Modernization

“ In fact, while it may lose some of its romance in the telling, the extension of commercial spheres for the most advanced nations is an extension of enlightenment, justice, and modernization which makes for the permanent betterment of those coming under their sway. ”

“ Within the context of our fast-changing society many traditional social values are being replaced as a result of modernization. Cultural patterns are being questioned, and the great masses of people are impatient to acquire for themselves the finer things of life afforded by scientific and technological inno­vation. ”

“ So it is today. The crisis of the past two years and our efforts to surmount it have led us inexorably to this decisive turning point in our history when we either thrust our economy forward into full modernization or forever remain in the shallows; when we either stop once .and for all the challenge of Communism in this country or be overrun by it; when we either attain the full promise of democracy or be led away into alternative routes toward the future. ”

“ One should regard the other technological advances, sciences, arts and political formulae of proven usefulness in the same light—i.e., those procedures which, down the ages, have time and again been put to the test and whose many uses and advantages have demonstrably resulted in the glory and greatness of the state, and the well-being and progress of the people. Should all these be abandoned, for no valid reason, and other methods of reform be attempted, by the time such reforms might eventuate, and their advantages might be put to proof, many years would go by, and many lives. ”

“ Improvement must here be understood in a wide sense, including not only new industrial inventions, or an extended use of those already known, but improvements in institutions, education, opinions, and human affairs generally, provided they tend, as almost all improvements do, to give new motives or new facilities to production. ”

“ What would you say, if by the gradual adoption and diversified application of this single principle, you should see a new scene of things spread itself over the face of civilized society?—morals reformed, health preserved, industry invigorated, instruction diffused, public burthens lightened, economy seated as it were upon a rock, the gordian knot of the poor-laws not cut but untied—all by a simple idea in architecture? ”

“ That accomplished, new fields of inquiry, knowledge, and improvement, will open themselves to the people, on which, by positive, creative action, they will have to build a solid substructure for a broader and higher development of American Civilization. ”

“ It will not be able, in the long run, to lean upon mere theories and maxims; it will be forced by the actual development to undergo changes, to reform and to remodel itself in correspondence with the great laws of historical progress. ”

“ For half a century we called upon unbounded invention and untiring industry to create an order of plenty for all of our people.
The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization. ”

“ If we go back and examine the evolution of government and industry, all this will be made clear; so clear that all may understand it. Certain fixed laws direct and regulate the growth of everything, and they are the same for all departments in the universe. The statement of the laws by which the sidereal and solar systems have evolved, will also describe those which the earth has obeyed, and are the laws of all material, governmental, industrial, intellectual, social, moral and religious change. ”

“ It is this uncontrollable desire to work on and fashion the rough materials that lie under our hands that gives the first impulse to civilization, and impels us onward in the progress of improvement. And wherever we discern the faintest indication that such a principle is at work, there we may securely hope that development will ultimately take place. ”

“ It's sometimes difficult to decide, but we aim for changes that will mean an increased scientific progress, a more advanced industrial technology, more and better education, the opening of opportunity for every member of the culture to exert himself to the full of his abilities. ”

“ If the institutions and practices of western civilization can be adjusted to meet the demands of the new situation created by the scientific, technological, political and cultural revolution, the reformed social apparatus may function in a new day that is dawning for the human family. If reform proves to be impossible, the apparatus of western civilization must be replaced by a social structure in keeping with the requirements of the new age inaugurated by the innovations introduced into the human culture pattern by the revolution of our time. ”

“ Religion, industry, state, education, and literature have been consciously transformed by the heroic efforts of such great men of the world, and these conscious and artificial transformations of the several aspects of social life have been the constituents of a new environment and thus the seeds of Renaissance. ”

“ In their own persons certain of these people possessed the qualities and the will which were imperative for the organization of the industry, the trade, and the finance that were to control the world for four generations, and produce that industrial civilization which is the basis and the energizing force of modernism. ”

“ This relatively small part of its task was still so big as to need the energies of a generation, for it required all the new machinery to be created--capital, banks, mines, furnaces, shops, power-houses, technical knowledge, mechanical population, together with a steady remodelling of social and political habits, ideas, and institutions to fit the new scale and suit the new conditions. The generation between 1865 and 1895 was already mortgaged to the railways, and no one knew it better than the generation itself. ”

“ The new basis of education lies in the changes which the nineteenth century wrought in industry, transforming village life into city dwelling, and substituting for the skilled mechanic, using a tool, the machine, employing the unskilled worker. The men of the eighteenth century made political institutions, and were content with democracy; the men of the nineteenth century, accepting government as it stood, built up a new industry. ”

“ You spoke of innovations, and I also believe it is ill to try experiments in states, unless the need be urgent, and unless it be the reformation that draweth on the change, and not the love of change that urgeth the reformation. Is not time the greatest innovator?—is he not always changing? ”

“ Enterprise and practicalness we are apt to think of as the exclusive possession of much more modern generations. Least of all would we be apt to consider them as likely to be found in the Thirteenth Century, yet here they are, and the commercial arrangements which were made are as absolute premonitions of our modern thought as were the literature and architecture, the painting, even the teachings of science at the same period. ”

“ We have, as I have intimated, passed through the pioneer stage of national development; we have tilled our fields, opened our mines, built our railroads, established our large cities—in short, have laid the foundations of a new and masterful civilization; it now remains for us to show whether we are capable of treating with originality the old problems which confront complex societies, and of solving them for the welfare of the public and the consequent elevation of individual character. ”

“ Slow changes, careful transitions, which follow and reflect the natural progress of events; half concealed and almost unconscious transformations, which do not run counter to consecrated formulas until innovation has secretly gained over the instincts of the people, and has allied itself with long custom — all these different forms of growth take place more easily in England, and even in the United States, than in France. ”

“ Everywhere I found politicians, officials, professors, literary men, commercial men, bankers, Brazilian and European immigrants, united in the same thought: that railways must be built, machinery bought, able engineers engaged, mines explored, cultivation extended, and industries founded to increase the country’s rate of progress by modernising it entirely. ”

“ Yet since national interests, international industry, commerce, science, and therefore progress are nowadays and increasingly so largely one, may we not in conclusion foresee something at least of the great lines of development which are common to cities, and generalise these as we are accustomed to do in history? ”

“ So marked are the changes which society exhibits—especially a society in a progressive state—that the outward and visible forms which our civilisation presents to-day, its public and private buildings, its means of communication, the appliances with which it works, its machinery, its docks, its artificial harbours, its instruments of war and its instruments of peace, have most of them undergone a complete change, and many of them several complete changes, within the last sixty years. ”

“ We might consider the question of the twentieth century progress from other points of view, such as agriculture, architecture, household art, literature, medicine, surgery, social relations, etc., though in doing so we should be considering simply developments of existing conditions. ”

“ His early love of simplicity hardened into a rigid opposition not only to the materialistic modern industrial system but to all change—the Reform Bill, the reform of education, and in general all progressive political and social movements. ”

“ Regarding, then, this conscious organized endeavor, enlightened and stimulated by a fuller understanding of industrial forces in their relation to human life, as a determinant of growing value in the industrial evolution of the future, it may properly belong to a scientific study of modern industry to seek to discover how the forces of conscious reform can reasonably work in relation to the economic forces whose operations have been already investigated. ”

“ My idea of human culture did not coincide with the current view, that cultural development is to be measured in terms of technical progress. Doubts, indeed, arose in me as to whether technical improvements and advances would actually contribute to the well-being of mankind. ”

“ In the last analysis the development of any society is determined by the development of its method of production. We are today sufficiently familiar with these laws to recognize the direction which social evolution must take, and to determine the road the political happenings must take. ”

“ A society which should bring its conscious will to bear upon the work of constructing new industrial forms to fit the new economic conditions, may make a progress which, while rapid, may yet be safe, because it is not a speculative progress, but one which is guided in its line of movement by precedent changes of environment. ”

“ At the outset of his career the set of opinion had been towards a larger and more popular policy than of old. New facilities of communication, new industrial energy, and a quick accumulation of wealth, as well as the social changes which followed hard on these economical changes, all pointed forward to political progress, to an adaptation of our institutions to the varied conditions of the time. The nation was quivering with a new sense of life ”

“ The natural process of development would have ultimately accomplished it unassisted by other agencies, but a wise and humane governmental system was adopted, originating in the spirit world, which constituted a complete innovation upon and revolution in previous systems, and which gave a marked impetus to the growth and advancement of mind, and which produced also a wonderful improvement in the physical constitutions of succeeding generations. ”

“ Any plan of world reform which leaves out the Human Equation is equivalent to an engineering plan which leaves out of consideration details like the Law of the Dead Centre or the Law of Expansion and contraction of metals. ”

“ These states, however, endeavour to retain unchanged a state of things once established and approved; while others, in which from the beginning the opinions of individuals have out-weighed the authority of the whole, admit, in the progress of time, of greater variety, and more innovations, readily take up whatever is offered to them by accident of time and place, or even eagerly seek for opportunities of change. ”

“ Hoping, with the sanguine expectation of an inventor, that a right understanding of my plan must secure its adoption, and relying with confidence on the clearness and force of my exposition, I little knew as yet the endless complexities in the machine of Government, the deep-rooted prejudice of routine, or the countless interests ready to start up in alarm at the appearance of innovation. ”

“ The most convenient, and perhaps the safest way to meet this demand is to indicate, with that modesty which rightly belongs to prophecy, some of the main reforms which seem to lie upon the road of industrial progress, rendered subordinate to larger human social ends. ”

“ It would seem that the necessity of reform arises from this, that our ideas, which are eternal, find themselves expressed in phrases and resulting in actions which belong to material environment—an environment, therefore, that perpetually changes in form. ”

“ All the changes in conditions of life in the last four hundred years have refashioned the mores and given modern society new ideas, standards, codes, philosophies, and religions. Nothing acts more directly on the mores than the facility with which great numbers of people can accumulate wealth by industry. ”

“ The eyes and thoughts of those working for social and industrial reform have been turned almost exclusively toward the great cities, and toward the solution of the questions presented by their teeming myriads of people and by the immense complexity of their life. ”

“ Many thinking men and women of the present generation are inclined to believe the twentieth century invention par excellence will be the bringing of all the machinery of production, transport and exchange under the official control of persons appointed by the State or by the municipality, and therefore amenable to the vote of the people. ”