Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/230

 216 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

grapple for once, there might be some chance for them. The wonder is thnt force is so seldom used.

Yet those who are dissuading workingmen from efforts for a gradual change, and urging them to try the way of force, are playing fast and loose with the future, and will, in the long run, probably retard social progress. There is a recoil after the use of violence which carries a cause almost back to the line from which it was shot by the explosion. Remember the almost uni- versal jubilation of Europe when the French Revolution began ; but remember also how the smoke of blood rose from the guil- lotine and obscured the judgment of men, so that it took two generations or more for the great ideals of that tremendous uprising to shine out in their first brightness again. If ever there was a grand and holy revolution it was the Puritan revolution under Cromwell. But a certain Charles Stuart, a perfidious traitor, was beheaded ; a reaction followed ; and today the Eng- lish Prayer Book still contains prayers for a day of humiliation and fasting for the martyrdom of his blessed majesty, beseeching God not to punish England for his death. Remember the con- fusion engendered by our Civil War and the bitter hatred left for these thirty years to poison the springs of our national life.

I do not say that force is never to be used. It is certainly useful as a rod to hang on the wall, and there are bad boys in these United States more alive to the swish of that rod than to all moral suasion. I am only contending that force is not as effective as it looks. The period of agitation and development which has been cut short by it simply comes in afterwards in another form. Not only the violence, but also the suddenness is dangerous. The slow conflict of opposing forces is God's method of educating a nation. He maketh even the stubbornness of con- servatives to praise him, though he sometimes does not appear to turn the remainder of it aside. In the peaceful conflict crude schemes are melted down and refined ; ideas are elaborated ; the public mind is permeated ; old fogies die ; a young generation grows up with the new ideals bred in their bones ; and when the cnange comes, it has a backing in the people. While if it were