148 
Kinley—The Direction of Social Reform . 
Socialists also mistake the present social need. Their cry is 
for a new industrial organization. But, as already pointed out, 
our present industrial system is the latest and most advanced 
development of the social organism. It has outstripped other 
social organs in the race of progress. This is the true explan¬ 
ation of the present disturbance. But we cannot properly call 
the industrial change the cause. It is a symptom. It is at 
once the result and the sign of progress. Therefore, to attempt 
a reorganization or a reform of the industrial system, would be 
to begin at the wrong end. It is not a proper statement of the 
situation, from the historical and sociological point of view, to 
say that our present industrial system involves great evils and 
therefore needs to be changed; but rather, that in the long 
struggle of social progress, the ethical and juridical functions of 
the social organism have not yet developed to the extent of the 
industrial. 
This is not .to deny that there are evils in the present system 
of industry. It is to deny that these evils, inhere wholly, or 
mainly, in the system. It is to claim that under different 
ethical conditions, the evils could be made largely to disappear. 
Nor is this position a denial of the possibility and desirability of 
a better system, even under other present conditions. 
“Whilst, however, an organization of the industrial world may 
with certainty be expected to arise in process of time, it would 
be a great error to attempt to improvise one.”* Moreover, the 
establishment of a system perfect from the industrial stand¬ 
point alone, would by no means do away with social ills. To 
draw the industrial system away from the other departments 
of social life to a still higher plane, would simply increase 
the strain on the bonds that hold society together. The over¬ 
development of one organ to the neglect of others can never 
produce either a normal man or a normal society. 
The fact is that it is in the elevation of practical ethics that 
we must look for the remedy of most of our present social ills. 
The industrial evils are not a first cause. They are themselves 
the result of relatively slow moral and legal progress. And it 
is to the acceleration of this progress that we must give our 
* Ingram’s Hist. Pol. Econ., p. 244. 
