Page:TheCity.djvu/11

Rh ::To what extent is success in the occupations dependent upon sound judgment and commonsense; to what extent upon technical ability?


 * Does native ability or special training determine success in the different vocations?


 * What prestige and what prejudices attach to different trades and professions and why?


 * Is the choice of the occupation determined by temperamental, by economic, or by sentimental considerations?


 * In what occupations do men, in what occupations do women, succeed better, and why?


 * How far is occupation, rather than association, responsible for the mental attitude and moral predilections? Do men in the same profession or trade, but representing different nationalities and different cultural groups, hold characteristic and identical opinions?


 * To what extent is the social or political creed, that is, socialism, anarchism, syndicalism, etc., determined by occupation? by temperament?


 * To what extent have social doctrine and social idealism superseded and taken the place of religious faith in the different occupations, and why?


 * Do social classes tend to assume the character of cultural groups? That is to say, do the classes tend to acquire the exclusiveness and independence of a caste or nationality; or is each class always dependent upon the existence of a corresponding class?


 * To what extent do children follow the vocations of their parents and why?


 * To what extent do individuals move from one class to another, and how does this fact modify the character of class relationships?

News and the mobility of the social group.—The division of labor, in making individual success dependent upon concentration upon a special task, has had the effect of increasing the interdependence of the different vocations. A social organization is thus created in which the individual becomes increasingly dependent upon the community of which he is an indivisible part. The effect, under conditions of personal competition, of this increasing interdependence of the parts is to create in the industrial organization as a whole a certain sort of social solidarity, but a solidarity based, not on sentiment and habit, but on community of interests.

In the sense in which the terms are here used, sentiment is the more concrete, interest the more abstract, term. We may cherish a sentiment for a person, a place, or any object whatsoever. It may be a sentiment of aversion, or a sentiment of possession. But to possess or to be possessed by a sentiment for, or in regard to, anything means that we are incapable of acting toward