Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/774

 758 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

do the multitudes of men, each following his individual motive, work out the social changes.

As was made clear in the preceding section, the numberless social activities, mostly microscopic, but of continental magnitude in their fecund composition and combination, are not peculiar to established organizations or groups. Their effects are often indirect and circuitous, and the efficacy, both of the greater acts and of the seminal combinations of minute ones, traverses long intervals of space and time. Time and terrestrial space set us no boundaries. We are all day in social contact with the men of ages past and of every continent and clime. 20 On rising I seize a sponge, by service of a South Sea Islander who got it for me from the ocean's floor; a cake of soap made by a Frenchman; a towel made by Turks. With each article of my apparel I receive the service of another group of my fellow-men. My underwear is from Scotchmen, or perhaps from Merino in Spain. My shoes' leather was stripped from the calf by Brazilian graziers, cut, lasted, and stitched by Yankees in Massachusetts. My coat is of wool from Australian rangers, carded, spun, and woven by Englishmen. To inventors, machinists, designers, web-drawers, weavers, I owe its fabric ; to other such, its lining ; to others, its silk braid and its canvas ; its buttons of metal and mohair required the labors of yet other scattered companies. How many hands have touched some part of its material ! How many brains have perfected the technique of all the processes of its manufacture! What an army in many detachments some with fresh young faces, some with bent and toil-worn forms do me service when I don my coat. Throughout the day the marvel does not cease. My breakfast orange was picked by a Florida negro; my coffee, raised by the brown folk of Java and Arabia; my steak comes from a Texas ranchman; my corn-roll, from a Kansas farmer. All have been assembled at my table by aid of those who tame the forces of nature, and build railroads and steamships, and of uncounted common men. Having received in the first hour of the day all these physical services, I take up the morning paper

"Compare Harris, Moral Evolution, p. 36, and Faucett, Manual of Political Economy. 6th ed., p. ia.