Reform (sociology)

“ It is a definite type of collective behavior which has come into existence and gained popularity under conditions of modern life. The reformer and the agitator, likewise, are definite, temperamental, and social types. Reform tends under modern conditions to become a vocation and a profession like that of the politician. The profession of the reformer, however, is social, as distinguished from party politics.
Reform is not revolution. It does not seek to change the mores but rather to change conditions in conformity with the mores. There have been revolutionary reformers. ”

“ Hope is felt that some of the great reforms of the day, in which all thoughtful individuals take a special interest, will prove fundamental in their curative effects, and heal this gravest of our diseases. Thus free access to land, co-operation and abolition of interest, total abstinence, universal suffrage, emigration, arbitration, State-socialism, etc., are all amongst the popular panaceas of the present day, each important reform or theory being chiefly relied on by its special advocates, to change all social relations and eradicate any serious social disorder. ”

“ In our own day of storm and stress, intense struggle for existence, sensational- ism, and hurry, Brook Farms or settlements, or even cooperative action of scattered individuals animated by a common purpose, would command neither influence nor sympathetic attention. Perhaps it is necessary to qualify the aphorism that small reforms are the enemies of great ones ; for, while small reforms do not attack the roots, the sources, of social wrong, they serve to popularize the idea of reform and prepare the public mind for radical programs. ”

“ By a method different from that employed in either case or group work, though with the same end in view, social reform seeks to improve conditions in the mass, chiefly through social propaganda and social legislation. ”

“ For if the growing demand of the subject masses for political and economic justice, the growing recognition and reality of their force, the ability to organize and insist upon their rights—if these are the principal direct agents of reform—not even the expansive method of Mr. ”

“ In our day the attempt is made to reform society by civilisation, by education, by material progress, by change of policies and organisations. No! the change needed is vital. It is the change from moral death to moral life. ”

“ Advanced and radical reformers of the new type all over the world, those who put forward a general plan of reform and wish to go to the common roots of our social evils, demand, first of all, reorganization. ”

“ But if we act on the principle of deferring all less important reforms until all the more important ones are accomplished, we shall be in danger of not reforming at all. Any reform that is well-timed and possible is important; for the complication of social relations makes all reforms of weight in their wider significance. ”

“ He laughs at those who cannot hear the word revolution without a shudder. "Revolution," he says, "means merely transformation, and is accomplished when an entirely new principle is—either with force or without it—put in the place of an existing state of things. Reform, on the other hand, is when the principle of the existing state of things is continued, and only developed to more logical or just consequences. ”

“ All definite and dogmatic schemes of social reform prove upon challenge to need adjustment and modification, to fit the actual workings of a society already infinitely complex. It is as the sentiment which for want of a better word we call socialistic works along with that broad and candid study of fact which we call scientific, and toward an ideal in which the material is but an instrument of the spiritual,—that there is solid promise of advance. ”

“ Between the two lay the conquest of political power by a new class, and in this lies the essential difference between revolution and reform. Measures which seek to adjust the juridical and political superstructure of society, to changed economic conditions, are reforms if they proceed from the class which is the political and economic ruler of society. ”

“ Amid all kinds of well-intended, however bigoted, opposition, the Society has submitted to reform after reform, and preserved its moral equilibrium—a sign that its constitution is of the strongest and the healthiest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When many persons shall have done this, when the majority shall admit the necessity of reform in all these institutions, their abuses will be redressed, and the way will be open again to the advantages which arise from the division of labor, and a man may select the fittest employment for his peculiar talent again, without compromise. ”

“ All other political questions were at once found to be merged in this, and the people availed themselves of the first opportunity to decree a sweeping reform, destined to harmonize their social and political organization with the advanced state of their moral and intellectual enlightenment. ”

“ We shall have, of course, to enlarge our family and social life, not in the petty spirit of present day Social Reform, hammering at small details and belittling our immediate past, but with a larger idea and more generous impulses. ”

“ It is for reformers in every town to direct all their force on the Town Councils, to turn aside to no scheme, and to start no new society, but to urge, in season and out of season, that the care of the people is the care of the community, and not of any philanthropic section—is, indeed, the care of Society, and not of societies. ‘The People, not Politics,’ should be their cry; and they should see that the power is in the hands of men, irrespective of party or of class, who care for the people. ”

“ The early years of the new century saw a tidal wave of reform sweep into all phases of American life. Agitation for the recall of judicial decisions and the introduction of such measures as the initiative and referendum attested new convictions in the realm of politics. The reform spirit found expression in muck-raking literature, movements for the betterment of dependents on society, legislation to alleviate unfortunate industrial conditions, and schemes of coöperation between employer and employee bore testimony to a new social consciousness and national morality. ”

“ The true movement of the last fifteen years has been the progress of one idea,—Social Reform. There it advances with steady and noiseless march behind every louder question of constitutional change. Let us do justice to our time. There have been periods of more brilliant action on the destinies of States, but there is no time visible in History in which there was so earnest and general a desire to improve the condition of the great body of the people. In every circle of the community that healthful desire is astir. ”

“ Social reform will soon be the all-absorbing interest as the modern realization of the claims of human nature and the growing power of the people, will not tolerate many of the present conditions of industrial life. ”

“ That Society needs regeneration in all departments of its life—political, religious, industrial, and social—is plainly apparent. But there is an essential omission in the kind of reform which is spontaneously taking place at this time, and which is lauded by Mill, Buckle, Spencer, Draper, and the advanced Thinkers of the day generally, as the true direction in which change should be made; an omission which will bring Society to disastrous revolution, even, it may be, to fatal overthrow, unless supplied. ”

“ We hear nowadays much about Social Reform, which, being interpreted, means, I suppose, the removal of certain conditions in and around society which stand in the way of man’s progress towards perfection.
Every human being, surely, ought to be able to make a free choice for good or evil. It is, no doubt, possible for each of us to choose the higher or the lower life ‘in that state of life in which it has pleased God to call us’ ”

“ They match well with the slaves who 'move on' at the bidding of a policeman, or with the knaves who only see in Woman the toy of a feeble lust.
"There are two great reforms needed, Ned, two great reforms which must come if Humanity is to progress, and which must come, sooner or later, either to our race or to some other, because Humanity must progress. One reform is the Reorganisation of Industry. ”

“ The greatest reforms which could now be accomplished would consist in undoing the work of statesmen in the past, and the greatest difficulty in the way of reform is to find out how to undo their work without injury to what is natural and sound. ”

“ The progress of a great reform is a nation's school. It creates as it advances, the moral principle, the individual independence, the habit of private judgment, the enlightened public opinion, which are necessary for its own success, and thus, by new moulding the national character, and elevating its tone of morals, it confers far other and greater benefits than its originators at first proposed. ”

“ It is not the mere perfecting of a reform already in motion, a detail of some established plan, but it is an epochal movement—the emancipation of a class, the redemption of half the world, and a conforming reorganization of all social, political, and industrial interests and institutions. ”

“ Further, at this moment when many methods of social reform offer themselves, it seems to me that all would be wise to remember that the only test of progress is in the development of character. Institutions, societies, laws, count for nothing unless they tend to make people stronger to choose the good and refuse the evil. Redistribution of wealth would be of little service if in the process many became dishonest. A revolution would be no progress which put one selfish class in the place of another. ”

“ EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION.
A social reform can very well be in accord with the interests of the ruling class. It may for the moment leave their social domination untouched, or, under certain circumstances, can even strengthen it. ”

“ It is this third factor alone which need be seriously considered to-day, when we ask ourselves how far the material upon which social reform is working, that is, the masses of the people, may be ready to accept the change. ”

“ The question is whether or not we shall, before the general zeal for reform dies away, through an abolition of the spoils system and the permanent establishment of a sensible civil service, win the other branch of reform, which is of still greater importance for the future of our political life. ”

“ Hence it was that so many plans for general reform produced so little definite result, except on the one hand setting before the then rising generation a higher standard of social responsibility which was destined deeply to tinge the after conduct and social activities of that generation, and on the other hand much social experimenting upon a small scale which stored up information and experience for the future. ”

“ It gives them a special aversion to political and social experiments, for it requires as the first essential of any project of reform that it shall issue naturally and easily out of—or at least be harmonious with—the historical conditions of the time and place to which it is to be applied. ”

“ The social reformer who adopts the fallacy of provisionalism is apt to be absorbed in the mechanical details of his work,—the settlement or the municipal reform society, or the charitable association tend to become highly organized and efficient pieces of machinery. ”

“ To effect it, would require such a revolution in the customs of society, such a radical reform in the habits and characters of individuals, as nothing short of a temporal millennium would be able to effect. ”

“ We believe, however, that in the deliberate choice of plain living by an influential portion of society there lies a greater potency of social reform than in all the schemes of socialistic reconstruction. ”

“ Reform, so called, is becoming confessedly more potent than its antagonist. The admission is reluctantly forced from pallid lips that revolutions—political, social and religious—constitute the programme of the coming age. ”

“ A sameness of circumstances might not mean social reform (indeed, personally, I doubt if anything but love for God will mean social reform) , but reform is necessary, and with that we all agree. ‘Effort is bootless, toil is fruitless’; with that we do not agree—our very presence here denies it. There only remains then that organised effort should be directed towards reform, noticing, by the way, that, having swept the room, we do not leave the broom about! ”

“ This then was the mental attitude with which I approached my duties as a reporter on the staff of a London daily newspaper of old standing and good progressive traditions. And my notion was that in every line written for publication, the end of social reform should be served, directly or indirectly. My [51] idea of attaining social reformation was that the people must be taught, urged, spurred into extracting further gifts from the State; that the public must be shown how to make their lives easier by getting the State to do more for them. ”

“ The beginning you speak of has been made at the wrong end. The true beginning of society reform must be made by the moral, æsthetic, and intellectual superiors of fashionable society as we now have it. ”

“ It was the commencement of a public movement upon the subject of social reform, which will flow on, wider, deeper, stronger, until it has proved in deeds the practicability of societies organized, from their central principle of faith to the minutest detail of industry and pleasure, according to the order of love. ”