722 THE FAMILY 



We do Hot understand the structure of our society of to-day and the 

 way in which it has grown out of the past. We do not see that our 

 corporations, our churches, our schools as well as our municipal 

 organizations, are the outgrowth of communal institutions of long 

 ago and that the history of the modern home is closely interwoven 

 with their rise and development. We do not see that municipal 

 reform is closely allied with ecclesiastical reform and with corporate 

 reform in general. 



Here we must look to our universities for the original work that 

 needs to be done in what may properly be called American sociology. 

 The field for original work and for contributions to social science here, 

 as well as for practical usefulness, is an open one and to my mind 

 very attractive. Let us hope that it will soon be entered with 

 enthusiasm. Some of us recall the great value of a little book on 

 zoology by Agassiz and Gould that was put into the hands of college 

 students forty or fifty years ago. How its classification and grouping 

 of animal life stirred our imagination and opened to our boyish 

 minds in an intelligent way the world it described ! How it disclosed 

 to us the value of the comparative method! And we remember the 

 similar work that botanical science did for us in that day. Since 

 those days other men have climbed on the shoulders of Agassiz and 

 his co-workers and have seen farther and clearer. But the method 

 remains and is continually winning new fields. But why should we 

 not soon have a similar stimulating work done in social institutions? 

 When it is done we shall have a different story of progress in the 

 knowledge and treatment of the family than the one we tell to-day. 



SHORT PAPER 



DR. FRANK SEWALL, of Washington, D. C., presented a short paper to this 

 Section on " The Civic Ideal in the Family." 



