Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/353

 SANITY IN SOCIAL AGITATION.-

Never was the air so full as now of social agitations. On the whole, this is a healthy sign. I sympathize with the mighty social movement of which these agitations are incidents. I can- not sympathize with the methods which some of the most con- scientious and high-minded agitators adopt. I am aware that my relation to the different parties concerned with these social questions is very much like that of the Girondists at the begin- ning of the French Revolution. They deplored the selfishness and obstructiveness of the privileged classes on the one hand, but they equally disapproved the extravagant theories of the popular leaders on the other hand. They were consequently despised by the court party on the one side, and by the revolu- tionists on the other. They were presently ground between the upper and nether millstone of this double hate.

Modern business is a sensitive plant. Some of the men who have the heaviest responsibilities for its cultivation would sup- press every implication that there is anything to improve in business practices. They would have all criticisms of present social order sternly ignored, except within the inner councils of the managing few. On the other hand there is persistent popu- lar clamor for wholesale and radical reform in the present ways of doing business. Between these two extremes it is not a pleasant nor a popular role to search for the golden mean. Nevertheless, the scholar's ambition is to find and tell the truth, not merely to repeat the things that people want to hear.

I have in mind the sort of agitation which holds before our imagination the prospect of accomplishing some wide-reaching changes in the world's ways of doing things, in the hope of

'The substance of this paper was read in April, 1898, at a conference called by the National Christian Citizenship League, to consider the general topic " Present- Day Social Problems in the Light of the Teachings of Jesus." The heat with which the paper was denounced by leading members of the league afforded new evidence that the message was timely.

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