Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/104

 92 the one process of progress. The only intelligent selfishness is structurally identified with unselfishness, as warp and woof in a piece of silk. Egoism that is not equally altruism tends to collapse of its own weight.

The pertinence of these reflections appears in view of the fact that the crisis calling for special relief brought into the consciousness of many representative citizens some most potent clauses of the organic translation of society. They apparently saw for the first time, or more clearly than ever before, that social peace depends upon maintaining something more like a balance between property and poverty. They realized that there is a prudential reason, which sociologists would call "a principle of the structural economy of society," for placing some of the strength of the strong at the disposal of the weak. One successful business man expressed it in the form: "Society must pick up its own chips or the chips will clog the wheels." In other words, perception of the facts of the situation passed very shortly into interpretation of the meaning of the facts, as elements of a social condition in which citizens as such have a personal concern.

Up to this point, then, we have traced the manifestation of an aroused civic consciousness simply as it concentrated itself upon the work of temporary relief. The conduct of this relief work served in the first place to bring sympathetic and generous feeling down from the cloudy region of speculation and to put it into application in certain specialized efforts. It further served to inform these newly aroused consciences as to the relation by which one part of civic amelioration is inextricably bound up with the remainder of corporate interests. While the town was canvassed for workers and for pecuniary supporters of relief measures, and while the time of all actively engaged was consumed by their attention to this fragment of the city's needs, new demonstration was met at every turn that a single municipal condition cannot be treated apart from the total associated life of the city. Thus contact with a single, and that an accidental phase of actual municipal conditions, developed intelligence about the other conditions involved in advantageous municipal cooperation.