June 5, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



889 



trol its character and its tendencies; it is 

 the necessary machinery for bringing aboiit 

 many reforms ; and a people who have not 

 the virtue and active energy to effect re- 

 forms through government are incapable 

 of accomplishing them through any other 

 organization of society or lack of organ- 

 ization. 



Individual responsibility in social re- 

 form can not be too strongly urged. Laissez 

 faire is materialism, fatalism, selfishness, 

 savagery, indifference, laziness, mere sub- 

 jective religious life and Pharisaism. It is 

 the priest and the Levite, and not the 

 Samaritan. 



We may dismiss anarchism and revolu- 

 tionary socialism at the outset. Even if in 

 a distant age government control can be 

 largely relaxed, abolition of government to- 

 day, human nature being as it is, would 

 necessitate the gradual reestablishment of 

 government through a chaos and struggle 

 which would be a repetition of Middle 

 Ages history. Did we have the social state 

 to-day, human nature being what it is, we 

 should have under another form of organ- 

 ization an exaggeration of all the political 

 corruption and selfishness and weakness 

 which exist under present forms of govern- 

 ment. In all civilized countries political 

 changes will be an evolution and not a revo- 

 lution. We may throw aside all supposed 

 absolute rights and inflexible principles. 

 Let the state do what it can do better than 

 individuals. 



Certainly we must recognize many 

 causes of poverty. It is harmful to make a 

 hobby of any one theory, or to try to find 

 a panacea in any one remedy. Unwilling- 

 ness may be subject to state regulation; 

 lack of thrift, prodigality, etc., may be 

 modified by philanthropic endeavor; in- 

 ability can be removed in a percentage of 

 cases bj^ education and by the infiuence of 

 such work as that of the ' settlements ' ; lack 



of opportunity for Avork can be met in part 

 in times of distress by state or municipal 

 provision for needed public improvements ; 

 various kinds of misfortune should be met 

 by state provision and organized philan- 

 thropy; hopeless pauperism should be the 

 state 's care ; inequitable distribution will 

 be gradually modified by labor organiza- 

 tions and the development of altimistic 

 principles in society. There is much of 

 poverty that no plan of state or society can 

 remove until the tone of the whole social 

 organism is improved. I refer to the lack 

 of aims and motives in those who are other- 

 wise physically and mentally capable. The 

 world is full of opportunities for estab- 

 lishing in thousands of centers, productive 

 industrial activities, if the unemployed had 

 the power of initiative. This whole subject 

 is related to the problem of degeneracy. 



That monopolies, so far as harmful in 

 fact and tendency, should be subject to 

 control is, I believe, the growing theory. 

 The findings of the United States Indus- 

 trial Commission, which has recently fin- 

 ished its labors, are significant, especially 

 as the commission can not be charged 

 a priori with undue hostility to wealth. 

 These findings show the need of control 

 through government, and the belief in its 

 possibility and feasibility. Moreover, the 

 very fact of the report shows that special- 

 ists, statesmen, and even politicians and 

 monopolists are awake to the fact that re- 

 form must come. 



In spite of certain biological doctrines 

 of social evolution, in spite of the advo- 

 cates of struggle, in spite of all laissez faire 

 theories, one important fact must be recog- 

 nized, namely, that human sympathy is 

 growing and that human sympathy must 

 be preserved in all its strength and purity ; 

 it is the bond that unites the units into a 

 social aggregate. At the same time it is 

 conceded by all scientific philanthropists 



