Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/491

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY 477

a social group which contains within itself, as does the family and the rural community, all the elements necessary to exist- ence the urban community. Here again we find the three necessary factors for a particular branch of science the natural group, the body of experts, the materials of knowledge in the special sciences and in the maxims of experts.

And here we discover that the title " municipal sociology " has already become current in common speech. It is manifest that the city cannot, for its guidance, use the isolated results of sanitary science apart from administration, or of pedagogics apart from municipal finance, or of aesthetic science apart from museums and art commissions, or of ethics apart from the tech- nical tests of conduct in every relation and situation. It is evident to editors and to all others who are trying to create and educate a genuine " municipal patriotism," a common judgment of policy, common will as to all that should be done for health and culture, for all citizens by all citizens, that social technology is at this crisis essential. And there are men and women of large brains and resources, outside of university lecture-rooms, who are honestly working at this task. Able editorials are not economic or political discussions, but sociologial in the meaning of the word here employed.

Of the other " component societies " which might furnish materials for similar branches of social technology it is not pos- sible to write within the limits of this article : the people of a commonwealth, the people of a nation, and in a far distant future mankind. Wildest speculation will long lure us toward these grand subjects, but the social technology of humanity must wait until we test our methodical tools on more limited subjects. There is already a science of the state, theoretical and practical, which rests on an implicit general sociology and leads on to a social technology of the nation. 1

But there are certain social classes, secondary products of evolution, which may become the subjects of systematic treat- ment in social technology. In some instances, under various names, precisely this task has been fairly well advanced. The

1 See RATZENHOFER, Wesen und Zweck der Politik.