Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/427

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS.

Popular Education and Public Morality. — Is American public opinion right that people grow better as they know more ? Are our modern systems of education really making better citizens ? Horace Mann said : " Knowledge and skill have but helped the man to be a more deadly enemy to his race, if he is wanting in right motives."

Statistics indicate a rapid increase of crime in recent years. The Guarantee Company of North America affirms that during the calendar year 1894 the aggregate of embezzlements, committed largely by educated men, was six million dollars more than during the previous year, making a total of more than §130,000,000 stolen in eleven years past. The United States census reports show a steady increase in the prison population in the last fifty years in proportion to the whole population, while illiteracy has decreased, and general education has been diffused. In Germany it seems crime has increased 28 per cent, between 1882 and 1892, while the increase in juvenile crime was 50 per cent. The increase in population during the same period was only 12 per cent., and there was a coincident increase in popular education. In France, in the poorest and most illiterate rural districts, the moral condition of the people is the best in the nation. Was Cardinal Antonelli's view a fair and disinterested one when he said, " Give the people bread and the catechism ; it is enough for them " ? The con- sumption of liquors in France, usually of poor quality, has sextupled within the last thirty years, while education has been compulsory during nearly the same time.

What is the interpretation of these statistics? In the first place, they show that the popular ideas of what constitutes right and wrong, and the administration of jus- tice, have become more intense and discriminating than formerly ; man has in recent years rapidly grown in self-consciousness, freedom, leisure, and in the number of his social contacts. We punish today hundreds of offenses which to our fathers were no offenses at all, or which their criminal legislation did not reach. Of such a character is alcoholic intoxication. Again, in the rapid breaking up of the old habits of social life which we have been undergoing, much individual demoralization and social dis- cord has been the inevitable result. Modern science may have unsettled many a man's moral and even religious convictions for a time, yet it has vastly expanded his conceptions, and his grip on the world, which must eventually result in a deeper moral and religious consciousness. Hence the condition of those people whose morality is based on blissful ignorance is not so high and desirable, after all.

Not less culture, but more and better culture is our need. This should be not con- ceived as merely intellectual culture, but all-around culture. It should aim to train conscience, will, hand, and intellect in the formation of habits of good conduct. Strictly religious education must, at present at least, be left to the church and the home in particular. But the school should be permeated through and through with truly moral feeling and motives. The common public school, remodeled and generously enlarged and reinvigorated on this principle, must be our chief dependence for a sturdy, moral, and efficient citizenship. — Ch.\ki.es W. Wendte, "Popular Education and Public Morality," in the New World, September, 1899.

Industrial Organization. — The time has gone by when it is necessary to argue as to the right to exist of large aggregations of capital for the purpose of industrial development. They have been found the only effective instruments for accomplishing the colossal public works demanded by the age. Every great movement in the world's history has been opposed owing to mistakes in its organization and progress.

And the great combinations of wealth have their mistakes. Periods of alternate "prosperity" and "hard times" recur. In periods of prosperity such as we are now- having, the danger point is regularly reached when, owing to unexpectedly favorable

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