Josiah Strong

“ Together they have given to the world more knowledge and more wealth, within the memory of living men, than all other instrumentalities employed in all the countless ages of the past. They have created in the Occidental world a new type of civilization, with which have obtained radically different conditions of life—in one word, a new environment which vitally concerns all classes. ”

“ What if, in each particular, all the states could be brought up to the standard of the most advanced state: how would the nation leap forward in civilization? For instance, the experience of several states has demonstrated the value of juvenile courts and of industrial legislation for children. In the natural course of things it takes years for such reforms to reach the more backward states: whereas the Institute, with the necessary funds, could doubtless educate public opinion so as to secure the desired legislation in one-quarter of the time. ”

“ The American Institute of Social Service is collecting a great mass of facts from Europe, as well as America, which embody experiences of many millions of people; and these facts scientifically interpreted throw light on many social problems, new and old, and afford practical guidance in the conduct of life, and in the establishment of right relations between man and man. Here then we see the fundamental principle and purpose of the Institute, viz.: to make the experience of all available for the instruction of each. ”

“ Now, our decennial census during the nineteenth century established a base line a hundred years long—the first in all history—from which we may measure in the twentieth and in each succeeding century. ”

“ The widespread hostility, if not open conflict, between organized capital and organized labor does violence to economic and social laws no less than to Christian principles. The Institute is striving to educate the public to see that such conflict is as needless and foolish as it is wrong, and cites instances to show that the Golden Rule is workable between masters and men.
Again, the reckless and increasing sacrifice of life and limb in American industry calls for such education of public opinion as will demand and enforce effective legislation touching accidents and their prevention. ”

“ Nature's method of adaptation is costly in time, in money, in suffering, and in life, because so far as man is concerned it is unconscious and therefore unintelligent. The American Institute aims to facilitate this process by making it conscious and intelligent. Do you ask how a work so new, so important and so difficult is to be accomplished? It would require some hours to acquaint you with the specific methods whose effectiveness has been demonstrated during the past five years. ”

“ The Institute desires to establish, as one of its dozen departments, a museum of security, where all such appliances may be collected and studied; and aims to secure in all of our forty-five states such legislation touching this general subject as will save thousands of lives and tens of thousands of limbs every year. An old Indian once said, "It costs too much to be a white man." Civilization always costs, but it "costs too much" just as far as it costs needless suffering and death. ”

“ This calls attention to the fact that the Institute is not simply a great bureau of information where a thousand inquiries concerning social conditions may find answer. It seeks actively to diffuse light even when there is no consciousness that light is needed. It aims through many channels to educate public opinion, which is the generic social reform, including all others. There are many great evils incident to our present stage of industrial and social evolution on which no intelligent lover of his country and his kind can look with indifference. ”

“ As President Roosevelt writes us, "The possibilities of the Institute are well-nigh boundless," and adds, "It is apparently proving to be the beginning of a world movement, and is being recognized by the best men of many different countries as a necessity in each and all of these countries in order to facilitate a readjustment of social relations to the new conditions created by the modern industrial revolution."
A Japanese who visited the Institute this summer in search of a solution of the new labor problems of Japan, remarked, "Civilization is common property." ”

“ Important as it is in social and political science to know precisely where we are, it is even more important to know the direction in which we are moving, for tendency is prophetic; and to establish a line of tendency we must fix more than one point ”

“ They have radically changed the methods of agriculture, of manufacture, of commerce, of travel, and of business; and they are radically changing the methods of charity, of philanthropy, of religion, of reform, and of education. Indeed, it is difficult to name a single field of human activity which has not been profoundly influenced by one or both of these two revolutions. ”

“ Unless prevented by intelligent foresight, the evils which have thus far attended the industrial revolution will accompany it around the world and involve the hundreds of millions of these countries in sufferings as measureless as they will be needless. ”

“ We are therefore bound by every obligation of humanity and religion to safeguard them with our experience, and thus forestall preventable evils, which if not thus prevented will prove to be far more disastrous in the Orient than they have been in the Occident. ”

“ The science of statistics, by which facts are so gathered as to embody truth, and so interpreted as to afford knowledge, is of recent origin. It is a singular fact that our young republic was the first government in the world to take a census at stated intervals. ”

“ Only in recent years have men learned to gather facts, to sift them, and correctly to interpret them, thus creating science. We are only beginning to construct the science of living, which is living in intelligent obedience to all natural laws ”

“ During the past century, and practically during the lifetime of many here present, there have taken place the two greatest revolutions in all history—one in the material world, created by the application of natural forces to industry ”

“ It redistributes population, compacting masses in the city, creating the tenement house with its long list of evils, complicating the problems of sanitation, and raising the death rate. It assumes the role of Herod and slaughters the innocents, while the children who escape from the factory with their lives are commonly pinched and deformed in body and mind. It creates the popular discontent which inevitably springs from the multiplication and popularization of knowledge together with the multiplication and concentration of wealth. ”

“ It is a fundamental law of nature that every form of life, whether vegetable or animal, individual or institutional, must be adapted to its environment. If the latter radically changes, the former must readjust itself or perish. ”

“ Most of the great problems of all the states are substantially the same, as in the case of pauperism, crime, defective and delinquent children, roads, the relations of labor and capital, and the like. ”

“ Most of these evils can be overcome or prevented only by legislation. The Institute aims to establish a department of comparative legislation which will make it possible to compare the laws of all our states and of all civilized countries touching any and every industrial and social problem, and furthermore to compare the effects of these laws, thus affording what the world has not yet possessed—data for scientific legislation. ”

“ The victories of peace are even more bloody than those of war. There were not so many victims of the late Boer war as there were of American railways during the same period. In 1902 our railways killed or wounded 73,250 people. ”

“ When a corporation desires to improve the condition of its employes, the Institute can furnish facts and photographs showing what is being done along these lines by many of the world's great captains of industry, such as Krupp of Essen. ”

“ If to casualties on railroads we could add those in the mining, manufacturing, building and lumber industries, the totals would show a very considerable industrial army killed and a very large industrial army wounded every year. ”

“ But only nine of our forty-five states require operators to report all accidents to their employes in factories and workshops; and the laws of no state require systematic returns of accidents in the building trades. ”

“ In response to inquiries, the Institute's bureau of information is constantly sending materials bearing on social and industrial betterment to newspaper men, ministers, students, teachers, authors, legislators, and the like. ”