Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/418

406 change of public opinion is unlikely, therefore, until there is an evident change of front in corporate management.

We have to ask then what shall we do about it?

I answer: First and foremost, the thing at which the "practical" men smile, which professional "reformers" sneer at as an evasion of the issue, viz., teach the fundamental principles of corporate and state relationship to all sorts and conditions of men. Whatever more direct measures we may hereafter devise, to reduce the evils of corporate selfishness and to harness capitalistic organization to public tasks, society cannot afford to persist in rule-of-thumb policies toward agencies with such enormous capacity to promote or to endanger the public good. It is as reactionary for us to treat capitalistic organizations indiscriminately and on principle as beasts of prey, to be baited at will whenever we can catch them at disadvantage, as it was for the English peasantry to resist the building of railroads, or for the Russians, of whom Wallace and Tolstoi tell, to demolish improved farm implements. On the other hand, the day is past in which men can be awed into acquiescence in the divine right of corporations. But if we cease to venerate without learning to appreciate, we may harm ourselves worse in the first instance than by retaining the dominant superstition. Between ceasing to pray to idols and beginning to smash them is a shorter step than to the intelligent use of them as monuments of art and indexes of culture. Corporations, trusts, monopolies are here. They have begun to reveal their incalculable potencies for social service. Men must be taught to distinguish between these devices, as controllable social agencies, and on the other hand the unsocial personal volition, which at present often acts the rôle of a possessing devil perverting the agency. Men must be taught to study the social adaptabilities of capitalistic organization as expectantly as we study the applications of electrical energy. Everybody except the anarchist anticipates the next grand social gain through some manner of extension of the principles of industrial organization. Let us promote this gain by spreading intelligence about actual