Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/658

646 the earlier type as illustrated by the Celtic element. Great Britain is a great alembic, where the phenomenon of social distillation continues. The communistic type is being converted into the particularist type. The first step in this change is the transformation of the home; from a condition in which only the crude necessities and comforts of life are desired, to one in which aesthetic and intellectual desires modify and even subordinate the former. The home becomes not only a material thing, but a moral one as well. This is the fundamental distinction in the transformation. In the particularist type the habitation becomes of less importance. The cottage is characteristic of it, while the larger house sheltering several families is characteristic of the communistic type. In the former, change of habitations is easier, for with them the interior of the home is more important than the exterior. The character of the home is a social force of first order, for it develops the sentiment of dignity and interdependence, it predisposes to activity, it (its one to become a gentleman. This type of home has characterized the Anglo-Saxon race. There are certain significant results of this condition. The first is the small number of domestic servants produced by the Anglo-Saxon race. The second is the great number of those who spring from the working classes and reach the highest stations in life. This also partially explains why the English and Americans are at the same time the richest and the most extravagant of peoples. It is by a betterment of the home that every methodical and profound social reform must begin. The social question is not so purely a question of wages as often thought, but it is also a question of conduct. And the most judicious use of income is not that which economizes to start the children well in life, but which expends for both parents and children in education and in improving the type of the home. ( in La Sociale Science, January 1896.)

Competition and Combination.—Supposing competition is indestructible, there is a great difference between what is left of competition in some industries, e. g., the English railways, and the competition of private undertakings in most other trades. The problems of persistence of competition cannot be solved by abstract reasoning, but only by going into the particular facts of different groups of production. The tendencies of competition on the one side, and of combination on the other, are always at work, but the conditions that make either the stronger of the two in different trades, in different countries, and at different times, can be learned only by analyzing the legal, technical and psychological facts in the various departments of trade.

The attention of economists has never been drawn to the fact that combinations existed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and have been destroyed by opposing forces. Monopolistic combinations were formed in the coal trade in the north of England. An historical sketch is given of the course of these combinations for the "Limitation of the Vends," and of the legislation against them. In 1830 a commission recommended the control of competition, but it was not until the building of railways to other mines was stimulated that the combination broke down. For the last half of the century, not a trace of the old combination can be found. (, in The Economic Journal, December 1895. London: Macmillian & Co.)

Human Cost and Utility.—It maybe questioned whether the relations between health, freedom, love, knowledge, etc., and marketable goods are not so intimate and organic in nature that to exclude all but the last from consideration will invalidate economic conclusions. There is no fixity as to what kinds of goods shall be measured by money, and so rank as wealth. Rightly speaking, money does not measure wealth, but want. If we took a more enlightened utilitarianism for our standard, we might measure the value of economic action by the net balance of rational satisfaction it afforded. A statement of value in terms of expenses of production, or of final utility as measured by money can tell nothing of the "real" effort which has gone to making a supply of wealth, or the "real" utility which is got by consumption.

In order to humanize a bill of costs, to reduce the statement in terms of cash to terms of human life, we must know: (1) The character and condition of the work. The suggestion of economic text-books that the inconvenient or dangerous element is represented by a higher rate of wages, is not borne out by facts. If it were, no true equation is possible between money and life. No person economically competent to