men from obtaining money or office in certain specified ways. We must so shape their ambitions that they do not wish to obtain money or office by means that injure the community. We must get them to consider public selfishness as dishonorable a thing as we now consider private selfishness. If a man to-day crowds himself out of a theater, leaving behind him a trail of bruised women and children, the very newsboy in the street will hiss him when he gets to the door. Such a man will be despised by the public, and in his heart he will despise himself, for taking advantage of his strength to crush others. But if a man gets money or office by analogous processes, the world is inclined to admire the result and forgive the means; and the man, instead of despising himself for his selfishness, applauds himself for his success."1

Certainly, unless in these peaceful ways we can transform our present system of grab-as-grab-can into a fair and rational industrial order, changes will come by violence and revolution. There are volcanic passions slumbering beneath the prosperity of our trade and manufacture; there is but a brief respite before society wherein to evolve a measure of social justice. The lower classes are awakening to their power; unless society and government grant them their fair share of the fruits of industry, they will take them through the wreck of society and government. There is no moral problem more pressing than the finding of peaceful remedies for industrial wrongs.

E. A. Ross, Sin and Society. H. R. Seager, Introduction to Economics, chap. XXII. C. R. Van Hise, Concentration and Control, chap. II. A. T. Hadley, Standards of Public Morality. H. C. Potter, The Citizen in his Relation to the Industrial Situation. W. Gladden, The New Idolatry. R. C. Brooks, Corruption in American Politics and Life. H. Jeffs, Concerning Conscience, chap. v. Dewey and

1 A. T. Hadley, Standards of Public Morality, p. 8.

Tufts, Ethics, chaps. xxi, xxIII. C. R. Henderson, The Social Spirit in America, chaps. VIII, IX. J. S. Brooks, The Social Unrest. Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, chap. v. Ruskin, Unto this Last. International Journal of Ethics, vol. 23, p. 455. For specific references, see footnotes.

CHAPTER XXVII

INDUSTRIAL RECONSTRUCTION

OUR modern industrial evils are so grave and so deeprooted that it is highly questionable whether the pressure of public opinion, piecemeal legislation, and the development of codes of honor can strike deep enough to eradicate them. Is not, perhaps, the whole system morally wrong? Instead of these endless attempts to cure the natural results of the system, is there not need of a radical reconstruction? Various attempts have been made, divers proposals are offered, in the hope of curing the causes of present maladies and devising a juster system. Many of these are doubtless impracticable, or tend to work more hardship than amelioration. But each proposal, of any plausibility, has a right to a hearing if it offers to end the great wrongs of contemporary industry; we must be very confident that it will not work before we reject it. For some way must be found to right these wrongs, or our whole industrial order will go to smash. We must not condemn too hastily a method which has not had a thorough trial, or whose defects time and experience might remedy. For mistaken experiments can be discontinued; and great as is the danger in incautious radicalism, the danger in "standing pat" is greater.

Ought the trusts to be broken up or regulated?

The greatest sinners are, certainly, to speak generally, the great corporations that we call trusts though the word "distrust" would better express contemporary feeling! So great has popular hostility to them become that the

Democratic party platform of July, 1912, declared that “a private monopoly is indefensible and intolerable," and demanded "the enactment of such additional legislation as may be necessary to make it impossible for a private monopoly to exist in the United States," i.e., "the control by any one corporation of so large a proportion of any industry as to make it a menace to competitive conditions."

But is it necessary to destroy this splendidly efficient concentration of industry in order to avoid its evils? The proposal to revert to the older competitive plan is reminiscent of the outcry against machine production a century earlier, and the earnest pleas then made to return to the hand-tool method. "Big business" constitutes one of the greatest advances in human industry, and therefore has surely come to stay. From the era of individual workers owning their tools, mankind advanced to the age of competition between small concerns using machines; no less marked an advance is that to the age of large-scale production and unified industry. Its advantages may be briefly summarized:

(1) The competitive system involves needless duplications of plant, machinery, and workers; clerks stand idly in rival stores, waiting for trade, drummers spend their time in getting trade away from one another, great sums have to be spent on advertising. Monopoly means a saving of all this wasted time, labor, and money.

(2) The competitive system means great fluctuations in industry, constant anxiety, forced cut prices, and frequent failures, with their financial ruin and heartbreak to employers and loss of work to employees. Monopoly means stability, comparative freedom from anxiety, and a saving of the economic confusion and loss of bankruptcies.

(3) The great scale of monopolistic production tends to still further economies. Raw materials are bought and trans

ported in larger quantities, and so at lower cost; less need be kept on hand at a given time. The utilization of by-products, made feasible by large-scale production, has proved, in many cases, a striking addition to human wealth.

(4) Monopolistic production means that more money can be put into improved processes, into plant and machinery, into making factories sanitary, and working conditions pleasant. The conspicuousness of the plant makes it more open to public criticism and more likely to awaken a sense of pride in the owners. Conditions are seldom tolerated in the big concerns that go unheeded in the little shops.

Surely our attempt, then, must be to retain "big business," and cure its evils, rather than to turn the hands of the clock backward by reverting to the wasteful competitive system. If this proves possible, we should work for the organizing of the as yet unorganized industries. Half of human effort is still wasted, through lack of such organization. If the innumerable butcher shops, grocery stores, apothecary shops, dry goods stores, etc., throughout the country, were consolidated locally, and then for some considerable section of the country, we could have greatly reduced prices and greatly improved shops. Mr. Woolworth's chain of five- and ten-cent stores offers a familiar contemporary example of the efficiency and saving to the consumer of such consolidation.

What are the ethics of the following schemes:

I. Trade-unions and strikes? We must, then, consider what methods of regulating, without destroying, monopoly are efficient and morally defensible; and, first, the method into which the working classes have put most of their effort and enthusiasm. The labor-unions have, as a matter of fact, actually effected certain results, which we may rapidly review: