OPPORTUNITY AND CLASS
EXISTENCE AND INFLUENCE OF CLASS—INHERITANCE CLASSES IN RELATION TO
THE FAMILY—HAS INHERITED PRIVILEGE A SOCIAL VALUE?—HOW FAR
INEQUALITIES OF WEALTH COULD BE PREVENTED BY EQUAL
OPPORTUNITY—ELIMINATION OF ORGANIZED MISERY—EQUAL OPPORTUNITY A
GOOD WORKING IDEAL—WHAT KIND OF EQUALITY IS ATTAINABLE
All societies are more or less stratified into classes, based on
differences in wealth, occupation, and enlightenment, which tend to be
passed on from parents to children; and this stratification creates and
perpetuates difference in opportunity. No one needs to be told that
extreme poverty may mean ill-nurture in childhood—resulting perhaps in
permanent enfeeblement—impaired school work, premature leaving of
school, practical exclusion from higher education, stunting labor in
early years followed by incapacity later, a restrictive and perhaps
degrading environment at all ages, and a hundred other conditions
destructive of free development. A somewhat better economic situation
may still involve disadvantages which, though not so crushing, are
sufficiently serious as bars to higher function.
Professor H. R. Seager, a careful economist, has suggested that the
population of the United States may be roughly divided into five classes
or strata, which are largely non-competing, in the sense that
individuals are in great part shut off from opportunities in classes
above their own. The highest class, enjoying family incomes of more than
three thousand dollars a year, has the fullest opportunity. In the
second class, with incomes of from one thousand five hundred dollars to
three thousand dollars, the boys begin work at sixteen or seventeen
years, and are handicapped in starting by lack of resources and outlook.
They are too apt to choose work which pays well at once, but does not
lead to advancement, and only a very small per cent rise above the
condition of their parents. A third class, with incomes of from six
hundred dollars to one thousand five hundred dollars, is marked by early
marriages, large families, early withdrawal from school, and lack of
outlook. Its members are rarely able to compete for the better positions
with classes one and two. A fourth class, of wage-earners at from one to
two dollars a day (at the time the book was published), shows the same
conditions accentuated. Their necessarily low standard of living and its
mental and social implications bar a rise in the world, and they
compete, as a rule, only for that grade of work to which they are born.
The fifth is a misery class, in which the most destructive and degrading
conditions prevail.[14]
I am not sure that this analysis is not somewhat one-sided, especially
in allowing too little influence to the relaxing effects of ease upon
those born in the upper class, but it is certainly nearer the truth than
the optimistic dogma that in this free country every one has an equal
chance.
And lack of pecuniary resource is by no means the only thing that
restricts opportunity and confines one within a class. To grow up where
the schools are poor and the neighborhood associations degrading, to
belong to a despised race, to come of an immigrant group not yet
assimilated to the language and customs of the country, or simply to
have vicious or unwise parents, may prevent healthy development
irrespective of economic resources.[15]
The existence of inherited stratification is due to the fact that the
child is involved in the situation of the family. As long as the latter
surrounds him, determining his economic support and social environment,
there must be a strong tendency for the condition of the parents to be
transmitted. And this merging of the child in the family is in itself no
evil, but arises naturally out of the functions of the family as the
group charged with the nurture of the coming generation.
In other words, there is a certain opposition between the ideal of equal
opportunity and that of family responsibility. Responsibility involves
autonomy, which will produce divergence among families, which, in turn,
will mean divergent conditions for the children; that is, unequal
opportunities. We all recognize that individuals will not remain equal
if they are allowed any freedom; and the same is true of families; even
if they started with the same opportunities they would make different
uses of them, and so create inequalities for the children. And we might
go further back, and say that so long as communities and
occupation-groups have any freedom and responsibility there will be
inequalities among them also, in which families and children will be
involved. A state of absolute equality of opportunity is incompatible
with social freedom and differentiation.
As society is now constituted, it recognizes the responsibility of the
family, in an economic sense at least, and makes the desire to provide
well for one’s children a chief inducement to industry, thrift, and
virtue in general. Unless we are prepared to change all this we must
allow a man to retain for his children any reasonable advantages he may
be able to win. It is only a question of what advantages are reasonable.
No one who thinks in full view of the facts will imagine that anything
like identity of opportunity is possible. There must be diversities of
environment, whether due to family or to other conditions, and these
will diversify the opportunities of the children. Equality is only one
among several phases of a sound social ideal, and must constantly submit
to compromise. There is much to be said for the view that we need to
work toward more definitely organized special environments and
traditions, because of the higher and finer achievement which these make
possible; and if we do, these can hardly fail to impress a greater
diversity upon those born into them.
It is on this ground of the need of special environments and traditions
to foster the finer kind of achievement that inherited privilege has
been most plausibly defended. Thus it is argued that the people who gain
wealth and power have, as a rule, ability above the average, and that
the inheritance of their wealth and position, and often of their
ability, makes possible the growth of a really superior class, with high
traditions and ideals, suitable for leadership in politics, art,
science, philanthropy, and other high functions which do not offer a
pecuniary reward. Certainly we need such a class, and if this is the way
to get it no petty jealousy ought to hinder us. There is no doubt that
the upper classes of Europe have grown up in this way, and have largely
performed these higher functions; and even in American democracy we owe
much of our finer leadership to inherited privilege.
This will probably continue to be the case, and yet there is no good
reason why we should relax our endeavors to make opportunity more equal.
If, through these endeavors, one kind of upper class becomes obsolete,
we may expect the rise of another, based on a freer principle.
The finer kinds of training and ideals may be secured otherwise than
through inherited privilege; namely, by having them organized in
continuing groups and institutions to which individuals are admitted not
through privilege, but freely, on the basis of proved capacity, the
institutions providing them with whatever income they need for their
function. In this way, for example, talented men and women, without
inherited advantage, work their way to careers in art, science, and
education, supported by fellowships and salaries. The fact that an
occupation-group is not hereditary does not at all prevent it from
having an effective class spirit and tradition, as we may see in the
medical or engineering professions. This is the method of open classes,
the ideal one for a modern society, and ought to be developed with the
aim of making all the higher kinds of service sufficiently paid, and so
capable of drawing the talent they need from wherever it may be found.
If the environment of a specially cultured family is at present
essential to the finest culture development, this is perhaps because the
general conditions of culture and early opportunity are not at all what
they might be. When the misery class is abolished and a more discerning
education fosters talent in children from all classes, the value of
special privilege will be reduced.
If opportunity were made as nearly equal as possible, consistently with
preserving the family, we might reasonably expect that the higher
functions of society would be better performed, because there would be a
wider selection of persons to perform them, and also that they would be
cheaper, because of the broader competition. Indeed many hold that we
might come to get the services of the best lawyers, doctors, business
men, and others whose work requires elaborate training, at prices not
much above what are now paid for skilled manual labor.
I think, however, that the latter expectation would be disappointed, and
that no conceivable equalization of opportunity would prevent great
differences in salaries and other gains. Such differences would arise
not only from unlikeness in ability, but also from the incalculable
nature of the social process, which is sure to act differently upon
different persons and result in diverse fortunes.
As regards the professions, even if the requisite education were made
accessible to all, successful practitioners would still, probably,
command large pay. A long technical preparation, such as is necessary
for law or surgery or metallurgy, would still be a difficult and
speculative enterprise, involving foresight, resolution, and risk of
failure, and this barrier would make competent practitioners
comparatively scarce. One cannot be sure that his abilities are of the
right sort, and while many make the venture who are not qualified to
succeed, so, without doubt, many who are qualified do not make it. It is
often a matter of mere luck whether a man discovers what he is fit for
or not, and it is not likely that vocational guidance can altogether
obviate this. The result is that only a part of the potential
competitors actually enter the field, and in the case of the less
settled professions this is apt to be a very small part.
And then such matters as the place where a man begins to practise, and
the connections he makes early in his career, are largely fortuitous and
have results beyond his foresight. One course of circumstances may lead
him into a position where his services are indispensable to a group of
wealthy clients, while another may result very differently. Men with an
ill-paying practice are not necessarily men of less ability than those
who are getting rich.
Still less can we expect that exorbitant gains in business could be
obviated by any possible equality of opportunity. In general such gains
imply not only ability but a fortunate conjunction of circumstances
which could not have been foreseen with any certainty when the man was
making his start. There is an element of luck and speculation in the
matter, the result of which is that of a thousand who started with equal
abilities and opportunities, perhaps only one or two will be on hand at
the right place and time, and with the right equipment to make the most
of an opening. When it appears there is commonly a small group of men in
range of it who are there rather by good fortune than foresight. Of
these the ablest, by endowment and training, will grasp it.
So long as the movements of life are free and unanticipated in anything
like the present measure, the individual will be like a swimmer upon the
surface of a torrent, able to make headway in this direction or that
according to his strength, but still very much at the mercy of the
stream. If he finds himself near a boat he may reach it and climb
aboard, but ninety-nine others who can swim just as well may have all
they can do to keep their heads above water.
This is fairly obvious in common observation. At a gathering, which I
was privileged to attend, of the principal men of a neighboring
commercial city, it seemed that the prevailing type was quite
commonplace. They appeared kindly and of a good business intelligence,
but hardly in such a degree as one might expect in the leading men of a
leading community. Apparently the city had grown and these men attached,
as it were, to the growing branches, had been lifted up accordingly.
I take it that large gains, and even gains that are unjust, so far as
individual merit is concerned, are inevitable, though some of the more
flagrant inequalities might be reduced by social reform. We must, then,
deal with them after they are made, and this points to a policy of
drastic taxation, the revenue to be used for the common welfare, and
also to moral control of the use of wealth through public opinion and
social ideals.
It is probably true that the poor, of a scattered and sporadic sort,
will always be with us; but organized poverty might be abolished. I mean
that the misery class, now existing at the bottom of the economic scale
and perpetuating itself through lack of opportunity for the children,
might be eliminated through minimum standards of family life and cognate
social reforms. For those who, for whatever reason, fall below the
standards there should be a special care designed to prevent their
condition becoming established in misery environments, and so passed on
to another generation. As it is now, lack of opportunity perpetuates
misery, which in turn prevents opportunity, and so on in a vicious
circle. The general result is a state of social degeneracy through which
ignorance, vice, inefficiency, squalor, and lack of ambition are
reproduced in the children. Families not far above the misery line also
need special care to prevent their being crowded over it. While it seems
likely that, in spite of all our precautions, misery will continue to be
generated, we ought to be able to prevent its organization in a
continuous class.
To do this we shall certainly have to proceed with the delicate task of
supplementing family responsibility without essentially impairing it. We
have already come far in this direction, with our compulsory education,
restrictions on child labor, removal from parents of abused or neglected
children, probation officers, mothers’ pensions, visiting nurses,
medical inspection in the schools, and so on. We need to do much more of
the same sort, and the question just how far we can go in a given
direction without doing more harm than good must be decided by
experience.
I think that equal opportunity, though not wholly practicable, is one of
our best working ideals. We are not likely to go too far in this
direction. There is a natural current of privilege, arising from the
tendency of advantages to flow in the family line, and any feasible
diversion into broader channels will probably be beneficial. The
unfailing tendency of possessors to hold on to their possessions and
pass them to their children is guaranty against excessive equalization.
Although dead-level equality is neither possible nor desirable, we may
hope for equality in the sense that every child may have the conditions
of healthy development, and a wide range of choice, including, if he has
the ability, some of the more intellectual occupations. There is such a
thing as a human equality—as distinguished from one that is
mechanical—which would consist in every one having, in one way or
another, a suitable field of growth and self-expression. This would be
reconcilable with great differences of environment and of wealth, but
not with ignorance or extreme poverty.