Part 49

"There is nothing so revolutionary, because there is nothing so unnatural and so convulsive to society, as the strain to keep things fixed, when all the world is, by the very law of its creation, in eternal progress; and the cause of all the evils of the world may be traced to that natural but most deadly error of human indolence and corruption--that our business is to preserve and not to improve."

In his retrospect of the Victorian reign, in the June Review of Reviews, W.T. Stead says: "It is to the stoutest conservatives of our time almost inconceivable that rational beings could ever have defended the system that prevailed in Britain sixty years ago."

I am no more assured of the rising of to-morrow's sun than I am that to the stoutest conservatives of 1950, it will appear "almost inconceivable that rational beings could ever have defended the system" that prevails in America to-day. They will, however, resist further progress as doggedly as do the conservatives of to-day, even while these see plainly how absurd was the attitude of their predecessors of sixty years ago. Your genuine conservative ever holds doggedly to things as they are. He clings tenaciously--and vainly. He belongs to a party whose defeat all history teaches is foredoomed. Now he stands for the divine right of kings; and notwithstanding he is a man of irreproachable character and able, moreover, to show that he is much less autocratic than most of his predecessors, he loses his crown and his head. Again, he stands for the parent country's unlimited power of taxation, and he forfeits his most flourishing colonies. At another period he urges long sufferance as a justification for continuing--even extending--the crime of slavery, and he meets defeat amid slaughter and devastation. No repetition of the lesson will ever teach him to consider what is abstractly right--what ought to be without reference to what is.

But the conservative has to be, in accordance with the law of nature, so poetically announced in the song of Willis in Iolanthe:

"That every boy and every gal That's born into this world alive, Is either a little Liberal, Or else a little Conservative!"

Or, as Emerson's prose expresses it--

"The two parties which divide the state--the party of conservatism and that of innovation--are very old and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made. This quarrel is the subject of civil history. The conservative party established the reverend hierarchies and monarchies of the most ancient world. The battle of patrician and plebeian, of parent state and colony, of old usage and accommodation to new facts, of the rich and the poor, reappears in all countries and times....

"There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact. It affirms because it holds. Its fingers clutch the fact, and it will not open its eyes to see a better fact. The castle which conservatism is set to defend is the actual state of things, good or bad. The project of innovation is the best possible state of things. Of course conservatism always has the worst of the argument, is always apologizing, pleading a necessity, pleading that to change would be to deteriorate. It must saddle itself with the mountainous load of the violence and the vice of society, must deny the possibility of good, deny ideas, and suspect and stone the prophets; while innovation is always in the right, triumphant, attacking, and sure of final success."

But though doomed to defeat, conservatism is not to be denounced or condemned. It is not without its uses. It often keeps us from following untried paths that open out alluring but end in thickets or quagmires. A brake is sometimes as necessary to safety as motive power is to progress. But the usual tendency of conservatism is to keep the brakes on all the time, causing either stagnation, retrogression, or a smash-up. The real revolutionist is the rock-ribbed conservative. It is the boulder blocking the onward flow of the stream that causes the eddy and the whirlpool.

Those who think on this subject and who really desire the improvement of society--unfortunately a very small class--are divided over the question whether mankind shall progress by the path of individualism or by that of collectivism. Extremists assure us that these paths go in opposite directions, or traverse each other at right angles. The truth is they run parallel; and we have been travelling both, now advancing more on one and then on the other, towards the ultimate goal of humanity--the perfection of society through the elevation of the individual, the perfection of the individual through the improvement of society. Each helps the other; neither can be independent of the other. It often happens that organized society cannot await the slow process of individual perfection. It must accelerate the operation by changing standards and ideals. There is no telling how long it would have required to convince each individual slave-owner of the wrong of human slavery, or each individual mine and factory owner of the wickedness of child-labor. Society had to take the matter in hand and force individual development--in one case by law, in the other by the sword. Many thoughtful persons are raising the question whether society has not more work of this kind ahead of it. There can be no individual perfection or progress under certain social conditions. Ceremonious politeness was not to be expected among the victims of the Black Hole of Calcutta. Starvation has often led to cannibalism among men who would shrink with horror from the thought of it under ordinary conditions. Society can create conditions favorable or unfavorable to the improvement of the individual.

The inevitable outcome of the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the triumph of each in its own proper field.

A line drawn from the past to the present shows the trend of the future. We find this embodying two distinct, and apparently contradictory, tendencies--one towards greater individual freedom, the other towards a constant extension of the principle of cooperation, or collectivism. That is, organized society leaves ever greater freedom to the individual in all those things that concern only him, while at the same time it extends farther and farther its supervision and performance of those things that pertain to the welfare of all, and which society can do for the individual better than he can do for himself. A man may kiss his wife on Sunday without scandal or fear of prosecution; and he may dress in any manner he pleases within the bounds of convention, which is still an unreasoning tyrant. He is generally glad to avail himself of the more convenient water-supply provided by the community; but he may, if he wishes, have a well in his yard, until, with the growth of the city, this becomes a menace to his neighbors' health; then it must be closed. He may still mould his own tallow candles and use no other light if he prefers; but cooperation among consumers supplies him with a much superior illuminant; and when this cooperation is extended to embrace all the citizens--i.e., when gas or electricity is furnished by the municipality, the cost is reduced, and he becomes a partner in the profits.

Of the benefits of municipal cooperation we had a signal illustration in the introduction of municipal sprinkling in St. Louis. Formerly, the occupant of a fifty-foot lot paid a private contractor from $6 to $12 a season, while he suffered from the dust blown from his neighbors' frontage and from unsprinkled streets all over the city. Now the owner of a fifty-foot lot pays about $1 a year and enjoys sprinkled streets throughout the whole city. Municipal cooperation in libraries brings the same kind of benefits. The average well-to-do reader, instead of a five-dollar subscription fee, pays a dollar tax; and for that not only he and his family, but also the families of his neighbors, have access to a superior library. And it is almost as necessary for your comfort that your neighbor's children have access to a library as for your own.

While social evolution tends to relieve the individual of the compulsion of law, and also to lessen the pressure of public opinion, in those affairs that pertain only to his own life, correlatively his action is more and more restricted in so far as it affects his neighbors and society in general--though here, too, law and custom tend more and more to individual freedom. It was once regarded as a public scandal not to go to church; and 50 years ago in St. Louis Unitarians were shunned as suspicious characters. But pari passu with the growth of individual liberty has grown the recognition of the duty of society to see that all persons have equal liberty--to protect the weak against the strong. Nothing in Victoria's reign has done more for the progress of England than the series of acts that have been passed to curb the greed of mine and factory owners, to prevent them from coining the muscle and manhood of Britain into gold--in a way that, at one period, threatened to exhaust the vitality of the race--to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

The whole history of mankind is a continuous struggle of the weak and ignorant many to secure the rights withheld from them by the superior strength and cunning of the few. The oppression and injustice of the past are apparent to all; but many of us, like the conservative antagonists of Cobden and Bright, fail to see anything seriously wrong in the present; and, like them, we fear change. But it is the part of wise men to welcome change as the natural order of the universe--to see that it is a change for the better.

It does not by any means follow that every new idea is a good one, that every proposed change would be an improvement. But as progress is the law of the universe, it rests with the old order to show why it should be continued. Wisdom, therefore, urges us to give careful consideration to new ideas, however contrary they may be to prevalent opinions, bearing in mind the frequent lesson of history that "the stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner," and approaching all questions in the spirit of St. Paul's injunction: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." For all political and social problems, which are the burning questions of to-day, there is, it seems to me, a simple test in Herbert Spencer's "first principle": "Every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberty by every other man." Legislation that does not square with the self-evident truth and justice of this dictum is bad legislation, and must prove maleficent to the nation, state, or city that enacts it. I need not offer any modern instances.

Reasoning in reverse order, i.e., from effect to cause, we may be sure that when we see in a country abounding in natural resources, as ours is, inhabited by the most intelligent, energetic, and resourceful people the world has ever seen--when we see in such a country millions of willing workers in enforced idleness; when, to account for the idleness and its attendant want and destitution, we are offered the absurdity of "over-production" of the very things for which millions are suffering; when we see men and women who toil not revelling in luxury, while others who labor sixteen hours a day are barely able to keep body and soul together, we may know absolutely, without further investigation, that there is something fundamentally wrong in our social organization.

This is not the time or place to point out these wrongs specifically, or to advance, even in the most general terms, what, after much thought, I believe to be the remedies. I merely urge the thoughtful study of social problems without bias or prejudice. This state of openmindedness is not easy to achieve. We think that we think our own thoughts; but as Tarde, the French psychologist, says: "What the individual hypnotizer is to his sleeping and abnormally plastic subject, such, almost precisely, is society to the waking and normally plastic man."

On the solution of social problems, Ibsen says: "There is only one thing that avails--to revolutionize people's minds." This was a difficult task about so plain a matter as the Copernican system, which was opposed by the combined learning and piety of Europe. How much more difficult must it be when the change affects the every-day life of every individual? As Nitti says: "Had the propositions of Euclid affected economic interests they would still appear doubtful hypotheses of arduous solution."

"As, then, in philosophy the first step is to begin by doubting everything, so, in social philosophy, the first step is to throw aside all supposed absolute rights."--JEVONS.

The public library is destined to play an important part, to exercise an incalculable influence in the solution of the social problems of to-day, and through this on the future of the nation and the race. The wisdom needed for this task is not to be obtained from schools or colleges, but from the higher education of mature minds--the masses of the people--which the public library alone can give. The preparation for this higher education of the masses devolves on the schools and colleges. Their curricula should be so arranged as to arouse "historic consciousness" in the youngest child, to awaken social consciousness, and to provide for its continuous development by starting every boy and girl on a career of self-culture--by matriculating every child in the People's University, the Public Library. In affairs that concern society as a whole, it is better to trust the well-informed common-sense of the people than the learning of the schoolmen.

It is not knowledge of mathematics or physics, or Greek and Latin, or modern languages; it is not the study--academic study--of history, or philosophy, or even political economy, that will solve the great social problems that now confront us. These will help in various degrees, directly or indirectly, some more, some less, some, perhaps, not at all. A knowledge of the general course of history is essential; some acquaintance with philosophy is useful; dogmatic theology serves only to confuse, but the true religion that lies in a vital acceptance of Christ's two commandments as a summary of the law and the prophets--that is the greatest aid of all. Such, however, is the influence of established order on men's minds that no investigation will avail without a determination to take nothing for granted, to re-examine what have been considered basic principles, to accept no postulates that do not square with reason and justice. This cannot be done by confining our reading to the accepted standards of a generation or a century ago. We must keep abreast of the thought of the time; we must keep our eyes and ears, and still more our minds, open; we must scorn no aids to enlightenment; but we must do our own thinking; we must consider the idea, not the source from which it came, remembering that good may come out of Nazareth; we must live up to the motto; "Truth for authority, not authority for truth," and we must "lend a hand."

My faith in the efficacy of the education offered by the public library is not without foundation. In more than one case I have seen a course of lectures or the reading of a single book lead to a course of reading in economics and sociology, which has entirely changed points of view. New ideals, higher standards, have made new men with higher lines of action. Their natures have not been changed, but their visions have been clarified.

One of the stock arguments which conservatism always brings out to give a final quietus to any proposal for social reform, is--"Oh, that's impossible; you'd have to change human nature!" This mental attitude, which, I am sorry to say, is the prevailing one with the great majority of mankind, is admirable satirized in some verses which I had great pleasure in printing in the April number of the St. Louis Public Library Magazine:

There was once a Neolithic Man, an enterprising wight, Who made his simple instruments unusually bright, Unusually clever he, unusually brave. And he sketched delightful mammoths on the border of his cave, To his Neolithic neighbors who were startled and surprised, Said he: "My friends, in course of time we shall be civilized! We are going to live in cities and build churches and make laws! We are going to eat three times a day without the natural cause! We're going to turn life upside down about a thing called Gold! We're going to want the earth, and take as much as we can hold! We are going to wear a pile of stuff outside our proper skins; We're going to have Diseases! and Accomplishments!! and Sins!!! Then they all rose up in fury against this boastful friend For prehistoric patience comes quickly to an end. Said one, "This is chimerical! Uptopian! Absurd!" Said another, "What a stupid life! Too dull, upon my word!" Cried all, "Before such things can come, you idiotic child, You must alter Human Nature!" and they all sat back and smiled! Thought they, "An answer to that last it will be hard to find!" It was a clinching argument--to the Neolithic Mind!

Yes, great progress and reform can be accomplished without changing human nature. The elemental forces in the heart of man are the same now as in the earliest recorded ages, and they are likely to remain the same for all time to come. We cannot change the elements of man's nature; but by changing conditions we can improve the product of reaction. We can elevate conduct by elevating ideals. There was a time when the man who could wield the heaviest battle-axe was the greatest man; and there are still circles in which Corbett and Fitzsimmons are regarded as the greatest men of the present day. But the men who now excite most general admiration are our "captains of industry," the men who succeed in getting money and the luxury and power it commands. How shall we elevate our national ideals?

Selfishness is a mainspring of human action. A like motive, desire for happiness, sets men to fighting dogs and to founding hospitals. Nero found pleasure in one way, Marcus Aurelius in another. Charles I. and Louis XVI. were not bad men; but they were controlled by outgrown standards. Elizabeth, Napoleon, Peter, and Catherine of Russia sought their own pleasure in accordance with their personal characters and the standards of their times. But how much higher and purer pleasure the devotion of their talents to the service of their fellowmen brought to Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, Cobden, Bright and Gladstone--and John Pounds!

False standards, low ideals, now lead many good men to find their pleasure, not in cruelty, not in sensuality, but in the accumulation of wealth, partly for the luxury, chiefly for the power it brings. "Superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer."