Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/443

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS

The law of 1897 attempted to regulate working overhours. But in its particular- izing and its ambiguity it has effectually destroyed its value, and we find the normal day exceeded from one to three times per week, and increased by from three to eight hours in some places. The attempt to regulate night work is told in practically the same story.

2. As to the wages received. No complete statistics are available for determining the average wages of the Russian working class. A comparison of the wages received in the province of Moscow and in the state of Massachusetts has some value when properly interpreted.

WAGES FOR ONE MONTH.

WORKERS.

Men ......

Mo Rubles.

scow. Dollars. 8.501

6.21

4.36

3-48

Massachusetts. Rubles. Dollars. 98.19 59.90 50.43 30.25 42.22 25.33 31.56 18.94

Women ..... Youths ......

iQ-35 7.27

Children -

5.08

The striking difference in favor of the Massachusetts laborer must be taken in connection with these facts ; the Russian cost of food is much less, the standard of life is much lower, and the demands for expenditure much fewer, than the American. Yet it remains true that the Russian spends 57 per cent, of his income, while the American spends only 49 per cent, of his, for nourishment. The " truck system " is still enforced upon the Russian laborer, but against it and the other unfavorable con- ditions the intelligence of the working class is beginning to arouse them, and this means better days for the class. VV. RAKHMETOV, " La situation de la classe ouvriere en Russie," in La Revue socialiste, September, 1902. T. J. R.

Invention Considered as the Cause of Social Evolution. The title poorly expresses my thought. When I say that social transformations are explained by the imitation of individual initiatives, I do not mean that invention is the only active force, or, to speak truly, that it is even the strongest force, but that it is the directive, determining, explicative force.

The direction of great, constant forces, of forces periodic in their action, is related to small, new, accidental forces, which, grafting themselves on the former, determine a new kind of periodic reproduction. In other words, a variation ingrafts itself upon repetitions and becomes a point of departure for new repetitions.

In the social world the element variation, accident, germ, is represented by the individual initiative, invention. The element repetition consists of climate, soil, race, as well as of tradition, custom, taught ideas, and acquired habits. Climate and race consist in periodic reproductions of movements. Periodic also are the successive generations of the same race that reproduces hereditarily the same characteristics, the same functions. On the other hand, tradition, custom, instruction, education, consist only in imitative repetitions, in the transmission of examples.

If periodic forces alone acted, there would be no social transformations. If individuals should resemble each other in all particulars, if hereditary repetition should be complete, without any individual variation, progress would be impossible. The question is how and why, in organized society, language, government, religion, morality, or art is modified at a given time.

To whatever category invention may belong, it has always the characteristic of being an intersection of imitative rays, an original combination of imitations.

The combination is always binary. Whatever may be the number of imitative rays required in order that from their intersection there may spring a new invention (itself destined to spread imitatively), they divide themselves into two groups, which unite as if there were only two elements to combine. Or rather, in a total invention we nearly always discover several acts of invention separated by some intervals, several elementary inventions, each of which is a binary combination, a coupling.

What is it which makes an original combination of imitative rays ? Two things : (i) the characteristic mental state of the individual brain in which the meeting of rays takes place (this does not mean that the brain must be superior to others in all particulars, but merely that it must be different, more adapted to the kind of func- tion it is to fill) ; (2) the direct view, in general of external reality perceived under

1 The ruble is taken at value of 60 cents.