the moral is its wholeness, its social character. One cannot think in ethical terms without correlating his thought with the problems of the community or the nation. For in its last analysis morality has to do with matters that make for social sanity. Ethical values are those which are fundamental for the solution of the social problem, the essence of which is how to enable men and women to live together with the least amount of friction and the best safeguarding of human values. If it be contended that we are moral in the larger sense only when we orient our immediate circle of interests in terms of their bearing upon the comprehensive social interests, it can hardly be said that American society is moral at all. It possesses a morality, to be sure, but it is haphazard, local, piecemeal. It is the morality that embraces those norms which must be observed if the business man is to get along peacefully and successfully with his business associate. It is the morality that is necessary for the minister to observe if he is to enjoy the sympathy and confidence of his sect. It is the morality the member of the labor union finds essential to the welfare of his group. It is the morality which the political party insists each shall observe if he plays the political game. We have the morality of "big business ", the morality of butcher, baker, and candlestickmaker; we have the morality of the scientist, the educator, the Jew, the Catholic, and the Protestant. But there is at present an absence of comprehensive authoritative norms, acknowledged by all classes and set up as the common goal of a common citizenship in a great democracy. In a word, we do not have as yet a fully self-conscious democracy.

To these animadversions it may be replied, of course, that there are, running through these various groups, certain great ethical conceptions such as justice, fidelity to contract, truthfulness, honor and the like or perhaps the great norms of the democratic conscience, liberty, equality, and fraternity. These, it may be said, rather than the individual's particular social theory or the ideals of his group, are what hold society together. The reply to this is that justice or liberty are mere abstractions except in so far as they become concreted in a

social program or are able to make use of social instrumentalities. Even the bitterest opponents have little trouble in agreeing upon a definition of justice in the abstract. The rub comes when they try to unite upon a social policy or seek to enact laws that will embody the principle of justice. It is doubtful whether any great ethical or political norm can ever claim reality apart from the immediate social instrumentalities through which masses of men are enabled to make it part of their thought and life. Ideals, to be sure, are always concrete realities in that they are the organizations of the ideas and sentiments of definite individuals. But even these individual subjective attitudes must become more or less institutionalized before they can ever become socially effective.

§ 2. CONFLICT OF INDIVIDUALISM AND COLLECTIVISM

Much of the confusion that reigns in the social mind of America at present is due to the conflict between two tendencies which we may call individualism and collectivism. Collectivism is opposed to individualism in the traditional sense in that it places the rights and interests of the many above those of the individual when they conflict and yet without seeking to destroy individual initiative. Collectivism seeks to control and to supplement individual activities in the individual's own interest as well as in that of society. Collectivism, therefore, is to be distinguished from socialism which tends to subordinate the individual by placing the instruments of production in the hands of the state, and by eliminating competition and private property.

During the last few decades collectivism has gained the upper hand over traditional individualism. In a classical passage, written in 1881, Lord Morley thus describes the growth of collectivism in England. "We have to-day a complete, minute, and voluminous code for the protection of labor; buildings must be kept pure of effluvia; dangerous machinery must be fenced; children and young persons must not clean it while in motion; their hours are not only limited but fixed; continuous employment must not exceed a given number of

hours, varying with the trade, but prescribed by the law in given cases; a statutable number of holidays is imposed; the children must go to school and the employer must every week give a certificate to that effect; if an accident happens notice must be sent to the proper authorities; special provisions are made for bake houses, for lace-making, for collieries, and for a whole schedule of other special callings; for the due enforcement and vigilant supervision of this immense host of minute prescriptions there is an immense host of inspectors, certifying surgeons, and other authorities, whose business it is 'to speed and post o'er land and ocean' in restless guardianship of every kind of labor, from that of the woman who plaits straw at her cottage door, to the miner who descends into the bowels of the earth, and the seaman who conveys the fruits and materials of universal industry to and fro between the remotest parts of the globe."

Three decades later ex-President Eliot wrote of the spread of collectivism in America, “Many persons are still living who remember Boston when it had no sewers, no public water supply, no gas, no electricity, no street-railways, and no smooth pavements: Albany when pigs roamed the streets, the only scavengers; Baltimore when each householder emptied the refuse from his house into the gutter in front of his door, and the streets were cleaned only by animal scavengers and occasional rains. Seventy years ago Massachusetts, as a state, provided no hospitals for its sick, wounded, or insane; issued no acts of incorporation with limited liability, built no docks, improved no harbors, regulated neither steam nor electric railways, exercised no control over the issue of shares or bonds of incorporated companies, built no highways, and appointed no commissions to construct systems of sewerage, water supplies or parks-in short performed none of the functions which to-day engage most of the attention of its legislature and its officials."

The psychological effect of this striking mutualization of the social order characteristic of the last few decades is most important for our understanding of the prevailing uncertainty

in our moral ideals. The pressure of a social order in which men have become so interdependent tends to elevate the wisdom of the collective mind above that of the individual. "The sentiment or conviction," says Dicey, "is entertained by every collectivist, that an individual does not know his own interest, and certainly does not know the interest of the class to which he belongs, as well as does the trade-union, or ultimately the state of which he is a member ". This tendency to place in the verdict of the group the ultimate source of moral authority is of course directly antagonistic to the traditional individualism which made the verdict of the personal conscience supreme. There is a complete shift of the moral emphasis. For the individual is now surrounded by a network of laws and regulations that remind him at every turn of his membership in a community with infinite ramifications, that his every act affects his fellows no matter how remote their lives from his, that the efficiency and honesty of his work are matters not of himself and his employer but of the entire commonwealth of which he is a member, that, in fine, it is now true as never before in the history of the world man liveth unto himself ".

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In such a situation the traditional militant ethic of the pioneer and of triumphant individualism is worse than useless. It becomes in many cases a genuine hindrance to the successful solution of great ethical issues. These more or less outworn individualistic traditions persist, however. They provide us with the only organized and authoritative social norms that the community knows. They keep the machinery of the social order going, though with much creaking and groaning. The lack of teamwork is unmistakably in evidence. There is a dearth of universal sanctions to which the conflicting groups and interests may appeal in the effort to adjust their differences. Classes and groups have their own standards of "right" and "wrong". wrong". We have group ethics and class standards galore but few comprehensive norms that all are willing to acknowledge.

Contrast, for example, the standards of the industrial

group with those of the business group. The latter is inclined to emphasize the inviolability of contract, the sacrosanct character of private property, and the finality and universality of the pecuniary standard of values. The workers tend to view property as a more or less fluid entity belonging to society as a whole and they subordinate pecuniary to human values. The business man emphasizes competition as the life of trade; the worker minimizes competition as the enemy of group welfare. The business man stresses individual liberty and personal initiative; the worker subordinates individual activities to those of the group. The business group finds the incentive to action in profitism; for the worker profitism is only of interest as it serves to elevate the standard of living for the group. The average business man is actuated by the conventional conception of patriotism which says "my country whether right or wrong"; organized labor is often inclined to place international above national interests, at least in theory, and where labor is oppressed the tendency is to repudiate patriotism as a selfish class motive. The difficulty of finding common ethical ground upon which these two groups may meet is obvious. Owing to the impact of widely divergent interests and traditions the emotions and sentiments of these groups and hence their standards of moral judgment, have little in common; in many respects they are fundamentally antagonistic on the great issues of modern life. The one group has the greatest difficulty in gaining even an intellectual appreciation of the philosophy of the opposing group, so great is the educative effect of the stresses and strains of group economy.

When the inevitable clash between these various conflicting interests comes, what attitude does American society assume toward the problem? For the most part we fall back upon the typically American habit of mechanical, haphazard, and largely irrational ways of effecting adjustment of the issues concerned. In other words we become (morally) uncritical drifters ". Organized labor strikes, that is, it repudiates reason and law in favor of force. The employer meets force with force and pickets his works or telegraphs for