614: POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



there is maintained that graduated subordination which ties 

 all inferiors to superiors, as the soldier is tied to his officer 

 so long as there is maintained the relation of status, which 

 tends to fix men in the positions they are severally born to ; 

 there is insured a comparative rigidity of social organization. 

 But with the cessation of those needs that initiate and pre 

 serve the militant type of structure, and with the establish 

 ment of contract as the universal relation under which efforts 

 are combined for mutual advantage, social organization loses 

 its rigidity. No longer determined by the principle of inheri 

 tance, places and occupations are now determined by the 

 principle of efficiency ; and changes of structure follow when 

 men, not bound to prescribed functions, acquire the functions 

 for which they have proved themselves most fit. Easily modi 

 fied in its arrangements, the industrial type of society is 

 therefore one which adapts itself with facility to new require 

 ments. 



572. The other incidental result to be named is a ten 

 dency towards loss of economic autonomy. 



While hostile relations with adjacent societies continuj, 

 each society has to be productively self-sufficing ; but with 

 the establishment of peaceful relations, this need for self- 

 sufficingness ceases. As the local divisions composing one 

 of our great nations, had, while they were at feud, to produce 

 each for itself almost everything it required, but now per 

 manently at peace with one another, have become so far 

 mutually dependent that no one of them can satisfy its wants 

 without aid from the rest; so the great nations themselves, at 

 present forced in large measure to maintain their economic 

 autonomies, will become less forced to do this as war de 

 creases, and will gradually become necessary to one another. 

 While, on the one hand, the facilities possessed by each for 

 certain kinds of production, will render exchange mutually 

 advantageous ; on the other hand, the citizens of each will, 

 under the industrial regime, tolerate no such restraints on 



