The Kinsley graphic. [volume] (Kinsley, Kan.) 1890-1940, 1896-01-17
SCIENTIFIC SOCIOLOGY.

tied Private Business Is q Public
Trust" are very good in themselves,
and they possess an added interest
from the fact that its author is Prof.
Albion w. Small, in Standard Oil
Rockefeller's university at Chicago,
and it is published in the university's
American Journal of Sociology. After
reading them you will wonder how
long before Rockefeller's university
will be firing another socialistic pro-
lessor. Says the professor: 1.-THE con-
ditions within which we are working
to-day are not the invention of men
deliberately hostile to their fellows
They are the result of enterprise on
the part of every sort of human beings,
in all of whom, up to date, self-interest
is the law of last resort We have, &C.
cordingly, social order which favors
one kind of interest to the hurt of 9TH
ers. Our civilization makes property
more sacred and secure than PERSONAL
ity. This fact no more brands the or
ganizers of modern business as enemies
of humanity than the fact that Wash
ington owned slaves impeached his
character as patriot and friend of
mankind.
''We are passing through a social
transition in which the power of few
men to control opportunities for en-
ployment is enormous. and the liberty
OF many men to defy the caprice of
employers is correspondingly reduced
1t will possibly be news to many men,
who look from the calm heights of pro-
fessional position upon the struggles
of organized wage carriers, that only
those children who inherit title to
land or its use are born into a legally
protected right to earn living. Other
children may inherit money or equiva-
lent personal property, and so long as
it lasts the law will protect them in its
use Then they must apply, with the
crowd born without inheritance, to
those who possess the land for the
privilege of working in further sup
port of life. True, only comparatively
few men suffer in their purse from this
condition. Neither did the southern
slaves as rule endure physical priva-
tions in excess of those which they
have borne since emancipation. I'm.
parchment of our industrial organiza-
ton is meanwhile not an attack upon
men, but judgment of system.
"a civilization in which one mans
access to a station above that of pau
perism is in any degree dependent up
on the arbitrary personal will of other
men is, by so much, repugnant to the
principle of the radical similarity of
all men in title to the franchise of
manhood The vulnerable point in
our present society is not it's permits
sion of large wealth to some of its
members, but its maintenance of in
situations which, in the last analysis,
make some mems opportunity to work
for wealth under any conditions de-
pendent upon the arbitrary will of
other men. We all understand that if
farmer is forced from his land, the
| law allows him no claim to any other
| land except a life lease of a place at
the poor farm. We understand that if
a weaver or switchman loses his job
no law compels another employer to
hire him. Few men outside. the wage
earning class have fairly taken in the
meaning of this familiar situation. If
a bookkeeper, or salesman, or teacher,
or doctor, or lawyer, or minister be
thrown out of employment, with no
title to land, apd no property in stocks
controlling natural agencies, he is lit
orally man without country. What
ever his personal ability to extract the
supply of his wants from natures re-
sources, the opportunity is closed. He
has no stock in nature. The resources
of the world are divided up among the
members of the propertied caste. and
the remainder of men depend upon the
members of this caste for permission
to get share of nature by labor in
improving nature.
Equal revenues from unequal serv-
ices is an immoral conception. Desire
for such a condition deserves no SYM
patty from honest men. Desire for
equality in title to a place in the
world where happiness may be pur-
sued without power of veto by any
other human being is an outcropping
Of our common humanity. Civiliza ton
is so far inhuman until men have
learned to live together upon terms
which insure qualification of this de-
sire. The social problem--if for SIM
plicity we may speak as though social
tasks were one-is how to socialize
ourselves to such a degree that, with
out bankrupting all, each may have a
secure lien upon a minimum share of
nature's endowment for satisfying
common human wants Every human
being who belongs in society at all be-
longs there as citizen, not as a sup
plant.
but, as its title indicates, this pa
per purposes to emphasize particularly
the second of the two principles which
have called essential in right society;
namely. not that merely public Office
but private business is public trust.
The economists have taught in so
many ways the dependence of civiliza-
ton upon division of labor that their
failure to reach this larger perception
is remarkable. Whenever it becomes
evident that an Individual or a class is
plainly evading the obligation of social
service society always claims a right
to repress the injury. The most seri-
Gus count in the wage-earner's indict-
ment of other classes is not primarily
that these classes draw too much pay,
but that they are not doing the work
that these revenues are supposed to
represent. The just grievance of the
poor man is not SO much that another
mans income is thousand, or ten
thousand, or a million a year. as that
either figure is more than its possessor
earns. Back of all former contracts or
statutes or institutions, therefore, is
this unwritten law of civilization that