Voluntary movement

“ I have laid it down as a first principle to educate the people through the people themselves, by their own voluntary co-operation and exertion, through the usual elective municipalities and other acknowledged and responsible organs of a free people. ”

“ That voluntary action by so many millions over so great an extent of country was a tremendous example, showing what an ideal and a public spirit and a call to action can do for people in making them forget private interests and convenience and making them great. ”

“ Let none serve you but by his own act and deed, by his own voluntary choice. Away with all whips, all chains, all compulsion! Be gentle toward all men, and see that you invariably do unto every one, as you would he should do unto you. ”

“ All that could be agreed upon was that a voluntary action is right whenever and only when its total consequences are as good, intrinsically, as any that would have followed from any action which the agent could have done instead. ”

“ It is important that every man who has any political power or influence should distinctly and explicitly avow this principle, and enforce it on the attention of our rulers; for it has become a common practice with public men to express a disapprobation of what they are pleased to call "the voluntary system," without explaining what they mean by the words. ”

“ No doubt, however, our growing system of voluntary institutions—churches, philanthropic societies, fraternal orders, labor unions and the like—are training us in the habit of expressing ourselves through the check-book and other indirect agents. ”

“ Thus while voluntary association is sometimes advocated as a step towards, and sometimes on the other hand as a substitute for, and bulwark against, state socialism, we find in practice these two forces working each in its own sphere, and in ways complementary one to the other, while underlying and essential to both is the force of individual action and self-help. ”

“ On the other hand, there is gradually developing a new sense of responsibility for assuming voluntary leadership in community activities, and a larger appreciation of the need of leadership and the duty of supporting it. ”

“ Now, there are voluntary, as well as involuntary associations; the voluntary, such as, from certain ends, individuals form one with another; the involuntary, that of the common society in which we live. ”

“ We have seen that, among peoples in low stages of culture, these furnish a marked case of non-militancy, absence of the political organization which militancy develops, absence of class-distinctions, and presence of that voluntary exchange of services implied by industrialism ”

“ All the necessary and useful occupations of every description would be carried on by voluntary groups, each group doing that particular work for which it was formed. When any work has been accomplished the group doing it would dissolve into its component parts, the various individuals that had composed it uniting with others in other groups for other and different purposes, as the necessities or expediencies of the times called for united action. ”

“ In all the movements we have described, the spiritual stimulus, the initial drive, and the solid successes have been provided by voluntary association. The State has not been the pioneer of social reform. Such a notion is the mirage of politicians. It has merely registered the insistent demands of organized voluntary effort or given legal recognition to accomplished facts. This is the distinctive note of English social development in the nineteenth century. ”

“ Yet the spirit of voluntary association and giving was not only a virtue but also a practical necessity for those residing on the frontier.
Today, even with the best efforts of Federal, State, and local government, voluntary service remains essential to solving our Nation's most serious social problems. ”

“ Seeing that experience clearly proves that the voluntary principle is a failure, or at least wholly inadequate, for it only touches the fringe of the difficulty, it becomes absolutely necessary that the State should step in and supplement charitable effort. ”

“ But the voluntary principle has been respected and vindicated! Has it? True it is that there has been a magnificent response to the Government's appeals. The patriotism and devotion of one half of the nation have effectively enabled the other half to evade its duty. But the time has again come when the demand for more men is imperative. Voluntarism is making its last efforts. Its devotees in their desperate endeavours to prevent its formal abandonment are eliminating from it every element of free will, and are introducing every device of veiled compulsion. ”

“ The consequence is that under voluntary systems there is continual progress, the constant development of new views, and the action necessary for their practical application; under political systems, immobility on the part of the administrators, discontented helplessness on the part of those for whom they administer. ”

“ The idea of a greater subordination of individual interests and established institutions to the collective future, is traceable more and more clearly in the literature of those times, and movement after movement fretted itself away in criticism of and opposition to first this aspect and then that of the legal, social, and political order. ”

“ We can also take direct part in promoting objects that tend to the well-being of society. Much is left by the state to voluntary effort by its members. The state undertakes the defence of the country by the army and navy, the relief of the poor, and the elementary education of the people; but beyond these and other instances of direct state action there is much left to be done by the people themselves, and for themselves. ”

“ Under the light necessary to effect so general a change of public sentiment, a considerable portion of the people would have reconstructed neighborhood society by voluntary association, in such a manner as nearly to do away intemperance, idleness, debauchery, miseducation, poverty and brutality, and to insure the requisite inducements, means and opportunities for great self-improvement and social usefulness. ”

“ To share in the general benefit, he must voluntarily contribute time and money to the general good. The necessary machinery of society will, of course, exist — courts to settle disputes and police to keep order — but they will be maintained by voluntary co-operation. ”

“ Demonstrate that capacity, prove that men by their own efforts may command all the means of life, show in institutions the truly religious nature of the movement and the relations that are to obtain, and the public will be gained to the idea of Association. ”

“ Another normal use of the voluntary association is the development and application of a criticism of established customs and institutions. It is not reasonable to expect all the members of a great people to move forward at an equal pace. ”

“ The course that will restore to the workmen a father's duties and responsibilities, between which and themselves the state has now stepped, is for them to reject all forced contributions from others, and to do their own work through their own voluntary combinations. ”

“ In a society developed on these lines, the voluntary associations which already now begin to cover all the fields of human activity would take a still greater extension so as to substitute themselves for the state in all its functions. ”

“ As to voluntary obedience, much depends on the ratio of restraint to the freedom that still remains. Ordinarily, youth submits readily enough to many restrictions, provided such restrictions bear upon specific fixed points, and leave elbow room for independent action. ”

“ Our theory does assert that, if any voluntary action is once right, then any other voluntary action which resembled it in one particular respect (or rather in a combination of two respects) must always also be right ”

“ The voluntary system is in its very earliest development and so, in calculating the prospects of associations among large groups of people, a league of nations, industrial government, or a federal union of states, the degree to129 which the material for a common consciousness exists determines how far coöperation will depend upon force, or upon the milder alternative to force, which is patronage and privilege. ”

“ A new force has to be reckoned with; a force which is going to complicate and transform all social relations, the whole property system. This new force is the human individual. For the first time since the beginning of history man claims his rights as a man, all his rights. The workman, the proletarian, the man who owns nothing is affirming his own individuality. ”

“ Freedom of movement, at home and abroad, is important for job and business opportunities-for cultural, political, and social activities-for all the commingling which gregarious man enjoys. Those with the right of free movement use it at times for mischievous purposes. ”

“ On the contrary, the communities in which the reason has been most cultivated, and in which the idea of social duty has been most powerful, are those which have most strongly asserted the freedom of action of the individual—the liberty of each to govern his conduct by his own feelings of duty, and by such laws and social restraints as his own conscience can subscribe to. ”

“ Or, if I am a laboring man, in the technical sense of the word that is commonly used to-day, I have a right to organize a society devoted to the furtherance of the eight- hour movement, or any other specific end or aim which seems to me necessary to the welfare of society as organized in the modern world.
All this we concede at the outset. People have a perfect right to organize on the basis of their particular beliefs, and to keep out of their organization those persons who do not happen to agree with them. ”

“ In appraising a revolution, therefore, we must distinguish carefully between the movement as a whole, and its individual phases, periods, and activities. Our ethical approval may be given to the revolution as a whole even while we condemn the acts of individual participators. ”

“ With us the duties, as far as Christian duties can be said to be optional, are voluntary; and the voluntary discharge of duties, like the voluntary support of religion, we know, from sad experience, to be sometimes imperfectly performed, at others intermitted, and often wholly neglected. ”

“ We want voluntary organizations for missionary purposes, the distribution of bibles, tracts, books, etc., etc., all of which we have a right to form in any way which we may conceive most conducive to the interests of the Redeemer’s cause. ”

“ Who ever heard of a church that had workers enough? Wherever there is a city, town, or village, there is work to be done in the direction of civic betterment.
Is your life restricted by certain responsibilities not of your own choosing, yet from which you cannot honorably escape—nay, would not escape? Do you long for freedom, for the power to carve out your own destiny in your own way? How swiftly you would move forward if you could tread the path of your own choosing! Do not think that you are unusual in this longing. It is difficult to be reconciled to the limitations placed upon us. ”

“ The status of children, in common with that of women, rises in proportion as the compulsory coöperation characterizing militant activities becomes qualified by the voluntary coöperation characterizing industrial activities. We see this on comparing the most militant uncivilized peoples with others that are less militant ”

“ At the same time, the leaders of the people were teaching them, in public meetings and in assemblies of the so-called Association of Volunteers, to regard themselves as the victims of every form of oppression. ”

“ These distinctions of motive and of type are manifest among the participators in every revolution. What we are concerned with is the dominant motive of those who initiate the movement and of those who assume its leadership with a deliberate sense of responsibility. ”

“ I have just read in a work on sociology, “Men surrender their individual wills to the collective will.” No, the true social process is not when they surrender but when they contribute their wills to the collective will. ”

“ Separate provinces, communities, and families, having distinct interests, and under no very powerful control from without, had learned independence of thought and action, self-reliance, patient endurance under the pressure of circumstances, and indomitable courage in the maintenance of personal and political rights, from the circumstances in which their relations to each other had placed them. ”

“ Another group of the same type is a so-called "movement," composed of a few individuals who associate themselves in a loose way to further a definite purpose, like the promotion of temperance, hold mass-meetings, and create public opinion, but do not at once proceed to a permanent organization. Eventually, when the movement has gathered sufficient headway or has shown that it is permanently valuable, a fixed organization may be accomplished. ”

“ The proper attitude of voluntary workers is to initiate and demonstrate the value of reforms, to persuade local authorities to adopt them, themselves to become members of these local authorities to ensure this end, and thus eventually render the voluntary organization for the object in question superfluous. There need be no fear; openings for further desirable voluntary work will always appear, as official work increases. ”

“ It can only be met by the discipline of a people who use their own government for worthy ends, who preserve individuality and mobility in society and respect the rights of others, who follow the dictates of humanity and fair play, the principles of give and take. ”