Society column

“ His chiefs learned early that so rare an organism was best left alone to function in harmony with its own nature. The Column had not only its own philosophy and its own æsthetics, but its own politics: if it seemed to contravene other and more representative departments of the paper, never mind. Its conductor had such confidence in the validity of his personal predilections and in their identity with those of “the general,” that he carried on things with the one rule of pleasing himself, certain that he should find no better rule for pleasing others. ”

“ Lawyers, politicians, statesmen, and indeed people generally, regard sociology as most closely connected with the history column, and would make the state paramount. The state is for them the social organism. Theologians and moralists, on the other hand, would make the church paramount in importance if not absolutely absorbing the others, and sociology as most closely connected with the psychology column. The modern materialist would make the guild the paramount corporation, and sociology as most closely connected through biology with the scientific column. ”

“ It was easy enough in the solitude of her chamber to dissect men's motives and analyze their main-springs of action, building up a logical basis of principles for the reconstruction of society which would ameliorate some of these social evils, but let her take her theory outside, and what was it? ”

“ I had been born in the working-class, and I was now, at the age of eighteen, beneath the point at which I had started. I was down in the cellar of society, down in the subterranean depths of misery about which it is neither nice nor proper to speak. I was in the pit, the abyss, the human cesspool, the shambles and the charnel-house of our civilization. This is the part of the edifice of society that society chooses to ignore. ”

“ Coming, as you commanded, to observe and report the social state of the metropolis of a people who, in the presence of the world, have renounced the feudal organization of society, I have found them, as you anticipated, totally free from the petty ambitions, the bitter resolves, and the hollow pretences, that characterize the society of older states. ”

“ It is true that they read journals published by their unions in which a five-column account is given of a reception to some “noble grand chief,” and as many columns more about babies born and brothers buried, but which may be searched in vain for a line of revolutionary economics to nourish their brain, open the eyes, give cheer to the heart or aspiration to the soul of a corporation slave. ”

“ I appeal to history—I appeal to the recollection of every man in this assembly, who, like myself, has passed the meridian of life, whether society has not advanced in morals as well as in arts, science, and literature, and everything which tends to improve the social character of the people. ”

“ Without forgetting the many institutions and workers in almost all departments of the field of civics, the rise of definite surveys and of scientific groupings like this Society, without ignoring also the many admirable workers and institutions of social endeavour, and their progressive integration into Social Unions, Institutes of Service, and the like, I may be permitted to press for the need of uniting both types, the scientific and the practical, into a single one—a civic museum and active centre in one. ”

“ But a great many people sat there doing nothing: husbands waiting for their wives, let loose in the various departments, discreet young women looking out for their lovers, old relations left there as in a cloak-room, to be taken away when time to leave. And this little society, comfortably installed, quietly reposed itself there, glancing through the open bays into the depths of the galleries and the halls, from which a distant murmur ascended above the grating of the pens and the rustling of the newspapers. ”

“ Even the most complex and rigid institutions may be looked upon as consisting of innumerable personal influences or acts of sympathy, organized, in the case of institutions, into a definite and continuing whole by means of some system of permanent symbols, such as laws, constitutions, sacred writings, and the like, in which personal influences are preserved. And, turning the matter around, we may look upon every act of sympathy 134as a particular expression of the history, institutions, and tendencies of the society in which it takes place. ”

“ M. Jaurès, there are more than two hypotheses to submit to this Chamber; between the society of to-day and yours there are an infinite number of social conceptions which may be developed. You underestimate the task. Admitting even that your criticisms are well founded, that present society is as bad as you say it is (and I am not of those who pretend that it is very good, as you well know) ”

“ When it is remembered that the home is at the same time the power-house that generates the forces that push society forward, and the channel through which are transmitted the ideas and achievements of all the past, it will seem to be the supremely important institution that human experience has devised and sanctioned. ”

“ Where do we get our notions of love, freedom, justice, and the like which we are ever applying to social institutions? Not from abstract philosophy, surely, but from the actual life of simple and widespread forms of society, like the family or the play-group. In these relations mankind realizes itself, gratifies its primary needs, in a fairly satisfactory manner, and from the experience forms standards of what it is to expect from more elaborate association. ”

“ An inquiry into the motives that induce the public to visit this gloomy chamber scarcely comes within the scope of this work. But that a very large number do visit the place in the course of each year, and that they cannot be deemed to belong to any particular class, but represent, without distinction, all classes of society, we may, of our own certain knowledge, aver without the slightest hesitation. ”

“ Naturally enough one column of the worlds news against twenty or more columns of local interest gave readers a false perspective, especially when every citizen of any local standing usually found a paragraph devoted to his own social or municipal doings. ”

“ In large vaults beneath are buried the heroes of 1789, with the victims of the later revolution of 1848. The capital of the column is crowned with an artistic Genius of Liberty standing on a globe, and holding in one hand the broken chains of slavery, and in the other the torch of enlightenment. ”

“ Is democracy, then, the rule of the crowd, and is there a tendency in modern times toward the subjection of society to an irrational and degenerate phase of the mind? [Pg 152] This question, like others relating to the trend of modern life, looks differently according to the points of view from which it is approached. In general we may say that the very changes which are drawing modern populations together into denser wholes bring also a discipline in organization and self-control which should remove them further and further from the mob state. ”

“ Each column has a head differently worked out, every sculpturally decorated part a different design. One sees that here the worker could create freely according to his pleasure and art, not haunted by drivers of capitalistic exploitation ”

“ Why should not every teetotal society have its lecture-room, where the artisan might be taught the principles of mechanics, the farmer the latest improvements in agriculture, and every one something that would make him a better man and better citizen? I long to see the day when every town will have its temperance hall, and every temperance hall its schoolrooms, its reading-rooms, its lecture-rooms, its exhibition-rooms, and even its public baths and gymnasium, for the operative classes. ”

“ The development of municipal life and institutions, the aggregation of wealth in walled cities, and the great changes in the mode of life thereby produced, prepared the way for the overthrow of gentile society, and for the establishment of political society in its place. ”

“ And this society, because it is so numerous and so gentle, and can be kept waiting round us all day long,—kings and statesmen lingering patiently, not to grant audience, but to gain it!—in those plainly furnished and narrow ante-rooms, our bookcase shelves,—we make no account of that company,—perhaps never listen to a word they would say, all day long! ”

“ Even if the existence and action of this Society had been constitutional and lawful, as it was no doubt thought to be by its members, still there was something in the elevation and responsibility of its position before the public, on account of which the ordinary proprieties, which might seem to be reasonably incumbent on all such bodies, had strong claims to be respected. In all seriousness, we do not think the time has come—certainly we hope not—when the political violence and rancour of newspaper columns, can be regarded as becoming in such a document. ”

“ There are a thousand mechanics' shops, a thousand loghouses where certain members of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, the orator of the day for one, might learn new and useful lessons on morals and politics, on the first principles of human relations. ”

“ If the schoolhouse is an efficient centre for the proper training of boys and girls to understand their social relations and civic responsibilities, and if the meeting-house is an efficient centre for the discussion of social ethics and a religion that moves on the plane of earth as well as heaven, then the town house will give a good account of itself in intelligent voting and clean political methods. ”

“ That members of the laboring class, at the close of a day's work, should assemble in such a hall as this, to hear lectures on science, history, ethics, and the most stirring topics of the day, from men whose education is thought to fit them for the highest offices, is a proof of a social revolution to which no bounds can be set, and from which too much cannot be hoped. ”

“ It has come to be an institution that he, standing on the steps of his house, should make a short speech to each class. The rainbow of men, sweeping gloriously down the city streets with their bands, dissolves into a whirlwind at the sight of that well-known, slight, dignified figure on the doorstep of the modest house—this is a thing which one who has seen it does not forget ”

“ The rest of that enormous bale of paper is eloquent of a public void of moral ambitions, lost to any sense of comprehensive things, deaf to ideas, impervious to generalizations, a public which has carried the conception of freedom to its logical extreme of entire individual detachment. These telltale columns deal all with personality and the drama of personal life. They witness to no interest but the interest in intense individual experiences. ”

“ Civilization, discipline, and order seemed to enter with the measured tramp of those marching columns; and the heart turned with throbs of added pity to the worn men in gray, who were being blindly dashed against this embodiment of modern power. ”

“ When [Pg 167] a populous society springs up rapidly from a few transplanted seeds, its structure, however vast, is necessarily somewhat simple and monotonous. A thousand towns, ten thousand churches, a million houses, are built on the same models, and the people and the social institutions do not altogether escape a similar poverty of types. ”

“ The Social Center, then, is the place in any community where the people of that community meet, discuss, enjoy, co-operate upon a common ground as citizens in a democracy, as members of a neighborhood, as human beings, without regard to party, creed, class, or difference of possession. ”

“ When we pass out of this room, presently, and touch the great outside world once more, what shall we find? How soon will it be generally known that a section of the community—a larger section, maybe, than we conceive possible—has been silently, suddenly, secretly taken from our midst? ”

“ But now, really rejoicing for the first time, we direct our steps into the innermost chamber of bliss belonging to our pavilion-dwellers; there we find them with their wives, children, and newspapers, occupied in the commonplace discussion of politics; we listen for a moment to their conversation on marriage, universal suffrage, capital punishment, and workmen's strikes, and we can scarcely believe it to be possible that the rosary of public opinions can be told off so quickly. ”

“ For what we have reached is really the conception of an Encyclopædia Civica, to which each city should contribute the Trilogy of its Past, its Present, and its Future. Better far, as life transcends books, we may see, and yet more, forsee, the growth of civic consciousness and conscience, the awakening of citizenship towards civic renascence. All this the production of such volumes would at one imply and inspire—life ever producing its appropriate expression in literature, and literature reacting upon the ennoblement of life. ”

“ Each house was a revolutionary centre for the propagation of individualism and personality. From the warmth of each domestic hearth grew up the vipers, Comradeship and Independence, to sting the State and poison the minds of men. ”

“ Or they can begin changing them—begin getting labor to help them change them.
If I had to save the world in a week or rather get assurance in a week that it could be saved, I would get all the people in it to agree for a year to read each other's papers. Have every man read two papers. We would start up for America the national Parallel Column Habit. Each man by himself daily putting his own little world and other people's world alongside until they got used to it, and then together.
There is no limit to what reading the wrong papers would not do for this nation. ”