Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/235

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 223

men in Pennsylvania is merely a fight between two parties for their rights under the law. Without implying an opinion about the merits of any specific case, we may assert that no one has a proper point of view from which to form an opinion until he can present the situation to himself in more adequate terms. The fact is that the production and distribution of wealth occur now under conditions that have been changing very rapidly, not only since the so-called "industrial revolution" of nearly a century ago, but particularly during the last twenty-five years. In the course of this changing a parallel mental process has been going on ; our concepts of social rights have undergone decided modifications. A hundred years ago American men had to deal only with other men like themselves. Today the distinctive factors in the situation are, first, that racial intermixture has radically changed the character of the population, and, second, that a host of artificial men are actors on the scene, and they are relatively as much superior to real men as the mythological gods were in turning the tide of battle now one way and now another before the gates of Troy. Corporations, i. e., legal persons, giants more mighty in the economic field than ancient chieftains were in the field of war, have transformed the situation in the working world. Our social process in the last century has been the play of five chief factors : first, the composition of the population; second, the development of a technique of production ; third, the development of a governmental system ; fourth, the development of general social or moral ideas ; fifth, the development of a system of distributing the output of our productive technique. Today we are confronted by the fact that our system of production has developed along one line of least resistance, viz., that discovered in the economics of the productive process, while our system of distribution has developed very largely along other lines of least resistance, viz., in accordance with the relative power in competition of men, on the one hand more and on the other hand less, able to get artificial helps in the struggle for distribution. One consequence is that the results do not conform strictly to the ratio of contributions to produc- tion. Meanwhile our politics and our social philosophy have