Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/724

 708 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

field of descriptive sociology is being more and more exhaustively studied by statis- tical methods that are yearly improving in precision. No science is making surer and better progress in the development of this method than is sociology. But it is most important to note that the first step in the application of the statistical method is classification, that the starting-point of all classification is resemblance, and that this coefficient of resemblance which I have contended is a mark of social phenomena is the basis of all social statistics — of all application of the statistical method in sociol- ogy. The most significant fact is that from the first known beginnings of statistical research to the present time all extension of the statistical method has been due to my consciousness of kind; the census taken in Greece in 594 B. C. and most of the refine- ments of statistical inquiry of these later years alike are due to this one cause. In making provision for the taking of our own census consciousness of kind, rather than general utility or the interests of science, was the one thing which prevented Con- gress from denying, without a moment's hesitation, the appropriations necessary for the prosecution of costly inquiries relative to religious denominations, labor organizations, distribution of wealth, etc. — Franklin H. Giddings, Ph.D., "Exact Methods in Sociology," in AppUtorCs Popular Science Monthly^ December, 1 899, pp. 145-59.

The Criterion of Progress. — Progress is made through the law of least effort' Man has sought to procure the useful through the least expenditure of effort, and al' history of invention conforms to that law. One characteristic of progress is the increase of man's power over things. The suppression of slavery is an act which demonstrates the second characteristic of progress: the emancipation of the indi- vidual from the oppression of another individual. This emancipation shows itself in the relation of capital and labor. The idea of patronage is only a survival of patri- archal and feudal traditions. It has disappeared in England and America. The contract of labor is more and more assuming the character of a contract of exchange which assures the independence of the contracting parties. Both parties negotiate on a plane of equality, and the progressive employer renounces the desire to impose religious, moral, or political restrictions upon the employed. In the case of most peoples the mode of acquisition considered for a long time as the most noble was vio- lence. It survives still among many people living in civilized nations who think that they cannot become rich except through the exploitation of others. The idea of exchange has cost a great struggle. The transformation of an enemy into a client is a conception which implies a series of very highly developed intellectual efforts : comparison of objects, estimation of reciprocal values, conclusion and execution of a contract. All these efforts have habituated man to think and decide for himself and not before an external authority. They have prepared him for discovery, invention, and freedom from the yoke of tradition and sacerdotalism. They have increased his individuality. The separation of the individual from both man and things grows more complete. According to the observation of M. Sumner Maine, the progressive evolution of societies consists in substituting contract for the arrangement of authority.

While the idea of contract has emancipated the individual, publicists who have essayed to establish it theoretically as the basis of the existence of societies have desired to make it an instrument for crushing the individual. The false conception of social contract of Hobbes and Rousseau dominated the Revolution, and continue to dominate the greater part of our publicists and politicians. The written and positive constitutions are affirmations of right : such are the Bill of Rights of 1689 in England, the constitution of the United States of 1787, and finally the French constitution of 1791.

In these acts men designated certain things as held in common ; but they took care to specify those which they intended expressly to reserve, and these took the name of liberties. Every recognized right fixed in a constitution is a conquest of the arbitrary to the advantage of the individual ; it is the substitution of contract for oppression.

That which distinguishes political from commercial contract is that the latter has for its object the exchange of services or of merchandise, with gain, while political contract ought to have for its object only the assurance of the security of the action of participants.