I. MINERALS AND POWER

In the United States the extraordinary richness of the heritage of natural resources has often been stressed. The rate at which this heritage is drawn upon is significant because it is basic to our material well being. The extent to which we use these resources is shown by the increase between 1899 and 1929 of 286 percent in mining production, as compared with increases of 210 percent in manufacturing, of 48 percent in agriculture, and of 62 percent in population. Modern civilization rests upon power, upon energy derived from inorganic rather than human or animal sources. Since the beginning of the century the consumption of energy has increased about 230 percent; and the prices of coal, oil and electricity have not risen more than have general wholesale prices. Iron, the most common element in the tools and machines driven by power, has been plentiful and its price has risen much less than have general prices, and most of the other minerals have risen in price less than the general price level.

But the supply of minerals is limited and exhaustible. As the richer and more accessible deposits are used up, mining proceeds to leaner ores and greater depths, and from year to year the natural obstacles become more serious. How does it happen, then, that the minerals can be used in increasing quantities, yet produced at diminishing costs? The answer is given by a thousand technological improvements in production and consumption. This brilliant achievement is shown in the increasing output per worker; in the coal mines it rose more than 50 percent during the period 1900 to 1930; in the same period the reduction in fuel consumed per unit of product was over 33 percent. In the field of the metals, there is a great increase in recovery of scrap, and the drain upon the under-earth supply is thereby retarded. The revolving fund of metal thus created will increase with the years. All of these factors promise further victories in the battle against increasing costs. For the immediate future the outlook is for a growing abundance of minerals available at declining price. After that and long before exhaustion sets in, the problem of rising costs will become more acute. The ultimate outlook is suggested by the 014xviiposition of England, where growing difficulties of mining have swallowed up the gains of technology and the output per worker in the coal mines is less than it was fifty years ago.

At the moment the problem which is absorbing the attention of the mineral industry is not one of scarcity but of surplus. Abundance of resources and the competitive organization of mining have led to excessive capacity, causing heavy loss to the capital and labor engaged. But in preoccupation over the problem of too many mines and too many miners, there is danger of forgetting the waste of the underlying resources which such destructive competition entails. The best seams and richest deposits are being rapidly stripped, leaving large quantities more or less unminable. In the bituminous coal industry this loss amounts to 150 million tons of minable coal a year, and oil production is a similarly conspicuous example of waste. The money losses in mining have stimulated attempts at control of production and even proposals to modify the anti-trust laws. From the public point of view it is important that any change in economic organization undertaken in the interest of steadier profits and wages should also insure conservation by preventing waste of the resources.

One of the most practical steps in conservation is to harness the inexhaustible sources of power. Power from the tides is still in the future, although a tidal project at Passamaquoddy Bay is now under consideration. Power from waterfalls, on the other hand, now supplies 36 percent of the electricity generated by public utilities. The capacity of installed waterwheels has increased sevenfold in thirty years, and projects now in hand insure further large increase. Even so, only about 40 percent of the potential horsepower has been harnessed. Except for the St. Lawrence the undeveloped resources lie chiefly in regions remote from present markets.

It is clear that development of water power as fast as it can be utilized is in the public interest. Yet there is danger of exaggerating the amount of energy obtainable from this source. At the present time only seven percent of the country's energy consumption—if heat be included as well as power—is derived from water, and even maximum development of the potential resources would leave us primarily depending upon fuel. As far as the energy resources are concerned, the heart of the conservation problem lies in preventing waste of coal, petroleum and natural gas.

II. LAND

With regard to the soil the situation is different from that of the minerals. The growing of crops removes essential chemical elements but these can be replaced. It is estimated by our experts, however, that about 015xviiione-fourth of the cultivated land in the United States, chiefly in the southeast and southwest, has lost by erosion a third of its surface soil, and that from another quarter of the land a sixth or more of surface soil has been removed. These are colossal losses and they are increasing every year, yet the threat of an insufficient supply of food or fiber in the future now appears to exist no longer.

There are still nearly 300 million acres of land devoted mainly to pasture which can put into crops by ploughing and planting, and another 300 million acres which could be used for crops after clearing of the forest or after drainage or irrigation. Despite this vast reserve of land available for crop production the nation can ill afford to permit waste of soil resources by erosion and allow the people of a district to be slowly reduced to poverty. Where the land cannot be protected by terracing it would seem that it may be restored to forest or grass. Erosion, of course, leads to the silting of the rivers and to floods, which are matters of national concern. The utilization of eroding lands for forest o grazing would also tend to reduce the surplus of farm products.

The economic prospects of agriculture have been changed by the rapid decline of the birth rate, the restriction upon immigration, the great decrease in exports of farm products, and by progress in technique. There has been no increase in crop acreage for 15 years, nor in acre-yields of the crops as a whole for 30 years, yet agricultural production has increased about 50 percent since the beginning of the century. The advancing efficiency in land utilization is due principally to the increased use of power machinery in agriculture, and to the application of scientific knowledge. Use of the engine has reduced the number of horses and mules by 10 millions during the past 14 years, thereby releasing about 30 million acres of plough land and large areas of pasture for raising meat and mild animals or for growing food and fiber crops. Total mechanical power used on farms increased from 0.5 horse power per worker in 1900 to 5.6 in 1930. Improvements in animal husbandry have resulted in a further saving of probably 25 million acres of crop land since the World War.

It is estimated by our experts that agricultural output per worker increased 22 percent between the average of the decade 1912-1921 and the average of the decade 1922-1931. A farmer now provides food for himself and three members of his family, for 12 Americans not living on farms and for 2 foreigners—a total of 18 persons.

The result of these changing forces has been a volume of agricultural production in excess of market demands, and this in turn affords a partial explanation of the net loss in farm population of 1.2 million between 1920 and 1930, although a reversal of population of farmers to cities means an 016xixabandonment of crop lands which should be first from the poorer lands, for there is a problem of the rural poverty areas as truly as there is a problem of the urban slums.

The power line is likely to supplement th automobile in drawing farmers to the highways and in causing the gradual abandonment of much land back in the hills. The selective abandonment of the poorer land is being facilitated by the agencies of communication such as the postal service, the newspaper, the telephone, and the radio.

Should government endeavor to facilitate or direct this migration from the farms in the handicapped areas, relocating on more fertile or favorably located and those who wish to continue farming? Often the economies to be obtained in the provision of schools and roads alone would justify the county or state in such actions. This might lead to the zoning of rural lands. On the other hand, should government policy aim at retaining as much as possible of the natural increase of the farm population on farms or in rural areas as a means of maintaining the national population?

Abandoned farm lands return to brush but are not likely to be used for lumber production for some time. There are, however, other uses of low grade forest lands: conserving game and fur bearing animals, affording recreation, protecting water supplies and preventing floods. The responsibility for the development of such uses and the reorganization of the school and road systems in regions consisting in substantial part of such lands seem likely to devolve largely upon the state.

The problem of export markets may be serious for a time. Technological progress in land utilization in western Europe and in Russia is proceeding as in the United States, while in northwestern Europe, where most of the exports of farm products are sent, the prospect is for a stationary or declining population within a few decades. Losses in European markets in part may be compensated for by the growth of markets in the countries bordering on the Pacific Ocean. To deal with the agricultural surplus raises the broad question of land utilization and of domestic and foreign markets.

The tendencies which have given rise to these problems of surpluses, markets and shifts in population rest in large part upon two great movements: technological advance and declining population growth. The advance of science and invention may be expected to continue. It may lead to the widespread adoption of mechanical corn harvesters and cotton pickers for the handling of two of our greatest crops, and to the wider use of other agricultural machines now in existence. If so, it will give a premium in crop production to the larger farms on the more level lands, and it will lead to reduction in the number of people engaged in commercial agriculture and to further shifts in population.

1. QUANTITY OF POPULATION

The Declining Rate of Growth. —The rate of population growth in the United States has long been declining but this fact has perhaps been obscured because of the size of the net increase decade by decade. Thus the increase from 1920 to 1930 was 17 millions as compared with 14 millions in the years 1910 to 1920, within which the World War occurred. Before the Civil War, however, the population was increasing at the rate of about 35 percent a decade. Between 1920 and 1930 it increased only 16 percent.

Experts on population have projected their curves into the future and the outlook is startling. Manufacturers who try to estimate future markets have been expecting a population of 140 million by 1940, but the calculations of our contributors, based on information not presented in the decennial censuses, show that the declining rate of increase has been particularly striking since 1923, and that hardly more than 132 or 133 millions are to be expected by 1940. This means that the markets for mine operators, farmers and manufacturers, whose plants may be over-equipped and whose problems are those of overproduction, will be considerably smaller than has been expected, unless foreign markets are expanded, or our domestic standards of consumption are raised.

As our statisticians look further into the future, they see possibilities of still greater declines in growth with the probability of a stationary population. They show that we shall probably attain a population between 145 and 190 million during the present century with the probability that the actual population will be nearer the lower figure than the higher. Such a prospect is radically different from that predicted a generation or even a decade ago.

Ideas regarding the domestic market will have to bee revised in the light of these estimates, not only by manufacturers and farmers but also by real estate owners, lawyers, doctors, teachers and many others. The problem will be to compensate for less rapidly growing numbers by endeavoring to raise standards of purchasing power and consumption.

America, with its rapidly expanding population and its exploitation of abundant natural resources, has been characterized by exceptional optimism and initiative. Will these traditional traits of the American character suffer by a declining rate of population growth and increasing difficulties in exploiting our national resources? It may be that this will prove to be the case, but we must make allowance for the highly dynamic factor of invention which is likely to develop new industries, stimulating optimism and energy through the creation of new commodities and new desires.

The Problem of an Optimum Population. —Shall we aim to have a large or a limited population? This is major problem in the development 018xxiof a population policy, and it is a question on which opinions differ. The manufacturer may see in a stationary or diminishing population a limitation of his market, whereas a smaller population may mean a higher standard of living for consumers. A patriotic militarist may have a very different idea of the optimum population from that of a labor leader. Similarly a real estate owner and a social worker may disagree concerning the most desirable numbers. Thus the population policy of the United States as it develops through the coming years will be affected by a variety of conflicting ideals and interests.

But while population policy is shaped by social wishes, knowledge may influence the decisions which are made. One influence may be the amount of unemployment which results from the displacement of men by machines and which may increase with the growing number of inventions. Similarly the methods of controlling the size of the population may differ. The policy of restricting immigration from Europe and of regulating the inflow from Mexico and Canada requires collective active while it is difficult to control social attitudes toward the natural rates of increase.

The future is likely to bring continuing discussion of th optimum population, which is turn may effect the validity of present predictions. The forces which determine the size of our population may be expected to vary from time to time, so that in the future numbers may fall and later rise again, but within the near future the prospect is for further decline in rates of increase, as the use of contraceptives may spread, if not among those religious groups which now bar them, certainly farther into the farming areas ad among the groups with lower incomes in cities and villages.

Distribution and Density of Population. —Population policy is concerned not only with the total numbers in the nation as a whole, but also with the numbers in particular regions and localities.

The most significant movements of peoples, however, relate to their concentration in centers of high density where th question is arising whether the larger cities are becoming too crowded to be comfortable and economical. Although this difficulty may be solved by the automatic working of economic forces and considerations of comfort, the delay and costs may prove great. There is evidence that factories have been moving from large cities to smaller places where land and labor are chapter and living conditions are more favorable. Nevertheless, our largest two cities have continued to grow faster than the general population, though no faster than the total urban population which includes small towns as well as cities. The fastest rates of urban growth from 1920 to 1930 were found in the smaller cities within the orbits of the metropolitan centers. The ideal of the Greeks was to limit the size of their cities, but in the United States most of the effective vocal element in cities appears eager for greater size. Various economic forces have in the past offered 019xxiiencouragement to growth, in part because of the unearned increment of wealth accruing to real estate owners and to other established groups interested in expanding markets.

Suburban transportation has helped to disperse the population of cities. Indeed, the boundary line of the city becomes more and more shadowy in a social and economic sense. The surrounding country is linked to the metropolitan center by delivery services of stores, by extension of telephone exchange areas, by daily newspaper routes and other similar bonds. The automobile helps to fill up the suburbs, families move outward, and in some cases they engage in gardening or even in part time farming. Little cities, towns, trading centers and shops grow up along the highways. In short, a new type of population grouping is appearing: not the city, but the metropolitan community—a constellation of smaller groups dominated by a metropolitan center. As the railroad and telegraph tended earlier to create our cities, so the automobile and the telephone tend now to create our metropolitan communities.

This dramatic development of a new type of population grouping—the metropolitan community—has not only affected city planning but has led to regional planning. A problem for city planning has been left by the outward drift of the city's population. Disorganized areas where the older residential sections impinge upon the business districts have been left to the weaker economic elements and sometimes to criminal groups with resultant unsatisfactory social conditions. The motor age has brought “boom” suburban towns planted with as little planning as the “boom” towns which burst into existence in the railway age.

This unanticipated type of aggregation has not only meant a reorganization of city planning, but has precipitated many adjustments of social habits. Large cities throughout the United States have been confronted with the task either of extending municipal services to surrounding suburban urban communities or of developing some new form of political association. Economic services, lured by gain, have responded promptly. The cultural institutions, schools, churches and similar organizations have found more difficulty in adjusting themselves to the rearranged population, political instutions, unpressed by competition, have been the least adaptive and have remained for the most part the same as in the pre-motor period. The costs involved in maintaining an obsolete political structure are now becoming the subject of conscious consideration and the problem cannot be neglected much longer.

The quantity of population in a particular region is affected by its distribution, the nature of which is changing rapidly; hence, the time is ripe for social and physical planning of these communities. How large our cities should be rests in part on conscious wishes and will power, but it will probably be decided for the most part by powerful economic 020xxiiifactors, such as the dispersal of manufacturing and trading centers and business policies dictated by land values and labor costs.

II. QUALITY OF POPULATION

Processes for Improving the Inherited Qualities of the Population. —Of the two ways of improving the inherited qualities of a people, the first, mutation, may be dismissed, since our knowledge is still too limited; the second, selection and breeding for desirable qualities, offers possibilities.

But what are the practical possibilities of improving a people by conscious selection? The lack of knowledge concerning heredity and the composition of the chromosomes of prospective parents is undoubtedly an obstacle, but breeders of livestock have accomplished results without this information. The obstacles lie rather in obtaining the necessary control, in the lack of agreement as to which combination of traits is desirable, and in the difficulty in mating of combining sentimental and spiritual values with biological values. The problem is one of research from which in time higher eugenic ideals may emerge.

More immediately urgent is the need of preventing individuals with undesired inheritable traits from having offspring. Such a policy could be enforced in the more marked cases of feeblemindedness, of which there are less than 100,000 in institutions, but for the large numbers outside of institutions, variously estimated in the millions, who is to decide? The abilities of individuals shade down from competency to idiocy, and it is not at all certain that all low grades of mentality are caused by heredity. So with the other objectionable types, the insane and criminals, it is not known that the factors producing them are inherited. Men often commit criminal acts because of social conditions. Crime fluctuates with the business cycle. In a similar manner, certain types of social experience conduce to insanity. For example, there was a higher percentage of rejections because of mental disorder among men drafted for the United States Army from cities than from rural areas. A few states have passed laws providing for the sterilization of certain inmates of state institutions by an operation reported to be otherwise harmless.

If conscious control of selection now seems remote, it should be remembered that selection is continually occurring nonetheless, and that a policy is demanded. Natural selection has not ceased and the modern urban environment may be quite as rigorous as that of nature in developing or suppressing physical or mental traits. Discoveries regarding birth control already represent a powerful device for implementing policies of selection, and the birth rate, itself a selective agent, is much higher among the groups with a low income than among those with a higher income. The 021xxivassociation, however, between large incomes and desirable hereditary traits may not be very marked.

Ethnic Groups and Immigration Policies. —Birth rates, death rates and migrations have redistributed groups of our population in the past and these forces are at work among our ethnic stocks. Among Negroes death rates are about one and a half times as high as among whites. Death rates are also higher for the foreign born than for native born whites, although the differences are slight for those in the same income groups. Birth rates are somewhat higher among Negroes and foreign born whites than among native whites. The net result is that Negroes constitute a smaller proportion of the population than in earlier years and if present policies of restrictive immigration continue in force, the foreign born will be a declining element.

The present immigration policy of the United States not only regulates the quantity of the immigrant population but is selective as to quality. Designed to favor certain groups of nationalities, it encourages the Nordic racial types of northwestern Europe and restricts the Mediterranean and Alpine types of southern and southeastern Europe. This policy selects a physical type which closely resembles the prevailing stock in our country, for about 85 percent of the whites in the United States in 1920 were from strains originating in northwestern Europe where Nordics predominate. The immigration policy is inconsistent as applied to the non-white acres. The entrance of Chinese and Japanese is limited, but not that of the Filipinos or the Mexicans.

The question of racial selection is confused by doubt as to which of the so-called racial traits are inherited. Crime and sickness, for instance, are frequently a matter of environment. Many personality traits peculiar to certain peoples are also acquired in the early home environment. The assimilation of immigrants may result in the loss of distinguishing personality traits, unless there is some marked physical characteristic to brand the individual and so to encourage prejudice and psychological isolation. The persistence of these distinguishing traits is encouraged by social segregation, separate languages, family life, and religions, whereas the schools tend to modify them. They persist more stubbornly among non-white immigrants than among the various racial types of European origin. It may be questioned if the present basis of selection according to racial types is a more desirable policy than selection within a race according to the merits and defects of individuals. However, to a certain extent our immigration laws take into account individual qualifications, for example by excluding aliens with records of crime or insanity.

Environmental Influences on the Quality of Peoples. —Breeding is not the only way in which to improve the quality of the people. Americans are taller than they used to be because of dietary changes and a reduction 022xxvin the diseases of childhood which permanently retard growth; at the same time bad housing and the reduction of violet rays by the smoky skies of cities are forces operating against growth. Participants in sports and athletics benefit thereby; though the number of indoor occupations involving less physical activity appears to be increasing. Such changes in the physical qualities are not inherited, but if the culture giving rise to them continues the gains may not be difficult to maintain. The problem is rather to extend wholesome environmental influences to those of us who now share them in lesser degree, particularly to the great numbers with low incomes. There are limits, however, to the improvements possibly by these methods, limits set by biological laws; the stature of a people cannot be indefinitely increased; family strains may vary greatly in their possibilities of development.

Mental and social qualities are peculiarly susceptible to influences of the cultural environment. In early childhood in the family environment the more firmly imbedded traits of personality are fixed, particularly the basis for mental health or disorder. These cultural influences are the subject of the next section. It is clear that within limits the qualities of peoples are susceptible of great variation because of cultural change. There is one possible type of influence which may be overwhelming if it should be developed. This is the influence of physiological invention. One illustration is the possible influence of new chemical knowledge on the regulation, growth and functioning of the hormones, particularly those associated with certain endocrine glands, with possibly astounding effects on personality and the quality of the population.

I. INVENTIONS AND ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION

Apart from rates of population growth, most of the social changes which are taking place are in our social environment rather than in the natural environment and biological heritage. The fact that conditions in 1930 are different from those in 1920 or 1900 is explained by changes in culture, not in man or nature.

Material Culture. —The magnificent material portion of our culture has been developed by scientific discoveries and inventions applied to a rich natural heritage. This is well understood, but what is less understood is the dynamic nature of this material culture, and the fact that the problems of society arising out of a changing technology are produced in large measure by this dynamic element. More and more inventions are made every year, and there is no reason to think that technological developments will ever stop. On the contrary, there is very reason to expect that more new inventions will be made in the future than in the past. It has required on an average about a third of a century for an 023xxviinvention to become successful after it has been made, and many new or unheard of inventions are now in existence which will have wide use in the future. The death rate of inventions is so great, however, that it is not easy to tell which will be successful. It may be that the world will find much use for talking books; school and college students may listen to lectures by long-running phonographs or talking pictures; moving pictures may be transmitted by wireless into houses; seeing with that new electric eye, the photo-electric cell, and recording what is seen, appear to have almost unlimited applications; new musical instruments different from any now in use may be given to us by electricity; the production of artificial climate may become widespread; an efficient storage battery of light weight and low cost might produce changes rivaling those of the internal combustion engine. And these are only a few of the myriad possibilities from new inventions in the future.

Social Problems Raised by the Communication Inventions. —The machine got its modern social significance from the earlier phase of the industrial revolution. Its later phase is characterized by inventions in the fields of communication and transportation which have brought about remarkable developments in the transmission of material objects, of the voice, of vision and of ideas.

The first problems raised by these inventions were those of coordination and competition, involving the railroad and the bus, the telegraph and the telephone, the newspaper and the radio. Similar problems are created by all new inventions, but because of their public aspects the recent inventions in communication have involved to an unusual degree planning, regulation and control.

Another set of problems cluster about mobility. These involve housing, home ownership, family life, child welfare, recreation, residence, voting and citizenship, land values, increases and declines in population and migrations of industry. The transmission of goods, of the voice and possibly of vision may act as a retarding influence on human mobility in the future and may cause a development of more remote and impersonal direction and controls.

A further set of problems center about the effectual shortening of distances and the increasing size of the land area which forms the basis or unit of operation for many organized activities. Closer communications favor centralization in social life, in domestic politics and in international relations. Thus the units of local governments laid out a century or more ago are now too small for the discharge of various functions. Problems of jurisdiction arising from the lessened significance of state boundary lines are increasing. Even national units may be too small in the future, but this is an embarrassment felt more acutely by other countries than the United States.

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A final group of problems arising from the inventions in the field of communications concern the greater ease and extent of their diffusion. Regional isolation is being broken down all over the world. Indeed, the spread of cultures throughout history has been dependent upon transportation and communication and a social revolution is now under way in the Orient fostered by those agencies. In general, both here and abroad cities are the great centers of dispersal of new developments, and from them new manners and customs, new ideas and useful objects spread to the villages and countryside. The agencies of mass communication increase the possibilities of education, propaganda and the spread of information. A collateral descendant of George Washington flew in 1932 in a single day over all the routes which Washington had traversed in the course of his lifetime. Today, a flight over the poles is known almost instantly and a single speaker may address an audience of 100,000,000. These developments bring problems of mass action, of mass production and of standardization. It is, of course, true that opening channels of communication tends to produce uniformities of speech, manners, styles, behavior and thought; but this tendency is counteracted in part by the increasing specializations arising from the accumulation of inventions which bring to us different vocabularies, techniques, habits and thoughts.

Problems Raised by Our Rapidly Changing Environment of Material Culture.—Among inventions other than those of communication, but especially in machines of production, there has been a continual development. A larger proportion of work by machines, and a smaller proportion of human labor is to be expected in the future. In 1870, 77 percent of the gainfully occupied persons in the United States were engaged in transforming the resources of nature into objects of usable form through manufacturing, mining and agriculture; in 1930 only 32 percent. There are indeed a few cases of wholly automatic factories and automatic stores and many automatic salesman. Nor are the heavy productive machines the only ones which are increasing. The modern American surrounds himself with small tools and machines for personal use, such as the typewriter, the radio, the fountain pen, the toothbrush, the golf stick, the sunlight machine and the ice–making refrigerator.

In 1851–1855, 6,000 patents were granted in the United States, in 1875–1880, 64,000, in 1901–1905, 143,000, and in 1926–1930, 219,000. This growing number of inventions and scientific discoveries has brought problems of morals, of education, of law, of leisure time, of unemployment, of speed, of uniformity and of differentiation, and its continuation will create more such problems. Social institutions are not easily adjusted to inventions. The family has not yet adapted itself to the factory; the church is slow in adjusting to the city; the law was slow in adjusting to dangerous machinery; local governments are slow in adjusting to the 025 xxviii transportation inventions; international relations are slow in adjusting to the communication inventions; school curricula are slow in adjusting to the new occupations which machines create. There is in our social organizations an institutional inertia, and in our social philosophies a tradition of rigidity. Unless there is a speeding up of social invention or a slowing down of mechanical invention, grave maladjustments are certain to result.

Industrial Technique and Economic Organization. —To put inventions to practical use often requires change in parts of the economic structure. The character of the work called for, its amount, the classes by whom it is performed, the materials used, the location of industrial plant, the capital investment, the selling methods, the prices of materials and products, the disbursement of wages, the profits made—these and a hundred subsequent matters are affected by improvements in machinery and industrial procedure. When the pace of technological progress is rapid, the business enterprises which grasp the new opportunities for gain bring to pass mass changes in economic conditions, and unwittingly produce a host of economic problems. All of these problems may be summed up in the question: How can society improve its economic organization so as to make full use of the possibilities held out by the march of science, invention and engineering skill, without victimizing many of its workers, and without incurring such general disasters as the depression of 1930-1932?

Distributing the Costs of Progress. —Even before the business collapse of 1929 Americans had become painfully alive to the rapid growth of technological unemployment and during the depression the tidal wave of cyclical unemployment has added its millions to the involuntarily idle. The depression also has put employers under the severest pressure to devise more economical methods of production, which mean in many cases the use of less labor to turn out a given volume of goods. At best, the problem of technological unemployment promises to remain gave in the years to come.

One hope for a solution is that inventions of new products will add to employment more rapidly than the invention of labor saving machines and methods reduces it. A change in the distribution of income which put more purchasing power in the hands of wage earners would enormously increase the market for many staples and go far toward providing places for all competent workers, but for the near future we see little prospect of a rapid increase of wage disbursements above the 1929 level. Another possibility is a great expansion of exports; but in a tariff-ridden world that also seems a dim hope. Barring a marked growth of demand, various palliatives for the suffering caused by unemployment will receive much attention. The six hour day and the five day week are method of 026xxix distributing the loss of jobs in a less inequitable fashion. Unemployment insurance has been rapidly gaining adherents in this country; but whatever its merits for tiding wage earners over slack seasons and moderate cyclical despressions, it cannot provide for those who are out of work for long periods. On the other hand, the technologically unemployed are a changing aggregation of individuals, and a solvent unemployment fund would do much to mitigate the distress which many now suffer before finding new openings. Perhaps the hardest cases to help are those of men and women thrown out of work too late in life to appear desirable applicants for new positions. An extension of old age pensions to care for such victims of progress may bulk large in future discussions.

The Committee is aware of the numerous objections urges against these schemes of social insurance, and of the heavy costs which they impose upon society; but it is also impressed by the inarticulate misery of the hundreds of thousands or millions of breadwinners who are deprived of their livelihoods through no fault of their own. To put the cost of unemployment squarely upon those who remain at work, upon employers and upon the public purse makes everyone conscious of the difficulty and focuses attention upon the need of devising more constructive methods for dealing with it.

While wage earners are the most numerous, they are by no means the sole sufferers from technological progress. People whose property is rendered valueless by new methods may in future demand compensation after some fashion. For example, investors in public utilities which have become unprofitable by reason of competition which they cannot meet and which the state will not prevent may demand that government buy their holdings. But this is a hazardous speculation and it may be premature to press it further.

The Problem of Economic Balance.—In the halcyon days of 1925–1929, there were many who believed that business cycles had been “ironed out” in this favored land. Everyone now realizes that we have been suffering one of the severest depressions in our national history. Those who are acquainted with past experience anticipate that, while business will revive and prosperity return, the new wave of prosperity will be terminated in its turn by a fresh recession, which will run into another period of depression, more or less severe. 027 xxx how to avoid errors of other types as well as can hope to make full use of the productive possibilities which modern technology puts at our disposal.

Reflection upon this range of ideas leads to more fundamental issues. The basic feature of our present economic organization is that we get our livings by making and spending money incomes. This practice offers prizes to those who have skill at money making; it imposes penalties upon those who lack the ability or the character to render services for which others are willing to pay. A decent modicum of industry and thrift is maintained by most me and women, and the incentive to improve industrial practice in any way which will increase profits is strong.

When business is active and employment full, this scheme of organizing the production and distribution of real income yields results upon which we congratulate ourselves. Probably no other large community ever attained so high a level of real income as the inhabitants of the United States enjoyed on the average in, say, 1925-1929.

But even in good times it is clear that we do not make full use of our labor power, our industrial equipment, our natural resources and our technical skill. The reason why we do not produce a larger real income for ourselves is not that we are satisfied with what we have, for in the best of years millions of families are limited to a meager living. The effective limit upon production is the limit of what the markets will absorb at profitable prices, and this limit is set by the purchasing power at the disposal of would-be consumers.

Yet how can larger sums be paid out in wages and dividends? No business can pay wages for making goods which will not sell at a profit, and no business can make a profit if it pays wages higher than its competitors for labor of the same grade of efficiency. Of necessity the business organizer's task is often the unwelcome one of keeping production down to a profitable level. There is always danger of glutting the markets—a danger which seems to grow greater as our power to produce expands and as the areas over which we distribute our products grow wider. Despite improvements in communication, increased accuracy in business reporting, the strenuous efforts of the Department of Commerce and the rising profession of business statisticians, the task of maintaining a tolerable balance between the supply of and the demand for the innumerable varieties of goods we make, between the disbursing and spending of money incomes, between investments in different industries and the need of industrial equipment, between the prices of securities and the incomes they will yield, between the credit needed by business and the volume supplied by the banks seems to grow no easier.

When these balances have been gravely disturbed, business activity is checked by a recession, which is followed by a depression of industry, 028xxxitrade and finance. Then our scheme of economic organization yields results which satisfy no one. The income of the whole population falls by 10 or 20 percent; in extreme depressions by a substantially greater figure. And these average losses are accompanied by appalling individual tragedies in millions of cases, scattered through all classes of society, but commonest among those who have few reserves.

To maintain the balance of our economic mechanism is a challenge to all the imagination, the scientific insight and the constructive ability which we and our children can muster.

Economic Planning. —To deal with the central problem of balance, or with any of its ramifications, economic planning is called for. At present, however, that phrase represents a social need rather than a social capacity. The best which any group of economic planners can do with the data now at hand, bulky but inadequate, is to lay plans for making plans. Those who know most about the actual conduct of the work of the world realize most keenly the magnitude of the task involved in planning. To work out schemes which could be taken seriously as a guide to production and distribution would require the long collaboration of thousands of experts from thousands of places. In addition to the accumulation and sifting of countless figures not now available, planners would have to decide intricate problems of social theory, either by thinking them out, or by accepting arbitrary rules. To gloss over the difficulties of the task is no service to mankind; to face them honestly should not discourage those who have faith in men's capacity to find their way out of difficulties by taking thought. As the task of planning economic relations is faced in detail, it is not unlikely that modest schemes will be devised which will make the present organization work more steadily. It is more in line with past experience to anticipate a long series of cumulative improvements which will gradually transform existing economic organization into something different, than to anticipate a sudden revolution in our institutions.

Yet the segment of American experience which we are reviewing includes a brief period during which changes in economic organization were made at a rapid pace—quite overshadowing for the time being the pace of technological changes.

Promptly upon entering the World War, the United States followed the example of its allies and opponents by seeking to mobilize economic resources behind its military program. With extraordinary rapidity the federal government not only became incomparably the greatest employer in the country, incomparably the greatest buyer of goods— all of which it had become in earlier wars—but it also assumed direct control over fundamental economic activities. It took the railroads and many of the ships out of private hands. It regulated exports and imports systematically 029xxxiiby licenses. It gave priorities in transportation, materials and use of men to producers of war materials, and purposely repressed industries non-essential to military efficiency or civilian morale. It intervened between employer and employee through the war-labor boards. It set up a Food Administration and a Fuel Administration. It fixed maximum and minimum prices for thousands of commodities. And it imposed all of these drastic restrictions upon private initiative and free enterprise through the zealous cooperation of hundreds of business executives who served as officials on nominal pay.

Despite the wastes and confusion attending upon this sudden overturn in economic organization, the mobilization served its purpose. In retrospect it offers a significant illustration of the rapidly and the success with which a people can recast its basic institutions at need. Seemingly, what engineers regard as the slow pace of change in economic organization is due more to absence of unity in will and purpose than to lack of capacity to imagine and carry out alterations. In 1917 the country was nearly unanimous in putting victory in the war above all other aims. In this supreme aim it had a criterion sufficiently definite to determine what should be done. No similar revolution could be effected in times of peace, unless a similar agreement in purpose, supplying equally definite criterion of social values, could be attained. But is it beyond the range of men's capacity some day to take the enhancement of social welfare as seriously as our generation took the winning of a war?

Current Changes in Economic Institution. —To those who look behind cherished phrases to the actualities of current life, it is clear not only that economic institutions can be changed, but also that they have been changing during the period covered by this survey of social trends. Private property, for example, is commonly supposed to be one of the fixed principles of our polity. But generation by generation the right of a man to do what he will with this own has been curbed by the American people acting through legislator and administrators of their own election. Perhaps the most spectacular instances have been the abolition of property rights in slaves by the Proclamation of Emancipation and the calm disregard of property rights in the liquor traffic shown by the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, but these are only two instances among thousands of cases in which consideration of the public welfare has been deemed to justify interference with property. Numberless detailed restrictions have been placed upon the uses of particular kinds of property—for example, municipal ordinances concerning the character of buildings which may be erected on city lots or the character of business which may be conducted therein. We have developed elaborate state and federal systems for regulating an expanding list of public utilities. Government discriminates between citizen and citizen on the basis of the amount of 030xxxiiiproperty owned. The fraction of his income or of his inheritance which a man is required to pay over to the public treasury depends upon how large that income or inheritance is. Recipients of “earned” incomes are often taxed less heavily than recipients of income from property. Nor are transformations of property rights effected solely by government. Competent legal student of modern business practice hold that quietly but surely the investor as a part owner in a corporation is being shorn in effect of almost all his privileges, except that of drawing such dividends as the directors declare and selling his stock when he sees fit. And of course the small business man often declares that his field of initiative is being gradually hemmed in by the rapid increase of great corporations.

How much farther such changes will go no man can say. It is conceivable that without any surrender of our belief in the merits of private property, individual enterprise and self-help, the American people will press toward a larger measure of public control to promote the common welfare. One possibility is a further extension of the list of public utilities to include coal mining and perhaps other industries. Progressive taxes may be graded at still steeper rates. An upper limit may be put upon inheritances. Public ownership may be extended, as suggested above, on the pleas of security owners who see no escape from heavy loss except through sale to the government. Small business men may succeed in getting drastic restrictions placed upon corporate enterprises. Farmers may demand and receive further special legislation to lighten their burdens. Labor organizations seem likely to push with vigor various plans for social insurance. And among the interests which will demand that government concern itself actively with their needs, large corporate enterprises will continue to occupy a prominent place.

It is not that all of the possibilities listed here will become actualities, but it seems inevitable that the varied economic interest of the country will find themselves invoking more and more the help of government to meet emergencies, to safeguard them against threatened dangers, to establish standards and to aid them in extending or defending markets. Our property rights remain, but they undergo a change. We continue to exercise an individual initiative, but that initiative has larger possibilities, affects others more intimately and therefore is subject to more public control. Since government action means more to us, we call for more of it when in need, and object to it more strenuously when it hampers our plans.

While changes of this type seem bound to continue they can be made more conductive to the general welfare if they are guided by understanding and good will than if they are the outcome of a confused struggle between shifting power groups. Whether we can win the knowledge which is needed to guide our behavior and apply this knowledge effectively 031xxxivto our common corners, are questions which the Committee must raise, but cannot answer.

II. SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS AND SOCIAL HABITS

The economic structure of course affects the other institutions of society, setting the stage for many of the activities of mankind and modifying the potentialities of life in innumerable directions. Its influence is particularly powerful on that great group we call labor, on our consumption habits and on the conditions of rural life. It also affects various other groups and such institutions as the family, the church and the school, and has much to do with the way in which we spend our leisure time. And all of these social institutions and habits affect the economic organization as well. All, indeed, are interrelated, and often the economic changes come first and occur more rapidly than the correlated changes in other parts of the social structure.

Labor in Society. —Wage earners may be viewed both as a factor in production and as a great group in modern society. In the former role their record of labor in production has shown steadily increasing efficiency as measured in output per worker, an increase of 50 per cent in the manufacturing industries since the beginning of the twentieth century. In part this has been due too the aid given by machines and in part to the organization of work more closely in accord with the principles of scientific management, supplemented by wiser consideration personal factors in working relations. Strikes have declined about 80 percent since the World War. In so far as increasing production may be due to the growth of technology the prospect is very bright; in so far as it is due to harmony in relationships between employer and employee, the past decade may have been exceptional and friction and strife may arise more frequently in future.

One of the problems of the future will be the condition of labor in industry and the past played by wage earners and their organizations in influencing these conditions. This problem at one time centered around the question of decent physical conditions of work and the attitudes of employers and workers. Such conditions have been better since the war, and the growth of scientific management should bring about further improvements, but this is a vast task and there will no doubt remain many grievances and complaints without satisfactory means of adjustment.

The problem of the conditions and role of labor has been associated at other times with the idea of industrial democracy, an extension into industry of the idea of political democracy with revolutionary possibilities. For a time, around the period of the World War, it appeared as if the movement might make a beginning here and there. In post-war years, however, the movement for better management has advanced and less is 032xxxvheard today of industrial democracy. Solutions may be sought along the lines of management and plant organization or along the lines of industrial democracy. Which set of solutions proves dominant is an issue which will profoundly affect the status of labor in modern society and as such is vital not only to the workers but to the community as a whole.

From the beginning of the century until the depression beginning in 1929 labor's standard of life has been raised about 25 percent, as measured by the purchasing power of wages, although this increase prevailed through only a few of the thirty years. In the two years following 1929, the aggregate money earnings paid to American employees fell about 35 percent while the cost of living declined 15 percent.

Along with health and happiness, a high standard of living is a great desideratum of struggling mankind. Abundant natural resources, a slowly increasing or stationary population and an ever expanding technology all point over the years to a higher standard of living, if the various possible strains on the economic organization do not weaken it for too long periods. Such strains appear in business depression, in wars, in revolutions or very rapid transformations and in weaknesses in some particular part of the structure. For the very near future the standard of living may decline because of the menace to wages caused by unemployment, the possible slowness of economic recovery from the depression and the weakness of collective action on the part of wages earners. Certainly every effort should be made to prevent any lowering of the plane of living.

No doubt the adequacy of wages for meeting minimum standards of living will long remain a matter of dispute. The problem of wage adequacy is affected by the appeals of new goods such as radios, automobiles, moving pictures, telephones and reading matter. The number of such items in the future will be greater, and sacrifices in food or in other ways which affect health will be made, unless all of us can be better educated as consumers. There is, however, one interpretation which should be considered. Death rates are still much higher in the lower income groups than in others. Until a point is reached where the death rate does not vary according to income, it seems paradoxical to claim that wage earners are receiving a living wage.

Poverty is by no means vanquished, although how widespread it may be is not now known for there have been no recent comprehensive studies of family income nd expenditure. The indications are that even in our late period of unexampled prosperity there was much poverty in certain industries and localities, in rural area as well as in cities which was not of a temporary or accidental nature. The depression has greatly intensified it. After this crisis is over the first task will be to regain our former standards, inadequate as they were. The longer and the greater task, to achieve standards socially acceptable, will remain.

033xxxvi

In addition to their effort to raise standards of living, wage earners have had a further objective in trying to shorten the hours of work, and since the beginning of the century hours have been shortened by about 15 percent. But such an advantage figure conceals a great variety of conditions. In several industries the hours worked were as high as 60 per week in 1930 and in others as low as 44. Pioneer and Puritan habits and philosophies regarding long hours of labor have given ground slowly before the oncoming machine, but long hours of toil promise to be less in the future and with this lessening of labor comes the problem of how best to utilize the hours thus saved.

While there has been gain to labor in higher earnings and shorter hours, there has ben no such success against the terror of unemployment. Along with physical illness and mental disease unemployment ranks as a major cause of suffering. Fortunately it has been less extensive among married men than among the widowed, separated and divorced, and much less than among the single, if we may judge by a few sample studies. Fewer women than men have lost their job, and the old appear to have remained unemployed a much longer time than the young. According to an estimate commonly used there were 10,000,000 unemployed in the summer of 1932, although if there were a system of recording those out of work, the margin of error in this estimate might be found wide.

Insecurity of unemployment is characteristic of the economic process, and no doubt if control of rates of change were possible, unemployment could be greatly reduced. Free land no longer offers an outlet. Emergency relief is inadequate. The larger problem seems to be that of making the proper application of the principle of insurance, discussed elsewhere.

The membership of American trade unions declined from 5 million in 1920 to 3.3 million in 1931, the first time in American history that the unions did not gain in membership in a period of prosperity. Of great significance also is the fact that in the big industries such as coal, meat packing and steel, the unions have lost ground and have made no gains in others such as the manufacture of automobiles. When other functions than membership are considered it is clear that the organization of labor has not gone forward as have other parts of the economic system. Organizations of employers and of employees have changed at unequal rates of speed. Unless labor organizations show a more vigorous growth in the future other resources of society must be drawn upon to meet these problems.

Consumers and Their Perplexities. —The rising trend of money incomes after 1900 meant that millions of families had more money to spend than ever before. The shortening of working hours meant that these consumers had more leisure in which to enjoy goods. The expansion of 034xxxviiphysical output meant that business men had a larger volume of goods to market. That recently invented goods bulked large among these products meant that manufacturers and merchants had to teach masses of men and women new tastes ad ways. The changes which occurred in consumption habits before the depression seem explicable mainly in terms of these four underlying trends.

To begin with the task of forcing new products into family and individual budgets: The sponsors of novelties made use of all the arts of publicity to arouse unsatisfied longings. Their success was promoted by the fact that people with more than their accustomed sums of money to spend do not know from past experience how they can get the most satisfaction from the margin, and must experiment a bit. Hence they are more than usually open to suggestions conveyed by advertising, or the examples of others. By extending widely the device of instalment selling, this margin of unaccustomed purchasing power at the disposal of buyers was made broader, and gave the promoters of novel products a still better attack upon the consumer's mind. Meanwhile, the increasing rapidity and efficiency of communications were making it possible to wage selling campaigns on a fighting front which stretched across the continent. It is doubtful whether any earlier decade in the country's history had seen the wholesale adoption of so many new goods, such considerable changes in the habits of consumers, as the years 1920-1929.

The financial motives for launching new products have always been strong. The maker of a new article which appeals to buyers can hope to escape at least for a few years from close price competition. In 1920-1929, when output was increasing with unusual rapidity and wholesale prices on the whole were sagging, these motives were peculiarly strong. But the favorite methods of seeking to profit from new products seem to have changed in a measure. In the past, the novelty has often been held at a high price for years, and only gradually reduced to a level at which the masses of wage earners could afford to buy. Recently this process has been telescoped. Men who believed they had a novelty with a wide appeal often tried from the start to bring their article within the reach of as many consumers as possible, and hoped that they might realize the profits yielded by small margins multiplied by millions of sales.

Faced by such tactics, the purveyors of long familiar goods have had difficulty in maintaining their shares in the consumer's dollar. In self-defense, they too have resorted to high pressure salesmanship, payment by instalments, and the like. Hence an enormous increase in the thought and the money lavished upon selling, and an enormous intensification of the attack upon the consumer's attention. Not only is the housewife solicited to buy for two dollars down and a dollar a month a dozen attractive articles her mother never dreamed of; she is also told of unsuspected 035xxxviiimerits in products she has used all her life, which now come in new packages under seductive brands. The task of making wise choices becomes harder the more products are diversified, the more genuine novelties appear in the list, the more old types are dressed up in new wrappings, and the more conflicting advice is dinned into the buyer's ears.

The difficulty is a profound one, resting in the twist given our thinking as individuals by our scheme of institutions. Under our form of economic organization, the economic status of a family depends primarily upon the size of its money income. Hence, we devote far more attention to making money than to spending it. For example, in passing upon tariff issues at the polls, we are influenced much more by arguments about the effect of import duties upon wages, employment, and profits than by arguments about their effects upon the cost of living. There is scarcely a trade or profession in the country which has not formed an association to safeguard its economic prospects. Every member of every one of these associations is also a consumer; that is the only economic characteristic we all have in common. But we give not of the thought to this basic common interest which we give to the task of getting more dollars for our individual selves.

Our emphasis upon making money is re-enforced by the technical difficulties of spending money. Consumption involves the buying of a large number of different commodities, mainly in small lots. No single price means much to us; nor does the quality of the single purchase mean a great deal. To make much trouble about any one item scarcely “pays.” To act wisely about all the issues involved is beyond our capacity as individuals. Yet our interests as consumers constitute our fundamental economic interests. Or are we mistaken when we say that most men work in order that they and their families may enjoy a comfortable living?

It would seem that there is little likelihood of improving common practice except by the development of special organizations to promote our interests as consumers more effectively than we can promote them as individuals. Government bureaus might conceivably play that role; but so far as the American government is representative of the American people it shares the basic defect in our thinking, and therefore seems little likely to correct it. As money makers, we can be relied upon promptly to object to any official service to consumers which jeopardizes our individual interests as producers. To give detailed advice about the qualities and “values” of competing products would require continual revisions to keep the information up to date. Any bureau which undertook such a service would invite charges of favoritism. It is not easy to see how the government could surmount the difficulties. Private ventures toward supplying what is needed in the way of counsel are being tried; 036xxxixbut the scale of the services now rendered is small. “Home economics” courses are given to an increasing number of pupils in schools; but it is difficult to make these courses deal realistically with the rapidly shifting problems which the housewife confronts as a buyer. In short, the prospect of making our habits of consumption more rational and of getting the maximum satisfaction made possible by our technical progress is not bright. We may be losing ground, and perhaps we shall continue to lose for a long time to come.

Rural Trends and Problems. —The lives of the inhabitants of our great rural areas are being profoundly modified by a score of factors. Improved communications, the advantages of quantity production and possibilities of national marketing are increasing in all sections of the country that tendency toward uniformity of American life which has long impressed foreigners accustomed to the picturesque variations of housing, dress, manners, and speech in Europe. Those groups of the population which change their economic and social habits most slowly are now objects of this pressure. Cities have long been subject to rural influences through migration. Now rural communities—villagers as well as farmers—are obtaining from the cities, where most inventions are made, more of the new conveniences and amenities which invention offers, and find that they are entangled in perplexities, arising from the fact that new and old habits do not fuse harmoniously. Thus the economic union of the country and the village is assuming new forms, largely shaped by the automobile and the communities inventions; but the adjustments of school, church and government are proving difficult. The trend toward the village has weakened the open country churches, and has not brought country members to the village churches as rapidly as the country churches are closed. In the districts which have not adopted the consolidated school, there are still many small open country schools with only a few pupils. Village high schools and commercial schools draw students from the surrounding farms which do not share in the control of educational policy. Local governments set up a century ago in jurisdictions based upon travel by horse and upon wealth largely in farm lands are not suited to the extended areas of operations caused by the automobile and the railroad or to the newer forms and distributions of wealth. These illustrations show the nature of the problems of rural and village life caused by the economic and technological forces of change. The issue in part is one of a improved coordination of villages and farms but it is also a problem of better union with the cities. These relationships affect not a small class, but the whole body of the nation. There are approximately 30 million people living on farms and 32 million more in communities with populations of less than 10,000. While many rural communities may have passed the peak of difficulties in making their adjustment 037xlto the automobile and its concomitants and in these respects are becoming more stable, we must expect that further changes initiated elsewhere will necessitate further adjustments in the years to come. The process is one of diffusion of new agencies of change from centers of dispersal along the channels of communication, reaching last those places farthest removed from their point of origin.

The plane of living in many far outlying rural sections has been but slightly affected by recent improvements. In the richer districts higher standards of living are set up, education is strengthened, and there are more new improvements. In poorer sections usually far removed from the great zones of transportation, there are higher mortality rates, and the knowledge upon which effective citizenship is based is more difficult to obtain. The idea of a national minimum standard—in health, in education, in culture as well as in income—below which citizens should not be allowed to fall is applicable to localities as well as to individuals. Recognition of the difficulties of the poorer or more isolated communities in helping themselves effectively has led to a wide use of grants in aid, whereby assistance from central sources or richer centers is extended under certain conditions. Because of the utilization of this principle in the past decade, few mothers have died on childbirth and many children are better educated, to mention only two effects. It should be realized, moreover, that the state aid extended to rural schools and other rural institutions is small in comparison with the contribution which the countryside makes to the cities in the form of the millions of young people, ready for life's work. The cost of rearing and educating the migrants from the farms to the cities during the decade 1920-1930 has been estimated by our experts at about 10 billion dollars.

Maintenance of a national minimum by grants in aid would not be necessary if a very large area were used as the base for collecting revenue and making expenditures. In cities the budgetary unit is not the ward but the whole city, and thus there is no need of a grant in aid to a poor ward in order to maintain sanitation, health and education. Since communication is unifying regions as cities are unified, the problem centers on grants in aid or changes in sizes of governmental units. In either case the spirit of local government is affected, but that has already been modified by the communication agencies.

How radically the countryside will be transformed by machinery, transportation and communication remains to be seen. These were the forces which made modern cities. Now they are extending their sway over rural regions with possible transformations in manners, morals and customs.

Of those gainfully occupied a smaller percentage is engaged in farming than in manufacturing, and the rural part of our population has fallen in 038xlinumbers below the urban. Political institutions have lagged behind economic situations, however, as is witnessed by the over-representation of rural regions in state legislatures. The population of three-fifths of the states remains more than half rural and by 1950 perhaps nearly half the states will still be more than one-half rural. These facts must be recognized in plans regarding education, business and other important phases of national policy.

Minority Groups. —Unless the recent restrictions upon immigration are relaxed or the declining trend in the natural increase of color groups is reversed, the much debated problem of minority ethnic groups will become less acute, although the relationship of Negroes and whites will raise continuing problems. From time to time new elements in the population may be introduced such as the recent accession of Filipinos and Mexicans. The development of distant peoples for whose welfare the United States has assumed a degree of responsibility has created a problem which requires attention, and there are signs of a more alert and sympathetic understanding. Yet our country is a colonial power without a well developed colonial policy.

The problem of the minority groups both within and without the continental United States is not so much racial as cultural. Adaptation needs to be mutual if the varied strains are to be knit into a productive and peaceful economic and social order.

Social discrimination, injustice and inequality of opportunity often block the path of adaptation both in the case of the foreign born and of native color groups. In the past the relations of Negroes and whites have been marred by evidence of friction and injustice, but more recently there has been a growing spirit of accommodation. As Negroes have moved northward and westward from southern towns and cotton fields, new questions have arisen over their entrance into industry and politics, questions which may become more widespread in the future. Their elevation in the economic and cultural scale will probably mean a more effective group consciousness. Rights of minorities need especially to be guarded and interpreted with understanding, such understanding as develops most soundly from mutual discussion and mutual action.

While some of the problems presented by minority groups based upon race and nationality seem likely to decline in prominence, the cognate problems of groups with special interests based upon economic or occupational needs will loom large in future. Many of these groups will undoubtedly become more insistent in their demands and their methods of securing recognition may raise new questions. The forces of technology and science are leading to a variety of associations based on economic interests, and in a country whose political representation is geographical these non-territorial interests have no direct government channels 039xliithrough which to make themselves felt. Occupational and economic groups have thus been forced to devise other ways of expressing themselves—by propaganda, by lobbying and by work through associations. As society becomes more heterogeneous in its economic interests the problem of minority groups of this kind promises to become more complicated and more grave. Indeed group conflicts to one kind or another still remain as a national social problem.

The Family. —The family is primarily the social organization which meets the need of affection and provides for the bearing and nurture of children. It is sometimes forgotten that it could once lay claim on other grounds to being the major social organization. It was the chief economic institution, the factory of the time, producing almost all that man consumed. It was also the main educational institution. The factory displaced the family as the chief unit of economic production in large part because steam, which took the place of man power, could not be used efficiently in so small a unit as the home. Some of the economic functions of the family were transferred to the factory and store, although it remains the most important consumption. At the same time, the educational and protective functions were transferred in part to the state or to industry. Other institutions, organized on a large scale, less personal in character, less steeped in feeling, but with greater technical efficiency, grew up outside the home and gradually extended their influence upon the lives of members of the family in their outside activities.

The changes in industry have been more rapid than those in the family, as witnessed by the arrival of old forms of family law, of the patriarchal-employer conception of the husband, of the old theories as to the proper place of women in society, and of the difficulties of adequate child training.

The various functions of the home in the past served to bind the members of the family together. As they weakened or were transferred from the home to outside agencies, there were fewer ties to hold the members with a consequent increase of separation and divorce. Divorces have increased to such an extent that, if present trends continue, one of every five or six bridal couples of the present year will ultimately have their marriage broken in the divorce court. This prospect has led to much concern over the future of the family, and prophecies that it will become extinct. Anthropologists, however, tell us that no people has ever been known without the institution of the family. On the other hand, many peoples have had higher rates of separation and marriage, especially those with simpler cultures than ours. Few cultures, however, have or ever have had families which perform as few economic functions as do American families today dwelling in city apartments. These facts suggest, as does a projection of the divorce curve, that our culture may be conducive 040xliiito further increases in divorce unless programs are instituted to counteract this tendency. The growing divorce rate apparently has not acted as a deterrent to marriage, for the married percentage of the population has been increasing during the 40 years for which there are records.

With the weakening of economic, social and religious bonds in the family, its stability seems to depend upon the strength of the tie of affection, correlated sentiments and spiritual values, the joys and responsibilities of rearing children. How the strengthen this tie, to make marriage and the family meet more adequately the personality needs and aspirations of men and women and children is the problem. This is a task in which the clergy and clinics are already showing an increasing interest. Much more knowledge is needed of the psychology of emotional expression and there is opportunity and need for the artist as well as the moralist. There are few problems of society where success would bring richer rewards.

Back of the facts on numbers of marriages and percentages of divorce, there are diverse personalities and the play of human emotions which defy exact measurement. Happiness and unhappiness have been little studied by science, yet happiness is one of our most cherished goals. As economic institutions are the clue to the standard of living, so, perhaps, the institution of the family is nearest that elusive thing called happiness. Opinions vary as to how much unhappiness there is in marriage, but in several studies, with rather larger samples, generally among educated groups, around three-fourths or four-fifths are reported as happily married, either by the married persons themselves or by close friends of the families. The ratings are fairly constant. While science has thrown little light on what happiness is, it appears to be closely bound up with the affections. The family, of course, does not have a monopoly of the affectional life, and happiness may be found in work, in religion and in many other ways. Although closely related to the affections, happiness is based upon the whole personality and its successful integration, and this integration goes back to childhood and the family setting. The family is not only concerned with the happiness of adults but by shaping the personalities of its children more than any other institution it determines their capacity for happiness. Further progress in mental hygiene may provide wholly unsuspected help in this field. The study of marriage and divorce may not only aid in stabilizing the family but may also help us on the road to happiness.

Children. —The world is just beginning to realize the importance of our early years in making us what we are. Much of what is thought of as heredity is really the family influence on the personality of the child, an influence quite significant socially as any that the family possesses. An 041xlivattempt to realize the human potentialities here and to prevent some of the tragedies which occur is being made through parent education, but to reach the millions of mothers scattered in individual homes is no easy task and such influences on a large scale can be directed more easily through the schools. The home is a very conservative institution, as the leaders of Communism in Russia know, for the habits and beliefs of parents tend to be transmitted to the children. These potentialities of child development and the responsibility of parenthood make parent education a major problem of the future.

An influence affecting the status of children is their diminishing proportion in society. In 1930 for the first time there were fewer children under five years of age in one census year than in the one preceding. For the first time also there were fewer children under five years of age than from 5 to 10 years of age. In some cities already there are not enough children to occupy the desks in the earlier grades. This decreasing enrollment has not yet reached the high schools, but it is only a question of time, unless a larger proportion of those out of school are continued in school. Though the supply of children is being restricted, the demand for them continues. The value of children to society may be expected to rise and more attention will be given to their well being and training, especially if wealth continues to increase. This interest has already been shown by the three White House Conferences on the child, the first called by President Roosevelt in 1909, the second by President Wilson in 1919 and the third by President Hoover in 1929, dealing with all aspects of childhood and its conservation.

The prospect of increased interest in children and their well being should not lead to complacency, however, for there is still imminent danger to the child in nervousness and mental disorder, a danger which may be greater in the small family system. Nor should the damage to childhood from economic insecurity and its consequence for the family be forgotten. Furthermore, there is stimulus to action in the thought of the scarcely touched resources for better childhood. Indeed some educators believe that a better rearing of children may lead to a healthier psychological adjustment of man to civilization through the refusal to accept the irrational and unhealthy customs that exist all around us. Enthusiasts even see the possibility of directing social change through the manner of rearing children.

With this interest and hope for such high rewards, there is a pressing need of research yielding specific and exact knowledge which may be applied generally by mothers, fathers and teachers. Even now in a territory as large as ours and with knowledge so unequally distributed there is a lag in the application of available knowledge as well as in the desired coordination of home, school, church, community, industry and government. The 042xlvproblem here is to utilize available resources to conserve childhood in the midst of rapidly shifting conditions of family life. There is a possibility that the schools, nurseries or other agencies may enroll a larger proportion of the very young children in the future. In the United States 20 percent of all children 5 years old were in school in 1930 as compared with 17 percent in 1900.

Women. —As production of economic goods was transferred from the home to outside industry, men's work went from the homestead to factories and stores. Women did not work outside the home to the same extent, partly no doubt because children, cooking and housekeeping still occupied them at home, although a number of their occupations, such as spinning, weaving, soap making and laundering were transferred to outside institutions. The number of women working outside the home is increasing. In 1900, 21 percent of all women over 16 years of age were gainfully employed while in 1930 the percentage was 25. In manufacturing the percentage of women employed is declining, but it is increasing rapidly in the clerical occupations, in trade and transportation and in the professions. Women are employed in some 527 occupations; but they tend to concentrate in a few callings, for about 85 percent of the employed women are in 24 different occupations. It is the younger women and the unmarried who form the bulk of women at work outside the home. One in four of all females 16 years old and over is employed and only one in eight married women is employed, but the percentage of married women at work is increasing much more rapidly than the number of women gainfully occupied and the average age of women who are breadwinners is rising slowly.

Women constitute a potentially large supply of workers, their bargaining power is weak, there are some uncertainties regarding their continuity of employment, and for these reasons their wages are low. Their entrance into industry, then, presents a number of problems involving legislation and organization.

The transfer of functions from the home has not been solely economic. Many functions have gone to the government, as for instance educational and protective functions, as well as regulatory controls over industry. With the losses of the family as a social institution, other institutions, clubs and associations, amusements, libraries, and political organizations are centers of activities outside the home. It has been said that some homes are merely “parking places” for parents and children who spend their active hours elsewhere. In the political field, since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment the percentage of women registering for voting is a good deal less than that for men, but from sample studies available it appears to be increasing, and women have sat in both houses of Congress and have held office in federal, state and local jurisdictions.

043xlvi

The diminution of the home occupations and activities of women opens several possibilities. One is the entrance of women into industry as has been noted. If there were more part time jobs the movement would probably be accelerated. Another possibility is the entrance of women into civic work and political activities. A third is the heightened standard of the quality of housework. A fourth is more recreation and leisure. The future positions of women will be determined by the degree of flow into these channels and the problem is to direct this flow into the channels most desirable. Meanwhile, the tradition lingers that woman's place is in the home and the social philosophy regarding her status has not changed as rapidly as have the various social economic organizations. The problem of changing these lagging attitudes amounts in many cases to fighting for rights and against discrimination. Women are newcomers into the outside world hitherto mainly the sphere of men. Many barriers of custom remain and the community is not making the most of this potential supply of able services.

Housing and the Household. —Society is trying to strengthen the home and the family by many aids, such as courts, social legislation, home economics courses, and the church. An important effort of strengthen the family is concerned with good housing. The influence of housing in family life is observed in the case of the apartment house, which in its present from is ill adapted to children, but which presents savings in household duties and makes possible certain advantages of congregate living. New homes in multi-family dwellings were almost 50 percent of the new homes in cities constructed before the depression, but only a small proportion of families, twelve percent, live in apartments. Although the percentage of home ownership has been increasing slightly in the country as a whole, the mobility of population encourages renting rather than home owning. About half of the nation's families live in rented homes. The problem is how to secure reduction of construction costs, greater use of economic organization, science and invention. To meet the need of better housing at lower costs improved methods of financing by private organizations are being tried for families of the lower income groups. Proposals of changes in the system of taxation are also being made. The question of governmental aid in one form or another will probably arise in view of the social utility of good homes. The improvement of housing involves the organization of the whole community through city and regional planning. In cities the new distribution of population effected by the automobile has accentuated the housing problem in old residence sections near business districts. Bad housing in these areas and also in rural areas persists in part because of the durability of the construction materials used in the old houses. If the life of a house were short, or if the cost of modernization were small, it 044xlviiwould be easy to adopt the new standards and conveniences in kitchens and bath rooms and in heating and cooling systems. New inventions in materials and designs of homes as well as in equipment are said to foreshadow a revolution in housing methods and if so may greatly aid in working out the problem.

Electricity is a form of power which can be transferred considerable distances and is adapted to the size of the household so that the number of electrical appliances for the home now reaches well into the hundreds. While steam has been the enemy of the household, electricity is its friend, but that electricity will restore the home to its former economic prestige is not likely. There are, however, 26 million women who have part or full time jobs as housewives and where there is a housewife there is a home.

Schools. —Reverence for the home, especially for the part it plays in building the personality and character of children indicates our potential interest in values other than material ones. Another social institution, the school, is a center of hope and concern. Few countries have ever been so eager for education as the United States.

Nearly all children of the elementary school age now go to school in this country, although the attendance of the Negroes is much below that of the whites. Of those of high school age, about 50 percent are now in school—evidence of the most successful single effort which government in the United States has ever put forth. An eight-fold increase of high school enrollments and a five-fold increases for college since 1900 is a great achievement but it must be remembered that there are still many who do not share these advantages. If, however, the growth of higher education continues a question may well be raised as to whether there will be enough of the so-called “white collar” jobs for those with higher degrees. Yet the higher education is clearly cultural and not wholly vocational and plumbers may discuss Aristotle with intellectual if not financial profit.

As the volume of knowledge to be acquired increases in the future, the question as to how long a person should go to school will be raised. The biological age for marriage is reached some time in the teens and in most cases earning a living cannot long be delayed. This problem will be worked out no doubt by improvements in the curricula of the high school and the grade schools and by night schools and programs of adult education. With shorter hours of labor a program of education for adults may be developed and become widespread, although at present the great enemy to adult education is the competition of amusements.

It will always be difficult to keep curricula in adjustment with changing times and with new knowledge. Some schools and colleges still offer 045xlviii courses which are survivals from the scholasticism of the Middle Ages. The proportion of emphasis to be placed on vocational courses and trade schools as compared with the proportion put on the less specifically utilitarian subjects is one of the questions of educational policy. A democracy with a mechancial civilization and with an increasing heterogeneity of shifting occupations must ask much of its schools.

The changes in industrial, economic and social conditions which have taken place in recent years create a demand for a kind of education radically different from that which was regarded as adequate in earlier periods when the social order was comparatively static. Members of a changing society must be prepared to readjust their ideas and their habits of life. They not only must be possessed of certain types of knowledge and skill which were common at the time when they went to school, but they must be trained in such a way as to make them adaptable to new conditions.

Indeed, it may be said that the failures of coordination in modern life are attributable in no small measure to the tendency of human beings to fall into fixed habits and conservative attitudes. Many individuals are unsuccessful because of their inability to adjust themselves to the changes which take place about them.

The schools deal with the world of ideas as well as vocational training. They are centers of thought. What ideas shall be passed on may be an issue in the future when the full power and influence of communication inventions in dealing with mass stimuli are realized. Among fascists, communists, churches, patriots and social reformers it is already a matter of grave concern who shall control the ideas of the children.

The Church,—The ideas and values of life have been in the past centered in the church more than in any other social institution except the family. The rule of the church in society was at one time extraordinarily broad. It dominated international relations; it was the patron of the arts; it taught the ethics of family life; medical practice and healing were among its functions; and education and learning were sponsored almost wholly by it. Religious issues determined migration and wars. As time went on the church became differentiated from the state, in large part it was separated from politics and education, and was dissociated from healing. Ethics and religion have been traditionally united, but whether this association will continue may be problematical.

Up to 1926, the date of the last religious census, the church in the United States had increased its membership at about the same rate that the general population had grown. In the five years following 1926, the Protestant church membership—the only one for which we have figures —is reported to have increased 2.5 percent, less than the increase in population. It may be inferred that the rate of gain in membership has grown 046 xlix faster since 1929, as the influence of a depression is to increase church membership. From 1906 to 1926 the wealth of churches increased more rapidly than did the national income. This is explained in part by the adoption of better techniques of raising contributions. Sunday school attendance increased, 1906-1926, less rapidly than did the number of children in the total population, although the youth organizations of a religious nature have grown very rapidly, especially during the World War.

What has happened to religious ideas and beliefs is not recorded by the census, but it has been possible to draw some conclusions from studies of religious publications. In the proportion of religious books per 1,000 listed in the United States Catalog, and in the percentage of religious articles listed in Reader's Guide there has been a decline since the beginning of the century, although both showed a marked increase when the right to teach the theory of evolution in the schools was before the courts. The proportion which the circulation of Protestant religious publications bears to all periodical circulation has also similarly declined. Analysis of religious writings for this period showed that the number of articles on traditional religious topics has decreased relatively, while certain revisions of traditional religious beliefs received increased attention, indicating a change in religious creeds. Some religious beliefs are coordinated with the scientific outlook of the day, and changes in science produce a lagging adjustment in religious beliefs. The problem of reconciling religion and science is often very serious for the troubled spirit of modern man. This is a special case of a general problem, namely, that of the adaptation of the church to changing conditions. The attempts to develop social programs under church auspices and the movements for church unity and cooperation among religious denominations are indications that the church is aware of this need.

There is reason to think that the structure of religious organizations will persist, however their functions change. There are 44 million church members; the youth organizations reach 6 million young people and church property is valued at 7 billion dollars. How their functions may evolve is a grave issue. One function is that of ministering to the needs of people who suffer in a world of stress and strain. Another is that of serving social and community life. Still another function is that of an ethical guide and force not only for individual but also for social conduct. The church is legally separated from the state; it is not formally in politics, but it has taken interest in such problems as those of the family, marriage and divorce, the prohibition of the sale of intoxicating drinks, capital and labor relationships, crime, and many local community questions. The question is with what varying degrees of vigor and resource will the forward movements of the churches be directed along these different routes.

047l

Morals and Attitudes. —Various agencies of society other than school and church are engaged in the generation and transmission of ideas, as for example, the press and the library, and these sources yield information on changing attitudes and interests. Publications in books and in articles show a growing interest in science and the scientific outlook. Attitudes, as judged by publications, have also undergone changes in recent years, indicating a decline of the authority of the past in religion, science and sex. Precedent is very much stronger in the case of government and law.

Our experts made no extensive inquiry concerning trends in morals but it requires no special investigation to see the setting given by social change to the problem of rules of guidance for conduct. In a stationary and simple society such as is often found among primitive peoples the conditions of life are much the same from generation to generation. A father knows about what the conditions of life will be for his son and his son's son. Rules of conduct can be worked out in great detail. They become tested by experience and can be applied minutely to specific situations. The authority of the past is mighty. There is majesty in the law.

In a changing heterogeneous society such as ours, many situations are new. Specific detailed rules of guidance based on the past are difficult to apply. Rules are worked out but they are abstract and tend to be too general for detailed guidance. The authority of the past tends to fade. Recourse to reason is difficult to apply and often fails in the emotional situations where the problems of conduct arise. Perhaps the study of mental hygiene may uncover new resources to help in these moral perplexities.

Codes of behavior and manners which are found carefully worked out in stationary societies serve the purpose of restricting the play of selfishness and egotism. In a changing society, the breaking down of these codes removes some of the restrictions on selfishness, and thus the problem of moral conduct is made more difficult in modern society.

Social philosophies are somewhat like codes of morals in their resistance to change. Their changes often lag behind the social organizations with which they are connected. Thus economic philosophies in regard to laissez-faire and competition persist in fields where the combination movement is an accomplished fact. Old fashioned attitudes toward work persist under urban factory conditions. Much confusion is engendered in the minds of men and women and young people generally by the gradual crumbling of many solid dependable beliefs which sustained the people of the nineteenth century.

Changes in habits are almost as difficult to measure as changes in ideas and morals. Habits and customs are being increasingly modified by 048lichanges in occupation and in residence. Less than one quarter of the population now lives on farms. The change in the manner of life indicated by this small proportion is profound, and now the habits within the rural regions are changing too. Our expert studies in the shifting patterns pf occupations show many alterations in daily life. The old skills of workmen which required years to build up are disappearing in the face of mass production. We have taken to wheels; farmers use machines, gasoline engines and electricity; the farmer, like the city man, no longer speaks to everyone he meets on the road in his far-ranging car; more workmen are wearing white collars; middlemen multiply; engineers are increasing greatly in number, while the proportion of clergymen is decreasing; there were ten newspaper men in 1930 to one in 1870. And these are only random observations illustrative of our changing habits.

Problems Presented by Increasing Leisure. —As has frequently been pointed out men work fewer hours per day and per week and the home tasks of women are less time consuming; child labor has been greatly reduced, and though school time has been extended children may share in growing leisure no less than their parents.

To profit the potential market offered by increasing leisure, many forms of amusement or recreation have been provided on a commercial basis, as for instance, moving pictures, automobile touring, travel, radio, boxing, tennis, golf, baseball, football, dancing and “resorts.” On these and similar recreations in the late 1920's our experts show that we spent 10 or 12 billion dollars a year. The curves of growth for most of these expenditures show steep slopes. Seemingly we spend more time, certainly we spend more money on these modern diversions than our forefathers spent on their typical recreations of fishing, hunting, riding and visiting.

How best to use growing leisure hours is an individual problem in which organized society has a large stake. Americans have but scanty traditional equipment for amusing themselves gracefully and wholesomely. Advertisements set forth what our forefathers would have called temptations. We are urged to yield to their enticements by notions of human nature which differ radically from those entertained even in our own childhoods. Man is not a machine, we say; his nature is not adapted to long hours of work at repetitive tasks; recreation is a physiological need as much as food; if wisely chosen it is good for both mind and body.

In our early history what recreation was indulged in remained under the aegis of the home or the community, except for certain scarcely respectable types. We still feel that the recreation of other people should be supervised; but clearly the home cannot exercise efficient supervision when recreation, because of the greater mobility of people and for profit making reasons, is provided in the form of mass entertainment. A growing 049liiproportion of people admit that workers on machines or in shops and offices need recreation, and many of them also demand that the municipality or state assume censorship and control. On the other hand, we see evidence of rising impatience with government supervision of people in their free hours. One of the problems which will still need attention in supplying this almost insatiable hunger for amusement and diversion is to devise a method by which the standards held essential by the community may be protected, at the same time allowing for the free play of new ideas and entertaining novelties.

By virtue of commercialization, the problem of leisure is bound up with purchasing. Not only automobiles, radios and theater tickets, but also many objects of household decoration or personal adornment are bought to make leisure hours more enjoyable. By way of evidence concerning our national scale of values, consider the following miscellaneous list of American expenditures in 1929: 200 million dollars were spent on flowers and shrubs, 600 million on jewelry and silverware, 400 million on newspapers, 700 million dollars on cosmetics and beauty parlors, 900 million on games and sports, 2,000 million on motion pictures and concerts, and 4,000 million on home furnishings. The outlays upon some items in this list have been heavily cut during the depression; but there is little doubt that expenditures upon recreations and indulgences of many kinds will tend to rise in the future as per capita income grows. Study of family budgets shows that as available income rises, smaller percentages of the total are spent on such essentials as food, rent, fuel and light, while larger percentages are spent on miscellaneous items. These facts concerning present expenditures contain a forecast of changes in the allocations of average family budgets in the future.

Business, with its advertising and high pressure salesmanship, can exert powerful stimuli on the responding human organism. How can the appeals made by churches, libraries, concerts, museums and adult education for a goodly share in our growing leisure be made to compete effectively with the appeals of commercialized recreation? Choice is hardly free when one set influences is active and the other set quiescent. From one and a half to two billion dollars were spent in 1929 on advertising—how much of it in appealing for use of leisure we do not venture to guess. Whether or not the future brings pronounced irritation with the increasing intrusions upon our psychological freedom by advertisements, the problem of effecting some kind of equality in opportunity and appeal as between the various types of leisure time occupations, both commercial and non-commercial, as between those most vigorously promoted and those without special backing, needs further consideration.

The growth of great cities with the accompanying overcrowding has interfered with leisure time activities in another way, namely, by leaving 050liiispace neither sufficient nor safe for active outdoor play. While the newer trends outward from the most congested central portions of these districts may relieve the deficiency in part, the reservation of necessary areas or the provision of equivalent facilities of other types remains as a problem for many communities.

The development by the government of parks, playgrounds, camping places and bathing beaches is an attempt to solve the problem. In recent years since automobiles have been commonly used, the natural scenery of our country has been enjoyed much more than ever before. This enjoyment has been facilitated by the policies of federal and state government in setting aside from private use for the enjoyment of future generations places of great natural beauty in which our country is singularly rich. Among the opportunities offered by the broader range of modern recreation there are few affording deeper and more lasting satisfaction than the contemplation of the scenes of nature. Indeed, one of the common bonds of experience among men of all groups and types is the enjoyment of natural beauty.

The Arts. —Not only in passive enjoyment, but in practice, art touches our hours of leisure much more closely than it does out working time, A comparison of the census records of 1920 and 1930 shows in general that artists of various kinds are increasing more rapidly than the general population. The trend of art in America must be treated primarily as a matter of opinion, but there is some factual material which indicates a growth in art interests, as for example the increase at all educational levels in art instruction as compared with other subjects, the growth of museum attendance—the Metropolis Museum in New York showing today a greater annual attendance than the Louvre in Paris. Upon certain points there seems to be general agreement; the stimulating effect of certain inventions, as for example coal tar colors and cellulose products, or the influence of electricity on music, an increased interest in the appearance of the home, the enlistment of art and artists by commerce and industry as an aid to sales. In architecture, the United States is a recognized leader.

From a social point of view, as contrasted with art of art's sake, the problem of art, like that of religion and recreation, turns today in its service to man in his inner adjustment to an environment which shifts and changes with unexampled rapidity. Art appears to be one of the great forces which stand between maladjustment man and mental breakdown, bringing him comfort, serenity and joy.

It appears, from inquiries, that while conscious enjoyment of the fine arts is becoming more general, a much more widespread movement is the artistic appreciation, both as to color and design, of the common objects which surrounds us in our daily lives. That these changes are 051livlargely unconscious, and that they are seldom recognized as touching the field of the arts, does not detract from their significance.

The artistic tradition of the United States is of course less rich than that of older countries. So far us beauty consists in the establishment of harmony between appearance and function, a rapidly changing society such as ours would appear to be a stimulating factor. So far as beauty depends on decoration, the history of the past would indicate that artistic adjustment to a cultural pattern cannot be achieved until that pattern has been in existence sufficiently long to permit of much experimental with the various possibilities it offers. Private wealth has been extraordinarily lavish in its patronage but not always wise. Governments are just beginning to concern themselves with the encouragement of the arts. The school may well grow into an effective agency for the development on a nationwide basis of an elementary consciousness of beauty, and a more general understanding of the place of art in industry and commerce may prove to have great potentialities.

III. AMELIORATIVE INSTITUTIONS AND GOVERNMENT

Society has three problems which have existed throughout all history—poverty, disease and crime. In addition there are many other distressing conditions which the inequalities of life occasion, such as ignorance, physical defects, biological inadequacies, neuroses, alcoholism, family desertion and unprotected children. The amelioration of these conditions is a major objectives involving the techniques of modern social science and public welfare. The larger but longer task is prevention and the building of a more effective social structure.

Public Welfare and Social Work. —Much ameliorative effort in the United States has been concentrated in social work and public welfare, the extension of social work under governmental suspices. Other agencies, however, share in these activities. Many of the services now rendered by social workers were once the responsibility of the family. The family still gives some degree of protection to its members, but much social work is occasioned by the failures of families to meet these needs. The church has often stepped in where the family was inadequate, and has maintained orphanages, hospitals, homes for the aged, and the like. The local government too has always had its provision for relief out of local taxes but private effort was for generations unorganized; beggars sought aid where they could and the rick acted as the spirit moved.

In the present century the growth of the services of social work has proceeded through social inventiveness to new transcending earlier conceptions. Governments have been extending their functions into these fields. More than two-thirds of the states have recognized stat boards or departments into state systems of public welfare, dealing 052lvwith child welfare, widowed mothers, the poor, the aged and infirm, the physically handicapped and the subnormal. This work requires the newly developed efficiency in public administration and the recent technical advances of professional social work.

How far public welfare activities will extend depends in part upon the conception of the state and upon the tax situations. The trend has been toward the transfer of private social work to governmental auspices, especially during the present depression. The further growth of public welfare activities is to be expected, particularly because of the range of problems which are dealt with in other countries through social insurance. The changes are fundamental and will require the maintenance and further raising of standards by the government and continued experimentation by private agencies.

Ameliorative efforts will be greatly lessened if poverty is reduced. Prevention of poverty on a large scale may not seem practicable in the near future, yet much can undoubtedly be done in that direction. The guarding of dangerous machinery reduces the number of fatal or disabling accidents to the workers increasing progress in fighting preventable sickness and disease reduces the amount of dependency caused by death of the breadwinner or by loss of earning power resulting from ill health; the practice of eugenics may lessen the number of indigents; and better education and training for productive work will have a beneficial effects, but above all higher wages and more regular employment will cut down the amount of poverty.

The accidents of life as well as deficiencies and delays in any program of prevention will continue to afflict many and to leave large numbers dependent and in distress. For some time in the future we shall undoubtedly be faced with the further problem not only of making more adequate provision for social case work treatment of those in need, treatment which will have preventive, corrective and relief aspects, but of providing more adequate relief in general. At the time these lines are written relief needs are running into the highest figures in our history. Coming after three winters of unprecedented drafts upon the public and private purse for unemployment relief the difficulties in the situation are forcing proposals aimed to provide relief on other than an emergency basis—among others, those which make use of the insurance principle.

Private insurance is now used by many to take care of burial, sickness and the needs of old age and to provide for dependents left behind at death. Optional insurance for individuals is purchased widely by those with adequate means. If wages were higher, larger numbers would undoubtedly follow this example, Group insurance is developing more widely. The most far reaching application of the principle is compulsory insurance ordained by the states. It is now applied in all but four of the 053lvistates in compensating for industrial accidents. Beginnings have been made in this country of insurance against old age and against unemployment, but no state has yet undertaken to provide compulsory health insurance. Mothers’ aid laws, now in nearly all states, operate as a form of state insurance to protect the home.

Social insurance does not remove the cause of dependency, although it may have an influence in stimulating preventive measures. It aims to spread the cost of the disabilities of life over a larger part of society and a longer period of time. The indications are that the United States in the near future will have to face the problem of providing more certainly and systematically for these ills which at all times, and particularly in periods of depression, have come to be a major task of public and private social work.

Medicine. —The practice of medicine is in a state of transition which is perhaps analogous to the state of industry during the early period of mechanization. There is a marked survival of traditional, individualistic practice, to which many physicians cling as did the early handicraftsmen seeing their independence and their creative skill threatened by the machine.

There is serious dearth of physicians inn rural districts, an oversupply in cities. The field of the physician has grown far too large for any one man to master, and the necessary equipment is often too elaborate and expensive, even for the rich doctor. Here the hospital and private clinic come in to play the part of thee factory, furnishing the machinery which the individual craftsman cannot secure for himself or, indeed, use if he could, so complicated has it become.

The private clinic represents an effort at cooperation in the interest, not only of efficiency, but also of economy and protection against the evils of unrestricted competition. Such an effort does not, however, strike at the deeper lying problems of present day medical practice, namely the uneven distribution of service and the more uneven distribution of its costs. Medical organization has not changed as rapidly as scientific medical research.

To meet these problems organization is needed, of which three types may be mentioned. One is the growth of private organizations, of which examples are found in universities and industries, which might be developed on a community basis. Aid and regulation by the state may be a feature. Another type is found in the rise of governmental health bureaus, federal, state, county, and municipal, which apparently without much deliberate planning have increase the amount and scope of their work. A third type, compulsory health insurance, has been tried for many years by European nations. It seems probable that this latter method will be considered by the American public at some time in the future. 054lviiNaturally, scrutiny will have to be given to the weaknesses of the European system and the changes which will be needed to be coordinated with the practice in this country.

The concern of social policy regarding medicine is with the extent and direction of the development of these different types of organized medicine. The problem is to make available to the whole people the results of scientific research and experiment at a reasonable cost.

Crime. —The modern view of crime is that it is not a thing apart, like cancer; not something which can be isolated and treated as a single phenomenon by such simple devices as punishment and prison walls. It is one manifestation of a complex set of forces in society; it is as complex as the environment which influences it; it is affected by the transition in business practices and morality; it is related to the gang life of children; it is influenced by inventions, notably by the automobile. The multiplication of laws, the presence of poverty and the overcrowding of urban areas are part of its background. While crime is the net resultant of exceedingly complex forces, it has specific feature which can be dealt with, as has been shown in the series of special report from the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement.

Whether crime is increasing or not is difficult to determine. Those who know most about the subject hesitate to say that there has been a “crime wave,” and where it has occured. The collection at regular intervals of reliable and comparable statistics of crime and the various phases of it treatment and control has been sadly neglected in this country. One step toward dealing with crime is to get reliable information about its various manifestations. It has been possible, however, by selecting several state and cities which have fairly reliable statistics of crime to secure some indications as to trends, particularly since the various series run somewhat parallel. The index number of arrests per capita of adult population (after the subtraction of those for traffic, automobile law offenses and drunkenness) in 7 selected cities were 80 in 1900,96 in 1910, 100 in 1920, 139 in 1925 and 110 in 1930. The data seem to show an increase in crime since the beginning of the century, but hardly a crime wave, if by that is meant an extraordinary rise in the number of criminal acts committed.

As to the total amount of crime, probably about 16 major offenses are committed in a year per 1,000 population in the smaller and larger cities. These are crimes reported to the police, which may not be a complete list. For the total population the rate would not be so high, since the very large rural population is not included, and there the rates are known to be lower.

To a certain extent crime is a creation of the changing regulations of society and of the attempts to enforce them. The more rule there are to break the larger is the number broken. Much law breaking arises, for 055lviiiinstance, in the attempt to prohibit or regulate gambling, prostitution, or selling intoxicating beverages. Laws concerning these types of behavior vary from time to time and from country to country. The number of criminal laws is increasing. There has been a growth of about 40 percent in the 30 years from 1990 to 1930 in selected states as measured by sections in their criminal codes. Society seems to have a penchant for multiplying rules. The number of sections in the constitution and by-laws of the New York Stock Exchange increased 46 percent from 1914 to 1925, and the North Central Association of Colleges and Universities added 33 percent to the number of sections in its governing standards in the 18 years from 1912 to 1930.

This tendency to make rules and regulations is itself a significant phase of modern life and it stands out boldly against the pioneer background of America, where relatively few organizational rules existed or where they were changed le frequently. Rules multiply through the translation of customs into written regulations. This formal change is not the whole story; for it would seem that the process of social change itself leads to more regulations. New inventions, social or other, call for new standardizations of behavior in cases where tradition provides little guidance. Moreover the process of social change probably encourages rule making. Conformity to new regulations takes time to learn; it is a part of the complex adjustments to the increasing heterogeneity of society. Recent rules usually lack the established character of laws of the past.

There seems little prospect that the task of making new rules, revising old ones, and enforcing both sets will ever be finished, or that the problem of dealing with law breakers will grow less important. A society without crime appears more remote than a society without poverty. The number of prisoners committed for the more serious offenses has increased steadily in proportion to the population. Even though this may in part mean merely greater efficiency in apprehending and convicting offenders, we are in no position to say that the number of these more serious crimes is decreasing. Fines, however, are more predominant among the penalties inflicted. In Massachusetts they increased from 67 percent in 1910 to 87 percent in 1930.

Organized crime is a very serious phase of this general issue. Criminals who operate in significant numbers and repeat their acts organize for the purpose. Crime is in a way their business. Thus law breakers in other respects have taken over the “business” of bootlegging, gambling and prostitution, as well as robbery, kidnaping and blackmail and other crimes for profit. One can understand how illegal distilling of liquor in mountains, or how piracy on the high seas flourishes in isolation; but how illegal business can be carried on extensively in the heart of a city is less obvious. One explanation is that the organized gangs of 056lixcriminals avoid contact with the law when possible, but where contact is unavoidable they seek to control the agencies of the law. The methods of organized crime are sometimes modeled after effective business techniques, in combination with many of the worst criminal practices. Racketeering, an especially insidious form of organized crime for profit, has grown up in many cities since the war. This attempt to control prices by violence instead of by business pressure levies a heavy tribute on the consumer and on the business activity concerned; and this appearance of the criminal in a dominating role over small business enterprise is a serious menace. Organized crime in general, however, is by no means a new or post-war phenomenon, although it has grown to unprecedented dimensions since the enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment. Bootlegging has put large funds in the hands of criminals.

The problem of the treatment of the prisoner is significant not only as a measure for protection but also for prevention. The most fruitful approach to this problem of treatment for those who have been convicted is not from the point of view of punishment, but from that of segregation according to the types of psychological defects or deviations of the prisoners, or according the types of their social experiences, with a view to further diagnosis of their delinquent tendencies and the provision of care aimed to refit those who are not hardened and hopeless criminals to become safe and self-supporting members of society. The development of a policy in accordance with this view means many radical changes in prison procedure.

Another fruitful and even more important attack is that of prevention, especially for those who pursue crime as a business. A program of prevention is necessarily wide in scope and can not be limited to police, courts, and prisons. It touches politics, elections, business ethics, legislation, gang life among youths, rearing of children, playgrounds housing, the disorganized dwelling areas of cities, medical service and mental hygiene. Indeed almost the whole structure of society is involved.

Basic Governmental Problems. —Government has come to perform many function for social welfare through public welfare departments, but these, of course, are only a small part of its activities. As the one sovereign organization government is or may be concerned with the problems of men at all levels.

Problems of governmental reorganization and functioning constitute a major question of adaptation and adjustment. It cannot be supposed that the present procedures will be able to deal effectively with the complicated types of problems certain to arise in the future, indeed already upon us. Specifically the problems of government turn about the reorganization of areas, mechanisms, and authority; the recruitment of the necessary personnel for administration and leadership; adaptation of the techniques 057lxdeveloped through the social sciences; the elimination of spoils and graft; the determination of the scope of governmental activity in the fields of general welfare, social control, and moralistic supervision of behavior; the determination of the amount of governmental expenditure in relation to national income, and the ways and means of financing the government's operations; the position of the national government in its relations with other members of the family of nations; the development of liberty, equality and democracy, in the face of the concentration of great wealth in the hands of a few. Of major importance are the relations of government to industry.

Overshadowing all these problems is the final question as to how to develop a governmental mechanism which will serve the interests and ideals developing through the recent social changes indicated in this report, how to adapt the best in the American tradition to the changing forms of modern life.

Growth of Governmental Functions. —Governments in general have been increasing in size and power. The only other great social organizations to compare with them in rates of growth are our economic institutions. This growth seems to have occured despite conflicting views as to what the functions of government should be. Some would restrict them to the minimum of agencies of protection, and resent any extension beyond the bare necessities of control and regulation. Other see government as a powerful organization which may be placed in the service of mankind in many different ways. The variety of governmental functions is amazing, when all types of government are considered, as is shown in several of the chapters which follow. Much of this extension has been through various administrative boards, which have been added from time to time and which eventually present a problem of coordination. Not many of these bureaus are discarded, although some, notably those of war time, have been dropped. The rate of obsolescence is greater for legislative enactments. Such an extension of the administrative side of government is probably one of the reasons for the enhanced power of executives and the administrative branches of the government.

In this field the most disquieting developments have been those of the intrusion of the graft system in the domain of the federal government, especially in the form of bootlegging, but also touching the Cabinet in the Teapot Dome case; and the rise of racketeering in certain urban communities. On the other hand notable progress has been made in many directions toward the strengthening of the public service in cities, states, and nation.

Evidences of this have been the development of a more powerful executive, both in leadership and in management, the rise of administrative boards with wide powers, the tendency toward consolidation of 058lxiadministrative power on all levels of authority, the efficiency movement in the direction of professionalization of the service, the use of modern practices in dealing with the problems of personnel management and governmental operations and the growth of organizations of administrative officials throughout the country.

At the same time large ranges of government have been dominated by avowed spoilsmen, corrupt, incompetent and partisan, or all three together, while graft and buncombe have been common; but on the whole notable advance has been made in the direction of increasing competence and integrity in governmental service, notably in fields like educational administration, recreation, health, and welfare, special phases of urban, state and national administration. Even in less promising fields such as police administration the beginnings of substantial and even surprising progress have been made in various localities.

The broad question of the relation of the democracy to the expert in administration has not been solved, but in recent years surprising advances have been made toward the establishment of more satisfactory relations. Whereas in the period 1830-1870 the spoils idea was universally accepted and even acclaimed, and whereas in the period 1870-1900 the principle of merit as against party service and of continuity in tenure was recognized, in the period covered by this study the expert has been recognized because of his utility and indispensability in the practical operations of the government. While expertness and administrative skill were by no means universally recognized and adopted, the new trend was strongly in this direction, and the indications are that this movement will continue with increasing momentum.

Relations of Government to Business. —The increasing complexity and interdependence of social life precipitate more sharply than ever the problem of the interrelations between industrial and political forms of organization and control, and this has been accentuated by the rise of large scale industrial units resembling in form while rivaling in magnitude some of the governmental units to which they are technically subordinate.

Unemployment, industrial instability, tariffs, currency and banking, international loans, markets and shipping, agricultural distress, the protection of labor, have raised many vital questions respecting the relationship of government and business, and it is easy to foresee that many others will be raised in the future. Demands are now being made for more effective control over banking, investment trusts, holding companies, stock speculation, electric power industries, railroads, chain stores, and many other activities. The new forms of corporate structure raise many problems of legal control for the protection of the minority interests, and of the community itself. The service functions of 059lxiigovernment are also likely to expand because of the demands of the special economic groups. The poverty of the marginal and submarginal farmers, the insecurity of the wage earners in industry, the perplexity of the consumers, the plight of the railroads, are likely to call for, indeed have already demanded the close cooperation of the government. Unemployment and industrial instability are of special urgency in their demands for governmental assistance, first of all in times of emergency, but also in preventing the recurrence of disastrous crises or in minimizing their rude shocks and ghastly losses.

Under such circumstances the problem of the interrelationship between government and industry is of grave importance. Shall business men become actual rulers; or shall rulers become industrialists; or shall labor and science rule the older rulers? Practically, the line between so-called “pure” economics and “pure” politics has been blurred in recent years by the events of the late war, and later by the stress of the economic depression. In each of these crises the ancient landmarks between business and government have been disregarded and new social boundaries have been accepted by acclamation. The actual question is that of developing quasi-governmental agencies and quasi-industrial agencies on the borders of the older economic and governmental enterprises, and of the freer intermingling of organization and personnel, along with the recognition of their interdependence in many relations.

Observers of social change may look here for the appearance of new types of politico-economic organization, new constellations of government, industry and technology, forms now only dimly discerned; the quasi-governmental corporation, the government owned corporation, the mixed corporation, the semi- and demi-autonomous industrial groupings in varying relations to the state. We may look for important developments alike in the concentration and in the devolution of social control, experiments perhaps in the direction of the self-government of various industries under central guidance, experiments in cooperation and accommodation between industry and government, especially as the larger units of industrial organization, cooperative and otherwise, become more like governments in personnel and budgets, and as governments become agencies of general welfare as well as of coercion.

The hybrid nature of some of these creations may be the despair of those theorists, both radical and conservative, who see thee world only in terms of an unquestioning acceptance of one or the other of two exclusive dogmas, but these innovations will be welcomed by those who are less concerned about phobias than with the prompt and practical adjustment of actual affairs to the brutal realities of changing social and economic conditions. The American outcome, since all the possible molds of thought and invention have not yet been exhausted, may be a type sui generis, 060lxiiiadapted to the special needs, opportunities, limitations and genius of the American people.

Those who reason in terms of isms or of the theoretical rightness or wrongness of state activity may be profoundly perplexed by the range of governmental expansion or contraction, but the student of social trends observes nothing alarming in the widely varying forms of social adjustment undertaken by government, whether maternal, paternal, or fraternal from one period to another.

The Costs of Government. —Few governmental functions are self-supporting; most are paid for by the taxpayer. The question of the costs therefore is fundamental, particularly in the present depression when it is very difficult to pay the money with which to run the government. No one is in the mood for thinking of the growth of governmental functions when taxes are such a burden and when the costs of government continue on almost the same plane as before the depression. In a business depression, the costs of government remain high while the incomes of citizens fall and a larger percentage of income must be contributed to the government. This has been case in all recent severe business depressions and the complaint of the taxpayer has always been loud on these occasions.

This problem has never been solved. It is very difficult to cut down the total expenses of government as will be seen later from the nature of the payments. Business adjusts more quickly to the business cycle than does agriculture, and perhaps both more quickly than governments. Yet something can doubtless be done toward adjusting government finances to the exigencies created by business cycles. The tax bill of all the governments in the country in 1930 was ten and a quarter billion dollars, perhaps 15 percent of the incomes of the people. Of course, the crucial question is what do we get for our money. We spend about the same amount of money or more on recreation, approximately one-seventh as much on tobacco, and perhaps about one-fifteenth as much on cosmetics. How this money paid to run the government is spent is seen in the chapters on government and taxation. No doubt there is waste, but attempts to cut down have recently led in hundreds of counties and cities to closing the schools for a time and also to cutting down normal relief, such as mothers’ pensions, just when it is most needed. The problem of the extension of the functions of government is then in part a problem of paying for them, which leads inevitably to the question of how this burden shall be distributed among the citizens.

The tax burden was only 6.6 percent of the national income in 1913, or about one-half the proportion it was in 1930. How has this increase come about? One-fourth of it was due to the war; one-fifth of the increase went to education; about one-sixth was for good roads and about one-seventh 061lxivwas for the various services of the municipalities, which are peculiar to great aggregations of people living in localities of high density. It is an interesting question what, if any, of these expenditures which doubled the tax burden we should have been willing to forego. The problem of the amount of taxes is the problem of what we want to spend our money for. The percentage of waste that can be eliminated, as the percentage of increase in efficiency, has not been measured.

The question of who pays the tax ranks with the question of how much tax should be paid. Even when some such principle as payment according to ability is adopted, the measure of ability remains to be determined, as well as the problem of administering the tax. The most noteworthy trend has been the rise of the income tax from 37 million dollars in 1913 to 2,700 million dollars in 1930, and of the inheritance and estate taxes from 26 million to 250 million, the rise of the gasoline tax and decline of the liquor tax. The general property tax still continues to yield nearly 50 per cent of the taxes raised, despite its almost universal condemnation as a tax once adapted to our rural life but which has survived into an era to which it is ill fitted. No doubt the struggle over who shall pay what proportion of thee tax will be raised anew in every fiscal crisis of the future. If the government's functions should grow very large, this issue will become one of almost overshadowing importance.

Large possibilities of economy are found in the elimination of duplicating or outgrown units and agencies of government, in the adoption of sounder practices in purchasing and other governmental procedures, in the abolition of the graft and spoils system, in the better organization of personnel, and in general in the establishment of efficient public administration. These roads to economy are well understood and may readily be used whenever the will to do so is sufficiently developed. It must be recognized, however, that there are many fixed charges which are not readily reducible and contractual payments which must be met, and that extraordinary expenditures are necessitated in periods of grave unemployment. Less readily measurable, but equally important savings may be made for the community in such items as the reduction of the law's delay in the administration of civil justice, in the prevention of criminality and racketeering, in sounder policies of dealing with the defective and the delinquent, and still more broadly in larger planning and keener foresight in dealing with the terrible losses arising from the tragic tension of war and economic depression, with their heavy burdens on the taxpayer. In this range of opportunities material economies may be made without crippling essential public services, and without overburdening the community from which governmental contributions must come.

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Representation. —The question of who pays the taxes leads naturally to the question, whom does the government represent. The theory of democracy is that the people own the government, but practice does not always follow theory. The provisions for representation were worked out long ago when distances were great and there were marked variations by locality and region. Now localities are marked rather by differences among their many groups and distances are short. Occupations are extremely varied; wealth is very unequally distributed; during all these changes the pattern of representation has remained the same. This lag has been partly compensated by the development of quick means of determining public opinion and by the propaganda activities of these highly organized groups. The slight decline in the percentages voting and the apparent increase in activities of pressure groups suggests a changing nature of representation. The problem of representation is the question of special interests in relation to general control—the very difficulty which gave birth to the modern representative government. This problem of representation of interests is seen in extreme form in the monarchies of the past and in the communistic state of today. It will also be a problem in the approaching closer relationships of business and government.

Laws. —The government is also the supreme law-making body of society, although rules of conduct are set forth by many other social agencies. New inventions like the radio, the airplane and the automobile call for laws as do new social conditions, such as child labor in factories, chain stores or trusts. Laws in general lag. No doubt unwise laws are passed, but in cases where the laws which have been passed are admittedly wise, the delay and effort to bring them to passage have been great, as in the case of child labor legislation. After legislation has been passed it must be interpreted in the light of the Constitution and given judicial review where the social philosophies of judges become a factor in determining legality. On the one hand is the problem of safeguarding the body of the law; on the other is the problem of bringing laws up to date with changing social conditions. The conflict is fundamental. By very definition a rule must be definite and reasonably fixed, otherwise it offers no satisfactory guidance. Yet these rules should be changed sufficiently often to meet the new situations in a changing society. Laws tend to appeal to the authority of the past but in a period of great change that authority many not offer any specific guidance.

The problem of advancement of the judicial administration remains pressing. The necessary flexibility in our legal system in order to supply the needs of a changing society is dependent on personnel and the training and philosophies of that personnel. The lower forms of collusion between the courts and crime, the intermediate types of job brokerage in judgeships 063lxviand the more refined manifestations of judicial remissness are a challenge to our constructive statesmanship and at times an occasion of profound despair. Selection of enlightened and liberal judges is one effective approach. The awakening sense of responsibility on the part of the bar, the organizations of judicial councils and the broader social philosophy of the courts are indications of change. Modern legal education and socio-legal research are a leavening influence working toward the greatly desired adoptability.

Some of the problems of jurisprudence mentioned above are being worked out by the extension of another social invention, the administrative tribunal, which often combines administrative, legislative and judicial functions in one body. Thus a health board adopts rules, renders decisions and carries out orders. Administrative tribunals have had a remarkable development within the 20th century and are an adaptation to the changing conditions. Their success argues for their further development, but they offer a solution for only a phase of the lag of the law.

The immediate problem may be stated broadly as that at adapting an antiquated judicial system to rapidly changing urban industrial conditions, to new concepts and practice in the world of business and labor. A wide range of questions in the field of judicial organization, procedure and public relations must be covered along with the development of scientific methods and the adoption of a broader social spirit.

It may be anticipated that the vigorous protests of leaders of the bar will be needed in the next period of our growth, and that the spirit and procedure of the judicial branch of our political system will undergo changes of a substantial and helpful nature. In this the quickened spirit of responsibility on the part of the bar and of the judges is likely to play an important role, while the scientific spirit now beginning to assert itself in centers of legal training and research will be widely influential.

Changes in the Structure of Government. —The authority of government in the United States has traditionally been weakened by the division of powers between the national government and the states, between states and localities, and further by the three-fold division of powers between legislature, executive and judiciary.

The first of these divisions was shattered by the events of the Civil War and has been progressively modified since that time, never more actively than during recent years. There is reason to anticipate the progressive development of centralization in the face of the rise of interstate commerce under modern economic conditions, the increasing importance of foreign trade, finance and diplomacy, and the sweeping changes in modes of communication.

At the same time centralization in state government is growing, especially with respect to rural governments, and bids fair to advance 064lxviistill farther. So rapidly is this movement progressing that the preservation of an adequate degree of local self-government is a matter of great concern, and one of the large problems of the future is the determination of the desirable primary unit of government.

In the meantime a new competitor for power has arisen in the form of the metropolitan region, which now looms large both in numbers and in wealth. Six such regions contain nearly half of the population of the United States and show rates of growth far above that of other sections of the country. This trend if projected for another generation would place the center of political power in the larger cities. In view of the present economic situation, there is some question whether this trend will be as strongly marked in the near future, but in any case the upward thrust of the urban center is one of the most striking features of the period under consideration, and gives rise to innumerable problems of politics and government. How shall the new metropolitan complex be drawn together in some less chaotic form of governmental framework including the city and its satellites, especially when they spread over more than one county or state; what shall be their relation to the state and national governments; what shall be the principle of distribution of taxation and political authority; shall the cities be given home rule, or strictly regulated by states, or set up as independent commonwealths as has been suggested in recent years; or shall some other method be found as a result of the present day groping toward a way out of an admittedly impossible situation?

Broadly speaking, notable advances have been made in the government of urban communities during the period just past, where indeed both the brightest and the darkest spots in American public life were evident. If freebooting has been highly organized in some cities, there has also been an impressive development of organized efficiency. The attention given to public administration under the influence of such movements as the city manager plan has not been surpassed anywhere in our governmental system and gives promise of important advance.

Rural government, while less spectacularly corrupt, has been in many cases incompetent, especially under the disrupting influence of the new distribution of wealth and populations and the new methods of transportation. At the end of this period, however, there has appeared intense interest in the reorganization of these outworn units and the reconstruction of new types of rural-urban government, with striking experiments in rebuilding and strong prospects for an advance which ten years ago would have been regarded as utopian. Transfer of functions, consolidation, coordination and creation of new units are methods already under way in the effort to establish a more practical form of local government.

The power to act within the three-fold separation of governmental authorities likewise shows the emergence of centralized power, and the 065lxviiiforecast indicates still further development toward the central focus of authority.

The executive has gained in prestige and power in the national and state government, and in some cities where the power of the mayor has been expanded. Increased veto power, larger appointing power, facility in popular appeal, and growth of administrative functions have all tended to exalt the position of the executive. The familiarity of the public with the “strong man” with large authority in business and social relations has also helped in this movement.

The almost omnipotent legislative authority set up at the outset of our national development has steadily lost to the courts on the one side and the executive on the other; and this process has gone on more rapidly than ever during recent years. The only exception of note is the rise of the city council in the city manager cities and the board in school affairs.

Yet the maxim, “It is the function of many to deliberate and of one to act,” contains the essence of much past experience and wisdom of government, under a variety of different systems, and it seems probable that representative bodies will occupy places of power and distinction in the organization of society, under any development of executive power or administrative authority.

Democracy. —Our country is cited as the great exemplar of democracy. Do the changing social conditions make the adaptation of democracy a problem? We note lines, which if projected into the future would lead in opposite directions, one away from democratic control and the other toward a more perfect realization of its principles.

From one point of view our observations show great cities from time to time the grip of organized and defiant criminals, rural districts often forlornly governed, masses of persons losing confidence in the ballot and elections, and regarding liberty, equality, and democracy as mocking catchwords twisted into legalistic defenses of special interests. The swift concentration of vast economic power in a period of mergers, and the inability of the government to regulate or control these combinations, or in many cases to resist their corrupting influences, are not encouraging in their sinister implications; the organized labor movement seems declining in numbers and vigor. The difficulty of providing a steady stream of high competence in political leadership and administration has contributed to the difficulty of our problem, while the expensive control of masses of people through the arts of organized publicity and propaganda presents its dubious aspects to the observer of democratic trends. Many have been led to conclude reluctantly that the emergence of some recognized and avowed form of plutocratic dictatorship is not far away.

But in considering the movement of American democracy and its collective competence, it is important not to lose sight of specific and basic 066lxixtendencies revealed in this report and bearing directly on the future of our institutions.

One of these is the habituation of the American people to large scale organization and planning in industry, keenly appreciated by the Soviets; another is the American tendency to make relatively prompt use of the latest fashions in science and technology; the lack of sharply defined and permanent classes or castes obstructing either economic or governmental change, and finally, the wide prevalence of democratic attitudes and practices in social life.

Our experts show in great detail the wholly unparalleled democratization of education in recent years; the unexampled democratization of forms of transportation, long an index of aristocracy; the democratization of recreation through the moving pictures, the radio, the park systems; the democratization and standardization of dress and fashion, often obliterating long standing marks of class. If we care to look upon democracy as a way of life, these fundamental facts are to be considered along with the corruption and ineffectiveness of much of our governmental machinery.

An interpretation which seems to have a margin of advantage is that of the prospect of a continuance of the democratic regime, with higher standards of achievement, with a more highly unified and stronger government, with sounder types of civic training, with a broader social program and a sharper edged purpose to diffuse more promptly and widely the gains of our civilization, with control over social and economic forces better adapted to the special social tensions of the time, with less lag between social change and governmental adaptation and with more pre-vision and contriving spirit.

Relations with Other Nations.— Recent trends show the United States alternating between isolation and independence, between sharply marked economic nationalism and notable international initiative in cooperation, moving in a highly unstable and zigzag course. Immigration restrictions and high tariffs on the one hand, and a World Court, a League of Nations, and outlawry of war on the other. Some signs point in the direction of independence and imperialism of a new Roman type, reaching out aggressively for more land or wider markets under political auspices; others toward amiable cooperation in the most highly developed forms of world order. It is not unreasonable to anticipate that these opposing trends will continue to alternate sharply in their control over American policy. In any case there can be little doubt that the trend will be in the future as in recent years in the direction of more intimate relations through developing modes of intercommunication and through economic interchange and on the whole toward an increasing number of international contacts; and this, whether the future pattern of action is predominantly imperialistic or cooperative in form and spirit.

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Whether the United States is growing more or less militaristic must also be judged in the dubious light of conflicting theories and conduct. Traditionally insisting upon the supremacy of the civil over the military power, we have held to that doctrine and have played an important part in all movements for the curbing or abolition of war, including participation in a “war to end war.” On the other hand, out interest in foreign markets and loans has greatly increased, and the need of a strong hand in economic diplomacy has been emphasized. Our military and naval establishments have grown, and systems of military training have been expanded. Our soldiers have fought in Asia, Europe and Latin America. Powerful propagandas both for militarism and pacifism have been set in motion, and their clashes have been frequent but inconclusive. The outlawry of war and the strong was establishment have doubtless been accommodated by many minds as a practical version of Theodore Roosevelt's dictum to “speak softly and carry a big stick.” The trends in short are conflicting and confusing, with the problems of war remaining as imminent and as grave as in the past.