for moral irresponsibility. These unprotected and outlawed areas of the Great Society must be brought under the rule of an enlightened social conscience.

§ 4. THE FUTURE OF THE GREAT SOCIETY

A word may be added in conclusion as to the future of the Great Society. The mastery of machine technology and the application of it to the problems of production and transportation and the like have undoubtedly increased to a vast extent man's power over nature. The dangers of famine and plague have been thereby minimized and in so far forth human life has been placed upon a more secure basis. But out of the very pooling of interests and powers that characterize the Great Society and the mutualization and interdependence this has created have arisen a host of other problems. Financial crises now are no longer affairs of single nations but include the whole world of finance. War has now become in every sense of the word an international problem. The unspeakable wrong and suffering caused by one great militaristic nation in the heart of Europe would have been impossible in the old days. of isolation. America, notwithstanding the thousands of miles of sea that separate her from Europe and her traditional doctrine of national self-sufficiency, was drawn into the struggle, a most eloquent testimony to the interdependence of the Great Society. Solidarity instead of bringing security has only multiplied our problems.

Again the very recency of the Great Society and the artificiality inseparable from the large part played by the machine process in its creation raises the question as to its power to endure. The history of the great civilizations of the past seems to show that they have suffered more from the inner stresses and strains of their own lives than from outside dangers. Without in any wise committing one's self to a pessimistic view of life it must be confessed that there are forces at work in the structure of the Great Society as it now exists that give us pause. The very real dangers that have arisen from the profiteer and the realization of how deeply ingrained is his

point of view in business ethics are, to say the least, not encouraging. It only indicates how radical must be any reconstruction of business that seeks to control or eliminate profitism. The impersonality inherent in the machine process and its creature, the corporation, suggests the long and thorny road the nation must travel before it really succeeds in making business enterprise completely moral and rational. The clash between powerful group interests as seen in frequent strikes and the widespread discontent with the present industrial and political orders threatens that moral solidarity that lies at the very heart of democracy.

These problems have given rise to a fear that is thus expressed by a recent writer. "Throughout the politics and literature of the twentieth century one traces the fear, conscious or half-conscious, lest the civilization which we have adopted so rapidly and with so little forethought may prove unable to secure either a harmonious life for its members or even its own stability. The old delight in 'the manifest finger of destiny' and the 'tide of progress', even the newer belief in the effortless evolution' of social institutions are gone. We are afraid of the blind forces to which we used so willingly to surrender ourselves. We feel that we must reconsider the basis of our organized life because, without reconsideration, we have no chance of controlling it. . . . . Our philosophers are toiling to refashion for the purposes of social life the systems which used so confidently to offer guidance for individual conduct. Our poets and playwrights and novelists are revolutionizing their art in the attempt to bring the essential facts of the Great Society within its range. "The uncertainty and moral bewilderment caused by the sudden rise of the Great Society brings us to the topic of the next chapter.

1 Wallas, The Great Society, p. 14.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beard, Charles: The Industrial Revolution, 1901; BOGART, E. L.: The Economic History of the United States, 1913; DICEY: Law and Public Opinion in Engiand, Lectures, VII, VIII; GHENT, W. J.: Our Benevolent

Feudalism, 1902; HANEY, L. H.: Business Organization and Combination, pp. 39 ff.: HOBSON, L. A.: The Evolution of Modern Capitalism, 1917; MARSHALL, L. C.: Readings in Industrial Society, 1918; Ross, E. A.: Sin and Society, 1907; STEIN METZ, C. P.: America and the New Epoch, 1916; TICKNER, F. W.: A Social and Industrial History of England, Chs. 35, 36; VAN HISE, C. R.: Concentration and Control, Ch. I; VEBLEN, T.: The Theory of Business Enterprise, 1915; WALLAS, G.: The Great Society, 1914.

CHAPTER V

OUR UNCERTAIN MORALITY

§ 1. WHAT IS AMERICANISM?

THE breakdown of ethical traditions sketched in preceding chapters has given rise to an uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty as to the nature of our ultimate loyalties. Measures of values in morals, ancient religious beliefs, standards of business ethics long accepted without question, national policies considered as inviolate as the "faith once delivered to the saints", are now being challenged, in some cases actually repudiated. As a nation we have become socially self-conscious to a painful degree. This has resulted in an embarrassing sense of moral and spiritual decentralization. Bernard Shaw's bon mot," a nation of villagers ", which at first merely amused, is now felt to carry the sting of reality. We are beginning to wonder whether the publicist's phrase “a nation of uncritical drifters " and the sober scholar's characterization of our ethical stock in trade as "a heterogeneous tollection of provincial moralities" do not contain a large measure of truth.

Recently an attempt was made by the editor of a scientific journal to secure a satisfactory reply to the question, “What is Americanism?" Representative Americans in every calling in life were selected and the query was submitted to them: "Upon what ideals, policies, programs, or specific purposes should Americans place most stress in the immediate future? " The replies show the widest variety, not to say contrariety, of opinion. The panaceas suggested included socialism, equal opportunity in business, happiness, prolongation of human life, application of the methods of physical science to human nature, liberty mental and physical, the restoring of the balance between social forces, the Gospel of Christ, exact facts

1 Small, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 20, pp. 433 ff., 613 ff.

in the different departments of life where facts count, further development of individualism, industrial and social democracy, equality of opportunity, abolition of the color line, the maximum well-being of all the people, eugenics, the single tax, internationalism, charity.

No more impressive array of data could be assembled to show the widespread uncertainty, even among educated American leaders, as to the ultimate values that underlie American democracy. The editor's comment upon these data is suggestive. "The exhibit reflects the fact that if there be such a thing as Americanism it is not composed into a widely accepted code. It is articulate only in the case of scattered individuals. We have opinions, but what is our opinion? We have purposes, but what is our purpose? We have policies, but what is our policy? We have standards, but what is our standard? We have ambitions, but what is our ambition? We have ideals, but what is our ideal? Those of us who know what our individual opinions, purposes, policies, standards, ambitions, and ideals are, mostly think we are too busy to compare them with others, and to find out whether it is right or practicable for them to become the guides of Americans in general."

It is safe to say that whatever mature and intensive thought there is in American society is concerned for the most part with isolated problems or with groups and movements. There is little attempt on the part of leaders to correlate the interests they represent with those of the nation at large. One man sees the entire social problem in the light of the "color line," another in terms of social injustice towards the worker, another in terms of a religious attitude, and still another in terms of the problems presented by eugenics. Everywhere we find more or less isolated centers of thought, intensive investigations of problems but little or no effort to coördinate those problems with the thought and experience of the nation as a whole.

It would seem, furthermore, that these interests which concern men are economic, racial, biological, religious, scientific, but not primarily moral in the highest sense. The essence of