to the measure of coöperation we have nevertheless attained, with its consequent division and specialization of labor and large-scale production, aided by the extraordinary development of invention and machinery.

The ideal of legal control.

The epoch of ultra-individualism, of what Huxley called "administrative nihilism," is rapidly passing. Jane Addams speaks of "the inadequacy of those eighteenth-century ideals ... the breakdown of the machinery which they provided," pointing out that "that worldly wisdom which counsels us to know life as it is" discounts the assumption "that if only the people had freedom they would walk continuously in the paths of justice and righteousness." 1 H. G. Wells remarks, "We do but emerge now from a period of deliberate happy-go-lucky and the influence of Herbert Spencer, who came near raising public shiftlessness to the dignity of a natural philosophy. Everything would adjust itself if only it was left alone." 2 It is becoming clear that we cannot trust to education and the conscience of individuals to right matters, not only because as yet we provide no moral education of any consequence for our youth, but because, if we did, the temptations in a world where every man is free to grab for himself would still be almost irresistible.

But there are two positive arguments for the extension of legal control that clinch the matter:

(1) Without the support of the law it is often impossible for the conscientious man to act in a purely social spirit. The competition of those who are less answerable to moral motives forces him to lower his own ideals if he would not see his business ruined. The employer of child labor in one 1 Newer Ideals of Peace, pp. 31-32.

Social Forces in England and America, p. 80.

factory cannot afford to hire adults, at their higher wage, until all the other factories give up the cheaper labor also. Where sweat-shop labor produces cheap clothing for some manufacturers, the more scrupulous are undersold. One employer cannot, unless he is unusually prosperous, raise the wages of his employees or shorten their hours until his competitors do likewise. Improvement of conditions must take place all along the line or not at all. And since unanimous voluntary consent is practically impossible to obtain, and of precarious duration if obtained, the legal enforcement of common standards is necessitated.

(2) Men generally are willing to bind themselves by law to higher codes than they will live up to if not bound. In their reflective moments, when they are deciding how to vote, temptations are less insistent and ideals stronger than when they are confronting concrete situations. To vote for a law which will restrain others, and incidentally one's self, comes easier than to make a purely personal sacrifice that leaves general practice unaltered. To realize that this is true, we need but look at the remarkable ethical gains made now year by year through laws voted for by many of the very men whose practice had hitherto been upon a lower moral level. Very many evils that once seemed fastened upon society have been thus legislated out of existence.1 And if the industrial situation still seems wretched, it is because, in our swift advance, new evils are arising about as fast as older evils are eradicated. The law necessarily lags behind the spread of abuses, so that "there will probably always be a running duel between anti-social action and legislation designed to check it. Novel methods of corruption will constantly require novel methods of correction. [But] this constant development of the law should make

...

1 For a vivid picture of earlier industrial conditions which would not now be tolerated, see Charles Reade's Put Yourself in His Place.

corrupt practices increasingly difficult for the less gifted rascals who must always constitute the great majority of would-be offenders." 1

The law can never, of course, cover the whole field of human conduct; it represents, in Stevenson's phrase," that modicum of morality which can be squeezed out of the ruck of mankind." Unnecessary extension of the law is cumbersome, expensive, and provocative of impatience and rebellion. Moreover, there is always some minimum of danger of injustice in attempting legal constraint; the law itself, as approved by the majority, may be unfair, or its application to the concrete case may be unfair. The individualists are right in feeling that men must be left alone, wherever the possible results are not too dangerous. But no hard-and-fast line can be drawn between activities that must be left free and those which must be regulated. Such apparently personal matters as the use of opium or alcohol must be checked because the general happiness is, in the end, greatly and obviously enhanced by such restraint. But there will always be, beyond the law, a wide field for the satisfaction of personal tastes and the practice of generosity. There is no double standard; if an act is legally right and morally wrong, that simply means that it lies beyond the boundaries of the limited field which the law covers. The extension of that field is a matter of practical expediency in each type of situation; beyond that field, but working to the same ends, the forces of education and public opinion are alone available.2

Should existing laws always be obeyed?

Year by year we are extending our network of laws over human conduct; more and more pertinent becomes the ques

1 R. C. Brooks, Corruption in American Politics and Life, p. 99. * For a discussion of this point, see F. Paulsen, System of Ethics, bk. II, chap. IX, sec. 9. International Journal of Ethics, vol. 18, p. 18.

tion, Will the people obey them? and the further question, Are there times when the law may be rightly disobeyed? We shall discuss the second question first.

It is obvious that our whole social structure rests upon the willingness of the people to obey the law. The watchword of republics should be, not "liberty," but "obedience"; their gravest danger now is not tyranny, but anarchy. We must individually submit with patience and good temper to the decisions of the majority, even if we disapprove those decisions. We must abide by the rules of the game until we can get the rules changed. And all changes must be effected according to the rules agreed upon for effecting changes. This law-abiding spirit is the great triumph of democracy; only so long as it exists can popular government stand. Though it be slower and exacting of greater effort and skill, evolution, not revolution, is the method of permanent progress.

We must, then, band together against any groups that, in their impatience of reform or opposition to the common will, cast aside the restraints of law - whether they are suffragettes, or working-men, or capitalists intent on breaking a strike, or "one-hundred per cent Americans" out to repress "Bolshevism." It is doubtful whether, in the long run, any of these groups further their particular cause by violence; but if they do, they further it at the expense of something still more precious, the preservation of the law-abiding spirit. Other organizations will not be slow to profit by the lesson of their success; and we shall have Heaven knows how many causes seeking to attain their ends by destructiveness and resistance. Especially, the very serious and menacing rebellion of labor against law must be firmly controlled; much as we may sympathize with their grievances, we cannot countenance the attempt to remedy them by violence. The Industrial Workers of the World, with their frank espousal of "di

rect action,"1 have made themselves enemies of society. "Sabotage," intimidation and coercion by strikers or capitalists, the spirit of Bolshevism (using that term to mean the advocacy of revolutionary methods) must be branded as criminal.

On the other hand, the spread of the spirit of lawlessness among the lower classes should serve to warn the upper classes that present social conditions will not much longer be endured. There is a great deal of idealism among the advocates of violence;3 there is a great deal of sympathy on the part of the public with lawless strikers, with the I.W.W. gangs that have recently invaded city churches, with all those under-dogs who are now determining to have a share in the good things of life. Unless the employing and governing classes meet their demands halfway, gunpowder and dynamite pretty surely lie ahead.

Will the spirit of lawlessness spread? Ought we to slacken our process of lawmaking lest we make the yoke too hard to bear? As a matter of fact, it is through more laws, better laws, and a better mechanism for punishing infraction of laws, that we can hope to check lawlessness. Lynchingsas we noted in chapter xxv-have been the product of inadequate legislation and judicial procedure; as our laws

1 Cf., in a pamphlet issued by them: "The I.W.W. will get the results sought with the least expenditure of time and energy. The tactics used are determined solely by the power of the organization to make good in their use. The question of 'right' and 'wrong' does not concern us. In short, the I.W.W. advocates the use of militant 'direct action' tactics to the full extent of our power to make them." (Quoted in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 109, p. 703.)

2 Cf. Ettor (quoted in Outlook, vol. 101, p. 340): "They tell us to get what we want by the ballot. They want us to play the game according to the established rules. But the rules were made by the capitalists. They have laid down the laws of the game. They hold the pick of the cards. We never can win by political methods. The right of suffrage is the greatest hoax of history. Direct action is the only way."

3 Cf., for example, Giovannitti's poem, The Cage, in the Atlantic Monthly, June, 1913.