known in America. The present cost of caring for the unfortunate is appalling, partly because we try to care for them. Modern industry requires more efficient workers despite a popular belief to the contrary. Inefficiency shows itself more quickly and its results are more serious. The inefficient got along somehow in older days. Now he becomes a handicap to the others. Men are not alike. The demand for equality in distribution indicates a faulty analysis of the situation. Wealth does mean power and selfish use of power is dangerous. Are the questions simple? Factory life, office life, is indoor life compared to farming. Indoor life in heated, often overheated, rooms with a reduction in the amount of physical exertion, with less pure air and less sunshine, involves greater exposure to the attacks of certain diseases. This is the key to the ravages of tuberculosis. Tuberculosis gets us because we live indoors, pneumonia when we leave the factory. Typhoid lurks in milk and water, especially when we use our rivers as sewers. The incidence of disease is changed and we must change or suffer. We cannot use either alcohol or beefsteak as did our ancestors without paying a penalty. Taxation As farmers we paid for the government by taxes on lands. There was logic in the old system, there is little but opportunism in our present jumble, which does not deserve to be called a system, of taxation. Modern industry has tremendously complicated the problem of government and increased its functions, so we tax everything in sight. The old landowner often became rich in spite of what he did to the land because the growth of population raised the price of land. Much of present taxation seems a scheme to penalize industry and thrift rather than to stimulate and subsidize it as claimed. The Home As already stated, modern life has minimized the rôle of the home and with it that of the family. Once the unit in industry was the family, now it is the individual. One does not get paid as the head of a family. The bachelor gets the same wage as the father of ten children. Then, too, we have divorced our social life from the house. We entertain at hotel or club; we seek amusement in moving pictures; we get our food from the delicatessen store. Home remains as the place to which we go when all else is closed or when sleep becomes imperative. The effects on the family life have not gone unnoticed. Only in the country districts does the family function much as it did. Save the victrola and the radio, all modern inventions have pulled us from home. In this summary we have touched upon a series of problems familiar to every intelligent person. Our social programs, machinery, adjustments, call them what you will, have not kept pace with the changes. We have felt, acted and then bewailed, rejoiced, or cursed according to our temperaments, rather than deliberated as to the readjustments we ought to make. Suggested Remedies for Social Maladjustments The speaker states the problem and throws the subject open to discussion. Up jumps some enthusiast with a remedy. Hear his solution of the problems raised. For the evils of capitalism adopt any one of the fifty-seven varieties of anarchy, communism or socialism and all will be well. Human nature will change, that is, the nature of the capitalist, for it is obvious that no laborer would graft on another. The lamb will lie down beside, not within, the tiger. For the vexing questions of taxation adopt single tax. Absorb the "unearned increment" and all land speculation will stop and all governments be free from financial worries. In matters of health accept Christian Science, fathered by Quimby and mothered by Eddy, and get rid of these modern demons, the doctors. In family matters stop divorce, the root of all troubles. Compel folks to live together whether they want to or not and everybody will be happy. All these remedies can be secured in convenient and nicely wrapped packages with full instructions as to use and with as many recommendations and endorsements as Peruna or Sanatogen ever had and given by equally competent experts. How simple, but alas, how misleading! Without debating the amount of good any of these remedies may contain (there was whiskey in Peruna and cottage cheese in Sanatogen) their fundamental weakness is that they are panaceas. No human program can be perfect. Every conceivable institution has its weak points. Adopt any form of socialism you will, put it in full force, and the day following repair will be needed, that is, unless all human experience is misleading. Until the experiment is tried one cannot tell whether there will be improvement or the opposite. After the patent medicine man has been quieted (active verb) the revivalist will arise to recommend a return to the good old standards of grandpa's day. The word revivalist has been too much limited in its application to religion. The revivalist is found in all fields. The good old-time religion will revive the churches. A return to "constitutional ideals" such as majority rule will eliminate political wrongs. City problems may be solved by a return to country life. These are samples of the recommendations we hear daily. Can We Go Back? These likewise have a radical defect. Society can no more go back to earlier conditions than a man can forget all he knows and start again in the kindergarten at the age of seventy. Once man has created a new world, the old has ceased to be. A given individual may escape to the wilderness; a society, never. A dilemma presents itself. Changes, call them improvements or anything else, in the conditions of life, introduce problems, witness the automobile. We want the new things but we dislike to face the consequences. These we call the costs of change. According to our natures we divide into groups, or, and more correctly, we face one way on one problem and the other on the next, for we are never logical. The Reactionary Attitude Personify these attitudes into reactionary and radical, under both of which there are several species. The reactionary comes, typically, from a group successful under older conditions. He is prosperous and eminent. He is satisfied that the adherence to old standards, plus (Grace to God) superior ability, has put him where he is. He dislikes all these modern innovations. Associating with his own group he hears similar sentiments at church and club. He feels that the man who differs is dangerous, "not safe" he calls him. Seeing the advantages of the old order he fears the dangers involved in change. According to the intensity of his feelings we call him, conservative, revivalist, reactionary. The Radical Attitude Opposed to him is the radical. As a rule he comes from a group which has little to lose and much to gain, perhaps, from a change. If he comes from an old successful group, as he does at times just as "actresses happen in the best regulated families," he is likely to be known for the warmth of his feelings rather than for the depth of his intellect. He recognizes that things are not working well and believes in some readjustment. If mild in nature we may dub him a reformer, if rabid he is a red or bolshevist or whatever the popular title may be just as the French peasant to-day often calls his donkey Mussolini. Sometimes he wants reform, sometimes advocates change, on general principles for its own sake. Change Is Dangerous The truth is found, as usual, somewhere between these two extreme positions. There must have been merit in the old institutions else they could not have survived so long. There are values, cultural and other, in old standards. Change does involve danger. Education is dangerous. Once in a while students do change their minds and cast off old beliefs. Change may involve the displacing of an old group with no obvious immediate improvement as in Russia to-day. The individual who espouses the new cause may be lost just like the mariner who sails the unknown sea, or the aviator who ventures over trackless oceans. The Way Out Yet, change is inevitable. There is no escape. Man may refuse to make new inventions, may live for a time in secluded mountain valleys or desert oases, but sooner or later the outsider with new machines, new ideas, enters the Paradise, and Adam eats the apple even if later he throws the blame on his wife. That no man can save himself has long been an accepted religious maxim. That no people can save itself is equally true. Only by denying that trait which makes him a man, his intellect, can change be stopped. Readjustment is difficult. New policies do not always succeed; new machines do not always work. There is no merit in change as such. Society has no escape. It must pay the penalty for being what it is. Panaceas do not exist either in medicine or politics. Man must work out his adjustment to an actual world, that is here and now. The attempt to |