Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/226

 2 I 2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

with a number of Germans of the middle classes and heard with astonishment how little love they had for their fatherland and how ready they were to transfer their allegiance to their new home. Outwardly New York cannot compare with Berlin. Our .irty and ill-paved, our tenements squalid, and the opportunities for easy and pleasant recreation and for the enjoy- ment of music and art are much fewer. Yet it seems that there is something in New York life that makes it more attractive than Berlin. I know no other cause than the greater freedom.

Freedom gives the real zest to life. Freedom is also neces- to develop a nation of vigorous characters. A high level of culture and ability can be produced without freedom, as we can see from the educational work of the Jesuits. But it will be the commonplace usefulness of barnyard fowl, assiduously laying eggs, but without wing enough to fly over the fence The Jesuits have developed no new thoughts ; no Jesuit has ever led humanity onward into the unexplored country of the future. If socialism takes away our freedom, it stifles the future leaders of humanity before their birth.

On the other hand it is well for the advocates of personal liberty who urge this objection against socialism, to remember that liberty is today the possession of a favored few. Few boys in New York really choose their profession. A job is the great arbiter of their destinies. Would a boy like to become an engineer ? But his father gets a job for him in a butcher-shop, and a butcher he becomes. Can the tyranny of socialism be much worse than that which locks the door on factory operatives now at the stroke of a bell, as if they were convicts, and docks them an hour's wages if a passing train makes them five minutes late in the morning?

A second danger in social-reform tendencies threatens the stability and importance of family life. This danger is often exaggerated by conservatives who are in need of a bugaboo. An aged brother once assured me that the application of the Single would inevitably lead to a communism of wives. Commu- nism of nonsense! Yet I think there is a considerable inclina-