Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/413

Rh abuse which restless men are heaping upon organizations of capital without discrimination.

For nineteen centuries Christians have been preaching and trying to believe that we are members one of another; that we must work together in order to live ourselves out. We are just beginning to realize this conception intimately in devices by which many scattered financial interests are bound into a closely knitted whole. And now we turn upon these unperfected devices, upon which men with all their hereditary and acquired selfishness have begun to experiment—these prophecies of balanced and adjusted and justified cooperation—and we charge them with all that is unregenerate in the people who make them their tools!

A railroad syndicate or a gas trust may be quite as innocent and quite as useful as a ward caucus or a Christian Endeavor convention. In other instances it may be simply a softer sandbag than ordinary footpads use. Both patriots and traitors use firearms, and they both use public franchises. They alike choose these latter means because they are economically effective. If we have the purest zeal for the common good that has ever fired the soul of ancient or modern reformers, we cannot apply that zeal to best purpose among our industrial problems without setting it to the task of perfecting the checks and balances of industrial combination, which corporations of all kinds have begun to apply. The correct view of the situation is this: The evolution of demand for particular kinds and quantities of work has been accompanied by the evolution of a peculiar industrial organization, having certain obvious adaptations to the tasks to be performed. This organization affords a unique medium for exhibition of new variations of human ingenuity and efficiency as well as perversity. These opportunities are embraced both by aggregations of capital on the one hand and by aggregations of labor on the other hand. These complementary factors are at once and perhaps equally the security and the menace of modern industry.

My answer to the question what is the functional