Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/365

 THE MEANING OF THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT 351

there are players. Each change of places gives somebody a chance to improve his condition, but at somebody's peril of losing his position. Opportunities are today so controlled that men feel themselves more subject to the caprice of others than at any time since serfdom disappeared. It is no comfort to the sidetracked man to read in tables of statistics the story of material and moral gains by all classes. These tables make no exhibit of the sense of insecurity among individuals within the classes. If that schedule could be filled out it would show a balance of unhappiness so great that it possibly makes our pres- ent civilization bankrupt. Machinery and capital and commer- cial combinations put multitudes in a condition of dependence on vast operations upon which they can exert but feeble influ- ence. The many are getting into a state of panic as they con- template the possibilities of this dependent condition. They feel that they have somehow been tricked out of their share of guarantees for "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness." They suspect that they are really being deceived by smooth words. They think they detect the beginnings of a slavery for the many in which the masters are released from the moral responsibility which mitigated the lot of former slaves, and at the same time have subtler means of making their mastery oppressive.

I will not undertake to discuss the grounds of this belief, nor to pass upon its correctness. I state the fact that men by millions take virtually this view of present social conditions, and the social movement is to be understood accordingly. It is really, in one part of its strategy, an abandonment of the old lines in which men a century ago fought for "liberty, equality, fraternity." That fanciful frontier is much too far advanced. The men of today are fighting not primarily for these ideal conquests. They are fighting for security: security of standing ground ; security of opportunity ; security of personal recog- nition among the shareholders in the inheritances of the ages ; security of a man's chance to be a man ; security that the mighty impersonal power of capital and organization shall not