Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/785

Rh bills of exchange that are due, as also on ordinary bills, which it gets receipted; and, until stopped by shopkeepers' protests, undertook to procure books from publishers. Lastly there come the measures for extending, directly and indirectly, the control over popular life. On the one hand, there are the laws under which, up to the middle of last year, two hundred and twenty-four socialist societies have been closed, one hundred and eighty periodicals suppressed, three hundred and seventeen books, etc., forbidden, and under which sundry places have been reduced to a partial state of siege. On the other hand, may be named Prince Bismarck's scheme for reëstablishing guilds (bodies which by their regulations coerce their members), and his scheme of state insurance, by the help of which the artisan would in a considerable degree have his hands tied. Though these measures have not been carried in the forms proposed, yet the proposal of them sufficiently shows the general tendency. In all which changes we see progress toward a more integrated structure, toward increase of the militant part as compared with* the industrial part, toward the replacing of civil organization by military organization, toward the strengthening of restraints over the individual and regulation of his life in greater detail.

The remaining example to be named is that furnished by our own society since the revival of military activity—a revival which has of late been so marked that our illustrated papers are, week after week, occupied with little else than scenes of warfare. Already in the first volume of "The Principles of Sociology," I have pointed out many ways in which the system of compulsory coöperation characterizing the militant type has been trenching on the system of voluntary cooperation characterizing the industrial type; and, since those passages appeared (July, 1876), other changes in the same direction have taken place. Within the military organization itself, we may note the increasing assimilation of the volunteer forces to the regular army, now going to the extent of a movement for making them available abroad, so that, instead of defensive action for which they were created, they can be used for offensive action; and we may also note that the tendency shown in the army during a past generation to sink the military character whenever possible, by putting on civilian dresses, is now checked by an order to officers in garrison towns to wear their uniforms when off duty, as they do in more militant countries. Whether, since the date named, usurpations of civil functions by military men (which had in 1873-'74 gone to the extent that there were ninety-seven colonels, majors, captains, and lieutenants employed from time to time as inspectors of science and art classes) have gone further I can not say; but there has been a manifest extension of the military spirit and discipline among the police, with the effect that, wearing helmet-shaped hats, beginning to carry revolvers, and looking on themselves as half soldiers, they have come to speak of the people as