Social reconstruction

“ I do not believe that these acts can, or ever have been intended to, bring about the social reconstruction. That can only be done, first, by a broad and wide education as to man's place in society and his proper relation to his fellows ”

“ Our generation has to take up this tremendous necessity of a social reconstruction in a great way; its broad lines have to be thought out by thousands of minds, and it is for that reason that 107I have put the stress upon our need of discussion, of a wide intellectual and moral stimulation, of a stirring up in our schools and pulpits, and upon the modernisation and clarification of what should be the deliberative assembly of the nation. ”

“ One needs to turn back to the files of its every-day publications to realize the progress that has been made, the secular emergence of a consistent and continually more nearly complete and directive scheme of social reconstruction from the chaotic propositions and hopes and denials of the earlier time. ”

“ In paraphrased application to the tendencies of our day, it may truly be said that all roads lead to the great social reconstruction. The economic awakening of the workingman, and his realization of the necessity for concerted industrial action; the tendencies of modern education, especially in their application to the free development of the child; the spirit of growing unrest expressed through, and cultivated by, art and literature, all pave the way to the Open Road. ”

“ Some think it must come by political instrumentality, by changes in the laws; others have no hope but in a social regeneration, or reconstruction of society, others still rely only on moral and religious influences. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All the elements that can contribute useful work to the general welfare are needed in the revolution for the building of the new life. No revolution can succeed without their solidaric co ̈operation, and the sooner we understand this the better. The reconstruction of society involves the reorganization of industry, the proper functioning of production, the management of distribution, and numerous other social, educational, and cultural efforts to transform present-day wage slavery and servitude into a life of liberty and well-being. ”

“ It is very possible that even the present generation will witness something serious in that respect. As to the coming generations, there is no doubt that they will assist at a thorough reconstruction of the social structure in all countries. ”

“ The theoretical historic outlook and historic enlightenment are intimately associated with practical endeavours towards reform, and in the new era history becomes vitae magistra, history guides practical life, guides politics. Strengthening of the historic sense and a belief in progress manifest themselves as an impulse towards reform, as an effort to bring about the essential reconstruction of social organisation. This impulse, this endeavour, leads to revolution, to the great revolution. ”

“ If, while the healing of this vast sore is progressing, the races are to live for many years side by side, united in economic effort, obeying a common government, sensitive to mutual thought and feeling, yet subtly and silently separate in many matters of deeper human intimacy—if this unusual and dangerous development is to progress amid peace and order, mutual respect and growing intelligence, it will call for social surgery at once the delicatest and nicest in modern history. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The entire history of social improvement has been a series of transitions, by which one custom or institution after another, from being a supposed primary necessity of social existence, has passed into the rank of an universally stigmatized injustice and tyranny. ”

“ The conditions of social progress, as we have traced the law, are association and equality. The general tendency of modern development, since the time when we can first discern the gleams of civilization in the darkness which followed the fall of the Western Empire, has been toward political and legal equality—to the abolition of slavery ”

“ The social revolution has not swept everything away, but it has modified the form of social institutions, and some of them, such as the old time farm home, the individual workshop and the agricultural village have been obliterated in many localities. How shall the new society be rebuilt? Only as the old was built—by the expenditure of human effort and under the guidance of the best wisdom that the community can muster. ”

“ It is plain that even the most conservative begin to feel this, and [Pg 154] effort constantly takes more practical form; but this is but the beginning of what must be,—the inauguration of a social revolution in ideas, and one to which all civilization must come. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ The social reform of whose advent the signs are everywhere visible, comprehends all others, and in laboring for its speedy accomplishment, we are conscious that we are devoting our best ability to the removal of oppression and injustice among men, to the complete emancipation of the enslaved, to the promotion of genuine temperance, and to the elevation of the toiling and down-trodden masses to the inborn rights of humanity.
In literature the Harbinger will exercise a firm and impartial criticism, without respect of persons or parties. ”

“ Slavery was one of society's economic experiments, feudalism was another, capitalism is a third. Through successive generations these institutions have been built up, reformed, discarded and replaced. The history of social institutions is a history of social experiment—of community progress through trial and error. ”

“ But we shall never understand the course of civilization, and the varied phenomena which its history presents, without a consideration of what I may term the internal resistances, or counter forces, which arise in the heart of advancing society, and which can alone explain how a civilization once fairly started should either come of itself to a halt or be destroyed by barbarians.
The mental power, which is the motor of social progress, is set free by association, which is, what, perhaps, it may be more properly called, an integration. Society in this process becomes more complex ”

“ 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. ”

“ The times were fruitful of industrial and social unrest and the many schemes and plans that were proposed, utopian, impractical, impossible though they undoubtedly were, were at the same time the signs and symptoms of social gestation, the fore-runners of the mighty change that was laying hold of governments and institutions and destined to revolutionize them all and level the human race upward to the plane of an all-embracing civilization. ”

“ Between the stage of embryonic life, through which Society had passed, and the stage of maturity and independence, upon which it will enter, there lies the gap which we can hardly bridge, namely, the revolutionary critical epoch, which gave birth to modern Society, the period which made possible the independence of future social life from the past and laid the foundation of a creative Society. What revolution does for life, criticism accomplishes for ideas and views. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nothing could be more fatal to prosperity, and to the fairest hopes of social progress, than if the great body of the upper and middle classes of the community had cause to regard that progress as indissolubly associated with an attack upon themselves. ”

“ The needed change was not in men, they agreed, but in social conditions; and from every phase of Socialism and Anarchy, I had heard the propaganda of widely varying changes, all alike, however, prophesying a regenerated society, the vision of which alone remained the hope and faith of many lives. ”

“ Now this human over-life may take either beneficent or maleficent or neutral aspects towards the general life of humanity. It may present itself a law and pacification, as a positive addition and superstructure to the Normal Social Life, as roads and markets and cities, as courts and unifying monarchies, as helpful and directing religious organisations, as literature and art and science and philosophy, reflecting back upon the individual in the Normal Social Life from which it arose, a gilding and refreshment of new and wider interests and added pleasures and resources. ”

“ The student of social and political evolution is concerned rather with the effect of such material changes upon the structure of society, that is, with the rearrangements of classes and the development of new groups of interests, which are brought about by altered methods of gaining a livelihood and accumulating fortunes. It is this social transformation that changes the relation of the individual to the state and brings new forces to play in the struggle for political power. The social transformation which followed the Civil War embraced the following elements. ”

“ But, although in an economic age such as ours industrial reform may seem the most striking, it is not the only effect of our shared enthusiasm and later ages may not think it the most important. There has been reform of social evils owing to the interchange between nations of ideas on education, religious toleration, medicine, and sanitation, the treatment of criminals, the suppression of slavery and many other subjects. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This was an urgent reform, a great work of salvation and glory, the necessity of which was plainly indicated by the great contemporary social movement, that downfall of the exhausted bourgeoisie and the irresistible rise of the masses, in whom quivered the energies of to-morrow. Henceforth it was on them one would have to draw; and among them, as in some huge [Pg 525] reservoir of accumulated force, one would find the men of sense, truth, and equity, who, in the name of happiness and peace, would build the city of the future. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ We have seen that a social revolution maybe considered to be from the standpoint of the whole because, even if it only occurs in a factory district, it is a protest of men against degraded life, because it proceeds from the standpoint of the real individual, because the community against whose separation from himself the individual reacts, is the real community of men, the civic community. ”

“ Some problems are peculiar to the country, the city, or the nation, like the need of rural co-operation, the improvement of municipal efficiency, or the regulation of immigration. A few are international, like the scourge of war. Besides such specific problems there are always general issues demanding the attention of social thinkers and reformers, such as the adjustment of individual rights to social duties, and the improvement of moral and religious efficiency. ”

“ The amazing revolution which has lately taken place in the arts and sciences, as applicable to the purposes of human economy, ought naturally to give birth to another revolution of a kindred quality in the political and social mechanism of society. ”

“ It was therefore necessary to give them a few positive precepts, moulding and regulating their moral and social conduct, to make them 'new creatures' with new notions and new purposes, and to remodel the national life. ”