Jacob Dorsey Forrest, Charles Harris Hastings, and Paul Monroe

“ The most important factor of national life, is the common people. If one measures the greatness of things by their extent and duration, then the most common becomes the most important, for they represent the principle part of human activity. This offers a field for an exact science. It offers a more important advantage. Through such a study there will develop a true intellectual union of the people, and through this intelligence will develop community, as well as individual, activities and affections. (Frantz Funck-Brentano in La Reform Sociale, January 1896.) ”

“ Neither Individualism nor Collectivism.—Individualism and collectivism are the great antitheses, the two contradictory solutions of an eternal problem. The history of this autonomy is in reality the history of human thought. ”

“ Socialism.—The social sciences, as all other sciences, are largely indebted to the past. There are many in recent times, however, who would break all bonds which unite past, present and future ; who would abolish inheritance in the intellectual world. This is especially true of economic principles. This hatred of principles is an incentive to social disorder. Such skeptics compose the advance guard of socialism. This evil tendency is promoted by the socialists of the chair, the Christian socialists, and the motley crowd who speak on these subjects without having any knowledge of them. ”

“ The problems of persistence of competition cannot be solved by abstract reasoning, but only by going into the particular facts of different groups of production. The tendencies of competition on the one side, and of combination on the other, are always at work, but the conditions that make either the stronger of the two in different trades, in different countries, and at different times, can be learned only by analyzing the legal, technical and psychological facts in the various departments of trade. ”

“ And in the individual associated, in this social man, is found both individual and species, organ and organism. These are the two fundamental principles, individualism and solidarity. The two conceptions are complementary on one condition, however; that is the fusion of the one in the other and the formation of a conception altogether new, as the chemical combination of an acid and a base forms a salt. So individualism and socialism should form a social reaction, producing a new body of religious and economic doctrine. ”

“ Evolution, as revealed in the physiological world, is in its essence the reasonable sequence of the unintended. Social evolution is even more strikingly so. But social progress is a double progress. It is the joint result of evolution, or unmtended changes, and changes introduced designed and carried out by men of various degrees of greatness. ”

“ We can discover not only how the units act but why they act. These inner properties of the social unit not only equal the facts of its external behavior in point of accessibility, but are superior to them. Not only does social science thus naturally begin with the unit, but it is also the unit with which its conclusions end. For these two reasons the methods and theories of physical science are inadequate for social science. ”

“ Contemporary sociologists, notably Herbert Spencer, deliberately reject the methods by which, in social science, the methods of physical science must be supplemented. So far as it goes this method is correct, and its introduction into the study of sociology is a genuine scientific achievement. Furthermore, social evolution is not identical with social progress though in many respects they coincide. There is a large part of social progress which is not evolution; and there may be much evolution which is certainly not progress. ”

“ Knowledge also has value in measuring the intensity of joys and pains, and the duration of the desires and disinclinations. Too-frequent enjoyment is stupefying; too-seldom enjoyment is unsatisfying. The most distant future cannot guide us, because we know too little about it. The realization of a nearly unknown end is impossible. One cares only so far as he can reckon the future; but the future will not be the same to every individual. Foresight is the mother of wisdom, if she does not go astray with the most distant future to bear human foolishness instead of divine wisdom.—Dr. ”

“ If each portion of the goods of a nation goes to satisfy the most real and urgent want, it attains its maximum value in a given condition of society, if it goes otherwise, there is waste. So long as any member of the community is without a "necessary," the distribution which assigns to any other member a "comfort" involves a net waste from the social standpoint. ”

“ If we took a more enlightened utilitarianism for our standard, we might measure the value of economic action by the net balance of rational satisfaction it afforded. A statement of value in terms of expenses of production, or of final utility as measured by money can tell nothing of the "real" effort which has gone to making a supply of wealth, or the "real" utility which is got by consumption. ”

“ Whoever solves this holds the key to all the great theoretical and practical questions in social science, in philosophy, in religion. But a social Christianity ofitrs a conciliation of these two contradictory terms. The religious question and the social question are one. Individualism is insufficient in both, for it undervalues solidarity. So, on the other hand, the collectivist conception is insufficient, for it exaggerates solidarity. For the socialist the individual is only an instrument, a tool, a member of a class. The conception of the state in antiquity is essentially socialistic. ”

“ Social Evolution and Social Progress.—The great triumph of the physical period of science has been the establishment of the theory of evolution. The object of science in its social period is the application of the same theory to the problems of civilization and society. ”

“ Great Britain is a great alembic, where the phenomenon of social distillation continues. The communistic type is being converted into the particularist type. The first step in this change is the transformation of the home; from a condition in which only the crude necessities and comforts of life are desired, to one in which aesthetic and intellectual desires modify and even subordinate the former. The home becomes not only a material thing, but a moral one as well. This is the fundamental distinction in the transformation. In the particularist type the habitation becomes of less importance. ”

“ Fear and hope alone excite the human heart. Thus, a proximate inferior good often attracts more powerfully than a distant, greater one. It is the function of education to strengthen the conceptions of more distant pain and pleasure. Self-command is present when a proximate desire is avoided in order to escape a greater future discomfort or enjoy a greater future pleasure. Knowledge of the causal relations of the joy and sorrow of the future alone bring about self-control. ”

“ In the moderation and mediation of these desires is found the principle of the basis of human welfare. II. Intelligence and self-control. This mediation is impossible without intelligence and self control; for we are concerned with a standard correctly adjusted to circumstances and not with an arithmetical medium. Only a desire for a goal in the future can act as a motive. This future happiness enters into the present conception. But within that future the nearer the point of realization seems to lie, the stronger becomes the desire. ”

“ The distinction of species and individual is only relative. The individual in the abstract does not exist; nor does society in the abstract. That which does exist is the individual associated, and society individualized. ”

“ Statics, like sociology, studies the structure of society, but there is a wide difference between the methods employed respectively. Statistics investigates in the first instance statistical conditions, and phenomena of uniformity, whereas sociology is concerned particularly with the general direction in which human evolution is progressing. ”

“ The new conception makes geography subordinate to history and yet superior to it. It stands to history as anatomy does to art. It becomes a branch of economic as well as of historical inquiry, deriving from that fact twofold importance. In every science which deals with man a similar diversion of opinion can be traced ”

“ This type of home has characterized the Anglo-Saxon race. There are certain significant results of this condition. The first is the small number of domestic servants produced by the Anglo-Saxon race. The second is the great number of those who spring from the working classes and reach the highest stations in life. This also partially explains why the English and Americans are at the same time the richest and the most extravagant of peoples. It is by a betterment of the home that every methodical and profound social reform must begin. ”

“ The standpoint of the church is always that of the communitv rather than that of the individual. The concern of the employer is invariably with the "short run;" of the church with the "long run." The church seems to have committed itself to the principle that control from without is a necessity in modern industrial life. Through the influence of the employing class the center of demand for reform has been shifted to international ground.—John Graham Brooks, in International Journal of Ethics, January 1896. ”

“ Present abuses in France are due to a want of experience in self-government, and to the absence of traditions of civic duty under a democratic form of government. Through the industrial revolution the old guilds decayed, and the laborer; who was formerly owner of his own tools, found himself dependent upon the capitalist. ”

“ The suggestion of economic text-books that the inconvenient or dangerous element is represented by a higher rate of wages, is not borne out by facts. If it were, no true equation is possible between money and life. No person economically competent to enter a "free contract" would work under existing conditions in white lead or linen. The lives of these unfortunate workers do not rank among expenses of production. (2) The distribution of the work. If shared among a large number of able-bodied workers during a reasonably short working day, the cost may be light. ”

“ The attention of economists has never been drawn to the fact that combinations existed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and have been destroyed by opposing forces. Monopolistic combinations were formed in the coal trade in the north of England. An historical sketch is given of the course of these combinations for the "Limitation of the Vends," and of the legislation against them. In 1830 a commission recommended the control of competition, but it was not until the building of railways to other mines was stimulated that the combination broke down. ”

“ The Social Question in France.—Socialism is the historical outcome of democracy; for political equality being secured, the next step was naturally towards social equality, or equality of opportunity At the same time theoretical social reform was quickened in France by the French fondness for the ideal. ”

“ In Baden the number of working women amount to 33 per cent, of all workers, and in Bayern in 1893 to 25.4 per cent, and in 1894 to 24.7 per cent. In Great Bntam in 1870, 60.4 per cent, of the laborers in the cotton industry were men, and in 1890 the proportion stood at 60.6 per cent. In Great Britain the number of females over 10 years old having employment increased from 34.05 in 100 in 1881 to 34.42 in 1891; but in the large industrial cities a smaller per cent of married women was employed in 1891 than in 1881. ”

“ In the legislature the double aim of the socialists is to modify by present measures the pressing grievances of labor, and to prepare step by step for the substitution of "la propriété sociale à la propriété capitaliste." An outline of the general programme of the socialists is here given. Socialism is not likely to be carried to an excess in France, because in no country is there so little inequality of riches. ”

“ The true socialists are these pantheists and doctrinaires of the evolutionary school. There is nothing more doctrinaire than scientific socialism, originating as it does in the Hegelian philosophy. It repeats to satiety the thesis, that the workmg-classes toil in a capitalistic world, excluded from the pleasures of civilization by moral and political laws and institutions which deliver the poor to the exploitation of the rich. Its insufficient and inefficient remedy is to transform man by a change in his environment. (Leon Say, in Journal des Economistes, December 1895.) ”

“ None of the higher or more refined kinds of modern commodities would have any "value" for a barbarous race, however rightly distributed; you may increase the wealth of a nation far more effectively by educating the consumer than by increasing the efficiency of the producer. ”

“ Agitation has been carried almost to the danger point over proposals to shorten labor time, establish a minimum wage, to give legal personality to trade unions. The dilemma which the church has to face is: how to reach the workingmen without adopting the methods of the unions. ”

“ The social question is not so purely a question of wages as often thought, but it is also a question of conduct. And the most judicious use of income is not that which economizes to start the children well in life, but which expends for both parents and children in education and in improving the type of the home. (Edmond Demolins in La Sociale Science, January 1896.)
Competition and Combination.—Supposing competition is indestructible, there is a great difference between what is left of competition in some industries, e. ”