The wide divergence of experience makes it difficult for the good citizen to understand this point of view, and many things conspire to make it hard for him to act upon it. He is more or less a victim to that curious feeling so often possessed by the good man, that the righteous do not need to be agreeable, that their goodness alone is sufficient, and that they can leave the arts and wiles of securing popular favor to the self-seeking. This results in a certain repellent manner, commonly regarded as the apparel of righteousness, and is further responsible for the fatal mistake of making the surroundings of "good influences" singularly unattractive; a mistake which really deserves a reprimand quite as severe as the equally reprehensible deed of making the surroundings of "evil influences" so beguiling. Both are akin to that state of mind which narrows the entrance into a wider morality to the eye of a needle, and accounts for the fact that new moral movements have ever and again been inaugurated by those who have found themselves in revolt against the conventionalized good.
The success of the reforming politician who insists upon mere purity of administration and upon the control and suppression of the unruly elements in the community, may be the easy result of a narrowing and selfish process. For the painful condition of endeavoring to minister to genuine social needs, through the political machinery, and at the same time to remodel that machinery so that it shall be adequate to its new task, is to encounter the inevitable discomfort of a transition into a new type of democratic relation. The perplexing experiences of the actual administration, however, have a genuine value of their own. The economist who treats the individual cases as mere data, and the social reformer who labors to make such cases impossible, solely because of the appeal to his reason, may have to share these perplexities before they feel themselves within the grasp of a principle of growth, working outward from within; before they can gain the exhilaration and uplift which comes when the individual sympathy and intelligence is caught into the forward intuitive movement of the mass. This general movement is not without its intellectual aspects, but it has to be transferred from the region of perception to that of emotion before it is really apprehended. The mass of men seldom move together without an emotional incentive. The man who chooses to stand aside, avoids much of the perplexity, but at the same time he loses contact with a great source of vitality.
Perhaps the last and greatest difficulty in the paths of those who are attempting to define and attain a social morality, is that which arises from the fact that they cannot adequately test the value of their efforts, cannot indeed be sure of their motives until their efforts are reduced to action and are presented in some workable form of social conduct or control. For action is indeed the sole medium of expression for ethics. We continually forget that the sphere of morals is the sphere of action, that speculation in regard to morality is but observation and must remain in the sphere of intellectual comment, that a situation does not really become moral until we are confronted with the question of what shall be done in a concrete case, and are obliged to act upon our theory. A stirring appeal has lately been made by a recognized ethical lecturer who has declared that "It is insanity to expect to receive the data of wisdom by looking on. We arrive at moral knowledge only by tentative and observant practice. We learn how to apply the new insight by having attempted to apply the old and having found it to fail."
This necessity of reducing the experiment to action throws out of the undertaking all timid and irresolute persons, more than that, all those who shrink before the need of striving forward shoulder to shoulder with the cruder men, whose sole virtue may be social effort, and even that not untainted by self-seeking, who are indeed pushing forward social morality, but who are doing it irrationally and emotionally, and often at the expense of the well-settled standards of morality.
The power to distinguish between the genuine effort and the adventitious mistakes is perhaps the most difficult test which comes to our fallible intelligence. In the range of individual morals, we have learned to distrust him who would reach spirituality by simply renouncing the world, or by merely speculating upon its evils. The result, as well as the process of virtues attained by repression, has become distasteful to us. When the entire moral energy of an individual goes into the cultivation of personal integrity, we all know how unlovely the result may become; the character is upright, of course, but too coated over with the result of its own endeavor to be attractive. In this effort toward a higher morality in our social relations, we must demand that the individual shall be willing to lose the sense of personal achievement, and shall be content to realize his activity only in connection with the activity of the many.
The cry of "Back to the people" is always heard at the same time, when we have the prophet's demand for repentance or the religious cry of "Back to Christ," as though we would seek refuge with our fellows and believe in our common experiences as a preparation for a new moral struggle.
As the acceptance of democracy brings a certain life-giving power, so it has its own sanctions and comforts. Perhaps the most obvious one is the curious sense which comes to us from time to time, that we belong to the whole, that a certain basic well being can never be taken away from us whatever the turn of fortune. Tolstoy has portrayed the experience in "Master and Man." The former saves his servant from freezing, by protecting him with the heat of his body, and his dying hours are filled with an ineffable sense of healing and well-being. Such experiences, of which we have all had glimpses, anticipate in our relation to the living that peace of mind which envelopes us when we meditate upon the great multitude of the dead. It is akin to the assurance that the dead understand, because they have entered into the Great Experience, and therefore must comprehend all lesser ones; that all the misunderstandings we have in life are due to partial experience, and all life's fretting comes of our limited intelligence; when the last and Great Experience comes, it is, perforce, attended by mercy and forgiveness. Consciously to accept Democracy and its manifold experiences is to anticipate that peace and freedom.
INDEX1
Alderman, basis of his political success, 226, 228, 240, 243, 248, 267;
his influence on morals of the American boy, 251, 255, 256;
on standard of life, 257;
his power, 232, 233, 235, 246, 260;
his social duties, 234, 236, 243, 250.
Art and the workingman, 219, 225.
"Boss," the, ignorant man's dependence on, 260, 266.
Business college, the, 197.
Charity, administration of, 14, 22;
neighborly relations in, 29, 230;
organized, 25;
standards in, 15, 27, 32, 38, 49, 58;
scientific vs. human relations in, 64.
Child labor, premature work, 41, 188;
first laws concerning, 167, 170.
City, responsibilities of, 266.
Civil service law, its enforcement, 231, 233.
Commercial and industrial life, social position of, compared, 193.
Commercialism and education, 190-199, 216;
morals captured by, 264;
polytechnic schools taken by, 202.
Coöperation, 153, 158.
Cooper, Peter, 202.
Dayton, Ohio, factory at, 216.
Death and burials among simple people, 238.
Domestic service, problem of, in France, England, and America, 135;
industrial difficulty of, 106;
moral issues of, 106.
Education, attempts at industrial, 201;
commercialism in, 196, 201;
in commercialism, 216;
in technical schools, 201;
lack of adaptation in, 199, 208, 212;
of industrial workers, 180, 193, 199, 219;
offset to overspecialization, 211;
public school and, 190, 192;
relation of, to the child, 180, 185, 193;
relation of, to the immigrant, 181-186;
university extension lectures and settlements, 199;
workingmen's lecture courses, 214.
Educators, mistakes of, 212;
new demands on, 178, 192, 201, 211.
Family claim, the, 4, 74, 78;
daughter's college education, 82;
employer's vs. domestic's, 123, 124;
on the daughter, 82;
on the son, ibid.
Family life, misconception of, 116.
Filial relations, clash of moral codes, 94.
Funerals, attitude of simple people toward, 238.
Household employee, the, 108, 109;
character of, 112;
domestic vs. factory, 116, 118, 119, 122;
isolation of, 109, 111, 117, 120, 132;
morals of, 125;
unnatural relation of, 113, 120, 121, 126, 127;
unreasonable demands on, 113, 115;
residence clubs for, 133;
social position of, 114, 119, 122.
Household employer, the, undemocratic ethics of, 116;
reform of, in relation to employee, 126.
Household, the, advantages and disadvantages of factory work over, 129;
competition of factory work with, 128;
difficulties of the small, 135;
industrial isolation of, 117;
industry of, transferred to factory, 104, 105;
lack of progress in, 117;
origin of, 104;
social vs. individual aspects of, 103;
suburban difficulties of, 134;
wages in, 131.
Hull-house experiences, 43, 53, 58, 59, 240, 247.
Human life, value of, 7, 178.
Individual action vs. associated, 137, 153, 158;
advantages of, 158, 162;
limitations of, 165;
moral evolution involved in, 226.
Individual vs. social needs, 155, 269.
Individual vs. social virtues, 224, 227, 265.
Italian immigrant, the, conception of abstract virtue among, 229;
dependence of, on their children, 184;
education of, 185;
new conditions of life of, 181.
Juvenile criminal, the, evolution of, 53-56, 187.
Labor, division of, 210, 213;
reaction from, 215.
Law and order, 172, 174, 234.
Moral fact and moral idea, 227, 229, 273.
Morality, natural basis of, 268;
personal and social, 6, 176, 103.
Philanthropic standpoint, the, its dangers, 150, 155-157.
Philanthropist, the, 154, 175-176.
Political corruption, ethical development in, 270;
formation of reform clubs, 246;
greatest pressure of, 260;
individual and social aspect of, 264;
leniency in regard to, 239;
responsibility for, 256, 263;
selling of votes, 244-246;
street railway and saloon interest, 262.
Political leaders, causes of success of, 224.
Political standards, 228, 229, 251-253, 261;
compared with Benjamin Franklin's, 255.
Referendum method, the, 164.
Reformer, the, ethics of, 270.
Reform movements in politics, causes of failure in, 222, 240, 262, 272, 274;
business men's attitude toward, 265.
Rumford, Count, 117.
Ruskin, 219.
Saloon, the, 243, 264.
Social claim, the, 4, 77;
child study and, 92, 180;
misplaced energy and, 90.
Social virtues, code of employer, 143, 148;
code of laboring man, ibid.
Technical schools, 201;
adaptation of, to workingmen, 204;
compromises in, 203;
polytechnic institutions, 202;
textile schools, 203;
women in, ibid.
Thrift, individualism of, 31, 40, 212.
Trades unions, 148, 158, 167, 169, 171;
sympathetic strikes, 174.
Workingman, the, ambition of, for his children, 191, 258;
art in relation to, 218;
charity of, 154;
evening classes and social entertainment for, 189;
grievance of, 211;
historical perspective in the work of, ibid.;
organizations of, 214;
standards for political candidate, 257.