SOCIAL SUSTENANCE. 45 



flames, the last vestiges of that which was a man. We are touching 

 upon the epoch when history begins. Megaliths are no longer raised 

 in Europe. They remained for a long time an unimportant memorial 

 of barbarous populations ; and it is only in our days that they have 

 been restored to their true place in the history of art and of human 

 progress. Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from La 

 Nature. 







SOCIAL SUSTENANCE. 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES AND DEFINITIONS. 

 By HENRY J. PIIILPOTT. 



THE study of the relation of organized society to individual suste- 

 nance may, for brevity, be called the science of social sustenance. 

 This means practically the same as the term political economy in its 

 original significance. Economy means housekeeping or husbandry, or 

 making a living. Political economy is housekeeping as affected by 

 social and political conditions. The word "sustenance" means mak- 

 ing a living, with or without a house or home, and with all that the 

 term "living " implies when used in that way. Making a living is not 

 merely keeping body and soul together. It is supplying all the physi- 

 cal, moral, and mental wants, in so far as conscious, irksome effort is 

 required to supply them. What is a living to one man is not to an- 

 other ; but the man who makes his own living is always called self- 

 sustaining. Sustenance, therefore, is the making any kind of a living. 



Social sustenance is making a living as affected by social conditions. 

 Social conditions are the conditions brought about by the existence and 

 conduct of other people. Exactly what social sustenance means, then, 

 is making a living as affected by the existence and conduct of other 

 people. 



The study of political economy begins the moment we try to think 

 how our making a living is affected by other people. The infinite mul- 

 titude of ways in which this happens may well discourage us. But we 

 do not have to understand all of them, nor even know all of them. 

 We have to classify them rudely at first, and afterward as fully as 

 we can. The most general classification of the ways in which others 

 affect our ability to make a living is this : 1. They may hinder us in it. 

 2. They may help us in it. 



So it is all a question of the help and hindrance others give us in 

 making a living. If this division into help and hindrance seems trivial, 

 it only seems so, for it is not. It has to be kept in mind all the way 

 through our study. A policy which is boasted of as enabling us to 

 increase our mutual helpfulness, as socialism, for instance, may or it 

 may not increase our tendency to hinder each other. If we wish to 

 reach a right conclusion we have always to ask whether the added 



