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 NO TES AND ABSTRA CTS 139

Take another example the little factory of our fathers' time. Here the change is less dependent on law for its shape. Economic interest has been the chief force. The little factory of thirty years ago was a simple affair. One man, a partnership of two or three, or a little company of resident stockholders, both owned and operated it. Sometimes, however, a superintendent with a small salary had it in charge. A variety of things were done by people who turned their hands to various kinds of work. All the processes of manufacture were completed in this one mill, or in that and the homes near by. The little factory bought its own supplies, sold its own goods and managed its own affairs directly.

Now the little factories have grown into big ones, or have disappeared except where special conditions have favored them. With dams raised, enlarged reser- voirs, improved water wheels and steam, they have increased power. Corporations of non-resident stockholders and associations of these in trusts have widened their constituency of control and service, and lifted them above the provincial limitations of other days. The processes of spinning, dyeing, weaving, and others are carefully separated, often divided between different companies. Careful spe- cialization and the most economic adjustments are made so that each part of the work is exactly fitted both in quantity and quality to the needs of the whole. Superintendence, bookkeeping, buying, selling are assigned to well-trained experts. Large salaries become possible and are cheerfully paid to competent officials.

Like changes may be found in political institutions, though here the move- ment has been much slower, since it has covered a far longer period. For the exigencies of government began centuries ago to compel peoples to go through them. The point directly bearing on our study is that the efficiency and com- pensation of the chief servants of communities, organized for various objects, is largely dependent on their structure, and that increase of salary has come as better organization has made it possible.

Lastly, we now turn to the little churches and see how far their structural changes affect this problem. The little church is as common as ever, and perhaps smaller than ever. And the large church is constitutd in very much the same way that the small one is. A greater variety of things is now done in most churches, and the teacher and chief official of the church has far more interests and kinds of work than his predecessor of fifty years ago. Pulpit, Sunday school, Endeavor Society, catechetical class, weekly conference meeting, and the home, for example, are all at work in religious instruction, but with little well-defined limits for each. Missionary interest is cared for in three or four ways. And so with other work.

The official head of the church is a teacher in all sorts of subjects. He is also a pastor and a director of a collection of unorganized, uncorrelated societies and committees. He is a leader in civic reform and philanthropies. He is unable in his various distractions to do anything extremely well. His is the one calling in life that has profited little by specialization. On the contrary, the drift in his case is all the other way. He is the one highly trained man who does not have the advantages of system and specialization.

Such a method of study forces upon the attention the larger and inclusive problem of the possible reconstruction of our entire ecclesiastical system. The other part of the comparative method, which discovers the differences in the types to which the local church belongs, and estimates their due force in continuing the present system in church structure, is an important scientific agency in the sug- gested line of study. But that must be left with the mere mention of it.

A dozen other practical problems before our churches need to be surveyed by this and other methods of scientific study before we can wisely say much about their solution. Many of these, like the one I have selected, are so far within the province of comparative sociology that under the methods of this new department of science they will quickly take on new significance and yield unexpectedly rich results. I !<now of no more promising field for practical results in use of scientific methods than that afforded by the urgent questions that our Congregational churches are constantly raising, but which so far generally get little more than a purely empirical treatment. REV. SAMUEL W. DIKE, LL.D., in the Congrega- tionalist, May 7, 1904.