Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/758

 734 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Although ethics, in common with all science, is theoretical, it is nevertheless intensely practical in the sense that it forms the basis for the practice of morality. Thus it has great practical value in that it shows the results of various types of moral conduct ; for example, of unenlightened benevolence or of a pharisaic atti- tude toward the fallen ; for not all types of morality are equally conducive to human welfare. Thus ethics furnishes a scientific criticism of morality. Its positive work in moral reconstruction consists in the sometimes slow, sometimes rapid, emergence of new and better ideals suggested by study of actual moral conditions. Knowledge of human nature and human conditions, and calm, sober, collected judgment on life based on moral experience, is absolutely an essential. Finally ethics is an empirical science dealing inductively with the same order of data as the other special sciences are called upon to describe, organize, and explain. PROFESSOR E. B. McGiLVARY, in Philosophical Review, November, 1903.

E. B. W.

Farm Colonies of the Salvation Army. The first of these in the United States was organized in 1898 at Fort Amity, Colo. Two others at Fort Ronne, Calif., and Fort Herrick, Ohio, have since been established. The motive for this movement has been to relieve city congestion and prevent families from being broken up at critical times. " Place the waste labor on the waste land by means of the waste capital, and thereby convert the trinity of waste into a unity of production ; " 'or, in other words, " the landless man to the manless land."

The plan adopted is to colonize only married men with their families, and only such as by their habits give promise of success. Business methods are employed throughout the process. Necessary funds have been raised by issuing $150,000 thirty-year bonds on the California and Colorado colonies. In addition to the general improvements provided, it costs on an average $500 to install a family in the colony and furnish it with the necessary tools, implements, and live- stock. Five years' experience has shown that the colonists are eager to pay off this indebtedness at the earliest possible moment. The sense of ownership is cultivated from the first, with excellent results. The experience of the Salvation Army is adverse to community of ownership as resulting " in the lazy doing nothing and expecting everything, while the industrious do everything and get nothing."

The farm colonies of the Salvation Army were organized to prove the possi- bility of relieving the congestion of the great cities, by removing worthy but poor families, furnishing them with the necessary capital, and settling them as home owners upon the land. It was argued by those who, while friendly to the scheme, doubted its practicability, that (i) they would not go, (2) they would not stay, (3) they would not work, and (4) they would not pay. Patient experi- ment has served to prove that these objections were groundless. The worthy poor of the great cities have gone, have stayed, have worked, and have paid. As a result of their successful toil they have become home owners, and the percentage of failures has been much smaller than was anticipated. COMMANDER BOOTH TUCKER, in U. S. Bulletin of Labor, September, 1903.

E. B. W.

Three Stages of Individual Development. The monocellular animal, un- differentiated and without organization, is the lowest type of individual. Succes- sively higher types are revealed as the individual becomes first an organized system, then a centrally controlled system, that is, a self-conscious volitional being, and in the third place a being conscious of an implicit unity with other individuals. These three stages are characteristic, not only of men considered singly, but in social groups as well. There is first the racial life, with its cus- toms and blood-unity, followed by the stage of individualism, and then the swing of the pendulum through a period of reconstruction between the individual and society.

In the Hebrew tace we see the strong national life under the early kings, the emergence of individualism under Jeremiah, and of reorganization under Ezekiel