INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION 807 



On the other hand we have an antinomy, as we may call it, in the 

 fact that this same industrial evolution has in consequence of the 

 division of labor given us some employments of a routine character 

 exceedingly simple, apparently soul-deadening, and very poorly paid. 

 These occupations fall to the most helpless classes in the community, 

 recruited by those crowded down and out of those kinds of labor 

 requiring growing efficiency. 



All this we may bring into direct connection with the struggle 

 for equality of opportunity. The progressive evolutionary stages 

 of industrial society set increasingly difficult tasks, and as a result of 

 the unequal development of men we have capacities almost infinitely 

 varied when they are applied to these tasks. 



The subject of contract brings before us in a new way the increas- 

 ingly complicated nature of modern industrial society and enables us 

 to see it from a new viewpoint. This is of particular importance 

 in the consideration of the labor problem. Labor remuneration is 

 governed by contract and contract determines the other conditions 

 of employment. Now modern contract becomes daily a more intri- 

 cate affair, which, for its interpretation, taxes the ingenuity of our 

 ablest legal minds. On the other hand it requires a rather developed 

 mind to grasp even the essential elements of contract. One of the 

 obstacles to reform in Turkey is said to be the difficulty the ordinary 

 Turk has in understanding the significance of time. 1 Yet the con- 

 cept time is one of the first elements in the labor contract. Let us 

 pause for a moment to consider the difficulties with which we are 

 confronted when we consider contract. Contract must be viewed as 

 sacred. It is a necessary foundation of our socio-economic order. 

 We admire the man " that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth 

 not." Thomas Jefferson wrote in his Bible opposite that verse and 

 the verses accompanying it in the Psalms, " the description of a 

 perfect gentleman." And we feel that he was right. Yet in con- 

 tract we have all the hardnesses, injustices, and cruelties of nature. 

 It is simply a medium through which existing forces find expression. 

 The individual must obey his individual contract; but it is apparent 

 that there must be a higher power, a public power, controlling, 

 regulating contract, forbidding some contracts, determining the 

 conditions of others, and in extreme cases dispensing from the 

 obligation of contract, as the courts in Germany may do in the case of 

 usury. Public authority must be the binding and loosing power. 

 Let us again seek an illustration in irrigation. From the Platte 

 River system in Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska more than two 

 thousand ditches take water. The absurdity of the idea that volun- 

 tary agreement expressed in unregulated private contract can divide 



1 North American Review, August, 1904, " Obstacles to Reform in Turkey," 

 by Charles Morawitz. 



