Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/528

 514 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

This much the industry, in mediating social responsibility, owes the laborer. The function he performs is on one side a social function. The industry performs this function immedi- ately, and the laborer is organically a part of the industry. The group, either in its larger or its narrower delimitations, owes to the individual in return for his life's energy not only a hand to mouth living, but also a guarantee against the possible evils of accident and sickness and the assured evils of diminishing returns. Since family solidarity, the last protection of the aged and the unfortunate, is now dissolving as former group and local solidarities have previously, the necessity for the recogni- tion of some such principle is the more urgent.

While such a system as the one outlined does not insure against the great evil of lack of employment, it does affect all but this. Though it is true that these evils are only sporadic in America at the present, yet in the near future they may become as menacing as in older civilizations, and in fact are rapidly becoming so. Consequently the consideration of such innova- tions by the American people is entirely pertinent. In time such questions will become political questions, as they have upon the European continent and as they are now becoming in England. As Mr. John Morley has remarked, whether achieved in the one way or the other, the man or the party that solves the problem of preventing the man who has worked hard all his life in the support of his family from becoming in his old age a subject of charity deserves more glory than by win- ning many battles on the field.

PAUL MONROE.

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.