Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/354

 336 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

getting people to decide on some new programme which will mark a distinct era in progress.

Now, there is this to be said at the outset: The bulk of human progress thus far has been achieved, not by design, but by accident. I mean by this that individual men have not been wise enough to understand all the consequences of their acts, and that bigger and better things have resulted than the persons tributary to them could foresee or foreordain. Men have started to do one thing, like ending England's oppression of her American colonies. They have ended by accomplishing a very different thing, namely, the independence of the colonies.

From this many men argue that agitation and foresight and planning about social improvement are useless altogether. This is not true. Social conditions may be improved by bringing our thought and work to bear on them. I therefore speak of social agitation, not as something to be discouraged in itself, but as something from which we may expect beneficent results; as something, however, which may bring direful consequences, unless it is temperate. I shall try to point out some of the facts which wise agitation will respect.

Social progress involves four elements, viz., (i) discovery, (2) persuasion, (3) individual adjustment, (4) social adapta- tion. In order to make my discussion bear as distinctly as possible upon this general statement, I will confine myself for illustration throughout this paper to the labor question. What is true of the labor question, in the particulars to which I refer, is true of all desired social progress.

The terms of the labor problem, as I see it, are these : (i) It is said that labor is not free, but that capital tyrannizes over labor. It may be that this statement sums up the whole matter in the minds of those who think it is true. In that case the items that follow are merely details under that general formula, viz.: (2) the conditions of labor are said to be unfair in respect of (^) sanitation, (1^) hours, (c) wages, {d) chance for advance- ment, (^) opportunity to get returns for inventive ideas, (/) security of employment ; (3) there is a permanent percentage of unemployed labor ; (4) politics adds to the hardships of