A SOCIAL POLICY TOWARD DEPENDENTS 823 



to wait for maturity of body and mind. Child-labor laws are 

 themselves the definite legal expression of a mathematical measure- 

 ment of a social duty. 



The trade-union world is stating its minimum standard more 

 and more definitely, and insisting on it with courage and constancy, 

 though sometimes also with acts of lawlessness and atrocity which 

 show disregard of community welfare. This minimum standard 

 includes such factors as the eight-hour day, the sanitary work-place, 

 protected machinery, the age of beginning apprenticeship, and a 

 minimum rate of wages for each branch of industry. The effect of 

 the successful and general application of this standard upon the 

 incapable and the feeble deserves our attention; but the enforcement 

 of the minimum, being a community interest, should not be left to 

 trade-unions, but should be, as far as possible, a matter of law and 

 governmental action. 



In the maintenance of this minimum standard we are compelled 

 to face the problem of immigration of foreigners whose standard of 

 living is below this minimum. So long as hordes of this class are 

 permitted to come freely to America, to live herded in unfit habita- 

 tions, and to compete for places with our naturalized citizens who 

 have already won an advance, the case is hopeless for our own people. 



Uncritical and traditional requirements of ethics produce an 

 unreasoning sentimentalism which wreaks injury upon the race. 

 The ethical demands of the future will become more exact, more 

 capable of explanation and justification, because they will rest both 

 upon inherited instincts of sympathy and also upon calculations of 

 the consequences of methods on social welfare in our own and coming 

 ages. Many of the moral standards of our times need to be pro- 

 foundly modified by this process of scientific testing and experimen- 

 tation. 



II 



The general form of our present problem is this: What is the 

 best system and method of promoting the welfare of the dependent 

 group considered as a vital part of the entire community? It is 

 chiefly a problem of technique. This technique is a mode of action 

 by a community. It is known and has its reasons in relation to the 

 rational order of society. It can be taught and learned, for it is 

 taught and learned. Hence it is a subject of science and has won 

 proper recognition as a topic in this Scientific Congress. This 

 technique is learned originally as other scientific conclusions are 

 reached, by systematic observation of social phenomena, by 

 induction from facts, by performing experiments with methods 

 under varied conditions, by inventing working hypotheses and 

 putting them to the test of reality. 



