building of
a spiritual cathedral, it would seem that the gargoyles had been made
first, that the ground is now strewn with efforts to “do good” which
have developed a diabolical capacity for doing harm. But even these
may fall into place. The old cathedral-builders fearlessly portrayed
all of life, its inveterate tendency to deride as well as to bless;
its trickery as well as its beauty. Their art was catholic enough to
portray all, and the cathedral was huge enough to mellow all they
portrayed into a flowing and inspired whole.
At the present moment it requires the philosopher to unify these
spiritual efforts of the common man into the internationalism of good
will, as in the past it was natural that the philosophers, the men
who looked at life as a whole, should have been the first to sigh for
negative peace which they declared would be “eternal.”
Speculative writers, such as Kant, Bentham, and Buckle, long ago
pointed out that the subsidence of war was inevitable as society
progressed. They contended that every stage of human progress is marked
by a further curtailment of brute force, a limitation of the area in
which it is permitted. At the bottom is the small savage community in
a perpetual state of warfare; at the top an orderly society stimulated
and controlled by recognized ideals of social justice. In proportion
as the savage society comes under the dominion of a common moral
consciousness, it moves up, and in proportion as the civilized society
reverts to the use of brute force, it goes down. Reversion to that
brute struggle may at any moment cost the destruction of the painfully
acquired bonds of equity, the ties of mutual principle, which are
wrought with such effort and loosed with such ease. But these earlier
philosophers could not possibly have foreseen the tremendous growth
of industry and commerce with their inevitable cosmopolitanism which
has so recently taken place, nor without knowledge of this could they
possibly have prognosticated the leap forward and the aggressive
character which the concern for human welfare has latterly evinced.
The speculative writers among our contemporaries are naturally the
only ones who formulate this new development, or rather bid us heed
its presence among us. An American philosopher[3] has lately reminded
us of the need to “discover in the social realm the moral equivalent
for war--something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war
has done, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual natures
as war has proved itself to be incompatible.” It may be true that we
are even now discovering these moral substitutes, although we find
it so difficult to formulate them. Perhaps our very hope that these
substitutes may be discovered has become the custodian of a secret
change that is going on all about us. We care less each day for the
heroism connected with warfare and destruction, and constantly admire
more that which pertains to labor and the nourishing of human life.
The new heroism manifests itself at the present moment in a universal
determination to abolish poverty and disease, a manifestation so
widespread that it may justly be called international.
In illustration of this new determination one immediately thinks of
the international effort to rid the face of the earth of tuberculosis,
in which Germany, Italy, France, England and America are engaged with
such enthusiasm. This movement has its international congresses,
its discoverers and veterans, also its decorations and rewards for
bravery. Its discipline is severe; it requires self-control, endurance,
self-sacrifice and constant watchfulness. Its leaders devote hours to
careful teaching and demonstration, they reclaim acres of bad houses,
and make over the food supply of huge cities. One could instance
the determination to do away with neglected old age, which finds
expression in the Old Age Pension Acts of Germany and Australia, in the
State Savings Banks of Belgium and France, in the enormous number of
Mutual Benefit Societies in England and America. In such undertakings
as these, with their spontaneous and universal manifestations, are
we beginning to see the first timid forward reach of one of those
instinctive movements which carry onward the progressive goodness of
the race.
It is possible that this substitution of nurture for warfare is
analogous to that world-wide effort to put a limit to revenge which
one nation after another essayed as each reached a certain stage of
development. To compel the avenger to accept blood-money in lieu of
the blood of his enemy may have been but a short step in morals,
but at least it destroyed the stimulus to further shedding of blood
which each avenged death had afforded, and it laid the foundations
for court adjudications. The newer humanitarianism is more aggressive
and substitutes emotional stimuli as well as codes of conduct. We may
predict that each nation quite as a natural process will reach the
moment when virile good-will will be substituted for the spirit of
warfare. The process of extinguishing war, however, compared to the
limiting of revenge, will be amazingly accelerated. Owing to the modern
conditions of intercourse, each nation will respond, not to an isolated
impulse, but will be caught in the current of a world-wide process.
We are much too timid and apologetic in regard to this newer
humanitarianism, and do not yet realize what it may do for us in
the way of courage and endurance. We continue to defend war on the
ground that it stirs the nobler blood and the higher imagination of
the nation, and thus frees it from moral stagnation and the bonds
of commercialism. We do not see that this is to borrow our virtues
from a former age and to fail to utilize our own. We find ourselves
in this plight because our modern morality has lacked fibre, because
our humanitarianism has been much too soft and literary, and has given
itself over to unreal and high-sounding phrases. It appears that our
only hope for a genuine adjustment of our morality and courage to our
present social and industrial developments, lies in a patient effort
to work it out by daily experience. We must be willing to surrender
ourselves to those ideals of the humble, which all religious teachers
unite in declaring to be the foundations of a sincere moral life.
The following pages attempt to uncover these newer ideals as we may
daily experience them in the modern city. It may be found that certain
survivals of militarism in municipal government are responsible for
much of the failure in the working of democratic institutions. We may
discover that the survivals of warfare in the labor movement and all
the other dangers of class morality rest largely upon an appeal to
loyalties which are essentially a survival of the virtues of a warlike
period. The more aggressive aspects of the newer humanitarianism may be
traced in the movement for social amelioration and in the protective
legislation which regards the weakest citizen as a valuable asset.
The same spirit which protests against the social waste of child
labor also demands that the traditional activity of woman shall be
utilized in civic life. When the State protects its civic resources,
as it formerly defended its citizens in time of war, industrialism
versus militarism comes to be nurture versus conquest. In order to
trace the displacement of the military ideals of patriotism by those
of a rising concern for human welfare, we must take an accounting
between those forms of governmental machinery and social organization
which are the historic outgrowth of conquest and repression and the
newer forms arising in their midst which embody the social energy
instantly recognizable as contemporaneous with our sincerest moral
life. To follow this newer humanitarianism even through its obvious
manifestations requires at the very outset a definite abandonment of
the eighteenth-century philosophy upon which so much of our present
democratic theory and philanthropic activity depends. It is necessary
from the very beginning to substitute the scientific method of research
for the a priori method of the school men if we would deal with real
people and obtain a sense of participation with our fellows. The
eighteenth-century humanitarian hotly insisted upon “the rights of
man,” but he loved the people without really knowing them, which is
by no means an impossible achievement. “The love of those whom a man
does not know is quite as elemental a sentiment as the love of those
whom a man does know,” but with this difference, that he shuts himself
away from the opportunity of being caught and carried forward in the
stream of their hopes and aspirations, a bigger and warmer current
than he dreams of. The eighteenth-century humanitarian substituted his
enthusiastic concept of “the natural man” for the warmth which this
stream might have given him, and so long as he dealt with political
concepts it answered his purpose. Mazzini made a most significant
step between the eighteenth-century morality and our own by appealing
beyond “the rights of man” to the “duties to humanity;” but although an
impassioned democrat, he was still a moralist of the earlier type. He
realized with them that the appeal to humanity would evoke a finer and
deeper response than that to patriotism or to any sectional morality;
but he shared the eighteenth-century tendency to idealization. It
remained for the moralist of this generation to dissolve “humanity”
into its component parts of men, women, and children and to serve their
humblest needs with an enthusiasm which, so far from being dependent
upon glamour, can be sustained only by daily knowledge and constant
companionship.
It is no easy task to detect and to follow the tiny paths of progress
which the unencumbered proletarian with nothing but his life and
capacity for labor, is pointing out for us. These paths lead to a type
of government founded upon peace and fellowship as contrasted with
restraint and defence. They can never be discovered with the eyes of
the doctrinaire. From the nature of the case, he who would walk these
paths must walk with the poor and oppressed, and can only approach them
through affection and understanding. The ideals of militarism would
forever shut him out from this new fellowship.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] L. T. Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, page 197.
[2] The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century. A. T. Weber, page
432.
[3] William James, Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University.