Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/186

 i 7- THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

rooms to the masses and the university-extension method was born ; on the other hand graduate students from Oxford were soon in the Whitechapel district among the social exiles of East London, and laid the foundation of the settlement movement by sharing the culture of university life with those who needed it most.

Kduard Uenison led the way in 1867, the same year that the university-extension movement began in Cambridge. Many students followed Denison's example, and the work went on quietly for eight years. It was then taken up by a young econ- omist of unusual promise. Arnold Toynbee recognized the debt <>! education to labor, and consecrated his life to the "social self-expression of culture."

Toynbee aimed to raise the standard of life in the White- chapel district by discussing the problems of the day with the laboring men and teaching them the principles of political econ- omv. In his lectures much of the material of his admirable his- tory of the English industrial revolution was given to the workingmen at first hand. He believed that the best he could give was none too good for the "sons of toil." He expected to learn much from their criticisms, and in testing the learning of the economist by the inside facts of their lives, rich in eco- nomic experience, he opened many avenues of social investiga- tion. The workingmen hated political economy. They called it the tool of the factory system. Toynbee hoped to help remove this prejudice by living out the principles of his science among them, and showing them by social experimentation and judicious teaching how the wise application of economic knowledge could raise their standard of living and begin to solve the problems that stared them in the face. He really builded better than he knew. The experiment proved a success. Although the labor- ing men refused to open their arms to political economy, as it then appeared, they accepted the man. The work Toynbee hoped to establish about economic theories was established about a personality. lie gave what he was as well as what he had. Labor recognized the ring of truth in the gift and