Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/234

 222 In one more formal particular these three writers resemble each other, viz., they each consider this outlook over contemporary conditions sufficient justification for certain generalizations of industrial cause and effect. It does not appear that they have formally criticised the logical relations of historical and contemporary data; but they have acted upon the assumption that analysis of contemporary status and movement yields data for generalization of statistical and dynamic principles—a supposition which is winning its way very rapidly as a working hypothesis.

The method upon which each of these three writers has attempted to work is indicated by Von Halle as follows: (Introduction, p. xv.) ". . . an analytic division into the several elements is necessary; and then by recombining the various parts of the problem, we may hope to put ourselves in a position to judge the phenomena as a whole. Let us ask then (1) what are the inherent tendencies of the general development? (2) What the product of a local and temporary situation? (3) What of accidental and individual influences? These questions must suggest the outlines of an analytical inquiry.

There are, accordingly, four preliminary matters to be considered.

"1. The general economic development, which growing out of the past, influences, and is influenced by the present, and furnishes the basis for the conditions of the future, themselves changing in their turn.

"2. The national character to which it is due that phenomena differ from place to place, although the general features of the development are similar.

"This largely conditions— "3. Legal relations, which determine the form of the new phenomena, unless they are strong enough to break them (legal relations) down and create new ones for themselves.

"4. Then there are, lastly, the purely 'subjective' influences, the chance concurrence of circumstances—the presence or absence of particular individuals, which give their color to events. These are usually put in the foreground, and are only too likely to have an undue influence upon our judgment by misleading us as to the relative importance of things."

An inspection of the three books upon which we are commenting will result in an arrangement of them on the basis of generality, in this order, viz., (1) Dyer, (2) Hobson, (3) Von Halle; i.e., Dyer tries "to estimate the value of the various factors in the industrial problem, and