Dependency

“ It has done little or nothing to eliminate the cause of dependency and it has spread itself so thin that in spite of its overwhelming extravagance, many whose need is the greatest are provided less than a minimum subsistence. ”

“ The feeble-minded, the epileptic, and the insane constitute a serious burden upon the community.
Defects in government have in some cases either encouraged dependency, or have perpetuated it. In so far as we have neglected legislation designed to reduce the force of industrial maladjustments, political factors may be said markedly to influence dependency. Our tardiness in protecting the labor of women and children is certainly responsible for a share of dependency. Our failure to adopt a comprehensive program of social insurance has added to the burden upon charity. ”

“ With all these superior natural advantages, why do we consent to be a mere dependency? Paying tribute to the amount of one-third of our earn- ings to a city which constantly strives to humble and degrade us ? ”

“ The smallness of the assemblies, or the gradations of dependency, puts one individual within the immediate ken of another, and thus, if by chance a free thought should be born, there is little hope that it shall live. ”

“ But there are other circumstances, all arising from the comparative 231 poverty of the people, which tend to produce, with a most obvious dependency of thing on thing, that deficiency of refinement of which I am speaking. ”

“ A general point in ethical theory is that people aren’t really ‘souvereign consumers’. They grow from dependent children to mature adults to dependent seniors, so that there is always a degree of dependency. Political economy takes this into account. The standard economic approach that assumes souvereign consumers however can still be useful for analysis even while being limited in this respect. ”

“ As the interdependency of each person on the other increases with the complexities of modern society, the circle of people performing vital services increases. Precedents once established often gain momentum by the force of their existence. ”

“ But men in society came to a division of things by agreement. Things not so divided were afterward discovered by individuals and reduced to possession. Thus things came to be subjected to individual control. A complete power of disposition was deduced from this individual control, as something logically implied therein, and this power of disposition furnished the basis for acquisition from others whose titles rested directly or indirectly upon the natural foundation of the original division by agreement or of subsequent discovery and occupation. ”

“ It is the mark set on those, who, not looking up to heaven, to their own soil and industry, as does the husbandman, for their subsistence, depend for it on casualties and caprice of customers. Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition. ”

“ Again, if we should study almshouse paupers, we should expect to find the causes of their dependence different from the causes of the temporary dependence of those who are dealt with outside of institutions and largely by private societies, especially the charity organization societies of large cities. It is especially, however, this latter class of temporary dependents that we are most interested in, because they show most clearly the forces operating to produce the various classes of permanent dependents. ”

“ And so little Dependence has this Affair on the Humours and Education of particular Men, that one Part of the same Republic may be wisely conducted, and another weakly, by the very same Men, merely by Reason of the Difference of the Forms and Institutions, by which these Parts are regulated. ”

“ But the universal, that is to say the state, government, and law, is the permanent underlying mean in which the individuals and their satisfaction have and receive their fulfilled reality, inter-mediation, and persistence. Each of the functions of the notion, as it is brought by intermediation to coalesce with the other extreme, is brought into union with itself and produces itself: which production is self-preservation.—It is only by the nature of this triple coupling, by this triad of syllogisms with the name termini, that a whole is thoroughly understood in its organisation. ”

“ It is evident, then, that their first difficulty, in this situation, after the general convention for the establishment of society, and for the constancy of possession, is, how to separate their possessions, and assign to each his particular portion, which he must for the future inalterably enjoy. This difficulty will not detain them long; but it must immediately occur to them, as the most natural expedient, that every one continue to enjoy what he is at present master of, and that property or constant possession be conjoined to the immediate possession. ”

“ The very fact that business and industry are organized on so large a scale soon convinces us that the personal independence of the proprietor no longer exists. Scores of new dependencies and checks hem him about. ”

“ But see how essential these agents are to the present condition of civilization. How many derangements among the wheels of business, and the plans of affection, if merely a snow-drift blocks the cars, or a thunder-storm snaps the wires! Our estimate of necessity, and, therefore, of utility, must be formed according to present conditions, and the legitimate demand that rises out of them; these conditions themselves being the necessary developments of society and of the individual. ”

“ The complete failure of the experiment ought to stand for a precedent, though it seems somehow to have been forgotten. Men, they found, would not work for the common interest as for themselves, and so the idea of a community of dependents was abandoned for an association of independent factors. ”

“ Only as the agricultural state is reached, and only as the tenure of land passes from the tribal form, through the family form, to the individual form, is there a widening of the sphere for the proprietary sentiment.
So that the primitive man, distinguished by his improvidence, distinguished also by deficiency of that desire to own which checks improvidence, is, by his circumstances, debarred from the experiences which develop this desire and diminish the improvidence. ”

“ Can there be duties to one's self, which are of absolute obligation? Duties are dues, and they imply two parties,—one who owes them, and one to whom they are due,—the debtor and the creditor. But the creditor may, at his will, cancel the debt, and release the debtor. In selfward duties, then, why may I not, as creditor, release myself as debtor? Why may I not—so long as I violate no obligation to others—be, at my own pleasure, idle or industrious, self-indulgent or abstinent, frivolous or serious? Why, if life seem burdensome to me, may I not relieve myself of the trouble of living? ”

“ Dependence means hanging. We must all hang. But we want to hang upon something that will not let us down, upon food, air, warmth, exercise, rest, such as are always available in an orderly life, or should be. ”

“ From above downwards through all the grades of society, the same system of responsibility, and the same restraints upon individual exercise of will, persist under varying forms. The conditions within the household differ but little in this regard from the conditions in a government department: no householder, for example, can impose his will, beyond certain fixed limits, even upon his own servants or dependents. Neither for love nor money can a good servant be induced to break with traditional custom ”

“ Habituated from childhood to the forms of subordination at present existing—regarding these as parts of a natural and permanent order—finding satisfaction in supremacy, and conveniences in the possession of authority; the regulators of all kinds remain unconscious that this system, made necessary as it is by the defects of existing human nature, brings round penalties on themselves as well as on those subordinate to them, and that its pervading theory of life is as mistaken as it is ignoble. ”

“ We seek other conditions, by reason we do not understand the use of our own; and go out of ourselves, because we know not how there to reside."
But nevertheless it becomes a necessity for us to understand the wishes of those who demand a change of condition, and it is necessary that they should understand the compensations as well as the limitations of every condition. ”

“ If we apply this law to society, if we assume the existence of reasonable beings around us, then the demand that all the faculties of the individual should be uniformly cultivated includes also the demand that all reasonable beings should be cultivated uniformly with each other. ”

“ So that, while the satisfaction of men's personal wants is furthered both by the maintenance of order and by the formation of aggregates large enough to permit extensive division of labor, it is hindered both by deductions, often very great, from the products of their actions, and by the restraints imposed on their actions, usually in excess of the needs. ”

“ But Induction cannot march up with quite so sure a stride, nor Deduction descend with so large degrees of certainty, in relation to persons endowed with free-will, as in relation to physical substances held firm in the grip of unvaried law. Still, the doubt always attaches far more to the actions of an individual than to the actions of the masses of men. ”

“ Where there is any considerable portion torn at once from one bank and added to another, it becomes not his property, whose land it falls on, till it unite with the land, and till the trees and plants have spread their roots into both. Before that, the thought does not sufficiently join them. In short, we must ever distinguish between the necessity of a separation and constancy in men's possession, and the rules, which assign particular objects to particular persons. ”

“ For, if it be true, as laid down by this English lawyer, that the principles of society; if it be true, that the very principles, or foundations of society dictate, that the destitute person shall have a legal demand for a supply from the rich, sufficient for all the necessities of life; if this be true, and true it certainly is, it follows of course that the principles, that is, the base, or foundation, of society, is subverted, is gone ”

“ A being, independent of any other, has no rule to pursue, but such as he prescribes to himself; but a state of dependance will inevitably oblige the inferior to take the will of him, on whom he depends, as the rule of his conduct: not indeed in every particular, but in all those points wherein his dependance consists. ”

“ At times, the consequences of the conjoint behavior of some persons may be such that a large public interest is generated which can be fulfilled only by laying down conditions which involve a large measure of reconstruction within that group.74 There is no more an inherent sanctity in a church, trade-union, business corporation, or family institution than there is in the state. ”

“ But how can it be shown that the principles applicable to an interchange of conveniences or luxuries apply also to an interchange of necessaries? No state can be such properly, which is not self-subsistent at least; for no state that is not so, is essentially independent. ”

“ An immediate catastrophe, social, political, and moral, would most assuredly be brought about by the granting of full elective rights to dependencies thus inhabited. Enlightened statesmanship should at once perceive the immense benefit that would ultimately result from such refusal of the franchise. ”

“ The objection ordinarily made to a system of community of property and equal distribution of the produce, that each person would be incessantly occupied in evading his fair share of the work, points, undoubtedly, to a real difficulty. ”

“ For there, by the denial of our merely finite or individual selves, we rise into union with the law which imposes on us an unconditional demand, or with the infinite source and end of our spiritual life. ”

“ I am going to write a Political Economy in my heavier moments. The first law I [Pg 382] lay down is, "Whenever there exists a demand, there is no supply." This is the only law that explains the extraordinary contrast between the soul of man and man's surroundings. ”

“ At length, necessity, immediate necessity, presses upon him; his family is made clamorous by want, and his calls of nature and of luxury are equally importunate; he has now lost his credit in the world, and none will employ him, because none will trust him, or employment cannot immediately be, perhaps, obtained; because his place has for a long time been supplied by others. ”

“ The case in which the same person owns all three, embraces the two extremes of existing society, in respect to the independence and dignity of the labouring class. First, when the labourer himself is the proprietor. ”

“ Apparently he held that a principle of acquisition by a temporary power of control co-extensive with possession expressed the nature of man in primitive times and that afterwards, with the growth of civilization, the nature of man in a civilized society was expressed by a principle of complete permanent control of what had been occupied exclusively, including as a necessary incident of such control the ius disponendi. ”

“ If capacity is to decide, where then is incapacity to end? And who is to judge of capacity? But if even property is to be taken as a standard, is not the possessor thus by a twofold preponderance made completely the master of the dependent poor? ”

“ I answer that, Dispensation, properly speaking, denotes a measuring out to individuals of some common goods: thus the head of a household is called a dispenser, because to each member of the household he distributes work and necessaries of life in due weight and measure. ”

“ To pretend that great changes and alienations of property have created new and great dependencies, and consequently new additions of power, as some reasoners have done, is a most dangerous tenet. If dominion must follow property, let it follow in the same pace; for, change in property through the bulk of a nation makes slow marches, and its due power always attends it. ”