Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/536

536 The conditions under which labor is fluid give opportunity for the growth of a half-employed and migratory class, who are, as a class, a tax upon the well-being of society. It is the greatest of all problems in the old world to see how the educative influence of society can be brought to bear so that it shall rear as much as possible the sort of man who is 'capable of standing on his own feet and of contracting when and how to render services to those who are willing to offer services he wants in return.' The question, What is to be done with those who can not and will not thrive on this system? is constantly presenting itself in new forms. For our present purpose it may suffice to recognize that this question exists, and that even when the conditions of race and history and social surroundings are similar they do not produce one type of individual only. Under these circumstances we can no longer take for granted that human aims and activities are becoming closely similar in all parts of the globe, even for economic purposes. The individual estimate of the utility and disutility of labor at any given moment may often be very different from that which the economist would assume to be the natural conclusion. It is obviously absurd to suppose of vast numbers of our fellow-creatures that they are in the habit of acting in accordance with what appears to be common sense to the average traveling Englishman, but they need not necessarily be fools on that account.

II. What is true of unconscious assumptions in regard to individuals personally also holds good for the mechanism of society; we can not assume that it works everywhere in the same way. The classical economists were inclined to limit their investigations to the areas and regions where free competition has been dominant, and thereby to exclude from consideration all those important problems which arise from the contact of individuals of two races, with different economic habits and ideals, upon the same soil. But even if the ages and areas of free competition could be cut off from the rest of the world, and we fixed our attention exclusively on this single plane, we should not find simplicity and uniformity throughout the whole region. The habits of business practise and labor organization differ in different lands; the banking system in Scotland is by no means the same as that in England, and a form of currency which finds favor in one is illegal in the other. There is also a want of complete conformity between the eastern and the western states in this matter; we can not argue directly from the one to the other. When this is true about the medium of exchange, it is obvious that the differences between one highly advanced community and another in regard to the terms on which labor is carried on, or the method in which land is managed, will be even more striking.

The great difference in the working of the mechanism of society, as we know it in England and as we find it in other lands, was the chief